Brothers in Blood

by David Stuart Davies

  ‘I’ll get on to it.’ She gave a mock salute.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And there’s more,’ added Sally brightly. ‘I’ve been able to identify that fellow in the photograph, the big chap on the motorbike. He certainly had form.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Snow.

  ‘Darren Rhodes. Huddersfield chap from Sheepton. He did time for aggravated robbery. The old biddy he robbed died of a heart attack. And then he won the pools. He was a bit of a local celebrity at the time. This was back in the late sixties. He was involved in a mysterious motorbike accident in 1970. He lost a leg.’

  ‘Why was it mysterious?’

  ‘Well, he lost his memory for a while and when some it came back he claimed he had been tricked into speeding and that his bike had been tampered with. I doubt if anyone believed him… but you never know.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Sorry, sir, he died of a drug overdose in 1978.’

  ‘Dead, eh? Well, he’s not going to be much help to us at the moment.’

  ‘I know sir, but it’s another piece of the jigsaw. The more pieces we get…’

  Suddenly Snow found himself grinning. His emotions were off the radar this morning.

  ‘Are you always this positive, Sally?’

  ‘Well, in this job, you’ve got to be, otherwise you’ll go under. Crikey, you know that better than me.’

  Snow nodded. He certainly did.

  ‘Are you all right, sir? You look a bit…’ She struggled for the word, conscious she was speaking to a senior officer. She didn’t want to use the word ‘depressed’ although that fitted her observations exactly, but the word had all sorts of clinical implications.

  ‘… a bit down,’ she said at last.

  Snow gazed up at Sally’s soft, sensitive features and smiled. He was not only touched by her concern but a little devil within him tempted him to tell her all his problems, to spill the beans about Armitage and wait to be comforted by her like a mother hen.

  ‘I’m just my usual early morning grumpy self.’

  ‘It’s living alone that does it. No one to confide in. No one to share your problems with, things that are troubling you. It’s good to get things off your chest now and then.’

  Snow knew that Sally was not only referring to him; she too lived alone after a messy divorce some two years before. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to travel any further down this road. Not because he did not like Sally or appreciate her unspoken offer, it was that his baggage was too sensitive to unpack with her – or anyone.

  ‘We make life choices,’ he said and immediately regretted it. Sally hadn’t made her life choice. Her cheating husband had. He’d dumped her and run off with his fancy bit on the side leaving Sally to face life as a single woman once again. She’d had no choice in the matter.

  For a moment Sally’s smile faded but very quickly it came back. She nodded as though in agreement. ‘Well, sir, any time you need to bend someone’s ear…’

  Before he could respond, she left the room.

  ‘Handled that well,’ he murmured to himself and sighed heavily.

  The telephone on his desk rang shrilly, preventing any further negative thoughts from invading his mind. He snatched up the receiver, but before he was able to speak, a breathy voice at the other end said, ‘Am I speaking to Detective Inspector Paul Snow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. This is Inspector Ray Daniels, Northumberland Police. I gather you’ve been doing a bit of plodding on my patch.’

  ‘Just making some enquiries.’

  The voice at the other end laughed. It was a deep-seated wheezy laugh. A heavy smoker, Snow thought.

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Inspector. I’m not one of those fellows who gets upset if an officer from another force comes snooping around his manor. We’re all in the same boat after all. We’re all trawling for wrong ‘uns.’

  Colourful imagery.

  ‘Yes.’ Snow wondered where all this was going.

  ‘I gather you were interested in a certain Russell Blake.’

  ‘I still am.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got him.’

  The nape of Snow’s neck tingled. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Well, to be more precise, we’ve got him on a slab. He’s not up to answering questions, unfortunately.’

  ‘Can you give me details?’

  ‘Certainly. I can do more than that. If you’d like to pop back up here I can show you the body and fill you in on all that we’ve got.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you,’ Snow said and he meant it.

  ‘As I say… same boat.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Head smashed in… to a pulp actually and dumped in a pool.’

