by L M Krier
‘Speaking of which, anyone who’s not yet chipped in for flowers for Megan and Maurice, I want to send them today, before they think we’ve forgotten them. So come and see me as soon as possible, please,’ Jezza said, her tone stern enough for a couple of them to shift in their seats and mumble something.
‘But back to the subject of your celebrity, boss, before I finally let it drop. If we suddenly get another arson right on our doorstep, will you then consider the possibility that someone is trying to get your attention because of recent publicity? You specifically. Not just the police in general. That it really is personal?’
‘I’m open to any and all possibilities, Jezza. For now, I’d prefer a bit of solid police work rather than pure speculation, please. Jo?’
‘Right, to work,’ Jo told them all. ‘We have the DNA results on the body parts now, boss, I think?’
‘The ones for the body parts are just in, but still not yet those for the cigarette stub from the first arson, although I know Jo’s been chasing those. Our body parts are a match for DNA samples taken from the possessions found at Mr Byrne’s flat. We need to keep in mind that there’s always a slim chance that someone other than Mr Byrne had been using the flat – someone we don’t yet know about – but it seems improbable in the face of no evidence for it. So for now we go on the basis that the remains are his. Of course, still without the head, it’s going to be very difficult to get a positive visual ID from anyone to confirm the hypothesis.’
‘Jezza, I think you and Mike should go and try to track down the cousin in Wythenshawe,’ Jo went on. ‘She’s the only next of kin we know of, so she should be informed first, for one thing. See if there’s anything else at all she can tell us about him that might give us a lead as to who could be behind this. And don’t forget we really need to know about that young girl in the photo. Who she is and what her connection to Byrne is.
‘Eric, you and Amelie keep looking into his background. With your contacts, Eric, if anyone can find out more about him, it will be you.
‘Virgil, how are you getting on with tree contractors?’
‘Slowly. I wouldn’t say no to a hand, if anyone’s free. I’ve been cross-referencing where they’ve been working with the locations of all dump sites to see who’s been nearest to those.’
‘Steve, can you work with Virgil on that for now? We need to start talking to them all and eliminating any we can, as soon as we can.’
‘Especially whoever pruned those London plane trees near the last drop site,’ Ted put in. ‘We don’t yet have any update of what type of tree fibres were found in the wounds on the body, so there might be no link there. The professor did warn me that might take some time because it’s specialised work. But clearly someone with a chainsaw has been working in that particular location recently so knows about it and about access to it.’
‘What about the arsons, boss? What do we need to be focusing on for those?’
‘I’m still waiting on reports to confirm if they were both the same pattern, but we’ll start out as if they were. Meanwhile I’m making arrangements to go and see William Warren, to get a feel for whether or not he could have been innocent of the crime he was convicted of. If we’re possibly looking at a miscarriage of justice. Now I’ve read through the file, I would say the evidence against him isn’t very compelling. It is possible that it wasn’t him who committed the original crime.
‘I’ve also been on to the prison for details of who he’s had contact with over the seven years he’s been inside, and which of those people have since been released. They warned me it’s going to be a substantial list, so there’ll be a lot of routine work there.’
‘I’ve made a start on known arsonists on our patch who are back out,’ Jo told them. ‘I’ll widen it to the whole Force area, in case it’s someone who’s moved here or isn’t living locally, just travelling here to start fires. That list will then need cross-checking against anyone who’s had contact with Warren since he’s been inside.’
‘I’ve been looking some more into Warren’s background, in case it would be helpful,’ Rob O’Connell told him. ‘The mother’s in a home now, quite unfit to be questioned. I spoke to the manager and she says the lady doesn’t know much about anything these days and hardly speaks. But the father is still alive, although he’s moved since the fire. A lot of bad feeling from the neighbours, perhaps understandably, once his son was convicted. If you want someone to talk to him at some point, I can go, if you like?’
