Skeleton Plot Read online

  No point in reminding him of that now. Men didn’t show gratitude or many other emotions when they were measuring out their lives in hours. Steve Williams didn’t think the police would work things out and get here in time to question Dutton. But he wasn’t going to take any chances on that. He’d cover the possibility, if he could. And he thought he knew the way.

  Jack Dutton, like many violent men, was a devoted family man, kind and considerate within the walls of his own home. Steve went quickly through the truisms of cancer being a bastard and there being neither rhyme nor reason in whom it chose to attack. He waited until he received a wan smile from the sick man, and then said. ‘And how’s Beth?’

  The invalid showed his first flicker of animation. ‘She’s all right. She’s a good lass, Beth. She comes every day, in the afternoons. She’s preoccupied with the grandchildren. We’ve got six of them now. I’d have liked to see them grow up.’

  ‘I’ll see her right, you know, Jack, if – if anything happens to you.’

  That ashen smile again. ‘We all know what’s happening to me, Mr Williams. But thanks for that.’

  ‘It’s Steve now, Jack. And I’ve got a bob or two laid by, as you’d expect. I’ll look after Beth. I’ll see she wants for nothing.’ Dutton nodded weakly. ‘I’d better be going now, Jack. The nurse said I wasn’t to tire you out.’

  He stood up, wondering if he had really achieved what he had come here to do. Was Dutton too far gone to appreciate why his silence was being bought with the promise of money for his wife? Then, as Williams turned to go, he learned that he had succeeded. The feeble voice from the bed behind him said, ‘I know nothing about that skeleton they found last week, Mr Williams.’

  The dark shadows of Fairfax Street were still vivid in Lambert’s mind as he watched the opening headlines of the television news at ten o’clock that night. The phone shrilled suddenly beside him, startling him because it seemed louder and more urgent with the lateness of the hour. Christine answered it, as she normally did in their home, prepared to defend it against the intrusions of the more brutal world which her husband’s job sometimes brought here. She listened for a moment, then passed the instrument without a word to John.

  The duty sergeant was highly apologetic, wary of the earful which might come his way for contacting a senior officer at home at this hour. ‘It’s a woman on a mobile, sir. Probably a nutter, but she insisted that you’d told her to contact you personally if she had any thoughts on the skeleton case. I can tell her to—’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Clark, sir. Ms Katherine Clark, she says. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but she was so insistent that—’

  ‘Give her my number, please.’

  He waited with the phone in his hand until it shrilled again a few seconds later. A nervous voice in his ear said, ‘Is this all right? You told me you wanted to know immediately if I’d any further thoughts on that squat.’

  ‘I appreciate your taking the trouble to ring me. I’ve been to Fairfax Street this evening. Seen the place for myself.’ It was irrelevant, but it seemed somehow that it might encourage frankness in that nervous voice.

  ‘I remembered the name of one of the men who was there. Well, only the first name. But you said anything would be welcome.’

  ‘It is. We’ve got the local police in Gloucester following up on that squat. But twenty years ago isn’t easy. There aren’t too many coppers around who were on the beat then.’

  He’d meant it as a vague threat that they’d ferret things out, that there was no point in her holding anything back. But she wasn’t listening to him. She was wondering how to phrase what she had to tell him, concerned only with giving him this one fact and then switching off her phone. ‘Most of the men came and went quickly. So did the women, apart from Julie and me. But there was one man who I think was there throughout my time in that squat.’

  ‘And his name was?’

  ‘I don’t know his surname. His first name was Mick.’

  He thanked her, said that she would hear in due course how the inquiry was proceeding, emphasized that if a surname should come back to her he would want to have it immediately.

  Kate Clark scarcely heard him, waiting only for the moment when she could cut the contact and relax. She hadn’t given him much, but it was all she could safely offer. Please God it would take the attention away from her and the things she needed to conceal.

  ELEVEN

  Michael Wallington told himself that it was good that he was meeting the CID in his own office. He would be in control here, much less nervous than if he had been on their ground at Oldford police station, the alternative venue they had suggested. He told himself that repeatedly.

  They came precisely at half past ten, the time they had specified. A tall, watchful man with a slight stoop who identified himself as Chief Superintendent John Lambert and a shorter but more powerful man who looked much less threatening, introduced as Detective Sergeant Hook.

  ‘Your reputation goes before you,’ said Michael effusively. ‘I’m sure everyone in the town hall has heard of the achievements of John Lambert. Coffee, please, Mrs Barrett! And a few biscuits, if your skill and influence can conjure them up for us.’ He turned his automatic beam on his PA and dispatched her to the task he had already agreed with her half an hour earlier. Then he seated his visitors in the chairs he had carefully positioned for them before they arrived and sat down opposite them. ‘This is quite intriguing. I can’t think what help the education department can offer to you, but it goes without saying that we are willing to offer whatever assistance we can.’

  Lambert gave him a grim smile, watched Mrs Barrett set the coffee tray down on the table beside him and said, ‘It is not your department but you personally who will be able to help us this morning, Mr Wallington.’

