Presumed Dead

by Shirley Wells

  Dylan lay back on his bed and let her talk. No response was necessary.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Stevie’s head ached when he woke up. He was surprised to find himself in bed, and he tried to think how he’d got there and why he was still wearing his clothes.

  He couldn’t remember.

  He tried to decide, unsuccessfully, what day it was. It didn’t matter as they were all the same, but he had a notion he was supposed to be somewhere today. Was it today the Council was sending people to fit a new front door?

  He got out of bed, put a hand to his aching head, and walked into the hall where he saw a brand new white door. He remembered now. Two men. One big and fat. The other was thin and moved quickly. Stevie had made them a cup of tea.

  He put on his anorak and went outside. The best thing was to walk. The doctors had told him that. Said he must keep walking along the road. Said it wouldn’t happen again.

  He walked along to Market Street where the cars moved slowly. There were so many of them, they had no option but to crawl along. The drivers tapped steering wheels or spoke into mobile phones. Some were smoking, others yawning.

  Stevie liked Market Street with its slow-moving traffic. He took a left onto Pringle Street. Cars moved slowly here, too. Some parked outside the newsagent’s, causing congestion. Stevie could overtake them easily.

  He kept walking until he was on the Manchester Road. The pain in his head increased with the noise of the cars. Here, the cars raced toward the M66 and Manchester. Four rows of cars. Noisy. Powerful. Smelly.

  He stopped walking as he remembered. Yesterday—was it yesterday?—he’d walked along this road with the man. They had walked all the way to Morty’s. The man had asked him about Anita Champion.

  Breakfast. The man had said to meet him at Asda for breakfast.

  Stevie cheered up. He didn’t have to walk along this road, he had to go to Asda. The man had said so. He mustn’t tell the doctors, though.

  The man wanted to talk about Anita Champion. Stevie had liked her. She’d been kind to him. Once she’d given him a sandwich. He’d been sitting on one of the benches in Moors Park and she’d come to sit beside him.

  “Isn’t it a lovely day, Stevie? I wish I didn’t have to go back to work this afternoon. I could quite happily sit here all day.”

  She was always smiling. Talking and laughing, too.

  “Do you want a sandwich? Cheese and onion?” She opened a bag and offered him one. “You may as well take one. I won’t eat all these.”

  So he took one of her sandwiches. It was good. Thick crusty bread and slices of cheese with thickly chopped onion, it was delicious. He could remember that. He could remember a lot of things.

  “What about you, Stevie? What are you doing today?”

  “Walking.”

  “Oh? That’s nice. Where are you going?”

  He had no idea. The destination wasn’t important. “Doctors say so. Say I must walk by the cars.”

  “Oh, Stevie, I’m sure they don’t mean every day.” She had looked appalled. “I expect that was years ago, after the—accident. It’ll be like falling off a bike, when they tell you to get straight back on again. It’s so you’re not afraid to do it.”

  Stevie wasn’t afraid to walk by the cars. It made his head hurt, but that was because of the noise and smell. He wasn’t afraid.

  He’d stood and brushed a few breadcrumbs from his jeans. The pigeons would be along for those.

  “Walking,” he’d told Anita, and he’d set off for the main road.

  The man wanted to talk to him about Anita Champion, but Stevie couldn’t remember. He could remember her getting in the taxi that night, and he could remember walking up to Morty’s. He hadn’t actually seen her there, though. But he wouldn’t have. He must have walked there and straight back. He couldn’t remember doing so, but he must have because he could remember her friends—those women—leaving Oasis.

  But that was all. The next thing he remembered was waking up in his bed the following day.

  He was at Asda’s store before nine o’clock. As he took the escalator to the cafe on the first floor, he could smell freshly baked bread. The man wasn’t in the cafe, though, so Stevie went outside again.

  The trolleys were lined up by the dozen, each chained to the one in front. If they let him walk with one of those, he would be fine. All he would hear was the satisfying, comforting squeak and rumble of the wheels. He wouldn’t hear the cars and his head wouldn’t hurt so much.

