A Long Time Dead

by Andrew Barrett

  Paul shook his head, “Don’t remember seeing it.”

  “Good. How’s he going to explain this one.”

  “What next?”

  “We seize the mug. It’s still in the old Disclosure policy. Anyway,” Roger said, “we take it as insurance. It’s photographed, but you can’t beat having the real thing to show to a jury.”

  “Okay, what’s my next exhibit number?”

  “Let’s see; photos are PB1, ESLA foil is PB2, footwear gels are PB3 to PB8, red stain swab is PB9, rim swabs are PB10, so the mug is PB11.”

  “What time you got?”

  “1930 hours.” Roger watched him writing out the CJA label, watched him stick it to a box, place the cup inside the box and seal it away.

  Finally, Paul signed over his seals.

  “Are you comfortable with this?” Roger asked.

  “With what?”

  “You know, doing this exam.”

  “I believe you didn’t kill that girl, Roger. I also believe that someone has seriously fucked up on a grand scale – I can’t help wondering why he’d want to frame you; I mean, killing a stranger ‘cause he dislikes you seems seriously extreme to me. But no,” he stepped back, “I’m not really comfy doing this. I haven’t asked permission, I’m still on probation, and I’m in a murder scene with a man who should be behind bars.” He laughed, “Not good credentials for a long career are they.”

  “Suppose not.”

  “It’s down to trust,” Paul said. “I trust you. You didn’t kill Nicky Bridgestock. It just needs pointing out to Shelby.”

  — Three —

  “You know something, boss?”

  “Lenny, I know lots of things; you want me start alphabetically?”

  “Oh, naff off, if you’re in one of your moods.”

  Shelby stopped the car violently, sliding its front tyre into the kerb. “What the hell did you say to me!” Then Firth shocked him further by getting out.

  “Forget it, Inspector Shelby. You’ve taken the piss out of me long enough and I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

  “Now just you—”

  “Shut up!” Amazingly, Shelby did, and Firth appeared shocked this time. “I’m putting in for a transfer.” He closed the door, stuck his hands in his pockets and began walking.

  Shelby leapt out, slammed his door in a temper and shouted, “Lenny Firth, you get the hell back here now.”

  Firth waved. Walked on through the rain.

  “Lenny!” Shelby was hoarse, veins stood proud on his forehead. But it worked. Lenny stood still long enough for Shelby to walk to him. Shelby gathered his breath, then quietly said, “Lenny, I just... I’m tetchy, that’s all. I got Chamberpot chewing my nuts, I got to find an escaped murderer; I can’t find this new SOCO, I can’t find the old one... I’m thoroughly pissed off. And I’m taking it out on you.”

  “And?”

  “Huh? Oh yes,” he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  Firth turned. “I forgive you.”

  “How noble. I’m still going to take the piss out of you, Lenny; you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know where they’ll be.”

  “Go on, spit it out.”

  — Four —

  Chris was alone. He bit his nails. He sat in an old fabric recliner in the corner of his back bedroom; the one he used as a junk room, the one with an old school desk under the window. Fifty yards away a streetlight glowed. It disturbed his thoughts, so he drew the curtains and sat back down in the darkness. He began thinking of his situation, and ten more minutes dropped out of Chris’s life. He spent it with Conniston; he wondered where Roger was, and he wondered when he would call around and accept the much-needed help he asked for. After all, Chris was his friend; Chris was here to help wherever he could.

  His feet were clenched tightly into fists again, burrowing into the carpet. They hurt but it didn’t matter.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  — One —

  They had employed the same technique for getting out as they had for getting in. And minutes after leaving Nicky’s house, Roger was trotting back up the mud path to Weston’s patrol car. To his left, and through the gaps between the houses, he heard Paul’s van drive away up the street.

  Paul agreed to go straight back to the office and lodge the swabs in the Scenes of Crime freezer before heading over to the bureau and beg if necessary for them to search the fingerprints from the mug. While they searched, Paul would visit the Footwear Bureau and the Photographic Studio to deposit his evidence. Then he’d go back to the Fingerprint Bureau hoping for a result.

