Unsolved

by Michael Fowler

  Hunter and Maddie lifted their eyes from their work.

  ‘A little bird tells me you’re on the team,’ Grace said, slouching into a chair and scooting it next to Hunter. She gave him a little dig with her elbow.

  ‘And not a moment too soon. We’ve been doing your job for you for the last week or so,’ Hunter returned sharply.

  ‘Oooh, get you.’ Grace made to rise. ‘Well, if that’s the case, you won’t want to hear what I have to say.’

  ‘You are not leaving here, Grace Marshall, until we have a full update.’

  Grace laughed, sinking back down in the seat. ‘Well, it definitely looks as though the two bodies we’ve found are that of Alison Chambers and Catherine Dewhurst. The clothing matches with the photographs from the container. Like you said, it certainly looks as if Dylan was following them around for a while before he abducted them. As to cause of death, we should have an indication of that when their post-mortems are done this afternoon.’

  ‘Any sign of any other gravesites there? The Bannisters’?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘Not yet. Certainly, there are no more next to the two we’ve found. We’ve only searched half of the place, though, and that includes looking in all the scrap cars. It’s going to be at least another day before we know.’ Pausing, looking directly at Hunter, she added, ‘Anyway, how are your interviewing skills?’

  Hunter looked at Grace, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’ve been tossing it off for the past couple of months, what with Sark and this. Thought you might be out of touch.’

  Hunter caught Grace winking across at Maddie. ‘Cheeky mare,’ he responded. ‘Any road, why are you asking?’

  ‘You and I have an audience with someone who says he will only talk to you. Dylan Wolfe.’

  ‘Dylan!’

  ‘Mike and Tony have not long done a second interview with him, and he’s refusing to say anything other than that he will only talk to you.’

  Hunter’s lips pursed. ‘Why me?’

  Grace shrugged her shoulders.

  As Hunter entered the interview room with Grace and clapped eyes on Dylan Wolfe, feelings of anger and vulnerability overcame him at the same time, spiralling his memory back to two nights earlier, causing him to catch his breath. The flashback momentarily stopped him in his tracks, but he quickly recovered, making his movement look natural by switching the paperwork he was holding from one hand to the other. He sat down at the table opposite. Grace joined him, and in that moment, silence reigned as Hunter’s eyes were drawn to the criss-cross scars mapping Dylan’s face that now made him look ugly and evil.

  ‘Take a good look. This is your handiwork,’ Dylan said, engaging Hunter’s stare and pointing to his face.

  Hunter was about to respond, telling him that his injuries had been all his own fault, but quickly stopped himself. That would only create a division between them, and Hunter was here to do a job. He took another deep breath, setting down his paperwork, all the time holding Dylan’s gaze. ‘I’ve been told you would like to speak with me,’ he said, making himself as comfortable as he could in the secure metal seat and offering up a phoney friendly smile.

  His opening seemed to instantly diffuse Dylan’s tension, who returned a smile that was more cynical than warm and answered, ‘No hard feelings, then?’

  ‘None whatsoever, Dylan. I’m here, aren’t I? And so are you.’

  ‘I’d rather be on your side of the table, though,’ Dylan gestured.

  ‘Well, we all make our decisions, don’t we?’ Hunter diverted his eyes to the bunch of papers he had clipped into three bundles — the Bannisters, Alison Chambers and Catherine Dewhurst — wondering which one Dylan would talk about first. ‘As I said, I’m told you want to speak with me.’

  ‘Yes, there’s something I need to clear up.’

  Grace reached across to switch on the recording machine.

  Dylan slapped his hands on the table, making them both jump. ‘Don’t switch that on. I’ll only talk off record.’

  ‘We can’t do that, Dylan. It’s against the rules. Everything has to be recorded or written down,’ Grace answered.

  Dylan pushed himself back and folded his arms. ‘In that case, we’re wasting each other’s time.’

  Hunter leaned forward. ‘Dylan, we would be heavily criticised if we went into court and said that you made a confession and we didn’t have it recorded. You know that.’

  ‘It’s not a confession.’

