Darkness, Darkness: (Resnick 12)

by Harvey, John

  From the women gathered at the funeral, there was ample testimony of the growing tension between Barry and Jenny Hardwick, arguments that had flared up in public, harsh words with Jenny most often giving as good as she got. Threats? The usual, nothing more. You wait till I get you home, that kind of nonsense. Hot air and blather. One time, all right, Jenny had been sporting a black eye, a real shiner, but when asked she’d said it had happened out on the picket line, run smack into someone’s elbow.

  ‘I’ll be honest,’ one of the women said, ‘if he had given her a backhander once or twice, it wouldn’t have been ’cause she hadn’t earned it. Goaded him sometimes, something rotten. Like she were saying, go on then, hit me if you dare. Felt right sorry for him, Barry, though I shouldna’, scabbin’ like he was.’

  ‘Barry had let her have one, she’d’ve give him one back, an’ all,’ another said. ‘Remember that lad? Ginger-haired bloke, set his cap at her. She walloped him once, by all accounts. Right proud of it, he were, too. Braggin’ about it all over. Daft young bugger.’

  Ginger-haired bloke – Danny Ireland – they knew his name, bits and pieces of past history, but not a great deal else. So far all attempts to track him down had failed. There’d been an address in Doncaster, a woman he’d lived with for a spell in Leeds, a child he might or might not have fathered in Goole. A spell working on the oil rigs, out of Aberdeen. Someone who might or might not have been him, applying for a job with P&O Ferries sailing from Hull to Rotterdam. Since which time, he didn’t seem to have filed a tax return, applied for benefit, appeared on a voters’ register: died.

  The sound of the trumpet playing a few warning notes in the far room told Resnick it was time for the second set. He was just draining his glass, when the man slipped into the seat alongside him. Fifties, narrow face, spectacles, thinning hair combed sideways in a Bobby Charlton; raincoat that had seen better days.

  ‘Detective Inspector Resnick?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘The Jenny Hardwick murder, though, Bledwell Vale, you are involved?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Little bird told me I might find you here.’ He held out his hand. ‘Trevor Fleetwood. Let me get you a drink. I’ll not keep you away from the music for long.’

  ‘Just a half, then.’

  Resnick watched him go. Fleetwood, Fleetwood, he knew the name from somewhere, but where? Over the hum of conversation, the burble of the fruit machine by the side wall, he could just make out the opening strains of ‘Moten Swing’.

  ‘We did meet once before,’ Fleetwood said, back from the bar. ‘Operation Enigma. The bodies in the canal. Ninety-six?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Got it now. You were writing a book . . .’

  ‘Death by Water. I sent you a copy.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  No answer.

  ‘I know, coals to Newcastle. You probably only glanced at it anyway. But this time I thought I might help you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Michael Swann, ring any bells?’

  ‘Not immediately.’

  ‘The M6 Murderer?’

  ‘Another book?’

  ‘More of a sequel.’

  Interest piqued, Resnick supped his bitter and waited for Fleetwood to continue.

  ‘Nineteen eighty-nine, Kim Bucknall, sexually assaulted, murdered, body found in a derelict building close to junction forty-three of the M6, just outside Carlisle. Three years later, ninety-two, Patricia Albright, raped, murdered, her body left on waste ground near Fullwood, north of Preston, buried beneath old timber, tarpaulin, rubble. Then ninety-four, Lisa Plackett, raped, anally and vaginally, her body pushed down a storm drain near exit twenty-one on the edge of Warrington. Michael Swann was convicted of all three murders in nineteen ninety-seven. Five years later, he’d have been sent down for thirty years minimum. As it was, he was sentenced to life, given a tariff of twenty-five years. A possibility of parole after twenty. Just three years from now. Not that I’d rate his chances too high.’

  ‘And you’re suggesting, what? A connection?’

  ‘Jenny Hardwick, how was she killed?’

  Resnick held his gaze, made no answer.

  Fleetwood essayed a smile. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, blow or blows to the head with a heavy object. The same or similar to all three cases for which Swann was found guilty, and in each of which he took advantage of whatever the surroundings to conceal the body.’

