THE DCI BLIZZARD MURDER MYSTERIES: Books 1 to 3

by John Dean

  ‘Any idea who?’ asked the superintendent.

  ‘No. Don’t look like that, John. It’s the God’s honest truth.’

  ‘That’s why I never fancied the Regional Organised Crime Unit,’ said Blizzard drily. ‘Too much religion.’

  Talbot laughed: the comment had eased the tension.

  ‘So where exactly do Galston and Cargill fit into this?’ asked Ronald. ‘I would not have thought either of them were big league.’

  ‘One of our surveillance teams followed your guys to a house in Leeds owned by one of the gang. Turns out he and Cargill have known each other since school. We are pretty sure the lorries are bringing the guns through Hafton docks. And both Cargill and Galston do regular trips to Moscow.’

  ‘But now Danny Galston is dead,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘And we wonder if the Eastern Europeans found out he was an ex-copper and decided to get rid of him.’

  ‘Danny Galston was the last person on earth to help the police,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘The gang might not have been as easily convinced.’

  ‘So, when are you going in?’ asked Ronald.

  ‘Monday. We believe Cargill plans to move a batch of weapons then.’

  ‘But in the meantime,’ said the chief inspector, ‘I still have a murder inquiry to run. It’ll look a bit strange if we keep away. Danny Galston was Cargill’s partner, after all.’

  ‘I appreciate that but who knows?’ There was a twinkle in Talbot’s eye. ‘If you give us a day or two, we might solve your case for you as well.’

  The comment stayed with Blizzard for the rest of the day because it was exactly what he would have said.

  Chapter nine

  ‘We’re re-opening our inquiry into the murders,’ said Blizzard.

  The words hung heavy in Cara Galston’s living room. It was late that afternoon and sitting on the sofa were the widow, relaxed and dressed tastefully in dark slacks and a red blouse with several buttons undone, and an anxious Georgia Horwood. Blizzard and Colley had met her several times over the years as part of their inquiries into the attack on Jenny Galston and her daughters. However, sitting there now, it struck her that they hardly knew her at all. Georgia was about ten years older than Cara and as big a contrast as could be imagined, a prim self-contained woman with straight brown hair, cut short but without much in the way of styling, and wearing a brown skirt and a pale green cardigan over her starched white blouse. It seemed to the officers that Georgia had always presented an image of a woman who had grown old before her time. Some said she aged the moment Jenny and her godchildren were attacked. Certainly, as the detectives looked at her now, they sensed Danny’s death had brought back painful memories.

  ‘May I ask why you would want to re-open the case?’ asked Georgia. ‘It can only re-open old wounds, especially at a terrible time like this.’

  ‘Whoever killed Danny did that for us, Miss Horwood,’ said Blizzard.

  Georgia digested the comment. Cara said nothing but stared out of the window, almost as if the conversation was of no relevance to her. The detectives realised that might actually be the case: she had never shown any interest in what had happened to Jenny and her children. Indeed, it had seemed to them that Cara Galston had done her best to airbrush Danny’s family out of his history. Instinctively, Blizzard glanced at the mantlepiece and the wedding photograph of Cara and Danny. The detectives sensed that, on the other hand, not a day went by without Georgia recalling the lost ones. She seemed close to tears.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ she said, trying to regain her composure, ‘I cannot see that re-opening the case will serve any useful purpose.’

  ‘I can assure you that we have not taken this decision lightly,’ said the chief inspector, ‘but we would not be doing our jobs if we did not at least consider the possibility that Danny’s death is linked in some way.’

  ‘I fail to see how that could be,’ said Georgia. ‘Jenny and the poor children passed away many years ago.’

  ‘Pauline has never been confirmed as dead,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘I think that we all know that she passed over to the other side a long time ago.’

  Blizzard’s mind went back to Hafton Cemetery and the strange little girl standing beneath the trees, surveying him with those lifeless eyes.

  ‘But she is not at peace yet,’ he murmured, without realising he had said it.

  ‘And just what do you mean by that?’ asked Georgia.

  ‘I mean that we need to close the case once and for all.’

