Cold bones, p.25
Cold Bones, page 25
part #8 of DS Aector McAvoy Series
McAvoy can’t decide if he should let Neilsen continue or ask him to put it in an email and send it over. The last thing he wants to do is tell him he already knows.
‘That’s great, Ben. Look, you really should be concentrating on—’
‘Sorry, Sarge, I don’t want to butt in but listen, this is important. I mentioned Arthur Lowery – her second husband – to my dad and he said he were a right nasty bastard. Got what was coming to him, which could mean anything. But given what he’d said about this Gerard I managed to get a few more details. Gerard Martin Wade. Born 1947. Did three stints inside before he was twenty-one. Real tearaway. Suffered terrible injuries when the Purcell went down. Bought a track licence in 1973 – bookie at the greyhound races – and made some serious money. He invested in a couple of vessels that were all but knackered and then made a fortune when the government offered decommissioning money. Reading between the lines, it was this Mr Wade who backed Ballantine when he dropped out of university. Helped him buy the Blake line. Hell of a way to honour his old mate, eh? That sort of gesture – well, what else might he do for him? It got me thinking, if this Arthur Lowery’s death wasn’t an accident, if this Gerard bloke did it, well—’ He stops himself.
‘I’m listening,’ says McAvoy cautiously.
‘I logged on to the investigation database and saw what Sophie had been working through. The contacts list? Well, look, I don’t know what it means, not in terms of Mrs Chappell, or whether it means anything at all, in fact. But Mr Wade. He lives up at West Ella. Huge house. He’s one to talk to about the bodies on the Holst. They were crewmates. Enid had called him.’
‘See what you can find,’ says McAvoy, concentrating over the hum of the tyres on the cold road. ‘Recent movements. Current whereabouts. Let me know what you find.’ He glances to his left and sees the jagged black V of a crow, a slash of charcoal on the mounds of grey cloud. He feels a chill tickling the scarred skin of his chest.
The phone makes a chirruping sound and McAvoy glances down at the screen. Kirkland is ringing through.
‘Sorry, Ben, can I just take this? I’ll be back. Sophie. Sorry, how are you?’
‘I’m fucking starving, Sarge, but don’t worry about that,’ barks Kirkland, who has heard the sound of the tyres on the wet road and altered her volume accordingly. ‘Anyway, Enid’s mobile phone has been pinged. We’ve followed its trail along the masts. It only left her property yesterday morning, not long before you arrived: 7.04 a.m. Country roads through Raywell, Ellerker, Welton, North Ferriby, down the A63 past the docks. Stopped there for eighteen minutes. At 8.34 a.m. it’s on Hessle Road. Back to the docks. Then it disappears.’
‘CCTV,’ says McAvoy automatically.
‘We’re working on it. But we picked up a specific vehicle through the number plate recognition software. You’ll remember the tyres. I’ve been sitting here watching four bloody screens and going boss-eyed but the vehicle belonging to Bernard Acklam – y’know, Napper – it flashes up on an ANPR check in four locations that would match the journey of her phone.’
‘How clear is the shot of the driver?’
‘We’ve got a great shot of him coming down Clive Sullivan Way and he looks geriatric. He’s not exactly blending in, either. Bright yellow suit, face like a sack of screwdrivers. Good enough shot to run through facial recognition software, if it’s in the budget.’
‘The boss would say that it was,’ says McAvoy, aware that Kirkland has no doubt already decided to do what she thinks best.
‘Could take some time, according to Reena Parekh. She’s got a report coming your way in the next half-hour. The PME is scheduled for first thing but she’s been able to take preliminary swabs and samples.’
‘And?’ asks McAvoy.
‘Makes me sad to think about it,’ says Kirkland, her voice dropping. ‘Doesn’t matter, does it? Not really. But she died a virgin. Makes me want to cry.’
McAvoy doesn’t know how to reply. Why was she known as ‘Mrs’ when it seemed unlikely she had married? Was it just presumption? Did it make a difference? ‘Good work,’ he says automatically. ‘How did you get on with the pay-as-you-go?’
