by Steven Dunne
‘Ward,’ murmured Laird, looking to the heavy sky to think. ‘Not little Donny Ward that was in the papers?’ Copeland’s faint nod confirmed it. ‘Jesus Christ. Two kids lost in the space of two months. . .’
‘I know.’
‘Merry bloody Christmas,’ growled Laird.
‘And I thought my family had it rough with Tilly,’ muttered Copeland.
‘Steady, lad,’ said Laird, glancing sharply at the young man. ‘We’ve a job to do.’
Copeland smiled weakly. ‘Guv.’
‘Walk me through it?’ continued Laird, remembering his first dead child. Concentrate on the facts. Keep the mind busy.
‘Right,’ agreed Copeland, seeking sanctuary in the specifics. He swept an arm up to his left, indicating the horizon where a suited SOCO was kneeling on the ground, measuring barely visible marks in the fresh snow. ‘The Wards live a mile or so over there on West Bank Road. You can just about make out some of the dead kid’s footprints heading away from home down to here.’
‘And then the bastard sneaks up and grabs him,’ concluded Laird.
‘I don’t think so, guv.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s weird. There seem to be two sets of footprints leading from the house but they’re hard to make out, like they’ve been trampled over. . .’
‘Trampled over?’
‘It’s hard to tell under the fresh snow but it’s like somebody has made an effort to obliterate any clear prints by dragging his feet through the marks.’
‘A chase?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Could be the doer leaving the scene, covering his tracks?’
‘Maybe. But we have a faint set of single prints leading in the opposite direction that we think are more likely the killer’s. SOCO reckon it was the Ward kid following his killer, obliterating all his footprints as he went.’
‘So he must have known him.’
‘Looks that way,’ agreed Copeland.
‘The dad did it,’ said Laird. ‘Fiver on it.’
‘Can’t take your money, guv,’ said Copeland regretfully. ‘The father was still at work when Jeff walked off. He’s alibied.’
‘You’ve checked that?’
Copeland’s expression was reproachful. ‘I’m not that wet behind the ears.’
Laird grinned. ‘Yes, you are.’ His levity faded. ‘All right, it’s not the dad. But some pervert got hold of the lad and strangled the life out of him. Witnesses?’
‘Uniform are going house to house. Nothing yet. One thing.’ Copeland gestured Laird to follow and set off to one of the clearer lone footprints disappearing into the distance. ‘The marks are from a small shoe. Size five.’
‘Are you thinking this was another kid’s handiwork?’ said Laird.
‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ said Copeland. ‘It’s becoming more common.’
‘OK, so check the Ward boy’s school friends. See how many live local and bring them in. What about other witnesses? Dog walkers, tobogganists, arctic explorers?’
‘No one even heard him scream, guv.’
‘Can you scream with someone’s hands round your throat?’ asked Laird.
‘I suppose not,’ replied Copeland. ‘And the bruising on his neck shows the killer used a rope.’
‘Show me.’
They walked back towards the crime scene tent and gazed past the two SOCOs busy in their work. On a flash of the camera, Laird saw the line of the rope on the skin.
‘Not good,’ said Laird, stepping past the younger man to spend a quiet couple of minutes looking at Jeff Ward’s lifeless body, flopped like a rag doll on the snow. ‘A rope smacks of planning. Let’s hope we can wrap this up sharpish.’
‘Weird thing,’ said Copeland over his shoulder, looking at the lifeless boy. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle.’
‘We all react differently, Clive.’
‘But if it were me I’d be trying to break away, do something.’
‘You can’t predict what people will do,’ explained Laird. ‘Some are paralysed with fear when they know they’re about to die.’
‘But no fight or flight,’ said Copeland.
‘Which makes it more likely it was someone the Ward kid knows,’ said Laird.
The pair stepped out of the tent, back out into the wintry chill. Only mid-morning and already it felt like dusk. Once clear of the hive of activity, Laird fumbled in vain for his cigarettes but Copeland failed to pick up on the hint.
Laird gave up the search for cigarettes, his expression grim. ‘I hate domestics. OK. Work up the father’s alibi until it’s cast in bronze then widen it out to other relations and ask about friends and neighbours. Maybe we’ve got a closet paedo in the area.’
‘But Ward wasn’t raped.’
