Grief Encounters (11 page)

‘Hi Charlie,’ he replied. ‘No problem, but it’ll cost you.’

‘Normal rates?’

‘Minimum wage.’

‘OK.’

‘I’m eighteen now, so it’s gone up.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘One hour minimum charge.’

‘Right,’ I told him. ‘But there is one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If this is a strictly business relationship you call me Mr Priest, not Charlie.’

‘OK, Mr Priest, what do you want to know?’

‘There’s this policeman,’ I began, ‘who’s in trouble because some, er, rude images have been found on his computer…’

‘Paedophilia?’ Danny wondered.

‘Um, yes, paedophilia. He says they were planted and he knows nothing about them.’

‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’

‘Perhaps, but let’s suppose that he was telling the truth. Could an outsider download images like that onto his computer?’
Download
is about as technical as I get.

‘Is it you?’ he asked.

‘No, it’s not me. Can it be done?’

‘It’s possible, if you know what you’re doing. Presumably the sender would want to stay anonymous.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘In that case they’d have to use a public IP address.’

‘You mean like an internet café?’

‘No, like AOL or Virgin or Freeserve.’

‘I see. Go on.’

‘Then you’d send him an email with an attachment that’s important or interesting enough for him to open. The attachment contains a Trojan horse virus which starts working as soon as the attachment is opened. It uploads the dirty pictures onto your friend’s hard disk and hides them somewhere really obscure, amongst his files. You then send him another email to uninstall the Trojan. The Trojan vanishes but the uploaded files stay.’

‘What if the cop’s computer has virus protection?’ I ventured, as if I’d understood everything I’d heard.

‘It wouldn’t recognise the Trojan, first shot, and you’d be in and out before it registered. It would be as good as impossible to detect.’

I said: ‘So he could be telling the truth.’

‘Yep, he could be.’

‘Thanks, Danny. I’ll mention you in despatches.’

‘So is it you?’

‘No! It’s not!’

‘I’ll believe you.’

‘Thanks for your help.’

‘You’re welcome, Charlie. I’ll send you a bill.’

‘He’s a bright lad,’ I told Dave as I slipped the phone back into my jacket pocket.

‘He gets it from me. We’re here. What’s the number?’

The reason Pope wanted to see us at home and not at his local nick was because he was decorating. The house was in the middle of a long row, with a small garden at the front and plastic window units that were out of character with the Victorian terrace.

He wiped his hands on a J-cloth and led us through the front room with its bare walls,
dust-sheeted
furniture and smell of paint. In the kitchen he asked if we’d like a coffee, but we declined.

I let Dave do the talking. Gradually we learnt that Pope had emigrated to Australia back in the Eighties and had returned to England four years ago. He was suffering from heart problems, he said, and couldn’t afford the medical bills over there.

Dave developed a sudden interest in DIY and soon had Pope swapping hints about property development with him. If it counted as your main dwelling place, we learnt, you could sell without incurring capital gains tax, as long as you kept it down to one per year. He’d worked, he told us, as a roofing contractor, but was now retired due to ill health.

He’d never heard of Magdalena, never been to Headingley and had only visited Leeds when Manchester City played United, back in
God-knows-when
. He’d seen the match but not much of the town because he’d kept his head down to dodge the missiles bouncing off the coach windows. On the weekend Magda died he’d drunk himself
rat-arsed
on Fosters and Blue Mountain Shiraz; a habit he’d developed in the Antipodes.

It wasn’t a completely wasted journey. We stopped at my favourite truckers’ café just off the M62 and had steak and kidney pie. The café should have died when the motorway opened, but quality sells, and now the clientele are more likely to be pensioners from Blackburn, Burnley or Bradford than lorry drivers on the Liverpool–Hull run. Dave wiped his chin on a napkin and rang his wife, told her he’d eaten.

‘So what do you think?’ I asked as he watched me tuck into a portion of apple pie and custard.

‘I think that if I ate as much as you do I’d weigh a ton.’

‘I burn it off; nervous energy,’ I explained. ‘It’s a curse. I have to keep eating to keep my blood sugar level up. You don’t know how lucky you are, having a weight problem.’

