Secret of the Dead (30 page)

He and Grace had not managed to get back for the previous evening’s de-brief. Driving conditions on the roads home had been atrocious, especially on the trail across Cumbria and into North Yorkshire. They had encountered gale-force winds and sheets of snow right up until the border with South Yorkshire, and then, surprisingly, the weather had eased up - the snow had given way to a mix of rain and sleet. It had been nine-thirty before they had got back to Barnwell. A three hour journey had taken almost five hours of driving time, and knowing that the incident room had been shut down for the night, Hunter decided not to bother driving to the station. Instead, he dropped Grace off at her place and then had taken the unmarked car home and parked it up on the drive.

Beth was on the phone to one of her friends when he had got in, and he knew from the way she had greeted him, with a waggle of her fingers and a flash of her sparkling blue eyes, before returning to her conversation, that she was in for the long haul with her chat. So he had poured himself a whisky and ran a hot bath. Then, mulling over the day’s events, he had languished until the water had got too cold to lie any longer, before drifting back downstairs to join Beth, where he had poured himself another dram and watched the news before re-climbing the stairs to bed. He hadn’t dropped off immediately he had found himself replaying the day’s findings over and over again, until he had finally drifted to sleep. At six am, he had awoken with a start, realised he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, thrown aside the duvet, had a quick shower, made tea and toast and then driven into work. As usual, he was first in, and he used the quiet time to write-up his daily journal, and prepare himself for the morning’s briefing. By seven-thirty the team were beginning to drift in. He greeted them swiftly, but chose not to engage in conversation as he still had overdue paperwork and e-mails to attend to.

He caught sight of Grace coming into the office and he watched her make a path to the kettle. He acknowledged her with a raised hand as he clicked open his e-mail list. He had one waiting for him from Duncan Wroe, with the bold title of ‘Prints identified.’ Hurriedly he opened it up and scanned the short text. His face lit up as Grace was delivering his Sheffield United mug full of tea. “They’ve identified some of the prints found at Jodie’s flat.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Kerri-Ann Bairstow!” He looked for a reaction. Grace’s eyes lit up. “Remember her?”

She nodded.

“What’s the betting that Kerri-Ann is the girl the downstairs neighbour saw in Jodie’s room on several occasions? The one who gave him a bit of a slagging.”

“It would certainly fit in with her character.”

Hunter nodded in agreement. They had come across Kerri-Ann Bairstow a few months ago, in August. She was a sex-worker, feisty and loud-mouthed, who had reluctantly become a witness for them in the ‘Lady in the Lake’ case.

“Well, if that’s not a turn up for the books. I’ll feed that in this morning, as well as what we learned yesterday, and then you and I will see if we can track madam down and have a little chat. Fancy her cropping up in two murders in such a short space of time. She’s certainly going to be pleased when she sees us two again - not!” A smile creased his face. “I’m betting she can tell us something.”

“Aye, and it’ll be like drawing teeth.”

“Oh I’m sure with your powers of persuasion you’ll get her to talk. You did last time, remember?”

Morning briefing took over an hour. Both Detective Superintendents were present and Michael Robshaw led the session.

Tony Bullars and Mike Sampson were first to speak. They had completed the search of Jodie Marie Jenkinson’s bed-sit but hadn’t found any significant evidence. Her mobile was still missing, and she hadn’t been the type of girl who kept a diary, so they were struggling to build up a recent picture of her day-to-day life.

That was when Hunter broke the news about the identification of the prints found in Jodie’s room. As expected, he and Grace were handed the job of tracking down Kerri-Ann Bairstow. Then he told everyone what he and Grace had learned the previous day. First, he reported on the interview with Amanda Rawlinson. He saw the looks around the room when he revealed Lucy’s pregnancy. “She was meeting Danny Weaver that night to tell him she was carrying his child.”

“So that could be the reason behind the flare-up in the market place,” interjected Det. Supt. Robshaw. “But why didn’t Danny Weaver explain when he was interviewed?”

