A Long Time Dead

by Andrew Barrett

  “Yes, I do. I hold up my hand to that one. I can guess where you got your information, and Chris is right. I nicknamed it ‘cruising’, because that’s what I did. After working late and finishing in the early hours of the morning, I would cruise slowly through the streets and yeah, I looked at the girls.

  “My marriage was at a low point, and seeing young girls baring all put a little sparkle back into my life. I did nothing wrong, I broke no laws; I wasn’t kerb crawling or stalking or harassing anyone. I certainly didn’t speed,” he almost smiled. “But I want to emphasise to you that I never picked anyone up. That I can promise you.”

  Shelby folded his arms. “You finish work early, and coincidentally of course, a young girl called Nicky Bridgestock dies at roughly the same time? Can you explain why we found your name and number on the back of her left hand at the post-mortem?”

  “Maybe she wrote it herself—”

  “She’s left-handed. She wouldn’t have chosen to write it on her left hand.” He pulled a photograph of the strangely lit inscription from the folder and showed it to Roger, proclaiming the action for the tape. “It’s not complete, I know, but it goes a long way towards your own details. Here’s another photo, same hand, same writing, enhanced by PolyLight. Convinced?”

  Roger accepted the evidence.

  He was a scrap of the man he was ten minutes ago. Shelby expected the request for a solicitor about now, but it didn’t come. Roger looked fraught, and Shelby thought he detected in him the first signs of real fear, though unusually for a fearful suspect, he didn’t fidget much.

  “I can see why you came looking for me,” Roger said. “But I’ve never set eyes on her, never been to her house. Yet my name and number are on the back of her hand?” He appeared to surrender, and leaned forward submissively. “I can’t answer you, Graham, like I can’t answer the fingerprint. I honestly do not know how they got there.” Then his posture relaxed, his shoulders slumped, as had become the norm for this interview.

  “Have you ever suffered from black-outs?”

  “No.”

  Shelby asked more questions, Roger grunted answers, occasionally expressing astonishment or wonder, but usually his eyes were pointing south. Now though, he didn’t conceal his feelings, and Shelby noticed a sparkle of hope.

  “I know how all this bloody evidence got there, and I’ll be fucked if it never crossed your mind as well!”

  “How?”

  “Planted.” Hope shone in Roger’s eyes.

  “Who by?”

  “Who has a grudge against me?”

  “You tell me.”

  The sparkle died. “It’s obvious when you actually stop and think about it. Weston.”

  Shelby gave no reaction, perhaps a tinge of sadness, that was all. “Weston?”

  “He hates me.”

  “The grudge thing?” Shelby asked.

  “His grudge thing.”

  “Okay, for the tape: you suspected Inspector Colin Weston of stealing weapons that were in his custody, yes?” Roger nodded. “Inspector Weston was investigated and subsequently vindicated. Since then, you both share a mutual dislike. Is that a fair summary of the situation?”

  “I reported him for stealing weapons and he was questioned about it. He objects to me having a heartbeat.”

  Shelby folded his arms, and said, “Roger, that was months ago. Everyone knows Weston had nothing to hide from that investigation. In fact, he’s the aggrieved party in all of this, and he laughs about it now.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You think a police Inspector would go to the trouble of killing someone and planting all your evidence around the scene because he was questioned about an alleged theft?”

  Roger grabbed at straws. “He beat me in the cell, only an hour ago.” His voice rose, his desperation made it to the surface, and that’s what Shelby clearly saw. A desperate man.

  “Okay, Roger,” he said, “I’ll look into it.”

  “You really don’t believe me, do you?”

  Shelby made no reply.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “How did he plant the evidence, how could he plant the evidence?”

  Roger thought for a long time before looking back at Shelby, before looking through him. “I have no idea.”

  “Did you have sex with her?”

  “Who, Nicky Bridgestock?”

  “Yes, Nicky Bridgestock.”

  “I’ve already said I didn’t know the girl.”

