Dust to Dust

by Patricia Hall

  “Let’s get back to Craig,” he said. “When he went off, did he tell you he was going? Did he pack a bag? Or did he just disappear?”

  “He were right depressed, were Craig. He never talked about it, but I know he blamed himself for what happened to our Stevie. Then, after t’pit closed, he got more and more depressed. He kept talking about emigrating to Australia. I came home from work one day and found he’d gone, taken half his stuff with him, and left a note on t’kitchen table saying he’d be in touch. That were it. We’ve never heard from him since.”

  “Did you report him missing to the police?” Mower asked. “A missing person?”

  “What were t’point? We knew he wanted to go. It weren’t a right surprise to any of us. Roy had got married and moved out, so there were just the three of us in t’house. Pete were spending most of his dole money down at miners’ welfare and Craig were kicking his heels doing nowt. I’d already met this bloke myself, who really fancied me. I buggered off myself a couple of months later. I never blamed Craig for what he did. It were t’best thing he could have done. I just hope he’s happy somewhere.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Laura Ackroyd had an extra long lie in bed the next morning. She had spent the previous evening mending bridges with Michael Thackeray, after telling him rather more of what she had learned from the Baxter brothers during her prison visit than she had felt inclined to divulge the previous night, in the teeth of his criticism, and he had left for work in a better humour than he had been in since the investigation had opened into Vic Randall’s death. Showered and dressed, Laura picked up the phone when it rang feeling relaxed, and was not surprised to hear her grandmother’s voice but was shocked by her news.

  “Ken Baxter’s dead,” Joyce said, without preamble. “Went early this morning, apparently. We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. In some ways it was a blessing. But all this dreadful business with Vic can’t have helped him, can it. It must have brought a lot of things back for him and Madge that they would rather have forgotten by now.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Laura said. “Is there anything you want me to do?”

  “Could you give me a ride over to Urmstone, pet? I’d like to be with Madge. She must be devastated.”

  “Yes, of course,” Laura said, without hesitation. “I’ll pick you up in half an hour.” Before she left, she called Thackeray.

  “Did you know Ken Baxter had died?” she asked when she got though to him.

  “I didn’t,” Thackeray said. “That’s a great shame.”

  “I thought I’d better let you know that I’m taking Joyce over to the house. I know you don’t want me in Urmstone, but this is an emergency. Do you mind?”

  “Am I really such an ogre?” Thackeray asked quietly. “Of course I don’t mind. I hope Mrs Baxter doesn’t think our inquiries had anything to do with his death. We had to speak to him. There was no choice.”

  “I’m sure you did it decently. I’ll pass on your condolences,” Laura said, wondering, as Thackeray obviously did, how they would be received. But when she finally arrived in Urmstone with Joyce, they found the house packed with people and Madge Baxter herself sitting in the front room, already restored to its original purpose, with a dazed expression on her face. Ian Baxter seemed to be in charge of proceedings and after he had greeted Joyce enthusiastically in the narrow hallway he nodded to Laura without warmth.

  “Thanks for bringing Joyce over,” he said. “My mother will be pleased she’s come.”

  “It was the least I could do,” Laura said. “Is there anything else I can help with? She glanced around the crowded living room and kitchen. “The village seems to be rallying round.”

  “That’s what villages do,” Baxter said shortly. “Actually there is something you could do for me. I have to go back to the hospital to pick up my father’s belonging, and deal with the paperwork. And I’d like to see him, to be honest. My mam jumped in a taxi this morning, instead of calling me to come and fetch her. I don’t think she knew what she was doing. She certainly couldn’t afford a taxi, that’s for sure. Said she didn’t want to wake me up because I had a long drive home later, as if I was going back to London now. She’s all over the place, in a daze. If you came with me I’m sure we could get the formalities over quicker and I could get back here sooner.”

  “I’m not sure how much help I can be,” Laura said doubtfully. “A bit of moral support, maybe? If that’s what you want.” Baxter looked at her, evidently dazed himself.

