‘They’re very interested in this gentleman called Russell Black, the social services director. He’s tied to the chief constable in some way. I heard a lot about Gary Maxwell too. And another thing, Pete, I recognised one of the women who came into the room while I was being questioned: DCI something-or-other.’
‘Kate Summers! DCI Kate Summers, was that her name?’
‘That’s it, Pete! I thought it was unusual that she was there. She doesn’t work in Blackpool, does she? She knew all about me. I’ve seen her on the TV talking about your case.’
‘No, she’s from back home, she’s not local. I don’t suppose you picked up any vibes while you were there? Any psychic clues or anything like that?’
‘If I didn’t know you any better, Pete, I’d think you were taking the mickey. No, I just get this sense of impending tragedy. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s all connected, Pete, but I can’t see the link.’
Alex was busy on her smart phone once more. Her fingers were working furiously.
‘What are the chances of you being on stage tonight, Steven? Can we come over and see you again?’
‘I’m certain that it will happen. I’ll get my manager to put some tickets by for you.’
‘Great, Steven. We’ll be along for the show tonight and catch up for a drink with you afterwards. Does that sound okay?’
I finished my call with Steven, grateful that we’d got the show to attend that evening. It would help to pass the time quicker so that we could make a start on Monday. But as it turned out, Sunday wasn’t going to be so quiet after all.
‘Bingo!’ Alex said, as I ended my call.
‘What is it?’ I asked, assuming that she’d managed to find Charlie’s email address at the paper. It was better than that.
‘How good am I?’ Alex smiled. In the time it took you to talk to our psychic friend, not only have I found Charlie Lucas’s email address, but I’ve emailed him and fixed up a meeting!’
‘In London or over Skype?’ I replied.
‘No, here in Blackpool. He was straight on the train last night. He’s scented blood so he’s travelled up here to dig out some of his old contacts. When I told him who you were he nearly exploded with excitement. We’re seeing him in ninety minutes. He’s meeting us for lunch at the Old Promenade Hotel.’
Chapter Eight
1992 Meg had never had a lot of time for Debbie, but because they’d had to share a room it was inevitable that they’d be forced to get to know each other a little better.
‘You don’t help yourself, Debbie,’ Meg had advised her. ‘You should try to take better care of yourself. The kids at school won’t tease you so much if you wash your hair regularly and use some deodorant. Your body is changing. You need to be aware of these things.’
Meg was too kind to dwell on Debbie’s weight, but she did her best to guide her. It was another one of those things that fell through the cracks at Woodlands Edge. With no parents to lead and nurture, the children often had to act as surrogate parents to each other.
One afternoon – before that terrible night when she was taken away in the minibus – Meg went into town with Debbie.
‘Let’s spend Saturday afternoon in the centre,’ she’d offered. ‘We can buy you some hairbands and maybe some perfume. You’ve got a bit of allowance saved up, haven’t you? I’ll help out too.’
It was just the two of them. Meg hadn’t particularly wanted to waste a weekend afternoon with Debbie, but she felt sorry for her. They went round the shops. They looked at CDs, but even their taste in music was disparate. It was difficult to find a way to relate to Debbie. Meg guided her through the process of buying clips and bands for her unruly hair, she tested perfumes with her in the precinct, and they stopped off for doughnuts and fizzy drinks before heading back to Woodlands Edge.
‘What do you think, Debbie? Are you going to try some of these things out? If you leave them all in your bedside drawer, nothing will change.’
Debbie had a mouthful of doughnut, but it didn’t discourage her from speaking. Meg winced and moved her glass to protect it from the assault of food debris coming from across the table. Debbie seemed oblivious.
‘I don’t mind about the others, so long as Gary likes me. Why would I be bothered with stupid teenage boys? Gary’s the one who really cares.’
This was the first sign to Meg that Debbie had any kind of relationship with Gary. She’d never really noticed before. Debbie had been off her radar until they were forced into a room together. Meg had casually observed that Debbie had an easier time of things when Gary was on one of his spiteful kicks, but had assumed that was because she was always aloof from the main group.
