by Steven Dunne
‘And a secret paedo.’
‘I’m still not convinced.’
‘You think McCleary’s being set up?’
‘I don’t know. But if McCleary did fire those shots, he’s making things very easy for someone.’
‘But if he took the boy. . .’
‘If McCleary did take Scott Wheeler and stashed him somewhere, then gets himself killed by an armed unit, we might never find the boy. But if McCleary didn’t take him and the boy is never found, no one’s ever going to believe he’s innocent if he’s dead.’
‘So you think whoever took Scott planted the kiddie porn in McCleary’s flat to point us in a different direction.’
‘The only thing I know for sure is those pictures weren’t planted by Scott’s abductor.’
‘Why so certain?’
‘Because if you’ve abducted a child, you must have more damning evidence to plant than a few dirty pictures.’
‘Like an item of Scott’s clothing,’ agreed Noble. ‘I see that. What do you want me to do?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Brook. ‘We don’t want Ford getting trigger happy. And if McCleary has taken Scott and hidden him somewhere, we need him alive to show us where.’
Brook rang off and prepared to ring his daughter but was unsure what to say. If he mentioned the shooting, that might guarantee a visit and he didn’t want Terri anywhere near him if someone was taking pot shots at him. Instead, with a heavy heart, he sent a perfunctory text to say he’d changed his plans and wanted to be alone at Christmas.
‘I’m sorry, Terri,’ he mumbled.
Rosie Shah opened her front door and frowned. ‘What now?’
Brook returned her expression with interest. ‘I got shot at last night.’
She was both astonished and angry. ‘And you think I had something to do with it.’
‘No,’ answered Brook. ‘But I’m reviewing your father’s old cases and I think somebody wants me to stop.’
Rosie Shah stared at him, the frost in her manner beginning to thaw. ‘Why did I call the hotline? I should’ve known. . .’ She blew out her cheeks. ‘You’d better come in.’
She stood aside and ushered Brook into the light, warm-coloured hall, the smell of spicy food and baking permeating the air. Brook could hear the same throbbing music he’d heard the night before.
A large portrait photograph of a beautiful woman hung on the wall. Facially, she looked a little like Rosie but her hair and make-up were from a different era. She was heavily pregnant.
‘My mother,’ Rosie explained, seeing Brook’s glance. She jabbed a finger towards her mother’s womb. ‘And that’s me. Excuse me,’ she said, pausing at the foot of a dark wooden staircase, filling her lungs and raising her face to the upper storeys. ‘Ollie,’ she shouted, her stentorian voice belying her slight frame. The music stopped seconds later. ‘Volume control,’ she bellowed a decibel lower.
Brook heard a muffled male voice answer with, ‘Please!’
‘Please and thank you,’ said Rosie, darting a glance at Brook. The music started again at a lower volume and she ushered Brook into a bright warm kitchen where the smell of baking was even stronger. Having forgotten to eat the night before, the aroma had an immediate effect on Brook’s production of saliva and his stomach began to grumble in case his brain hadn’t taken the hint.
‘That’s the trouble with kids,’ she smiled, clicking on a kettle. ‘You teach them good manners and they hold you to the same standards. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t just be easier to leave them to work it out for themselves.’ A shadow of something personal darkened her face for a second before the smile resumed. ‘Tea?’
‘Please. And thank you,’ Brook added drily. She gave him the ghost of a smile in return. ‘You mentioned ex-DCI Copeland last night, Mrs Shah.’
‘Was he the one shooting at you?’ she asked, half-serious.
Brook raised a stern eyebrow. ‘No.’
‘And you weren’t really shot at because you came to see me, were you?’ she continued. ‘That was just to inveigle your way in.’
‘Inveigle?’ echoed Brook. ‘Mrs Shah—’
‘Please don’t keep reminding me of my ex. My name’s Rosie.’
‘Rosie,’ repeated Brook sternly. ‘Why on earth would I need to inveigle myself into your house? You rang the Scott Wheeler hotline with information about his disappearance. People who do that are inviting a visit from CID.’
