Skeleton Plot (21 page)

He hesitated for a moment before he rang the bell, wondering how he was going to introduce himself at this late hour and after all this time. It was very quiet here. He thought he could hear the distant sound of the river, running low at the end of the drought; the forecast said there would be rain before morning. She opened the door more quickly than he’d anticipated, throwing the full blaze of the light behind her on to his face, catching his moment of surprise and apprehension as he fought to produce words.

‘I’m sorry to call so late. My name is Michael Wallington. I don’t suppose that means anything to you, but we were—’

‘I know who you are. I recognized you. I can guess why you’re here. I feel I was almost expecting you, somehow. You’d better come in.’

Kate Clark turned and led the way into a spacious, pleasant lounge. The developer had preserved the long Georgian windows and one of them was open six inches at the bottom. She switched off the television and he could definitely hear the sound of the Severn now, a soft surge over stones, sounding surprisingly close through the gathering darkness. She looked out and then drew the curtains, though no one could observe them here.

Then she turned to him, motioned him to sit in an armchair. She studied his face for a moment before she sat down opposite him. She said, ‘You haven’t changed much, you know. The stubble’s gone and you’ve filled out a bit, but I’d still recognize you.’

He felt that he should offer her the routine compliment, tell her that she too hadn’t changed much, that he’d have recognized her immediately although twenty years had passed. That was the sort of thing people said, even though women didn’t believe it. He sensed this woman wouldn’t want it, might despise him for it if he voiced it. He said, ‘I expect the police have been in touch with you.’

Kate gave him her first smile, but it was impersonal rather than friendly, an acknowledgement that they had suffered similar embarrassments. ‘They have indeed. Three times, if you count the initial contact from a rather handsome Detective Inspector. That was on Wednesday. Then the man in charge and what I think they call his bagman visited me on Thursday afternoon and again on Saturday afternoon.’ She enjoyed the precision. She always went for accuracy in her working life; it often seemed to give her an advantage. ‘They wanted to hear all about me and Julie Grimshaw. They wanted to know everything I could tell them about you, as well.’

She hadn’t offered him a drink or any kind of hospitality and she’d come straight to the point. She’d worn well, he thought. She must be around forty-three years old now, he reckoned. But she looked less than that. Not having children probably helped, he thought, making automatic allowances for his Debbie and her very different way of life. This woman had short dark hair which framed her broad, strong face very pleasingly. He’d never found grey eyes very attractive but these ones were, wide and bright on either side of a rather sharp nose.

He knew now that she would be irritated rather than pleased by any physical compliments. He said, ‘You’ve come a long way since we were together at seventeen Fairfax Street.’

‘Is that the address? I couldn’t even remember it.’

He doubted whether that was true. She was too meticulous a woman for her recall to be patchy. But he said, ‘I suppose we’ve both spent twenty years trying to forget about the events of 1995.’

‘Not the events. I’ve tried to forget about my lifestyle then and the way we lived from hand to mouth in that house in Gloucester. But I’ve no reason to erase the events from my mind. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of in 1995.’

Michael smiled, trying to lighten the tension, to establish some sort of bond between them. ‘I’ve nothing to be ashamed of either. Both of us need to convince the police of that.’

Kate Clark folded her arms, well aware that her body language was shutting him out. She was refusing or at least delaying the kind of agreement he wanted. ‘You’ve more to hide than I have. I wasn’t dealing drugs, or even using them. I didn’t try to induce a girl who we now know became a murder victim to become a drug seller. I’d say you have a lot more to hide than I have, Mick.’

She used the diminutive almost like an obscenity, recalling to him that world he was trying to obscure. Her own recall was vivid enough. She’d been frightened of this man in the squat, where he’d dealt drugs and had money and seemed to control everyone who lived in that house. She’d been careful not to annoy him then, even though she’d maintained her independence. The boot was on the other foot now: he’d made a journey on the edge of darkness to meet her in secret and ask for her support. The man who’d issued orders and treated her with a surly truculence at Fairfax Street had now come here begging for favours.