  ‘Well, what is it, then?’

  ‘I want to make a deal.’

  Hunter settled back, breaking into a smile. ‘We can’t do deals with you. It doesn’t work like that. You know what evidence we have against you. Two of my colleagues have already interviewed you on two occasions and told you.’

  ‘I think you’ll do a deal when I tell you what I have.’

  Hunter looked briefly at Grace. Her face was deadpan. He returned to looking across at Dylan. ‘What’s it in relation to? Tell us that and we can make a decision on whether it’s evidence or not.’

  ‘It’s about David Bannister’s car.’ Dylan’s mouth twisted into a cocky grin. ‘I think you’ll be very interested in what I have to say about it.’

  The mere mention of David Bannister had Hunter hooked. ‘Okay, Dylan, tell us why you think we’ll be interested in making a deal.’

  Dylan Wolfe spoke uninterrupted for ten minutes, Hunter and Grace taking in everything he told them without their eyes leaving his face for a moment. As he finished, he eased himself upright. ‘Well, is that worth a deal, or not?’

  Hunter bundled his paperwork together and picked it up off the table. Glancing at Grace, he returned his gaze to Dylan. ‘We’ll need to see our boss, Dylan, and speak with her, and we’ll also need to make a few enquiries before we get back to you. Only then will you know whether we’ve got a deal or not.’

  The sun was dropping low in the sky when Hunter pulled off the road by Sprotbrough Weir onto a dirt track that led them to an old stone bridge beneath a railway track no longer in use; twenty-five years ago, the track had been used by a local pit to transport coal to the goods yard, but since the closure of the mines, the rails had been ripped up and the tracks were now only used by walkers and ramblers. He slowed the car as he approached the narrow bridge; a concrete bollard at the entrance meant they could travel no further, so he stopped and turned off the engine.

  ‘This is where David Bannister’s car was dumped.’ Hunter was speaking to Dawn Leggate, who was sitting beside him. In the back were Grace and Maddie.

  ‘Right here?’ Dawn responded.

  ‘No. Not exactly here. Dylan told us it was at the other end of the field, through the tunnel. This was once the main thoroughfare through to a hamlet called Levitt Hagg. It’s no longer there. It was abandoned in the nineteen-fifties because of the poor housing conditions. Many of the foundations are still there, but they’re the only signs of the place,’ Hunter answered.

  ‘And you think this is where he brought the Bannisters’ bodies?’

  Hunter nodded sharply. ‘I’m certain. There’s an opening at the other end of the field that leads straight to Levitt Hagg. It’s just a stone’s throw from where David’s car was dumped and burned out.’

  ‘And the area was never searched?’

  ‘As far as I’m aware, no. I’ve spoken with Roger Mills and he says the burnt-out car was reported to the police by whoever found it, but it wasn’t traced back to David.’

  ‘And how did Dylan manage to hide it in the container all this time?’

  ‘The local police used to call on Bones to recover abandoned vehicles, and Dylan was working for him back then and so was able to pick it up and hide it.’

  ‘Very convenient.’

  ‘Very,’ Hunter agreed. ‘And fortunate for us.’

  ‘But we don’t know if the Bannisters are actually buried over there?’ Dawn pointed through the tunnel to the overgrown wasteland beyond.

  ‘No. But it’s
my guess they are. The ruins are pretty much overgrown, and there are a lot of dykes and a couple of wells where bodies could be easily hidden. I’ve spoken with the council planning department and they are going to send me some old maps of the location.’

  ‘And what’s the deal for Dylan to give you a statement?’

  ‘We won’t oppose a psychiatric assessment or block him going into a psychiatric hospital. He knows that he’ll be going down for a whole life term, and he’d rather spend it in a secure hospital than prison.’

  ‘But that’s the most probable outcome anyway.’

  Hunter gave a wry smile. ‘I know, but I never told him that. I said I’d see what I could do.’

  ‘Crafty bugger.’ Dawn slapped Hunter across the thigh. ‘Well, staying here is not going to get anything done. I’ve got a search to organise, you three have got some phone calls to make, and we need to pull together the evidence. We’ll use your office.’