  He walked across the car park, back and forth, sometimes using the zebra crossings, occasionally stepping straight between the rows of cars.

  “Morning, Stevie!”

  “Morning, er—”

  “Dylan,” the man said. “My name’s Dylan Scott. Remember?”

  “Dylan.”

  They walked inside and took the escalator to the cafe.

  He liked the man. Dylan. He would remember that.

  He liked the breakfast, too. His plate held an egg, two sausages, three rashers of bacon and a portion of mushrooms. On another plate, he had two slices of toast and two individually wrapped chunks of butter.

  The man had a pot of tea. “I’ve had breakfast,” he said. “At the hotel. It’s included in the cost of the room.”

  Stevie had never been inside a hotel.

  “So,” the man said as Stevie tucked in, “have you thought of anything else? Is there anything you’ve remembered about the night Anita Champion went missing?”

  “No.” He couldn’t remember. He’d tried, but he couldn’t.

  “What about Morty’s? Was there a bouncer working there? Did someone get free drinks for Anita?”

  Stevie couldn’t remember. No, he was sure he hadn’t known anyone who worked there. “No.”

  “I spoke to Anita’s daughter last night, Stevie. You remember Holly, don’t you? She remembers you. She said her mum liked you.”

  Stevie felt his mouth curl into a smile at that. He couldn’t help it.

  “Yes.” He remembered Holly. It was nice that she said Anita Champion had liked him.

  The smile vanished. He wanted to remember, but he couldn’t. Anita Champion had got into the taxi, he knew that, and he could remember walking up Manchester Road to Morty’s. He must have turned round and walked back into town, but he didn’t remember doing so. He could remember seeing those women, three of them, leaving Oasis. One of them, Yvonne Yates, had left early. There had been something wrong between the other two. They had been angry about something.

  What had happened, he worried, between the time he walked up to Morty’s and the time he was outside Oasis?

  “Who used to go to Morty’s, Stevie? You must know that. You know Anita Champion went there. You must know others who did.”

  But Stevie didn’t. His breakfast was finished and his head was hurting. He didn’t know. Couldn’t remember.

  He shouldn’t be here. He should be walking along the road. The doctors had said so.

  “Must walk.”

  He limped out of the cafe, down the escalator and across the car park.

  “Must walk,” he reminded himself.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As he drove on the M65 to Blackburn, Dylan wondered why the gods had it in for him. What had he ever done to anyone?

  His wife had thrown him out, his mother had moved in, he was penniless—well, he would be if it weren’t for Holly Champion’s faith in him—and now, as if that lot wasn’t enough, he was on his way to meet the copper from hell.

  Pikey had phoned him that morning, soon after Stevie’s abrupt exit from Asda’s cafe.

  “You’ll never guess,” he’d said, laughing.

  “Then I won’t bother. Out with it.”

  “The senior investigating officer on the Anita Champion case was none other than your friend and mine—are you ready for this?—Frank Willoughby.”

  “What? Oh, no. You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope. I knew he hailed from Lancashire—hey
, it’s a small world, isn’t it?”

  “Small and full of shit,” Dylan groaned. “Of all the coppers in the world—”

  “He’s retired now so perhaps he’s mellowed.”

  “Fat chance.”

  “I told him you’d like a word and he was more than happy for me to pass on his number. Said he’d look forward to hearing from you.”

  “Look forward to kicking me in the bollocks, more like.”

  Dylan and Pikey had experienced the dubious pleasure of working under D.C.I. Frank Willoughby when he had been sent down to the City on an undercover job. He was a damn good detective, Dylan acknowledged grudgingly, but he was a bastard to work for. Nothing they did was right. Nothing.

  Every day had started with a bollocking for some misdemeanour or other. They had all prayed for his stint of duty to end.

  “Soft fucking southerners” had been his favourite description of Dylan and Pikey.

