Some By Fire dcp-6 Page 10

  "Er, nothing," I replied.

  "It says here… where is it? Oh, here we are, in Any Other Business:

  Examination of all outstanding murder cases going back thirty years, with Mr. Priest typed in the margin. I know you don't like going to the meetings, Charlie, but if you think this'll get you out of them you're mistaken."

  I said: "Forget it, Gilbert. We were just discussing DNA testing in old cases, and I suggested it could be taken further."

  "It looks as if you volunteered to do it."

  "Well, I'll un-volunteer."

  "Right. How did you go on yesterday?"

  He wasn't too pleased when he learned that I'd be spending a large proportion of my time working for the SFO, but relaxed when I told him that they were paying my expenses.

  "So where are you starting?" he asked.

  "With the files. See what's on them that I never knew about. I was a humble sergeant at the time, and not on the case."

  I drank my tea and went back downstairs to review the troops. Nigel was due in court, Jeff and Maggie had appointments with various people on the robbers' circuit and Dave was hoping to talk to someone on the Sylvan Fields estate who had ambitions of becoming a paid informer.

  It's heart-warming when you hear of one of them trying to better himself, restores your faith in the system.

  The West Yorkshire archives are in the central registry in the cellars of the Force HQ, or the Centre, as it is more usually called. Grey steel industrial racks, row after row, are bulging with brown folders stuffed with papers and photographs. Every written page is a testimony to man's indifference to the feelings of his fellows. There's not much joy down there, little to uplift the spirit when you consider that these are the unsolved cases. The ones we crack are usually destroyed to save space.

  '1975, did you say?" the civilian archivist asked as he led me between the lines of Dexion shelving.

  "July," I replied. "Possibly filed as Crosby."

  He turned down an aisle, read a label, went a bit further, read another, backtracked a few paces and looked up. "We need the steps," he said.

  "I'll fetch them." He walked with a pronounced limp and I was impatient. Our movements had stirred up fifty years of dust and the place smelled of old paper and corruption. I rolled the steps into position and locked the wheels.

  The file was about two feet thick, in four bundles tied with string. I lifted the first one out and climbed down. "I'll leave you, then," he said.

  "Thanks, you've been a big help. I'll put them back when I've finished."

  When he'd gone I scanned the letters and numbers on the next rack of shelves, looking for a name. I was certain this one wouldn't have been destroyed. There it was, next but one: a whole bank of shelves devoted to one villain, the biggest file we'd ever had. I ran my fingers over them, leaving a clean trail through the dust. In there were the names of thirteen women and fifty thousand men, and the contents had touched the lives of everyone in the country. One man's name was printed within those pages nine times, but he wasn't caught until a lucky copper found him with a prostitute in his car and a ball-peen hammer in his pocket. Peter Sutcliffe, better known as the Yorkshire Ripper.

  I took the first bundle from the fire file to the desk near the door and untied the string. There were photos and a list of names and the coroner's report. Sergeant Priest and PC Sparkington, first on the scene, weren't mentioned. An hour and a half later I retied the string and fetched the next bundle. The prostitutes in the next street were convinced that they were the intended target and the CID went along with that. I broke off for something to wash the dust out of my larynx and some fresh air.

  Bundle three was mainly interviews with the ex-boyfriends and minders of the girls. Their pimps, in other words. They all had alibis, which wasn't a surprise, and plenty of witnesses to say they were visiting their moms at the time of the fire, whenever that might have been. I was gathering a good picture of the investigation and where it might have gone wrong, but nothing that helped Crosby's case. Maybe bundle four would hold the key.

  It was more of the same. The usual suspects had been rounded up, informants consulted, gossip listened to. It had been a crime that aroused passions, it's always the same when children are involved, and plenty of people had their pet theories. The local branch of the National Front denied any responsibility and expressed lukewarm regret, and the leaders of the Asian community demanded more protection.

  I scanned the next statement briefly, turned it upside down on the pile I'd finished with and reached for another one. I was working on automatic. Something clicked inside my brain and I picked it up again.

