The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  ‘What kind of support?’

  ‘Someone to talk to . . . maybe a doctor.’

  That was just the sort of vague concern that would have been duly noted and filed. The comment ‘I think he might need to talk to someone’ was never going to stay on any parole officer’s radar when nearly everyone else on his caseload would have benefited from counselling. The parole office probably received these kind of messages all the time, and there were never the resources available to follow up any but the most worrying.

  ‘It was the prison sentence that did it, of course,’ she continued. ‘I’m not saying it was wrong, but in all honesty we were never sure whether he was guilty or not.’

  Without opening his eyes, her husband suddenly spoke up. ‘Of course, he always had it in him. We’d seen him lose his temper in the past.’

  ‘Not against women, though,’ she said.

  ‘How would we know, Joan?’ He sighed deeply and manhandled the arms of the chair until he had pulled himself into a sitting position. ‘He’s been an adult for over twenty years, love, and when you say he became disconnected, you mean from us. He was already troubled, and we don’t know whether he was better or worse with other people than with us, do we?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose we do,’ she replied.

  Her husband turned to speak to Goodhew, instead. ‘We have two sons and they’ve had the same upbringing, but with two different outcomes. Two different personalities, almost from birth. A seed can fall on fertile ground and still grow towards the thistles, Detective.’

  ‘Just say what you mean,’ she muttered.

  He gave Goodhew the sharpest of looks. ‘You know exactly what I mean, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ he nodded, and considered the little he knew about Greg Jackson. ‘And these thistles you refer to aren’t people, are they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thoughts, maybe, or perhaps something more?’

  ‘I’d call them core values. Things that seem right to him that don’t add up for Joan and me. We saw his qualities, too: he was a handsome lad, bright – probably even brighter than his brother – and so creative.’

  Joan cut in: ‘He’s a skilled carpenter, you know.’

  ‘But bitter because he never made it as an architect. Even when they were kids, if you gave them a pound each, his brother would be thrilled, but Greg would wonder why he hadn’t been given more. He always finds the world against him. And, sadly, the blame is never his. We still hope he’ll find his turning point.’

  ‘See the light, perhaps,’ she added. ‘People find it at their darkest moments.’

  Goodhew guessed these two weren’t so much the type of couple who finish one another’s sentences as the type to have discussed the subject matter so frequently that they had settled into a comforting rhythm of familiar words and platitudes.

  ‘Where do you think he is now?’

  ‘We have no idea,’ Mr Jackson replied, ‘but he isn’t the type to do anything stupid.’

  ‘To himself, you mean?’ Goodhew’s tone made the question sound unintentionally loaded, and Jackson stiffened. Any moment now, they would realize that his visit here hadn’t been primarily motivated by any concern for their son. He glanced from one to the other, deciding they were honest people even if they were lying to themselves about their son. ‘OK, we do have one cause for alarm.’ He said it as though he was reluctantly sharing a confidence, when in truth he was only stalling for time.

  Joan looked anxiously at her husband to check if he’d appreciated the sudden gravity of this moment. He had, so she turned back to Goodhew, who found himself pinned by the stares of both parents. The timing seemed good, so he saw his opening and jumped at it.

  He turned a little more towards Joan. ‘We think your son is armed, ready to attack the person he believes put him in prison.’

  Her hands lay in her lap, her fingers clasping each other a little tighter. In Goodhew’s peripheral vision, nothing else moved.

  ‘Who?’ she breathed.

  He took his gamble. ‘He made threats before he disappeared, involving torture, gardening wire and pliers.’

  From the corner of his eye, Goodhew saw Mr Jackson grip the arm of the chair again, a sudden snatch for support. Goodhew turned sharply in his seat. ‘Tell me, Mr Jackson. You say he isn’t the type to do anything stupid, but is he also the type to let old scores go unsettled?’

  ‘No. At the end of seven years, you’re meant to cancel any debts.’ If it was a quote, it was one that Goodhew failed to recognize. ‘That had no effect on him, though,’ Jackson’s father added. ‘As you can tell, my son and I don’t share the same outlook.’

  ‘We’re looking at the possibility of carefully planned revenge. Disablement, torture, possibly death.’

  To Goodhew’s left, Joan drew a sharp breath.

  ‘Do you think your son capable of planning that way?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she replied, but any further words were immediately drowned out by her husband’s.

  ‘He might not follow it through, Detective, but he would have considered and refined that plan in minutest detail. In his eyes, at least, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. I have some idea of the life he lives within his own mind; and I realize he fantasizes about revenge. I hoped he wouldn’t follow it through.’

  ‘And if he does . . . please help us find him.’ Goodhew’s eyes met Mr Jackson’s and he held his gaze firmly. ‘It could save your son – or someone else.’

  Jackson hesitated and Goodhew waited for him to connect these latest words with the description of Paul Marshall’s murder that already existed in the public domain. But Mr Jackson’s thoughts were clearly following a different path, as his head turned towards the window.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Goodhew waited with Mr and Mrs Jackson until two uniformed officers came to relieve him. He didn’t recognize either of them, but passed on the relevant details and slipped away as quickly as possible, glad to break free of the pained silence that had overtaken Greg Jackson’s parents.

