Dying Fall

by Patricia Hall

  "You going to United on Saturday," one of the boys asked, making the question into a challenge. Mower shook his head.

  "I'll be working at the playground Saturday," he said non-committally.

  "Young Terry won't be there," one of the youths said. "They'll all be going to t'match with their mates. First o't'season. They rate this new striker they've got. Played for Crystal Palace. Have you seen him?" Mower had found no way of disguising his southern accent and freely admitted to being a Londoner when challenged.

  "Nope, I'm a Wimbledon man myself," he said truthfully, knowing that this would provoke the derisive laughter which followed and, he hoped, defuse the situation. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Sue coming back towards him over the grass, closely followed by the half dozen women she had been talking to, and there was a determination in her walk and, glimpsed fleetingly, an expression on her face which caused him some concern. He slid to his feet and went to meet her.

  "Ready?" he asked as she approached.

  "Not quite," she said. "This is Debbie Renton, little Josie's aunt. She's got something she wants to ask you." Mower's concern deepened slightly. He was uncomfortably aware that the boys he had been talking to were still just behind him, engaged in some horse-play round the bench, while the women, evidently angry, ranged themselves in front of him, accusation in their eyes.

  He glanced at Sue but realised with some disillusion from her frozen expression that he would find no support there. Nor, he knew, would there ever be again if he were forced to answer what he guessed they would want to know: whether he was in fact a policeman. He turned back to Mrs. Renton, who stood with solid, freckled arms folded across an ample bosom which strained her cotton dress to its limit, implacable suspicion in her eyes.

  "What is it?" he asked, with a tentative smile, switching on all the charm he dared although he guessed it would not avail him much.

  "We want to know what you were doing round the back o't' flats Friday tea-time," Debbie Renton said aggressively, her eyes like small glass marbles of icy blue in her flushed and sweaty face. It was not the question he had expected and it caught him by surprise. It took him seconds to realise what lay behind it and when he did he was horrified. He caught Sue's eye in desperate appeal but got no response.

  "You were seen hanging around," she said. "Is it true?"

  Mower thought fast.

  "Who saw me?" he asked, playing for time.

  "Never mind that," Mrs. Renton said angrily. "Someone up on t'top floor were watching, that's all. So what were you playing at?"

  "I did see a couple of kids home at about five. They said they'd be OK on their own but I wasn't sure. I thought it was better to keep an eye on them." He half turned to Sue, appealing for her help. "Come on, Sue, you know me better than that," he said. "What they're suggesting is crazy. I wouldn't lay a finger on a child." He knew the denial would sound hollow. He had heard it often enough himself from men who had undoubtedly laid far more than their fingers on children.

  "I don't know you that well," Sue said, her dark eyes full of suspicion. "I never know men, if it comes to that. When you got this job did the committee run a police check on you?"

  "Yes, of course," Mower said, bitter at the irony of the question.

  "You should bugger off this estate," one of the watching women said belligerently. "We can do wi'out strangers here." Sue looked at him, a hint of doubt now in her eyes, and Mrs. Renton was not to be mollified.

  "We don't know owt about him," she said, her voice rising with anger. "He were there watching little girls and an hour later our Josie were attacked. I want him down at t'bloody nick, else I'll not be responsible for what I'll do to him." She made a furious chopping motion with her hand that froze Mower's blood.

  Afterwards he had no doubt that he could have calmed the women down, if necessary by agreeing to go to police HQ with one of them, and ended the embarrassment that way. But Debbie Renton's outrage had evidently ignited anger which neither she nor he could control. The next thing he knew he had been sent spinning awkwardly to the ground at the feet of his accusers by a blow from behind.

  "Bastard," shrieked the youth he had been talking to minutes earlier, following up his initial assault by aiming a tremendous kick at Mower's head. If it had landed where the boy intended Mower would have been unlikely to take any more conscious part in the proceedings, but he rolled to one side, taking the force out of the kick which merely grazed his shoulder.

