Shaw slammed the tumbler down on the table so hard, the whiskey slopped over the side. “All right,” he said. “You want the truth? I’ll tell you. I’m not stupid. I worked with John for too many years not to have my suspicions, but – know what? – I never took a fucking penny in my life. And maybe I blinkered myself, maybe I even protected him, but we did our jobs. We brought down the bad guys. I loved the man. He taught me everything. He even saved my life once. He had charisma, did John. He was the kind of bloke everybody noticed when he walked in the room. He’s a fucking hero around these parts, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“And that’s why you’ve been doing everything in your power to scupper DI Hart’s investigation into Graham Marshall’s murder? To protect your old pal’s memory. To protect Jet Harris’s reputation. To do that you get someone to break into her flat, try to run her down, have me beaten up.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
He looked at Michelle, then back at Banks, a puzzled expression on his face. “I certainly never had anyone intimidate DI Hart in any way. I wasn’t worried about her. It was you I was worried about.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’re the loose cannon. It was you I needed to keep an eye on. It was different for you. Personal. You knew the victim. I could tell the first time I saw you that you weren’t going to let go.” He shook his head and looked at Michelle again. “No,” he said. “If anyone had a go at you, DI Hart, it wasn’t down to me.”
Banks and Michelle exchanged glances, then Banks moved on. “Are you asking us to believe that you worked with Harris all those years and you hadn’t a clue what he was up to?”
“I’m saying I had my suspicions, but I buried them. For the sake of the force. For John’s sake. Listen, squash a bug like Fiorino and another one takes his place. You can no more stop prostitution, porn and drugs than you can stop sex and drinking. They’re always going to be there. Policing was different then. Sometimes you had to rub shoulders with some pretty nasty bedfellows to do the job.”
“And what about Graham Marshall?”
Shaw looked surprised. “What about him?”
“Did you know what really happened to him? Have you been covering that up all these years, too?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Shaw’s voice was little more than a whisper now.
“Well, let me tell you a story,” said Banks. “We can’t prove it, but this is what DI Hart and I believe happened. Donald Bradford most likely killed Graham. He owned the kind of knife that was used, and Graham trusted him. All Bradford had to do was drive down Wilmer Road around the time Graham would be heading for the other side and tell him something else had come up, to get in the car. That’s why he took his bag of newspapers with him. He thought he would be going back to finish his round later.”
“What possible motive could Bradford have?”
“That’s where it gets complicated, and that’s where your boss comes in. Donald Bradford distributed pornographic magazines and blue films for Carlo Fiorino. Fiorino had quite a network of newsagents working for him. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it, you being a vigilant copper and all.”
“Sod you, Banks.” Shaw scowled and topped up his glass.
“Somehow or other,” Banks went on, “Graham Marshall became involved in this operation. Maybe he found some of Bradford’s stock by accident, showed interest. I don’t know. But Graham was a street-smart kid – he grew up around the Krays and their world, and his father was a small-time muscle man – and he had an eye for the main chance. Maybe he worked for Bradford to earn extra money – which he always seemed to have – or maybe he blackmailed him for it. Either way, he was involved.”
“You said yourself you can’t prove any of this.”
“Graham came to the attention of one of Fiorino’s most influential customers, Rupert Mandeville,” Banks went on. “I know he posed for some nude photos because I found one at his house. Whether it went any further than that, I don’t know, but we can tie him to the Mandeville house, and we know what went on there. Underage sex, drugs, you name it. Mandeville couldn’t afford to come under scrutiny. He was an important person with political goals to pursue. Graham probably asked for more money or he’d tell the police. Mandeville panicked, especially as this came hot on the heels of Geoff Talbot’s visit. He got Fiorino to fix it, and Jet Harris scuppered the murder investigation. You knew that, knew there was something wrong, so you’ve been trying to erase the traces to protect Harris’s reputation. How am I doing?”
“You’re arguing against your own logic, Banks. What would it matter if he told the police if we were all as corrupt as you make out? Why go so far as to kill the kid if Bradford thought we could control the outcome anyway?”
Banks looked at Michelle before continuing. “That puzzled me for a while, too,” he said. “I can only conclude that he knew which police officer not to tell.”
“How do you mean?”
“Graham had definitely been to the Mandeville house. What if he saw someone there? Someone who shouldn’t have been there, like a certain detective superintendent?”
“That’s absurd. John wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t like what? Mandeville’s parties catered to all tastes. According to his wife, John Harris was homosexual. We don’t know if Mandeville or Fiorino found out and blackmailed him or if they set him up. Maybe that’s how he took his payoffs from Fiorini and Mandeville, in young boys. Or drugs. It doesn’t matter. Point is, I think Graham saw him there or knew he was connected in some way and made this clear to Bradford, too, that he’d go elsewhere with his story.”
Shaw turned pale. “John? Homosexual? I don’t believe that.”
“One of my old school friends has turned out to be gay,” said Banks. “And I didn’t know that, either. John Harris had two damn good reasons for keeping it a secret. It was illegal until 1967, and he was a copper. Even today you know how tough it is for coppers to come out. We’re all such bloody macho tough guys that gays terrify the crap out of us.”
