Dust to Dust

by Patricia Hall

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d no idea driving from Urmstone to the hospital and back would turn out to be dangerous. It came right out of the blue. Have you spoken to Ian Baxter?”

  “He came to see me,” Thackeray said. “I didn’t want to pursue him the day his father died but he came in of his own accord.”

  “I told him he must,” Laura said.

  “How much did you see of the other car? Or the driver?”

  “Not much,” Laura said. “It happened so quickly. I didn’t notice him coming up behind me – the road’s very twisting – and once he’d hit me I was struggling to keep the car straight so we didn’t hit the wall and go over the edge. It’s an awfully long way down to that field, I realised when we got out of the car. It took me a while to stop shaking.”

  “It took me a while to stop shaking when I heard what had happened. I could have cheerfully throttled Ian Baxter. And all this is not good for you in your condition,” Thackeray said.

  “Having a baby’s a perfectly natural process,” Laura said with a smile. “I’ll be fine. Honestly. Have you caught up with Roy Atkinson yet? Is he back from Turkey? From what Billy said, I thought he might not be as squeaky clean as he likes to claim. I didn’t warm to him when I spoke to him.” Thackeray stepped back and looked at Laura strangely.

  “I didn’t know you’d spoken to him,” he said.

  “I’m sure I told you,” Laura countered, although when she thought about it she was not entirely sure she had. “I’d promised not to go to Urmstone, so I met him on the motorway as he was setting off to Turkey.”

  “What day was that?”

  “The afternoon after Vic Randall was killed. The Saturday afternoon. You shot off to Urmstone, remember? You may be right. I think I was half asleep when you came in that night. We got a takeaway and I went to bed early. Do you remember? I told you about Ian Baxter finding the body of Fielding. But I may not have told you I went out to see Roy Atkinson. It wasn’t deliberate. I was just a bit out of it that night.”

  “Ah,” Thackeray said, and Laura wondered if she imagined the scepticism in his voice. This sort of misunderstanding was doing nothing at all for their relationship, she thought. “You didn’t tell me, that’s for sure. He’s not back yet, apparently. He was held up at the Bulgarian border. But his wife said he left for Turkey on the Friday afternoon.”

  “Well, he may have left home, but he certainly didn’t leave the area,” Laura said flatly. “He was large as life on the M62 the following day, ready to head to Hull to get the ferry. He’s not a man you can easily miss. And I’ll tell you something else you might like to know. He’s got a sawn-off shotgun in his cab.” Thackeray pulled out his mobile and made a call, looking grim.

  “Kevin,” he said. “First priority tomorrow morning. Find out when Roy Atkinson is due home and if he’s back already, bring him in. But pick him up away from his lorry, at his home if possible. I’ve reason to think he may have a shotgun in the cab.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ian Baxter picked up the phone in his mother’s house half way through the next morning, expecting it to be the undertaker, or one of the local women who had rushed to volunteer to do the catering for his father’s wake at the welfare hall the following Friday. He felt harassed and disoriented, anxious to get everything settled so that he could drive home to London to bring his wife and baby daughter back to Yorkshire for the funeral. At first he thought there was no-one at the other end of the line and was about to put the phone back down when a muffled voice on a bad line spoke his name, a voice he almost recognised but could barely believe in.

  “Who’s that?” he asked urgently.

  “Is that you, mate? Is that Ian? It’s me, Craig, your old mucker. Long time, eh?” Baxter felt as if he had been punched and took a moment to catch his breath.

  “Is that really you, Craig?” he said at last. “Where the hell are you? Where’ve you been, man?” Suddenly all the bad times, when Craig had sneered at his ambitions and play fights had degenerated into something harder, were wiped from his mind and he was a boy again, before the strike, running heedlessly through the woods with the wind in his hair to camp out for long summer days in their secret place, lighting fires to roast spuds which never seemed to be properly cooked, and taking their first tentative puffs of tobacco and, later, weed, and their first sips from cans of lager.