  “I’ll drive,” Laura said firmly.

  “I’ve never done this before,” Baxter said. “I’m all at sea. I wanted to talk to my dad but he never regained consciousness while I was there. There’s so much I wanted to say to him. I feel as if a door’s been slammed in my face.”

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  “There was so much we never even began to say to each other. And it’s too late now. I wasn’t even able to sort out what he knew about Fielding’s death. My mother got angry when I mentioned it, said he and Vic wouldn’t have covered up a murder. But if we’re honest we just don’t know what they would have done back then Everyone was off their head, in one way or another, and my father and Vic were struggling to keep everyone in line. They’d have done whatever they thought was necessary and there’s no way they would have wanted to see a striking miner convicted of killing a copper. Though that’s what they got in the end, after the strike was over. Col Randall says his father did do some covering up. We were going to see the police again this morning, but I’ve told him that will have to wait now. When I mentioned it to my mother she just said it was a lousy, wicked time and everyone did and said things they would never have normally dreamed of doing.”

  Laura was suddenly aware that Madge had come into the hallway behind them and was listening to their conversation, her eyes angry in a haggard face.

  “You know where the power lay,” she said in a fierce whisper. “With that woman in charge anything was possible. They could have murdered a copper themselves to make us look bad. Your dad always said that there were things going on that we never really understood, folk no-one recognised stirring up trouble. It killed your dad in the end, just like it killed little Stevie Atkinson and that wretched policeman, and now Vic. And if it didn’t kill folk, it wrecked their lives, Billy’s life, Col Randall’s life. Only with Ken, it’s taken more than twenty years to do it. Joyce Ackroyd was close behind Madge and put her arm protectively round her.

  “Come on, love,” she said. “Come and sit down. Let Ian get off to the hospital. Are you staying Laura?” Laura shook her head.

  “I’m taking Ian back to the hospital,” she said. “I’ll come back for you, nan.” She followed Baxter out of the house to her car. He looked, she thought, like a small boy adrift in a threatening, grown-up world. So although she did not feel that she could be of any real help, she drove him the

  five miles or so to the district hospital where Ken Baxter had died, and waited for him while he went to see his father’s body in the chapel of rest and then visited the bereavement service and eventually came away, looking even more pale and drawn, with a small collection of his father’s possessions in a plastic carrier bag.

  “I’m so sorry, Ian,” Laura said, as they walked slowly back to her car in the hospital car park.

  “I said goodbye, after a fashion,” he said. “I was here most of the day yesterday, but he was barely conscious. It wasn’t the way I wanted it.”

  “And I’m sorry we couldn’t keep on working together to help Billy,” Laura added, as she slipped the car into gear and headed back towards Urmstone. “You need to concentrate on that, in spite of everything. It’s something which would really please your mother if we could get him out.”

  “I suppose you told your boyfriend everything Billy said when we visited,” he said.

  “In outline, yes,” Laura said. “I’m sure he’ll have Billy interviewed again and he’ll want to speak to you, too. Though he knows your
father’s died, so he’ll probably leave that a bit. They’re not complete barbarians, you know, whatever you thought back in ‘84.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I told you I was planning to talk to him.” It was a short enough drive and as she drove Laura was aware that Ian Baxter seemed to be silently debating with himself about something. Suddenly he smiled.

  “It wasn’t all doom and gloom back then,” he said, to her surprise. “I remember the Christmas party. Suddenly all this food arrived, and presents. We’d resigned ourselves to getting nothing at all and my mother only had a frozen chicken in for Christmas dinner. Then right at the last minute these vans drove in with stuff the support groups had collected. After going hungry for months we suddenly had all this food. I ate crisps and drank fizzy pop till I was nearly sick. My mother and the other women were up half the night making up parcels for every family and distributing presents for all the kids. Not that it was easy. I was down at the welfare with some of the other older lads and found some gay lad with purple hair parcelling up a teddy bear for a great lummox called Kevin who was only a year younger than I was. I can still remember Kevin. He always seemed too big for his clothes until that year when suddenly his trousers started slipping down off his hips and he had to beg his mother to find him a smaller belt. Poor Kevin. We teased him unmercifully.”

