THE DCI BLIZZARD MURDER MYSTERIES: Books 1 to 3

by John Dean

  ‘So, have you been paid any compensation?’ asked Colley.

  ‘No. Three months ago, my lawyer recommended that I give up my fight. GC Haulage had used every delaying tactic in the book down the years and it was starting to cost too much. My lawyer is a good woman but she could not keep working for free, nor would I expect her to. She said that there was no way the company was ever going to pay up so I abandoned my legal action. I had no options left, really.’

  ‘So you threw paint over the stones in revenge?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘Yes, I did. I was so angry. In fact, I would love you to charge me with criminal damage because then I can say all this in court.’

  ‘But why attack Susan Graham’s stone first?’ asked Colley. ‘Was it simply a case of targeting anyone who worked for the company?’

  ‘She was a bitch.’

  ‘All we know is that she died of cancer,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘Just because you die of cancer, that does not mean automatically you are a good human being, Chief Inspector. My husband was a wonderful man but Susan Graham deserved everything she got.’

  The detectives looked at her, startled once more by her anger.

  ‘What exactly do you have against her?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘As company secretary, Susan Graham was the one who advised their lawyers. It was down to her that the company never paid compensation. When I heard she had died, I was glad and I don’t care who knows it. People like that do not deserve to live.’

  ‘And Ray Heskey?’ asked Blizzard. ‘Why attack his stone if you did not think he was driving the lorry that killed your daughter? I thought you said he had no option about lying.’

  ‘Everyone has options, Chief Inspector. Ray Heskey had choices but he refused to help Emily which makes him just as guilty as Danny Galston. He was the one who covered it up for all those years. Besides, to have him and the Graham woman both lying in the same cemetery as my poor Emily had always seemed so obscene. Attacking their stones seemed the right thing to do.’

  Blizzard nodded. Somehow he found himself agreeing with her.

  ‘And I think we can understand why you attacked the Galston gravestone,’ said Colley.

  ‘Actually, I was not going to do it at all,’ said Janice. ‘Little Chloe wasn’t that much younger than Emily and the last thing I wanted to do was deface her memory. I had no argument with her or her mother.’

  ‘So, what made you change your mind?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘Danny Galston rang me one night. Said he knew that I was attacking the stones. Threatened me if I did it again. Said he’d send some people round.’

  ‘So you attacked his stone as well?’

  ‘You were there when I did it, I think, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘The old lady who stole the flowers from the crematorium?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Blizzard, his mind going back to that afternoon in Hafton Cemetery. Suddenly he remembered the woman in the headscarf.

  ‘I was watching her as well. I’ve seen her do it before. Quite a turn of speed for a wrinkly, don’t you think? I see her in the supermarket sometimes. Steals frozen chickens from them.’

  Despite the tension in the room, the detectives smiled at the image of the light-fingered pensioner.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Blizzard, after a few moments. ‘What is your connection with Gerry Brauner. How come he was at the depot yesterday morning?’

  ‘A friend put me on to him. We did not dare say anything publicly during the legal action – the company would have used it against us – but when it failed, I felt we should do something to draw attention to the case. Gerry said the anniversary was a good opportunity, that the nationals might go for it. Said the papers love what he called ‘a dead kid’. Somewhat distasteful, I am sure you will agree, but he might be right. However, we seem to have stumbled upon something. I’ve never seen so many police officers. The radio said it was about guns. Was CG Haulage smuggling?’

  ‘It’s not our investigation,’ said Blizzard blandly.

  ‘No, it was that lady called Talbot, I think. She came over very well on the television.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said the chief inspector, ‘whoever murdered Danny Galston is very much my investigation.’

  ‘I freely admit to attacking his family’s gravestone, but murdering him? I think not.’ Janice sat back and crossed her arms. ‘You’ll just have to believe me on that one, gentlemen.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we will,’ said Blizzard with a sigh.