Kate said, ‘The police asked me a series of questions about Mick, who dealt in drugs. I told them what I remembered of those months in 1995. We’re involved in a murder case, Michael, and the fuzz don’t take kindly to attempts to deceive them.’ She wouldn’t tell him that she’d held back as much as she could at her first meeting with Lambert and Hook, that they’d treated her almost as a hostile witness when they’d come here for the second time on Saturday.

Wallington said, ‘They think it’s possible that I killed Julie Grimshaw when she disappeared so suddenly. Presumably they think the same about you. I should have thought it was in our interests to compare notes and present a united front to them.’

Kate looked at him coolly. ‘And what happens if they’re right and one of us is in fact guilty? If we do as you suggest, the other one would become an accessory after the fact.’

Michael found her spiky attitude very persuasive, as he had all those years ago in Fairfax Street. And she looked to him much more attractive in her maturity than she had in her youth. He ordered his loins to cease stirring and reminded himself sternly that he was a happily married man, with two lively children and a splendid wife. He said brusquely, ‘I’m not guilty. I didn’t kill your friend Julie. Did you?’

‘Would I tell you if I had done? And do you expect me to accept your bald assurance that you didn’t commit murder? You’ve just told me that you haven’t managed to convince the police of that.’

Michael grinned at her, trying desperately to lighten the tension. ‘You’re very attractive when you’re serious and intense. But I expect you know that.’

‘And maybe you look more handsome when you’re trying hard to be persuasive.’ Her lips curled suddenly into a smile. ‘But we’re not about to leap into bed, Michael. Is that why you came here tonight?’

‘No, of course it isn’t!’ He felt like a gauche boy being checked by a girl prefect. ‘I suppose I wanted us to compare notes on our experiences with the police, that’s all. I find it very disconcerting when they know all sorts of things from their other interviews which they aren’t communicating to me.’

‘That’s something at least that we can agree upon. I find that disconcerting too. Or to be more accurate, downright annoying. But I don’t see that putting our heads together is going to do much to relieve our frustration.’

‘They gave me the impression that I was their prime suspect, that their net was closing in around me.’

Kate looked at him very seriously, with her head a little on one side. ‘Did they really? Well, I have to tell you that they didn’t make me feel like that at all. I can only assume that they think they’ve got you bang to rights for this one, Michael.’

She was teasing him, wasn’t she? Having a bit of fun at his expense, even in this most inappropriate of contexts? He was almost sure that she was teasing him. He said rather forlornly, ‘I thought they made everyone feel as I do.’

She could sustain her gravity no longer; she dissolved into mirth. ‘Of course they do, Michael. It’s part of their technique. They tell you nothing about what they’ve discovered about anyone else. And then they make you feel that they’ve got you cornered, that every bit of evidence they’ve got to hand points to you as their culprit.’

Michael Wallington felt very foolish. ‘I thought we could compare notes on what the CID had on us. I can tell you that they know about my drug dealing in 1995 but don’t propose to take it any further. They know that I was at seventeen Fairfax Street throughout the summer and they say they haven’t so far been able to clear me of this killing.’

Kate Clark smiled at him almost fondly, as if he was a simpleton in need of her help. ‘Turn that the other way round, Michael. They haven’t yet any solid evidence that you committed murder. They’re keeping you in the frame, but they can’t pin anything on you.’

He brightened a little. ‘And no doubt they know that you were Julie’s constant and closest companion throughout the summer, but can’t unearth any evidence to show that you killed her.’

‘I’m not sure about that “closest”. At least two men slept with Julie Grimshaw during those months. I’d say both of them are still in the frame, and perhaps stronger candidates than either of us. And now I think you should journey back to the bosom of your anxious family.’ She kissed him full on the lips at her door, but it was an embrace dictated by a common understanding rather than passion.

An outside observer, or even a trained police presence, would have learned even less than they had about each other. Either or both of them might still be involved in this murder from a previous generation. They were very different people in 2015. Only the Severn flowed exactly as it had in 1995.

