My bones ache from training, my blood lust to hurt is long diminished yet I have learnt much without putting myself in harm’s way. Shortly I will be gone.
The back-door swings open, a spotlight comes on piercing the trees around me. The dog leaps out, frothing at the mouth, barking, straining to be released from its lead by a huge figure looming from behind the light. I stand as stone.
A voice hisses, “Best be on your way DCI Cade.
“Before I release Fang here through the gate. He. And I. Can smell you.”
I cannot breathe, fearful I am in a scene from a gothic horror movie as the beast rears at the excitement of a chase before the voice slithers out again, “Those fools inside would never guess but I knew you were there.”
A pause, “Your time is nearly here.”
I actually expect the maniacal cackle of a horror villain then. I hear him urge the dog on before releasing it. The tearing slobber of the animal crashes into the thick bushes even as I force myself to calmly lay a trail of aniseed balls for twenty yards along the slight path before I veer home in a totally different direction.
21
Brandy in hand, central heating gurgling through my cottage, I dab long out of date ointment on the cuts and bruises lacing my hands and the side of my face. Hawthorn and gorse slashed me repeatedly as I fought through their thick morass of armoured thorns to my own woodland even as Rudd’s dog thankfully settled to enjoy his pungent aniseed finds.
My mind turns to Wayne Rudd. For it was he. The sixth person in the house, the eldest son and brother, the hissing giant who unleashed Fang.
Now twenty-eight years old and for me, the prime suspect when Bess and Grace disappeared. He hated me then, lusted after Bess I know. Yet he had a cast iron alibi, being two hundred miles away for the week in question, with a half dozen witnesses. Added to which he did not have, could not obtain the forensic clean up skills to sanitise my cottage of all evidence for what had gone on or arrange my supposed vehicle driving to and from Wales surely?
Still, I do not, would never trust a word he says. In trouble with the police since the age of ten for drink, minor drugs, using his size to bully and humiliate, and suspected of numerous burglaries, he had always escaped conviction or punishment and often been let off without charge. The countryside runs on who you know, not right and wrong. I suddenly link the dots: Rudd Senior being related to Bull, who is cosy with Odling could well explain that. The problem is checking and finding evidence.
Rudd has been off the grid for almost seven years without coming to the notice of the police anywhere. I know, I have checked his movements regularly, working on a pipe laying gang all over Europe. So why is he back now? And in a D’Eynscourte Estate pick up for it was certainly his silhouette behind the wheel at the Hall.
I set the burglar alarm system and stand at the top of my landing, staring down my front lane, teasing out the nuances of memory from when I first met young Wayne.
***
The summer before my family disappeared, it was one of those wonderful August days when the air is hot and dancing with the life of fluttering butterflies and hum of bees, combine harvesters crawling soundlessly over the fields on the hills like tiny insects.
Driving home early that mid-August afternoon to spend time with Bess and Grace, I found four youngsters aged thirteen or fourteen in our private lane, sitting with Wayne Rudd who was showing off his motorbike and his grown-up ways. Before I became a public menace, installing the large steel gates and encouraging gorse and bushes to abound and enclose my cottage with protection.
Rudd was twenty-one at the time, and had his arm draped around one young girl, stroking her breast, while holding the other female lightly to his side with a hand clamped under her skirt on her thigh.
It was clear the girls did not want to be touched that way. It was clear the two boys with them dare not go up against Rudd, who was twice their size and by reputation quickly violent and especially intimidating in his black leathers.
If he had not felt compelled to give me a V sign as I slowed down to pass them, if he had not been clearly fondling under-age girls, I might have left it as just a bunch of young people from the village who did not have anywhere else to go or anything else to do. Instead, after parking the car outside the cottage I had waved to Bess at the window that I would only be a minute and walked back round the slight bend to hear Rudd’s nasal whine, “Woman who lives here, well up for it, know what I mean guys?”
All of them were facing away from me, totally engrossed in their own drama as I walked closer. One of the girls started crying and called out to the boys, “Get off me, Dave, Cliff, help me, please.” A pretty girl, bright eyes all a glitter, voice softly spirited even in fear.
Rudd’s accent was broad Ancaster, thick and deep, “Time you boys left, these girls know they’ll be safe.
“With me.”
I walked quietly unseen to within five yards of the group and said softly, “Hello, mind telling me what you are doing here?”
They all turned and looked at my dark shape against the sunlight behind. I knew Rudd would see someone not large, not small, easy pickings for a six foot three man foolishly secure in his size and an extended family of louts to support him.
No one spoke before one boy gulped, whether in shame at his own helplessness or at being caught trespassing, “Just hanging about Mister, you know.”
“On my land though I am afraid, with beer, cigarettes, cannabis if I am not mistaken,” I said softly, moving closer to the two girls being held.
“Piss off,” Rudd belched then, picking up a beer by his feet and finishing it with a burp as he threw the can at my feet.
