Secret of the Dead (13 page)

“Two more punches son, and we’re done.”

Hunter swung in a flourish of quick jabs and finished with a strong uppercut, lifting the pad his father held. As he dropped his arms with exhaustion, his dad sideswiped his head.

“Keep your guard up at all times son.” His dad gave him a wink and cracked a grin as he gripped one pad under his armpit and tugged it off. “That’s it, we’re done.”

Pulling off the other pad, he reached across to Hunter and grabbed his hands to help as he slipped off the training mitts.

“Good session that Hunter. Shower now, eh?” He dropped the gloves and pads against a ring post and ducked under the middle rope. “What time did you say you had to be in to work?” he asked, glancing back as he stepped out of the boxing ring. “Have you got time for a quick cuppa before I open up? Don’t know about you but I’m parched.”

Hunter nodded. He was still trying to catch his breath. He grabbed a towel off a corner post and wiped his face and the back of his neck as he made his way to the changing room. The adrenaline was still coursing through him. He felt energised despite the workout he’d just had.

He was glad now that he’d dragged himself out of bed early. He’d even had the time to take the boys to school that morning - something he’d not been able to do for ages. Now he felt set up for the day; he could take anything that was thrown at him.

“Put the kettle on, I’ll be ten minutes,” he shouted after his father, who was sloping off towards his office. “I don’t have to be in until eleven this morning, I’ve got a funeral to go to, for that ex-detective. That case I’m on that I’ve told you about?”

* * * * *

Barry Newstead grabbed Hunter the moment he strolled into the department.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you on your mobile most of the morning,” he said excitedly.

Hunter pulled his phone from his pocket and examined it. His face creased.

“Sorry Barry, I’ve had it on silent. I’ve been down at my dad’s gym.”

“You’ll never guess what I’ve discovered?” He thrust a sheet of paper at Hunter.

Hunter saw that it had a list of numbers, in time, day and date order. Barry stabbed a finger over one number highlighted with yellow fluorescent ink.

“That’s the top copy of Jeffery Howson’s itemised phone bill for his land-line. Guess who he rung on the afternoon of his death.”

Hunter scrutinised the tinted telephone number. It didn’t mean anything.

“Alan Darbyshire. He rung Alan Darbyshire just before five pm on that Saturday he was killed. It’s one of the last numbers he called that day. The next one was mine and the last one was his daughter Katherine.”

Hunter fixed Barry’s glistening brown eyes.

“Good God Barry, this is a real turn up for the books. It completely contradicts what he told me and Grace yesterday. He told us that he had last spoken with Jeffery on the Monday or Tuesday prior to his death. Does the gaffer know about this?”

“Yeah, I fed it into this morning’s briefing. He’s chasing up forensics to prioritise examination of some of the exhibits, see if we can find something good enough to bring Alan in.”

* * * * *

Hunter stamped his feet on the damp grass. The cold was beginning to get to him. A biting north westerly wind had picked up since he had emerged from the warm church and was disturbing the fallen autumn leaves around the headstones in Barnwell cemetery. The dry rustling noise disturbed an uncanny silence.

He flicked up the collar of his overcoat and buried his hands in his pockets as he scanned the faces of the mourners huddled graveside.

Ten minutes earlier, he had followed up at the rear of the slow procession as Jeffery Howson’s casket had been carried from the church to his final resting place in the cemetery. The light wood coffin now rested upon two wooden posts above an open grave.

Hunter could smell the freshly turned soil and clammy earth.

Four of the coffin bearers, two either side of the grave, each grabbed hold of the end of a rope, and took the weight of the casket as the supporting props were slid away. The bearers began to lower the coffin.

Hunter watched the casket making its descent.

“We commit this body to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” said the vicar in sombre tones, his head bowed. He peppered the coffin lid with a handful of loose soil.

Hunter looked at the burial group, scanning their faces. It wasn’t a large assembly, made up of mainly elderly men. Hunter guessed they were ex-colleagues.

Three women made up the burial party as well. Katherine and her daughter, Amy, were two of them. Katherine was sobbing uncontrollably. A slender, dark dyed-haired woman, who looked to be in her mid-sixties, had a comforting arm around her. Hunter guessed it was Katherine’s Mother; Jeffery’s ex-wife.

