Fallen Idols

by Neil White

  He turned up the volume on the television and put his head back in his hands. If he just waited it out, he’d find out.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Why did you let him go?’

  I was confused.

  My father’s expression was blank, like he had gone through the reasons so often he’d run out of feelings about it.

  ‘We never had him,’ was all he said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He ran his hands across his forehead, a rueful smile making his eyes sad. ‘David Watts was never arrested.’

  I was astounded. ‘At the moment, the police don’t make good copy,’ I snapped.

  He gave me a thin smile. ‘We come out of it smelling of shit.’

  I held out my hands. ‘Go on then. Let’s hear it.’ I’d never spoken to him like this before, as if I was in charge. But I was on my patch now.

  He stood up and walked to the window. He looked out for a while, and then said, ‘It went fine at first.’ He leant on the glass pane with his arm. ‘I called the ambulance and then got some more officers up there. All the crime-scene routines went by the book. The photographs were taken; the swabs were done. There was only one suspect in my mind: David Watts. There was just one problem.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Glen Ross.’ Dad sighed, then said, ‘He was the first on the scene. I told him what I’d seen, and he just went quiet. When I tried to explain, he just rubbished me, said that I had been too far away to tell.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  Dad looked me in the eye, but when he saw my glare, he looked away again, thinking back to a time over ten years ago. I let him think, watching the red light on the tape machine shining bright as dusk kicked in. I was aware of the room slowly slipping into darkness.

  ‘I did nothing,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Why?’

  My dad smiled, but there was no pleasure in it.

  ‘Glen Ross is a politician in a police uniform. Even back then, he used to talk about going places, about running the town, making it great. Thought he could clean up crime and make it a better place.’

  ‘Didn’t want too many black faces fouling the air?’

  My dad shook his head. ‘I don’t know if that was the reason. Glen Ross hadn’t planned this. It just sort of landed in his lap.’

  ‘If it had been the mayor’s daughter on that cold ground, would he have done the same?’

  Dad shook his head. ‘Probably not.’ He looked away, uncomfortable.

  ‘So you went along with it for the good of Turners Fold, to help Glen Ross clean up the town?’ I was incredulous. Was this collection of forgotten streets worth a dead teenager? A dead black teenager?

  He then said something that knocked my outrage off its rails.

  ‘I went along with it for you.’

  I paused, unsure what he meant. Then I asked, ‘Why me?’

  ‘We’re not from Turners Fold. We just found ourselves here, trying to make a living and bringing you up to be a good man. Glen Ross is Turners Fold to his core. His dad was a policeman, and his dad before him. His family know everyone in the town, they have all the secret handshakes they need, can play golf at all the right courses. And so do the Watts family. I’m new, I always will be in the eyes of people like Ross and the Watts family. You were getting to the end of university and you had that job at the Post all lined up, and your mother was happy here. If I went out on a limb, the two people I cared about the most would suffer, because there was no chance of Glen Ross backing me up.’ He sighed. ‘So I stayed quiet to keep the peace, for you and for your mother.’

  I sat down and ran my fingers through my hair. I had never imagined my dad as helpless, but right then he seemed it, controlled by a small town to forget the murder of an innocent young girl.

  ‘Is that it?’

  He said nothing, so I carried on, ‘You could have come forward.’

  ‘They had someone else’s DNA inside of her. All I would have done is messed up a murder trial. Can you imagine how that would have gone down?’

  ‘It would have freed an innocent man,’ I said. When he didn’t answer, I said, ‘Tell me about him.’

  My father shrugged. ‘Nothing much to say. Just some local unfortunate, found drunk on a seat in the middle of town. Back then he was well-known, one of the local strange ones. You know what it’s like round here, how the gene pool gets a bit thin sometimes. He was at the pub most nights, and most nights he drank too much. But he was okay. He was harmless. If we ever found him, we just took him home. He lived with his mother in a small bungalow, and she would stay up worrying every night until he came home.’ Dad gave out a heavy sigh. ‘Glen saw him in town, sleeping off the beer on a bench. He lifted him, processed him, and then let him go. A couple of days later, when we got the DNA results, he was arrested for rape and murder. The town got a murderer, moved on, and my career ground to a halt.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because I turned down promotions. Glen Ross thought he could buy people. He thought he’d bought Watts, and he thought he could buy me. He was wrong again. He tried to get me to sit my sergeant’s exams, or get me into CID, just trying to give me too much to lose. Make me high enough so that I couldn’t stand the fall. He was right in a way. I had you. I had your mother. I needed the job. But at that moment my job stopped being a vocation. If that’s what lies higher up the pole, people like Glen Ross, I don’t want it. I’ll sit out my career in uniform. Just take the money, and when the uniform comes off, I stop being a copper.’

  ‘But how can you be so sure about David Watts if someone else’s DNA was inside her? What makes you so right and everyone else so wrong?’

  He took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows at me, trying to remind me who was the father and who was the son. I ignored it. I was being a journalist now, not a son.

