Crying Out Loud

by Cath Staincliffe

  Libby answered the phone and I heard the deafening cries of a howling baby close by. Relief rippled through me like a drug. ‘Libby, Sal Kilkenny.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Not a good time? I just wanted to fix up a meeting. Are you free tomorrow?’

  ‘I can do mid-morning, say, half ten.’ The crying became even more frantic. ‘Sorry, I’ll have to go,’ she added.

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  It was quiet in my house. I peeked in the lounge and found Jamie, wrapped in a blanket, asleep on the sofa. Ray was in the kitchen, reading the paper after his lunch. I was five minutes later than I’d said. Would I get a lecture?

  ‘Hi,’ I greeted him. ‘I got some clothes. Has she been OK?’

  ‘Not bad. Just gone off.’

  ‘You going into work?’

  He paused. I looked at him. Was there something wrong? My stomach constricted. He shifted the chair, got to his feet. Then I saw it: the invitation stark in his eyes, the way his lips parted slightly, the rise of his chest.

  I walked to meet him. Felt his hands in my hair, the brush of his moustache, then his lips on mine and his tongue, firm and smooth and warm. There was a sizzling sensation in my breasts and belly, the flush of heat between my thighs. I pulled away, hungry, breathless, savouring the intensity of his gaze. Those rich, brown eyes.

  ‘Your bed or mine,’ I whispered.

  He grabbed my waist, pulled me close, then raised his hand to the top button on my shirt. ‘Who said anything about bed?’

  With huge consideration Jamie slept for two and a half hours and was still asleep when it was time to fetch Maddie and Tom. So was Ray. We’d decamped to my room for a post-coital rest and now he was lying on his back, snoring lightly, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, the curls at the edge of his temples damp with perspiration.

  I showered quickly and dressed, scooped up the baby and put her in the buggy, lowered the rain hood and set off.

  The rain battered down, drumming on the plastic cover of the buggy, bouncing off the flagstones. The air was fresh, strong with the dark, watery smell of wet stone. I barrelled along, almost enjoying the weather. Still high from love-making, still smitten by the man who I had never imagined I’d fall in love with. And relieved that I had been able to forget, for a couple of delicious hours, that I was no closer to solving the mystery of who had left a foundling on my doorstep.

  SEVEN

  Jamie shared my bath that evening. I could have washed her in the sink or top and tailed her; after all I’d already showered so I didn’t need a soak, but there’s nothing quite so pleasant and calming as bathing with a baby.

  It had been my escape route when I had Maddie. As a single parent, there was no one close by to help me look after her. We had some hard times: days when she’d run me ragged and I’d be in tears at the sheer scale of it all. The lack of sleep, the fact that it took so long to change her, to feed her, that there was never any respite.

  When I reached fever pitch, or she did, there was the fail-safe option of the bath. My gas bills soared but it was worth every penny. Afternoons would often find us submerged together. When she was particularly fractious we might end up having two baths in one day. I’d run the water, walking to and fro with her as she cried. Her protests accelerated when I undressed her: her face contorted, red with fury, limbs rigid, her cries so sharp they made my breasts leak milk. Then I would pull off my own clothes, lift her up, climb into the water and lower her in, brace her on my knees so she could see me. As the water lapped at her feet, then her bottom and up to her chest, her cries would falter, shrivel to gusty breaths then fade. The magic of water: a return to the womb.

  I was ready for bed by nine thirty and didn’t resist. Jamie had me up at midnight, three a.m. and five thirty. Consequently by the time Libby Hill arrived for our meeting the next morning I felt like death warmed up.

  I’d rung Abi Dobson the previous evening and lined her up to look after Jamie while I saw my client. I spun her the same story about Jamie being a friend’s child I was looking after while she had an operation. Abi was delighted. ‘More practise,’ she said. ‘I’m doing loads of childcare at the moment.’

  ‘You ought to make the most of the time you’ve got left,’ I warned her.

  ‘Everyone says that.’

  ‘Yeah, because we all wish we had. You won’t have time to wipe your nose once the baby comes.’

