by Mike Crowson
* * *
Kevin Musworth lived, or rather had lived, in a walk-up block of mixed flats and maisonettes on a council estate up towards the Bradford Road from the canal. To be precise, it had been a council property and had been passed to a Housing Association which was trying to improve the properties. Unfortunately it wasn't having much luck improving the residents.
Stairs, lifts and hallways were more frequently washed and rubbish cleared more effectively, but youths still urinated in stairwells and walls were still covered with graffiti as soon as they were painted.
In the sunshine the place didn't look too bad and some of the trees were big and solid enough to survive the younger kids. Off street parking had been improved by inserting lockable posts into the tarmac and charging rent for spaces. This meant fewer abandoned vehicles and a tidier overall appearance. It might still be a depressing area on a wet day in November, though, Tommy thought.
The detective found the right floor and the right flat - number 307 - and knocked at the door. A slovenly looking youth in jeans and a dirty T-Shirt opened the door.
"Is this the home of Kevin Musworth?" he asked.
"He ain’t in," the youth said, "He ain’t been in since Saturday."
"I'm aware of that," Tommy said mildly. "Is his mother or father around? Are you related?"
"He's my younger brother, not that it’s your business."
"I'm really sorry to tell you that it is my business," Tommy answered. "I have some bad news."
Something about Tommy's manner communicated itself to the young man and he grew a little less wary.
"Mum's in the living room watching the repeat of Home and Away," he said. "Are you police?"
Tommy showed his warrant card. "I'm a detective at the Witchmoor Edge Branch and I sometimes get jobs I'd rather not do. This one of them."
He followed the youth inside and shut the door behind him, before walking into the lounge. A blonde woman of about forty and quite presentable switched off the television. Both the woman and the room were past their best, but still had a semblance of what they once were. The woman was tidy and groomed and must have been young when she had the older boy. The room was clean and carpeted, but you couldn't say a great deal more for it.
"Nice timing," she said, "I'd just finished my daily dose of envy. I'd really like to live in a nice house in a place where it’s always summer. Still," she said brightening, "I don't suppose it's like that all the time."
"This man's come from the police to talk to you about Kevin, ma," said the scruffy young man.
"He's been missing since Saturday tea time," Mrs. Musworth said.
"I'm afraid he was pulled out of the canal drowned on Sunday morning. He had nothing with his address on it and it until now to track him down from his fingerprint records. Nevertheless, although were confident of the identification, I'd appreciate it you would make a formal identification."
Mrs. Musworth looked faint. "Dead you say?"
"I'm afraid so," Tommy said gently. Musworth might have been a young thug, but even most young thugs have mothers who care.
"I wasn't worried about him not coming home on Sunday," Mrs. Musworth said, "Especially as Wayne Sansom from next door disappeared at the same time." Then she added with a hollow emptiness. "I thought he might have got into trouble with the police again, but I figured I'd have heard by now. I was just starting to get a bit worried that he hadn't contacted me at all, but he was always a thoughtless little bugger. Not like Barry." She nodded at her elder son.
She took a paper hanky from a box on top of the TV and blew her nose.
"He were running out of control since their dad up and left me. I couldn't keep him out of trouble and he were thoughtless, like I said." She wasn't really talking to either Tommy or Barry directly - just talking in general.
"Now he's dead, you say. Thoughtless to the end."
Then a thought seemed to strike her and she looked puzzled.
"Fell in the canal?" she asked. "Funny thing is, he could swim quite well. He had medals for swimming at junior school."
Tommy thought Kevin probably hadn't been very good at swimming while drunk, but he didn't say anything. "Did Kevin say what he was doing or where they were going Saturday night?" he asked.
"He was going to a disco somewhere. I think it was at that youth centre down the bottom of Bingley Road towards Saltaire. He went with Wayne Sansom and an older boy called John something. John ... something Polish."
"John Koswinski," said Barry. "He's around, because I've seen him. He might know what happened."
Tommy thought he probably had a name for the body in the ruin and for the one who climbed dripping from the canal. He made a note of the two names and addresses and thought this was quite a good afternoon's work.
