The Judas Sheep

by Stuart Pawson

  Next morning I did the journey again. Sylvia was not quite what I expected. She reminded me of my grandma, and had worked for Town & County for nearly forty years in various capacities, but never on sales. Her right arm trembled as she poured me a tea, splashing into the saucer, and I guessed that she suffered from a mild form of Parkinson’s disease, or something similar. She was a loyal servant, and had been treated loyally. I accepted a couple of bourbons and held the saucer under the cup as I drank, so as not to drip on my trousers.

  ‘So how do you like being in the law-enforcement business, Sylvia?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s smashing. Best job I’ve ever ‘ad. Are you sure you don’t want milk?’

  ‘It’s fine, thanks. Just what I needed. How many people do you catch?’

  ‘You’d be surprised, Mr Priest, you’d be surprised.’

  ‘Call me Charlie,’ I told her, popping half a biscuit into my mouth, ‘Everybody else does. Tell me about this missing tape, please.’

  She pointed to the rack of tapes above the VDU. ‘Well, Charlie, as you can see, each tape is marked with a label, saying which day it is. I thought the label had fallen off Friday’s tape, until I looked in the cupboard. See what I mean?’ She delved under the desk and opened a door. There were two unmarked tapes inside. ‘We ‘ad ten tapes, so there should ’ave been three spares, but there’s only two. It looked as if the unmarked tape was a new one, and Mr Norris ‘ad taken the Friday tape.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘To give to the police, I suppose.’

  ‘Has anyone else interviewed you?’

  ‘No, but I couldn’t tell you nothing, could I?’

  ‘The manager tells me that you were with him when the camera caught Mrs Norris arriving, that last time.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Does he often come down here?’

  ‘Just on a Friday morning, usually.’ The smile reached her eyes, displaying a fine set of crows’ feet.

  ‘I get it,’ I said, as if I’d just learnt their little secret, ‘He comes down here to watch for her arriving, so he is ready for her. Is that it?’

  She nodded, spilling more tea into her saucer. ‘As soon as we see her he rings Drapery. They ring Menswear and Fashion. In thirty seconds the entire store knows she has arrived.’

  ‘He rings them? Don’t you ring anybody?’

  The smile vanished from her face, quick as the channels changed on the VDU. ‘No. I’m too slow with the telephone. I operate the cameras, see where she’s heading.’

  ‘So you were watching the monitor while he was phoning?’

  Now she looked worried. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you see that he didn’t?’

  ‘I … I thought the police had the video. I didn’t think I’d seen anything important.’

  The feeling I get in my loins when I’m on to something was growing stronger. It’s a bit like dancing in fur-lined underpants, and the slower you dance, the greater the sensation.

  ‘Your manager told me yesterday that Mrs Norris was a proper cow,’ I said.

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yep. He has a very low opinion of her.’

  ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Would you like some more tea?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  The teapot was lighter, now, so she could manage it one-handed without spilling a drop.

  ‘There was a man on the video …’ she began.

  ‘Yak!’ I spluttered. ‘No sugar! Sorry about that. Tell me about this man.’

  She passed a spoon across to me. ‘I was just about to switch to another camera, see which way she was heading, when I saw this man approaching the car, so I stayed with the front entrance. He walked up and spoke to the driver – that poor man whose body they found. I didn’t like the look of ‘im so I zoomed right in. The police – you – would’ve ’ad a really good shot of ’im. Close up.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘He was a skinhead, wearing one of them old Army jackets, with the camouflage patterns on it.’

  ‘I had one of those once,’ I told her. ‘Could never find it. How tall was he?’

  She shrugged, unamused. ‘Hard to say.’

  I stood up. ‘Whereabouts did the roof of the car come?’ I asked, indicating various levels on my chest. She picked one that made him seven feet nine.

