THE DCI BLIZZARD MURDER MYSTERIES: Books 1 to 3

by John Dean

  Blizzard stared uncertainly at his sergeant for a few moments then recognised the impish look and smiled. Few at Abbey Road could get away with such humour at the chief inspector’s expense, certainly not concerning something which he held so dear. The quip lifted the sombre atmosphere in the sweltering signal box.

  ‘No respect, young David,’ said Blizzard as he crossed the room and crouched down by the body. ‘So, go on, who do we have here?’

  Colley paused. Wait for it, he thought, wait for it.

  ‘Is he talking to you?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘He certainly is. He’s saying someone gave him a right beating and would I nick the bastard who did it.’

  Blizzard surveyed the way the man’s right leg was twisted grotesquely beneath the body, the ankle protruding at an unnatural angle. Ignoring the sickening sight of the bone poking through the skin, he glanced at the ripped shirt, one sleeve almost hanging off, and at the jeans, the long smears of dried mud and torn knees suggesting the victim had been dragged across the stony ground outside.

  ‘He didn’t give up without a fight,’ said the inspector.

  ‘I suspect that’s how he lived his life, guv.’

  ‘He tell you that?’

  Colley nodded and the inspector shot him an approving look. Blizzard let his gaze stray up to the man’s face. He surveyed the caked blood that had welled from the ugly wound on the forehead, matting the straggly beard then trickled down his cheeks, staining the man’s smashed teeth. He looked at the misshapen and swollen nose and the numerous gashes that partially obscured the man’s features.

  ‘Some of these injuries are certainly old,’ said Blizzard. ‘He’s had that busted nose a long time. You reckon he was a scrapper?’

  ‘Yeah. Look at his hands. This man has been through the mill plenty of times.’

  ‘Well he lost this time,’ said the inspector as he straightened up, grimacing when his right knee cracked. ‘This is as bad a beating as I’ve seen. Have you noticed his hair?’

  ‘I’m wondering if it’s dyed.’

  ‘For why?’

  ‘Vanity. Or maybe because he did not want to be recognised. Our Railway Man is a bit of a mystery, all things considered.’

  ‘He is indeed,’ said the inspector and looked back to the dead man: there was something he could not quite place. It kept nagging away at the back of his mind. ‘I keep thinking I should know his name.’

  ‘He a villain then?’

  Racking his memory, the inspector tried to summon up the name from somewhere. Eventually, he shook his head.

  ‘No use,’ he said. ‘Who found him?’

  ‘Dog-walker.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’ said Blizzard as the two men made their way carefully down the rotting stairs and out into the bright afternoon sunshine. ‘When I retire, I’m going to go to university and do a thesis on what breed of dog is most likely to find a corpse.’

  ‘Hafton would probably give you a grant for it. My niece is going there to do media studies, whatever that is.’

  Blizzard snorted and was about to say something when there came a sound which never failed to send a tingle down his spine, the long-drawn-out whistle of the Silver Flyer.

  ‘Took us ages to find that whistle,’ said the inspector proudly. ‘Bobby Ford found it in a scrapyard in Doncaster in the end. Picked it up for a tenner. I mean, can you believe that? A tenner. Must be worth three or four hundred. And the lads reckon that some of the name plates could be worth the same to a collector. It’s a real delight to see her steaming again and…’

  His voice tailed off as he noticed the sergeant’s smile.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘You, guv. Just you.’

  Blizzard gave him a rueful look but his face clouded over as he saw the plume of steam billowing into the air as the Silver Flyer began its first trip round the grounds, pulling a carriage full of excited families.

  ‘This really is the last thing we want, David,’ he said. ‘On a day like this. It’ll ruin everything.’

  ‘Tell me about it. I’ve got a mountain of work on, as it is. We had sixteen burglaries last night and the DI’s tied up with that supermarket job over in Kingston Avenue. That’s another bloody bath-time missed.’

