Running

by S. Bryce

  The sun was beginning to peter out and the wind and the rain had forced their way through the countryside like gate-crashers at a party.

  If it wasn’t for the missing kids. He wouldn’t have bothered coming out again. It was a mystery not best left unsolved. And when it came to missing children Detective Inspector Bradford, left no stone unturned.

  The chief suspect, William Mannis had finally spilled his verbal guts, and Bradford wasn’t about to waste time with red tape. Mannis had confided to him and no one else; well no one else human. He had taped their conversation. But that tape was going to be conveniently missing for a while.

  Facts first, then evidence. There was never a case that could be solved without it.

  He wasn’t doing this for the kids parents, most of whom were physically missing, or - in the case of Celia, Tosh, and Eleanor’s mum - mentally. He wasn’t looking to become a hero, or gain a promotion. Although, if it was offered to him, he wouldn’t have said no. He was doing it because they were innocent. All children were innocent in his eyes. Somewhere along the line, the system failed them. He wanted them to be all right. He wanted to get them some place safe. Not one of their bodies had been found, which was a good thing. But William Mannis was sticking to his story and he had whimpered out a good one.

  Jack Lambert had stayed silent. He hadn’t said a word from his hospital bed. Bradford expected him to stay quiet when he ‘came to.’ Lambert wasn’t a rat. He’d sooner say he shot himself rather than turn in his attempted murderer.

  Yawning, Bradford turned off the ignition. He had been anxious about coming out again. Anxious enough to have a few sleepless nights. Sergeant Pederson knew it, and hadn’t troubled him with much conversation. He wiped his hands on a square of tissue, and then threw it out of the window.

  ‘The forensics aren’t done,’ said Pederson, breaking his silence.

  Bradford didn’t care whether the forensics were done or not. They were never done. Why Pederson felt the need to remind him of this, obvious yet niggling, fact irritated him. They had passed the forensics team’s van a mile down the road, heading in the other direction.

  Bradford got out of the car and ducked under the yellow tape. Pederson popped a large umbrella open as soon as he got out, and then put it down again when he realised the rain had dwindled to a light spray.

  Bradford greeted one of the two police officers left standing. One of the officer’s was his best friend’s nephew, Hayden, a newbie to the force. He was holding his cap. Bradford imagined he was using it as a punching bag. Hayden wanted to be where the action was, but he was unlikely to find it in the Medswell countryside, standing sentry outside a bungalow that had been emptied and boarded up three days before he arrived.

  Bradford flashed the other officer on duty his ID badge. She didn’t even look at it. The wind was trying to wrestle her umbrella out of her grasp and she was busy attempting to reign it back in. She was even newer to the job than Hayden. They had both transferred from London.

  Bradford sighed. ‘You’re not security guards. Get in the damn car.’

  Hayden nodded and started towards the patrol car parked few short feet away from Bradford’s black sedan.

  ‘Forensics said no one was to go inside inspect-sir,’ said the female police officer, whose name escaped Bradford.

  Bradford nodded and waved his hand. Since when had forensics headed up an investigation? ‘Thanks for the info, but I’m not going in.’

  It was six in the evening and already getting dark. He wasn’t planning on staying long. There was one room in particular, in which he wanted to take another sweep.

  * * *

  Chapter 66

  Facts First

  Bradford jogged past the front of the house, his shoes squelching in the wet earth. Pederson’s feet squelched not far behind him. He came to the lawn. Ironically, it had become a mud pit fit for pigs. The dispatch team had tried to keep it neat when they started hauling out the bodies, but a mixture of bad weather and overwrought enthusiasm had turned the operation into a muddy mess. Too many people had trodden in and out, and a lot of rain had fallen, turning the empty graves watery.

  Bradford stepped onto the patio. He took a torch from his inside pocket, snapped it on, and opened the back door to the kitchen. He went through to the hall, and then took a left. He was looking for the room with the bloodstained sofa; the one with the evidence, the one they had to return to when health and safety issues were resolved. The floorboards were as loose as sand, or so he’d heard, and part of the ceiling had collapsed.

