Darkness, Darkness (19 page)

When they asked at the station, the clerk thought he remembered a man answering Ireland’s description buying a ticket for Mallaig. But then, someone they got into conversation with in Cobbs Bar reckoned to have seen a man with some kind of big rucksack hitching a lift on the A82 north towards Invergarry and Fort Augustus on Loch Ness, this the day that Ireland had disappeared.

Catherine Njoroge was quite adamant when they phoned in for instructions. ‘Check back in with the local force, whoever you spoke to before, then get yourselves back down here as soon as possible.’

‘No passing Go then, boss,’ Cresswell asked, ‘not even if it means picking up two hundred pounds.’

Catherine broke the connection without answering. Monopoly, a game that brought out the worst in everyone.

She’d confronted John McBride first thing, the morning after her uncomfortable interview at Serious Organised Crime Unit headquarters.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Picard – you’ve been passing on information to him about the investigation.’ More a statement than a question.

‘No more than he asked me.’

‘Which was what?’

‘He wanted to know how things were going. Simple as that. I told him.’

‘It didn’t occur to you to ask yourself why he was making enquiries through you and not me?’

‘I thought he must’ve had his reasons.’

‘And what did you tell him exactly?’

McBride lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. ‘What’s been happening with the inquiry. Just a summary. Interviews carried out, information received, actions allocated.’

‘And that was all?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘He didn’t ask you to express an opinion on how things were progressing?’

‘Not in so many words.’

‘How many words, I wonder?’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Don’t you? I think you do. I think you saw an opportunity to stick a knife in my back and you took it.’

‘Not true, boss.’

Catherine steadied herself, straightened, making use of all the height she had.

‘Nobody else here, Sergeant, just you and me. So listen. In future no detailed information about this investigation is to be passed on without my explicit say-so. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘We’re understood?’

‘Understood.’

‘And is that the beginnings of a smirk on your face?’

‘No, boss.’

‘All right. Now listen. Names that have come down to us from the Swann investigation, the file you showed me, how far have we got with winnowing down that list of names?’

‘Only so many hours in the day, boss.’

‘Okay, but let’s speed things up as much as we can.’

‘Will do.’

‘And Cartwright? Where was it, Saskatchewan somewhere?’

‘Another call in today, RCMP.’

‘Good.’ Still focused on McBride’s face, she took a step away. ‘We’re going to nail this, right?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘God, Charlie, you’d have handled it better.’

‘You’ve got to stop thinking that.’

‘Believe me, you would.’

They were in the Half Moon on the Chesterfield Road, a barn of a place with low ceilings, fake wooden beams and a range of two-for-ten-pounds Square Deal meals. But it was out of the town centre and, at that time of the evening, quiet enough to talk without being overheard.

‘Other things aside,’ Catherine said, ‘McBride would have responded better to you. Man to bloody man.’

‘He’s got issues with you being a woman, that what you mean?’

Catherine smiled. ‘Not just a woman. I’m black, Charlie, in case you hadn’t noticed. And not Beyoncé black. Very black. The kind you can’t miss. And promoted above him. Giving him orders. How do you think he feels about that?’

‘He may not be as prejudiced as you think.’

Catherine shook her head. ‘How many years do you think he’s got in, McBride?’

‘Twenty? Twenty-five?’

‘And I’ve less than half that. Which leaves him sitting there asking why is she a DI while I’m still a DS? And the answer comes, positive discrimination.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Come on, Charlie. So many points for being female, so many more for being black, a few more still for a halfway decent degree. And McBride’s what? White, Scottish, most likely not a graduate. What’s that expression my father used to use? Pulled himself up by his boot straps? And how far? I might be pretty angry if I were him.’

Resnick reached for his glass. ‘I had a DS at Canning Circus. Graham Millington. Practically all the time I was there. Good copper. DS when I arrived, DS when I left. Wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. A little responsibility but not too much. Go home nights and forget about the job.’

‘Married?’

‘Yes.’

‘You think McBride’s married?’

‘Between divorces, far as I know.’

‘Children?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What’s he got, then, Charlie, aside from the job?’

‘Partick Thistle?’

