by Nick Oldham
Observing him was Diane Daniels, a detective sergeant on FMIT, who was on a slow recovery trajectory from serious gunshot wounds received in the line of duty the previous year. She’d been critically injured, almost died, and was still too weak to return to work. She was sitting in the bow window of the pub, her legs stretched out across the long seat, watching alternately Henry’s antics and the herd of deer grazing brazenly on the village green out front.
As the pandemic bit into the human population and everything had ground to an abrupt stop, wildlife from the surrounding countryside seemed to sense the opportunity to invade areas normally shunned because of unpleasant people.
‘Haven’t seen Horace today, must be hiding,’ Diane said. She was sipping a cup of green tea flavoured with orange and ginger and was referring to the huge red deer stag which frequented the area and was regularly seen during the pandemic strutting cockily through the village streets. Henry had called him Horace and the name had stuck.
‘He’ll be down.’
Henry overstretched himself slightly and almost lost his balance, making Diane lurch towards him to rescue him if he fell – a conditioned reflex, but a move she could never have completed if Henry had gone flying. She winced in agony.
‘Sorry,’ he apologized.
‘You’re too bloody old to be going up ladders,’ she chided him, getting comfortable again.
‘Needs must.’
Diane turned to look back out of the window and saw Horace emerge from woodland on the opposite side of the green. ‘Ooh, he’s here,’ she said happily, watching the magnificent animal wade across the stream and bound up on to the green where, muscles shimmering, he surveyed the grazing females, most of which seemed to give him sidelong coquettish looks. ‘Looks like he means business,’ Diane commented. ‘I quite envy those ladies.’ She gave Henry a wistful look.
He didn’t respond to the jibe.
His mobile phone, which was on the table in front of Diane, began to ring. He knew it was his rather than hers – which lay alongside – because of the ringtone. For a while he had stopped using Rolling Stones songs but had resumed and now ‘Living in a Ghost Town’ sounded out loudly, with Jagger’s wailing vocals a very appropriate soundtrack to the pandemic gripping the world.
Diane winced again as she leaned forwards, tilting the phone to see who was calling.
‘Rik Dean … should I answer it?’
Now that she was on FMIT, Rik was her boss, but he was also Henry’s brother-in-law and former colleague. Henry had identified Rik as a good detective many years before and had got him on to CID way back; he had moved up through the ranks without any further assistance from Henry and had finally stepped into Henry’s shoes on FMIT as Henry retired. It was something that still left a sour taste in Henry’s mouth, but he was learning to live with it.
‘Nah,’ Henry said from his perch.
‘It might be important. It might be to do with … y’know?’ Diane said.
The phone continued to ring. Henry liked the tune.
She was referring to the investigation Henry had become involved in which had resulted in Henry and a guy called Steve Flynn bursting into a deadly hostage situation in Rik’s house and shots being fired. Even now, months later, the legal and court wranglings were still trundling on with no end in sight. Henry expected Crown Court dates soon and a trial that would be long, aggressive and emotional.
That said, Henry also enjoyed winding Rik up.
‘If it’s important, he’ll call back or leave a message.’
He did ring again about half an hour later when Henry had had enough of painting and had moved to sit alongside Diane in the window with a fresh brew each as they watched the wildlife. Horace had disappeared, but the herd was still there.
‘How’re you feeling, babe?’ Henry asked her, probably for the tenth time that day. Since the shooting and the time spent in hospital, she had been staying at The Tawny Owl under Henry’s watchful, overprotective gaze, plus the care of the local GP, Dr Lott, who had taken her on board as a personal case, not least because he was a Tawny Owl regular and wanted to keep on Henry’s good side, as did many of the villagers.
She sat up again and Henry watched her flexing everything from her neck down. She winced again and finally declared, ‘Better each day.’
Then the phone rang. Henry answered this time and put it on speakerphone so Diane could eavesdrop.
‘I knew you wouldn’t answer first time,’ Rik Dean barked without precursor.
‘What do you want, Rik? Is court coming up?’
‘No, not much happening in the justice system with the pandemic.’
‘Nothing new there. OK, so what do you want?’
‘How’s Diane?’
‘I just asked her that – doing as well as can be expected when recovering from a near-death experience.’
‘Good. Hey! Y’know – tell her not to hurry back.’
‘She isn’t going to.’
‘No, no, you’re right.’
‘So what do you want? You got my sister, you got my job,’ Henry teased him. ‘This isn’t just a welfare check, is it?’
‘No,’ he hesitated. ‘Look, Henry, I know I keep pestering you …’
‘Yes, you do,’ Henry interrupted him. ‘And yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, I’ve thought about it. I need the money for the business and to keep myself in the luxury to which I have become accustomed. I’ll do a six-month contract.’
When Rik had managed to entice Henry back for a very short spurt the year before, because Henry hadn’t really wanted to do it, he had stuck out for an extortionate amount of money – and got it. Now he was prepared to accept the going rate, whatever that was, for civvies in that role.
Henry could almost imagine Rik blinking in astonishment.
‘Really?’
‘Yep.’
‘That would be great because one of my cold case investigators just upped and left and we’re a bit short.’