  ‘That’s excellent, Sylvia,’ I said. ‘You’ve been brilliant. Look, it’s all been a misunderstanding about the tapes. If anything, the fault is with me, for not asking to see the right people. Now I’d like it if tomorrow I could send someone to talk to you and try to help you remember more about this man. One of our experts. He’ll show you some pictures, and ask you to pick out the ones most like him. Will that be all right?’

  She nodded.

  I jumped to my feet again and grinned at her. ‘You’re a good witness, Sylvia. I wish they were all like you. Expect it’s with being in the business.’

  She still looked troubled. I didn’t want to leave her feeling depressed, that’s not my role in life. ‘I’ll tell the boss how helpful you’ve been,’ I said. ‘And that we’ll need some more of your time. It might be easier if we invited you to the station, but if he grumbles, let me know.’

  Her left arm was across her body, holding the right one steady. She looked from me to the floor, and back to me.

  ‘I …’ she began.

  I pulled a chair across and placed it close to hers. ‘What, Sylvia?’ I said, softly.

  ‘I … there was someone else. On the video. I don’t suppose it’s important, but―’

  ‘It might be. Why not let me be the judge?’

  She nodded. ‘There was an old woman on the pavement. She turned and watched Mrs Norris la-di-da into the store. She’s like a bag lady, except that she pulls one of them bags-on-wheels. I’ve noticed her before, on the VDU, but ’aven’t seen her since. She … she …’

  I let her lapse into silence. After a minute or so I asked: ‘She what, Sylvia? What were you going to tell me?’

  She smiled and shook her head. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  I didn’t move. ‘Please?’

  She sighed and pulled her arm tighter. ‘She reminded me of what I might have become, if it ’adn’t been for Town & County. That’s all.’

  There was a proper cafe just over the road from Town & County, with tablecloths and portions that varied in size according to the whim of the waitress, so I had a decent lunch. My seat looked out on to the street, but no old lady pulling a shopping trolley shuffled by. It was the right time of the week, but maybe she wasn’t a creature of habit. I’d asked Sylvia to keep a lookout for the woman on the video, and save me the tape if she saw her again.

  DCI Peacock wasn’t chuffed when I rang him from home and told him about the missing tape. No doubt he ruffled a few feathers amongst his staff when I rang off. He agreed to send someone sympathetic round to interview Sylvia, for a full statement of what she saw and a description of the mystery man in the combat jacket. I typed a report for the files and dossed on the settee for an hour, listening to Mahler’s Fifth. How did he know that, a hundred years later, it would just fit on a CD? That’s genius.

  At the Heckley end of the enquiry into Nicola’s death Nigel now had a comprehensive account of her last movements, and was starting to interview all known sex-offenders who were loose in the community. There were over ten thousand of them across the country, including fifty who’d been convicted for child murder. We’d interview them all, starting with those living locally, and ask for hair samples where necessary, to obtain a DNA profile. For the ones who’d been given life, we’d be able to store this information in the data bank, but all the rest would have to be destroyed. They’d paid their dues, asked forgiveness, changed their spots. After that lot had been sorted through there were all the others, without records. Everybody is a first-time offender at some point in their career.


  We had some spin-offs. Dave Sparkington took a dislike to the creep who owned Heckley’s new disco, the Copper Banana, and did him for possession and employing unlicensed bouncers. We drove the town’s only full-time prostitute off the streets, and charged George Leach, Nicola’s stepdad, with indecent assault and every related offence we could think of.

  Under expert guidance, Sylvia described the mystery man as being about five-ten, stockily built, a skinhead with a round face. He was wearing a combat jacket and trousers. It was good. Liverpool CID circulated the description, but didn’t release it. The following Friday Sylvia rang me at the station. She’d seen the old lady again and caught her on camera.

  I was busy, interviewing a couple of youths for something that would have warranted a clip round the ear when Dave Sparkington was a kid. Mind you, they guillotined pickpockets in Halifax in those days. I told Sylvia and asked if she would mind if an officer from the local nick visited her and collected the tape. She’d rather liked whoever it was who took the statement from her, and I promised to ask for him again.

