Fall From Grace

by Menon, David

  ‘Where’s he gone, Mr. Naumann?’ Sara asked, impatiently.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’

  ‘You’re lying!’

  ‘If you weren’t a police officer I’d slap your stupid face!’

  ‘Oh go ahead, sir. In fact, feel free. You must be so out of practice after leaving your storm trooping and torturing days behind? In fact, what did it feel like to cure people of their pain, rather than being the one who was causing it? That must’ve been quite some transition.’

  ‘I have given decades of service to this country as a medical professional, young lady.’

  ‘Then I appeal to that… that side of the man you are. Help me to save those girls, Mr. Naumann. Help me to do the decent thing for once in your life.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Oh I don’t think I’ll be going there, sir,’ Sara snarled, ‘but I think you might.’

  After their encounter with Naumann they drove to the terraced cottage in Bollington, up in the hills east of Macclesfield, where Colin Bradley lived.

  ‘I always feel dirty after I’ve been in that Nazi’s company,’ said Sara.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Joe, ‘both him and her Ladyship are quite something.’

  ‘He really believes he’s done no wrong,’ said Sara. ‘That’s the really hideous thing about it. There’s nothing to link him with the relationship between Glenn Barber and her Ladyship but I bloody wish there was. Anyway, let’s see what Bradley is up to.’

  There was no reply when they knocked on the door and when Sara peered through the window there was no sign of life. Then one of the neighbours emerged from next door, a short, plump woman in a knitted cardigan and a tweed skirt. Her hair was going grey and was in no discernable style, just short and wavy.

  ‘Are you looking for the Bradley’s?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right, madam,’ said Joe. ‘I’m Detective Constable Alexander and this is Detective Chief Inspector Hoyland.’

  ‘Police?’ said the woman, her hand against her chest. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the police.’

  ‘What isn’t?’ asked Sara.

  ‘Well they left here in a taxi yesterday morning. Colin and Monica and the two boys. You should’ve seen the taxi. I thought its suspension was going to go with all the stuff they were taking with them. Come to think of it, it did look like they were going on more than just a holiday and even that surprised me because I thought they were supposed to be broke.’

  ‘Where did they say they were going, Mrs...?’

  ‘Treadwell, Julia Treadwell.’

  ‘Mrs. Treadwell.’

  ‘Well all they said was that they were on their way to catch a flight at Manchester Airport,’ said Julia Treadwell. ‘There wasn’t time for them to tell me where to before they sped off.’

  ‘And what time was this, Mrs. Treadwell?’ asked Joe.

  ‘It was just before eight o’clock,’ said Julia Treadwell. ‘I was just on my way to work.’

  ‘And you say they were broke?’

  ‘Oh, they were always broke,’ said Julia. ‘That’s why I thought it was strange that they were going on holiday all of a sudden.’

  When they got back to the station Sara ordered a check on the passenger lists of all flights departing Manchester Airport yesterday. Superintendent Hargreaves then asked her to come to his office.

  ‘Close the door, Sara,’ said Hargreaves, ‘and then you’d better take a seat.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that, sir,’ said Sara. ‘Have you got some bad news for me?’

  ‘You could say that,’ said Hargreaves who was sat behind his desk. ‘You’re to drop all charges and any pending investigations involving Lady Eleanor Harding.’

  Sara was aghast. ‘I don’t understand, sir?’

  ‘Whatever we find out about her activities, past or present, will have to be dropped.’

  Sara felt like she’d been hit with a cricket bat. ‘Say that again, sir?’

  ‘Instructions that have to be obeyed, DCI Hoyland,’ said Hargreaves. ‘No questions, no compromise, just absolute obedience.’

  ‘And this is from the Home Office?’ she demanded rather sharply. The look on Hargreaves face said it all. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just a bit of a shock’

  ‘It’s alright,’ said Hargreaves.

  ‘So did this come from the Home Office, sir?’

  ‘Yes but they would be acting on instructions from elsewhere,’ said Hargreaves.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The palace probably,’ said Hargreaves. ‘That’s the way these things usually work.’

  Sara paced to the window and rubbed the back of her neck. All that work. All that pushing to get a confession out of both Harding and Naumann was now all going to be pissed down the drain because those who sit at the top table of the British establishment always look after their own. It made her sick. She’d never been a revolutionary but she was wondering about it now.

  ‘All is not lost though, Sara’

  Sara turned back to him. ‘How do you mean, sir?’

  ‘They tried to impose a news blackout on all this,’ said Hargreaves. ‘But they were too late. Someone had already leaked the story to the press.’

  Sara could see the obvious look of pleasure on the Superintendent’s face and she returned it with a smile. ‘And that will prove very inconvenient to those with something to hide.’