  "Leave it out," he yelled at the teenager as he scrambled to his feet, but the boy was past listening, and his mates backed him up by forming a threatening circle in front of Mower while the group of women watched in implacable silence, like tricoteuses at the guillotine, effectively blocking his escape to the rear. The youth ran at him again, head down, and forewarned this time, Mower with his greater height and strength met him in a bear hug which allowed the boy only to hit him awkwardly around the back and kidneys which he proceeded to do with enthusiasm as the two of them swayed wildly between the watchers.

  “Sue," Mower shouted desperately, as he dodged a leg which another youth had thrust out in the hope of tripping him up. "For Christ's sake sort them out. I'll go and see the Bill." The appeal was costly because it distracted him for long enough to allow another of the youths to come round behind him and land a vicious punch which brought him to his knees. He could taste blood in his mouth now and felt a moment of panic. If he could not get away, he thought, he would be faced with a simple choice between doing one of these kids some serious damage or having some serious damage done himself. Either way his cover would be irrevocably blown, the weeks he had worked on the estate wasted and Michael Thackeray infuriated.

  The boy he was holding tried to head butt him and again Mower was quick enough to dodge the full force of the blow which caught him on the temple. With a struggle, he got back to his feet, still holding his first assailant tightly as a human shield against the rest, though very aware that the other youngsters were growing bolder and if they co-ordinated their attack the fight would escalate from unpleasant to extremely nasty.

  Suddenly he saw his opportunity. He had spun round, with the first boy still flailing about in his unforgiving grip, just as all three of his friends appeared directly in front of him at once. With a tremendous heave he pushed his first attacker straight at them, knocking them all off balance for one crucial second. He put his head down and ran.

  More by luck than judgement he found himself heading along the grass parallel to the main road which led towards the centre of the town, and even as his attackers regrouped themselves with yells of fury not far behind him he saw his salvation as a small white VW Beetle started up at the kerb outside the old people's bungalows on the other side of the road and headed in his direction. Mower dashed heedlessly across the road, causing Laura Ackroyd to brake sharply. He flung open the passenger door and got in, fighting for air as he slumped into the passenger seat.

  "Get me out of here," he said, though Laura, seeing four or five hefty youths approaching at a menacing run needed no telling. She accelerated away, leaving Mower's pursuers standing in the middle of the road screaming obscenities after them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kevin Mower washed the blood off his temple and squinted at himself in the mirror in the police headquarters' wash-room. He went to his locker and took out a long-sleeved polo shirt and a pair of jeans which he put on over his tee-shirt and shorts and inspected the effect. For the moment, he thought, he could explain the graze away and avoid any chance that Thackeray might pull him off the estate for his own protection before his time was up.

  "Some irate husband caught up with you at last, Kevin?" sergeant Phil Groves said, coming into the room and peering with interest at Mower's injury.

  "Sod off," Mower said irritably, although in truth the question uppermost in his mind was exactly who had just caught up with him. Who, he wondered, had claimed to see him from the top floor loitering at the back of the flats and filled Mrs. R
enton's mind with that implacable suspicion. And was it just coincidence that a gang of violent lads had happened to be close enough to add their weight to the angry advice that he should get off the estate and not come back. Even Sue Raban, he thought, had been curiously reluctant to intervene on his behalf. Had he, he wondered, been deliberately warned off and if so who exactly was doing the warning?

  Adjusting his shirt collar so that it concealed the most easily detectable marks on his neck, he strolled into the main CID office where a battalion of detectives was collating information on the escalating situation at the Heights. His appearance led to the usual banter about his under-cover role, but Michael Thackeray was unsmiling when he noticed his presence and nodded him into his office.

  "Anything new?" he asked. Mower shook his head.

  "Not much, guv, but I thought I'd better check in with you after last night's episode. Word up there is that it was another petrol bomb."