‘The one that belonged to this Marlowe you found online, yes? I keep ringing it. Different provider, different phone masts, but the last location we can identify for certain was on the M18, 30 December, near the Scunthorpe roundabout. If the phone’s gone out of the window that may be the last we see. Do you want me to send uniforms down Hessle Road, keep an eye out for Enid’s phone? It’s a long shot, but . . .’
‘May be worth a saunter around the docks,’ muses McAvoy. ‘Ask a uniform to follow the trail, where possible. Might strike lucky.’
‘No problem, Sarge,’ says Kirkland, pressing on. She coughs and he hears her take a swig of something fizzy. ‘I’ve spoken to Sue again, at the History Centre. They’ve got old copies of the Hull Mail on microfiche. She can dig them out for you.’
‘Thanks, Sophie,’ he says. ‘If you could send me her number I’ll make arrangements.’
‘I’ve been trying the other trustees,’ says Kirkland, before he can end the call. ‘I wasn’t sure how you wanted to deal with Mr Acklam, considering the, y’know, political nature of it.’
‘Do you mean Area Commander Slattery’s instruction not to go anywhere near him? I think we can safely expand that to include those connected with him.’
‘Yeah.’
‘The fingerprints, the car – they’re good but they’re not critical. We need to have something firm before we can pick him up. Concrete. Something Slattery can’t brush off. Park it for now.’
McAvoy sighs. It hurts where Ballantine hit him. Hurts even worse in the pit of his gut; the place that gnaws at him and won’t let him sleep until he knows he’s done the right thing, no matter what the cost.
‘What do I tell Slattery?’ asks Kirkland. ‘I mean, if he asks where you are?’
McAvoy lets the breeze cool his forehead. ‘Tell him we’ve gone fishing.’
Chapter 25
Freetown Way, Hull
7.23 p.m.
Daniells parks the truck on the paved area beneath the curving glass roof of Hull’s History Centre, drawing glances from the drinkers who huddle outside the Old English Gentleman. It’s one of Hull’s prettier pubs: a big, reassuring rectangle of a place that serves, more or less in its entirety, as Hull’s theatre district.
McAvoy stares out through the rain-jewelled windows of the truck, trying to work out what the hell he’s got involved in. He doesn’t truly know what he suspects. He’s not given to gut instinct or intuition but something has felt terribly wrong about this investigation from the start. He wonders whether it was his own name, half completed in the crossword puzzle, that made it all feel so personal, so oddly familiar. He wishes, more than anything, that he could simply ask Mrs Chappell what she had been up to in those weeks before her death. Whether he is right in his suspicions that she and her friend had somehow identified a serial killer.
He glares at the pub, his thoughts grinding against one another. The pub interior looks as inviting as the façade: all imitation gaslights and creamy lace drapes, parted like the stage curtains to reveal a scattering of drinkers dotted around the wooden bar. Behind the bar a short, immaculately dressed man with a large moustache is chatting to two mismatched customers, drying brandy glasses on a white apron like a saloon-keeper in a cowboy film.
He turns back to the archive building where two figures are silhouetted in the light from the open door. One is tall, with long, straggly grey hair and dirty spectacles, a sizeable beer-belly straining at a Hull Libraries T-shirt like a space-hopper in a bin liner. His companion is younger and considerably more glamorous. She has big eyelashes and luxuriant dark hair, tied up in a knot and precariously secured with a Biro and a felt-tip pen. She gives the two officers a smile as she approaches.
‘Would you be Sergeant McAvoy? I’m Sue Whittle.’
‘Thanks for going out of your way to see us, Ms Whittle,’ says McAvoy, shaking her hand. Her palm is soft and warm, slightly damp.
She gestures towards the History Centre and the man who stands sentry at its open door. ‘This is Martyn. He’s an archivist as well.’
‘All rather exciting, isn’t it?’ asks Martyn, a little giddy. His accent is Mancunian. He manages to give off the air of a roadie from a metal band, from the roots of his patchouli-smelling hair down to the Tippexed toes of his steel-capped boots. He has taken the time and trouble to paint the word ‘Dead’ on his left boot, and ‘Head’ on the right.
