by Penny Grubb
‘The guy wasn’t involved at all, was he? He was just in the wrong place.’
For a second he didn’t understand what she was saying, then realised it was the article about Robert Morgan’s death. He’d only skimmed it. Morgan had fallen victim to a group of animal rights protesters trying to make a name for themselves.
‘Was he? I can’t remember. Poor sod. I haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail.’
‘They should have thrown away the bloody key! Some of them were no more than children but the ring-leader should never have been let out.’
The pictures in his head were from his brief reading of the article along with the 30-year-old memories that had surfaced. He’d been right about remembering the name. The protest group had released circus animals in a stunt that became too big for them to handle. Robert Morgan had been killed by the tigers they’d freed.
‘It was a big story at the time. Everyone was talking about it. Do you remember?’
She threw him a withering glance. ‘I was barely six.’
‘I was doing O levels. I think we were the last class to do them, it was GCSEs after that.’
‘I can imagine adolescent boys revelling in a story like that.’
There was disapproval in her tone and he felt ashamed of his 16-year-old self. She was right. They’d delighted in the exotic nature of the crime, the gruesome outcome, full of self-righteousness about people who played with fire. Most of the perpetrators had been their age which had given a glimpse into an alien world. In other circumstances, it could have been him and his friends fired up by one irresponsible adult. As with all these things, a series of half-truths that made good copy had been splashed across the headlines. But yes, it had all come out in the end. No element of just desserts. Wrong place, wrong time. She was right, Robert Morgan had been an innocent bystander and his wife Pamela had suffered for 15 years then killed herself because of what had happened.
He pulled up a chair and sat down. Close to her but not too close. Farrar’s cold cases gave them neutral ground. These were details he couldn’t share with anyone outside the team without compromising his integrity, but he told himself that Pamela Morgan’s suicide wasn’t even a cold case. It wasn’t a case at all. He told her all he’d found out about her.
‘Poor woman,’ she said, her forehead creased to a frown. ‘What a dreadful thing to have to live with. Especially after the people who did it came out.’
Webber stared at her; couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it. ‘When?’ he asked. ‘When did they come out?’ Could there be a link between Pamela Morgan’s suicide and the release of the people who’d caused her husband’s death?
‘How should I know? Who’s the bloody detective here, Martyn?’
He acknowledged her point as he glanced through the paperwork. Ten years, he estimated, for the ring-leader; considerably less for the young kids he’d roped in. He’d get the detail later.
‘What puzzles me,’ he said. ‘Is this Brad Tippet guy. What’s he doing all over everything today?’ He told her about Farrar’s scrawled note. Then he crossed another line and told her about the real cold case, the car in the gravel pit and Farrar’s throwaway comment about Tippet and the missing third brother.
‘Big brother post office,’ he said. ‘John told me Tippet would have known him at school.’
His thoughts stalled for a moment on Tom Jenkinson, the car he and his mate had followed to the gravel pits. A link there made no sense at all, but he hated unexplained coincidence.
‘And it’s the missing brother who’s at the bottom of that lake, is it?’ Melinda said. She didn’t sound very interested.
‘Probably, but I doubt there’s much left to find.’
She turned to look at him. The blank indifference in her eyes chilled him. He would work through her anger and upset, but he had nothing with which to battle indifference. She was putting it on, she had to be. She knew how to unsettle him, how to give him a rough ride. He had to keep his nerve.
She said, ‘You haven’t made any plans for tomorrow, have you?’
He wasn’t sure what she was getting at but replied with the negative that was clearly the answer she needed to hear.
‘You hadn’t forgotten it’s Saturday and you’re not working?’
‘No … ’course not.’ Of course he had. He thought about his instruction to Davis to call him first thing. It would be easier all round if he were working and Davis wasn’t, but clearly Melinda had plans and his only option was to fall in with them.
‘Tell me about John Farrar’s father,’ she said. ‘He must be knocking on. How would he know Pamela Morgan?’
‘He didn’t. Someone told him about her.’
