Slipknot

by Priscilla Masters

  Don’t tell me this was an accidental fire. This is a consequence. A terrible consequence.

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Nine months old, Ma’am. Fighting for his life. They flew him to Birmingham. He’s on life support. But I’ve heard the chances aren’t good.’

  A volcanic fury bubbled inside her. She was so angry she could have screamed with it. Instead she said dully, ‘Get Inspector Randall on the phone, will you.’

  And Jericho melted away.

  She stood very still in her room, conscious of the diminutive figure flitting in front of her eyes with those neat movements, as elegant as a ballet dancer, the small pumps with their dainty straps criss-crossing over the feet, furthering the image. She tried to blink but stubbornly they continued to tap-tap out their rhythm. Until her phone bleeped and she picked it up, knowing who it would be.

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Hello.’ Even in the tersest of greetings she knew he felt as she did.

  Angry.

  ‘Alex, we have to stop this.’

  ‘You’re making some assumptions, aren’t you, Martha?’

  ‘Yes. I am. And so will you. Coincidence I can take, Alex, but this is screaming at us.’

  It was the many-headed hydra. Cut one off and two appear. Crimes proliferate.

  ‘Yes.’ There was a pause before he spoke again, only to say, ‘I should take you over there. You should see the scene.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Half an hour? I’ll pick you up.’

  Robertson Way is a wide, fast road which runs between Monkmoor and the Lord Hill Momunment. In spring it is lined with a million daffodils and some small allotments. But either side are housing estates, some modern, some older, some detached, others semis. There are a few remaining council houses and privately owned residences. Chelsea had lived in one of the council houses.

  It was easy to pick out the scene of the girl’s death. Besides the official cars, police, fire service, the Gas Board, so many people had gathered – some on official business: TV reporters, cameras on shoulders, orange-faced people talking into arc lights, radio reporters, wafting huge furry grey microphones and the inevitable clusters of self-conscious voyeurs. All the way along the hedge at the front of the property was displayed the nicer side of human nature. Rows and rows of bunches of flowers, cellophane-wrapped, most with damp, fluttering messages of sympathy, love and the usual eternal question – why? – which always surfaces after tragedies like these – Dunblane, London tubes, senseless murders like this one.

  They climbed out of the car.

  The house had suffered badly when set on fire. The windows had cracked and blackened. Soot marked the spots where the flames had raged, splitting the glass. The fire service had wreaked its own damage, doors kicked through and water. Plenty of water.

  And yet around the site of mayhem there were marks of normality.

  The Ashbournes had been house-proud. The garden had been neatly tended. A small, white-painted wicket gate led into a newly laid cobbled path which neatly divided the front lawn. Influence of Charlie Dimmock, no doubt. But at the path’s end normality ended. The front door was burned and splintered, inside Martha glimpsed yellow-hatted fire-fighters and uniformed police. They passed through to witness the havoc the fire had caused. The house had been destroyed. Nothing remained except charred rafters, melted shapes which must once have been furniture, the wires of a television. What the fire had spared, the water had completed the damage. The carpets were sodden. And the smell intense. It reminded Martha of the morning after a Guy Fawkes bonfire. The team of Scenes of Crime personnel was talking to the fire-fighters, watched by one police officer in a fluorescent green jacket. She listened in.

  ‘The source of the fire was near the back door.’ They all trooped through, into the kitchen or what had once been a kitchen. Now it was a soggy, burnt mess of chipboard and more melted plastic. Martha could see a collection of spice jars, cracked and blackened, cutlery, cracked china and what she guessed had probably once been a microwave oven.

  ‘A hole was cut in the glass and petrol poured through.’ The fire officer was including her in his tour. His eyes were cornflower blue and he had a serious, craggy face. He reminded her of Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno. Same grim perception of fire, not as a source of warmth or to cook food with but as a ruthless, destructive force capable of distributing death, taking the lives of the most innocent.

  The cornflower blue eyes met hers and she nodded a greeting.

  He would know who she was. They had met, briefly, before.

  ‘Once practically anything gets hot it’s combustible,’ he said. Pairs of eyes roamed the room and they nodded. ‘Chipboard kitchen units, plastic tops, just bonfire food. The fire spread vertically.’ He pointed upwards. ‘Straight up, right into the girl’s bedroom. It would have been fearsome within minutes. Hot gases, toxic smoke. The little boy was in the front bedroom and was a bit more lucky.’ His face tightened. ‘We hope. By the time the parents rounded the corner from their local it was way too late. And yet it had probably been burning for less than twenty minutes.’

  Alex spoke in her ear. ‘She made a couple of calls to friends from her mobile at just after ten. Neighbours saw the lights on downstairs at a quarter to eleven. They were switched off before eleven. By twenty past the Ashbournes were on their way home.’

  Martha turned to leave. She felt queasy now as well as angry. But Alex was standing right behind her. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she said in a low voice.

  Once they were outside she faced him. He was an honest man. His revulsion would surely be as deep as hers. ‘It’s enough. This horrid proliferation must come to an end. We must flush it all out, clean the Augean stables.’ Her hand pointed behind her. ‘Have you any idea who committed this – this carnage?’

