Witchmoor Edge (5 page)

"I'm aware of that," Tommy said mildly. "Is
his mother or father around? Are you related?"

"He's my younger brother, not that it’s your
business."

"I'm really sorry to tell
you that it
is
my
business," Tommy answered. "I have some bad news."

Something about Tommy's manner communicated
itself to the young man and he grew a little less wary.

"Mum's in the living room watching the repeat
of Home and Away," he said. "Are you police?"

Tommy showed his warrant card. "I'm a
detective at the Witchmoor Edge Branch and I sometimes get jobs I'd
rather not do. This one of them."

He followed the youth inside and shut the
door behind him, before walking into the lounge. A blonde woman of
about forty and quite presentable switched off the television. Both
the woman and the room were past their best, but still had a
semblance of what they once were. The woman was tidy and groomed
and must have been young when she had the older boy. The room was
clean and carpeted, but you couldn't say a great deal more for
it.

"Nice timing," she said, "I'd just finished
my daily dose of envy. I'd really like to live in a nice house in a
place where it’s always summer. Still," she said brightening, "I
don't suppose it's like that all the time."

"This man's come from the police to talk to
you about Kevin, ma," said the scruffy young man.

"He's been missing since Saturday tea time,"
Mrs. Musworth said.

"I'm afraid he was pulled out of the canal
drowned on Sunday morning. He had nothing with his address on it
and it until now to track him down from his fingerprint records.
Nevertheless, although were confident of the identification, I'd
appreciate it you would make a formal identification."

Mrs. Musworth looked faint. "Dead you
say?"

"I'm afraid so," Tommy said gently. Musworth
might have been a young thug, but even most young thugs have
mothers who care.

"I wasn't worried about him not coming home
on Sunday," Mrs. Musworth said, "Especially as Wayne Sansom from
next door disappeared at the same time." Then she added with a
hollow emptiness. "I thought he might have got into trouble with
the police again, but I figured I'd have heard by now. I was just
starting to get a bit worried that he hadn't contacted me at all,
but he was always a thoughtless little bugger. Not like Barry." She
nodded at her elder son.

She took a paper hanky from a box on top of
the TV and blew her nose.

"He were running out of control since their
dad up and left me. I couldn't keep him out of trouble and he were
thoughtless, like I said." She wasn't really talking to either
Tommy or Barry directly - just talking in general.

"Now he's dead, you say. Thoughtless to the
end."

Then a thought seemed to strike her and she
looked puzzled.

"Fell in the canal?" she asked. "Funny thing
is, he could swim quite well. He had medals for swimming at junior
school."

Tommy thought Kevin probably hadn't been very
good at swimming while drunk, but he didn't say anything. "Did
Kevin say what he was doing or where they were going Saturday
night?" he asked.

"He was going to a disco somewhere. I think
it was at that youth centre down the bottom of Bingley Road towards
Saltaire. He went with Wayne Sansom and an older boy called John
something. John ... something Polish."

"John Koswinski," said Barry. "He's around,
because I've seen him. He might know what happened."

Tommy thought he probably had a name for the
body in the ruin and for the one who climbed dripping from the
canal. He made a note of the two names and addresses and thought
this was quite a good afternoon's work.

"I'm afraid I have to ask you to identify the
body, make sure it is Kevin for official purposes. The coroner will
want to know its all been done properly."

"I think I'll make myself a cup of tea," Mrs.
Musworth said bleakly, the facts seemingly striking home.

"I think that's a grand idea," Tommy said
encouragingly.

When she'd gone into the kitchen, he said to
Barry, who seemed to be a lot more human than he looked, "I'll slip
off now, but I'll ring to arrange for someone to take you and your
mum to identify the body. I'll try and find a woman constable to
help her through it. We'll also need a signed statement. I'll type
up this little lot and she can check it and sign it at the same
time."

Barry Musworth just nodded, so Tommy made a
note of the phone number and Barry let him out in silence.

