‘Then what?’
‘He picks the child up,’ Alice said. ‘The early sun caught his hair. It was like gold.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Like golden seaweed swaying and blown in the wind. He carried him down the side of the bank and when he tried to fire the child again he burned bright for a while and the person ran. I heard the car move. Like an old ’orse it was. Coughin’ and noise-makin’.’
Joanna gave a loud sigh. ‘Please, Alice. Can you tell me anything – anything at all about the car?’
Alice screwed up her face in tight thought. ‘It were a long one,’ she said eventually. ‘Long.’
Mike gave a short curse and Joanna knew exactly what he was thinking. So near and yet no nearer. She had seen it – and could tell them nothing except that it was a long, pale, noisy car.
‘Then what?’ she suddenly asked. ‘Alice, why didn’t you try to put the fire out?’
‘For three reasons,’ Alice said, holding up three filthy fingers. ‘One, I got no water. Two, I knowed that child were dead. I went and looked at ’im.’
‘And put the posy of flowers there?’
‘I sells them sometimes in the market,’ Alice said shyly. ‘ ’Twas all I ’ad for the child.’
‘And what was the third reason?’ Mike asked.
‘The soldiers came,’ Alice said, looking at him. ‘With their noise and their painted faces and their creepin’. And they found ’im.’
‘Did you know him?’
Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I did not. He were a pretty one but I never seen ’im before.’
The wind howled through the short curling bracken and Joanna found herself staring at another face so filthy it reminded her of the soldiers wearing their camouflage paint. In a wild setting this man looked even more wild – and mad – with his straggling hair and thick, black beard. And he too was wearing a huge greatcoat, tied around his middle with string. It could only be Jonathan Rutter.
The man stared at her woodenly.
Alice made a few deft gestures before turning back to Joanna. ‘He can’t tell you anythin’,’ she said. ‘ ’E slept right through.’
Jonathan glanced at his wife and gave a slow, toothy grin which gave him an idiot look.
Joanna shrugged her shoulders. She was inclined to believe Alice. There was nothing to be gained from him.
‘Why do you live here?’ she asked. ‘It’s cold and exposed and dangerous. You could die in the snow.’
Alice nodded sagely. ‘People do,’ she agreed. ‘Four people one year but they weren’t in a cave else they would have lived. They was in a car.’ She stopped speaking for a moment and stared out over the huge basin of the valley – all the time a slow, affectionate grin moving across her face. ‘This is our kingdom,’ she said. ‘Our country. They try and make us ordinary and live down there.’ She looked contemptuously at the toy-town of Leek. ‘Social workers said we could ’ave a flat down there.’ She spat sharply on the ground. ‘ ’Ow would we live in a flat?’ she asked the wide panorama. ‘After livin’ ’ere all our lives. We got no ’lectricity. We got no ’ot water. But we got the silence and I’d rather ’ave that any day. While we can, Mrs Policeman, we’ll stay ’ere.’
Joanna sighed. She was unsure of the legal position of the Rutters choosing to live here but she would lay a bet it was giving some virtuous social worker sleepless nights.
She touched Alice’s shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘If you do remember anything else, please get in touch with me.’ She laid a white card on the woman’s hand and Alice stared at it with a wry smile.
‘Apart from decoration,’ she said, ‘there ain’t no point me ’avin’ this. I never learned readin’.’
‘So what have we got?’ Mike said scornfully as they dropped back down the hill. ‘A couple of loons and no information.’
‘Not quite.’
‘A long car,’ Mike said.
‘An estate car?’ Joanna queried. ‘I’ll take Alice into town and ask her to point out similar vehicles. It was a noisy car. Remember the barmaid at the Winking Man said she thought it was Herbert’s Land Rover. Also, Mike, we know what the killer was wearing and even more important the route he or she took over the moors and why. I don’t think we’ve done too badly. We are getting somewhere.’ She smiled. ‘It might not be quite fast enough for you but I’m more interested in final results and a conviction than in speed.’
He grinned at her. ‘So I’ve noticed.’ Then he paused at the foot of the hill. ‘What are the odds on Private Swinton?’
