A Duty of Revenge

by Quentin Dowse

  Wilde almost shit himself when Grantmore used Darnley’s name – and guessed it was the press. His initial reaction was to hang up but somehow his reporter’s curiosity took over. Darnley had claimed he had a photograph that somehow implicated Grantmore in the murder, and his promise of a scoop when the full story broke drove him on against his better instincts.

  ‘Yes, this is the press and I assume from your response you know exactly what I am talking about. Would you care to comment?’

  He held his breath. He hadn’t yet even mentioned the photograph. All he could hear was Grantmore’s laboured breathing – a clear indication of his fear – and in that instant, Wilde knew Darnley was on the right track. He also realised that he had not revealed his identity or even his newspaper. Emboldened, he ploughed on.

  ‘We have come into possession of a photograph that we have reason to believe is you…’

  He paused, holding his breath again and dared to hope.

  Again, there was quiet, so he added, ‘We are planning to publish the photograph…’

  There was a long sigh at the other end.

  ‘Tell Darnley to meet me in the Molescroft in Beverley at seven tonight.’

  The line went dead.

  Richard Wilde pushed open the phone box door like he was leaving a Wild West saloon after a gunfight. He set off briskly towards the office, his heart pumping, blood surging and his mind whirring.

  He hadn’t compromised himself. The young reporter realised that Darnley would think he now had greater control over him, with a man like Grantmore thinking he had crossed him. He hadn’t even had to pass on the request for a meeting. As far as Darnley would know, he had done exactly as he was asked and got the result he wanted. Could he turn this situation around to his own advantage? Get out of Darnley’s grip? Get a better story?

  He had to think. But he had to pass on the message to meet Grantmore in the pub at seven o’clock. He checked his watch, only three thirty. He decided to keep Darnley waiting and make out when he rung him that he’d had a hell of a job in getting Grantmore to meet him. It was only a small step in trying to get back in control – but it was a start.

  As he walked back to the newsroom, he reviewed what he knew. He’d researched the murder in Ponteland and Darnley had told him that Grantmore knew who had done it and that he had a photograph that somehow helped prove it. He quickened his step. He needed to find out more about Grantmore, the death of this young lad Ryan Harrod, and figure out how he could capitalise on the knowledge he now had. He needed to investigate. The rest of his journey was occupied with dreams of the call to join the Telegraph or the Times – Richard Wilde, Investigative Journalist. He’d always known he would make it.

  *

  18:45 That Night

  I drove one-handed down Lairgate in Beverley as I undid the top button of my shirt and pulled my tie loose. I was going to be a bit early arriving for what was bound to be another confrontational meeting with Grantmore, but I intended to claim the territory. Wilde had rung me about fifteen minutes beforehand, keen to let me know how hard he’d worked to get Grantmore to meet me. Fortunately, I’d been at Police HQ on Priory Road, updating the new ACC (Ops), Jane Greenhall, with my heavily sanitised version of progress with the case, so I was within twenty minutes’ drive of the pub. My tame newshound had sounded anxious. Worried that Grantmore knew who he was and that he was doing my “dirty work” as he put it. He’d tried to push me into giving him more information, saying his job was on the line due to redundancies and he needed a story as his reward for helping me. To be honest, I felt sorry for him and promised he’d get the story when it broke, but there was nothing I could give him for now. But he was no mug and now knew Grantmore was somehow connected to the murder of Ryan Harrod in Northumberland. I surmised he’d have made the link to my investigation of the Beverley robbery and the murder of Emmerson. So I warned him off from digging around Grantmore. In truth, I was a little worried about the position I’d put him in. He was young and green and Grantmore was a dangerous bastard who wouldn’t think twice about getting at me by shafting Wilde with his bosses – or worse. Conversely, he was an ambitious young journalist and I didn’t want him telling his bosses what he had got from me. Shit. Just more complications I had to try and wrestle with, in what was fast becoming a minefield of potential disasters.

