‘Really? Why? What’s happening? Is something up?’
Harry couldn’t have thrown a better hook and line.
‘Yes, it’s a situation that I really need your input on, actually, Sir. Can you help?’
Harry knew exactly what he was doing, saying just enough to appeal to the DSI’s ego, and taking him away from his thoughts about DSI Firbank.
‘Oh, well, if you insist,’ Swift replied.
‘I think your seniority in this, your experience, would be hugely appreciated by the rest of the team, Sir,’ Harry said, doing his best to sound as convincing as possible. ‘I hope that’s okay?’
‘Well of course it’s okay!’ Swift said, his voice biting impatiently at the heels of Grimm’s. ‘What exactly do you need from me?’
Harry paused just long enough.
‘Well?’
‘The press are here, sir, and I’ve given them your name as the point of contact. I know you’re not SIO on this, but I thought it best that you be the one to front this.’
‘The press? SIO on what? The incidents you’ve been investigating? They don’t know about it all yet, surely! They can’t!’
‘They can and they do,’ Harry said. ‘Not everything I’m sure, but enough to be here and needing to be dealt with. And I can’t be spending my time on it when, as SIO, and as I’m sure you will understand and support, I need all the time and staff hours I can get to find who’s responsible as soon as possible.’
More silence, the sound of Swift clearing his throat.
‘Right, I’m on my way. I’ll be there within the hour.’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ Harry said. ‘I can’t say how much I app–’
The line went dead.
Harry handed Jim his phone back.
‘Sorted?’ Jim asked.
‘Looks that way,’ Harry said. ‘Right, best we go tell the press Swift is who they need to speak to, eh?’
A few minutes later, Jim pulled them up into the marketplace and Harry climbed out to witness a sea of faces turn to stare at him. There were cameras, too, and microphones, and lots of people getting very shouty about things. And Harry wasn’t in the mood for shouty unless, of course, it was him that was doing the shouting.
As the faces crowded in, Harry turned back to Jim’s Land Rover and climbed up onto the bonnet. He then turned around and stared down at the crowd.
‘Right then,’ Harry bellowed. ‘How’s about you lot all shut it for a moment and listen in? You can do that, can’t you? Listen?’
A tall man thin as a string pushed his way to the front of the crowd and looked up at Harry, notebook in one hand, pen in the other.
‘DCI Grimm,’ the man began, ‘what can you tell us about the two murders that have occurred over the last few days?’
Harry glared at the man, willing his face to melt under the heat of his fury. He’d met this one before. It was Richard Askew, from the Westmorland Gazette. A big mouth in a small paper doing his best to shout the loudest.
‘Come on, Grimm,’ the man said, ‘the people have a right to know! Are they safe? Is there a serial killer on the loose?’
‘Was I talking to you?’ Harry asked. ‘Specifically, I mean?’
Askew gave a shrug.
‘Is that a yes, a no, or an I don’t give a shit?’ Harry asked. ‘Just so we’re both sure. Because I, unlike you, prefer to be clear on things, before I act.’
‘No, I guess,’ Askew said.
‘Exactly!’ Harry replied. ‘So, why don’t you wind that thin neck of yours in and see if you can find a little bit of courtesy, while I chat to everyone else, and not just you?’
Askew’s mouth fell open to say something then snapped shut.
‘Anyway,’ Harry said, now back on with the rest of the crowd, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with Detective Super Intendent Swift and he will be here within the hour to give a statement and answer your questions. Until then, can I ask that you give myself and my team the space we need to get on with our jobs? Thank you!’
Harry was about to climb down when Askew piped up again.
‘Can you confirm that the victims went to school together, Detective? Right here in Hawes, as a matter of fact?’
The words cut into Harry like shrapnel and it was all he could do to not grab a hold of Askew and introduce him to the loud end of a really good slap.