  “Craig, where’ve you been?” Baxter asked again into the crackling ether.

  “Never mind all that,” the voice said. “I’ll tell you some time. Right now I need to know what’s going on up there. I read summat in t’papers and someone told me they’d got me in t’frame for killing that copper. That your Billy never did it, after all. Is that right, mate? Are they looking for me?”

  “I don’t know,” Baxter said. “The police aren’t saying but we think they’ve got a DNA sample from something at the scene, even after all this time. You know they can pick up stuff now from years ago. If you remember what happened, it could be yours, couldn’t it? You were messing around and you grabbed that stake. It wouldn’t look good for you if they matched it up, even if I told them how it got there.”

  Baxter felt suddenly cautious, wondering for a panic-stricken moment if the police would have gone so far as to have his mother’s phone tapped.

  “Jesus, you haven’t told the police, have you? About us and the body, I mean?”

  “No,” Baxter said, the lie coming almost without hesitation. “Of course not.” There was a long silence, and for a moment Baxter thought that the connection had been broken.

  “Have you told anyone?” he asked, into the silence.

  “No way,” Craig said. “But I’ll keep out o’t’way of all this, no fear.” And then the line really did go dead. Ian hung up, feeling thoroughly confused. There were so many questions he had wanted to ask Craig that his brain was spinning. Like an automaton, he dialled 1471 only to be informed, unsurprisingly he thought, that the number of his caller was not available. Then he dialled Billy’s solicitor, Miriam Feldman, who had promised that she would make inquiries about the whereabouts of Craig Atkinson if Ian thought it would help their case for Billy’s release. But his colleague in London was no help.

  “We’ve got nowhere looking for him,” she said. “I’ve had an inquiry agent checking out everything legal and a few things that strictly speaking aren’t, but we’ve found no trace of him since 1987. He’s either done a very successful disappearing act, which seems unlikely for an unemployed miner of his age, or he’s been abroad, or, we were beginning to think, he’s dead and has been for a long time. No doubt the police will have done the same checks if they want to talk to him. Are you sure it was him on the phone?”

  “Voices don’t change much over time,” Baxter said. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I think it was him. Blast the man. Why didn’t he talk to me properly. It wouldn’t have cost him anything.” Miriam could hear the bitter disappointment in Ian Baxter’s voice and sighed.

  “He obviously doesn’t want to be around, Ian, and doesn’t want you to trace him, either. You can’t blame him. You really don’t know what he was involved in on the night of the murder, do you? The less you’re in contact with him, the better for you, I should say. You should tell DCI Thackeray about the call, to be on the safe side.”

  “Yes, fine,” Baxter said wearily, knowing that Miriam was right and dreading yet another session with the DCI, knowing it would look as if he was letting information out in dribs and drabs which could only look suspicious..

  “I’ll come up for the funeral,” Miriam said. “I liked your dad. He’d have got on well with my father politically, though he fought the good fight in a university rather than down a pit. But it was the same war.”

  “That would be good of you,” Baxter said quietly. He felt in need of support from the south, most of all from Carrie and Daisy.

  “If only the lions had been led by bigger lions instead of donkeys, they might have won,” Miriam said. “Never m
ind. We’ll get your brother out. Tell your mother that. That’s the least we can do.”

  Wearily he rang the police incident room and found himself put through to Sergeant Tom Becket, and told him what had happened.

  “Are you sure it was him?” Becket asked after Baxter had repeated his brief conversation with Craig Atkinson almost word for word.

  “As sure as I can be,” Baxter said.

  “We’ve found no trace of him,” Becket said. “It’s difficult to disappear these days, there’s so many official tabs on folk. Did he give you no idea where he’d been hiding? Abroad, was it?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Baxter said and Becket obviously caught the weariness in his voice.

  “I’ve got some good news for you,” the sergeant said. “Though I’m not sure I should be telling you. But unofficially, any road, they’ve found no matches to your DNA apart from where you said you were, in Vic Randall’s kitchen. And nowt from what they’ve got from the old murder either, I’m told. So you’re off that hook. But don’t tell anyone I told you?”