Now she thought about it, Meg had noticed that Debbie seemed to chat more with Gary, whereas the other kids gravitated towards Tom and Bob. Meg knew for herself the children’s craving for adult connection. Most of them sought approval in some way, and they found those replacement relationships among the staff, but what Debbie was saying felt intense to Meg.
‘I’ve noticed that you and Gary seem to get on well. He can be a bit of a sod sometimes though, can’t he?’
Meg never saw a face change so fast.
‘Don’t you call Gary a sod!’ Debbie erupted, spilling her drink as her arm moved across the table. ‘He’s my Gary, and if he gives you a hard time it’s because you’re a stupid bunch of spotty teenagers. I don’t need all this rubbish that you’ve bought me. Gary likes me exactly the way I am!’
Meg didn’t know what to do. Debbie’s voice was raised. It was only a small café and people were looking at them. Her face was red most of the time, but in her anger it was crimson. Coke dripped on the floor as Debbie continued her shouting. She picked up the pink striped paper bag with the hairbands inside and threw it at Meg.
‘Stuff your fashion advice, Meg Stewart. I don’t need it!’
She picked up the last doughnut and stormed out of the shop.
‘Are you okay, dear?’ Ivy, the café owner, asked.
Meg was horrified. She hadn’t thought that Debbie was capable of anything like that. She was embarrassed by the disapproving looks that she was being given by the other customers and was grateful to Ivy for showing kindness when it would have been easier to scold her. Ivy mopped up the Coke, cleared the debris from the table, and offered Meg a new drink and anything that she wanted to eat. Ivy had been a teenager once, she knew what it was like.
‘What was all that about, dear?’ she asked, pulling up a chair and setting down her cup of tea. The café was beginning to empty. It was nearing the end of the day, and she had time to talk to this upset teenager.
‘I don’t know why she did that,’ Meg replied, grateful to Ivy for her companionship. That day they became lifelong friends. Meg would continue to return to her café for many years afterwards, when it evolved from a soft drinks and doughnut bar to a modern coffee shop.
‘She got angry all of a sudden. I’ve never seen her like that. I was only trying to help her.’
‘Don’t worry, my dear. You’ll make it up soon enough. Believe me, I was falling out with my friends all the time at your age. It soon blew over. She’ll be right as rain when you see her next time.’
As the customers left, Ivy stood up to clear the small tables. It felt the most natural thing on earth for Meg to help her as they continued chatting. Before she knew it, it was past half past five. Tea at the home was always at six. Gary Maxwell would make sure she went without tea and supper if she dared to turn up late.
‘I need to go,’ she said to Ivy, with the last tray of cups in her hand. ‘I’m going to be late for tea.’
‘Don’t you worry, dear. My John will be waiting outside in the car to take me home, and we’ll drop you off. If you ever want a little Saturday job, you’re always welcome here. You’ve done an excellent job helping me to clear these tables. Think of it like an audition at the Winter Gardens. And you passed with flying colours!’
Meg beamed at Ivy. She revelled in the pra
ise. It made all thoughts of what Debbie had done fade away. She would take that Saturday job, not immediately, but after the adoption was completed and she was living closer to town with Tom and Mavis.
As Meg was dropped off at the home, nicely in time for tea, all thoughts of the row with Debbie had passed. Debbie took the bag of hairbands that Meg returned to her and thanked her as if nothing had happened. Ivy was right, it just blew over.
And Meg saw no more of that side of Debbie’s personality until the night that she grabbed the kitchen knife out of her hand. It was on that terrible night that she understood why Debbie had leapt so quickly to Gary’s defence when they’d argued in Ivy’s café. Debbie thought she was in love with him.
Charlie Lucas looked exactly as you’d expect an old newspaper hack to look. It was a long time since I’d seen the tarred fingers of somebody who smoked so much. His hair was fully grey and he had to be at least sixty-five. A navy blue cravat was tucked neatly into the top of his shirt.
