A Walk With the Dead

by Sally Spencer

‘It’s nothing but the wind rustling through the leaves,’ she told herself desperately, ignoring the fact that there was no wind to speak of.

  She wanted to run towards the lights. But she knew that would be a mistake, because if she lost her footing, she would fall on her face, and once she was on the ground . . .

  Fighting her ever-increasing fear, she forced herself to put one foot before the other and test the ground before entrusting her full weight to it.

  The path was no more than a dozen yards away, she thought – she was going to be all right!

  And perhaps the prospect of reaching the path was enough to encourage her to abandon her caution a little, because suddenly her left leg buckled slightly under her, and she stumbled forward.

  She stumbled – but by some miracle, she didn’t fall. She came to a halt, took a deep breath, and concentrated on re-establishing her equilibrium.

  ‘Only ten yards,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘Ten yards at the most.’

  And it was at that very moment that she felt the hands locking around her throat.

  Her attacker was standing right behind her, his rubbery fingers pressing down hard against her soft skin.

  She began to choke, and dark spots were already starting to appear before her eyes.

  In a panicked attempt to break free, she twisted first to the left, and then to the right, but the attacker had his body pressed closely against hers, and breaking free was simply impossible.

  She tried to scream – but she couldn’t.

  More through desperation than planning, she lifted her right leg and kicked backwards. She felt the heel of her shoe make contact with something hard – maybe the man’s knee – and suddenly the hands had gone from her throat and she could hear the sound of a body falling to the ground.

  Now she was free to scream. And scream she did. It was a harsh, rough terrified scream, which seemed to fill the whole park.

  She was conscious of her attacker moving, and knew she should run away, but her legs seemed frozen to the spot.

  She screamed again – even louder this time – and heard the sound of feet, crashing through the undergrowth in the distance.

  ‘Tony!’ she sobbed. ‘Help me, Tony.’

  Behind her, she heard a scurrying noise and the whoosh of branches being knocked roughly aside.

  Her attacker was leaving, she thought. She was going to live!

  The crashing grew louder, and suddenly Tony was by her side.

  ‘What the bloody hell’s happened?’ he demanded.

  ‘I was attacked,’ she croaked. ‘The murderer . . .’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not just making this up?’ Tony asked suspiciously.

  She could not believe he had said that.

  ‘The murderer,’ she repeated. ‘He . . . he was here.’

  ‘I mean, how do I know you’re not just pretending – to punish me for not escorting you out of the park?’ Tony asked.

  ‘My throat,’ she gasped. ‘Look at my throat.’

  He flicked on his lighter, and held it so close to her neck that she could feel the heat.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, ‘you really were attacked!’

  ‘Yes . . . I . . .’

  ‘We need to think,’ Tony interrupted. ‘There’s a taxi rank at the end of the park. I’ll give you some money, and walk most of the way to it with you. I promise I won’t let you out of my sight until you’re safely inside the cab. But you mustn’t tell the taxi driver what happened. You mustn’t tell anybody what happened.’

  ‘But we have to let the police know,’ Dolly protested.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ Tony told her. ‘If we go to the police, they’ll want to know what we were both doing in the park. And that could be rather tricky, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Somebody tried to kill me!’ Dolly moaned.

  ‘Yes, I know that, but they didn’t succeed, so there’s no real harm done,’ Tony said. ‘Those bruises look nasty, but if you say you’ve got a sore throat and wear a scarf, they’ll be gone in a day or two.’

  ‘Somebody tried to kill me,’ Dolly repeated – because there didn’t really seem to be anything else to say.

  ‘Look, I was keeping this a secret until the next time I saw you, but since you’re so upset, I suppose I’d better tell you now,’ Tony said. ‘It’s your birthday next week, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’ve arranged a special treat to celebrate it – a slap-up meal in a really posh restaurant.’

  She was confused. Everything was so confusing.

  ‘A really posh restaurant?’ she said. ‘But you told me we couldn’t even go in a pub together.’

  ‘Ah, yes, that is what I told you, and it’s quite true,’ Tony said awkwardly. ‘But . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But . . . err . . . I was only talking about Whitebridge when I said that. This posh restaurant’s in Accrington, where nobody knows us.’

  ‘But wouldn’t they think . . .’

  ‘You can pretend you’re my daughter while we’re in the restaurant – you wouldn’t mind that, would you? – but later, when we’re in the park . . .’ Tony pulled himself up suddenly, as he realized what he was saying. ‘No, not in the park . . . of course not in the park . . . somewhere nice . . . maybe down by the river, maybe out on the moors.’ He paused to take a breath. ‘Later, after all that pretending in the restaurant, we’ll go somewhere nice, and you’ll be my little sexpot, just like you always are. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said – because she would like it.

  ‘Only, if we go to the police, that can’t happen, can it?’ Tony asked. ‘There’ll be no posh restaurant and no little trip out to somewhere nice – because I’ll be in gaol. So I think it’s best we forget the police. Don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Dolly said dubiously.

  Tony laughed. ‘You suppose so,’ he repeated, as if she’d made a joke. ‘You’re a funny little sexpot, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  ‘Right then, let’s find you a taxi, just like we planned,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed.

