Bitter Edge

by Bitter Edge (retail) (epub)

  She felt sorry for the youngsters now; they were imprisoned by their screens. What made it worse was that they used them for their work, and then they came home and used them for their rest. There was no escape; it was madness. She wouldn’t miss it. The accountant had been and sorted her affairs. John had done most of it anyway, and nothing much had changed since he’d gone, only the amount that was left. The girls would have the house. They’d no doubt disagree over what to do with it, but that, thankfully, would no longer be her concern.

  Ted held her elbow as they crunched through the snow. The sky was blue, the air crisp. There was no better place to be in the world than the Lakes on a day like today. The mountains glowed in the distance and Wendy wished she was a climber. She never had been, but that wasn’t the point. She’d started dreaming about lots of pastimes that she’d never get to try.

  Ted helped her into his car. It was very smart indeed. He kept it clean and tidy, and she liked that. Kelly could learn a thing or two from him; her car was a disgrace. He got her settled, then went to his own side and climbed in. He turned to her and smiled. Life was a funny old thing. No one could predict what might be around the next bend. She smiled back.

  He drove towards Keswick, and she thought he might be taking her to a nice café, or perhaps a pub with a roaring fire. The main road was clear, but piles of snow were stacked high at each side. The mountains, as they drew closer, looked majestic, and all of their millions of years old.

  He drove through Keswick and on down the east coast of Derwent Water. Cat Bells looked inviting and gentle, and Wendy wanted to dive into the lake. They’d swum in Ullswater, off the shore of Wasdale Hall’s grounds, drunk and frivolous. Everybody did it, and without phones, no one was self-conscious or worried. Wendy had stripped to her bra and knickers, but she might as well have thrown them off too, since soaking wet they were see-through anyhow.

  ‘Remember swimming in Ullswater, Ted? At midnight?’

  ‘Good heavens, that’s brought back memories! I don’t think I could manage that any more,’ he joked.

  ‘We’d be on the front page of the Daily Mail now, you know. It was scandalous.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. The youngsters think we didn’t know how to live, or have fun.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about that, Ted.’

  ‘Hmm?’ He concentrated on his driving.

  ‘What we got up to.’

  He gripped the steering wheel. ‘I haven’t forgotten, Wendy. I just wish I could have made you my wife.’

  His words came as a surprise. She’d never felt like a floozy, or used in any way, but she hadn’t thought about the flip side either.

  ‘Kelly has been asking certain questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Us.’

  ‘Well that makes sense. She has been rather tetchy lately. Do you think she minds?’

  ‘No, not at all. That’s not what I meant, Ted.’

  He negotiated a milk tanker in the road ahead and they came to the Lodore Falls. He pulled off and parked at the hotel.

  ‘Oh lovely! I haven’t been here in years.’

  ‘We’re booked in for lunch.’

  Ted got out and went to Wendy’s door to help her out of the car. He was still strong, and she leant on him.

  The foyer was warm and there was a well-tended fire in the bar. The smell of food and Christmas spices was intoxicating, and Wendy decided that she’d have a drink before dropping her bombshell on Ted. She ordered a sherry, and they were escorted to their table, which overlooked the lake. The sun shone into the dining room and Wendy was reminded of another meal she’d had in an expensive hotel, with Kelly. Father and daughter had the same certainty, the same self-possession when in company: nothing fazed them. Nikki was different. John’s daughter was more reserved in company and hesitant about her place in the world, not convinced of her path. Kelly had built her own path, as had this man before her.

  She sipped her sherry and perused the menu. It was thankfully simple. Her tolerance of food was intermittent lately. She prayed that her digestive system stood the test today. She didn’t want to embarrass Ted. She wished to be dignified to the end, and if she wasn’t, she’d make sure that he didn’t see her.

  ‘What takes your fancy, Wendy?’

  ‘I’m thinking the chicken, it sounds lovely.’

  ‘Starter?’

  ‘No, that’s too much; I think I’d pop.’

  Ted ordered, then reached across to take her hand.