‘And you don’t know where the Brad Tippet man fits in?’
He shook his head and she angled her thumb towards the article about Robert Morgan. ‘Surely big cats have been banned from circuses for decades. How could it happen?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘They went out of fashion, so to speak, but no outright ban until pretty recently, the last year or so. In the 1980s the protesters were out in force.’
‘So was Brad Tippet involved in animal rights stuff?’
‘Not as far as I know. Other than John scribbling his name on a piece of paper, he has no link to Pamela Morgan. And anyway, it happened in Dorset, not round here.’
‘What was Robert Morgan doing in Dorset?’
‘I don’t know. I expect it’s in the case files somewhere.’
‘Is it just John Farrar holding a grudge, then?’
Webber gave her a half shrug. Which grudge did she mean? Farrar and Tippet or him and Harmer? Neither were ideas to which he wanted to give currency, yet Farrar’s behaviour hadn’t been entirely rational today.
‘Everything I’ve read,’ he told her, ‘says Tippet was just a bystander caught up in someone else’s crime. Like Robert Morgan. Tippet had his car stolen and used in a post office raid. Morgan ran into the middle of some insane scheme to release big cats from a circus.’
‘What did they do, Martyn? How did it happen?’
‘How long’s that PM report?’ He pointed to the screen where her inbox showed the forwarded email. ‘Can you print it?’
It was more than a post-mortem report. It was a detailed reconstruction of the protesters’ plans and of Robert Morgan’s last moments built from the forensic examination of the scene and the expert witnesses at the time of the court case.
‘They had inside help,’ he told Melinda as he read. ‘They drove the lorry with the tiger cage to a derelict warehouse. Maximum hassle to recapture the animals, but without putting anyone in danger.’ He felt the curl in his lip as he recited what had been the protest group’s attempt to rationalise what they’d done.
‘Morgan was found, what was left of him, when the authorities went to recapture the animals. The group got their publicity. Quite a panic in the local area.’
‘Why didn’t they do them for murder?’ Webber heard the anger in Melinda’s voice and felt pleased it should be diverted away from him.
‘It was pretty clear that they didn’t know he was in there. The moment it came to light someone had been killed, they all came forward.’
‘I’d have done the bastards for murder,’ she spat out. ‘But why was he there?’
Webber read on, turning the page. ‘It doesn’t look like they ever found out. The place was supposed to be deserted. They claimed they’d checked it out earlier in the day.’
‘You said his wife’s suicide note said they’d rowed, never made up?’
‘I haven’t seen the full note, but yes, one of the extracts said something like that.’
‘So he’d gone and got drunk and staggered into that place to sleep it off.’
Webber gave her a tight smile and pulled himself to his feet, the papers clasped in his hand. Yorkshire to Dorset was a long stagger. Grim reading, the woman at the lab had said. It was that all right. He walked across to the window, gazed
out on to a road lit only by streetlights and pulled the curtains across. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said.
He didn’t want to look into her eyes as he spoke. He’d read through enough of the reconstruction, the painstaking work done by the various forensic experts. Later, after she’d gone to bed, he would delete it from her email so she’d never get to read it for herself. Robert Morgan hadn’t been sleeping anything off. Webber suppressed a shudder. The evidence showed that Robert Morgan had been chased from one end of the big space to the other. With his lower leg ripped to shreds, he’d managed an almost impossible climb up a heap of rusted equipment in his desperation to reach a tiny window that would have been too small for him to get through. The tigers would have had no trouble bounding up to grab him down again.
As he yanked the curtains fully closed, shutting out the night, Webber imagined a man finding the strength to pull himself up a makeshift mountain, trailing a semi-amputated leg. Had he heard them loping easily towards him or had they moved silently, invisible until the agonising burn of claws stabbed into his flesh to drag him down? He squeezed shut his eyes, trying to block out the picture. Melinda was right. He’d have wanted the bastards done for murder, too.
