by J M Gregson
Panic flashed across the smooth face of Karen Jones as she saw a detective sergeant looking at these things. ‘I save up my money. I do a few hours in the Red Lion at lunch times.’
‘And in the evenings, you’re a hooker. Bringing men back here. Earning enough to pay the rent and buy a few luxuries.’
‘You can’t prove that.’
Lucy sighed. ‘We could, if we wanted to, Karen. But we’re not here to harass you. We’re here to find out all we can about a dead girl you knew. A girl very much like you. A girl who was murdered.’
‘I told her to be careful.’ The words were out before she could check them.
‘I’m sure you did, Karen. But she wasn’t very experienced, was she? You were giving her a few of the tips of the trade, weren’t you?’
Karen Jones nodded, her eyes now on a worn patch in the fading Persian carpet, which had graced a grander room than this in its heyday. ‘There are places you can’t go in this town. Not to work, I mean. Not to pick up men.’
‘And why is that, Karen?’
‘There are people who control the trade, aren’t there? People who keep the best areas for their own tarts. They cut up your face, if you don’t keep off. You can’t work, without your face being right.’
‘And they might even kill a young girl, if they thought they could get away with it. To encourage the rest of you to stay in line.’
She nodded dumbly. Perhaps she felt that if she didn’t put that idea into words, if she let the phrases come from the police, she wasn’t grassing on the men she feared. The man she feared, to be accurate.
‘So you think one of the pimps who control prostitution around here might have had your friend killed?’
Again she nodded rather than put it into words. All she actually said was, ‘I can’t think who else would have wanted to kill Sarah. She was a good kid.’
It was a belated assertion of her own seniority, a pathetic reminder that this young, vulnerable creature had been a mentor to someone even younger, even more defenceless against the dark forces of this strange half-world she inhabited.
Karen Jones looked fearfully up and down the street as her visitors departed, but was relieved to see no one in sight, as a wan sun lit up the faded dignity of the Victorian facades. Then she went and made herself a cup of coffee and sat down to an anxious review of what she had said to them.
It didn’t seem too bad. She hadn’t even mentioned Joe Johnson’s name.
‘We don’t even know how long she’s been dead yet.’ Percy Peach was professionally lugubrious with his chief.
‘This is ridiculous, you know. Things moved much faster than this when you were away!’ said Chief Superintendent Tucker peevishly.
Peach allowed his black eyebrows to rise expressively beneath the bald pate. ‘I see, sir. Bodies were presumably discovered more quickly in the last year, then.’
Tucker stared at him suspiciously. Irony was not his strong point. That left him at a severe disadvantage with DCI Peach. ‘I expect they were, yes. Things were generally much tighter when you were away.’
This was manifestly untrue. Peach had skimmed the crime figures quickly and then studied the clear-up rates very closely. Even his experienced eye had been shocked by them: he was holding his own private sessions in the CID section to amend matters; some Inspectorial fur had been considerably ruffled two storeys beneath Tucker’s penthouse office. He looked hard at Tucker and said, ‘Really, sir. Well, I expect Traffic would still have me back if you think I am a drag on the progress of your section.’
‘No, no, Peach, I’m not suggesting that.’ Tucker forced the kind of smile we don for the dentist and said, ‘Goodness me, you didn’t use to be so touchy in the old days. Do come and sit down, Percy.’
Peach sat down with extreme care in the armchair indicated by Tucker’s expansive gesture. His first name had been forced through the closed teeth of the Head of CID’s wide, artificial smile. Well, Percy didn’t want to hear it any more than Tommy Bloody Tucker wanted to say it. He said, ‘The girl’s been dead two or three days at least. We may get a more accurate time of death from the PM report.’
‘Do we have an identification?’
‘Probably, sir. One of our young ladies of the night thinks she was called Sarah Dunne.’