  Snow grimaced. Another corpse to add to the growing list.

  ‘I can be with you around lunchtime.’

  ‘Good. We can down a pint or two together after viewing the exhibit,’ said Daniels with another wheezy laugh.

  Ray (Dinosaur) Daniels plonked down a glass of sparkling mineral water on the table in front of Paul Snow with a scowl of disdain. ‘I thought you Yorkshire lads like to sup ale,’ he said, lowering his considerable weight onto a bar stool.

  ‘I have to drive back to Huddersfield. Don’t want to be breathalysed on the way.’

  ‘Hey lad, just show ‘em your badge and they’ll let you off.’

  Paul had already sussed that Daniels was that kind of policeman, one who ignored the rules except for those he made up himself. He certainly was of the old school and should they ever bring 1956 back again, Detective Inspector Ray Daniels would feel at home. They had visited the morgue where the body of Russell Blake was still lodged after his autopsy which, as Daniels commented, ‘had told us bugger all that we didn’t know already’.

  He had been beaten about the head with a stone – particles of which had been found in his hair – and had been dead when he hit the water. He was a teacher at a local secondary school – taught English – was married to Sandra and she was expecting their first child. He seemed, on the surface at least, a decent respectable sort of bloke. His wife had no idea who would want to kill him. That, as Ray Daniels explained, was about it.

  It was interesting information but, like so much that Snow was learning in recent days, it did not really throw much light on the dark events he was trying to investigate. What exactly connected a school teacher from Durham with the murders in Huddersfield still eluded him. But he was certain there was a connection.

  ‘So now, lad,’ the large inspector intoned, leaning forward, after taking a large gulp of bitter, the froth leaving a faint creamy moustache on his upper lip, ‘I want to hear your story. Why are you so interested in our dead school master?’ He sat back and lit a cigarette.

  ‘It’s complicated and somewhat tenuous at the moment, but…’

  ‘I can do tenuous and complicated,’ grinned Daniels.

  In simple and concise terms, Snow recounted the details of the killings at Matt Wilkinson’s house and grim events that followed. By the time he had finished, Daniels had consumed his pint and was ready for another.

  ‘Crikey,’ he said, ‘it’ll take me a while to get my head around all that. I’m off for a Jimmy Riddle and to get another pint. D’you want another drink?’

  Snow had hardly touched his water and shook his head. ‘I’d better be making tracks soon. Get back to base.’

  While Daniels was away, Snow went over the facts again in his mind, trying to edit out the insignificant details and concentrate on those elements that forged connections. Three men had been brutally murdered – three men who were in the habit of raping homosexuals. They were killed by three murderers, one of whom, Alex Marshall, had been brutalised by Wilkinson and his cohorts in the past. Therefore it was reasonable to assume that this was a revenge scenario. Well, Snow hoped it was reasonable. It appeared that two of the killers – and he was taking a leap in assuming that the school teacher Russell Blake was one of the trio
– had been murdered themselves. And so the question was, who by? Was the culprit killer number three to protect his own identity or some unknown, a Mr X?

  There was one interesting piece of information that Daniels had relayed to him: Blake had spent a great deal of his youth in Huddersfield, only moving away when he came to Durham University. It was during this period he could have got to know Alex Marshall. Perhaps the whole thing had its seeds back then – the time when Darren Rhodes had his nasty accident. They each had a photograph of the guy.

  And then there was Laurence Dane, who had stayed at the Sea Hotel, Brighton in 1976 and sent a message to Alex Marshall to meet up. Perhaps he was the one to track down.

  ‘You look miles away,’ said Daniels returning to his seat with a fresh pint of bitter.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Ah, thinking… that gives you a headache.’ Daniels gave a weary smile and lit another cigarette. ‘It’s a bit of a bugger, this case, but these bastards often have a way of sorting themselves out. We’ll need to keep in touch, pass on any tidbits that can be of use.’