  *

  Charlie Mason was only doing his job at the petrol station to earn some extra cash for his intended trip next year. He planned to get a working visa for Australia and maybe even settle there permanently. Since his mother had died, his father had married ‘the bitch’ with unforgivable haste – his mother hadn’t even been dead three months before she marched his Dad into a register office and tied the knot with him. They’d been having an affair for years before Charlie’s mother had been killed in a car accident. Now he had to listen to them at it all night and every night through the thin walls of their terraced house on the east of Oldham. Their love-in had frozen him out and he felt alone in his own family home where once he’d felt safe and happy. It was as if his mother had never existed. The bitch had changed everything she could into the way she wanted it and his father had raised no objections. He hated his father now. How could he have been so indecent? His father wasn’t an old man, only just into his forties, and Charlie had wanted him to be happy. But not like this. Not with someone who wanted to take over his life and freeze out everyone who’d gone before. His Aunts and Uncles, especially on his Mum’s side, had all noticed and had even offered him a room at theirs when it got too much. His maternal grandparents didn’t want him to go to Australia. They’d lost their daughter and didn’t want to effectively lose their grandson, too. But they understood that he had to find his own way and promised to go and see him if he did end up settling there.

  But all of that was still a few months away. He had to save some more cash first. He liked doing the early shift. If there was no overtime going in the afternoon he’d usually spend the time walking on the moors close to where he lived. The open space and the peace it offered made him feel close to his mother. He spoke to her out there on the moors. It felt like she was all around him. He still missed her like crazy even after all this time.

  It was just before half past nine and the busy period had just passed. Those who refused to use the trains to commute into Manchester usually started their journey around this time and would often curse for not having filled up the night before. They could be quite temperamental by the time they got to pay and Charlie had to ask them to put their pin number into the card machine. But Charlie never let it get to him. It was like water off a duck’s back. They could all just go and fuck themselves. He wouldn’t give them a second thought when he was lying on a Sydney beach in a few months time with some hot girl beside him. Like his father and the bitch, he would be a million miles away in his own world.

  He didn’t see the man come out of the bushes on the oth
er side of the garage forecourt. He didn’t notice him marching up purposefully to the shop where Charlie was engaged behind the cash desk. He didn’t see him take the gun out of his pocket and blast Charlie’s dreams of a future in Australia into the next life.

  *

  Paul had just got back from a meeting with the head of Salford social services when Anita told him he had a visitor.

  ‘She says her name is Tiffany?’ said Anita. ‘She says you’ll know her? She looks heavily pregnant. It can’t be long before she drops it.’

  Paul’s heart sank. He really didn’t need this just now.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Anita. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Paul. ‘Thanks Anita. You can show her in.’

  When Tiffany stepped through into Paul’s office he didn’t know quite what he’d been expecting but it wasn’t the girl who was stood before him. Yes, she was pregnant but she carried quite a bit of weight on her anyway. She was a big girl. She wasn’t classically beautiful. Her cheekbones weren’t high and her mouth was small giving her face a kind of pinched look. She was quite ordinary and if it wasn’t for the wonders of make-up it struck Paul that she was just the sort of girl a soldier chooses to keep the home fires burning whilst he’s out there risking his life for Queen and country. Someone to push out a couple of kids for him and make him feel like the returning hero as soon as he walks through the door. Sexually she was probably pretty ordinary, he guessed. But she no doubt knew enough to fill in the gaps for him between tours of duty. Her hair was breast length and dyed a bright copper colour which Paul didn’t think suited her very white face. He hated himself for appraising her like this but he couldn’t help it. Sizing up the opposition was always too tempting to resist despite the circumstances.

  ‘Tiffany?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Tiffany,’ she answered. ‘Jake’s wife.’

  She emphasised the word ‘wife’ as if she was slapping him across the face with it.

  ‘Any news on Jake?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You heard anything?’

  ‘No,’ said Paul.

  ‘Mind you, I don’t know who he’d contact first,’ said Tiffany. ‘You or me.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Suppose it depends on which one of us he was into at that particular moment.’

  ‘You should be sitting down,’ said Paul, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk.

  ‘I’d rather stand, thank you.’

  ‘Tiffany, for fuck’s sake you shouldn’t be standing for too long and neither should you get yourself upset.’

  Tiffany put her hand on her hip. The affected drama of the move almost made Paul burst out laughing.

  ‘You’ve got a sodding nerve. If you didn’t want me upset then you shouldn’t have been sleeping with my husband!’

  Paul’s momentary flash of humour was quickly replaced by anger. ‘I was going out with Jake for nearly four years before he married you.’

  ‘Really?’ she scoffed.

  ‘Yes, really, and instead of being a grown up and telling me he didn’t want me anymore he just stopped contacting me for months. I was going out of my mind with worry when he was building his little love nest with you so if anybody’s got a right to be upset it’s me!’

  ‘So you say,’ she said dismissively.

  ‘Yes, I say! So sit down and we’ll talk but I’m not taking a lecture from you, Tiffany, because I don’t deserve it.’