  The chief inspector nodded to Colley and the sergeant escorted Janice down the corridor to reception. It was as she was about to leave the police station that Janice looked at the detective.

  ‘Have you got children, Sergeant?’

  ‘My partner is pregnant,’ said Colley, surprised that of all the people in the world he should choose to divulge the news to Janice Garbutt.

  ‘Well, when the little one arrives, take good care. It can be a dangerous world for children.’

  Janice Garbutt walked out of the front doors. The sergeant thought about running after her but something stopped him. As he stood and watched her disappear into the misty evening, he felt cold. The sergeant tried to tell himself it was caused by the chill of the evening but he knew it was something more. When he went back to tell the chief inspector what she had said, Blizzard’s office was in darkness and his coat had gone.

  Chapter twenty-three

  Shortly after ten that evening, Colley picked his way across the expanse of wasteland behind the city centre railway station, heading for an old corrugated shed, the place to which he knew Blizzard retreated when he needed to do some hard thinking. Childhood passion reaching deep into adulthood, Blizzard was one of the founders of the Hafton Railway Appreciation Society, a small group of volunteers who restored steam locomotives. Most of them were retired railmen and the shed was the home of their prize possession, the Silver Flyer. For many years, she had hauled carriages between Hafton and the Midlands, until taken out of commission in the 1960s. Blizzard stumbled across her while investigating an assault that took place on the wasteland and now, the society having raised the money to buy her, he spent as much of his spare time as possible working on the engine.

  The sergeant approached the shed, his feet crunching on broken glass. Noticing a light filtering through chinks in the shed door, Colley stood for a moment, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. The sergeant took a deep breath, wrenched open the door, which groaned in protest on rusty hinges, and peered into the half-light provided by a couple of old table lamps balancing precariously on rickety tables. Blizzard was hard at work on the locomotive, crouched in oil-stained blue overalls, his hands gloved against the biting chill.

  ‘Evening, David,’ he said, without looking up from the obdurate bolt with which he was battling. ‘Must be important to bring you down here at this hour.’

  ‘It is.’

  There were a few moment’s quiet, the only noise the scraping and scratching of the chief inspector’s spanner. Eventually, Blizzard gave a triumphant grunt as the nut came free. Noting the sergeant’s uneasy expression, the chief inspector dug out a stool from the mess and placed it next to a ramshackle little table bearing a kettle, a few mugs, a box of teabags and sheaves of paper on which were scrawled instructions for the engineering team.

  ‘So, what’s up?’ asked Blizzard, gesturing for the sergeant to sit down.

  ‘I’m finding this investigation very difficult.’

  ‘Going to tell me why?’ asked Blizzard.

  He took the kettle over to the grubby sink in the corner of the workshop.

  ‘I have to tell you that Jay is pregnant,’ said Colley.

  ‘I have to tell you? What sort of talk is that? You make it sound like a press conference.’

  Blizzard filled the kettle then returned to plug it in and rooted round for another stool.

  ‘Besides, I know she’s pregnant.’

 
; ‘You do?’

  ‘Fee worked it out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Dunno. Women know these things. How many weeks is Jay?’ The chief inspector smiled at Colley. ‘Fee said that was the kind of question to ask about pregnant women. Impressive, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. Twelve weeks.’

  ‘That’s the last time I let you go on sodding holiday. Hey, don’t look so worried, it’s a joke. We are both delighted for you. I am delighted for you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Besides, Fee is talking about us having one,’ said Blizzard. ‘Says I’m not getting any younger. Something about a spring chicken.’

  Colley chuckled.

  ‘She’s got it all mapped out, David,’ said the chief inspector. He gave a shake of the head. ‘Buy a house in the spring, get married the year after, baby the year after, mow the lawn on a Saturday, wash the car on a bloody Sunday. Even wants me to get a B&Q discount card. I mean, how crap is that?’

  ‘You a dad?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Me with a B&Q card.’ Blizzard grinned, then pretended to look affronted. ‘Anyway, I would make an excellent father.’