‘Cold case? Not ongoing ones?’
‘Cold case,’ Rik confirmed.
Henry had a little moment’s thought about it, then said, ‘OK.’
‘You’ll be working under the DS based in the FMIT block at Hutton.’
‘DS who?’
‘Blackstone. I’m sure you’ll get along like a house on fire.’ And with that, Rik hung up.
Henry looked at Diane. ‘You know this DS Blackstone?’
‘Oh yeah.’ And she began to giggle.
It took a while for things to fall into place, with the result that Henry’s first day as a Cold Case Civilian Investigator actually coincided with the tentative reopening of The Tawny Owl under pretty strict but seemingly ever-changing government guidelines to be adhered to by pubs reopening for business following the COVID lockdown. That was why he was up particularly early.
There was a much-reduced service, but he still wanted to be open for the breakfast trade, and as soon as he unlocked the front door, two local gamekeepers came in, sat at a table and ordered the Tawny Full English which they habitually ate every day prior to going to work on a local estate, but hadn’t been able to do so for several months.
When it was time for Henry to set off for work (a thought that slightly appalled him, not least because he was returning to a world in which he had to ask someone for permission to take a day off), he had to be shunted out by Ginny who insisted she could manage things. Henry knew this but it was still a wrench to get into his new Audi A5 and head for the motorway.
Blackstone tore off the car park, leaving marks on the tarmac, but slowed as she drove along the drive from the training school towards headquarters, then out through the exit under the rising barriers.
Henry opened the Clanfield file and fished out the meagre contents.
Before he had a chance to start reading, Blackstone said, ‘Stranger rape from ten years ago; ten-year-old girl approached by a youth on the banks of the River Ribble near Avenham Park in Preston.
Dragged into bushes, raped at least twice, half strangled, but survived.’
Henry forced himself to think, remember. Then it came to him. ‘She was called Melanie … Melanie Wooton, school kid on her way home.’
‘Good memory.’
‘Big investigation … a few suspects thrown into the pot … pretty good e-fit of the offender if I recall. Wasn’t one of my jobs, though.’
‘Very good memory. So what were you doing at the time?’
‘Chasing terrorists, I think. I remember the girl was very badly traumatized.’
‘Very badly, which was only to be expected. Horrific ordeal. I think the force did a pretty good job with her in terms of support,’ Blackstone said.
‘But no arrests.’
‘No DNA matches – although the lad’s spunk is still on file, which makes it look like the offender didn’t have, and still doesn’t, a criminal record or cautions.’
‘So why has this been resurrected?’ Henry asked.
‘It hasn’t really.’
Henry arched his eyebrows.
‘Not officially; not officially as in “Please look at this, DS Blackstone, because some new evidence has come to light”. I just want to look into it, is why it’s been resurrected, as you say,’ she admitted.
Henry shrugged. ‘OK.’
‘I remember it happening, too,’ Blackstone said. ‘I wasn’t involved, either. I was based in Lancaster back then, but I read newspaper reports, spoke to detectives on the job and it sort of resonated with me. When I landed this godforsaken job on the CCU, I checked up, saw it had never been solved, and there it was, stacked up, festering away and no one’s even looked at it for five years, far as I can tell. I thought I would.’
‘And you’ve uncovered something?’
‘On a wing and a prayer,’ she said.
They were on the road into Preston now, driving along the newly built by-pass towards the city.
Blackstone explained that the offender, a white male, maybe around fourteen to sixteen years, with no previous criminal convictions due to the lack of a DNA match, was probably a local resident and may have known or stalked the victim (although she maintained she did not recognize him). She went on to say that it was unlikely this would be a first offence, so Blackstone had done a couple of things.
First – and this impressed Henry – she had drawn a circle on a map with a compass of a two-mile radius of where the rape had occurred and noted the name of every street and road within that area. She had then looked at the voters’ register which listed the occupants of every house, from ten years ago up to and including the current list.
She had cross-referenced these details with the house-to-house logs that were completed in the aftermath of the rape, and then meticulously compiled an Excel spreadsheet which included details of all the houses and their inhabitants against what was recorded on the logs.
‘Obviously, it’s not that scientific,’ she admitted as they crossed the bridge over the River Ribble just before rising up to Preston itself. ‘Thing is, and you’ll know this, sometimes cops doing house-to-house enquiries are not always as meticulous as they should be because it can get a bit tedious, and, of course, there is always the possibility of residents lying to them, believe it or not.’
‘What were you looking for?’ Henry asked, intrigued.
‘Well, basically,’ she said, banging on the horn and swerving the Mini around another driver who had the temerity to signal well in advance before pulling out in front of her. ‘Dickhead,’ she snarled. ‘Anyway, if the offender was a lad under voting age, which would seem to be the case, his name would not have appeared on the voters’ list at that time, and, don’t get me wrong, I know people move home all the time … anyway, I just kept looking for males appearing on subsequent voters’ lists in the streets in the area, males who have obviously turned eighteen at some time in the last ten years.’
Henry nodded, got the logic.
‘Not rocket science, as they say,’ she admitted.