We met him in the bar of the Old Promenade Hotel. It was the kind of place where they advertise free Wi-Fi and then make you ask for the password, which is something ridiculous like password123. It may have been doing its best to embrace the modern world, but its artwork of choice was still The Crying Boy, its preferred wallpaper floral, and its carpets dark and intricately patterned. Charlie would be lucky if he had his own ensuite. The rooms in that place can’t have been costing his bosses very much.
Charlie stood up the moment we walked into the bar. He’d spotted us immediately. He gave us a wave and we walked over to his table. He’d already pulled up chairs for us – he was ready to get straight down to business. I knew how keen he was to talk to us, but he probably didn’t realise that I was equally eager to pick his brains.
Sitting on the table was a spiral-bound notepad filled with neatly written shorthand. I saw Alex give me a little smile as she clocked it. We’d sat our shorthand examinations together years ago when we were trainee journalists. It was our dark secret, cheating a little in the test to make sure we both passed first time. It was ages since I’d had to use shorthand, but I could still make out the occasional word.
Charlie was halfway through a pot of tea. It was one of those metal ones that hotels still insist on using, the type which dribbles most of the tea onto the tablecloth rather than getting it directly into the cup. There was a small pile of tea-stained serviettes in the middle of the table. He spoke with a strong London accent.
‘Can I order you both a tea?’
Alex and I declined and Charlie got straight down to business.
‘So you were married to Meg Stewart, or Meg Yates as I knew her? She’s been Meg Bailey for how long?’
He’d caught me on the back foot. He was straight in there with the questions. I’d expected him and Alex to do a bit of bonding first, but the pleasantries were perfunctory, and there was no acknowledgement of their previous altercation.
I talked him through our marriage, but he knew it already. I was just confirming his information. Charlie was good, a real quality journalist. He took shorthand notes without pause or interruption. It was a second language to him and he was completely fluent. He knew what to ask, and he checked and rechecked his facts, dropping in his questions seamlessly: Where did you live while you were married? … Did Meg ever speak to you about the investigation into the Woodlands Edge children’s home? … What did she say about life in the home?
I was beginning to feel punch drunk. I had to change the pace and make sure that I got my own questions in.
‘Actually Charlie, can we have that pot of tea? I’m getting quite thirsty.’
That stopped him for a moment, and gave me the chance to turn the tables on him. As he tried to catch the attention of the serving staff, I moved to my own agenda. I’d wait until I’d got some information from Charlie before I gave him everything he wanted from me.
‘So Charlie, what was your involvement in the original case? We’ve seen old newspapers – it was quite a sensation in Blackpool at the time.’
‘There’s not much that would pique my interest these days, but this story is worth staying in a shitty hotel for. I know these people of old. It’s a right old twisted mess,’ he replied.
‘We heard from one of our sources that you were very persistent at the time. Is it true that you called the Yates girls the fire sisters? That seems a bit cruel.’
Charlie fidgeted in his chair.
‘Where’s that tea? This place is like Fawlty Towers.’
He paused, but gave me an answer to my question.
‘Times were different then. We had a smoking room in the office. Jimmy Savile was still doing Jim’ll Fix It. Did you know Rolf Harris was on the show in 1993? How ironic is that. The world was different then. More oblivious. But there was something going on at that place. It was one of the most efficient cover-ups I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some major arse-covering in my career, let me tell you that for starters.’
There was another pause. It was my turn to play reporter. I waited for him to carry on.
‘We did call them the fire sisters. I’m not proud of that, but you know what it’s like in a newsroom. Someone starts these things and everybody has a snigger at it. They stick. It never got used in the newspaper articles, maybe in a couple of headlines. But I do regret that. It was such a great story: the investigation, the fire, Gary Maxwell. They were only young girls, it was a long time ago. I was much younger then. Your kind of age probably. When you get as long in the tooth as me you start to reconsider some of the things you’ve done.’
