Harte

by Robert Innes

  “Fletcher,” Gresham snapped at the officer. “If you so much as breath a word to this man…”

  “What the hell is all the noise about?” came a voice from outside the office.

  Fletcher looked relieved. “Well, she’s here now.”

  He disappeared from view to allow the new arrival to enter the office.

  Blake stared at her, completely dumbfounded. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  The familiar blonde woman looked surprised to see Blake. “I could ask you the same question,” she said before shrugging. “I suppose I better introduce myself properly.”

  Blake stared in amazement as the ID of the woman was produced and held up in front of him.

  “Detective Inspector Lisa Fox, Manchester CID.”

  Eight

  Harrison was sitting in the reception area of Harmschapel police station impatiently waiting for somebody to come and talk to him.

  Jacqueline had been led into the nearest interview room and was now being spoken to by Mini Patil who had received all the details from Mattison with no more than a curt nod and a glare.

  Harrison sighed and tapped his fingers on his knees in an agitated fashion. He was unsure if Angel was even going to tell him anything and as he checked his phone, he felt another wave of frustration at the lack of communication on Blake’s part. He found it hard to believe that Blake had not checked his phone once since Harrison had first called him, unless something much more pressing was going on in Manchester and with Frost on the loose, he dreaded to think what that could be.

  He walked up to the reception desk where the desk sergeant, Mandy Darnwood, was sitting, transfixed by a sudoku puzzle in front of her. As Harrison approached, she glanced up at him.

  “Can I help?”

  “Does Inspector Angel know I’m here?”

  “I have no idea,” Darnwood replied. “If he does, he’ll be here.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Have you been told he does?”

  “Well, yes. But he’s taking his time and this is really important.”

  “He’s a busy man,” Darnwood said, looking down at her puzzle again. “He’ll be here.”

  Harrison stared at her for a moment, annoyed that she did not seem to understand the magnitude of the situation before turning around to take a seat again.

  Then, a door opened next to the one that Jacqueline had been taken through. Through it, briefly, Harrison caught sight of Jacqueline, with her head in her hands through the window, as Mattison stepped out.

  “Matti, what’s happening?” Harrison asked.

  “Harrison, I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything. Just take a seat, Angel knows you’re here, he said he’ll come and speak to you.”

  “And say what?” Harrison asked hotly. “Matti, Blake could be in danger, you know that!”

  “Yes, I know,” Mattison said soothingly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t say anything else. Just take a seat. There’s a lot going on at the moment, just try and be patient. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.”

  He indicated the chairs to Harrison and then walked away down the corridor, shaking his head at Darnwood as he passed in a manner that suggested that she had a nerve to just sit there while he was so busy.

  Once he had gone, Harrison glanced at the door to the side room of the interview room. The chances were, even when Angel decided to come and talk to him that he was going to give him nothing helpful to go on whatsoever. There was, in Harrison’s mind, only one way he was going to find out anything.

  Keeping his eye on Darnwood who was now scribbling frantically on the puzzle looking quite pleased with her progress, Harrison gently opened the door to the side room and slipped inside, closing the door silently behind him.

  The small, narrow room he was in was bathed in a dim light from the interview room behind the large window to the side of him, beneath which was a long desk and a couple of chairs.

  Harrison sighed, fully aware that he was probably breaking a number of laws being in here with the intention of listening in on the interview. A voice at the back of his mind was telling him that he was hardly going to be much help for Blake if he managed to get himself arrested.

  He was just deciding that he was better off going back outside and waiting for Angel when Jacqueline spoke behind the window.

  “Is Harrison alright?”

  Despite his instincts not to, Harrison slowly sat down on one of the chairs facing the window.

  “Harrison will be fine,” Patil told her, looking sympathetic. “I expect he’s just worried about DS Harte.”

  Jacqueline nodded.

  “So, shall we go back to the night of Tom’s attack?” Patil asked gently. “Talk me through what happened.”

  Jacqueline sighed again. “I’ve barely slept since it happened. All I see whenever I close my eyes is my son lying there because of what I did. All this time, I thought I’d killed him. When he woke up today, I can’t tell you the relief that hit me.”

  “I bet,” Patil said. “So, go on. Why do it in the first place?”

  Jacqueline wiped her eyes and looked down at the table. “The night it happened, Tom and I had had a huge row. I just felt like he had become so distant. We used to get on so well, we were so close! But since he came back to Harmschapel, there’s been something so distant about him, something different. Something darker. Anyway, he told me that he didn’t care about what I thought, that I didn’t understand him at all. All I wanted to do at that point was try and get through to him, to work out what the hell was going on in his head that he was so upset about. But he just called me a liar, told me I’d been lying to him all his life. His father wasn’t who I said he was.”

  “Who did you tell him his father was?”

  “I’d always told him that his father was my ex-husband who died a few years back. I mean he basically was, he raised Tom, he was as good a father to him as anybody could be. When he died, Tom went off on his gap year, travelled around a bit. I wasn’t going to stop him, he needed that time to grieve.”

  “So, was that what you were arguing about? The fact that your ex-husband wasn’t his father?”

