by Chris Simms
'You didn't tell me this because you were afraid of what Sutton might do? Don't you think your opinion of Sutton would have been of some use earlier in this investigation? Why is he so cold? Give me an example. Did he treat Rose badly?'
'Not physically, but emotionally. There was no affection, no love. It was just a partnership. They ran the farm together, that was it.'
'Why does that make him capable of violence?'
'It doesn't. That dog he shot. The one that was worrying his sheep. He didn't shoot it once. He winged it with one barrel, then emptied the other into it at point blank range. After that, he tied it to the rear bumper of his Land Rover and dragged its carcass across the field to the couple. I could tell he'd relished it. There was something in his eyes as he described doing it, a sadistic look. I thought, you could do that to any living thing, animal or human.'
Jon also remembered the cruel delight in Sutton's voice as he'd recounted the event. 'And you approved his application for a high-powered hunting rifle. I can't believe you kept all this back. You're off the investigation, you understand? And I want a statement from you about all of this, along with your where- abouts on the night of each murder.'
'On the night of each murder?'
'Think about it, Clegg, you're right in the shit over this one. Now, where's your senior officer? You're going to tell all this to him.'
On the way back down from the Superintendent's office, Jon ran over Clegg's admission. It still didn't seal things up. Sutton had moved up on the list of suspects, true. But he'd a seemingly sound alibi for the night Rose died. In his gut, Jon didn't think Clegg could have done it either. The man had immense physical power, no doubt about that, but there was no motive Jon could think of for killing Peterson and Kerrigan too.
Hobson? Still in the picture, no doubt about it. But what was his connection to Peterson and Kerrigan? And how could he have known Danny Gordon? That would be a good place to start. He opened the door to the interview room and got an impatient glance off Rick.
'Sorry for the delay. Some new information just came to light.' He flicked the tape back on. 'Interview resuming at ten forty-six, now present in the room, DI Spicer, DS Saville and Jeremy Hobson.' He removed the photo of the Silverdale five-a- side team from his folder and slid it across to Hobson. 'The youth in the middle of the football team. Have you ever seen him before?'
Hobson regarded the photo for all of a second before looking up. Here we go, thought Jon. Never seen him. To his surprise, Hobson nodded. 'He worked briefly at the zoo.'
'Danny Gordon worked at your zoo?'
'That's Danny Gordon? My God, I didn't realise that was his name. As part of our community involvement, we accept lads from the Silverdale facility on work placements. The one helping me today, he's from there.' He turned to Jon. 'Only a fraction of any zoo staff are permanent. During holiday periods we need to double our numbers, so we take seasonal staff from many places. Students of zoology, animal behaviour and veterinary sciences, along with more casual workers.'
Jon glanced at Rick, who was looking equally surprised. Rick turned back to Hobson. 'So Danny Gordon did a stint at your zoo. When?'
'A few years back.'
'Doing what?'
'Cleaned tables in the cafe´. I offered to let him help with the animals, but he obviously didn't enjoy it. City lad through and through.'
Jon thought about how Samburu's hairs had turned up on all three victims. 'Did he ever help out with the panthers?'
'Once. He hated the smell though. Unlike his friend. He took a real shine to them.'
'Who?' Jon asked.
Hobson placed a finger over the head of James Field. 'Him. They arrived together. He was called James, I think. Far more enthusiastic. In fact, he was one of the best workers the Silverdale ever sent.'
Jon felt light-headed. He didn't know how it fitted together, yet, but he knew this was it. 'You're saying James Field had plenty of contact with the panthers?'
'Oh yes. I trusted him to feed them, clean them out. He took to studying their behaviour, learning their natural history, everything.'
'Hunting techniques?'
'Yes. I expected him to apply for a full time job to be honest. I would have taken him on too.'
'Gordon and Field were good mates?'
'Absolutely. They stuck together each break time, shared those roll-up cigarettes they all seem to smoke. James was stronger, more mature. I got the impression it was almost a big brother, younger brother kind of thing between them.'