"I'm afraid I have to ask you to identify the body, make sure it is Kevin for official purposes. The coroner will want to know its all been done properly."
"I think I'll make myself a cup of tea," Mrs. Musworth said bleakly, the facts seemingly striking home.
"I think that's a grand idea," Tommy said encouragingly.
When she'd gone into the kitchen, he said to Barry, who seemed to be a lot more human than he looked, "I'll slip off now, but I'll ring to arrange for someone to take you and your mum to identify the body. I'll try and find a woman constable to help her through it. We'll also need a signed statement. I'll type up this little lot and she can check it and sign it at the same time."
Barry Musworth just nodded, so Tommy made a note of the phone number and Barry let him out in silence.
Detective Constable Gary Goss was making heavy weather of Joe Davis. It wasn't that he was elusive or reluctant to talk, more that he rambled off on irrelevant side roads of thought and reminiscence. Moreover, he had actually seen very little and reports from both DS Gibbs and the Fire Brigade had already covered everything Joe knew.
The one possible exception to that was a remark that he had seen two or three youths on the concrete quay below the boarded warehouse, now a ruin. He was not sure when - the last week or two was the best he could manage - or how often - more than once was a bit vague.
DC Goss put that in his report to be included in the statement, but it was probably unimportant and might well refer to a quite different bunch of youths.
As he was pretty well next door to the Sansoms's flat, Tommy knocked at that door as well. The contrast with the Musworth's was considerable. Mrs. Sansom was a big woman of Afro-Caribbean extraction and a girl of about five came to the door with her mother. She stood cautiously eying Tommy and sucking her thumb.
Tommy was more sensitive than a lot of officers to how intimidated by the police black Britons can be and how this often manifests itself as surly and suspicious, so put on his best smile and said politely, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I need to speak to Wayne. He was with a boy who was pulled out of the canal drowned and I was sort of hoping he might be able to throw some light on it."
"Wayne's not been around since Saturday night." She sounded alarmed. "It wasn't him that fell in the canal was it? He never was no good at swimming"
That, thought Tommy, might be why he had tried to escape the fire without jumping in the water. He kept his thoughts to himself, however.
"It was a white boy fell in the canal," he said. "We think it was young Kevin Musworth."
"Oh my gawd," Mrs. Sansom said. "They was together on Saturday night. Wayne don't usually cause me no trouble and he hadn't never stayed away from home like this. You don't think he's hiding?"
Tommy was pretty certain Wayne had died in the fire and he knew he'd have to break the news to her sometime. This, however, was not the moment.
I don't think so," he said. "I'd better get a search started for him though. Do you have a photograph."
"There's the photo he had took the last term at school," Mrs. Sansom said. "You can only borrow it though. I want it back."
DC. Hammond felt sure this fairly pleasant looking boy, now only a year
or so older, was the body from the burnt out ruin. He knew he was only postponing the moment of grief for the Sansom family, but let them learn the truth as gently as possible. Not that it was a very gentle truth.
But what had Kevin Musworth, Wayne Sansom and John Koswinski been doing in the boarded up warehouse, and where did Simon Hunter come into it. Perhaps Millicent Hampshire had some idea. His boss was a smart cookie, when it came to detective work, and not bad as a boss either.
Goss and Hammond typed up their various reports and the statements for signing and arranged for a switchboard operator to call up both Joe Davis and Mrs. Evans in the morning. He also asked for someone from the uniformed branch to pick up Mrs. Musworth and get her to identify Kevin's body. Lucy Turner arrived back at the station to type up Mrs. Hunter's statement. Tommy, on the other hand, rushed off to keep a date.
That young man, Millicent thought, was a nice catch for some young lady, but he wouldn't be easily caught. He was tall and sturdy, always immaculately groomed and dressed and really quite handsome. He was, however, always rushing off to see some woman, and she had a feeling it was a different one each time.
Millicent herself had several jobs to do before she went home. First, and most urgently, she put out an interest report on Simon Hunter's red Porsche. Now every officer of the West Yorkshire Police would know the car was wanted and her interest would show on any computer enquiry about the car as well. It was only a matter of time.
