by Mike Crowson
* * *
DC Gary Goss had been making his own advances to the overall picture as well, although his visit to the East Witchmoor Youth Centre was almost a little less than productive.
"We had a disco Saturday night," youth leader Tim Cruikshank recalled. "There were between fifty and sixty people. A lot of noise, some alcohol but no drugs that I know of. Why do you ask?"
"Was Kevin Musworth here that you noticed?" Goss asked.
"Let me see ... Musworth ... Yes I think so."
"Was he with Wayne Sansom?"
"How would I know? It was nearly dark in the centre. Wait a minute. Yes, he was with Sansom. A real yob called Koswinski tried to get in. Nasty bugger. I banned him from the youth club for fighting and giving drugs to someone a month or two back. He tried to sneak in under cover of the dark, and when I threw him out, Musworth, Sansom and a kid called Barker - I don't know his first name. They all left with him."
"What time was this?" Goss wanted to know.
"Not sure. Eight thirty, nine oclock."
"You can't be more exact?"
Tim Cruikshank was not exactly unhelpful in his attitude, though Goss hadn't seen or heard any reports of the drugs incident, but he was evidently impatient to get on.
"No," he said abruptly. "I was busy."
"I don't suppose you know where they went."
"I was inside and they were outside. As far as Koswinski is concerned, that's the way I like it."
"Well, thank you Mr Cruikshank. Unless someone saw them after they left here I'm afraid it looks like a dead end."
"You could try Gloria. She was at the door selling tickets. She may have seen which way they went. It would still have been light."
Cruikshank went to the office door and called his assistant, a wide-eyed, bleached haired woman of thirty-something.
"You remember I threw out Koswinski last Saturday and he left with three others?"
"Yeah."
"I don't suppose you happened to see where they went."
"No. I didn't see them go," she said. Then, just as Goss had that sinking feeling, she added as an afterthought, "But I remember Koshwinski did say summat about the Apocalypse having a better disco anyway. He gives me the creeps, Koswinski does. They say he was behind that gang rape of the girl in Shipley and I wouldn't be surprised."
"I told you he was a nasty bugger," Cruikshank remarked.
"We know all about Koswinski, but we can't seem to get any evidence against him, "DC Goss admitted. "Well, that's a useful lead. I'll try the Apocalypse next."
"If you don't mind me asking, why do you want Koswinski?" Cruikshank asked.
"I don't think we're exactly looking for Koswinski, but Musworth was pulled out of the canal drowned on Sunday morning and Sansom is missing. There was a body in that fire and we have to investigate the possibility that it was either Sansom or this other youth, Barker."
"Jody Barker?" Gloria asked.
"Probably," Goss said, "Do you know where he lived?"
"Naw," Gloria said shaking her head.
"Or his age?"
"Naw. He's left school though. About seventeen I'd guess."
"Well, I've done better than I thought I would," DC Goss said. "Thanks for your help."
At the Apocalypse there was only a manager around at that time of day and he was a little wary of the detective. The Apocalypse was a full blown nightclub with a no under 18s policy and a reasonable reputation for co-operating with the police and for keeping drugs under control. Inside they seemed to have things fairly well under control, but there sometimes fights outside.
The manager was a dapper little man with a moustache called Norris. He was in his late thirties and a reasonable sort of bloke. Goss was shown into the office and sat in a comfortable chair, while Norris settled himself behind the desk.
"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked the detective.
"I'm trying to trace the movements of four youths who may have tried to get in here last Saturday evening," Goss explained. Norris relaxed a little to discover his part was at most indirect.
"I always ask the bouncers for a full report of any incident," he said. "It's just a case of fireproofing my ass if anything goes wrong."
"Last Saturday the four set out to come here. They left the East Witchmoor Youth Centre about nine and I wondered if they'd turned up here."
"Photos?"
DC Goss pulled out a print of the school photo of Sansom and the scene of crime shot of Musworth. "That's two of them, he said. "One is tentatively identified as Jody Barker, but I don't have a photograph yet."
"They look too young," Norris said shaking his head. "I don't think they'd get past the bouncer at the door."
The fourth was Koswinski.
