by Jo Smedley
“We don’t need to decide now. Let’s see if anything else comes up. The closing date isn’t for another week at least.”
We went back to studying the boards. We still had her family, her friends, her Roller Derby team, the possible new boyfriend and the very questionable drugs angle to look into.
Chapter Thirteen
I didn’t often see Irene at the weekend. I wasn’t sure whether this was because she purposely kept her distance, not wanting to intrude on family time, or whether it was because I suddenly became unpredictable in my daily movements.
With Lucus home my routine changed drastically. There were no planned baby groups. The dog walk was at irregular times because we’d sometimes use the car to head off down to the beach or to a woodland walk, and within the weekend we had to fit in the more mundane food shopping and do any DIY maintenance that had cropped up during the week.
While my timetable deregulated at weekends, my early morning routine didn’t. Lillian still woke early and because Lucus had worked all week, childcare duties still fell to me on the weekends. I wondered sometimes how he’d cope as a house husband. Would he go as stir crazy as me?
With Lucus asleep upstairs it meant noise making suddenly had to be kept to a minimum, which meant I had to become even more creative in the mornings to keep her amused in a way that didn’t generate a lot of noise at the same time. Musical toys were kept out of reach, the dining room door was closed to muffle the sound and I developed into the biggest baby game going. We played peek-a-boo, I found new objects to put into her cupboard so there was a change to her favourite activity and sat with her has she unpacked it, making every new item an experience that would keep her going a little longer. I sat her on my knee and ran through all the old favourite rhymes that involved jiggling her as she sat. This the way the ladies ride. Row, row, row your boat. The Grand old Duke of York. It was exhausting in a way the general day to day timetable of busyness was not, and I was always at my worst when Lucus finally made it down the stairs and wondered if I’d made coffee. I didn’t even drink coffee. I resented him at weekends far more than I did at any other time, and had David Tennant called by one Saturday morning with the offer of taking me away from it all, I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t go.
My brain ticked over while I held up a rabbit and did “pretend play”. Ignoring whether we should or not, how exactly were we going to get into Lesley’s inner circle to establish motive or opportunity? Had she had a baby, I could have insinuated myself into her inner circle of friends really easily by joining the same baby group. As to whether I’d have found out anything useful between choruses of “hello baby how are you” was debatable, but at least I would have been in with the chance. The problem was, Lesley just didn’t socialise in any of the same circles as either of us, and we shared no links, which left us with no easy paths to follow.
I had to hand it to her. Irene’s idea of the interview was inspired, it would at least get us a foot in the door at the office, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to achieve anything other than giving us a flavour of her working environment. We had already established she had been killed by someone close, which meant what we needed to do was find a way into her social life. A way to find out who she knew well enough that may have been in the position to stab her in the back. In my experience, work colleagues rarely called past the house.
I wondered what Lesley would have been doing this time in the morning on Saturdays before she was killed. I glanced at the clock. 8.15am. Probably still in bed. I know I would have been if I’d had no child to contend with.
I added a teddy to the mix. Lesley wanted children, Rose had said. I felt sure she wouldn’t have at this time in the morning. She’d probably much rather have been in bed, sleeping off a night out with her roller derby buddies.
Roller derby…
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and quickly typed in a search. They must have a website or something. Where did they practise? When?
I fished a biscuit out of the cupboard and handed it to Lillian. It would keep her quiet for a time, while I clicked on a few links. Above me I heard a dull thud and a trickle of water in the pipes. Lucus had just stepped into the shower.
There only appeared to be one roller derby group in Grimsby and Cleethorpes – the Grim Reavers, but the website was out of date by two years. Clearly whoever set that up had either left the group or found themselves too busy to do anything more about it. There was nothing on there about dates, times, anything that might be of use to us.
I tried Facebook. Bingo. Lots of posts and all within the last few weeks. Even a picture of Lesley with an RIP message a few posts down. Yes. This was what I wanted.
I scrolled down, looking for anything familiar. No notices about practises, or try outs, which would have given me a hint about where they played. Here and there in the feed were photos of the team posed against various walls. Nothing that identified the practise area though.
A few more group shots, messages about away matches, and then… bingo. “Fresh Meat - Cleethorpes leisure centre”. I glanced at the date attached to the post. Saturday morning a few months ago – which meant the middle of winter, hardly the right time for a barbecue. I read a little closer. It looked to be a post about try outs. Fresh meat indeed! Did they practise there every Saturday morning? It was worth a call.
I picked up the phone.
“Cleethorpes Leisure Centre.”
“Hello. I, er, I was just calling up to find out about roller derby. Do you have a group that practises with you?”
“Yes. Every week. They’re in 11 am today actually. Did you want me to put you in touch with the coach?”
“No. That’s fine. I er... I was just wondering what time they played. I’m …err…I’m busy most Saturdays.”
“I think they practise one other time in the week – an evening. I could get Mandy to call you if you like? She runs the group?”
“No… I err… that’s fine. Thanks.”