  "Word is right," Thackeray said grimly. "It's all in the Gazette. With a leader calling for police heads to roll if the anarchy isn't brought under control soon." He waved at a copy of that afternoon's paper which lay on his desk with Laura Ackroyd's graphic description of the previous night's events lavishly displayed across the front page.

  "And no-one saw anything unusual?" Mower asked.

  "Not a thing, apart from a car leaving soon after the fire started, but that could be completely innocent. Our man on surveillance failed to get a proper look at it anyway because he was distracted by the explosion on the top floor of Bronte. I increasingly get the feeling that someone up there is playing games with us," Thackeray said.

  "You know Jackie Sullivan was warned to drop her campaign?" Mower asked. Thackeray nodded without enthusiasm.

  "Someone is trying very hard to preserve the status quo up there," he said. "And if the child hadn't died in the fire they might well have succeeded. The women would probably have decided their campaign wasn't worth the grief it was bringing them."

  "They're winning hearts and minds," Mower said soberly. "All I've picked up today is that Jackie Sullivan got no more than she deserved. She should have kept her mouth shut, in other words. Rough justice but Wuthering's inimitable own. And then there's the bloody vigilantes waiting to pounce on anyone they think has designs on their kids. That could be very nasty too." He had just had a bitter taste of just how nasty, he thought.

  "Jack Longley reckons the whole place will explode if we don't come up with something soon," Thackeray said. "What happened to your head?" he added sharply, noticing the raw patch on Mower's temple for the first time.

  "Some little Vinny Jones look-alike brought me down in a football game, guv," Mower lied easily. "They reckon because I'm twice as big as them anything goes in the way of a tackle."

  "Good job they don't play rugby. You'd be black and blue all over," the chief inspector said unsympathetically.

  Mower suppressed a groan at that, only too aware of the aching bruises across his back and shoulders where he had been pummelled in what had been more like an no-holds-barred wrestling match than anything known to either football code.

  "Anyway, now you're here you can do me a report to justify your wages at that holiday camp you're running," Thackeray went on. "And I'll fill you in on what's going down on Thursday when the council's planning to clear Bronte House of unauthorised elements. I'll want you back here for that. There's bound to be umpteen drug arrests and I want every single one of them questioned about the joy-riding, and the assaults and the petrol bombing. You can liaise with your friends at the drug squad." That was a sore point with Mower, who had been ambitious to transfer there and had been rejected.

  "Sir," he said stonily, unwise enough to let his displeasure show. Thackeray pounced.

  "Don't play the prima donna with me, sergeant," he said. "This undercover ploy was your idea and it's come up with damn all. I want you back on the strength here on Thursday morning."

  “Sir," Mower said quickly. "I think I'm running out of rope up there anyway."

  There was a knock at the door and Val Ridley poked her head round. Thackeray nodded her in.

  "Something a bit odd, sir," she said, waving a sheaf of computer print-outs in front of her. "John Stansfield - the chap you met on the top floor yesterday? I checked with the DVLC in Swansea as you asked and there's neither a driving license or a car license issued to anyone of that address in that name. In fact nothing at that address at all. And according to the tenants' list that flat is let to a Bill Stansfield. It may be nothing..."

  "Check it out," Thackeray said. "It may be something. It's the little things that often turn out to be significant. You never know. And cross-check against the search of the garages too. He definitely said he had an old banger."

  Mower typed out his report, trying to make next to nothing into something himself as he catalogued the detail of what he feared were many wasted days, professionally at least. He still had hopes on the personal front, or had thought he did until he had caught sight of Sue's disturbingly impassive face as she had watched him being beaten up. Now he was not so sure.

  On his way out of the station, he met the community constable from the Heights, Alan Davies, plodding wearily up the steps in shirt-sleeves.