  ‘There is just one more thing,’ Tony told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I must admit that I’m a little hurt you’ve never thanked me for rescuing you.’

  ‘Thank you, Tony,’ Dolly said meekly.

  ELEVEN

  It was a few minutes before the sun was due to rise, and the uniformed sergeant was sitting in the passenger seat of one of the patrol cars.

  ‘The feller we’re about to drop in on used to be a very important figure in this town, you know,’ he told the driver.

  ‘Did he?’ asked the other man, though he was not really interested, and was instead mentally debating the important question of whether the overtime he would be earning was worth dragging himself from his bed at this ungodly hour.

  ‘A very important figure,’ the sergeant repeated. He glanced down the street that lay in front of them – at the decaying terraced houses and gardens filled with old prams and rotting fridges. ‘And now he’s living in Balaclava Terrace. How are the mighty fallen, eh?’

  ‘That’s right,’ the driver agreed, as he calculated whether the overtime payment would be large enough to buy him the graphite fishing rod that he’d had his eye on for some time.

  A bird – it might have been a sparrow – chirped on one of the roofs, and the sergeant switched on the car’s interior light and checked his watch.

  ‘Six twenty-seven,’ he announced. ‘Time to move,’

  The driver turned the ignition key, flicked his back lights on and off – as a signal to the van parked behind them – and pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘Get your foot down, lad – we don’t want to give the bugger any warning we’re coming,’ the sergeant said.

  The driver pressed down hard on the accelerator, and the patrol car shot forward.

  ‘Seventy, sixty-
nine, sixty-eight, sixty-seven . . .’ the sergeant said, counting down the numbers of the houses they were now whizzing past. ‘Fifty-three, fifty-one, forty-nine . . . That’s it. Slam the anchors on, lad.’

  The driver hit the brake, and the car skidded to a halt. Behind him, the driver of the van was carrying out a similar manoeuvre.

  The sergeant leapt out of the car, rushed up to the short path of number forty-five, and hammered on the door.

  ‘Police!’ he shouted. ‘Open up! Do it now – or we’ll break the bloody door down.’

  The residents of Balaclava Street were not the only ones to suffer a rude awakening that early morning. Those who lived in New Bridge Street, East Street, Elm Avenue and India Mills Road were similarly awoken by a sudden banging on the door and a demand from the police that they be admitted.

  The disturbance did not last for long. By six thirty-two, when the last hurriedly dressed man on DI Beresford’s list was led handcuffed to the waiting patrol car, it was all over, and those who had heard the knock on the door with some trepidation – but had not subsequently been arrested themselves – could return to their beds and their uneasy sleep.

  Dolly Turner lived far enough away from any of the dawn raids to have avoided being woken up by them, but she was awake anyway. Dolly had hardly slept at all the previous night, but instead had tossed and turned – and worried.

  She knew that Tony was right when he’d said that if they reported what had happened to the police, he’d probably end up in serious trouble. And she was looking forward to going to a posh restaurant in Accrington, though at least part of her suspected that if she hadn’t been attacked, the question of the restaurant would never have come up at all.

  But . . . but . . .

  But she had been attacked!

  She could have been killed!

  And surely, whatever Tony said, the police would have to be told, or she’d be in trouble as well!

  She heard the sound of shuffling feet in the corridor outside, then a cough, then the sound of her dad urinating into the toilet bowl.

  Her dad!

  She hadn’t even thought about him as she’d mentally struggled over what to do next. But if the police found out about Tony, her dad would find out about Tony. And if her dad found out . . .

  It simply wasn’t fair that you should have problems like this to deal with when you were only fourteen years old, she told herself.

  It simply wasn’t fair at all.

  Paniatowski examined herself in the mirror over the basin in the women’s toilets. Her eyes were bloodshot, but that was only to be expected after having spent half the night studying criminal records. There were lines etched into her face, too, and not all of them – she strongly suspected – were due to exhaustion.

  ‘Louisa was right, you’re starting to show your age, Monika,’ she said to the image in the mirror, and she was so tired that she could almost have sworn that image nodded back in agreement.

  She turned on the tap, cupped her hands under it, and splashed some water on her face.

  ‘Better,’ she said when she looked into the mirror again, ‘but not that much better.’

  ‘You want to be careful, boss,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘If people hear you talking to yourself, they’ll start thinking that you’re as far round the twist as the rest of the DCIs.’

  Paniatowski turned to look at Meadows, who appeared as fresh as if she’d had a good night’s sleep.

  ‘Did you come down here just to take the piss, Sergeant?’ she asked. ‘Or was there some other purpose to your visit?’

  Meadows grinned. ‘I came to tell you the suspects have arrived, boss,’ she said.

  ‘All five of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paniatowski looked into the mirror again, and studied her reflection’s eyes. They were still red, but now that the adrenalin had started pumping through her, all signs of tiredness were gone.

  ‘Then let’s get started,’ she said.

  Most of the prison officers in the canteen were sitting in groups of two or three, but there was one – a sandy-haired man in his late twenties – who was alone, and it was to his table that Baxter carried his breakfast tray.