  Abi looked amazing when she opened the door to us. She was tanned and her hair streaked from travelling in Thailand and India, and she wore some stretchy knit combination that hugged her huge belly.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked her. ‘You look great.’

  ‘I’m good.’ She lifted Jamie out of the buggy. ‘Apart from the piles.’

  I groaned in sympathy.

  When Libby arrived, I outlined for her what I’d done so far and was honest with her about my uncertainty.

  ‘So, you’re saying you can’t tell one way or the other?’ she asked me, her grey eyes piercing.

  ‘If you pushed me, I’d say he’s more likely to be guilty than not. But if you take away the confession, I’ve no idea how strong the other evidence is. Partly because I don’t know exactly what they’ve got. We all know he was at the cottage, that he stole Charlie’s wallet and that there was blood on his footwear – but how secure is the forensic evidence that he used the knife? I’d have to be in the police to get that sort of information. They never found the weapon, did they? So it will be impossible to prove Damien used it, I think.’

  Libby sighed, irritated by the unsatisfactory nature of my report. ‘So that’s it. Well, what else could you do?’

  ‘Try and see Damien’s lawyer, perhaps. They would know what evidence the CPS had. Though Chloe Beswick says they told her loud and clear that there are no grounds for an appeal. She’s asked me to talk to Damien again. It’s up to you,’ I told her. ‘You don’t need to decide now. He’s not going anywhere. Do you want to think about it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. Then she thought of something, leant forward with her hands on her knees. ‘What if you could talk to someone in the police?’

  ‘That would help. Why?’

  ‘It’s just – there was one of the detectives; he questioned me when I was a suspect.’ She gave a bitter laugh, still hurt at the treatment she received. ‘But after that he kept in touch, let me know where they were up to. He informed me when they arrested Damien Beswick and he told me when they had a confession. It was good of him. I didn’t have a family liaison officer as such but he did it anyway. He might see you.’

  ‘What’s he called?’

  ‘Geoff Sinclair – he’s based at Longsight. I did try him when the letter came, but he was off work.’

  ‘I’ll try that, then?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ She seemed happier at the prospect than she had at me giving up. She wanted to get to the bottom of things and not be left with any doubts or ambiguity.

  After she’d left I rang Greater Manchester Police and asked to be put through to Longsight; I was passed around a bit and was finally told that Detective Sinclair had retired.

  When I rang Libby, she was disappointed but asked me if I could try and contact him anyway. She knew he lived in New Mills, a village up in the peaks beyond Stockport.

  Luckily Sinclair had a BT phone line. That meant he was in the directory. With the plethora of telecoms providers, many subscribers are no longer listed. It isn’t impossible to find people on other networks – it just takes longer.

  He was home. He listened to my spiel about working on behalf of Libby Hill (I was sure that using her name would get me further than leaving it out) and I told him that both Libby and Heather Carter had received letters claiming Damien Beswick was innocent.

  ‘Tell her to chuck it in the bin,’ he said, in a blunt Lancashire accent.

  ‘She won’t do that, not yet anyway. Can I come and see you?’

  ‘Why?’ He was guarded.

  �
��Libby wants to be certain that the conviction was sound. If I knew some of the police evidence that supported his confession—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘I could be there by one,’ I pressed on. ‘It’s been a terrible shock for her and she really appreciated how you kept her informed during the enquiry. You could help me set her mind at ease.’ What’s a little emotional blackmail between investigators?

  ‘I’ll need to be done by two,’ he said flatly. ‘And you’ll have to park in the pub car park on Crown Street.’

  Result!

  I left Jamie in Abi’s care and made the trip out along the A6 through the suburbs beyond Stockport. The road narrows frequently and is choked with traffic. It got easier once I forked left and climbed up past Lyme Park, scene of the famous white shirt fandango with Mr Darcy in a television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. If you didn’t see it think hunk with smouldering eyes and a manly chest drenched in wet white cotton. On through Disley and from there the road clung to the hillside as the valleys opened out and the peaks came into view. New Mills is famous for its textile mills and sweet factory (Swizzles, home to Refreshers, Love Hearts and Drumstick lollies) and, more recently, renowned for the innovative hydroelectricity scheme sited on an old weir.

