The Innocent Ones
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Chapter Seventy-Three
Chapter Seventy-Four
Chapter Seventy-Five
Chapter Seventy-Six
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Chapter Eighty
A Letter from Neil
Acknowledgments
Copyright
The Innocent Ones
Neil White
Prologue
Three Months Earlier
It was too dark.
He shouldn’t have agreed to wait here. It was too late now though. The meeting had been set up like this, someone wanting to talk to Mark Roberts, ace reporter.
Yeah, right. At least that’s how he’d pitched it, even if the reality was different.
He was in a park on the edge of Highford, high on a hill, a housing estate behind, nothing ahead but the dark silhouettes of the valley sides and the orange glow of the street lights in the valley below. There was a children’s playground at one side, the supports of the swings just skinny outlines, the roundabouts and climbing frames deserted, but the park was mostly about the views and the quiet.
During the day, it provided commanding views, bordered by high moorland slopes, tall chimneys grasping towards the sky like old grey fingers. At night, it was swallowed by the darkness that enveloped the valley sides.
He’d never heard of Highford until a couple of weeks earlier, one of those hidden-away places, a small dot on a northern map. He missed London. He yearned for the noise and the chaos and the pollution and the crowds. In the middle of winter, this felt like a different country. The people huddled. That was the best way he could describe it. From the cold. From the winds. From the rest of the world, it seemed. Trapped between hills so that it felt like no one ever had the chance or the will to leave.
He’d been in Highford for a week and it had dragged.
The people were different. It was hard to pin down why. Friendly, he supposed, and he liked that, wasn’t used to it, most of his life spent as just another face in the crowd, crammed into underground trains or lost in the rush of people always having somewhere else to go. In Highford, it seemed like people paused to say hello, to spend time with each other.
Perhaps that’s what happens when you’ve nothing else to do. You reach out.
That didn’t seem enough though.
He blew into his hands and tried to peer into the shadows in the park, dark and foreboding.
The weather was different up here. The winds blew hard over the barren Pennine landscape, where not even the valley sides offered much protection, Highford just one of a line of towns by a canal that threaded its way to Yorkshire. He’d expected it to be colder, but it was the rawness that took him by surprise, somehow cleaner and sharper, no lines of traffic to warm and pollute it.
He cursed himself for agreeing to the meeting. He would never have agreed to this in London, waiting in a dark and deserted place, but he’d been lulled into believing that nothing ever happens in Highford. Why would he feel threatened? He was the big-city boy from the glamorous south. Street-smart.
This was no ordinary meeting though. He was uncovering long-buried secrets, and that makes people desperate.
He could always bolt through the housing estate behind, accessible through a small alley, or ginnel, as they were known round here.
He clapped his hands together and wiped the dewdrop from his nose. He paced and stamped on the ground. Nine o’clock on a February night was not a time to loiter. The cold penetrated his boots and made him long for somewhere warmer. A small pub with a fire perhaps, one of those country places made up of small, cramped rooms and paintings of fox hunting. The moon caught the glint of a growing frost, the barren hilltops turning silver.
There was a noise.
He went still. It sounded close, but he couldn’t be sure. There’d been cars on the housing estate behind, just light hums, and not long ago a police siren had disturbed the night, a flashing blue light strobing the darkness, but this was different. This was closer.
He swallowed, nervous now. He’d made a mistake. He was too isolated. The ginnel was a trap, not an escape route. If there were other ways, he didn’t know them. He should have suggested somewhere further away, on neutral ground, because secrecy was a must, but had he been wrong-footed? He’d agreed because he’d got lost in his story, excited about his progress. Was he about to pay for that?
Another noise. A small crack, like the snapping of a twig.
He turned, his heart beating faster now, his nerves keener. There was someone there, he was sure of it.
‘Hello?’
He waited for a response. Nothing.
He might have got it wrong. He was in the countryside, which meant animals, and what could he know about how they sounded? It might have been a bird in a tree. He glanced upwards, where the edges of the park were bordered by large black shadows, the winter skeletons of sycamore and horse chestnut.
He looked back towards the ginnel, a small path, no more than twenty yards long with a street light at the other end. He should make for there and disappear into the estate, make an excuse, postpone for another day.
No, he couldn’t do that. He’d waited to
o long for this meeting. He wanted to run, but he fought the urge. He was there for a reason. He couldn’t back out now.