  “What happened to Kevin?” Laura asked. “There’s still some big lads around.”

  “Not Kevin,” Ian said, suddenly gloomy again. “My mother said heroin got Kevin. With a lot of the younger men it was heroin or booze. The older miners just ended up on benefit for the rest of their lives, or succumbed to the dust like my dad. They promised the mining villages all sorts, even that government: regeneration, fresh jobs, a brave new world without the pits. But you can see for yourself. Not much happened round here.”

  Laura slowed down slightly at the top of the steep hill and the final bends which led back down to the village. Dark clouds were piling in from the Pennines to the west and the light was poor and she felt the need to concentrate hard but she still failed to see a dark coloured car coming up fast behind her until it swung out, apparently attempting to overtake on a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Then, in an instant, the overtaking vehicle side-swiped her Golf and, as she struggled with the steering, she realised for the first time that only a narrow grass verge and a low stone wall stood between the road and a sheer drop into fields below. The car eventually came to a halt, with its passenger side scraping hard against the wall, and its tyres stuck in deep mud, and Ian and Laura gazing at each other for a long moment of heart-pounding silence as they took in what had happened.

  “God almighty,” Ian Baxter whispered.

  “Who was that maniac?” Laura asked faintly. The other car had long disappeared down the hill and round a sharp bend. Laura opened the driver’s door and Ian followed her out, clambering over into the driver’s seat before he could escape. Together they surveyed the damage. It was the muddy verge which had probably slowed them enough to save them from crashing through the wall and dropping thirty feet into the field of sheep below, but the car was badly scraped.

  “That was close,” Laura said. “Do you have many drivers like that round here?”

  “I hope not. He didn’t even slow down.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Laura said.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Baxter asked. Laura’s mouth was dry and she sat down abruptly in the driver’s seat as her knees threatened to give way beneath her.

  “It was deliberate? Did you recognise the car?” she asked. Baxter nodded.

  “No,” he said. “But it must have been damaged. I think this is one time where I feel the need for the police.” Laura smiled wryly.

  “The state my car’s in I’m not going to be able to keep it from one policeman anyway,” she said.

  “But let’s keep it from my mother, shall we?” Baxter said. “She’s got quite enough on her plate without thinking someone’s out to kill me. Please?”

  “Fine,” Laura said faintly. “Let’s see if we can get out of this mess, shall we? Give me a push from the back, would you. I don’t think the mud’s too deep to move it.” But as she put the car into gear and eased it off the verge and back onto the road, her main concern was what Michael Thackeray would say when he discovered that someone might have intended to kill her as well.

  DCI Thackeray was surprised when a uniformed constable told him that Ian Baxter wanted to see him. His visit must be important to take him away from his family at a time like this, he thought as he made his way to the interview room where Baxter was waiting, looking haggard and anxious. As he passed the main incident rook he beckoned Sergeant Tom Becket to accompany him.

  “Take some notes,” he said briefly before opening the interview room door. “This might be important.”

  “Mr Baxter,” Thackeray said as he entered the room. “I was very sorry to hear of your loss.”

  “Thank you,” Baxter said. “I wouldn’t be here now if someone hadn’t just made an attempt on my life. We have to stop this now, before someone else is killed. I want to tell you anything, anything at all, that might help you.” Thackeray smiled grimly.

  “I’m glad you see it that way at last. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a lawyer. What has surprised me in this case is that you, of all people, seem to have been less helpful to the inquiry than you should have been.” Baxter sighed.

