The Killing Club (3 page)

Craig Titmus heard the tap on his door. There were just two taps, and then the sound of feet moving on to the door of the next cell. Again two more taps, the noise of knuckle bones on steel, then more footsteps, more taps – on and on the same signal. ‘I’m here. It’s me – Blackwell. Look out.’

He jerked bolt upright on his bed, sweat breaking out in his armpits. Blackwell rarely worked on the isolation block now, but when he did it was always the same old routine, letting his fingers and feet tell them who was there. That
he
was there, and that he could see
them
, but they couldn’t see him.

Blackwell had been on when a guy on the block had hung himself up by a rope he’d made from shredding his blankets. Craig knew that Blackwell had watched the wretched bloke through the Judas hole, and that he’d not raised the alarm until it was all over. Well, he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, but he
knew
.

Craig would be out the next day and he knew there would be plenty of Blackwells waiting for him. A howling mob would find him, or the papers would let on where he was. They’d hunt him down like a fox and tear him to bits.

He should be glad to be getting out next day. But he’d been shut up so long the whole idea of it freaked him out. No one had been to visit him for years. He sometimes screwed up his eyes to try to see his mum in his head, imagine how she might look now. Blackwell had told him she’d gone crazy because Craig had murdered her bloke. He’d been a security guard, which was almost as hallowed as a policeman. Everyone would be out to get him, Blackwell said. He made it sound as though he was famous – him, Craig. He supposed that was something, at least, but not exactly a good thing.

He heard footsteps coming back, stopping at his cell. Blackwell had always liked to watch him. He jumped back on to his bed, flung himself down and faced the wall.
Don’t react, just wait. He’ll go away
. He covered his ears, just to be on the safe side. Blackwell liked to trickle filthy words and thoughts through the hole.
Titmus, Titmus, they’ll come and get you, murdering bastard
. And then, in time, he went away, giving a final two raps on the door as he shuffled off to torment someone else. Craig waited until morning, his thoughts milling and stirring into a boiling stew of anxiety.

Blackwell was off duty when it came to leaving. Dave Lofthouse came to escort him to the desk at the outside door where the guards would give him his stuff and get him to sign a paper. He didn’t mind Dave – he was new to the job, young and not yet broken in by the older screws.

They walked in silence, past the cells where the inmates called out goodbye as he passed. A lump came into his throat and he could manage no more than a grunt to let them know he wouldn’t forget them. They went through corridors and doors which Dave unlocked and then locked again after they’d passed through. When they passed the kitchen he could smell the warm softness of cooking: mince and onions, sponge and floury custard.

And then, as if he was in some kind of dream where things happened in no particular sequence, he’d been given a bag to carry and he’d reached the big grey metal outside door. As they waited for the guards at the outside desk to buzz it open, Dave put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good luck, Craig. Don’t let’s be seeing you back here, eh?’

And then he was out in the yard and there was blue sky above him and a bright sun. He screwed his eyes against the light, shying away from it. He looked around him; there was no one there, no one waiting to get him. No sign of any Blackwells. Not yet.

The sense of aloneness scared him. He’d had years of being watched, told what to do, never having to make a decision for himself. He made himself move forward, because that was all he could do, just walk away. He didn’t know yet what he would be walking to. He remembered one of the guards saying he had to get a bus, get to the probation office. He’d been given some directions to put in his bag, along with enough money to keep him afloat for a week or so. They’d told him the probation officer would help him. But Blackwell said he’d be all on his own a like fox on the run, with a pack of hounds behind him, catching up, catching up.

He tried to picture his life, running on ahead of him like an endless road. What would happen to fill all those minutes and hours and days until he got old? He didn’t know. He wanted a family to go to, but there was no one. His mum hadn’t ever been married and he had no brothers or sisters, not that he knew of anyway. His gran and grandad had died, the prison officers had told him that. But his mum was still alive. But she wouldn’t want him, Craig, back ever. Because he had murdered her bloke and therefore driven a pile of nails into his own coffin.