  Marks had been the first person Goodhew had rung, updating him on the conversations with both Jane Osborne and the elder Jacksons. By the time he returned to Parkside, part of him expected to find Marks’s office empty but, as Goodhew turned aside from East Road, he glanced up and spotted his boss standing, sentinel like, at the window.

  The corridors were deserted and, between the front desk and reaching Marks’s office, Goodhew encountered no one. ‘Mr Jackson senior believes that it’s from the same roll,’ he said, as he passed the evidence bag across the desk. Marks straightened the clear pouch so that it sat squarely in front of him. The three-inch strip of wire that had looked so nondescript on the garage floor now held the potential to turn their investigation around.

  Through the plastic, Marks poked one end with his finger. ‘Forensics are already sending someone up to collect it. In theory they may be able to determine whether it came from the same roll of wire, or else spot if the same wire cutters were used on the wire that tied Marshall to that tree. How confident are you, Gary?’

  Goodhew pulled up the spare chair and sat himself directly opposite Marks. They both eyed the evidence bag. ‘Jane Osborne asked me why anyone would plan so vigorously to kill someone else – why not just do it. She was right to point that out. Greg Jackson had seven years of festering in which to plan how to inflict sufficient pain to get his full revenge.’

  ‘But Paul Marshall was the wrong man.’

  ‘Jackson obviously didn’t think so when he grabbed him. Marshall was a sadistic rapist, who had already attacked Becca, so when Jackson heard about the attack on Andie . . .’

  ‘Yes, it’s easy to see how he jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

  ‘Or he assumed Marshall knew the truth.’

  ‘But none of this is evidence, Gary.’

  ‘I went to Jackson’s parents in the hope that I’d be able to nudge something free. I gave them a few details regarding the attack o
n Marshall, but speaking as though it hadn’t yet happened.’

  Marks rotated the evidence bag through ninety degrees. ‘And this is what fell out?’

  ‘Pretty much. There’s still no sign of him?’

  ‘Not yet. We have as many people as we can on it. The next option will be a public appeal.’

  ‘What can I do to help find him?’

  Marks shook his head. ‘Forget Jackson for now, and just show me Becca Osborne’s card.’

  Goodhew slipped the fuchsia and red business card from his wallet.

  Marks held it at arm’s length to focus, a habit he’d only developed in recent months. ‘So she thinks Becca may have been carrying one similar to this the day she died?’

  ‘I’m going to show Genevieve Barnes, just in case she recognizes it. I phoned her on the way back. She has a lunch break at midday, so I’m meeting her then.’

  Marks handed the card back to him, ‘OK, then.’ He reached across to the end of his desk and, for the first time, Goodhew saw a familiar pile of papers. ‘I had these brought down from Kincaide’s desk; I wanted to check the progress on these bank records. Michael’s currently at Andrew and Karen Dalton’s house and office, where they’re taking photos and packing up any potential evidence. But I want it done by this afternoon, as we can’t keep the Daltons out forever. In fact, I have officers in every direction, so it’s unusual for you to be the only one sitting still.’

  He slid the papers towards Goodhew. ‘Have you looked at these at all?’

  ‘I had a glance at some of the most recent, but I didn’t want to interfere with any work Michael had already done.’

  ‘Or it was a bit dull-looking, perhaps?’

  Goodhew screwed up his nose. ‘There was a bit of that, too.’ He noticed several envelopes under the pile that he didn’t think he’d seen before. ‘Are those replies from the banks?’

  ‘A few have come in but so far they’re all a dead loss. We haven’t found one bank that can identify any potential accounts that may have been used by either Mary Osborne or used to hide her money.’

  ‘But there’s still whatever the older bank statements can tell us. How far back can we go with what’s there?’

  ‘Pretty much as far as you like.’

  ‘How about around the time of Becca’s death?’

  ‘And before.’ Marks pushed the pile towards him. ‘There you go.’ He checked his watch. ‘You have a couple of hours still before noon.’

  The bank statements ran into hundreds of pages. Goodhew had already scanned the last six months but without anything piquing his interest. It was 10.15 now, so he didn’t have two hours; closer to one by the time he drove to Addenbrooke’s.

  The whole pile looked daunting; he loved figures and logic, but hated dealing with money. Or was he looking at it the wrong way? He carried the collection of pages back to his desk, then placed his palm firmly on the top of the stack, and slid the pile around until the documents were fanned across the entire width of the desk. Spending patterns wouldn’t help.

  He walked to the water cooler, then back again, and stood with his back to the window, staring at the desktop.

  Patterns. What did he know?

  A new wave of tiredness hit him, but he wasn’t about to stop and consider how little sleep he’d actually had. Neither was he prepared to sit and blindly look through several hundred sheets of paper. He smiled wearily. Blindly look: that didn’t sound right. He took a deep breath, turned to the window and pressed his forehead against the glass.

  He stared down at Parker’s Piece. It was really nothing but a rectangle of grass, but sometimes, like now, its timelessness anchored him.