  “This is a picture of Nicky’s face; perhaps she went under an alias.” Shelby handed Roger another photograph.

  “No, I’ve never seen her before.” He slid the picture back across the table. “Why ask me if I’ve ever had sex with her? What sham have you come up with now?”

  “It’s no sham, Roger. We found a hair, a pubic hair in amongst her own—”

  “Oh go on, you think that’s mine, too?”

  “Judging by the evidence we’ve collected so far, I’d say it was a pretty safe bet, wouldn’t you?”

  “But, just one?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “It’s a plant, Shelby!” Roger’s arms shot outwards to emphasise his eureka moment. “I’ve never found only a single hair. Two, three or a clump of them, but never just one. Doesn’t that suggest a plant to you?”

  “It represents good, hard evidence.”

  “Go on, surprise me, it is my pubic hair, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t know for sure yet. I was hoping you could save us a couple of grand trying to find out, really. All you’ve got to do to make things easier on yourself is admit having sex with her.”

  Now Roger’s temper surfaced again. “I didn’t have sex with her! Since I was twenty-three, I have slept with only two women: my wife and Alice Mary Taylor. Did you find any semen, any trace of lubricant from a condom?”

  “What car do you drive?”

  “Did you find anything? Answer me, Shelby, otherwise I stop being so fucking co-operative and demand a solicitor.”

  Shelby stared at Roger. “No, we only found the hair.”

  “Then it’s a plant, man. Are you so blind? It all makes sense to me, but you can’t see the weather for the twatting snow! Open your eyes.”

  “Calm down, Roger.”

  “Piss off with your ‘calm down’. Put yourself in my shoes – wherever they are – would you be calm with someone’s murder pinned to you? Well? Would you bollocks.”

  “What car do you drive?”

  “Sierra.”

  “What year?”

  “Ninety-five.”

  “Seats?”

  “Four.”

  Shelby cursed under his breath. “What material?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what fibres you found on her clothing, I’ll just agree with you and we can move onto the next load of shit you’ve got lined up.” He slouched in his chair. “If I did kill her,” Shelby sat up, “don’t you think I would have cleaned the inside of my car to remove her fibres from them? Or if I was really clever, I could have used one of those polythene seat covers that mechanics use.” He shook his head, rubbed his fingertips. “If you find fibres belonging to a Sierra on her clothes, bully for you, it proves she rode in a Sierra, it doesn’t prove she rode in my Sierra.” Shelby’s face remained expressionless. “It’s in the car park, impound it and SOCO it.”

  “Already done, Roger.” Shelby flicked the corner of a file with a fingernail.

  “So what’s with the stupid questions then?”

  “Answers, that’s what’s with the questions.”

  Suddenly Roger beamed. “I had a pair of underpants go missing.”

  “What?”

  “It all makes sense now.”

  Shelby said, “What the hell are you blabbing on about?”

  “I know where Weston got my pubic hair. You can ask Lenny Firth.”

  “Ask Firth what?” Shelby couldn’t understand where this was going.

  “Last time I played squash with Lenny Fir
th, we got back to the locker room and a pair of my underpants had been stolen.”

  Shelby barely managed to conceal a smile, but he got the impression Roger detected it anyway.

  “Go on and ask him if you don’t believe me.” He sat back quickly and folded his arms like a chastised child, and it wouldn’t have surprised Shelby if he stuck his tongue out.

  “Someone stole a pair of your underpants from the locker room?”

  “Correct.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  Roger faced forward. “To plant evidence on a fucking corpse? I thought it was someone taking the piss at first, and eventually I forgot about it; but it all makes sense now.”

  “To you maybe.”

  “Weston must’ve rooted around in my locker, stole things that didn’t belong to him, and then planted them on the body. I think that makes a whole shit-load of sense. Don’t you?”

  “Incredible, I’d call it. Weston stealing your pubic hair?”

  “That it belonged to me hasn’t been established yet.”

  “I’m assuming that it’s yours since your fingerprints and your name and number have been found around the scene. A fair assumption, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Roger said nothing.

