Snow Kills

by RC Bridgestock

  ‘Gerr!’ he roared at the dog as he half-heartedly kicked out with his boot. The animal’s dark eyes never left his master. Immediately its ears dropped. It lowered its belly to the floor and it slunk into a dark corner. ‘Useless swine,’ he called out.

  Feeling somewhat safer now the dog was out of harm’s way, Andy opened his door and Vicky followed, digging deep in their pockets for identification. The man continued to come towards them dragging his steel toe-capped boots on the flagstones. ‘They’ll be no more fucking chicks this year until I get another,’ he mumbled to himself, brandishing the big metal ratchet he held in his hand. ‘Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any. Clear off. Don’t you know you’re on private property?’ he said.

  ‘Mr Barrowclough, Paul Barrowclough?’ Andy said.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘DC Andy Wormald, Harrowfield CID,’ he said, holding up his warrant card.

  ‘And DC Hardacre,’ Vicky said, with a glare.

  ‘What do you want?’ The man was so obese; his neck reminded Vicky of a pair of hotdogs. The stench came from him like a force field, pushing her backwards. She tried to raise a confident smile but struggled to find half a grimace.

  ‘January 7th you worked for Harrowfield Council, helping them grit Manchester Road in the heavy snow, that right?’

  ‘That’s right darling’. Not a crime is it? Hey, Tell you what, coppers are better looking now than they were in my day,’ he said, turning to Andy.

  ‘And wagon drivers get uglier in my experience,’ Vicky muttered under her breath.

  ‘A sense of humour too. I like that,’ He held his hands out. ‘Cuff me now. I’ll admit to anything sweetheart.’

  ‘We’re speaking to drivers who were out during the evening of White Wednesday Mr Barrowclough, to see if they can help us with our enquiries,’ Andy said.

  Barrowclough cocked his head.

  ‘A young girl parked her car, a pink Ka, near to Ivy Cottage on Manchester Road. She hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘Well, that’s the vehicle I was using that night, in there,’ Barrowclough said, nodding towards the open wooden doors. ‘Brake drums seized, probably all that bloody salt. You want to go in and have a look?’

  ‘Should we?’ said Andy.

  ‘Thought that’s what you lot did, nosey around?’

  ‘We just want to know if you saw the car or a young girl walking alone on Manchester Road that night, or anything else that seemed out of the ordinary that you think might help in the investigation into her disappearance?’

  ‘I saw a lot of bloody cars that night and a lot of bloody people walking in the snow too. Ivy Cottage? Yes, I know the place. Nelly’s brewed up for us many a time.’

  ‘Did you go there on White Wednesday?’ said Vicky.

  ‘No, too busy,’ he said.

  ‘Did you see this girl or the car?’ Andrew pressed on, showing him a photograph of Kayleigh.

  ‘No. But I did see some young lads larking around a car. They’d gone by time I headed back to the depot. Can’t say I blame them. Nobody in the right mind would stay out in weather like that.’

  ‘You did,’ said Vicky with a sneer.

  ‘Pays well darling and I need all the money I can get to treat my ladies.’

  ‘You’re not married then?’ said Andy.

  ‘Not the marrying kind. Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s my motto, always has been,’ he said. ‘It’s been nice talking to you, but I can’t stand here all day. Anything else I can help you with?’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get the wagon working. It won’t earn me anything stuck in that shed.’

  ‘Can you give us a description of the lads you saw messing around the vehicle on Manchester Road that night?’ said Andy.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. Vicky looked at Paul Barrowclough, pen poised.

  ‘They looked like bloody snowmen,’ he chuckled. ‘Got you there, didn’t I? Eee it’s the way I tell ’em.’

  Vicky scowled and put her notebook back in her coat pocket.

  ‘We’ll need a statement off you at some point, sir,’ Andy said.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’m not getting involved. I’ve told you what I can remember, and that’s it.’

  Andy looked at Vicky.

  ‘Please?’ she said, unenthusiastically.