  I dragged my mind back to the job in hand as I decided to park my car at Sessions House, the local Beverley nick, as I didn’t want Grantmore clocking my private car. I walked up Molescroft Road towards the pub to find only a handful of elderly folks enjoying the local pub grub. I’d realised why Grantmore had suggested this place, as no one he knew was ever likely to clock him associating with the law in here. I bought a pint of bitter and a bag of crisps then took up a position tucked away behind the side bar, where I guessed he’d feel more comfortable, as we’d be well out of sight. To be fair, I shouldn’t have been having a one-to-one meeting with a known criminal, so I was also keen on remaining incognito.

  Just after seven, he strolled in, looking far more relaxed than I’d expected. He didn’t seem in a rush to get out of sight and actually nodded a pleasant enough “evening” to the four old fogies sitting to the left of the door enjoying their steak and ale pies and fish and chips. He may have wanted to be inconspicuous but in middle-class Beverley, in a pub full of nosey pensioners, he stuck out like – well – a one-eyed, scar-faced thug. I beckoned him over, as the two women in the party he had acknowledged turned to their men-folk clearly in a state of high excitement. Poor old Sean recognised that he had made something of a mistake meeting me here and tucked his head further into the upturned collar of his leather jacket. He dodged quickly around the main bar into the small side room with only two tables that I’d claimed for our meeting. I wanted him onside and not his usual confrontational self, so I slid along the bench seat, letting him have the most discrete corner in the whole pub.

  ‘What you having, Sean?’

  I stood and took the two steps to the small bar as he settled himself in, looking nervously around, unsettled by the interest he had piqued by merely walking into the place.

  ‘Large whisky. No ice.’

  The barmaid was unoccupied so within a couple of minutes I had paid for the drink and sat back down. Sean sat slouched on the bench, his arms folded across his chest and his shoulders buried deep in the folds of his jacket, trying his best to look bored. He took the drink and downed half of it in one macho swallow. His eyes locked onto mine in a defiant stare that was almost a caricature of a hard case.

  I gave a low chuckle and then took a leisurely sip of my beer.

  ‘Drop the act, Sean. I’ve got you by the bollocks… only proverbially this time… and you know it… or else you wouldn’t be here. You know what I want. His name and as much as you know about the jobs.’

  ‘You must think I’m stupid, Darnley. I’m saying fuck all to you even in a pub. You could be wired up… or had the place bugged before I got here.’

  I laughed. ‘You’ve been watching too much telly, Sean. But if you’re worried about it, let’s go somewhere else. You decide.’

  I turned towards him and raised my arms as if offering him the chance to frisk me.

  ‘I don’t trust you, Darnley. Let’s move tables.’

  He got up and moved to a table that was in a busier area.

  I laughed to myself at him thinking I could have bugged our conversation. I had moved too far down an unethical path to have even tried to obtain the necessary surveillance authority. However, his actions just further confirmed to me his involvement. He knew something.

  After a couple of minutes more of the hard-man silence, he kicked discussions off.

  ‘Okay, I don’t want your tame reporter putting that photo in the paper, so I’ll give you something, but I want full immunity before I say a thing. Like you said, the bastard will kill me if that photo appears in the
paper, but if I give you him… and his gang… I want immunity, or else I’m dead anyway.’

  I had anticipated this. There was no way I, or anyone else, could offer Grantmore immunity for his part, whatever that part was, in the robbery at the building society and murder of Emmerson. These were far too serious a set of crimes to let anyone walk away. I didn’t know if, or how, he might be involved in the murder of Ryan Harrod, but that further tied my hands, as another force was involved. In a perfect world, I needed him to tell me who the man in the photograph was, who his accomplices were and as much about their crimes as he could. He would then admit his part, plead guilty and then give evidence against them, with the prospect of a lighter sentence. I knew all that was as likely as Hull winning the FA Cup, but I always like to be optimistic, so I explained all this as he finished his drink.

  When I’d given him the “official offer”, he just laughed.

  ‘Yeah, then when I come out I can go and do charity work in a homeless hostel. So what’s the real deal?’

  The truth was, I didn’t have one beyond that official line and I knew all along he’d never take it. All I could do was try and build the pressure.

