by Alison Bruce
This time Marks stared down at the list without being prompted to do so.
‘I know I’ve only looked at them because of Rosie and Nathan, but it started me thinking that perhaps Shanie and Meg fitted as yet another pair.’
‘It’s a big jump in thinking. You’re suggesting eight murders, when we only have grounds to investigate one at the moment.’ Marks stared at the remaining sets of papers. ‘So what happened with the other four?’
‘Accidents – two drownings and two drug related.’
Marks was usually seated very upright, both straight backed and sharp eyed. This time though, he buried his face in his hands and pressed his eyes shut with the tips of his fingers. ‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered.
Goodhew wasn’t about to hazard any interpretation of this comment, so he stayed still and silent.
After a long pause that seemed to run on for several minutes, Marks drew a weary breath and leaned back until he appeared to be looking at the wall behind Goodhew. ‘Once in a while it would be a pleasant change for the easy option to be the right one. Never turns out that way, does it?’
‘Sir?’
‘I respect your perseverance, Gary. I would have preferred a clear suicide verdict on both girls, and you might easily have reached the same conclusion. The fact that you haven’t has been the result of more determination on your part than I myself have shown these last few weeks.’ His attention immediately reverted to the papers. ‘So are you familiar with all these documents?’
‘Roughly speaking, I know what they deal with, but I haven’t had time to read them all fully.’
‘Okay, I will need to pull everyone off other assignments and get them back on to this case. I’ll brief them later this morning, so we’ll aim for eleven o’clock. In the meantime . . .’ His attention wandered away briefly, then returned. ‘In the meantime that gives us about three hours, so you go and visit Colin Wren, and I’ll take Len Stacy.’
FORTY-TWO
Goodhew located Colin Wren with a single phone call.
He drove to Chesterton, pulled into the car park of Ferry House and left the police car next to Colin’s van. He spotted Colin almost at once, standing precisely in the same spot as the last time they’d spoken, facing the far end of the garden as if he was still watching Rob Stone walk away.
When he’d said I’m working at the same place Goodhew hadn’t guessed it had been meant quite that literally.
Colin turned to him slowly, his expression quizzical.
‘No Rob today?’ Goodhew asked.
‘No, not today. I’ve spoken to him on the phone, and he seems okay. Says he’ll be back on Monday.’
‘D’you think he’ll really show?’
‘Probably.’ Wren shrugged. ‘We’ll see. I’d like to think it’ll be because his conscience will get the better of him, but he’s more likely to turn up because I don’t pay him if he’s not here. Actually, that’s not entirely fair – he’s much better than he was.’
‘Really?’
‘Give him time.’ Colin Wren’s expression changed, as though he’d only then realized that the reason for Goodhew’s visit might not involve Rob Stone.
Goodhew knew this was his cue. ‘I’m here on another matter, Mr Wren. The death of your brothers.’
Colin looked stunned. ‘Johnnie and Vince?’ Their names were uttered in little more than a whisper. He took a couple of steps backwards, towards the nearest bench. ‘Can we sit?’
‘Of course.’
‘Has something happened?’
Goodhew shook his head. ‘Did you realize that Shanie’s mother was at school with you?’
Colin frowned. ‘I know she was acquainted with Amanda, but I don’t know how. Who is she, exactly?’
‘Sarah Sumner?’
It took him a moment to register that name. ‘The American girl?’
‘Yes, and it’s the connection with your old school that’s made us look back at other cases.’
Colin nodded slowly. ‘I see, but it was twenty-eight years ago. How can there be a connection?’
‘We don’t know that there is, but I’d like you to tell me what you remember.’
‘Don’t you have the case-notes, still?’
‘Some, the rest are archived. I expect they’ll be waiting for me when I get back.’
‘Checking my memory then?’ It was a jokey comment and Colin tried to add a smile but it touched his lips too briefly to count. ‘Obviously I have photos of Johnnie and Vince, but they’re in an album. I saw one of those pictures recently and I realized they looked slightly different to the way I remembered them. In between one time I see the photos and the next, I think I do forget a little bit more.’
Colin leaned forward and plucked a broad blade of grass growing up alongside the leg of the bench. He had one elbow on each knee and split the grass from end to end with the nail of his thumb. He let the two pieces fall to the ground before continuing to speak. ‘Nineteenth of April 1984. It was a Thursday, I remember that clearly. They were a year apart from each other in age, and I was five years older. That made me the serious older brother and them the two irritating kids. I mean, that’s how it seemed then.’ His voice wavered as he finished the sentence. ‘I had this Walkman – they were expensive then and I’d saved for it. John nicked it from my room a couple of weeks before and I’d caught them both with it. I was angry, of course, and next time it happened I ended up scrapping on the floor with Vince. Our house was like that – we were timid at school but rough at home. My mum went nuts.’
‘Because you hit him?’
‘Not with me, just with them. She could see how angry I was, I reckon. I never thought they’d do it again, after that barney.’ He sighed. ‘What a fucking nightmare.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Thursday the next week, they went down to Jesus Green, and I know they had some cans of cider with them. Probably smoking, too, maybe joints. I didn’t actually know where they’d gone, but when they didn’t come back home that night, I guessed they might have been down there.’