  Roger took out the phone and from the depths of his memory, summoned up Chris’s home phone number. He dialled it and listened as a recorded voice told him the number was unavailable. “Shit.” He found the patrol car keys, and drove out of town, watching for other patrol cars, and praying he made it to the safety of Chris’s house without some sharp-eyed copper pulling him over. The radio was still dead. The day had been a long one, and only neat adrenaline kept him going. He was tired beyond measure, and hunger fell marginally into second place. His heart beat fast and he held the steering wheel extra tight so as not to feel his hands trembling. He tongued his split lip.

  He had to get to Chris’s house; had to. Chris would keep him safe. Chris would stand up for him. But Roger stopped thinking about Chris. He was half way there when his earlier intention resurfaced and screamed go to Weston’s house!

  Roger pulled over and sat in the gloom. The more he thought about it, the more urgent it became. If he could get into Weston’s house and find conclusive evidence linking Weston to Nicky, such as a pair of shoes with the same pattern as those on Nicky’s kitchen floor, it would add to the evidence he and Paul already had, and it would blow this murder charge to hell.

  Going to Chris’s could wait until later.

  “No, it’s not a mistake,” Roger convinced himself, and he turned the car around, driving through the evening traffic towards Sandal, hands trembling more than ever.

  As he passed the open gates to Weston’s house, he saw a patrol car on the driveway, a single officer inside. A hundred yards further along, Roger turned into an exclusive estate where the houses just got bigger, the size of small hotels, with top-end cars parked on cobbled driveways. He kept turning right until, between the houses, he could see the street lamps on the main road. Then he parked the car and walked boldly through someone’s garden until he came to the rear wall.

  Roger peered over the top, and could see Weston’s house two or three houses away to his right. It was in darkness, only a string of glowing garden lamps illuminating what looked from here like an ornamental pond and a gazebo. Time squeezed him; urged him over the wall and onto a mud path that ran along the backs of the grand houses.

  Minutes later, Roger nestled beneath the dripping gazebo. His hands and arms were freezing, his nose running and his ears were numb. Only then, did he realise he had nothing with him to break into the house. “And what if it’s alarmed?” he whispered; the absence of an alarm bell box on the wall meant nothing.

  The collective glow from the rough circle of garden lamps barely grazed the house, but it was enough for him to see the way in. The bathroom window was ajar. It would mean climbing up a drainpipe, and negotiating a two or three-yard shimmy along a sloping tiled roof that was probably growing its own moss carpet, but it was his only chance.

  Blowing into his hands, he scampered across a stretch of spongy grass, shadows dancing around his feet.

  ––––––––

  — Two —

  Paul approached Bishopgarth, a six-acre West Yorkshire police site that once housed the Bishop of Wakefield and his staff over a century before. The old Bishop’s Palace was a CID training block now. The footwear and fingerprints bureaux, and the Fingerprint Development Laboratory, were secreted in a recent addition to the complex on a lower level than the rest of the buildings; it looked like a fugitive from an industrial estate.
>
  Out of breath, Paul descended the stairs and jogged along a corridor, rushing towards its end where a sign stuck onto the double doors proclaimed ‘The Fingerprint Bureau’. Smirking to himself, he opened the door marked ‘The Finger’, and stepped into a large office he hadn’t seen since his training days.

  Even though night had fallen, it was bright in here; reflective windows stretching down one side of the office bounced light from diffused fluorescent tubes overhead. There were at least thirty desks, and at most of them sat the fingerprint examiners, hunched over their work areas, quietly doing their jobs while immersed in music from a radio or cassette player. Above the desks were divisional identifiers hanging from the ceiling: AA, AC, BA, BB, CA, CB, and the like. No one sat at the desk below Paul’s divisional identifier, DA.

