Behind Dead Eyes

by Howard Linskey

  ‘I hate it when we row,’ she said as she snuggled up to him in bed an hour later, following make-up sex that had somehow pleasingly evolved from the high state of adrenalin they were both in by the end of their argument.

  ‘Well we don’t do it very often, Karen,’ he said as he drew her closer to him.

  ‘I can see why people might get confused by us though,’ she said. ‘We do spend a lot of time with each other but that’s cos we’re good together, babe.’ She laughed again. ‘I mean I do practically live here.’

  ‘I s’pose you do,’ he admitted. ‘You’ve got a key, you’re here more nights than you’re not.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ she said. ‘You get your meals cooked for you all the time and sex on tap. It’s not all bad, is it?’ They both laughed at that. ‘And there’s me paying rent on a place and I’m never there.’

  He knew she was hinting, but just this once he didn’t mind. He’d been an idiot. Karen was a cracking lass but his fragile ego had been dented by the idea of people at work talking about them. Where was he going to get another girl as nice as this one, as good-looking as this one, as accommodating in bed as this one?

  He didn’t mind her folks either, not really, although her mum did have an annoying habit of mentioning Karen’s ex every time she saw him, since the bloke still lived close by and wasn’t over Karen.

  ‘Come on, Mum, we were eighteen,’ blushed her daughter the last time the former boyfriend came up in conversation. ‘It was years ago and I’m with Ian now.’ And she held Bradshaw’s hand as if to assure him when she said that.

  ‘I know that,’ her mother replied, as if he wasn’t in the room, ‘I just think it’s nice that he always speaks to us when he sees us. He even came round last Christmas to see how we were doing.’

  ‘To see how Karen was doing, more like,’ said her father without looking up from his newspaper, ‘and I told him, she’s got a boyfriend.’ He said that bit as if he had seen the other bloke off with his shotgun.

  All the same, Bradshaw didn’t like to think of Karen with this other man, this first love that must have been so significant her parents kept mentioning him.

  He remembered that moment now and how jealous he had been at the thought of Karen with another man, even if it had been years before, and realised he would be gutted if she went with someone else – not that he gave her much incentive to be faithful, with his commitment-phobic attitude. He would just have to grow up.

  And just like that, all of his resistance to their relationship was suddenly swept away.

  ‘You might as well, you know,’ he said it lightly, ‘move in, I mean. There’s plenty of room here and, like you said, it’s not all bad is it?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Karen said, ‘do you mean it?’ And there were tears in her eyes then. ‘I can’t tell you how happy you’ve just made me. I just never thought we’d end up as a permanent item.’

  Neither had he, until she put it like that.

  Moving in together didn’t necessarily mean forever in Bradshaw’s eyes but clearly Karen thought otherwise. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘well, there you go.’

  ‘Good to see you, Tom.’ There was a brisk handshake at the door of the newsroom. ‘It’s been a while,’ Graham Seaton reminded him as they walked briskly across the newsroom.

  ‘It has,’ agreed Tom and he tried not to think about their divergent career paths. Since Graham Seaton and Tom Carney last worked together at the Durham Messenger more than five years earlier, Seaton had gone on to become a reporter then a senior reporter for his Newcastle daily and finally, in a move that no one saw coming but Seaton, its youngest-ever editor. Meanwhile, Tom could, at best, describe himself as a failed author, former journalist, part-time amateur builder and ‘property developer’. Tom was grateful when Seaton didn’t ask him how his life was just now. Instead he was immediately business-like.

  ‘You’re looking into Sandra Jarvis’s disappearance?’ he said. ‘Well we’ve run a lot of stuff on that in the past six months. Her father never lets up, poor bastard. You’re welcome to take a look at it all.’

  ‘I will, thanks,’ Tom said, ‘but it’s background I’m after, which is why I want to speak to your best crime reporter, if he can spare me the time.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Graham nodded towards the frosted glass door of the conference room. ‘Don’t take all day though, mate, we’ve got an edition to get out.’

  ‘Half an hour, tops,’ Tom assured him.

  ‘We keep her in here,’ said Graham, as if she were a cell mate of Hannibal Lecter, and he opened the door to reveal a solitary figure sitting at the far end of the conference table. The woman’s head was down but there was no mistaking her. She was busy writing notes on a pad. He might have known she wouldn’t sit staring out of the window while she waited for him, even for a few minutes.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said and she looked up, ‘small world.’

  ‘I was about to say, “This is Helen Norton, our resident crime expert,” ’ said Graham, ‘but I can see your paths have already crossed. I hope you remembered your manners, Tom.’

  ‘He was the perfect gentleman,’ said Helen.

  ‘We worked on the Sean Donnellan case together,’ Tom told her editor.

  ‘Of course, the book! How’s it doing?’

  ‘Great.’

  When Tom offered nothing further, Graham took this as his cue. ‘Okay, I’ll leave you to it then.’

  Tom drew out the chair next to her so they could sit at right angles to one another,

  ‘How are you, Tom?’ she asked a little stiffly.

  ‘Surviving.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you since …’

  ‘Mary Collier’s funeral,’ he said. ‘You stayed for one drink.’