“He might have boss, and Alan Darbyshire and Jeffery Howson chose to suppress it. Especially after what they had done to him with the confession,” said Hunter. “We now know that Danny wanted Lucy to run away with him and the pregnancy would certainly complicate matters. It could well have been the trigger behind the argument that night. I guess the only other person who’ll be able to answer that question is Danny Weaver himself, and he certainly wasn’t forthcoming in prison. There is also the added element of her husband, Peter. We don’t really know if he knew of all this and that’s the reason why she and Danny were arguing. Let’s not forget that when Lucy went out that night to meet up with Danny, we seemed to have overlooked the fact she went out alone. Amanda said that Lucy doted on her daughter, so why should she go out and leave Jessica? And there is nothing in the file which tells us who was looking after Lucy’s daughter that night. Someone had to be. What if that person was Peter, and he was telling Lucy to end it, or something to that effect? We know he threatened her and used violence towards her.” Hunter leaned forward on his desk and folded his arms. “I know, when we spoke with him the other day, he said he didn’t know about Lucy and Danny’s affair, but we only have his word for that. And after what Amanda told us yesterday, I wouldn’t believe anything he said. She certainly paints Peter Blake-Hall in a bad light. And she was also extremely critical of Alan Darbyshire and Jeffery Howson. They persuaded her what to put in her original statement, and then primed her about what to say in court. Weaver never stood a chance.” Hunter glanced across the room, his mouth set tight. “I got something else as well yesterday.” He related his meeting with the tramp ‘Chicken George’. When he got to the part about the photograph identification, he flushed, especially when he saw the look on Detective Superintendent Robshaw’s face.

He said, “I know I didn’t go about it right gaffer, but it was the only way I was going to get anything out of him. And to be honest I don’t think he’s got that long to live. You ought to see him. He’s in a real mess. He has all the tell-tale signs of liver disease. But he has given us something really positive to work with. He definitely pointed out Peter Blake-Hall and Ronnie Fisher as being the two he saw carrying Jodie into the Barnwell Inn. She was kicking and screaming, he said. Under the circumstances, I don’t think I could have got any better result.”

The SIO’s face changed. “Okay Hunter. I guess I would have preferred if the identification had been carried out according to procedure, but needs must in the circumstances. And it does give us something concrete to work with, but are you confident he told you everything? You’re happy that he definitely didn’t see what they did to her?”

“He said not, Boss. And to be honest I believe him.” Hunter turned to Grace, who acknowledged his words with a nod. He continued, “There was no hesitation whatsoever when he said that as soon as he saw them drive away he left by the back stairs and that he didn’t go anywhere near the cellar. We know from the layout of the pub that could be right and from the stuff he left behind in the loft, he certainly left in a hurry.”

“And he told you they had a black four-by-four?”

“Yeah, with blacked out windows. No prompting.”

“Okay, that’s good.” Michael Robshaw’s eyes swept the room. “This is our first real break-through. The link to the three recent murders now is the black four-by-four and so one of the main priorities is to find that car. The witness at Wentworth seems to think it could be a Mitsubishi Shogun. I want to know if Peter or Ronnie own one, and if they do, where it’s garaged.” He switched his gaze to Detective Superintendent Dawn Leggate, standing beside him. “Dawn, what do you have for the team?”

She didn’t have much to say. Scenes of Crime had completed processing the derelict inn and no significant evidence had been found. Task Force were scheduled to finish their search of its perimeter grounds that day, but she wasn’t hopeful of finding evidence, she added. “Much of the scene had been heavily contaminated by the contractors and their vehicles before we got called there.” She had managed to persuade the head of the forensic science team at Wetherby to fast-track all their submitted samples.

Detective Superintendent Robshaw brought in Barry Newstead. “You’ve managed to follow-up on the Crime Squad thing, I understand?”

