by John Dean
‘Yes,’ he began, ‘but he can’t hurt anyone now.’
‘Sorry,’ said McGarrity, ‘just didn’t know him that well. I heard he left the city.’
‘Look, John,’ said Watt. ‘I know you’ve got a job to do but I really must object about the way…’
‘Like it or not,’ said Blizzard as Fee walked over and stood waiting for the outcome of the conversation, ‘my officers are going to have to keep asking questions. They can do it with your co-operation or without.’
‘Why question people here? The signal box is outside our perimeter fence. Nothing to do with us.’
‘You never know in these situations. Look, I’m really sorry about this, Malcolm, this is the last thing any of us wanted.’
With a scowl, the museum manager disappeared towards his office. Blizzard crossed to join Fee.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Rafferty, glancing at McGarrity. ‘We don’t want Blizzard’s lot asking us questions.’
Making sure that the detectives had not seen them, they slipped away through the crowds.
* * *
‘Perhaps, Miss Rees,’ said Colley, staring across the table in the stuffy little interview room, ‘you can explain why you, of all the people, should be the one to discover the body of Billy Guthrie?’
Megan Rees returned his gaze for a few moments, allowing the sergeant to peruse her a little further. Colley had to admit it, he found her fascinating. However, the more he stared at her, he realised that the fascination was not so much about her attractive appearance but more about her demeanour. There was something strangely composed about her, a calmness at the centre of the storm and a sense that she knew things that no one else knew. Colley glanced across at the chief inspector sitting next to him. More accustomed to suspects breaking down under questioning, both officers had found themselves disconcerted by Megan Rees from the moment the interview had started.
Even on the drive to Abbey Road Police Station earlier that afternoon, Megan had said nothing, sitting in the back of the car and staring out of the window, ignoring the uniformed officer sitting next to her and rebuffing Colley’s attempts at conversation as he drove. Since arriving at the station, her silence had continued and now Colley sought some kind of steer from Blizzard, who was sitting with his arms folded. The inspector shrugged: the officers had agreed that since Megan had appeared to like the sergeant when they met in the railway siding, it made sense that he should lead on the interview. It was an approach that was getting them nowhere.
‘Miss Rees,’ said the sergeant more insistently. ‘You really do have to co-operate with us.’
‘Is someone looking after my dog?’ She sounded worried.
The question startled the sergeant: it was the first time either detective had seen her heard exhibit any emotion.
‘Why do you ask?’ he said.
‘If you keep me in overnight, someone will need to make sure he is fed and walked.’
‘Why should we keep you in overnight?’
‘Don’t look like that, Sergeant,’ she said, the faintest of smiles playing on her face. ‘It’s not a clue. It’s not a veiled admission that I killed Billy Guthrie.’
‘I could understand if it was,’ and the sergeant, nodding at Blizzard. ‘I mean, we both know what you have been through.’
‘Are you a father, Sergeant?’
Surprised by the question, Colley nodded.
‘Yes. Just. A daughter.’
‘Can you imagine what it would be like for her growing up without you?’ asked Megan, fixing him with a stare. ‘I mean, don’t give me some mindless platitude, can you really imagine what it would be like for her if you were suddenly taken away from her?’
Without realising he had done it, Colley shook his head and suddenly realised what it was about Megan Rees that so disturbed him: it was as if she had seen deep into his mind and discovered the secret fears that had crowded in ever since he had first held his daughter in his arms. Fears he had not been expecting, fears that he felt acutely now every time he watched baby Laura sleeping. Frightening thoughts of having something so precious that nothing else in life seemed to matter. A fear that a criminal might flash a blade, pull a gun, and leave Jay and their daughter to fend for themselves in a hostile world. Such thoughts, never far from the sergeant’s mind in recent weeks, had become more insistent in the hours since he had talked to Brian Robertshaw about events on The Spur. Sensing both Megan Rees and Blizzard watching him intently, Colley shook his head again.