  “But what about Billy?” Ian asked quickly, but Becket’s tone changed and he guessed someone else had approached him.

  “Thank you, Mr Baxter. I’ll pass that information on,” the sergeant said formally and hung up before Baxter could say any more, though he guessed if they had found no trace of his DNA at the site of Fielding’s murder they had probably found none of Billy’s either as the two samples would be similar. So it was with a feeling of some relief, which he did not dare share yet, that he went back into his mother’s living room to continue planning his father’s funeral. Perhaps, he thought, Miriam Feldman really could get his brother out of jail at last. His great sadness was that his father would not be there to see it.

  The next few days passed for Ian Baxter in a blur. He was the one who crumbled under grief while his mother remained apparently calm and dry eyed, her emotions firmly under control. Like an automaton, he did as he was asked, dealing with registrars and undertakers and life insurers and caterers to set up the funeral which his mother wanted for Ken. He spent many hours in the phone talking to his father’s friends and former colleagues in the NUM whom Madge demanded be informed, and making sure the local newspaper had the details of his career and his precise role in ‘84. With Vic Randall already gone, it was the passing of the old guard, Baxter repeated like a mantra to everyone he spoke to, and although his own feelings were ambivalent about the strike, he believed these men had earned their memorial.

  His mother meanwhile, remained at home, dressed in her best dark dress to receive the steady stream of visitors from right across the coal-field who arrived in a steady stream to express their condolences and to arrange with meticulous care the cards of sympathy which soon stood on every flat surface in the house. The one from Arthur Scargill took pride of place with the family cards on the mantelpiece. If Baxter had noticed that Jim Ferguson seemed to have abandoned his vigil outside, he might have reassured himself that the object of Ferguson’s interest had slipped finally beyond his grasp. But he did not take his absence on board.

  Two days before the funeral Baxter planned to drive home to London to pick up Carrie and his baby daughter and bring them back to Yorkshire, but that morning, just as he was beginning to pack his bag, the phone in the hall rang and his mother called him downstairs.

  “It’s that Miriam woman you work with,” his mother said in a piercing whisper that could not fail to reach Docklands.

  “Miriam?” David said, taking the receiver. He heard a sharp intake of breath at the other end and knew that he was not going to like what was coming next. “Are Carrie and the baby all right?”

  “Thankfully, yes,” Miriam said, although Baxter could hear the strain in her voice. Baxter stiffened and he could see the panic in Madge’s eyes as she stood beside him hanging on every word.

  “It’s OK,” Miriam said. “They’re not hurt. I promise. They’re at my place and my mother’s with them. But last night someone shot at the house. Two bullets went through the front window and into the wall on the other side of the room. They weren’t in the room. In fact Daisy was already upstairs asleep. But Carrie was a bit panicked and when she tried to contact you she said she couldn’t get a reply. Nor could I, as it goes.”

  “There were a lot of people here last night,” Ian said. “It’s possible we didn’t hear the phone.”

  “Anyway, I took her to my place and put her to bed with a sedative. She was still asleep when I left and my ma was having a lovely time with Daisy, who didn’t seem to be the least bit disturbed to be in a strange house with a stand-in granny. I’d give it a couple of hours before you call Carrie…”

  “I’ll come down,” Baxter said. “It’ll take me three hours, if I bend the speed limits and there’s no snarl-ups…”

  “No,” Miriam said sharply. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring them up. I should come up for the funeral anyway, and I’m not in court today or tomorrow. Give me a couple of hours to brief Razia to hold the fort. We’ll be with you by six at the latest.

  “Have the police been told?”

  “Yes, they came quickly enough. They don’t like firearms. But they seemed a bit clueless about who might have taken pot-shots at your house,” Miriam said.

  “Did you tell them we were being harassed by their own ex-sergeant, Jim Ferguson? He’s gone very quiet at this end since my father died. There’ve been a few yobs hanging around outside the house, but now I think about it, I’ve not seen him for a while. He could well have gone back to London.”