Detective Constable Gary Goss was making
heavy weather of Joe Davis. It wasn't that he was elusive or
reluctant to talk, more that he rambled off on irrelevant side
roads of thought and reminiscence. Moreover, he had actually seen
very little and reports from both DS Gibbs and the Fire Brigade had
already covered everything Joe knew.

The one possible exception to that was a
remark that he had seen two or three youths on the concrete quay
below the boarded warehouse, now a ruin. He was not sure when - the
last week or two was the best he could manage - or how often - more
than once was a bit vague.

DC Goss put that in his report to be included
in the statement, but it was probably unimportant and might well
refer to a quite different bunch of youths.

As he was pretty well next door to the
Sansoms's flat, Tommy knocked at that door as well. The contrast
with the Musworth's was considerable. Mrs. Sansom was a big woman
of Afro-Caribbean extraction and a girl of about five came to the
door with her mother. She stood cautiously eying Tommy and sucking
her thumb.

Tommy was more sensitive than a lot of
officers to how intimidated by the police black Britons can be and
how this often manifests itself as surly and suspicious, so put on
his best smile and said politely, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I
need to speak to Wayne. He was with a boy who was pulled out of the
canal drowned and I was sort of hoping he might be able to throw
some light on it."

"Wayne's not been around since Saturday
night." She sounded alarmed. "It wasn't him that fell in the canal
was it? He never was no good at swimming"

That, thought Tommy, might be why he had
tried to escape the fire without jumping in the water. He kept his
thoughts to himself, however.

"It was a white boy fell in the canal," he
said. "We think it was young Kevin Musworth."

"Oh my gawd," Mrs. Sansom said. "They was
together on Saturday night. Wayne don't usually cause me no trouble
and he hadn't never stayed away from home like this. You don't
think he's hiding?"

Tommy was pretty certain Wayne had died in
the fire and he knew he'd have to break the news to her sometime.
This, however, was not the moment.

I don't think so," he said. "I'd better get a
search started for him though. Do you have a photograph."

"There's the photo he had took the last term
at school," Mrs. Sansom said. "You can only borrow it though. I
want it back."

DC. Hammond felt sure this fairly pleasant
looking boy, now only a year or so older, was the body from the
burnt out ruin. He knew he was only postponing the moment of grief
for the Sansom family, but let them learn the truth as gently as
possible. Not that it was a very gentle truth.

But what had Kevin Musworth, Wayne Sansom and
John Koswinski been doing in the boarded up warehouse, and where
did Simon Hunter come into it. Perhaps Millicent Hampshire had some
idea. His boss was a smart cookie, when it came to detective work,
and not bad as a boss either.

Goss and Hammond typed up their various
reports and the statements for signing and arranged for a
switchboard operator to call up both Joe Davis and Mrs. Evans in
the morning. He also asked for someone from the uniformed branch to
pick up Mrs. Musworth and get her to identify Kevin's body. Lucy
Turner arrived back at the station to type up Mrs. Hunter's
statement. Tommy, on the other hand, rushed off to keep a date.

That young man, Millicent thought, was a nice
catch for some young lady, but he wouldn't be easily caught. He was
tall and sturdy, always immaculately groomed and dressed and really
quite handsome. He was, however, always rushing off to see some
woman, and she had a feeling it was a different one each time.

Millicent herself had several jobs to do
before she went home. First, and most urgently, she put out an
interest report on Simon Hunter's red Porsche. Now every officer of
the West Yorkshire Police would know the car was wanted and her
interest would show on any computer enquiry about the car as well.
It was only a matter of time.

Next she opened a new folder lying on her
desk. It was a request from the Divisional Commander, via the Chief
Inspector, for figures relating to all deaths over the last four
years which the department had investigated, and a similar request
relating to violent attacks on the person which they had
investigated. It would be easy enough to have civilian staff get
the records and it might not take her long to provide an analysis,
but what a drag.

For a while she gazed gloomily at the file,
then rose with a sigh from her desk and made her way out.

