by Nick Oldham
Henry checked the time. ‘Better get going. They’ve both been in custody over twelve hours now; another twelve and we’ll be after a Superintendent’s extension.’
Gilbert and Spencer were interviewed all day, sometimes for extended periods, sometimes in short bursts. All the time Danny and Henry kept an eye on their rights, ensuring they got adequate breaks and refreshments and the interviews were conducted fairly and without oppression.
All in all, very frustrating.
Being polite to people suspected of murdering kids did not come easy to either detective and as the day wore on, the veneer cracked occasionally. Particularly when they could see they were getting nowhere fast.
Neither prisoner admitted anything which would incriminate them in the murder, not even when the detectives — reluctantly — played their best hand and dropped Grace’s evidence on their laps.
At 6 p.m. that day, decisions needed to be made.
‘ Let me get this straight: as it stands at the moment, the only thing that will convict me now is the evidence from that little girl.’
‘ That’s true, but the task of discrediting her story would not be too onerous, I would suggest.’
Gilbert spread his sausage-like fingers on the table. ‘The only problem is, she knows some things only an eye-witness would know. She saw us bashing the girl’s face and she saw us drag her into the shower and wash her; she also saw us get rid of the bedding. It’s little things like that which make her story all too real.’
‘ You’re right,’ Stanway agreed.
‘ I think,’ Gilbert pointed at Stanway, ‘it would be better for all of us if that young lady were unable to give evidence, don’t you, Maurice?’
Stanway went icy from head to toe. His throat constricted. He squeaked, ‘What do you mean? You want her paid off, or something?’
Gilbert chuckled evilly at Stanway’s misconception. His pig eyes bored into Stanway’s. ‘No, I mean that for all concerned, she would be better off dead.’
Stanway’s rectum squinted as he held back a fart of fear. ‘You mean..?’
‘ Are you fucking thick, Maurice? I thought you had a law degree.’
‘ I… I do. I…’ He was dumb for a moment, then blurted, ‘What are you suggesting?’
Gilbert leaned on the table which creaked under his weight. His voice was just above a whisper, but was dangerous nonetheless. ‘Go and see my co-defendant, Mr Spencer, and tell him to give you the name of someone who will, for a fee, be happy to go and visit our young lady-friend, wherever she may be, and put a pillow over her face, or whatever is most appropriate.’
‘ I can’t do that.’
‘ You can and you will.’
Stanway’s bottom lip flapped uncontrollably like an awning in high winds as he babbled nervously, ‘I’m a solicitor, not someone who organises contracts on people. And anyway, we don’t know where they’re keeping the girl. She’s in secure accommodation somewhere.’
‘ And that’s a problem for you?’
‘ It is.’
Gilbert’s voice did not change, but to Stanway’s ears it became more and more menacing.
‘ Are you telling me you cannot walk out of here, pick up a phone and speak to one of our like-minded colleagues in the Social Services — and they would be unwilling to give you that information? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘ No, but…’
‘ But what? Now let me spell this out for you, Maurice. In more ways than one I am very big in the Northwest of England. Very rich, very well-connected. I’m sure I’ll be able to ride out the storm caused by the material the police have found in my house, but facing a murder charge is a very different kettle of fish.’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘I know you have a predilection for putting your twinkle into the bottoms of little boys…’ The solicitor started to babble a protest; Gilbert held up a hand to shut him up. ‘I don’t have a problem with that, Maurice, as you know, but what I’m leading up to is this: many of my friends and business associates have the same bent, shall we say. I could reel off a list of names of businessmen, councillors, school governors, all sorts of people — solicitors, even. So, what I’m getting at is this — if I get done for murder, lots more heads will roll, Maurice. Including yours, my friend.’
Maurice Stanway, LLB, was stone grey and feeling bilious.
‘ If she dies, and it’s made to look like a coincidence, then I’ll be very happy indeed. Have I made my point?’
Henry’s office: Danny replaced the phone. ‘Nothing further from the forensic team.’ She relayed the news grimly to Henry and FB.
