The Hidden

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I want everyone who was there on Sunday questioned comprehensively, and I want all the interviews cross-referenced,’ Marsden said. ‘The killer will be on one of those lists, and I don’t want him slipping through our fingers. Sergeant Yates will give you your specific assignments. That’s all for now.’

  He stepped down from the podium, and headed for the door. He looked surprised to see Beresford was still there, and even more surprised when it became clear that the other inspector wasn’t going to move out of the way in order to let him leave.

  ‘Do you have a problem, DI Beresford?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Beresford replied, ‘we have a problem – and it’s not one I want to talk through where we can be overheard.’

  Beresford and Marsden strode to the far end of the car park, where they were screened from the main headquarters building by several large police vans.

  ‘Is this private enough for you?’ Marsden asked.

  Beresford looked around. Not only was there no one in earshot, there wasn’t even anyone in sight.

  ‘It’ll do fine,’ he said.

  ‘So what’s on your mind?’

  ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Don’t ever do what to you again?’ Marsden replied, wonderingly – though Beresford was sure he knew exactly what he was talking about.

  ‘Don’t ever put me in a position where I’m forced to agree with you, whether or not I think you’re right.’

  ‘Is this about me giving the job of checking the tapes to DC Crane?’ Marsden asked.

  ‘You know it is.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you think he’s up to it? If that’s the problem, I can soon assign it to somebody else.’

  Marsden was doing no more than play games, Beresford thought, feeling his right hand clenching into a fist.

  ‘Of course Crane is up to it,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a couple of sniffer dogs that would be up to it, with a bit of training. It’s no more than clerical drudgery, and it’s a wilful waste of the talents of a good detective.’

  ‘Which one do you think you are?’ Marsden asked. ‘My guess would be Eric Clapton.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Or maybe you don’t think your team is Cream at all. Maybe you think you’re Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – or some other supergroup. But let me tell you this, Inspector Beresford – there are officers in this division (and I’m one of them), who are sick to death of you and the rest of Chief Inspector Polak’s team strutting around like you’re cocks of the walk.’

  Though he knew his hand was clenched into a fist, Beresford was not even aware he’d taken a swing at the other man before he felt it make contact with Marsden’s jaw. It seemed to come as a surprise to Marsden, too, but if his mind didn’t know what was happening, his body recognized the situation immediately, and responded by crashing backwards onto the ground.

  You’re out of control again, Colin, said the voice in his head. And this time – you bloody fool – you’re out of control with a policeman!

  Maybe he was a bloody fool – but he didn’t care. His body swollen with rage, he looked down at the fallen man, and said, ‘Get up, you bastard.’

  ‘Have you gone crazy?’ Marsden asked, staying where he had fallen, but gently probing his jaw with his left hand. ‘Don’t you know that could cost you your job?’

  ‘My boss is the best bobby in Central Lancs – and she’s fighting for her life,’ Beresford said. ‘She’s entitled to some respect.’

  ‘Do you want to help me back up to my feet?’ Marsden asked, holding out his hand.

  Beresford hesitated for a second, then took the hand and pulled Marsden up.

  Marsden looked around him.

  ‘Do you think there’s a possibility that anybody saw what just happened?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t need witnesses,’ the bloody fool who had once been DI Beresford said. ‘I’m not the least bit sorry for what I just did, and if you haul me up in front of the top brass, I’ll not deny it.’

  ‘You’ve got it arse over backwards,’ Marsden told him. ‘I’d only report you if there were witnesses – because I’d really have no choice. So do you think anybody saw what went down?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I won’t report you.’

  ‘Why won’t you report me?’

  ‘Partly because you’re right – your boss is a good detective, if a bit too flashy for my taste, and I had no right to refer to her in the way I did.’

  ‘And what’s the other reason?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘The other reason is that you’d be too embarrassed that you didn’t see the punch coming,’ Beresford guessed, ‘and that when I landed it, it was enough to knock you down.’

  Marsden looked uncomfortable. ‘If you brag to anybody else about this, all bets are off,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t tell anybody,’ Beresford promised. He stood to one side and held his arms out. ‘Do you want to take a free swing at me?’

  Marsden shook his head. ‘I’m not going to sink to your level – but neither am I going to stand by and watch your team steal all the glory from this investigation. Is that clear, DI Beresford?’

  ‘We’ve never been ones to chase after glory,’ Beresford said sincerely.

  ‘Of course you haven’t,’ Marsden replied, with a sneer.

  Then he turned, and started to walk back across the car park.

  Beresford – for some reason he couldn’t quite explain – found he was rubbing his own jaw.

  Last night it had been some drinker in a pub, this morning it had been a detective inspector, he thought.

  Who knew what might happen in the afternoon?

  Maybe he’d headbutt the chief constable!

  As he rode out of Whitebridge, he could feel the tears streaming down his face, behind his visor.

  What was he crying for? he wondered.

  It certainly wasn’t for the girl. It wasn’t even really for himself.

  No, it was for the bike, which, even now, was faithfully carrying him to the site of what would be its own destruction.