  Blizzard looked at his colleague. Sudden flashes of irritation had been one of the things the chief inspector had noticed about Colley since the birth of baby Laura. There had been tell-tale signs in his appearance as well. Tall and lean, the sergeant was, as always, smartly turned out, his black hair neatly combed, his round, most boyish face clean-shaven and his dark blue shirt perfectly ironed, but the bags beneath the eyes told their own tale. So did the laboured way he moved, the sergeant’s natural athleticism banished beneath an invisible weight.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘Just a bit tired.’

  ‘I can keep an eye on things if you want to take a flyer.’

  ‘You know that’s not the way it works, guv. Besides, haven’t you got that railway association dinner?’

  ‘I can skip it.’

  ‘I know how much it means to you. I’ll be fine, honest. We’ve got plenty in if we need them.’

  The inspector glanced along the old trackbed toward the plume of steam once more. Staring past the officers completing the taping off of the scene, he could just make out through the trees, the occasional white head among the children slurping ice creams. Blizzard knew who they belonged to; a number of retired railmen from across the north had attended, some of whom had travelled from the old railway towns of Sheffield and Doncaster to be guests at the opening before attending the dinner being staged in the Railway Hotel that night.

  ‘Maybe,’ mused Blizzard, ‘the dinner could be relevant to the inquiry.’

  ‘You think chummy was a railman come back for the opening?’

  ‘Be tragic if he was. They’re the salt of earth, those old railmen. They really are.’

  The detectives heard a muttered curse and turned to watch, with some amusement, a dapper figure slip-sliding his way down the embankment. Having reached the bottom, Detective Inspector Graham Ross, divisional head of forensics at Abbey Road, wiped his shiny black shoes with a pale blue handkerchief produced from his breast pocket. Job done, he picked his way carefully across the uneven ground, trying to prevent flecks of dried earth getting onto his trousers. Blizzard winked at his sergeant: everyone knew that Graham Ross prided himself on his appearance. Today was no different: his brown wavy hair was beautifully groomed, there was not a suspicion of stubble on his face and he was dressed immaculately, in a pressed grey designer suit with a blue silk tie.

  ‘Ah, Versace,’ said Blizzard affably. ‘How nice of you to join us.’

  ‘Can’t you lot find bodies somewhere more convenient?’ Ross looked irritably round the siding. ‘So where is our little friend?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Blizzard, gesturing to the signal box. ‘It’s dirty up there, mind.’

  ‘Isn’t it always?’ said Ross.

  Having walked across to the box, the three officers climbed gingerly up the creaking steps. Once at the top, the banter died away to be replaced by a more sombre atmosphere as Blizzard pointed to the body in the corner of the control room.

  ‘Any idea who he is?’ asked Ross, glancing at the inspector.

  ‘We wondered if he might be a former railman.’

  Ross walked over to the corpse, crouched down and stared at the body.

  ‘Well, you might just be right there,’ he murmured.

  ‘What did I say?’ said Blizzard with a triumphant look at Colley. ‘I said that he was a… Hang on, how do you know that?’

  Ross examined the brown strands of hair poking through the black then looked closely at the dead man’s broken knuckles. The detective carefully lifted up the man’s bloodstained shirt to reveal the outline of a poorly-removed tattoo emblazoned across the chest.

  ‘Because believe it or not,’ he said, ‘I reckon this is Billy Guthrie.’<
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  ‘I thought I knew him from somewhere,’ said Blizzard, with a low whistle. ‘But are you sure? He looks a lot different from his mug shots.’

  ‘He does but he definitely had a tattoo like that and I reckon his hair’s been dyed. And he didn’t wear spectacles when I knew him.’

  ‘We reckoned that this was a man who did not want to be recognised,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘Hardly surprising.’

  ‘Is anyone going to tell me who Billy Guthrie was?’ asked Colley.

  ‘If you’d ever worked in Burniston, you wouldn’t need to ask,’ replied Ross.

  ‘He a villain then?’

  ‘The villain. Burniston’s hard man. I came across him when I was a uniform sergeant there. I tell you, Dave, I have not been scared of many people in my life, but Billy Guthrie, Jesus.’