J
ohn Lambert was trying hard to concentrate on the ten o’clock television news. Not much of it was good, as usual. He retreated from life into sport. It seemed that England might be able to put out a full-strength team for the forthcoming Ashes test against Australia. Bert Hook had reservations about the spin attack. But neither of them would see much of the match on television, if the skeleton from 1995 continued to occupy them.

Christine brought him a beaker of tea and decided against offering him fruitless advice about not overdoing it at work. ‘Don’t you go dozing off in the chair: you need proper sleep at your age.’ That was one of the phrases she used as an in-joke between them. ‘I’ve had a long day, so I’m going up now.’ She still used those words when she was tired, though they’d lived in a bungalow for ten years and more now.

It was ten minutes later when the phone shrilled beside him. He snatched it up immediately, anxious that his wife should not be disturbed. This was no family crisis – that was the usual fear when a call came in at this time of night. It was the police station at Oldford, apologizing too fully for contacting him at ten forty in the evening. Perhaps the station sergeant also thought that he shouldn’t disturb a Chief Superintendent of his age. Lambert brushed away the man’s contrition; he knew that an experienced officer wouldn’t ring him at this time unless he considered the matter urgent – or unless this was something which needed a decision he wasn’t senior enough to take.

‘Anonymous phone call, sir. Asking for whoever was in charge of the Lower Valley Farm skeleton case. I had it traced immediately. Public phone box; the caller was long gone when our car got there, as you’d expect.’

‘Content?’ The officer must think it wasn’t just another of the score or so of loony phone calls which they’d had in the last week – dramatic findings like bodies buried twenty years ago always brought out the over-imaginative and the downright crackpots.

‘There’s a name in the call, sir. One of the ones we haven’t revealed to the press. I thought you should hear it for yourself and see what you thought of it. It’s probably nothing, but only you can decide on that.’ The usual disclaimer, and a fair enough one. Rank carried responsibility. The old watchword of the junior copper was that he – or increasingly she – wasn’t paid to make decisions. That still held true.

Lambert heard the sergeant fiddling with the machinery and then a distorted and muffled voice came through his earpiece. Part of the distortion was because this was recorded, but most of it came from the original call. A handkerchief or some similar fabric over the mouthpiece, probably: an old but still effective method of disguising the identity of the speaker. The voice was female, he thought, but he couldn’t even be completely sure of that. He listened hard, then asked the station sergeant to play the call back to him again.

The voice asked to speak to the man in charge of the case, then said, ‘You should speak to Stephen Williams. He knows more than he’s telling you. Don’t let him get away with this.’

Stark and simple. Advocating an action he had already been planning to take the next day. There was nothing in the call beyond that simple message. The only odd thing was the choice of forename. In extensive dealings with that wily villain he’d never heard Williams called anything but Steve before. Stephen was the kind of formal name which might have been used by a mother of her son, perhaps. But Williams was sixty-six and his mother had been dead these many years. A wife, possibly? Even a vastly experienced detective felt his pulses quicken at that thought.

The thunder came during the night, never directly overhead but rumbling in the distance for hours, disturbing Lambert and fostering in him the speculation which was already fracturing his night. He rang Bert Hook at seven forty. An hour later he was waving a greeting to his sergeant’s cheerful teenagers as they departed for school. He picked up Bert at his gate at twenty to nine.

It was the worst time for schools traffic. Lambert was planning what he would say to Williams, as well as briefing Hook on last night’s phone call. He felt in no hurry now, very calm. It was a mood that he could not have analysed or explained.

It took them longer than he would have expected to reach the big detached house which was the nearest residence to Lower Valley Farm, but that did not matter to him now. The house had been isolated at the time of Julie Grimshaw’s death, so that the spot where she had been buried must then have seemed remote. The new housing estate reared like a harsh modern intrusion at the edge of the farmland. But if these raw brick houses and bungalows had not been erected, poor Julie Grimshaw’s remains might have lain undisturbed for another century.

Lambert looked across towards the back garden of pensioner Joe Jackson’s bungalow, where those bones had been turned up only ten days earlier. He had the sense of a wheel turning full circle.

