Paying the Ferryman

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Maybe you should find out,’ Steel said.

  SIX

  ‘Is that Inspector Friedman? Alec Friedman?’

  ‘This is ex Inspector Friedman, yes. Who is this?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘They told me you’d both left the force, but … anyway. I’m DS Willis, Ferrymouth CID. I wonder if I could speak to your wife?’

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s about an old case of hers. At least, we think it is.’

  Alec hesitated, then said, ‘OK, I’ll hand you over. But you do know that—’

  ‘That your wife had to resign on health grounds. Yes, your old colleagues filled me in.’

  Alec could hear the smile in her voice as she added, ‘They made me jump through a fair few hoops before I could get your number.’

  Alec covered the receiver and explained to Naomi who the caller was and then handed over the phone. He sat back in the chair by the window while Naomi listened as Willis told her about the Griffins.

  ‘I don’t recognize the name,’ Naomi said.

  ‘She’d probably remarried since you gave her the card, but we don’t know what her original name might have been. Her first name was Lisanne. It’s unusual enough—’

  ‘That I might have remembered her. Sorry, I don’t recall anyone of that name. Is it possible she changed her first name as well? How far back do you think we’re going?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just it. The family moved here three years ago but we know absolutely nothing about them before that.’

  Which in itself is strange, Naomi thought. Ferrymouth was, what, seventy miles away? Eighty, perhaps. ‘You want me to come over?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, we did wonder if you would, but … look, usually before we inconvenienced you, I’d send some photos over, but …’ she broke off, suddenly embarrassed.

  ‘Send some over anyway,’ Naomi said. ‘Alec worked some of the same cases; it’s possible he would remember her. I’ll give you his mobile number.’

  ‘What’s all that about?’ Alec asked.

  ‘A double murder. Ferrymouth CID are having trouble contacting next of kin and they found an old business card of mine tucked into an address book. They hope I might be able to help out.’

  ‘Bit of a long shot,’ Alec said. ‘We used to hand those things out like—’

  Alec’s phone beeped and Naomi listened as he opened the message.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said.

  ‘You recognize them, then?’

  ‘The woman, yes. The man looks familiar, but I’m not sure. Six years, maybe seven years ago we finally managed to put her husband away. He’d been beating seven shades out of her and the kid for years. They moved up here from London, the Met asked us to keep an eye – he was a suspect in an armed robbery. She testified, finally, but not just for the domestic. You remember the Baldwins? Thea and Terry Baldwin.’

  She heard him returning the call. ‘DS Willis? Yes, right. The woman was Thea Baldwin. Married to Terry Baldwin. Went down about six years ago. History of domestic abuse, but what he was finally put away for was, among other things, the murder of an associate. If I remember right there was a falling out over the proceeds of a robbery.’

  He paused. ‘Yes, that would be it.’

  Naomi heard him pause again. She listened, straining her ears but unable to catch the other side of the conversation. Napoleon, her big black guide dog, rubbed his nose against her hand, sensing her sudden change of mood. She stroked his ears. Yes, she remembered the Baldwins, Thea and her little girl. Naomi had been the one who had finally convinced Thea to shop her husband.

  ‘So,’ Naomi demanded when Alec had got off the phone. ‘Are we off to Ferrymouth, then?’

  ‘The Baldwin case was one of the last—’ He broke off.

  ‘One of the last before my accident,’ she finished for him. ‘It’s OK, Alec. I can face my old life, you don’t have to dance around it. You of all people should know that by now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. You’re right. I think the truth is, you handle it better than I do.’

  ‘I came to the court to give evidence,’ she recalled. ‘About a week after I’d been discharged from hospital. Everyone was pushing for an adjournment, but—’

  ‘No one thought it was fair that you should be dragged up to testify so soon after you’d come out of hospital.’

  ‘I think it was good for me,’ Naomi said. ‘I think it reminded me I could still do something, even if my old life was over. I think I needed to know that.’ She paused, then asked, ‘So what are we doing once we get there, then?’