  Jacqueline shook her head. “He knew already. I didn’t have a clue how. And he was just being so nasty and angry. It was like looking at a complete stranger. He threw one insult at me too many about what I may or may not have been like when I was younger with men and I told him to get out of my sight and he stormed upstairs. All I was thinking at that point was that I needed to work out a way to be more honest with him. I mean, how do you tell somebody that they’re related to a serial killer? Eventually, I had some form of dialogue in my mind to start off with, so I went upstairs and I was just about to knock on his door when I heard him talking to somebody on the phone. It was late by that point. I thought he was chatting to some man he’d been dating, he had been so attached to his phone of late, when I suddenly heard him say ‘I can’t believe she’s lied to me all these years about you, Dad.’”

  “He was talking to Frost?”

  Jacqueline nodded. “God knows how he’s managed to get hold of a phone where he is.”

  “There’s ways and means,” Patil told her. “None of them especially pleasant. So, go on.”

  “It became pretty obvious that they were plotting something involving Blake. He was telling him all about Blake’s plans to go and see his friend in Manchester, that he’d be there for the next two weeks and that it should give him ‘plenty of time.’”

  “To do what?” Patil asked.

  “I have no idea, but if you’re now telling me that he’s somehow escaped prison…” Jacqueline’s voiced trailed off as she began to cry again. “The things coming out of Tom’s mouth, I couldn’t believe it. It was like he’d been brainwashed. He didn’t sound like my son. I mean, Tom’s always had a sharp tongue, don’t get me wrong. But he’s never sounded so angry, so dead set on revenge.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He stopped talking
and said that he could hear somebody moving outside, so I hid in the linen closet while he came out to the corridor. Then, he went outside and I followed him. The pair of them were plotting this huge revenge plan on Blake for putting that monster in prison. He confirmed to him that Blake was heading to Manchester and that he’d been sending him every detail of Blake’s life. Then they mentioned that Harrison was getting suspicious and that Tom was going to change the contact name in his phone.”

  “From ‘F’ to something else?”

  “I assume so. At that moment, all I could see standing in front of me was somebody who was about to go down a very dark path and I had to do something to stop him. By the side of the road was this old bit of drain pipe and…” Her voice cracked as she held back her sobs. “I hit him over the head, I just wanted whatever he was doing, what he was becoming, to stop! I couldn’t let that man turn my son into anything like him. Then, I ran back indoors and I just broke down. I didn’t move from where I was on the kitchen floor ‘till I heard Blake and Michael Gardiner arguing the next morning when they found him. Thank God Blake was up and about early. Those dreams he was having sort of did more good than harm the end. Tom was laughing with Frost about them too. I wish to God I hadn’t mentioned them to him. Blake told me in confidence.”

  “Why didn’t you call an ambulance, Jacqueline?” Patil asked, looking at her confused. “You’d just knocked your son out, you could have killed him.”

  Jacqueline shook her head. “I have no idea. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had this strange idea in my head that if anybody else became involved until I’d formulated some sort of plan as to what I was going to do then everything would just get ten times worse. I know it sounds insane, but I was trying to protect him. I wasn’t thinking any further ahead than just stopping whatever he was being forced into. If that meant that he had to go to hospital then…”

  Harrison stared at Jacqueline in disbelief. He knew that what she had done was wrong, but he also felt like he knew her and it was well enough to know that however misguided her intentions, she would have only have done it to protect her son. She looked utterly broken, as if her whole world had collapsed around her. For the first time since discovering who Tom’s father was, Harrison felt relieved that he had apparently recovered from his attack.

  “So, tell me about Thomas Frost. How did you meet him?”

  “Many years ago,” Jacqueline said, appearing to shudder. “I was living in Manchester, as it turns out, not all that far from Blake. We never crossed paths of course, but I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been, never telling Blake that we used to come from the same city. I know what an effect Thomas Frost had on his life, how was I supposed to tell him that I was once in a relationship with him? I swear to you, I had no idea what he was like when I first met him. He was charming, he was eloquent, good sense of humour, even quite the looker back then. I look at pictures of him now and I feel sick that I ever let him anywhere near me.”

  “And he’s Tom’s father?” Patil asked slowly.

  Jacqueline looked down at the ground, but said nothing.

  “Jacqueline?”

  Harrison narrowed his eyes as he watched Jacqueline. There was clearly something she was holding back.

  “Come on, Jacqueline,” Patil said. “It’s time to be honest. We can’t help you if you don’t start telling us the truth.”

  Jacqueline sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I feel like all I’ve ever done since that boy was born is try and protect him. I know it doesn’t look like that at the minute but…”

  “Jacqueline, come on.”

  She took a deep, shaky breath. “There’s only one person other than me that knows what I’m about to say to you. Thomas Frost thinks he’s Tom’s father. I mean, why do you think he’s called Tom? He was obsessed with the idea of passing his name down.”

  “But he isn’t?”

  “Whatever happens, Mini, promise me that he will never find this out.”

  “Find what out?” Patil coaxed. “Come on, Jacqueline, you’re doing really well. Just tell me.”