‘No,’ he said quietly, detective’s instincts returning as he realised that her comment might give him a way to move the interview forward. ‘No, I can’t imagine what it would be like for my daughter to live without me. Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t have to imagine. It’s what I have had to do every second of the day,’ said Megan. ‘There is not a day, not a minute, that I do not think of my father.’
‘Yes, I know and…’
‘And if you ask me if I am glad that Billy Guthrie is dead, then the answer is yes, Sergeant.’ Her eyes flashed fire. ‘The answer is yes. Yes, I am glad that he is dead and, yes, I hope his death was slow and, yes, I hope that it was exceedingly painful.’
‘Your anger is understandable. I know that what happened that night your father was…’
‘You know nothing,’ she said, spitting the words out and startling the detectives with her venom. ‘What did your lot do? What did anyone do? Nothing, that’s what.’
‘I am sure the investigating…’
‘Don’t defend them! When the police turned up at the pub, no one would even talk to them. No one had seen anything, apparently. Like it never happened. Like my father had never existed. Cowards, the lot of them. And your lot – your lot let him get away with it.’ Her voice dropped. ‘But I saw what happened. Oh, yes, I saw what happened.’
‘You did?’ said Blizzard, sitting forward in his seat.
She nodded. ‘All of it.’
‘Then how come you never said anything to officers at the time?’
‘My mother told me not to.’
‘Why on earth would she say that?’ asked Blizzard.
‘She said Guthrie would only cause more trouble for us.’ Her lip curled in anger. ‘Can you believe that, your own mother telling you to do that? And what extra trouble could he cause? He had already taken away the most precious person of all.’
‘Yet you still kept quiet,’ said the inspector. ‘Despite all the things you have just said about the other witnesses, you said nothing.’
‘I was eleven-years-old,’ replied Megan and her face briefly assumed an expression of helplessness. ‘What did I know? I mean, my own mother.’ Her expression hardened. ‘I’m glad the bitch is dead.’
‘And how did your mother die, Megan?’ asked Blizzard softly.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said with another faint smile, back in control of her emotions. ‘But I hate to disappoint you. She wasn’t found with a big knife sticking out of her back with my name on the handle and a message Die, mummy dearest, do. No, my mother died of a heart attack last year. Ironic really, since I’m not sure she even had a heart.’
Blizzard looked at her for a few moments, not sure how to take the young woman sitting defiantly before them, her arms crossed as if defying the detectives to challenge what she was saying. He glanced over at the sergeant, whose expression suggested that he, too, found the interview increasingly disturbing.
‘Perhaps,’ said Blizzard, ‘it would help if you told us what you saw the night your father was attacked.’
‘What good would it do now? Guthrie is dead, you can’t touch him. Someone has already done that for you.’
‘But it might help us work out who killed him.’
Megan shrugged.
‘Please,’ said Blizzard.
The intensity of his comment seemed to strike home and, after thinking for a few moments, she nodded.
‘We lived over the pub,’ she said. ‘I had sn
eaked down because my mum said I could have a bottle of orange juice from the bar.’
The Queen’s Head, a cavernous, former coaching house on the market place in Burniston, was virtually empty at nine o’clock that Wednesday evening. As Denny Rees stood behind the bar, polishing glasses, he perused those that had come in out of the rain. In one corner of the large wood-panelled lounge sat a small group of four middle-aged men enjoying a quiet pint. Rough, working men. Collecting the glasses earlier in the evening, he had heard them talking about a late-night poker game and surmised that they had travelled from Hafton to take part and were enjoying a few drinks beforehand.