‘Were you not listening?’ Harry asked. ‘Or is it deliberate? I mean, do you act like an idiot and hope I’ll take pity on you and answer your questions, is that it?’
‘So they did,’ Askew said.
Harry leaned in, making full use of his size, but more of his ruined face, to add to his menace.
‘The DSI will be here soon enough to answer your questions. I suggest that you wait until then to ask any more.’
Then, without another word, Harry pushed on through and over to the Community Office, crashing through the doors and into the office to find the rest of the team.
‘Bollocks!’ Harry roared, as the door crashed shut behind him. ‘Absolute bloody arse bollocks!’
Matt stood up and met Harry halfway. Liz and Jenny remained seated.
‘They just turned up,’ Matt said. ‘Word’s got around about what’s happened. That’s just the way it is around here. And with La’ll Nick involved, it’s got around even quicker. Everyone will be talking about it now. And by everyone I mean literally everyone. Knock on any door right now, and it’ll be the topic of conversation, for sure.’
‘What’s this about the victims being at school together?’ Harry asked. ‘And how is it I’m hearing it first from that streak of piss Askew and not from you lot?’
Harry watched as Matt composed himself.
‘They were at Hawes Primary School together,’ Matt then explained. ‘Names around here, they don’t get forgotten. They just sort of keep on rolling. Again, that’s not exactly going to help with keeping it all quiet.’
‘But how did that information get out?’ Harry asked.
‘I don’t think it did,’ Matt said. ‘It was just there. People hear the name, they remember stuff, and there we go.’
Harry slumped down into a chair as Jim entered the room.
‘Don’t think they’ve seen anything like that before,’ Jim said, then turned to the others and explained what Harry had just done. ‘And that Askew bloke, how is it that he knows so much? He’s not even with one of the main papers, is he? He’s just local!’
Harry took a deep breath, sucking in as much calm as he could.
‘Swift’s on his way,’ he said. ‘He can deal with them from now on. As for us, here and now? I want to know everything about the victims. And I mean everything. They went to school together, but so what? Something else connects them. School isn’t enough. I want to know what they had for breakfast, their favourite magazine, who their friends are, if they’re allergic to dogs, if they buy Lottery tickets, everything!’
‘On it, Boss,’ Matt said, then added, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Harry was sitting in a chair, which was far too small for him, in a tiny waiting room decorated with some very colourful and unique pieces of artwork by various artists he had never heard of, including, Emma S, age 7, (A Dinosaur That Is Big), John G (My Mum Is Smiling), Tom S (Our New Puppy Called Sammy), and Nicola B (The Night Sky At Night). He had been sitting there for fifteen minutes, his backside becoming increasingly numb, waiting for the head teacher to come and speak with him. It was four thirty in the afternoon, school was over, and Harry was having flashbacks to his own childhood. He’d spent rather too much time waiting for the headteacher to talk to him thanks to a habit of not just getting into fights, but of starting them. The rest of the team were sifting through any and all information they could find on the two victims, with another round of door knocking in Oughtershaw, and a number of uniformed officers doing the same in Richmond around the residence of Mr Hutchison. And DSI Swift was now dealing with the press, and growing increasingly sweaty and r
ed in the face while doing it. Forensics were also at Hutchison’s house, searching the place for anything that would give an idea as to how he had got from his home to a slurry pit in Widdale.
A door to Harry’s left opened and out walked a woman wearing a genuine smile and the shiniest red shoes Harry had ever seen.
‘Mr Grimm,’ she said, and Harry rose to his feet, momentarily stuck in the chair and having to prise himself out of it. ‘I’m Jennifer Alderson.’
‘Yes, hello,’ Harry said. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’
‘It’s not a problem, especially under the circumstances,’ the head teacher replied. ‘Come in, won’t you?’
Harry followed the woman back through the door, which she eased shut behind him, before inviting him to sit in a chair on the nearside of a large desk. She made her way to the other side and sat down.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
Harry shook his head. He was already somewhat wired thanks to the amount of tea he’d drunk that day thanks in the main to the monstrous mug from Matt.