‘What’s that?’

Resnick grinned. ‘The Notts County of Glasgow?’

It was growing dark when they left. Catherine taking the opportunity for a cigarette before the drive south. Lorries heading off towards the motorway. Years ago, Resnick thought, they would have been carrying coal, coke, steel. Lord knows what they were carrying now. Logistics – what the hell was that?

‘Swann,’ Catherine said. ‘We’ll go and see him?’

‘We probably should.’

She dropped her cigarette to the ground in a small shower of sparks before stubbing it forcefully out.

‘Night, Charlie.’

‘Goodnight.’

They climbed into their respective cars and eased out into the traffic.

Resnick was still driving up and back in his borrowed car, neither relishing the time he spent alone in the house at the end of each day, nor feeling strongly enough that he wanted company, wanted a change.

For all it held memories that as well as being pleasant, happy even, could be disturbing – the sound of a door opening and then closing above, a footstep on the stair, reminders of a presence no longer there – there was something about that house where he had lived for many years now that was reassuring. Comforting. His own things for one, things that had accumulated over time; pieces of furniture moulded to his shape and size. Records, far too many of those, CDs. A shelf or so of books, including, with the train ticket still marking her place, the book Lynn had been reading the day she died. The way the cat would circle round his chair, push its nose against his leg, then wait, poised, before jumping into his lap, circling and then settling down, head between its paws.

Catherine drove with the radio on, items of news spooling out largely unregarded: youth employment reaching a new high, a car bombing in the centre of Beirut. There’d been a large bouquet of flowers waiting for her at the station in Potter Street that morning, a note of apology written in Abbas’ practised cursive hand.

‘Admirer, ma’am?’ the officer on the desk had said.

She had torn the note in half and half again, asked the duty sergeant to make sure the flowers got to the local hospital before they wilted and hoped that would be the end of it.

Indicating clearly, she accelerated into the outside lane.

THERE HAD TO
be, Catherine thought, a more appropriate address for HM Prison Wakefield than Love Lane. A high-security prison, with four units housing somewhere in excess of seven hundred prisoners, one hundred or more of them Category A, it specialised in high-risk sex offenders and those found guilty of violent crimes against women and children.

Catherine had dressed carefully: a dark loose-fitting trouser suit, flat shoes, hair tied back, no jewellery, little or no make-up. Nothing that would emphasise her femininity. Alongside her, Resnick, nevertheless, looked drab, ordinary: a middle-aged man in an ill-fitting suit with creases in his shirt and fading food stains on his tie. Over the past fifteen to twenty years not so much about his overall appearance had changed; he had just got older.

They would be seeing Michael Swann in one of several small rooms separate from the main visiting centre. A low table with four chairs, in one corner a small play area for children, against one wall a machine dispensing drinks and snacks.

With apologies, it was explained there would be a short wait.

Resnick thought about getting a Mars Bar from the machine; thought better of it.

‘You’ve been here before, Charlie?’ Catherine asked.

‘This particular unit, no. But Wakefield, yes. More than a few times, unfortunately.’

‘Bad place? Bad memories?’

‘All prisons are bad places, pretty much all, just a matter of degree. Ones like this – Long Lartin, Full Sutton, Manchester – lifers, prisoners on lockdown, there’s a sort of hopelessness – I don’t know – malignancy. You want to shake it off, wash it away . . .’

Footsteps approached the door, stopped, went off in another direction.

‘Last time I was here,’ Resnick said, ‘Wakefield, it was to see a man who’d systematically abused most of the children in his family, boys as well as girls, children as well as grandchildren, over a period of thirty years.’

‘And nobody knew?’

‘Of course people knew,’ Resnick said, suddenly angry. ‘They knew, somewhere inside they knew, but to say anything would have been to admit those things had really happened. Not that, in that respect, he was any different. Didn’t matter how much therapy, how much talk, multidisciplinary intervention, whatever they call it, he remained in denial. Which meant, of course, when he went before the parole board they turned him down.’

‘He’s still here?’