I ignored him, my gaze passing over the boys to finish on the young girls still being fondled, their eyes pleading for help, “And you will be Mr Wayne Rudd I presume, who has been known to be a peeping Tom around my property and to leave used condoms at our door?”
Surprise hung in the air.
Rudd went all still, his fingers stopped kneading the girl’s thigh, and his hand stopped cupping the other’s breast. Just the buzz of bees in the hot sunlight now, the odd burst of bird song from the woods.
They always have to try to regain control when being shown up and the dumb ones respond as Rudd did, “Fuck Off.”
I smiled then, and heard the boys gasp as I did what must have appeared a truly mad thing to them, I moved to within a yard of Rudd.
All sweet reason, “I have wanted a word with you for some time Mr Rudd. But my wife did not want me to cause any trouble in the village.”
“I, said, Fuck, Off.” Rudd spat out the words one at a time, pushing the girls to one side as he stood to his full height and bulk.
“While you still can.”
‘Project your own threat,’ Daniel always says and I have done for years, they tell me, often scaring suspects just with a look. It is vital when you are smaller than most at only five ten and not visibly muscular when dressed. ‘Assess the opponent’ is another truism. Rudd was big and stocky of frame, but with the beginnings already of a flabby stomach bulging out of control. I had watched him at the boxing club on his rare visits a few years previously, struggling to do even basic exercises without stopping and whining. His leathers meant his face was the only target this day though.
I jeered, “And a big boy like yourself, what are you, twenty years old, fondling a girl of thirteen or fourteen. A criminal offence if I am not mistaken.”
Rudd had either not heard I was police or did not care. He was younger, stronger, confident, and they were five to one in his mind.
His leathers creaked as he moved closer to intimidate with his height, and hissed, “Fuck off, now, while you can and I will be there to fuck your slag of a wife when I want and when you are least expecting it.
“Got it!”
His hand was coming up, presumably to push or hit me, I neither knew, nor cared.
The others were rooted to the spot, they said later. According to their sta
tements, Wayne Rudd was throwing a punch when suddenly he was ‘almost dancing and flying.’ ‘The only way I can describe it,’ said one of the girls. He was lifted off his feet as he went backwards and skittered five yards on the loose gravel of the rutted lane before smashing into his own bike, which slowly fell on its side beside him. Then he was face down on the ground, struggling for breath, his nose pouring out blood.
When I looked up and round, they were all literally struck dumb, white faced I remember, shocked by the sudden violence even though it only lasted a moment.
Rudd himself was like a little kid whimpering over and over, “My nose, you’ve broken my nose, my teeth.”
I yanked him over on his front and handcuffed him, formally cautioning him even as he moaned, ‘I ain’t done nothing’ over and over again. Then I called for backup and pointed for the four to sit on the nearby stile. Rudd lay sprawled face down, his eyes vicious as they threatened a bad fate to all there.
The four all nodded hard when I turned and said quietly, “I’d be grateful if you guys would not come down this lane again. It is private property, after all.”
Then the girls were both a torrent of tears, wanting their mothers, hardly listening as I told them all would be well.
***
I knelt by the prone young man so his face was close to mine and said easily, “And if anything, anything bad should happen to me or mine or any of these children, I would come looking for you. Mr. Rudd. Same thing if I see you near here again, or ever hear you have talked about my wife or me.”
A jocular throw away remark to end, “And the law would be the least of your worries.”
Rudd looked away, nose to the ground and did not reply.
That final threat did not go into any official reports even though all the youngsters said it had been the most chilling memory of that day.
Their statements had not helped though. Despite my best efforts there had been no prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service did not trust the kids to give evidence on the sexual charge, and the two girls actually withdrew their complaints while denying they had been influenced or intimidated. It was my word against Rudd. This was all before the public controversies about child abuse in Rotherham, Oxford and elsewhere otherwise it might have been a different outcome. Or perhaps not. Today we could have had him for the new offence of ‘acting for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification with a child’ which carries a two-year sentence, but not then.
Rudd’s lawyer claimed I had not identified myself as a police officer and there was discrepancy on who threw the first punch so no assault charge could be laid. His father rustled up two good character references, one Bull Senior, one the local vicar who was heavily dependent upon Mrs Rudd for flower arranging duties. We might have got an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, the CPS suggested, but it seemed too little to me.
There was even a suggestion that I be investigated for violent behaviour when a complaint was made to Chief Superintendent Mary Hamnet, then Head of C.I.D.. She quickly quashed that but this incident was the basis of my then being accused of being violent on some earlier cases. The sex offender, and potential rapist of two under-age girls escaped with a slight rap on the knuckles: a caution for trespass and a fine for an untaxed motorbike.
Worse in ways, better in others, the incident had wider effects. Bess had seen the finale and made it plain she thought I had over-reacted, taking the chance to hurt the young man rather than just arresting him. Given what happened, perhaps she was right. It was a month before she forgave me. Rudd’s mother left her husband and moved down south, ashamed of the police being at her house so much and Wayne ‘gone bad’ and Duane already following. The girls left the county within a year and I lost track of them entirely, the two young boys are both now at University.
