One Dead Witness hc-3

by Nick Oldham

  ‘ They’re just outside the shower door.’ She dropped them onto the floor.

  Another murmur was the response.

  Myrna retreated from the restroom. Back in the office she sat on her leather chair and tried to work out what the hell was going on. On the desk-top lay the newspaper the female had been carrying. It was soaking wet, near to deterioration. Myrna considered tossing it into the wastebasket. Before she did, she unrolled it carefully.

  It was a five-day-old edition of the British Daily Mail. Not an unusual sight in Miami, where British newspapers were common on the streets and sold at many stores. Myrna flattened it carefully so the sports headlines were uppermost. She turned the paper over and read the news headlines.

  The irony of it was that, through snoring loudly, Danny woke herself up. She cursed. She had been to sleep and then, fuck it, she had woken herself up. This, she thought, was going to be one of those nights.

  She rolled over, tugged the duvet tight around her head and shut her eyes. It was one o’clock. In six hours she had to be up. Six hours

  … if only she could get six hours, that would be bliss — almost a normal night’s sleep. Six lovely hours…

  The restroom door opened and Myrna looked up.

  The sex-chatline telephonist, who had been a vital witness against Bussola, the girl by the name of Tracey Greenwood stood there, one of the bath towels folded around her, another smaller towel around her head. Myrna had to admit she looked a thousand times better than she had done an hour before when Myrna had brought her into the office.

  ‘ Hi. How are you feeling?’

  ‘ Okay.’

  ‘ You should really go to hospital.’

  ‘ I’m fine, nothing’s broken; you didn’t run into me, I jumped onto your bonnet.’

  ‘ Bonnet?’

  ‘ Bonnet — hood — you know.’

  ‘ Oh yeah, I see. Bonnet’s English.’

  ‘ Yeah, summat like that.’

  Myrna stood up. ‘Come on, sit over here.’ She pointed to the sofa. ‘I’ve got some coffee on, but I’ve only been able to find some cookies to eat. There’s not much food around the office.’

  ‘ It’s okay, I’m not really hungry.’

  The girl pulled the bath towel tight and tottered across the office to the sofa. Myrna watched her out of the corner of her eye whilst she fixed two cups of steaming coffee from the filter machine. The girl was deadly thin, her legs seemingly no fatter than a ballpoint pen; her shoulders protruded bones and her arms were like twigs, dry-looking and capable of being snapped. She looked anorexic and like a drug addict. The mainline marks on the inside of her arms and the backs of her knees were prominent. Some had scabs on them, where blunt, rusted or pre-used needles had been inserted. It would not be long before she was dead.

  Myrna handed her a coffee. She took it gratefully, hands a-quiver. She piled numerous lumps of brown sugar in then added cream.

  Myrna drank hers back. She lowered herself down onto the opposite end of the couch.

  The girl sipped her sweet brew. Her eyes traversed the office and the view across Miami. ‘Nice office,’ she commented.

  ‘ Thanks.’

  ‘ I suppose you’re wondering why I threw myself at you.’

  ‘ You could say that.’

  A massive shiver suddenly convulsed the girl’s whole body. She almost spilled her coffee. ‘Oh God,’ she gasped, ‘I really need a fix.’ She looked hopefully at Myrna.

  ‘ Coffee’s as far as I go.’

  ‘ I really wanted to see Kruger.’

  ‘ He’s dead.’

  ‘ I know.’

  ‘ So why have you come?’ Myrna demanded because she suddenly remembered that Kruger’s death might have been prevented if only this girl hadn’t disappeared. ‘You’re partly responsible for him dying. If you’d stayed and testified in the first place, Bussola might still be in the can.’

  ‘ No way. Don’t try to pin that one on me.’

  ‘ Okay — so I ask again: why are you here?’

  ‘ I know something,’ she said. A look of horror crossed her face and remained there. Myrna studied her carefully and thought the girl’s expression was the result of seeing something so painful that even its memory brought back terror. The girl’s head flicked quickly towards Myrna; her opaque, lifeless eyes produced tears which tumbled down her white cheeks. ‘I know something,’ she repeated with a sob of anguish. ‘Something terrible.’