I put down the phone. Saturday morning 11am. I’d been to the leisure centre before when I’d helped with the church youth group. Once you were through the turn-styles you could get right through to the sports halls. Some even had spectator areas you could sit in. I scrolled down through more photos. Yes… those breeze blocks and netting had looked familiar, and look – there was the gap where the spectators could look through. This was exactly what we needed. I called Irene.
“Morning, Ruth.”
“How did you ..?”
“Caller display. Besides. Who else would phone before 9am on a Saturday?”
“Fancy swimming?”
“I, er… what have you got?”
“Roller derby. They meet on a Saturday, 11am, at the Leisure centre. Same time as the public swim.”
“What about Lucus?”
“He hates swimming. I’ll just tell him I’m meeting a mother from baby group. He won’t know. In fact, he’ll probably just be glad I’m leaving him alone in the house to his books for a couple of hours. He works all week you know.” Try as I might I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Do you want me to call you back?”
“Yes. Main line. He’s in the shower.”
I put the phone back in its cradle and she rang back instantly. We didn’t chat. Just fixed up the time. If we went at 10.30 I could take Lillian for a short swim, Irene could do a few lengths, and then we could be out just after 11 and sidle around to the spectator area.
“Who was it?” Lucus shouted from upstairs.
“Eve from baby group. Wondered if I’d like to go swimming today.”
“What did you say?”
“Yes. Is that OK? You can stay here if you like…,” I tried to sound nonchalant. I knew what he would do given the choice, and a Saturday with a toddler in Cleethorpes leisure centre was not top of his “to do” list, but there was always the chance.
Lucus didn’t even sound disappointed. Just agreed to the arrangements with a mild look of reli
ef. Not only did he not have to go swimming, something he hated anyway, but he also got out of trying to amuse Lillian for an hour, and he’d have the house to himself the whole time I was away - bliss.
“We’re going swimming!” I told Lillian with a grin, holding her in front of me. “Come on… let’s get our stuff together.”
Chapter Fourteen
We rendezvoused in the car park outside the leisure centre. The weather was nondescript. It wasn’t clear, it wasn’t cloudy, it wasn’t raining, but it wasn’t bright sunshine either. Lincolnshire had a lot of these non-descript days in the spring.
Ahead of the car park was the endless stretch of beach that was the Cleethorpes coast. The sand never truly dried out when tide went out, and today the sky was reflected by the wet sand creating mirages and merging the horizon in the distance to a blue/brown haze. In the distance I could see both Bull and Haile Sand Forts, left over relics from the World Wars, two sentries guarding the Humber.
A sharp breeze was whipping along the seafront today, picking up the scent of salt and seaweed. My hair blew about my face wildly as I opened the car door to extract Lillian from the back seat. Irene’s car was already parked a little further along the concrete sea defence wall, and she got out as she saw me and walked over carrying a small swimming bag. I shouldered my own changing bag and much larger carrier which contained Lillian’s water wings, swim nappy, both our towels and swimming costumes.
“I think the flume is working today,” Irene said. “She’d probably enjoy that. I think you can go down together.”
I didn't question how she knew. Over the sound of the wind in my ears I could just make out the rattle of water in the outside pipes.
We paid up, went through the turn-styles, had our swim and then rendezvoused back in the changing area like any other family group would do.
Toting our swimming bags we exited the pool changing room, and I put Lillian down and encouraged her to go for a walk further into the facilities with us following happily in her wake. It wasn’t unusual for family groups to meander through the facilities after a swim. Children were, after all, quite curious creatures and if there was anything going on further into the building, be it a game of squash, badminton, football, or indeed a roller derby practise session, we would not seem too out of place. We both had wet hair, we’d clearly been swimming, and we had a curious toddler with us as the perfect excuse.
I opened the double doors into the main part of the sports facilities and followed Lillian through. I could hear a lot of noise further into the building and it wasn’t long before we stumbled into a gaggle of men and women in roller-skates and protective pads. There was no obvious equipment visible, and I wondered what it was exactly they were practising each week. In my head I’d imagined hockey sticks and pucks or something, but clearly there wasn’t anything like that needed in for roller derby. They all wore crash helmets and protective knee and elbow pads, and of the people in the hall already, it was clear that roller-skating around and around the hall was the mainstay of the game. I watched as one group of girls teamed up to prevent another skating past them. All three jinking left or right to prevent the girl behind getting ahead. I wondered how they all stayed upright. If it had been me looking behind so regularly I’d have been in a tangle of limbs on the floor already.
I picked Lillian up so she could watch and Irene and I took up position on the nearest spectator wall. Clearly there was both more and less to the sport than I imagined. I wasn’t sure if they were playing or just practising, but there appeared to be two teams. Red and blue bibs marked the different groups and it reminded me very much of my teenage P.E. lessons, except for the fact our hockey lessons were a lot more sedate by comparison. This sport looked positively dangerous. Every now and then, with no seeming reason to it that I could fathom, someone in the middle blew a whistle and the groups slowed to a halt. I tried to work out the pattern.
One of the non-players sidled up to Lillian and gave her a little tickle under the chin.
