To Honour the Dead (5 page)

‘I hate to think.’

Butterfield leaned forward to look over his shoulder, struggling to make anything out through the film of dirt. It took a few moments for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness of the room.

‘That does not look good,’ she said quietly when they did.

Gallagher tried the front door but found it locked so the detectives jogged up the street, past Esther Morritt’s home and through the band of trees that took them round the top of the village and back down along the rear of the properties. Halfway down, they climbed over the low wall at the end of one of the gardens. Walking quickly up the path, they noticed that the back door had been forced.

‘Definitely not good,’ said the sergeant as the detectives stood for a few uneasy moments before he led the way into the cottage, through the narrow kitchen and into the gloomy hallway.

‘Hello! Anyone in? It’s the police!’ shouted the sergeant but there was no answer. He gestured at Butterfield. ‘Check the bedrooms, will you? I’ll take a look in the living room. Oh, and be careful. I don’t like the feel of this.’

As Butterfield headed quietly up the stairs, Matty Gallagher stood in the hall for a few moments, his heart
pounding and his hands clammy. The sergeant had seen many scenarios like this during his time in London and already had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Such scenes had something that he had never been able to describe. Not a smell. Not even a feeling. It was, he concluded as he stood there, something about the silence. A heavy, oppressive silence. For a moment he was back in a terraced house in London, his first murder inquiry as a young officer. That house had the same silence that he felt now.

‘Bugger,’ said Gallagher.

Having composed himself, he walked into the living room and surveyed the devastation: drawers wrenched out of the dresser and discarded on the carpet, seat cushions hurled onto the floor and an upturned table lying amid the shards of a shattered vase. The sergeant’s gaze strayed to the photograph hanging on the wall. Gallagher stared into the face.

‘Well, if you’re going to pick a victim,’ he sighed, ‘you might as well pick a good one.’

‘Guv,’ came Butterfield’s voice from upstairs. It sounded flat.

Gallagher knew what she had found.

Jack Harris shouldered his haversack, trying to blot out what he had just been told by his sergeant. It was not easy and as he walked across the soggy moor, his thoughts grew darker, his mind constantly wandering back to the attack on the war memorial. It would, he knew, only serve to increase the tension in the valley. He recalled a seminar on rural policing that he attended shortly after returning to Levton Bridge. The officer giving the talk, who had been based in a similar upland division to the inspector’s, had said, ‘Where do you think my fear of crime is highest?’ One sergeant had said, ‘The housing estates in your towns?’ ‘Wrong,’ the officer had replied. ‘They are used to crime, see it most days. Sounds callous, I know, but it’s a fact of life, I am afraid. No,
my biggest fear of crime is in my rural areas where nothing happens from one month to another.’ Noticing the puzzled expression on some of the officers’ faces, he had explained: ‘Why? Because when someone nicks a quad bike from a farm, the shockwaves ripple through all the communities for weeks. And you can multiply that tenfold when, God forbid, you get a murder. The place goes into meltdown, take it from me.’

God forbid you get a murder
. Those words resonated now with Harris. He stopped walking as a thought struck him. Had he erred? Had they already seen a murder but not recognized it for what it was? Had he blindly backed Gallagher against Esther Morritt without properly considering all the options? Had her son really been the victim of an assault that night? Had he…?

‘No,’ he said, ‘Matty was spot on and there’s an end to it.’

Harris glanced down at the dogs, who were eyeing him expectantly. The inspector cursed under his breath. He hated it when work impinged on his walks.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘We’re supposed to be on a day off.’

Harris could not be sure but it seemed that Scoot nodded in agreement. The inspector chuckled and had just started to walk again when his mobile phone rang. He took the phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. Gallagher, it said. Harris tensed.

‘What now?’ asked the inspector irritably into the phone. ‘Can’t you sort out a hot-head with a pot of paint without me?’

‘It’s not the graffiti that worries me,’ said the sergeant’s sombre voice. ‘I am afraid we got us a murder.’

God forbid
.

‘Don’t tell me that someone has killed Esther Morritt?’

‘No such luck, guv.’ Gallagher hesitated. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I’m afraid the dead guy is your mate Harold Leach.’

Harris closed his eyes. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

‘He’s been done over good and proper. Didn’t have a chance, poor fellow. You coming down?’

‘I’m on my way.’

‘Quick as you can. There’s already quite a few media here – someone tipped them off about the vandalism – and they’re asking what’s happened at the cottage. That television reporter – Landy or whatever she’s called – she’s getting arsey about it.’

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ said Harris, slipping his phone back into his pocket and looking down at his dogs.

‘Sorry, boys,’ he said. ‘Duty calls.’

The driver eased the dark vehicle into a parking place at the motorway service station and cut the engine.

‘What now?’ asked his passenger.