Hunter hated funerals.

He had been tasked with attending Jeffery Howson’s service, and he knew nearby there would be a member of the Intelligence Unit covertly filming everything. It was standard procedure; it was not unknown for the killer to turn up at the funeral of his victim.

That thought made him lock onto Alan Darbyshire who was huddled amid the congregation. The man met his gaze, as if he had known he was being watched. He quickly turned away and dropped his head.

If that wasn’t the actions of a guilty man,
thought Hunter.

Hunter’s concentration was disturbed by the machine-gun rattle of a solitary magpie somewhere to his left. He turned his head and fifty yards away, by the boundary hedge, he caught a sudden and unexpected movement. A broad, squat figure dressed in a black padded jacket and wearing a dark woollen hat, which covered most of his head and his ears, disguising his features, was standing close to a gap in the cropped line of holly.

Hunter eyeballed him for several seconds. The unknown guest was staring in the direction of the funeral party.

Hunter took a few steps back, pulling out his radio from inside his coat. He switched it into life. It had been pre-loaded onto the same frequency as that of his colleague’s from the Intelligence Unit. Although he couldn’t see him, he knew he would be somewhere nearby.

Turning away from the gathering, he pressed the handset close to his mouth and in a low tone requested the plain clothed officer’s attention.

The radio crackled but there was no response.

He tried again, in a firmer tone this time, and began striding toward the stranger.

Hunter knew he was in the open but he had little option. Instinct was telling him that something wasn’t right.

He’d only made a half a dozen steps before the incomer saw Hunter and began edging away towards the breach in the holly hedge.

Hunter picked up his pace and hissed into his radio as the stranger made the gap.

In a flash, the man had disappeared. Hunter smacked the radio against his thigh in frustration.

Damn it!

He knew that even if someone did respond in the next few seconds it would be too late - the dark-clad figure would be long gone.

- ooOoo –

DAY FIVE: 28
th
November.

“Hunter Kerr I’m surprised at you,” scolded Grace, looking over the rim of her coffee cup. “It’s not like you to be a nine-o’clock-critic.”

“I’m just so frigging miffed. We could have caught that guy at the funeral. Instead he did a runner and we’ve no idea who he is.”

Grace pushed herself forward. Leaning across the desk, she said, “It was a mistake. Anyone could have made it. The Intelligence Unit guy had simply switched his radio off for the church service and forgot to switch it back on...end of. He wasn’t to know that the stranger was going to turn up in that part of the graveyard. His job was to film the congregation of Jeffery Howson’s funeral and he did that.”

Hunter held up his hands. “Yep, fair comment Grace. It just would have been nice to find out what he was doing there.”

“Course it would, but we didn’t, and so we have to live with it. He’ll come again. We’ll find out who he is, don’t you worry.” She took a sip at her drink and set it down, hands still wrapped around her warm mug. “Anyway, he did manage to get some good footage of Alan Darbyshire. Did you see the look on his face as you were chasing after the guy?”

Hunter nodded.

“Picture wasn’t it? You could tell from his reaction that he knew who that man was.”

“There’s no doubt Alan Darbyshire is up to his neck in this. I’d love to bring the slimy lying toad in, but you heard the gaffer at this morning’s briefing. He wants us to hold off for the time being, see if we get something concrete that will link him physically with Jeffery Howson’s death.”

“It’ll happen. We know he told us one lie about the last time he spoke with Jeffery because of the telephone records, and don’t forget his signature on those notes we found in Howson’s safe. If they are the originals, then we’ve at least got him for perjury in the Weaver trial. That will be enough to arrest him and get enough of a lever on him to quiz him about the murder.”

Hunter nodded again. “I can see where the gaffer is coming from. Because Darbyshire’s ex-job, especially an ex-DCI, he wants us to get enough evidence so that when we do finally give him a tug we can make it stick, but it’s so frustrating.”