‘If it’s a first-timer, the perv might have got off on it before he was ready. Doesn’t mean he didn’t want to violate him. If there’s a next time, the victim may not be so lucky.’
‘Lucky?’ exclaimed Copeland, turning to leave.
‘You know what I mean,’ said Laird. ‘Clive!’ Copeland glanced back. ‘Gently does it. We don’t want any more weeping and wailing than necessary. And make sure we’ve got plenty of girls to do the hand-holding.’
Copeland was about to depart when his eye caught a figure marching over the horizon. He took a sharp intake of breath and nodded at the distant form. ‘I hate to tell you this. . .’
Laird turned to look. ‘What in God’s name is Bannon doing here?’
The two officers watched the heavily layered man with a wild grey beard and wilder silvered hair striding towards the crime scene. He walked with difficulty and Laird surmised that the underfoot conditions were not the only factor.
‘Jesus,’ said Copeland. ‘He’s gone downhill fast. He’s not long retired, is he?’
‘Keep your voice down, Clive,’ mumbled Laird. ‘That’s a friend of mine and he used to be the finest detective on the force.’ He shouted in greeting at the approaching Bannon, his smile aping normality. ‘Sam! What are you doing here?’
Bannon panted to a halt, his thin pockmarked face red from the exercise. Laird could see he’d lost a lot of weight since he’d last seen him and, even at this early hour, his breath smelled of whisky.
‘Walter,’ said Bannon in return. He glanced at Copeland and narrowed his eyes. ‘I know you.’ Copeland squirmed under the older man’s cobalt-blue stare.
‘DC Copeland,’ interjected Laird.
Bannon’s eyes narrowed, as though sifting evidence in his pomp. ‘Clive Copeland – Matilda’s brother. I’m sorry for your trouble.’
Copeland blanched, the wound still raw.
‘Sam,’ said Laird quickly, stepping in front of Copeland. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
Bannon fumbled in his heavy coat for cigarettes, pulling out a squashed pack of Capstan Full Strength and offered them round, his sudden grin exposing black and yellowed teeth. Both officers refused a free smoke though Laird plucked the cigarette from Bannon’s mouth and put it in his pocket for later.
‘This is a crime scene, boss,’ said Laird softly.
Bannon nodded in remembrance of procedure. ‘Crime scene. Right.’
Laird sounded out the words as though addressing a child. ‘Boss. Sam. You have to leave. You can’t be here.’
‘Come off it, Walter,’ said Bannon with a wink. ‘You can’t hide it from me. It’s another one, isn’t it?’
‘Another one?’ asked Laird and Copeland in unison.
Bannon touched his nose with a finger. ‘You can’t fool me, Wally.’ He nodded towards the canvas. ‘I heard it on the radio. It’s the missing Ward kid, right?’ Their silence confirmed it. ‘Thought so. How long has he been dead?’
‘Sir,’ began Copeland. ‘I don’t think—’
‘How long?’ shouted ex-DCI Bannon in sudden and violent frustration. The noise was deadened by the canopy of snow but still activity stopped, all heads turning to the drama.
La
ird sighed then nodded at DC Copeland.
‘About twenty hours at a rough guess,’ said Copeland reluctantly.
Bannon found his smile again. ‘Killed yesterday then.’ He beamed at Laird. ‘December the twenty-second.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ exclaimed Laird. ‘Not this again.’
‘But was I right?’ beamed Bannon.
‘I don’t want to hear it, Sam,’ said Laird.
‘But—’
‘Enough!’ shouted Laird. ‘Now get yourself away from here before I have you escorted away.’
Bannon’s expression was dismayed. ‘You’d do that to your old guv’nor?’
Laird stared at him, his jaw set.
Bannon nodded unhappily before turning to stumble away. ‘All right, Wally. But you’ll see,’ he muttered over a shoulder. ‘You’ll see I’m right.’
When Bannon was fifty yards away, Laird turned back to the crime scene.
‘Guv?’ ventured Copeland.
‘Don’t ask,’ ordered Laird.
Two
Sunday, 22 December 1963 – Kirk Langley, Derby
‘Say cheese, everyone.’ Bert Stanforth squinted at the group through the viewfinder of his shiny new Kodak Instamatic 100, one leg kneeling on the carpet.