  ‘I saw him, Jack, running away from the scene. That’s all I can say.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve hardly followed football since. I used to love it, and I mean really love it, but a footballer’s career should never be worth more than a girl’s life.’

  I looked at him and I felt disheartened.

  ‘I can’t do anything with this, Dad. All I can report is that a girl was killed walking back from David’s farewell party. My paper won’t print that. It’s a sidebar to the feature, but that’s all.’

  ‘So you’re saying you don’t believe me?’

  I sighed. I wanted to believe him, I really did, because he was my dad, and because I was getting a sense of why my father hated Ross so much, but journalists spend half their time spiking dead stories. But I knew that I didn’t care about the truth most times. Journalists don’t. It’s the story that matters.

  ‘It’s not that, Dad, but you can imagine the power David Watts has in the media. If I try to run this, his lawyers will be all over me, and I’m just freelance. I’ve no paper to back me up. No one will ever use me again and I’ll be back here, skint.’

  My father clasped his fingers together and put them against his nose. I got the feeling he was trying to decide how much more to say.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that then.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like it was me that left Annie Paxman dead on that ground. I stayed quiet to keep my job in my town. You’re doing just the same thing.’

  ‘That’s a cheap shot. You could have done something. I can’t. It’s too late.’ I was angry now.

  ‘There was something else,’ he said. He sounded uncertain.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A gold chain.’

  He put his head back and let out a deep breath. He stayed like that for a few moments, and then smiled. ‘A chain,’ he said. ‘As simple as that. I saw it in her hand, clasped in her fingers.’

  ‘What was it like?’ I was starting to feel uneasy.

  ‘Some kind of Celtic design on a thick chain. Like three curls. It looked like it had been ripped off in the struggle. It had some engraving
on the back, just a few words. Some kind of a Gaelic phrase.’

  I leant forward. ‘What Gaelic words?’

  He looked at me, curious, and then said, ‘Rath Dé Ort EW.’

  It felt like a door had slammed shut in my head. My father’s voice retreated to a whisper, my head filled with adrenalin, the rush, the words from Laura bursting back. Rath Dé Ort EW. Twice in two days. I could hear my heart beating, my pulse racing fast.

  ‘It means…’ he started.

  ‘By the grace of God. I know.’

  He looked at me in surprise.

  I tried not to smile. It didn’t matter now whether David had killed Annie Paxman or not. It linked in with the football shootings, and I had the story.

  I watched the red light blinking on the voice recorder. I thought about telling my father about the link with the football shootings, but I guessed he would find out soon anyway. And then I thought about Laura. I had a reason to call her.

  But then something occurred to me.

  ‘EW?’ I asked. ‘What does it mean?’

  At that, Dad grimaced.

  ‘Eugene David Watts,’ he said. ‘But he prefers David.’

  She had the players in the crosshairs. Her finger was squeezed tight on the trigger, a whisper’s width from firing.

  They were milling about at the back of the coach, waiting for their bags. One of the players was speaking on a phone, standing still. She scanned the other players with the scope, but they were all moving around, either laughing and joking or just disappearing out of sight behind the coach. She didn’t recognise him, but that didn’t matter. He would be enough to make David Watts take notice, and that was all that mattered.

  She took a deep breath and calmed herself, took another look down the scope, set herself. He hadn’t moved, was still on the phone. She would go for his back. He might get lucky and the bullets would miss some vital organs. It was the message that counted, not the outcome.

  The body of the gun was out of the window, a sheet wrapped around the stock in the hope it might muffle some noise. She had a mattress against her back to keep the noise out of the room. The more the ring of the shot stayed out of the hotel, the more time she would have to get out.

  Her breathing stopped, time seemed to slow, and then she started to squeeze the trigger.

  I didn’t know what to say. It was a lot to take in. If he was right, David Watts was a rapist and a killer. Was that the last time? Were there any more victims out there like Annie Paxman? Then I thought about proof, and wondered whether I only believed it because my dad was telling me.

  But then I thought about what my father had always told me when I was growing up, that truth is always the most important thing.

  I tugged on my lip and looked at my father. Was he just obsessed? There was someone else locked up for this, caught by his DNA, found guilty beyond any reasonable doubt by twelve of his peers.

  But I had always wondered why Dad had stayed a constable. I had known he was better than that. Now I knew why.

  Then something occurred to me.

  ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ I asked. ‘It was over ten years ago. Is it because of the feature I’m doing?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, I’m telling you because you’re doing a feature on him. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have told you.’ He paused, again looking like he was thinking about how much he should tell me. ‘But secondly,’ he continued after a few moments, ‘I’m telling you now because Annie Paxman has come back to haunt him.’ He looked at me, scrutinising me. ‘David Watts is being blackmailed.’

  ‘Because of Annie Paxman?’

  He nodded.

  I whistled. That changed things, gave a direct link to David Watts, and the neck-chain was maybe the missing piece. ‘What’s the demand?’

  ‘A full confession.’

