Dust to Dust

by Patricia Hall

  had done what she said she would do and told Thackeray far more than he had been prepared to tell him himself.

  “Do you want a solicitor, Mr Baxter?” Mower asked as he set up the tape-recorder and indicated who was present in the room.

  “Do I need one?” Baxter asked. “You said I was here voluntarily.”

  “You are,” Thackeray snapped. “But in the light of what we now know you have been concealing from us, I thought you might like to consider your position. We’re here to talk about two cases of murder to which you seem to have been unusually close.”

  “No,” Baxter said. “I’ll reserve the right to have a solicitor if I think I need one. But I guess I probably know as much about the law as you do, so I’ll cope. And I assure you I’ve not been trying to conceal anything at all which might have a bearing on Vic Randall’s death. I’m more than ready to help you find his killer, believe me.”

  “Right,” Thackeray said. “Let’s get some ancient history cleared up first. Then we know where we stand. First, do you believe your brother killed, or was involved in the murder of Andy Fielding in any way?”

  “No,” Baxter said. “I believe he’s innocent.”

  “Do you have any idea at all who could be guilty?” Thackeray pressed.

  “No,” Baxter said again. “I’ve no idea at all. As you probably know, there was a lot of anti-police feeling in the coal-field at that time. If he was spotted in the village at night, out of uniform, he was putting himself at considerable risk. Almost anyone could have killed him if they’d got into an altercation of some sort. It was only a week after the Metropolitan Police trashed the place.”

  “And the village would have covered up for whoever it was, Mafia-style?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Baxter said.

  “Like your mother covered up for you, telling the police you were safely in bed that night when in fact you were out on the streets with your friend Craig Atkinson?”

  Baxter winced slightly and hesitated. He had forgotten telling Laura Ackroyd that sliver of information but he supposed he must have done, and he was suddenly filled with revulsion at the position he found himself in.

  “We were out on the streets most nights, briefly,” he said. “For ten minutes or so, when Billy and the rest went out. No more. I was supposed to be looking after my young sister, Annie.”

  “So like every else, you were involved in the lies and deception back then?” Thackeray asked.

  “Yes, everyone, pretty well, was involved,” Baxter said quietly. “I lied because I was more scared of my mother than I was of the police. But we didn’t know then how many people had seen us skulking about, including quite possibly my mother herself, though she never said anything at the time. I think Craig and I reckoned we were invisible, but it seems we weren’t.”

  “And do you believe people would still cover up for the guilty person, assuming it was not your brother?”

  “Very probably,” Baxter said. “No-one in the village would want to see anyone else go down for it after all this time, I don’t suppose.”

  “So it’s not impossible that someone who knew something, and feared Vic Randall might disclose some damaging information, might be tempted to prevent him from doing that, even now?” Thackeray asked.

  “Not impossible, no,” Baxter said. “Although I’ve heard nothing to suggest that’s what happened. My father and Vic Randall are – were – highly respected members of this community. I can’t imagine anyone turning on them now.”

  “Right, that’s clear enough,” Thackeray said, not bothering to conceal his anger at Baxter’s replies. “Now let’s turn to what you specifically didn’t tell me last time we spoke, but which you saw fit to tell Laura Ackroyd. You and your friend Craig Atkinson found Fielding’s body that morning and said nothing. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Baxter said. “We were on the way to school. We decided to go the long way round.”

  “ Why the hell didn’t you report it to the police?” Thackeray snapped.

  “I don’t think you’ve been listening to what I’ve been saying, chief inspector,” Baxter said. “No-one was in a frame of mind to talk to the police under any circumstances back then. The man was obviously dead, way beyond help. It was a dreadful sight and we were shocked rigid. I was physically sick. We ran to the woods. We had a den back there, an dilapidated hut close to the entrance to an old drift mine. We ran there and smoked a fag, and then went to school as if nothing had happened. That’s the way it was back then. He was a copper and basically we didn’t care tuppence for him. Looking back, I’m ashamed of the way we behaved, but then it seemed entirely normal.”