  Mary Collier wasn’t quite Eleanor Rigby; when she died and was buried people came, but not many. There was the vicar of course, her housekeeper who ‘did for her’ as she used to say and three elderly ladies who had known Mary their whole lives and hadn’t allowed the gossip that followed her in later years to prevent them from paying their respects. One of the few pleasures of elderly widowhood was the opportunity to dress in Sunday best to attend the funeral of one of your peers, gaining a visceral thrill at having outlived them.

  Other than that small gathering and Tom, the funeral party consisted of two people; Detective Sergeant Ian Bradshaw, who sat quietly at the back of the church, and Helen, who had donned a black dress she last wore for a job interview at the paper where she now worked. Both of them attended the funeral service partially out of respect but also because Mary Collier’s death marked the end of something more than just her life. It effectively brought down the final curtain on the Sean Donnellan case, which would then become the subject of Death Knock, because Tom had agreed with Mary that his book would not be published until she was gone.

  ‘Thought you might have made it to the book launch,’ he added, trying to sound like it was no big deal.

  ‘I was going to,’ she stammered. ‘I wasn’t sure you if you wanted me there.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ he asked. ‘I invited you and you were in the bloody book.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. It was stupid … I read it though.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. I thought it was brilliant,’ she said this with such earnestness that he actually let out a laugh.

  ‘Well I’m glad someone did.’

  ‘I wasn’t the only one,’ she said, ‘the reviews were great. Was it a good event? The launch, I mean. Bet you had loads of people there.’

  ‘Ian Bradshaw came,’ he said quickly, ‘with his girlfriend, Karen. I think he wanted to know what I’d written about him.’ He could have admitted that a little piece of him had quietly died when she hadn’t shown up, but he wasn’t quite ready for that level of honesty. In truth he didn’t have too many people to invite. There were his sister and brother-in-law, a handful of friends from school or the pub but precious few fellow journalists. He later found out
that Malcolm had issued an unofficial fatwah on him, meaning colleagues from his old job at the Durham Messenger lived in fear of being spotted at his book launch. So Tom had said a few thank yous and signed a handful of books before retiring to the nearest pub to drink too much while trying not to wonder where Helen was.

  ‘What are we going to tell our grandchildren when they ask me why you didn’t turn up to my book launch?’

  ‘You don’t want kids,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, well not this minute but who knows? I could change my mind, one day.’

  ‘Can’t see it,’ she chided. ‘You’d have to evolve into a functioning adult first.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I’ve been hanging out with the blokes in the newsroom and the banter is just vicious here. It tends to rub off.’

  ‘I can take it,’ he said. ‘They treating you well then?’

  ‘It’s been great.’

  ‘Surprised to see you cooped up in the conference room, not out and about exposing wrongdoing.’ He was joking but it struck a nerve. After her experience in the multi-storey car park Helen felt safer in the office even though she knew she couldn’t hide herself away forever.

  ‘What brings you to our door then?’ she asked. ‘I could tell by your face you weren’t expecting to see me, so it can’t have been a social call.’

  ‘I used to work with Graham, so I called him and asked if I could speak to his best crime reporter,’ said Tom. ‘I was expecting some middle-aged hack but he brought me to you.’ And Tom went on to explain to Helen the sequence of events which led him to the Record’s office, including his interest in the Rebecca Holt murder and his agreement to help Frank Jarvis find his missing daughter.

  ‘And what do you need from me?’ she asked when he was finally through.

  ‘Well,’ he seemed hesitant now, ‘nothing necessarily …’

  ‘Tom, I’m happy to help,’ she said firmly, ‘any time.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, relaxing a little, ‘it’s just that I don’t have a newspaper behind me these days, so anything you come across on either of the cases I’m looking into would be really useful. We’ll probably end up going over the same ground but …’

  ‘That never stopped us before.’

  ‘No, it didn’t.’ It was how they had first met, in fact. ‘Thanks, Helen. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Least I could do.’ Tom took this as a form of apology.

  ‘So how are things with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Graham has been great.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t be, compared to Malcolm?’ he asked.

  ‘Even so,’ she replied, ‘he has been letting me write some interesting stuff about local politicians and their links to some pretty ropey people.’

  ‘Newcastle has always had its fair share of gangsters,’ he smiled, ‘some of them in City Hall. You must be pissing people off.’

  ‘There is that possibility,’ she conceded.

  ‘Be careful,’ he told her, ‘articles on corruption tend to upset people.’

  ‘You ought to know,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, well, just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. I’m not preaching. I realise you know what you’re doing. Things are going well then? You’re okay, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  He noticed she hadn’t mentioned the boyfriend. He had to assume he was still on the scene though.

  ‘You seeing anyone else?’ she asked and he must have looked a little surprised by the directness of the question. ‘Today I mean, while you’re in town,’ she added quickly.

  ‘I’m going to the Highwayman on the Quayside. Sandra Jarvis worked behind the bar there part time and in the holidays. Maybe I’ll find someone who worked with her. They might know something.’

  ‘I don’t know it,’ she said, ‘but the name rings a bell.’