  ‘Not even if you got your top bollocks out, darling.’

  ‘Well that’s never going to happen, so before we go, one last question, have you ever been in trouble with the Police?’

  ‘I’m sure you know the answer to that already. So if that’s it, I’ve got other things to do,’ he said turning and walking away without a backward glance. Vicky watched the huge doors closing, but not before he gave her a sly wave of his dirty hand.

  ‘Jerk!’ she said under her breath as she followed Andy back to the car.

  ‘Small world isn’t it? He admits knowing Regan and it’s Longbottom and his mate Merryfield he saw, no doubt.’ said Andy

  ‘Wonder if he knows Nelly Regan is a man?’ said Vicky. ‘His eyes are far too close together for my liking. We need to dig deeper with that bastard.’

  Andy laughed. ‘He’s really got to you hasn’t he? The top bollocks jibe?’

  ‘No, I used to work with a bloke who always called tits top bollocks, or brace and bits. It’s the way he said it, made my skin crawl.’ Vicky said shuddering as she rolled up her sleeve.

  ‘See, look at them hairs standing up on my arm.’

  ‘Wonder what he’s got previous for?’

  ‘Fiver says it’s sex offences.’

  ‘Can’t be much, or they’re old records that they’ve weeded out, like the burglaries for matey back at the Council depot. I think it’ll be assault or handling and receiving stolen goods – you’re on.’

  ‘Hang on, you can only choose one offence.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Assault’.

  ‘No, it’s definitely a sex offence. Want to double the bet to a tenner?’

  ‘Have you already seen some Precons?’

  ‘No, if I had seen his previous convictions then I’d have dropped it on his toes. You’re not that cocksure now, are you?’ she said with a grin.

  ‘A tenner it is,’ Andy said holding out his hand for her to shake.

  ‘Easiest tenner I’ve ever made,’ she said with a wink.

  Chapter 26

  ‘I think Jen just needs a rest,’ said Dylan. ‘She needs to get away for a while.’

  ‘And you’ve as much chance of her wanting to leave you, as you have Hugo-Watkins taking an interest in your missing girl,’ said Dawn.

  Dylan sat in deep thought.

  ‘I think you’re wrong.’

  ‘You’re telling me that Jen won’t worry about how you are coping, here, alone when you’ve got this lot on? Well, be it on your head, but I’m telling you now she won’t want to go anywhere without you,’ said Dawn.

  A/Detective Inspector Dawn Farren walked out of his office with an ‘I told you so’ look upon her face.

  Dylan’s phone rang and he snatched it up.

  ‘Dylan,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got good news for you, Inspector Dylan. I’m right, the odontologist I’ve been talking to says it is highly likely he’ll get DNA from the two newest skulls’ teeth,’ said Maggie Jones.

  ‘What can we do this end?’ asked Dylan.

  ‘The odontologist will take a mould of the teeth and then it’ll be up to your team to liaise with the local dentist with a view to identifying the deceased. That’s of course if their respective records are still maintained over the past three decades.’

  ‘Well that’s definitely a positive line of enquiry for us,’ said Dylan.

  Dylan put the phone down, contemplating her words.

  ‘Odontology?’ said John Benjamin.

  ‘Tina Walker, the girl who went missing all them years ago – I wonder,’ he pondered as he threw the file over the desk to John. ‘Check what information we have about other Mispers around the tim
e that she went missing, will you? Either in our Force area or over the border.’

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘This investigation is not your run of the mill, is it?’

  ‘No, budget permitting we might even look at craniofacial reconstructions on the skulls. Although they’re telling me it’s expensive, we might have to see if it’s feasible on this.’

  ‘How good would that be though, to see what the two people who the skulls belong to in 3D?’

  ‘Find out how they lived, find out how they died, or so they say. This investigation will get lots of media attention, John, so it’s a real chance for you to get to know the journalists and editors.’

  John frowned. ‘I don’t like doing TV and radio, boss. What if I say something wrong?’