  ‘Timings aside,’ Resnick said, ‘and Jenny was killed a whole five years before the first of those murders, Swann’s territory, the M6 like you say, it’s a long way from North Notts. The other side of the country.’

  Fleetwood took an envelope from his pocket.

  ‘Take a look at this.’

  It was a press photograph, in colour, fuzzy at the edges, the details clear enough to bring Resnick up short. Shoulder-length dark hair, just a few shades off black, sharp features, blue-grey eyes: it could have been Jenny Hardwick’s younger sister.

  ‘Donna Crowder,’ Fleetwood said. ‘Nineteen. Her body was discovered less than an hour’s drive away from where Jenny Hardwick lay buried. Beaten about the head. Half-buried beneath bushes and brambles. Foxes found her before anyone else. No one’s ever been charged with her murder.’

  ‘And this was when?’

  ‘Eighty-seven.’

  ‘And you think it was Michael Swann that killed her?’

  ‘I think he killed both of them, first Jenny, then Donna three years later. Then the others. I just need you to help me prove it.’

  21

  RESNICK HAD MADE no promises to Trevor Fleetwood, other than a rather vague agreement to stay in touch. Before leaving the pub that evening, he had contacted Catherine Njoroge and arranged to meet her in Nottingham the following morning. Lee Rosy’s in Hockley, opposite the Broadway Cinema.

  Catherine listened without interrupting, sipped her tea.

  ‘You think there’s anything to it?’

  ‘I think he’d like there to be.’

  ‘So he can get another book out of it.’

  ‘That and the publicity, yes.’

  ‘I looked up his website last night, after you phoned me. All pretty unsavoury. Book jacket illustrations, mostly suggesting gore and mayhem. Knives, knotted rope, naked breasts, women screaming. Truly horrible. I made a note of some of the titles, here . . .’ She unlocked her mobile phone, tapped Notes. ‘In the Ripper’s Footsteps. Evil Intent. Death by Water. Famous Murder Trials of the Last Century.’

  ‘Death by Water,’ Resnick said, ‘about the canal murders. Operation Enigma. That’s when I met him before. Getting on twenty years ago now.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘The book?’ Resnick shrugged. ‘Sensationalist, of course. Pretty much what you’d expect. But otherwise . . . yes, it was accurate enough. He’d done his research, you could tell that.’

  ‘There’s a book here,’ Catherine said, glancing back down at her mobile. ‘Born to Kill. Interviews with convicted murderers. One of them’s Michael Swann. I downloaded it on to my Kindle. The chapter on Swann’s one of the shortest. A rehash mostly of the murders. Some stuff about Swann’s upbringing, childhood, but nothing out of the ordinary. Difficult to get any sense of what he’s really like.’

  ‘There’s no suggestion he might have had other victims?’

  ‘No. Fleetwood asks him, asks him outright, and, of course, Swann denies it.’

  ‘Does he mention Donna Crowder? Fleetwood, I mean?’

  ‘In the interview? No.’

  A young couple came in, students, spoke quietly to the man behind the counter and went to a table by the side wall, laptops out of their bags and open almost before they’d sat down.

  ‘Nobody’s made this suggestion before?’ Catherine asked. ‘In the Crowder case, for instance. Considered Swann as a likely suspect?’

  ‘Not as far as I can know.�
�

  Catherine arched her neck and smoothed her hair, worn loose today, away from her face with a brush of her hand. ‘If this gets opened up, Charlie, it’s a whole new territory. Two murders, possible links to a serial killer. There’ll be no way of keeping that toned down. Not once the media get wind of it.’

  Resnick nodded. ‘What Fleetwood’s banking on, I suppose. And certainly not what Picard and Hastings had in mind. Though as long as it drew attention away from the strike, they might even be pleased.’

  ‘Something big, you could see Picard muscling in, wanting a bit of the limelight for himself.’

  Resnick shrugged. ‘Investigation that size, might not be such a bad thing.’