Jon took a deep breath. Slow down, he thought. Keep your head clear. All that stuff James Field had said about hardly knowing Danny Gordon. What bullshit. 'Right, I'm concluding this interview at ten-fifty.' He clicked the tape off and looked at Hobson. 'One minute please, Rick and I need to talk.'
Out in the corridor he had an almost overpowering urge to leap into the air. 'It's Field. Am I right?'
Rick's eyes shone with excitement. 'How does it work? Field killed Sutton, Peterson, Kerrigan and his best mate?'
'No, Danny Gordon killed himself, unable to take it after Peterson humiliated him all over again. Field found his friend's body and decided to settle things with Peterson himself. He added the word to Gordon's suicide note. Simple revenge. Kuririkana. Remember. It was payback for what happened in the past.'
'So how do the other deaths fit in?'
'We'll find out soon. We've been concentrating on Danny Gordon. But if it's Field doing the killing, there's no wonder we haven't found any links between the victims. We need to get over to that garage straightaway.'
Thirty-Three
The side street was still clogged with cars. Droplets of rainwater were clustered on the windscreens, drips slowly fell from dented bumpers, pooling in the oil-stained puddles. A train rumbled by overhead, wheels screeching on the steel tracks.
Jon and Rick hurried along the narrow street, halting at the door to 'A and L Repairs'. Sensing Rick was hanging back, Jon looked over his shoulder. 'What?'
'I just thought, shouldn't we get back-up? If it's him, he's got one evil weapon on him.'
Jon paused, realising his eagerness had got the better of him.
'There's no back way for him to get out by. We can call for help once we know he's inside.'
He knocked on the door before pushing it open and stepping into the dingy interior. A Vauxhall estate was up on jacks, the legs of a dirty pair of overalls poking out from beneath. 'Hello there,' Jon announced.
The legs twitched and the garage owner wheeled himself out from beneath the vehicle, the body board he was on completely obscured by his bulk. 'Yes gents?'
Glancing towards the shadows at the rear of the garage, Jon said, 'Is James Field about?'
The man sat up and, still holding a spanner, wiped a cuff across his forehead. 'Nope. He's not turned up since you were last here.'
'Got a home address or phone number for him?'
'Yeah, I've tried ringing. He's not answering. Tell him he's sacked when you catch up with him.'
'What's his address? We'll pop round.'
With a grunt, the man got to his feet. He led Jon and Rick to the rear of the garage and opened a dirty address book. 'There you go.'
Jon took out his notebook and jotted it down. 'Can I take a look in his locker?'
'Padlocked.'
'Maybe you decided to break into it? It's your locker, after all.'
The man nodded. 'I suppose I could have.' He picked up a stout screwdriver off the workbench and positioned the end of it beneath the metal plate on the door. Two sharp yanks and the piece of metal flew off. He headed back to the Vauxhall.
Jon swivelled the reading lamp so its beam shone inside. On top of a pair of overalls was the book James Field had been reading.
Secrets of the SAS – Survival and combat techniques for the world's harshest environments.
Jon pulled on some gloves and opened the book to reveal a section on camouflage and ambush. 'Oh bollocks,' he said, putting it on the table, th
en gently lifting out the overalls. Beneath them was a box file. He placed the overalls on the workbench and with the tip of a finger, lifted the file's lid. Inside was a large piece of folded paper. Jon lifted it out by its edges and gently shook it open.
'Sweet Jesus.' At first he thought it was a diagram for a particularly brutal looking garden fork. Thin lines next to it gave measurements in millimetres. The handle, little more than a tube with a splayed base, measured one hundred and forty. It then merged with an oval shaped piece of metal with four bumps running across the top. From each one there emerged an evil looking hook, each one measuring forty millimetres. Further round the oval was a barb-like fifth. 'The dew claw,' murmured Jon. 'He's replicated a panther's paw.'
'My God,' said Rick. 'It's the murder weapon.'
'Or weapons,' Jon replied. 'One for each hand.'
As Rick returned to the car for evidence bags, Jon addressed the garage owner once again. 'Did James show any interest in welding?'
