FF 07 Creature Discomforts

by Ted Tayler

  Jack Sanders sounded a fascinating character. He’d been at Gablecross for years. Gus had heard glowing reports of the DCI while working on his own cases in Salisbury. Sanders was a straight arrow which made Gus wonder how he put up with Theo Hickerton as his second-in-command.

  Before reviewing their approach on the Burnside murder, Gus reckoned it was worthwhile taking a trip to Swindon to chat with the retired DCI off the record. Gus called Sanders, and the pair agreed to meet at ten in the morning. Gus remembered Luke saying that he wouldn’t be home yet, so Gus rang and left a message. Luke could keep Neil and Lydia occupied until he arrived in the office. Another half-day wouldn’t make Grant Burnside any less dead, and they weren’t getting anywhere with the information they had gathered to date.

  As the evening passed, Gus wished he hadn’t eaten so healthily. There were good reasons for never combining items such as onion and radish in any dish he prepared. As night fell and he drew the curtains in the lounge, he poured himself a glass of red wine.

  It was unlikely to cure his wind, but he needed to spend an hour deep in thought before going to bed. He convinced himself it deserved a nightcap.

  Wednesday, 20th June 2018

  At least Gus hadn’t drunk too many glasses of red wine last night. The alarm woke him at seven o‘clock, and after he showered and dressed, he opted for a fried breakfast. It might not be the healthiest option, but one large sandwich isn’t enough to keep body and soul together for long. Gus was looking forward to something more substantial tonight. He wondered whether he’d be eating alone.

  It was still early. There was plenty of time before leaving to drive to Swindon. Unless his old Ford Focus had an off-day, he should make it in forty-five minutes. He hoped Suzie was out of bed and available to talk. Her drive into work from Worton was shorter, so she shouldn’t be leaving for a while yet.

  “Good morning,” she said, picking up on the fourth ring.

  “Did I catch you, unawares?” asked Gus.

  “Not at all, I just enjoy keeping you on your toes. It doesn’t pay to make a man feel you’re too eager.”

  “What are you doing this evening? Do you fancy a meal somewhere?”

  “I never reject the offer of a free meal,” said Suzie. “What are we celebrating? Surely you haven’t solved that new cold case so soon?”

  “As if,” groaned Gus, “although we may have confirmed that a person who went missing came to a sticky end. Don’t ask for details if you’ve just had breakfast.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Yes, I had my muesli and yoghurt. No doubt, you had a fry-up.”

  “It’s the proper way to start a day,” said Gus.

  “Not if you want to stay fit and healthy,” said Suzie.

  “What time tonight?” asked Gus. He was thinking people were picking on him.

  “I’ll drive over after work,” said Suzie. “We’ll wander to the allotments. I enjoy a chat with your old friend, Bert. The vicar might be there too.”

  “So, the plan is to eat in the Lamb later in the evening, is it?” asked Gus.

  “I was buying time to convince you to eat less stodgy food, especially in the summer months. Perhaps we could have a salad?”

  “On one condition,” said Gus.

  “What’s that?”

  “Neither of us orders a meal with onions or radishes,”

  “You know I love you, even though you’re quite mad, don’t you?”

  “I thought of another condition,” said Gus. “I’ll have as much salad as you want, as long as it comes with steak.”

  “Incorrigible,” said Suzie, “I’ll see you at half-past five.”

  Gus thought he’d got out of that well. He had something to look forward to tonight. He went outside and set off for Haydon Wick to meet with Jack Sanders.

  It made a change to travel alone. As this was a conversation between two former police officers, the rules covering his consultant’s role didn’t strictly apply. Gus felt hamstrung when he had to have one of the team with him when he interviewed a witness or a suspect. He understood the need for the restrictions, but it was so much different from the days when he was a serving officer.