  There was no getting out of it, though. As he’d been the senior investigating officer on Anita Champion’s case, Dylan had to talk to him. For all he knew, they might have gathered all sorts of info.

  So he’d phoned him.

  “I’ll be out for an hour or so,” Willoughby had said. “About three would suit me best.” He’d given Dylan his address and that had been that. The conversation hadn’t been long enough to tell if he had mellowed or not.

  With the aid of his sat nav, Dylan found the address fairly easily and stopped his car outside a solid detached house with a huge well-maintained garden. Very nice.

  It was precisely three o’clock, so Dylan might earn a Brownie point for punctuality, another of Willoughby’s foibles. Either way, he would treat himself to a few pints if he managed to escape with his testicles in the right place.

  He walked up the driveway, prodded the doorbell and heard a deep bing-bong echo through the interior.

  Then he was face-to-face with Frank Willoughby.

  It was getting on for sixteen years since they had worked in the same building, and Dylan was taken aback by the change in the man. He looked much older and, amazingly, almost frail.

  “Well, well, well,” Frank said. “I never thought I’d see you north of Watford Gap. You’d better come in.”

  “Thanks.” Dylan was led down the hallway, through the kitchen and into a conservatory—heated, thank God—where several newspapers and an empty coffee mug suggested that Frank spent a lot of time in there.

  “How are you, Frank?”

  “Can’t complain. You?”

  “About the same.”

  Frank must be heading toward sixty, Dylan guessed, but he looked older. His skin had a greyish tinge to it. His hair was still the same, though. Short, thick and dark.

  “Retirement agreeing with you?” Dylan asked.

  “Not particularly, but I had a heart attack a couple of months back, so any sort of work is off the agenda for a while.” He gave Dylan a searching look. “Retirement agreeing with you?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Better than being inside, though?”

  “Yeah, better than that.”

  It had been too much to hope that Willoughby hadn’t heard about his spectacular fall from grace and dismissal from the force.

  “You’re driving so you won’t want a proper drink, will you? Fancy a cup of tea?”

  “That would be great. Thanks.”

  While Frank clattered around in the kitchen, Dylan admired the view of the hills from the conservatory.

  “Nice spot,” he said when Frank put the tea things on a wicker table.

  “It is, yes. Now, sit yourself down.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Pikey seems to be doing well for himself,” Frank said.

  “So it seems, yes.”

  “He’s a good copper.”

  Sixteen years ago, Pikey had been another soft fucking southerner, but Dylan refrained from saying so.

  “He tells me you’re looking into the disappearance of Anita Champion,” Frank went on.

  “I am, yes. Her daughter’s asked me to see what I can find out. I’m surprised that more wasn’t done at the time.”

  “There was no money. Isn’t that what it always comes down to?”

  “Not where you’re concerned, no.” The copper Dylan remembered wouldn’t have let a minor detail like resources affect an investigation.

  “A month later, a child was abducted,” Frank said. “We were busy working on that. It was more important than chasing a grown woman across the country.”

  There were two large slices of what looked to be homemade fruit cake on the tray, and Dylan helped himself to one.

  “Is that what you thought? That she was swanning around the countryside?”

  Frank let out his breath. “Not really.”

  His answer surprised Dylan. “So what did you think?”

  “We all hoped she would turn up, obviously. But there was no evidence of foul play, none at all, so there was nothing we could do, was there? Besides, we launched a massive search for Janice Bright, the missing child, so we would have found a body if there’d been one to find.”

  “Not if the perp had buried her in his cellar.” Dylan took another bite of cake. It was heavy and moist, just the way he liked it. He’d skipped lunch, too, so he was starving.

  “And whose cellar should we have searched?” Frank asked. “She had no enemies. There was nothing to suggest she hadn’t just taken off.”

  “Leaving her daughter behind?”

  Frank shrugged at that. “What have you learnt so far?”

  “What makes you think a fucking soft southerner like me has learnt anything?”