Ted nodded his agreement. ‘Go and sound him out first, Rob. See if, with the passage of time, he’s had any more thoughts on the night of the fatal fire. Find out if he visits his son at all. See what their relationship is like.
‘I know you’re all working hard. But we’re a week on in both cases, so we could do with something to show for it.’
‘This is going to sound daft,’ Jezza began. ‘But I asked before whether there could be any link between the arson cases and the body parts, because of the burns injuries we know Byrne had. Now Martha’s uncovered a drag queen in the vicinity of the most recent fire, and one of the limbs found had nail varnish on the toes. Is that putting two and two together and making twelve?’
‘Can forensics give us any more on that toe nail polish from the body part, boss?’ Jo asked. ‘Do you want me to follow that up? See if we can’t get at least a brand and the name of the colour?’
Sergeant Eric Morgan was observant. He never missed a thing. It was what made him a good copper. He may have appeared to be sitting quietly in his customary pose. But his eyes were following everything that was said. Every gesture which anyone made. He saw Amelie’s glance dart from Jo to Virgil and back again at Jezza’s words. She said nothing. But the sergeant filed that information away for later.
‘Mrs Brady? I’m DC Vine, this is DS Hallam, from Stockport Police.’
Jezza and Mike held up their ID for the woman who had opened the door to see. They’d agreed on the drive over to Wythenshawe that Jezza would do the talking to begin with, although she always protested that she wasn’t the tea and sympathy type. Hopefully, as a cousin of Byrne’s who admitted not having been close to him and not staying in touch, the news wouldn’t come as too much of a shock to her.
‘Is it about our Bernie? Has he turned up?’
‘Could we come in, Mrs Brady? Rather than talk on the doorstep?’
‘It’s not good news, then. Yes, well, you’d better come in, I suppose. I don’t want the nosy neighbours wondering why I’m having a visit from the police. You might not be in uniform but anyone round here can smell a copper a mile off.’
She looked Mike Hallam up and down with a critical gaze and added, ‘Well, I suppose you could pass for an insurance salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, at a pinch.’
She led the way to the back of the house. A compact kitchen, neatly kept. She pulled out chairs by the kitchen table and gestured to them to sit down.
‘I think you’re supposed to offer to make me a brew, but I’ll save you the bother, if it is bad news. Bernie and I weren’t close, and I hadn’t seen him for years. I’m sorry to hear if he’s passed away but I’m not so grief stricken I can’t put the kettle on. Tea or coffee?’
They both opted for tea and Jezza queried, ‘Bernie?’
‘It’s what he always called himself, from being small. Well, with a name like he was saddled with, it’s not surprising, is it? I can’t imagine what possessed my Uncle Milo to come up with that. Bartholomew was too much of a mouthful and Bart wasn’t cool enough back then, before The Simpsons came on TV.’
Despite her saying she wouldn’t be affected by bad news, she was clearly skirting round the subject, busying herself with brewing up. Mike Hallam stepped in quietly.
‘Mrs Brady, I’m sorry to have to tell you but remains have been found, the DNA of which has been matched to items from the flat where your cousin was living when he disappeared.’
‘Do I have to come and identify the body, then? That’s what you u
sually do, isn’t it?’
Mike carried on, in the face of the grateful look Jezza gave him. She knew tact was not her strongest point, so she was more than happy to leave it to him to break the news gently.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Mrs Brady. We haven’t yet been able to recover all of Mr Byrne’s body, so facial recognition isn’t an option.’
‘Bloody hell,’ she said, as she put the teapot down hard. Jezza stood up quietly and took over from her while she went to sit down.
‘It would help us a great deal if you could tell us if your cousin had any distinguishing features on his body, to help rule out any doubt about identity.’
‘Well, there were the burns scars, of course. You probably know about those. His left hand and foot were badly burned when he was mucking about with a firework at a bonfire party. When he was a kid. He was always a bit wild, until that happened. That seemed to settle him down. Ta, love,’ she added as Jezza put tea in front of her.