But why was there no message to explain the lateness?
There was a different noise, and it was closer now, like the quiet slide of footsteps on grass, squeaking under shoes, trying to stay silent.
His skin broke out in goosebumps. He had to get away. Something wasn’t right.
He turned on the spot, trying to track the sounds, because they seemed to be coming from all around him, as if the shadows bounced the noises back.
‘Stop messing around.’ His voice trembled.
Someone appeared in front of him, a dark figure.
He stepped back, yelped in panic.
The figure rushed him.
He started to shout but stumbled backwards, his shoes slippery on the frost. Something moved through the air. An arm, holding something dark and heavy.
He put up his arms to protect himself, but it wasn’t enough.
Something thudded into the side of his head and knocked him to the ground.
All sounds went dull apart from the harshness of his breaths, the fast drum of his pulse. The lights in the valley below swirled as he lifted his head, his body disobeying him as he swayed. He wanted to be down there, in the town, where it was safe, people living ordinary lives.
The lights were blotted out, the shadow there again, standing over him, arms high in the air, an object hanging down.
Before he could shout, there was another huge swing, and this time it seemed to move more slowly, the faint glow of street lights catching the gleam of something wet. His blood? Its arc made him shrink back, but still it continued towards him.
The thud seemed to echo as it crashed into his head, his thoughts scattered like splintering glass, the ground against his body and he couldn’t work out why.
His last thought was how the grass felt cold against his cheeks.
One more swing, one final crash of his skull, and then all the lights went out.
Chapter One
Present Day
Dan Grant rubbed his forehead and gazed towards the desk.
His case had ended and he was waiting for the verdict, a drink-driver who claimed that he hadn’t been driving the car he was twenty yards from, the keys in his pocket, his name on the documents, the engine ticking as it cooled down and he urinated against the wall of a shop.
He was in his local Magistrates’ Court, none of the glitz and gravitas of the Crown Court. The glamour ended at the door.
It was grand from the outside, with steps rising between columns of grey millstone to high wooden doors. Once inside, however, there was just a waiting area filled with rows of plastic chairs, bolted to the floor to stop them being used as weapons, because sometimes the courthouse is where warring factions meet. The courtrooms were at the end of the waiting area, accessed through more wooden doors that clattered when they closed.
When Dan first started out, the court corridor was always busy, people summonsed to court for even the most minor offences. That didn’t happen anymore. There was more pressure to deal with them away from the courtroom, because it was cheaper and they could still be recorded as a win. Now, the court corridor seemed deserted, as always, with the few lawyers still willing to scrap it out for the available clients hovering at one end, like hyenas feasting on a carcass.
Once inside the courtroom, Dan could insulate himself from the quietness outside, because it was the same as always. His skills against a prosecutor’s skills. It was why he did the job: for the conflict, the combat. When he’d first started out twelve years or so earlier, the courts had been like a bear pit, the snarling of wily old practitioners coming up against police officers brought up on the old rules. That was the career his former boss had enjoyed: Pat Molloy, a man who’d thrived on eccentricity. He’d died a year earlier, and it felt sometimes as if he’d abandoned Dan to the wasteland, because it seemed as if the courts were being run dry, kept only for the big cases, until one day they could be closed altogether, everything dealt with by some kind of virtual penalty scheme. Input your reference number and your sentence will be emailed to you.
As he looked around, the courtroom was as jaded as the system. The walls were painted a soft yellow that must have seemed calming when first applied, but it had faded to dirty, with large bubbles in the plaster that sent dust falling to the benches below.
The prosecutor leaned across: Pam Smith, in her forties and formidable, her smart business suit and gleaming dark hair concealing someone who fought hard. ‘What do you think?’
Dan switched on a smile. ‘The case? It will probably go your way. They do most times.’
Pam looked doubtful. ‘The witnesses weren’t good, and these…’ and she gestured towards three empty chairs: the magistrates’ chairs, the three upstanding members of the community who acted as judges in their spare time. ‘They’re too unpredictable. I’ve come across the chairman before. I wouldn’t trust him to judge a flower show.’
‘You win more than you lose.’
‘But we’re supposed to win nearly all of them, because they wouldn’t be in court if they hadn’t done it.’
‘Ah, the wisdom of the righteous.’
Pam smiled. ‘You sound jaded. You’re too young for that.’