  Gus realised that Jack Sanders must have retired at around the same time as he had. Neil’s notes had informed him that Jack was a widower. They had more in common than he initially thought. As he got closer to the northern suburb of the town, he recalled how Jake Latimer had described the area. Twenty thousand people crammed into little boxes. Gus thought that might have been Neil’s sour interpretation of what Jake said. His DS wasn’t in the best of moods yesterday.

  He threaded his way through the sprawling estate with its collection of weird-sounding street names. Whatever happened to Daisy Close, and Honeysuckle Mews? Perhaps former councillors had given their names to the signs dotted around every corner.

  Gus recalled the conversation he had with Maggie Burnside yesterday morning, and these street signs were a constant reminder that Swindon boasted forty different nationalities. With a few minutes to spare before ten o’clock, Gus drew up outside the semi-detached house where Jack Sander spent his retirement.

  A neatly trimmed privet hedge bordered the front garden of the house on three sides. Flowers filled every spare inch of ground that the hedge protected. Oriental poppies, geraniums, violas, and irises and a couple that Gus couldn’t name. Maybe one was London Pride, but that sounded more a brand of bitter, and he might be mistaken.

  Gus stared at the plants as he walked up the gravel driveway.

  He raised a hand to ring the doorbell.

  “I’ll be out the back, come on round,” said a voice.

  Jack Sanders was leaning out of an upstairs window.

  The ex-DCI was as brown as a berry. It was plain he spent most of his days in the open air. This front garden didn’t get to look this good without effort. Gus wondered what the back garden looked like. He walked along the pathway at the side of the house to find out.

  Jack Sanders stood waiting for him. He was taller than Geoff Mercer, but then, that wasn’t difficult. Gus thought Jack was five feet seven or eight, and there was nobody here at number thirty-seven to tell him to eat healthily. The extra weight he was carrying caused Jack to sweat profusely. He mopped his brow with a damp handkerchief as they made their way to the bottom of the garden.

  “We’ll sit here in the apple trees’ shade if that’s okay with you?”

  “That’s fine, Jack,” said Gus, “it’s Gus, by the way. Our paths never crossed while we were both catching criminals, but I heard plenty of stories.”

  “The odd good one, I hope?” said Jack. “I heard things about you too when you worked over the other side of the county. How long have you been out?”

  “Pretty much the same as you,” said Gus, “This garden looks terrific. The flowers at the front and this fruit and vegetable patch at the back are splendid. It must keep you busy?”

  “I never had the time when I was working. You know how it is. I got stuck into it after I retired to stop myself from getting bored. Then Avril got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and eighteen months ago, I was on my own. These days, I put the hours in on the garden to take my mind off how much I miss her.”

  “I lost my wife, Tess, to a brain aneurysm six months after I retired,” said Gus. “We’d moved from Salisbury into the countryside to search for the good life. I took on an allotment besides the sizeable garden on the bungalow. Like you, I was alone, and the gardening has helped to dull the pain. When you put in the work, the earth gives back in abundance. The colour and beauty of those flowers take your breath away.”

  Jack and Gus sat in silence for a while as a gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the trees, and a blackbird treated them to a virtuoso performance.

  “Some coppers leave all this behind to live in Spain,” said Jack Sanders. “Not so bad at this time of year, but in a week or two, it will be a hundred in the shade, and they’ll be indoors. Where’s the fun in that? What was it you wanted to k
now, Gus? Anything and everything about that Burnside family?”

  “That’s about the size of it, Jack,” said Gus. “I suppose his murder was one of those cases we get landed with that just won’t leave us alone?”

  “The ones that keep us awake at night long after we’ve moved onto a new case. I think I had more than my fair share of those. Grant Burnside wasn’t the worst by a long chalk.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Gus, “I can’t recall you having too many failures.”

  Jack Sanders laughed and mopped his brow again.

  “This will take a while to get the details right. Why don’t I fetch us a cold one? A glass of fresh lemon squash, I mean. I don’t drink the hard stuff any longer. The doctor’s got me under the thumb.”

  Jack strolled back to the house, and Gus relaxed in his chair. There were worse ways to spend a morning.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jack Sanders returned with a tray with glasses and a pitcher of lemon squash. He poured them a refreshing drink and then sat back in his chair.