  Danny was in a sort of dream-filled twilight zone, somewhere between sleep and deep sleep, images of fifteen years ago zipping through her mind. She was walking towards a door. From behind the door were voices. Angry. Raised. Arguing. Danny was in uniform. Her police car was parked behind her. There were white chippings underneath her feet, scrunching as she walked. She got closer to the door. The voices became louder. A man and a woman. The words had meant nothing to her. Merely jumbled. A big disagreement, possibly the first stages of domestic violence.

  At the time she only half-listened to what was said, yet the words must have lodged themselves into her mind subconsciously. Like someone half-seeing a number plate and subsequently dredging it out of the recycle bin of the memory whole and complete.

  But the mind is a curious organ. Often it stores things the owner doesn’t even know are there. The skill is in the process of recall. Sometimes it is a skill which can be acquired. Other times it is pure luck or circumstance which is the catalyst.

  And that night it was a dream, because Danny had fallen asleep thinking about poor Claire Lilton… and the coincidence was that fifteen years before she had visited Joe Lilton’s home on the outskirts of Blackburn to do a firearms enquiry and had stumbled into a domestic dispute, but at the time had not really heard the words which were being said as she walked to the door of the house.

  In her dream, Danny was back there. It was a perfect reconstruction. All her recall was superb, even down to the words which passed between Joe and his then wife.

  Danny woke abruptly and for once did not lose the dream. It was there with her, vivid and exact.

  ‘ Jesus, Jesus.’ She threw the duvet off and got into her dressing-gown. She dashed downstairs, cursing herself for not keeping a pen and paper next to the bedside. She found both in the kitchen odds and sods cupboard and scribbled down the words.

  Suddenly they all made sense.

  The memory must have hurt the girl. Since speaking those last words she had lapsed into a vague silence, blankly staring through the window.

  ‘ What do you know, Tracey?’ Myrna asked softly, unable to stand it any longer.

  Tracey jumped like a charge had been passed through her. She raised a thin finger and pointed to Myrna’s desk. ‘The newspaper… can you get the newspaper?’

  Myrna placed her coffee down, crossed the office and peeled the wet paper from her desk blotter and carefully carried it back, handing it over to Tracey. She took it and laid it on the sofa. She did not open the paper, as Myrna expected her to, simply pointed to the headlines.

  ‘ What? You know something about that?’

  Tracey nodded.

  Myrna twisted her head and skimmed through the story underneath the headlines. It was all about the discovery of a girl’s body in some woodland in the North of England. It was a fairly run-of-the-mill story in national newspaper terms and had only made headlines because other good news was scarce, and the way in which the body had been discovered was obviously of great interest to many people. Lovers frolicking in a woodland glade don’t often find bodies — but when they do they can rest assured the whole world will want to know and so will their legal partners.

  ‘ What do you know?’ Myrna asked.

  ‘ I know the girl who was murdered… Annie Reece. She was my friend.’ Her voice faltered. ‘And I know who killed her.’

  ‘ Go on,’ said Myrna

  ‘ His name is Charlie Gilbert. You know him too… he was one of the men who were defiling that girl the other night.’

 
Chapter Sixteen

  ‘ A sodding dream?’ Henry exclaimed with mixture of contempt and amusement. ‘You want to go and investigate something because you had a dream? I need you here, not gallivanting across the county on some cockamamie goose chase.’

  Danny rubbed her face and held her thumb and forefinger at the bridge of her nose in an effort to alleviate the monstrous headache she had as a result of the lack of sleep. ‘I know it sounds whacky, Henry, but I think it’s worth following up.’

  ‘ Tell me what the dream was and I might let you go.’

  ‘ It was… oh God,’ she began hesitantly. The images which had been so alive had now faded away to nothingness. It was a good job she had written some of the words down. ‘Words. I just remembered some words I’d heard years ago and I think there might be some connection with Claire.’