  “So, Weston placed your fingerprints at the scene as well, did he? Explain it to me. Go on, I’m all ears.”

  “Tell me and then we’ll both know. But someone sure as hell did, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. You!”

  Roger offered a weak laugh. “You know, this whole thing is preposterous. You’ll accuse me of killing Sally Delaney next.”

  Shelby stopped flicking the file. He blinked, sat up straight and watched the smile fall off Roger’s face. “Did you?”

  “No! I did not.”

  “They were both stabbed in the neck.”

  “So you’re sharing info with me now, huh. Hoping I’ll slip that little nugget into the interview somewhere? Well, I didn’t know Nicky was stabbed in the neck—”

  “But if you did kill her, Sally I mean, the scene’s messed up now; you’ve contaminated it since you were there to examine that scene. You had legitimate access,” Shelby suggested.

  “Ah, but I didn’t do Nicky’s scene, did I?”

  “Exactly. And we found your evidence at Nicky’s scene.”

  “If I wanted to corrupt that evidence, supposing I did kill Nicky – which I did not, I would have volunteered to do her scene with Chris.”

  “No, no; Chris Hutchinson said you had other commitments. Like visiting Alice, we’ve since learned.”

  “If I had killed Nicky Bridgestock, I would have gone to the scene to nullify the evidence. If I’d wanted to ruin the fingerprint theory, I would’ve accepted Chris’s invitation to do the PolyLight.”

  “Your marks were already at the bureau by then.”

  “That’s my proof! How would I know that?”

  “But even if you visited Nicky’s scene, you couldn’t eradicate your name, number and hair, could you?”

  Roger sat back in his flimsy plastic chair, sweat glowing on his forehead. “If I was going to kill Nicky Bridgestock, why would I write my details on her hand and then kill her?”

  Shelby kept the distance between them constant; he leaned forward, laced his fingers and grinned an old dog grin, eyes twinkling. “Double bluff.”

  “Bollocks. I’ve heard of kids doing that sort of thing with graffiti, but come on, this is murder. I wouldn’t do it, Graham. I wouldn’t take the risk.”

  “I don’t think she was your intended victim. Maybe you met her in Wakefield, exchanged numbers and then you ran her home. You wanted sex then, and maybe she did something to offend you, just as you were close to penetration. And you lost it, Roger, you lost it big style and you stabbed her in the neck!”

  “I did not!”

  “It’s rough, I grant you. But I was hoping you’d fill out the details for me.”

  “Fuck, Shelby, make ‘em up. You’re pretty good at storytelling.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  — One —

  Chris found Firth in the Major Incident Room. It was a large office attached to the briefing room, and set up specifically to deal with the murder of Nicky Bridgestock and nothing else. When the investigation was complete, the room would be mothballed, HOLMES 2 would be shut down and the team disbanded back to whatever division from which they had been abstracted, resuming work of a more routine nature.

  Taped to the Incident Room walls were plans of Nicky’s house, maps of the surrounding district, dates, times, names, associates, her recent whereabouts, her last known activities – everything that was known about the short life of Nicky Bridgestock. And next to the whiteboard at the head of the room, there was a blown up photograph of the girl herself, smiling, happy and young.

  And dead.

  “Lenny, have you got any news about the interview yet?” Chris asked.

  “Nope, not a sausage.”

  “Well,” he whispered, “I think it’s only fair to go and tell his wife what’s going on. It’s four o’clock; he’s due home in an hour and when he doesn’t show, it’s going to worry her.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Firth wagged a stern finger. “That’s part of my job. In fact, after I’ve been to OHU, and got this Section 18 search warrant authorised, that’s just where I’m heading.”

  “Shelby working you hard, then?”

  “I can handle it.”

  “I’ll be out of your way before you get there,” Chris said, about to leave.

  “No you’re not—”

  “Come on, Lenny, give the woman a break. She’s not well. Let her hear the news from someone she knows and trusts. I’m their friend. I—”

  “No!”