  “Right,” he said, “did you ever hear about a young lass called Tanya Norris?”

  Gus shook his head.

  “The name means nothing to me, Jack. Was she someone whose case kept you awake at night because you never cracked it?”

  “You’re not kidding. It’s a while back now, but the more I thought about Grant Burnside’s killing in the months after I retired, the more I kept coming back to Tanya Norris.”

  “Grant’s killing was your swan song, wasn’t it?” asked Gus.

  “It was, and it wasn’t the way I would have chosen to leave,” said Jack. “A big win was how I wanted to sign off on my career. It ended with a whimper. We made zero progress, and the top brass couldn’t get me out of the firing line quick enough.”

  “Typical,” said Gus, “they took advantage of you being due to retire to offer up a scapegoat to the press and the public.”

  “To be fair to them, they waited long enough for the spotlight to have moved on, so my reputation stayed intact.”

  “What was it about that earlier case that made you think it was like Grant’s killing?”

  “Way back in 2010, Tanya Norris ran away from her family home in Oxford. Tanya was fifteen. She stayed with a school friend for a while and then drifted from town to town seeking temporary work. She ended up homeless on the streets in Swindon. Tanya was vulnerable. In only a few weeks, she had been groomed and sold for sex. Tanya’s mother had reported her missing, but we had few resources available to find a delinquent teenager. There were four men believed to have carried out the grooming and abuse. They were two sets of brothers who preyed on pre-teen and underage teenage girls. Rumours started as far back as 2005 that something was going on here, matching events in Oxford and several northern cities.”

  “It was becoming a familiar pattern across the country back then,” said Gus. “Most of those men came from Muslim backgrounds. Their victims were nearly always white. People who suspected criminal activity contacted the authorities, but nobody followed it up because they feared getting accused of racism. As most of these girls were from broken homes, it was easier to dismiss their stories as being made up purely to get sympathy. The authorities discounted the rumours and complaints as unreliable.”

  “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,” said Sanders. “In the Spring of 2012, Tanya Norris became pregnant. She arrived in a distressed state outside the doors of the Great Western Hospital on Marlborough Road. Tanya claimed the gang had attempted to make her miscarry. Doctors treated her, and as she recovered, they listened to Tanya’s claims of what she’d suffered for the past two years. What happened next was the first strange occurrence. Tanya left the hospital with a couple claiming to be her parents. She hasn’t been heard of again.”

  “Did anyone get statements from the medical staff who treated Tanya Norris?” asked Gus. “Did you have details of how this grooming gang operated?”

  “Yes,” replied Sanders, “after initial contact on the streets or a local park the girls got taken to various events, they travelled around town in top-of-the-range cars, and received presents. The men lulled the girls into believing they cared for them. It was easy to see why. They never had much love at home. For a few, it was the first time anyone had shown them affection. After giving them free access to alcohol, the next step was to offer them drugs, and Tanya and the others soon became dependent on the gang. That was when the nightmare began. After the four men had used and abused the girls for several days, they set them to work at various addresses around the town where dozens of men paid to have sex with them.”

  “Today there are at least seventy-five towns and cities in the UK where grooming gangs operate,” said Gus. “Eight years ago, we imagined Rochdale and Oxford were isolated examples. The problem went far deeper than anyone dreamed. Who was responsible for things here in Swindon?”

  “Anjum and Kamal Ahmed, and Farhan and Bassam Hussein were in their early to mid-thirties. The brothers believed that young white girls were promiscuous by nature because they were non-believers, non-Muslim. They deserved to be exploited and degraded. The Hussein brothers drove around town in a brand new Lexus. We found CCTV evidence of them on Queen’s Drive, travelling towards the A419, on an evening in late January 2012. It’s believed they were ferrying girls from a nightclub in Old Town back to the flats where the girls stayed. The Lexus returned an hour later but turned off the main road onto one of the many side streets without camera coverage. The brothers’ car turned up abandoned in a side street in Rodbourne the following morning. It was locked and empty. Neither brother was ever heard from again.”