  ‘Uh-uh. I want this, Charlie. It’s my case, my investigation.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘So let’s proceed, but gently, okay? Keep it close to home.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Maybe you could take a look at the Donna Crowder inquiry, see how closely Fleetwood’s theories tie in to the facts.’

  ‘And Swann?’

  ‘Let’s leave Swann for now. Talk to him later, if we have to.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Mary Connor, I promised I’d meet her. Let her know what’s happening in the investigation as much as anything. She’s been staying up at her father’s place in Chesterfield since the rest of her family went back.’

  She was on her feet, bag on her shoulder. ‘You never know, it might give me the excuse for another word with Barry, too.’

  Resnick nodded down towards his cup, the slice of apple and cinnamon cake alongside. ‘I’ll stay here, finish this.’

  Catherine smiled, touched him briefly on the shoulder as she moved past.

  The café was slowly getting busier. Another couple of students. A man in his late twenties, early thirties, sitting up to the window, roll-neck jumper, jeans, sipping espresso, scrolling through the news on his iPad. Near the back, a woman Resnick thought he recognised from his infrequent visits to the cinema opposite: fair hair, near shoulder length, face dimpling as whatever she was listening to through her headphones made her smile.

  For Resnick, it had been across the street at Broadway that Operation Enigma had started. An evening when Milt Jackson, vibraphone player from the Modern Jazz Quartet, had been making a rare one-off appearance: Resnick, sitting forward, eager with anticipation, the first notes of ‘Bag’s Groove’ starting to roll out from the accompanying piano, when his pager had summoned him suddenly away. The body of a woman had just been discovered by the lock gates of the Nottingham Canal, close to where it joined the River Trent. A young woman, Eastern European it transpired, but otherwise difficult to identify; a silver ring on the little finger of her left hand, a gash deep into the bone above the right eye. One of three other bodies to have been discovered in canals in the preceding years. Operation Enigma. Like many things seen through water, the truth was often refracted, never quite what it seemed.

  Trevor Fleetwood’s book had topped the True Crime listings for a month or two before falling away; extracts had been published, Resnick remembered, in the Post. Another level of distortion, though, at root, the facts had been basically sound.

  Pushing back his chair, Resnick lifted the last piece of cake with finger and thumb, shared a smile of half-recognition with the woman from Broadway, and stepped out on to the street. With any luck, the room he’d been allocated at Central Police Station would still be available, not too many questions as to the information he’d be searching for on the computer.

  As chance would have it, Andy Duncan was just leaving the station as Resnick arrived.

  ‘Student?’ Resnick asked. ‘Any change?’

  Duncan shook his head. ‘Goes on much longer, I can see ’em pulling the plug.’

  Poor bastard, Resnick thought. Knight errant in a thankless world.

  Ever since thinking of Milt Jackson and ‘Bag’s Groove’, he hadn’t been able to get the tune out of his mind. The original version, the first he himself knew, the first he’d heard. Miles Davis stating the theme on trumpet before playing several choruses with just bass and drums behind, Davis having told Thelonious Monk, the pianist on the date, to lay out whenever he was soloing. A request Monk didn’t exactly take kindly. It was Christmas Eve and he’d wanted to be at home with his family, not working on somebody else’s session for scale. And when it finally came to his turn to solo, Monk, even more idiosyncratic than usual, had jabbed out little phrases that seemed purposely to sing against the natural rhythm, the natural logic of Davis’ own playing, his fingers often striking two keys at once, the space between.

  Why does he play, Resnick’s wife, Elaine, used to ask in the long long ago, as if he’s got no arms?

  Answer: because he can.

  Why play the right notes when the wrong ones will do?

  Resnick typed the name Donna Crowder into the computer and set the search engine chasing. The press photographs gave him the same jolt as before; she could have been Jenny Hardwick’s younger sister, or Jenny herself just a few years younger. The same prettiness shot through with a strong hint of determination. Blue eyes staring directly back at the camera. A young woman, sure of herself and her place in the world.

  Too sure, perhaps.

  All too familiar a story.

  Donna had been to a nightclub in Sheffield with friends, become separated, missed the last bus, and set out to hitch home to Rotherham along the Sheffield Road.