  The Indexers and HOLMES Sergeant looked around at them.

  Chris lowered his voice, “I promise I won’t ask her any questions or give away any of your information, I just want to be the one who tells her. I’ve known her for years. Anyway, you won’t even know I’ve been.”

  “I can’t let you do it, Chris.”

  “You owe me, Lenny,” he whispered.

  “How the fuck do I owe you?”

  “I bagged you a bloody killer, didn’t I?” His whisper grew menacing. “And anyway, I’m off duty myself soon; are you going to stop me popping in there for a coffee?” He smiled reassuringly at the Indexers. They went back to work.

  Lenny gave it some thought. “Okay,” he conceded, “but if you find any sniff of evidence, or she tells you anything of interest, firstly you get out of there, and secondly you tell me. Understand?”

  “Deal.”

  “You say nothing about—”

  “I’m not about to piss on your bonfire. I won’t give away any operational secrets. I simply want to be the one to tell her. We’re good friends, you know.”

  “Okay. Like I said, I’ll be paying her a visit myself later, but maybe you’re right; it would be a good idea for a friendly face to see her first. What’s wrong with her, anyway?”

  “Arthritis.”

  “Ouch. My gran had that; nasty business.”

  “Yeah, nasty,” Chris said.

  — Two —

  It was Friday. Beaver’s big day. He had ‘borrowed’ the pool car from an associate, and then he stole a Wakefield street atlas.

  The car, an old Escort, was on false plates, used illegal red diesel and ran out of tax about the same time its tyres ran out of tread. It hadn’t seen an MOT station in years. Water dripped onto Beaver’s skinhead from the so-called sunroof. The wipers worked when they felt like it.

  He drove through town, past French-style cafes, the trendy wine bars and then out of Wakefield, up Leeds Road past the drive-through chippy, past the video and hardware stores and pulled into a lay-by so he could double check the map. Nervously, he chewed gum. He turned to the page he’d folded over, found his location with a dirty nail-bitten finger, and made a mental picture of the directions to follow on foot.

 
; “Wedgwood Grove. Next left, left again and then right. Next left, left again and then right,” he repeated. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.” If there were any witnesses to the killing, they would see him leaving the scene dressed in a red coat and blue jeans. He planned on turning the corner and reversing the coat, pulling it inside out, so black showed, giving himself sufficient time to get back here at a leisurely pace. He climbed from the car, slammed its door and crossed the street.

  Beaver took his first left and almost fell onto the baby as a pushchair took his feet from under him.

  “Sorry, sorry,” said the young mother. “I’m lethal with this thing. I haven’t passed my test yet.” She smiled shyly at him, waited for a jovial response.

  Beaver glared. He regained his balance, and carried on walking, glancing back over his shoulder. Clumsy fucking bitch! How’s that for blending in, he thought.

  He took his next left and then crossed diagonally over the quiet suburban street, turned right where kids threw ball and cycled around in the rain, where dogs barked at the fun and where elderly neighbours stood chatting beneath golfing umbrellas, plumes of hurried breath pulsing out of their gummy mouths. The sun was twenty minutes from being dead, and high in the third quarter of the sky, a translucent half-moon dangled in a solitary patch of clear sky.

  Beaver kept on walking, the wind in his face, watching the house numbers roll by. He looked at the smudged number written on his hand: thirteen; unlucky for some, he mused.

  Thirteen came slowly up on his left side.

  He continued walking, taking several lengthy glances at the house. He could see no one through the lounge or hall windows, he could see no one upstairs, and the drive was empty except for a few oil stains and a ragged cat taking shelter under a handmade wooden bench. He decided to continue his walk for another hundred yards and maybe select a vantage point from which to view the house without being the centre of attention himself. He spat out the gum and fumbled through his pockets for more.

  — Three —

  “Boss, boss.” Firth closed the cell area gate and walked down the corridor to meet Shelby as he came out of the toilet.

  “Can’t I even have a leak without—”

  “Two bits of news.”