‘A prostitute?’ Tucker’s face dropped at the thought. Low-life murders were always the most difficult to solve. And the least worthwhile: Tucker was firmly of the view that people who dabbled in crime deserved whatever they got. Sometimes it seemed to him a pity that he had to give his full resources to chasing up crimes like this, but he supposed that the law had to be upheld.
‘An apprentice prostitute, you might say, sir. None of the female officers who interview the toms when we bring them in has even heard of Sarah Dunne.’
‘Once we have an identification, the house-to-house should help us with the time of death. We should be able to establish when she was last seen.’
Peach noted that a year without him hadn’t diminished Tucker’s talent for the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious. ‘Yes, sir. We’ve located the people we think are the girl’s parents. DC Murphy has gone over to Bolton to break the news and bring someone back for an identification.’
‘Good man, Brendan Murphy.’ Tucker nodded his approval.
Peach lifted those black eyebrows again, this time in genuine surprise. Tucker was so vague that he rarely knew the names of his staff, and even more rarely the name of someone as humble as a DC. ‘I agree, sir. I’m trying to persuade him to withdraw his request for a transfer.’
‘He’s requested a transfer? Well, talk him out of it, Peach. We need men of his quality. I expect you’ve been on his back too much. Can’t get away with that, you know, in the modern police service.’
Peach refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t been around during the last year to be on anyone’s back. He had already had a long chat with Brendan Murphy about his transfer request. This had revealed that the man was frustrated by Tucker’s bumbling inefficiency and the resultant decline in the morale of the Brunton CID unit over the last twelve months. As an ambitious young DC, he did not want to be working in an indifferent section; he had readily withdrawn his transfer request when he found that Peach was back with the unit. Percy said, ‘I expect he’ll stay, sir, now that he knows he has your approval.’
Tucker looked hard at the inscrutable round face on the other side of his desk. ‘Well, I shan’t delay you any longer, Peach. Get on with it, please. Try to get back to your old standards of briskness and efficiency. The world doesn’t stand still, you know.’
‘I see, sir. Well, it’s good to have your overview of the case. It’s been just as useful as it always was. Some things at least don’t change.’
Tucker regarded him uneasily. But Peach’s eyes were trained on the wall just above his head and his features fixed in a rigid mask. Suddenly it seemed to Tucker much less than a year since he had had a conversation like this. He tried to sound confident, even patronizing, as he said, ‘Well. It’s one of the reasons they promoted me, I suppose. Some of us have the capacity to see the wider picture, to fit the scene in our own small patch into the wider panorama of crime outside.’
Peach stood up and nodded his agreement. ‘And some of us are condemned to work for ever at the crime face, providing the statistics which will fit agreeably into that wider picture. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, sir.’
It was always good to leave the old wanker on a quotation: that guaranteed his puzzlement. But Percy Peach was not as unaware of the wider world of crime beyond Brunton as Tucker thought he was. As he went back down the stairs to the real world, he was troubled by the idea which had beset him before he climbed the beanstalk to the land of the evil giant.
Was it possible that this killing was not an isolated crime, but one of a series in a larger pattern? That would mean that the murderer of Sarah Dunne would kill again, if they did not find him.
Seven
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nbsp; It was a bright modern house with lots of windows overlooking neat gardens. Some might have called it dull and box-like, but it was the kind of dwelling for which many people save hard for most of their working lives. It was also an incongruous setting for the news they had to break.
It was quickly apparent that the Dunnes had no inkling of what had happened to their daughter. Brendan Murphy took the initiative: it was the first death the young female constable in uniform beside him had had to break and she was plainly ill at ease.
Mrs Dunne, still unsuspecting, still anxious to break the conversational ice, said, ‘That’s a real Irish name, isn’t it, Murphy? Perhaps you’re a Catholic, like ourselves.’
‘I am indeed, though I’ve lived all my life in Lancashire. Mrs Dunne, I’m afraid I may have bad news for you.’
Dismay clouded the bright, open countenance beneath the neat brown hair. ‘It’s Sarah, isn’t it? Has she had some sort of accident?’