The case still rankles me. Men exploiting women always does. Some cases just get under your skin. This was one for me. Only tonight do I learn that the then Sergeant George Odling is acquainted with Bull and knows the Rudd clan. Without doubt he and Creel had got involved to thwart not only me but common justice. After all they were in charge of the case as it was in their squad’s area then.
A few months afterwards his father James Rudd asked for a word in the village pub garden one golden autumn afternoon when we were having a family lunch with my mother. He wanted to apologise, explained that Wayne was a changed man, working laying pipes all over the country, earning good money and would not be any trouble again. Then James’ wife left him, his life fell apart, young Duane became troublesome if never caught and Mr Rudd shunned me thereafter.
Wayne Rudd was a peeping Tom, made implicit threats to me and my wife and child, and his look laid on the floor in cuffs said he would never forgive or forget. Naturally Creel did not want to know of him as a suspect when my family disappeared. It was left to me to quietly and unofficially investigate his alibi as best I could and, unfortunately, clear him.
22
Rooms ignite memories. My and Bess’ bedroom is one I seldom enter. The odd night that I have tried to sleep there, ghostly flute music hovers always from the corner by the window where she used to practice until the dream and nightmare devour me.
Nights and weekends, I divide my time between staring for hours aroun Grace’s room and working in the fourth bedroom at the side of the house well away from the prying eyes of any non-existent visitors. Unlocking the latter’s triple keyed steel door and disarming its own separate alarm, I am blinded by the blazing lights that flood a space laid out like a major police crime ‘Incident Room’. The heavily barred and draped windows to the side and back of the cottage overlook our vegetable garden and meadow.
Pin board covers every wall surface, showing a mass of photographs of witnesses, sketches of my house and area, maps of the village, my route to and from the Brecon Beacons, and post-it notes galore. On one wall are two columns of photographs - of my wife and daughter as they were seven years ago and computer mock-ups of how they might be now, drawn by an expert I pay to do the update once a year.
Another wall has six columns drawn on it, the head of each being a post card from places around the world. Each with a list of leads below it and follow up documents relating to those places after my visits.
The third wall is titled ‘Key Suspects’ with brief biography details of each, a timeline of events for their alibis for the night in question – that fateful Thursday seven years ago ten days hence. A pitiful anniversary indeed.
On the fourth wall hang two large television screens, each one divided into four, each showing images from the eight cameras hidden in my woods, giving an angle on every approach to my cottage.
A stand-alone white board, covered with stark red lettering of my latest thinking hogs the centre of the room and hypnotises so I have to pull my eyes away.
Six meagre evidence boxes contain all the official documents on the case, including local CCTV material and the forensic report on the state of our house after whatever happened had happened. My merely having these documents would merit suspension if not dismissal, as would my very act of investigating the case myself. Creel has officially warned me off both verbally and in writing on a regular basis. There are another seven stacks, eight boxes in each, full of neatly collated files. A pile for each year I have been pursuing this quest; the fruit of my labours.
Driving in earlier before my adventure at the Rudd house, I picked up some letters in the mailbox by my forbidding six-foot steel outer gates. Without a glance, I now throw them into a large box I keep for the thousands of letters received about my predicament. In the early years I read them all, avidly, whether hate mail or sympathetic to my cause or offering me solace through mysticism or even marriage. The same amount came to Police Head Quarters then, perhaps they still do. A trickle still comes to my home but I have long dumped them unopened no matter their origin, be it China or Chile, Margaret River or Manchester, Norway or Nigeria.
My story, headlined cruelly as ‘The Cold-Hearted Cop.’ Or ‘Butcher of
his Own Family,’ or ‘How can this cop stay a cop?’ angered people all over the globe. Our Head of Communications warned me a month ago that newspapers would remember the seven-year date and the letters, the phone calls, emails, tweets and Instagram posts would explode as a result. I do not look at any of the score of Facebook pages about me, one even on my side apparently, nor follow the tweets or the five highly visible websites that regularly update developments or place comments on my case and evil character.
So much labour is stacked here in this room; leads worked, re-worked, theories developed, followed, dismissed. A clue to the solution must be here somewhere, I know; big or small. I am simply missing it or not seeing properly. I stare at the white board directly in front of me and then begin my nightly ritual, like boxing, never to be missed or thwarted. To look again at possible narratives of what went on those seven years ago. Who, what, when, why, how? The answers have to be here.
***
It is past two in the morning. As usual, the room energises me and I need to stay awake the better to avoid sleep and nightmare. Creel as a DCI and Odling, his then Sergeant, were in charge of the case, wanted me to be guilty and so hardly looked for other explanations or culprits. Odling took the same attitude when he became the DCI for Major Crimes in the county.
It was and is left to me alone. I find the files on Wayne Rudd, sit at the central table with its large screen and high-powered computer to study it. There is no question. The man can be dismissed as a suspect.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 13