Darkness, Darkness (29 page)

‘Come out here, you make a new life, that’s what it’s all about. Why you’ve come. Try hanging on to the past and somehow it’s like you’re marooned, you know. I’ve met people out here like that, Brits, a few – like they’re in some kind of limbo. Easier for me in a way, I guess, no close family, not left alive, never married, no kids. Friends, I suppose, a few I missed, at first, anyway – Howard, for instance – look, you’ll pass on my best – Howard and Megan, is it? – but you make new ones, don’t you? It’s what you do.’

There were three of them sitting round the screen: Catherine, Resnick, McBride.

Catherine asked him about each of the names he had provided; names that had already been passed into the system, were being checked against the National Police Computer. Cartwright added what detail he could, but it was precious little.

‘Barry Hardwick,’ she said. ‘You knew him, I suppose?’

‘Barry, yeah. From the pit. Jenny’s husband. Gutted when I heard what’d happened to her. Lovely girl, she was. And the circumstances – course I never heard anything about it, never made the papers over here, first I knew was when the sergeant told me. Gave me a chill, I don’t mind telling you, thinking when I was laying that last lot of concrete what was underneath. Jeeze! Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Barry, though, did he ever lend you a hand? The work you were doing?’

‘Church Street? No. No, never.’

‘And you don’t have any recollection of him hanging round the property at all?’

‘No. Hey, listen, you don’t think . . .’

‘He and Howard, they weren’t particular friends?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Someone behind him said something they couldn’t properly hear, watching, and Cartwright turned his head to reply.

‘Geoff,’ Resnick said, ‘there’s something I wanted to ask.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘When I was talking to Howard, he said he and his family went away over the Christmas period, is that right? Is that how you remember it?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Megan’s folks, was it? Something like that.’

‘And you stayed home, at the Vale? Worked on the extension?’

‘Most of the time, yeah.’

‘Most of the time?’

‘Went up to see my old man. Just for the day. My mother, she’d already passed. He was living up in Seaton Carew, outside Hartlepool. Ended up staying over. Christmas Eve, it would have been, when I got back.’

‘You’re sure of that? It’s all a long time ago.’

‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Last Christmas I saw my old man. Not likely to forget.’

‘And the work on Church Street, was that finished before you left to visit your father?’

‘Not quite. I’d promised myself I’d get everything done and dusted before going, but in the event, never quite made it. Hard core down okay, insulation, and I ran out of time. Left boards across it overnight, reckoned I’d lay the concrete when I got back next day. Which I did.’

‘And nothing had been interfered with while you were away?’

‘Not as far as I could see.’

‘But it could have been?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Would it have been possible, for instance, for someone else to have removed the insulation, dug up the hard core and then replaced it in such a way as you’d never know?’

Cartwright shrugged, pulled a face. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. Yes. As long as they knew what they were doing. Not difficult. And you think . . .’ He shook his head. ‘God, doesn’t bear too much thinking about, does it?’

Catherine took her time. ‘One final thing, Geoff, and thank you for your patience, but we have a list of names of our own. Only short, don’t worry. I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at them, see if they ring any bells.’

‘In relation to the building work, you mean?’

‘That especially, yes.’

She typed in the names, pressed enter, and they appeared in the message box at the bottom of Geoff Cartwright’s screen.

They followed his expression as he scanned the list quickly, then looked again at each one, giving it some thought before dismissing it and moving on. Thinking again, not quite decided, looking back.

‘This name here, down at the bottom. Steven Rowland. There was a Steve put in a couple of shifts, I remember. Didn’t think of him before.’

‘But you think that could be him? Rowland?’

‘Could be. Don’t suppose I ever knew his last name. Just one of the lads out on strike, you know, looking for a bit of cash.’

‘And he was what? Local?’

Cartwright shook his head. ‘From the Vale? No? Sheffield way, maybe. Down from Yorkshire, certainly. Picketing, you know. Palled about with a ginger-headed lad, I remember. Can’t summon up his name for love nor money.’

‘And this ginger-headed lad,’ Catherine asked, keeping her expectations under control, ‘did he help out at Church Street, too, along with his mate?’

