TR01 - Trial And Retribution

by Lynda La Plante

  Jason opened the door to Walker and Richards but his mother came drifting along behind him. Her hair looked like a ball of straw and her eyes were half shut. The stomach beneath her dressing gown swelled unambiguously now.

  "Oh! It's you!" she said half dreamily.

  "I'm sorry, I was lying down.

  The doctor told me you know .. "

  She placed a palm on her bulge. Richards smiled her sweetest smile.

  She wondered what tranquillizers the doctor had been shelling out.

  "Sorry to bother you, Anita. We wanted a word with | Peter."

  "He's not here. I don't know where he is."

  Richards swapped a look with Walker and looked over Anita's shoulder at Jason, who was still hanging around in the hall.

  "Jason still off school, Anita?"

  Anita was clawing at her son's shoulder, trying to get him behind her.

  "Oh, school!" she said.

  "He's got a rash on his legs. It's nothing, just a rash."

  Jason was wearing shorts. Meg and Walker looked at his legs, covered with red marks. They were beginning to turn blue in patches.

  "Any idea when Mr. James will be back, Mrs. Harris?"

  "No, I don't really... There's nothing wrong, is there?"

  Walker said, "No, no. We won't keep you out of bed."

  He started to leave, but turned at the last minute.

  "Oh, Mrs. Harris.

  Just the one thing. What time did you say Mr. James left the flat that lunchtime? "

  Anita didn't understand. She looked in panic from Walker to Meg and back again.

  Meg said, gently, "The day Julie Anne went missing, Anita."

  "Oh! I think ... around twelve-thirty, I think. Yes. Is that all right?"

  "Yes, thank you, Mrs. Harris," said Superintendent Walker, jerking his head for Meg Richards to follow him.

  North and Satchell's second interview of Mrs. Wald was brief but informative.

  "You see," the meals on wheel lady told them, "I just phoned my husband and he thinks I should come back to you he's an Inspector on the buses, you know."

  "I see," said North.

  "What have you come back about, exactly?"

  "Well, the murder of that little girl of course. I gave a statement--' " Yes, I have it here. " North picked up the statement and showed it to the witness.

  "Was there anything you wanted to add?"

  "Well, I think I should. You remember I said I couldn't remember the face of the young man I saw on the stairs that day? The long-haired man with the dark overcoat? Well, I was doing my rounds today, lunchtime, when I actually met him. It was on the stairs again he was carrying a tin of beer and he looked dreadful. Anyway, this time I asked him. Are you the little girl's stepfather? I said. You see I'd been up just after it happened with a bunch of flowers. So I just said something about that and he said yes, he was the stepfather and he said thanks and went on his way. It was then I heard the chimes of the ice-cream van and that made me think ..."

  "So now you would like to amend your statement giving a positive identification."

  "Yes. On the day of the murder, I saw him coming out of the flats about quarter past one. Then I delivered the lunch and left Enid's at about half-past one. Then I saw him again at the ice-cream van."

  "The same man you had seen earlier on?"

  "Yes. You see, I didn't really get a good look at his face. But now that I've talked to him ... I mean, it was definitely him, the stepfather. Half-past one."

  "Mrs. Wald has strengthened her statement," Satchell told Walker when he got back from seeing Anita Harris.

  "Made a positive ID of Peter James coming down the stairs at one-fifteen on 5 September."

  "Well, I've just been to the Harris's," said Walker, sharply.

  "Mrs. Harris says she sent Peter James out at half- past twelve. And Poole says he parked his ice-cream van around the same time."

  North and Satchell shook their heads.

  "The meals on wheels woman said she saw Peter James again at half-past one."

  "At the ice-cream van," added Satchell.

  Walker considered.

  "So either she's got it wrong or the ice-cream man has."

  He started to pace up to the window, then back to the notice board where the timetable of the murder was written up.

  "We know the little girl was taken at five past one. So, if Mrs. Wald is right about the times, Peter James is in the clear-right?"

  "But if Poole is telling the truth, he could still be our man," added Satchell.