  ‘I thought you already had done that,’ said Cara, unable to conceal the contempt in her voice. ‘You made no secret of the fact that you thought Danny had killed them. Harry Roberts certainly thought so and you are no different.’

  ‘But Danny always denied it.’

  ‘Fine time to decide he’s innocent, Chief Inspector,’ said Cara with a dry laugh.

  ‘I didn’t say he was, but if either of you know anything that might cast some light on things, now is the time to speak up. Danny has gone now. Perhaps that changes things?’

  Cara shook her head and Georgia looked out of the window.

  ‘Miss Horwood?’ asked Colley, noticing the gesture.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Look,’ said Colley, ‘we are as desperate as you to bring this to an end so if there is anything that you can say now to help us bring…’

  ‘Georgia has already said she knows nothing,’ said Cara, glaring at the sergeant. ‘I think you had better respect that, particularly at this difficult time.’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘And I am sure your superior officers would not take kindly to the harassing of a poor, grieving widow, Sergeant.’

  Colley glanced at Blizzard, who shrugged.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, the detectives were back on the front drive. Blizzard unlocked the car door then turned and stared back at the house. Georgia was watching him out of the living room window but turned away when she saw him looking at her.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Colley.

  ‘Secrets, it’s always bloody secrets with that lot.’

  ‘They’re certainly covering something up,’ said the sergeant. He lowered himself into the passenger seat.

  ‘Listen,’ said the chief inspector, getting into the driver’s seat and wincing as his back twinged, ‘I want you to review all the evidence from the original murders. Tell me if we missed anything.’

  He reached into his jacket pocket as his mobile telephone started ringing.

  ‘Blizzard,’ he said.

  ‘It’s Randall,’ said the gravelly voice belonging to one of the detective sergeants over on the east side. ‘We need to meet.’

  Blizzard listened for a few more moments then replaced the phone in his pocket.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said the chief inspector. ‘The game’s back on.’

  Chapter ten

  ‘Sorry, guv,’ said Colley, looking up wearily from the documents he had been studying all morning as Blizzard walked into the deserted CID squad room. ‘I can’t see anything here.’

  Blizzard dragged a chair over and sat down at the other side of the desk.

  ‘Nothing at all?’ he asked.

  ‘You know Harry. He covered all the angles.’

  ‘He always did play things by the book, but is there still not a chance that we missed something?’

  ‘If we did, I can’t see it,’ said Colley, looking back down at the case file on the deaths of Jenny and Chloe Galston.

  ‘And Ralph Cargill wasn’t much help, as I recall.’

  ‘Said he had no idea who would want to hurt them. Do you want me to mention it when I see him?’

  ‘Mention nothing. Make it look routine.’

  Colley nodded. The chief inspector, trusting Colley implicitly, had told him about the gun-running investigation the moment he left the meeting with Wendy Talbot the afternoon before, stressing the need for a sense of circumspection until the raid was c
arried out the following Monday. While understanding the reason for the cautious approach, Colley shared the frustration felt by his colleague. It was, as the sergeant had said over an after-work pint, like working with one arm tied behind their backs.

  * * *

  Colley arrived at the headquarters of GC Haulage on the small Hafton West Industrial Estate shortly after three-thirty that afternoon. Standing at the end of the estate furthest from the main road, and backing onto the canal, the garage and single-storey office block were home to a business that had been built up by Galston and Cargill until it had an annual turnover running into several millions.

  The sergeant edged his car through the green gates and into a high-walled yard strewn with broken crates, tools and coils of wire. Colley parked in between two large lorries being loaded by a team of workmen and headed for the office block and up the stairs to the office. He was received courteously by Ralph Cargill, a man in his fifties with thinning grey hair, a neatly-cropped grey beard and a wiry frame which indicated someone who looked after himself. Even though he was dressed in oil-stained blue overalls, he had a more urbane demeanour than the boorish Danny Galston and as Colley took a seat amid the overflowing files and scruffy ledgers piled up on the floor of the office, the sergeant was struck by the contrast between the men.

