Chloe- Lost Girl

by Dan Laughey

  True, Sant thought. His experience of patrolling football grounds in the late eighties had taught him that most of the violence was not as organised or orchestrated as newspapers or TV documentaries pretended.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Tony, ‘the British Movement was mostly working-class fascists from the north – there were branches in Manchester, Newcastle, certainly Leeds – people who had nothing in common with the London-centric crew who’d governed the NF for the previous decade.’

  ‘What happened to the Movement?’

  ‘It dissolved in 1983, but many of its members kept going, setting up local groups with a host of different names, and then, by the early nineties, some of the big cheeses in the Movement set up a new organisation called Combat 18.’

  Sant knew it well. ‘A fair share of its members hailed from Leeds.’

  ‘I’ve researched this,’ Tony nodded, ‘and by my reckoning more than one thousand Combat 18 members were active in West Yorkshire in the mid-1990s.’

  ‘And some of them tore apart Lansdowne Road during the England-Ireland football match. What year was that?’

  ‘1995.’

  ‘You certainly know your dates.’

  Tony smiled his appreciation. ‘I wouldn’t be much good as a political historian otherwise. But as I was saying, the early eighties brought major change. Essentially the NF, despite the wishes of its middle-class leaders, became more militant for a while, setting up Instant Response Groups and seeking connections with right-wing terrorist networks abroad, especially mafia leaders in Italy. Political Soldiers – that’s what they called themselves. The older faction, who preferred marches and demonstrations, broke off to form their own party – what they called the New National Front – later to be re-named the British National Party.’

  ‘If the BNP was more moderate than its predecessors,’ Sant motioned in bewilderment, ‘that goes to show how bad things were back then.’

  ‘Right, Inspector. Whereas the BNP preferred peaceful campaigning, IRG militants spent their time training for military-style combat. The Notting Hill Carnival in London as well as the Chapeltown Carnival here in Leeds were targeted by the NF’s militants – luckily nothing too serious happened.’

  ‘Trouble flared at Notting Hill every year, I recall.’

  ‘True, but far worse could’ve happened. I mean, there were genuine bomb plots and plans for mass shootings.’

  ‘So what else was happening with the fascists at this time?’

  Tony stifled a yawn and scratched his bald brow in one motion. ‘Well, the two major threats to the country’s stability in the eighties were IRA attacks on mainland Britain and the miners’ strike.’

  ‘I remember them well, though at least the miners were fighting for a worthy cause; their livelihoods.’

  Tony wagged his finger purposefully. ‘That’s what made things interesting for the NF and later the BNP. You see, the IRA situation was a no-brainer for the fascists. Almost all of them, with the exception of the odd catholic among rank and file, were pro-Ulster, anti-IRA. They were united in their support for the loyal Britons of the Orange State fighting a treacherous rebellion. In fact, fascist magazines of the time like Spearhead and Bulldog were carrying posters urging fascists over here to cross the Irish Sea and join the UDA.’

  ‘The Ulster Defence Association.’ Another blast from Sant’s past.

  ‘It’s also likely,’ Tony continued, ‘that in return for their help with the recruitment of soldiers over there, the UDA and other paramilitary groups supplied militant nationalists over here with guns, bomb-making equipment, drugs and all manner of niceties.’

  ‘Where does the miners’ strike feature in all this?’

  ‘It threw a spanner in the works. Hatred of the IRA brought unity, but the miners’ strike divided opinion among British nationalists. The enemy within, as Thatcher called the miners, was no enemy to working-class fascists in the north of England or in Wales. On the contrary, many of these people – the more militant NF as well as the dying embers of the Movement – respected the striking miners, sang songs in support of them at football matches, and labelled working miners as scabs for crossing picket lines.’

  ‘But the old and respectable face of the NF saw things differently?’