  "And Anita bears Poole out, doesn't she? Why would she give a time that puts her boyfriend in the frame?"

  A thought struck Walker, as he pictured Anita standing in her hallway, with young Jason hovering behind her.

  "Could she just have been confused?" he speculated.

  "Or could she .. " He studied the photo of julie on the board.

  "Julie Anne had all these bruises on her body. And Meg says the marks we saw on Jason's legs today looked like strap marks."

  He turned and glanced round his team. His face was hard set.

  "Bring in Peter James, first thing in the morning. Pat, take Meg, talk to the mother again. Make it nice and easy, nothing confrontational yet. We've got to get to the bottom of whatever makes that family tick."

  "You've been talking to the police Peter's voice was hoarse from all the alcohol and smokes he was consuming these days. But he could still make the ornamental plates on the kitchen shelf rattle with his shouts.

  Anita continued peeling a carrot. In the lounge. Tony started to cry.

  "They came round here. I never said a word to them. I wasn't well."

  Peter walked to the window and looked out into the dark as Jason wandered in.

  "Well, there's one of them bloody watching us. He's on the building site. He's been watching us for weeks, the brickies told me. Watching what we do and whether he goes to school."

  Anita gave Jason the carrot and started shaving another.

  "I swear to you I never said nothing. They want to talk to you." Peter swung round menacingly.

  "What about?"

  "I don't know. They just asked what time you went out looking for Julie."

  "Oh yes?" His voice faltered, the bluster leaving him.

  "So what time did you say?"

  Anita told him. Peter looked at her in disbelief, then started hammering on the window pane.

  "No, no, no!" he shouted.

  "That's wrong. That's bloody wrong, you stupid, stupid cow!"

  Down below the flats a car nosed into the estate, moving at walking speed past the playground before drawing up opposite the now deserted building site. The engine and lights were killed. After a few seconds the driver emerged and walked past the site office towards the pile of sewage pipes. Some wire fencing had been erected around them, but he pushed his way through.

  For more than an hour, Colin Barridge stood beside the pipes. He wasn't thinking of anything, he was as blank as a sentry. Inspector North had seen that his mind wasn't on the job so she'd told him to take a couple of days leave. But what she couldn't tell him was how to fill the time. Coming here seemed the only thing to do, a compulsion.

  He didn't know why.

  Perhaps it was because it was the only place he could feel any kind of peace.

  chapter 18

  FRIDAY 1 NOVEMBER. 9 A. M.

  "Yes, he's there again-see him? "

  Richards and North were back on the Howarth, meaning to invite Peter James to Southampton Street to help them with their inquiries or to speak with Anita Harris if James wasn't there. But DI North was deflected by the sight of a lone figure standing at the place where the body of julie Anne Harris had been found.

  "Come on," she said.

  "Let's get this sorted once and for all."

  "He's no better then?" asked Richards as they started across the muddy, rubble-strewn ground.

  "No, he's not. As you know, he found the body. Now he's suffe
red some kind of reaction. Flashbacks. Says he keep feeling her in his arms.

  Can't sleep. "

  "What about occupational health?"

  "Says he's tried that. Doesn't help. I told him to take a day or two off Barridge!"

  They had reached the young constable, who was standing ramrod straight like a guardsman. He was wearing his uniform.

  "What the hell are you doing here?"

  Barridge had been oblivious to their approach. He gave a start.

  "Nothing, ma'am."

  His nose was red and he was trembling with cold.

  "What d'you mean, nothing? You were here yesterday as well, so I heard."

  Barridge looked at his feet.

  "I'm not on duty, ma'am," he mumbled.

  "I

  did as you suggested, got some time oft'. "

  North opened her mouth. She was going to tell him she didn't do it so he could feed his morbid state by making sick pilgrimages to the site of his trauma.

  But Barridge wasn't listening anyway. He was pointing at the ground.

  "That's where I found her shoe. Just there."

  Pat touched his sleeve and said, gently but with a touch of exasperation.

