by Meurig Jones
‘Of course,’ Wallace replied, making it sound as if there was no question of him doing anything to the contrary.
‘Off you go then.’
DC Jones rose hurriedly from her workstation and said to Ellis, ‘Before Kevin goes, he might want to be a part of this information.’
Ellis waved a hand in Wallace’s direction. ‘Hang about, Kevin.’ He looked up enquiringly at DC Jones. ‘What’ve you got, Debbie?’
DS Hazel stopped working on his computer to listen.
‘Mayfield didn’t lie about Tom Thorne. He was a young offender at the youth custody centre. He was released aged fourteen in April 1991, went home to Cardiff where he lived on a council estate with his parents and younger brother, and he had to make probation visits weekly. After only two visits he stopped going. When his probation officer visited his home, she discovered he had left and no one knew of his whereabouts. He went on a missing persons register—’
Ellis interrupted to ask, ‘And has he been missing ever since?’
DC Jones looked at the sergeant and nodded gravely. ‘That’s right.’
‘Could he have been seeing Mayfield after he’d gone missing?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility. But there’s no way he could have gone abroad. He’s never applied for a passport.’
‘So Mayfield told us another lie. But he was truthful when he told us his name.’
Leaning with one arm against the door, Wallace chuckled. ‘I think our boss man may have frightened him into that one.’
DC Jones nodded agreement. ‘Yes, he’s now terrified for his life. And he needs the police to protect him, so he was forced into giving us half the truth.’
Ellis stared thoughtfully into the distance for a moment. ‘I wonder what happened to this Tom Thorne?’
Jones shuddered. ‘I’d hate to think.’
Freeing himself from troubled thoughts, Ellis told Wallace to get on his way.
Once he had left, Ellis told Debbie, ‘I think we need to get Mayfield back here. Get on to the main desk and see if you can get the patrol car that’s keeping an eye on him to bring him in.’
As soon as he finished speaking, his desk phone rang and he snatched it up. DC Jones was about to return to her desk but Ellis indicated with a raised hand for her to stay, listening intently to the received information from the call, making small exclamations to show the caller he was listening. He ended the call by saying, ‘Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll have a word with Chief Superintendent Marden and see if we can organize a helicopter search.’
Jones and Hazel were poised and tense, awaiting news of the sudden development.
Ellis said, ‘After the change of shift with the patrol cars, the new shift was called to an incident in Singleton Street. When they eventually checked up on Mayfield’s boat, it had gone. Our bird has flown. Or in this case sailed.’
TEN
AS HE DROVE to Llanelli, DC Kevin Wallace dreamt of his promotion following his contribution to this case. He was in great spirits when he arrived at the B & Q store, but his hopes were soon dashed when the store manager said:
‘I’m sorry if you’ve had a wasted journey.’
After this jolt of disappointment, Kevin listened with growing impatience while the manager explained about the store policy of employing staff with special needs, and it was unlikely that Mr Edwards would remember who he sold the wrecking bar to. Yes, he had a great memory for every character and scene in every Harry Potter film, but as for remembering information such as Wallace wanted….
To his disappointment, this was confirmed when the young detective visited Gareth Edwards at his home. The young man could provide no information, had no clue what a wrecking bar looked like, and was only intent on barcode scanning and the operation of the sale itself.
As he headed back to Swansea, he cursed his luck.
After attending two post mortems, Lambert couldn’t face lunch. It wasn’t so much the dissection that was nauseating but the lingering smell that left an indelible stain on the memory. With a stomach that grumbled loudly, he drove quickly from Cardiff to Bridgend, parked outside the Science Support Building, which was all part of the same complex at Bridgend Police HQ, and phoned the incident room to see if there were any developments. He stopped himself from swearing when he received the news of Mayfield’s escape, followed by a request from Marden to visit him in his office once he had met with forensics.
‘I’m not happy about this situation with Mayfield,’ was Marden’s opening line when at last Lambert entered his office.
Lambert shrugged and affected a mystified expression. ‘Neither am I.’
‘Then why did you let him go?’
‘We had nothing to charge him with.’
Marden made a snorting sound in the back of his throat. ‘He was a convicted paedophile, Harry, who lied to you when questioned. And now we have a helicopter search going on because his boat’s gone.’
‘Yes, that was bad luck about the patrol car being called to another incident.’
Marden’s face reddened. ‘You’re missing the point, Harry. If you hadn’t let the bastard go, this might never have happened.’
‘True.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’
Lambert couldn’t resist adding, ‘Well, there’s no point shutting the stable door, as they say.’
Marden’s voice had an icy edge to it. ‘I can’t believe you let this man go before you heard what forensics and the pathologist had to say.’
‘We had no reason to hold him, sir. With all due respect, what would you have charged him with?’
Marden gave Lambert an acid look and chose to ignore the question. ‘I find it difficult to believe that someone of your experience and record let a suspect go. Were you distracted by the other murder in Carmarthen? Is that what it was? You took your eye off the ball?’