  “Given all that deception in 1984, Mr Baxter, you can see why we find it difficult to believe anything anyone in Urmstone tells us, including you, now we have another murder on our hands,” Thackeray said. “We now know that you and your brother and the Atkinson boy were out and about the night Fielding was killed, two of you apparently just stumbled on the body the next day, though you didn’t bother to tell anyone, and now you are back in the village when Vic Randall is stabbed and again you happen upon the body. You have to admit that is a lot of coincidences.” Baxter nodded, his face gaunt. He stared at Thackeray and then at Mower.

  “I don’t think you can have any idea what that year was like, unless you were here,” he said. “We’re all scarred by it, one way or another, even those of us who were little more than children.” Thackeray sighed.

  “I was here myself, very briefly,” Thackeray said, with the faintest flicker of sympathy in his eyes. “Not after the murder, long before that, but I saw the way things were going. But there’s no excuse for what happened later. Murder is murder and Fielding’s death was brutal.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that. I still have nightmare’s about it,” Baxter said. “But I promise you, I had nothing to do with it, and nor did my brother. It took some force to kill Fielding like that, and Billy was almost crippled from the day before. I wanted to say that at the trial but his barrister said it would only confirm that he was a violent man and would damage his case. But it wasn’t him who’d been violent at Orgreave. It was a copper on a horse.”

  “So what about your friend Craig Atkinson, Mr Baxter,” Thackeray went on. “Did he stay out after you went home to mind your sister?”

  “He could have done,” Baxter admitted. “He sometimes did.”

  “And you’ve no idea where he is now?”

  “None at all. As far as I know he disappeared about three years later, after the pit closed. I don’t think any of his family have heard from him since. He used to talk about going to Australia, so I always assumed that’s what he did. He wouldn’t have contacted me anyway. I stayed at school and went to university. I think he was jealous of that, to be honest. We didn’t have much contact after he went down the pit with his father and his brother.”

  “Did you know PC Fielding?” Kevin Mower broke in unexpectedly. “Had you ever seen him before?”

  “I didn’t think I had,” Baxter said slowly. “But it turns out I probably had. Sergeant Becket tells me that Fielding was with him on the tip the night Stevie Atkinson died, so both Craig and I had seen him before, in uniform that night. He was the one who wanted to finish his tea before he and his mate came out to see what had happened. I was furious with him at the time, and I think Tom Becket was too when he turned up to help. I didn’t recognise him as the same man the morning we found the body.”

  “Do you think Craig Atkinson recognised him?” Mower came back quickly.

  Baxter sat in thought for a moment, reluctant even after all these years, and Craig’s long-time disappearance, to say anything to incriminate him.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “I think he recognised him.” Thackeray and Mower sat in silence for a moment.

  “And he could have born a grudge against Fielding? Did he blame him for his brother’s death?” Thackeray asked at length.

  “I think we both felt Fielding wasn
’t much help that night on the tip. It was Tom Becket who tried to save Stevie’s life. But I never heard him mention Fielding again. Craig and I blamed ourselves for Stevie’s death back then, if you really want to know.”

  “You weren’t blamed at the inquest, were you?” Mower asked. “Why should you beat yourselves up about it if it was an accident? And what happened wasn’t the fault of the police,”

  “That’s a matter of dispute,” Baxter came back sharply. “I can see now, on a good day, that it wasn’t our fault that Stevie followed us out that night. But that doesn’t mean that those who persuaded young kids that they needed to be clambering around coal tips in the middle of the night to keep their families warm don’t bear some responsibility.”

  “I think we’re straying off the point,” Thackeray said, after a moment’s thought. “I’m going to ask your opinion, Mr Baxter. Is it your feeling that Craig Atkinson could have been involved in the death of PC Fielding, either alone or with somebody else?” Baxter nodded slowly.

