Suspect

by Nicholas Rhea

  ‘There’s a nice riverside pub about a mile out of Lainby,’ she said. ‘How about a bar snack instead of cooking at home?’

  ‘Great idea. I just hope I don’t get a call-out! I’ve left Paul Larkin in charge.’ He grimaced. ‘Right, sweaters on, boots laced up and some cash in my pocket — I’m ready!’

  And so they sallied forth into the North Yorkshire countryside, driving through dales and across the moors until they dropped into Lainby. Parking near the old pack-horse bridge which had spanned the River Keal since the fifteenth century, they left their car and began their walk. Lorraine reckoned it would take half an hour to reach the Trout Inn and they set off, arm in arm, without a care in the world.

  Quite deliberately, they did not discuss the murders. Each recognised that some break from work was essential and they found themselves observing nature about them — identifying birds from their songs before sighting them in the woods beside the river, such as willow warblers, chaffinches and blackbirds, noticing the spraints of an otter, the leap of a salmon, the nest of a green woodpecker and the brilliance of the dragonflies which flew like helicopters over the still waters of deep pools which the river had excavated into the banks at bends and corners.

  ‘It’s a little bit of heaven, isn’t it?’ She clung to his arm, revelling in the freedom and the freshness of the evening.

  ‘I wonder why I never did this before?’ He shrugged. ‘June wasn’t one for exploring the countryside, she favoured towns and shops and theatres…’

  ‘It’s everyone to their own desires,’ she sighed. ‘But this is my way of relaxing. But I see we have company!’ She nodded to indicate someone ahead of them. A man was sitting beside the river, fishing rod high above the surface as he concentrated on the task in hand.

  ‘It’s Vic Hadley,’ he said quietly. ‘So this is where he gets to, eh?’

  ‘We shouldn’t disturb him,’ she suggested.

  ‘We’ll bid him good evening, though,’ Mark said. ‘We can’t just walk past and ignore him…although he’s so engrossed in what he’s doing that he’ll never notice us!’

  As they walked towards the silent fisherman, Mark made a determined effort to speak to Hadley.

  ‘Hello, Vic.’ He halted on the path over where Hadley was sitting. ‘So this is where you get to, eh?’

  ‘Hello, sir.’ There was a warmth in Hadley’s voice now, unlike his unemotional conduct at work. ‘Aye, I love it here. So calm, you can sit for hours and hours and watch the world go by — well, the world of wildlife, that is. Otters, water voles, even foxes will come close by if you sit very still. I’m not too fussed about catching trout, to be honest, it’s just the peace and quiet that appeals to me.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Pemberton sympathised. ‘That’s why Lorraine and I get out for walks like this. My new hobby — a break from police work.’

  ‘There’s a good pub along the river bank.’ Hadley pointed. ‘They do good bar snacks, and the beer’s great!’

  ‘That’s where we’re heading, Vic. Can I buy you a pint? A snack even?’ Quite suddenly, Mark Pemberton was a detective again; he knew he had discovered his means of entry into the secret world of Vic Hadley. The countryside, country life, walks by the river, drinks in country pubs… If he could befriend this lonely, somewhat aloof man, then he might discover more about him. If he and Lorraine could meet him on walks, by the river, on the moors, in social circumstances, then he might elicit something of this man’s life and movements.

  ‘No thanks, sir. I appreciate the offer, but my supper will be ready when I get in — I promised I’d be back in a wee while.’

  ‘OK, well, another time perhaps. Is this your regular place?’

  ‘This river, aye. It’s got trout and salmon — I go for the trout, lovely fish.’

  The float bobbed in the water and Vic said, ‘Looks like a bite,’ and began to gently reel in his line. But the bobbing stopped. ‘Just a wee tickle,’ he grinned. ‘Crafty blighters, trout.’