  Alex’s face was as grim as the fire officer’s. ‘We’ve got some ideas,’ he said. ‘Getting proof is going to be a different kettle of fish.’

  ‘DreadNought’s gang.’

  He nodded. ‘The Gough family have some very dangerous contacts. This wasn’t a schoolboy prank that went wrong. They watched and timed, laid their trap. Petrol isn’t that easy to use.

  ‘Then we have to return to the beginning, ‘to the initial bullying, to the crime of Callum’s assault on Roger Gough. Until we work our way through that we won’t solve either Callum’s death or this.’

  ‘And how do you suggest we start?’

  ‘Go to the school, Alex. Lay the bullying right open. Get statements. Confidential, if you like but get them. Make a statement that the murder of Roger Gough was a consequence. Only then can you concentrate on Callum’s death.’

  ‘Why would we need to? He hanged himself.’

  She stared past him, at an ordinary street, in an ordinary town in middle England and felt an electric shudder. ‘Are you sure of that?’

  He stared at her. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  His face seemed to sink into tiredness. ‘Neither am I. It’s all too pat. Too…’ Neither of them had the appropriate words to hand.

  ‘Alex,’ she said softly. ‘If Callum didn’t commit suicide where does it leave us?’

  ‘Floundering,’ he said.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Send some officers to the school but you go to the prison, Alex. There’s something there,’ she said. ‘Back there. The entire story must come out. We have to expose it all,’ she said, ‘from the first, to do justice to the dead.’

  ‘We have several officers working on this case,’ he said, his eyes drifting back towards the house. ‘We expect early arrests over this, so if what you want is an exposé you’ll have to point me in the right direction.’

  ‘Tyrone Smith,’ she said, ‘would seem an obvious choice. And he hasn’t got the brains to realise that you can only suspect. And then there are the prison officers.’

  ‘So how do you think he died?’

  ‘I have an idea,’ she said. ‘I think I read somet
hing somewhere. It’s lurking at the back of my mind. Something to do with the hanging. No.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘It isn’t fair to say anything until I’m more sure. I’ll speak to Mark and then I’ll get back in touch with you.’

  Alex was scowling. He looked over his shoulder as he drove away. ‘Don’t leave it too long, Martha.’

  She glanced across at him. He had a troubled look which she hadn’t seen before. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve just got a really bad feeling.’

  ‘About things in general?’

  ‘No.’ He took his eyes off the road. ‘Shelley Hughes, to be specific.’

  She waited for him to enlarge.

  ‘The vengeance of the Gough family is boundless,’ he said. ‘Roger Gough got his bullying nature from his parents all right. And Shelley Hughes will be a natural target for them.’ He swung out onto the bypass. ‘I wonder where all this will end up,’ he said softly.

  When they arrived at her office he opened the door for her but stood still, chewing his lip. ‘One particular friend of the Gough family is a psychopath. He’s been inside for three years for a really brutal assault on a night club owner who owed him some money. He did all sorts of things, Martha, including slicing off the man’s nose. He’s an absolute—’ He managed a smile. ‘Actually there isn’t a word to describe him. We try to keep an eye on him but he slips around, turns up for his parole officer’s appointments then vanishes back into the woodwork. He was seen having a drink with the Goughs at the local. He’s the sort of guy who’d do it for nothing, just cause he’d enjoy the job. We can’t be everywhere, watching him, sorting this mess, and protecting Shelley Hughes.’ His brow was wrinkled with worry. ‘We just can’t do it.’ She knew what he meant.

  She nodded and took a couple of paces towards her door but he was beside her. ‘Any more messages for Martha?’ he asked lightly?

  ‘No. My communicator has fallen silent,’ she said. ‘Alex – when this is all over promise me you will help me find out who is sending me the messages.’

  ‘You realise it’ll mean delving right back in your past?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m prepared for that but I have to know. Sometimes it feels like a threat – at other times it feels almost as if it’s from a friend. I alternate between fright and curiosity but at some point I have to know. I want you to help me.’

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  And even that made her feel easier.

  They parted then and immediately she was back in her own office she dialled the number of the mortuary to speak to Mark Sullivan.

  He listened carefully to her questions, taking his time to answer each one fully.

  And by the end of the conversation she was satisfied.

  The difficulty would be to prove it.

  Policemen are not pathologists and pathologists are not policemen. Each skill is incomplete in a murder case without the other. They must work hand in glove and find it possible to agree on the final scenario. And then they must present it to the satisfaction of a court of law. When they both agreed maybe, just maybe, you had the solution.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Alex got back to her two days later, calling at her office on an off-chance to show her some of the statements his officers had squeezed out of the school fellows of Callum Hughes, Roger Gough and Katie Ashbourne.

  His face looked younger and he seemed happy as he leaned back in the armchair, his long legs sticking out in front of him. ‘I’ve had real cooperation from the headmaster,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I think young Chelsea’s death has finally tipped the balance.’ His eyes looked half sad. ‘Her death is finally going to make a difference. He’s going to call a special assembly to talk about the problem of bullying. He’s setting up special teachers as bullying officers who are sworn to secrecy. I think he can really stamp it out.’