  “I didn’t think that then,” he said. “It never even crossed my mind. He was my best mate. But much later, after he disappeared, and I went over and over what had happened in my own head, I did begin to wonder.”

  “And with your brother in jail, you never thought to talk to the police even then?” Thackeray sounded incredulous.

  “I’m a lawyer, Mr Thackeray,” Baxter said. “A vague feeling at the back of my mind isn’t evidence. If I’d had the slightest bit of evidence that might have helped Billy, I’d have done something about it. But when his appeals were heard, Craig was long gone, and confessing we’d seen the body would only have muddied the waters. It wouldn’t have helped my brother and might have thrown suspicion on me. I’m not that reckless, Mr Thackeray. I had my life to lead, a long way from Urmstone. You may think we were wrong not to reveal what we’d seen when we found the body, but what was done was done. It was best forgotten.”

  “And now we have another death, an old man killed in his own home, which may or may not be connected to what happened then. And again you found the body, though this time you behaved like a good citizen and called the police.”

  “Of course,” Baxter said. “‘Eighty four is a long time ago. We’re different people now.”

  “But I have to ask you what you were doing the previous evening?”

  “Is that when Vic was killed?” Baxter asked. “He was very cold when I found him.”

  “Just answer the question, please, Mr Baxter,” Thackeray said, and Baxter sighed.

  “I was at home with my parents all evening. My mother cooked a meal at about six thirty, and then I sat with my dad for a while until my mother settled him down for the night. We watched television for a bit, and went to bed quite early. I spoke to my wife on my mobile but I was asleep by about eleven.”

  “You didn’t go out at all?”

  “No,” Baxter said. “Not at all.”

  “We asked you previously whether you had ever been upstairs in Vic Randall’s house,” Thackeray said. “And now I have to ask you again if you would give us your DNA and fingerprints so that we can eliminate you from our inquiries.”

  Baxter hesitated, for a moment, and then gritted his teeth, knowing he had no choice. If he refused, Thackeray might arrest him and take the evidence he wanted anyway.

  “Of course,” he said, feeling sick.

  As Ian Baxter walked slowly back up the hill to his parents’ house he was horrified to see an

  ambulance parked outside. He started to run, his heart pounding with anxiety as much as the exertion, and found the front door open and his mother standing in the entrance to Ken Baxter’s sickroom, watching two paramedics at the sick man’s bedside working with breathing apparatus.

  “I went in with lunch and he’d stopped breathing,” Madge said as Ian came into the house and put his arms round her. He could see where Madge must have dropped a tray on the floor, food and crockery scattered around and getting trodden into the carpet.

  “He’s gone, he’s gone,” Madge moaned against her son’s shoulder. “He’s not breathing.” But Ian could see that the paramedics had not given up and after another minute one of them turned away from the bed, where Ken lay white-faced and limp with a mask strapped over his nose and mouth.

  “We’ll take him in now,” the first paramedic said, and gently the two of them lifted Ken’s emaciated body onto a stretcher and prepared to carry him out of the house. “His heart’s OK. Ish.”

  “Who’s coming with him?” the other paramedic asked, and Madge grabbed her coat from the hook behind the front door.

  “I am,” she said firmly.

  “I’ll follow in the car,” Ian said, almost unable to breath himself as he watched his father being eased into the ambulance. “Where are you taking him?”

  “The district hospital, A and E,” the driver said as he slammed the door. Don’t die on me now, you old beggar, he said to himself as he stood by his car watching the ambulance climb the hill out of the village, blue lights flashing and the siren fading into the distance. I haven’t finished with you yet, he thought. There’s so much I still want to tell you. Too much we’ve left unsaid all these years. He got into his car and started the engine with tears in his eyes. “Oh, damn and blast,” he said out loud. “This is turning into a disaster.”

  Towards midnight that night, Ian Baxter woke with a start in the armchair in his parents’ living room where he had fallen into a doze after he had come back from the hospital. He had left

  his father in intensive care, breathing only with artificial help, and Madge sitting rigidly at his side on a hard chair, refusing even to consider moving.

