Heart of the Demon (D.S.Hunter Kerr) (8 page)

“Come on, come on,” she muttered with each dialling tone. Finally it was answered. The man’s voice seemed a lot steadier since the last time they had spoke
n several years ago.

“Barry it’s Sue” she blurted out. “Susan Siddons. I really need to see you. It’s about our Carol. I think they’ve just found her.”

* * * * *

The unexpected phone call from retired detective Barry Newstead later that evening, practically demanding that they meet, took Hunter completely by surprise. But he knew the moment he had replaced the handset that it was a request he dare not refuse. From experience he knew that Barry never rang anyone out of the blue, and therefore it had to be something vitally important.

He turned off the car stereo as soon as he pulled out of the drive and in silence drove the few miles from his home along the unlit country roads to the tranquil picture-postcard village of Wentworth, where Barry had fixed the meet, dwelling on the strangeness of the telephone conversation he had just had with an old colleague whom he had last seen over five years back.

In his head he replayed his first ever meeting with the huge, bullish man. It was the 1st of September 1988 - he had been sixteen years of age. It was one of those dates locked inside his memory bank. That was because it was the day the police told him that his girlfriend, Polly Hayes, had been murdered; her battered body had been found in woodland. Barry had been one of the detectives on the case and had interviewed him.

They had never found her killer, and a year into the enquiry Barry had broken the news to him that the case was being closed until further evidence came to light.

Finding out who had been responsible for his girlfriend’s murder had been his incentive for joining the police. And with each murder case since, he had either enquired or examined the similarities of how each victim had met their deaths, but he still hadn’t turned up her killer. This recent case was looking no different.

He had stayed in touch with Barry, not just to discuss any fresh information about Polly’s murder, but also because a bond of friendship had developed between them, and he had caught up with him again, at the age of twenty-five, when he had achieved detective status, and been posted to district CID.

When he had entered the CID office on that very first day, a nervous knot in his stomach, Barry had been one of the first people to greet him.

He became his mentor. Hunter quickly learned that Barry was one of the figureheads of the department, and also a legend in the office and in the first twelve months he regaled him with his adventures over a many a pint. He soon realised that in spite of his outward appearance he had an incredibly fast and alert mind and he could talk the hind-leg off a donkey. Hunter had learned that Barry had a vast network of informants and that when he ‘fingered’ someone for a job then without doubt they had done it. Along the way he also became familiar with Barry’s interview techniques. Occasionally he had witnessed Barry use violence, out of sight and mind of the custody sergeant, to gain a confession. As he, himself, had become involved in jobs with Barry he became mesmerised by some of his frighteningly unorthodox methods. Methods, which both scared, and yet at the same time, excited him. Hunter soon realised that Barry was so determined to prove that the villains he dealt with were found guilty of their crimes. And he would listen to him continually defend his activities by repeatedly stating “I can put my hand on my heart when I say I have never put an innocent man behind bars.” And he would back this up by telling him how many of his miscreants had written letters to him from prison for a visit so that they could ‘clear their slate’ before release. Hunter soon discovered that his clear up rate for crime was phenomenal.

But then Hunter had transferred to Drugs Squad, and had then achieved promotion and they had lost touch. Whilst in his new post he had picked up gossip which had disturbed him. Sadly, he’d learned that Barry had brought about his own downfall. Barristers and judges had begun to vehemently challenge his breaches of guidelines, in particular of The Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and his ‘collars’ began to walk away free from court.

Word got back to Hunter that some of the younger managers had labelled him a maverick and a dinosaur, and between them had plotted his downfall. In particular one newly promoted Chief Inspector had removed him from operational CID and sidelined him to a desk job. He’d left numerous messages on Barry’s voicemail for him to get in touch. He’d expected him to return the calls and take his advice, but he never had. The next thing he had learned was that Barry had retired. Hunter had caught up with him again at his leaving do. It was one of the biggest he had attended and he saw and heard so many past and present CID bosses praise his efforts. He recalled one retired Detective Superintendent telling everyone ‘how sad it was that detectives like him were no longer allowed to operate to the benefit of the victims.’

Hunter had recently watched the TV series ‘Life on Mars’ and had been amazed how much of Barry’s character and working practices fitted into the series. He did wonder at first if he had been an advisor to the programme and found himself scouring the credits for the ex-detective’s name.

As he pulled into the rear car park of the village pub Hunter couldn’t help think that despite the inconvenience and the fact that he was shattered after another gruelling fourteen hour day it would be nice to catch up with Barry again after all this time.

The George and Dragon, built of Yorkshire stone, was a typical country pub. The interior had a warming ambience and its décor was that of an old farmhouse, with heavy stone flagged floors, timbered ceilings and whitewashed plaster walls. Turn-of-the-century sepia photographs of the pub and the village decorated the walls, and the furniture was a mixture of heavy wooden chairs, high backed benches and many different sized tables. It was one of those pubs he only occasionally visited, particularly on warm summer evenings, though with its range of good quality real ales he quickly acknowledged he should and would pay it more attention in future.

The bar area was a hive of activity and he scoured the sea of faces to see if he could spot Barry. He hoped he would still be able to recognize him after all these years. Then he spotted him, tucked away in the corner on one of the high back seats, just putting a pint of beer to his mouth. ‘He hasn’t changed one bit’, he thought to himself. The same, dark, rumple of hair and red-flushed face, reminiscent of a hill farmer. Hunter was deeply suspicious of the Dorian Grey appearance, especially as he knew that Barry had been retired at least six years and would be in his early fifties. Hunter made eye contact, raised his hand to acknowledge him and then shook it several times towards his face silently mouthing the words ‘want another beer’. Barry gave him the thumbs up and Hunter ordered two pints of Timothy Taylor Landlord; one of his favourite real ales, before squeezing between customers towards the seated area where his ex-colleague sat.