Norris brightened. "Oh well," he said. "I can tell you about him. I banned him three weeks ago after a fighting incident. The bloke at the door stopped him coming in on Saturday. Apart from the ban he was pretty well loaded."
"Drunk?"
"Yeah. He'd had too much. He's a belligerent little bugger when he's sober, but drunk ..." Norris shrugged meaningfully.
"What time was this?" DC Goss asked. "We're trying to piece together the movements of the four of them on Saturday evening."
"Well I only know for certain about Koswinski. You'd have to speak to Brash, the bouncer, but if they left the Youth Centre together they may well have still been together."
DC Goss agreed. "Do you have a time for this?" he asked.
"I'll check it in the incident book," he said, and pulled a hardback book from his desk drawer. "Let's see." He flipped through the pages and then ran a finger down the entries.
"Here we are. About ten thirty," he said triumphantly.
It was a bit later than Goss had expected but he was pleased with progress. He thought it was time to go back to the station, have a bite to eat and type up the report, so he thanked Norris and left.
Gary Goss was feeling decidedly hungry by the time he reached the canteen and found himself behind DI Hampshire and Tommy Hammond, newly arrived back from Bradford.
"There's just salad left," a plump, jolly assistant behind the counter was saying. "I've cheese, tuna and one egg salad left."
"A salad is fine this weather," Millicent said. "I'll have the egg. Have you got a roll?"
"I'll have the cheese salad with two rolls," Tommy decided.
At that moment Lucy Turner arrived back and stood in the line.
"And I'll have a tuna salad and three rolls," Gary Goss added. "I'm hungry"
"Am I right in thinking there's nothing left but salad," Lucy remarked.
"'Fraid so," the assistant agreed.
"You can have cheese salad, tuna salad or cheese and tuna salad," Tommy joked.
"Wow, that's a difficult choice," Lucy said. "But I'll be really awkward and have a tuna and cheese salad instead of cheese and tuna one."
"It's the last of the tuna," the assistant said, "You may as well have what's left." She piled Lucy's plate high.
The four of them carried their plates and drinks to the same table. Lucy's was enormous.
"You'll need a doggy bag for that," DC Goss observed.
"Catty bag," Lucy corrected.
"Should that be 'pussy bag'?" Goss wondered aloud.
"That sound faintly obscene," said Tommy. "But are you going to save some tuna for your cat," he asked Lucy.
"My cats do all right," Lucy answered. "It's a cats world: I'm just there to open the tins for them."
"We can't have cats," DC Goss said. "The children are allergic to them."
"My cats are allergic to children," Lucy responded. That's why me and Julia haven't got any children!"
By an unspoken agreement there wasn't much talk of business over the food - business was saved until they got back to the Incident Suite.
The uniformed officer on the dedicated reception, PC Gail Downing, had settled herself in and established a database, but there wasn't a lot on it yet. Gail was not long out o
f training and looked up in awe as Millicent entered. DC Bright was also in the room.
"Inspector Hampshire, ma'am," Gail Downing said.
"Yes."
"Chief Inspector Cooke rang and said he'd like you to pop into his office as soon as you got back, to have a briefing on how it's all going."
"Ring him up now. We're about to meet and compare notes, so if he can get in here right away it would save us going over the same ground more than once."
"Okay," She turned telephone Cooke.
"Right," Hampshire said, "Grab yourselves a chair each and sit in a circle. Gail, unless the phone goes you'd better listen in. We may need you to know where something fits in and who'd be interested."
PC Downing flushed slightly but joined the circle feeling important.
"Now," Millicent began. "You all know more or less what's in the autopsy reports, but look at them again if you've any doubts. DS Turner and I spoke to the wife." Hampshire explained the story. "Now DS Turner was going to talk to Ellen Barnes. Did you find her in?"
Chief Inspector Cooke came in as Lucy was giving her account of her talk with Ellen Barnes and Alice Dent.
"Is there anything to support the alibi?" Cooke asked.
"I've got a till slip from the shopping expedition. Date's correct and the time is shown at 2.51pm. I've asked Vodaphone for a print out of the calls, so I can check the call time against the till slip."
