Cherringham--Death on a Summer Night

by Neil Richards

  But now, this heat was really getting to people — Jack included.

  Even though he’d lived through plenty of torrid New York summers, last night was up there with the worst of them.

  After getting back from the pub, he’d slept fitfully on the deck of the Grey Goose — all night long he’d been unable to shake off the events of the night before.

  Tim Bell: killer — or wrongly accused? Why had he come back? Especially to face all that hatred?

  And most importantly — how could the guy have been convicted without a body ever being found?

  Habeas corpus not apply here?

  Jack had finally fallen into a deep sleep around two, then woken suddenly at five gasping, dreaming that he’d fallen in the river, the water closing over his head …

  Over breakfast Jack realized he wanted to find some answers.

  Which is why he’d braved the crowds of a Cherringham summer weekend this morning. From here, just across the square, on the ground floor of the Village Hall, he could see the public library.

  He knew from past cases that it had a big local history department. But the library also kept every copy of the local paper for the last hundred years.

  And Tim Bell was bound to be on the front page of many of those copies. He’d thought about telling Sarah what he was up to. After all, by nine-thirty — even though it was a Saturday — she would be working in her office just over the road from where he stood now.

  And they always worked cases together.

  But this one was sensitive. Feelings running high.

  And he didn’t want to pull her in unless there really was something to investigate.

  Jack heard the bell of St. James chiming.

  Nine a.m.

  He tipped the dregs of his coffee onto the pavement, dropped the crushed cup into a trashcan — and crossed the road to the library.

  *

  Two hours later he knew why Tim Bell was such a figure of hatred in Cherringham.

  But he had no idea — on the evidence revealed in the papers — why a jury had convicted him.

  When he arrived, he hadn’t told the young librarian at the desk what he was looking for — just asked to see the newspapers for 1989 and 1990. She’d taken him to the microfilm reader at the back of the library, given him the key to the storage cabinet, and then instructed him on how to work the machine.

  He’d listened patiently — in truth this was one piece of old-school tech he could operate in his sleep, having spent thousands of hours at NYPD headquarters on identical machines.

  Then he’d found the fiches, loaded up the machine with files starting in August ’89, and got to work.

  The first “missing” reports appeared in the paper a day after Dinah Taylor hadn’t returned home from the fair.

  Dinah, the reports mentioned, was well-liked in the village. Sixteen years old, pretty and confident, she helped out at various charities, worked in one of the local stores, supported the church …

  But she was also apparently an amazing violinist, a school star pupil destined for a London conservatoire and a glittering future.

  There was speculation that maybe the pressure had got too much for her and she’d just taken off somewhere — “give it a few days, she’ll be back with her tail between her legs” as one of her teachers put it.

  But a week later … and notions that she’d done a teenage “runaway” were replaced with hints from the police that her disappearance was now being treated as suspicious.

  The army was brought in to search the village and scour the surrounding fields. A murder squad from Oxford took up residence at the police station. The river was dragged. Countless interviews were conducted. Heartfelt pleas to “whoever knows where she is” were made by Dinah’s distressed parents and friends.

  As Jack well knew, so very heart-breaking those must have been.

  But no body was found.

  Then — a fragment of clothing had turned up on a hill outside the village. Dinah’s mother identified it as coming from the dress she’d worn that night. And on the material … bloodstains. And the lab analysis revealed it was Dinah’s blood.

  But not just Dinah’s. There were also traces of someone else’s blood.

  And as tests showed, that blood was Tim Bell’s — a young lad with a bad reputation, seen by numerous witnesses driving her away from the fair on the last night she was seen.

  Bell’s house and car were searched. More blood traces were found — on his clothes too. Police labelled them as “signs of a struggle” in his car.

  Bell was brought in and interrogated over two days and nights. First, he denied everything. Then he finally admitted going off with her in his car.

  His defence, according to the paper, wasn’t convincing. She’d “led him on”, he’d “had a bit to drink”, they’d argued, she’d run off, he’d gone after her, he’d seen a car — but he couldn’t describe it properly, then he’d gone back to the fair but all his mates had gone home, so he’d packed it in too …

  He swore: she was alive last time he’d seen her — that just about summed up his defence.

  But his story didn’t stand up.

  Nobody remembered seeing him come back to the fair.

  Nobody saw Dinah again.

  Nobody else seemed to have a motive to kill her.

  Then there was the blood.

  And by now — two weeks after Dinah’s disappearance — even though there was no body, there seemed to be no doubt that the poor girl was dead.

  There was still only one name in the frame — Tim Bell. Who’d already served time in a youth detention centre for theft, assault, drunk and disorderly …

  Bell was charged with murder, bail was withheld, and he was imprisoned to await trial.

  Jack flipped forward a few months to the trial, and slowly read through the daily reports in the paper, winding on the microfilm page by page.

  The trial, in Oxford, didn’t last long.

  A string of witnesses stepped up to the stand to say Bell had been drinking, dropping tablets, bragging about what he and Dinah were going to get up to that night.

