Darkness & Light: A Frank Elder Mystery (Frank Elder Mysteries)

by John Harvey

  “Do we know who she is?” Elder asked.

  Prior shook her head.

  A short way off, Reardon was talking to the pathologist, the crime scene manager standing beside them. Every now and then there was a small flash from inside the tent as photographs were taken. Crime scene officers were beginning to take swabs and samples.

  His initial briefing over, Reardon came to where Elder and Maureen Prior were standing. He was an inch or so below six foot, broad shoulders but slim hips, a body that seemed to taper away till it reached his black leather shoes, polished earlier, but now blotched with mud.

  “Dead less than three hours,” Reardon said. “Rigor’s barely started.”

  Elder looked down at his watch: it was fifteen minutes past midnight, Thursday morning.

  “You know Frank?” Prior said.

  “By reputation,” Reardon said.

  He and Elder shook hands.

  “What are you thinking?” Prior asked. “She was on the game?”

  “Looks that way. One of the PCs is pretty sure he’s seen her round and about. Cranmer Street, Mapperley Road.”

  “And she brought her punters here?”

  “It’s possible. Either that or the body was dumped. Once we’ve had a proper look at all the marks and tracks, we might know better.”

  “What did the pathologist say about cause of death?” Elder asked.

  “Strangulation.”

  “Ligature or manual?”

  “Manual, looks like,” Reardon said.

  He caught a glance pass between Prior and Elder.

  “Something I should know?”

  Prior told him about Richard Dowland.

  AN HOUR LATER, NO MORE, THE TELEPHONE DRAGGED Tom Whitemore from his bed.

  “Don’t answer it,” Marianne, his wife, said, reaching out an arm toward him as, sluggishly, he pushed aside the blankets and rolled his legs around till his feet touched the floor. Blankets and sheets—somehow a duvet was never quite comforting enough.

  Standing, Whitemore listened, grunted a few monosyllabic responses, then put down the phone.

  “What is it?” Marianne was sitting up now, tugging free the undershirt she slept in from where sweat had stuck it lightly to her body. She liked to sleep with the window open, Tom with it closed. The last thing he did each night was go round all the downstairs windows and make sure they were locked; bolt and lock both doors: He knew too well what was out there and she did not.

  “One of mine,” Whitemore said, zipping up his trousers, tucking in his shirt.

  “In trouble?”

  “So it appears.” He sat down on the bed to pull on his socks.

  “Serious?”

  Leaning across, Whitemore kissed her on the forehead and gave her arm a squeeze. “Get back to sleep.”

  Switching on the upstairs light, he pushed the door to the twins’ room quietly open. Andy lay almost sideways on the upper bunk, thumb stuck in his mouth; underneath, Felix had wriggled himself fully upside down and wrong way around, one of his feet pushed under the pillow, the other on top. Carefully, Whitemore eased his son’s thumb from his mouth and kissed them both.

  Downstairs, he lifted a well-worn leather jacket from the crowded set of pegs near the front door and pulled it on. Outside, the air struck cold and the car spluttered twice before the ignition caught and held. There were precious few stars in the sky.

  The rendezvous was in the Portland Leisure Centre car park, off Meadow Way. Lewis Reardon and two other detectives, Maureen Prior and a man Whitemore failed to recognize. A civilian?

  Reardon he knew by sight—a coming man. Prior introduced Frank Elder and the two men shook hands. There was a set of Polaroids in Reardon’s pocket and, for Whitemore’s benefit, he spread them across the roof of one of the cars.

  Whitemore looked and nodded.

  “We know who she is?” he asked. The same question Elder had asked before.

  By then they did.

  A shoulder bag had been found several allotments away, chewed up a little by one of a pair of goats that was kept tethered there. Condoms, KY Jelly, cigarettes and a disposable lighter, a couple of ready-rolled joints, a credit card in the name of Ms. L. Carne.

  Lorraine Carne. Known to her pimp and boyfriend as Lo. He had the grace to shed a few tears as he asked the officer who’d rousted him from his bed where the cash had gone from her bag. Hundred, hundred and fifty she’d’ve had in there, no question.