  “I’ll pass that on to the DI I spoke to last night, don’t worry,” Miriam said. “But he seemed more inclined to put it down to youngsters.”

  “With a gun?” Baxter objected.

  “You know it happens,” Miriam said. “Anyway, I’ll fill him in and you can follow it up when you come home after the funeral. Just relax, Ian. I’ve got everything under control. I promise.”

  Baxter believed her, although he could feel his own heart thumping and his mother was gazing at him in horrified reaction to what she had picked up from his end of the conversation. He thanked Miriam and hung up, and put his arm round Madge, who, for the first time since Ken’s death, had tears in her eyes.

  “It’s all right, mam,” he said. “Carrie just had a bit of a fright with some yobbos last night. Miriam’s bringing her up this afternoon. Everything’s OK.” But he did not believe it, and he didn’t think Madge did either. It looked as though laying Ken Baxter to rest had not satisfied the attack dogs, as he had hoped. And he suspected they were still looking for the sort of red meat he could not give them, however much they believed he could.

  Brenda Atkinson had not aged nearly as much as his mother, Ian Baxter thought, when the woman who had been his next-door-neighbour for most of his childhood pulled up beside him in a top-of-the-range convertible as he walked back up the hill from the shop later that morning. He had been reassured by a phone call from Carrie, who played down her overnight scare and was clearly relieved to joining him later in the day, and he was enjoying the fitful sunshine and fresh breeze away from the stuffy atmosphere of his mother’s house when Brenda pulled in to the kerb. He recognised her immediately as she wound down the driver’s window in spite of the pounds she had put on. The smile, above more than one extra chin, was exactly the one which had seldom reached her eyes back then and the eyes were still as calculating as they had ever been.

  Bren had always been well-endowed, he thought, but now she looked positively obese. There had been a time, he thought, before Stevie was killed, that she had offered a more outgoing face to the world, but after that tragedy she had frozen, her already chubby face becoming intransigent, her voice shriller, and the frequency with which she seemed to be stuffing her mouth accelerating alarmingly as she told anyone who would listen, and many more who would not, where she would put Arthur Scargill and all his works. By the end she had been as roundly despised as her husband when he went back to work – a decision most l
aid at her door anyway – and more ready to fight her corner with a vicious tongue.

  “Ian? I thought I recognised you. Scrawney as ever. Is your mam at home?”

  “She is,” Baxter said cautiously. “You’re not going to see her, are you?” He knew his mother’s reaction would scarcely be welcoming.

  “I thought I’d best,” Brenda said without enthusiasm. Then her face softened slightly. “We did have our good times, you know, in spite of what went off later.”

  “Can we have a word first?” Baxter said, his pulse quickening. Here, he thought might just possibly be the answers to some of the questions which were tormenting him.

  “You’d best get in then,” Brenda said, opening the passenger door. “We’ll go a for a quick bevvy at the Red Lion, if you like. Put off the evil moment, eh?” And she gave Baxter a malicious smile as he slid into the passenger seat and she pulled away from the kerb. He glanced at her well cut suit and silk scarf and took on board the fact that Brenda Atkinson had somehow landed on her feet.

  “You look as if you’ve done all right for yourself,” Baxter said as he handed her a Bacardi and coke and put his own pint down beside in in the lounge bar of the road house a mile or so out of the village.

  “And you an’all,” Brenda said, running an appraising eye across Baxter’s own designer jeans and sweat shirt as if she knew precisely what each item had cost him. “You did it your way and I did it mine. I always wished Pete had been a bit more ambitious.”

  “You’re married again, then?”

  “Certainly am,” Brenda said. “So what’s going off in Urmstone? I had a visit from a very tasty young detective sergeant last week, asking all sorts about Craig. They seemed right keen to find him, but why? What do they want to know about him for? He’d not come all the way back from Australia to bump off Vic Randall, for God’s sake. That’s ridiculous.”