by Neil White
She looked up when Pete came into the room. He was holding pieces of paper.
‘I don’t think Egan liked me smiling,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to go and speak to all these people.’
‘Who are they?’
He waved the papers in the air. ‘Witnesses. Those people who rang in with information about Eric Randle and Kyle. We’ve got to go and speak to them, take their statements.’
‘I thought we were on Jess’s murder investigation,’ said Laura.
Pete gave a small laugh. ‘We’re part of the merged inquiry team that’s pretending it hasn’t merged.’
Laura opened her mouth to speak, and then stopped. An idea started to form, some glimmer of light in her head, glowing, getting brighter all the time.
‘You okay?’ said Pete.
She looked up at him, her eyes sharp now, focused. ‘Are there any more of these?’ she said, holding up Jess’s dream descriptions.
Pete shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Everything from her bedroom cabinet is there.’
Laura picked up the journal and turned it over in her hand. ‘This is full of dream descriptions,’ she said. ‘Ten years of them. I don’t think she wrote down every dream, the book wouldn’t have lasted for ten years if she had—it must just be the important ones. And they are orderly. They are dated, and she went back to the ones she saw come true and made a note. She was going to some kind of support group when she died, so she still thought it was important.’ Laura held it up like a preacher. ‘These dreams were a big deal to Jess.’
Pete shrugged. ‘So what’s the problem?’
Laura opened the journal to the back page. ‘This one is full. Look,’ and she flicked through the pages so he could see. ‘Every page filled up.’
Pete began to chew on his lip. ‘Sorry, Laura, I’m not there with you yet.’
Laura’s smile widened. ‘If this one is full and ends back in 2004, where is the journal she was writing in before she died?’
A flicker of a smile crept over Pete’s face as he sat down and looked through the journal.
‘You might have something, but,’ and then he nodded towards the pieces of paper, ‘then again, maybe she got sick of keeping a journal so she used just any old piece of paper?’
Laura shook her head. ‘No. You saw how neat her house was. This journal is the same. Each entry dated. All the dates follow. She didn’t just open the journal at any old empty page. She went to the next one, so that it all followed chronologically. And don’t forget that she will have been writing these as soon as she woke up. No, this girl was orderly, neat.’
‘But what about the scraps of paper?’
‘She might have used those when she didn’t have her journal with her. Maybe she was away from home when she wrote those, on holiday or something. She wouldn’t take her journal with her because it was too precious. What if she lost it?’
‘Do you think we should go back to her house to search for it, see if she had it hidden away somewhere?’
Laura looked doubtful. ‘It would only be in one place: next to her bed. She would have to be able to open it as soon as she woke up. And it’s not there now.’
Pete put the incident reports on the floor. ‘Are you thinking that whoever killed her took it?’
‘I think more than that,’ said Laura intently. ‘I think her killer went in there to get it.’
Pete furrowed his brow. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because there must have been something in it that he didn’t want anyone to see?’
Pete sat back and exhaled. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. Dreams. Premonitions. This is Blackley, a crappy old mill town. It’s not The X Files’
Laura grinned at him. ‘Do you remember why Eric Randle was there, at her house, at that time of the morning?’
Pete nodded and laughed. ‘He’d had a fucking dream.’ And then he pointed at the journal. ‘And you think that if Jess had written down something that made her killer get twitchy, maybe something her killer had done, or was planning to do, then her killer wouldn’t know exactly how much she had seen? Or would maybe see again in another dream? So she had to be silenced.’
Laura smiled, her dimples flashing. ‘I’m thinking something like that.’ She looked at the journal in her hand. ‘There must be something in the missing journal that caused someone to get jumpy.’
Pete sat back and rubbed his face with his hands, as if he was trying to wake himself up. ‘So she dreamt of her killer?’ he asked.
Laura shook her head. ‘No. Why would she let him in if she had seen his face in her dreams as her killer? No, I think she dreamt about something else, and I think I know what it was.’
‘Go on.’
Laura raised her eyebrows, her eyes mischievous now. ‘I think she saw who was abducting those children.’
‘You’ve lost me again.’
Laura laughed.
‘C’mon, it’s not that difficult. Who is the one person that connects Jess and the abductions?’
Pete thought for a few seconds, and then he said, ‘Eric Randle,’ his eyes widening.
‘You’re getting there, Sherlock,’ said Laura. ‘And if there was a journal that gave a clue about the abductor, then it must rule out Eric as the abductor.’
Pete shook his head. ‘How did you get to that conclusion?’
Laura shrugged. ‘It’s simple: why would he go to all that effort to avoid detection and then call the police with some story about having a dream? If Eric had killed her, the last thing he would do is start talking about dreams.’
‘But that means something else is all wrong,’ said Pete.