‘Do I? I don’t mean to be, but it’s, well, you know, everything’s changed.’
‘Pat Molloy?’
‘He ran the firm, made all the decisions, and now it’s all down to me.’
‘You’re a fine lawyer, Dan.’
‘But now I’m a boss, an administrator, doing all the things I didn’t sign up for when I first started out.’
‘Pat Molloy was a good man, a good lawyer. We don’t get many like him these days.’
‘No one with a brain comes into crime.’
‘Clean up then, if you’re one of the few good ones left. If it gets tough, bail out. We’re always recruiting.’
‘Me, a prosecutor?’ Dan laughed. ‘I can’t quite see that.’
‘Why not? The hours are better for a start.’
‘Because it’s not why I do it, putting away the bad guys.’
‘You think keeping them free is a more noble thing?’
‘No, it’s not that. I don’t mind which way the case goes if it’s the right way, based upon the evidence. Everyone deserves a fair shout though, a chance to defend themselves. If it lets a few guilty ones go free along the way, that’s just the price. It’s a lot better than the innocent ones being locked up.’
‘Innocent ones? Really? I’ve not seen many. There are the guilty ones where the evidence is good, and there are the guilty ones where the evidence isn’t, but they’re still guilty.’
‘You’re not looking hard enough, that’s all.’
‘And your guy today? An innocent one?’
Dan smiled. ‘I don’t think so, but if he gets away with it, doesn’t that make it your fault somehow, not mine?’
Before Pam could respond, the court clerk came back in. She seemed irritated as she said, ‘Can you get your client, Dan?’
‘Why are you so angry?’
The clerk gestured with her hand towards the door to the magistrates’ retiring room, where Dan could hear someone laughing. ‘They’ll believe any old rubbish.’
‘Should I be getting the probation officer as well, in case they want to hear more before sentence?’
‘There won’t be a sentence. It’s not guilty.’
Pam hissed something under her breath and clenched her jaw. She tugged on her jacket as she fastened it, something to occupy her hands to stop her throwing her pen across the desk, not wanting to be scrabbling underneath as the magistrates came back into the courtroom.
Dan headed for the door to get his client, trying hard not to give away that he knew the verdict already.
That’s when he noticed her.
He didn’t know how long she’d been there, but she’d been watching the case. That wasn’t unusual, th
e seats reserved for the public attracted the curious, but it was the look she gave him as he went to the door, as if he was the focus.
She was close to sixty, elegantly dressed in a blue blazer and cream trousers, her hair in a neat side-parting and dyed a rich chestnut. Pearls hung over a black top and her fingers were adorned with chunky rings. She was too smart to be hanging around a crumbling court building in Highford.
He waved to his client, who’d been sitting on the steps outside the building, joking with his friends, the courtroom appearance just another bad day.
As he went back in, his client behind him, the woman stepped towards him and passed him a note.
He pocketed it and gave her a curious glance as she went back to her seat.
Dan sat back in the lawyers’ benches and listened as the chairman read out the reasons why his client was not guilty, none of it making much sense in a real-world setting, but some magistrates don’t like to convict anyone, and some like to convict everyone. That was the game.
As he listened, he opened the note.
Mr Grant. We need to talk.
As he frowned and looked back to the woman, she nodded and folded her arms.
He put the note back into his pocket. Whatever she wanted, it didn’t look like good news.
Chapter Two
Jayne Brett looked out of her window as she checked her watch. More than an hour before she started work.
She was giving the big-city life a go, living in an apartment not far from the centre of Manchester. It was modern and clean on the inside, the first floor of a bland red-brick building that was part of a cul-de-sac in a cluster of cul-de-sacs, built as part of the regeneration of the city in the sixties, when there was a mass slum clearance and whole communities were bulldozed and replaced with shiny and new. Gone were the long terraces, unbroken lines of houses without bathrooms or indoor toilets, laundry stretched outside and children wrestling in the gutters made filthy by the smoke that belched from the mills and factories.
Fifty years on, they’d turned into small warrens that attracted those who wanted to stay hidden. Broken street lights and dark alleys made it a dangerous place to be. She’d thought living close to the city centre would bring the noise and the mess and vibrancy, but it turned out that she’d ended up in the urban hinterland, caught between the wealthier suburbs and the steel and glass of the city-centre apartment blocks.
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