  Frank smiled at that. “Even soft southerners make good coppers. Sometimes.”

  “This one didn’t. This one was dismissed from the force.”

  “Yeah, I know. And I was sorry to hear it. Really sorry.”

  Dylan’s head flew up. He’d imagined Frank would think a filthy cell the best place for him.

  “I’ve arrested dozens of scumbags in my time, Dylan, and they don’t take kindly to it. I could have been in the same situation myself, many times. Any copper could.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” He did. More than Frank could know.

  “Come on, then. Tell me what you’ve got so far.”

  “Probably nothing. How about you tell me what you know?”

  Frank smiled like an experienced hand indulging a young rookie. “I know we weren’t called in until over a week after she went missing.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because everyone, her daughter included, assumed she’d met up with someone—a man—and would return when it suited her.”

  “Her daughter was only eleven!”

  “Yes, I know.” Frank put his hands together and rested the tips of his fingers beneath his chin. “So what do I know? I know she went out with friends, as she often did on Saturday nights. They started at the Commercial, went on to Oasis and then split up—as they often did—and, although she was seen dancing with a couple of unidentified men at the club, she was never seen again.” He shrugged a little sheepishly. “As I said, we were busy with other things. We put out an appeal for information, but nothing came of it.”

  “So you closed the case? Just like that?”

  “Of course not. The case is still open, but you can’t follow leads that aren’t there. She was a grown woman, Dylan. We made sure her daughter was okay. That was our main priority.” He leaned forward and picked up his cup of tea. “So what have you found out?”

  “Anita Champion slept her with her employer’s boyfriend, one Eddie Swift. To teach her a lesson, the other girls—and I imagine Sandra, her employer was behind it—put something in her drink. God knows what. One of her friends, Brenda Tomlinson, was a nurse at the time so, presumably she could have got hold of anything. She’s on holiday so I haven’t managed to speak to her yet. Anyway, this had the desired effect and Anita was later seen by two of those friends throwin
g up in the alley outside Oasis. They heard a man go to her aid and then they scarpered.

  “The man, Stevie—God, I still don’t know his surname. He’s a few pence short of a shilling and they call him Simple Stevie. According to him, he stayed with her for half an hour, got her some water from the club, and then walked with her to the taxi rank. He saw her get in the taxi and he knows she was intending to go to Morty’s. Morty’s was a—”

  “Shit hole,” Frank said. “We used to get called out to that place most weeks.”

  “Mm. Anyway, that’s the last time she was seen as far as I can tell. But I’ve only just found out about that, so I’m going to find—or try to find—people who worked there.”

  “Right.”

  “Eddie Swift reckoned that a bouncer at a nightclub used to get free drinks for Anita.”

  “I’m impressed.” Frank nodded at the other piece of fruit cake. “You have that. I’m supposed to be watching my weight.”

  Dylan was more interested in Anita Champion, but he was also starving, so he grabbed the cake.

  Frank, meanwhile, left the room for a few moments and returned with a phone. He tapped in a number, then had a good chat with his caller.

  Dylan’s patience was about to expire when he heard Frank say, “Tell me, mate, what was the name of that bouncer at Morty’s? The big ugly bugger we arrested?…Ah, yes, that’s it…Can you think of anyone else who worked there?…Oh?…Did he indeed?”

  When the call ended, Frank returned the phone to the other room and came back with a pen and paper in his hand.

  “Now then.” He wrote quickly. “Colin Bates was a bouncer at Morty’s. Ugly sod. We had him on an ABH charge. The bloke who did the disco for years was a flash prat by the name of Sean Ellis. He was crap at his job, but got to keep it because the ladies liked him. And, of course, you’ll know that Phil Mortimer owned the place?”

  “Yes.”

  “He and his wife run a nursing home now.” Frank grimaced at the notion. “There must be more profit in waiting for death.”

  Dylan took the paper from him. “Thanks for that, Frank, I appreciate it. I owe you.”