  Less than ten miles.

  At some point on her journey, the assumption was, she had accepted a lift. By the early hours of the following morning, having checked the local hospitals and contacted Donna’s friends, her parents had alerted the police.

  Donna’s body was found three days later amongst the scrub and undergrowth alongside the River Don, where it runs more or less parallel to the road. Other than the fact that her clothing was torn, there were no apparent signs of sexual assault.

  From reading the various news reports, it seemed that Donna’s boyfriend at the time had come under suspicion, but, as far as Resnick could tell, neither he nor anyone else had ever been charged with Donna Crowder’s murder.

  It still lay open, unsolved.

  The senior officer who’d been in charge of the investigation, Resnick saw, was Detective Chief Inspector Maurice Rawsthorne of the South Yorkshire Police. A photograph showed him in full uniform at a press conference the morning after the body was found. Seated to one side, Donna Crowder’s mother; on the other, Detective Sergeant Paul Bryant, Rawsthorne’s number two.

  Rawsthorne, Resnick happened to know, had died some seven or eight years previously; but Bryant was not only still alive, but had only recently retired. A sometime colleague – Bryant had started out in the Nottinghamshire force and the two men had had occasion to meet up professionally over the years – Resnick thought it was time to look him up, take him, maybe, a little something to help him celebrate kicking off the shackles of the job.

  22

  MUCH OF THE past few days, confrontation either side of the picket line at a minimum, Resnick had spent kicking his heels, relatively little to report. A stalemate of sorts seemed to have been reached.

  ‘You still alive up there, Charlie?’ his operational commander had enquired. ‘Still breathing?’

  ‘Just about, sir.’

  ‘Thought you might have gone AWOL. Gone native.’

  It was like a storm waiting to break.

  When it came the call was brief and to the point. At first he hadn’t recognised the voice. Peter Waites. Since their first meeting in the early days of the strike they’d met again several times, developed a grudging respect. ‘Might want to get yourself up here, Charlie. Bit of a to-do. Nasty. One of yours, as it turned out, on her way to hospital.’

  Her?

  Diane Conway?

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘Bassetlaw. Local.’

  ‘How serious?’

  ‘She’ll live, if that’s what you mean. Precautionary, I’d s
ay, much as anything.’

  Resnick was already reaching for his coat. ‘I’ll be there.’

  He found Peter Waites standing close by three burned-out cars, one of which had been turned on to its side as a makeshift barricade. Circling the wagons, Resnick thought. The road was covered in splintered glass that crackled beneath his feet when he walked. Several of the nearby houses had had their windows broken; SCAB in jagged paint down one of the doors. Pieces of half-brick, smooth-edged stones.

  Disappointment writ large on the union man’s face.

  ‘I know I said it’d not happen here, not on my watch. Cars set alight. All this. Pains me to say you were right, even though it’s just the once.’

  ‘What happened?’ Resnick asked.

  ‘Kicked off in the pub earlier, couple of the lads got into an argument. Usual argy-bargy. Result was, time comes for second shift, more on picket line than’s been the case for good while. Well, you know. Police get wind up, whistle up reinforcements. Still shoutin’ an’ not a lot else until someone throws a stone. Catches one of coppers on side of head. And then they’re away. Blue bloody murder. And I’ll tell you what, Charlie, my life, him as threw that first stone, he was a copper, an’all. I’ve seen him, seen him front of police line afore now, an’ there he was, civvy clothes, in amongst our lads, geein’ ’em up, eggin’ ’em on, hurlin’ that bloody stone, could’ve taken eye out o’ one of his own.’

  ‘Police officer, you’re sure?’

  ‘Sure as I’m standing here.’

  Resnick looked at the cars, the street. ‘That was all up by the pit. What about all this here?’

  ‘Some of the pickets got back down, found a bunch of lads from the village, bloody little tearaways, had torched their cars. Of course, they go looking for restitution. Next thing you know, coppers are down here, two Transits of ’em. Wading in left, right and centre. Which was when that lass of yours got hers. Back of the head. Flying bottle, some said, but I’m not so sure.’