  Across the back wall was the police file, a huge metal cabinet with locked roller shutter doors. It contained all the fingerprints of serving police officers and civilian staff, over six thousand employees, and it was there to aid elimination from inadvertent contamination at crime scenes. Paul knew that his fingerprints had been picked out of there for comparison twice since he became operational. Once he lifted his own marks at a burglary, and again at a rape.

  “They used to send out fingerprint brushes sprayed gold and mounted on a plinth if you lifted your own marks.”

  Paul turned. It was Barry Goodwyn struggling through the door with a tray of hot drinks. “Here, let me help.”

  Barry put the tray on a table and shouted, “Tea up!” and then to Paul he said, “Back in the old days, when we had time for a bit of fun, you’d have received a couple of golden brushes by now, young Mr Bryant.”

  Paul blushed. “Barry,” he said, moving to one side. “I could really use your help if you can spare half an hour.”

  “What’s up?”

  Paul followed him to the desk below ‘DA’ and pulled up a spare chair. Radio 2 played to the furry animals paper-clipped around the back of Barry’s workstation.

  “What’s it to do with?”

  Paul opened his CID6 book.

  The word ‘Murder’ stood out, and Barry read the address. “Aw, not more Bridgestock stuff. I’ve just got back from telling Inspector Shelby about the Bridgestock marks.”

  “What about them?”

  “Hasn’t he seen you?”

  “No. Why would he?”

  “I think I’ll let him explain it.”

  “Now I’m seriously worried.”

  “Okay,” Barry said, “but if he asks how you know, I didn’t tell you.”

  “Fine. Shoot.”

  “One of the marks that you submitted has a speck of blue paint sandwiched between the lift and the acetate.”

  “Shit,” Paul whispered.

  “He’d like a word, I think.”

  “I bet he would,” his thoughts steered away to Shelby, an anger management candidate if ever there was one.

  “Anyway, what you got there?” Barry asked.

  They can only sack you once, he thought, handing over the envelope. “Marks from the kitchen area, this time; a mug actually.”

  “How come you went back? I thought they’d about wrapped that scene up and put it to bed.”

  “Just tying up loose ends, I guess,” he shrugged.

  “Let’s have a look then.” Barry pulled out the fingerprint lifts and asked, “Why haven’t they been photographed?”

  “Ah, yes. They’re a rush job.”

  “Chris behind all this, is he?”

  “Well, you know—”

  “Supervisors are the worst offenders of all.”

  “They are?”

  “They can’t abide others breaking the rules, but when it suits them, they’re all for it, and they always get someone else to do the dirty work for them. Do as I say, not as I do; a favourite saying among that lot, I’m afraid.”

  “So you always have them photo’d first.”

  “Supposed to. But if they’re a special rush job, we can usually oblige.” Barry sipped his tea and then pulled his magnifying glass over a small easel mounted on top of his desk, raked back at such an angle as to provide comfort and prevent casting his own shadow across his work. “Let’s see them.”

  — Three —

  Roger scurried towards the drainpipe and gripped the cold steel with numb hands. He climbed, feet scrabbling for purchase, and eventually was high enough to haul himself up onto the slick roof using the gutter. Cautiously, he shuffled along to the open transom. It was a simple reach away. He paused there, looked into the garden below, and listened. Traffic drone from the front of the house permeated around to the back.

  Roger gripped the window frame and heaved himself up. Only then did the question occur to him: Is there anyone still inside? Will someone see me? But the most important question came last: how the fuck do I get back out without breaking my neck?

  That’s when he fell headfirst into Weston’s bathroom. The back of his legs clattered against the open window, and his shins grated against the frame. He landed in a heap on the tiled floor, and the window clattered loud enough, Roger thought, to flush out anyone still left inside the house. Seething at the pain in his shins, and hands planted flat against a warm radiator, he waited for the footsteps. None came.

  At the doorway, he peered across the landing. An orange light bleeding through a window glistened on a chandelier high above him. Leaning out, he saw the landing disappear into the shadows thirty feet away; there were no PIRs.

