Past Mortem (33 page)

Newson drained his beer. ‘I’m sorry, Roger, but it’s out of the question. I’m not looking for a partner.’

‘Oh, yeah. That’s right, you got one, you’re in love with her, right? You told me that.’

Newson had indeed told Jameson this and now he deeply regretted sharing the confidence. Everything about Jameson made him feel deeply uneasy. ‘She’s an excellent officer,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, I don’t think my chief superintendent would approve of my teaming up with an American cop, particularly one who’s on suspension.

‘All I’m saying is talk to me, Ed, tell me what you know, what you find out. I
know
the man you’re chasing. He’s the same as me.’

‘Roger, I couldn’t possibly make you party to a Scotland Yard investigation.’

‘
I need to know
, Ed. I need this from you.’

‘And what I need from you is a comprehensive list of your trips to the UK over the last two and a half years. I want to know when you were in England, Roger.’

Jameson stared hard at Newson. The easy smile remained but it was edged now with anger. ‘Oh, I see. It’s like that, is it?’

‘I can always get the information from the passport office.’

‘I suppose I should have guessed the way you’d start thinking, Ed. You’re a cop, after all, ain’t you? We’re all bastards underneath.’

‘I don’t think so. I’d also like to know what you were doing on the day after the reunion.’

‘Ah, the day Christine died.’

‘That’s right, the day Christine died.’

‘Just chilling, Ed. Drifting around town. Checking out the Sunday papers, watching the world go by.’

‘Was anybody with you?’

‘Not a soul all day.’

‘Did you speak to Helen Smart at all?’

‘Helen Smart? Why do you ask?’

‘Because I want you to tell me the answer.’

‘No, I didn’t talk to her.’

‘What about emails?’

‘Ah, emails. Maybe. I have emailed her. It may have been that day.’

‘You’ve been in email correspondence with Helen Smart?’

‘Not correspondence. I just wrote to her, that’s all.’

‘And the difference being?’

‘Not much, I guess.’—

‘Why did you write to her?’

‘To tell her that she needed to work through her demons. That she needed to get herself some closure.’

‘I see. Did she reply?’

‘She said she’d work on it.’

Newson got up. ‘Thanks for the beers, Roger. I may be in touch.’

‘When this guy gets in touch with
you
, Ed, come back to me. Like I said, I
know
him.’

‘Oh, so do I,’ said Newson. ‘I mean, in a real sense. I actually do know him.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes, you see Christine Copperfield was on her mobile phone leaving a message for me when the killer turned up at her door. She looked through her little spy hole and when she saw who it was outside she concluded her message to me by making it clear that we were both acquainted with her visitor.’ He was watching every detail on Jameson’s face, looking for any sign of fear or panic.

‘Well, I guess she didn’t tell you who that guy was or you’d a pulled him in by now.’

‘That’s true. But whoever this murderer is, Roger,
I know him too
.’

Newson left, trying to walk the walk of a tough, confident, in-control cop.

As he got to the door Jameson spoke up after him. ‘You know what? I think maybe your guy is doing the world a favour, kind of clearing away the trash, like that thing we do in New York, zero tolerance. How about zero tolerance for bullies, right? Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? I seen enough shit to know that sometimes it ain’t good enough to sit round wringing your hands and saying how terrible things are. Sometimes you have to do something about it.’

That phrase.
You have to do something about it
.

Helen’s phrase. Roger’s phrase. Helen Smart. Roger Jameson. Quite a team. One bully, one victim, same school. Newson’s school.

Newson knew them both
.

Helen Smart could never have got past Farrah Porter’s or Angie Tatum’s door, but maybe Roger Jameson could. A big, handsome American cop. He might have persuaded them to let him in. On the other hand, Roger Jameson would be unlikely to make a man like Adam Bishop feel anything but nervous and defensive, while kooky, sexy little Helen would not scare him at all. Could there have been
two
people at Christine Copperfield’s door when she made her final phone call? Then she really would have had a story to tell Newson.

THIRTY

T
he following morning Newson travelled once more to Manchester, where he had an appointment with Mark Pearce at the Fallowfleld kick-boxing gym. He caught the 6.55 from Euston and having had breakfast, which to him always tasted better on a train, he thought it a reasonable enough hour to phone Rod Haynes, the Manchester pathologist. A woman’s voice answered. A voice Newson ‘recognized.

‘Dr Clarke?’

‘Who is this?’ she answered suspiciously.

‘Ed Newson. I was phoning for Dr Haynes.’

‘Ah, right, of course. Silly of me to pick up the phone…It’s just the kids, you know. I gave them this number.’ She was clearly embarrassed. ‘I’ll just get him. It’s pretty early, Inspector.’

‘Yes, I know, I’m sorry. It was a medical question, actually. I was just wondering if someone suffers low-level neurological damage in their adolescence — if their brain was bruised — would that affect them much in later life?’