‘Was it fire in particular that interested Bernie?’ Jezza asked her. ‘Or did he get up to other things as well?’
‘He was a typical lad. Always up to summat. Until that accident. That turned him round, you could say. He got more into religion as a result of it. Probably because he realised how much worse it could have been. He’d been brought up Catholic, like all the rest of the family. But it became much more important to him, after that.
‘So how did he die? What happened to him? Was it some sort of an accident?’
Again, Jezza looked to Mike to field that one.
‘At the moment, Mrs Brady, we’re treating it as a suspicious death. How long ago did you last see your cousin?’
‘Heaven knows. Ten years, at least, for sure. Maybe longer. We used to do the whole exchanging Christmas cards thing that families do, but even that dropped off after a time.’
‘Was there a reason for that? Did you fall out over something?’ Jezza asked her.
‘No, not really. We just sort of drifted apart, like.’
Jezza produced the enlargement of the photo booth picture. Byrne with the still unknown little girl, sitting on his knee. She put it on the table in front of the woman.
‘Do you know who this girl is, please? Have you seen her before?’
The woman glanced at the picture. Made to push it away. Then pulled it closer and picked it up.
‘I don’t know who she is, no. But I can see why a photo like this might make you suspicious. A grown man with a little girl, and his hand where it is. It probably means nothing. Our Bernie was always a bit like that, from being a lad. A bit touchy-feely, you could say.’
‘Was he like that with you?’ Jezza asked her.
‘Oh, good grief, you know what kids are like, growing up together. Show me yours and I’ll show you mine. That sort of stuff. I never thought there was anything pervy about him. Not unless you’re going to tell me you found a load of kiddy porn on his computer or something.’
‘We didn’t find a computer among Mr Byrne’s possessions, Mrs Brady,’ Mike told her. ‘Do you know if he had one? We found a fairly basic mobile phone at his flat but we aren’t sure is that was his current one.’
‘We never did emails or anything, now you come to mention it, so perhaps he didn’t have a computer. I haven’t seen him for years, like I said, but he did phone me one time to make sure I had his mobile number. In case I ever wanted to get in touch, he said. Although I think we both knew that I probably wouldn’t.’
‘Do you still have the number, please? It would be helpful to our enquiries if we were able to at least trace where his phone was last used, if he had a different one to the one we found.’
She stood up and went to rummage in a handbag on the work surface. She took a phone out, scrolled through some entries, then read out a number which Jezza noted down.
‘Mrs Brady, do you by any chance happen to know who your cousin was trying to throw the firework at when he was injured? Were you there at the time? Was it just a random thing or was he targeting someone in particular, for some reason?’
‘Oh, I was there all right, love. It was me Bernie was trying to throw the firework at. Thank god it never hit me. Although I was sorry it injured him. Folks were telling him it was divine retribution.’
Once Jezza and Mike were in the car and heading back to Stockport, he remarked, ‘You’re determined there should be a link to the arsons with the Byrne case, aren’t you? I don’t see how there possibly can be. The time-lines don’t fit.’
‘I wasn’t thinking so much about the current arsons. I just wondered if Byrne had a history of playing with fire. And then there was the firework incident. Trying to throw a firework at his cousin. That’s a bit warped. It might even give her a reason to hold a grudge against him, over the years. Was that the first such incident he’d been involved in? Could somebody else have had a reason to kill him because of something he’d done to them? Something to do with fire.’
Ted was head down over paperwork, hoping to clear the decks before Josie and Jock turned up later. Trev had suggested inviting them round for a meal that evening, before they headed back to Bury. Ted wasn’t keen. He tried hard to keep his work and home life as two separate entities. But Trev had insisted, and he could be persuasive when he wanted his own way.
‘Please, Ted. I’d like to see them again. Josie’s a riot. I don’t know how she manages to have such a sense of humour, especially not when she’s working on a case like that. Usual rules can apply; no shop-talk in the house. You can do all that at work before you get back here.’