  ‘Then I’m going to Northumbria Police HQ to read the case files, though that might take a while as there are loads of reported sightings.’

  ‘You’ll be there all day by the sound of it.’

  ‘There is one thing I would appreciate from you,’ he told her.

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘I’m missing a bit of background on Frank Jarvis. There’s a lot in the public domain but I could do with a little gossip.’

  ‘You mean dirt?’ she asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ admitted Tom, ‘if he’s dirty; but his reputation says otherwise.’

  ‘And you believe that?’

  ‘He’s a politician – so I’d say the odds are stacked heavily against him, wouldn’t you?’

  Helen watched him for a moment to see if he was serious. ‘Okay, I’ll do some digging,’ she said, ‘and don’t worry, I’ll be discreet.’

  ‘You know what, don’t be,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t mind him knowing I’ve been asking after him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Two reasons: one, it shows I’m doing my job properly.’

  ‘And two?’

  ‘I’d quite like to see if it rattles his cage.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The two Julies lived in a small student house with a couple of other girls. When Ian Bradshaw told them he was a police officer involved in the Sandra Jarvis investigation, Julie One, whose surname was actually Elliott, nervously invited the detective to sit at the kitchen table with them.

  Julie Two, whose real name was Morrison, offered to make him a cup of tea.

  ‘Yes please,’ he said and Julie One looked worried.

  ‘We’ve only got herbal tea left,’ she admitted, as if confessing a serious felony.

  ‘Then I’ll pass. I won’t be long. This is just routine.’ He didn’t normally try to put people at their ease before questioning them but these two looked guilty and nervous in a way that only the entirely innocent can. Up until Sandra’s sudden disappearance they had probably never had any dealings with the police.

  ‘We’re not suspects or anything?’ asked Julie Two.

  ‘Suspects?’ he repeated.

  ‘In Sandra’s disappearance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he asked amiably, ‘are you?’

  ‘God, no,’ protested Julie One and she gave her friend an angry look, ‘we had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Then you have nothing to fear. We haven’t been able to locate Miss Jarvis and it has been some time since she went missing. When that happens we like to go over everything again, piece by piece, to see if there is anything we’ve missed or if someone remembers something in the meantime they didn’t mention previously. Okay?’

  They both seemed visibly relieved at that.

  ‘You lived with Sandra Jarvis for how long?’ asked Bradshaw, reaching for his notebook and pen. He wrote their full names at the top of the new page but from that point simply put ‘Julie 1’ or ‘Julie 2’ next to relevant comments they made.

  ‘From the beginning of the first term,’ said Julie One.

  ‘Right up until …’ Julie Two looked a little alarmed as if she might be about to say something incriminating.

  ‘She disappeared?’ he offered helpfully.

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Julie One, ‘that was in reading week last year.’

  ‘Last year? I thought it was February of this year?’

  ‘She means the academic year,’ said Julie Two.

  ‘Of course.’ He let Julie One continue.

  ‘We went home to our families then but when we all came back to halls Sandra wasn’t there.’

  ‘And you never saw her again?’

  ‘No,’ said Julie Two.

  ‘Let’s go back to when you first met. What did you think?’

  ‘Think?’ asked Julie One, and Bradshaw couldn’t help but wonder how these two had landed places at such an esteemed academic establishment as Durham University. Perhaps his DCI was right when he repeatedly told Bradshaw, ‘You can’t learn everything from a textbook.’

  ‘What was your impression of her?’ he
clarified.

  ‘She was really nice,’ said Julie Two quickly, as if defending the missing girl against an accusation from a third party, then she added, ‘at first.’

  ‘But she changed?’ Bradshaw prompted.

  ‘After Christmas,’ explained Julie One. ‘In the first term we all got along great in our halls. The girls on our floor shared a kitchen and we went out in groups. She was as friendly as anyone else.’

  ‘But you noticed a change in her in the second term.’

  ‘It was very noticeable. I remember when she came back to halls after the Christmas break, she barely acknowledged anyone.’

  ‘Sandra stayed in her room all of the time,’ said Julie Two, ‘and on the rare occasions we did see her she seemed really sad.’

  ‘Did anyone talk to her about this or did you just leave her to it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ There was a defensiveness from Julie Two that might have indicated some guilt. Perhaps she felt they could have done more to help?

  ‘We tried to get her to come out with us like before. Every time we went into town or the union bar one of us would knock on her door.’

  ‘But she always refused?’

  ‘She’d make excuses at first; she had to work or study or was going to do something else instead, like her laundry or buying groceries. After a while she didn’t even bother with excuses, just said she didn’t want to go out. Some of the girls resented that.’ She sounded as if she was one of them. ‘We gave up in the end. I mean there’s only so many times you can ask, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is,’ Bradshaw agreed. ‘And she never gave any reason for the way she was feeling?’

  The two Julies both agreed she had not. ‘Sandra just shut everyone out,’ said Julie One.

  ‘Problems at home, boyfriend troubles, drugs?’ he offered as explanations.

  ‘We got the impression she was happy at home. She didn’t have a steady boyfriend. At least I never saw one and she never looked …’ She was searching for the right word.