  Others said that in the weeks after she disappeared he didn’t seem to show any remorse, just carried on going down to the Ploughman’s as if nothing had happened.

  And although the evidence was — in Jack’s eyes, by NYPD standards — circumstantial, the jury returned a unanimous verdict.

  Guilty.

  Jack read the final report — the sentencing.

  Twenty-five years at her majesty’s pleasure …

  Then Jack rewound the last microfilm, put it in its case, and turned the machine off.

  He sat back in the hard wooden chair, trying to imagine serving a sentence like that for a crime you hadn’t committed.

  No wonder Tim Bell looked dead inside when he came into the pub. Jack knew from talking to plenty of ex-cons that many only survive a long stretch behind bars by suppressing all emotions.

  Without emotions, it’s just time passing, day by day, month by month, year by year.

  The man might be guilty. But there sure as hell wasn’t enough evidence to convict him if he’d been standing trial in an American court.

  And that made Jack doubt the whole story.

  With this one thought: Bell could indeed be innocent.

  He got up from the table, locked the files away in the cupboard, and left the library.

  But outside there wasn’t any fresh air. He wiped his brow: hardly midday, and it must be eighty degrees already and so humid.

  He looked across the street at the little building where Sarah worked. Her web design company had the top office, above the estate agents. She used Saturday mornings to catch up on paperwork, so he knew she’d be in there.

  He realized this was a first.

  Usually somebody came to them, asking for help, needing an investigation. But now this was being driven by him. By a sense of injustice.

  He was going to have to be careful. Get too in
volved in a case and you make mistakes.

  Which was why he couldn’t do this without Sarah. Even though it wouldn’t make her popular.

  And what if she turned him down?

  He made a quick decision, and headed up the road to Huffington’s.

  Funny thought: maybe an iced frappe latte might just make the difference between a “yes” and a “no” …

  He smiled at that.

  It wasn’t bribery. Just good tactics.

  6. Lost Years

  Sarah and Jack walked side by side down Gibraltar Terrace, checking the door numbers, looking for Tim Bell’s house.

  Sarah rarely came to the old council estate on the edge of Cherringham which had been built in the fifties. She could see that some of the houses had been done up — but most were tatty, with paint peeling and overgrown lawns and hedges.

  The poor end of the village.

  In the bright sunshine, some people sat outside their open doors. As they walked by, Sarah smiled at kids splashing around in a little paddling pool. But as she and Jack passed a group of older kids sitting on a wall, she felt their suspicious gazes following them.

  “Not what the tourists see,” she said.

  “Same the world over,” said Jack. “People are poor and we never seem to be able to solve that.”

  They reached the door number they were looking for and Sarah stopped.

  “Guess this is it,” said Jack.

  Sarah looked at the tiny terraced house: grey pebbledash walls, tired curtains dangling at the windows, the front garden just a patch of dry grass, a few miserable shrubs.

  She could see cardboard taped to the door where the glass should have been. Broken glass was scattered across the weed-covered path.

  … and slogans were sprayed across the front door in lurid colours.

  “Leave or die”

  “Killer!”

  Obscene words of hatred. Violence. Fury.

  She turned to Jack, aware now that people were watching from the house opposite, and that the teenagers they’d passed were now heading down the street towards them.

  “I’d say we’ll be safer inside than out here,” said Jack, with a nod toward the approaching group whose numbers seemed to have swelled. She recognized some of Terry Hamblyn’s mates among them — and one or two older faces she’d seen around the village.

  Easy to raise a lynch mob these days with mobile phones, she thought.

  Sarah dragged the rusty gate open, headed to the front door, and knocked loudly.

  There was no response.

  She looked at Jack.

  He stepped forward and opened the letterbox.

  “Mr Bell, this is Jack Brennan. We er … met … last night down at the Ploughman’s.”

  Silence.

  Sarah shrugged and leaned in to the letterbox.

  “Tim, we want to help. We think we might be able to help you. We’re not here to cause trouble.”

  She waited, but still no response.

  Over Jack’s shoulder she could see one or two more people walking purposefully down the street.

  “Jack, I think we’d better go — now, before—”

  Behind her, she heard the door slowly open. She turned to see Bell’s face just visible, pressed against the frame, pale against the dark interior of the house.

  “Right. Come on then, if you’re coming,” he said.

  He opened the door wider and they went in.

  Then Sarah heard the door slam behind them.

  *

  Sarah and Jack sat in silence at the kitchen table, waiting for Tim to make their tea. Sarah felt she was in a time warp: the kitchen cabinets were seventies originals and all the appliances — cooker, fridge, even the toaster — looked even older.

  The whole house seemed tidy and clean. But threadbare and hardly furnished.

  “You been dealing with the locals all right?” she said.

  “Kids with spray paint? Do me a favour.”

  “Looks a bit more serious than that,” said Jack.

  “I can deal with it. Prison was no cake-walk.”

  She watched as Tim placed two old mugs on the table, followed by a bag of sugar, and a carton of milk, and a spoon.

