‘I’m surprised to hear he’s still alive,’ said Banks.
‘Very much so,’ said McLaughlin. ‘At eighty-five years of age.’
‘And what does the CPS think?’ Banks asked, glancing at the lawyer. He knew there had been some confusion in the Savile business as to whether the CPS hadn’t gone ahead with a prosecution because he was too old and infirm, or because they thought the police had insufficient evidence. Banks knew the CPS had already been criticised for not acting sooner over Sir Cyril Smith, the Rochdale MP, who had been abusing young boys for years until his death in 2010. Now, no doubt, they were eager to show the public they were taking the lead on child sexual abuse and exploitation.
‘He’s fair game as far as we’re concerned,’ Janine Francis answered.
‘And when did the offence take place, sir?’ Banks asked Red Ron.
‘Summer 1967.’
Danny Caxton was almost at the height of his success by 1967, Banks remembered. Everyone knew who he was. He was still a handsome devil, too, or so hundreds of mums thought. Christ, even Banks’s own mother had sat fixated in front of the screen drooling over him while his father snorted and Banks disappeared upstairs to listen to his Rolling Stones and Who records.
‘I’ll give you a brief outline,’ McLaughlin went on. ‘There’s a useful bio and a summary of events so far in the folder before you. Take it away and study it later. He certainly had an eventful sort of early life. Overcame a lot of adversity. He was born in Warsaw in 1930. His parents saw the writing on the wall and got Danny and his brothers and sisters out in 1933. They got split up, and he grew up with distant relatives in Heckmondwike.’
‘That could have a serious effect on a person’s mental health,’ said Banks. ‘I mean, just trying to pronounce it.’
There was a brief ripple of laughter, then DCS Gervaise said, ‘Be careful, Alan. My dad came from Heckmondwike. Anyway, it wouldn’t be too hard. Just omit the vowels and it’d be perfect in Polish.’
McLaughlin waited for the laughter to die down, then went on. ‘For the moment, I want you to consider the following. The complainant in this case is a woman called Linda Palmer. She was fourteen years old at the time of the alleged assault.’
Banks had heard of Linda Palmer. She was a poet, lived locally, had been written up in the paper once or twice. Been on BBC2 and Radio 4. Won awards. ‘The poet?’ he said.
‘One and the same. She first called Childline, and they told her to get in touch with us.’
‘And why do we believe her?’ asked Gervaise.
‘Same reason we believe any claim of historical abuse,’ said McLaughlin. ‘Her story’s convincing, and we hope it will be even more so after you have all finished your tasks.’ He glanced towards Janine Francis. ‘The CPS has given a green light to continue with this, even on what little we have so far. That’s why what Mr Moss said about managing the media is so important. We don’t want to draw flak the way some other county forces have done. On the other hand, we don’t want to appear to be operating in secret. And we know how difficult it is to keep a low profile in a case of this magnitude. You’ll just have to do your best for as long as you can.’
‘What are the facts?’ Banks asked. ‘Briefly.’
‘That’s what we want you to find out, Alan. You’ll be conducting the initial interview with Linda Palmer. You’ll also be interviewing Danny Caxton. Mr Burgess here will be monitoring the case nationwide.’
‘Surely it would be protocol to send a female officer to interview Linda Palmer?’ said Banks.
‘Not necessarily,’ said McLaughlin. ‘The detective she talked to when she first called in is a female, a DI MacDonald, and she asked the same question, but Ms Palmer said she didn’t care as long as it was someone who would believe her. She doesn’t want any special treatment. That having been said, you have three extremely competent female officers on your team.’
‘What did Linda Palmer accuse Caxton of doing, exactly?’ Banks asked.
‘According to Ms Palmer, Danny Caxton raped her.’
‘And she’s just come out with this story?’
McLaughlin sighed and glanced at the police and crime commissioner.
‘That’s irrelevant,’ Margaret Bingham said. ‘The reasons women have for coming forward so many years after a traumatic event are complex. It’s not, at the moment, your job to question these motives, merely to ascertain their veracity.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Banks asked.
‘The way you usually do it,’ McLaughlin answered. ‘Use your detective skills. We also have trained child protection officers who specialise in knowing the sort of details true victims are likely to remember, and whether they are telling the truth. If you have any doubts after you’ve talked to her, you’re welcome to go over her statement with one of them, if you wish. And if it makes you feel any better, Ms Palmer did report the incident shortly after it occurred in 1967.’
‘And what happened to that investigation?’ Banks asked.
‘That will be another aspect of the case for you to determine,’ said McLaughlin. ‘Clearly it was derailed at some point, for some reason, as Mr Caxton wasn’t brought to justice at the time, and he’s never been charged with raping Linda Palmer or anything else since.’
‘Don’t you think that might be because he never did anything?’ said Banks. ‘I mean . . . nearly fifty years ago . . . It’s about as cold a case as you can get.’
‘I know,’ said McLaughlin, ‘and I sympathise, Alan. But some of Jimmy Savile’s crimes went back further than that. We’ve got historical abuse going back to the early sixties and before.’