  I paused, waiting for more. ‘No money?’

  He shook his head. ‘Seems not.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Glen Ross.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  He shrugged. ‘No, but I’ve no proof.’

  ‘And that’s why he was here,’ I said slowly, everything slipping into place.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. He was telling me to keep quiet, to remember the script.’

  ‘And you changed your mind?’

  He smiled, broader now. ‘If Annie Paxman’s story has to be told, I’ll help. That bastard has been sitting pretty for too long now.’

  ‘Watts or Ross?’

  ‘Both.’

  I stood up, my turn to pace. I walked to the window and turned round. I realised I had to write the story now. My father had told me that David Watts was being blackmailed. Dad hadn’t done anything about Annie Paxman and it had haunted him for a decade. If he did nothing about the football shootings, it would kill him.

  But then I realised that my father hadn’t mentioned the football shootings through any of this. It had only ever been about Annie Paxman. I looked at him and wondered whether I should tell him about the neck-chain being found at the scene of the shootings. Then I thought about Laura and my promise to her. And the police decision to hold that information back. He didn’t need to know. Not yet anyway.

  ‘Are you doing this for Annie Paxman, or for you?’ I asked.

  He stayed silent for a while.

  ‘Maybe both,’ came his answer. ‘Annie Paxman was a victim, but she wasn’t the only one. What about that poor sod stuck in prison for the last ten years? Did I let him go there too easily, because I could see something of myself in Watts? A young man about to start a football career, about to have all the things I had dreamt about? England caps. Success. I just don’t know. What I do know, though, is that justice wasn’t done, and if justice needs a hand, then I’ll give it.’

  I smiled at him, pleased to see something of the angry old man I remembered from my adolescence.

  Then he turned to me again and almost pleaded, ‘Are you going to write the story?’

  My smile faded. ‘I don’t know, Dad. It’s not the story I’ve been asked to write. And the evidence isn’t there to print. You can see that.’

  He nodded, looking resigned.

  ‘Was there anyone else there who knew?’ I asked.

  He looked down, a shadow skimming across his face. ‘I wasn’t on my own in the car. James Radley was with me.’ He looked up at me. ‘Do you remember James?’

  I remembered him as one of the local coppers. I also remembered when he’d died in a house fire, along with his wife, trapped in their beds by the thick, acrid smoke.

  ‘So you’re the only living witness?’

  Dad nodded again. ‘If I get evidence, will you write about it?’ he asked.

  I thought about it for a moment, worried about where it might lead. People were dying and my father was the final link with what had happened ten years earlier.

  But I gave a journalist’s answer.

  ‘If you can get me evidence, someone will print it. It’s the scoop of the year, if I can get it.’

  Dad stood up and stretched, and then he rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, and I remembered his disturbed sleep.

  I leant forward and clicked off the machine. ‘Get some rest, Dad, and let me think about this.’

  He patted me on the shoulder and left the room.

  I became aware of how quiet it was. The last strains of daylight were coming in through the window, the clouds in the distance turning red. I thought about the story I’d written that afternoon and realised how empty it now seemed. I had a feature, an exclusive. That was in the bag. But now I had a huge story, one that would make the red-top editors shake with excitement, knowing it would be the talk of every bar in Britain, and it was one that would make my name.

  But then I remembered my deadline, and my personal promise to myself to never get personally involved in a story. I smiled. Aren’t promises there to be broken?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The player stayed still as she squeezed the trigger that
last small measure.

  The gun kicked and the noise of the shot blasted around her ears. Through the scope she saw the player sink to his knees, his hand shooting forward to his chest, the other players turning towards him.

  She pulled the gun back into the room, her hands already unpacking the rifle, running on adrenalin, each section coming apart neatly and going into her overnight bag. She put the bag over her shoulder and headed for the door, trying to stay calm as she heard the shouts from the street coming in through the window.

  She took some deep breaths and then reached into her pocket, pulling out a gold chain. She let it twirl in her fingers for a moment before turning to toss it onto the bed, ready to be found. The papers hadn’t reported the chains yet, but David Watts would have to take notice now.

  Her hand paused on the door handle as she tried to compose herself. She closed her eyes, exhaled, and then opened the door.

  She almost shouted out loud when she saw that there was someone standing right outside.

  I sat on the concrete base of the aviary, looking out over Turners Fold.

  The aviary had ceased to be anything special a long time ago. Birds were kept there once, a summer attraction, budgies, parrots, cockatiels. Time had turned it into a dirty brick cube with a mesh front and seats under its roof, painted black, the slats scratched by graffiti.

  But I wasn’t there to wonder why the birds were no longer there. I was looking for something else. I was looking for a feel of whatever had happened here all those years ago.

  I looked around. I could see green fields and clusters of trees rolling away, until they rose up to Pendle Hill in the distance. Across from the park was a playing field, a burnt-out cricket pavilion at one end. The road around it curved and faded away, lined with pebble-dashed semis, blues and creams and browns mismatched until they got lost by a curve in the road.