  Alec laughed. ‘I don’t expect they’ll want much from us; we can take some time and have a look around the area. Its years since I was over that way. Best pack your thermals, though, the wind really howls in off that bit of the coast.’

  ‘When are we going?’

  ‘They want us to drive over later today. DS Willis is fixing up a B and B for the night. That OK with you?’

  ‘So long as it’s dog friendly. I’ve done it before. I’ll get a bag packed,’ Naomi told him. ‘Then we can remind one another about the facts of this old case of ours.’

  DS Willis found her boss mooching about in Sarah Griffin’s bedroom, still searching for anything that would give them clues as to family. ‘I called the hospital again,’ Steel said. ‘She’s still not conscious but they’ve got her warmed up and she’s showing signs of recovery.’

  ‘The bullet wound?’

  ‘Was a through and through. Caught her in the side and smashed through a lower rib. It hit the little boy on the way out and then passed through Sarah’s arm as it exited, but didn’t hit any of Sarah Griffin’s vital organs. She’s lost a lot of blood but it was the cold that almost killed her. Another hour at most, they reckon, and we’d have been burying her too.’

  She nodded. ‘I finally got through to Naomi Friedman – as she is now. They’re coming this afternoon; I said I’d get a room booked for them somewhere. She left the force on health grounds just after they put Lisanne’s husband inside.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘RTA, apparently, left her blind. So her husband is driving her over, but as he worked the case too … if they know the background we might start to understand why the Griffins were here and what happened after Lisanne left her husband. Find anything on family yet?’

  Steel sat down on Sarah’s bed and looked around. ‘Nothing. There are a few photos from when she was younger, but nothing written on the back to tell us who was who. She kept a sort of diary but it seems to be mostly song lyrics and poems.’

  ‘Hers?’

  ‘Well, I think some of them are, but I’m not up on popular music, so I doubt I could tell.’

  Willis smiled. Steel was strictly classical when it came to music. It was all Radio Three when she was in his car.

  ‘She mentions friends.’ The journal was on the bedside cabinet and Steel picked it up and flicked through the pages.

  ‘“Went to the cinema with Joey and Evie. Saw Joey and Tel last night. Funfair with Joey and Tel. Stopped the night at Evie’s.” Joey seems to figure a lot.’

  ‘So does Tel. One of them might be a boyfriend.’

  ‘I’ll get someone round to the school, talk to her teachers.’

  ‘It’s worth talking to the search teams,’ Willis said. ‘There were quite a few youngsters out there today. I’d guess about a dozen or so that should have been in school.’

  ‘Good idea. I’m heading across there in a few minutes. What puzzles me is that there’s nothing here from before they came to Ferrymouth, at least not that I can see. My sister’s kids, you look at their rooms and there’s birthday cards and school books and posters dating back to when they were embryos, and that doesn’t include all the junk she manages to keep.’

  ‘It’s called sentiment,’ Willis told him.

  ‘Well, I must have had a bypass. Anyway, there’s none of that here, not in the girl’s room, not i
n the rest of the house.’

  ‘Well, having spoken to Alec Friedman I may know why that is,’ Willis said. ‘Sarah and her mother had to start over with their lives about six years ago. She testified against her old man and changed her name thereafter.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Lisanne Griffin was Thea Baldwin. I called up the case notes and had a quick skim. Lisanne was her middle name. Baldwin went down for eighteen years: sexual assault, aggravated burglary, armed robbery and a murder to top it off, not to mention domestic violence. Naomi Friedman was the one that persuaded her to testify, after which Thea Baldwin dropped off the planet. Until now.’

  ‘And this Baldwin, he’s still inside?’

  ‘Apparently. Thugs like him have a long reach, though. He could have put out a hit on them.’

  ‘So he could,’ Steel agreed. ‘But the one thing that still puzzles me is the angle of those shots. Unless the forensic reports come back different, I’m still betting on the shooter being seated. You don’t invite a stranger into your house at three in the morning and then sit down for a chat until he produces a gun. Do you?’