‘It’s worse than that, Mrs Dunne. We’re not absolutely certain it’s Sarah yet, but the girl we’re talking about is dead.’ Be as gentle as you can, but don’t wrap it up. Don’t make it out to be less of a tragedy than it is; there’s no way round it. Percy Peach had told him that, and Brendan Murphy listened to Peach as to no one else.
He had got them sitting down before the news, but now Frank Dunne stood up and walked across to sit beside his wife, moving like a man waist-high in water. He was older than his wife, a grey-haired teacher in a Bolton school, a quiet, efficient man with great natural dignity. A man to whom this sort of thing should never happen. But what man anywhere could deserve this?
Dunne put his arm round his wife’s shoulders, drew her unresisting body against his without looking at her, and said, ‘You’d better give us some more details, please, DC Murphy.’
Brendan said, ‘There isn’t much we can tell you as yet. A body was found in a workmen’s hut on a derelict site. A female who answers to your daughter’s description. I’m very sorry.’
‘A body? On a derelict site?’ Rosemary Dunne repeated the words woodenly, as if that might enable her to take in their meaning.
‘We’re certain now that this girl was murdered.’
Frank Dunne pulled his wife a little more tightly against his side with his right hand. ‘Murdered? How was she killed?’
‘She was strangled. Apparently with her own scarf.’
Rosemary Dunne’s hand flew to her mouth. She gnawed at the knuckle of her index finger, unable to produce words. It was her husband who said, ‘And have you got the man who did this?’
‘Not yet. But we will do. We’ll be asking you to give us whatever help you can with the investigation.’
Rosemary Dunne said, ‘But how can we help? We don’t even know any of her friends at the college.’
‘Your daughter was at college?’
Frank Dunne said with a hint of irritation, ‘I should have thought you’d have already known that. She was on a hairdressing and beautician’s course at the Brunton College of Technology. She wasn’t very academic, our Sarah. And she could have got a similar course in Bolton or Manchester and travelled from home, but she said she preferred the course in Brunton.’ He glanced for the first time at his wife. ‘I – I think she wanted to get away from home. Establish her independence, show her parents that she’d finished with school and was becoming an adult. It’s understandable, I suppose. That’s what I told Rosemary when she was worried about Sarah leaving here.’
He was already taking on the burden of guilt for letting her move out into the dangerous world which had killed her, beginning to ask himself the questions which would gnaw at him for the rest of his life.
Rosemary Dunne’s eyes were wide and glassy, but she spoke like one in a dream, fumbling for the words she did not want to voice. ‘Had she been . . .? I mean to say, was she . . .?’
‘It seems that she hadn’t been raped, as far as we can determine at present.’ Brendan Murphy chose his words carefully, anxious to spare them this at least. ‘We shall perhaps have more details after the full post-mortem.’
Mrs Dunne nodded several times, as if she might enter the knowledge into her reeling brain by this physical movement. Then she said, with a tiny vestige of hope, ‘But you said you weren’t certain yet that this girl was our Sarah.’
‘I did indeed. But I don’t think you should raise your hopes too high, Mrs Dunne.’ He wondered how he could give the mother a dampening phrase of realism. Then he decided that it was safest to be straightforward. ‘I’m afraid the law requires that one of you should identify the corpse.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Frank Dunne volunteered almost before Murphy had framed the words. ‘I’ll just get my coat and then I’ll drive over behind you.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ said his wife determinedly. ‘I’m not being left at home to go mad with worry.’
Her husband looked at her for a moment, trying to deal with this picture. Then he said, ‘All right. We’ll go together.’
Murphy said, ‘There’s no need for you to drive. We’ll take you over in the back of our car.’
Frank Dunne argued a little, then accepted the offer. No one wanted to voice the thought that he might be too distressed to drive home after the identification.
Father John Devoy was a Catholic priest who was well respected by his flock, even in these days of religious doubt. He was always welcome in the primary school behind his high stone church, and even after all the crippling revelations about paedophilia among the celibate clergy, the parents were happy to see him laughing with their children.
