Death in a Far Country

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Right,’ Thackeray said. ‘When’s he coming up to Yorkshire?’

  ‘They’re sending him all the reports and he anticipates starting preliminary interviews next week. Obviously they want to get on with it now you’re fit and back on duty.’

  Thackeray took a deep breath. Fit, he thought, was a relative concept. ‘Right,’ he said again as Longley hung up without further comment.

  They would waste no time now, and he wondered whether he or Longley would still have careers by the summer. There was no doubt in his own mind that if the Chief Constable and the senior officers at County Headquarters wanted either of them out of the force they would be able to justify it to this outside investigator: Longley seemed to have inexplicably left a vulnerable child unprotected; he himself had thrown away a life-time’s training in an attempt to protect Laura. He had never regretted that decision, made in the heart-stopping heat of the moment, but he knew that if he had gone by the book the resulting shoot-out might have been avoided and the life of a man might have been saved. He shifted uneasily in his chair, jarred by the now familiar stab of pain from the wound in his back. He and Laura could also very easily have died that day, he thought, and maybe ACC Richards from Birmingham would find that a mitigating factor. Or maybe not.

  He got up with Amos Athertons’s report in his hand and walked slowly through to the main CID room, feeling old. Most of the desks were empty, the detectives already deployed on inquiries around the canal area, but Sergeant Kevin Mower glanced up from his computer screen, with questions in his eyes.

  ‘You need to read this,’ Thackeray said, dropping the report onto Mower’s desk. ‘She was beaten, stabbed and then drowned. I’m organising a briefing for two o’clock. We need to get a murder inquiry on the road, even if we don’t know who she is.’

  ‘There’ve been no missing person reports that fit in the whole of the county. I just checked again, guv,’ Mower said.

  ‘Identification is the first priority,’ Thackeray said. ‘But we mustn’t let potential witnesses by the canal off the hook. We need to check if anyone saw or heard anything that night. Door-to-door, though that’s a relative concept down there. Most of those buildings are empty, and those that aren’t are offices closed at night. But there’s the houseboats.’

  ‘Uniform are on to all that,’ Mower said.

  ‘What about the underwater search?’

  ‘Zilch,’ Mower said. ‘Used condoms and needles, which is more or less what you’d expect round there. It’s a quiet spot. But no sign of a handbag or a weapon.’

  ‘According to Amos we’re looking for a knife with a three-or four-inch blade, less than half an inch across, pointed, smooth edged. If they’ve had no joy in the water you’d better intensify the search along the bank. And I can’t believe a girl wouldn’t be carrying some sort of bag or purse. You may not carry ID as a matter of course, but everyone needs money.’

  ‘Maybe the motive was simply robbery,’ Mower said.

  Thackeray shook his head slowly. ‘She’d been hit and kicked in a sustained attack,’ he said. ‘Read the report on her injuries. You don’t do that just in the course of snatching a purse.’

  ‘Race then?’ Mower said, his face darkening. ‘There’s enough nutters out there these days who don’t like anyone a shade darker than they are.’

  ‘There are, but do they hang around a lonely towpath on the off-chance someone they don’t like will turn up? But you’re right, that’s another line of inquiry. We’ll have to see what we can pick up amongst the right-wing racist groups. But ID is the first priority. Until we know who she is we can’t even begin to work out what she was doing down there in the first place. It’s not somewhere you’d choose for a stroll on a dark winter night with no coat on. Remind the search teams that she was distinctly under-dressed for the conditions, will you? As under-dressed as that, she must have been noticeable. Or there may be a coat or jacket somewhere. If she was down there for sex, paid for or not, she may have taken a coat off in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘Odd things people do,’ Mower said. He glanced away, as if thinking of something else. Thackeray hesitated for a second himself, before ploughing on.

  ‘The other thing you need to know is that the inquiry team looking into the Christie deaths is expected up here next week for preliminary interviews. I expect they’ll want to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m sure they will,’ Mower said. He leant back in his chair and took in Thackeray’s sunken cheeks and pale complexion.