  Saturday morning DCI Peacock rang to say they had a hard copy for me, and I told him I would collect it on Monday. He had no objections to me coming on to his patch to track her down, but he sounded as if his teeth were gritted. On the way home I called in at the Electricity Board showrooms and picked up a few leaflets on dishwashers. One wall was covered with TV sets, all showing the same picture. A bomb had exploded inside an Army recruiting centre, damaging the furniture and ruining a scale-model of a Centurion tank. The group calling themselves TSC had claimed responsibility.

  I was growing used to the drive to Liverpool, over the tops of the Pennines, backbone of England. It was a change from the flat drive to Hull. They may not be high hills, but the weather up there is extreme and variable. Thick fog, a gale and driving snow – all at the same time – are not unusual. Today it was sunny, but you still needed the car heater on. It’s the fast lane up the hill, overtaking all the lorries grinding their way westwards. Down the other side it’s every man for himself as they make up time, freewheeling at eighty miles per hour until you hit the roadworks.

  The motorways on a map of England look like the veins in the back of your hand. The lorries and vans and salesmen’s cars are the red corpuscles, carrying the nation’s oxygen – trade – in a ceaseless merry-go-round, twenty-four hours per day. The leucocytes are white and fast, with coloured stripes down the sides and blue lights on top. They clean up the damaged cells, or any that are behaving abnormally. They can’t see viruses, though, or spot the ones who lie in wait, ready to spread cancer when the opportunity arises. That’s my job.

  The picture of the old lady was built up from the lines of the video screen, with very little detail. It showed a stooped figure in women’s clothes, pulling a shopping basket on wheels. Her coat was brown and the basket may have been green, but you couldn’t make out any patterns on the material of either. She had almost escaped off the left-hand edge of the frame when the camera caught her, and was facing the wrong way, but the picture showed her essential characteristics, like a Lowry painting, and that’s what I wanted.

  DCI Peacock granted me the freedom of Liverpool. A couple of nasty racial attacks over the weekend were stretching his manpower beyond the limits of elasticity. A search of doubtful value, for a bag lady of uncertain reliability, was the last thing he needed. ‘You find her, Charlie,’ he suggested with strained resignation. ‘Be my guest. You have quite a way with old ladies, I’m told.’

  Fifty yards downwind of Town & County was a newsagent’s kiosk. The proprietress had seen the old lady many times – she went thataway. A busker, a hairdresser and a waitress in a bistro had all seen her go by in recent months, but not lately. By now I was getting away from the shopping area. A greengrocer told me she sometimes bought oranges from him and a window cleaner had seen her around. He pointed me towards a residential area; rows and rows of terraced houses. I was growing warm.

  Several people shook their heads and asked what she’d done. I told them she might have witnessed a crime. ‘It’s a long shot, but we have to take it,’ I explained, over and over again. A man pushing a buggy with a little boy in it told me to get stuffed, wack, he wouldn’t help the filth if we paid him. He was wearing a ring in one ear and had a mural of Walt Disney characters tattooed around his midriff. His dad looked a nasty piece of work.

  I knocked at the first door at the end of every row of houses, without luck. About fifty per cent of the time nobody answered, in which case I knocked at the next door until I raised someone.

  I was growing depressed by the time I climbed the three steps up to the front door of Number 11, Ladysmith Grove. The little yard was littered with plastic toys, and a big pile of fresh steaming dogshit decorated the iron lid that led down into the coal cellar. The hound started barking before I knocked.

  A female voice shouted at the dog, and its barking grew even more frantic, but muffled, as it was evidently shut in a room where it couldn’t savage unexpected callers. Bolts were slid back, a lock turned, and a skinny girl with bleached hair, wearing a pink quilted housecoat, opened the door. She had a snotty-nosed infant in her arms.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you, ma’am,’ I said, holding my ID towards her. ‘DI Priest. I’m conducting a few investigations, and would like to know if you have ever seen this woman. We believe she lives near here.’ I showed her the picture.