The drive from Swift’s cottage to the station just outside the market town of Ilkley was a match for any recommended scenic route you could pick from a tourist handbook of the Yorkshire Dales. And the weather was typical too; a bleak chill in the air, the sky low and glowering, turning the hills to brooding dark monsters. Streams sparkled beneath humpback stone bridges and dips in the road had become glinting splashy fords following the heavy rain through the night. A photographer’s dream.

By 7.45 a.m. he was settled behind the desk in a tiny office, the only space the superintendent could find for him at present. It was on the top floor of the building, which was currently undergoing a re-fit. The walls were bare and ready for painting and the room smelled of dust and stale cigarette smoke. The single window was about the size of a tea tray. But the room had a computer and a phone and a pleasing air of quietness, being removed from the hub of activity of the work being carried out on the floors beneath.

Swift was well aware that the waters had partly closed over him since his decision to take time off work. That happened with everyone who had a long absence from the team: no one, however good at their job and valued as a person, was irreplaceable. He imagined the comments on his file; queries about possible post-traumatic stress disorder, about his ability to deal with it, about his future in the force. Curiously none of this worried him. His main concern was to get to grips with the case in hand and to make good of the opportunity to test himself out once again.

The sergeant at the front desk had told him that Inspector Fallon was finishing off paperwork in her current station and would not be joining him until the beginning of the next week. Swift was not sorry about that: getting his feet back under the work table would be easier on his own.

Not that he intended to sit behind his desk all day. Having reviewed the brief details in the file Stratton had given him, he made an appointment to visit the mortuary and speak to the pathologist, then turned his attention to the issue of doing some research regarding the scene of the crime.

His first port of call was a well-heeled bungalow in a small cul-de-sac about a hundred yards from the base of Fellbeck Crag. The man who opened the door was a tubby, baldheaded man with a grandfatherly appearance. A toddler who looked like a good candidate for fulfilling the role of grandchild was standing behind him, peering curiously around his right leg.

‘Good morning, young sir!’ said the tubby man. ‘And who might you be?’

‘Good morning, to you,’ Swift said, thinking it was a long time since he had been called a young sir, and showing his ID. ‘DCI Swift.’

‘Bertrand Morrison,’ the man responded, waving Swift through the door, whilst the toddler continued to stare in solemn silence. In the sitting room, a large blond dog raised an untroubled head as the three of them filed in.

‘Sit down, sit down!’ Morrison said. ‘What can we do for you, Chief Inspector? I’ll guess you’re here about the poor beggar who met his maker on the crag.’

‘You’re quite right. I’m investigating the circumstances of the man’s death.’

‘Checking out that there was no foul play, I’ll be bound,’ Morrison replied.

Swift nodded, making no comment.

‘Do you know who he was?’ Morrison asked.

‘Not yet. I take it you didn’t recognize him.’

‘Never seen him before in my life.’ Morrison shook his head regretfully. ‘Poor chap, toppling off the crag and then being set alight. What a terrible business.’

‘Yes,’ Swift agreed. ‘And a troubling experience for you, Mr Morrison.’

‘Oh well, it wasn’t too jolly, I have to admit. But that’s life isn’t it? You take the good with the bad.’

Swift wondered if Morrison was more upset than he admitted. ‘One of our Liaison Officers could have a talk with you if that would be helpful,’ he said.

‘Thanks for the offer. I don’t think I’ll be needing anything like that.’ He paused. ‘But then if your officer were a pretty young blonde, I might change my mind.’ Immediately he looked ashamed of having made this frivolous remark. ‘Sorry, we mustn’t speak disrespectfully of anything to do with death.’

Swift judged that Mr Morrison had no need of any counselling, being resilient enough to counsel himself. Or was there another reason?

The toddler, having carried out his own check on Swift, now sidled softly up to him and held out his hand, offering Swift the Lego brick he was holding in his hand.

Swift received it with due gravity. ‘Thank you.’

‘His name’s George,’ Bertrand Morrison said. ‘They’re all coming back, the good old traditional names. Say hello to the Chief Inspector, George.’

George stared for a few moments, declined to speak and wandered away to the pile of toys stacked in a box beneath the window.