  ‘I saw Val Ridley the other night,’ he said quietly, making sure none of their colleagues could hear what they were saying. ‘She’s all geared up to give evidence and I don’t think the Super’s going to like what she has to say. She’s still furious that someone got to the little girl.’

  Thackeray nodded. Val Ridley had resigned while he had been fighting for his life in hospital after a child she had become attached to had been killed. It was not something she would either forget or forgive, and he was not sure how far and wide she would apportion blame when she was asked. The very fact that she had resigned probably meant that she wanted to escape the pressure she would be under to close ranks in the face of an inquiry. The canteen culture of officers covering each other’s backs still ran deep and although he did not condone it, he understood it. Val was a wild card, he thought, who certainly threatened the Superintendent, and possibly himself as well.

  ‘They won’t confine themselves to serving officers,’ he said. ‘I fully expect they’ll want to talk to Laura. And then there’ll be the inquests. A lot of things will be said there that we could do without. I guess the Chief Constable wants this inquiry finished before the trial and then the Coroner opening full hearings. That way he’ll reckon he can put the best gloss possible on what happened – and maybe say he’s sacked the people responsible for any mistakes as well. I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘It’s a bloody shame we lost Val,’ Mower said explosively. ‘I did try to get her to change her mind while you were in hospital, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Thackeray said. ‘But it’s water under the bridge now. Is she still planning to be a social worker?’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘She’ll be good at it,’ Thackeray said.

  ‘She was a good copper.’ Mower was not bothering to hide his anger.

  ‘Yes,’ Thackeray agreed. ‘But in the end she couldn’t hack it. She got too involved. And I’m sure that when she’s asked she won’t hesitate to tell the inquiry who she thinks is to blame.’

  ‘It could be a year or more before the case comes to trial,’ Mower said. ‘This thing will run and run.’

  ‘And mud sticks,’ Thackeray said, tiredly. ‘Anyway, put all that on the back burner for now. We’ve more urgent things to think about, like a dead pregnant girl. I’ll see everyone at two, and we’ll see where we’re at. Two lives were lost in the canal, the girl and her baby, and they both deserve our attention. Don’t let’s get distracted.’

  Across town at the Gazette, Laura Ackroyd stared contemplatively at her computer screen as she tried to compose a final paragraph for her profile of Jenna Heywood for the next day’s paper. She could see an anxious-looking Tony Holloway watching her from the other side of the newsroom, where his and the other sports reporters’ desks were clustered together in a defensive hollow square. Ever since she had returned to the office from her long lunch with Jenna, Tony had been eagerly offering snippets of information and advice and, in return, she knew that he was hoping for first view of what she had written. First view, she thought, and quite probably a pre-emptive input to her article if it in any way impinged on his entrenched opinions about United, its new chairman and members of the old guard to whom he felt that he owed favours.

  She had enjoyed her lunch with Jenna, and had begun to think that she understood why she had taken up part-time residence with her mother in Broadley while they both took time to come to terms with the loss of Sam and Jenna took stock of her newly inhe
rited position as chief shareholder of the club. The latter was not a job any of her co-directors hoped she would keep for long, Jenna had admitted with a faintly satisfied smile. She reckoned she knew of at least two groups – one of existing directors and one of people with no apparent connection to Bradfield at all – who seemed determined to buy her out if they possibly could. But if Laura was reading Jenna Heywood correctly, she guessed that sort of challenge would only make her the more determined to do her own thing, as soon as she had taken time to reflect on exactly what that might be.