Denny surveyed them with slight concern: Hafton may only be eleven miles to the south of Burniston but the city and the market town were worlds apart and everyone knew the two places did not mix. Denny had lost count of the trouble he had seen break out between men from the two communities. Having said that, these men seemed to be keeping themselves to themselves and the few locals seemed to be ignoring them. Indeed, the only other people in the pub were a young couple who only had eyes for each other as they sat by the window, and in one of the alcoves was one of his regulars, an old man nursing the pint he had bought an hour before. He wouldn’t make much profit if they were all like that, thought Denny morosely. Because Wednesdays were never busy, Denny was working on his own. He could have brought in one of the barmaids but times were hard in Burniston and trade had been slow over previous weeks so he was doing anything he could to keep the costs down, keep the brewery happy.
Denny knew all about hard times. A former fitter, he had first been made redundant when the Hafton locomotive works closed in the mid-sixties. Managing to find work once more, he had lost his job twice, first from a Hafton railway maintenance company and again three years later when Burniston’s largest engineering plant closed down. Eventually, with jobs scarce, he became the tenant at the Queen’s Head, a job in which he excelled, quickly becoming popular with the regulars even though he had only been there six months.
Denny busied himself behind the bar. Surveying the four Hafton men out of the corner of his eye, he thought he vaguely recognised one of them, fancied that they might even have worked together on the shopfloor at the locomotive works. Not that they had ever spoken: the works had employed six thousand people, after all. When the man had walked up to order more drinks, there had been a flicker of recognition but no words were spoken about their previous life. What Denny did remember was that the man was a decent sort, not the kind to kick off.
It was shortly after nine that the door to the pub swung open and in walked three men. Denny stiffened as he saw the leader, a burly man with a misshapen nose and a scar on his cheek. Billy Guthrie. The landlord knew all about Billy Guthrie. Trying to keep calm, Denny put down the glass he was polishing and watched silently as the arrivals walked up to the bar, all three of them casting ugly glances in the direction of the group in the corner.
‘I thought I banned you, Billy,’ said Denny calmly.
‘Heard you were letting shite in so thought I would come and help you get rid of them.’
‘I don’t need help, and even if I did I would not ask for it from you.’
Guthrie’s eyes flashed his anger.
‘Besides,’ said Denny, ‘they can drink here if they like. It’s a free country.’
Guthrie ignored the comment and walked towards the Hafton men, who eyed him nervously.
‘Time to get out, lads,’ said Guthrie.
‘Stay where you are,’ said Denny.
He reached beneath the bar and produced the truncheon which he had started keeping there since the night he had banned Guthrie for fighting. There had been plenty of rumours that Guthrie was looking for revenge and Denny Rees was not the kind of man to take any chances. Guthrie glared at Denny as he came around from behind the bar.
‘In fact,’ said Denny, ‘it’s time for you to get out, Billy. No one says who gets to drink in my pub but me. I barred you, remember.’
Guthrie eyed the truncheon for a few moments before walking up to Denny, until the two men were eyeballing each other. Denny could smell the drink on his breath. Guthrie looked past him and noticed Megan watching wide-eyed from behind the bar.
‘I am sure that you would not want to do anything stupid in front of your daughter,’ he said.
‘You keep her out of this,’ said Denny, half-turning.
The punch was lightning quick, a hammer blow of a right fist smashing into the side of Denny’s face. The force sent the landlord flying backwards. Everyone heard the sickening crack as his head struck the edge of the bar and he crashed to the floor.
‘He did not move,’ said Megan, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘It may have taken him fourteen months to die but my father was dead from the moment he hit the floor. And if I hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t turned to…’
Her voice tailed off and she started to sob. The two detectives had been sitting forward in their seats, listening in silence as she recounted her story. Now, as if a spell had been broken, Blizzard gave a little sigh, stood up and went to lean with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes for a moment: sometimes the raw human emotions he encountered in the job were too much to take. In a strange way he was relieved to feel the emotion knotted in his throat. It was somehow reassuring. The inspector had discussed the subject with Fee several times in recent weeks. Noting the way Colley had softened his response to some situations since the birth of the baby, Blizzard had found himself wondering why he felt no such inclination. Colley had always been the more compassionate one of the two officers but until the baby was born, Blizzard had not questioned his own reactions. Had not felt the need. Now, though, he found himself re-evaluating many things. Could it be, he had asked Fee, that you experienced so much heartbreak and evil that you eventually became too cynical, incapable of feeling genuine emotions, incapable even of loving? They had been in the local village pub at the time and Fee had nodded at his glass and suggested that it was the beer talking but the conversation had troubled them both.