‘We wait.’ The driver noticed his friend’s worried expression. ‘Don’t worry about it, Ronny. There’s no way they can trace it back to us. We were careful. You know that. And we never meant to … I mean, the old bastard shouldn’t have …’

‘But he did, didn’t he, Dave? He did and we …’ He saw a man walking over to the car. ‘That him?’

‘That’s him, and he ain’t going to be happy about this. Not happy at all.’ Dave wound down the window.

‘You got it?’ asked the new arrival.

‘Yeah,’ said Dave, reaching over to open the glove compartment and producing a small brown paper package. ‘Look, there was a bit of a hitch.’

The man looked hard at him. ‘Hitch?’ he said. ‘What kind of a hitch?’

‘We just heard on the radio that the old guy is dead.’

‘Dead?’ The man leaned into the car and hissed, ‘How the hell did that happen?’

‘He was alive when we left him,’ said Dave defensively.

‘Well, he’s not bloody alive now, is he?’ The man got into
the back of the car and leaned forward. ‘This changes everything. The thing will be red hot now. Every copper in the land will be after us.’

‘Not backing out, are you?’ said Dave, turning in his seat. ‘Because we’ve taken a huge risk for you and if you are …’

He did not finish the sentence but let the words hang in the heavy air inside the vehicle. Dave looked hard at the man, who appeared deep in thought.

‘Well?’ asked Dave after a few moments, holding up the package. ‘Are you taking it?’

‘Yeah,’ said the man, reaching forward for the package and handing over an envelope. ‘Yeah, I am. It’ll be out of the country by tonight. But there’ll be a lot of shit flying over this and if you even think of talking to Jack Harris and his people you know what it means for you.’

Dave tore open the envelope and looked at the bank notes.

‘I understand,’ he said.

‘Be sure you do,’ said the man, getting out of the car. ‘You just be sure you do. Harris will be all over this like a rash.’

J
ack Harris and Matty Gallagher stood in the half-light of Harold Leach’s bedroom and stared in silence at the battered body lying on its back beside the bed. The old man’s face was heavily bloodstained and his jaw looked as if it had been broken. His left arm was twisted at a grotesque angle and his pyjama jacket was ripped in several places.

‘A fighter to the end,’ said Harris quietly.

‘No medals for this one, unfortunately.’

‘No indeed,’ said Harris. As he looked into the dead eyes of Harold Leach, the inspector shuddered, an unusual reaction for a man inured to murder. But then they were not usually friends.

‘You all right?’

‘Yeah.’ Harris walked over to the window and peered through the curtains. Having gone home to change hurriedly into a suit before he headed for the village, the inspector reached into his pocket and produced a red tie which he proceeded to put on while he surveyed the scene below. ‘So much for keeping things low key, eh?’

Gallagher joined him and for a few moments they stared down at the small crowd that had gathered outside the cottage. Butterfield and a uniformed constable were trying to keep order but without much success. Several people were crying and being comforted, others stood in grim-faced silence. On each face was etched the lines of shock. Harris
remembered those words during the seminar and knew how they felt. He felt the same. The effect of the killing would be experienced for a long time, he imagined. God knows where it would end up, he thought.

Gallagher watched the inspector struggling with his tie. I wonder, the sergeant asked himself, how long it will be before he says that he told us so? He helped his boss straighten his tie.

‘Thank you,’ said the inspector. ‘All fingers and thumbs today.’

‘You sure you’re all right?’

‘Yeah, just a bit shaken up, you know.’ The inspector looked over to the body. ‘Harold was a good friend. Someone I admired.’

‘I know.’

‘I knew something like this would happen.’

‘I know that as well.’

Harris nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess you do,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘I guess I have banged on about it.’

‘Perhaps we should have shown more respect for your instincts.’ Gallagher looked at the body. ‘After all, poor Harold is dead, is he not?’

‘He is indeed.’ The inspector glanced back out of the window and craned his neck to see further down the street, where he noticed more people arriving, recognizing one of them as a local newspaper reporter who appeared to be interviewing Roger Barnett as they walked.

‘Not sure Barnett agrees about keeping things low key,’ said Gallagher. ‘Another chance to get his name in the papers.’

‘The sooner we get Harold out of the village the better. The last thing we want is a bloody media circus.’

‘Might make more sense to get Roger Barnett out,’ said Gallagher. ‘Besides, not sure we can really avoid the media scrum. Dead war hero, brutal killing, the journos will
absolutely love it. We had something similar when I was with the Met. Even had one of them trying to sneak in through the back of the house. Pretended to be the old guy’s nephew when we collared him. It’s such a noble profession.’

‘You’re probably right,’ sighed Harris. His gaze settled on the scruffy figure of Lenny Portland, loitering on the edge of the crowd and staring up intently at the cottage.

Noticing the detective watching him, Portland turned and walked quickly down the street, past Roger Barnett and out of the inspector’s view.