  Geoff Sinclair looked like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies – well, a middle-aged version. Bald-headed with wide cheekbones, big ears and a long, scrawny neck, bulbous startling blue eyes and rubberiness to his lips. Large hands with spidery fingers. Unlike the ghostly creature in the films, his complexion was sallow, yellow. It was hard to tell his age: his face was wrinkled but I’d have guessed fifties rather than sixties. Police can retire after twenty-five or thirty years on a pension, so if he had joined up as a young man he may only have been fifty or so now.

  We didn’t shake hands but he invited me in with a nod of the head. His cottage was on the outskirts of town and the living room had a broad window running across the main wall at the back, facing out on to the hills and the valley below. Nature in wide-screen. It was another breezy day and a stand of hawthorns to the left of Sinclair’s garden, bent low to the hill, shivered in the wind.

  ‘Would you like a brew?’ he offered. ‘There’s a pot just made.’

  I thanked him and he disappeared into the kitchen while I sat and drank in the view. As the hills rose from the valley floor, I could see where farmland gave way to the moors, the green and tawny pastures replaced by dark splashes of peat bog, swathes of purple heather and orange-coloured bracken. I made out the hulk of Kinder Scout, the area’s highest peak: a gritstone plateau, a sometimes wild and treacherous place to walk. Clouds like boulders, dense and rounded, swept over the mountain. It’d be a punishing commute to work in Manchester from here but maybe the trade-off was worth it.

  The tea came, hot and strong, bitter on the tongue. Just the way I like it. Aware that my time was limited, I began by showing him Chloe’s letter. He read it and snorted, a plosive ‘pah’ from his lips.

  ‘I went to see her, then I visited Damien,’ I told him.

  ‘He still in Strangeways?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So, what’s his story?’ he sounded deeply suspicious as he lifted his mug.

  ‘Garbled, to say the least. He says Charlie was already dead when he entered the cottage. He claims he confessed because he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms and it was the easiest way to end the interview and get some medical attention.’

  ‘He entered a guilty plea,’ Sinclair said deliberately. He blew on his tea and took a sip.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘but then he told his sister he’d made it up.’

  ‘He’s mucking you about,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe. But if you set aside the confession and his presence at the scene, what other evidence did you have? You didn’t have the weapon.’

  ‘Never found.’ He pulled a face. ‘Beswick said he’d chucked it away – wouldn’t or couldn’t say where.’

  ‘Was it his knife?’

  ‘No. He said it was at the cottage, on the work surface. When Charlie came at him, Beswick grabbed it. One stab wound to the stomach. But Beswick’s narrative of events matched everything at the scene. Everything,’ he repeated, locking those large eyes on mine. ‘There were no loose ends, no discrepancies. He’s wasting your time.’

  Personally I thought the absence of the murder weapon was rather a loose end but I didn’t want to aggravate him. I wasn’t going to just drop it, though. ‘Did you interview him?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ He took another sip of his tea.

  I was disappointed, thinking he wouldn’t have as much information if he hadn’t heard it first-hand. ‘But Damien was at the cottage,’ I pointed out. ‘He’d have picked up details from being there, wouldn’t he, even if he hadn’t been the one to attack Charlie? Like where the body was and the fact that Charlie had been stabbed?’

  Sinclair’s eyes, wide and glassy, like blue mints, bore into me. ‘It’s possible,’ he allowed. His long fingers curled round his mug.

  ‘How much detail did he give?’ I asked. ‘He could barely remember anything when I asked him to talk me through it,’ I said. ‘Surely the police would expect it to be coherent and detailed.’

  ‘He’d taken drugs that day, on the way to the cottage – did he tell you that?’

  Annoyance flickered inside me; Sinclair noticed and gave a little nod. If Damien had been doped up, it could well affect his recollection of events.

