‘This is a bit above and beyond, isn’t it?’ Julie-Ann said to Millie. ‘I’m impressed.’ Though Millie got the distinct feeling that the opposite was true.
‘I was just bringing Lucy up to date,’ Millie said. ‘We met one of Will’s fans the other night.’
‘Oh, not Sally!’ groaned Lucy, plonking herself down on the sofa, and curling her legs underneath her.
‘You know about her?’ Millie asked, taking an armchair across from her and Julie-Ann.
‘Yes, indeed. Will thinks it’s hilarious. The poor woman’s obsessed.’
‘Has he ever been concerned about her?’
‘No, it’s just a joke,’ Lucy stopped in her tracks. ‘You don’t think she—?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ said Millie, keeping it light. ‘I agree that on the face of it she seems harmless. But I’ll probably go and have a chat with her at some point. Where’s the band playing tonight?’ she asked, to change the subject.
‘Oh, they’re up in the north, Will called me from Bolton.’ From that point talk of the investigation ceased and, thanks to a bottle of Merlot or two, Julie-Ann seemed to relax and Millie saw a whole new side to Lucy. When she let her hair down, she and Julie-Ann were wild together. They drooled over Millie’s photographs, and listened sympathetically to her account of the rocky relationship with her parents which had all come right in the end.
‘I need a man,’ said Julie-Ann wistfully, as they finished Millie’s pictures. ‘Here’s both of you settled down and I haven’t even got a bloke.’
‘Millie’s boss is pretty hunky,’ Lucy said, drunkenly.
Millie pulled a face. ‘He’s all right, but hunky isn’t really a word I’d use.’
‘Oh, he is,’ Lucy insisted. ‘He’s tall, slim, still got all his own hair.’ She turned to Millie. ‘Unless you know something I don’t?’
Smiling, Millie shook her head.
‘You’d like him, Jules,’ Lucy went on. ‘A bit on the serious side, but he’s got these amazing blue eyes. Is he married?’
Millie sighed, ‘No, as a matter of fact he’s not, but I think he might be seeing someone.’
‘A keeper?’
‘I don’t know. It’s none of my business really.’
‘There we are then,’ Lucy said, triumphantly. ‘We could fix you two up. What’s his name again?’
‘Tom Mariner.’
‘Tom and Julie-Ann, Julie-Ann and Tom. Ooh, yes! I like it.’ And to Millie’s great relief she seemed content with that.
What Julie-Ann and Lucy had in common was their shared history and inevitably they got around to reminiscing.
‘Your mum showed me all your cheerleading trophies,’ Millie said.
Lucy cringed. ‘The burden of being an only child,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Mum collects and archives everything. She and Dad must have recorded my every breath from the time I was born. Did she take you up to the spare room? It’s entirely taken up with photo albums. And those trophies really should go.’
‘No!’ Julie-Ann protested. ‘They remain a shrine to your achievements. The cheerleading was so much fun!’
‘How on earth did you get into it?’ Millie asked, knowing that nothing like that ever went on at her own school.
‘We came up with it ourselves,’ said Lucy. ‘They had some cheerleaders on Blue Peter or something, so we decided to set up our own troop.’
‘Only because “Foxy” Foxton disapproved,’ put in Julie-Ann. ‘And it looked so cool! We did it all ourselves; held the auditions — only the prettiest girls were allowed to join.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Lucy objected. ‘It makes us sound really exclusive.’
‘It’s true.’ Julie-Ann contradicted her. ‘You might have gone all politically-correct now, Mrs Health Visitor, but at the time, the whole point of it was to attract boys! God, we were so shallow back then. And the costumes only came in one size, so everyone had to be thin enough to get into them.’
‘Oh, that was terrible,’ said Lucy, suddenly shamefaced. ‘The poor girls we turned down.’
‘It was only fair,’ Julie-Ann insisted. ‘You had to be fit enough to do the routines. They were really energetic. And you had to be able to dance a bit, of course, even though neither of us was much good. The auditions were hilarious. Everyone was desperate to join so it was such a feeling of power. I don’t think I’ve had a buzz like that since.’