  "Go home, Barridge. Take off your uniform. Rest and stay at home."

  They watched as he began to walk back to his car, then set off towards the Harris's block. Trudging up the stairs, they heard a click and a mechanical whirr.

  "Lift's working today," said Pat.

  "Stairs are better," said Richards.

  "Calves and thighs!"

  Before they reached the Harris's floor and sounded the bell, Peter James had exited the lift three floors below and headed off into the grey morning.

  Half an hour later, Satchell found Del. Supt. Walker splashing cold water on his face in the Southampton Street gents.

  "Guv - Peter James. He's here. Walked in of his own accord."

  Walker roller-towelled his face then beat Satchell to the door.

  "Come on then let's get at him."

  "Anita told me you wanted to see me."

  They were back in the interview room the eternal, unchanging interview room. Peter James spoke in flat, cautious tones.

  "Yes, we did," said Walker.

  "Did she tell you why? We've been a little concerned about marks which the pathologist found on Julie Anne's body bruises consistent with being struck, several days before the day she died.

  Peter shifted in his seat.

  "Well, yeah. She was quite a naughty little kid underneath them blonde curls."

  "You hit her?"

  "Like I said, her mother and me found her a handful, sometimes."

  "Perhaps you and Mrs. Harris have had a talk about this?"

  Peter looked straight into the Superintendent's newly washed face, clenching his teeth. He felt rising anger.

  "No, but I tell you what we have talked about. The fact that we can't even bury her."

  "I am deeply sorry about that, but it's completely out of my control.

  Detective Inspector North has gone over to yours today. She'll be explaining to Mrs. Harris. "

  "So how come no one's explaining to me?" He thumbed himself in the chest.

  "You think it doesn't affect me? I bathed her, I told her bedtime stories, I took her to school. You sons of bitches are trying to twist everything round to make something sick out of it."

  "But you admit that you've had to discipline the children?"

  "Look what is this?"

  "In your role as stepfather, Peter? Are you denying that you've disciplined them physically?"

  "No because I have."

  "That's good," said Walker, jabbing the air with his finger.

  "Because you have hit the kids more than once, in fact?"

  "Yeah, I have. We both have. That doesn't mean ... Look!

  "You charging me or what? I came here, nobody had to bring me in. So what are you trying on? I never I swear before God1 never done nothing wrong!"

  "OK, take me through it again. What time did you go out looking for Julie Anne on September the fifth?"

  Peter James was shaking his head.

  "I don't believe this. It was after one o'clock! Before that I was in the flat fixing the sink. Anita asked me to get the kids in. But she turned the tap on by accident and soaked me I had to go and change my clothes. So I didn't go downstairs for fifteen or twenty minutes."

  Walker showed him a statement form.

  "That's not what Mrs. Harris says in her statement."

  "She doesn't know does she? She's confused. She had it wrong. She remembers things a lot more clearly now that she's calmed down. Listen to me it was well after one o'clock. Well after."

  Walker stood up stiffly and sighed.

  "OK. Thank you, Mr. James." He moved towards the door.

  "Just wanted to get things straight," said Peter in a soft, conciliatory tone.

  "That is exactly what I'm trying to do, Mr. James." He waved Peter away.

  "You can go."

  The corridor was busy with officers going about the normal business of the police station. Walker cannoned through them like a dodgem car towards the Incident Room. He urgently wanted to hear what the Harris woman had had to say.

  North and Richards weren't back yet. Exasperated, Walker decided to kill some time by juggling a few figures on his budget sheet.

  By the time the Inspector and Sergeant came in he was in a terrible mess, with debit and credit figures wandering into the wrong columns as if they had lives of their own. He hurled his pencil into a corner.

  "You know something?" he said darkly to North.

  "If I'd wanted to run a sodding corner shop, why would I have joined the job? It's a fucking joke!"

  North put a handwritten statement, typed and signed, on his desk.

  "Guv, this is Mrs. Harris's new version. I also double-checked with some of the other residents not that any of them can remember that Thursday. But they do say the ice-cream van is always parked just at the time Poole says it was then twelve-thirty."