‘I’ve already had plenty of those down the years,’ she said.
‘From Clive Copeland, you said.’
She hesitated, wondering whether to submit to questioning. ‘He called once in the early days when he was a detective sergeant. Then DS Ford. The names change. The message doesn’t.’
‘Forget about the Pied Piper,’ said Brook.
‘There you go.’ She pointed a finger at him. ‘You haven’t even changed the wording.’
‘Presumably they say they’re concerned about the damage you might be doing to your father’s reputation,’ suggested Brook.
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You sure they didn’t send you?’ Brook didn’t answer. She poured hot water into a teapot. ‘You’ll have to have Darjeeling, I’m afraid. I won’t have anything else in the house. A hangover from my years in Bengal.’
‘Fine,’ replied Brook. He took a look around, noticing now the oddments of knick-knacks with an Asian theme. ‘I’ve never been to India.’
‘Go,’ she said. ‘It’s a real eye-opener. A good place to find yourself, metaphysically speaking.’
‘And did you?’
She smiled. ‘I think so. Problem is I also found a husband and when that didn’t work, and I realised I was pregnant, it was goodbye to globetrotting and hello to parental responsibility.’ The oven alarm sounded. ‘Speaking of which. . .’
Having opened the oven door, allowing more of the delicious aromas to taunt Brook, she removed a pizza on to a large plate as a slim teenage boy, pale brown skin and jet-black gelled hair, concealing dark features, shuffled through the door. He was in regulation teenage uniform, as strictly enforced as if he were in the army. Worn jeans covered bare feet and were held up only by his thighs, too-small torn T-shirt hanging loosely showed his skinny midriff and designer underpants, the only nod to materialism displaying the label as required by teenage law.
He walked into the kitchen as though Brook were invisible and approached the pizza plate. His face fell. ‘This isn’t Cheese Feast.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Rosie Shah laconically. ‘Better throw it away then. I’ve got some sprouts I can microwave for you.’
‘Fun-ny,’ he said sarcastically, turning to leave with his plate. He stopped cold at the kitchen door, returning with a look of impatience to place the plate back on the counter.
With a sly glance at Brook, Rosie rifled through a drawer for a mezzaluna and sliced the pizza into segments. ‘I’ve got some salad to go. . .’
But Ollie was already on his way again, without having looked at Brook once.
‘Thank you,’ she prompted.
A muffled repetition trailed away. A moment later the music began again.
‘Do you have kids, Inspector?’ she inquired, pouring tea through a strainer. ‘Or do I need to explain what just happened?’
Brook emitted his one-note laugh. ‘A grown-up daughter.’
She smiled at him. ‘Then you’ll know.’ She pushed a milk-free tea towards him.
Brook managed to maintain the remnants of good cheer on his face despite the tug of guilt and regret. Although recently reconciled with Terri, Brook had missed almost her entire childhood after the divorce.
‘You also mentioned your past last night.’
She looked suspiciously at Brook as she had the day before. ‘A few drugs when I was younger. Finding myself.’
‘And they threatened you with that?’
‘It was all very polite, you understand, never any unpleasantness. But yes, a word in the ear of a friendly reporter was the us
ual tactic. I told them to publish and be damned. They never did.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? As soon as the Wheeler boy went missing I told my son everything about my past drug use before I rang the hotline, so don’t waste your breath.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Ollie?’ Rosie shook her head. ‘He thought it was cool. Kids today, eh?’ Her confident façade began to crumble and Brook could see painful memories playing across the surface. ‘If this good cop routine is a new approach. . .’
‘Mrs Shah. Rosie,’ Brook corrected himself. ‘I was given your name and address by a colleague looking into Scott Wheeler’s disappearance. You claimed to know something about a serial killer called the Pied Piper who abducted young boys. I’m not interested in your background and I’m not here to warn you off.’
She eyed him. ‘Keep talking.’
‘I’m re-investigating two murders that occurred in the sixties, murders that were under the command of DCI Sam Bannon, your father.’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘During my research, I found a reference to the Pied Piper actually on a folder that belonged to one of those cases. It was in your father’s handwriting.’
