The Unquiet Grave

by Steven Dunne

  ‘You don’t sound convinced,’ observed Noble. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’

  Brook smiled. ‘Just be aware. There’s often something on a case you don’t see because you’re too close.’

  He shivered as he walked through the front entrance to be greeted by the sight of Sergeant Hendrickson, leaning on the front desk, grinning at him like a Cheshire Cat.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Brook icily, avoiding his eye and hurrying his step towards the lifts.

  ‘Inspector,’ replied Hendrickson. ‘We thought you’d retired,’ he shouted gleefully at Brook’s retreating frame.

  Brook’s pace didn’t slacken and he pushed through the double doors a second later.

  ‘Still, not long now,’ muttered a chuckling Hendrickson. ‘And seeing you about to get royally fucked over is just as good, mental boy.’

  Brook headed back down the stairs to the basement, a feeling of gloom growing with each step of his descent. Winter was here and the days were too cold and dark to sit in his cottage garden when he got home from work. Worse, what little daylight on offer at work was being denied him. It wouldn’t have concerned a younger Brook, but advancing age brought with it the instinctual dread of winter’s cold embrace that he’d once observed with bemusement in the elderly.

  He opened the door to his bare office and slumped down, at least able to draw a measure of comfort from a familiar chair. He resisted picking another cold case file from the trolley and spent the rest of the afternoon searching the usual sites to confirm the continued well-being and last known addresses of the remaining living witnesses in the Stanforth murder. By the end of the afternoon, Brook had a list which included ex-DI Walter Laird, now in his seventies, Edward Mullen, Edna Spencer and Amelia Stanforth.

  His final search was for Brendan McCleary. It proved more difficult as there seemed to be large gaps in his National Insurance and tax records, which usually meant one thing.

  ‘Prison,’ muttered Brook. He yawned and looked at his watch. It was nearly five. Not a long day by his standards but he’d hardly slept the night before and felt close to exhaustion when he left the office and trotted out to the darkened car park with his laptop and empty flask.

  ‘Good first day back, Inspector?’

  Brook turned from unlocking his car to see the squat figure of Brian Burton grinning at him from behind the safety of another vehicle. He prepared an insult but kept it to himself when he saw the recorder in Burton’s hand.

  ‘You’ve just missed me, Brian,’ said Brook, opening the car door. ‘I left two minutes ago.’

  ‘Same old Brook, too arrogant to say a few words to the local taxpayers,’ commented Burton with a sneer.

  ‘Where’s the photographer you usually hide behind, Brian?’ said Brook.

  Burton could scarcely contain his glee. ‘He’s back at the paper looking through the shots we got of you this afternoon, loafing around in the car park while there’s a kid missing. Good story that.’

  Brook paused then stepped away from the car. ‘That’s a story? I’m not even on that case.’

  ‘Everyone’s on that case,’ insisted Burton. ‘Everyone who cares, at least.’

  Brook was speechless for a moment. ‘This is harassment. We have laws.’

  Burton clicked off the recorder for a moment. ‘Harassment, my arse. I’ll let my readers decide. They have a right to know how you spend your time and they’d like to know how you’ve got the nerve to draw your pay sitting on your backside at home for five months.’ Burton clicked the recorder back on, hoping for an indiscretion, an insult, possibly even an assault. ‘Still no comment, Inspector Brook?’

  Brook felt his fist tighten and his mind unconsciously plotted the optimum route to his prey. A second later, he had control. ‘I spent part of that time in hospital because I was injured on duty, protecting the people of Derby.’

  ‘You were fucking suspended as well.’ Burton’s smirk afforded a glimpse of yellow teeth. ‘It’s a matter of record. But never mind,’ he said, clicking off the recorder. ‘I’m sure I can think of something better for you to say.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Brook. ‘And while you’re composing our fictional chat, Brian, think about what you do for the good of this city – that is, apart from pressuring vulnerable people to commit suicide.’

  Burton’s grin faded and Brook returned to the driver’s seat and drove away.