‘Now why is he here, I wonder?’ said Harris.

‘What you seen?’

‘Lenny Portland. Seems to keep turning up like the proverbial.’

‘This is way out of his league.’ The sergeant’s attention switched to the blonde television reporter conducting an interview with Henry Maitlin further down the street. ‘I hope they’ve got a lot of tape in that camera.’

Harris allowed himself a smile; as so often with the sergeant, his comment had eased the tension in the room.

‘So what have we got?’ he asked, turning back into the room. ‘Anyone see or hear anything last night?’

‘Neighbour heard some thuds around midnight.’

‘They not investigate?’

‘She’s eighty-seven.’

‘So?’

Gallagher was about to remonstrate with Harris but the inspector gave the slightest of smiles and the sergeant thought better of it; it was like he always said, you just never knew with the DCI.

‘The thuds must have been loud, mind,’ said the sergeant instead. ‘The old dear’s Mutt’n’ Jeff. Got to be robbery, hasn’t it? Forensics still can’t find his VC, and whoever did it left some of the other medals so it looks like they knew what they’d come for.’

‘It’s a high price for a bit of gun metal, Matty lad. You get to talk to Esther Morritt?’

‘Came across this on my way to see her. I reckoned that a bit of vandalism paled into insignificance so I …’

‘Might be worth it all the same. There’s been plenty going off in the last few days and a lot of it centres on Esther Morritt and her mouth.’

‘Yeah, but surely they’re unconnected?’ Gallagher gestured to the old man. ‘I mean … this is much more…?’

‘Can’t assume anything,’ said Harris, walking over to the door. ‘We ought to talk to Barry Gough as well.’

‘The anti-war guy?’ Gallagher was unable to conceal his incredulity this time. ‘That’s even more crazy than thinking that Lenny Portland might have been—’

‘Like I keep telling people,’ said the inspector as he headed down the stairs, ‘the way things have been going lately, anything is possible. Absolutely anything.’

‘Within reason,’ muttered Gallagher under his breath and followed him out of the room.

At the bottom of the stairs, the inspector walked into the living room and, after nodding at the forensics officers, looked at the picture of Harold Leach on the wall, medals pinned on his blazer, VC taking pride of place. Next to the picture were other framed photographs; Harold being introduced to the Queen at a royal garden party, Harold meeting the prime minister when he visited Levton Bridge, Harold with his grandchildren at a Christmas party. With a sigh, the DCI walked out into the hallway and into the street where he was confronted by the sight of Rob Mackey pushing his way through the crowd.

‘I hope you’re still going to talk to Esther Morritt,’ said Mackey, jabbing a finger at the inspector.

Gallagher, following Harris out of the house, shook his head when he heard the comment. There were plenty of things guaranteed to evoke a reaction from Jack Harris –
most things, actually – but few bettered pointing a finger at him and demanding that he do something. What’s more, the sergeant knew – everybody in the valley knew – that there was bad blood between Harris and Mackey. Gallagher knew that was why Harris had been happy for him to handle the Philip Morritt case. Said he couldn’t trust himself to keep his temper with the man.

‘I asked you a question,’ said Mackey as Harris ignored him. ‘You had better not forget what the bitch did to my memorial stone just because some old guy has been done over.’

People in the crowd looked at Harris, waiting for the reaction. They were not to be disappointed. Seeing that the inspector’s fist was bunched, Gallagher held his breath and prepared to intervene.

‘Some old bloke?’ said the inspector. ‘Is that what he is to you – some old bloke?’

‘Yeah, well, it’s very sad and all that,’ said Mackey, the murmuring in the crowd making him realize that he had overstepped the mark, ‘but it does not mean that you should ignore your duty to—’

‘Do you know,’ said the DCI, walking forward so that his face was within inches of Mackey’s, ‘I have had just about enough of your whining voice. In fact, if I never heard it again, it would be too soon.’

‘Now hang on a minute, Harris….’

‘So might I suggest that you sod off out of this village before I rearrange your face?’ said Harris quietly.

Mackey stared in amazement at the inspector, looked as if he was about to retort but, on hearing the applause rippling round the gathering and noting the detective’s thunderous expression, thought better of it. He turned on his heel and stalked back down the street, furiously rebutting the television reporter’s attempts to interview him. Gallagher relaxed slightly. Harris noticed Butterfield staring at him.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘You got something to say, Constable?’

Butterfield shook her head meekly. ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’

‘Good,’ said Harris, brushing past her and walking through the crowd, which parted respectfully to let him pass. ‘Right answer.’

‘It’s what’s called community policing,’ said Gallagher helpfully to the young constable as he walked past her.

Butterfield smiled weakly then turned her attention back to the crowd, which was pushing closer to the cottage again.