‘I get that you don’t like it,’ Margaret Bingham interrupted. ‘But you’d better get used to it. All of you. We might have dropped the ball in the past, but not again. Not on my watch. There’s going to be more and more cases of historical abuse coming up over the next few years. People who think they’ve got away with something for ever. Men who think they’ve got away with something for ever because of their fame or their wealth or their power. Or just because they’re men. This was the brutal rape of an underage girl by a man of thirty-seven, and I expect you to go about it investigating it as you would if it had happened yesterday.’
‘That’s not possible,’ said Banks.
‘Oh? And why not, Superintendent Banks?’
‘No physical evidence. Dodgy memories. Missing statements. With all due respect, ma’am,’ Banks went on, ‘you’re a civilian. So is Mr Moss. Most of the people you’re talking to here are veterans of many investigations, and the fact of the matter is that you simply can’t investigate a crime that happened almost fifty years ago in the same manner as you can investigate one that happened yesterday. All you have to go on is the accuser’s statement. I understand all about cold cases solved by new DNA evidence. They’re the ones that make the news, and I’ve seen New Tricks, but those are the exceptions. Do we even have any DNA in this case, for example?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Margaret Bingham, clearly irritated by Banks’s objections. ‘That’s for you to determine. And I may be a civilian, as you say, but I am the police and crime commissioner, and I have every right to ask my officers for their best efforts. That’s what I’m asking. You put as much time, effort, intelligence and investigative skills into this as you would into a sexual assault that happened yesterday. Believe me, you’ll have all the resources you need at your disposal.’
That was a good opening move on his part, Banks thought. Piss off the bosses and the crime commissioner at the first big meeting of the new job. But he’d never had much time for Margaret Bingham and her agendas. She and Adrian Moss would make a fine team. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he muttered.
McLaughlin cleared his throat again. ‘Though the Met is technically in charge of Operation Yewtree, Mr Burgess here from the NCA will be bringing his expertise of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection command to bear on the case.’
Burgess tipped his hand in a mock salute. ‘At you
r service,’ he said.
‘What will your role be?’ Banks asked.
‘Co-coordinating between you and the Met, mostly,’ said Burgess. ‘I’ll be trying to make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. The case is unwieldy enough already. Linda Palmer was living with her parents in Leeds in 1967, but the assault took place in Blackpool. She now lives near Eastvale, a village called Minton-on-Swain, and Danny Caxton lives out on the coast, as you probably know already, though he lived in West Yorkshire for some years. In Otley. If we involved all the local forces – not to mention the rest that will soon come into play as the complaints add up – you can imagine what a mess we’d have on our hands. That’s why we decided on one SIO for Linda Palmer, one team manager, and that’s you. It’s your job to keep a firm hand on the rudder. I’m available to provide updates and background intelligence from other sources wherever possible. Believe me, in this investigation, the different county forces involved will be talking to one another, and complete records will be kept of every interview, every allegation, every scrap of evidence. We have several complaints about Caxton from around the country already. The one thing you can be certain of is that there will be more complainants coming forward once the news gets out, and there’s strength in numbers as far as we’re concerned. How many depends very much on the access and opportunity Caxton had to satisfy his needs. It’s my feeling, given his long and wide-ranging career, that he had plenty. They’ll all have to be traced and investigated. Possible witnesses tracked down. Locations probed. I’ll be searching for similarities in the complainant accounts.’
‘Just how wide is this investigation?’ asked Gervaise.
Burgess looked at Chief Constable Sampson, who put on a suitably grim expression and said, ‘So far, according to the NCA, we have seven independent complaints about Danny Caxton spanning the years between 1961 and 1989. All from females between the ages of fourteen and sixteen at the time. The county forces involved have done as much background checking and taken as many preliminary statements as necessary so far, but we, and the CPS, feel it’s time to move quickly now. The CPS also happen to feel that ours is one of the crucial cases, that it has a good chance of netting a positive result.’
‘Why is that?’ asked Banks. ‘As far as I’ve heard so far it’s no different from any other such case. One person’s word against another’s. What gives us a better chance of making a charge that sticks?’
‘Simply this,’ said Chief Constable Sampson. ‘Linda Palmer has informed us that, in her case, there was someone else present. There was a witness.’
When DI Annie Cabbot and DC Geraldine Masterson arrived on the scene around half past nine that Wednesday morning, the whole eight miles of Bradham Lane were already sealed off from where it began at a T-junction two miles west of Eastvale to where it ended beside a bridge over the River Ure.
‘It would be in the middle of bloody nowhere,’ said Annie. ‘We’ll have to get a mobile unit out here and find the bodies to man it. And we’ll have to run the Major Incident Room from HQ. There’s not enough facilities out here.’
The uniformed constable standing by the police tape bent to talk to them. ‘There’s an officer and a patrol car down by the bridge at the far end, and two officers at the scene,’ she said, then pointed. ‘The crime scene is three miles down there.’