‘That’s a tricky question, Inspector. How do you define ‘low level’? And what do you mean by ‘affect’? Physically? Mentally? Psychologically? What was the extent of the initial bruising? How was it treated, and was that treatment effective? Surely, Inspector, you can see that you’re being ridiculously vague.’

Having an affair had not caused Dr Clarke to lighten up.

‘OK, a fourteen-year-old boy gets hit on the head repeatedly with a book for an hour, ending up nearly losing consciousness. He’s treated in hospital for cranial bruising and then spends a month in bed, but he suffers from headaches for years afterwards. Fifteen years later, do you think he would still be affected?’

‘Yes, of course he would! It’d impact in some manner or other on his whole life.’

‘I’m talking about actual physical brain damage. Is it possible that an attack like that could have unbalanced the lad but not in a manner that was obvious, creating a sort of mental time bomb so that while he seemed to be getting on with his life, all the time the seeds of violence were growing and then one day he just flips?’

‘And goes bananas?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sticking compasses in people and dyeing their pubic hair red?’

‘Perhaps, yes.’

‘Yes, it’s possible. Not very likely, but anything’s possible with the brain. However, there’d be no way whatsoever of telling without a scan and numerous neurological tests. The lad might be perfectly OK, he might be a Jekyll and Hyde. If you want to find out you’ll need to section him under the Mental Health Act and have a really good look at him.

‘Right. OK, thanks. I doubt I’ll find we have grounds for that. Anyway, just a thought. Thanks for your time. All well?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘So um…please give my best to Dr Haynes.’

Newson put down the phone. Dr Clarke was right, it had been a bit of a stupid question. He turned his attention to the papers. All the tabloids led on the tragic suicide of Tiffany Mellors. Most of the papers ran double-page spreads, simultaneously shedding tears for the tragedy of a young life cut short and glorying in the adolescent beauty of a teen queen. There was Tiffany grinning broadly in her little netball skirt, and in action wearing tiny shorts and a bikini top playing badminton on the beach. There were pictures of her at a school dance, gorgeous in a low-cut top, tummy proudly on display with the obligatory glittering belly button and the lowest-cut hipster trousers Newson had ever seen. Every paper pondered the same issue. If a girl like this could be driven to slash her wrists because of the torment of bullying, then we had scarcely begun to understand the scale of the problem. Newson read all the reports and he wondered. Tiffany Mellors had died like a Helen but she had lived like a Christine. Strange. He supposed the editorials must be right. With bullying you simply never could tell.

The train pulled in at Manchester Piccadilly Station in good time, affording Newson the luxury of walking to Rusholme. The placards for yesterday’s
Manchester Evening News
were out in front of the newsagents as he passed by. They too had got bullying fever. The whole country was indulging in an orgy of soul-searching about lost innocence, flowers crushed and the general mental health of the children in its schools.

‘It is only a matter of time,’ the paper announced on its front page, ‘before Manchester faces the tragedy of its own Tiffany Mellors.’ And there again were the photographs. Some enterprising journalist had persuaded one of Tiffany’s schoolfriends to produce a snap of the whole girl gang on a trip to the local lido. Five gorgeous girls bursting out of their bikinis, grinning over their ice creams with Tiffany at the centre, the gilded star of a golden galaxy, and yet, as she had informed the world herself just before she took her own life,
the bullying killed her in the end
.

The gym where Mark Pearce worked and trained was typical of its kind, rough, sweaty and intimidating. Men of all races were united here in the pursuit of physical perfection for the purpose of aggression. Six-pack stomachs and rippling biceps were standard. Newson noted, as he had had occasion to do before when encountering young men practising martial arts, that at some point an effort had been made to remind these disciples of perfection of the original spiritual routes of the craft they practised. There were posters on the walls featuring setting suns on still seas and prettily worded messages on the, subject of harmony and humility. More recent posters, however, showed Van Damme, Bruce Lee and the Terminator. The men studying at the Rusholme gym were not doing so in order to learn about themselves and complete their spiritual journey to oneness. They were doing it so that they would be able to separate a man’s head from his shoulders with a single kick.

Newson hovered in the doorway while an enormous bald man who seemed to be in a position of authority studiously ignored him, continuing to play the pub-style tabletop video kick-boxing game that served as a front desk. Eventually the game ended.

‘They do a beginners’ class at the Moss Side Community Centre,’ said the man without looking up, ‘but if I were you, mate, I’d just buy a gun.’

‘I don’t want to learn kick-boxing,’ Newson replied. ‘I’m here to see someone. Mark Pearce. I’m a police officer.’

Newson held up his ID, which the man glanced at with barely concealed contempt. ‘Fookin’

‘ell,
you’re
a detective inspector?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fookin’

‘ell, so southern coppers are as crap as your footballers.’

‘Could you just tell Mr Pearce that I’m here.’