  When Brook reached the village of Kirk Langley he pulled off the A52 on to Moor Lane and slowed to a crawl looking for the Stanforth house in the dark. Amelia Stanforth had never married and had lived her entire life in her parents’ house – the same home, overlooking the same garden, where her younger brother had perished in an unexplained fire. Brook found it hard to imagine living nearly fifty years within sight of the spot where a loved one had died. Unless, of course, Billy Stanforth wasn’t as loved as a younger brother ought to be and Amelia had stayed out of a warped sense of guilt.

  When he found the house, Brook stepped from the car and approached the gate. The front garden was large, though details were difficult to pick out in the pitch black of a country night. The paved path to the door wound round the front of the house to the rear garden where Billy Stanforth had died.

  The building itself was a weathered, redbrick structure, solid and spacious, built in 1952, when homes were not yet designed to shoehorn occupants into box-sized rooms. Although somewhat tired and shabby now, it must have been a desirable residence fifty years ago. Clearly Bert Stanforth, a master butcher, earned decent money although good housing wasn’t ludicrously overpriced in the sixties.

  Brook walked carefully over the damp, weed-encrusted paving stones, drawing his overcoat around him in the chill winter wind. He rapped on the glass door and a cheerful young woman appeared, struggling to balance a baby in her arms. A blast of heat and light hit Brook and warmed him.

  ‘I’m DI Brook, Derby CID,’ he said, not bothering to show his warrant card. ‘I’m looking for Amelia Stanforth. I’m told she lives here.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Not any more. My husband and I have lived here for the last three years. She was the nice old lady who lived here before us.’

  ‘Any idea where she went?’

  ‘She went to St Agatha’s Care Home. At least that’s where I forward any mail. I assume she’s still there if she’s still alive. She seemed quite frail. I gather she had heart trouble.’

  Brook thanked her and walked away from the welcoming glow of family life. On a whim, he walked around the low wall of the garden boundary and peered into the unlit grounds at the rear. There was nothing to see except a rough lawn with a child’s multicoloured plastic bike abandoned on its side to the elements. Retracing his steps, Brook fancied he could see a Victorian greenhouse-cum-conservatory on the other side of the house but the light was too poor to be sure.

  He was returning to his car when a blood-curdling screech rent the air. He turned back to the house but didn’t venture past the gate. He could see the woman in the well-lit kitchen preparing the evening meal. Through the large window at the front, Brook could also see a small boy standing entranced in front of a large television showing cartoons. Both were oblivious to the noise. It hadn’t come from the house.

  Brook listened for further cries. Nothing. Deciding the noise had been made by a distressed animal or more likely an owl, he got into the car and drove on through the light rain to Hartington.

  Brook chewed his way mechanically through his dinner of cold rice, smeared haphazardly with cream cheese. His daughter, Terri, had left a cupboard full of staples for him to consume and Brook had nearly exhausted them. The pasta was gone but he had enough rice left for about three more meals of rice and cream cheese and then he’d be on to the few tins of pulses she’d laid in. Unless he wanted to eat lentils with cream cheese next week he was going to have to do the unthinkable and go food shopping.

  After his austere meal, Brook lit the wood burner and sat down in his small sitting room to watch
the end of Don’t Look Now. As he’d suspected, the end of the film brought no comfort for the grieving family, just more death and suffering at the hands of an evil, almost supernatural entity. At the final death scene, as Donald Sutherland’s throat was cut, Brook looked deep into the embers of the burning wood, recalling his conversation with Copeland.

  Have you forgiven yourself?

  As the end titles played, Brook’s eyelids began to droop but he was roused by the distant vibrating of the mobile in his jacket. He dragged himself through to the kitchen and read the text from DS Noble. DS Jane Gadd was now a DI. Noble had been passed over for promotion.

  ‘I’m sorry, John,’ muttered Brook. After a few seconds composing suitable consolation, Brook began to thumb out a painstaking reply, but was halted by the phone vibrating again in his hand. Only two contact numbers on his speed dial and both were contacting him at the same time. If this kept up he was going to need a secretary.