  “Get yourself home and get some sleep,” his mother had instructed, letting go of his hand reluctantly. “And see if you can get permission for Billy to come and see him. I’ll ring you if there’s any change.”

  Ian had nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and not daring to tell his mother that the chance of Billy’s being allowed to visit his father was remote. For the funeral, maybe, he thought, but that would be all. He barely remembered the drive back to Urmstone and as he slumped into a chair, rather then making the effort to go upstairs, he felt sure that his father would not be coming home again. The sickroom lay as they had left it, the bedclothes thrown back and Ken’s lunch tray still strewn across the floor. In the morning, he thought, he would have to make the effort to tidy up, before his mother came back, as inevitably she must. He had seldom seen her disturbed by anything life threw at her, but as he had glanced back at her sitting beside what would probably turn out to be Ken’s deathbed, she had looked defeated, and the sight had cut him like a knife.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To Ian Baxter’s surprise, he realised that he had not woken from his exhausted sleep naturally. There was a sharp knock on the front door and he guessed that it was probably not the first. Wearily he staggered to his feet and went to answer it, knowing that his first panicky fear that it was the police again was unlikely and the second, that it might be news of his father, could not possibly be true. That would come by phone from the hospital, if it came at all. To his surprise he found Colin Randall standing on the doorstep, shivering in the sharp wind which was blowing sleet against the side of the house.

  “I saw t’lights on,” Col said, red-faced and blowing on his hands. “I knew summat were up. Is Ken taken worse?” Ian hustled Col inside and took his wet anorak from him, leaving him to run a hand over his reddish stubble of a haircut and his florid face to get rid of the worst of the icy water which clung to him.

  “I fell asleep in the armchair. My dad’s in intensive care,” Ian said flatly. “My mam’s there with him. I came back to get some rest but that’s not easy.” Col followed Ian into the living room, where they both sat in silence for a moment, gazing at Ken’s rumpled bed.

  “I’d not have bothered you if I’d known,” Col said at last. “But wi’you being a lawyer, I though you might know what to do.” Ian sighed. He
was dog tired, but he knew that for Col to be in Urmstone at this time of night, twenty miles from home, he must have a good reason.

  “If I can help…” he said. “I was really sorry about your dad. You know I’d not seen him for years, till this last week, but he was part of my childhood too, you know. Dad’s best friend…”

  “Trouble wi’our dads was that they could never accept that owt had changed,” Col said. “That’s why I fell out wi’mine in the end. I told him, after all that had happened, I were a sight better off up there working in t’open air than I’d ever have been carrying on underground in that bloody pit. Right bust up, we had. He never forgave me.”

  “Don’t let the police hear you saying that,” Ian said. “They’ll put the worst possible interpretation on it.”

  “Don’t I know it. It was the bloody police I wanted to talk to you about. I can put up wi’t bloody chief inspector suggesting I might have had reason to stab my own dad. I’ve a cast iron alibi for that. My van were out of action on Friday, so I’d no transport, spent half the evening with a mechanic mate of mine getting the damn thing going again, and then I had to get deliveries out Saturday morning up beyond Bradfield. I were up to my eyes, and with other people most o’t’time. I can put up wi’all those questions. But I’m buggered if I’ll put up wi’some London pig harrassing me about what went down twenty years ago.”

  “Ferguson?” Ian asked. “I thought he’d given up. He was hanging around the village for a while but I haven’t seen him since I got back from London, though I reckon he’s the person harassing my mam by phone. Heavy breathing and all that nonsense. I picked one up myself. I gave whoever it was a mouthful, I can tell you, but he didn’t respond. You know Ferguson’s not even a copper any more. Did he tell you that? I reckon he’s out of control. He’s already had a go at me – physically, I mean – I’d not be surprised if it wasn’t him killed your dad.”