  He ripped the police hazard tape off the door and pushed it open. He shone the torch around for a bit before going inside. Forensics had taken away a scrapping of the dried blood from the sofa for testing. The blood type was matched to that of Johnny Conzett, a small-time drug dealer who had slipped off the police radar many moons ago. He was one of the bodies they exhumed from under the lawn. His body was dug right into the earth, like an old tree root, he recalled.

  William Mannis had been arrested for Johnny’s murder, his hair fibres having been found tucked in the folds of the sofa, and the balled up rotting fist of what was once Johnny Conzett.

  Mannis cried when he was arrested. Bawled like a baby. Bradford hadn’t expected that. But where there was a Bawler, there was also a Squealer. And squealing was exactly what Mannis did. He confessed to Johnny’s murder and filled him in about the Hortsford museum robbery.

  A total of five bodies had been exhumed. Three of them had lain in the lawn for so long, they would take a while to identify. One of the bodies had been buried with the weapon that killed him: an axe. All that was left of the victim was a skeleton and a bashed in skull. Bradford smiled grimly to himself. No doubt Medswell forensics would spend months puzzling over how that “John Doe” died.

  One of the graves, a smaller one, was empty. Interesting. Bradford had yet to determine if the body had been moved, or if the intended victim had escaped or was let loose. He wasn’t ruling out Mannis’s involvement in that one either.

  There was no sign of Paul Dockland, and no indication that the body of, what was his name? Saul had been dragged from the kitchen where he allegedly met his death.

  There was evidence, however, that children had been living in the bungalow. No doubt about that. It made Bradford feel sick to his guts. God knows what abuse they must have suffered at the hands of those monsters.

  Charlie, Mannis’s brother was quick to defend him. He said Bill had never laid a hand on the kids. He claims that he looked after them. “He would never have hurt them, no”. Bradford came close to believing it, until Mannis relayed his sick justification for sending the girl and her little brother down a twenty-five foot drop to their deaths. ‘No other way out for them,’ he said. ‘Too young, couldn’t have fended for themselves. I was doing them a favour.’

  He was doing himself a favour, thought Bradford; a nice little get-my-sentenced-reduced favour. Bradford had been curious as to his relationship with this Saul. He seemed genuinely upset that the boy had dropped down and died right before his eyes. He made it seem as if grief was making him rack with sobs, not the fact that he was looking at spending the rest of his life rotting in jail. Perhaps, he killed this Saul too and had come to regret it.

  Bradford vowed Charlie would get his little spell in his prison too for sitting around on his fat arse doing nothing. That was the other kind of sicko he couldn’t stomach.

  Bradford left Pederson at the door. He picked his way through the littered room as if he were manoeuvring his way through a landmine. The portion of the ceiling that had collapsed, exposing the crumbling beams, was in a corner he had no need to venture.

  Bradford pulled on a pair of latex gloves and shoved the sofa off the platform, making the loose floorboards jump.

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing this by ourselves,’ said Pederson as he stood languid by the door. ‘There might be asbestos.’

  ‘Get in here you nim-wit.’

  There was a gre
at gap on the floor all right. Bradford got to his knees, scrunched up his eyes and held his breath, preparing for the big reveal. He had an icky feeling in his belly as he shone the torch down the shaft. He’d seen bodies before, decomposed ones mostly and the fresh ones of adults, never children. His eyes slowly widened.

  Pederson shuffled into the room, but came nowhere near the shaft. ‘Well?’

  Bradford shuddered with relief. ‘There’s no one in there.’

  ‘You sure?’ Pederson mounted the platform and peered into the shaft, just as Bradford was swinging his torch back up.

  ‘There’s only one way down, and only one way out and those kids didn’t take it. Looks like they’re still on the run.’

  Pederson rammed the butt of his umbrella between the floorboards. ‘Or they’re lying some place else.’