‘We were good for a while,’ Lucy admitted.
‘You won enough competitions,’ Millie said. ‘So why did you stop?’
‘Then exams came along so it kind of fizzled out—’
‘We grew up,’ Julie-Ann reminded Lucy. ‘Maybe we should start it up again,’ she giggled. ‘I bet we can still do it. Come on, I’m sure Millie would love to see one of the routines.’
Millie was caught up in their enthusiasm. ‘Oh yes! A demonstration!’
It was pretty impressive, even though they were rusty after all this time, and when they did the final leap and whoop at the end, Millie clapped and cheered unrestrainedly, to make up for being the sole member of the audience. But the excitement was short-lived. Lucy had gone a very peculiar colour. ‘Oh God, I think I’m going to be . . .’ She ran to the bathroom and they heard the sound of the lovely Merlot being regurgitated. Julie-Ann was staying the night, so having ensured that Lucy was all right, Millie left them to it and drove home.
* * *
First thing on Monday morning Mariner rang through to Tony Knox.
‘We’ve got something else to work on.’ He filled Knox in on what he had learned from Coleman. ‘I want to look at all the archive material we’ve got on that case and find out what the dead man’s family are up to now.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Knox, and Mariner pictured him eyeing up the pile of paper on his desk. ‘I could do with something to read.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Mariner said. ‘This is one for me. If anyone needs me I’ll be at Lloyd House all morning.’
* * *
Mariner knew that Hughes’ CPS case file would be stored alongside thousands of others in the basement of police HQ in the city centre. It was the early morning rush hour, and the journey in took Mariner a protracted hour. As he inched his way through the Queensway Tunnel he thanked God — not for the first time — that he didn’t have to make this journey every day.
It took the archivist some time to retrieve Hughes’ records. Mariner couldn’t begin to imagine how much data was stored here, but the folder he was given was pretty substantial. He settled himself in one of the half dozen booths designed for that very purpose and began to read.
The first thing that smacked Mariner in the face was the date of Hughes’ death. According to the CPS report, Billy Hughes, aged nineteen, had been arrested by officers, Ronnie Silvero among them, who’d been called to a brawl outside a nightclub. In police custody in the early hours of the morning of Saturday, March 3 — exactly twenty years ago last Sunday — he had slipped into a coma. His life support machine was switched off a week later. That was interesting, or might be if they could pin down the exact date when Nina Silvero had received the flowers. Last year dead flowers, this year murder?
Mariner began with Ronnie Silvero’s version of events, as taken in his statement that fateful night. It was, according to the report, the day of an East/West Midlands derby. Nottingham Forest had travelled to the city, along with thousands of their fans, for an away game against Birmingham City in the FA Cup semi-final. Trouble had been expected, which explained why Silvero — by then an inspector — was out on the streets at all. But the expected hooliganism never kicked off. A series of minor scuffles were reported that night, but that was all: just the usual Saturday night fodder.
Consequently, Ronnie Silvero had been in the vicinity of a nightclub when he, and the two constables he was with, were called to a fight outside a nightclub then called ‘the Dome.’ Hughes was drunk and abusive, behaving in a violent and aggressive manner towards the officers and resisting arrest. I
t took the three of them to restrain him, handcuff him and get him into a squad car, using batons and at one point even CS gas. Reading the report it seemed ludicrous that so much force should have been needed for just one man, but Mariner had been there enough times and had no trouble at all envisaging the scene. Some men, and increasingly these days, women, could behave like wild animals in that context, and generally speaking the hostility was directed at the arresting officers.
Taken to Steelhouse Lane, Hughes was briefly uncuffed while being processed, but turned his aggression on another detainee, so again he had to be wrestled to the ground, his hands held behind his back in the classic ‘prone restraint.’ He was then removed to a cell to cool off. So far, so routine. But the detail that followed in Silvero’s report became suddenly skimpy and reference was made instead to the duty sergeant’s log. From this Mariner noted that Hughes was checked at ‘regular intervals,’ but when the duty sergeant looked in on him at 2:45 a.m., the prisoner was found to be unconscious. The alarm was raised and though the sergeant attempted resuscitation, his efforts were unsuccessful. At eight minutes past three an ambulance took Hughes to Dudley Road hospital where he was admitted to intensive care. A week later he was pronounced brain dead and the machinery keeping him alive was turned off.