CHAPTER 7
At one minute to eight the following morning Webber’s mobile sprang to life. He was in the bathroom; heard it cut out as Melinda answered it. There’d been an air of recklessness about her since she’d faced down Harmer. It left him uneasy, scared she was about to do something rash.
‘DI Davis,’ she told him. ‘Said you’d instructed him to call first thing.’
‘Sorry, I did ask him to call. He’s a lazy sod, I wanted to make sure he was on top of things. What did he say?’
For a moment she just looked at him. Webber had the impression she was spoiling for a fight and the least little thing would spark it. Then she seemed to rein back. ‘No change,’ she said. ‘He’s waiting to hear from the lab. Will you nip down to the shop? We’re out of cereal.’
‘Sure. Do we need anything else?’
He savoured the crisp morning air as he strode down the street, relieved to be away from the tension, annoyed at being on eggshells around her. Early days, he told himself … he had to remember that. She’d accepted that there was no emotional attachment between him and Suzie; never had been. It was just the blasted child that was going to be solid evidence of his infidelity forever. He’d checked the wall calendar in the kitchen to work out how far on this pregnancy was. Barely three months. Not too late for her to lose it, not that he wished the woman any harm, not really. He just wished he and Mel could be left alone to lead a normal life. Mel would blow up at him if he voiced thoughts about miscarriage. Women were odd like that. Look at all this joining forces with Fiona stuff. He’d bet the Harmer bitch was no more pleased about it than he was.
He and Mel had always planned to have two children. The decision was whether to have the second before Sam was two, or whether to wait until Sam was about five and going to school. The latter option would allow Mel to go back to work, pick up her career. He’d even floated the idea of him being the one to take leave for the second baby; still hadn’t worked out whether that was a daft idea or not. Where were those plans now? Early days, he told himself again. Get over these first few weeks, establish that his marriage would survive and then … Then of course, there would be an imminent birth overhanging everything. Then there’d be a child and all manner of complications.
The street was waking up as he returned to the house. He swapped brief hellos with his neighbours, knowing he’d never get on to the same easy footing as Mel had with them.
Sam was in his high chair, at work with an outsize spoon on a bowl of the cereal they’d supposedly run out of. Melinda greeted him with, ‘I found a box at the back of the cupboard,’ but didn’t meet his eye. He was pleased but kept his expression neutral. Her slightly defensive stance said she knew she was being childish sending him on fool’s errands. Fine by him if she snapped herself out of it and he didn’t have to. He’d been planning on giving her a few days’ leeway before he made a stand.
‘So what do you want to do today?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘We’ll go to Spurn Point,’ she said. ‘Sam and I will enjoy watching the birds.’ She still avoided his eye.
‘Spurn? In this weather?’ He stared at her. It was the last thing he’d expected.
‘We’ll wrap up. It’s not wet. Just cold.’
She insisted on taking the wheel. He knew there was an agenda, but wasn’t worried. Her recklessness wasn’t going to affect her driving, not with Sam in his seat in the back. If he’d been driving, he’d have skirted Hull to get to Spurn. She chose to head for Beverley and fight her way through the Saturday morning traffic. She didn’t say much, and when she spoke it was to quiz him on Pamela Morgan, the woman whose husband had been killed by tigers.
‘Why would anyone go out of their way to suggest it wasn’t a suicide?’
‘Hard to guess without finding out who it was and talking to them directly.’
Sounds from the back seat. Webber turned to see Sam fast asleep, his lips working as he mumbled to himself. He smiled as he studied the tiny features and fought down an urge to reach out to stroke the smooth skin. Best to let him doze.
‘John Farrar didn’t do much when it was first reported, did he?’ As she spoke, Melinda clicked on the car lights. The greyness of the day intensified. It would have turned to a proper fog by the time they reached the coast.
‘He had someone look into it,’ he said. ‘She left a note. There were no doubts.’
‘No one dug deep though, did they? What if it was to do with her husband’s death?’
‘It was. That’s why she did it. But if you mean maybe one of the original perpetrators turned up again, reminded her, opened old wounds … well, there’s no crime there. She chose to take her own life.’ He was aware that her lips tightened. ‘I’m not defending them,’ he said. ‘I’d have locked up the stupid bastards and thrown away the key. I’m just saying that John probably did all he could by having someone look into it.’