  ‘What you’re not taking into account,’ Sinclair said, ‘is that the detectives talking to him would have been trained in advanced interview techniques. You have a suspect who says they can’t remember and there are ways and means to access those memories.’

  ‘Like what?’ I was interested professionally, although a major difference between my role and that of the police when talking to people is that I have no authority. The people I speak to can clam up, get up and walk away, refuse to let me over the threshold. I can’t ‘detain’ anyone for questioning.

  Sinclair set down the cup and winced: an irritable, grumpy old man not wanting to explain. Nevertheless, he began to answer my question, his hands gesturing expressively as he spoke. His wrists were bony, jutting from his pullover, and I wondered if he lived alone, and if he’d let mealtimes slide in the weeks since he’d retired.

  ‘Take a mugging,’ he began. ‘It’s all a blur to the victim – didn’t get a good look at the mugger and so on. But they do mention it had just started raining. Well, we take that one concrete detail and build on it: what sounds were there when it started raining? Was it cold or warm? Had anyone just passed them? Do they remember what colour coat the person was wearing?’

  ‘Appealing to the senses?’ I saw what he meant.

  ‘That’s what memories are made of.’

  Like a smell bringing back a particular time in life, or a piece of music triggering a memory. I thought about it. There had been precious few sense memories in Damien’s story when I spoke to him: ‘it was freezing’ was one, the smell in the cottage another.

  ‘I wasn’t in on those interviews,’ Sinclair said. ‘Beswick’s recollection was hazy at times because of the drugs, but it still fit the known facts. Fit like a glove. Now, if his new version is a load of tripe, then keeping it vague, ill-defined and sketchy is safer for him. If you’re lying you keep it simple, say the minimum, so there’s less to trip you up. Telling the truth you can elaborate, illustrate your story, you don’t need to worry about contradicting yourself. The memories are solid. The details are there.’

  I looked out to the hills while I considered what he’d said. A fierce gust of wind rattled the hawthorn and a crow landed on the dry stone wall at the bottom of the garden, its plumage dark and ragged.

  ‘One thing he did say was that the door was unlocked. Why would Charlie not lock up?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he was coming in and out, fetching things from the car. And he was expecting Libby, remember.’

  �
�But the lights were off: that’s what drew Damien to the cottage,’ I said. ‘He thought it was empty.’

  Sinclair shook his head. ‘It’s more likely he turned them off after.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a natural impulse, to conceal a crime. The criminal will want to hide the body, delay detection, obscure the truth.’

  ‘Damien said he was sick by the gate.’ Another clear detail – was it a lie?

  ‘That’s right,’ Sinclair confirmed.

  ‘And he saw a man walking down the hill,’ I said.

  Sinclair frowned, creases rippling across his wide brow. ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Someone coming down the hill as Damien was going up from the bus,’ I said.

  ‘We’d nothing like that on house-to-house. There was no mention of that,’ he said. ‘We hadn’t any witnesses in the vicinity, not a soul.’ Sinclair closed his eyes for a moment. I waited. ‘Did Beswick imply that this man might be the real killer?’ he asked, sarcasm ripe in his tone.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted.

  He gave a snort. ‘There you go, then. He knows we have no other suspects so he conjures someone out of thin air.’

  Was that the case? Damien inventing a bogeyman in the dark – a shadowy figure who’d never come forward? Something, someone to give his retraction more credence.

  ‘Why was Libby a suspect?’ I asked him.

  ‘She found the body, she’d been at the scene, she had a close relationship to the deceased. We had to eliminate her. Standard practice.’

  ‘But what motive would she have?’ Above the slopes of Kinder, a bird was cruising on a slipstream.

  ‘Lover’s tiff. He tells her he’s going back to the wife and she loses it. Or she tells him about the baby and he wants to send her packing.’ He paused. ‘She had the baby all right?’

  ‘Yes, a girl.’

  He dipped his chin, satisfied. ‘It’s always a sensitive area.’ He went on: ‘Those close to the victim are key candidates for the crime. No one likes putting a person who has just lost a loved one through a bout of questioning, and it is done with great sensitivity, but it has to be done.’