‘I take it you found something. A name?’
‘Yep … four households in that compass circle have had male members of the family registered since the offence took place.’
‘Nice one,’ Henry said appreciatively.
‘I’ve already spoken to three and ruled them out for various reasons – not least because all willingly provided DNA samples which cleared them. But I’ve been having a real to-do trying to pin the fourth lad down.’
‘And now you have?’
‘I most certainly have. The original family still live at the same address they did ten years ago – mum, dad, daughter. They were all listed on the voters’ register at the time of the rape. The son’s name appeared on the list four years later, which fits in with the possible age of the offender, if you will.’
‘Fourteen becoming eighteen.’
‘Yep, and he’s still on the register for that address, making him about twenty-four now; however, the son no longer lives with mum, dad and big sister. He left home under a cloud.’
‘What sort of cloud?’
‘One that included violently assaulting his mother – pushed her downstairs, broke her arm.’
‘Not reported?’ Henry guessed.
‘Correct. And he assaulted his sister sexually over the years, though never raped her, apparently.’
‘Also not reported?’
‘Correct also.’
‘And the father?’
‘He’s on the voters’ register, but has not been with the mother for years.’
‘And what about the house-to-house?’ Henry asked.
‘The mum doesn’t remember the police calling, even though the form says they did … not sure if I want to go down that route, though,’ Blackstone confessed and eyed Henry. As she drove along, she unwrapped a stick of chewing gum which she slid into her mouth.
‘Hmm.’ Henry thought about that. The implication would be that it might unearth the falsification of a document and land someone in deep trouble for claiming they had done a job which they hadn’t. Henry was slightly conflicted about it, but said nothing.
‘Tch! Families!’ Blackstone tutted, having moved on. ‘Anyway, the lad gets kicked out when he was nineteen, but the family never kept track of the little shit’s whereabouts, had nothing to do with him. Thing is, I’ve also looked at all sexual offences committed by strangers in the Preston area for the last six years and there is an intermittent series of indecent assaults which have been growing in the severity of violence used but have, unfortunately, left no DNA behind. Strangling. Girls dragged into trees, gloved fingers inserted, plus some indecent exposures. The descriptions fit an older version of our rapist. See the file.’
Henry sifted through the paperwork as Blackstone explained, ‘I got the e-fit guy to do a bit of ageing, best guess, adding ten years to the original e-fits.’
Henry was again impressed.
‘His name is Ellis Clanfield. He’s on jobseeker’s allowance, which is how I found him. He lives alone in a grot-box bedsit just off the city centre; I’m not saying it’s our guy, but if nothing else, I’m going to get his DNA for elimination today … but I just have this’ – Blackstone juddered her shoulders – ‘feeling. And if it is him, we need to get him off the streets because I suspect that if we don’t, Mr Christie, the next time we find any DNA, it’ll be on a dead victim.’
‘Call me Henry.’
‘Henry.’
‘Pretty good hunting ground for a sexual predator,’ Blackstone said as she pulled up on a less than salubrious cobbled street in the east of Preston, quite close to the city centre, not far from where the original rape had taken place.
Henry understood what she meant.
From his own knowledge of the area, he remembered there were a couple of primary schools, a secondary school and a college nearby, and a maze of back streets as well as a plethora of grotty businesses; it was a vicinity in which a fairly clever offender could easily go to ground without too much trouble.
A stalker’s paradise, he thought, and an area in need of much development.
‘I’m not going to play funny buggers with this guy. I’m not going to play word or mind games with him. I’m going to tell him exactly where I stand and that I expect his full cooperation in providing a DNA sample, and if I don’t like the look or feel of him, I’m lifting him.’
‘Best way,’ Henry said.
‘Mask up, Zorro.’
They walked along the street.
‘He’s in a flat over a tattoo parlour … you could’ve guessed, really,’ Blackstone said.
‘Course he is.’
‘So why are you coming back, Henry?’ she asked him, her face mask muffling her voice. ‘Can’t be short of dosh, surely? Not on your humungous pension.’
‘I was asked,’ Henry said, ‘and the money will be useful.’
‘Fair dos.’
‘And you’re an investigator down, I’m informed.’
‘Oh, yeah, that wanker.’
There was obviously a story to tell there, Henry thought, but he didn’t push it because he’d already had an inkling from his earlier meeting with Rik Dean who’d alluded to a personality clash between the recently departed investigator and the CCU DS, who turned out to be Blackstone and who seemed to Henry, even in these early moments, to be an abrasive whirlwind and a little quirky to boot. Then he found himself feeling uncomfortable at labelling her like this, wondering if he would have pigeon-holed a man as quickly.
There was no doubting, though, that she came across as a very determined character who took no bullshit.
And he was also very impressed by her because even if this inquiry into Clanfield came to nothing, what she’d done to track him down should be applauded. It was this kind of determined, unflashy, basic detective work that Henry had loved seeing from the people who worked for him in the past. Bread-and-butter stuff that caught villains.
The tattoo parlour was on a street consisting of small, terraced houses, most converted into flats, and some shops, including the tattoo parlour, an off-licence and what looked like a brothel.