  The officer looked up, and there was a slightly worried expression on his face. ‘I wasn’t on duty on any of the occasions that Jeremy Templar was attacked, so there’s really nothing I can tell you,’ he said.

  Jeremy Templar, Baxter noted. Not just “Templar” or Prisoner Some-Number-or-Other, but Jeremy Templar. Now that was interesting.

  ‘What makes you think I’ve come across here to ask you questions?’ he said aloud.

  ‘Haven’t you?’ the officer asked.

  ‘No, the only reason I’m here is to have my breakfast, and I thought I might as well share a table with a fellow “ginger”, unless, of course, my fellow “ginger” objects to that. Do you object?’

  The officer shrugged. ‘Not really.’

  It was about as warm an invitation as he was likely to get, Baxter thought, placing his tray on the table and sitting down.

  ‘So what’s your name, son – and how long have you been in the prison service?’ he asked, as he sliced off a piece of sausage and dipped it in the deep-yellow yolk of one of his fried eggs.

  ‘I thought you said you wouldn’t be asking any questions,’ the officer replied suspiciously.

  ‘This isn’t questioning, son,’ Baxter said, good-naturedly. ‘If you want to see how I question people, you should sit in on one of the interrogations. All I’m doing at the moment is making a little light conversation, but, of course, if you’d rather I just shut up . . .’

  The officer flushed slightly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I must have sounded rather rude.’

  ‘Think no more of it,’ Baxter said magnanimously.

  ‘My name’s Tim Robson, and I’ve been working here for about three years,’ the other man told him.

  ‘And do you like it?’ Baxter asked, cutting the corner of a piece of sliced bread.

  ‘I wouldn’t say I exactly like it,’ Robson answered, ‘but it’s a necessary job that’s not as easy as it looks, so there’s a certain satisfaction to be gained from doing it well.’

  ‘It certainly is necessary,’ Baxter agreed, and then, deciding to test the water, he added provocatively, ‘The longer we keep this scum off the streets, the better it is for everybody. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘There are certainly some prisoners in here who shouldn’t be released for a long, long time,’ Robson said carefully.

  Baxter nodded. He just about had the lad’s number now, he decided. Robson was something of a vague, polite liberal. Within the prison context, he was probably slightly uncomfortable about both his liberality and his good manners, and thus would always do his best to keep out of any discussions in which his true self might be revealed. All of which meant that if he was going to say anything useful, he needed to be steered into it.

  ‘Most of the officers in this prison think I’m here to pin the blame for Templar’s suicide on them, but that’s not the case at all,’ Baxter said. ‘In fact, the longer I’m here, the more convinced I am that, working under these conditions, there wasn’t much at all they could do to protect him.’

  ‘No, I don’t think there was much they could do,’ Robson agreed.

  ‘That’s not to say that I don’t get the distinct feeling that any of them lost much sleep over what happened to the man,’ Baxter continued. ‘I’d even go far as to guess that most of them consider that whatever punishment he took from the other inmates was well deserved.’ He paused for a significant moment. ‘I expect that’s how you feel yourself, isn’t it?’

  ‘And how do you feel?’ Robson asked, evasively.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, the only punishment that any man should be subjected to is to serve out the sentence handed down to him by the judge,’ Baxter replied.

  Robson nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘Of course, it woul
d be unreasonable to expect the ordinary, decent prisoners, who are forced to rub shoulders with the dirty pervert every day, to have the same attitude as I do,’ Baxter continued.

  ‘But what if he wasn’t a filthy pervert at all?’ Robson asked.

  Now he hadn’t been expecting that, Baxter thought.

  ‘Are you telling me that Templar didn’t do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t say, with any degree of certainty, that he was innocent, but I believe that he was,’ Robson replied.

  ‘You talked to him, did you?’

  ‘No, we’re not supposed to have conversations with the prisoners about anything – and especially about the crimes they’ve been convicted of.’

  ‘So where does this belief in his innocence come from?’

  Robson looked embarrassed. ‘This will sound stupid.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ Baxter assured him.

  ‘It comes from having observed his wife on visiting days,’ Robson said in a rush – almost as if he believed that expressing the thought quickly would somehow make it sound less idiotic.

  ‘Go on,’ Baxter encouraged.

  ‘There are some women who decide not to stick by their husbands when they’ve been sent to prison, but they’re in a small minority,’ Robson said. ‘A lot of the prisoners’ wives don’t actually approve of what their men did to end up in jail – but they still come to see them religiously, every visiting day, and give them what comfort they can.’

  ‘And a great comfort it must be to them,’ said Baxter, who still had no idea where the other man was heading.

  ‘The one exception to that rule is in the case of the sex offenders,’ Robson told him. ‘Their wives are so disgusted by what they’ve done that they never visit. But Mrs Templar came every single visiting day. And we looked forward to it almost as much as he did, because she was a very attractive woman, and all the officers fancied her.’

  Baxter sighed. The problem of talking to young men with an idealistic streak, he thought, was that they invariably got things wrong.

  ‘It’s not as straightforward as that, son,’ he said. ‘A man can have a beautiful wife and still fancy little girls – or little boys, for that matter. I’ve seen it happen scores of times myself.’