Henry tapped his bottom teeth with his thumbnail. It was 6.30 p.m. ‘No supporting evidence,’ he said bitterly. ‘This is shit.’
‘ There’s not even any point in going for a Super’s extension,’ Danny said. ‘An extra twelve hours only gives us until tomorrow morning. They’ll be spending eight of those asleep.’
‘ Charge him,’ FB said. ‘Put him before court in the morning and get a three-day lie-down so we can get into his ribs about the other murder in Darwen.’
‘ Based on what?’ Henry enquired. ‘A witness in the States who’s done a runner? And not only that, we don’t know one hundred per cent that it is a murder. The post mortem was inconclusive.’
‘ He has to be questioned about it at the very least. And we need chats with him about all the stuff in his house. I think we’ve stumbled onto something very big here.’
‘ What about Spencer?’
‘ He’s going nowhere. Charge him with murder too, get a three-day lie-down and let’s have a nice long chat with him about the two mispers we found in his place — and Grace’s allegations about him sexually assaulting her.’
Henry and Danny nodded. Henry crossed to the computer in his office and logged into the custody system.
He started to prepare a murder charge.
‘ Do you wish to make any reply to the charge?’ Danny asked Gilbert. ‘If so, you may like to write it in the space here on the form, or I’ll gladly write it for you.’
‘ Only that you’ll all regret your mistake, but I don’t wish to have that recorded, so no — no reply.’
Danny turned to Spencer. They had been jointly charged. He shook his head, said nothing.
Danny completed the charge forms and handed the defendants their copies. They immediately gave them to Stanway who stuffed them into his briefcase. Danny thought he looked decidedly agitated. His hands were shaking as he closed the case. He appeared near to collapse.
‘ Are you okay, Mr Stanway?’ she asked with concern. ‘You look peaky.’
‘ I’m fine, thanks,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ll see you all at court in the morning.’ He turned to leave, only to find he had not locked his case properly. It flipped open, scattering the contents across the floor, papers, pens, forms, everywhere.
Danny helped him collect them together. She was unaware that the last piece of paper she handed to him only had one bit of information on it. A telephone number given to Stanway by Ollie Spencer.
The number of a killer.
Stanway waited in the dark in his car in one corner of a deserted coach park near to Blackpool football club’s increasingly dilapidated ground. The beat of his heart seemed to be taking place in his throat.
A movement in the shadows made him gasp.
He peered through the windscreen into the darkness. A man was standing there. How he had got to that position, Stanway did not know. On his hands and knees perhaps.
There was the flare of a match, briefly illuminating a face, the features of which were difficult to make out. The match died, the end of a cigarette burned.
Another match was struck, flared, tossed to one side.
Two matches. The agreed signal.
‘ Oh God,’ muttered Stanway. He opened his car door and had to lift his numb legs out of the footwell and onto the ground with his hands. He was sure he would fall over as soon as he put any weight on them. But they held him up. Only jus
t, but they worked.
Stanway teetered across to the man in the shadows, stopping about six feet away from him. The end of the cigarette glowed as he took a drag. Stanway smelled booze and body odour as well as the smoke.
‘ Got the money?’
‘ Half now, half when it’s done.’
‘ That wasn’t the arrangement.’
‘ Oh yes it was.’ Stanway tried to sound assertive.
A hand appeared. Stanway fumbled in his pocket and slapped an envelope into the waiting palm.
‘ Do I need to count it?’
‘ It’s all there.’
‘ It better be.’
‘ The job needs to be done soon. Tonight if possible. Are you sure you can do it?’
The man sniggered. ‘Piece of piss. Where is she?’
Stanway told him.
‘ Tomorrow night, back here, same time,’ the man said. ‘Make sure you come alone again and with the rest of the money. If you don’t, I’ll come for you, Mr Stanway.’
The man moved into deeper shadow. Stanway saw the butt of the cigarette drop to the ground, heard the scrunch of a heel, then there was no sound. The man had gone.