  Back at the office, Dawn Leggate organised a search team with sniffer dogs for the next morning. Hunter, Grace and Maddie took on the new enquiries arising from Dylan Wolfe’s interview. Alice Bannister, Roger Mills, George Evers and Denise Harris were all telephoned and asked a series of fresh questions, their responses recorded with a view to getting new statements. Afterwards, following a quick scrum-down, where each of the detectives briefed Dawn on the new information they had been given, she directed a plan of action and then left the three of them to organise the evidence and prepare their interview strategy while she returned to MIT for evening briefing. Before leaving, Dawn told them to meet her at Levitt Hagg at 10 a.m. the next morning and to come prepared for a long day.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  At the following morning briefing in MIT, Hunter fed in the report he had done on the disappearances of Alison Chambers and Catherine Dewhurst, pointing to each of their photographs on the updated incident board as he made reference to them. DCI St. John-Stevens took briefing. Dawn had arranged to meet with the search team at Levitt Hagg, leaving Hunter with specific instructions not to mention anything about the search for the Bannister family and although he kept to the script, he felt as if he was operating underhand. From time to time, as his eyes left his notes and drifted into the audience, he couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of St. John-Stevens’ face. The look he returned didn’t disguise his unhappiness with Hunter’s presence, and Hunter wanted to send a smirk his way but resisted the urge as he finished his presentation.

  Hunter waited for questions, but the DCI stepped up to the podium, quickly jumping in, begrudgingly thanking him for his input and ushering him back to his seat. St. John Stevens then brought them up to date with the removal of Alison Chambers’ and Catherine Dewhurst’s bodies to the morgue, where post-mortems were being carried out that morning, and informed the team that the extended search of the vehicle dismantlers yard was continuing in the hope of finding evidence related to the Bannister family. At this announcement, Hunter dipped his head. Under normal circumstances, he would have mentioned the search at Levitt Hagg, but following Dawn’s instructions, he said nothing, letting the DCI wind up briefing by issuing the day’s list of tasks. Not surprisingly, he left out Hunter and Maddie, and usually Hunter would have been miffed, but not today. This morning, he, Maddie and Grace had an appointment with Detective Superintendent Leggate at 10 a.m.

  To avoid drawing attention to themselves by leaving a parked police vehicle near the old tunnel and footpath to Levitt Hagg, Hunter, Maddie and Grace took the longer route to the ruins, through Sprotbrough, leaving their fleet car near The Boat Inn and making their way on foot along the canal side to the old moorings of the abandoned hamlet.

  During their journey the wind had picked up, and though it wasn’t cold by any means, it was strong, and buffeted a line of trees that fronted the remnants of a set of cottages, whipping up trails of dead leaves. Hunter scrunched through them as he looked for an entrance to the hamlet, a flashback of his childhood exploding inside his head, and he wanted to kick out and scatter the leaves around like he used to.

  The gap they found was through the doorway of a shell of a cottage, and stepping carefully over stone debris, they emerged into an overgrown back yard. Hunter heard before he saw Dawn Leggate. She was with a uniform inspector, engaged in conversation, holding between them a large plan of the area, the inspector pointing into the swaying trees where Hunter caught his first glimpse of the search team. The three detectives sidled up, bidding them ‘good morning,’ as they approached. Dawn and the inspector turned their heads.

  Dawn said, ‘How did briefing go?’

  ‘Good,’ Hunter answered.

  ‘Was any mention made of the Bannisters?’

  ‘Only that the search was being extended down at the vehicle dismantlers.’

  ‘Good, and I’d like to keep it that way. For today, at least.’

  ‘How’s this search going?’ Hunter asked.

  Dawn darted a nod at the inspector. ‘Steph here has mapped out an area she wants to try first. This place has two wells and is surrounded by an old dyke. It was probably dug to prevent flooding when it was originally built, but it’s long since got clogged up and overgrown, and as Steph has pointed out, if the Bannisters were dumped or buried here, because of the state of the buildings, this is the most likely place to hide them, so we’re starting here. We’ve had a quick look in the wells and there’s a bit of water in them, so we can’t see the bottom, but we’re holding off sending anyone down them until we’ve searched the dyke first. We’ve not long started on that, and there’s a lot of overgrown vegetation to clear before a thorough search can be done.’