  Bradford could have done without the sergeant’s pessimism. ‘He said, the girl, Kate knew the bungalow well enough to find her way around in the dark.’

  Pederson flicked up one of the floorboards with his heel. ‘He was counting on that, maybe she had a torch and more brains than he gave her credit for.’

  ‘Will you cut that out,’ said Bradford, ‘or it’ll be our bodies they’ll be pulling out tomorrow. What was the name of the woman who called the police?’

  ‘Ada Bright,’ said Pederson, tucking the umbrella under his arm.

  ‘I want to question her again.’

  ‘She says all she heard was a single gunshot.’

  Bradford stood up and slipped his torch back into his pocket. ‘She also swore she saw someone running from the bungalow. Who knows, she might have remembered something else by now.’

  Pederson helped him hitch the sofa back onto the platform. They left the room. Bradford stuck the tape back over the door.

  ‘You think they’re still alive, don’t you?’

  Bradford pulled off the latex gloves and stuffed them in his pocket. ‘I have to. Four kids lying dead somewhere, it doesn’t bear thinking about. The bodies of the children aren’t where he said they were. I intend to find out the truth.’

  * * *

  Chapter 67

  Ada Bright

  A month later, Detective Inspector Bradford sat in Ada Bright’s living room holding a large mug of black coffee.

  He was utterly fixated with her garish living room.

  The floor was fitted with a heavily patterned carpet and a zebra rug. The walls were papered with a rambling luminous pink and green floral pattern.

  ‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ she said, following his gaze to a set of inexplicable figurines draped over the electric-blue mantelpiece.

  Bradford cleared his throat. ‘Mmm,’ was all he could manage.

  ‘If I’d have known there were little kiddies up there,’ said Ada. ‘I would have done something about it. Most folks would have.’

  They always said that, “If I’d have known.” It was a moot point in his opinion.

  He pressed the coffee mug to his lips and gave a small hiss. Still not cold enough.

  Ada had turned the heating up full blast and she had seated him on a sofa more comfortable than his own bed, if he didn’t have a shot of coffee soon. He thought he might never get up. Hell, he might never wake up.

  She handed him back the photo of the three ‘kiddies’.

  It was found in the mother’s purse. The photo was slightly blurred and terribly battered. Who knew when it had been taken.

  ‘Where’s the mother now?’ said Ada. She did up the last open button on her cardigan. ‘She must be fraught with worry.’

  Bradford sighed. ‘Mental institution.’ He put the photo away.

  ‘They never came down to the village. I would have seen them.’ Ada took a gulp from her own mug of milky tea. ‘I know you said if I think of anything else, I’m sorry but I haven’t. I never saw any children. I was driving by. I heard a gunshot, and saw someone sprinting away too big to be a child. That’s one thing I’m sure of.’

  She lowered her mug and tapped the base with her long nails. She studied Bradford’s face. ‘You’ve got more news, haven’t you?’ She put one hand to her lips. ‘You haven’t-haven’t-’

  ‘No,’ said Bradford. ‘We’ve not found them, and I’m starting to think we never will. There’s no evidence to suggest that any of those children died in that house.’ He gingerly took a sip of coffee. ‘Would you mind opening a window?’

  He would have liked her to open all the windows and the doors. But she was frail-looking, and he didn’t want to be held responsible for an old woman getting sick. Won’t hurt for her to open a window, he thought. He wasn’t planning on staying long.

  Rick Caulfield had been arrested in Italy two weeks ago. The rest of his gang had already been rounded up.

  Jack Lambert had recovered from his gunshot wound. And as Bradford expected, he denied having anything to do with the Hortsford museum robbery, but he was able to confirm Mannis’s story about the children, though his version of events to how Saul died were a little different from Mannis’s version. He said that Rick pumped the boy full of bullets, and then went after Kate and her little brother. Jack took some smug satisfaction in telling him that too. William Mannis wouldn’t change his story. And when Bradford told him that they found no bodies down the shaft, the man shook with relief. ‘I always knew that Kate was a smart one,’ he said.