What surprised Mariner was that the inquest that followed, considering all the evidence, had so definitively reached a verdict of unlawful killing. Hughes’ death could have been caused by a number of things, including injuries sustained during the initial fight outside the club. From there, the prosecution against the police was two pronged, accusing the officers of using undue force on the hapless Hughes, and then neglecting him after the arrest, simply leaving him in the cell. One of the cornerstones of the prosecution case was evidence from Arthur Rhys. The only other man in custody that night, Rhys had been occupying the cell next door to Hughes’. Rhys had given a statement from Winson Green, where he was by that time, on remand for burglary, about what he’d heard. He claimed that shortly after Hughes was placed in the cell, he’d heard a rasping noise like someone gasping for breath, and Hughes calling for help, saying that he needed his inhaler. Rhys had heard the viewing hatch slide back and the duty sergeant’s response. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he’d said, before he went away again.
According to Rhys the wheezing continued for several minutes, then there was a gurgling sound before everything went quiet. Rhys claimed to have yelled, ‘We need help in here. I think he’s in trouble,’ and banged repeatedly on his cell door. He claimed that nothing happened until about ten to fifteen minutes later, when he heard the duty sergeant return to Hughes’ cell and say, ‘Oh fuck,’ before pressing the emergency bell. During the commotion that followed Rhys claimed to have heard an officer comment: ‘We shouldn’t have left him like this, we shouldn’t have left him like this.’
The problem with this particular piece of evidence, of course, was that it was unlikely to be unbiased. Rhys himself was also under the influence of alcohol at the time of Hughes’ death, and as he didn’t have any form of timepiece, the chronology couldn’t be relied on. Nor would it say here if he had been offered any kind of incentive to give evidence.
So what, Mariner wondered, had happened in the intervals between the duty sergeant’s visits to Hughes’ cell, and why had he been so slow to respond to Rhys? For enlightenment, Mariner rifled through the file for the duty sergeant’s report. Finding it, he gave a start. The name at the top of the report in distinctive handwriting was that of Sergeant Jack Coleman. So Coleman had been personally involved with this. That was why he’d been so cagey. But he must have known that Mariner would find out at some point.
Mariner read Coleman’s report carefully. Everything tied in with what Silvero and Rhys had recorded. It was when he got to the part about leaving Hughes in his cell that things got tricky. At this point, according to Coleman’s notes, he had returned to the custody desk and rung through to Inspector Ronnie Silvero, who was, by this time, in the canteen for R&R.
I told Inspector Silvero that I was concerned about Hughes remaining in that position, suggesting that now he was confined to a cell and could do no more damage, the cuffs should be removed. We discussed the situation. There were concerns about whether the prisoner might harm himself and it was felt that he could reasonably be left in the restraint position a little longer. I also asked if anyone knew if he was asthmatic. No one did. A fellow officer [I can’t remember who] also suggested that Hughes was ‘playing to the gallery.’ Inspector Silvero suggested I relax, have a cup of tea and then check on Hughes, at which point I could remove the handcuffs . . . by which time, it was too late.
So Coleman, it seemed, had done what he could to avert the tragedy. The responsibility for the decision making had been Ronnie Silvero’s and Silvero’s alone. The statement from a female constable who had been present in custody at the time corroborated Coleman’s version of events, confirming that the conversation had taken place, and that Coleman had proposed removing the handcuffs from Hughes. The subsequent prosecution would have put Coleman in an impossible situation. Tell the truth and incriminate a senior officer, or protect Silvero and incriminate himself? Coleman had chosen the way of common sense and integrity, but what had Ronnie Silvero thought about that? Was that why Coleman had been so attentive to Nina Silvero after Ronnie’s death, because he, too, felt responsible?