“Bollocks. This is all pure speculation.”
“Not about John Harris,” Michelle said. “It’s what his ex-wife told me.”
“She’s a lying bitch, then. With all due respect.”
“Why would she lie?”
“She hated John.”
“Sounds like she had good reason to,” Banks said. “But back to Graham. He threatened to tell. I don’t know why. It could have been greed, but it could also have been because Mandeville wanted him to do more than pose for photos. I’d like to think that was where Graham drew the line, but we’ll probably never know. It also explains why he was preoccupied when we were on holiday in Blackpool just before he disappeared. He must have been worrying about what to do. Anyway, Graham knew he’d better go farther afield than the local nick. And he had the photo as evidence, a photo that could incriminate Rupert Mandeville. He compromised the whole operation. Mandeville’s and Fiorino’s. That was why he had to die.”
“So what happened?”
“The order went down to Donald Bradford to get rid of him. Bradford had to be at the shop by eight o’clock, as usual, that morning. That gave him an hour and a half to abduct Graham, kill him and dispose of the body. It takes a while to dig a hole that deep, so my guess is that he planned it in advance, picked the spot and dug the hole. Either that or he had help and another of Fiorino’s henchmen buried the body. Either way, with Harris on the payroll, Bradford could at least be certain that no one was looking too closely at his lack of an alibi.”
“Are you saying that John Harris ordered the boy’s death, because-”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’d say it was Fiorino, or Mandeville, but Harris had to know about it in order to misdirect the investigation. And that makes him just as guilty in my book.”
Shaw closed his eyes and shook his head. “Not John. No. Maybe he didn’t always p
lay by the rules, maybe he did turn a blind eye to one or two things, but not murder. Not a dead kid.”
“You have to accept it,” Banks went on. “It’s the only thing that makes sense of later events.”
“What later events?”
“The botched investigation and the missing notebooks and actions. I don’t know who got rid of them – you, Harris or Reg Proctor, but one of you did.”
“It wasn’t me. All I’ve done was discourage DI Hart here from digging too deeply into the past.”
“And set Wayman on me.”
“You won’t get me to admit to that.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Banks. “So Harris took them himself when he left. That makes sense. It wasn’t his finest hour, and he wouldn’t want the evidence hanging around for anyone to see if Graham’s body ever did turn up. Insurance. Cast your mind back. You were there in the summer of 1965. You and Reg Proctor covered the estate. What did you find out?”
“Nobody knew anything.”
“I’ll bet that’s not true,” said Banks. “I’ll bet there were one or two references to ‘Dirty Don’ in your notebooks. One of my old mates remembered referring to him that way. And I’ll bet there was a rumor or two about porn.”
“Rumors, maybe,” said Shaw, looking away, “but that’s all they were.”
“How do you know?”
Shaw scowled at him.
“Exactly,” said Banks. “You only know because Harris told you so. Remember, you were just a young DC back then. You didn’t question your superior officers. If anything showed up in your interviews that pointed you in the right direction – Bradford, Fiorino, Mandeville – then Harris ignored it, dismissed it as mere rumor, a dead end. You just skimmed the surface, exactly as he wanted it. That’s why the action allocations are missing, too. Harris was in charge of the investigation. He’d have issued the actions. And we’d have found out what direction they all pointed in – the passing pedophile theory, later made more credible by Brady’s and Hindley’s arrest – and, what’s more important, what they pointed away from. The truth.”
“It’s still all theory,” said Shaw.
“Yes,” Banks admitted. “But you know it’s true. We’ve got the photo of Graham, taken at Mandeville’s house, Bradford’s connection with the porn business and the possible murder weapon, and the missing notebooks. Go ahead, see if it adds up any other way.”
Shaw sighed. “I just can’t believe John would do something like that. I know he gave Fiorino a lot of leeway, but I thought at the time that he got his reward in information. Fair exchange. That’s all I was trying to protect. A bit of tit for tat. All those years I knew him… and I still can’t fucking believe it.”
“Maybe you didn’t really know him at all,” said Banks. “No more than I knew Graham Marshall.”
Shaw looked over at Banks. His eyes were pink and redrimmed. Then he looked at Michelle. “What do you think about all this?”
“I think it’s true, sir,” Michelle said. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. You didn’t want me to look too closely at the past because you were worried I’d find out something that might tarnish Harris’s reputation. You suspected he was bent, you knew he gave Fiorino a wide berth in exchange for information, and something about the Graham Marshall case bothered you. You didn’t want it stirring up again because you didn’t know what would come to the surface.”
“What next?” Shaw asked.
“There’ll have to be a report. I’m not going to bury this. I’ll report my findings and any conclusions that can be drawn to the ACC. After that, it’s up to him. There might be media interest.”
“And John’s memory?”
Michelle shrugged. “I don’t know. If it all comes out, if people believe it, then his reputation will take a bit of a knock.”
“The lad’s family?”
“It’ll be hard for them, too. But is it any better than not knowing?”
“And me?”
“Maybe it’s time to retire,” Banks said. “You must be long past due.”