  "And we've had Peter James here and he says he left the flat at just--' " After one o'clock," interrupted North.

  Walker nodded.

  "Fixing the sink, right? Had to change his clothes?"

  "Yes," confirmed Pat, nodding at Anita Harris's latest statement.

  "Word for word."

  Walker shook his head.

  "She's covering for him, isn't she? Christ!"

  "There's something else, guy. She seemed a different woman this morning, there was something about her much more together. She was cleaning the place up. Doing the washing. And she seems more clearheaded."

  Walker covered his ears with his hands.

  "Give me some good news, for God's sake! Because if there isn't a case

  against Michael bloody Dunn, where are we going to go? "

  On the way back, Peter stopped at the post office to cash his benefit cheque, then decided to treat everyone to a kebab. When he reached home, the flat looked neater than it had for weeks. The windows were open and there was a smell of furniture polish.

  "Hi!" he called.

  "Got you a shish kebab."

  He went through to the lounge. On the sideboard, flowers and cards were arranged neatly, as round a shrine, in front of the framed photographs of Julie. Good-bye, sweet Julie. We missed-you, darling .

  Anita was sitting on the sofa. Nearby, Tony rolled on the floor in a T-shirt and nappy but she was taking no notice. She looked pale and stunned.

  Peter crouched beside her.

  "You all right, girl?"

  Jason appeared. He was sniffing like a dog, smelling the kebabs.

  Anita said, weakly, "Jason go to your room."

  "Mum, I'm hungry."

  "Go on do as I tell you."

  Peter looked at Jason, who seemed to flinch from the glance, but Peter handed Jason the take-away bag.

  "Here, take it with you."

  Jason grabbed the food and disappeared.
Tony went on rolling and mumbling.

  Anita said, almost in a whisper, "I found the doll."

  Peter froze.

  "You what?" She stood up.

  "I swapped their mattresses over, Jason's with Julie's.

  And I found her Barbie doll. "

  Peter said nothing for several seconds. He got up and walked to the window.

  "Did you give it to the police?"

  She shook her head.

  "No, I--' " Where is it? Anita! I'm warning you, I've had all the hassle I'm prepared to take this morning. "

  He advanced on her, his fist raised.

  "Anita, if that bastard Dunn gets off, it's me they're going to charge, you know that, don't you?

  They're after me for it, I can tell. And I never touched a hair of her head. "

  Anita's hands were clenched together, white with the tension. She had begun to weep.

  He grabbed her arms, shaking her, pushing her backwards.

  "Anita! I never touched her! Inever touched her!" He let her go. She simply stood there, weeping, her arms raised from her sides. She made no attempt to defend herself.

  Peter was snarling.

  "I loved her, listen to me ... I couldn't have harmed her."

  In his bedroom, Jason was sitting on the floor with the kebab bag spread open in front of him. Slowly he was eating the food, stuffing chips and chunks of meat into his mouth in continuous succession. And as he chewed he counted every slap of Peter's hand against his mum's face.

  chapter 19

  SATURDAY 2 NOVEMBER. 10 A. M.

  AT Clarence Clough, Derek Waugh was sniffing around the Dunn case again, in spite of the complexities of Lady Preece's will and the horrific breach of contract liabilities faced by his client, Alphastrom Management Systems.

  "Not found the alibi witness yet, I see," he said, waving Belinda's report commissioned from a South Wales private investigator.

  "If you don't track him down pretty soon, we're looking at a blank on the alibi, Belinda."

  He dropped the report back in her pending tray, where he'd found it.

  She kept her eyes on the computer screen, controlling an urge to snap.

  "There has been a possible sighting of Terry Smith at the Simon Community in Cardiff, Tiger Bay. And I'm just drafting an ad in the Big Issue'm London."

  Waugh snorted.

  "Last people who read that thing are the homeless. Now, I was thinking about something else. Aren't you going to need independent forensic confirmation that the little girl frequented Dunn's flat, so that those fibres could have been left there any time?