The Unquiet Grave (31 page)

‘Then you coached them.’

Laird looked unswervingly back at Brook. Eventually, ‘Yes. I coached them. But only because it
wasn’t
relevant, Brook. They were just kids. I was trying to keep their minds clear.’

‘Well, you drummed it in so effectively, even now it’s their reflex answer,’ said Brook quietly. ‘Yours too.’ Silence. ‘So tell me now, Walter. Who was Brendan’s other girlfriend?’

‘I told you, I don’t remember,’ he growled.

‘You’re lying,’ replied Brook softly.

Laird’s breathing quickened and he found Brook’s eyes again but the younger man’s gaze didn’t falter. Eventually Laird’s breathing slowed. He nodded acceptance, his features becoming friendly, reassuring. ‘Will you take it on trust, one copper to another, that whoever else Brendan was seeing had no bearing on the inquiry?’

Brook was surprised to be asked. ‘I’ll consider it if you tell me who she was.’

Laird shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Who are you protecting?’

‘I don’t want to discuss—’

‘Is it DCI Bannon?’

‘I said I can’t tell you,’ Laird snapped.

‘If your SIO made an error of judgement. . .’

‘Leave him out of it,’ snarled Laird. ‘Sam was my friend.’

‘He was your friend and colleague, I understand that. But DCI Bannon is long dead. Nothing you say to me today—’

‘I think you’d better leave now,’ said Laird, struggling to stand on the threadbare carpet.

‘We haven’t discussed Matilda Copeland’s murder yet.’

‘And we’re not going to until I speak to Clive. I can’t believe he’d let you look at her file without speaking to me first. And yet you walk in here, bold as brass, riding roughshod over people’s reputations. . .’

‘When have I done that?’

‘Sam Bannon was a great man and the finest detective I’ve ever served with.’

‘I still need an answer.’

‘The way me and Sam conducted our investigations is none of your business.’

‘With respect, Walter, it’s my only business until I get transferred back to active cases,’ said Brook quietly. ‘You know the routine. I ask the questions you asked at the time and then try to come up with some you didn’t ask. I don’t like it any more than you, but until I’m told to stop, that’s my job.’

‘Get out. I’m tired,’ croaked Laird, beginning to pant again. ‘Billy Stanforth died near fifty year ago. You can talk to me and all the other witnesses until we’re blue in the face and we won’t tell you anything new.’

‘And Matilda Copeland?’

‘What about her?’

‘While we’re on the subject of partners, I couldn’t find a single reference in the file about Matilda’s relationship with boys.’

‘So?’

Brook sighed impatiently. ‘So she wasn’t a virgin when she died, Walter. She was sexually active. If she didn’t have a boyfriend, you and Bannon must have given some thought to. . .’ Brook hesitated, trying to find the right words, ‘an abusive relationship.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ panted Laird. ‘George Copeland was a good father. . .’

‘You checked?’

‘Yes, I checked,’ insisted Laird. ‘Tilly wasn’t abused by her father. He was a good man.’

‘Well, someone was having intercourse with her,’ replied Brook.

‘You’re wasting your breath until I clear it with Clive, understand?’

After a beat, Brook stood. ‘Talk to Clive. But I’ll be back.’

A door opened somewhere in the back of the house.

‘Fish and chips, Dad,’ shouted a voice with a strong Derbyshire accent. ‘Get that kettle on. It’s freezing out there. Haven’t you put plates on to warm? Come on, me duck. Have I got to do everything meself?’

The uniformed sergeant Brook had encountered at the care home emerged from the kitchen carrying a parcel of steaming fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. Sergeant Laird was startled to see Brook.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Take it easy, son,’ warned his father.

Brook realised his hands had balled into fists when he saw the officer who had been so offhand with him at St Agatha’s. He took a few deep breaths, counting the seconds off in his head. It had been a while since he’d had to do the technique. ‘I’m a detective inspector, Sergeant, so I suggest you mind your manners or you’ll be up on a charge.’

Laird the younger stared at Brook, uncertain what to say, before finding his grin. ‘You’re that washed-up detective from London who nearly got canned a few months back.’ He turned to face his father. ‘What’s he doing here, Dad?’

Brook answered for him. ‘We were talking over old times, reviewing some of your father’s old cases.’

‘Which old cases?’

‘You’ll have to ask your father,’ said Brook.

‘Dad?’

‘Billy Stanforth.’