  ‘Not unless it’s a stranger you think you can trust,’ she said. ‘And there are not many that fall into that category, especially given the time of night.’

  ‘So who would seem legitimate, if they called round in the early hours of the morning?’

  ‘Only one I can think of,’ Willis said. ‘Given this Thea or Lisanne’s background, she might just be willing to open the door to a copper. Especially one that had something to say regarding her ex. I can see that just about being possible.’

  Steel nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking along the same lines,’ he said. ‘And what you’ve just told me about Baldwin reinforces that. She’d always be expecting that knock on the door, no matter how far she ran.’

  Joey badly wanted to go to the hospital, to try and see Sarah. He knew Maggie was right when she kept telling him that no one was going to get in to see her, not unless they could prove they were family. But he couldn’t shake off the need, the overwhelming desire just to get on a bus and go to the hospital and wait for as long as it took until they let him in.

  Then the policeman arrived, the one called Steel who was in charge, and he asked for anyone that knew the family well to come and talk to him, and Joey and Tel found themselves dragged forward by Maggie and brought to his attention.

  Tel wasn’t sure he liked that, but for Joey it was almost akin to torture. The only dealings he’d had with the police was when his dad kicked off and they came round to sort him out. The one good thing about the police, Joey thought, was that they sometimes hauled his dad off for a night in the cells. He always made up for his absence once he’d come back, but Joey had come to cherish those few, safe hours, even if they were only the calm before a usually massive storm.

  The policeman led them through into what Maggie called the vestry and they all sat down.

  ‘That’s Sarah’s book,’ Joey said accusingly, as the policeman produced the little red diary.

  ‘It is, and it mentions both of you,’ DI Steel told him.

  Joey bristled. ‘You shouldn’t go through people’s private things.’

  ‘We’re trying to find family. Next of kin. We’ve had to look through a lot of things.’

  ‘I don’t think they had any,’ Maggie said. ‘Joey, did Sarah ever mention family?’

  He shook his head. ‘She said her dad had gone to prison. That he beat on her mum. Like … well, anyway.’

  DI Steel waited, but Joey didn’t go on. He spoke to Maggie. ‘So you’re Tel’s mother?’

  She nodded. ‘Joey and Tel are best friends. Always round at our place, aren’t you, Joey? Sarah came over a lot too. She’s a lovely girl. Do we know—?’

  ‘The hospital says that the signs are good’ he said.

  Joey leaned forward. ‘She’ll be OK?’

  ‘They believe so.’

  He looked, Steel thought, as if he was about to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry about Jack, though. She loved Jack.’

  ‘We think she was trying to keep him safe.’

  ‘She would do. She’d try.’ Joey fidgeted awkwardly in his seat. ‘I want to see her,’ he said.

  ‘She can’t see anyone just now,’ Steel said. ‘But I’ll see what I can do, OK?’

  ‘Joey’s not family,’ Maggie said. ‘Will they let him in? You shouldn’t make promises – even half promises – you might not be able to keep.’

  Steel raised an eyebrow at the reprimand. Then he nodded. ‘As I say, I’ll see what I can do. We’re trying to find next of kin but it doesn’t look as if the Griffins have had any contact with anyone, former friends or family, since they moved here. I think Sarah will need her friends around her when she wakes up.’

  ‘But she will wake up?’ Joey insisted.

  Steel’s gaze flashed briefly across to Maggie as though mindful of her warning.

  ‘The doctors think so,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you any more than that right now.’

  Joey nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.

  ‘What can we do to help?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘You can tell me all about the Griffins. Anything you can think of. Who their friends were, who they associated with. If they mentioned anyone from their past. Tell me what Sarah liked to do, who she saw after school, where she went. Just talk to me.’

  Maggie, Joey and Tel exchanged looks and Maggie shrugged. ‘Where to start?’ she wondered.