  Maybe she’d wait until after they’d eaten, she thought. She chastised herself. She’d promised Kelly that she’d do this; in fact, she’d insisted. Kelly had been more than willing to give Ted the news herself, but that wasn’t right. It was Wendy’s job. What happened next was up to them. She wouldn’t be here. She couldn’t wait.

  ‘The reason I mentioned Kelly is that I need to tell you something.’

  ‘I’m listening.’ He sipped his pint.

  ‘She’s your daughter, Ted.’

  He didn’t react in any of the ways she’d been prepared for. She’d imagined herself alone, phoning a taxi, being called a liar; she’d seen raised voices and histrionics. But none of those things happened. He was about as calm as anyone could be; she should have known. She saw Kelly in him when he looked at her and cocked his head slightly, thinking about the perfect question to ask but testing it in his brain before presenting it to the world.

  ‘I did wonder,’ was all he said. He didn’t question it or doubt it. Wendy’s hand shook slightly as she drained her sherry and asked for another.

  ‘Did you?’

  He nodded. ‘Does Kelly know?’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I’m telling you.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  Wendy looked at him. She could see that he cared for Kelly. He really wanted her to be receptive to the news. He looked like a man who’d been given a second chance; or at least hoped for it. Her throat tightened.

  They’d be all right.

  ‘She wants to see you.’

  Chapter 39

  Rob’s Manchester mole sent his report on Christmas Eve.

  It was not what anyone had expected, and it blew a hole through the Tony Blackman case. Most of the report was computer jargon that only Rob understood, and when he read it out to the team at Eden House, they had to stop him and request that he explain what on earth he was talking about. They understood the straightforward English, such as ‘download’, ‘input’, and ‘keyboard’, but when it came to things like firewalls, spyware, encryption and steganography, they were baffled.

  Rob apologised and tried to translate the report for the laymen in front of him. They’d hit a similar kind of web of confusion when they’d tried to unpick the mass of bank accounts and files connected to a money-laundering case a few years back, run from the Isle of Man. They hadn’t had Rob then, and they’d relied solely on computer buffs sitting in dark rooms.

  Apparently it was really easy to conceal files on computers; you just downloaded an app, or used the computer’s own system for hiding data from prying eyes. However, most of the tricks available freely online weren’t anywhere near good enough if you were contemplating hiding information from the police.

  Rob explained that on Friday 1 December, between 6 and 7 p.m., close to eighty JPEG images had been downloaded from a removable device onto Tony Blackman’s computer hard drive. Alongside the images, nineteen videos, including audio, had also been downloaded. The process had taken fifty-nine minutes and the pathway had been cleared by a cleaning device that had to be plugged in manually. So what the mole had uncovered was that rather than try to conceal the graphic content, the user had tried to conceal how it had gotten there.

  ‘You can never erase the hard drive memory. What’s a red flag is that the images were there in plain sight, and paedophiles usually go to great lengths to firewall and encrypt the actual material. In this case, what took time is finding out how all the images got on to the compu
ter at the same time, and we now know that it was done via the removable device.’

  Rob also explained that at the same time as the device was running, the user had also been searching Lakeland poetry. But that wasn’t all. During the fifty-nine minutes, several Instagram and Facebook accounts were logged onto, and posts were deleted and liked. The accounts belonged to a user called ‘SadieSadie1234’ and were registered to a mobile phone in the name of Miss B. Rawlinson. Everybody in the room knew that Sadie Rawlinson’s mother was called Belinda, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that Sadie probably didn’t pay for her own phone.

  ‘Jesus, we’re talking contempt and wasting police time,’ Kate Umshaw said.

  ‘We can say goodbye to the CPS wanting the case,’ Kelly agreed. ‘Kate, you and Emma need to go and pay mother and daughter a visit. I’ll get Blackman in. It still doesn’t prove that he didn’t download the images; just that Sadie was in his flat at the time it was done. We need to get a statement of her competence in computer science from school. She also needs to be asked how Mr Blackman managed to assault her when she was cruising Instagram and Facebook. What was she looking at?’ Kelly asked Rob.