  ‘ And how many years ago did you hear those words?’ There was a hint of mockery in his voice.

  ‘ Fifteen.’

  ‘ And Claire was only eleven, right?’

  ‘ I know it sounds completely stupid and my mind is like a little ball of cotton wool at the moment, which doesn’t help matters.’ She was pacing Henry’s office. ‘But humour me. Give a sucker an even break.’

  She stood across the desk from Henry. Pale, tired, drawn. She had not even bothered to put on make-up, which was very unusual. She looked ill.

  ‘ Okay,’ he relented. ‘Although I don’t know how I’ll justify it if anyone asks me — “my DS is following up a lead from a dream”. Sounds like something from The X-files.’

  ‘ Thanks, Henry. I’m grateful.’

  ‘ You’ve got until five today, then it’s back to reality, Danny — and take a mobile with you, just in case we need you back here.’

  She shot out of the office before he finished speaking.

  Tracey was sleeping now, curled up on the sofa with Myrna’s overcoat laid over her thin body. She twitched constantly and moaned, sometimes fearfully, as though demons were chasing her.

  Myrna leaned back in her big office chair, feet on the edge of the desk, her half-closed eyes on Tracey, working through the horror story Tracey had spent a couple of hours relating in minute detail.

  The sound of police sirens on the streets below permeated through the triple-glazed windows.

  The big question for Myrna was — what was the next step to take? Or even, did she believe what Tracey was saying? Or was it simply revenge?

  Myrna believed it was true. It was other people, she guessed, who would have to be convinced. She flicked open her electronic organiser and tabbed through the directory to find the phone number she required.

  Within thirty minutes of leaving Henry’s office, Danny, in a plain CID car, was leaving the motorway and heading east towards Blackburn. She bore left towards Clitheroe and passed British Aerospace at Salmesbury, the classic English Electric Lightning guarding the gates like a huge Airfix kit. Even compared to jet-fighters today, the Lightning still looked the biz.

  Minutes later she turned left off the main road and cut down towards Osbaldeston.

  In fifteen years the place had changed little. She drove straight to the large house which had once belonged to Joe Lilton. Apart from a new colour for the woodwork, the house looked exactly the same. A large Mercedes was on the driveway, the same colour as Danny’s somewhat older model had been. She experienced a tinge of sadness at the thought of her lovely car, but was thankful the insurance meant that in the not-too distant future, there would be a brand-spanker on her drive.

  As she walked to the house this time there were no sounds of people arguing. A couple of dogs barked when she rapped on the door, which opened after a short wait. Two black Labradors bounded out and surrounded her in a friendly way.

  ‘ Can I help?’ asked the lady with them.

  She was in her fifties with a ruddy complexion, a large aquiline nose and sharp, angular face. Danny knew instantly it was not Joe Lilton’s former wife. She sighed inwardly, knowing she’d been a bit optimistic to hope to still find her here.

  ‘ I’m looking for an old friend,’ Danny said, thinking that introducing herself as a cop might complicate matters. ‘She lived here, ooh, a good fifteen years ago. We lost touch when I moved south. Her married name was Lilton.’

  The woman considered the information, then shook her head. ‘No, doesn’t ring a bell. We’ve been here five years; bought the place from a family called Rice. I think the house had been through several hands before that. Sorry.’

  ‘ Okay, thanks. It was a long shot.’

  Danny drove away and pulled up under some trees in a country lane. Even for a cop, finding someone fifteen years on is not necessarily easy. She thought for a few minutes, then had a brainwave. She used the mobile phone Henry had made her take (bless him) and dialled Lancashire Police HQ and asked to be put through to the pensions department in Human Resources.

  She explained who she was and what it was she wanted.

  Less than five minutes later, the woman gave Danny the information she required: Robert Neville, Police Constable, had retired eleven years ago. She gave Danny his address and telephone number. Danny was pleased to discover he still lived in Blackburn.

  Neville was the officer who had regularly worked the mobile beat covering Osbaldeston fifteen years before — the beat Danny had been allocated for that one day when he had been off sick.

