‘He’s called a town meeting for Wednesday evening,’ Rushton said. ‘Wants me there to explain why we haven’t found the kids yet. He also wants me to send officers to the Big Smoke because there are rumours they’ve been seen on trains south. I need my men here. The fact that he donates a few hundred quid a year to the benevolent fund does not give him the right to tell me how to do my job.’
‘No, boss,’ Tom said.
Rushton glared. ‘What the bugger do you two want?’
‘Florence has an idea, boss. We want to run it past you.’
I could feel my face glowing. I blushed easily back then, and the heat wasn’t helping.
‘I was thinking that we could—’ I broke off and tried again. ‘Well, I’ve been speaking to the other kids at her school – Patsy, I mean Patsy Wood – and you can tell they’re not really thinking. I ask them if they remember anything and they say, “No,” and that’s the end of it.’
The super glanced down at his watch. ‘One would hope,’ he said.
‘Boss, you know how you’re on Look North tomorrow night, doing that appeal thing?’ Tom said. ‘What Florence has in mind is contacting the producer to see if they’ll run a short film beforehand that we help them make.’
The super folded his arms and looked me up and down. ‘In the pictures business now, are we?’
‘Sir, I’m thinking that we find a girl who looks like Patsy – same build, colouring, as similar as possible – and then we dress her in Patsy’s clothes.’
Rushton’s eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing.
‘Then we get this girl, this new Patsy if you like, and the friends she was with last night and we ask them to do exactly what they did during her last few minutes. You know, set off walking home from the park, down Snape Street, along Argyle Street, then down Livesey Fold. They say their goodbyes at the corner and then Patsy walks off down Nelson Street.’
The super opened his mouth.
‘Boss, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been interviewing witnesses and they claim to remember nowt,’ Tom jumped in. ‘Then when you give them something to, I don’t know, jog their memories, like, um, “The Clarets were coming out,” they go, “Oh yeah, I remember now. The coalman had pulled away and I saw the bloke on the motorbike. Dodgy-looking bugger – I thought so at the time.”‘
‘People think in pictures,’ I said. ‘Sometimes if you jog their memories with one picture, it helps to release others. People remember more than they think, but their memories are stored deep and you need to find a way to bring them to the surface.’
The super’s stare hardened.
‘Everyone in town will be watching you on Look North,’ said Tom. ‘If we show them Patsy’s last movements, actually show them, not just tell them, it could help them remember. Obviously we have the phone number in big letters at the bottom of the screen.’
‘Obviously,’ said Rushton. ‘You don’t seriously think Patsy’s parents will agree to this? Not to mention the other kids’ folks.’
‘Tom has a really good rapport with Patsy’s mum,’ I said. ‘And I know Luna Glassbrook, one of her friends. I’m sure she’d be keen.’ What I didn’t add, but believed, was that Luna Glassbrook would do anything for attention.
‘You’re talking about a reconstruction of events,’ said the super.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘A reconstruction. That’s a great name for it, sir.’
‘If it works, it could be groundbreaking,’ Tom said. ‘If it doesn’t, well, at least we’ll know we tried everything.’
We waited. Rushton had young children himself. There was a picture on the desk of his son, Brian, in a plastic policeman’s helmet.
‘And that could be important if … well, if we don’t find them safe and sound,’ Tom said.
‘Or if another one vanishes,’ I added.
Heavy silence. I’d done it again. I could feel Tom’s glare on the back of my head.
‘Florence could get on the blower to Look North, see what they think,’ Tom said. ‘She’s got a posh voice: she’ll get on with them nobs.’
There was a pause while Rushton stared at us. ‘I suppose a phone call can’t hurt.’
Tom and I looked at each other.
‘If I come out of this smelling of anything other than lavender, I will string you two up by parts the sun doesn’t see. Do I make myself clear?’ Rushton glared at us. ‘Now fuck off. You’ve reminded me I need to organise a haircut.’