  Computers had changed the face of policing. They had created a labyrinthine pit of other worlds to hide in. The police were always playing catch-up as more sophisticated and impenetrable spaces appeared in cyber land. It was a minefield, and Kelly was glad to have Rob. It didn’t matter how many times he explained how it all worked, she would never get it. But when he translated it into her language, she knew that they could use it. None of that helped Mr Blackman, though. He’d been inextricably linked in the public mind with sex offences against children. He’d never teach again.

  ‘She was liking photos and commenting on pages. Typical social media activity.’

  ‘Right, so she was sitting at his computer, Lakeland poetry pending on Google, presumably as a red herring, and checking her social media. Can we prove it?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘In a court, you could argue that whoever was sitting at the computer was the same person who downloaded the material, otherwise they would have had to have taken turns. Either way, Sadie Rawlinson was using the computer when the images were being downloaded.’

  ‘What would a defence team argue?’

  ‘That she had no idea what was going on and that Blackman was the one using her social media accounts.’

  ‘And the assault?’

  ‘All planned. He’s an unstoppable pervert with a lust for young girls, and he lured her there, showed her some poetry and gave her the name of some handy websites to search, downloaded the images, then assaulted her.’

  ‘Bullshit. How likely is it?’

  ‘You can never tell with lawyers. She hasn’t got the means to pay a shit-hot barrister, that’s for sure, but you also never know with Legal Aid. It all depends on her performance in court, against a perceived predator. If it were to go to jury, they’d have most likely seen him in the press already.’

  It wasn’t the police’s job to prove guilt or innocence in a court of law – that was up to the legal process – but the lawyers and barristers could only use what the police had provided, and it needed to be watertight, or else the CPS wouldn’t entertain it.

  ‘Emma, have you heard from your mole?’ So much of their investigation now depended on digital footprints. Emma had got Kelly’s go-ahead to examine Jenna’s iPhone records more closely, and had passed them to another computer geek who sat not three desks from Rob’s contact in the Manchester office.

  ‘After talking to the caretaker’s boy, I can’t help thinking that a helping hand over a cliff comes in many different forms. Jake Trent, the boy who killed himself two years ago, injected himself with so much fentanyl that it could have felled a five-hundred-pound bull. The boy had been a consummate and skilled drug user; there was no way he’d get his calculation so wrong. Or that’s what the caretaker’s son said. North Lakes Serious Crime wasn’t even involved after the coroner ruled an overdose, and the boy’s past indicated a miserable downward spiral of self-destruction, confirmed by the parents and the school.’

  Kelly went to the whiteboard. ‘So, we’ve got Tony Blackman potentially supplying drugs, as well as Bobby Bailey and Luke Miles a question mark. I think Sadie is the common denominator here, and she’s fragile as hell: her mother is a drug addict, with a history of low-level warnings from the police, including prostitution in Barrow, and Sadie’s veneer is too tough to be real.’

  Chapter 40

  Ted sat on a bench overlooking Derwent Water. He’d walked through snow to get to this particular spot and had wiped it off the bench so he could sit down. He pulled his coat tight around him and caught his breath, which came in great white clouds. The snow made the Lakes brighter somehow; it provided the perfect light for the sky, water and fell to shine.

  He and Wendy had spent the night at the Lodore Falls Hotel. He’d dropped her off reluctantly at home this morning, and left her to rest. She’d looked happy, but tired. The last thing she’d said to him was that she wished they’d done this years ago. He wished for the same thing, but ever the pragmatist, he looked forward, not back.

  He already had two daughters. A third was an unexpected surprise, but one that didn’t perplex him. On the contrary, it made him happy. He’d asked Wendy a hundred times why she hadn’t told him; why she’d kept it to herself for all these years, but he knew the answer. He thought of his own ex-wife and questioned the paternity of their daughters: perhaps Mary had done the same. He’d never know.