As he moved about his duties in this largest Catholic parish in one of the most Catholic towns in England, Father Devoy gave no sign of the inner turmoil which rent his soul.
He was forty-three now, old enough to have seen most of the joys and the tragedies of life, but young enough to bustle about his duties with an energy which spread a little of its force among those with whom he worked. Those of his flock who knew him well called him Father John: Devoy was easy enough to say, but it had a faintly Gallic ring, which made it suspect to these sturdy northern folk.
He had been in Brunton for a few years now, after serving his time as a curate in less busy and challenging places. He was cheerful in times of celebration, gravely sympathetic in the face of death, unwanted pregnancies, drugs and the other tragedies which beset his flock. Everyone thought that in due course he would become the Canon in charge of St Matthew’s.
The only person who was certain that he wouldn’t was Father Devoy himself. People put this down to a natural modesty, a Christian humility which they would have expected of Father John. Only John Devoy himself knew of the splinter of evil which was piercing his soul.
Late on this Tuesday afternoon, Father Devoy took the holy oils and the blessed sacrament into the small, overheated terraced house where a man lay dying of cancer. He heard a last confession in the man’s erratic croak of a voice, placed the wafer of the Eucharist on the dry tongue as the man took his final communion. Then he anointed him with the holy oils, touching his lips and eyes and ears, reciting the ritual words of the Last Sacrament over the man who lay with closed eyes on the bed beneath him.
Extreme Unction: the last and most solemn of the Roman Catholic Sacraments. The final solace of the dying. Sometimes Father John, whispering the soothing words over the still form which seemed already unconscious, would have been glad to have this final releasing balm administered to himself.
The woman who was so soon to be a widow was resigned to the death. She was fifty-one, a year younger than her man, full of an energy which was carrying her through the final stages of this mortal sickness up the stairs. She handed the priest a cup of tea and said, ‘The doctor came this morning. He’s upped the dose of morphine. He says it won’t be long now.’
Father Devoy sipped the tea he did not want: you were offered it at every house where you called in Lancashire. He tried to avoid the clichés he had heard too often, but sometimes what pe
ople expected to hear was the best therapy. ‘He’s at peace now, Mrs Fogarty.’
She was called Debbie, but he could not bring himself to use the name, which seemed too young and frivolous for the situation. ‘He seems very serene. Ready to meet his maker in Heaven.’ It was easier when they had a serene faith in the afterlife. Too many of his parishioners now were troubled and uncertain about what awaited them. Father John couldn’t tell them that he shared many of their uncertainties, that in his darkest hours he hoped above all that there was no Hell.
‘Did you hear his confession, Father?’
‘I did, Mrs Fogarty. A few little things that I’m not sure the Good Lord would see as even venial sins. There was nothing big that he’s been concealing from you for years, Debbie.’ He smiled at her. He’d managed the name at last, probably when it was most needed. Everyone knew that you couldn’t divulge the sins that a man had revealed in the secrecy of his Confession, but you were surely allowed this kindly negative. Spouses liked to be reassured that there were no dark and tremendous secrets that had been concealed from all until the hour of death.
Father Devoy went back into the November world outside, carrying his own dark and tremendous secret locked in his heart.
Frank and Rosemary Dunne held each other’s hands tightly in the back of the police Rover as it drove into the small car park behind the mortuary, preparing themselves for a very different death from the one being handled with quiet dignity by Mrs Fogarty.
Brendan Murphy took them slowly through what must happen, as much to allow them a moment to compose themselves in this alien place as to explain the forms one of them must sign if this was indeed their daughter.
Frank Dunne said decisively, ‘I’ll do this. You stay here.’ His wife looked for a moment as if she would argue. Then she sat down again, and remained silently with her hand in the young policewoman’s, scarcely older than the daughter she had lost, as the attendant led her husband away through the double doors.