  ‘What my dad was really worried about was that some outsider would buy the club and then just asset strip it,’ Jenna had said quietly, after a few glasses of wine had evidently made her more forthcoming than she had been at first. ‘The stadium site, so close to the town centre, is worth a fortune, and if you didn’t want to build a replacement you could just flog it off for redevelopment and pocket the profit. I really don’t want the bastards to do that. United was part of my life when I was a kid. Going to the match on a Saturday afternoon was the highlight of my week until I went away to uni. And I still kept it up whenever I was at home. It was one of the few things that my dad and I had in common. And I know it’s part of the lives of the fans in just the same way. It’s still a family thing here, isn’t it? Passed on from generation to generation. I know the big clubs have moved into a different financial dimension, but it’s not like that at United. So it’s struggling? I think I can fix that. And I’m certainly going to give it a try.’

  ‘But it’s not just a question of money is it?’ Laura had asked. ‘You have to keep the club in the League to survive as well, don’t you? Isn’t that a much harder nut to crack?’

  ‘You mean do I know enough about the game to make it a success?’ Jenna had come back quickly. Laura shrugged.

  ‘My father had a lot of faith in the new manager, and he signed the Nigerian player, Okigbo, who’s certainly turned out to be very good. So we’ll have to see, won’t we? Why don’t you come to the Chelsea game on Saturday and see how we get on? Be my guest. You never know, we may give the commentators a surprise. Stranger things have happened in the Cup.’

  ‘Why not? Thanks,’ Laura had said, carried along by Jenna’s obvious enthusiasm and well aware that Bradfield was in a state of hysterical excitement over the forthcoming David and Goliath clash, with gold and blue favours and pictures of the so-far unexpectedly victorious local team appearing in every shop window.

  Still considering her final paragraph, she was suddenly aware of a presence behind her shoulder and turned to find Tony Holloway unashamedly reading what she had written on her screen.

  ‘Tony, I’m not after your job, you know. This is just a profile of a woman taking on an unusual role.’

  ‘It’ll be very unusual if she runs the club into the ground,’ Holloway grumbled, still reading. ‘She rates Minelli, does she? I’m not sure I do. I think old Sam made a mistake with him.’

  ‘Well, she’s hardly going to announce that she thinks he’s a waste of space in a piece like this, is she?’ Laura countered. ‘This is pretty innocuous stuff. I’ve no doubt you’ll be the first to know when she runs into difficulties, as I’m sure she may do. She says herself it’s going to be a tough call, and from what you say it doesn’t look as if anyone’s going to give her an easy ride at the club, or in the Gazette, for that matter. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s a breath of fresh air and she’s nobody’s fool. She’s a successful businesswoman in a cut-throat profession, so I don’t see why we should pander to the whingers and whiners just yet. Give her a chance, for God’s sake.’

  ‘It’s not just me. The fans are grumbling too,’ Holloway said defensively. ‘They don’t like it. They’ve not got much time for political correctness on the terraces. They liked old Sam Heywood. He was one of them, in spite of his brass. But a public relations woman from London? Who’s not been to a match in years? They just think she’s having a laugh.’

  ‘Well, I daresay the Chelsea game will fill me in,’ Laura said. ‘Jenna’s invited me into the directors’ box to see the game. I’ve never been to a football match before. It’ll be a new experience.’

  Holloway looked at her for a moment in apparent disbelief, his lips a perfect O of surprise in his rounded face.

  ‘She’s invited you to the Chelsea game? A lot of people would sell their grandmothers for a ticket for Saturday.’

  Laura smiled sweetly.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think I’m taking any fan’s ticket as a guest of Jenna’s. And who else would I support?’ She was surprised to recognise just how much she and Jenna Heywood had in common in their unfashionable tendency to stick to Bradfield in spite of the temptations to play on a bigger stage.

  ‘If these clubs are going to survive at all, she reckons that you need to attract women and families to become fans. And some of the ethnic minorities. You can’t rely on elderly white men in cloth caps any more. There aren’t enough of them left, are there?’ Laura knew that such sentiments were often regarded as sacrilegious in the context of United, although she was equally sure that Tony Holloway, who was not stupid, recognised the truth of them. If something dramatic was not done at the club, it would continue its long slow decline into oblivion, in spite of the current season’s unexpected Cup success. And that, too, would in all likelihood dribble away into the sand this coming Saturday afternoon when the poor bloody infantry of Bradfield faced the stratospherically expensive guided missiles from Stamford Bridge. As Jenna had admitted – not for quoting, of course – it would probably be a massacre.