‘Thanks,’ said Annie. ‘As long as we don’t have to walk.’
‘It’s a hard road surface, ma’am,’ said the officer. ‘And a rough one at that. Not much chance of tyre tracks, but you never know what the CSIs might find. I’d go carefully.’
‘We will. I know those CSIs.’
The patrol officer untied the tape at one end, and Gerry drove slowly along the narrow road.
Annie was intrigued by the shapes of the trees. Some seemed dead and stunted, standing there like men doing handstands, or the twisted and darkened shapes of burned bodies in a pugilistic stance. Others made a dazzling symphony of green in the breeze after last week’s rains, leaves glistening and dancing in the morning sun. The road meandered, and on a couple of occasions, there were narrow unsurfaced lanes leading off, signposted to villages or farms Annie had never heard of. It would be easy to get lost here if you took a wrong turn, she thought. Here and there were passing places in case you met someone coming the other way.
The first sign that they were close to their destination was a patrol car blocking the road ahead and a cyclist in bright purple Lycra leaning against the bonnet, head in his hands. A female PC stood next to him, notebook in her hand. A male officer, also making notes, sat in the car. The sleek bicycle leaned against the drystone wall. Annie bet it weighed about two ounces, cost a fortune and went like the clappers. So many cyclists had been inspired by the Tour de France’s Grand Départ in Yorkshire that you could hardly move for them on the roads these days. Some of them looked quite fit in their Lycra, too, Annie thought, though not this one. He needed a few more thousand miles on his speedometer to get up to snuff.
‘This is Mr Roger Stanford,’ said the PC. Then she gestured towards the misshapen bundle lying in a cordoned-off area several yards further along the road. ‘He found the . . . er . . . her.’
‘Thanks,’ said Annie. ‘And you are?’
‘PC Mellors, ma’am. Stephanie Mellors. Most people just call me Steph.’
Annie gestured for PC Mellors to follow her a short distance from Roger Stanford. ‘Tell me, Steph,’ she said, ‘what do you think? First impressions?’
‘You mean did he do it?’
‘Well, if that’s where you want to start.’
Steph shook her head. ‘He’s gutted, ma’am. A blubbering wreck. You can tell. I don’t think he’s faking it.’
‘You look a bit peaky, yourself.’
‘You haven’t seen her yet, ma’am. It’s never easy, something like this.’
‘Too true. What do you think happened?’
‘From my limited experience, I’d say she was either hit by a car or beaten to death.’
‘Have you any idea who she is?’
‘No. There’s no ID, and as far as I can tell from . . . you know . . . I’ve never seen her before in my life. It’s such a strange thing. She’s not wearing a stitch of clothing.’
‘OK. Let’s have a word with Mr Stanford.’
Roger Stanford was still leaning on the bonnet of the patrol car with his head in his hands. He wasn’t crying, Annie noticed, just propping his head up as if it were too heavy with images of violent death to hold itself up. He would need to be investigated, being the person who had found the body, but he didn’t need to be treated like a suspect. ‘Mr Stanford,’ she said, touching his arm. He raised his head, a blank expression on his face, as if he had been startled out of a deep sleep. Annie introduced herself. Gerry stood beside her, notebook at the ready. ‘What time did you find the body?’ Annie asked.
‘It would have been about a quarter to nine.’
‘Is this journey part of a routine, or are you on holiday?’
‘Daily routine. I live in Bradham and I work in Eastvale. Clinton Estate Agents. I usually pass here about a quarter to nine. That’s how I know. I keep track of my times.’
‘There are quicker ways.’
‘No nicer ones, though. I always make sure I have plenty of time.’
Annie looked him up and down. ‘You go to work dressed like that?’
‘Oh, no.’ He pointed to the little bundle strapped to the back of his saddle. ‘I change at the office. We have a shower there, too.’
‘Very civilised.’ Annie made a mental note to take in the bundle of work clothes for forensic analysis. Maybe he didn’t do it, but she couldn’t go around letting things like that slip by. ‘So you make this same journey every morning?’
‘And evening. More or less. Every weekday.’
‘Do you ever notice anyone else using the road?’
‘No. I mean, once or twice I’ve seen a tractor out early, pulling a few bales of hay o
r something from one field to another, and once there was a farmer shifting some cows over the road, blocking the way. Maybe the occasional car, but they’re few and far between, thank the Lord. Cars are . . . well let’s just say they’re not always sympathetic towards cyclists. Usually the lane is deserted. That’s why I like it. Nice and quiet.’
Yeah, thought Annie, and cyclists are a pain in the arse as far as motorists and pedestrians are concerned. They don’t stop at red lights, they go the wrong way up one-way streets, they ride on the pavements when it suits them, and the list went on. But she said nothing. ‘Let’s go back to this morning. Anything unusual at all?’
‘No,’ said Stanford. ‘I set off the same time I always do, around a quarter past eight, and I got here as I said, about a quarter to nine. It’s only about six miles, but there’s a tough uphill stretch, and I wasn’t really pushing my speed.’
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 2