‘May have done. Might well. I remember him being around, like I say, but any more than that . . .’ He smiled. ‘All a long time ago.’

Ginger-haired lad from Sheffield way: they could summon up a name even if Cartwright couldn’t. Danny Ireland, had to be. How many red-headed Yorkshire miners were there likely to be in Bledwell Vale at the same time, after all? Danny Ireland, who had – how had Edna Johnson put it? – trailed round after Jenny like a needy dog.

Danny and Steve.

Catherine allowed herself a smile.

Steve Rowland had been brought in for questioning as part of the Donna Crowder investigation, initially because he’d been seen with Donna’s boyfriend of the time, Wayne Cameron, driving him around town the evening she was murdered. When it turned out that he’d gone out with Donna himself previously, and that he’d once been named in an alleged assault against another former girlfriend, he had come into consideration as a possible suspect. But there had been no forensic evidence to link him to the crime, no proof that his car had been used again later that evening, and an alibi placing him at a lock-in at one of the local pubs till the early hours had proved difficult to break.

Maybe now it was time to look again.

It didn’t take Vanessa so many minutes to come up with an address. He’d moved, but not moved far. The Rivelin Valley area of Sheffield. McBride made a quick call to the local nick: person of interest in an ongoing murder inquiry living in their area. Thirty minutes or so away along the A57.

TWO DAYS A
week they run a luncheon club for the elderly and Jenny helps out when she can; hurrying home to collect Brian from Linda’s and then maybe getting a bit of washing done before Colin and Mary get back from school; Mary, like as not, with Nicky in tow. Then it’s setting her thoughts to what they were all going to eat later; seeing what kind of a mood Barry is in before letting him know there’s a meeting at the Welfare that evening, will he just keep an eye on the kids before going out for a pint himself later? She’ll get back as soon as ever she can.

Turns out, everything’s fine. Hunky-dory.

Mary’s got a gold star for a drawing she’s done of a cat in class: big and black and beautifully shaded; so good, in fact, Jenny can scarce bring herself to believe Mary’s done it all herself, except she swears that she has. Cross my heart and hope to die. And if Colin’s scored even half the goals he claims, kicking around in the playground, Leeds United scouts will be knocking on the door any time soon.

Even Barry’s in a good mood for once, talk of a Christmas bonus that might be wishful thinking on someone’s part, but might almost as well be true. God knows, he thinks, they’re due something for all the grief they’ve been taking, day in and bloody day out, months now. It’s not been so bad for him, because of Jenny, he’d be the first to admit that. But some of his workmates – car tyres slashed, bricks through the windows, rotten eggs and worse stuffed through the letter-box. Got so he thinks scab might just as well be his middle name.

‘Go on, duck. You go. Set world to bloody rights, eh?’

She needs no second bidding.

The meeting seems to go round in circles, Jenny feels, the same niggling points being argued about over and over. Not that there’s been any doubt about the main items. Hasn’t been for some time now. The kids’ party will be held on the afternoon of Saturday the 22nd, starting at 3.30. Peter Waites has agreed to dress up as Santa, one of the others on the committee has promised to borrow his wife’s fancy dressing gown and come as a Middle Eastern magician – more bad conjuring tricks, Jenny reckons, than Tommy Cooper – and two of the lads are down to run the disco. Then it’s Christmas dinner there at the Welfare on the day itself.

Thanks to the almost overwhelming generosity of others there’ll be food and presents enough to go round.

Danny’s standing just across the street when she emerges, duffel-coat collar up, cigarette cupped in the hand down by his side, street light just catching the colour of his hair.

Jenny hesitates for a moment, before turning sharply away.

Crossing the street after her, he calls her name. Not loud. Loud enough.

She lengthens her stride.

‘Jenny, hang about, for Christ’s sake . . .’

There’s a narrow passage between two houses, leading on to an area of waste ground, a mix of grass and cinders, where groups of striking miners would have the occasional kickabout, and where, until recently, Sam Palmer had kept a shaggy, down-at-heels pony. The joke, when it disappeared overnight, was that Sam had butchered it himself and gone to the next village selling the choice cuts as best beef. Not so far removed from the truth not to be believed.