“Fancy your chances when you get older do you?” she smiled at her. She had pink hair and a nose ring, but a friendly face. I placed her round about thirty, she wasn’t thin, but wasn’t what I’d describe as plump either. She had the natural padding of someone in middle age. She might have kids of her own back home. She talked to Lillian as if she’d been through that phase. Not too babyish but with a natural pitch that was very much aimed at a youngster without being coochy-coo.
“We’ve been swimming,” I said, by way of explanation for us being there at all. “What’re you doing?”
“It’s roller derby,” she said. That much we both knew of course, but I had to say something to get her talking.
“Is this just a practise?” Irene asked.
“Well, yes and no. We’ve split into teams and we’re playing each other at the moment. We did techniques earlier – we’re just putting it all into practise now.”
The whistle blew again and a big gaggle of girls started racing around the track, leaving two at the back, still stationary.
“What’re they doing?” Irene asked. She appeared genuinely interested. So was I. This was new to me. A sport that wasn’t taught in school. I had no idea what was going on within the hall, but it was clear there were some rules to it.
“They’re the jammers. They’ve got to get past the rest of the group to score.” The whistle blew again. “Here they go now.”
I watched as the two girls took off chasing the others ahead of them on the track. They skated with a purpose, knees bent. I could see the muscles in their legs pumping the skates behind them, as they gained rapidly on the other girls.
“How do they score?”
“By getting past the rest of the group. It’s a little hard to explain. Easier to watch. Those two girls are the Jammers at the back,” she said. “They’ve got to get through the group and then lap them. They score on the next go round. The more of the opposing team they pass, the more they score.”
“I see,” said Irene. I was glad she did, as I still hadn’t a clue what was going on. But then, we weren’t here to learn how to play. I watched as the two jammers caught up to the rest of the group and with dodges and faints tried to get past the other girls. The speed they were all going, the sport must be prone to injuries. I wondered how many broken bones the team saw each year.
“How often do you practise?” I asked.
“Every Saturday morning and the league teams have another on Wednesday Night.”
“I’m guessing you’re in one of the league teams?” Irene asked. The girl we were speaking to had on a “Grim Reaver” t-shirt, and compared to the motley attire of the girls currently on the sports hall floor with mismatching t-shirts, knee pads, helmets and elbow pads, this girl looked much more colour co-ordinated. All her various pads and helmet were a matching black, just like the other girls chatting in the spectator area.
“I am now,” the girl confirmed. “Came in mid-season.”
“Congratulations,” Irene said. “I’m guessing you must have scored better than one of the other girls or something in practise did you?”
“Well, sort of.” She looked a little embarrassed. “Usually its injury that gets you into the league mid-season, but one of our team was… well… you might have read about it in the news. Lesley Cooper?”
“Oh,” said Irene, feigning shock and surprise. She pulled it all off with the ease of a professional actor, and I wondered if she’d ever been involved in any amateur dramatics. She gave away nothing. No one watching her reaction would have believed we had come here precisely because of that information. Her face was exactly what you’d expect from a curious granny hearing some sad news. “Terrible wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” our Lesley substitute confirmed. “We were all out that night, you know, having a get together. We assumed she’d had another row with her ex or something and was tied up at home. None of us thought she’d… well… we didn’t know anything about it until it was in the paper.”
“Oh dear,” Irene said, hiding her excitement well. I looked ahead into the sports hall, trying to keep my face as blank as I possibly could. We’d just ruled out the entire Roller Derby team. If they were all out together, then they were all each other’s alibis. “Was she the only one who didn’t come then?”
I winced. Even I thought I sounded too obvious. Surely she wonder why I had asked such a strange question. It wasn’t the natural thing to say after being told about a murder. But the girl didn’t seem to notice. And confirmed exactly that. Lesley had been the only person who didn’t show up. Which meant her entire roller derby group was in the clear. I could visualise the big cross on the post it note already.
Irene asked a few more conversational questions, just to keep things natural, and then announced that we ought to take Lillian home for lunch and we left. None the wiser about how you actually played roller derby, but several suspects lighter in our murder enquiry.
Chapter Fifteen
“Well...,” Irene tapped at her fridge after I’d made my phone call to book the prospective visit. “We’ll know more about her office tomorrow, and that’s the roller derby team ruled out in toto. But what about the others?”
Over the weekend I had wondered briefly if I should have picked up Sherlock Holmes rather than my current Sci-Fi novel, but then I realised, murder mystery fiction was just that, fiction, and if the novelist had set up the story, then it wasn’t true detection at all, but a step by step process to baffle the reader and make the detective look intelligent when the solution arose. Real life was nothing like that and I’d be fooling myself thinking otherwise. We were not going to solve Lesley’s murder by examining the clay on someone’s boot, nor by setting a team of vagabond children off to hunt for clues. We’d solve the crime by applying ourselves to a detailed investigation of the facts as we knew them.
We were hampered in our own investigation by the lack of access to crime scene data, which the police had in their possession, but we had the information given to us by Russ and that would have to suffice. Fingerprints were only useful if you had a clue whose fingers to compare them to. Anything else the police had found would have had a similar problem. A hair, a fibre, a trace of footprint or dirt, could only tell them so much, they would still need to shortlist all of Lesley’s contacts to the people most likely to have committed the act before any of this evidence could create a cohesive case.