Danny worked for two hours on the preparation of the remand file for Gilbert and Spencer. She wanted it to be exactly right and continually read and re-read it until she saw double and her head throbbed.
Finally she completed the front sheet, copied the file and pinned it all together.
She walked wearily to Henry’s office where he was still transcribing one of the interviews from tape to paper. A tedious task, usually carried out by a trained civvie. Unfortunately they didn’t work after five and urgent files don’t wait until the morning. He removed the headphones when Danny came in.
‘ Done,’ she said, and dropped the files onto his desk.
‘ Excellent.’
‘ Now I’m going to have a word with Grace, which I should have done yesterday.’
‘ Don’t spend too much time with her tonight, Danny. Just a quick hello, how are you, we’re still with you, then get yourself to bed. It’s been another long day.’
‘ Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said, leaving the office, giving Henry a tired wave over her shoulder. ‘See ya in the morning.’
She nipped into the CID office, commandeered the keys for one of the cars and five minutes later was heading north out of Blackpool.
St Jude’s was a former primary school, saved from certain demolition about twenty years before when an overflow problem at various juvenile detention centres and children’s homes saved it from the bulldozer. Little money had ever been spent on it and much of its refurbishment was merely cosmetic.
Danny parked in front of the building and went to the huge double doors. She rang the bell and heard it echoing somewhere inside. Footsteps drew nearer and the door was opened by a very formidable-looking woman. Danny knew this to be the matron, named, appropriately enough, Miss Steele.
Danny flashed her badge and introduced herself, already having phoned ahead in advance to warn of her arrival.
‘ She’s in room number four.’ Miss Steele answered Danny’s query and gave her directions.
‘ Is there just yourself on duty?’
‘ Aye, me and nine kids. Want me to take you down to her room?’
‘ I’ll find my own way, thanks. I’ll see you on the way out. Only be about ten minutes.’
‘ I’ll be in the office, just here.’ She pointed to a slightly open door.
Danny thanked her and walked down the corridor. She passed a common room, which she glanced into. Several young girls were lounging around, watching TV. Danny walked on, turned right down a hallway, off which were the private rooms. Grace’s room was the last on the right.
As she walked she felt a distinct chill from a draught blowing thinly down the corridor. At the far end she could see a fire door which was open, banging in the breeze. Danny thought it was unusual, but nothing more than that. She decided she would tell Miss Steele on the way out.
She stopped at Grace’s door and tapped. ‘Grace, it’s me, Danny Furness,’ she cooed. ‘I’ve come to see you.’ Her fingers wrapped around the handle, Danny pushed the door open.
Inside the room, the man sub-contracted by Maurice Stanway looked up. He had not quite finished the job and he forced the pillow down with all his weight onto Grace’s face and at the moment the door opened, she ceased squirming.
Danny could not believe her eyes, but incredulous though the image was, she reacted instantaneously. She threw herself across the room screaming, ‘Get off her, you bastard!’ Her arms flailed as she launched herself over the last few feet.
The man fended her off with the pillow, held like a shield before him, taking all the blows Danny rained down on him.
But he was big and mean and the concept of striking a woman, particularly in this predicament, did not play on his conscience at all. Using the pillow he forced Danny away from him, pushing her roughly. She staggered back.
He dropped the pillow, bunched the fingers of his right hand into a large, hairy fist and drove it towards Danny’s face. It caught her hard, sent her spinning back against Grace’s bed, over the prone figure of the dead girl. Danny knew she did not have the strength or the fighting skill to win here, but she had one thing going for her — long fingernails.
Though dizzy from his punch, she spun round like a panther and lurched towards him again, willing herself to get her claws into his cheeks and dig them in as deeply as humanly possible.
She succeeded. Dramatically so.
Eight fingernails gouged down both his cheeks, drawing rivulets of blood and flesh with them and a howl of pain from the attacker, who reacted by whipping up both his forearms, flicking her hands away and leaving her very open for his next onslaught.