Kevin Turner practically bounced into Ted’s office, looking pleased with himself. Smug, Ted decided was a more appropriate word.
‘Uniform to the rescue once more, Ted,’ he told him. ‘You can thank me later with a pint.’
‘Can’t be this evening. I’ve got Josie and Jock coming down from Bury for a debrief then they’re coming back to mine for supper.’
‘You’re taking work home? Won’t Trev divorce you for that?’
‘It was his idea. He’s rather taken with Josie.’
‘I saw that, on that dodgy website. Anyway, we might just have something of interest and importance for you. One of my officers, doing the inventory of Byrne’s possessions, found a bottle of nail varnish. Old, almost empty and pretty much dried up. Only didn’t the lower leg that was found have painted toe nails? I’m surprised whoever did the first search through for DNA sampling didn’t pick up on it straight away. It can’t be a coincidence, surely?’
‘I’m surprised it was missed, too. I’ll need to look into what went wrong there.’
‘My officer said it looked like a possible colour match for the photos of the foot. We’ve sent it off for testing and cross-matching, but I thought you should know. That’s nearly a week lost when that lead could have been followed up. Looks like someone needs a kick up the backside for missing that.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘Right, goals for today. What do we hope to achieve?’ Sergeant Eric Morgan asked Amelie as he drove them back up towards Gorton, to the address where Byrne had been living before moving to their patch.
‘You mean before or after you’ve had the first of your several breakfasts?’
Morgan laughed. She was getting his measure. He patted his stomach as he replied, ‘What can I say? I’m a big boy. And me mam always said I had hollow legs. We will stop for a brew on the way, for sure. Best way to make contact with the locals. Second best?’ he asked her.
She hesitated. Not the sort of thing she’d learned in all the theory she’d studied to date.
‘Local corner shop, where they still have them,’ he told her. ‘Especially a newsagent or an offy. They tend to know everyone and everything that goes on in their area. Even if Byrne hasn’t lived round there for a while, we might get lucky and find someone who remembers him.
‘It’s the sort of routine shoe-leather work that us humble Woodentops get saddled with. And you’d be surprised how many time
s it’s exactly what solves a case. If you watch crime rubbish on the TV you’d think we spend our time holding up the tape for you lot to enter a crime scene. At least with Ted Darling as your gaffer, you’ll see him give credit where it’s due.
‘Right, so while I drive, why don’t you search online for what local shops there are in the area which are still open and we’ll work our way through them.’
They got lucky at the second newsagents they tried. Amelie was learning a lot from watching Eric Morgan at work. People seemed willing to talk to him. There was a confidence and air of authority about him. A solid presence, deserving of some respect.
He started out by showing the woman behind the counter the picture on the Missing Persons poster. Asking her if she knew the face, if the name, or his nickname of Bernie, meant anything to her.
‘Bernie? Yes, I remember him. Haven’t seen him for a good while, though. I heard he’d moved away, but I don’t know where to.’
‘What about this one? Would you have any idea who the little girl with him is?’
She took the second photo from him and lifted it closer to her face to peer at it.
‘Not very clear, is it? But I reckon that’ll be Lucy.’
Still looking at the picture she raised her voice suddenly and bellowed, ‘Bill! Bill! Come and see what you think to this photo.’
‘What?’
‘Deaf old bugger,’ she muttered before shouting again, ‘Come and look at this.’
‘Who is Lucy?’ Amelie asked her.
‘Daughter of the neighbour up where Bernie was living. She used to come in here with him sometimes. He’d buy her sweets and stuff. Mother was some kind of a junkie, so little Lucy spent a lot of time with Bernie, bless her. At least he was nice to her.’
A man came into the shop from the back of the building, mumbling and grumbling to himself. He visibly started when he saw Eric Morgan, in uniform, standing talking to his wife. She thrust the photo at him and asked, ‘This is little Lucy, isn’t it? With Bernie?’