  And so Pemberton and Lorraine walked away, leaving the untidy, sweatered figure hunched over his rod as he cast yet again into the place where he felt the trout lurked. Leaving him, Lorraine and Mark chattered about nothing in particular, but already Pemberton’s mind was working on his next strategy. This had been a chance meeting, a pleasant one, and for just a moment Hadley had softened. Pemberton began to see that some kind of relationship might develop between himself and Hadley.

  It could be a relationship born of a joint interest in rural matters, and if a false friendship was the cost of finding the truth about those killings, then Pemberton was prepared to befriend this man, or pretend to befriend him. He wondered if he was being a Judas in thinking along these lines; he wondered if a true friend would betray another, even for the sake of law and order. But police work was police work…

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Lorraine observed as they strolled arm in arm beside the gently flowing water.

  ‘Just enjoying the peace and tranquillity,’ he lied, not very convincingly.

  ‘You weren’t going over the murders in that head of yours, were you?’ she demanded. ‘If I know you, you’d be going over the evidence again and again, trying to slot one piece of the jigsaw into place…’

  ‘Or trying to work out ways of trapping the suspect!’

  ‘Trapping the suspect?’ she asked quickly. ‘You mean you’ve got a suspect, Mark? You know who the biker is?’

  She was quick, he realised, too damned quick. He tried to direct the conversation towards the black-suited biker, but she was astute enough to see that he had made a slight error.

  ‘Mark, you said trapping the suspect. That sounds as if you know who you want to trap…’

  ‘A slip of the tongue,’ he muttered.

  ‘You’re hiding something from me.’ She was not going to let this drop now. ‘We said we would never have secrets…’

  His mind was working rapidly. In seeking someone to share the responsibility of investigating Hadley, he began to realise that Lorraine might be just the right person. She was alert, intuitive, dedicated to him and dedicated to her work, and, after all, the decision about his choice was his and his alone. She knew how he thought and how he responded; she knew what angered him and what delighted him.

  A hundred yards along the river there was a bench, placed here in memory of an old lady whose favourite place this was. He pointed to the seat and said, ‘Can I talk shop for a while?’

  ‘Why do you think I brought you out of the office?’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Mark Pemberton, I can read you like a book. I knew something was bothering you… Come along, sit down and tell Aunty Lorraine all about it!’

  There was no one else within sight or sound of them, Hadley now being a good half-mile upstream, and so he settled on the bench as she sat by his side.

  ‘Lorraine, what do you make of Hadley?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Does he worry you?’

  He explained the terrible suspicion that had crossed his mind that afternoon and provided her with his reasons. She listened intently, nodding from time to time and asking Mark how or why he had cause to suspect Inspector Hadley.

  ‘I’ve expressed my concern to the Chief,’ he said. ‘He wants me to investigate Hadley without Hadley realising, just to see if there are any grounds for my suspicions. If there are, then the murder teams would take over the work.’

  ‘Oh Mark, what an awful job!’

  ‘Just now, seeing him on the river bank, I realised I might have to befriend him in order to find out what I want. I can’t say I relish that.’

  ‘But he’ll be suspicious of you, Mark, the minute you start asking questions or following him around. He won’t be fooled by casual encounters, not if they happen with increasing regularity and especially if they’ve not happened before. He’d smell the proverbial rat a mile off! You’d alienate him, Mark, he’d never become your friend. It wouldn’t work.’

  ‘I think I knew that all
along!’ he admitted. ‘Anyway, the Chief wants me to appoint someone to work with me on this. I had no idea who to select — until now. So how about it? Will you help me? Officially, I mean. It’ll mean snooping on a colleague who’s already gone through hell, if we are to believe the official version of events at Millgate supermarket.’

  ‘I wouldn’t begin by assuming he’s guilty,’ she said. ‘I’d want to prove he’s innocent, if indeed he is innocent…’

  ‘So you have doubts, too?’

  ‘Mark, if you have doubts, then I have doubts. I trust your judgement sufficiently well to know you would never lightly entertain such dark thoughts. If you have reason to suspect Hadley of being a killer, then clearly, I want to help you determine the issue, one way or the other.’