She looked at him. ‘They would be high,’ she said. ‘But we both know it’s impossible. Army security. He can’t have been in two places at once. And there is no way he got out of the barracks, came back and got into his bunk. He didn’t do it. Finding the body was pure coincidence.’
‘Why didn’t he tell us he knew Dean then?’
‘Come on, Mike,’ she said, ‘you know that type. Help the police? They’d as soon throw a drowning man a life-buoy. He knew we’d get the boy’s identity sooner or later. However, I still want to question him.’
Eloise was sitting in the cafe bar, drinking Coca-Cola. Jane and Matthew were watching. Suddenly the child looked up self-consciously. Why had they stopped arguing? For two days now there had been peace – almost a truce between them. She sucked noisily through her straw and was quickly reprimanded by her mother.
‘Manners,’ Jane said, but mildly.
She swivelled her glance up to her father. He was staring out to sea as though he were a hundred miles from here. And he was far away, dreaming.
‘I want to sit on your lap, Daddy.’
Matthew gave a shudder, quickly disguising it as a jerky laugh. ‘You’re far too big a girl to be sitting on your daddy’s lap.’
Eloise’s lower lip hung down. ‘I want to.’
And Matthew gave in, held his arms out and Eloise struggled to tuck her long legs around him.
Jane’s face grew hard. ‘Just one more whole day of the holiday,’ she said. ‘Then we fly on the next day.’
Eloise clapped her hands like a toddler. ‘Goodee,’ she said. ‘And I can soon be riding Sparky.’
‘Yes,’ Jane said firmly.
They were holding tin bowls, lined up in the mess. Withers started first – on cue – prompted by a wink from Private Holt. He jostled Swinton. ‘They know who the kid is, Swinton.’
Swinton felt his anger rise as quickly as he felt Tom boy shrink beside him. ‘Fuck off,’ he said.
Holt and Withers were either side of him now. ‘Some poor bastard from a home,’ Withers said. ‘A local home for bastards whose mothers can’t be bothered to care for them.’
‘What was the name of the place again?’
‘Tweet Tweet Tweet Tweet.’
Holt was inane but the jibe was enough to tip Swinton into pure fury. He lashed out a punch aimed at him but Holt ducked and Swinton lost his balance and fell into the table.
Withers grinned. ‘Careful ... careful.’
‘Why don’t you leave off?’ Surprisingly it was Tom boy – sensitive to his comrade’s lack of a family home. Rare courage found from somewhere. But as quickly as it had erupted it subsided again and Tom boy flushed and fell silent.
As usual, Swinton failed to appreciate the risk Tom boy had taken. ‘Piss off, blubber-face,’ he said, then turned back to Withers. ‘So the dead kid came from a home,’ he snarled. ‘So bloody what?’
‘He came from the same place as you did, Swinton.’ Another voice had joined the pack of jackals.
‘And you were the one what found the body.’
‘Don’t tell me it was all a big coincidence.’
‘Sure it was a body when you got there?’
Tom boy blinked and moved forward. ‘It was nothin’ to do with Gary. The kid was dead. I saw he was dead. Gary had nothin’ to do with it.’
Swinton turned on him again. ‘I said piss off. I don’t need Tom soft boy to fight my battles.’ He faced Holt squarel
y. ‘If you want to say something, soldier, come right out with it.’ He leered and clenched his fist. The others sensed his great wish was to use those fists. ‘Come on,’ he said, beckoning with his hand. ‘Come on ... don’t be scared.’
The soldiers backed off. They were no match for Swinton. He didn’t feel pain and when the wild look was in his eyes he positively welcomed it ... almost needed it. Swinton looked from one face to the other, grinning, the gap in his teeth giving him a crooked, evil expression.
Tom boy saw the knife and gulped, uncertain whether to warn the others, but they had half expected it. This gave their planned beating a legality. Swinton had been armed. They pummelled him then, trying to make him scream, but they didn’t understand him.