‘Marky,’ the man shouted at a young man who was currently in the ring unleashing kick after kick at the hapless head of a less-skilled opponent. ‘
Marky!
’

But the man still did not hear. He was lost in a world of his own where sweat, muscle and the broken body of the man opposite him represented the entirety of his existence. The man turned off the sound system, which was playing gangsta rap at full volume, and went to lean on the ropes of the ring.

‘Fookin’
Mark!
’

Finally the man’s name penetrated his brain and he stopped his kicking. The face that turned towards Newson looked bewildered, aggressive and defensive all at once, like a dog that had been pulled from its dinner.

‘There’s a copper here from London says he wants to see you.’

Mark Pearce remembered now. Blinking through the sweat that was pouring down his face, he put a towel over his head and climbed out of the ring.

‘Can’t go out. Not got time to change an’ that,’ he explained. ‘Only get three hours to train, after that I’m cleaning bogs, so make it quick, will you?’

‘Three hours? You do that for three hours?’

‘Fookin’ right I do. Nobody fooks with me.’

They went into the locker room and Newson reeled from the smell. This was a male environment and it seemed to Newson as if he was breathing the soup-thick air directly through the sweat-sodden, greying jockstrap lying on the bench, where Pearce clearly expected him to sit, and which he was forced to brush off on to the floor in order to do so.

‘How long have you been training?’

‘Four years. It’s great, it’s my fookin’ life. It’s given me a purpose.’

‘That purpose wouldn’t by any chance be to give Denis Spencer a good kicking, would it?’

Pearce looked at Newson in surprise. ‘What the fook do you know about me and Denis Spencer?’

‘I read your entry on the Friends Reunited site.’

‘Were you at school, then? I don’t remember you.’

‘No, I’m investigating his murder.’

‘Whose?’

‘Denis Spencer’s.’

For a moment Pearce seemed not to understand. ‘What do you mean? What’re you on about? Who’s been murdered? Not Denis Spencer? That in’t it, is it?’

‘Yes, Denis Spencer.’

‘He’s int’ army.’

‘He was. He was killed more than a year ago.’

‘Fook off, no.’

‘It’s not something I’d make a mistake about. Denis Spencer is dead. I don’t know why, but I presumed you knew.’

Mark Pearce’s expression turned suddenly from bewilderment to despair. When he spoke again the noise he made could only be described as a howl.

‘
No!
No, no, no, no. Fookin’ nooooooo!’

‘I’m sorry you’re upset,’ said Newson. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Pleased?! Pleased?! I’m not fookin’
pleased!
’ Pearce smashed a fist against one of the lockers, denting it considerably. He leapt to his feet and unleashed a series of kicks at the dead metal, making such a commotion that the big man from the door came in to admonish him.

‘I’ll fookin’ dock your wages, you cunt! Dentin’ my fookin’ lockers.’

Pearce sat down again, his anger suddenly drained and replaced with despair. ‘
I
wanted to kill ‘im,’ he said. ‘
I
wanted to kick the bastard to death.
I
were going to go and do it the minute I got my black belt. Four years I’ve been training. Four fookin’ years. He was my purpose. My goal.’

‘Mr Pearce — ’

‘It were only when I decided that I had to kill him that I started to get on wi’ me life.’

‘Well, someone else has saved you the trouble, Mr Pearce, and also a life sentence for murder. I’d look on the bright side if I were you.’

‘But
I wanted to do it
.’

‘Mark, apart from the letter you put up on the Friends site, have you ever talked to anyone about what Spencer did to you?’

‘No, it were between ‘im and me.’

‘Not even to a girlfriend?’

‘Don’t ‘ave girlfriends. You can’t trust ‘em. They’re all slags. I’m in love with kicking ‘eads.’

‘The person who killed Denis Spencer killed him by smashing him over the head with a book hundreds and hundreds of times. Can you think of anyone you know who might have felt like doing that on your behalf?’

‘You’re telling me he got killed wi’ a book?’

‘Yes. Somebody secured him to a chair and hit him over the head with a heavy book until he died.’

‘That’s…that’s fookin’ mental, that is. That’s what ‘e done to me!’

‘Exactly.’

A big smile spread across Mark Pearce’s face. ‘Oh, that is sweet, that is. Oh, that’s beautiful, that is. Dead fookin’ beautiful. I don’t mind that. That’s all right, that is. An’ there was me just goin’ t’ fookin’ give ‘im a kickin’. Oh yeah, somebody else has been thirstin’ for revenge, in’t they? He must ‘ave done what he did to someone else, mustn’t he?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘All I can say, mate, is if ever you find out who did it tell him he’s got a pal in me, OK? He’s my brother, the bloke who done that to Denis fookin’ Spencer. My fookin’ brother! An’ if you catch ‘im and bang ‘im up, I’ll fookin’ come and kill you!’