  “It became clear to me quite early on in our relationship that there was something wrong with Frost,” Jacqueline said quietly. “Something angry, I’d even use the word ‘deranged’. I became quite close to his father in the early days, to the point where I was closer to him than I was to Frost. He could see something in Frost too. His wife, Frost’s mother, had died long ago and he had just brought him up on his own.

  “Anyway, Frost used to disappear sometimes, doing God only knows what, I dread to think knowing what we know now. Sometimes it would be overnight, sometimes a few days. Me and his dad, we got talking one night, we opened a bottle of wine that turned into two, that turned into three and, well…I’m sure you can hazard a guess at what happened.”

  “You slept with Frost’s father?”

  “It was a drunken mistake,” Jacqueline said with another sigh. “Then a few weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant. By then, there’s no two ways about it, I was scared of Frost. There was no way I was about to tell him that the baby I was expecting wasn’t his.”

  “And you’re sure about that? Tom definitely isn’t Frost’s son?”

  “Positive,” Jacqueline replied. “The dates didn’t work out otherwise. I just failed to tell Frost how many weeks gone I was. With good reason. Throughout my pregnancy, he became more erratic, angrier. One night, he got drunk and told me that if he ever found out that I’d cheated on him with anybody, that he’d kill me with his bare hands and if Tom wasn’t his that he’d do the same to him. Then he went out and got himself arrested for attacking this young woman in the street. He got released with a caution, presumably because he didn’t hurt her that badly, I don’t know. But I knew from then that he could never find out. About a month after Tom was born, I packed up all my stuff while Frost was out on one of his disappearing acts and just left. Never showed up at my job, never set foot in Manchester ever again. I sofa surfed for a little while, then saw about a cottage in Harmschapel. Cost me every penny of anything I’d ever saved but I got it and then I met my Stuart here and that was that. We raised Tom together like a proper family.”

  Harrison shook his head in disbelief. The thought that Jacqueline had been living her life constantly looking over her shoulder in case Frost somehow found her made him want to reach through the glass and hug her. He could barely imagine the relief she must have felt when Frost was all over the news having been arrested, especially when she could have been so close to being one of his victims herself.

  “So who is Tom’s father?” Patil asked. “What’s his name?”

  But as Jacqueline replied, the door to the side room opened and Harrison found Angel standing over him, his face stern and his stare steely.

  “Mr Baxter,” he said quietly. “What, may I ask, are you doing in here?”

  Harrison stood up quickly. “I’m sorry, Mr Angel. I really am. I just needed to know what was going on. Blake’s in danger and I needed to find out what was happening. I haven’t heard that much, honestly. I don’t really know anything just…”

  Angel held his hand up and Harrison was immediately silenced as if Angel had the power to suddenly make him stop talking.

  “We will discuss this breaching of privacy in a moment,” Angel said. “For now, I suggest you come with me.”

  “For what?” Harrison asked.

  Angel raised his eyebrows. “I was under the impression you wished for me to explain to you what was going on?”

  Harrison merely nodded.

  “Then follow me.”

  Harrison immediately rose to his feet and followed Angel through the station. As they passed the reception, Angel glared at Darnwood who appeared to have just realised where Harrison had disappeared to and was looking sheepish as she placed her sudoku puzzle out of sight.

  Eventually, they came to Angel’s office and the door was closed.

  “Take a seat, Mr Baxter,” Angel said, appearing to glide a
round the desk towards his own chair.

  Harrison perched himself nervously at the end of the chair, trying to work out how he was going to tell Blake that he had managed to get himself arrested by his boss.

  “Let me begin by telling you that under any other circumstances, you would currently be facing a very serious charge,” Angel said. “As I am sure DS Harte has explained to you at some point, police confidentiality is extremely important, in fact, vital to the smooth running of any investigation, especially one as sensitive as this.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Harrison said nervously. “I’m just really worried about Blake, I haven’t heard from him since he arrived in Manchester.”

  “I understand your concern,” Angel continued. “So, allow me to explain to you as best I can what is going on at the moment. Please remember though, that as far as anybody else other than DS Harte, or anybody at this station is concerned, this information is confidential. The only reason I am telling you is because you have a right to know because it is your partner that we are discussing and he happens to be a senior officer at my station. Is that understood?”

  Again, Harrison nodded.

  “For the past few months, we have had an officer working here undercover,” Angel began. “You may be aware of PC Lisa Fox?”

  “The officer who Matti…”

  “Yes,” cut in Angel briskly. “Except she is not a police constable, she is actually a Detective Inspector for the Criminal Investigation Department in Manchester. She had been investigating Tom Patterson for a number of months now because it was becoming increasingly clear that Thomas Frost was conversing with somebody in prison. Nobody was quite sure how, we have obviously just discovered that it was via a secreted mobile phone. As far as anybody knew when he was first arrested, Thomas Frost only had one son, a man called Simon who now lives in Australia. When Tom started visiting Frost in prison, authorities became slightly suspicious, especially after everything that happened with Kerry Nightingale recently because of a new visitor to Frost.”

  Harrison remembered Kerry’s death because of a crazed fan of Frost going to visit him in prison and effectively being entrapped into becoming a killer on his behalf. It had been a case Blake had been working on very soon after the pair of them had become a couple.