‘Come on, you lot,’ she said. ‘Step back.’

Gallagher caught up with Harris near the green. ‘You still want me to go see Esther Morritt?’ asked the sergeant, falling into step with the inspector.

‘No,’ said Harris with a half-smile, the irritation of a moment ago banished as quickly as it had flared. ‘I would have said that it pales into insignificance given what’s happened here. Wouldn’t you agree, Matty lad?’

Gallagher nodded. Sometimes Jack Harris could be almost human, he thought. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself,’ he said.

‘Indeed.’

As they stepped onto the green, Henry Maitlin approached them; the officers could see that he was fighting back the tears.

‘A terrible business,’ he said, voice trembling. ‘And with Remembrance Sunday so close.’

‘Tragic,’ said Harris, nodding.

Maitlin looked at the inspector with moist eyes. ‘Have you any idea who did this, Jack?’ he asked. ‘I mean, what had he ever done to harm anyone?’

‘We think they were after his VC, Henry.’

‘Medals can fetch a lot on the black market if you’ve got the right buyer,’ said Gallagher.

‘Disgusting,’ said Maitlin and his voice was urgent now.
‘You have got to get whoever did this quickly, Jack. You know what people round here are like.’

‘I am afraid I do, Henry. What have you been hearing?’

‘I’ve already had several old dears from the village coming up to me saying they are frightened to sleep in their own homes tonight.’ Maitlin glanced across to where the young television reporter was watching as her cameraman filmed people heading into the street. ‘And when she interviewed me, that Landy girl asked me if I thought Chapel Hill was a safe place to live. I did not know what to say, Jack.’

‘Tell them they’ll be safe enough. This place will have officers on patrol all night. I’ll see to that.’

‘I’m not sure that will be enough. Folks are really scared.’

‘I’m sure it’s a one-off.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ Maitlin hesitated. ‘Don’t be too hard on Rob Mackey, Jack. I know you don’t like the man but he’s been very generous to the Legion. Even paid for the refurbishment of the pavilion. I don’t know what we would have done without him.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Harris bleakly as Maitlin headed off towards the cottages. The inspector looked at Gallagher as the men started walking again. ‘Do we really have nothing?’

‘Pretty much. Forensics reckon the place is clean. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. This feels like pros, it really does, and that means they have got to have come from outside.’

‘I guess you’re right,’ said Harris as they paused at the war memorial. He surveyed the graffiti then turned as Barnett approached. ‘Give me some good news, Roger.’

‘Might be able to do just that. That old bloke over there by the phone box, chap with the little dog? Well, he lives down the bottom of Tenter Street and reckons he was woken up by the sound of a car door sometime after midnight. Looked out
of the bedroom window and saw a vehicle on the far side of the green. He says it disappeared towards Levton Bridge.’

‘He get a good description?’

‘His knowledge of cars stopped when the Morris Marina went out of production. However, he did notice that one of its brake lights was out.’

‘The one we saw yesterday,’ said Gallagher. ‘Didn’t Butterfield say that traffic had given it a ticket?’

‘She did indeed,’ said Harris as he headed off across the grass towards the car park. ‘Get on it, will you?’

‘Sure. Where will you be?’

‘Got to talk to an old friend.’

Roger Barnett looked quizzically at Gallagher. ‘An old friend?’

‘Leckie,’ said the detective sergeant, ‘it’ll be Leckie.’

‘Chief Inspector!’ called a woman as Harris reached his Land Rover.

The inspector turned to see the television reporter and her crew approaching.

‘Ah, Miss Landy,’ he said thinly, ‘taking a break from scaring the shit out of innocent old people, are we?’

‘I don’t think that’s a fair comment, Chief Inspector. After all, a man has been murdered here – can’t exactly exaggerate that, can I? Oh, don’t look like that, Jack, you know it’s true. Everyone seems to believe that the dead man is Harold Leach. Can you confirm that?’

‘We have not made a formal identification yet,’ said Harris, giving her a hard look, ‘but if it is him, that will be Harold Leach VC to you and me. Around here, young lady, we honour our dead. I suggest you do the same.’

‘Not sure they honoured Harold.’

Harris said nothing, turned and walked over to his vehicle. Standing not far away, on the edge of the green, Lenny Portland was watching the confrontation when his mobile phone rang. He fished it out of his parka pocket.

‘Yeah?’ he said.

‘It’s me,’ said a man’s voice. ‘You better not be responsible for what happened last night.’

‘It weren’t nothing to do with me. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’

‘Well, someone did the old bastard over.’

‘I tell yer, it weren’t me that killed him. Got to go. Harris.’

Having unlocked the vehicle, the inspector had heard the phone ring and had turned to see Portland. Seeing the inspector walking towards him, Portland slipped the phone into his pocket and headed in the opposite direction.

‘Lenny!’ shouted the inspector.