  “You really reckon Dowland for this?” Whitemore asked.

  “After what happened before,” Prior said, “Eve Ward—it’s got to be at least a possibility.”

  Whitemore looked at Reardon.

  “Worth a pull,” Reardon said. “That at least. ’Less you got reason to say otherwise.”

  Whitemore shook his head.

  They got into their cars.

  A FOX LOOKED TOWARD THEM FROM THE END OF THE street, temporarily blinded by the lights. Red brush aglow. It stood a full half minute before trotting nonchalantly on, into the narrow alley and out of sight. Hunters, but not for him.

  Fists hammered on the door.

  A woman’s voice sang out from the house opposite: if they didn’t shut it she’d call the fucking police.

  Reardon knocked again and a downstairs light came on. A few moments later a scrawny ginger-haired man in T-shirt and boxer shorts dragged open the door, yawning, and scratching between his legs.

  “Not you,” Tom Whitemore said, and the man stood to one side.

  Pushing past him, they went quickly along the narrow corridor and up the uncarpeted stairs. Whitemore knocked on the door and called Richard Dowland’s name. There was a sound, not easy to decipher, from inside, but no clear reply.

  The door moved open at Whitemore’s touch.

  Dowland was huddled, crouching, in the farthest corner, hands across his mouth, babbling, his face wet with tears and snot.

  “Richard,” Whitemore said, cautiously approaching, his voice low and even. “Richard, it’s okay.”

  With as much care as he had earlier taken his son’s thumb from his mouth, he moved Dowland’s hands away from his face.

  “I’ve been a bad...” Dowland said, blinking. “I’ve been a bad boy.”

  THE NEAREST INTERVIEW ROOM WAS AT THE CENTRAL Division police station. Dowland was cuffed and put into the back of a car, white faced and frightened. He shivered waiting for the car to drive off, and when it did he began crying; when he got out of the car at the station, the crying had stopped, but he was still shivering. Tom Whitemore took off his jacket and put it round Dowland’s shoulders but it didn’t appear to make any difference.

  Whitemore took Reardon to one side. “Before you start questioning him, I want to make sure there’s somebody there he knows.”

  “He’ll have a solicitor, what more’s he need?”

  “I said, someone he knows. Someone he can trust. He’ll likely go to pieces else and then what good’ll he be? Or anything he says.”

  Reardon grudgingly agreed. “Just make it sharpish, that’s all.”

  Whitemore called Ben Leonard on his phone.

  THE DUTY SOLICITOR WAS WAITING AT THE POLICE station entrance, eating a kebab from the late-night kiosk near the square. A queue of mid-week clubbers, mostly students, stood waiting for taxis at the far side of Mansfield Road, by one of the entrances to the Victoria Centre.

  “This my client?” the solicitor asked, licking chilli sauce from his fingers.

  Raising his eyebrows, he screwed up the paper from his kebab and, not seeing anywhere to dump it, pushed it down into his briefcase with his papers and his phone.

  Dowland was hurried inside.

  “Get you anything?” Reardon said, once they were in the interview room.

  Eyes down toward the floor, Dowland shook his head.

  “Tea,” Whitemore said. “Richard likes a cup of tea. Two sugars, that right, Richard?”

  At a nod from Reardon, the uniformed officer who’d been standing j
ust inside the door went off in search of a brew.

  Elder and Maureen Prior were sitting in an adjacent room. “Hang about if you want,” Reardon had said. “No skin off my nose.”

  They had elected to stay.

  Ben Leonard arrived, minutes later, had a quick conversation with Tom Whitemore, spoke quietly to Dowland and took a seat close to his side.

  Using his thumbnail, Reardon broke the cellophane wrapping on two audio tapes and stripped it away, slotted the tapes into place in the dual recorder fixed to the wall.

  “This interview,” he began, “started at one forty-seven, Thursday the twelfth of May.”

  After the usual admonitions, Reardon cleared his throat. “So, Richard, where were you earlier this evening?”