  ‘Right. The old guard’s anti-communist politics had no time for workshy miners and even less time for the mineworkers’ union. You see, far right ideologies are inherently antagonistic to trade unions. On the contrary, the far right stands for elitism and protects the ruling interests against all forms of indiscipline amongst the working classes. Don’t be kidded by fascists who call their parties “national socialist movements” – socialists they will never become.’

  Sant drained the last of his tea. ‘So for the far right, the miners’ strike turned out to be a battle of wits between political principles and working-class solidarity.’

  The young man yawned again before nodding. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  ‘They’ll be no more midnight oil to burn if you’re not careful.’

  Tony repressed a laugh. ‘Excuse my yawning. Yes, it’s another late one for me tonight. I’m aiming to wrap up the conclusion to my monograph, but guaranteed, between then and now I’ll find a hundred other citations to reference, footnotes to add.’

  Sant rounded things off by asking Tony if he’d ever heard of Chloe’s ex-boyfriend Jake Downing, but the name didn’t register. Neither did the name Owen Madeley, the enigmatic screwdriver carrier seemingly unrelated to everything but Dryden’s one-time naïve shadowing of a suspect.

  As he was thanking Tony on their way out of the refectory, Sant caught a glance of the retreating back of Neil Rothwell, locks of fair hair flowing over his ears. Had the professor been snooping on his conversation with Tony? Rothwell was unmistakably a control freak if he spent overtime spying on his own colleagues. Such eccentric behaviour needed an explanation – urgently.

  Nothing was more urgent now, though, than Sant’s date with Mia.

  It was almost ten pm. That made him ninety minutes late for his dinner date. He phoned to apologise but, to his surprise, Mia didn’t seem put out at all.

  ‘I’ve been working on your behalf, Carl,’ she said, ‘crunching the microfiche. How about you meet me in the library again, same place as before, and don’t get lost in the storeroom this time.’ Her laughter trailed off as the line went dead.

  Sant felt relief at her lenience with him. Time management had never been his strength. And he needed Mia to cut him some extra slack right now, for before joining her at the microfiche readers he felt the urge to log into a workstation in a quiet corner of the library – far away from snooping professors – using Chloe’s username and password, as supplied to CID by the university on the day she was reported missing. A flood of emails appeared on the screen, all but the most recent ones having been read by investigating officers.

  He ran the search-term ‘Nexis’ and got eight-six hits. Chloe had been busy scouring the news database, that much was certain. However, no reports were dated before the nineties apart from two in 1988 and 1989 from The Times and The Guardian, about how the country’s police forces were rolling out initiatives to improve their relationship with Britain’s “coloured communities” (the Macpherson report on institutional racism in the Met would set out more far-reaching reforms ten years later). It wasn’t much, but it was enough to convince Sant that Chloe’s Nexis research was exploring 1980s policing and race relations. Could this research have anything to do with her disappearance?

  If the answer was yes, then the same subject-matter was surely tied to Dryden’s murder as well as the killing of Gray over thirty years earlier, which meant that the woman ostensibly doubling as Dryden’s informant and Chloe’s ex-neighbour – the mysterious Susan Smith – was the only possible centre to this maze of interconnected crimes. Who was she? If I knew the answer to that, Sant told himself, then the road to solving all these crimes would shine forth as bright as a diamond.<
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  Suddenly a bizarre thought struck him. If Chloe was still alive – a prospect looking less certain with each passing day – could she have been Dryden’s shadowy informant on that fateful night, furnishing him with her former neighbour Susan Smith’s address? The address she’d written on a scrap of paper that Dryden had accidently dropped and which was now safely concealed in an evidence bag? It was a long shot, but it couldn’t be ruled out. Perhaps Dryden was playing the maverick detective, hiding from his colleagues the whereabouts of the missing Chloe. Or perhaps Dryden had no idea who his informant was and didn’t live long enough the tell the tale; only long enough to etch a shorthand date on a misty window pane.

  31 8... 4?

