A Walk With the Dead (26 page)

I
t had only just gone dark, but already the thin ribbon of road that connected Dunston Prison with Dunston village was covered in a thin sheen of frost that twinkled in the glare of George Baxter's headlights.

He was far from the first person to have felt the need to escape from the prison, he thought as he drove along, but unlike most of the others who nurtured the desire, he actually could.

When he was leaving instructions with the switchboard operator to transfer all calls from Whitebridge to the village pub, he had noted the secret smile – so slight it was a bare twitch at the corners of the operator's mouth – and had known exactly what it meant. Nobody in the prison liked him – not even the ones with nothing to fear – and no doubt they felt a sense of collective victory in having succeeded in driving him out, albeit temporarily.

Well, they were wrong, he thought, as he pulled on to the pub car park. He wasn't running away at all – he was merely recharging his batteries – and after an hour or two in the pub, a couple of pints and perhaps a little conversation with some ‘normal' people, he would return to the prison with fresh resolve.

The Red Lion, it turned out, was the kind of parochial village pub that seemed to think that because it had three different flavours of crisps on sale, it was in the food-catering business – the kind of pub that believed that its darts champion was world class, and its domino players performed with far more skill than the so-called grand masters in the much inferior game of chess. Still, for all that, there was a log fire blazing away in the bar, and the locals – if not exactly effusive – were friendly enough.

By the time he was halfway down his first pint of John Smith's Best Bitter, Baxter was starting to relax, and as he took the first sip of his second pint, the process was almost complete.

Then a voice in his head said, ‘You should ring Jo tonight, you know,' and he felt his neck muscles tighten.

He wondered where his marriage was heading, whether it was already damaged beyond repair, and if it
was
irreparably damaged, whether it was his fault.

He loved Jo. He really did. True, he did not love her
as much
as he had once loved Monika Paniatowski, but you can't rewrite the past, so there was really not much he could do about that.

Perhaps the best solution to Jo's problem with Monika was for him to resign from his post, he thought.

Perhaps, when all was said and done, he had no choice but to leave the job he had wanted all his adult life, and move away with Jo to some other part of the country, where Monika might no longer be a ghostly presence in their bed.

It would be hard – very hard – to do that, but it was the
right
thing to do.

He drained his second pint, wished the few people in the bar a good evening, and stepped out into the cold Yorkshire air.

It was then that he saw the man and the girl – and knew there was trouble ahead.

The two were standing by his car, waiting for him. The man was stocky, and about forty years old. The girl was perhaps sixteen – and careworn.

‘I'm Arthur Williams, and this is my daughter Susan – and we want to talk to you,' the man said, in a Midlands accent.

‘I'm listening,' Baxter replied.

‘You've no right to be doing what you're doing up at that prison,' Williams said.

‘And what exactly is it that you think I'm doing at the prison?' Baxter wondered.

‘You're trying to blame the officers who work there for Jeremy Templar's suicide,' the other man told him. ‘You're trying to ruin the lives of some good men, just because that filthy louse topped himself.'

‘You know these “good men” personally, do you?' Baxter asked.

‘Of course I don't know them personally – we live in Birmingham, and have done all our lives. But even if they
weren't
good men – even if they were the scum of the earth – they can't be anything like as bad as he was.' Williams turned to the girl. ‘Tell him,' he said.

The girl hunched up her shoulders. ‘I don't want to, Dad,' she whimpered. ‘Please don't make me.'

‘It has to be said,' Williams replied firmly. ‘Tell him!'

‘You shouldn't be putting the poor girl through any of this,' Baxter told the other man.

‘You're half right,' Williams said. ‘I
shouldn't
have
to put her through it! But I
do
have to – and that's your fault.'

‘If I wasn't carrying out the inquiry at the prison, someone else would be,' Baxter pointed out.

But Williams was there to talk, not to listen.

‘Jeremy Templar took my little daughter into the woods . . .' he began.

‘It . . . it wasn't exactly the woods, Dad,' the girl said.

‘If I have to tell him, rather than the person who should be doing it, then at least have the decency to let
me
tell it my own way,' her father said harshly.

The girl bowed her head. ‘Sorry, Dad.'

‘He raped her,' Williams said. ‘And then he sodomized her with the neck of a bottle. And she's not the only one he did it to – she's just the only one who saw his face.'

It suddenly occurred to Baxter that he was in the presence of the only real witness in the case against Jeremy Templar, and that talking to her might be a way of testing Prison Officer Tim Robson's belief that the verdict had been unsound.

‘Would you like to get in my car for a minute, love,' Baxter said softly to the girl. ‘I think we should have a little chat.'

‘If she's getting in your car, then I'm getting in the car as well,' Susan's father said.

‘No, you're not,' Baxter told him.

‘You might be a big shot in Lancashire, but you're nothing to me, so don't think you can order me about,' Williams said.

‘I never sought out this meeting – but if we're going to have it, we're playing it by my rules,' Baxter said. ‘And if you're not happy with that, I'll just get into the car on my own – and drive away.'

Williams hesitated, then said, ‘Once you've talked to Susan, will you listen to what I've got to say?'

‘Yes,' Baxter agreed, heavily. ‘Give us five minutes alone, and I'll be willing to hear you out.'

‘All right then,' Williams agreed.

Baxter opened the passenger door for the girl, then walked around the car and got into the driver's seat. Even if he learned nothing from their talk, it would at least give the poor girl five minutes' relief from her relentless father, he thought.

Susan sat rigid – hardly breathing – and Baxter could tell that she was reliving the attack in all its terrible detail.

‘You can relax, Susan,' he said soothingly. ‘I'm not going to ask any questions about what the man did to you.'

The girl took a deep breath. ‘Thank you.'