There was no urgency to hurry home, because
she lived alone and, before she drove away, she toyed with several
cassettes, selecting one with care. Her taste in music was an
interesting idiosyncrasy, since she liked three wildly different
varieties of music under different moods and circumstances. Her
short 6 year sojourn in Spain, almost 15 years ago, as the wife of
a Seville policeman called Carlos Aguila, had left her with a taste
for the folk music of the Andes and South America generally, which
he had loved. On the other hand, she liked genuinely mediaeval
music and instruments especially as a background to thinking out a
puzzle - and then she liked nice, beaty country and western music
when she was doing housework.

Tonight she felt just a bit nostalgic. Her
brief marriage to Carlos Aguila had been happy, very different from
that of Shirley and the late Simon Hunter, and ended tragically
with a car bomb. The Hunter marriage had ended, she thought, with a
specific and targeted murder by someone who wanted to kill Hunter
as an individual, while Carlos had just been in the way of a group
of indiscriminate terrorist killers. She sighed and steered the car
out of the walled car park, through the security gates and into
Tolpuddle Street to the haunting tone of Inti Illmani and the pan
pipes.

Millicent turned into the driveway in front
of her very desirable stone built, early eighteenth century
cottage, and let herself into her empty but not quite lonely home.
She had just hung up her jacket and was putting away the few
groceries she had stopped for on the way home, when the phone
rang.

"Hampshire," she said.

"Hello mum, it's Ana," a voice said. It was a
pleasant voice, speaking very good English, but her daughter had
been brought up by her husband's parents in Seville. Ana was not
English and you could tell.

"Hola Ana. Me alegro de oirte. Its nice to
hear from you. How are you and how are Nanny Sanchez and Grandpa
Aguilar?"

"They're both well, but I wanted to ask you
about University. I think University in the UK would be nice. I
wondered what you thought about the course Leeds has on European
Law and whether I could get to Leeds from your house. If you'd have
me, of course."

"Have you? Of course you'd be welcome here.
There's nobody but me, though I come and go to work at odd hours.
Leeds is about fifteen or twenty minutes by train. What does Nanny
Sanchez say?"

"Ah, well. That's the problem. Whether I go
the University in the UK or Belgium or Spain there'd be the fees.
Can you help?"

Millicent was mildly affronted. Granted, she
hadn't been the best of mothers in giving time to her daughter. The
shock of Carlos's death had sent her into the army and the bomb
squad, and there was no place in the army for a child. On the other
hand, she had always provided financial support.

"I'll pay your fees," Millicent said a little
shortly. "You apply where you really want to go and I'll find the
cash."

"Thanks mum. I knew you'd help, its just that
Nanny Sanchez was worrying."

"Well tell her not to worry. Now. Tell me how
the exams went."

After the phone call and a makeshift meal of
mushroom omelette and chips, Millicent settled back in an armchair
to think. Tobias NDibe had unsettled her and Ana's phone call
reinforced the mood of self examination.

N'Dibe had been both right and wrong: she did
drive herself hard but it was not so much her job as her personal
demons. She had married young but been very happy with Carlos and
had been driven slightly insane by his murder. Her time in the bomb
squad combined an urge for revenge with an urge to come to terms
with the facts. She had moved into the police to find refuge from
her demons, but they had followed her. Perhaps the meeting with
N'Dibe was some kind of turning point. She might try to track him
down and contact him again.

Millicent became DI Hampshire again and put
on a CD of the music of 11th century composer, Hildegard von
Bingen. She turned down the volume and began to consider possible
connections between the fire, the drownings and the murder. She
also thought over Shirley Hunter's story, about which she was still
mildly uneasy, and how it might be verified or otherwise!

Chapter 4: Tuesday 14th August (am)

Tuesday morning might well have been a
country and western music morning for the drive to work, but
Millicent wasn't really in the mood for music of any kind. She had
work uppermost in her mind. Her first job was to instruct DS Gibbs,
who was back today, that he was to establish an incident room
devoted to the case. Feeling sure that the three cases were related
in some way she could see no point in delay.