Blizzard ran through the conversation now as he stood and watched Megan Rees, who sat at the table staring down at her clasped hands. And the inspector knew the answer: human pain was human pain and pain to be shared. He wondered if it was becoming a godparent that that done it. Responsibility of a different kind. This time it was Colley’s turn to recognise his colleague’s discomfort.
‘You cannot blame yourself,’ said the sergeant, looking across the table at Megan. ‘You must never blame yourself for what happened.’
She gave a dry laugh after which there was silence in the interview room again. Blizzard returned to sit at the table.
‘Megan,’ he said, looking hard at her, ‘time to level with us. If you had killed Billy Guthrie, people would understand. We would understand. Maybe you saw him in Hafton yesterday and lost it, maybe it was a crime of passion.’
‘And how exactly did I lure him to the signal box?’
‘You’re an attractive young woman. Maybe you made him an offer that he could not refuse.’
‘Isn’t that called leading the witness?’ The edge was back in the voice.
‘I am just saying that you might have done anything to get back at him. A court might take the view that you attacked him when the balance of your mind was disturbed.’
‘You’re fishing, Chief Inspector. Besides, there is one major flaw in your argument. Surely you must have heard enough about Billy Guthrie to know that someone like me could never hope to do that. The man was a brute.’
‘Yes, I app…’
‘But it doesn’t mean that I did not want to kill the bastard,’ she said vehemently. ‘Or have not done it every day in my dreams.’
Silence fell on the room: somehow there did not seem anything more to say.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Colley was standing in the deserted CID room, clutching a mug of tea and staring out of the window at the summer storm clouds rolling in da
rk and heavy along the river. There had already been a couple of distant grumbles of thunder and the sergeant found himself perspiring in the suddenly heavy atmosphere. He turned when Blizzard walked in.
‘Any more thoughts?’ asked the inspector, sitting down at one of the desks and putting his feet up, grimacing as his bad knee protested again.
‘She has such anger inside her. I mean, what is she – twenty-three? – yet she feels like that.’
‘You of all people should be able to understand.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The bond between father and daughter,’ said the inspector. ‘It’s very strong. Laura may only be a few weeks old but I can already see the way she looks at you. The way she smiles.’
Colley considered the comment for a few moments then nodded.
‘Becoming a father changes everything,’ he said.
‘So Fee keeps saying.’
‘She still keen on the idea then?’
Blizzard nodded gloomily. Graham Ross walked in.
‘How did it go with Megan Rees?’ he asked.
‘She reckons she saw Guthrie batter her father,’ said Blizzard.
‘That never came out in the original inquiry.’
‘Reckons her mother told her to keep quiet.’ Blizzard looked at the piece of paper in the DI’s hand. ‘What’s that?’
‘My preliminary report,’ handing the document over and sitting down at one of the desks. ‘It all points to the assault taking place in the railway siding. We are pretty sure it happened sometime after midnight.’
‘How so sure?’ asked Colley.
‘The mud on his trousers. The ground was bone dry yesterday but the heavens opened at about midnight. The mud suggests he was out in it.’
‘Weapon?’ asked Blizzard.
‘Not sure there was one. Looks like this was a good old-fashioned beating. Some beating, mind. And way beyond what Megan Rees could administer.’
‘Maybe,’ murmured Blizzard.
‘Come on,’ protested Ross. ‘You surely cannot believe that a woman is capable of this. I mean, whoever did this used a tremendous amount of force and she’s only a kid.’