  ‘But you hate kids!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Blizzard. He lowered his voice. ‘But I haven’t told Fee. I’m waiting for my moment.’

  ‘I think she must have worked it out by now. Bloody hell, who would have believed it?’

  ‘Yeah, well I don’t want it spread round the station, Fee would kill me. But having a baby is a happy occasion, surely. Why do you look so worried?’

  ‘It’s a lot of responsibility.’

  ‘I reckon that’s only half of it,’ said Blizzard. He dropped a couple of teabags into the chipped old maroon pot. ‘There’s been something on your mind for a while.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’

  ‘I always notice, David.’ Blizzard touched him lightly on the hand, the first time the sergeant could recall him ever doing anything like that. ‘Go on, spit it out.’

  ‘Well, I got to thinking it would be nice to bring a kid up away from Hafton. Maybe live abroad. Run a bar, perhaps.’

  ‘Why on earth would you want to run a bar?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a bar. I mean, what is there here for a kid? You see how many crimes we investigate and there’s more and more schoolkids carrying knives and drug dealers on every corner and there’s all those murders and…’

  ‘Most people never see a murder,’ said Blizzard. He hunted around under the debris on the table for the bottle of milk as the kettle started to groan and wheeze. ‘Or get involved in anything worse than being pulled over for speeding. And the only knife they ever see is the one they carve the Sunday joint with. You know that, David.’

  ‘Yes, but what about Chloe Galston? And Pauline? And Emily Garbutt? And what about all the kids in Keeper?’

  ‘What about all the hundreds and thousands of kids who are sleeping safe and peaceful in their beds tonight. Come on, David, you know what the job does to us. We spend all day bumping heads with low-lifes and it turns us a little bit crazy. Why do you think the child protection teams only do six months?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘You talk to Jay. She spends all day looking at smiling little faces and reading story books about princesses and cheerful dragons. I imagine Jay is not in despair at the state of the world.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Remember Reg Kirkup? Nicked a burglar then spotted him walking on his estate with his pit-bull so he moved house. Then what happened?’

  ‘As I recall, another burglar walked past his new house the day he moved in. Even looked in some of the boxes.’

  ‘Exactly. Even if he lived on top of a mountain, Charlie would still see a burglar one day.’ Blizzard hunted for a couple of mugs on the table. ‘Even if he wasn’t there. You’ve read all that fear-of-crime stuff Arthur keeps dumping on my desk. It’s part of life. What’s important is how you deal with it.’

  ‘OK, but I do feel that…’

  ‘Take my advice, don’t do anything hasty. Crack open a bottle of wine and talk to Jay. But remember, the force can’t afford to lose officers like you and I sure as hell can’t.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Colley. ‘It’s just… I don’t know… like sometimes I wish this baby would never be born.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Blizzard. He looked at him sharply. ‘I don’t want to hear talk like that. The baby will be the most brilliant thing that has ever happened to you.’

  Colley looked at his friend, marvelling at that rarest of rare sights, a beam on John Blizzard’s face, and grinned.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the sergeant. ‘You might just be right.’

  ‘As always. Was that what you came down here for?’

  ‘There was something else.’

  ‘Don’t tell me it’s quads?’

  ‘God forbid! No, when I saw Janice Garbutt off this evening, I kinda got the feeling she was trying to tell me something. Said it was a dangerous world for children.’

  ‘Yeah, but her daughter was run over by a truck.’

  ‘I’m sure she was trying to tell me something else. Couldn’t get out of the building fast enough when I asked her to explain.’

  ‘I tell you, there’s too many people holding out on us,’ said Blizzard. He flicked the boiling kettle off and poured the water into the teapot. ‘Let’s reconvene tomorrow morning, go through the evidence then lift some bodies. Cara Galston, Gerry Brauner. Anyone else we fancy. Janice Garbutt again maybe.’