  He’d driven back to Derwent Water because if he couldn’t physically be with Wendy, he wanted to be where they’d last been together. The bench, under the trees, overlooking a pebble beach and with a view of Cat Bells and Grisedale Pike beyond, was dedicated to ‘Dear Ada, Wife, Mother, and dearly beloved Grandmother. Always in our hearts and taken too soon. 1987.’ He fantasised romantically that Ada used to sit here with her husband, with Walla Crag behind them, gazing out onto the lake, planning their retirement; a retirement that never came because she died suddenly of some awful disease.

  Pain was such a constant visitor to life that pleasure should be scooped up and bagged at every opportunity, and that was just what Ted intended to do. He was no fool. He’d trained in medicine, and he knew that Wendy was gravely ill. She’d been battling for the best part of two years, and had been in and out of the Penrith and Lakes Hospital more times than he’d cut open bodies, but it didn’t diminish her resolve, or indeed her sense of fun that he so fondly recalled.

  He thought about his new daughter. It was rather late to assume the role of loving and supportive father when almost forty years had passed, but he was willing to give it a go. There was, after all, nothing to lose. Their working relationship was coming to an end, as he had finally made the decision to retire, and Kelly would have to get to know a new coroner. Perhaps the impromptu pints in the less salubrious establishments of Penrith would continue, but that might be too much to hope for. All he could do was stand by Wendy now, and wait to see what Kelly wanted of him, if anything.

  She was quite something, Kelly Porter. Just like her mother. Last night had been wonderful, an experience Ted had never thought he’d get to enjoy again. A night in a Lakes establishment with a beautiful woman was something that didn’t happen every day, particularly to a man in his sixties. He felt like a youngster who’d conquered the best-looking girl in the school. But with age behind them, there was no demure stalling, or crippling embarrassment, or need for Dutch courage; it had been spontaneous, thrilling and one of the most exciting nights of his life.

  He looked out across the lake.

  The fact that the bench upon which he sat was situated not two hundred yards from where Jenna Fraser had ended her life was not lost on him. Those youngsters saw nothing ahead, only what was behind them, and they despaired of a future they thought they had lost before it had even begun. How wrong they were! The wastefulness hit him and he looked down at his hands: the hands that h
ad cut open Jenna’s body, to reveal that her heart was the only intact part of her. It had probably gone on beating for minutes after impact because it was so cleverly designed by its maker. The same maker who had crumpled these hills and fells; the same maker who drove one man to kill another. Ted had had plenty of corpses on his slab, but none quite like that of Jenna Fraser.

  He’d had two missed calls from Kelly. One this morning, as he was asleep next to her mother, and the other when he’d been dropping Wendy off. Was she spying on him? Did she know that he knew?

  He’d been too nervous to call her back, but now he felt silly, and took his phone out of his pocket.

  When she answered, he began to ask how she was, but Kelly was in work mode and wanted to talk about suicide. Ted sighed and realised that he’d have to make an appointment with his daughter, rather than the detective, to have a proper conversation with her. She was asking about two teenagers who’d taken their lives two years apart, both from Keswick.

  ‘Of course I remember them,’ he said.

  ‘Jake Trent was a drugs overdose, correct?’

  ‘Yes, pretty straightforward. Fentanyl, it’s a cheap heroin substitute.’

  ‘And Laura Briggs, four years ago, she was a domestic case.’

  ‘Yes, as I recall.’

  As always, Kelly didn’t draw breath when she was onto something. Ted had no idea why she was raking up old suicides, but he was sure that she had good reason. She was an excellent detective; probably the best he’d ever worked with.

  ‘The case was harrowing,’ he told her. ‘She’d cut her wrists in the bath and gradually bled to death. She was being sexually abused by her father.’ Ted wished he could have some time alone with child abusers in his mortuary, with a saw, a scalpel and some blunt rusty shears. A few slow hours would do it.

  ‘I know, Ted. They were open-and shut-cases, handled by first responders and your office. There was no need to involve the serious crime department. At least that was what was thought.’