‘I think Mr Pope has a cushy carry-on,’ Dave reckoned, coming back to the subject. ‘He’s almost certainly on the pan-crack, sells his house every year or two for a nice profit, after making a few modifications to bring it up to date. Nothing too strenuous, just a bit here and there, while living on the job. I think I could manage that.’

‘You couldn’t knock a nail in straight.’

‘I can. I got a C in woodwork.’

‘Did you? I thought it was religious instruction. C’mon, take me back.’

In the car I reclined my seat and closed my eyes. Dave said: ‘Blood sugar level troubling you?’

‘Something like that,’ I replied. I was thinking about being a roofing contractor in Australia. The weather was hot, but you were on the roof of someone’s bungalow, in the breeze, wearing shorts and stripped to the waist. It sounded fun. Then you come to Lancashire, where the ancient houses are three storeys high and the wind whips across them and eats into your bones like a gnawing rat. It was no contest, medical bills or no medical bills. Didn’t Australia have a National Health Service? I’d check it out, but for now, Georgie Pope was still in the frame.

Serena, one of my DCs, was in the foyer as we entered, and she fell in step with me as we climbed the stairs.

‘Did you go and see the blind lady?’ I asked. She was working on the hold-up, with Jeff Caton.

Serena smiled as only she can. ‘Yes, boss. And guess what? She says she can recognise the man who pushed her to the ground.’

‘Can she? So is she only partially sighted?’

‘No, she’s as blind as a bat, but she says she would recognise his voice again.’

‘Oh. So what does Jeff say to that?’

‘He says it’s worth bearing in mind, but not enough on its own.’

I hung my jacket behind the door and looked at the fresh pile of paper in my
In
basket. There was a conspiracy to swamp me in paperwork; I was sure of it. One day, deep inside the pile, there’d be something incriminating. I’d miss it, and the next thing I knew would be the rubber heel boys lifting me off my chair and throwing me out of the front door. It reminded me of the paedophilia, hidden deep in the folders on Superintendent Swainby’s computer.

Jeff came in and I confessed to him that I’d quizzed Serena about the blind woman. ‘You’re the boss,’ he conceded. ‘Apparently she told Serena that the person who knocked her over shouted “Get out of the effing way” at her in a green voice. Except he didn’t say effing.’

‘A green voice?’

‘That’s what she reckoned.’

That thought triggered off images of Wassily Kandinsky and his paintings. He claimed that he saw musical notes as colours. ‘Am I right in believing it’s the gala on Sunday?’ I asked.

‘It is,’ he confirmed.

‘Crikey. I’d better do some work tonight, then.’

‘Are you putting something in again?’

‘If they’re dry in time. It wouldn’t be the same without my contributions.’

I made a coffee, took it into my office and dialled a number. I was about to put the phone down when Len Atkins answered.

‘It’s DI Priest from Heckley CID, Mr Atkins,’ I said. When I was sure he remembered who I was I went on: ‘Did Magdalena ever mention anyone in Australia that she knew?’

He said: ‘No, never.’

‘Did she ever express a desire to go there?’

‘No, not to me.’

‘Did Angela ever mention it? Did she ever threaten to join her dad in Oz, anything like that?’

‘No.’

‘OK, Mr Atkins. Thanks for your time. I’ll keep you informed.’

Next I rang ex-DCS Colin Swainby. ‘It’s Charlie Priest,’ I began. ‘Just a quick question. Did the young woman – Teri, was it – did she have a knowledge of computers? Not just a bit on how to use them. Did she know about software and viruses, that sort of thing?’

‘No, I doubt it. She was a hairdresser, once upon a time, and eventually owned a small chain of beauty salons. I doubt if she knew one end of one from the other.’

‘Ne’er mind,’ I said, ‘it was just a thought.’

‘Except…’ he began.

‘Except what?’ I encouraged.

‘Except…I think her husband might have been au fait with them. He was something in IT, she told me. That’s computers, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It is.’

‘What have you found out, Charlie? Could someone have put those images on my hard disk?’

‘According to my information, yes they could, using something called a Trojan horse virus. It would be undetectable.’

‘So that’s it, then. The husband…’

‘It’s a strong possibility.’