14
Tuesday 17 June 1969
Look North were surprisingly keen on the reconstruction idea. Unsurprisingly, my colleagues were not. The kinder, less judgemental ones considered it a waste of time; the rest – and I’m quoting now – a daft idea that would show us up as pillocks in front of the entire country and who did her ruddy ladyship think she was? The super was as good as his word, though, and I was relieved from Tuesday-morning beat to get ready.
I spent it at the school and out on the streets, planning the route. I got back to the station, hungry and hot, at just after two o’clock, to a sense that something had happened in my absence. I caught a muffled ‘Here she is’ as I passed down a crowded corridor towards the canteen.
Tom was sitting alone at one of the tables. I bought a ham sandwich, poured a glass of water and knew that several pairs of eyes were watching me cross the room.
‘Ears burning?’ Tom asked when I sat down.
I glanced around. Two people looked down quickly. Another continued to stare. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
Tom wiped a piece of white bread and margarine round the edge of his plate. ‘Boss has two members of the town council, the head of the Rotary Club and a school governor giving him earache as we speak. And John Earnshaw was in first thing.’
‘About the reconstruction?’
Tom affected a trembling, elderly voice. ‘It will cause unnecessary panic, focus attention in the wrong direction entirely, be bad for business and bring down the seven plagues of Egypt upon our pleasant Northern town.’
‘Ten,’ I said miserably.
‘Huh?’
‘Ten plagues of Egypt. You might be thinking about the seven deadly sins. So it’s not happening?’
‘Oh, it’s happening all right.’ He turned to his jacket, hanging over the next chair, and began to search through the pockets. ‘Rushton is one of the few nobs in town who hasn’t succumbed to the lure of the lodge.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. And your cigarettes are in your shirt pocket.’
He clapped a hand to his chest. ‘Freemasons. This town is run by ‘em, and Rushton won’t join. Why do you think the powers that be can’t stand him?’
‘So he’s really going out on a limb for me?’
‘He likes you.’ Tom lit up and blew smoke at me. ‘Can’t understand it myself.’
I spent the next hour waiting to hear the reconstruction was off. I even wandered up to the CID room to find out what was going on. Raised voices could be heard from Rushton’s office, but when the door opened, he just walked through the room, jacket fastened, cap on his head, and muttered, ‘Good luck tonight, lads,’ as he left.
When the time came, we met in Sunnyhurst Park, where Patsy and her friends had spent Sunday evening. It was a little after three o’clock, before the end of the school day, but the cameraman assured me that a filter over the lens would give the impression of twilight.
The six teenagers emerged from the park gates looking as natural as I could have hoped. A girl called Maureen had been chosen to play Patsy. The clothes our missing girl had been wearing had vanished with her, but I’d searched through second-hand shops in the town centre and found a red cardigan and flower-print dress that even her mother agreed was a good match.
I was waiting with the producer on the first corner as the kids came past. Luna, her eyes bigger than ever thanks to the make-up she’d sneaked into school, was walking alongside Maureen. Behind them was John Donnelly, towering above the others. His fa
ther owned the biggest pub in town, a soot-stained, Gothic construction called the Black Dog. At fifteen, he’d had his adolescent growth spurt early and seemed the natural leader of the group.
John had an odd, timeless look about him. His clothes seemed dated, made from natural fabrics rather than the garishly patterned nylon worn by the others, and his dark hair was cut shorter than was fashionable. He was a handsome boy, though, with slanted dark eyes, pale skin and long, graceful limbs.
Tammy Taylor, at his side, was pretty with long, dark hair and a thick fringe. Like Luna, she seemed overdressed for hanging around in the park. Behind her walked Dale Atherton, a small, skinny lad with hair the same colour as mine and even more freckles. Finally, tagging along at the back, was Richie Haworth. He was shorter and squatter than the others, with a cap of blond hair obscuring most of his face. As the children approached the film crew, he was the one who couldn’t resist a self-conscious wiggle of his backside.
‘We can edit it out,’ murmured the producer.