Shaw snorted, then coughed. He lit another cigarette and reached for his drink. “Maybe you’re right.” His gaze went from Banks to Michelle and back. “I should have known it would mean big trouble the minute those bones were found. There wasn’t much, you know, in those notebooks. It was just like what you said. A hint here, a lead there.”
“But there was enough,” said Banks. “And let’s face it, you know as well as I do that in that sort of an investigation you first look close and hard at the immediate family and circle. If anybody had done that, they’d have found one or two points of interest, some lines of inquiry that just weren’t followed. You dig deepest close to home. Nobody bothered. That in itself seems odd enough.”
“Because John steered the investigation?”
“Yes. It must have been a much smaller division back then, wasn’t it? He’d have had close to absolute power over it.”
Shaw hung his head again. “Oh, nobody questioned Jet Harris’s judgment, that was for certain.” He looked up. “I’ve got cancer,” he said, glancing toward Michelle. “That’s why I’ve been taking so much time off. Stomach.” He grimaced. “There’s not much they can do. Anyway, maybe retirement isn’t such a bad idea.” He laughed. “Enjoy my last few months gardening or stamp collecting or something peaceful like that.”
Banks didn’t know what to say. Michelle said, “I’m sorry.”
Shaw looked at her and scowled. “You’ve no reason to be. It won’t make a scrap of difference to you whether I live or die. Come to think of it, your life will be a lot easier without me.”
“Even so…”
Shaw looked at Banks again. “I wish you’d never come back down here, Banks,” he said. “Why couldn’t you stay up in Yorkshire and shag a few sheep?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, wouldn’t I? Don’t you be too sure I’m as corrupt as you think I am. Now if you’re not going to charge me or beat me up, why don’t the two of you just bugger off and leave me alone?”
Banks and Michelle looked at each other. There was nothing else to say to Shaw, so they left. Back in the car, Banks turned to Michelle and said, “Do you believe him?”
“About not being responsible for the burglary and the van?”
“Yes.”
“I think so. He seemed genuinely horrified by the idea. What reason has he to lie about it now?”
“It’s a serious crime. That’s reason enough. But I think you’re right. I don’t think he was behind it. He was just doing his best to protect Harris’s reputation.”
“Then are you thinking who I’m thinking?”
Banks nodded. “Rupert Mandeville.”
“Shall we pay him a visit?”
“You want me along?”
Michelle looked at Banks and said, “Yes. I feel we’re getting near the end. Graham Marshall was your friend. You deserve to be there. I’d just like to stop off at the station and check a few things out first.”
“He won’t tell us anything, you know.”
Michelle smiled. “We’ll see about that. It certainly won’t do any harm to yank his chain a bit.”
Chapter 19
It didn’t take Annie long to drive to Harrogate and find the small terraced house off the Leeds Road. Vernon Anderson answered the door and, looking puzzled, invited her into his Spartan living room. She admired the framed Vermeer print over the fireplace and settled down in one of the two armchairs.
“I see you have an eye for a good painting,” Annie said.
“Art appreciation must run in the family,” said Vernon. “Though I confess I’m not as much of a reader as our Lauren is. I’d rather see a good film any day.”
On the low table under the window a couple of lottery tickets rested on a newspaper open at the racing page, some of the horses with red rings around their names.
“Any luck today?” Annie asked.
“You know what
it’s like,” Vernon said with an impish grin. “You win a little, then you lose a little.” He sat on the sofa and crossed his legs.
Vernon Anderson didn’t look much like his sister, Annie noted. He had dark hair, short tight curls receding a little at the temples, and he was thickset, with a muscular upper body and rather short legs. With his long lashes, dimples and easy charm, though, she imagined he would be quite successful with the opposite sex. Not that any of those things did much for her. If there was any resemblance, it was in the eyes; Vernon’s were the same pale blue as Lauren’s. He wore jeans and a T-shirt advertising Guinness. And sandals over white socks.
“What’s all this about?”
“I’m looking into the kidnapping and murder of Luke Armitage,” Annie said. “Your sister was his teacher.”
“Yes, I know. She’s very upset about it.”
“Did you ever meet Luke?”
“Me? No. I’d heard of him, of course, of his father, anyway.”
“Martin Armitage?”
“That’s right. I’ve won a few bob on teams he played for over the years.” Vernon grinned.
“But you never met Luke?”
“No.”
“Did your sister tell you much about him?”
“She talked about school sometimes,” Vernon said. “She might have mentioned him.”
“In what context?”
“As one of her pupils.”
“But not how exceptional he was, and that she gave him private tutoring?”
“No.” Vernon’s eyes narrowed. “Where are we going here?”
“Lauren said she was visiting you the day Luke disappeared. That’d be a week ago last Monday. Is that true?”
“Yes. Look, I’ve already been through all this with the other detective, the one who came by a few days ago.”
“I know,” said Annie. “That was one of the locals helping us out. It’s not always possible to get away. I’m sorry to bother you with it, but do you think you could bear to go through it again with me?”
Vernon folded his arms. “I suppose so. If you think it’s necessary.”
“If you don’t mind.”
Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was) Page 41