  ‘And Shelley Hughes? Is she safe?’

  ‘Not too sure there,’ he said, his face clouding over. ‘She’s still getting some unwanted attention. Graffiti’s been daubed on her house. “A murderer lived here. You’re next.” Stuff like that. She’s beginning to crack.’

  Then unexpectedly he smiled, a shy, friendly grimace. ‘One bonus seems to have come out of all this though. Do you remember the teacher who spoke up for Callum, Farthing? Adam Farthing. He’s taken it on himself to become her protector, keeping an eye out for her.’ He grinned again, unselfconsciously. ‘I think they’re becoming fairly close.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad. I liked her.’ She hesitated. ‘And Smith?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve tackled him about the sleep business,’ he said. ‘I’ve made it quite clear that I don’t believe he slept all the way through but he’s just stone-walling me. Looking blank and generally being unhelpful. Keeps saying over and over again that he doesn’t know a thing and that he slept all night, like a baby.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t budge him, Martha. He’s completely immovable. He’s learned his lines and he’s sticking with them. I’m not getting anywhere with him.’

  ‘What about the prison officers?’

  Alex’s pupils seemed to sharpen. ‘They’re a bit more tricky. They’re very defensive. The real issue is that I’ve got no real idea of where I’m going. I keep asking them the same old questions, all about timing and who was asleep. The trouble is, Martha, if I say anything to them it sounds like an accusation. Now if I start accusing them of bending the truth as far as times go it soon sounds like I’m accusing them of something much more serious.’ All of a sudden he lifted his eyes and looked deep into hers. ‘You’re going to have to give me a clue, Martha,’ he said softly. ‘There’s something you know that you’re not telling me. It is, I suspect, something medical. I think you’ve probably had a word with Mark Sullivan and he’s confirmed what you’d suspected. Am I right?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m impressed,’ she said. ‘You’ve put your finger right on the button. I did know something. It was something I heard years ago – a sort of pathology legend, if you like. Some experiments were done in the mid-nineteenth century by a guy called Casper. He hanged cadavers, some fresh, others a couple of hours old, but none had died from asphyxiation. And then he compared post-mortem changes with people who had hanged themselves. I’ve no proof,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything and I don’t know how you could obtain proof except through a statement. I only know that something could have happened – that it was theoretically possible. Not that it did happen.’

  ‘Tell me, proof of what, Martha,’ he begged, ‘or this case is not ever going to be solved.’

  ‘I want you to question Walton Pembroke and Stevie Matthews,’ she said. ‘Speak to them again and simply throw some doubt on the cause of Callum Hughes’s death. Say the pathologist is voicing some doubts. They won’t know for certain that Mark hasn’t thought of something else. Say the whole suicide verdict is uncertain and that I’m voicing concern.’

  Randall still looked dubious. ‘But Martha…’

  She took no notice. ‘And then investigate Walton Pembroke,’ she said. ‘See if you can find a connection. Any connection – however tenuous with the Gough family. Come on, Alex,’ she said impatiently. ‘You don’t need me to point you in the right direction. Bank accounts. Mobile phones.’

  He was still observing her. ‘I’m still not absolutely sure what you’re getting at,’ he said.

  She sat very still, frowning, hardly meeting his eyes. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said.

  ‘Of what? You think the prison guards murdered Callum? That the Goughs paid the two guards to kill him?’

  ‘No-o,’ she said. ‘‘I believe that Callum was already dead when he was hanged,’ she said. And then, ‘Think about the two prison officers? One is a craggy, ancient thing who’s near to retiring. But it’s the other one that I’m interested in. Inexperienced, new on the job, naive. Oh – so naive. She believed what he told her. I think it was that terrible combination
of the one manipulating the other. Remember the bruises on Callum’s face, the one on his chest. She restrained him – badly. Incompetently. Callum was an asthmatic. And he simply stopped breathing because she was sitting on his chest. I believe that Walton Pembroke was the one who encouraged her to do it. But the terrible crime was making it appear that the boy had committed suicide. Once I’d realised that Casper’s experiments had proved that the post-mortem findings when a body had been strung up two hours after death I had a different time frame. Then the other injuries all made sense.’

  Randall’s eyes narrowed but she ploughed on.

  ‘The reason that the restraint was performed was, I suspect, that Pembroke took some money from someone to rough Hughes up while he was inside and that someone has to have been the Goughs. It was no coincidence that Callum was put in a cell with the nastiest piece of work in the entire prison. It’s obvious Walton Pembroke was waiting for him. It must have supplemented his pension nicely, taking the odd backhander from people. Looking after them – one way or another. This has got to be stopped and the only way to do it is to show the whole thing for what it was.

  Alex’s face was grim, his jaw set.

  Martha ploughed on. ‘I want to hold a joint inquest,’ she said, ‘on all three youngsters because they are cause and effect. Had DreadNought not laid into Callum Hughes both he and Callum would still be alive. So would Chelsea. If the entire thing had been stopped much earlier there would have been no deaths. Roger, Callum and Chelsea would have had lives. I firmly believe this, Alex.’

  He read the determination in her face, the set of her jaw. ‘We need a confession then.’