‘Go on.’ Her voice was little more than a squeak and her eyes were filling.
‘It’s almost impossible to make any headway on the two cases because the remaining witnesses are either too old or too unwilling to help me. And I’m sad to say that your father’s old colleagues belong in both those groups. They may feel they have a legitimate reason to close a door on the past but I’ve been given a job to do and I’m going to do it, no matter where it takes me. Will you help me?’
She nodded imperceptibly and tears of relief fell on to her smiling lips. ‘Thank you,’ she croaked, reaching for a roll of kitchen towel. ‘You’re the first. . .’
‘Before you get too grateful, you need to understand something,’ said Brook. ‘If my inquiries find your father criminally at fault in any way—’
‘Criminal? What do you mean?’
Brook paused, wondering whether to risk their new-found accord. ‘Your father was retired. He was a heavy drinker too. Yet somehow he uncovered a serial killer that no one else knew existed.’
‘So?’ retorted Rosie, aggressively.
Brook was beginning to wish he’d said nothing but now he’d opened the door, he had to step through it. ‘He also had mental health issues.’
‘Dad was under stress because of what he knew and because he couldn’t prove it,’ she explained. ‘It unbalanced him sometimes. What are you driving at?’
‘OK,’ said Brook. ‘Playing devil’s advocate, you understand: if someone with a mental illness had invented a killer and people took no notice. . .’ Brook halted to let her fill in the blanks.
She looked at him in horror. ‘You think Dad killed one of those boys to make his theory look plausible?’ She was stunned but Brook could see the alien thought had lodged in her mind. ‘So the boy in the snow, Jeff Ward. . . you think. . .’
‘The possibility occurred, yes.’
‘But why would Dad invent the Pied Piper?’
Brook shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Why do the mentally ill do anything?’
‘How could you even think—’
‘By looking at the bare facts,’ said Brook.
‘Such as?’
‘Fact one – experienced detectives dismissed your father’s theory of an unknown killer out of hand.’
‘That’s because there was no concrete evidence,’ she said before realising she’d delivered fact two.
Brook held his hands open. She was making his case for him. ‘Fact three, your father showed up at the crime scene the same morning Jeff Ward’s body was discovered.’
‘He was listening in to the police frequency,’ she countered, but the doubt had taken hold.
‘You know that for certain?’
She took a sharp breath. ‘I was only ten when the Ward boy died.’
‘Is that a no?’
Rosie lapsed into silence for a few minutes. ‘Did Laird and the others tell you Dad had killed that boy?’
‘The opposite. As far as they’re concerned, your father was a hero who’d fallen on hard times. Walter Laird was very protective of him.’
‘Was he?’ She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘So, all these years they really might have been warning me off to protect Dad’s reputation?’
‘Is it so surprising?’
‘When you put it like that, I guess not,’ she said mournfully.
‘I just thought you should know that I’m after the truth and not a vindication of anyone’s. . . position.’
She nodded finally. ‘OK. I’ve waited a long time for the truth to come out and I’m not going to stop now.’ She took a deep breath. ‘This is a shock. I think I need a proper drink.’ She took a bottle of white wine from the fridge and gestured at Brook, who shook his head.
She poured a full glass and attempted a pallid smile. ‘Dad didn’t kill that boy. You’ll see.’ She plucked a set of keys from a nail. ‘Come with me. I’ve got something to show you.’
Brook followed Rosie Shah through the gathering darkness of a winter’s afternoon, alternating between watching his footing and gazing at the large wooden building looming out of the shadows. ‘Your father died in a fire in this garden.’
‘In a shed identical to this one,’ she said over her shoulder. She hesitated. ‘I had it rebuilt exactly as it was.’
Brook trained his eyes on the back of her head, fresh doubts surfacing.
‘You can say it,’ she said defensively.
‘Say what?’
‘That I’m weird,’ answered Rosie. ‘That I’m obsessed like my dad.’ Brook decided not to comment.