  There were many days, like today, when a steady trickle of pedestrians and cyclists crisscrossed its open space, but little else happened there. But go back far enough and there were sketches of 15,000 people sitting down to celebrate Queen Victoria’s coronation in that same space. And, of course, YouTube footage of the music festivals that rattled his flat’s windows for one weekend in July each year.

  All of those things created patterns: patterns of activity and congestion – and, most of all, patterns of spending. And the same thing would apply in reverse. He turned back and the pile looked just as daunting, except now he would look at it in the light of what he did already know. He knew the date when Becca had died, the dates of the trial, and the dates of every other key event that could be considered to belong to the Osborne family.

  He dropped into his chair, then began investigating from a year before Becca’s murder, and made notes of each occurrence of one single item: Money in. Mary had paid herself a regular wage. He made a note to apply for the requisition of the KADO Employment bank accounts, although he was confident that Marks would already have that in hand. The other amounts, low in value and appearing only sporadically, were sales of Gerry’s sculptures. Sponsorship from an arts foundation came in one lump sum; it and a few very modest speaker fees had been paid via bank transfer, and were clearly described.

  He’d gone just one month past the date of Becca’s murder when the taxi arrived to take him to Addenbrooke’s. He carried a section of the pages along with him and, by the time he was dropped at the front entrance of the hospital, he had formulated the beginnings of a list. He’d drawn three columns: ‘event’, ‘amount’ and ‘description’. On most lines the date and amount only were noted, but every few lines the corresponding chronological milestone was logged, too. So far he’d marked three: Becca’s death, Jackson’s arrest, Jackson’s trial.

  He closed the notebook, slipped it into his pocket and headed through the long hospital corridors to Costa Coffee, where he found a vacant table.

  Goodhew recognized Genevieve Barnes from images that had appeared in the newspapers during Jackson’s trial. She seemed to have aged by more years than had actually passed from then until now. Her complexion had an outdoorsy ruddiness but it wasn’t a healthy enough glow to mask the haggard look of worry that accompanied her.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, as she shook his hand. Her manner was refreshingly straightforward. ‘You’re the officer who met with my husband.’

  ‘He told you, then.’

  ‘We’ve had a struggle undoubtedly, so the least we could do was be honest with one another.’ She had a very direct gaze and didn’t seem aware that she was scrutinizing him as intently as she appeared to be. ‘Have you discovered something?’

  ‘There is an ongoing investigation and once that concludes, we will contact you.’

  ‘That’s not all, I hope.’ Her eyes flickered continually and she seemed to read his expression as closely as she must have read Jackson’s. He therefore thought he would know immediately if the business card meant anything to her. ‘I mean that’s not the only reason you’re here. You said you had something to show me?’

  He took his wallet and held it, partly opened, as he spoke. ‘I have a card here. It is similar to one that Rebecca Osborne was given on the day of her death.’ He took it from its pocket and placed it in her hand, all in one move. ‘Please tell me if you recognize it.’

  Her fingers jolted as if a shock of electricity had run through them. She nodded slowly a couple of times. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, then continued staring down at it for a few seconds more, with her head bowed. Emotion had flushed her cheeks an even deeper red.

  ‘Do you understand what this means?’ She shut her eyes. ‘I could never have properly described this card but, now that I’ve seen it, I know this is what I saw. This is the answer to seven years . . .’ The words caught in her throat, and silently she began to cry. The tears slipped from her tightly closed eyes, some falling on to her lap, the others on to the grey tabletop. ‘Seven years of feeling doubted . . . of doubting myself.’ Goodhew grabbed a couple of serviettes from the counter behind him, took Becca’s card from her and pressed the tissues into her hand instead.

  She looked up for a moment, her face crumpled with anguish, and he cursed the stupidity of arranging to meet her in such a p
ublic place. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe we should go somewhere quieter.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she murmured, and she didn’t seem to care that she’d been sobbing openly. She clutched the ball of damp tissue in her fist. ‘I’ve remembered something. A man’s foot. He stepped closer to my face as I fell forward. Then he went the other way, back into the house. It was never Jackson. He didn’t do it.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  Goodhew held Becca’s card in one hand, turning it over as he explained it to Marks. He had almost phoned the DI from the taxi on his way back, but decided to wait as he wanted to see his expression. Now he was in front of his boss’s desk, and looking straight at him, but was none the wiser. Marks was at his most inscrutable.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘So the evidence was tampered with?’

  ‘Yes, someone took the card.’ Goodhew had said virtually the same thing a few minutes earlier, but now he guessed that Marks had moved on to thinking about the knife that had killed Becca and stabbed Genevieve Barnes. Or, more specifically, whether that had also been interfered with.

  But it took another couple of minutes still before Marks was ready to voice his thoughts. ‘That knife was deliberately mislabelled for forensics,’ he said finally, ‘and, because of that, we couldn’t prove the chain of evidence. It was therefore disallowed.’ He was speaking almost to himself, but with total certainty.

  ‘Who would have done that – and why?’

  Marks seemed to consider this carefully, but in the end his expression flickered till his gaze fell squarely on Goodhew. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I made a mistake, because I was distracted.’ He double-blinked. ‘Forget the knife for now,’ he urged, seeming oblivious to the fact that he was the only one who had mentioned it.