There had been an outcry, of course, with Hughes’ family and their supporters calling for a public enquiry, which an apology from the then Chief Constable didn’t dampen. The enquiry concluded that ‘errors of judgement’ had been made and the CPS began assembling a case against the three officers involved; Silvero was indicted with negligent manslaughter and suspended from duty, and the two arresting constables faced lesser charges. Jack Coleman, Mariner noted, was not charged. Eighteen months on and shortly after the date for the trial had been set, Ronnie Silvero had died. There was no detail, just the simple words ‘deceased’ and ‘file closed.’
Also contained in the file were copies of the hate letters that Rachel Hordern had mentioned her mother receiving. Although not very imaginative, they didn’t make for pleasant reading, the general themes being that Ronnie Silvero had got off lightly and the sender’s hope that he would rot in hell. But the subject was definitely Ronnie and not Nina. From a different era, they were handwritten and Mariner took a copy of one, so that he could compare it with the handwriting on the florist’s card. The letters were unsigned, but some simple research identified Billy Hughes’ next of kin as Eric and Eva Hughes who had an address in Rubery, once a village, but now the southernmost suburb of the city. Alongside notes he’d already taken, Mariner wrote it down together with a phone number, and for the moment, closed the file on Billy Hughes.
Mariner rubbed his eyes. He was getting a headache; the sooner he picked up those glasses the better. Leaning back in his chair he considered the single most useful piece of information he had gleaned from all this; that Billy Hughes had died of asphyxiation, a similar, choking death to that of Nina Silvero.
Chapter Thirteen
Even though she’d only drunk coke and then tea, Millie still arrived outside Sally Frick’s house on Monday morning feeling as if she had partied the night before. She felt slightly queasy and shivery, as if she might be coming down with something.
Frick lived with her elderly mother in a terraced house off Kings Heath high street. The front door was in need of a coat of paint, and when Sally showed Millie in there was an odd smell, the odour of old age. She took Millie through a dim and narrow hall past a closed door behind which there were murmuring voices. The sitting room at the back of the house overlooked a narrow yard, and the interior of the house was decorated like something from the nineteen fifties.
‘We have to sit in here as Mummy’s room is in the front,’ Sally explained. ‘She can’t manage the stairs any more. The nurse is here getting her up. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Millie declined. ‘How long have
you been following the Leigh Hawkins Band?’ she asked.
‘Oh, ages,’ said Sally. ‘Since I first saw them at the Red Lion and fell in love with Will.’
‘And you go to all their gigs?’ Millie asked.
‘The ones in the Midlands, yes. Sometimes it takes me all afternoon to get there.’
‘You must have an understanding boss.’
‘Oh, I don’t work anymore. Caring for Mummy is very demanding so I gave up work some time ago. My neighbour is very good though. She comes and sits with Mummy when I want to go out.’ Her face creased to a frown. ‘I don’t really understand why you’re here. How can I help?’
‘We’re investigating some nuisance phone calls that Will Jarrett’s wife has been getting,’ Millie said.
‘Oh dear.’ She didn’t sound too put out by the idea.
‘Do you know anyone who might want to do that?’
‘No, I can’t think of anyone,’ Sally said, straight away.
‘Sorry. Could I use your bathroom?’ This time it wasn’t a ploy, Millie suddenly felt quite nauseous. But, once upstairs, it did give her the chance to peep into each of the three small bedrooms. On the bedside table in what appeared to be Sally’s room, was a photograph that caught Millie’s attention. It was framed in the way that most people would present a picture of a close family member, but within this frame was a picture, clearly printed from the internet, of Will Jarrett. Disappointingly, however, unless Mummy had one in her room, Sally Frick did not appear to own a computer. Just to be sure, Millie asked anyway, when she returned to the sitting room.
‘Oh no,’ Sally said. ‘I wouldn’t really have the need for one, though I used to use one at Cullen’s, where I worked, and they did once send me on a course for beginners. And I sometimes use my brother’s computer to keep up to date with what the band are doing.’
‘What about a mobile phone?’ Millie asked.
Sally chuckled. ‘Whatever use would I have for one of those?’
Married Lies (Reissue) Page 17