‘But I would like to ask you about something else, if that's all right.
Is it
all right?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Your dad said that the man who attacked you had also attacked some other girls, but you were the only one who'd seen his face. Have I got that right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why didn't the other girls see his face?'

‘He always wore a ski mask. The newspapers all called him the Ski Mask Rapist.'

‘But he wasn't wearing one when he attacked you?'

‘He was wearing one, but . . .'

‘Go on.'

‘While he was doing it to me, I . . . I lost consciousness, and when I came round again, he was standing up and taking off his mask.'

‘He didn't know that you'd come round?'

‘No.'

‘But if you could see his face, then he could see yours. Surely he would have noticed that you were conscious again.'

‘I was looking up at him, but he was looking over the bushes. I think he was making sure there was nobody else around when he made his escape.'

‘What did he do with the mask?'

‘He rolled it up and put it in his pocket. Then he walked away.'

It was a clear, careful narrative, Baxter thought, but he had had been in the police long enough to know that someone who desperately wanted Templar convicted could have primed Susan with the whole story, without her even realizing what was happening.

‘And you're sure the man who attacked you was Jeremy Templar?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘You recognized him the moment you saw him in the police identity parade – without anybody prompting you to pick him out?'

‘I recognized him while I was lying on the ground,' Susan said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘He lived near us. We used to meet at golf club socials. I even danced with him a couple of times. He seemed such a nice man, back then.'

Templar's wife had not believed in his guilt, Prison Officer Tim Robson had not believed in his guilt, but after talking to Susan Williams for five minutes, Baxter was as sure as he could ever be of anything that Templar had done it.

‘Listen to me, Susan,' he said softly. ‘Are there ever any times when you think that what happened to you was partly your own fault – that if you hadn't danced with Jeremy Templar in the golf club, or been wherever you were when he grabbed you, it would never have happened?'

‘There are a few,' the girl admitted.

‘
None
of it was your fault,' Baxter said fiercely. ‘You must tell yourself that every morning, as soon as you wake up. And even if you can't quite convince yourself at first, it's worth persisting, because there'll come a day when you
will
believe it – and that's when the pain will start to go away.'

‘Thank you,' the girl said.

Baxter reached into his pocket.

‘Here's my business card,' he said. ‘If you ever need to talk to anybody, just give me a ring at the number on it, and I'll drop whatever I'm doing immediately, and be there for you. All right?'

‘All right,' the girl agreed.

‘But if I was you, I wouldn't tell your dad I've given you the card,' Baxter cautioned.

‘I wasn't going to,' Susan replied.

Baxter patted her on the shoulder. ‘Good girl. Now, you wouldn't mind staying in the car while I have a few words with your dad, would you?'

‘No,' the girl said.

Baxter got out of the car, walked a few yards clear of it, and then turned around.

Susan's father joined him. ‘Well, has she told you all you need to know?' he demanded.

‘More than enough,' Baxter said.

‘So now maybe you'll stop persecuting those poor prison officers, and let matters rest as they are,' Williams said.

‘You're too angry,' Baxter told him.

‘Wouldn't you be angry – if it had happened to your daughter?'

‘Of course I would – but however angry I was, I wouldn't let her see it.'

‘So I'm supposed to be pretend to feel all right about the fact my daughter was raped, am I?'

‘You're supposed to be concentrating on your primary concern, which is Susan. It might have made you feel better if, instead of him simply being banged up, Templar had been roasted to death over a slow fire – but it wouldn't have done her a lot of good. She needs love and reassurance, not rage.'

‘Are you trying to tell me how to look after my family?' Williams asked, furiously.

‘Yes. What else do you expect me to do, when I see you making such a bad job of it?' Baxter wondered.

‘I've a good mind to give you a damn good thrashing, and hang the consequences,' Williams said, bunching up his hands into fists.

‘Is that really what your Susan needs to witness at this moment?' Baxter asked.

The anger started to drain out of Williams, and his fists unclenched.

‘What we've said to you has made no difference at all, has it?' he asked plaintively. ‘You're still determined to ruin the life of a good man over what happened to a piece of shit who didn't deserve
anybody's
sympathy.'

‘I have a job to do, whether I like it or not,' Baxter said.

‘So you're only obeying orders, are you?' Williams screamed. ‘You're no different to the bloody Nazis, Mr Baxter.'

It was then that he decided to take a swing at the chief constable, but he was no fighter, and Baxter caught the arm and held it in an iron grip.

‘You should try and calm down a little before you talk to your daughter again,' Baxter said. ‘She deserves better than this.'

‘Let go of my arm,' Williams said.

‘I will, in a moment,' Baxter promised. ‘And when I do, you'll have two choices. The first is that you get back in your car and take your daughter home. The second is to throw another punch at me, and if you do that, I'll knock you down and then have you arrested. Do you understand that?'

‘Yes,' Williams said, through clenched teeth.

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes, I'm sure, you bloody bastard.'

Baxter released the other man's arm and stepped clear. Williams turned sharply on his heel, strode furiously back to Baxter's Jaguar, and collected his daughter.

Watching them drive away, Baxter wondered if his own words of advice might eventually sink into Williams' brain and start to have a positive effect.

Probably not, he decided. Williams would continue to look back at the past, rather than forward to the future, and though his rage might be muted by time, it would always be there.

He lit up his pipe, and took a few puffs.

It had been a distressing evening, he thought, but it had also been an informative one.

He had learned – with little room for doubt – that Templar was guilty of the crime for which he'd been imprisoned – and probably of others that he'd never been charged with.

But he'd also learned something else – that a man who lived in Birmingham had known he would be in the Red Lion pub at precisely the time he was there, had known what car he would be driving, and had been able to recognize him without them ever having met.