‘So you raised the alarm?’
‘No, Mum did. I found out they’d taken my Walkman again and I was angry. Said I wouldn’t look for them. Said they had better bring it back, or else. “I’ll kill the bastards” is what I actually said.’ He clasped his hands behind his neck, eyes shut, head down until he felt it safe to speak again. ‘They’d gone into the water, and the police found the bodies the next day. Still had their clothes on, so they reckoned one had tried to rescue the other. The Walkman was in a carrier bag also in the water. Bag was knotted. Heavy enough to sink I guess, but airtight. It still worked. Fucking thing.’
FORTY-THREE
Len Stacy worked as a brickie and was currently employed on a new housing development out on Cambridge’s northern expansion. The building company was quick to let DI Marks know where to find him, but actually locating plots 108 to 120 on an unmarked and unsurfaced street somewhere in a warren of what felt like hundreds of similar streets took far longer.
In the end, Marks found Stacy at about the same time as Goodhew was wrapping up his interview with Wren.
Stacy was around five foot eight and stocky, the kind of tree-trunk physique that managed to simultaneously look both robust and unhealthy. He was working on the exterior wall of one of the houses. His back was to the road, but he’d turned to look at the approaching car before Marks had even slowed. By the time Marks had parked, Stacy had already reached him. Some people possessed a sixth sense that alerted them to any policeman within a five-mile radius; the fact that Stacy and Marks already recognized each other helped too.
‘Who d’you want?’
‘You, actually.’
Stacy planted his feet so he faced Marks more squarely. His first response was to look angry – some things never changed. ‘Go on,’ he instructed.
Marks didn’t hurry. He wasn’t intending to antagonize the man, but he knew that giving in to Stacy’s bad attitude would provoke him as
much as a slap across his cholesterol-filled face. During Marks’s younger days, rounding up Stacy had been a regular event, especially during football season; luckily that only lasted for about eleven months out of twelve. Stacy had a dull and predictable repertoire: pre-match disturbance, swearing on the terraces, post-match scuffle, pub scuffle, domestic scuffle.
Stereotyping wasn’t great but Stacy was that stereotype, right down to the never-to-be-removed England shirt, fuzzy Union Flag tattoo on his left forearm and a swallow tattooed on his neck. He was fairly adept at the bully stereotype too, flaring up quickly, facing off loudly and, when threatened, backing down at the last, scraping out of trouble time and again.
He had incurred a couple of minor convictions that dated back to his twenties, nothing since.
‘I’m part of a team investigating two sudden deaths in the Cambridge area.’
Stacy’s expression darkened, and he turned his head away. He then pulled a packet of Golden Virginia from his pocket and busied himself with the ritual of Rizla, tobacco, filter, and finally lighting up.
‘And you want to talk to me about my kids, right?’
‘Aiden and Becki, yes.’
‘I thought that was done with.’ His expression hadn’t changed but now his glare was directed at his cigarette rather than at Marks. ‘No point going over it. I don’t think about it any more.’
‘We’re looking into the possibility of a connection between Aiden and Becki’s deaths and another case.’
‘There won’t be one.’ His voice was heavy with disinterest but then his gaze suddenly pitched sideways and landed on Marks. ‘Or is this your way of saying you lot screwed up the investigation?’ He realized how much that answer now made sense to him. ‘Years since I’ve seen you, right?’ He didn’t need to wait for a reply. ‘What are you now – DI or above, right?’
‘Just DI.’
‘You’re too fucking senior to be down here, unless you’ve been sent to sell me some special bullshit. What really happened to my kids, Marks?’
The workers across the road were still now, tools in hand, staring over at the commotion.
‘What do you think happened to them, Mr Stacy?’
‘I don’t think it was an accident.’
‘Then what?’
‘They weren’t heavy users – someone gave them something bad.’
‘But you knew they were using?’
‘I guessed. All teenagers do it. They would’ve known what they were doing though. They just mucked around, nothing serious.’
Marks had heard the It was just marijuana/steroids/Ecstasy, delete-as-applicable, shock response from a bereaved parent/friend/relative, also delete-as-applicable, too many times in the past. It had ceased to surprise him years ago, but he felt increasingly angry every time it was trotted out.
‘They weren’t stupid,’ Stacy continued firmly.
‘I also wanted to inform you that we will be running further tests on the blood samples taken at the time.’
Stacy ground out the butt of his cigarette between his discoloured thumb and index finger and dropped the rest. ‘Should have guessed you lot didn’t look into it very hard. Couple of no-hope kids, what do you care?’
‘Actually I do, and if anything has been missed in the earlier investigation I’ll do my utmost to find it. That means I will stay in contact with you.’
Stacy shook his head in disgust and turned back towards the half-built house. After three or four paces he hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it over his left shoulder. He cocked his head towards Marks and then shouted to a colleague, ‘Old Bill reckon they’ve cocked up.’
Marks walked towards his car.