  "Would you do something for me, mate?" he asked, ignoring the older man's disapproving glance at his unshaven face and grazed forehead. "Some biddy up at Wuthering near enough accused me of watching little girls for nefarious purposes this afternoon. That's not an idea I want spread around while I'm still working up there. Could you put it about that I've been to the nick to make a statement and have been cleared of any suspicion?"

  "Bloody play-acting," Davies grumbled.

  "Come on, Alan," Mower said, suddenly feeling as weary as Davies looked as his bruises reminded him even more insistently of their presence. "It may be play-acting but it's my neck on the block if it goes wrong." And his neck, he thought ruefully, had already taken enough of a hammering for one case.

  "Come on Alan. We're all on the same side."

  "I suppose," Davies said grudgingly. "Aye well, I'll see what I can do. I'll put the word about. They might have your goolies else, and that'd never do."

  Laura was writing her report for Case Re-opened. She was sitting at her kitchen table with a portable computer in front of her, the window wide open and the sound of bird-song and laughing children wafting in from the long gardens outside. She had flung off her office suit when she had arrived home and was wearing nothing over her bra and pants except a voluminous white cotton top, half-way between a tee-shirt and a dress. She had loosened her hair from the clips which had barely restrained it by the end of a hectic day in the office, and it fell in a tangle of copper curls around her face. She looked like a rather serious flower-child as she frowned slightly at what she had written.

  It was a perfect summer evening but her mood was sombre. It had been a long and stormy day at the Gazette, with Ted Grant in one of his most objectionably censorious moods. The editorial which had excoriated the police in a Force 10 tabloid gale of invective for not bringing peace and tranquility back to the troubled Heights had been mild compared to the venom Grant had poured privately onto the whole pantheon of villains he believed responsible for social collapse on the present scale. Architects, planners, rock musicians, parents and teachers, social workers and Labour politicians – which was stretching it more than a bit for a party out of office for more than a decade – plus a whole top ten of 1960s demons from Dr. Benjamin Spock to Mick Jagger, all came in for scorn and derision as he paced up and down the news-room in a pantomime fury which Laura guessed he had modelled on some high profile London editor of his vague acquaintance. In the end, as he heaped blame for some misdemeanour on Jane Archer, a diffident young trainee who often bore the brunt of his rages, Laura's own less than certain temper had snapped.

  "Come on Ted, she's here to learn," she had said, standing behind Jane with a protective hand on her shoulder and trying to see which particular s
entence on her computer screen had sparked Ted's wrath.

  "She's been here almost a year and seems to have learned nowt," Grant snapped back. "I'm sick and tired of arty-farty young graduates off some student paper who think they know it all."

  "It's an easy enough mistake," Laura had said. The remark may have been reasonable but it was certainly not circumspect. If it served its purpose in deflecting Grant's attention from the bowed head of the unfortunate Jane, who was singularly ill-equipped to deal with his aggression, it did little for Laura's own future prospects. Turning an even deeper shade of purple, Grant had waved her into his office and proceeded to attack her qualifications, her competence, and her ancestry, being an old antagonist of her grandmother's in her post-war political hey-day.

  "It's a bloody shame you didn't stay in Portugal with your father when you broke your bloody ankle for all the use you are here," Grant concluded, his eyes bulging and his scalp glowing through the thin covering of grey hair.

  "And it's a pity you didn't stay on the kind of London rag which thrives on your sort of bullying," Laura came back with a vehemence to match her boss's before spinning on her heel and leaving, slamming the door behind her with a finality that shook the glazing in its frame. The newsroom outside was uncannily silent and she knew that the assembled staff had been listening avidly to the confrontation.

  "One day you'll go too far," the chief sub Frank Powers had hissed as she had swept past his desk, head high, cheeks flaming.

  "One day he'll go too far," Laura said. Jane's chair was empty, her computer screen winking away inconsequentially to itself. Laura hurried to the cloakroom where as she expected she found Jane weeping quietly into a paper towel.

  "I'm not cut out for this," she said.