  The PA was studiously calm and inscrutable, but her boss was not. He did not like this being said in the hearing of Mrs Barrett, but it was hardly specific enough for him to object to it on the grounds of confidentiality. It was, as Wallington suspected, carefully calculated on Lambert’s part to counter the urbanity of his reception here, and it succeeded in that. The man who ruled here was discomfited, in spite of his determination before they arrived to remain calm and in control of things.

  Michael waited until the PA withdrew and then said with a forced grin, ‘That only makes this more intriguing. Please elucidate for me.’

  That was a phrase he used with junior employees and sometimes with town councillors. The four-syllabled word often intimidated them. It did not intimidate this man. The unsmiling Lambert was only too willing to elucidate. ‘I can be quite specific for you, Mr Wallington. Indeed, I am anxious to be so, in the hope that such precision will prompt your accurate recall of events now twenty years behind us.’

  ‘I was told when this meeting was arranged that it was in connection with your investigation into the discovery of this skeleton which was unearthed near Hereford last weekend. I can’t think how—’

  ‘We wish to know everything we can discover about events which took place at seventeen Fairfax Street, Gloucester, in the spring and summer of 1995.’

  Lambert’s grey, unblinking eyes held those of Wallington as unerringly as a mesmerist’s, though Michael was conscious of Hook turning unhurriedly to a new page of his notebook on the left of his peripheral vision. ‘I – I think I was in Gloucester in 1995. It’s difficult to be certain of dates so long ago. And that particular address doesn’t—’

  ‘Seventeen Fairfax Street was at that time a squat, illegally occupied by a constantly changing group of people, as such places commonly are. We have good reason to believe that you were there throughout the months which interest us.’

  Michael glanced automatically at the door, thinking of the ordered world beyond it and the contrast with his life of twenty years ago. ‘I had various experiences in my younger days, as many people do before their lives take on a pattern. I think I was what my revered parents would call “a litt
le wild” at the time you mention. You will forgive me if I cannot be precise about what I was doing at particular times, but I can assure you that it was nothing which—’

  ‘Let me try to assist the workings of your memory, Mr Wallington. One of the occupants of that squat remained constant through the comings and goings of others. He went by the forename of “Mick”. We have reason to believe that this person was you. Are you telling us now that this was not so? Are you asserting that this “Mick” was some other person entirely?’

  Michael’s mind raced though the options, but he couldn’t assess them coolly one against another, as he was used to doing now in his daily working life. He didn’t have enough information for that. He didn’t know what would happen if he denied all knowledge of Fairfax Street. How much did these men know? He had thought that he was finished with those days in the squat and everything which had gone on there. He had believed that he would never again need to confront this section of his past. But he was no fool. The police had a lot of resources, when they chose to use them. And in the case of a suspicious death, they used everything. Money was no object then; he often pointed out the richness of police resources when his own education budget was under fire.

  If he said he was somewhere else at the time, could they disprove that? Innocent until proved guilty, after all. But if they had proof that he’d been in Fairfax Street, they could make life very difficult for him. His whole career was at stake here. He said dully, ‘I was in a squat in Gloucester at that time. I don’t recall the address – we didn’t deal in addresses. You didn’t receive any post when you were living in a squat.’

  It was an attempt at a joke. But it didn’t relieve the atmosphere in this room, which now seemed to him stiflingly hot. He noticed that they’d finished their coffee while he was speaking. He lifted his own untouched cup, trying desperately not to spill its contents. He said feebly, ‘There’s more coffee in the pot. Please help yourselves. And likewise with the biscuits.’ He didn’t feel able to pass them round. They’d probably end up on the carpet at his feet if he tried to do that.

  ‘So you admit that you were the “Mick” who was living in this squat?’

  He rallied briefly. ‘I’m not sure that “admit” is the right word, is it? It makes me sound as if I was guilty of something, rather than just being a member of a desperate and ever-changing group living from hand to mouth in a derelict house.’

  Lambert gave him a brief smile and returned to the attack. ‘It seems quite an appropriate word in this case, Mr Wallington. Our information is that the person known to our informant as “Mick” was a drug dealer.’

  ‘Then it couldn’t have been me, could it? There were drugs around, in the squat. In my very limited experience, there always were in such places. Pot is one way of escaping from the real world and a lot of people in squats want to do that. There were the harder drugs, as well. Horse and coke, mainly. That’s how some people had sunk low enough in life to end up in a squat. But I had no—’

  ‘How did you come to be there, Mr Wallington? You had a degree from Bristol University at that time. Neither your background nor your education were those of the normal squat-dweller, if there is indeed such a person.’

  ‘I don’t think there is. My experience is very limited, as I said, but all kinds of people seem to end up in squats. They range from those who are well-nigh illiterate to those with public schools and universities behind them. A lot of squat-dwellers seem to drop out without completing their degrees; I suppose I was atypical in that respect.’

  He was desperately trying to disappear into generalities, to lead them away from the specifics of what he had been doing in that squat in the summer of 1995. But they were too experienced for him. They saw his attempt at diversion immediately for what it was. Lambert nodded at Hook, who said immediately, ‘Tell us whatever you can remember about the other people in the squat at that time, please.’