  No answer.

  “Richard? You going to tell me?”

  No answer.

  “Earlier this evening, where were you?”

  No answer.

  Reardon repeated the question, with slight variations, another half a dozen times, eliciting the same response.

  “You might tell your client, Mr. Logan, it would be in his best interests to answer my questions.”

  “My client,” said the solicitor, leaning forward, “is within his rights not to say anything.” There was a piece of meat wedged between his back teeth and, try as he might, he couldn’t pry it free.

  “Why don’t you drink your tea, Richard?” Ben Leonard said, leaning toward him. “No sense letting it get cold.”

  Reardon scowled.

  Dowland looked at the mug of tea as if seeing it for the first time; his hand was shaking so much when he picked it up that it spilled down his fingers and back along his wrist.

  “Jesus!” Reardon muttered beneath his breath.

  Two gulps and Dowland set the mug back down.

  “This evening,” Reardon said, impatiently. “Where were you?”

  “N... n... nowhere.”

  “Nowhere? You had to be somewhere?”

  Dowland turned toward Leonard, mouth open, eyes wide.

  “What did you do this evening, Richard?” Tom Whitemore asked. “Stay in? Watch TV?”

  Dowland nodded.

  “Went out for a bit later, though? Stretch your legs? Get a bit of air? Not a bad night for a stroll.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dowland said, so quiet it scarcely registered on the tape.

  “Say again?” Reardon said sharply.

  “I’m sorry,” Dowland said, louder this time.

  “I bet you are,” Reardon said. “I just bet you are.”

  Dowland glanced at him briefly, then let his head drop back down.

  “Tell me what happened,” Reardon said. “When you went out.”

  Dowland’s hands were interlocked but moving, bitten-down fingernails scraping back and forth across the insides of his wrists, scoring the skin.

  “Take your time, Richard,” Ben Leonard said. “Take as much time as you want.”

  Reardon shot him a look that said keep the fuck out of this.

  “Take your time,” Leonard said again, resting a hand for a moment on Dowland’s shoulder.

  “I... I went for a walk,” Dowland said.

  “A walk?” Reardon echoed.

  “Ye-yes.”

  “Where did you go?”

  Dowland looked round at Leonard then at Whitemore, but this time neither of them intervened.

  “Tell us where you went, Richard,” Reardon said, trying for the same modulation Whitemore had used earlier. “Where you’re not supposed to go, was it? Where you know you’re not supposed to go.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s that exactly, Richard?”

  “You know. He knows.”

  “Tell me. Won’t you tell me?” Reardon knowing they needed it on the tape.

  “Up round, you know, St. Ann’s, the Forest.” The answer slow in coming, accompanied by more scratching, Dowland’s head moving agitatedly from side to side.

  “And that’s where you went? St. Ann’s?”

  Dowland nodded.

  “Richard, that’s where you went this evening?”

  Nothing.

  “Richard...”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “It’s okay, Richard,” Leonard said. “Take it easy.” Reaching slowly across the table, he laid one of his hands on Dowland’s. “Don’t do that. You’re hurting yourself.”

  The inside of Dowland’s left wrist was raw, pinpoints of blood showing through the skin.

  “Tell us what happened,” Tom Whitemore said. “In your own time. Okay?”

  They thought he would never start and then he did.

  “I never meant to go up there, you got to believe me. Don’t know how I even got there, the graveyard, you know? Cemetery, up by Mansfield Road. I’d had a drink, a drink or two, down in town and just sort of wandered...”

  He looked at Tom Whitemore as if for guidance and Whitemore nodded gently back at him and waited.

  “Course I saw the girls, all down Forest Road, you know, where they go. Standing round, waiting for cars and that, and I thought no, that’s not right, you’re not allowed, you mustn’t go there and so I suppose I crossed the other way and...”

  “The other way across the Mansfield Road?” Reardon asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right, must’ve been. I was just walking, right? Like I said. Didn’t mean nothin’. Walkin’ an’ I saw this woman. I’d seen her before. Followed her. I know I shouldn’t. But I followed her. She never saw me, not then. An’ I watched her. Watched her and...”