“It’ll come good in the end.” Grace pushed herself upright and took a last sip of her coffee. “Anyway, we have enough work to handle just now. You weren’t here for this morning’s briefing, but the Super wants us to speak with Daniel Weaver before he hears it from the press that we’ve re-opened the Lucy Blake-Hall case, especially as he’s already had one appeal turned down. I’ve already set things in motion. He’s currently in Wakefield Prison, and I’ve also managed to track down his barrister from the trial back in nineteen-eighty-four. He’s defending a stabbing case at Sheffield Crown Court which is listed for three days, so I’ve left a message with his secretary for him to get back to me.”

“Good job Grace. Once you sort out a time and date with him to meet, I’ll contact the prison and fix up a visit. This will not be an easy one, you know. If those notes from Howson’s safe prove to be original, he’s going to be more than a little pissed off. He’s served twenty-four years for a murder he might not have done.”

“And we’re going to come in for some flak from the media. They just love a miscarriage of justice story like this.”

“That’s why it would be nice to have Alan Darbyshire in a cell before we go and speak with Daniel Weaver.”

“Trouble is we need the evidence, and we haven’t got enough.”

“Talking about evidence, how’ve you gone on with the old card index?”

“Don’t ask. That has been a nightmare. I’ve managed to get it in some semblance of order, but only thanks to Isobel from the HOLMES team. She’s worked on the old card system on quite a few murders in the past, so she helped me piece it all together. It’s currently laid out over two desks in their office, and the team are slowly inputting it into the computers. She’s estimated that in roughly a fortnight’s time, we’ll be up to speed and be able to run the Lucy Blake-Hall enquiry from HOLMES. But it’s going to make for a fair bit of leg-work. And I can see we’re going to need some help from the Cold Case Team”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, Isobel’s already identified that quite a few of the witnesses are dead. Added to that, some of the addresses no longer exist. Some of the old terraced streets have been knocked down, and to complicate matters further, some of the female witnesses have changed their names. Got married and moved. This is not going to be an easy investigation.”

“And let me throw something else into the mix.”

Grace set aside her mug, looking puzzled.

“You might wonder where this has come from, but it was something that came into my head yesterday. I tried to dismiss it, but it’s still niggling away.” He paused and met his partner’s gaze. “Lucy might not be dead.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“I know Grace. I can see by your reaction what you’re thinking. And if I try to rationalise things, that suggestion doesn’t make sense. After all no one has seen her for twenty-five years. Everything says Lucy is dead. However, you and I know that stranger things have happened. Especially after finding those contemporaneous notes in Jeffery Howson’s safe. It means Daniel Weaver’s confession is false, so all we have is the last sighting of her in Barnwell market place.”

Hunter tented his fingers and looked across at Grace. “I’ve gone back over the prosecution file. The original murder investigation never found an attack site. And though we have witnesses who saw and heard Daniel Weaver and Lucy arguing, we have no one who actually witnessed any assault upon her. And there was never any blood found on Weaver’s clothes, or at his flat. All we have is that the confession made by Weaver is probably false, and if that is proved to be the case, we are left with the puzzle of finding out where Lucy disappeared to on twenty-sixth August nineteen-eighty-three.”

* * * * *

Tony Bullars and Family Liaison Officer Carol Ragen rang the front door bell of Katherine Edwards’ home and waited. From deep inside, they heard a shout to ‘Come in’ and so let themselves into the hallway. Carol called out again and a woman’s voice answered from the back room. As the two detectives entered the kitchen they found Jeffery Howson’s ex-wife, Jennifer West, standing half in, half out, of the open French doors. She was taking a long draw on her cigarette. She acknowledged them with a raised hand, and then flicked the smouldering remains out onto the paved patio.

Tony and Carol watched her shiver as she took a last look out across the rain-sodden garden before stepping back into the warmth and closing the doors.

“Gosh, it’s brass-monkeys out there today,” she said as she stepped towards the sink, filled a glass with water and took a mouthful. “You won’t tell Katherine you caught me smoking, will you? I’ll not hear the last of it if you do. I’ve told her I’ve quit since Jeffery was diagnosed with lung cancer.” She took another sip of water and then set the glass down on the drainer. “It’s easier to tell a white lie than to argue with her. I’ve been smoking since I was fourteen and it’s hard to break a fifty year habit.”