  ‘A nutter then?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ross. ‘But what made him all the more dangerous is that he was a boxer so he knew how to handle himself.’

  ‘I told you he was a scrapper. He was good then?’

  ‘He was, Dave. My dad always reckoned that he could have made something of himself if he had stuck at it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he could have been a contender,’ said Colley with a slight smile.

  ‘Dad said he could have fought for the British title. His trainer was a bloke called Roly Turner and he’s trained some good fighters in his time. Runs that club down by the bingo hall.’ Ross glanced at the inspector. ‘Roly was a railman as well, guv. I guess that’s how they met.’

  ‘So, was Guthrie really that good?’ asked Colley.

  ‘Oh, aye. I remember my dad telling me how he saw him fight for the Eastern Counties title at the Victoria Hall one night. Took him two minutes to win. They had to lift the other lad back over the ropes, he was in such a state.’

  ‘So if he was that good, how did he end up here?’ asked the sergeant, gesturing to the signal box.

  ‘Usual story – used his fists too readily out of the ring. Pub brawls mostly. Not that we ever got anything to stick. Problem finding witnesses brave enough to speak out against him in court. Folks were terrified of Billy Guthrie. Not sure anybody minded when he vanished.’

  ‘Vanished?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Yeah, must have been 10-12 years ago.’ Ross looked at Blizzard for confirmation.

  ‘About that,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Guthrie had been out of the fight game for a while but he tried a comeback against some kid, in the Victoria Hall again. It was a big story at the time: the local rag made a huge thing of it, special pull-out and the like.’

  ‘I assume Guthrie lost?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone won,’ said Blizzard, walking over to stare out of the window. ‘Guthrie head-butted the kid.’

  ‘Injured him really badly,’ said Ross. ‘There was uproar. Damned near a riot in the hall, folks trying to get at Guthrie, the medics trying to look after the kid. Cops had to call in extra bodies to calm things down.’

  ‘Coming to think of it, I do remember something,’ said Colley. ‘I assume that our friend vanished after that?’

  ‘Not quite – see, that was on the Saturday, then the following Wednesday, Guthrie turns up in the Queen’s Head in Burniston. Starts kicking off. He was always kicking off when he’d had a few sherbets, was Billy. Picked on some Hafton lads. The landlord tried to stop him and got a smack for his troubles. The poor bloke was in a coma for fourteen months before he died.’

  ‘That’s where I knew about it from,’ said Blizzard. ‘Because the lads Guthrie picked the fight with were from our patch, Burniston asked us to take a statement but they all kept shtum. Then, like Graham says, Guthrie simply dropped off the face of the planet.’

  ‘Without so much as a by-your-leave,’ said Ross. ‘Him and his wife and their teenage daughter. No one knew where they had gone, or if they did, they weren’t telling. The house stood empty for the best part of a year then the building society repossessed it.’

  ‘So, did no one see Guthrie at all after that?’ asked Colley.

  ‘We circulated his details to other forces but it all came to nothing. The Rees family were livid – said he had gotten away with murder.’

  ‘Rees?’ said Colley.

  ‘Yeah, the dead pub landlord was called Denny Rees. Why?’

  ‘The girl who found him is called Megan Rees.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve got someone with a motive then,’ said Ross. ‘She’s the daughter.’

  ‘I’ll bring her in,’ said the sergeant, disappearing down the stairs.

  When he had gone, Blizzard returned his attention to the corpse.

  ‘So how come chummy is here, Graham?’ he asked. The locomotive whistle pierced the afternoon air again.

  ‘Perhaps she brought him back. You said he worked on the railways. What if he was making a sentimental journey to see the Old Lady?’

  ‘I’m not sure Billy Guthrie did sentiment.’

  Blizzard looked down at the dead man’s battered features.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose he did.’