  For over two hours Hunter meandered around the old hamlet, visiting some of the ruins, where he caught only the briefest of signs — bits of broken furniture — that the place had ever been lived in. He didn’t even know this place existed, or anything about it, until his Google search a few days ago. Resting beside the River Don, this must have been a marvellous place to live in the summer. It was a shame it had been abandoned following the closure of the old limestone quarry a hundred yards along the bank. If any of these cottages were still habitable today, they would cost a fortune to buy.

  He was just feeling the pangs of hunger and was about to make his way back to the group to suggest getting something to eat when a shout went up. Hunter whipped his head in the direction of the call and saw an officer with his hand raised. Dawn, the inspector, Grace and Maddie had already set off towards the search team.

  When Hunter got there, everyone was looking down into the overgrown gully and his eyes fell on one of the officers who was on bended knees, reaching into the entrance of a manmade stone bridge that had obviously been built to get across the dyke.

  ‘There’s something here. It looks like a blanket or something similar,’ the uniform officer was calling back, reaching further in. A few seconds later, he scuttled back out on his knees and looking up, he said, ‘There’s a body. I can just make out a skull.’

  A forensics team was there within the hour, and an hour after that the forensic supervisor told Dawn that they had found two adults’ skeletons wrapped in blankets beneath the bridge. There was no sign of a child, he told them, but they had also found a household carving knife and a green onyx ashtray. Hunter recalled the latter item being mentioned during one of his conversations with his former tutor and colleague Roger Mills, and he mentioned that to Dawn.

  ‘It looks like we’ve found the Bannisters,’ she responded. ‘Though we’re not going to know that for definite until the post-mortems have been conducted, and maybe not even then. In the meantime, we seal off this area, get the bodies recovered and get the knife and ashtray fast-tracked for analysis.’

  It was 9 p.m. before Hunter got home. Dawn had told Grace, Maddie and himself to go straight home and that she would contact them all later with instructions. It reminded Hunter of his undercover days when a sensitive operation was running. The two skeletons had been recovered, sealed inside body bags with th
e blankets they had been found wrapped in, and transported to the Medico Legal Mortuary in Sheffield, where Dawn had arranged for post-mortems to be carried out tomorrow. Despite a thorough search beneath the old stone bridge, they had not found any remains of a child and that had left them all puzzled as to whether it was the Bannisters they had found or not, and so Dawn had arranged for a fresh search to begin at first light the next day in the surrounding location.

  As Hunter tucked into a pizza, his whole body was fizzing with adrenaline. He would definitely need a couple of glasses of whisky to bring himself down before he went to bed.

  He poured himself a generous measure of Glenfiddich, and a glass of wine for Beth — she wanted to talk about his day — and made his way through to the lounge. He had just settled down when he felt his mobile ping in his pocket and he pulled it out. It was a message from Dawn. He read, You were right about the prints. Meet me at force headquarters, 8 a.m. sharp.

  Following a meeting with the ACC Crime Commander and Dawn, Hunter drove back to the MIT facility with snippets of their discussion and deliberations flashing through his mind, sending his thoughts into overdrive. He had never been privy to anything like it in his career. As he parked up and climbed out of the car, Dawn said to him, ‘Are you okay with this?’

  Hunter looked at her and nodded.

  ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

  The pair of them made their way up the stairs, Hunter rehearsing his lines inside his head as he went. As they passed the MIT Office, Dawn poked her head through the door and asked after the DCI. She was told he was in his office and she made her way along the corridor, with Hunter in tow. Hunter’s stomach fluttered.

  Dawn didn’t knock before she entered. The DCI was at his desk, going over some paperwork. He looked up as they stepped in. He gazed at Dawn first and then over her shoulder at Hunter. Hunter saw him pale and his mouth set tight. He’s guessed!