  He loved that bike. He’d spent two years saving up for it – denying himself all the treats all his friends took for granted; risking the occasional bit of petty thieving, if he thought it might put a few bob in the bike fund.

  Even then, he’d not had enough money to buy it in the normal way – the proper way – but he’d wanted it so badly that he’d been willing to take his chances and had gone the dodgy route instead.

  He had left the town behind him, and now was crossing the empty moors. On any other occasion, he would have opened the bike up – let it show what it could really do – but it was bad taste to show off in a funeral cortège, even a unitary one without witnesses, and so he kept to a sombre speed.

  If he hadn’t lost his temper with the girl, she would still be alive now, he told himself. If he hadn’t lost his temper with the girl, he wouldn’t now be taking his bike on its last ever ride.

  As he rode past the bus stop for the Moorland Bus Company, he checked his watch. He still had time to do what he needed to do, and then get back to this stop in time to catch the afternoon service back into Whitebridge, he thought, but it was going to be tight.

  A track branched off the main road to the left, and he took it. The track had a rough surface, made worse by the quarry lorries which had once ploughed it up, and at any other time, he would have worried about what it was doing to his bike’s tyres. Now, of course, it didn’t matter, because all the bike had to do was to carry him for another quarter of a mile.

  He stopped the bike at the lip of the quarry, and looked down at the steep slope which led to the bottom of it. A lake had formed in the abandoned workings, and though he didn’t know how deep it was, he was sure it was deep enough.

  He felt a sudden impulse to stay on the bike – to ride it down the steep slope
and into the dark water. But the impulse soon passed, because although he deeply regretted what he had done, he still did not regret it enough to want to pay with his own life.

  He dismounted, wheeled the bike to the edge, and gave it a gentle push.

  For perhaps the first quarter of its journey, it stayed upright. Then it hit a rock, the front wheel buckled, and it was over. That didn’t matter. As a result of the momentum it had already achieved, and the gradient it found itself on, it continued moving – bouncing into the air, crashing on the ground, then bouncing again – until it hit the lake with a resounding splash, and sank from view.

  He took off his helmet – because why would he need it now? – and threw it after the bike.

  Bounce, bounce, bounce … splash.

  He turned, and saw the hiker – bobble hat on his head, rucksack on his back, stout stick in his hand – looking at him.

  Are you crazy? the man’s expression seemed to be asking. That was a good bike – a very good bike – and you’ve destroyed it!

  If he’d kept his helmet on, the hiker would have had no idea what he looked like.

  But you didn’t do that, did you? he asked himself. Oh no – you had to go for the grand gesture; you had to leave yourself open to being fingered.

  He wondered what to do next.

  Should he try to explain?

  ‘It looked in good nick, but it was falling to pieces, really.’

  Should he threaten?

  ‘If you tell anybody what you’ve seen, I’ll hunt you down wherever you are. I promise you that.’

  Or should he, perhaps, make absolutely certain that the man never told anybody anything that he’d seen?

  It would be very easily done, he thought. The man was clearly weaker than he was. He was middle-aged, and so, presumably had already had the best that life had to offer him, which was why his idea of fun now seemed to be a lonely walk across a bleak moor.

  It would probably be doing him a favour to end his life now. It would probably …

  ‘Tipping a good bike into a quarry – are you soft in the head, lad?’ the hiker asked.

  The words had the instant effect of driving any crazy notions out of his mind – of driving any notions out of his mind, if truth be told.

  He turned, and jogged back down the track.

  When the bus came, the driver gave him a slightly strange look, but said nothing, and as he sank back into his seat, he felt a sense of relief.

  It had cost him his beloved bike, he told himself – but he had probably got away with it.

  SIX

  When Cynthia Broadbent had entered the teaching profession, just after the war, she’d had visions of herself as a headmistress of a prestigious school – of being an educator whose sage pronouncements would be regularly reported in the Times Educational Supplement. It had taken her perhaps two years working at the chalk face to realize that she did not have the determination, charisma, gravitas or ruthlessness necessary to become an effective leader, and thereafter she had settled for slowly climbing the educational ladder, so that now, a few years from retirement, she had finally been promoted to second deputy head.

  She had known other women who, on being appointed to similar positions, had become martinets, striding extravagantly and loudly along the school corridors as if they had taken the head of the SS as their role model. She, in contrast, had chosen a much quieter, softer approach to her work – more Albert Schweitzer than Heinrich Himmler.

  The position suited her, and seemed likely to continue to do so into the next decade, at which point she would be old enough to claim her pension. When that time arrived, she would buy a cottage by the seaside with her friend, Miss Tweedsmuir, who, though a teetotaller, had been working as a bookkeeper at the local brewery for over twenty years, and if their new seaside neighbours decided to regard the two late-middle-aged women living together as a pair of rampant lesbians, well, that was their business.

  This lunchtime, she had just been down to the main gate to shoo away the reporters – there weren’t many, most had had the decency to stay away. Now, walking back across the playground, she considered the impact the murder might have on the school community.