‘So why get you to look into it again now?’
He opened his mouth to reply then closed it again. Farrar had done it for much the same reason Mel had clobbered him, but he wasn’t going to say so. Any discussion that touched on Harmer and her pregnancy had to be initiated by Mel if he was to stay out of trouble. ‘It’ll be foggy at the coast,’ he said.
He thought she’d taken the hint about the weather when she turned off the road before Patrington and headed for Withernsea. He didn’t know what Withernsea offered out of season, but hopefully more shelter than Spurn. They bumped along the narrow lane, grey clouds a dark arrowhead leading the way towards the sea. A muddy lay-by opened to one side, bordered by skeletal hedgerows, a line of coloured plastic recycling bins standing bedraggled as its only occupants. Melinda slowed as they reached a small village. High walls and hedges lined their route as they wound past a conclave of prosperous dwellings. The road ahead forked. She looked unsure. Webber thought about saying, ‘Go right,’ but didn’t want his head snapped off so kept quiet, even as she eased the car the wrong way. She’d find out soon enough. There was no way through. The narrow track ended in the tall pillars of a gateway, the entrance to another of the big houses.
She manoeuvred the car in the small space, turning it round and then reversing a short way into the drive, where she stopped, put on the handbrake and turned to him. ‘We’ll go and have a look at the sea,’ she said. ‘Me and Sam. We’ll be back in about an hour. Well, go on, don’t wait till Sam wakes up.’
He looked into her eyes, saw a tiny spark of triumph under an expression she fought to keep neutral. ‘Where the f …?’ He swallowed the curse for Sam’s sake not hers. ‘Where are we, Mel?’
‘Donald Farrar’s house,’ she told him. She looked at the clock. ‘Dead on time. You know what these ex-military types are like on punctuality. I rang this morning. He’s expecting you.’
He held her gaze as anger bubbled up inside him. Thoughts churned in his head. If she’d done this a week after Harmer’s revelation and not a day, he’d have already been wresting control of the car from her and they’d be in the middle of a shouting match. He would make allowances. Clearly she didn’t think Farrar had done enough and was making sure he was back in the firing line. There was a tiny voice deep down that wanted to grab the chance to talk to Farrar senior about his call last May, but he suppressed it. It wouldn’t even be a legitimate interview. It wasn’t a case, and if it had been, Farrar had taken him off it.
He would be perfectly calm about this. He would get out of the car, go round to Mel’s side and help her out. Then he’d drive them all to somewhere where it might be sensible for a family to spend a grey Saturday in November. And he’d check whether she’d genuinely rung to make an appointment with Farrar senior. If so, he’d ring back and smooth over the cracks.
‘OK, Mel, you’ve made your point.’ He kept his tone soft. Her gaze dropped. He put his hand on her arm. ‘I understand what I’ve put you through, and I’m truly sorry. But enough of this nonsense. OK?’ She gave a half nod. ‘Now, let me take you somewhere for the day where Sam can have a good time.’
She unclipped her seatbelt and reached for the door handle. He climbed out, leaving the door open, glancing into the back where Sam was beginning to stir.
The rev of the engine took him unawares. He leapt back as gravel sprayed across him, felt his jaw drop as the car lurched forward, its passenger door swinging wide. In a second he was sprinting after them, flinching as Mel threw the car into an abrupt swerve that slammed shut the open door, and then, with tyres squealing they’d vanished round the corner leaving just the receding whine of the engine. He stopped, his heart hammering hard in his chest. The stupid cow! She’d unclipped her seatbelt to make him think she would do as he asked.
He couldn’t even phone her, his mobile was in the car, and it would do no good if he could. An hour, she’d said. And this godforsaken place didn’t boast a shop, never mind a pub or anywhere he could get shelter from the persistent drizzle. She’d led him by the nose and left him with no sensible option but to do her bidding.