  ‘Take it or leave it. If you leave it, you’ll be rearrested and questioned again, then that photograph of you and the bloke in the Sunderland scarf of whom you are so scared will appear in the national press. Keeping up so far? Next, I’ll release you with a press conference to follow, explaining how since your arrest, the focus of the inquiry has shifted to the north-east. He will of course then think you’ve grassed him up for a deal. Then I’ll put you under surveillance until he comes to bump you off, and catch him… hopefully, before he’s succeeded.’

  All of this was just a threat – pure fantasy.

  Although I was convinced that the photo was the only key we had to the case, it was unusable other than to exert this pressure on him to reveal the north-east connection. Of course he didn’t know that, but he was no mug, having been through the wringer of the Criminal Justice System countless times – as his response showed.

  ‘Fuck you, Darnley. I’m a businessman and I don’t do anything for nothing. You can’t prove anything against me or else you’d charge me. That photo is not clear enough to say it’s me. I’m stood near a car – big bloody deal. It’s all circumstantial and you know it. Without me talking, you’ve got nothing.’

  He finished the last of his whisky and shoved the empty glass towards me.

  I stood at the bar waiting for the drinks, frustrated that the pressure that I was undoubtedly applying was not going to deliver the result I needed. I took the drinks back to the table and, unable to conjure up any new tactic, I wasted ten minutes merely reiterating my threat to expose him as a grass to try and turn up the pressure. He didn’t even speak. He was not going to succumb. Eventually, he held up his hand to silence me.

  ‘Now I think I should buy you a drink. Another pint… or something stronger?’

  I handed him my pint glass and watched as he leaned on the bar flirting with the barmaid as cool as you like. I felt the control slipping away from me again.

  While I drank my pint, he made me a proposal.

  ‘I’m not giving you any names but I’ve been asked to set up another job. I’ll do it and then tip you off, when and where. You catch them on the job. They end up in the nick… and I stay out. I still owe the bastard twenty grand from fifty he loaned me and this way I keep the money… and my life.’

  My mind raced. In tightly controlled and authorised circumstances, this was an actual tactical option. Even with the police in full control, this was still a high-risk strategy and only ever used when no other course was possible. It could never be sanctioned in these circumstances – with a criminal dictating the terms.

  Maybe not legal – but possible?

  ‘As I said, Darnley, I’m a businessman. I’ve got where I am by taking risks. This would be a big risk for me but I’m willing to take it… but have you got the balls?’

  There was no further discussion. We both agreed to sleep on it but set ourselves a twenty-four-hour deadline. I walked slowly back towards Sessions House, my mind in turmoil, seeking an alternative solution to the one Grantmore was offering. Being manipulated by a villain was a bitter pill for me to swallow, especially since I had always had him marked down as just a vicious thug of low intelligence. I realised I had underestimated his criminal cunning and would have to work hard to regain control of a situation that would see me move from a copper who was prepared to bend the rules, to one who was now contemplating ripping them up completely. I was heading for another sleepless night.

  Unbeknown to me, things were moving rapidly, and not for the first time in this case, circumstances were yet again about to change. My plotting and scheming could not keep up with events.

  Sixteen

  Next Morning

  08:40 Friday, 5th February 1999

  Richard Wilde was knackered. He too had spent a sleepless night wrestling with his conscience, his emotions and his plans. He showered at 6am then drove into Hull and checked in at the newsroom before stationing himself in the same café opposite Cleopatra’s that Darnley had used two days earlier. Like Darnley, he watched for Grantmore, his mind still churning through all the scenarios that had kept him awake. Grantmore was in some way involved in the murder of the young man up north, and it wasn’t too far a stretch to figure out that that crime must be connected to the murder of Emmerson following a similar robbery in Beverley. Wilde didn’t want Darnley’s titbits. This was real investigative journalism – what he’d dreamed of when he was at university. His plan, if you could call it a plan, was to follow Grantmore, see who he met and just hope something developed.