Laura nodded. ‘I’m already there,’ she said, tapping her head. ‘If the abductor wasn’t Eric Randle, then it was no suicide today. It was murder.’
Pete began to smile. ‘And do you know who was friends with both of them?’ he added excitedly.
‘Go on?’
‘Billy Hunt.’ Pete put the papers on the desk and then pointed to the door. ‘Time for a visit, Watson.’
I hadn’t been to the graveyard since I had arrived back in Turners Fold.
My father had died the year before. He had been a policeman, just an ordinary everyday bobby, one who needed nothing more than to do his job, take his pay, and look after his family.
I was an only child, and the family had got even smaller when my mother had died, taken away from me in my teens, cancer robbing her of the fizz that she had, a bounce that had carried her through her life. It toughened me up, but it destroyed my father. By the time he got through the grief, I had grown up and moved on, heading for London with my head filled with dreams.
I loved London—the buzz, the noise, the movement. But it wore me out. I missed the green spaces, the talk, the smiles.
My father had died trying to do what was right. He’d made an enemy he couldn’t fight and died for his trouble. Now I was walking towards his gravesite. I was feeling scared.
It was in a beautiful place, at the back of an old blackened church with castellated walls and a high slate roof. Entry to the churchyard was through an old stone gate, and clematis climbed over like bright flops of cloth in summertime. Turners Fold was in the valley below, my new house on the opposite hill.
The day was clear and I could see for miles, the hills in the distance picked out in sharp relief. I could make out people moving about in the town below, just tiny shapes, and a tourist barge cruised along the canal in the middle of town. A hundred years earlier the town would have been under a pall of smoke, just the hills around clear. Now the industry had gone, the whole town came into view.
As I got nearer to my father’s grave, I had to steel myself. I had learned to do that after my mother died. Take a deep breath, don’t let the emotions get near. I did the same again now. But as I saw his name it became hard to control. The letters were still bright gold in the black granite, the words simple. ‘Robert Garrett. Husband and father, policeman. Killed in the line of duty. Lest we forget the sacrific
e he made. You will be missed.’
Killed in the line of duty. Sacrifice. He hadn’t wanted that. He had wanted to get to his retirement and enjoy his life. Would he have done the same again? I didn’t know, but I remembered the look in his eyes when he realised that justice had to be done.
I felt the same passion again. Sometimes it was about doing the right thing. I hadn’t written much since my father died, just scraps to keep the money coming in. Now, I felt like I was on the verge of a big story once more.
I thought about Laura. I loved her more than I had ever loved any woman. But then I thought about Mary, how her father’s memory would be sullied by press speculation. And I thought about Eric, someone I had known so briefly. I knew they deserved justice. All I could hope for was that Laura would still love me when I had finished.
I reached out and touched the gravestone. It was just a stone, nothing more. I smiled at it and headed off.
Chapter Forty-two
There was a pack of kids outside the shop as I arrived. They were dressed all in black, some racing around on bikes, all with their hoods up even though the evening was warm. They were like a pack of rats as they scurried around. The bright red Stag stood out as I parked it, and I wondered whether I ought to get myself a different car, maybe a beaten-up runaround, for days like this.
I sat in my car for a few minutes and pondered where I was going with my story.
I liked the Darlene Tyler angle. It had everything: the horror of the abduction, the joy of the return, the happy ending. It would be good for the glossies. Eric as the abductor would help that story, because he had put himself into it. Proving that Eric had also been a victim would change that.
But then I thought about Eric the father, Eric the husband. And I thought about Mary. Since my father had died, I put greater store on the human side.
I saw the kids look over as I got out of the car, but I caught their eyes and gave them a silent warning.
As I walked towards the doorway I sensed the darkness inside. The windows were protected by metal grilles, so that the glass behind looked grubby. As I walked in, the sunshine outside was replaced by dim yellow artificial light. I saw that the shop was empty. There were two long aisles running away from the door, with the till nearest the exit, the alcohol on shelves behind. No one self-served booze in here. As I looked, it appeared the same went for razor blades and batteries.
I looked down the aisle and saw the clock Mary had talked about, large white digits on a black background, those that turn over like old railway destination boards. The date was correct.
I turned towards the till and saw a large man behind the counter, his stomach inflated like a football under his jumper. He was Pakistani, with a bushy moustache and his hair swept to one side, his fringe decorated with strips of grey. I noticed him watching me so I stepped up to the counter and introduced myself.
‘I’m writing a story on Eric Randle,’ I said. ‘He used to come in here and have photographs taken of his paintings.’
The man looked at me for a few seconds, as if he was trying to reconcile my presence with the news about Eric’s death, and then nodded. ‘I remember. He come in here maybe four, five times every year. But he had been coming in here more than that in the last few weeks.’