Swift looked at the benign, slumbering dog. ‘I gather that it was your golden retriever who found the body.’

‘Indeed he did,’ Morrison declared. ‘Barney has a nose like a bloodhound.’

‘I see,’ Swift said. ‘Do you walk regularly around the crag?’

‘Oh, yes. Every morning, every evening, regular as clockwork.’

‘Can you tell me what happened on the evening you, or rather Barney, discovered the body?’

‘We set out around teatime. It takes about five minutes to walk from here to the entrance to the woods at the foot of the crag. We’d been walking around fifteen minutes, when Barney did one of his off-piste sloping off away from the path and into the undergrowth. I didn’t think anything about it as he regularly goes off on a nose-to-the-ground job. I went on at my usual plodding pace, and all of a sudden I heard this bark. And then I realized that it was him – and that he sounded excited and somehow worried. I followed the noise and there he was, standing beside the body, barking his head off.’

He stopped, his amiable, carefree expression stilling into seriousness. ‘Well, I stepped forward to have a look and I was pretty sure the poor chap had had it. But I didn’t touch him. Well, to tell the truth I felt squeamish and anyway they always say you shouldn’t interfere with funny goings-on, don’t they. I put Barney on the lead and calmed him down. And then I got out my mobile phone and contacted the police and the ambulance service. Barney and I sat and waited until someone came. One or two runners came past, but they didn’t cotton on what was happening. Well, I suppose me and Barney were blocking the view. Anyway, the police were there in minutes, and one of them had a bit of a feel at the body and said he thought it was dead. After that they cordoned the body off, then took some details from me. And that was it, really.’

‘Thank you, that was a very clear and helpful account,’ Swift said. He let a small silence fall. ‘Mr Morrison, do you have any reason for saying that the dead man toppled from the crag.’ Swift had checked the wording of the press release and there was no mention of the possible reason for the man’s death, or the way he had met it.

Morrison looked faintly surprised to be asked that question, as though it were quite unnecessary. ‘Well, it makes sense – to me anyway. You see, I do a circular walk with Barney. We walk almost to the top of the crag and then we turn along a narrow path which has a point on it which I’ve long regarded as a death trap. I’d certainly never walk near it without having the little one on reins and even then I’d keep right to the other side of the path.’

His answer was so ready and straightforward that Swift put Morrison on the furthest back burner of being a suspect as regards the killer he was searching for.

‘So presumably you have a good idea of the location from which the body might have fallen?’

‘Oh, yes. I know exactly the spot,’ said Mr Morrison. ‘Exactly! Me and Barney pass it every day. And that body was as near-as-damn-it directly underneath that very spot.’

‘Would you show it to me?’

‘Absolutely would – no problem. Do you mean now?’

‘If that’s convenient for you.’

He wrinkled his forehead. ‘Well, we’ll have to take the little ’un along. I can’t leave him when he’s on my watch. Child-minding duties are my new career, you see, seven and a half hours, three days a week. He fills my days with gold does that little lad. And then Barney’ll have to come too.’

Swift smiled. ‘No problem.’

Twenty minutes later, having wrestled the child into his shoes and outdoor gear, then got himself and the dog ready for walking, Mr Morrison carefully locked the front door behind him and the little party set out. As Swift had guessed, progress was very slow. By the time they reached the site where the body had been found, Swift was familiar with a good deal of Bertrand Morrison’s family history and his views on a number of issues ranging from childcare to the disgraceful state of the British economy. He noted that the site, which was still cordoned off with white tape bearing the blue police logo, was not in full view of the path, as it lay in a channel of hollow ground which formed part of the modulations of the terrain just beneath the slope of the crag. Morrison was understandably reluctant to walk up close to the site in the company of his grandson and his dog. He stood waiting whilst Swift took a few moments to glance at the area and form a general impression.

They then commenced the climb which would take them to the high reaches of the crag. The toddler made a valiant attempt with the first few steps, then fell and began to cry. Morrison swept him into his arms and stomped forwards up the steps, clutching his burden. Swift found that it required quite an effort to keep up and was impressed with the older man’s stamina.