Barry, seated at his desk, slipped on his reading glasses, quickly skimmed several sheets of paper in front of him, then removed his spectacles and addressed the room. “I mentioned that there was some intelligence about Peter and Ronnie bringing in amphetamine from Holland and it was believed they were using imported cars from Germany to carry the stuff. I told you that they had been flagged up by number three crime squad as targets. Well I managed to track down the DI who was in charge of the team doing surveillance on Peter and Ronnie. He’s called Tom Stone, who’s now retired and living in Devon. As soon as I mentioned the pair’s names I couldn’t shut him up. He’d every reason to as well, because the operation he ran went belly-up.” He put on his glasses again and referred to his notes. A few seconds later he took them off again. “They took the job from drug squad when intelligence indicated they were bringing in the stuff direct from Holland. They started following Peter and Ronnie around in March of nineteen-eighty-six. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering at first. All they had was evidence from a couple of users that Ronnie was the one who was knocking out the gear. And they had nothing on Peter, other than a whisper that it was his money being put up. The fact that he was using the imported car business to bring in the gear came from a significant source six months into the surveillance. In fact, that intelligence highlighted where the collection point was in Holland and some of the distribution outlets in Sheffield and Leeds. Tom says that the job was running really smoothly, and that they were putting together the evidence, slowly but surely, and then nine months into it things started happening which made the team suspicious that Ronnie and Peter were on to them, especially Ronnie, who was the one doing the running around. It was nothing concrete, but occasionally during the surveillance he’d suddenly deviate, double-back, or just put his foot down and lose them in a side street. Then they had regular sightings of two detectives at Peter’s club.” Barry paused and looked around the office. “Yes, you’ve guessed it, Alan Darbyshire and Jeffery Howson. There was nothing to say they were tipping off Peter or Ronnie, but their visits to Peter’s club were too frequent for the Crime Squad’s liking and so they decided to introduce an undercover officer.” He paused again and narrowed his eyes. With mouth set tight, he continued, “And that’s where it went belly-up. He momentarily stroked the line of his jaw with the edge of his reading glasses. “Just to digress a little, when I became aware that Guy Armstrong was sniffing around at the beginning of this enquiry, Sue, my partner, told me that she used to work with him, when he was a reporter with The Chronicle, and when he went on to work for The Daily Mail, that he was involved in a road accident in which a cop was killed. Well this is where it gets very interesting. That cop was the undercover Crime Squad Detective. Tom Stone said he has no idea how Guy Armstrong got involved or if he actually knew the UC man or not. He only became aware of the reporter after the fatal crash late one night on the road between Wakefield and Barnwell. The UC man had already established himself with Ronnie and had just gained enough trust to set up a sting deal. He had ordered a couple of kilos of amphetamine and was arranging a delivery. The detective had gone to Peter’s club the night of the accident to put down a deposit for the gear. The next thing was that at around midnight on tenth July nineteen-eighty-eight, Tom Stone got a phone call about the accident. Apparently, the UC man was a passenger in Guy Armstrong’s car, and was dead, and Armstrong had been taken to hospital seriously injured. Guy had been drinking he was two-and-a-half times over the drink-drive limit and his car had left the road on a bend near Millhouse Dam and had hit a dry stone wall. When they interviewed Guy in hospital, a couple of days later, he insisted they had been run off the road.” Barry paused and stared around the room. He had a captivated audience. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Especially with recent events. The bottom line, however, was that they could find no evidence to substantiate his story and so he was charged with causing death by careless driving. He offered the same story at court but he was found guilty and given an eighteen month prison sentence suspended for two years. Because of Guy’s job as a reporter, and because of the sensitive nature of everything, especially with Crime Squad being involved, they decided not to speak to him. And so they never knew what connection Guy had with the undercover detective, or if in fact he ever knew he was working undercover. The guess was that he was just following his nose for the story and the UC man was a source for him to tap into.” Barry shook his head. “We shall never know.” He glanced down at his notes again. “Anyway, there was an internal enquiry, and it was decided to hush the whole thing up and to shelve the ongoing operation against Peter Blake-Hall and Ronnie Fisher. But there is one interesting snippet arising out of this.” He smirked. “I mentioned earlier that Crime Squad got significant information which changed the course of their investigation. Well that source was none other than Daniel Weaver. He apparently wrote to them from his prison cell.”

* * * * *

After learning from a neighbour that Kerri-Ann Bairstow hadn’t been seen at her own flat for the past fortnight, Hunter and Grace spent the morning driving around several of the council estates in Barnwell, banging on doors. Every time, they’d missed her by days - she had crashed down for a couple of nights before moving on. Finally, after two-and-half-hours of what seemed like a cat-and-mouse chase, they got lucky. At one address the female occupant told them that Kerri-Ann had left the previous evening and that she was in a bit of a mess - drinking heavily and not eating properly. In a drunken stupor, two nights ago, Kerri-Ann had rambled on about someone wanting to kill her, and the friend was really worried about her. She gave the detectives another address to try.