  His brain cells doing somersaults, he logged out of Chloe’s account, shutting down and unplugging the workstation for good measure, and then went in search of Mia. She was trawling through the November 1984 Yorkshire Post reel when he found her. He glared at the microfiche reader and saw images of a funeral cortege led by two horses and a lone drummer. Crowds of people flocked both sides of the road as the hearse, flanked by six uniformed sergeants and a drill instructor, made its way from Millgarth police station to the same church outside which the deceased had fallen just days earlier. Nine black Mercedes limousines, one for each of this cat’s lives, trailed in their wake.

  The coffin was draped with the blue ceremonial flag of West Yorkshire Police, on top of which lay a small mountain of floral tributes, a white crucifix of carnations. Just visible at the very pinnacle sat Sergeant Gray’s helmet. Behind the pall bearers came the family of the unfortunate policeman tracked by never-ending files of officers – five hundred uniforms called off picket-line duty.

  ‘If you didn’t know whose wake it was, you’d think it fit for a king,’ Mia commented.

  ‘A military funeral no less,’ he agreed.

  ‘And the rector gave him a military send-off. Remembrance Sunday was only two days after, and with that in mind, the powers-that-be chose to add Gray’s name to the list of war dead.’ Sant wondered who those powers-that-be were. ‘According to the rector,’ she went on, ‘Gray had fought valiantly in the war against crime. Chief Constable Waterford, who read the lesson, cursed his fellow officer’s bad luck at stumbling upon the face of evil.’

  Sant had come across those clichés so many times before, he’d become desensitised to the fears they roused in others.

  Mia spoke in hushed tones, heightening the tension of the events she was recounting. ‘There’s a quote from the rector’s sermon here – “George Gray’s death was absolutely selfless. He would know that the firearm had been used, while he himself was unarmed. What tremendous courage to care for his injured colleague by diverting the venom of the attacker to himself. Such absolute bravery must surely compare with the heroism of many of those who were killed in the great wars of this century” – and the rector goes on to talk about how, during his twenty loyal years of police service, Gray fought for a society free of tyranny. He prayed that the violence in society would end so children – at this point he nodded towards Gray’s son and daughter in the congregation – could enjoy a better future filled with peace and security.’

  Sant focused the microfiche reader’s lens on a sad photograph of Gray’s widow wearing a black hat and charcoal-grey suit, mourning a husband and father lost forever. The image was captioned: “Victoria Gray hugs her children as the congregation sings ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer’.” She was doing her best to comfort them while dabbing at the tears running down her cheeks.

  Behind Victoria Gray sat Sally Tanner. Her husband had pleaded with doctors to let him out of hospital so he could attend the funeral of his “shift Sarge” who he described as a “good bloke” as well as an inspirational supervisory sergeant. But Detective Chief Inspector Lotherton had echoed the medical advice: “He is not fit enough sadly.”

  Also in attendance were the Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Leeds, and Chief Constables of forces around the country including North Yorkshire, Humberside and Cumbria. The Lord Mayor called for the immediate return of the death penalty for police killers. The Secretary of the West Yorkshire Police Federation was more restrained, calling for tighter controls on firearms but dismissing the idea of routinely arming officers.

  Mia turned the knob of the reader clockwise and the spool of film wound down a couple of pages, settling on an image of a group of uniformed mourners. Sant immediately picked out familiar faces in the crowd; the young, eager, wrinkle-free faces of Gilligan and Lister side by side. Whereas Gilligan’s head was bowed, Lister was practically facing the snapping photographer, his deep-set eyes appearing to protrude towards the spotlight like questioning eyes, querying the good intentions of the press and their prying cameras.

  Pictured elsewhere were the leading lights of Leeds CID past and present. The hard men of the dark sixties and even darker seventies; men who’d done war service and had the scars to prove it; men who’d handled the M62 coach bombing, the Black Panther murders, the Rowntree killing spree; men still reeling from the five-year hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.

  Some discharged from service, others heading that way.

  Sant spotted retired Assistant Chief Constable Timothy Pitman among them, still bearing the burden of public condemnation following the Ripper fiasco. Pitman’s the man for the job! That’s what they used to say. They stopped saying it once the Ripper had ruined his reputation.