  Snow nodded. ‘Certainly.’ He drained his glass. ‘Now I think I’d better be on my way. Thanks for the help.’

  Daniels raised his glass in reply. ‘No problem.’

  When Snow arrived back at his office, it was dark and most of the team had gone. There was just Sally and Bob Fellows in the incident room and he was shrugging on his coat ready to leave. Snow wandered to the little kitchen area to make himself a coffee.

  ‘Where’ve you been, sir?’ asked Fellows.

  Snow told him. ‘Thought I’d spare you the drive this time,’ he added.

  ‘Anything you want me to do tonight?’

  Snow shook his head. ‘No, you get off. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Fellows didn’t need telling twice. He was out of the office in a trice.

  ‘You get off, too, Sally,’ Snow said, putting the kettle on.

  ‘Yes, I think I’m done for the day.’

  ‘You and me both.’ Suddenly he felt very weary and it wasn’t simply a tiredness brought on by two long drives in one day; it was like a dark depressive languor that had suddenly settled on him.

  ‘You all right, sir?’

  Snow smiled. There she was mother-henning him again.

  ‘Right as I’ll ever be,’ he replied with more gravitas than he had intended.

  ‘You need a hot meal and a drink to perk you up, I reckon. What you having to eat tonight?’

  Snow shrugged. He hadn’t thought. Meals were not very high on his agenda at the moment. But the mention of food made him realise that he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast.

  ‘Why not come back to my place. I’ve a home made steak and kidney pie in the fridge – enough for two. Washed down with a glass of red, it’ll do you the world of good.’

  The world of good. Oh, that’s what he could do with.

  He hesitated for a moment, sorely tempted and then slowly shook his head. ‘Thanks, Sally but…’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘That’s all right, sir,’ she said quickly, somewhat embarrassed that she had made the offer to her boss in the first place. What was she thinking of? ‘It was just a thought.’

  ‘And it was a very nice thought, too. I appreciate it. Really. Thank you. Maybe another time.’

  Grabbing her coat Sally headed for the door. ‘Good night then, sir,’ she said in a muted fashion before making a swift exit.

  ‘Damn!’ Snow slammed his fist against the wall. He felt both angry and guilty for turning down Sally’s offer in such a dismissive fashion. Why the hell shouldn’t he have gone to her place for a bite to eat? He could do with the company. Take his mind off things. Off Armitage. Of course he knew why. He was frightened that Sally might have motives behind the invitation. Might have some kind of romantic agenda. As soon as this thought slipped into his mind, he realised how ridiculous it was. She was a lonely woman, he was a lonely man and all she’d done was ask him to share a meal together. What an idiot. A clumsy idiot. And as if to prove his point he accidentally knocked over his coffee mug, the granules spilling over the work surface.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘And this, of course, is the most important room in the property.’

  ‘Oh, really’

  ‘Yes… the bedroom.’ The response was heavy with innuendo. He paused for a moment and then pushed the flimsy door open. ‘I’m sure you’d like to take a look inside.’

  The girl frowned slightly but entered nonetheless. He followed behind her, closing the door.

  ‘You must test the bed,’ he said, plonking himself down on it and pressing both hands on the mattress. ‘Come and try it.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ the girl said, a note of concern in her voice.

  ‘I insist,’ he said, reaching out and with a sudden movement, pulling her towards him.

  She gave a little cry of surprise as she landed on the bed by his side.

  He just grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He leaned over her and stroked her face. She gave a little whimper.

  ‘OK. Cut. That’s a take. Well done you two,’ said Ted Torrance, the director. He gave a little chuckle. ‘We can’t get any steamier than that before the watershed. We don’t want the old ladies gagging on their chocolate digestives.’

  There was general muted laughter from the crew.

  ‘We’ll break for lunch now. Scene 14b at 2 p.m. please.’

  ‘That’s me done for the day then,’ said Laurence who had wandered over to Torrance.

  The director nodded. ‘Good work, Laurence. You’re a natural for television. You did very little in that scene but you were fully convincing as a sleazy bastard.’