‘Far from it, sir. The reason Mayfield lied to us was because of his past, and because he was scared. He knows he could become the killer’s next victim. He had absolutely no motive for killing his friend Titmus or the man in Carmarthen. The reason Mayfield’s scarpered is because he fears for his life. But that boat has to moor at some other port or seaside town. He won’t have gone far in that thing.’
‘Presumably this Mayfield knows a lot more than you got out of him during your questioning.’
Lambert hesitated. Should he tell him about Thorne being on a missing persons list since 1991? He decided against it, as that would only give the chief super fuel for his argument about hanging on to Mayfield. Lambert chose to change the subject instead, and had just started telling him about McNeil and the vigilante group when the phone rang. Marden picked it up hurriedly, barked his surname, and then listened intently, his face a picture of troubled management. He sighed deeply and ended the call.
‘That was the ACC. The chief constable wants a thorough briefing. This has become a major headache. The press are going berserk on this one, and it’s thrown up all kinds of issues. It’s fast becoming political.’
‘I know,’ Lambert said. ‘It’ll be a fight between freedom of the press and the civil liberties of our poor sex offenders.’
Ignoring the comment, Marden crossed to the door. ‘Let me know, as soon as you can, what we need to tell the press.’
As he was being ushered out of the office, Lambert said, ‘We know the store where one of the murder weapons came from. DC Wallace went over to interview the bloke on the checkout who sold it. And if he can’t ID him, we may need to issue press details in case there’s someone else in the queue who can.’
Marden, who was taller than Lambert, peered down at him like a headteacher staring at a troublesome boy. ‘I hope for your sake, if you do get an ID, he doesn’t bear any resemblance to this Mayfield.’
‘I think someone with white wavy hair and a pitch-black moustache would be rather noticeable. No, it won’t be him. I guarantee it.’
‘We’ll see,’ Marden said then turned and headed off down the corridor.
; Lambert glanced at his watch. It was time to get back to the incident room at Cockett, and he wanted to view the TV documentary which Ellis had managed to get downloaded on to their system from the producer of Green Valley Productions.
As he walked along the corridor, in the opposite direction from the chief superintendent, he thought about the way Marden had trusted him with the case, even though he had found fault with his handling of the Mayfield interrogation. He knew Marden appreciated his unblemished police record, but their mutual dislike of each other boiled down to something deeper. Something personal.
But he didn’t think Marden would let it get in the way of the investigation. At least the man was professional, he grudgingly admitted.
When he arrived back at the incident room, Lambert found DS Hazel alone, busy collating all the recently acquired information while he munched his way through a Mars Bar.
‘There’ll be a day of reckoning,’ Lambert said.
‘I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes.’
‘You might be crossing it sooner than you think, when you notice how tight your trousers feel.’
Hazel grinned and patted his trim waist. ‘I think you might be a bit jealous, Harry. How did the post mortems go?’
Not wanting to be reminded, Lambert muttered, ‘OK,’ and changed the subject. ‘How about this TV documentary?’
‘Tony managed to track Gavin Lloyd, the MD of Green Valley Productions, to his home. The guy couldn’t do enough to assist us, and drove into Cardiff where his office is based and loaded the film on to their website for us.’
‘Did Tony say what this Gavin Lloyd thought about his researcher downloading child porn?’
‘Yeah, he said the guy was disgusted, and appreciated that there might be a connection between Mark Yalding and the murdered paedophiles, and agreed to do all he could to help.’
‘Very public spirited.’
‘Tony got the impression he was an “I” specialist. Liked the sound of his own voice.’
Hazel waved a hand towards one of the computers. ‘It’s ready and waiting for you. Let me know if it’s better than last night’s EastEnders.’
‘Thanks, Roger.’
Lambert sat at the computer that Hazel had indicated, expecting to view cutting-edge, sensational television journalism; instead, he found it was quite the opposite and was rather pedestrian. There was no presenter, a voiceover provided the narrative, and it began with shots of the youth custody centre that Titmus had run, and spoke about society’s responsibility to protect its young, asking questions about professional youth workers and social workers. The voiceover was distrustful, wondering how these evil men came to be in charge of such an institution. This was followed by street shots, ordinary two-up-two-down houses in one of the Valley towns, and an out-of-shot presenter asking residents how they felt about a released sex offender living in their neighbourhood. The response was predictable, so Lambert fast forwarded. As soon as he saw a shot of the marina he clicked the cursor back onto play. Here the presenter, again out of shot, talked to a man whose face was pixellated to disguise his identity, but Lambert could see the name of the boat and where it was moored, so he knew it was Titmus.
The presenter, somewhere behind and to left of camera, asked Titmus the questions that had been asked of Mayfield in the interview room. Why was he living on a boat and not at his home? Titmus’s voice was authoritative, with just a trace of Welsh accent, sounding affronted as he replied, saying he had served his time and paid the price for his transgression.
Transgression. Not crime or offence or felony. But transgression. Clearly Titmus thought of his crimes as a mild form of misbehaviour.
Next, the presenter asked Titmus if he was in touch with any other convicted sex offenders, to which he replied, ‘Of course not. I thought I had made it quite clear that I will commit no further misdemeanours.’
There it was again. The word playing down the enormity of the crime.