As they walked away from the camera along Argyle Street, Luna dropped back to walk beside John and he slung an arm around her shoulders. It seemed an unusual display of affection for self-conscious teenagers. On the other hand, children here did seem to date young. Only that day at Patsy’s school, another of her classmates had told me that Luna had been ‘going with’ John for two months, that Patsy had wanted to ‘go’ with him, but he’d turned her down.
We’d expected to have an audience for the reconstruction and, sure enough, people – mainly women – were watching us from doorways and street corners, but as the children reached the corner, I spotted a group of four suited men beside a parked Daimler. One of them seemed to be watching me, but as the first female police officer in Sabden, I was used to being noticed.
At the street corner, the children split up, as they’d done on Sunday night. Maureen carried on alone, her red cardigan sharp as blood against the blackened stone of the houses she passed. She walked past the corner shop, which would have been closed when Patsy walked this way, and the White Lion pub, which would have been open. She passed the bookmaker’s and the house that doubled as a hairdresser, with a salon in the front room. When she reached the ginnel, she stopped.
Ginnels – wide, cobbled alleyways that ran between two back-to-back rows of terraced houses – were common in the industrial North-West. Every house had a backyard that led out into a ginnel. People used them a lot to avoid getting the front steps and hallways dirty.
Patsy would have been expected to go home via the ginnel. It was the quickest way and she was late. The door to the Woods’ backyard was never locked.
On warm days, Northern housewives strung their washing on lines across ginnels and, on a June evening, it would have been out until late. At four o’clock in the afternoon, it was impossible to stand at one end of the ginnel and see any distance down it. Anyone could get lost amid the hanging rows of towels, shirts and sheets. Anyone could slip behind a large sheet and – poof! Gone.
At a signal from the producer, Maureen stepped into the ginnel, pushed aside the first sheet and was gone.
15
‘In the small Lancashire town of Sabden, at the foot of Pendle Hill, fears are growing tonight for the safety of fourteen-year-old Patsy Wood, who vanished from near her home on Sunday evening. She is the third child to go missing in the town in recent months.’
As the anchorman cleared his throat, the television picture vanished, to be replaced by a flickering mass of grey dots. A collective groan went up. Those of us who’d been assigned to take telephone calls were gathered round the station’s only TV set, apart from PC Butterworth, who was standing behind it, holding the aerial up high to improve the signal.
The picture flickered back as the camera panned left to show enlarged photographs of Susan Duxbury and Stephen Shorrock. Susan was plump, with dark brown hair that needed washing, bad acne and NHS spectacles. Stephen was smaller, thinner, with mousey hair and a pinched look around the eyes. Neither was particularly attractive, but I guess few are treated kindly by teenage years.
‘Susan Duxbury stayed late at school on the afternoon of Monday, 17 March to help a teacher tidy up the classroom,’ the anchorman read. ‘She left alone and was last seen in the town centre, some distance from her home. Stephen Shorrock was playing football with friends on Wednesday, 16 April. After the group split up, he is believed to have walked home along Sabden’s main road but never reached his house.’
The anchorman glanced up briefly from his notepad. ‘Sightings of both children near the rail and bus stations gave rise to initial speculation that they might have left Sabden voluntarily, possibly running away from home,’ he said. ‘But with the disappearance of a third child, questions are being asked of the town’s police.’
He spun to face the man on his right and the camera panned back.
‘Superintendent Rushton, this is the third child to go missing on your patch in as many months. What are you doing wrong?’
‘The question you need to be asking, Frank, is why the people who know something aren’t coming forward,’ Rushton countered. ‘Teenagers don’t just disappear. We’re working on the theory that the children, all of whom knew each other, may be together somewhere. If that’s the case, someone will know something.’
‘The three children all went to the same school. Do you consider that significant?’
‘There is only one secondary school in Sabden. What I would like to say at this stage is—’
‘You’re averaging a disappearance a month, superintendent. Are you expecting another child to vanish in a couple of weeks?’