Steve Williams looked at them with open distaste, then dropped immediately into ritual abuse. ‘This is harassment, Lambert. I’ve had enough of the stink of pigs around my house. The two of you can piss off.’

‘If we go, you go with us, Williams. We can do this here or at the station. You can have your brief present, if you wish.’

‘I’ve done bugger all and you know it. This is harassment!’

‘Here or at the station. Your choice.’

He stood looking down at them with undisguised malevolence for a moment, then turned without a word and stalked into the front room of his house. It was set out as a dining room, with table and chairs in the centre. He slumped into the chair at the head of the table, watched without further comment as his two adversaries disposed themselves on each side of him. He was still in shirt sleeves, with a pair of red braces stretched over his wide shoulders, perhaps as a statement that this was his house and it was still early in his morning. His single eye focused maximum hostility upon John Lambert. ‘Say what you’ve got to say, then fuck off and don’t come back.’

Lambert said quietly, ‘We need to talk to you much more about Liam, Steve.’

It was at this point that the door which Williams had carefully shut behind them opened silently and a woman stood motionless in its frame, standing stark as a sleepwalking Lady Macbeth, staring wide-eyed at the scene before her. But this figure was not in night attire. Hazel Williams was perfectly dressed and fully made up, as if she wished to provide a deliberate contrast to her husband’s morning scruffiness. She looked at each of the three men in turn, then apparently decided to focus her attention upon the last of the trio, DS Hook.

Williams, who had been stilled by this dramatic entry, found his voice. ‘There’s no need for you to be involved in this, my love. I’ll tell you all about it when these men have left our home.’

‘I’m staying. You’re going to talk about Liam.’ It was almost as if she was issuing orders to him.

‘They really shouldn’t be here harassing us like this.’ Williams gave Hook a brief basilisk glare, perhaps because it was upon him that his wife had chosen to focus. ‘It’s bad enough them coming here giving me grief and disturbing my life, but I’m not having them upsetting you, Hazel. If you go into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of tea, I’ll tell you what’s happened when these pigs have gone. That will be very shortly.’

‘I’m staying.’

‘That really isn’t necessary. And it probably isn’t a very good idea.’ Williams’s voice was uncharacte‌ristically tender. He shuffled awkwardly to his feet and moved around the table towards his wife.

‘It is very necessary. We’re going to talk about Liam. All of us.’ Hazel moved in slow motion to sit beside Hook at the table, rejecting her husband’s touch and seeming perfectly composed. Once seated she sat still as a statue, staring straight ahead of her. She waited as if listening for her cue in some pre-ordained ceremony, one with which she was familiar and they were as yet faltering. She was at that moment the calmest person in the room, though none of the men there knew how brittle her composure might prove.

The moment of silence caused by her words seemed to stretch for a long time before Lambert said to Williams, ‘You’ve been very cagey about your son and the part he played in the last weeks of Julie Grimshaw’s life.’

‘That’s because Liam had nothing to do with this. You should let the dead rest in peace.’

Steve Williams had lost his truculence and his obscenities now. He was seeking to direct his words at his nemesis, Lambert, but the glance of his single eye kept straying towards his wife, separated from him at the table by Hook’s sturdy frame. He desperately wanted her to look at him, to acknowledge some kind of bond between them, but she stared straight ahead, cocooned in her own concerns, waiting for her moment to speak in this tense ritual of her own devising.

Lambert said coldly, ‘We need to take action before the dead can rest in peace, Steve. Julie Grimshaw was murdered and buried without concern or goodbyes. We can let her rest in peace only when her killer has been brought to justice.’

‘Liam didn’t kill Julie. He had nothing to do with her death. So let him rest in peace.’

His eyes were on his wife and the other two men glanced quickly at her as he repeated his claim. But she continued to hold her stillness, smooth as monumental alabaster. Hook wondered whence that phrase had sprung into his head.

‘You’ll need to convince us of that, Steve. Liam was very close to Julie in her last days. We know that now, from what others have told us. You concealed it from us, which now makes it seem more significant.’