When Rosie stepped on to the low wooden veranda, the whole structure creaked. She grinned at Brook’s sombre expression. ‘Is this creeping you out?’ Brook didn’t answer. ‘It’s not like he died in this shed.’ Rosie unlocked the pine door with two keys and walked into the blackness.
She snapped on a lamp on top of a large desk, throwing jagged shadows on to the walls.
‘This is also a close copy of his desk,’ she said, trailing a loving hand across the leather top. ‘Everything is the same. Even the phone.’ She picked it up and brandished it at Brook. ‘It works too. Like I said, I had everything rebuilt exactly as it was. Mostly from memory. And a few photographs.’
Brook looked around. The place was more like a mobile home or a holiday cabin. The desk sat in the middle of the first room but there was still space for a fridge and a microwave against the back wall. Another door led off to a smaller room and Brook could see the end of a camp bed there. He turned his gaze on the desk, its surface covered in dozens of picture frames, all but one containing photographs of Rosie’s mother. The odd one out was an old photograph of a handsome young Sam Bannon, leaning with a young Walter Laird on an old-fashioned Jaguar, both smiling happily for the camera.
‘Dad had thousands of pictures of Mum. The one you saw in the hall was his favourite.’
‘There are no pictures of you,’ Brook observed, playing responsible parent for a moment. ‘Even as a baby.’
‘You are a detective.’ She laughed flippantly but couldn’t hold the mood. ‘Why would he have pictures of me? I killed the only person he ever loved.’
Brook looked at her but she wouldn’t make eye contact. ‘Your mother died in childbirth, Rosie. It could happen to anyone.’
‘It didn’t happen to anyone, it happened to my mum. And Dad never forgave me.’
‘You can’t possibly know that. Or say that he didn’t love you.’
‘If he did love me, he had a funny way of showing it,’ she said. ‘He never even held me. Not once.’
Brook tore a page from his unwritten autobiography and read it out. ‘Men have funny ways of showing things, Rosie. Especially love. And he was a copper. It’s hard in our line of work to let things affect us. Sometimes we bury our affections down deep so they can’t be u
sed against us. Remember that when you think of your father.’
She shrugged but seemed pleased at Brook’s words.
‘Do you remember much about the night he died?’ asked Brook.
‘Not much. Officially it was an accident though, much later, one of Dad’s colleagues told me it was suicide. He said they put the thumbscrews on the chief fire investigator to change his findings so the insurance paid out.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Your father’s friends committed fraud,’ said Brook. ‘Telling you was a risk.’
‘It was Detective Sergeant Bell, if you must know. He was in charge that night, though Walter Laird called the shots when he got here.’
‘When did Bell tell you?’
‘Three years later. That’s when I knew for certain Dad didn’t love me. He’d rather kill himself than spend another day with me.’
‘He was ill,’ said Brook.
She nodded. ‘Yes, he was. And I was alone in the world – an orphan at fifteen, a mother I never knew and an unhinged father who committed suicide.’ Rosie lowered her head but bounced out of her reverie a second later. ‘But hey, when I was eighteen, I was rich. And ten years after Dad died, I used some of the money to rebuild Dad’s shed, everything as it was. Like a memorial,’ she said, her lip beginning to quiver.
Brook looked around. ‘This isn’t healthy, Rosie.’
She ignored him and waved a hand at her surroundings. ‘This is how it looked the day he died.’ She nodded over Brook’s shoulder. ‘Except that wall was covered in documents and photographs. His Pied Piper wall, he called it.’ Brook turned to look. The pine wall was bare.
He turned back to her, silent for a moment, searching for the right question. It wasn’t hard. ‘Why?’
‘The shed?’ Rosie considered the question as though for the first time. ‘My first shrink told me I was in denial about Dad’s death, turning back the clock to when he was alive. My second said I was trying to please a ghost. Who knows? But it seemed like a good idea at the time.’ She studied Brook. ‘I know it must seem weird and I can see that with hindsight.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Though in one way I’m glad I did it because when Walter Laird and Clive Copeland saw it they thought I was off my trolley.’