Towards the top of the steps Morrison indicated that they were to take a left turn, which took them up an earth path patched with outcrops of rock. There was another climb and then they made a second left turn joining a high path which ran parallel to the path they had started out on. Glimpsing down, Swift was surprised at how much height they had gained. The view across the valley was sweeping and impressive. To the right of them the path was separated from the hilly farmland by tired-looking wire netting. In the distance, Swift spotted two deer, standing on the high point of a ridge, dramatically outlined against the sky.

‘Just here,’ Morrison said, gesturing to the left with a nod of his head, keeping the child firmly grasped in his arms.

Cautiously approaching the cliffside edge, Swift saw that he was standing on the brink of a jaw-dropping precipice. Below him the land curved inwards slightly, giving almost immediately on to serried ranks of bluish-grey rock which ran all the way down to the plateau below – and the place where the body had been found.

He stepped back a little.

‘That poor chap must have fallen from there,’ Morrison said. ‘It’s the only place along here that’s truly dangerous – a death trap, if you like.’

Swift agreed. He stepped forward again, knelt down and looked at the point just beneath the jut of the land. If a person were to stumble and be taken off balance they would have every chance of falling on to the small platform of grass-covered earth immediately below. But if they were pushed, they would miss breaking their fall and land on the rock. He imagined the horror of it; bouncing down the rock, clutching at emptiness, hurtling on to further injury, powerless to prevent their inevitable fate.

He got to his feet and brushed the earth off his hands.

‘I’ve written to the council once or twice to suggest they put some warning signs or barricades up, but nothing’s happened,’ Morrison said. ‘I suppose in all fairness it’s not a very much-frequented path. Too goatlike for most folks.’ He shifted the child’s position on his hip. ‘Well, that’s enough of all that. Let’s move on, shall we?’

They resumed their walk, which would eventually lead them on a long gentle slope back to the lower path. After negotiating two streams, the land began to flatten out and Morrison let the child get down. He sped off with glee. ‘Run, run, run!’ he shouted, chasing after the dog.

‘If it were up to me to offer an opinion,’ said Morrison, ‘I’d say that your body had a helping hand to send him on his way. You’ve just looked at the lie of the land, Chief Inspector, you’ll have seen that a person would need some force behind his fall to hit the rock.’

Swift was impressed. ‘Do you know of other fatal incidents that have taken place at that spot?’

‘No, strangely enough, I don’t, and I’ve walked all over the crag for years. Still, you’ll be able to look it up on your computers, won’t you?’

Swift nodded confirmation.

‘I’m always around,’ Morrison said. ‘Minding the little ’un and walking the dog. And while I enjoy every minute of it, I wouldn’t say no to a little more excitement from contact with the outside world. So if you need any more wise words from a willing old pensioner, just give me a call.’

‘I will,’ Swift said.

Morrison suddenly stopped dead and struck his forehead with his hand. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you, Chief Inspector. Blow it, I’m such a befuddled old codger these days. You see, on the day Barney and I found the body this part of the crag had been cordoned off all day for some tree cutting. I saw them leaving when I came along with Barney. So that’s maybe why someone didn’t spot it sooner. I mean, if the poor chap had been killed the night before you’d have thought he’d have been found much earlier in the day. There are dozens of dogs being walked in this little spot, which means he must have been killed sometime after dark on the Monday or very early Tuesday before the council tree-cutters got here. That is, after all the general public and all other traffic had departed to bed and the workers had started, which was eight o’clock so one of them told me. I’d say a slot between 11 p.m. Monday and, say, around 7 a.m. Tuesday. Dirty deeds can happen in the night, you know. It never gets really dark this time of year, and I should know – I’m an insomniac.’

Swift digested all this and committed it to memory. He hadn’t expected to be given an estimated time of death with such cogency so soon. He would ask for a written statement from Morrison later and it would be interesting to compare his evaluation with that of the pathologist. ‘Did you ever think of taking a job with the CID, Mr Morrison?’ Swift inquired.