His accent was thick, a mix of Kashmir and the Western Pennines. He looked towards the calendar.
‘He never bought anything,’ he continued. ‘Just got me to take a picture of him holding up some damn painting.’
‘Didn’t you mind?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not worth making enemies round here,’ he said, and he glanced outside.
‘Do they give you a hard time?’ I asked, following his gaze.
‘They laugh at my sons because they don’t drink and work hard at school, but maybe they would have better lives if they did the same.’ He looked back to me, and I sensed disappointment. ‘I love England. It has given me things I could not have had in Pakistan, and so many people are nice. But so much of it is bad. It’s like they can’t see how good it is and want to destroy it.’
‘Or themselves.’
He nodded at that.
‘Why do you stay here?’ I asked. ‘You could have got a shop in a place where you wouldn’t have to protect your windows with cages.’
He laughed. ‘Not at this price. And I charge a lot for the vodka. If I can stop them from pinching it, I make a good living.’
I smiled at him. He was working in a fortress but I could see that he had an exit strategy. Make the money, bring up his children and then get out. As I listened to the kids outside, swearing and shouting at each other, it struck me that none of them had one.
‘Did Eric come here often to have his photograph taken?’ I asked.
The man shrugged. ‘Once every few weeks. I’ve been here ten years, and it seems like he has been coming all of that time. He came in more when I was first here, but then he stopped for a while. In the last two or three years he has been coming back. He told me he used to come into the shop when the last owner had it.’
I pointed at the calendar. ‘Has it always told the right date?’
He looked over towards it. ‘Always. It never breaks down. And the clock is always right. That’s why I’ve kept it.’ He glanced out of the window again. ‘I would get back to your car. It’s a nice car and they spoil nice things.’
I looked out through the open doorway and saw the kids looking through the side windows of the Stag. I thanked the shop-owner and went outside, and they all stepped back as I approached. A couple of them smiled. In a different neighbourhood I would have taken it for friendly interest. Maybe I was wrong to think of it as any different round here.
As I reversed away, the pack began to circle the pavement once more.
Laura and Pete arrived outside Billy Hunt’s house, a semi-detached bungalow on a low-rise estate on the edge of Blackley, with views towards the retail parks, the neon and glass bright against the dark green of the countryside backdrop.
‘Remember, he might be just a witness,’ cautioned Laura.
Pete looked doubtful. ‘I know Billy Hunt. He’ll only help us if we scare him into it.’
When they got to the front door, Laura went to ring the doorbell. Pete stopped her and banged hard instead on the glass in the door, two panels filled with patterned glass that bounced in the frame. After a few seconds, Laura saw a blurred shape appear behind the door, and then, as the door opened a sliver, she saw frightened brown eyes blink behind small round glasses.
‘Billy Hunt,’ bellowed Pete. ‘It’s the police. We need to speak to you about Jess Goldie’s death.’
The eyes blinked rapidly again, and then the door closed. Laura was about to turn around when she heard the chain come off the door. It was opened by a small and chubby man, with a dark side parting, his cheeks ruddy. He looked dishevelled, his eyes red, his jaw unshaven.
‘Billy?’ Laura asked. When he gave a nervous nod, Laura smiled at him and asked, ‘Can we come in?’
Billy scowled, his lips pursed together, but then he opened the door. He didn’t move, so that Pete and Laura had to sidle past him. They went into the front room, and Laura stopped, surprised. There was a woman lying on the sofa, her hair grey and thin, her scalp showing through. She was wrapped in a crocheted blanket, and when she noticed Laura, she looked up slowly. Laura saw tiredness in her eyes.
Laura nodded and smiled. ‘Mrs Hunt.’ There was a large framed picture of Billy above the fireplace. She knew she’d got it right, because the old lady smiled back, watery and weak.
‘Hello, love,’ she said quietly as Billy appeared behind her.
‘Not in here,’ he barked, and ushered them both into a dining room at the back, separated by doors filled with frosted glass. When he shut the doors, he asked, ‘What do you want?’ His tone was unfriendly, curt.
‘Calm down, Billy, we just want to ask you a few questions,’ said Pete.
‘I want to call my solicitor.’
&n
bsp; ‘I didn’t say you were a suspect, but if you’re feeling guilty, go ahead.’
Laura looked down, embarrassed. She didn’t mind that Pete bullied his way through the job, but sometimes tact got further.
‘Is that your mother, Billy?’ Laura asked, her voice full of concern.
He turned to her and his mood softened. ‘Yes. She’s got cancer.’
Laura thought she saw tears flash into his eyes. He blinked them away.
‘Does anyone help you look after her?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s just us two.’ He glanced towards the door. ‘She gave me everything. I can’t just leave her so someone else can look after her.’