Next she opened a new folder lying on her desk. It was a request from the Divisional Commander, via the Chief Inspector, for figures relating to all deaths over the last four years which the department had investigated, and a similar request relating to violent attacks on the person which they had investigated. It would be easy enough to have civilian staff get the records and it might not take her long to provide an analysis, but what a drag.
For a while she gazed gloomily at the file, then rose with a sigh from her desk and made her way out.
There was no urgency to hurry home, because she lived alone and, before she drove away, she toyed with several cassettes, selecting one with care. Her taste in music was an interesting idiosyncrasy, since she liked three wildly different varieties of music under different moods and circumstances. Her short 6 year sojourn in Spain, almost 15 years ago, as the wife of a Seville policeman called Carlos Aguila, had left her with a taste for the folk music of the Andes and South America generally, which he had loved. On the other hand, she liked genuinely mediaeval music and instruments especially as a background to thinking out a puzzle - and then she liked nice, beaty country and western music when she was doing housework.
Tonight she felt just a bit nostalgic. Her brief marriage to Carlos Aguila had been happy, very different from that of Shirley and the late Simon Hunter, and ended tragically with a car bomb. The Hunter marriage had ended, she thought, with a specific and targeted murder by someone who wanted to kill Hunter as an individual, while Carlos had just been in the way of a group of indiscriminate terrorist killers. She sighed and steered the car out of the walled car park, through the security gates and into Tolpuddle Street to the haunting tone of Inti Illmani and the pan pipes.
Millicent turned into the driveway in front of her very desirable stone built, early eighteenth century cottage, and let herself into her empty but not quite lonely home. She had just hung up her jacket and was putting away the few groceries she had stopped for on the way home, when the phone rang.
"Hampshire," she said.
"Hello mum, it's Ana," a voice said. It was a pleasant voice, speaking very good English, but her daughter had been brought up by her husband's parents in Seville. Ana was not English and you could tell.
"Hola Ana. Me alegro de oirte. Its nice to hear from you. How are you and how are Nanny Sanchez and Grandpa Aguilar?"
"They're both well, but I wanted to ask you about University. I think University in the UK would be nice. I wondered what you thought about the course Leeds has on European Law and whether I could get to Leeds from your house. If you'd have me, of course."
"Have you? Of course you'd be welcome here. There's nobody but me, though I come and go to work at odd hours. Leeds is about fifteen or twenty minutes by train. What does Nanny Sanchez say?"
"Ah, well. That's the problem. Whether I go the University in the UK or Belgium or Spain there'd be the fees. Can you help?"
Millicent was mildly affronted. Granted, she hadn't been the best of mothers in giving time to her daughter. The shock of Carlos's death had sent her into the army and the bomb squad, and there was no place in the army for a child. On the other hand, she had always provided financial support.
"I'll pay your fees," Millicent said a little shortly. "You apply where you really want to go and I'll find the cash."
"Thanks mum. I knew you'd help, its just that Nanny Sanchez was worrying."
"Well tell her not to worry. Now. Tell me how the exams went."
After the phone call and a makeshift meal of mushroom omelette and chips, Millicent settled back in an armchair to think. Tobias NDibe had unsettled her and Ana's phone call reinforced the mood of self examination.
N'Dibe had been both right and wrong: she did drive herself hard but it was not so much her job as her personal demons. She had married young but been very happy with Carlos and had been driven slightly insane by his murder. Her time in the bomb squad combined an urge for revenge with an urge to come to terms with the facts. She had moved into the police to find refuge from her demons, but they had followed her. Perhaps the meeting with N'Dibe was some kind of turning point. She might try to track him down and contact him again.
Millicent became DI Hampshire again and put on a CD of the music of 11th century composer, Hildegard von Bingen. She turned down the volume and began to consider possible connections between the fire, the drownings and the murder. She also thought over Shirley Hunter's story, about which she was still mildly uneasy, and how it might be verified or otherwise!