When Stacy reached the other men he turned again, and as Marks closed his car door, delivered his final volley.
‘I lost everything, when I lost them. My kids were my fucking world.’
Marks retaliated silently, No, they weren’t. But they should have been.
FORTY-FOUR
At primary school they called him Nobby, as in ‘copper nob’. And by fifteen it had been shortened to Nob. Or variations. Oi, Nob or You fucking nob were the two most common.
He’d dyed his hair now and his teeth were no longer overcrowded, nor tipping back like king penguins the moment before they topple.
He’d still looked like that in the last school photo. It had been one of those whole-school roll-out efforts, the ones that seemed like a good idea, that parents bought then didn’t know what to do with. Mostly they seemed destined to stay in some drawer, probably held tight by their original elastic band until either the rubber perished or the photograph was dug out in response to one of those ‘Do you remember so-and-so . . . ?’
For Nobby it had been neither scenario. He’d never even thought about the school photo since the day it was taken. His mum hadn’t bought a copy and he hadn’t cared. What interest was there in a photograph full of the victims and the bullies and worse still, those who stood silently on the sideline. Those with their sympathetic expressions and too little courage to harness the power of majority.
It had been an airless July afternoon when he’d first clapped his eyes on the wretched thing. An hour earlier and it would have only been a school photo. By the time he saw it, it had become the answer, the map and the future.
He’d helped himself to that same copy without asking, and now it stood on its end on the shelf next to the TV.
He liked watching television, but sometimes found it impossible to concentrate on any programme until he’d opened out the photo and studied it one more time.
He didn’t think it counted as either a trophy or the start of one of those obsessional collections of the newspaper clippings or hacked-up photographs that other killers seemed to collect.
In reality he didn’t know much about any of it. He certainly didn’t consider himself a criminal. That word belonged to the kind of opportunistic conscience-free scum who undermined society. He was on the other side of the fence – right over the other side.
One day he’d be arrested, charged and put on trial. There would be condemnation until they’d heard his side. The jurors would be the adult equivalents of one section of the kids in the photograph.
Two rows staring out at him, blank faced because of the unfamiliarity of it – but fully alert nonetheless.
Their expressions wouldn’t change but finally their eyes would light up as they recognized the truth.
He doubted that he would be faced with jail, although he’d understand it if the judge handed down a custodial term. The law needed to maintain the illusion that this wasn’t an acceptable way for good people to behave. He’d see the look of apology in the judge’s eye and accept his fate like a man.
He was well versed at imagining every scenario he expected to face. The courtroom scene was a favourite. He’d even been to visit the court; he sat in the public gallery watching a wretched defendant named Bryant deny that he’d ever seen a succession of stolen vehicles – even the ones smothered with his fingerprints, DNA and trademark touched-up paintwork.
£120,000 worth of BMWs.
Bryant’s defence relied on: ‘Must be a mistake . . .’
Nobby’s own defence would centre on the more challenging assertion: ‘I knew exactly what I was doing and I never got it wrong.’ He would take them back to the beginning . . .
He barely noticed himself reach for the photograph, but once it was in his hands, his fingers traced over the curve of the roll and the sheen of the glossy coated paper.
This photograph would definitely be Exhibit Number 1. The police would probably label it differently, by using a numeric reference that, for them at least, held a wider significance. But he would explain to them that it had to be Exhibit 1 and refuse to refer to it by any other name.
The moment had come to look at it again so he placed the end approximately three inches to the left of his left elbow and unrolled it from there. He knew this was the perfect position so that the group he wanted to view
would appear directly in front of him.
And there they were.
He could almost hear Mr McCracken calling out their names with his Glaswegian growl swamping every syllable. The boys by their surnames, Brett, McCarthy, Stacy, Stone, Viney and Wren. And full names for the girls: Mandy French and Sarah Sumner.
McCracken never spat out all those names in the same breath – that was his own, minor embellishment. In fact, they weren’t all in the same class or even the same school year.
But by luck they were all in the same quarter of this big roll-out picture, and Nobby loved the way they all stared out at him, unaware of the invisible rings that circled some, the lines that joined the circles, and the way they were close enough for him to cover their faces with the tips of his fingers and make them disappear.
Just staring at the picture brought back that summer: the sawdust and the disinfectant mix that was swept along the corridors to remove the smell of sweat and the trodden-in food scraps and dirt on the stair carpet. The stewed smell that hung in the air outside the cafeteria even when the school was silent at the weekends. And the holes the kids had cut in the six-foot fence to get them out, or in, at will.
The deserted playground and the sound of the football being kicked rhythmically against the science-block wall until Mr Groves, the caretaker, bustled over to tell everyone to get lost.
All of those memories had been nothing until the first and subsequent unrolling of that photograph. Clichéd as it sounded, the day it was taken now seemed like only yesterday, and he wished he could fall into that scene, knowing what had really happened, knowing what he knew now.
He liked to think he would have killed them all.
He might have regretted that, for who would have suffered then? Their parents, their loved ones, but not them. Or he might have done nothing, and regretted that more.