‘Cheese!’ screamed the assembled youngsters. The noise was cacophonous and the children – grinning, gurning and gap-toothed – clung to each other, many off balance in contortions only young bodies could allow, their hands clutching at friends’ garments for ballast.
Stanforth tried to hurry as every second that elapsed increased the certainty of chaos, inevitable when the young are invited to be still.
‘Hang on.’ Stanforth lowered the small camera from his face and looked at the flash cube before making an adjustment. He smiled apologetically at the assembly. This was his first ever camera, specially purchased for the occasion, and his discomfort with the technology was evident.
‘Ready this time. Cheese!’
‘Cheese!’
Awaiting the flash, the youngsters wriggled like eels against the confinement of proximity, some leaning on a quivering leg, kept upright by other bodies as they leaned towards birthday boy Billy Stanforth, arm in arm with best friend Teddy Mullen, at the centre of shot. Others grinned shyly, hiding their bashfulness behind the shoulders of friends while Charlotte Dilkes just stared dreamily at Billy, her features wreathed in adoration.
Party hats, made from yesterday’s newspaper, fell to the floor or were grabbed and held to the head, causing further commotion. Others, boys in particular, railed against being demoted to the back row and pushed down on the front row’s shoulders, straining to be centre stage in this pictorial record of William Stanforth’s thirteenth birthday.
‘I’m Hillary on top of Everest,’ shouted one boy, raising his head above the rest.
‘And I’m Sherpa Ten Pin,’ shouted another, trying to join him on the backs of others.
‘Just a minute,’ tutted Bert Stanforth, checking the flash again. The noise amongst his subjects ramped up further.
‘Hurry up, Bert,’ said his wife from the kitchen doorway, from where the delicious smell of baking sausage rolls wafted. ‘The kids are starving.’
‘OK, this time,’ shouted Stanforth. ‘Cheese.’
‘Cheese!’ screamed the young voices, even louder than before.
To one side of the scrum of giggling kids stood Billy’s elder sister, fifteen-year-old Amelia, looking on indulgently at the squirming mass of youth, urging her father to take the photograph. Her lips-only smile tightened when she glanced at the grandfather clock, her mood darkening with every second of captivity.
Take the flipping picture, will you, Dad? Brendan will be waiting for me.
She looked round at her escape route but it was blocked by her mother, smiling happily, her hands habitually hidden in a crumpled tea towel. Ruth Stanforth was a plump woman in her late forties. Her only respite from delivering and raising three children was standing in front of a stove cooking the meat her husband brought home from his butcher’s shop. The constant standing, combined with the protein-rich diet, had made her legs fatter at the ankle than the calf.
Amelia caught her mother’s eye and was forced to fake joy for the second it took to turn away in frustration.
He won’t wait if I’m late and then what? The rest of the day babysitting these flipping nippers. She gulped back her emotions. I’m losing him. Plenty of girls after my Bren. He won’t wait. And he won’t come up to the house to see me. Not after Dad sent him packing that time.
‘You’re not to speak to that young man again, Amelia,’ he’d said. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
Amelia shuddered at the memory of her father’s tone and the subsequent overheard conversation with her mum.
‘That Brendan’s a wrong ’un, Mother.’
‘But Bert, she’s nearly sixteen and old enough to live her own life,’ her mum had replied.
‘She’s not sixteen yet.’
‘But Bert—’
‘Not while she’s under my roof, Mother. Not with him. The McClearys are criminals, no-good gypsies. Walter Laird tells me young Brendan is already on their radar for thieving.’
‘I know he’s a bit wild, Bert, but he’s only young.’
‘He’s seventeen, Mother, and Walter says he smokes and drinks and God knows what else. Do you want your daughter ending up in the family way like that trollop Vivienne what’s-her-name down in the village?’
Amelia tried not to scowl at her father, his face hidden behind the camera. Have you never been in love, Dad? If so, you wouldn’t make me suffer like this, forbidding me from seeing my Brendan. Forbidden love. Amelia knew about that. She’d been close to tears during a reading of Romeo and Juliet last month. According to her Lit teacher, Romeo’s lover was even younger than she was and yet, barely old enough to have her monthly cycle, Juliet had allowed nothing, not even death, to come between her and the boy she loved.