  Chapter five

  Fee Ellis was waiting outside the museum when Blizzard pushed his way through the crowds ten minutes later, the inspector wrinkling his nose in distaste at the sound coming from the band performing in the marquee. He smiled when he saw the detective constable standing on the steps. Five foot eight and slim with short, slightly waved, blonde hair and wearing dark trousers and a grey T-shirt, she was, at twenty-eight, nearly two decades his junior. They had been together for a couple of years but now, as ever when they were working together, Blizzard assumed a professional air.

  ‘What we got?’ he asked as the officers walked into the building and through what had once been the main ticket office, now a gift shop.

  ‘Not much yet,’ she said. ‘We’ve kept it low-key like you said.’

  ‘Yeah, don’t want to panic folks,’ said Blizzard, pausing to examine one of the railway books on a shelf. ‘I might come back and buy that. Thought it was out of print.’

  They began walking again.

  ‘Trouble is,’ said Fee, ‘there are so many people moving about, it’s going to be impossible to keep track of everyone.’

  ‘I appreciate that but there has got to be a chance that someone in there knows more than they are letting on.’

  ‘Because of Guthrie’s links with the railway?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the inspector as they walked through a corridor lined with black and white photographs of steam locomotives. ‘Because of his links with the railways.’

  They walked onto the main platform and the inspector surveyed the happy throng of families walking round the displays. One of the most popular attractions was the model railway that stretched for twenty-five feet along one wall of the museum. Children peered excitedly through the glass cover at the re-creations of the 19th century Hafton line as it wound its way up from the docks and westwards through the city’s outskirts before emerging out into rural flatlands dotted with villages. There were plenty of larger exhibits as well and strolling around the locomotives and rolling stock had brought back memories for Blizzard of standing at the bottom of the garden when he was a child in Lincolnshire and waiting for the mighty steam locomotives to thunder past, the drivers waving back at him and sometimes, if he was lucky, letting rip with the whistle.

  Blizzard felt a rush of anger that someone had ruined the day. He left Fee and another detective constable to make discreet inquiries and walked over to where John McGarrity and Tommy Rafferty were standing, partially hidden by a large display case containing an old station bell. They were talking to a slim, earnest young man wearing green cords and a brown leather jacket. That it seemed to be a serious conversation did not surprise the inspector. Malcolm Watt was a serious man. Blizzard had known him for a number of years, beginning in the days when he was one of the city council’s tourism officers and the first person to give credence to the idea of a railway museum. The ins
pector had been delighted when it was announced that his new friend was to be the museum’s manager.

  ‘John, what the hell is happening?’ hissed Watt as the inspector joined them. ‘I’ve had half the councillors in the city asking me what your lot are doing in the siding.’

  ‘I know but…’

  ‘And your officers have been asking people questions. Hardly makes for the best impression on a day like this, John. I mean, surely it could wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s not my fault someone’s been murdered,’ said Blizzard.

  ‘Murdered?’ gasped Watt.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said Blizzard quickly as people turned to look at them. ‘My aim is to make sure that today passes off with the minimum of fuss but yes, we’ve found a body over in the signal box.’

  ‘You’ll not keep that quiet for long,’ said McGarrity.

  ‘Yeah, they’ve already been sniffing around,’ said Watt, nodding at a television crew interviewing the mayor in front of one of the locomotives. ‘One of them nipped out for a fag and noticed your lot putting the tape up in the siding.’

  ‘This body,’ said McGarrity. ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man,’ said Blizzard. ‘We’re pretty sure he’s a former railman.’

  ‘Who is he?’ asked McGarrity.

  ‘Bloke called Billy Guthrie.’

  McGarrity gave a low whistle.

  ‘You knew him?’ asked Blizzard.

  ‘Everyone knew Billy Guthrie.’ McGarrity glanced at Rafferty. ‘You remember him, Tommy?’

  ‘Nasty bit of work,’ said Rafferty.

  ‘Well, I need to track down his relatives. Someone has to ID the body.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said McGarrity, ‘didn’t know him that well, John.’

  Blizzard looked at Rafferty, who shook his head firmly and turned away from the conversation. The inspector was struck by the thought that, even in death, it was always the same with Billy Guthrie. No one dared be associated with him when it came to police investigations.