Hunter also saw that Barry still had that bushy moustache, which he stroked so frequently and annoyingly, and as he got closer he sp
ied the tell-tale signs that he was dying his hair. As Barry pushed himself up from his seat and thrust out a hand to greet him Hunter couldn’t help but notice he was more beer-bellied and rotund than he had last remembered him, but as he gripped and shook his hand he could feel there was still strength in those arms, which he had seen him use piston-like on more than one occasion to pummel an adversary.

“Looking Good Hunter.”

“You too Barry.”

“Still as diplomatic as ever I see. That’s why you got promoted and I didn’t. I’ve put on a few pounds I know, since I retired.”
He slapped the side of his girth; “but I can still give the young-uns a run for their money.”

Hunter had no doubt that he could.

“How are you doing?”

For a good half hour as they sipped their beers Barry quizzed him about the job, tut-tutting and shaking his head as Hunter described the many changes that both the uniform side as well as the CID departments had undergone since Barry’s retirement. For a few seconds he wondered if he himself would be as cynical and critical when it became his time to leave. Over the first twenty minutes conversation the chilled smooth tasting beer went down easily and Barry went to the bar to replenish the glasses.

Then as Barry eased himself back into his seat Hunter decided it was time to get to the crux of why he had driven here. “Well I have to say I was intrigued by your call, right out of the blue after all these years.”

Barry took the head off his beer. “Have you identified your body from the Manvers site yet?” he enquired not looking up.

“Not yet. We’re ploughing our way through hundreds of missing-from-home files going back years and the gaffer went on Crimewatch tonight, but I don’t know if anything’s come of that.”

“That’s why I rang you. I got a call just like you, right out of the blue. From a woman I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. It was the mum of a girl who went missing back in the early nineties, a Carol Siddons.”

“Should that name mean anything to me? Like I say Barry there are many girls who are still outstanding in our records. What makes her think it’s her daughter?”

Barry took another drink of his beer and set his glass down. “I personally worked on that case for a short while, as a favour to the mother. Susan Siddons was a girl I knew from my beat days and she became a snout of mine, a very reliable one. Anyway what I’m getting around to is that she recognized the clothing you showed on the programme tonight as that which her daughter was wearing on the night she disappeared. Let me just give you a bit of background and then I’ll give you Susan’s address so that you can go and meet her tomorrow.”

Hunter eased himself back into his weathered pine chair, cupping his pint, ready to listen. He knew from his early career days that Barry Newstead had a real flair for recounting the many and varied cases he had been involved in.

“Susan Siddons was a young journalist, in her first job straight out of University when I first came across her. She was a real looker. Could fetch ducks off water, but she always seemed to attract the wrong type of bloke. She came from a middle class background; both parents were teachers, and I think she just wanted to experience ‘a bit of rough.’ Anyway she took up with a guy from a family of villains who was a real bastard to her. She got pregnant and moved in with him. We got called out quite a few times to their house as a result of ‘domestics’ but she would never press charges even though he’d slapped her around and blacked her eyes on a couple of occasions.”

Hunter noticed Barry had started to salivate. He watched him take another swig of his beer and then wipe droplets from his moustache with one of his shovel-like hands.

“Then one night,” he continued, “he gave her a real good hiding. Hospitalised her. Broke her nose, an eye socket and a couple of her ribs. I was on evenings and got the call out. He was pissed up when I got to his house and spouting off that she’d not complain about him. I gave him a taste of his own medicine and then took him in. I told the custody sergeant that he’d resisted arrest and that he’d confessed to me about the assault on Sue whilst coming back in the car. He made a complaint, but it was my word against his and the upshot was that he got eighteen months in Armley. When he went down I managed to persuade Sue, who had her daughter Carol by then, to move into her own place. For the first time she took advice from someone in authority. Unfortunately for her, her lifestyle began affecting her job. She started to drink a little too much and they gave her the push. She carried on drinking even more, and in some real dives, but she used to give me some real good info and in return I slipped her the odd tenner, or bought Carol, her daughter, a bit of something from time to time. I later found out she was touting round blokes for beer money, who in return would go home with her at the end of the night. But she wasn’t shagging them. She used to give them a large nightcap with some of her sleeping tablets in and they’d go spark out, and then next day she’d spin them a story whilst they nursed their thick heads. That was fine, until one night when one old guy, who’d got angina, took a turn for the worse and was rushed into hospital. Doctors there got a little suspicious and called in the police. A young sergeant went to the house and recovered a whiskey glass, which had the remnants of some of her anti-depressant tablets. I have to confess I tried to intervene in the case, and try and make the sergeant see the job for what it was, but he could only see ‘jobs-worth’ and she got two years for administering a noxious substance.”

“What happened to her daughter?” asked Hunter finishing off his second beer.

“Got taken into care. She was twelve years old. It changed her totally. She could already look after herself. Well she had to because of Sue’s lifestyle. But you know how it is. She’d entered a system that was full of young kids who were beyond the control of their parents, who were either on bail from court for violence or thieving, or self-harmers, and she became one of them. A real tearaway. She became promiscuous, regularly went shoplifting, got drunk, fought with kids, fought with staff, even fought with the police. Regularly went missing from home, and so when she went missing in the early nineties no real effort went into looking for her until she had been gone at least ten days. Sue contacted me, and as a favour to her and for old time’s sake I put in a fair bit of effort in my own time to try and track her down. But I hit a brick wall. I did have some concerns but the gaffers wouldn’t hear any of it. They just thought she’d buggered off to one of the big cities and was working as a teenage prostitute. For years Sue tried to get the police, and the papers interested, but because of her history got nowhere.”