  ‘You won’t. I don’t like it either but you’ll get used to it, it’s a necessary part of the job, I’m afraid. We need the media to help us to get the information about the incidents we deal with out there and ensure the appeals go as far and wide as possible. The reporters are your voice, and don’t you forget it. They might need us for the information but it’s a two-way thing, we need them too. Be nice to them.’ Dylan stood quiet for a moment. ‘I want to see for myself what’s further up the river and on the hillside above where the skulls were found. They might have got washed down with the heavy rain and snow we’ve had lately. Do you fancy a run out?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, why not? I just hope we don’t find any more,’ John said.

  Dylan grabbed his old leather coat from the coat stand and shrugged into it.

  ‘You and me both, mate. Years ago, they reckon that if the police even had a loose horse near the border of Lancashire they’d frighten it over so the expense and work load would be incurred by our neighbours,’ he grinned. ‘They may have possibly reciprocated with the skulls on this occasion.’

  He stopped at Lisa’s desk on their way out and bent down to speak to her quietly. ‘Do me a favour, will you? Enquire about times of trains from Harrowfield to Portsmouth for me?’

  Lisa frowned. ‘One or two tickets?’

  ‘Just get me the times.’

  Lisa shrugged. ‘Okay.’

  John followed Dylan out of the door collecting his radio from his desk as he passed. ‘Do you think they did really?’ John said as he caught Dylan up at the door.

  ‘What? Move a body from one county to the next? Probably, especially if the officers were due to go off duty. They wouldn’t get paid overtime in them days, remember, a bit like Inspectors and above nowadays. It’s okay for the desk boffins who approve the legislation, but not for us who work the bloody hours.’

  ‘Some things don’t change, do they?’ said John.

  ‘Talking about moving bodies reminds me,’ Dylan said. ‘Going back some time, one of the forensic pathologists working on a case of mine took a head back to the laboratory, from the mortuary for further examination. He had it in a plastic bag on the back seat of his car, not labelled or anything, mind. He’d thrown a car rug over it so it was concealed though. Guess what?’ Dylan chuckled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He only got stopped for speeding on the M62.’

  The men had arrived at the car. Dylan pressed the fob to release the locks. Dylan and John opened the doors in unison and got in.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah, and since it was at night and they didn’t have a lot on, the traffic lads searched the car and made the gruesome discovery.’

  ‘I guess he would be arrested and questions asked later?’

  ‘Well they thought they’d apprehended a murderer of course. He’d a hell of a job convincing them who he was, and where he had just come from.’

  ‘I bet he never did it again.’

  Dylan chuckled. ‘What we tend to forget, as police officers, dealing with lying scum day in day out, is that the majority of people are honest, even if they’ve done something wrong. Like the bloke who parked on double yellows outside the nick and went in to admit that he’d murdered his wife and tell them she was in the boot of his car. Since he was illegally parked, the officer on desk duty told him to go and move the car immediately, otherwise he would get a parking ticket.’

  Dylan steered the car from his car parking space in the rear yard and drove out towards Ovenden.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘True as I sit here. As you can imagine, the bloke became really agitated, so the help desk officer called a beat officer in to deal with him. He went to the car with the man, who voluntarily opened his car boot, showed him the body and the officer arrested him for murder.’

  ‘God, how embarrassing. He’d have to make a statement to say the he hadn’t believed him.’

  ‘You’d think so wouldn’t you? But no, he just asked me if he should include the fact that he was parked contrary to regulations on double yellow lines in the file, so he could get done for that as well,’ Dylan laughed.

  ‘Nothing stranger than folk, as they say in Yorkshire, is there?’ John said.

  ‘Yes, and you have to include police women in that too. I once knew a long-serving policewoman who was fingerprinting a joiner. His left index finger was missing, so she prints his second finger again in the space provided on the form. Nobody’s any wiser about this until the forms come back with a red ink notice and an instruction to take the joiner’s fingerprints again as, they pointed out, she’d taken the print of his second finger on left hand twice. She wrote back to the bureau stating the man’s forefinger was missing so she thought she’d make use of the space. The report went back and forth to HQ several times. She couldn’t see that the problem was that she had shown the defendant with all fingers present. I think the moral is John never underestimate the ability of police officers to cock things up when something should be straightforward.’