  ‘What’s all this about some millionaire property developer being interested in buying the club, anyway? You haven’t written about that, have you?’ Laura asked.

  Holloway shrugged and looked uncomfortable.

  ‘She knows about that, does she?’

  ‘No, I don’t think she’s heard more than the odd rumour,’ Laura said. ‘She was asking me about it, thinking that I would know. What’s it about, another Russian billionaire like the one who bought Chelsea or what?’

  ‘We should be so lucky. But it is just a rumour,’ Holloway said. ‘I’ve not been able to make it stand up as a story, though stranger things have happened. Football clubs are getting a bit like trophy wives – something every self-respecting millionaire wants to spend his money on. Worse things could happen to United.’

  ‘Just as long as it’s the football club he’s interested in and not just the property for redevelopment. That’s what Jenna says she’s afraid of.’

  ‘You’re not putting anything about that in your piece, are you? Ted Grant’ll think I’m falling down on my job if you do.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t planning to. I was concentrating on the personal in this piece. I’ll leave the financial skulduggery to you.’

  ‘You obviously got on well with our Jenna, then?’

  ‘Yes, I did actually,’ Laura said with a smile. ‘I liked her. She seems to know what she wants and she’s not going to be put off by unreconstructed Yorkshiremen who still think women should only speak when they’re spoken to. I don’t know much about football but I do recognise a breath of fresh air when it hits me. I think you’re going to be in for an interesting few months on the sports pages, Tony. I really do.’

  When she had finally finished her feature and received Ted Grant’s grudging grunt of approval, Laura took a detour to see her grandmother on her way home. Joyce Ackroyd still lived in one of the old people’s bungalows on the edge of The Heights, always known locally as Wuthering, one of Bradfield’s most notorious estates where the tower blocks were at last in the process of redevelopment. Apparently unfazed by the noise and dust as she watched the blocks of flats she had helped to plan as a young town councillor come down, Joyce Ackroyd was proving very reluctant to move away to any quieter corner of the town that Laura suggested.

  She came to the door slowly, reliant on a walking frame now for her arthritic
hips and knees, but delighted as always to see the granddaughter who had inherited her once red hair and more than a little of her fiery temperament.

  ‘You look tired, love,’ Joyce said sharply when Laura had made them both tea and settled in her tiny living room. ‘How’s that man of yours? Is he better now?’

  ‘More or less,’ Laura said cautiously. She knew Joyce had always harboured reservations about her relationship with what she called ‘her policeman’. ‘He’s back at work, though I’m not sure he should be.’

  ‘You both work too hard,’ Joyce said. ‘How are you ever going to…’ Joyce hesitated, with unusual tact though Laura knew well enough how she had intended to end the sentence.

  ‘Don’t go there, Nan,’ Laura said. ‘It’s all a bit fragile. Anyway, I didn’t come up to talk about my love life, such as it is. I came to ask you about Dad.’

  ‘Ha,’ Joyce said. She had recently returned from a holiday with her only son, Laura’s father, and had been succinct in her criticisms of an ex-pat lifestyle in Portugal, which she regarded as self-indulgent and futile. ‘Next thing you know he’ll be back in England,’ she said. ‘He’s in a panic over this drought and the forest fires they’ve been having in Portugal, reckons the place won’t be worth living in if he can’t fill his swimming pool and play on a nicely watered golf course.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it being any better here in a few years’ time, the way things are going,’ Laura said. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to ask you. What I’m interested in is Dad and Sam Heywood. Weren’t they big mates at one time? I seem to remember meeting Sam at home once or twice, a long time ago, when he first took over United and they did quite well for a bit. I don’t remember Dad having any interest in football, but Sam was one of the local wheelers and dealers and Dad never let one of them pass him by.’