  He’d read the Guardian from cover to cover and by 9.30am there was still no sign of his quarry, when his attention was drawn to another customer who had entered the café about twenty minutes earlier, polished off scrambled eggs on toast and was now just sitting staring across Spring Bank. It was the Canon camera with telephoto lens that the man constantly fiddled with that had piqued his interest. Richard coveted the camera and was about to engage the man in conversation about its qualities, purely to fill the time, when the man suddenly raised his camera, adjusted the lens and fired off three or four shots through the café window. Following the camera’s angle, Richard was gobsmacked to see that Grantmore was the subject of the man’s photography. He watched as his target waited at the door of his business before being buzzed inside. The man lowered his camera and left it on the table while he ordered another pot of tea before continuing what clearly seemed to be the same vigil as Richard’s.

  The journalist was intrigued. Could the other bloke be a copper maintaining surveillance? His rudimentary knowledge of such practices made him quickly rule that out. He didn’t appear to have a radio. Certainly, no earpiece was evident and he had written nothing down in a surveillance log that Richard knew was essential. Having discounted that option, he mused that the man was perfectly suited to such a role, as he would never have been identified as such. His age was indeterminate, anywhere between thirty and fifty, and he looked like a skinny relic from the 1970s. He sipped his mug of tea as if it was in a fine china cup, with his little finger sticking out as if at afternoon tea with the gentry, not in a greasy spoon in Hull. Wilde weighed up his options.

  He had just decided to approach him in the guise of talking about his camera when the little man suddenly jumped up, grabbed his anorak from the back of his chair, picked up his camera and rushed out onto Spring Bank, heading towards Ferensway. Then Richard spotted Grantmore walking in the same direction on the opposite side of the road. The man was clearly following Grantmore. Without a thought to the whys and wherefores, Richard joined the hunt. Now this was journalism.

  Twenty minutes later, now on Witham, he saw Grantmore enter his other emporium of delight, Nicole’s. Grantmore’s “shadow” had positioned himself in the ent
rance to a narrow alleyway about thirty yards away from Nicole’s entrance but on the opposite side of the road. Richard hung back, pretending to look at cars for sale on one of the used car showroom forecourts that cluster along Witham. He watched as the little man moved deeper into the alley entrance and seemed to settle down for another wait.

  After fifteen minutes of looking at cars and realising that the salesman hassling him was not going to “leave him to browse”, he approached the alley entrance with no clear idea of his tactics and confronted the diminutive observer.

  ‘Why are you following Sean Grantmore?’

  Startled, and reacting purely on the instinct that Wilde must be one of Grantmore’s thugs, the man thrust the expensive camera with its long lens straight into Richard’s nose, causing a nasty gash. Since the camera’s strap was round his neck, his head followed the trajectory of the camera resulting in his forehead smashing into the back of it. There ensued considerable moaning, groaning, bleeding and struggling, with the reporter eventually ending up sitting on the prostrate cameraman, who lay face down on the footpath outside the Poundstretcher store, adjacent to the alley.

  Now thoroughly pissed off, and with all semblance of professionalism abandoned, the much stronger reporter dragged Grantmore’s stalker to his feet and out of sight of Nicole’s. Once safely round the corner into Holborn Street, he sat him on a low wall and took a seat next to him. While Richard dabbed at his still bleeding nose with the sleeve of his shirt, the little cameraman stared up at him.

  Both men just sat. Panting, bleeding and sizing each other up but with all aggression dissipated.

  ‘Well… why were you following Sean Grantmore?’

  This time, Graham Morley answered his question and half an hour later, the two men were back in the café on Spring Bank, sharing a pot of tea and still talking.

  *

  13:30 That Afternoon

  I made my way into the tearooms at Wolds Village, a newly refurbished set of old farm buildings close to the village of Bainton and about three miles from Driffield. When who I now thought of as my tame reporter had rung me in a state of high excitement, demanding we meet immediately, I had thought of this place as discreet and out of the way – and I knew the coffee was good. He’d demanded that I come into Hull but I insisted he came to me – keeping the upper hand.