When he stood up, his face was already beginning to swell and the pain in his back told him one or two ribs had cracked. Stiffly he walked to the door, turning round when he reached it. ‘I didn’t kill the bloody kid, you morons,’ he said. ‘If you had any sense at all you’d know that. He was dead when we were all asleep here in our beds.’
‘Gary ...’ Tom boy appealed to him and Gary resigned himself. Tottering through the door Tom boy held him up. The soldiers carried on filling up their tin dishes.
‘We can have extra,’ Holt said cheerfully. ‘Two missing.’
As Joanna and Mike reached the black police van they sensed an atmosphere of excitement. More had been found. There was a buzz in the air, quick activity, and instead of the unbroken line of uniform a clump of police were busy stringing off a round area, connected with a long corridor of red and white plastic ribbon.
Joanna nodded towards the spot. ‘The first burning,’ she said, and they walked until they reached the group of police officers.
‘It wasn’t in the original search area, Inspector.’ The SOC officer, Sergeant Barraclough, greeted them with a note of apology.
Joanna waved it aside.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘What have you got?’
Triumphantly the sergeant held up a scorched black glove safely in its plastic bag.
Joanna grinned. ‘Well done. Forensics could make a whole case out of that one glove. Tell me, Barra,’ she said, feeling, at last, pleased, ‘I’ve read they can get fingerprints from the inside of gloves. Any chance here, do you think?’
He shook his head dubiously. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Wool’s a terrible material for fingerprints. And it’s been out here for three days now – damp and cold. Still if I remember rightly at PM I cut off some of Dean’s clothing. I’ve got the feeling forensics said there were strands of black wool.’ He looked at her. ‘I didn’t have a clue then where they’d come from.’ He paused. ‘Funny, isn’t it, how all the little bits and pieces make up one big picture?’
‘Over here, Sarge.’ Joanna could never rid herself of the excitement the phrase evoked in her.
Armed with plastic bags the SOC officer moved to the spot. The constable pointed down. Caught on a sharp bramble was a tiny fragment of material. Tiny, but not too tiny to see, was a piece of coat lining in the bright red Royal Stuart tartan.
Barraclough picked it up with a pair of tweezers. ‘Well done, my lad,’ he said. ‘Sharp eyes.’ He grinned. ‘This is better. This is much better.’
Joanna thought for a minute. ‘We want maps of the area,’ she said, ‘and plot the finds. I want to know the exact route.’ She looked at Barraclough. ‘Well done, we’re getting somewhere now. Keep at it, Barra. Remind the men not to miss anything. A fragment such as this might be the piece we need to nail our killer. I don’t want him getting away. He could kill again.’
It was the one horror that haunted any police officer in charge of a murder investigation. Fail to find the killer – as they had done with the Yorkshire Ripper – and you pay with another innocent life. If someone had to die, let it not be through the failure to pick up a strand of thread or read a sign. On the other hand, an arrest made with insufficient evidence would mean an acquittal and a killer still on the loose.
Joanna’s mobile phone crackled and the voice informed her Private Gary Swinton was sitting in the station, ready to talk to her.
DC King met her as she walked into the station. He shook his head. ‘I can’t see how he did it,’ he said. ‘He was at the disco till two then came back with all the other blokes. He was seen back in by the soldier on duty.’ He looked at Joanna. ‘He definitely saw him. There’s no way he could have got out and killed the boy. It’s impossible.’
She nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘The firing was at about four. At that time we know Gary Swinton was in the bunkhouse with about thirty other soldiers. Thank you.’ She smiled. ‘He can be excluded from the inquiry. But I still have some questions I want to put to him.’
Swinton was sitting alone, looking ill-at-ease, still dressed in heavy black army boots and green camouflage. But his beret was tucked in an epaulette and he looked less menacing without the camouflage paint on his face. And his neck looked bony and thin sticking out from the thick collar. His bright hair was cut so short Joanna could see pink scalp beneath. He was younger than she had thought – barely seventeen – and he looked frightened. The ugly swelling on his eye, the cut lip and the undisguised wincing as he moved did not escape her either. Summary justice? One thing she knew without doubt, life would never be easy for Gary Swinton. She felt it was important they put him at his ease.
‘Thank you for coming in, Gary,’ she said.