Martyn leads them into the warm embrace of the reception area, locking the door behind them. There are two wooden high-backed chairs and two low stools with round, shabby cushions. McAvoy and Daniells take the stools.
‘I appreciate you giving up your evening, Ms Whittle.’
‘Sue, please.’
‘Sue. Thank you. And it’s Martyn . . .?’
‘Wilde. Like Oscar.’
‘And you’re a librarian, I understand?’ says Daniells to Sue.
‘No, I’m a senior archivist. Not as senior as Martyn here but he won’t live for ever.’
Martyn nudges her with a pointy elbow. There’s a pleasant camaraderie between them and McAvoy wonders for a moment how he would fare in their line of work. He imagines himself wheeling a cart, loaded high with old manuscripts and textbooks, helping students and genealogists with their queries and delving into dusty old tomes for nuggets of forgotten information: a treasure hunter seeking a speck of gold. The pleasure of being contractually obligated to tell people to ‘shush’. He can think of worse ways to spend a life.
‘I’m sorry to have landed this on you,’ says McAvoy. ‘You’ll have heard about Mrs Chappell . . . and about the incident on board the trawler at St Andrew’s. We’re trying to put a picture together of Mrs Chappell’s movements in recent days. You spoke with Sophie about some papers.’
‘It’s horrible,’ says Martyn, looking down at his boots. ‘She was so full of life.’
Sue shuffles her papers. Closes her eyes for a second too long. ‘Sophie, sorry, DC Kirkland – she gave me a start when she answered Mrs Chappell’s phone. She’s explained this to you already, I presume? That I was ringing to enquire about some documents that she had been examining?’
‘Yes,’ says McAvoy. ‘There had been some, shall we say, inaccuracies.’
Sue smiles, grateful for the choice of wording. ‘There were some papers missing from one of the files she’d been examining. People can be scatter-brained, can’t they? It was Martyn who noticed. I rang her to point out that she might have, you know, had a moment. She did say she dithered a little, now and then.’
‘I’m aware she was in the early stages of dementia,’ says McAvoy. ‘Could you perhaps tell me how you first came to know her?’
‘Through the library,’ says Sue, palms open. ‘She used to come in to central now and again. Sometimes she was invited to exhibitions and new displays. She was involved in lots of charities, you see, and the main library has a lot of events. She was a bit of a character, with her big coat and her crazy outfits. I liked her a lot. It must have been not far off a year ago that I first had a chat with her. Alec’s exhibition. The Hessle Road one.’
McAvoy nods. He remembers it well. Alec Gill’s exhibition capturing Hessle Road in the 1970s had been hugely popular. They were candid black and white snaps, images of children with grubby faces and gap-toothed smiles, playing with tin soldiers on rubble-strewn street corners; tattooed old men with flat caps and spectacles as thick as the bottom of their pint glasses. They immortalised the housemaids with their aprons, scrubbing front steps until they gleamed; women in overalls and boots, their big hair trapped beneath headscarves. Images of shopkeepers leaning in the doorways of shops long since shuttered and bulldozed. Men on the docks, arms around donkey-jacketed shoulders, backs to the sea. It had been a powerful, oddly emotional exhibition, made doubly eerie by the presence of many of the photographer’s subjects. Each framed picture became a magic mirror, reflecting a distorted, cruelly aged facsimile of the original. Shrivelled, arthritic pensioners stopped and smiled in front of monochrome depictions of themselves as they used to be. Men with bald patches laughed as they saw themselves sitting astride motorbikes in bell-bottomed flares and hippy tresses.
‘Mrs Chappell was there at the opening,’ explains Martyn. ‘I don’t know whether she was in any of the pictures but she was part of that scene, right enough.’
‘I recognised her when she came in a few months back,’ adds Sue. ‘That coat was rather distinctive. She said that she had been using the archives at the Treasure House in Beverley because it was more convenient but that they didn’t really hold what she was after.’
‘And that was?’ prompts McAvoy.
‘All this,’ says Sue, pointing at her paperwork. ‘Social Services documentation from the days of Hull Corporation. Old copies of the Hull Mail on microfiche. The records from Hesslewood Hall. Trawler logs. Shipping registers. It was a big undertaking.’