  Jack Lambert claimed to have never seen or heard of Ellie. He also claimed the last time he had seen Paul Dockland; he was alive, unsteady on his feet, but alive.

  Ada opened the smallest window - a fraction - and secured it with a window hook. ‘What’s this all about?’

  She sat down stiffly on the edge of a padded chair. Her chin tilted upwards, her small lips pursed.

  Bradford took another photo from his pocket and gave it to Ada. So far, the man in the photo was the only one forensics had identified from the remains discovered in the lawn.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Ada asked.

  ‘We found it in the bungalow, buried under a pile of junk. ‘He was a relative of yours, I believe?’

  Ada nodded. ‘My uncle Alden Wallis.’

  Tears came to Ada’s eyes as she continued to stare at the photo. ‘You found him buried out there in that house of horrors?’

  Bradford nodded. Everyone called it that now. ‘In the lawn,’ he said, pausing to take a few more gulps of his coffee. ‘Along with the murder weapon.’

  Ada’s hand went to her mouth.

  ‘Identified him from his dental records.’

  ‘1949 he was murdered. They all said she did it.’ She glanced up from the photo into Bradford’s eyes. ‘But there was no body. Lots of evidence, but no body. So they never got a conviction. She denied it of course and the affair, and the little one she spawned as a result of it.’

  Bradford nodded. He had checked the police archives. Alden Wallis’s wife, Mary had been married to Alden for two years. He had moved from Devon to Medswell in 1938, to hack at the unfortunate trees in the Medswell countryside. He was well known and well liked. He had his own little getaway cabin in the woods. That’s where they found his blood. Staining the walls and floor like dried paint. There was no murder weapon and no body. The police debated the murder weapon: the victim’s own axe, the killer: his wife, and who had helped shift the body: her lover. No charges were ever brought against them.

  ‘She reported him missing,’ said Ada quietly. ‘She was a charmer. Could wrap just about any man around her finger. She pointed the police in the wrong direction. Apparently she had an alibi. They never thought of checking the lawn though. There was a wall dividing the woods and the lawn in those days. And the people who lived in that house were a respectable lot. It was the last place the police would have looked.’

  Bradford nodded. ‘You don’t know if anyone chops wood up there now?’

  Ada shook her head and sighed. ‘Not as far as I know. Those trees are protected. But I can’t say for sure that no one goes up there. Why?’

&
nbsp; ‘One of the offender’s claims that the older girl was always asking him about a woodcutter. She said she could hear someone chopping wood. I thought it was something I’d follow up.’ Bradford drained his coffee. ‘You can keep the photo.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ada rose to her feet, holding the photo to her bosom. ‘Those poor kids. I do hope you find them.’

  Bradford hoped so too. He went outside, manoeuvring his way around the large red pick-up truck parked in the drive. He would keep digging, pick through the details of the case, until eventually…

  He sighed heavily. Eventually, the runaways would go further and further down his list of priorities before slipping into the unsolved missing persons files.

  Facts were facts. There was no one else out there looking but him.

  * * *

  Chapter 68

  Well I Never!

  Ada lifted the flap of net curtain at the window. She watched Detective Inspector Bradford make his way over to his car.

  ‘Did you hear all that?’ She said to the person who had entered the room. She watched the detective drive off. He looked as if he was about to fall asleep at the wheel. ‘Might be the last we’ll see of him.’ She let the curtain drop and turned her back to the window.

  ‘Maybe I should go,’ said her house guest. ‘He could come back.’

  ‘I’m not wanted for murder and neither are you,’ she said, more sharply than she intended, ‘so there’s no reason for you to go anywhere is there. Besides I could do with the extra money.’

  The man gave a half-nod and sat down, stretching his legs under the table.

  Despite the nicks on his face where he had attempted to shave, Paul Dockland didn’t scrub up too bad, thought Ada as she passed him a mug of tea. Sure, he had a haunted look in his eyes, and like her, looked older than his years, but he had a rugged handsomeness to him, which she remembered from the old days.