  Jack Sanders topped up their glasses and then continued his grim tale.

  “Anjum Ahmed drove a BMW and was the typical young driver who ignored the rules of the road. The Ahmed brothers’ route after they left the nightclub appeared to lead them to Toothill. Again, they appeared on CCTV. It was easy to spot Anjum. He darted from lane to lane, looking for an opportunity to put his foot down. As often as he did that, he needed to brake with equal ferocity. We spotted them returning from the outskirts after thirty minutes and thought they were heading home through Old Town. We assumed that the Porsche 911 close behind them was already racing the BMW. Because at the Mead Way roundabout the two cars shot off on the A419 towards Blunsdon.”

  “You couldn’t identify where this Porsche and the BMW first made contact?”

  “No, it must have been in the suburbs somewhere.”

  “Was the driver of the 911 known to the police?” asked Gus.

  “The car was registered to a private company. There was no way to know who might have been driving it that night. Anyway, thirty minutes later the Porsche returned alone, travelling within the speed limit, and turned off towards Old Town. We began receiving phone calls about the burned-out BMW first thing in the morning.”

  “Let me guess,” said Gus, “there was no sign of the Ahmed brothers.”

  “Not after that sighting at Mead Way.”

  “How did you explain that?” asked Gus.

  “You may know that the Burnside gang were building their empire,” said Sanders, “and people like Edwards and Franchetti had people operating in the town. Either of those three outfits could have been responsible, but really, they were only interested in the drugs. The Burnside gang have never stooped to trafficking young girls for sex.”

  “They see themselves as proper villains brought up to respect family values, I suppose?”

  Sanders smiled.

  “Something like that. Either way, that particular grooming gang ceased to be a problem. We don’t know what happened to the young girls. But the word on the streets was that several flats and rooms in private houses became available in February that year.”

  “It sounds too public-spirited to me for the Burnsides or one of the other gangs to get involved,” said Gus. “Did anyone dig deeper to learn what was behind it?”

  “We had enough on our plates,” sighed Sanders, �
��apart from a rising crime rate. The Olympics was only a few months away. You know what it’s like if the problem goes away without you needing to take action, you move on to something where you can best utilise your resources.”

  “Why did the Grant Burnside murder get you thinking about Tanya Norris?” asked Gus.

  “Two sets of brothers disappear without a trace. Someone eliminates the grooming gang they operate, and the girls are missing. Four years later, one of our most notorious gang leaders gets shot dead, and once again, there’s not a single clue to follow. Something strange was behind it. I’m certain of it. You get a niggle, don’t you, and it doesn’t go away?”

  “I get those niggles too, Jack,” said Gus, “maybe you’re right, and there was something odd.”

  Gus thought Colonel Jack Sanders had helped him as much as he could. It was time to leave the retired DCI to his gardening. Gus thanked Jack for the lemon squash, said his goodbyes and walked back to his car. He sat for a while with the key poised and reviewed the latter part of their conversation. Sometimes an investigation throws up more questions than answers. Gus couldn’t stop thinking about the fate of the poor girls.

  According to Jack Sanders, the young girls disappeared in early 2012. That change in their circumstances occurred within days of the disappearance of the two pairs of brothers. They were the men responsible for grooming the girls and selling their bodies to all and sundry across Swindon over at least two years. Where did the girls go? Who took them, and why? Jack Sanders said that someone took Tanya Norris away too. Did someone kill her and dispose of the body to ensure her silence? It wasn’t unheard of, and killers did it all the time. But what of the others, surely a number between twelve and twenty was impossible to keep hidden?

  Suppose those poor girls were still alive, Gus thought. They would be between nineteen and twenty-three now. At that age, they should be in proper jobs, have formed relationships, and got married and had children. He kept coming back to who took them, and why? Gus didn’t want to think about that too much.