‘The Stanforth boy? After all these years? You’ve got to be joking me.’

‘We’re done now, son,’ said Laird, putting a shaking hand to his brow.

‘Are you all right, Dad?’ His burly son rushed over to him.

‘Tired out and that’s a fact,’ said the old man.

‘Do you need a drop of rum?’

‘Maybe a small one – we’ve been at it a while.’

‘Have you now,’ said the younger Laird. He turned to look at Brook with disdain. ‘Time you were off, Brook.’

‘Detective Inspector Brook,’ replied Brook, enunciating clearly. He hesitated over his options but decided not to push too hard. He and Walter Laird still had a lot of ground to cover. ‘I was just leaving.’ He moved to the front door. ‘We can pick this up later, Walter.’

‘My dad can’t pick nothing up later,’ said the younger man. ‘He’s in his seventies and needs his rest so I’d advise you not to come back. Whatever business you had is done with. Got it?’

Brook had no fear of bullies and enjoyed cutting them down to size but he didn’t want to poison the small pool of potential witnesses. He ignored the younger man, opening the front door to an icy blast.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ Laird advanced, unwilling to let Brook leave without an answer. The amused expression on Brook’s face was not what he expected. ‘What you grinning at?’

Brook’s amusement was genuine. For reasons unclear to him, aggression always aroused in him the same reaction. Perhaps it was the sight of the less powerful trying to assert control in the only way they knew how, but whatever the cause, Brook had discovered that his apparent pleasure in the face of such hostility never failed to disconcert the aggressor.

He calmly held the younger man’s gaze. Uncertainty lurked behind the belligerent façade and Brook knew he had his measure. ‘Enjoy your meal,’ he said from the front door. He turned but halted in the threshold. ‘Oh, one more question, Walter. Have you ever heard of the Pied Piper?’

Sergeant Darren Laird sneered at Brook but his father’s expression was blank as he shook his head.

‘No.’

Just that. No curiosity, no amusement or contempt – a simple negative. Brook nodded and stepped out into the drizzle. The old man had heard the name before.

Twenty

Back at the station late that afternoon, Brook knocked on Copeland’s door and marched in. He wasn’t there so Brook made a mug of tea and retreated to his stark office, suppressing the urge to search Copeland’s office for the file about the death of Jeff Ward in 1973.

Sipping his tea, Brook mulled over his interview with Walter Laird. He wondered about the old man’s relationship with the late DCI Bannon. What had happened at the time of the Stanforth investigation to cause an experienced SIO to delegate interviews with tricky witnesses like children to a detective constable?

‘Or maybe he didn’t,’ mumbled Brook. ‘Maybe it was Bannon who kept McCleary’s mystery girlfriend under the radar.’
And, out of misguided loyalty, Walter Laird is covering for him
. ‘And that’s not all. You’re talking to yourself, Damen. Please stop.’

‘I will,’ he answered a second later.

Brook took another sip of tea and turned on his laptop to hunt down DCI Bannon’s personnel records. It took him much longer than it would have taken Noble but eventually Brook had the information he needed. He read with interest.

DCI Samuel Bannon’s career was shorter than most detectives of the day but his record was distinguished nonetheless. Despite this, as he read Brook got the sense that something wasn’t right. There was nothing actually on file but, reading between the lines, it seemed to Brook that something had happened in the sixties to blight Bannon’s career. That there was no indication of a setback on the file didn’t surprise Brook. Mistakes and poor performance were often glossed over and if you didn’t actually know what the problem was, it could be difficult to spot. But Brook knew that chief constables often used coded shorthand on an officer’s record to describe a career on the slide because similar references had appeared regularly in his own file.

Like Brook, Sam Bannon was initially much admired and often cited for excellent performance. He rose quickly through CID ranks and became a DCI at the tender age of thirty-eight. He was forty years old when he picked up the suspicious death at the Stanforth house in 1963, a case that was to be conspicuously unsolved, as was the even higher profile Matilda Copeland murder, two years later. Bannon was the SIO on both and Brook sensed that his career had started to turn sour around this period. It wasn’t a nosedive, more a gradual falling-off of his clear-up rate and a sharp decrease in commendations. And according to the record, his health began to deteriorate at the same time because there seemed to be several long absences from duty which became a feature of his later years in the force.