  ‘Terri.’

  ‘Dad, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘How was your first day back?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked Brook.

  ‘Because it’s important, Dad. Don’t you have an app on your phone for birthdays and stuff?’ She laughed then answered her own question. ‘Course not. If your phone were any older it’d be a plastic cup with string through the bottom.’

  ‘I use my memory, girl,’ announced Brook. ‘Keeps the cobwebs off.’

  ‘That explains all the missed birthdays. How was it?’

  ‘I’ve had worse days.’

  ‘What did your boss say?’

  ‘Charlton? Not much. He thinks he can bore me out of the profession. He hasn’t a clue about my threshold for staring at walls.’

  ‘Go, Dad,’ laughed Terri. ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’

  Brook pulled a face. ‘Is that Proust?’

  ‘Never mind Proust, are you still eating right?’

  ‘I had pasta with cheese sauce last night and tonight I had rice.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Did you get my message about Christmas?’

  There was an awkward pause. ‘I did but I’ll struggle to get over for Crimbo, Dad.’

  ‘If it’s about coming back to the cottage, Terri. . .’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with what happened, Dad.’

  ‘You could have been killed.’

  ‘But I wasn’t and I’m not scarred for life or anything so stop worrying on that score.’

  ‘No nightmares?’

  ‘No, I told you.’

  ‘At least tell me you’ve stopped blaming yourself for my suspension.’ Silence. ‘Terri, I’m an experienced detective. I should’ve known better.’

  ‘But it was my idea.’

  ‘And I should’ve said no. What happened was my fault. Accept it.’

  ‘If you say so,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I do say so. Does that mean you’ll come? Just for a couple of days.’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘I’ll try but it’s my final year, Dad, and I want to pull out all the stops.’

  ‘I understand. Do what you have to do, Terri. I’ll manage.’ He smiled at her as if she were sitting across the table from him. Terri rang off. ‘I always have,’ he said to the silent phone.

  Eleven

  Wednesday, 12 December 2012

  Brook entered his old office before seven the next morning. It was empty, prompting equal measures of relief and disappointment. Part of him was happy to avoid all contact at an hour when he wasn’t the best communicator. However, another part of him wanted to make Noble aware of his brush with Brian Burton the previous evening, the result – he was in no doubt – of a tip-off from Hendrickson.

  He retrieved an old mug from a desk drawer and headed down to the basement with it, proud that he’d managed to avoid taking any of the cartons of cigarettes that had forced themselves so alluringly into his field of vision.

  After making tea in Copeland’s empty office, Brook picked up the photograph on Copeland’s desk. A striking young girl’s doomed smile gazed back at him, her arms draped around her younger brother Clive, their dog between them. He replaced it and looked around the office for the files he’d seen Copeland covering with his arm the day before. They were nowhere to be seen. He tried the desk drawer but it was locked.

  ‘Taking no chances, eh, Clive?’

  With little enthusiasm, Brook returned to his office and picked up where he’d left off the night before, tapping Brendan McCleary’s name into the PNC database. The screen filled with his record. Theft was prominent and McCleary had served several small terms for burglary and shoplifting. But what drew Brook’s eye was the single charge of murder for which McCleary had served twenty years of a life sentence from 1969 to 1989.

  Details were basic but there wasn’t a lot to report. In 1969 23-year-old Brendan McCleary had arrived home drunk one evening and must have got into a row with his father, Malcolm. After blowing his head off with a shotgun, McCleary had gone to bed and slept soundly until the next morning, when the body was discovered. With blood and viscera all over his clothing, McCleary had been charged and convicted with ease. Since his release in 1989, he hadn’t reoffended or at least hadn’t been caught doing so.

  Brook clicked on a link to the Probation Service and found a current address for him on their database. Something about the address rang a bell so Brook double-checked his notebook. McCleary lived in the same sheltered housing complex as Edna Spencer, one of the young children at Billy Stanforth’s fateful party in 1963.