  It was made by Paul Travis Carter to DC Jones, four weeks after the fire. Carter lived at number twenty-seven Leopold Avenue, just over the road. Two days before the fire he'd gone on an expedition to the Dolomites with a party of schoolkids and had just returned. About a week before leaving he went for his customary take away and as he locked the door he noticed a young woman approaching number thirty-two. She hesitated on the top step for a few moments and left. He'd assumed she'd put something through the letter box, although her actions didn't look like that. He followed her, because that was the way he was going, and she got into a posh car that was waiting round the corner and was driven away. The car might have been a two-litre Rover and the driver looked like a man, although his hair was longish and Carter couldn't be certain. "I don't suppose it's important," he'd told the DC, 'but I thought I'd better tell you." The DC had obviously agreed with the not important bit; there wasn't even a description of the woman.

  "Wait till I tell Sparky," I said to myself, and made a note of Carter's details. He shouldn't be too hard to find. I put everything back and slapped the dust off my hands. As I turned to leave I took a last look at the Ripper files. We'd been misled on that one, gone off at a tangent, wasted thousands of man hours. Someone had made a big mistake with the fire, too, and I didn't think it was me.

  Carter was a responsible citizen who conscientiously registered to vote. Two minutes on the computer upstairs in the HQ CID office and I had his latest address. Middleton, South Leeds. I thanked everyone for their help, flirted briefly with a rather attractive sergeant and left. Carter lived in a cottage along a dirt track near the golf course. It sounds nice, but a burnt-out shell of a Fiesta reminded me that just down the road was a rambling estate where middle-class meant having floorboards, and quiche was the plural of cosh.

  He was in the garden, hacking at a grass jungle with a bargain-store sickle. A golf club would have done more good. His hedges were overgrown, heavy with honeysuckle and wild roses. It was a cottage garden gone mad, and it reinforced my belief that there is no such thing as a labour-saving garden. He looked up and demanded: "Who are you?" the sickle held handy to deliver a forearm volley. I told him.

  I'd decided that his wife had left him long before he poured it out.

  The garden; the state of his front room; having to wash two cups before he could offer me a coffee; they were all clues. I lived like that, once, before I reformed. Carter was wearing grey slacks, a striped cream shirt with the cuffs and neck fastened, and black brogues. His only concession to the weather had been to remove his tie. He told me he'd retired early and spent his time working for a Third World charity and trying to write a textbook on Roman England. He believed that Roman values were lacking in certain elements of our present-day society, and a return to them would be for the good.

  Crucifixion? I thought.

  He'd missed the fire, of course. First he knew of it was when he saw the boarded-up holes and smoke-streaked brickwork. He'd been shocked to learn that they'd all been killed, and disturbed by the matter-of-fact acceptance of it by his neighbours. They'd had a month to get used to the idea, and it's amazing how the human mind can accommodate disaster when it happens to someone else.

  "It was twenty-three years ago," I reminded him. "Can you remember the girl you saw?"

  "Oh yes, Inspector. I've thought about it so many ti
mes."

  "You said in your statement that she may have put something through the letter box?"

  He looked uncomfortable. "I know I did. She walked to the front door so purposefully, paused for a few seconds much longer than it would have taken to put a letter through and turned and left, equally purposefully."

  "Maybe she was checking the address on the envelope," I suggested.

  "I thought of that. It's possible, but her actions weren't right. I went through all this with the detective, you know."

  "OK," I said, 'how does this sound? The woman walked up to the front door with a piece of chalk in her hand. The house was number thirty-two but the painted number had weathered away. She wrote thirty-two on the wall and left. Could that have been it?"

  His eyes widened slightly and he nodded. His skin was sallow and hung in folds around his neck. He wasn't eating properly since she left. I didn't get this bad, did I? "Do you know, Inspector, I believe you could be right." He stood up and faced an imaginary door. "The numbers were painted about here," he said, raising his left hand to shoulder height. "At least, mine was." He went through the motions and said: "Did she write it at this side?"

  "Yes."

  "In that case, she'd have to lean over if she were right-handed, which she didn't. It would make more sense if she were left-handed."