‘Water will be just fine, thank you.’
The head teacher poured him a glass from a jug on her desk.
‘So,’ she said, relaxing back into her chair, ‘how can I help?’
‘I don’t know if you can,’ Harry said, ‘and to be honest, this is a bit of a long shot, but you never know, right?’
The head teacher said nothing, clearly waiting for Harry to continue.
‘Does the school have records of pupils going back into the seventies and eighties?’ Harry asked.
‘Of course,’ the head teacher replied. ‘Goes back decades. What exactly is it that you need?’
‘I’ve the names of two pupils,’ Harry said. ‘I know they both attended here at the same time. It might be useful to learn more about the school at that time, other pupils who were there with them, if there was anything that happened during the years they attended, that kind of thing.’
‘Am I right to assume this is about, you know, the awful goings on we’ve all heard about?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes,’ Harry nodded. ‘People are talking, then?’
‘Yes,’ the headteacher said. ‘You could say that.’ She then fell quiet for a moment, resting her hands together on the desk in front of her. ‘Our records are confidential,’ she said eventually. ‘As I’m sure you would understand. But under the circumstances . . .’
Harry said, ‘This is entirely a police matter. Confidentiality is pretty much the order of the day.’
Rising then, the headteacher walked to a large metal cupboard and unlocked it. Opening the doors brought into view numerous, well ordered files.
‘These belong to the decades you mention,’ she said, gesturing at a row of files on a shelf in the cupboard. ‘Are you able to narrow it down a bit at all? We’ve photographs as well, you know. Not just the official class ones, but of activities, sports days, that kind of thing.’
Thinking about Capstick and Hutchison, Harry said, ‘Maybe seventy-eight onwards?’
If they had been at school together, then he figured seeing files and photos from when they had been there at least a few years made a little more sense than trying to look at everything. It was somewhere to start, anyway, even if it came to nothing.
‘Do you know what you’re looking for specifically?’ the headteacher asked, pulling some files out and placing them on her desk.
‘No, not really,’ Harry said.
‘I’ll leave you alone for a while, then,’ the head teacher said, then slipped out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Harry stared at the files. Having set the rest of the team off on finding out as much as they could about the two victims, he had then realised that if they had been at school together, then perhaps there was something useful there, too? He doubted it, but it was worth a look regardless. The two victims being childhood friends, if they were friends that is, he thought, was intriguing enough to have him at least go and have a look, which was why he’d wandered up to the school, leaving the rest of the team with everything else. But there was one other thing which had sent him to the school for a nosy, and that was what Little Nick had said, something about John not even being liked when they were at school, or something along those lines, anyway. For him to have brought that up at all had struck Harry as odd. To harbour that kind of resentment for so long took more than just getting your head flushed down the toilet a couple of times. He doubted there was anything to it, but it was worth a look, and anything which gave them a better understanding of the victims and their lives was never a bad thing.
With his little notebook open, ready to jot anything down of importance, Harry opened the files, which he discovered to be logbooks and diaries recording the daily goings on at the school, including absences, illnesses, visitors, holidays, and any accidents or incidents that happened at the school. There was even mention of a government information film, Harry noticed, which had been shown to the whole school each year. Seemed that at the time the then head teacher hadn’t entirely approved of it being shown at all, and there had been some resistance from a number of the parents, particularly by one who had voiced concerns about its impact on his daughter, but it had still gone ahead. Harry wondered for a moment what on earth could be so bad about a film designed to help kids stay safe for a head teacher to not want it shown. He jotted down the title, then further on found not just two, but three names he recognised: John Capstick, Richard Hutchison, and Nicholas Ellis. John was a year older than the other two, but due to the size of the school, they had all been in the same class; thirty-two children in total.