He mumbled his reply.
‘Detective Sergeant Korpanski,’ Gary shot an apprehensive look at the DS, ‘and I really asked you to come in to go over a few details about the morning you found Dean’s body.’
His shoulders stiffened at the sound of the boy’s name but she would ask him simple questions first. The difficult ones could come later. She looked at one of the uniformed police officers. ‘Is there an interview room free?’
He nodded towards a green door on the left of the corridor and the three of them moved into it. Joanna switched on the tape recorder while Gary gave her a look like a frightened rabbit.
‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.
Joanna shook her head. ‘No, Gary,’ she said, ‘but I want you to clear up a few things.’
The look of apprehension remained on his face.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you knew Dean?’ she asked.
His face paled. He licked his lips, fumbled in his pocket. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Go ahead.’ Mike slid an ashtray across the table.
‘You and Dean were together at The Nest, weren’t you? Both in care. You knew Dean very well, didn’t you?’
He dragged deeply on his cigarette and nodded.
‘Did it not occur to you that the first thing we needed to do to help us catch Dean’s killer was find out his name?’
‘I knew you’d pin it on me.’
Joanna leaned forward. ‘Don’t be so bloody silly, Gary,’ she said. ‘You didn’t do it. There isn’t a force in the country would try and pretend you did.’
He took another deep drag from his cigarette and blew it straight in her face.
‘But I believe you can help us over another matter.’
‘What’s that then?’ He scowled.
‘Who was being cruel to Dean?’ She picked up his packet of cigarettes. ‘Someone was burning him, with cigarettes, just like these.’ She looked the soldier straight in the face. ‘Was it you?’
‘It were a laugh,’ he said. ‘There weren’t no harm in it. They did it to me when I was a kid. It never hurt me.’
‘And were you fucking him as well?’
Gary Swinton looked insulted. ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘I don’t fancy little boys.’ He drew an exaggerated female shape in the air. ‘Curvy. That’s how I like ’em.’ He shot Joanna a cocky look. ‘Like you.’
Mike stepped forward. ‘Watch yourself,’ he said.
Joanna waited before speaking again. ‘So, Gary, if you weren’t molesting Dean – who was?’
&n
bsp; ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘How should I know?’
‘And where did he go when he absconded?’
‘To his family I always thought.’
Joanna stared at him. ‘But he didn’t have a family.’
‘Well, that’s where I thought he went. I never bloody well asked him.’
The surly attitude finally began to irritate her. ‘Well, I wish you had,’ she said. ‘We might have some idea who it was murdered your little friend.’
Gary Swinton blinked and Joanna spoke again to him, quietly. ‘Just go over that morning, will you?’
Carefully he repeated what he had said before ... A platoon, B platoon ... the slow creep on his belly up the bank ...
She stopped him.
‘How is it you didn’t notice the fire?’
‘We wasn’t looking that way.’
‘You didn’t smell anything?’
‘Wind must ’ave bin in the wrong direction.’ He paused. ‘It weren’t until we got to nearly the top that me and Tom boy smelt it.’
Mike moved behind him. ‘You knew that smell, didn’t you? Flesh burning.’
Gary Swinton half turned. ‘It weren’t like you’re saying,’ he said. ‘It weren’t cruel. It were more of an endurance test. See?’
Mike gave a loud expression of disgust.
Gary was sweating now – fear – shaking as though he was an alcoholic.
Mike moved closer to the table. ‘What did you do to that poor kid?’ he asked. When the soldier didn’t answer he spoke again in a soft, dangerous voice. ‘Who did the tattoos for you?’
‘It were Jason. Bugger. He said he’d do ’em neat.’
‘And he did Dean’s as well?’
Gary seemed to crumple. Slowly he nodded and went silent.
Joanna looked at Mike. ‘May I have a word?’ she asked. Outside she said, ‘We have to let him go now. We both know we aren’t going to charge him with anything.’
‘I’d like to wring his bloody neck,’ Mike said viciously.
She smiled at him. ‘Really, Detective Sergeant?’
Catch the Fallen Sparrow Page 13