He slid back out from under the vehicle. 'Yeah. He was making garden ornaments. Don't know what. I'd leave him to it, let him lock up at night.'
Jon looked at the acetylene tank and blowtorch to his side. Garden ornaments, my arse.
It was a short drive to Field's place in Ryder Brow. The flat was located on the ground floor of a three-storey 1970s building. The armed response unit showed up ten minutes later, shortly followed by the call from the Detective Super giving them permission to enter the flat.
Jon and Rick watched from down the street as the building's residents were quietly ushered away. Once the area was clear, the team went in. The communication officer's helmet mike sounded seconds later. 'No one in.'
Jon and Rick ducked under the cordon tape, reaching the doors to the building as the armed officers began filing back out, Heckler and Koch MP5 carbines held across their chests. The front door to Field's flat had been smashed off its hinges and they had to step over it to enter his property. An armed officer appeared from the front room, removing his earpiece as he did so. 'One of you DI Spicer?'
'Me,' Jon replied.
'You've got a letter.' He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.
'In there.'
The front room was sparsely decorated with second-hand furniture. A sofa was positioned against the back wall, an African-style throw failing to conceal the battered upholstery at its base. Mounted on the wall above it was a wooden face mask, splashes of red surrounding the jagged eyes, lines of dots running across the forehead and cheeks.
'Something gives me the feeling that's from Kenya,' Rick commented.
Jon turned to the note on the table.
To DI Spicer,
If you're reading this, you've worked it out.
Once you turned up at the garage, I knew it wouldn't be long before you came back. After Kerrigan I rechecked Danny's place and saw all the police cars outside. I knew then it was time to go.
You won't find me now. I'm a shadow in the night, the darkest part of your fears, the stuff of nightmares.
There's one more place I'm going to visit, then I'm done. Death doesn't scare me. My life never began and what little of it
remains will be spent putting this final wrong right.
Kuririkana.
The words set a hoard of terrible images swirling in Jon's head. Snippets of the moor at night, the red light floating in the blackness above, the fragment of sheep's fleece snared on a spike of gorse, crows sweeping low across the dead sky, the gaping throats of Sutton, Peterson and Kerrigan, dark clouds spreading across the land. And behind it all that low throaty rasp, as if conjured from the pit of hell itself.
'He doesn't sound like a happy bunny,' the man with the firearm announced.
Jon's mind snapped back to the present. 'He's after one more person. Rick, get on to Summerby, we need to find every detail from this bloke's miserable, fucked up life.'
Rick had just got through to their senior officer and was reading James Field's note out when Jon's phone went. He glanced at the screen. Mum. 'Hi, can I call you back?'
'Yes, OK. But is Alice with you?'
Jon blinked. 'No. She said she'd be at home.'
'Well, I'm on your doorstep and she's not answering again. I've brought you another pie.'
'Have you got your key?'
'Yes.'
'Go ahead and open the door. I'm sure she'll be in there.' He listened as she unlocked the door. 'Alice? It's me, Mary.
Are you in?' A second's silence. 'No, it's empty.'
Jon breathed in sharply through his nose. 'Hang on. I'll try her mobile.' He pressed the speed dial, listened as the phone started ringing. Thank God, it's not on answer phone.
'It's me.'
'Mum?'
'Yes. Alice's phone is in the kitchen.'
Fuck, she never goes anywhere without it. 'Mum, can you stay there until she gets back?'
'Again? OK, I'll hang this washing out.'
He returned the phone to his pocket. Was he panicking over nothing? Yes. She hadn't cracked up. Jesus, he'd attended enough incidents where someone had. She wasn't even close to the mental state of those poor bastards.
'Problem?'
Jon looked at Rick. 'Alice has disappeared again.'
'Again?'
'Yeah, she went off to the library yesterday. She'd switched her phone off.'
'And today?'
'She's gone off somewhere with Holly and left her phone at home.'
'Do you want to go back to your place?'
Jon weighed it up. 'No. Mum's there. We'll only do each other's heads in if I'm waiting there too. She'll have just popped out to the shops or something.'