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘I’ve got another one for you. A drunken man walks into the station and tells the officer on the desk, ‘I’ve killed the bitch. She deserved it after all these years. She won’t make my life a misery ever again. So here I am to give myself in.’ Now, some people are very helpful, or at least they try to be, but in this instance he was sent packing and told, ‘Come back when you’re sober. I haven’t time to listen to your drunken stories today, Fred,’ for the officer knew him. Fortunately he got a taxi to the next town and went into the nick there and made his confession again. This time, they checked out his story and found it to be true. He had killed his wife and he was arrested. In the subsequent interview he told them he’d also been to another nick to turn himself in and they’d sent him packing too. Can you imagine if all we had to do was wait at the front desk for people to come in and confess?’

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t life be boring?’

  They drove in silence for a while to where the skulls had been found, and then out onto the main Ovenden road above. There was a large lay-by surrounded by a little fence and a small wall. The field beyond sloped steeply down to the stream which in turn continued to flow down to where the skulls were discovered. At one corner of the lay-by was a pile of rock salt, the wall behind it had crumbled and it had spilled over into the field below.

  ‘Council grit store? I’ve passed it numerous times over the years. The pile is usually bigger than this,’ Dylan said.

  ‘Yeah, I pass it most days. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen it,’ said John. ‘Perhaps the weight of the recent dump for this year’s bad weather explains the wall crumbling?’

  ‘Did the skulls come from here?’ he said, kicking the bottom of the remaining pile that was hard and compacted. ‘Then did they roll down into the stream? I think we need this grit moved to see if we find any other human remains in it. I bet the tarmac underneath hasn’t seen the light of day for donkey’s years.’

  ‘I seem to remember when I was a lad there was a grit box in the corner.’

  ‘I wonder if that still exists under this lot?’ said Dylan.

  ‘Probably rotted away. But there’s only one way to find out, as long as I don’t have to mov
e it.’

  ‘I think we’ll talk nicely to the Council, John,’ Dylan smiled. ‘Otherwise, mate, there’s a shovel in the boot.’

  Chapter 27

  It was back to the office for the scrum down. Dylan wondered if the officers had progressed with their individual enquiries; he looked forward to this time of day. The only person that had caused some interest today and was brought to Dylan’s attention was Paul Barrowclough.

  ‘We’ve been to see the most obese, obnoxious, grubby, smelly, man of the century,’ said Vicky.

  Dylan laughed, ‘I can always count on you to say it as it is, can’t I? I take it he wasn’t your idea of an Adonis?’

  ‘Positively minging. You know me, I aren’t picky but... he was a fucking weirdo – and surprise, surprise, the night Kayleigh went missing he was on Manchester Road with his wagon. Furthermore, he says he knows Regan and he also told us he saw two lads making a nuisance of themselves, which fits in nicely with what we already know.’

  Andy shook his head in despair of his partner.

  ‘He impressed you then? Maybe he will end up as our star witness?’

  ‘Well, I pity the pair that have to interview him if we have him in for questioning.’

  Andy’s eyes went up to the ceiling.

  ‘He riled her, boss. He told her he wouldn’t make a statement even if she showed her top bollocks, didn’t he?’ said Ned.

  ‘They are not bollocks, moron. You told him, Andy? Anyway, you’d better get your wallet out, you snitch, you owe me a tenner.’

  ‘So we have established the guy is not on Vicky’s favourites list, but what else do we have on him?’ said Dylan.

  ‘Barrowclough tells us Ivy Cottage was, is, a coffee spot for him and he has Precons for unlawful sexual intercourse, although to be fair to him, he did admit to being known to us,’ Vicky said holding her hand out for the ten pound note Andy offered.