  “It goes back a long way,” he said. “Almost twenty five years. It didn’t wreck my life, as it did so many, but it came close. As a local man, you should understand these things.” Thackeray looked at him impassively. As a man, he had some sympathy with Baxter, but as a policeman he had other priorities.

  “You said someone has attempted to kill you. Tell me about that first.” But as soon as Thackeray heard that Laura had been driving the car that had been forced off the road, it was as if he had been kicked in the stomach during one of the rugby games he had enjoyed in his youth. He found that for a moment he could barely speak.

  “Wait here,” he said and made his way out of the room on legs like jelly. In the corridor outside he leaned against the wall for a moment trying to control his breathing until he found the strength to pull out his mobile phone and call Laura. She answered at once.

  “Are you OK?” he asked. “I’ve got Ian Baxter here.”

  “Yes, I know. I dropped him off,” Laura said quickly. Thackeray could hear the murmur of

  voices in the background and realised she must be back at the Baxters’ house. “The car’s a bit scraped but we’re fine. It could have been bad but it wasn’t. Really, Michael. I’m sorry.

  I just gave him a lift and this came out of the blue. But I’m fine, truly.”

  “Can you get home?” Thackeray asked.

  “Yes, I’ll take Joyce back soon. The car’s perfectly drivable.”

  “Go home now, Laura,” Thackeray said. “Please. And stay there where I can be sure you’re safe. I’ll get away as soon as I can and see you there.”

  “I will,” Laura said. “Love you.” Thackeray rang off and turned back to the interview room where he found Tom Becket chatting to Baxter like an old friend.

  “That hill’s lethal,” the sergeant said to Thackeray as he sat down again. “One or two have gone over t’edge and not lived to tell the tale.”

  “You’re sure it was deliberate?” Thackeray asked sharply.

  “As sure as you can be,” Baxter said. “No-one in their right mind would overtake there in normal circumstances.”

  “Did you recognise the car?” Baxter hesitated.

  “Not for certain,” he said. “It was medium size, and a dark colour, possibly dark red.”

  “The driver?”

  “Just a blur. But that bastard Jim Ferguson drives a car that colour. I’ve seen it often enough. He’s been parked outside my parents’ house day and night since all this blew up again. He came to see me in London. He seems to have been to see almos
t everyone who was around in ‘84. He’s attacked me once already. Has he gone completely over the top this time? Is it possible? Do you even know where he is?” Thackeray glanced at Sergeant Becket who shook his head.

  “Nothing new there as far as I know,” he said.

  “We’ll intensify our efforts to find him,” Thackeray said. “And now you’d better tell me whatever else you wanted to tell me, Mr Baxter. I think it’s long overdue.” Ian Baxter took a deep breath and Thackeray could see that even now old loyalties were tearing him apart.

  “I went to see my brother Billy in Strangeways,” he said slowly. “And he told me some interesting things which I didn’t know before. And then Col Randall came round to see me last night. We were both going to come and see you this morning, but then my father passed away and I had more important things on my mind. I’m sorry. But you need to talk to Col, too. He’ll confirm some of what I’m going to tell you.”

  After spending an hour going over Ian Baxter’s new version of events the night Andy Fielding was killed, Thackeray went back to the office in Bradfield.

  “Ferguson,” he said to Sergeant Kevin Mower, who was surprised at the vehemence in the DCI’s tone. “I want him found.”

  “Right, guv,” Mower said.

  “And Roy Atkinson,” Thackeray went on. “He should be back from his Turkish trip by now. I want him in here for interview. I want to know where he was on the night Vic Randall was killed. And how come he never admitted to being the last man to leave on the night Andy Fielding died. I think Roy Atkinson could be the missing link we’re looking for.”

  Thackeray was determined to get away early that evening and he found Laura in the kitchen chopping vegetables and sipping a glass of tonic water. He put his arms around her and kissed the back of her neck.

  “You have a genius for finding yourself in dodgy situations,” he said gently. “I need you to stop.” Laura turned towards him and buried her face in his shoulder.