Just before the passageway opens out, she stops and leans back against the wall.

He’s a little breathless when he catches up to her.

‘What the hell’re you running for?’

‘I’m not.’

Tobacco smoke bitter and warm in his mouth, he kisses her and she kisses him back. His hand like a homing pigeon to her breast.

She can taste coal dust and dirt on his neck. Bares her breast for him and arches her back, her nipple hard in his mouth.

Her hand between his legs.

He takes the nipple between his teeth.

Fumbling with the zip of his jeans, she catches her little finger and he stiffles her cry with the soft skin on the inside of his arm; takes her finger into his mouth and sucks away the blood, what little there is.

Despite the cold, she’s wearing nothing more than skimpy pants beneath her dress.

She wants him to touch her and when he doesn’t she takes hold of his wrist and guides him down.

Oh, God, she’s wet.

Hands beneath her buttocks, he lifts her off the ground and she eases him inside her.

Minutes and they’re done.

While he wipes himself, she leans back against the wall. The building seems to be shaking, but of course it’s her.

Reaching out, she kisses him, hands on his neck, wants to hurt him, suddenly, without reason, fingernails gouging his skin.

‘Fucker!’ he says, eyes alight; thrusting against her, he kisses her hard in return.

And then, almost as soon as it started, it’s over.

While he zips himself up, pulls his clothes to order, she’s straightening her dress, lifting her coat from the dirt and brushing it down, combing her fingers up through her hair.

A cloud shifts across the moon and she can see the boyish grin on his face: the tomcat that got the cream.

‘I must go,’ she says.

‘Hang on, I’ll come with you.’

‘No, not together. Just in case.’

‘Okay.’ He gestures towards the field. ‘I’ll go round by here.’

He reaches for one last kiss, but she’s already moving away.

Stepping out of the alley, out from the shadow, she thinks she sees something away to the right, just out of the street light’s orbit, someone standing there, watching, but when she looks again there’s nothing. Nobody, still or moving.

Just her imagination, then . . .

Checking her watch, she realises she’d promised Barry she’d be home a good half-hour ago and hurries on her way.

STEVE ROWLAND, LIKE
a good many of the miners who had supported the strike, had scarcely been in regular employment since the day the pit where he’d worked had, as Arthur Scargill had forecast, been closed with the loss of several hundred jobs. Painting and decorating, he’d done that for a while, the back of his van a jumble of stepladders, dust sheets, brushes, pots of paint; window cleaning, too; small-scale removals; worst of all, six bloody months in an abattoir across from the County ground in Nottingham.

‘Get shot of their old strikers in here, do they?’ he’d joked. ‘Once they’re past their sell-by date.’

A Doncaster Rovers supporter since knee high, he’d thought it was funny, a laugh. A quick fist had told him, that close to Meadow Lane, it was best to keep his smart-arsed remarks to himself.

Out of work and on the dole the best part of eighteen months, he’d finally got a job stacking shelves in a supermarket on the other side of the city. Part-time. Still had a van, a clapped-out Transit that should have been off the road by rights, and wouldn’t start on cold mornings anyway, meaning he had to take two buses to get to work, a good fifty minutes each way. Added to which the hours, early shift especially, were such as to totally bugger any kind of social life you might have, though in Steve’s case, as he’d be the first to say, that was hardly a consideration.

Never married, never even close, the last sex he’d had he’d paid for, regretting it almost as soon as the business was over, tart using her knickers to wipe between her legs, all the while lighting a cigarette.

There were a few faces he knew in his nearest local, people he’d pass the time of day with over a slow pint, moan about the weather, the useless bloody immigration laws, Manchester-fucking-United, the way the whole bloody country was going to rack and ruin. No one he’d really call a friend, a pal.

Not since Danny; not since Wayne. Both a long time ago.

Wayne, poor bastard, thrown through the windscreen on the motorway. And Danny . . . Danny he hadn’t heard hide nor hair of since a postcard from Inverness and that had to have been fifteen years ago if it was a day. He had it still somewhere, dog-eared and fly-blown, stuck down the back of some drawer.