He pummelled her down to the floor and would have gone on, probably to kill her, if Miss Steele hadn’t appeared at the door and shrieked something incomprehensible.
He leapt over Danny, punched Miss Steele out of the way and hurled himself down the corridor towards the open fire escape, which had been his means of entry, and was gone.
Blood dripping from her nose, Danny dragged herself up by the edge of the bed. She looked at Grace’s pale face and placed the tips of her first and second fingers onto her warm neck, checking for the beating of a pulse which she knew she would not find.
Danny then inspected her own fingernails and hoped she had got enough of the man underneath them to identify him through DNA.
Chapter Twenty
In comparison to the previous evening, Saturday morning found Maurice Stanway in his element. He stood before the three magistrates on the Bench in the specially convened court and carefully stacked the files on the table in front of him, adjusted his spectacles and cleared his throat. He squinted contemptuously at the CPS solicitor sitting a few feet away from him; Stanway believed he could run rings round the bugger. He smiled benignly at the magistrate’s clerk and the Bench beyond.
‘ If it may please Your Worships,’ he said with a mouth full of syrup, ‘I represent the defendants in this case, Messrs Gilbert and Spencer…’
In the dock, sitting mutely side by side behind the high brass bars, were the two named persons. Four cops hovered behind them. Neither prisoner was handcuffed.
‘ You have heard my learned friend,’ and there was a slight sneer as Stanway emphasised the word ‘friend’, ‘and I have several submissions to make on behalf of my clients this morning. Firstly, as you know, both are charged with murder, a serious allegation. My first submission is in respect of this charge. It is within my knowledge that the police do not have any evidence to substantiate this charge whatsoever. As you are aware, a dreadful, dreadful incident occurred last night which resulted in the death of the only police witness to this case. It was an incident, I hasten to add, purely coincidental and unrelated to my clients being in custody…’
‘ My arse!’ hissed Danny Furness through clenched teeth. She, Henry and FB were
seated at the rear of the court. Henry quickly laid a hand on her arm. He sensed she was about to stand up and heckle some very unprofessional points of view. She was convinced, as was Henry, that Grace’s death was no coincidence.
‘ Shush,’ Henry admonished her.
‘ The prosecution evidence, as I understand, relied one hundred per cent on this unfortunate girl’s evidence.’ Stanway sounded sad. No one could have guessed he was the one responsible for sending her killer round. ‘There is no supporting evidence — nothing. And, to put it simply, the prosecution no longer has a case. To proceed on the evidence of one dead witness would be ludicrous and a criminal waste of public money. On those grounds, I submit to the court that the charge is withdrawn and the case dismissed.’
He paused for effect, then went on: ‘The prosecution have also stated their desire to interview my client about other matters. What are these other matters?’ Stanway took a breath. ‘Let me tell you: in relation to Mr Gilbert, one of Blackpool’s most respected businessmen, a man who supports many local children’s charities, these are matters concerning certain documents found in his house. Yes, Your Worships, documents. I ask you! Does that require a further seventy-two hours in custody? No, I submit it does not. Mr Gilbert will gladly make an appointment to come to the police station and be interviewed at any time suitable to the police, not himself. It is imperative that Mr Gilbert is given his liberty today. He has many businesses to run, many people to employ who depend on him…’
‘ God give me strength,’ Danny blurted, unable to contain herself.
Stanway stopped talking, swivelled slowly and glared at Danny, as did everyone else in court. He pulled his spectacles down his nose and looked over the frames at her. Danny stared defiantly back. Fuck them, she thought.
‘ Please keep quiet, Officer,’ the clerk of the court warned, ‘or I shall have to consider you to be in contempt of court.’
Danny breathed impatiently down her nose.
Stanway resumed his address, but Danny did not hear another word of it. Her mind suddenly felt as if an express train was roaring through it, whilst reliving last night’s horror at the children’s home. Henry kept one eye on her, fully responsive to her tension, knowing she was close to explosion.