  Brook loaded Google maps on to the screen to reconnoitre the surrounding area. Mount Street was in Normanton, less than a quarter of a mile away from St Chad’s Road, where young Scott Wheeler had disappeared five days previously. Brook flicked at his mobile then sifted through the Stanforth file with his free hand. He removed and folded a document into his pocket, while he waited for an answer to his call.

  ‘John, it’s me,’ said Brook, a moment later. ‘Listen, have you interviewed a Brendan McCleary about Scott Wheeler? He lives on Mount Street and has a record longer than my arm, including murder.’

  There was a pause at the other end. ‘Didn’t you get my text last night?’ asked Noble.

  Brook closed his eyes in self-reproach. ‘John, I. . . commiserations. It’s a hard blow and totally undeserved.’

  ‘Well, thanks for thinking of me at least,’ came the sarcastic reply.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t respond. I thought you might want to be left alone,’ Brook lied, his eyes still closed. He regretted it immediately. ‘No, that was a lie, John. Terri rang me and I got distracted. I’ve no excuse.’

  Strangely Noble seemed to perk up at this admission of Brook’s failings. ‘No, you’re right. There’s nothing to be said. What was the name again?’

  ‘Brendan McCleary.’

  ‘I’ll check. Anything with kiddies?’

  ‘Nothing and only one incidence of violence on his whole record but that was a murder and he served twenty years for it.’

  ‘Why the interest?’

  ‘He’s a name from one of my cold cases. A thirteen-year-old boy died at a party in nineteen sixty-three—’

  ‘Nineteen sixty-three!’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ complained Brook.

  ‘And this McCleary was there?’

  ‘Sort of, well, unknown. It’s a cold case, remember,’ said Brook.

  ‘He’d be how old?’

  ‘Late sixties?’

  ‘Got him,’ said Noble. ‘He’s on our radar but only because he’s on the DB and in the area. And the murder was a domestic. Nose clean ever since. Cooper called round but he wasn’t there. No reason to suppose he’s off the straight and narrow but we flagged him for a call back. . .’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Well, he’s pushing seventy and, as you say, there’s nothing even close to fiddling on his jacket and if he was a paedo it should have shown up befor
e now.’

  ‘Do we still not know whether Scott’s disappearance was sexually motivated?’

  ‘No. We don’t even know whether someone took him, but if they did. . .’

  ‘Without a ransom demand, it’s unlikely to be a kidnapping,’ finished Brook.

  ‘Exactly. And so sexual perversion moves to the top of the list. Hang on.’ A pause and muffled voices as Noble spoke to someone else. ‘Rob says Cooper spoke to the warden at the sheltered flats. To us he didn’t stand out as anything other than a broken-down old lag. Unless you know something different.’

  ‘No, John. It was just a thought.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the information. I’ll get Cooper back round there.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m on my way there now, unless you want me to hold off.’ Brook couldn’t be sure but he thought he heard an impatient sigh at the other end. Am I becoming a nuisance in my old age? Brook detected more than a trace of indulgence in Noble’s exhaled reply.

  ‘What’s the address?’

  Mrs Gross ascended the concrete stairs with discomfort, Brook and Noble averting their eyes from her huge backside. And each other. The rotund woman sidled rather than walked but Brook guessed this was more a function of her weight than any actual disability. The two officers trailed in her wake, breathing in the dual scent of stale tobacco and pickled onions that accompanied her. They reached a rotting, white-framed wooden door with a mottled security-glass window. The interior was further screened by a blind inside the apartment. She gestured superfluously at the door. ‘Four A – this is it.’

  Noble rapped hard on the glass and waited, ear cocked. He knocked again. No noise from within.

  ‘Like I told the other officer, Mr McCleary’s hardly ever here these days,’ she wheezed, still recovering her breath.

  ‘Do you see him coming and going, Mrs Gross?’ asked Brook. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Noble smiling.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she replied, flicking a glance at Noble who looked away. ‘But about six months ago he moved a few things out and now he don’t spend much time here. See him maybe once or twice a month to pick up his letters. That’s it.’