‘That’s our speciality, of course,’ says Martyn, flicking his long hair behind his ears as if he’s a model in a shampoo advert. ‘That’s what this place is for. A complete archive of local history, all under one roof. If we haven’t got it, it doesn’t exist – or it’s sealed until such time as we’re allowed to share the contents.’
‘And you have a record, yes? Everything that she examined in recent months?’
Sue glances at Martyn. ‘Not precisely, no. If it had been that easy I could have said all this to your DC this morning. You see, we have records of everything she signed out for study but only up until the end of November. After that, it’s more patchy.’
McAvoy looks to Martyn, correctly guessing that he will want to explain any inefficiency or malpractice. ‘Her friend started accompanying her,’ he says. ‘She said that he was her carer though I must admit that seemed unlikely, given how infirm he looked. But he was a rather trickier character. We’d find him examining folders that he hadn’t signed the forms for. As you can imagine, we operate on trust in many cases. If you’re going to make copies of things you sign the correct form, pay the fee and we have a record. It’s a simple system. He seemed content to help himself, picking out folders from the stacks as if he were browsing the shelves in a newsagent’s.’
‘This gentleman,’ says McAvoy. ‘Can you describe him?’
The two archivists nod. ‘We were talking about him before you came in,’ says Martyn. ‘Obviously nobody gets into the archive without signing in so we have a record of the names and details and the various dates he visited the archive with Mrs Chappell. Walked with a stick. I’d say he was at least sixty. Looked rather shrivelled, as if he’d been big and lost weight.’
‘He had a bit of a beard,’ adds Sue. ‘There were badges on his walking stick.’
‘The name,’ says McAvoy.
‘There was a trace of Liverpudlian in the accent,’ adds Martyn.
‘He gave his name as Sam Marlowe,’ says Sue. ‘Address the same as Mrs Chappell’s. We had no reason to doubt it.’
McAvoy feels shards of ice slip beneath his skin. He experiences a sudden explosion of memory. Sees himself, sitting on a bench in the grounds of a stately home. Sees the man at his side, smoking an unfiltered cig and drinking whisky from the bottle. Russ Chandler. Russ fucking Chandler. A freelance journalist and jobbing researcher. A failed novelist. A one-legged alcoholic; angry and bile-filled, spending his latest expenses claim on a month in a drying-out clinic, soaking up other men’s stories; their pain . . .
‘Hesslewood Hall,’ says McAvoy, under his breath. ‘I know that name.’
‘It seems a horrible word in this day and age but it was an orphanage,’ says Sue, looking at McAvoy’s face with concern.
He has to give himself a little shake before he tunes back in to what the archivist is saying. He nods politely, even as he starts logging in to the police database, cursing under his breath. He should have known. Should have fucking known!
‘We get some former residents who come in to see the records,’ continues Martyn. ‘Some are looking for answers about their own pasts. Some were adopted and are searching for the names of their real parents. We have to disappoint a lot of people. The more confidential information is sealed for ninety-nine years. To trace your family origins you need to go through certain channels. Certain procedures.’
‘That used to be the case, at least,’ chips in Sue. ‘Social media has changed all that. Never mind getting counselling and making sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for. Nowadays people go on the first social media page that fits whatever snippets of info they have about their past and ask anybody who knows who they really are to get in touch. As an archivist I find it all horribly inaccurate. As a person, I find it all rather . . . wrong, I suppose.’
McAvoy twitches in his seat as a great red warning message flashes up on the screen of his phone. All inquiries regarding Russell Chandler, or his pseudonym Albert Jonsson, should be directed to Detective Superintendent Patricia Pharaoh.
Sue shakes McAvoy’s arm and hands him a sheaf of documents.
‘This is what she wanted,’ she explains. ‘On 4 December Mrs Chappell requested access to all files relating to Hesslewood Hall between 1963 and 1966. She paid the flat fee that allowed her to make copies of whatever she saw fit, having signed a disclaimer promising that they would not be shared. That’s standard. As I say, the names of the children and such, they’re kept out of the public domain, but . . .’