I hadn’t expected that. Nor had Alex. I caught her eye, and her glance conveyed, WTF? She joined the conversation.
‘Why were you all so suspicious about Meg and Hannah? As you said, they were just young girls at the time. Why did they get picked on by the press?’
‘We were never really convinced about that fire. It seemed like too much of a coincidence, bearing in mind all the bad blood in Blackpool at that time. You know, my marriage ended because of that case. I spent so many weeks up here that my wife pissed off with the kids and took up with some new bloke that she’d met. Absent father she called me. I think a lot of us got a bit obsessed with it.’
Again, another meeting of the eyes with Alex. Charlie Lucas was in confessional mode.
‘When the Yates’ house burned down so close to the investigation being concluded, we were looking for blood. We originally thought it was going to bring down the entire hierarchy in Blackpool. The chief constable was implicated, the head of social services Russell Black, Gary Maxwell, Ray Matiz, they were all in there, but nothing stuck.’
I hadn’t heard the name Ray Matiz before. That one was new to me. I didn’t want to steer him off course – he was in full flow. I thought I’d got him where I wanted, but I should have known better. Charlie Lucas was an old pro and he was just softening me up for a blow to the head. He left the pause longer than was comfortable, even for me, and then came straight out with it.
He took some photographs from his shirt pocket and spread them out on the table. There were three of them, clumsily cut out from a computer printout. Where the fuck had he got those? I didn’t even know that they existed.
A picture of me with Ellie Turner, the first woman I’d cheated with, taken from a CCTV image in the bar where we’d met. Another grainy image, this time with Becky Jarvis, the woman who’d tracked me down to the holiday camp where I was living, leading to the sexual encounter which started the violence all over again. And then, the thing that I thought was over. I thought this was dead and buried, hidden forever. Somehow, he’d got a still from the sex film that Becky had made. How the fuck had he got his hands on that? I thought we’d erased any copies.
He drew a final set of photographs out of the back pocket of his trousers. These were set of photos showing Alex walking along the street with a variety of men. And there was a business card too: Ultimate Discretion Escorts - Soho, London. The bastards, they were even onto
Alex. Probably biding their time until they released the story. Bastards.
‘Now, Mr Bailey ... and Alex,’ he smirked. ‘I’ve a couple more questions that I need to ask you.’
I felt sick after our encounter with Charlie Lucas. What the heck was I thinking? There was no way I was going to end up top dog after that. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d got the images, but the police must have had those shots on file. CCTV video would have formed part of both murder investigations I’d been involved in. The camera hadn’t been working in the hotel the night I cheated with Ellie, but we’d met in a pub over the road. I hadn’t even thought about that. The photo with Becky, that was trickier, but the arcade area had a closed-circuit security system, and they’d caught a shot of us kissing outside the arcade windows.
The leak had to have come from within the police. And that video – I thought we’d sorted that out. Alex said the digital forensics team probably lifted it. It could have been deleted from a smart phone, but there was still a chance it might not have been permanently deleted from the main server.
The bastard, he stitched me up good and proper. He asked me all sorts of details about our marriage – what Meg had been like while we were married, what she’d told me about the past. He pushed and pushed. He even wanted to know every detail about our discussion with Mavis Yates and the ladies at the Methodist church. Violated is the only word I can use to describe how the encounter made me feel. I felt grubby and dirty after we’d spoken. I was completely deflated by the experience.
‘I’ll be in touch if I need anything else,’ were his last words.
He tucked the photos back into his top pocket. We got the message loud and clear.
We walked out of the hotel in silence. As the swing door closed behind us I spoke.
‘That’s why you resigned from Crime Beaters. You knew that was coming.’
I’d had one of my rare moments of insight. The minute Charlie had dropped those photos of Alex on the table, I knew what had happened.
Don't Tell Meg Trilogy Box Set Page 59