  Colley nodded, delighted to be contemplating police business rather than embarrassing and deeply personal feelings, but before the sergeant could say anything, Blizzard’s mobile telephone rang and the chief inspector walked over to his jacket, which was hanging on a peg on the shed door.

  ‘That will be my beloved,’ said Blizzard ruefully. ‘Telling me my dinner’s cold. I haven’t been home.’

  ‘Or the bed’s hot,’ said Colley. He started to pour the tea. ‘It’s all about temperature, this baby lark, you know. I tell you, it’s been a real eye-opener. All you want to do is roll over and go to sleep after a hard day at work and the missus whips out the thermometer and…’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sergeant,’ said Blizzard quickly, locating the mobile and lifting it to his ear.

  It was short conversation.

  ‘Who was it?’ asked Colley when the chief inspector had finished talking.

  ‘Randall. He’s coming over. Says it’s important.’

  * * *

  The shed door gave another groan of protest and in walked a grim-faced Max Randall followed by an equally sombre Alex Mather.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Blizzard. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Maybe we have,’ said Randall. ‘Alex has heard something.’

  ‘Lenny Rowles is back,’ said Mather.

  Blizzard said nothing but walked over to the locomotive, absent-mindedly running a hand down her boiler as the thoughts raced through his mind. When he told Fee about the moment the following morning, after a night he would never forget, Blizzard described it as time standing still for a few seconds as old memories came rushing back, memories he had hoped were gone forever, memories of the only man whose propensity for extreme violence had ever truly frightened the chief inspector. Blizzard’s mind was crowded with images of the bull-faced Lenny Rowles and his grotesquely damaged victims, dark thoughts of inquiries thwarted time and time again because none of Rowles’ cowed victims ever dared give evidence against him.

  ‘Tell me you are kidding, Alex,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘I’m not famed for my sense of humour.’

  ‘I reckon it’s true,’ said Randall. ‘There’s a lot of frightened people around at the moment. I thought it was something to do with Danny Galston’s death but the return of Rowles would explain everything.’

  ‘But why is he back?’ asked Colley, who had been equally shaken by the news. ‘And what do we do?’

  ‘Well, for a s
tart…’ began Blizzard.

  Again his phone rang and he walked briskly over to his jacket, fished the device out and placed it to his ear.

  ‘John,’ said the desk sergeant at Abbey Road, calling from home having suddenly recalled the visit of the battered blonde to reception earlier in the day. ‘I have a major apology to make.’

  ‘For what, George?’

  ‘I was going to tell you earlier then got embroiled in other things and clean forgot. There was a woman in to see you this afternoon.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘Attractive blonde piece. Didn’t give her name but she had been done over real bad. Domestic, I reckon. I asked her for some details but she said she would only talk to you. Walked out without giving me her name.’

  ‘Sounds like Cara Galston,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘Danny’s old lady?’ said the desk officer with a low whistle. ‘Jesus, I thought she looked familiar. Just couldn’t place her. Sorry I didn’t let you know earlier, old son. Silly mistake.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it, George. And thanks for letting me know.’

  Blizzard put the phone away and struggled into his jacket, wincing with the pain as his back protested after its hours in the chill of the engine shed.

  ‘Someone has beaten up Cara Galston,’ he said, nodding at Colley. ‘We’ll go and ask her who did it.’

  ‘We’ll fish round for a bit more on Rowles,’ said Randall.

  ‘There’s a pub I know,’ said Mather. ‘Maybe I can pick up something there.’

  ‘Be careful, you know what he’s like,’ said Blizzard.

  Mather flapped a hand lazily as he and Randall walked out into the crisp, starlit night. Five minutes later, having put his tools away and made sure the shed was secure, Blizzard headed for the door.

  ‘Come on, Sergeant,’ said Blizzard. He clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘Hot bed or not, we’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Don’t we always,’ said Colley.

  Blizzard padlocked the shed door and, as they walked across the wasteland towards the nearby lights of the city centre, the sergeant’s phone rang.