Harry tracked back through the files briefly, then followed the three names through the school. He cross-referenced these with a number of the other files, which contained within them the photographs that the headteacher had mentioned. And in those he found himself staring into the long-ago eyes of two men he only knew as corpses. Nick was there, too, and he seemed almost unchanged, thin and rat like as a child, it seemed, not just as an adult.
John, it was clear to see to Harry, was not a happy boy at school. And he didn’t just gather that from the photographs, which in their fading colours showed a boy whose clothes were threadbare, his hair unkempt, and on his face an expression of emptiness. He read it as well in the daily logs, written by the teachers, with John’s name coming up all too often. They spoke of a boy who didn’t so much struggle at school as fight against every part of it. He had behaviour problems, it seemed, he wouldn’t concentrate, he had run away from school too many times to count. Then, as he’d grown older, and hit age 10 and a growth spurt all at once it seemed, bullying had risen to the top of the reasons why he was in trouble, with John throwing his weight about rather too often and with far too much enthusiasm.
Harry shuffled through more logs, more reports, more photographs. He found some notes and photographs from a sponsored walk along the roman road, which crossed the fells behind Hawes, and in those opened the briefest of windows onto John’s friendship group at the time. There were six in total, Harry found, including John, Barry, and Nick. The other three, names and faces new to Harry, were Simon Swales, Jack Iveson, and Ian Snaith. And in the last year John spent at Hawes primary school, before heading off on the bus down the dale to the comprehensive at Leyburn, those six names made frequent appearances in the logbooks, and never, it seemed, for any good reason. Numerous mentions of them were made, not just as individuals, but as a gang, and Harry found it almost laughable to think of the six boys staring back at him from those old photos as being described as such. He’d dealt with gangs, bad ones, and not just adults either. Kids could be just as mean, just as violent. But he just couldn’t see it in the pages in front of him. And yet, years later, two of them were now dead, murdered, and for why? A bit of bullying, playing cowboys and Indians with a little too much enthusiasm, throwing a few stink bombs around?
Harry turned a page to continue reading, his eyes drawn to a substantial section just down the
page where the boys’ names were noted, and a date, but the notes relating to these details had been scribbled out, which struck him as a little odd. Why would that be? The rest of the records were all clear, but this bit had been all crossed out for some reason. But what was it? The notes surrounding this particular section were from the winter of nineteen seventy-eight and seventy-nine, which had clearly been a bit of a one to go through. The school had been closed for a while with frozen pipes, a particularly lethal ice slide – which had stretched the entire length of the playground and been the main cause of at least two broken wrists and a case of mild concussion – had had to be salted, much to the pupils’ disappointment, and a mass snowball fight, between years five and six, had resulted in two of the dinner staff going home with bruises, and detention for both year groups. An eventful winter, Harry smiled, imagining the fun that the kids must have had.
Harry thought back over the last few days, remembered the little chat with Nick, and how he’d found himself wondering if something had happened back at school. Was that this crossed out bit in the notes? It was a leap, not least because Nick had not exactly said very much, if anything at all. But then again, Harry mused, by not saying much, perhaps Nick had ended up saying quite a lot. So, was this it, then? The something that either did or didn’t happen? It was hurting Harry’s brain to think like this and he was pretty sure a headache was coming on when a cough from behind him caused him to glance over his shoulder and find the headteacher standing in the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said, glancing at his watch, ‘I didn’t mean to be so long.’
‘It’s not a problem, honestly,’ the head teacher replied. ‘However, I do have a meeting to go to and I need to lock up. Unless of course you want to spend the night in a draughty Victorian school, which rumour has it, may even have its own ghost!’
‘Really?’
The head teacher laughed.
‘No, I don’t think so, at least I’ve not seen anything, though this is an old building, so it makes lots of weird creaking sounds. The children do like to spook each other though with stories of something hiding in the boiler room under the school!’
Best Served Cold: A DCI Harry Grimm Novel Page 15