Swainby started to laugh. I thought he was choking, at first, then I realised he was laughing. It was an admission that he’d been well and truly caught. ‘That’s perfect,’ he said. ‘Just perfect. He stitched me up, good and proper.’

‘It’s probably illegal,’ I said. ‘There are laws about these things.’

‘No, I’ll take my medicine, Charlie. At least I’ll have something to tell people, now. Those I want to tell. She told me they were separated, but obviously he didn’t think so. Thanks for your trouble, Charlie. I feel better about it, now, knowing that there’s a plausible explanation.’

‘Enjoy your retirement.’

‘I think I will.’

Having Swainby off my back rejuvenated me, and for once I didn’t hang about in the office. I collected the frames for my pictures from the PC who made them and went home. They always look better with a frame, no matter how simple. I fitted them loosely and studied the finished works for about ten minutes while I ate a bowl of tinned pears. The organiser of the gala had rung me to confirm I’d be entering, and had asked what the pictures would be called, for the programme. I usually say: ‘Untitled One and Untitled Two,’ but he asked me to call them something more interesting.

Dylan was singing on the music system, all about his ‘Visions of Johanna’. The paintings lacked something, I decided. A motif, or a cipher, to lift them, provide a theme, and link them together. The words of the song provided it. I scratched a hint of an electricity pylon into the still-wet paint of one of the pictures and painted a short row of them, green on red, on the second one. That was it. They were finished. Titles:
The Ghost of Electricity, One
and
Two
. Being metaphysical is easy once you realise it’s ninety per cent balderdash.

I was sealing the backs of the pictures with masking tape when it came to me. Synaesthesia. That’s the medical condition of seeing colours associated with sounds. I rang Jeff Caton and spelt it out to him before it fled from my memory again. He said he’d check it out on the Internet.

The Magdalena enquiry wouldn’t go away. We looked for the tattooist but drew a blank, and started tracking down the student population who lived in the vicinity. This meant talking to their landlords and asking for a forwarding address, which would be the parents in the majority of cases. Most of the landlords were helpful, some were downright liars who were abusing the system. Not a few of the students had told their parents they were staying on for a variety of reasons, but were nowhere to be found. The ones we did locate were scattered far and wide. We forwarded pictures of Magda to the local forces and asked them to do the interview. It was a waste of time: one of the most distinctive characters of my era had become the Invisible Woman.

So we went national, and my drawing of her was shown on
Crimewatch
. Nineteen people rang in to say they’d seen her, of whom sixteen were evenly spread throughout the country but three were in a cluster around Pontefract. We were in business, or so we thought.

Dave and I made the drive and spoke to the Ponte Three. One had a stall in the market selling pet food and the woman she’d seen on television was a regular customer, buying food for a dog and a parrot, but she hadn’t been in for at least a fortnight. Number two had seen her in town, whilst shopping, but couldn’t add anything to that. Number three was a bus driver. The woman, he told us, caught his bus once per week into Pontefract to do her shopping. She got on and off at Little Smeaton, but he hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks. Buses to and from Little Smeaton were about as regular as solar eclipses, so it looked as if she’d changed her routine. We hotfooted to the village.

The first door we knocked at and showed the drawing elicited a shake of the head. The second and third pointed down the main street, the fourth one said: ‘Next house down.’

Dave knocked and we waited, looking up at the windows, peering round the side of the house, listening for noises. The grass in the lawn was just a little too long, the windows grubby and a vase of flowers in the downstairs window was long past its best. It was beginning to look as if we’d found Magdalena’s last place of residence.

I knocked again while Dave walked round the back to see if any windows were open. Breaking the door down seemed unnecessary but we needed to be inside.

‘I wonder if any of the neighbours have a key,’ I said.

‘I doubt it,’ Dave replied.

‘Haven’t you one of those sneaky little implements in your pocket that will unfasten any lock devised by man?’ I asked.

‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’

‘Let’s talk to the immediate neighbours,’ I suggested. ‘See what they can tell us.’

‘If this were one of the Gaitskell Heights flats you’d have had the door kicked in by now.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’ I lifted the brass knocker one last time and rat-tat-tatted it against the door while Dave leant on the bell-push.