  It took Myrna two hours to contact Karl Donaldson at the FBI office in London. He had been in a breakfast meeting with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the head of the Maltese Police, discussing a particular drugs problem involving an American gang.

  When he returned to his office, he had skimmed through his messages, saw the one from Myrna timed at 8 a.m. and was immediately interested. He put her message to the top of the pile, then went to get a coffee. First things first.

  ‘ It was really nice to see you after all these years,’ Robert Neville said with a wave. ‘Sorry I couldn’t help you.’

  ‘ That’s fine,’ Danny said, trying to mask her disappointment. It had been a wasted journey because Neville had no idea where the first Mrs Lilton had gone after she moved away from Osbaldeston. He had just been glad she had gone.

  Danny walked away from Neville’s house towards the CID car, giving a quick backward glance and saying, ‘It was nice to see you too, Bob.’

  ‘ There is one thing that might help, actually… it’s just come to me.’

  Danny tried not to let her shoulders droop. It had been an effort to get away from this man who had been divorced about six years, seemed to be leading a fairly solitary existence, and was reluctant to let the sight of a skirt leave his house without giving it a good long ogle. She turned, firmly believing this to be a delaying tactic.

  ‘ Yeah, there is one thing. I seem to remember that when the Liltons split up, she got a fair percentage of the business. They had a few of those shops that sell everything dirt cheap — toiletries and stationery, stuff like that. They had five shops and I think she got two of them, one in Accrington and one in Burnley. She had to change the name of them, though.’

  ‘ Can you remember what they were called?’ Danny smiled sweetly.

  Neville wracked his brains. ‘Something like, “Everything You Need” or “Just the Ticket” or “Cheep ‘n’ Cheerful”. I’m not sure, sorry. Something tacky. I think the shops are still there. The one in Accrington is on Broadway, I think.’

  At five-fifteen in the morning it could only be one person calling the office. Myrna lunged for the phone on her desk and picked it up before the first chirp had been completed. Tracey moved, disturbed by the noise. She did not wake.

  ‘ Karl?’

  ‘ Yeah, it’s me, Myrna. How ya doin’?’ came the voice from 3000 miles away, loud and clear.

  ‘ Good,’ she whispered into the mouthpiece. ‘Can you hear me okay?’

  ‘ Yeah — but you sound like you don’t want anyone else to hear.’

  ‘ I don’t. Just hold the
line while I transfer you.’

  She put the call through to Steve Kruger’s office and slipped across the hallway, closing the door behind her. It was a strange sensation to sit in Kruger’s chair, but she felt comfortable and warm doing so, almost as if he was still there and she was sitting on his knee. She picked up the phone. ‘That’s better. Now I can talk.’

  ‘ What can I do for you, Myrna? I passed on that last piece of information you gave me to a detective I know in Lancashire Police.’

  ‘ Thanks, Karl. This is about him again, Charlie Gilbert.’

  Donaldson did a quick calculation in his head re time-zones. ‘In that case this must be important if you’re phoning at this time of day.’

  ‘ It is, I think. I want to get something moving, only I’m not sure how. I reckon I need your knowledge.’

  ‘ I’m flattered. Shoot.’

  ‘ The cops in Lancashire have dug up a body, young girl, maybe a week ago now, I’m not sure. It made national headlines because it was found by a man and a woman having sex.’

  ‘ I read about it.’

  ‘ I got some information which points to Gilbert as the perp.’

  Ahh, the word ‘perp’ made him smile nostalgically. ‘Offender’, which they used in England, was just so… dull.

  ‘ Gilbert? How good is the information?’ Donaldson wanted to know. ‘I don’t want to bother the cops with gossip.’

  ‘ It’s better than information, Karl.’ Myrna declared her hand. ‘It’s a witness. I’ve got one here who says she knows for sure it was Gilbert. I believe her, and from what I know of Gilbert I’d believe he’d easily be capable of murder. I just don’t know how to take this forwards… and there is a further complication.’

  ‘ Yep?’ He tried to sound positive.