Resnick shook his head. ‘After he failed to get parole a second time, he started self-harming, talked about taking his own life. For the next two months he was on suicide watch, round the clock. The day after the psychiatrist pronounced him safe and the watch was withdrawn, he was found dead in his cell. Hanged himself.’

Catherine hesitated. ‘How did that make you feel?’

‘Not good. Not necessarily. But then I thought about the children, the harm he’d done to them and I didn’t feel so bad.’

The door opened and Swann was escorted in.

Late sixties, he looked older. Below medium height, he walked slowly and with a slight stoop, the beginnings of a hunched back. His face was round, its shape accentuated by his glasses; cheeks that sagged a little, a surprisingly small mouth. Grey trousers, grey shirt, black socks, brown slip-on shoes, no laces.

Several paces into the room he stopped, looking at Catherine with evident surprise.

Catherine promptly introduced herself and Resnick and, as if playing host, Swann gestured towards the chairs, bidding them sit.

‘I’ll be just outside,’ the prison officer said, and closed the door behind him.

‘There,’ Swann said, ‘trusted, you see. Some inmates, the dangerous ones – challenging, that’s what they’re supposed to call them nowadays – they stay in here, two of them sometimes, just in case.’ His voice had traces of a Northern accent, north-west, a suggestion of a lisp. ‘Me, I’m a pussycat compared to some. I mean, just look at me.’ He smiled. ‘Not hurt a fly.’

Just three young women, Catherine thought, three we know about for certain.

‘But I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,’ Swann said. ‘I was in the braille shop. Turning books into braille so the blind can read. It’s lovely work. Restful.’ Placing the fingers of his right hand on the skin of the other, and stroking it up and down, he closed his eyes. ‘You grow sensitive to it, after a while.’

Angling his head towards Catherine, he slowly opened his eyes. Still fingering his arm, he held her gaze.

‘We think you might be able to help us,’ she said, unfazed. ‘I’m leading an investigation into the murder of Jenny Hardwick. She was killed in the village of Bledwell Vale a little under thirty years ago. Late nineteen eighty-four.’

‘Cold case, is it then? I know about those from the telly.’

‘Killed in a manner you’d be familiar with.’

Something stirred in Swann’s eyes.

‘You don’t know the victim’s name? Hardwick? Jenny? it’s not familiar at all?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Or the place? Bledwell Vale?’

‘Wales, is it? Sounds Welsh to me.’

‘Nottinghamshire. North. Between Worksop and Chesterfield.’

‘The crooked spire.’

‘That’s right. You know the area, then?’

‘Everyone knows the crooked spire.’

‘But you are familiar with the area?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘I thought you were.’

‘Pretty, was she, Jenny? I don’t suppose you’ve got a photograph? If I could see a photograph, then I might know . . .’

A look of anticipation came to his face as Resnick reached inside his coat; faded as all that emerged was a small black notebook that was flicked open to a particular page.

‘Nineteen eighty-four,’ Resnick said, glancing down, looking at what was, in reality, a blank page. ‘Sheffield. That was the first time you drove a minicab?’

‘Lorries, that was my thing. Vans, too. Always liked vans. Short haul.’ Bending his head towards Catherine, he smiled again. ‘You know, man with a van. No job too small.’

Catherine’s stomach lurched and it was more than she could do to stop her eyes from blinking.

Behind his owlish glasses, Swann’s own eyes grew large.

‘Eighty-six to eighty-eight,’ Resnick said. ‘Sheffield again. Close on two years. All for the same firm, was it? Or more in the way of moonlighting? We weren’t too sure.’

‘I don’t know why you want to know all this. The woman you’re talking about, Jenny, nineteen eighty-four you said.’

‘How about Donna Crowder,’ Resnick said. ‘Ring any bells?’

Swann shifted a little in his seat.

‘Found murdered close to the A6178, the Rotherham– Sheffield road. Nineteen eighty-seven.’

Shifted a little more.

‘Someone, we think, picked her up on her way home. Offered her a lift. Minicab, possibly. Likely not a booking. Off the clock. Or maybe someone in a van.’

Swann blinked. ‘Look, I thought this was supposed to be helping me towards my next parole hearing. That’s what I was told. That’s the only reason I agreed . . .’