  Tiffany waited a moment and then she did sit down. Her back was aching. Her legs were too and she really shouldn’t have worn these shoes. The heels were too high considering the bump she was already balancing.

  ‘How long before the baby is due?’

  ‘I’m seven months gone,’ she said. ‘Do you love him, Paul?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Paul.

  ‘Well at least you’re being honest.’

  ‘It’s the only way to be,’ said Paul, ‘no point pretending now.’

  ‘When I read about your friendship with him in the paper I just put two and two together. It was a shock but then so much has been a shock lately. I never expected my husband to be into men as well as women, but I had no idea he was working for a gangster either. Then when the police said they were looking for him in connection with Glenn Barber’s murder I just didn’t know what to do.’

  Tiffany started sobbing and Paul couldn’t help going round and putting his arm round her.

  ‘I’ve moved back in with my Mum since we found out,’ said Tiffany, between sobs. ‘Why has Jake done this to me?’ she cried.

  ‘He hasn’t done it to you,’ said Paul in measured tones. Her self-obsession was annoying him. ‘He’s done it to himself.’

  ‘But I’m the one who’s got to live with it.’

  ‘Don’t you think he has too?’

  ‘I don’t know what he thinks and I’m not sure I care anymore.’

  ‘He should’ve held on,’ said Paul. ‘We could’ve put into his defence everything about the traumas he went through in Afghanistan. That’s where he changed, Tiffany. That’s what we need to understand.’

  ‘But he’s a murderer,’ she wailed. ‘He murdered Glenn Barber.’

  ‘I know but the lawyers could’ve argued mitigating circumstances, Tiffany, that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘I’m too ashamed to face anyone I know,’ she said. ‘That’s another reason why I moved back in with my Mum.’

  Oh so it’s back to being all about you, thought Paul. ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘But what am I going to tell the baby?’ she pleaded. ‘How can I tell it that it’s father is a murderer?’

  ‘You don’t tell the baby that,’ said Paul who was struck by the weirdness of a situation where he was sitting here trying to reason with the wife of the man he loved. ‘You tell the baby that it’s father was a heroic soldier for his country but that his experiences led him to do some bad things.’

  ‘My Mum never wanted me to marry him but I loved him, Paul.’

  Tiffany cried her heart out on Paul’s shoulder although he didn’t feel that disposed towards her. He didn’t like thinking it but she was clearly too thick to have been able to cope with someone as complex as Jake had become.

  ‘Look, Tiffany, you’ve got to focus on the future for yourself and the baby now.’

  ‘And how am I going to do that?’

  ‘I’ll make sure you’ve got enough money and I’ll make sure you’ve got everything you need for the baby.’

  ‘You’d have taken Jake off me if you’d had half the chance.’

  ‘Tiffany, either accept my help or don’t accept it,’ said Paul who was tired of trying to get through to this child. Jake was out there somewhere and what with that and everything else that was on his mind he really didn’t have time to indulge someone who should’ve been able to at least try and save Jake.

  ‘But you would’ve taken him off me,’ said Tiffany. ‘Don’t lie. You would’ve done if you could have.’

  *

  Louise Cooper tried her best to convince all the girls she worked with in the travel agent’s on the edge of Bury town centre that she wasn’t a gold digger. But they all knew that she was. The thing was that although she’d grown up on one of the town’s council estates, her family had been given a taste of the good life through her father’s £200,000 lottery win but her parents had splashed it around like the proverbial confetti and now, five years later, it had all but gone. They were back living on benefits and Louise badly needed her roots doing. But that was something else. She’d grown used to going to the top hair designer in Manchester and now she couldn’t contemplate going anywhere else. It was all part of the image she’d built up around herself. So she had to save up and though she’d been at the travel agents a while she wasn’t paid that much. She’d been passed over for promotion twice in the time she’d been there and though she would protest till the cows came home that she was quite happy out on the desk serving the custom
ers, the reason why she hadn’t been promoted was that she lacked the ability for a supervisory or management position. She was thick. Exceptionally pretty on the outside, thanks to some very expensive make-up that she now struggled to keep on buying, but on the inside she was like a house with no furniture in it, a table laid but no food in the bare cupboards. Her accent was so affected it made her workmates cringe at times and she could always be heard above all other noise wherever she was. She knew they laughed at her behind her back. When her family had money she couldn’t have cared less. These days she’d been getting more sensitive about it.

  Her current boyfriend was called Raymond. He wasn’t just in fine furnishings. He owned a chain of furniture shops across Northern England and they went to all the right places to eat and drink. He’d told her that he hadn’t had sex with his wife for five years and explained the existence of his two-year old daughter by having given in to his wife on her birthday once. Still, he gave her a good time in fancy places before she had to open her legs and try and keep up with his voracious appetite. She’d never known anything like it. He could keep it going for hours. She always told the girls at work all the details the next day whether they wanted to know or not.