‘That isn’t true at all. No child was reported missing in May.’
The anchorman’s eyebrows sprang upwards. ‘Well, I’m sure we can all be very thankful for that. So are you expecting July to be a good month? Can the parents of Sabden relax for a few weeks?’
Had Rushton been in the station, a missile would have been thrown. As it was, he simply stopped blinking. ‘We’re concentrating on finding Patsy, Stephen and Susan at this stage. Speculative scaremongering would be counterproductive.’
‘So if you’re not going to warn them to take care, what would you like to say to the people of Patsy Wood’s home town?’ asked the anchorman.
After the super had made his carefully worded appeal for witnesses, the station played the reconstruction.
It gave me goosebumps. Even though I’d seen the filming a matter of hours before, the distance created by the television screen made it more real somehow, as though we were actually watching Patsy’s last movements. When Patsy (I mean Maureen, of course) turned into the ginnel behind Nelson Street, I heard someone in the room behind me give a low gasp.
When it was over, I held my breath, braced for a repeat of the disparaging comments I’d been forced to listen to all day. The room was uncharacteristically silent. I felt something nudge me in the back and turned to see Tom wink at me.
The calls came streaming in. More than one caller was sure they’d seen Patsy heading towards the centre of town. Others reported seeing her at the bus station, at the train station, back in the park, even on a ferry leaving Liverpool dock.
Visitors arrived for Rushton and reluctantly agreed to see one of the inspectors when they were told the super wasn’t available. I only caught a glimpse, but I was pretty certain they were the same four men I’d seen watching the reconstruction earlier that day.
Amid every call that came in, the one that mattered was directed to me, because no one thought that it did matter. ‘Loony on the line,’ the sergeant called. ‘Come and deal with it, Flossie.’
I bit my tongue, picked up the phone and heard the story of a voice calling out for help. From a newly dug grave.
16
The churchyard of St Wilfred’s Roman Catholic Church was so close to the Hill that it was difficult to tell where the one ended and the other began. Maybe an outlying stone, tumbled from the boundary wall, marked the spot, or pe
rhaps a clump of heather stealing its way in from wild to tended land. Either way, there came a point at which the ferns, bracken and dry moorland grass had definitely given way to headstones and urns, when the steep rise had levelled out, and it was here, in the sheltered spot between the crumbling wall and the oldest stones, that the local children played.
The sun was low in the sky when we swung the gate. Shadows were lengthening, and the golden glow of minutes earlier had faded to a dull, flat light. Darkness was creeping over the Hill, turning it from green and yellow to turquoise, its crevices deeper, almost black. It was the time of day that locals called the daylight gate, neither day nor night but something in between, when the normal rules of both seemed suspended. A time when anything could happen. I’d lived in Lancashire for only a few months, but I’d already learned that the daylight gate was a time when the housewives closed their windows and latched their yard doors, when younger children were called in from the street.
When the unusual phone call had come in, about children hearing strange noises in the churchyard, the sergeant had given the job of following it up to me. Nervy kids, long-shot call, visit to the edge of town – it had WPC Lovelady written all over it. To the sergeant’s annoyance, though, he’d had to send a driver with me, so PC Randy Butterworth and I had gone together to the children’s house.
What I’d heard from the kids had been enough for me to borrow the family’s phone and call Tom, who’d driven out immediately. He’d sounded sceptical, but he’d come all the same, and he led the way over the grass path towards the grave. The kids’ father followed close behind. I went next.
PC Butterworth lingered by the gate.
The grave in question rose from the ground like a newly baked loaf, smooth and perfect, a rounded oval shape. The top layer of earth had dried in the sun and a fine sprinkling of soil, like whole-meal flour, danced a little dust storm above it.
The children, brothers aged six and nine, hadn’t come out with us, but I could see them peering from an upper window of their house. Nor were they the only ones. Word had got round and every window that overlooked the churchyard had faces in it. People were gathering at the gate too. Randy stood guard, his back to us, keeping them out.
The Craftsman Page 5