  "We'll make a detective of you yet, Mr. Carter," I said. "I'd come to that conclusion myself. Now what about her description? Do you think you can give me one?"

  "Wasn't it on the file?"

  "No, I didn't find it."

  "Well, I told the detective who interviewed me. It's a bit late, if you don't mind me saying so. It's lost its impact."

  "We appreciate that she'll be much older now," I said.

  "It's not just that. Punk was just starting, and now every other young person you meet has purple hair, but up to then I'd only seen it on television."

  I was up six times through the night. My neck itched, my wrists itched and my ankles itched. Big lumps came up in all these places. Now I knew why Carter kept his shirt tightly buttoned; he wasn't as dumb as I'd thought. I searched the bathroom cabinet for soothing gels but all I could find was some body lotion pour hommes that Nigel had told me contained pheromones and drove women wild. It didn't work, and wasn't any better on midge bites. I showered, dressed, wrecked the spider's web on the car door with great relish and went to work.

  Sparky wanted to know all about it, and was as chuffed as a cock robin when I told him about the left-handed girl with purple hair.

  "That's what we said," he reminded me. "When we found the chalk. How tall did he say she was?"

  "About five feet, five-two."

  "Bloody 'ell! We ought to be detectives."

  "We are detectives."

  "So Carter saw this punk bird mark the house and Duncan told his brother he was going out with someone with purple hair? It's got to be the same one."

  "I'd have thought so. When did punk start?" I asked him.

  "Umm, about 1980?" he suggested. "Bit before, maybe."

  "Mid-seventies, according to the library. Their gazetteer says it "exploded" in 1976 and that's the year the Sex Pistols released "Anarchy in the UK". Never Mind the Bollocks was in '77. There can't have been too many of them around in '75 'specially in the provinces.

  Maybe she was before her time, like me. How do you fancy a day on the telephone?"

  "Er, I don't," he replied glumly, anticipating what I had in mind.

  "But David," I began, 'it's essential work, which may lead to the apprehension of a vicious criminal. It's not just the glamorous jobs, such as mine, that bring results. They also serve who sit in the office all day drinking vast quantities of machine coffee."

  "Gimme t'list," he said, reaching for it.

  If you go into any high street shop and buy something, a vacuum cleaner for example, the pimply assistant manager who takes your order will punch your name and post code into his terminal and say: "Is that Mr.

  Windsor of Buckingham Palace Road?" and you say it is and your full name and address is printed on the invoice. Our system is nearly as good. If you have ever bought anything on credit, taken out a driving licence, voted in an election or owned a telephone, we have you on record. Or maybe you've joined a motoring organisation, a book club or the Mormons. Most of these sell each other volumes of names and addresses, and we're on the circulation list. When we get really desperate we consult Somerset House. If you've been born, married or died they'll know all about it. I gave Dave the three pages of names and addresses that Jeremy had sent me from the university.

  "These are Duncan Roberts's classmates," I told him, 'with their parents' addresses. It might be easier to see if mum and dad still live in the same place and ask them. Otherwise…" '… otherwise, consult the oracle," Dave finished for me.

  "That's it, sunshine. And these…" I passed him another sheet, '… are names I extracted from the file yesterday. The three with the asterisks are the boyfriends of the women who died in the fire. Let's not lose sight of the fact that one of them might have started it. And then there are the names on the report that Crosby gave us. It wouldn't hurt to have a word with that lot.

  I'll sort them out. If all else fails with the students, there's a department at the university called the alumni relations' office. Old boys' club to you. They might be able to help." His hangdog expression gave me a pain in the left ventricle that I couldn't ignore.

  I said: "You could, of course, give Annette a crash course in the system and leave her to it." Annette Brown was a DC who'd been with us for a fortnight and had already fallen under Nigel's protective arm.

  "I was going to ask you," he replied, 'but it'll upset Goldenballs."

  "He'll recover. Anything else?"

  "No. Where will you be if I need you?"

  "Chemist's, to start with."

  "Chemist's? What for?"