  Prowling along the landing, he could see three doors to his right, three to the left. The first on the left was a walk-in airing cupboard, the second a guest’s bedroom, and the third was a games room, furnished with a full-sized snooker table, dartboard and its own bar. Nothing in any room to incriminate Weston. “The wealth of an Inspector,” Roger whispered. Dejectedly, he crossed the landing, opened the first door into a palatial bedroom with a carved four-poster and lace-edged canopy. This room was at the front of the house, and the same orange hue that lit up the landing, shone through two large windows onto an army of Lladro and Royal Doulton figurines.

  Barbara Taylor Bradford novels splashed the oak bedside tables, but with nothing of interest lying in the drawers beneath them. Where does Weston sleep? he wondered.

  * * *

  “Well?”

  “Well what, woman?”

  “How do you feel, Colin?” Geraldine Weston fidgeted with her handbag.

  “How the bloody hell do you think I feel?” He raised his voice, “I’ve been slammed around the fuck—” he saw DC Clements observe him through the door’s window. He waved her away, lowered his voice. “I’m leaving,” he said. “Now.”

  The uniformed officer accompanying Clements looked in too.

  “But you can’t,” Geraldine said, “you’ve suffered a concussion.”

  “And every minute I spend in this god-forsaken shit hole is making me suffer even more!”

  “But—”

  “Oh stop your damned whining, woman, and get out the bleeding way.”

  Geraldine stepped aside as Weston threw back the covers and staggered to his closet. He took out his uniform trousers and pulled them on.

  “Why must you go home anyway? What’s the urgency?”

  “Don’t question my decisions,” he snatched his shirt from a hanger. “I’m expecting a phone call.”

  “But your health—”

  “Shit.” Drips of blood across the collar, and more smeared down the back. “You didn’t bring me any clothes, did you?”

  “They said you were staying overnight.”

  “Come on, we’re leaving.” Weston dressed and barged through the door, glaring at Clements as she approached him. “And you stay the hell away from me, as well.” He gave the same look to the uniformed officer. Geraldine slipped out behind him, her coat over her arm, car keys clutched in her hand.

  “Inspector Weston,” Clements began, “You can’t leave. You’re—”

  “Pissed off? Damned right I am
. Now go away, little girl.”

  “Sir,” said the officer, “we’re under instruction—”

  “Fuck your instructions, boy. I am free to go whenever I please.”

  Weston marched up the corridor, past the nurses’ station, and Geraldine scurried along behind, glancing back.

  “Who was he calling boy?” the officer said.

  Clements took a deep breath and rang Shelby.

  * * *

  Roger tiptoed along the landing and entered the next bedroom. Old cigar smoke poked him in the eyes. No Lladro in here; only a couple of photos showing Weston with considerably darker hair, his nose bloody, hand curled into the red knot of a fist held aloft in victory. Roger looked away from the picture and swallowed.

  A double bed with the covers awry sat between the windows. Underwear was piled on top of a bureau, and a wicker basket by its side dripped clothes onto the floor. In this room, there were no bedside cabinets. Weston used the windowsills to hold overflowing ashtrays, and the net curtains were smeared with burns. A copy of Bravo Two Zero and a stack of girlie magazines lay on the floor among a scattering of empty cigar boxes.

  After finding nothing of interest in the first of Weston’s wall of wardrobes, Roger opened the second, and that’s where he found the shoes.

  * * *

  “Are you finished yet?” Micky asked.

  Helen didn’t even raise her head, just continued writing and said, “I have paperwork to do. And interruptions don’t help. I’ve already had Shelby in here beating Jon up, and then Paul nattering for directions to the bureau or something; the last thing I need is—”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m off duty in half an hour; I thought maybe we could...”

  She put down her pen, slid her hair back behind her ears and folded her arms.

  Micky fidgeted. “I know I’ve been a bit distant lately.”

  “Distant? I need a telescope to see you these days.”

  “Will this make up for it?” He took out a small navy blue box. Helen looked hopefully at his smile before news from his radio spoiled their privacy.