  “You not having one?” said Jack.

  Tim shook his head and sat down opposite them.

  Like a police interview, she thought. Suspect there and us two playing cops.

  “Is this where you used to live before …?” said Sarah.

  “’s where I grew up,” said Tim, taking out a tin of tobacco and papers.

  Sarah watched him deftly roll a cigarette then light it. No question of whose house rules. His rules.

  “Parents still around?” said Jack.

  “Died when I was inside.”

  “That must have been difficult,” said Sarah.

  She watched him pick a shred of tobacco out of his teeth.

  “I didn’t like them that much. So I wasn’t bothered.”

  Sarah wondered if he genuinely felt like that or whether the words were just a defence.

  “Usually they let people come to the funerals …”

  Tim seemed to bristle. “I said I wasn’t bothered, didn’t I?”

  Flash of anger there …

  “So this is the first time you’ve been back since—”

  “Since I got put away for a murder I didn’t do? Yes.”

  “Why are you back, Tim?” said Jack.

  “It’s where I live, isn’t it?” He took a deep drag of his cigarette. “Lovely Cherringham.”

  “You got friends here still?”

  “Still? Turned out I never had any bloody friends.”

  Sarah watched Tim carefully. There was an air of compressed violence about him now, as if without warning he might suddenly explode and attack.

  Since they arrived, he hadn’t looked her in the eyes; and since he sat down he hadn’t taken his eyes away from Jack’s.

  “You … you said you wanted to help me. How’re you going to do that?”

  Sarah watched Jack — the question wasn’t addressed to her.

  “Sarah and I …” said Jack, “we work together sometimes on cases — ones that maybe the local police aren’t interested in, or—”

  “I know what you do,” said Tim. “They teach you how to Google. In prison.”

  “Okay,” said Jack. “So here’s the thing. I looked at your case. I read the reports. The trial transcripts. And I can’t see why they convicted you.”

  “Funny. That’s just what my lawyer said.”

  “Didn’t you appeal?” said Sarah.

  “Lost that too,” said Tim, without looking at her.

  Sarah watched Jack nod and sit back in his chair.

  “You must have rubbed a lot of people’s backs up in the court.”

  “It’s not supposed to be a popularity contest, is it?” said Tim.

  “Oh yeah?” said Jack. “Who told you that?”

  “I didn’t kill her,” said Tim, shrugging. Then, looking away … “I didn’t hurt Dinah. That night — or ever.”

  “Beyond reasonable doubt, the jury clearly thought you did,” said Jack.

  “And what about you?” said Tim.

  “I’ll know in a day or two,” said Jack. “Right now I have some reasonable doubts.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Don’t count on it for long,” said Jack.

  Sarah searched Tim’s face for any trace of emotion, but saw none.

  “Like I said before — how are you going to help?”

  “If you didn’t do it — maybe we can find the real killer.”

  “You — and her? Twenty-five years later?”

  Sarah didn’t react as Tim now turned for the first time and stared at her as if she was a child.

  “How?”

  Jack smiled.

  Sarah knew he’d be enjoying this, so used to dealing with suspects like Tim over the years. But she felt her that her skin was creeping.
<
br />   “Well,” Jack said patiently, “why don’t you start at the beginning? How you met Dinah. What happened that night. Every detail. Think you can do that?”

  “Fat lot of good it’ll do.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that, Tim. You want help … justice. Maybe we’re it.”

  Sarah watched Tim as he sat unmoving, blinking slowly, as if he was conserving energy. Then he stubbed his roll-up on a saucer, reached for the tin, and started to roll another.

  “I met Dinah at a gig at the Young Farmers’ Club, about a week before the fair came to Cherringham. She was with a couple of her mates; they always hung out together …”

  Sarah took out a small pad from her handbag and started to make notes as Tim spoke.

  She knew the way Jack interviewed people.

  And when Tim finished, Jack would get him to tell it all again. From the beginning.

  And then again. And again. And again.

  Until something was different.

  Or wrong.

  Looking for the word or fact or gesture that gave away — guilt.

  The tell …

  But finally, when all the talking had been done, and when she looked at Jack — and he looked back — she knew that … in this case, there was no “tell.”

  What Tim Bell had been saying was the truth.

  7. Fresh Air

  “Outta the way, Riley, you menace!”

  Laughing, Jack sidestepped his crazy Springer Spaniel and carried the tray with coffee and biscuits up from the galley, through the wheelhouse, and out onto the deck of the Grey Goose where Sarah was sitting in the shade of the umbrella.

  “Dog’s going to be the death of me,” said Jack, putting the tray on the table.

  “I think these days … there’s a queue for that honour,” said Sarah.

  Jack poured the coffees and sat opposite her.

  “Meaning — what the hell mess have I gotten into this time?”

  “Something like that,” said Sarah.

  Jack took a sip of his coffee and offered her a biscuit. Riley shuffled closer across the deck, then lay at Jack’s feet. Jack glanced down: Riley looked back at him mournfully, knowing he wouldn’t get a bite, but never giving up hope …