The rest of the footage showed three other paedophiles: the first, Jarvis Thomas, whose face was also hazed out, but Lambert was able to identify him from the interior of his mobile home; the second was a man in Birmingham, whose immediate neighbours knew he’d been in jail, but thought it was for theft; and finally a man who lived in a hostel in Cardiff who was selling Big Issue on the streets. There was nothing about Gordon Mayfield, who had either slipped under the TV researcher’s radar or been excluded for editorial reasons.
The scaremongering conclusion of the programme was that in the programme makers’ opinion these men would undoubtedly re-offend, but for legal reasons they could not be identified as it could never be proven that they might commit similar crimes at some time in the future.
But the Sun had no such qualms, for which Lambert felt grateful as he clicked onto their website. He could either get the article online or at least get them to email it to him so that he would know the identities and rough whereabouts of the other sex offenders.
ELEVEN
DC JONES DROVE carefully through one of the most depressing areas in Cardiff. Blocks of flats, the ground floors boarded up and desolate, and corner shops with wire mesh protecting the windows; rusting abandoned cars and litter-strewn streets. Sitting in the passenger seat, staring at the hostile environment, Ellis’s mood began to sour.
‘The recession must be another bloody great nail in the coffin for people round here,’ he observed.
DC Jones swerved to avoid a football kicked into the road. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she replied, ‘they ever had high expectations, even before the economy took a nose-dive.’
‘What about this Chislet? You think he might be a handful?’
Jones shook her head. ‘Not if you think about the last five years. There’s been no serious criminal activity.’
‘But you must admit, Debbie, of all the youngsters who passed through Titmus’s institution, this one tops the list. His first crime was stoning a neighbour’s cat to death at the age of ten. Then a spectacular list of juvenile crimes. A serious assault on another boy in an alternative curriculum programme, and then a three-year sentence at the youth custody centre. And, after his release, when he turned eighteen, some of his crimes were stomach churning.’
Jones laughed grimly. ‘I can’t wait to meet this little charmer.’
‘You won’t have long to wait.’ Ellis pointed and tapped the windscreen. ‘That must be him with the hotdog barrow.’
On a street corner, close to a shabby pub, a man stood by a hotdog stand, smoking and drinking from a can of Foster’s. Although he was only in his early thirties, Chislet’s thin, ravaged face and receding hair gave him the appearance of a much older man. Jones had seen his photograph and read his physical details, but was still surprised by his small build.
‘He’s only a little geezer,’ she said.
‘They’re the ones you have to be wary of. It’s called over-compensating.’
She parked the car directly in front of Chislet’s hotdog stand and they both got out. Chislet watched them calmly, not a muscle moving in his face. He flicked the stub of his cigarette into the road without taking his eyes off them.
Ellis showed Chislet his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Ellis and this is Detective Constable Jones. We’d like a few words.’
‘What about?’
‘We’d like to know where you were on Thursday night.’
Chislet put his beer on top of the stand, next to the square cavity containing unappetizing-looking frankfurters, and lit another cigarette with a disposable lighter. Both detectives watched him carefully, aware of the delaying tactic. Once he had inhaled and let out a stream of smoke, he gave them a cold smile and jerked a thumb at the pub.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Ellis demanded.
‘Means I was in the pub Thursday night. Go in and ask if you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t mean pub hours. I mean the middle of the night. Early Friday morning, say between one o’clock and 4 a.m.’
> Chislet shrugged. ‘I was in bed, fast asleep.’
‘On your own?’ Jones asked.
Chislet gave her a suggestive smile. ‘Yeah. Too bad I never had no one to keep me company that night.’
‘So you have no witnesses who can back you up?’
Chislet’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Ellis. ‘Why do I need a witness? If I say I was in bed, I was in fucking bed.’
‘How’s custom?’ Jones asked, deliberately wrongfooting him.
‘What?’
She nodded at the hotdog stand. ‘You make much of a living at this?’
‘I get by.’
‘And do you offer your customers any other kind of stimulant?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Ellis broke in sharply, ‘She means are you using this as a front for dealing in drugs?’
Chislet laughed confidently and tapped his pockets. ‘You’re out of luck. You won’t find anything on me.’ He gestured towards the hotdog stand. ‘And you won’t find nothing in there neither. Go ahead and look if you wanna. Have a look under the sausages, if you don’t mind paying for them.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Ellis said. ‘Because your customers come to you on the street corners and you take their orders. That’s how you operate, isn’t it? How is it you manage to pay the magistrates’ fines selling hotdogs? Not exactly doing a roaring trade, are you?’
‘At least, not in hotdogs,’ Jones chimed in.
Chislet began to shift from one foot to the other, starting to look disturbed, and Ellis braced himself for an explosion. But just as the sergeant feared an imminent clash, Chislet’s tension seemed to evaporate as he took another long drag on his cigarette.
‘You got any proof of this?’ he asked.
Ellis smiled. ‘Let’s forget the drugs for the moment. We’re not drug squad. We’d like you to cast your mind back twenty years ago, when you were at the youth custody centre.’
Chislet stared into Ellis’s eyes, clearly wondering where this was leading, and waited for him to continue.