  The children were bound to be somewhat upset, of course, but nowhere near as upset as if someone else – say, Louisa Paniatowski – had been killed.

  Louisa involved herself wholeheartedly in the life of the school. Everybody knew her, and everybody liked her. Mary, on the other hand, had belonged to that small band of pupils who seemed to be in the school, but not of it. And it was wrong to call them a band, Miss Broadbent thought, because what defined a band was that they stuck together, and these children stuck to nobody at all – were, in fact, solitary islands floating in a sea of friendships and alliances.

  It was as she was approaching the bike sheds that Miss Broadbent noticed the girl wearing the prefect’s badge.

  Now, for goodness sake, what was she doing there? Miss Broadbent wondered – and walking over to the girl, she asked just that question.

  ‘It’s my turn to be on dinner duty, miss,’ Louisa Paniatowski said, in her responsible prefect-voice. ‘It’s down on the rota.’

  ‘Well, yes, that may well be the case, but given the circumstances, surely someone else—’

  ‘Please don’t send me home, miss,’ Louisa pleaded, the prefect-voice having quite disappeared, and tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I was just thinking of your little brothers,’ Miss Broadbent said, suddenly feeling inadequate to deal with the situation.

  ‘As Elena’s pointed out—’

  ‘Who is Elena?’

  ‘She’s a Spanish girl we employ. She’s sort of part-house keeper, part-child minder.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Anyway, as she says, she can make a much better job of looking after the twins than I could, because she’s a lot less personally involved.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could go and sit with your mother?’ Miss Broadbent suggested, still keeping her head above water in the sea of confusion which had engulfed her – but only just.

  ‘There’s only so much time that I can spend with Mum before I start wanting to go and find a roof to throw myself off,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Now you mustn’t talk like that, my dear,’ Miss Broadbent said, as confusion turned seamlessly into panic.

  ‘That’s just a bit of black Northern humour, miss,’ Louisa said, with a weak grin. ‘I don’t expect I’d really kill myself. Apart from anything else, we’re Catholic – and if Mum did die, the babies would need me more than ever. All I really meant was, it’s comforting to be here, if only for a little while – doing the job I know how to do, seeing what I expect to see.’

  Miss Broadbent could never remember patting a pupil on the shoulder before, but she patted Louisa now.

  ‘You do what you need to do, my dear,’ she said, ‘and if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, you know where my office is.’

  It wasn’t that Colin Beresford didn’t mind being alone, but rather that he had had to, of necessity, get used to it. For years, while caring for his mother (who had been struck down with early-onset Alzheimer’s), he had spent most of his evenings alone, even though she had often been in the room with him. And later, after she had died and he had set about acquiring his reputation as Shagger Beresford, he had made a conscious choice to be alone, especially after sex, because to linger in a temporary partner’s bed too long would, it seemed to him, hint at a commitment he was simply not prepared to make.

  The one place he really didn’t like being alone, he had only just discovered, was in the police canteen. Canteen culture was, by its very essence, a matey culture, and it was normal to be there with at least one other member of the team, but Meadows was out with DS Higgins, Crane was in the technology room, and Monika … Monika was fighting (and who could say just how successfully) for her life.

  He could, he supposed, have joined the other team – the parallel team, which saw his own team�
�s success as nothing more than a quest for glory, and wrote off as pure bloody luck all the hard work, good leadership and occasional sliver of pure bloody inspiration which often brought about a successful result – but he suspected he wouldn’t be welcome, and so he sat alone, sipping industrial strength tea from a big white mug which felt almost heavy enough to serve as the proverbial blunt instrument.

  He felt his spirits rise when he saw Jack Crane enter the canteen, but his pleasure quickly changed gear, sliding into curiosity, when he saw the look on the young detective constable’s face.

  ‘There’s something you need to see at once, sir,’ Crane said, without preamble.

  ‘On the CCTV tapes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what’s the urgency?’

  ‘I’m supposed to report to DI Marsden the moment I uncover anything that might be of significance.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘I think what I’ve found might be a major lead, and I don’t want it to be sucked into Marsden’s vortex before you’ve had a chance to look at it.’

  ‘Come again?’ Beresford said.

  ‘We need to share the lead – because it’s our boss who’s lying in that hospital, and that makes the whole investigation our business.’

  ‘You’re right, Jack,’ Beresford agreed. ‘You’re bloody spot on.’

  The technology room could more accurately have been called the technology cupboard, and even with just the two of them there, it felt very crowded.

  ‘I know the only reason Marsden gave me this job was to make it clear that, as members of the boss’s team, we’re expected to do all the donkey work,’ Crane said, as he threaded the tape around the spool, ‘but it’s worked out very well, because if any other bobby had been put on the job, we’d still be hours away from getting this information.’

  He sounded like he was bragging, Beresford thought. But he probably wasn’t. As far as he could tell, Crane never bragged, maybe because the young detective constable had so much self-confidence that he didn’t feel the need to.

  ‘So why did you get to it quicker than anybody else would have done?’ Beresford asked.