"That should tell us how reliable the story is," Hampshire remarked. "It's a pretty strange story but it may well be broadly true." She paused and looked around. "Or of course it may not. Shirley Hunter is a nurse, and that puts her high on a list of suspects as regards means, and she's pretty high as regards motive, considering the kind of man Hunter was. However, I talked this morning to two other people who admitted wanting him dead."
She told them of her conversations with Shields and Knowles. "They both have pretty powerful motives and this IT specialist we have yet to speak to may have at least as good a motive," she concluded.
"DC Goss was starting from the other end. What was Musworth doing Saturday night?" Detective Inspector Hampshire continued. "How did you get on?” she asked, turning to Goss.
"According to what DC Hammond learned yesterday, Musworth was definitely with Sansom and possibly with Koswinski and the word was that Sansom was going to the Youth Centre, so that's where I began," Goss explained, and recounted his finding at the Youth Centre and the Apocalypse.
"So they were together at around ten thirty," Cooke observed.
"I'm going to check with the doorman at the Apocalypse, but it looks that way," Goss agreed.
"Musworth drowned, Koswinski swam ashore and there was an unidentified body in the rubble," Hampshire said. "It looks virtually certain the body in the burnt out building was either Sansom or Barker. We'd better try and identify Barker and trace him, before we tell Sansom's family he's dead. On the evidence so far, I'd say they - some of them or all four - threw the body in the canal and the fire broke out and cut them off. What the four of them were doing only Koswinski knows." She turned to Cooke. "What I'd like to do is have DC Goss and DC Hammond pick him on suspicion of murdering Hunter and Musworth."
There was a slight shuffling. "Oh I know he isn't even a suspect," Hampshire said hastily. "But he's getting to be a hardened nut and he won't tell us anything if we ask him nicely. Hammond and Goss can give him something of a grilling and just maybe he'll come out with the story. This time we're not actually after him, at least I don't think we are."
"Worth a try, I suppose," Cooke said at length.
"How did you get on at the hospital, DS Gibbs?" Hammond asked, moving the agenda on.
"Nothing very concrete, I'm afraid," Gibbs said. "Shirley Hunter is a nurse, like she said, and seems reasonably well liked. She would have had access to morphine, but drugs are fairly well controlled. When something out of the ordinary is prescribed for a patient, supplies are sent up from the pharmacy, enough for a day at a time."
"You spoke to the pharmacy?" Millicent asked.
"Yes. Youngish bloke called O'Connor runs it and seems well in control. One thing I did come across, though ..." He hesitated.
"Go on," Cooke urged.
"It's probably not important, but there was a rumour linking the Hunter woman to a Doctor Patel in Respiratory at Bradford Royal. He was on duty all weekend and seen regularly all day Saturday doing different jobs. I think you can rule him out, but it may give her even more motive."
"Right," Hampshire said, "DC Bright was checking with neighbours for anything to confirm Shirley Hunter's story or call it into question. Find anything?"
"Nothing useful," Bright answered. "The next door neighbour says they were always quarrelling and that he used to hit her, but we knew that anyway."
"Take someone with you," Hampshire said, "Keep at it. I'd like to find someone who saw them leave at around eleven thirty."
"Okay," she continued, "DC Hammond and DC Goss can pick up Koswinksi tomorrow and try to put the frighteners on him to find out what happened between ten thirty and twelve thirty Saturday. DS Gibbs. First I want you to go to Hunter's house and go through his work area for anything personal. Use Matthew as a witness and then he can get on with the door-to-door enquiries afterwards. After you've done that, take someone from scene of crimes and take a cast of car prints from Knowles's car and Shields's car and compare them to the casts taken at the picnic site."
At that moment she had one of her flashes of uncontrolled insight and nearly fell off the chair. She dropped her notebook and folder and clasped a hand to her forehead.
"You all right?" Cooke asked.
"Yes," Millicent said faintly. Then more strongly she said, "Yes, I'm OK. DS Gibbs. When those items of food from the picnic scene come back from forensic, check them against that till receipt. DS Turner, you and I will go and talk to the IT specialist tomorrow. I've just remembered that she was called Rosie O'Connor. Its very odd that someone with a strong motive for a murder using morphine should share a surname with a hospital pharmacist."
Chapter 6: Tuesday 14th August (Eve)