Although there were few details, his absences were noted and this was reflected in the profile of cases he was allocated. From 1967 onwards, Bannon began to be assigned less important cases and he was shuffled into an administrative role in 1970. Two years later, Bannon took early retirement on health grounds at the age of just forty-eight and died at his home in the suburb of Littleover in 1978, at the age of fifty-five. There was no exact date of death.

Brook fumbled for his notebook, scrambling to find the right page amongst his notes.

Pied Piper

63 WS 1st?

22/12/73 JW 2nd or 3rd? Wrong MO

Dec 78? 3rd or 4th?

Others?

No 68. Why? FS?

Brook stared at Bannon’s note then at the blank wall to think it through. ‘If you’re right, Sam, WS is William Stanforth, first Pied Piper victim on his birthday in nineteen sixty-three. Leaving out Francesca Stanforth, Jeff Ward was the second victim in nineteen seventy-three, also on December the twenty-second.’

Brook read and reread the fourth line. It made no sense. ‘Dec 78? 3rd or 4th?’ His brow furrowed. ‘Third or fourth victim.’ Brook sighed and his fingers twitched for a cigarette. ‘Help me understand, Sam. If there was another victim on December the twenty-second, nineteen seventy-eight, why is there no record of any murders on that day in the Derby area?’ Brook stared some more, his brain banging up against the facts.

‘Or maybe it was just a theory and you died before you could confirm it.’ Brook banged his head gently with a fist before looking sharply back at the screen. ‘When did you die?’

He flicked through his pad and fumbled for his mobile, tapping out the number quickly. After a dozen rings, Laird picked up. ‘Walter?’

‘What do you want, Brook? I haven’t spoken to Clive yet,’
answered Laird sourly.

‘It’s not about Matilda.’

‘What then?’

‘Sam Bannon died in nineteen seventy-eight.’

‘You rang to tell me that?’

‘No. I need to know what date he died.’

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Brook got the impression Laird didn’t need to search his memory for the details.

‘My friend died in the early hours of December the twentieth.’

‘The twentieth?’ Two days
before
the anniversary of William Stanforth’s death. As an afterthought Brook asked, ‘How did he die?’

‘A tragic accident,’ said Laird quietly. ‘He burned to death in a shed in his garden.’

Brook returned from the kettle in Copeland’s empty office and wandered back to his chair. A shed fire. Coincidence? According to Laird, Bannon’s death was a tragic accident, not a murder. And presumably it had been looked into by ex-colleagues.

Brook’s laptop was still showing Sam Bannon’s personnel information. Before he left the page, Brook noticed that Bannon’s wife Alice had died fifteen years before her husband in 1963. Again there was no exact date but the odds suggested it would have been before the penultimate week in December.

‘Nineteen sixty-three!’ Brook sat back in his chair and sipped at his tea. The year of the Stanforth fire. The year Bannon had identified a young boy’s horrific murder as the first strike of an unknown serial killer – the Pied Piper.

‘Your wife’s death might explain your negligence at the Stanforth crime scene,’ mumbled Brook. ‘But if you were distracted by grief, Sam, when did you get the idea that Stanforth was killed by a serial killer? And how do you know about a third or fourth victim in nineteen seventy-eight, if you died two days before Billy’s birthday? Either you made a mistake. . .’ Brook’s eyes narrowed, ‘or you were the next victim.’ He shook his head. ‘In which case, why didn’t you die on the twenty-second?’

Brook banged his head with his hands, realising he was tired and hungry. ‘This is nuts. I’m sorry, Sam. There’s nothing here.’ He stood, tempted to go in search of a vending machine but he didn’t want to miss seeing Copeland. He had too many unanswered questions rolling around in his head and he was damned if he was going to write them all down.

McCleary reloaded and took aim again. He fired but the beer bottle remained resolutely on top of the crumbling drystone wall. At least dust from the stone had sprayed the bottle. Getting better. He took aim again, remembering to get his breathing right, and fired. The bottle disappeared from the stone. He took aim at the next bottle. It too disappeared, as did the next.

‘Like riding a bike,’ grinned McCleary, hitching his rifle and taking a roll-up from behind his ear.

He lit up then bagged the broken bottles and trudged back to the Land Rover through the mud.

Twenty minutes later, Brook woke in his chair, yawned and sat upright to massage his neck, feeling vaguely refreshed mentally, if not physically. Looking at his watch, he realised it would be dark when he dragged himself out to the car park so he sat still for a moment, enjoying the last call of that netherworld between sleep and consciousness, a foot firmly in both camps.