  Dowland’s hands came up to his face as the tears returned in gulping sobs that shook his body. His head moving side to side behind his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” The words muffled, mumbled, blurred.

  Ben Leonard looked across meaningfully at the solicitor, and the solicitor said, “We should take a break.”

  “Yes, yes.” Reardon was already on his feet. “This interview suspended at two-thirteen.”

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER THEY WERE BACK. DOWLAND had made some attempt to wash, to wake himself up in the interim; the front of his shirt was wet and so was his hair.

  “You okay now?” Tom Whitemore asked. “Okay to carry on?”

  Dowland nodded.

  “Good,” Reardon said. “Now, Richard, you were telling us about this woman, the one you followed—where was that? Where did you see her, can you remember?”

  Dowland shook his head.

  “Somewhere to the right of Mansfield Road, you said. Is that correct? Just because of the tape, if you could answer properly...”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Mapperley, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember the name of the road? The road where you saw her first?”

  “No. I’m sorry. I dunno.”

  “And you followed her, that’s what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was looking for business?”

  “Yeah. Course. What else she be doin’?”

  “So did you speak to her or what? What happened?”

  “No, I just... I just followed her and then, then I hid like, in this garden, watching.”

  “You were just watching her or watching her with somebody? Was she with somebody? You were watching her with someone?”

  Dowland shook his head emphatically. “No, no. Not like that. I never done that.”

  “And this garden? It was, what, like an allotment? An allotment garden?”

  “No, I dunno. I don’t think so. You mean like all veg an’ that? No, no, I don’t know. It might’ve been, I dunno.”

  “And the woman, did she see you watching her? Is that what happened?”

  “Yeah, she might. I never meant her to, but yeah, she might’ve, yeah.”

  “So what happened then? Did she get angry? Start shouting?”

  “No, not shouting, no.”

  “Calling you names? Did she start calling you names, maybe? Lose her temper?”

  But Do
wland was shaking his head again, pushing his fingers up through his hair, scratching the spots on his face. Starting to rock, forward and back, on his chair.

  “Is that when you hit her? Is that why? Because she was angry, calling you names?”

  “No. No.” Dowland slammed his forearms down hard against the tabletop. “Why’re you saying that? Don’t say that. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

  “Richard, it’s okay. It’s all right now. You can tell me. Tell me.”

  Dowland lowered his face into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, just audibly. “I’m sorry,” through a slew of tears.

  Ben Leonard stayed with Dowland, attempting to comfort him, a uniformed officer looking on. The solicitor was back outside, smoking a cigarette. Along with Tom Whitemore, Reardon joined Elder and Maureen Prior in the small adjoining room, their faces, all the faces save for Lewis Reardon’s, pale in the artificial light.

  “So,” Reardon said, “we get a warrant, right? Search his flat.”

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER, MORNING TRAFFIC BUILDING UP outside the building, buses logjammed front to rear in every direction, two of Reardon’s team arrived back with broad smiles on their faces and, each one secure inside plastic, a pair of broken-down size nine no-name trainers with dark mud caught between the grooves of the sole.

  Chapter 35

  IT WAS THE SAME YOUNG OFFICER AS BEFORE, ENJOYING the chance to wind up a superior. “Your boyfriend’s downstairs again,” he said, and ducked back before Maureen Prior could throw anything.

  Ben Leonard was the most conservatively dressed she’d ever seen: dark blue chinos and a pale green shirt, a plain gray baseball cap covering most of his blond hair.

  “Dowland,” he said. “You’re not going to charge him. You can’t.”

  Prior shook her head. “It’s not my case.”

  “It’s your concern. It bloody should be.”

  Two officers walked casually past, feigning disinterest.

  “Here,” Prior said. “If we’re going to talk, let’s not do it here.”

  There was a small windowless room along the corridor that was used by temporary support staff in emergencies. Now it was a quarter full of reams of copy paper and old files. No chairs.