  "Something for bloody midge bites."

  It cost four quid and didn't work, and now I smelt like an apothecary's pinny. I came out of the toilets and went back upstairs to my office.

  Dave was busy on the phone, pencil poised over a half-filled page. I reread the list of Fox's shady dealings that Crosby had given us and extracted any relevant names. If they were really on Fox's payroll we'd need a jemmy to prise it from them, but it was worth a try. They'd be relaxed, not expecting a call from us. When they say they'll only talk in front of a solicitor you know you've struck paydirt.

  Dave knocked and came in. He sniffed and said: "Cor, have you been using fly spray? I've found a couple of locals, if you want to be getting on with it."

  "Who are they?" I asked, leaning back.

  "Terence John Alderdice read chemistry at Leeds Uni with Duncan Roberts. He lives in Leeds and will be home after about six, according to his wife. And, wait for it, Watson Pretty, who was the ex-boyfriend of Daphne Turnbull, Jasmine's mother, now lives in Huddersfield, right on our doorstep. He's out on licence after serving five years for the manslaughter of one of his subsequent girlfriends. They had a quarrel and she fell down the cellar steps and broke her neck. Oh, and she had a ten-year-old daughter."

  "He sounds a right charmer," I said. "What do they see in them?"

  Dave shrugged his shoulders. "Want me to see Alderdice tonight?" he asked, but my phone rang before I could answer.

  I listened, raising a finger to Dave to signify that this was interesting. "Grab your coat," I told him as I put the phone down and unhooked mine from behind the door.

  "What is it?" he shouted after me as we ran down the stairs.

  "Halifax Central have just arrested someone for using Joe McLelland's Visa card in Tesco. He'll be in their cells by the time we get there."

  If my geometry was any good he wasn't the one in the video. He had the build, but was only about five feet six. They brought him from the cell to an interview room and sat him down with his packet of fags before him. He was about twenty, wearing torn jeans and a T-shirt from the Pigeon Pie English
Pub on Tenerife. They served Tetley's bitter and Yorkshire puddings and I could hardly wait to go.

  "So where did you get the card?" Sparky demanded. I've told him before about being too circumspect.

  "I found it."

  "Where?"

  "In t'car park."

  "Which car park?"

  "Tesco's."

  "When did you find it?"

  "Just then."

  "Before you went shopping?"

  "Yeah."

  "What were you doing in the car park?"

  "Goin' shoppin'! What do you think I were doin'?"

  "You had no money on you."

  "I'd left me wallet at 'ome. I didn't realise until I was in t'shop. I was goin' to 'and t'card in, but I'd filled me trolley by then and I din't know what to do, so I used t'card." He whined his well-rehearsed story as if it were the most self-evident explanation in the world.

  "You fell to temptation," I said.

  He swivelled to face me and jumped on my words as if they were a life raft. "That's it! I fell to temptation!"

  "Does your weekly shop normally run to four bottles of Glenfiddich?"

  Dave wondered.

  "We'saving a party," he replied, lamely.

  "And six hundred cigs?"

  "I'm a 'cavy smoker."

  "And two packs of fillet steak?"

  "You've gotta eat."

  Dave was silent for a few seconds, then he asked him if he had form. He had.

  "What for?" Dave asked.

  "Thieving."

  "Have you done time?"

  "Yeah."

  "How was it?"

  "Orrible. I'atedit."

  "You could go back in for this."

  "It was a mistake! "Onest! I din't mean to use it, it just 'appened. Things just 'appen to me. Like 'e said, I was tempted."

  I clunked my chair back on all four legs. "You made a good job of Mr.

  McLelland's signature," I said.

  "I just copied it."

  "Whoever stole this card from Joe McLelland left him tied in his chair, and his wife, for ten hours," I told him. "They are both elderly. It's a miracle they were found. This was nearly a murder case. Now I'm prepared to believe that it wasn't you who tied them up. I'm prepared to believe that someone sold you the card. That's what I think, so if I'm right you'd better tell me a name, or we'll just have to assume you took it off them yourself. What do you say?"