  Standing next to Pitman were his one-time right-hand man, Detective Chief Superintendent Alf Farrar, and the man who’d replaced him, Assistant Chief Constable Trevor Branwell. Branwell was untainted by the past – unlike his peers. He was chosen by CC Waterford to head up the internal enquiry into the Ripper investigation – and had come out smelling of roses. Not content to let it be, in the 1990s he’d visited Sutcliffe in prison and made him confess to further attacks on women long suspected to fit the Ripper series; his modus operandi.

  There was no sign in any of the photos of Waterford’s predecessor, former Chief Constable Ronald Gregory. Sant knew why. Gregory had disgraced himself in 1983 by selling his Ripper memoirs to a national newspaper for a five-figure fee. Swiftly ostracised by the force, he never attained the knighthood he’d desperately hoped for.

  On the same page of the newspaper was a short report on the Manchester armed robbery connection which tallied with what Sant had read in the Gray murder file earlier that day. Sergeant Lister was mentioned by name as the detective leading this line of enquiry and was quoted as saying there was strong evidence to link the investigation into the police shootings with plots to raid post offices, banks and building societies. If only he’d ignored Lotherton’s instinct and focused his energies closer to home, Lister might have solved the case and caught the perps a lot sooner. Who knows? Lister could have attained the heady heights of West Yorkshire Police’s chief officer in record time if he’d steered clear of the pot-shots taken by Lotherton and co.

  Mia suddenly laughed out loud, making Sant jump. ‘Journalists dream up the daftest theories. It says here: “A Yorkshire Post reporter witnessed detectives mingling with the crowds, scanning the faces of everyone around – in case the killer or his accomplice, out of morbid curiosity, had returned to the scene of the crime”.’

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ said Sant.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘It happens more often than you’d believe. Last year a man was interviewed by TV reporters after an elderly neighbour of his was stabbed to death. He talked so much the reporters made their excuses and hurried away. Five hours later he was arrested and charged with murder.’

  ‘My word! Was he guilty?’

  ‘As sin. They got a DNA match on the knife – the case against him was indisputable.’

  ‘But why talk openly about a murder you’ve committed?’

  ‘It must be psychological,’ he said after pausing for though
t. ‘Some murderers, for some reason, go out of their way to draw attention to themselves.’

  ‘How weird. But then, I should possess a working knowledge of the criminal mind.’

  Sant looked anxious as well as confused. ‘How come?’

  Mia laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a psychopath. I’m a psychology student.’

  ‘PhD?’

  ‘That’s what I’m working towards.’

  ‘I’d better be careful what I say from now on.’

  She wiped at his sleeve. ‘I’m not a shrink, though I find psychoanalysis intriguing.’

  ‘Anything unusual you’ve analysed in the news reports?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve noted the key twists and turns, but it’s less than likely there’s anything here not to be found in your top-secret files.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Mia’s list covered a two-week period following Gray’s murder. Sant began ticking off each item, mentally tallying it with information from Capstick and the police archives. By the time he’d checked the last item, only one was left un-ticked.

  ‘A possible opening?’ she probed.

  ‘Possible but not probable,’ was his response. ‘I’ll consult my archives expert, who loves a daily covering of dust. Can you print this story?’

  ‘Certainly, though it’ll cost you ten pence.’

  ‘I’ve got a better offer,’ said Sant. ‘A very late dinner.’

  ‘Dinner at one in the morning?’

  ‘The best time to eat curry.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  13

  Wanting to sleep. Incapable of sleep.

  Good cop, bad cop.

  Role reversal.

  Ray-Bans snoozed while Baseball Cap did the talking, his eyes half-hidden above the curved red brim of his cap. Lean and mean, he wore a constant grin of sardonic amusement.

  He reached for the wallet in the pocket of his coffee-brown sports jacket and plucked out a passport-sized photo.