‘Liam didn’t kill her. You lot will never be able to prove that he did. It’s time you left this house. You’ll upset Hazel if you stay, and I can’t have that.’ He reached a hand automatically towards her, but she held her pose as if he had spoken not a word.

Lambert said calmly, ‘Julie had ended her association with Andrew Burrell and taken up with Liam. We believe that it was a serious relationship. Perhaps it might even have led to marriage in due course, had it not been fractured; other people have indicated that to us.’

‘That isn’t true. It could never have become serious.’

Lambert continued as if Williams had not spoken. ‘We obviously cannot question Liam about this. We cannot take his statement on what happened, though his might well have been the most vital testimony of all. If, as you claim, he had nothing to do with her death, you owe it to him as well as to Julie to answer our questions.’

‘No comment.’

Williams would normally have accompanied the denial he had issued so many hundreds of times over the years with a contemptuous sneer, but today he could not muster that. He was intensely conscious of the silent female presence beside Hook, as were all three men in the room. Lambert said coldly, ‘“No comment” isn’t good enough this time, Williams. Your dead son’s reputation is at stake here.’

‘Liam had nothing to do with that girl’s death.’

‘Then convince us of that. Tell us what you know of the death and how those bones came to be in the ground so near to this house. We’re not going away.’

‘Liam had nothing to do with this. He’s right in that.’ The female voice when it finally sounded was as even and impersonal as a Delphic oracle. It carried the ring of truth because of its calmness and utter conviction.

Bert Hook turned his weather-beaten, outdoor face very slowly to confront the woman at his side, careful as if he was preparing to handle an injured animal. ‘It’s time now, Hazel. You should tell us now, don’t you think?’

She didn’t look at him, staring straight ahead whilst she nodded almost imperceptibly. Her firm chin jutted upwards a little with her determination. Her stillness and the grief she carried permanently with her gave her a dignity which was compelling, even in this starkest of contexts. Hazel Williams enunciated her words evenly and very clearly. ‘Stephen did it. He didn’t approve of Julie. She wasn’t good enough for his son.’

Even now she didn’t look at her husband, but there was not a scintilla of doubt about her statement. Hook said gently, ‘How did he do it, Hazel?’

Williams’s single eye flared wide with fear. ‘She knows nothing about this. She’s feeding you her fantasies. Hazel, please go away and leave this to me. You’re only upsetting yourself here.’

But there was despair in his voice and his wife ignored him completely. She did not want him in the room and she now banished him from her presence by sheer force of will. ‘He thought Julie wasn’t good enough for our son. He said she was a junkie. But she wasn’t. Liam and I would have got her off the drugs. She wanted to be rid of them, really. Julie would have been good for Liam. They were good together. He never had another girl after Julie. Not a real girl friend. Not one he could have settled down with.’

Williams looked desperately from Hook to Lambert. ‘She’s rambling. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. We should get her out of here. She’s going to upset herself and then lock herself away again. You don’t see what I have to put up with. You don’t see the trouble you cause when you come here prying into things which have long gone.’

There was a hopelessness about his pleas now. His tone moved from desperation to despair as he spoke. And still the inexorable, oracular female voice continued, without acknowledging his presence, let alone what he had said. ‘Stephen told her to be on her way and to get out of our son’s life. Liam was going to be his father’s heir and take over his empire, Stephen said. He couldn’t afford to have a little tramp like Julie holding him back.’

The phrases Williams had thought she had long forgotten came ringing back like a legal sentence. He said hopelessly, ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. This is harassment and my lawyers are going to have you for it. Hazel, it’s time for you to shut up and get out now.’

‘He hit her over the head with something. A bottle, I think.’

‘This is rubbish. I never—’

‘I heard him talking to his man about it afterwards. The man he usually got to do his dirty work for him.’

Hook nodded, gave her a small smile of sympathy. ‘Jack Dutton, that would be.’

Hazel looked at him as if she had forgotten his presence beside her. ‘That’s the man, yes. Jack Dutton. I think he’s dead.’