  She took it from me and inspected it for about two seconds. ‘It’s old Missis Crowther,’ she said, in an accent – that sounded as if she had a jar of Vick up each nostril. ‘Lives over there, where the windowboxes are.’

  I followed her pointing arm. At the other side of the street, about fifty yards further along, were the only surviving plants within half a mile. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You’ve been a big help.’

  She closed the door without another word, and went to try to stop the dog giving the furniture rabies.

  The plants were geraniums, just breaking into bud. The paintwork on Mrs Crowther’s house was just as dilapidated as all the others in the street, but the windows and curtains were clean, and her stone steps were freshly painted white at the edges. Tubs of wallflowers were scattered around, ready to give a colourful show in a few weeks, if the frost or the vandals didn’t get them first. I knocked at the door.

  There was a light on in the kitchen, so I was fairly sure that she was home. After a couple more knocks I heard some shuffling and the door opened as far as a safety chain would allow it.

  ‘Mrs Crowther?’ I asked the left half of the face that appeared in. the gap.

  ‘Vat do you vant?’

  ‘I’d like a word with you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ She sounded frightened.

  ‘I’m a police officer. My name is Charlie Priest.’ I passed my ID through the gap and a surprisingly large hand took it from me. If she’d run off with it I’d have been in big trouble. I put my face close to the door so everyone in the street couldn’t hear what I was saying. ‘Last January, just after New Year’s Day, you were seen walking past the Town & County department store. Do you know where I mean?’

  Her hand emerged, offering my warrant card back to me, and the half-face nodded. ‘A car drew up,’ I went on, ‘a Rolls-Royce, and a woman got out. Do you remember?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I remember. He sploshed me.’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me all about it. May I come in, please?’

  She closed the door. I heard the scrape of the chain and the door opened wide. ‘I do not know vat I can tell you,’ she said, nervously.

  We went through into a heavily furnished sitting room, all dark wood and maroons. Some of the furniture looked expensive, but it was gloomy in there and I’m no expert. Her accent sounded East European, maybe German, but I’m about as good with accents as I am with furniture. Several watercolours adorned the walls, and they were excellent. I do know a bit about paintings. The one over the fireplace was of a young girl, playing a violin. The expre
ssion on her face was of profound concentration mixed with pleasure, and you felt that somewhere, sometime, you had met her, heard the music. She was a figure from your past.

  When I approached the painting and peered at it, Mrs Crowther put the light on so I could see it better. That’s a beautiful picture,’ I told her, hoping that she had never been visited by a double-glazing salesperson. I meant it, dammit, I meant it. Is it my fault if they’ve usurped sincerity for the sake of a sale? The signature on the bottom said O. Crowther.

  ‘She vos a beautiful girl,’ she replied, gravely.

  I sank into an easy chair and let the ‘vos’ register. ‘You say the Rolls-Royce splashed you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I told the madam, but she just rushed by me. So I told the driver. “You sploshed me,” I said, and he apologised.’

  That was big of him.’

  ‘It vos more than I expected.’

  At a guess she was about seventy, maybe a little older. I suppose I could have asked her, but it wasn’t important. She was an intelligent lady, and that mattered more than her age. I remembered the overweight teenager who’d witnessed poor Nicola’s last movements and couldn’t describe the simplest detail, and vowed to fight ageism until I crumbled to dust.

  I said: ‘Another man was seen approaching the car, a few seconds later. Did you see this man?’

  I could tell from her reaction that she had. Her hands began to tremble and she bit her lip.

  ‘Tell me what you saw, Mrs Crowther,’ I said.

  ‘He scared me,’ she mumbled.

  ‘You’ve no need to be scared. Nobody is going to hurt you.’

  ‘If they find I am here, they vill come round, paint things, evil things, on my valls. Break my vindows.’

  ‘Who will?’

  ‘The skinheads. The … the Nazis.’ She spat the word out as if it were a draught from a poisoned chalice.

  ‘So you think this man was a Nazi?’