  ‘I wondered when you’d come,’ said Cargill.

  ‘I tried yesterday, Mr Cargill.’

  ‘I’ve been very busy.’

  ‘Even at a time like this?’

  ‘I still have to keep the business running,’ said Cargill. ‘I took on a couple of Danny’s runs. Been over to Mansfield. I assume you have come about his death?’

  ‘I am trying to piece together a picture of his life.’

  ‘Surely you have all the information you could ever need. Your lot have been hassling him for years.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you might know something of use to us.’

  ‘Danny was a very private man.’

  ‘He did not strike me like that,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘It was all front. He was really ill at ease with people. I deal with the clients, Danny just liked driving lorries.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘You are wasting your time here, Sergeant. Danny Galston was not a man given to revealing much of himself, certainly not to me.’

  ‘Surely, as his closest friend…’

  ‘Who said we were friends?’

  ‘You had been in business for more than twenty years.’

  ‘My milkman has been delivering yoghurts to my house for thirty-five years but it does not mean we go on holiday together,’ said Cargill, smiling at his joke. ‘I’d go out to the odd official “do” with Danny, maybe have a couple of pints afterwards, but that was about it.’

  Colley eyed the haulier, trying to work out if he was telling the truth. There was something self-contained about the man, a sense that his defences were well and truly employed but that behind the calm and measured answers, there was a lot going on. The sergeant could hear Blizzard’s voice in his head. ‘Secrets,’ it said. ‘Always secrets’. However, mindful of Blizzard’s demand for circumspection, Colley decided to play the unimaginative copper and keep his thoughts to himself.

  ‘Had Danny been worried about anything?’ he asked.

  ‘He was always upset when the anniversary came around. Not helped by Gerry Brauner. I assume you know about him?’

  ‘I know you broke his camera.’

  ‘He was lucky I didn’t break his bloody neck. Greasy little shit. Wanted me to set up Danny. Tried it every year.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘Listen, Sergeant, it’s no secret that myself and Danny did not get on but there was no way I was going to play Brauner’s game.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I have a couple of trucks to get off otherwise we’ll miss the ferry. Have we finished?’

  ‘Just one more thing – do you think Gerry Brauner could have killed Danny? His pictures show that he was there at the time.’

  ‘Typical of the man,’ said Cargill. He opened the window and yelled down to one of the workers in the yard. ‘Roy, get a sodding move on, they won’t put themselves in the truck!’

  He slammed the window.

  ‘No, Gerry would not kill him,’ he said. ‘Why kill the fatted calf? Now, you really must go. If we miss the ferry there will be hell to pay.’

  * * *

  At the same time as the sergeant was being ushered from the depot, the interview having come to its abrupt end, Blizzard was heading for Hafton Cemetery four miles away. As dusk descended on the city once more, the chief inspector pulled his car off the busy main road and edged up to the wrought-iron gates. Seeing them closed, he honked his horn several times. While he waited, he surveyed the house at the entrance. It was a small Victorian stone-built affair with the light in its front window giving it a cosy air amid the deepening chill of the November evening. After a few moments, a figure emerged from the front door and walked towards the car. Blizzard wound down the window and looked into the face of Desmond Roach.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the cemetery manager brusquely.

  ‘Still in a job then?’

  ‘No thanks to you. I’m on a final warning. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to see the grave again.’

  ‘Well you can’t. Can’t you read?’

  Roach pointed to the large sign next to the entrance. Closed at dusk, it said.

  ‘I don’t do closed,’ said Blizzard. ‘Open the gates.’

  ‘But my boss said…’

  ‘I don’t do bosses either. Open the gates.’

  Roach hesitated but something in the chief inspector’s expression made him bite his tongue. Ten minutes later, Blizzard was standing in front of the Galston grave. Throughout his career, he had always told his officers to let the scene talk to them. It was all too easy to become so engrossed in an inquiry that they failed to see the bigger picture. Stand back and it was amazing what was revealed. That’s what Harry Roberts had taught Blizzard, and he often passed it on to his officers. He had lost count of the times it had worked for him and it happened again now as he stood at the grave, letting his mind roam in its search for answers. The more it roamed, and the more he looked at the beaming face of little Chloe looking up at him out of the gravestone, the more Blizzard instinctively knew that Danny’s death was nothing to do with gun-running.