Amelia looked again at the clock, ticking down to her sixteenth birthday as well as her rendezvous in Kirk Langley. In a few short weeks she’d be a woman. Then there’d be no good reason to resist Brendan’s coaxing. If only she could keep him happy until then. Already her young body ached, physically ached, to be near him and, once enfolded in his strong arms, Amelia Stanforth had felt temptation stirring within her. She loved Brendan and, before she’d let him put his hands under her jumper, Brendan had been forced to confess his love in return.
Once she would have felt dirty but not any more. Temptation was in the Bible. She’d learned that in RE. Only a week ago, they’d studied the story of Adam and Eve and their encounter with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. And although the teacher had explained their fall from grace with thin-lipped disgust, Amelia had begun to understand their folly in a way that Sister Assumpta would never be able to appreciate if she taught the subject until she was a hundred.
Amelia glanced at the clock again. Her eye was taken by her younger sister, standing beside her at the end of the front row. Billy’s twin, Francesca, was the only child not grinning or fidgeting with impatience at their father’s incompetence. Instead she looked coolly at Amelia’s private smile of anticipation and leaned over to her. ‘Missing Brendan, I bet.’ Amelia blanched at her sister’s taunt. ‘Well, he’s not missing you.’
‘Shut up,’ whispered Amelia.
‘Was that his new dolly bird earlier?’ murmured Francesca, out of the side of her mouth.
Amelia turned to her, face like thunder. ‘I said shut up, Fran.’
‘Nearer my age than yours, the dirty old man,’ continued Francesca, under her breath.
The sudden explosion of the camera caused a whoop of excitement and rubbing of eyes before the roiling mass of young bodies attempted disentanglement.
‘OK. One more,’ joked Bert Stanforth, unleashing a chorus of protest. He laughed as he wound on the film. ‘Just kidding.’
‘Brendan loves me,’ insisted Amelia to her sister’s leer
ing face. ‘It’s Billy’s birthday. Better not start a barney, Fran.’
The grin on Fran’s face disappeared and she turned white. ‘It’s my birthday too,’ she spat.
Amelia grinned, sensing swift retaliation. She looked round with mock interest. ‘So tell me, sis. Which of these nippers are your friends? Oh, wait a minute. None of them. You haven’t got any.’
Mrs Stanforth reappeared at the kitchen door, tea towel in hand once more. She smiled maternally at the assembled party. The feast was ready. Ham sandwiches with the thinnest scrape of butter, homemade egg and bacon tart, sausage rolls, tinned peaches and Carnation milk to follow, topped off by trifle and a plate of Jammie Dodgers for those keen to force as much of heaven’s bounty down their throats as they could manage.
‘Go through to the dining room and help yourself to cordial, children,’ she said to an answering hoot of pleasure. ‘I’ll bring in the food.’
‘Let’s eat,’ said Mr Stanforth, ushering the eager mass of youth towards the dining room with its brand-new, extended drop-leaf table and borrowed chairs. ‘Make sure your hands are clean,’ he chided, as he shooed them along.
‘Want to sit next to me, Billy?’ breathed Charlotte Dilkes, grinning bashfully at Billy.
‘No, thanks,’ replied Billy, brushing abruptly past her scrawny frame. Teddy Mullen, cruising in Billy’s wake, smiled cruelly at her and she gulped back a tear before sullenly following the others into the dining room.
The hall was nearly empty and Amelia waited for her father’s back to turn before sidling towards the door.
‘Where are you going, Amelia?’ called Francesca, a malicious grin returning to her features.
Bert Stanforth turned to see Amelia’s retreating frame. ‘Amelia?’
Amelia turned, a pallid smile fixed to her face. ‘Going to round up the strays, Dad.’
‘But the gang’s all here,’ beamed Mr Stanforth. ‘Come on, give us a hand.’
Amelia dutifully followed him to the dining room, glancing fiercely at Francesca as she passed.
Amelia stood in the lean-to conservatory at the side of the house, occasionally looking out into the dark windy countryside. Through the rattling windows, she hoped to catch sight of Brendan walking back down Moor Lane from Kirk Langley to his father’s rented bungalow on Pole’s Road. She should have met him an hour ago and, in her heart of hearts, she knew he wouldn’t have waited more than ten minutes.