  ‘All right. You’ve got the job,’ he said. ‘Starting right now. So having established that, let’s get to that pub and have something to eat. I’m famished.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The following morning’s dawn raids, carried out simultaneously by two police forces upon the homes of all criminals known or suspected to use shotguns, had very satisfying results. Even if the raids did not greatly benefit the murder investigations, they did result in the detection of other crimes. A multiplicity of search warrants had allowed the seizure of any goods believed to be stolen, any unlawful drugs, any illegally held firearms of any description or anything which might be the proceeds of crime. The element of surprise did produce several illegally held revolvers and rifles, the proceeds of several major cases of burglary in country houses and two hauls of dangerous drugs. The outcome was that several people were taken into custody and the year’s crime detection figures would be considerably enhanced.

  So far as sawn-off shotguns were concerned, only two were found. There were several full-length shotguns among the seizures, most of them held without the necessary documentation; of the sawn-off versions, one was in a town terrace house and the other in a coastal village. Each owner was arrested and taken into custody for possession of these illegally altered weapons. They would then have to explain their whereabouts at the time of each murder and submit their guns to ballistic examination. However, neither owned a motor cycle. The gut feeling was that neither man was the killer.

  One of Pemberton’s wishes had been fulfilled because two of the men knocked out of bed at that early hour were convicts from the Millgate supermarket robbery — Roger Pollard and Robert James Sykes — but neither was found in possession of stolen goods or firearms of any kind. The third Millgate supermarket raider, Shaun Gill, driver of the getaway car, had not been in possession of a sawn-off shotgun during that abortive attempt and so he was excused this morning’s visit. Those raids had been carried out before Pemberton arrived at the office — Detective Inspector Larkin had supervised them — and Pemberton’s first task that morning was to check the force’s own list of shotgun certificate holders to see if Hadley was listed. He was. Although Hadley did not require a shotgun certificate or a firearms certificate in order to use guns during the course of his duty, he did need these documents if he used or possessed such firearms in his off-duty moments. He was listed as holding both types of certificate. Any rifles, pistols and revolvers held could be identified by their make, calibre and serial numbers, but these were of no current interest to Pemberton; shotguns, however, were not identified on their certificates and these were of interest. The holder of a shotgun certificate could possess or buy as many shotguns as he or she wished, and none was identified on the certificate. Thus a man with, say, ten shotguns legitimately held might shorten the barrel of one of them, an offence in itself, and no one in authority might know.

  All the shotguns that had been found would now be subjected to close ballistic examination to see if they were linked in any way to the murders.

  It was while Pemberton was dealing with the business of that morning, plus coping with the task of preparing the items for discussion at the daily CID conference, that Lorraine had decided to visit the force welfare officer. This was in Lorraine’s capacity as Pemberton’s special aide in the Hadley enquiry — she wanted to delve into the inspector’s private world but knew she must ease herself into the trust of Mrs Marsden. Mrs Susan Marsden was the force welfare officer; she was a forty-five-year-old former policewoman with experience in social work, nursing and all aspects of the caring professions. The visit was Lorraine’s idea. She had discussed it with Pemberton last night and they had decided a chat with Mrs Marsden might be fruitful.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me.’ Lorraine settled on a chair in the dark office. At the northern side of the building, the gloomy room lacked sunlight, hardly the most suitable place for an office where light and cheeriness were required in abundance. ‘It is confidential, you will understand.’

  ‘Like most of my work,’ commented Mrs Marsden, a plump blonde whose greying roots were exposed.

  ‘Inspector Hadley, Vic…’ Lorraine provided her with the reason for the visit. ‘As you know, he has returned to work, light work, as a therapeutic exercise, and he is working in our department.’

  ‘Yes, I am aware of that — Admin, did notify me through the usual channels and Vic also keeps me informed.’ Her answer was delivered in a curt, sharp tone.

  This cold reception, and the lack of an offer of a cup of tea or coffee, made Lorraine suspect that Mrs Marsden was on her guard. Perhaps the appearance of a detective asking about a man who had been under a heavy cloud of suspicion, albeit two years ago, was likely to give rise to some concern? But Lorraine could cope, she believed.