  ‘Unfinished business,’ he murmured.

  Oblivious to the cold starting to wheedle its way into his bones – the chief inspector was not wearing a coat – Blizzard’s mind went back to those dark days 15 years previously. It was easy to see why the officers in the case had felt Danny Galston was guilty of slaughtering his family. The haulage boss had been apprehended five hours after the killing, and during several subsequent interviews his story never changed. In his version, Danny had been upstairs running a bath for Chloe, when he heard a commotion in the living room.

  Hearing screams from his wife downstairs, Galston rushed out onto the landing but was confronted by a masked man brandishing a knife. The man demanded to know where the safe was and said everyone knew Danny had money. Galston claimed that he struck out at the intruder and that a struggle ensued. As the two men fought, Chloe and Pauline ran out onto the landing from their bedrooms and started to scream. Galston claimed that, as he half-turned, the intruder dealt him a savage blow to the head, which sent him tumbling down the stairs, smashing his right cheek on the wall as he fell. At the bottom, Galston was vaguely aware of Pauline running out into the street and crying for help. Galston said that, as he struggled to his feet, he became aware of a terrible silence in the living room and a second masked man ran out into the hallway and lashed out a foot, sending Danny Galston flying backwards once more. By now in great pain and not really knowing where he was, Galston stumbled out into the street and the next thing he knew was when two uniformed officers arrested him as he wandered on the edge of the city centre later that evening.

  It was
a story that never wavered through long hours of questioning and certainly Danny Galston’s shock had seemed genuine enough. Standing now by the grave, Blizzard remembered him breaking down in the interview room and sobbing. The medical examiner did later confirm that Galston had been struck in the face. Pushed hard by Harry Roberts, the examiner had been unable to rule out that the injury was self-inflicted. Unlikely, the doctor had said, unhappy at the way he felt Roberts was trying to pressure him, but not impossible.

  The chief inspector now found himself, and not for the first time in recent days, viewing the events differently. He remembered the fierce way Harry Roberts had conducted himself, never sleeping, drinking too much, pushing, pushing, always pushing for a breakthrough. But what if he had pushed too hard, wondered Blizzard? What if they had all pushed too hard? What if they had not taken that moment to stand back as he was doing now, but had instead let their feelings take over in their desperation to avenge the death of Chloe Galston? Blizzard gave a small shake of the head as if to banish the memories but the thoughts kept crowding back and among them were the words of Desmond Roach when he said that Danny Galston came every year to place flowers on the grave. What if the detectives had made a terrible mistake. What if? What if? What if? No, Danny Galston had killed them and that was all there was to it.

  Blizzard frowned when he noticed that the red paint had not been cleaned off the Galston gravestone properly. Resolving to confront Roach about his shoddy work, he turned and gave a start; picking its way silently between the trees and the gravestones, was a figure. Blizzard gave a sharp intake of breath then relaxed when he recognised Gerry Brauner.

  For his part, when Brauner spied Blizzard standing by the grave, he considered leaving but something made him keep walking. The truth was that Brauner had found himself moved by the death of Danny Galston in a way he had not expected. A man used to cynically dealing with tragedies as good stories to be sold at the highest price, he knew that sometimes they got through every journalist’s defences. The killings of Jenny and Chloe Galston had certainly been one of those occasions and Danny’s death had brought back unwelcome memories. At the time, Brauner had been a young staff photographer for the local evening newspaper and something about little Chloe’s face beaming out of the front page had touched him, just as it touched everyone who saw it. Even though he had no children at the time, Gerry Brauner had cried for that little girl then and had done so more than once since, his emotions heightened down the years because he now had young children of his own. Brauner assumed that some cases also got to police officers; he had grown to know Harry Roberts a little down the years and recalled how the DCI struggled to talk about the case. Such feelings were, Brauner assumed, similar even for John Blizzard.