  Laurence smirked. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

  ‘Indeed. I reckon you’re an asset to the show. I’ve already had a word with Piers, the producer, to suggest that they keep your character on a bit longer.’

  ‘Well, cheers for that. I must admit am rather enjoying myself.’ He cast a glance at Sarah Cracknell, who was checking her make-up. ‘Still, dragging darling Sarah under the covers has its plus points.’

  ‘There’ll be no under the covers on Emmerdale, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to find your thrills elsewhere.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Laurence. ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘Call it a hunch, although it’s not really a hunch because I’ve nothing to back it up. Call it ‘the need to do something when all other ideas have run out.’ Am I making sense?’

  Sergeant Bob Fellows grinned. ‘Not really. Perhaps you’d like to start from the beginning and simply.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Snow as though he was thinking aloud, which in a sense he was. ‘It seems to me that all this stuff began in Huddersfield some time ago. Maybe around 1970 when Darren Rhodes had his accident – if it was an accident. Why Russell and Alex should have the guy’s photo I do not know. I can’t think they would be friends with such a low life but he does somehow link them together and probably to the other fellow in the frame.’

  ‘This Laurence bloke.’

  ‘Laurence Dane, yes. Sally’s had no luck with him yet. Certainly he hasn’t got a record, that’s for sure. Apparently he’s not with Equity. But we’ll trace him in the end. But back to this morning’s business… in 1970 Russell Blake was attending Greenbank Sixth Form College doing his A levels…’

  ‘And that’s why we’re on our way there now?’ There was a note of incredulity in Fellows’ voice.

  ‘Yes. We’re off to see one of the English teachers, a fellow by the name of Colin Simpson.’

  ‘Who he?’

  ‘He taught Russell Blake. I just wanted to get a snapshot of the young fellow circa 1970 and see if it leads us anywhere. I rang the Head yesterday and very obligingly he did a little digging and came up with Colin Simpson. He’s the only member of staff still around from 1970 who had Blake in his group.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s got a good memory and he’s not
senile.’

  Colin Simpson did have a good memory and as a fellow in his mid-forties, he was far from senile. He looked tired though, haggard even, with a lumbering gait and bowed shoulders; the years of teaching were taking their toll. He was dressed in an ancient shiny suit which had obviously seen great service in the classroom. A knitted tie of indeterminate colour hung loosely knotted around his neck.

  He saw Snow and Fellows in one of the smart ‘study rooms’ off the library and had even arranged coffee for them. It was, thought Snow, that for Simpson this was a pleasant interlude from the rigours of the classroom. Contact with the real outside world during school hours.

  ‘So,’ Simpson said, pulling on his chin ‘you’ve come about Russell Blake.’

  Snow nodded. ‘You remember him?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Bright lad but…somewhat self-contained.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  ‘He kept a kind of protective shell around himself, as though he didn’t want to get contaminated with human intercourse. You could only get so close to him. He was a difficult boy to understand. Intelligent though. That was his saving grace. But arrogant with it. Didn’t mix. But he did have a close friend and they were joined at the hip. They both thought they were above it all. A memorable pair. I must admit they intrigued me.’

  ‘Who was this friend?’

  ‘A boy called Laurence.’

  Snow threw a glance at Fellows. ‘Not Laurence Dane?’

  Simpson shook his head. ‘No. Laurence Barker. Tall, snooty lad. He and Russell were inseparable. They were on their own idiosyncratic wavelength, in their own little world. It was rumoured they were queer but I never subscribed to that theory. There was something else other than sex which bonded them together.’

  ‘What was that?’

  Simpson shrugged. ‘Don’t really know. They had a kind of weird sense of humour and the same bleak view of the world – of life itself, I suppose. They viewed most things with sarcasm and disdain. Intellectually miserable you might say. But they were not in the least bit camp – if you know what I mean. To be honest, I didn’t dislike them but at the same time I didn’t understand them.’