  ‘I have been asked to look to the welfare of all those on the murder enquiry,’ Lorraine said, thinking this was a good line of introductory chat. ‘It is Mr Pemberton’s idea. I try to identify areas of stress among the teams; some will work themselves literally into the ground if we’re not careful.’

  ‘It happens. And not just in the CID and not just during murder investigations,’ added Mrs Marsden, her cold eyes upon Lorraine. ‘Many other officers do suffer from stress.’

  ‘I know that well enough,’ Lorraine said. ‘But in our case, if I see someone is unhappy or unable to cope, I give advice — which generally entails coming to see you or reducing their work load.’

  ‘Go on, Miss Cashmore.’

  ‘Well, I wanted you to know that we are caring for Inspector Hadley now that he’s with us. We do know of his past problems, that is no secret, and I am not breaching any rules of confidentiality when I mention them.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘So, Mrs Marsden, my reason for coming to see you is to let you know that I shall be keeping an extra eye on Mr Hadley during the present murder investigation. As you know, we are involved in the hunt for a serial killer, along with Langbarugh CID, and although Mr Hadley’s initial task was much lighter, he is now helping us to program current and incoming data into HOLMES. It’s a demanding job — all murder enquiries are, but this one especially. The work is very detailed, and it has to be completed swiftly and accurately. We’ve advised him not to work a full day, and, so far, he has agreed to this; he will continue to work the hours we suggested at the outset. He works the hours he wants; it is something he decides.’

  ‘He did tell me that he enjoys the work,’ and there was just a hint of a smile from Mrs Marsden. ‘I am very pleased with his progress, much of it due to his own determination. I see him every week, you know.’

  ‘I do know the force has been very kind to him,’ Lorraine said. ‘And in return, he’s never let the force down. He’s given one hundred per cent commitment, no days off sick before the Millgate affair, a record of health that shows no days of illness.’

  ‘I agree. Miss Cashmore. He’s not one for taking time off duty through sickness. He was a very sound and reliable officer with a one hundred per cent attendance record until those newspapers began to smear him. But he tells me that work with your department is all very relaxed and friendly, and I can see he is making good progress. He is a very determined and s
trong man, emotionally strong, I mean. Physically as well, I should imagine.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone would argue with that appraisal,’ Lorraine smiled. ‘And I do know that none of the senior officers of the CID has any complaints about him or his work. He appears to know how to relax — we saw him fishing last night, clearly enjoying the solitude it offers.’

  ‘He spends a lot of time fishing, by the river, not the sea,’ said Mrs Marsden. ‘He’s not one for the crowded seaside places. He much prefers the solitude of the river bank. The various therapists and counsellors are delighted he is doing this.’

  ‘One reason for my visit’, continued Lorraine, ‘is to inform you that our current enquiries might trigger off reminders of Millgate. For example, early this morning there was a co-ordinated raid on villains known to use sawn-off shotguns, and two of those visited by our teams were Pollard and Sykes — Vic will associate them with Newton. I cannot guess what effect that might have on Vic Hadley. When their names eventually come through our filing system for entry into HOLMES, Vic might be the one who has to process them. We’re not quite sure how he will react, Mrs Marsden. I wanted you to be aware of these factors, perhaps so that you can notify Mr Hadley’s therapists and counsellors. We want to resist removing him from that task because he’s doing a good job and besides, removal from the work might imply a lack of faith. In his present condition, we do not want him to think we cannot rely on him to cope. Detective Superintendent Pemberton has asked me to say that we are very happy for him to continue working with us, but we don’t want the work he’s doing to create any kind of reversal of his progress. His health, both mental and physical, plus his welfare, must take priority.’

  ‘Is there likely to be any other link between the current murder enquiry and Millgate?’ asked Mrs Marsden. ‘I mean, I’m not very au fait with the sort of things that emerge during an intense murder investigation.’