  ‘Sarah’s best friend is Evie Watts,’ Joey told him. ‘They sit together in class. She didn’t like talking about “before”. That’s what she called it, when they still lived with her dad. He was violent. Her mum told the police and she went to court and they put him away. Sarah didn’t like to talk about it. She said they’d got away from him and that was all that mattered.’

  ‘And her stepdad. How did she get along with him?’

  ‘She loved him,’ Joey said simply. ‘He was kind, gentle, she said. Never yelled or got mad with them. And she loved her little brother. It’s going to tear her up, you know, when she knows he’s dead. When she finds out they’re all dead.’

  Silence crept into the room and remained, settling between the policeman and the teenagers and Maggie. It was Maggie who finally broke it.

  ‘Who would do a thing like that? It seems … impossible. Especially in a place like this.’

  ‘It’s all about “before”, isn’t it?’ Joey said. ‘About what they were running away from. All about the stuff she didn’t like to talk about. It came and caught up with them, didn’t it?’

  Steel nodded slowly. ‘It looks that way,’ he said.

  Joey sniffed hard, trying not to cry. He looked down at the scuffed red top of the vestry table. He wanted so much to help Sarah, to help this Steel to catch whoever did this to her and her family. His black hair needed cutting and it flopped down into his eyes. Impatiently he pushed it back and raised his head to look at Steel.

  ‘She had an auntie,’ he said. ‘She was the only person from before that Sarah talked about. I don’t think she was a proper auntie, not like a relative.’

  ‘And did she have any contact with this auntie? Did she tell you where she was? Her name?’

  Joey thought about it. One day in the summer they’d crept into the barn with a bottle of cheap cider Joey had pinched from his dad. They’d sat with the barn doors open, sun streaming on to the hay-strewn floor, and shared it – or some of it anyway. Neither of them had dared turn up at home drunk or stinking of booze, though their reasons had been very different. Joey didn’t want his dad to have anything more to punish him for and Sarah just didn’t want to upset her mum and stepdad.

  But they’d drunk enough to loosen tongues. Joey had told her about his life. About his hatred for his father. About his wish that he could just leave and keep on going until his dad was just a memory disappearing over the horizon, and Sarah had finally talked a little about ‘before’.

  ‘Trinny,
’ he said. ‘Aunt Trinny. She said she was a neighbour who lived a few doors down. Sarah said she was always kind, that she looked after Sarah and her mum when … you know, when her dad kicked off. She said she was the one person she wished she could still keep in touch with.’

  Steel was watching him intently and Joey found himself returning that look. For a moment it was as if there were only the two of them in the room.

  ‘And did she make contact?’ Steel asked.

  Joey shook his head. ‘No, but I know she told her mum how she felt because she told me she had. I told Sarah she should talk to her mum about how she felt.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Steel asked gently.

  Joey broke contact, looking away from him. There was a lump in his throat that seemed to be big enough to choke him. The words could hardly come out. ‘Sarah said her mum reckoned they could risk sending her a birthday card,’ he said. ‘It was her birthday in October, I think. Sarah was really happy about it. She said that friends should know you’d not forgotten them.’

  Steel sat back in his chair.

  ‘Do you think that might have given them away?’ Maggie asked. She sounded awed. ‘Do you think Sarah’s father caught up with them or something? My God, to even think of doing that to your own child.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Steel admitted. ‘We need to be careful about getting ahead of ourselves. But it’s a start. Thank you, Joey, you’ve been a big help.’

  ‘What else can we do?’ Tel asked.

  Steel smiled at him. He was clearly feeling left out. ‘The three of you can start by making me a list of names,’ he said. ‘Anyone Sarah might have been close to. And places she liked to visit, things she liked to do or that she told you her family liked to do. Anything you can think of, OK?’

  Three heads nodded. Maggie and the boys rose to leave. At the door, Joey turned back to look at him. ‘I’ve seen you before,’ he said. ‘You go to the bike project.’

  Steel raised an eyebrow and then nodded.

  ‘You promised,’ Joey added. ‘About Sarah. About trying to get me in to see her.’