  The Wallington brow furrowed impressively. It was a tactic he used extensively when he was about to make key suggestions in both formal and informal meetings; it now came automatically to him in these very different circumstances. He could surely handle this plodding DS like a local councillor. He said with a returning urbanity, ‘I’m afraid I can remember very little about that constantly changing human detritus, Detective Sergeant Hook.’

  ‘That’s a pity, because we now know that the skeleton you mentioned at the outset of this meeting was a companion of yours there. Her name was Julie Grimshaw and we now believe that she became a murder victim during the summer of 1995. It is entirely possible, even probable, that her murderer was one of the people who lived with her at seventeen Fairfax Street. I’d say that it is very much in your interests to recall and pass on whatever you can about the people who were with you in that squat.’

  Michael stared at Hook with real distaste. It was nothing personal: the bearer of bad news has been vulnerable for thousands of years. Wallington had at that moment no idea of the expression on his face. His mind was wholly preoccupied with what he had just heard and how he was going to cope with it. He eventually said dully, with the air of a man acknowledging defeat, ‘I knew Julie Grimshaw. I remember her in that squat.’

  ‘Then you must give us the benefit of your presence there. You must tell us everything you can remember about Julie and your other companions. Don’t leave out even the smallest details; none of us knows at this moment what will prove to be significant.’

  This was Bert Hook at his most persuasive, assuming for the moment the innocence of the man in front of him, treating him as if they were all on the same side in this. It wouldn’t stop Hook weighing the evidence in due course, deciding with John Lambert how reliable or how devious Michael Wallington had been in the defence of his own interests.

  Wallington’s voice seemed to come from a long way away as he said, ‘She was a pretty girl, Julie.’

  ‘So you were attracted to her?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I didn’t shag her.’ The harsh four-letter word fell like a stone into the still pool of his recollection.

  ‘But someone else did.’

  Hook made it a statement, not a question, trying with his certainty to convey the impression that they knew more of the events in that dark place than they did. Wallington looked at him now not with hostility but with a kind of wonder. ‘I expect so. She was a pretty girl, when you cut through the dirt and the torn clothes and the way she’d chosen to live.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not anyone in the squat, I think.’

  ‘Tell us about the drugs.’

  Michael felt no shock. Perhaps he wasn’t capable of shock any more. His world was falling apart around him, but no one save he and these two men knew about it as yet. ‘I think Julie was on drugs, yes. A lot of them were. It’s difficult to remember much about it at this distance of time.’

  Lambert had never taken his eyes off the man. He was trying to decide now how uncertain Wallington really was and how far he might be using his own stupefaction as a shield against their questions. He said quietly, ‘Take your time, please. You can remember a lot more than you have told us so far and we need your help in this. Was Julie Grimshaw hooked on drugs?’

  Michael turned his head very deliberately from one to the other of the two men opposite him, as if it demanded a physical effort to refocus. ‘I can’t remember enough about her to be certain. I’m pretty sure she was a user, but it wouldn’t be fair for me to say more than that.’

  Lambert nodded grimly. ‘We’re beyond the point where we need to concern ourselves with being fair to Julie, Mr Wallington. Someone was so unfair that he killed her and hid her body from the rest of us for twenty years. Someone whom you might have known and lived with at seventeen Fairfax Street. Forensic examination of what is left of her has shown that she had used considerable quantities of heroin in the final months of her life. What can you tell us about that?’

  ‘I can’t add to it. You already know more than I do
. I remember that she was a user, but that’s all.’

  ‘Where did her supplies come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where she went when she left the squat. I don’t know where any of them disappeared to when they went out. It didn’t pay to enquire into what the other squat occupants might be doing. They were a strange and unpredictable crew. Their behaviour wasn’t consistent. They could be friendly and talkative one day and hostile the next.’

  ‘But things are coming back to you now. Your recall of these events is much clearer than you thought it was going to be ten minutes ago.’

  Michael wondered if that was congratulation or criticism. He felt that he couldn’t be sure of anything with these two any more. That unnerved him, because he was used to being sure of himself and of exactly what he must do in the situations which confronted him as Chief Education Officer. ‘I’m battering my brain and trying to remember what I can. There were drugs around in that squat. I’ve absolutely no idea where they came from. I wasn’t a user myself or I might have known.’

  ‘Tell us about the other people at seventeen Fairfax Street in 1995. We’ve got the local police on the job, but someone who was in the place will know much more.’

  Was that a warning to him? Had the local plods told them a lot more than they were admitting to? Were they trying to trip him up? What were the penalties if they could prove that he’d been trying to deceive them? Obstructing the police in the course of their enquiries, they called that, didn’t they? But he’d no idea what the punishment for it might be. Michael Wallington was used to operating in a civilized world, where he knew the rules and could usually operate them to his advantage. Now he was being thrust back into the feral world of the squat, where dog ate dog and the weakest went to the wall. Was he mixing metaphors there? When he least wanted it and could least afford it, pedantry thrust itself into his teeming brain.