Rick shrugged. 'If you're sure. Summerby's putting everything into finding James Field. There's a team heading over to the Silverdale as we speak, another has gone to find his probation officer and they're trying to trace his social worker too.'
'What about us?'
'He says to start going through this place. A car's on its way to help.'
Jon looked around. 'Let's do it then.'
Thirty-Four
They started going through the front room, pulling out drawers, leafing through papers, searching for any clues as to what James Field might be planning next.
Rick went over to the answer phone and pressed play. Three messages from the owner of the garage asking where he was. They'd moved to his bedroom when Jon heard Rick announce,
'This is weird.'
Jon paused at the open wardrobe and glanced over his shoulder. Rick was on his knees, bent almost double so he could see under the bed. 'What is?'
'There's nothing of a personal nature. I was expecting some porn hidden in here at the very least. Would you have any meaningful idea of who lived in this flat if we didn't know already?'
Jon bowed his head in thought. Rick was right. The flat was missing the usual items that made it someone's home; photos of friends and family, phone numbers on scraps of paper, even documents such as phone bills, bank letters or nectar card statements. James Field had left as much trail as a ghost.
He turned the wardrobe inside out. Old trainers, battered jeans, a hooded top. The bathroom bore even less fruit. No bottles or pills bearing a GP's label or a pharmacy's price sticker. Jon slammed the cabinet shut. 'There has to be something in this place.'
They pulled up carpets, tapped for fake floorboards. Nothing.
'Right,' said Jon. 'The bastard thinks he's clever. Let's check outside.'
They went to the walled off area containing the residents' bins. Green containers were lined against the wall, each one bearing the number of a flat. Jon zoned straight in on number three, flipping it over and dragging out a single bag of rubbish. He ripped it open, spilling potato peelings, blackened bananas and several empty pots of yoghurt, green mould ringing their rims. 'Let's check the rest.'
They started tipping over the others and hauled out rubbish sacks, the sweet smell of putrescence filling the air. Scrunched up letters, pizza boxes, clumps of hair, empt
y wine bottles, used tampons, plastic containers, lumps of festering chicken, crumpled tins and cans.
'No wonder the country's landfill sites are overflowing. Have this lot heard of recycling?' Rick muttered, crouched before a knotted bin liner. He pulled the plastic apart and his hands stopped. 'Jon.'
Jon turned. A shoebox was at the top, its lid slightly off. 'Lift it out, carefully.'
Using the tips of his gloved fingers, Rick lifted the object clear of the debris surrounding it. The layer of grey dust covering the lid had finger marks in it. Rick flipped it off and they stared at the pile of letters inside. The address on the uppermost envelope read, James Field, Flat 3, Oakdene Flats, Thomas Street, Ryder Brow, Manchester.
'Gotcha,' Jon grinned.
Back in James' flat, they started laying the letters out on the living room floor. Most of the envelopes were written in a childish style. 'Danny Gordon's writing,' Jon said. The remainder of the envelopes were written in a neater hand. At the bottom of the shoebox was an envelope with Kenyan stamps on it. No letter was inside, just the stubs of two plane tickets. 'He flew to Nairobi on the fifth of March, two thousand and one, returning on the twenty-sixth.'
Rick had slid a letter out from one of the envelopes bearing the childish writing. 'You're right, it's sent from Strangeways. Jesus, Danny Gordon couldn't have been awake in many of his school classes, the spelling is atrocious.'
'What does it say?' Jon asked, picking up a letter with the neat handwriting.
'Just going on about being bored. Slagging off his padmate, talking about what they'll get up to when he gets out.'
Jon unfolded his letter, a frown slowly appearing on his face.
'It's from a Pat and Ian Field.'
'His parents?'
Jon read the letter in its entirety. 'They adopted him.' He turned the letter over, glanced at the date at the top. 'This was written after James returned from Nairobi. They're asking his forgiveness for what happened, saying it wasn't their decision about his name. They tried to do what was right and they still love him as their son.' He looked at Rick. 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?'
Rick looked at the note James had left for Jon. 'The one more place he has to visit. Surely not?'