An Early Grave (6 page)

CHAPTER 8

Nights were the worst times, sleep, dreamless sleep always a blessing. He’d been alone for three years now. Time to think. Time to heal. Time to pass. He didn’t do any of it well. Tilly was there when he lay down; she was there at his waking, when he ate breakfast, walked Midgey, when he read newspapers and bought drink at the mini-market. Mostly she held Emily in her arms beckoning him to join them. Sometimes, especially at night in the darkness of his bedroom, she stood alone urging him to want her, to come for her, to put everything right in their world. Night time he feared as the vampire feared the sunlight. There was nothing in his life that didn’t trigger a worry in him. He was disturbed by his past, frightened by his present and dreaded his future. He’d grown up in this house, and now it was his prison. He was well aware of his fall to drudgery, of the filth he inhabited, the foul smelling air he breathed, and he had no inclination to do anything about it. Nothing mattered. Even now, having met the woman who could help find the killer of Emily and Tilly, he had little enthusiasm for the quest. If only he could sleep without waking, lie down on the once fresh white sheets, now grey and threadbare, close his eyes and diffuse from time to eternity. Then he would have peace.

Daylight, but early. Banging on the front door. Not the usual time for those bastard kids to call. Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? Some of them, he’d known their older brothers and sisters. Went to school with them. Did they know what their siblings got up to? Did they believe the stories about him?

He sat on the edge of his bed, the bed he’d had since he was fifteen when his late mother had decided he’d outgrown his childhood bunk and should have a new divan. Pyjamas, these days, were not part of his limited wardrobe. He slept in the T-shirt and boxer shorts he’d worn the previous day and would wear for several days to come. In bare feet, he came to the top of the stairs and peered into the darkened hallway. The banging continued.

‘Police, Mr Armour. Can you come to the door please?’ A male voice. Callum returned to the bedroom and gazed from the window, through the metal screen. It was the same car that Inspector Grogan had come in the night before. Maybe she was outside. Did she have something already? Information on Justin Kingsley? He pulled on his jogging trousers, pushed his feet into his brown shoes and hurried downstairs. The male voice continued calling.

‘Can you open the door, Mr Armour? It’s the police.’

Persistent, he thought. As was his habit he left the chain in place, undid the lock and pulled the door as far as the chain allowed. Peering through the crack, he saw the detective who had accompanied Tara Grogan.

‘Open the door please, Mr Armour. We’d like a word.’

‘What’s this about?’

‘Open the door please.’

‘First tell me what you want.’

The door hit him on the head then banged against the inside wall, the chain pitifully useless in protecting him from a stout kick. Callum’s hand shot to his face, to stifle the blurring pain across his nose and eyes. DS Murray and DC Wilson barged into the hall. Wilson pressed Callum to the wall and pulled his hands behind him before he had any chance to recover from the blow. Murray charged into the living room. Midgey barked noisily, and Callum heard the policeman pulling at paper and boxes, tossing things around.

‘We’d like to have a word with you at St. Anne Street,’ said Wilson. With a firm grip of Callum’s shoulders, he ushered him outside.

*

If only they knew how weak he felt, they wouldn’t have bothered with their show of strength. He hardly had the energy to stay on his feet, never mind walk out to the car. Wilson placed him in the back seat of the un-marked Vauxhall, closed the door and waited for Murray to emerge from the house. A minute later he appeared empty handed, slammed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat of the car.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions about your neighbours, Mr Armour,’ said Murray, when they’d settled into an interview room at the station.

Callum sat on a blue plastic chair with a padded seat, his hands set one upon the other and resting on a bare laminate table. His eyes, usually gritty with sleep and dirt at this time of the morning, watered still from the blow to his head caused by the bashing-in of the door. He wasn’t brave, hadn’t felt the need to be since the heart of his life had been snatched away, but for some reason he decided to defend himself in the presence of this pair of self-important louts.

‘It’s Dr Armour.’

Murray winced at the reply.

‘Or, Dr Stinker?’

‘As long as you get the Doctor part right.’

‘Tell us about the girl who was killed the other night in the house opposite yours.’

Callum did not reply.

‘It’s a reasonable question Mr…Dr Armour.’

‘I’ll speak to Inspector Grogan, but I’m not talking to you wise asses.’

Murray continued as if he hadn’t heard Callum’s statement of intent.

‘Tell me about the porno films being made at the house?’

Callum glared at Murray, realising of course, that Tara Grogan would have shared this information.

‘You must have seen who was involved? Men? Women? Perhaps you, Dr Armour?’

The pair of detectives got no further. Callum sat impassively, staring at the wall ahead of him. To each question raised he offered nothing but a stale odour of sweat and a breath smelling of cheap lager.

*

Tara was late arriving at the station. She’d called at a community centre in Walton to meet some members of a women’s group: a Mum’s & Todd’s operating primarily for the Polish community. Aniele Zagac, a friendly woman of about thirty-five with excellent English, had a couple of energetic kids climbing over her as she tried to hold a conversation.

‘I do not know of any Polish girls who have gone missing,’ she said in reply to Tara’s question. ‘If you like I will ask my friends to contact other groups and families.’

‘I would appreciate that, thank you. Do you know of a man called Teodor Sokolowski?’

The woman’s smile weakened, as slowly she moved her head from side to side, her pale blue eyes looking uncertainly at Tara.

‘He rents houses around Liverpool to workers from Poland?’

Aniele Zagac’s attention, fortuitously, it seemed for her, was claimed by her children who had begun pulling at their mother’s long grey cardigan, stretching it out of shape. Now she didn’t have to look Tara in the face.

‘I have not heard of this man,’ she said, drawing both her charges close to her body, so that neither one was able to keep hold of the cardigan. Tara reached a card to the woman.

‘If you hear of anything relating to Mr Sokolowski, or of a girl who’s gone missing, please let me know.’ The woman inspected the details on the card and gave a single nod.

Ten minutes’ drive from the community centre and she pulled into St. Anne Street Station, a dull four-storey flat-roofed block. She was grateful for the help, but she didn’t for a second believe that Aniele Zagac had told the truth about Teodor Sokolowski. Was it a case of ex-pats closing ranks? When she reached her desk on the first floor, she found a post-it stuck on her computer monitor informing her that she was required downstairs at interview room two. She met DC Wilson in the corridor outside the room, his back against the wall, hands busy at his mobile phone.

‘Super’s been looking for you, Mam,’ he said, a hint of warning in his voice.

‘What about?’

‘We have a suspect for the girl’s murder.’

‘Really?’ She felt a sudden gush of excitement from the hope that they had already tracked down the vicious killer of the young girl.

‘It’s that bloke Armour you were talking to the other day. Super and Murray are with him now.’

Disbelief and exasperation battled for supremacy. How did they decide that Armour was implicated in the murder? Surely, they hadn’t acted merely on what she had told Murray?

‘Tara,’ said Tweedy as he emerged from the interview room. As the door closed behind him she caught sight of Callum Armour sitting rigidly at the table staring into space. ‘I’m glad you’re here. This Dr Armour is proving difficult and insists on talking only to you.’ He looked rather disapprovingly at Tara, like a father inquiring what his teenage daughter had been up to the night before. ‘I’m happy for you to proceed, of course, but perhaps you should point out to your friend that his conversation with you will be recorded.’

‘Yes sir.’ He smiled weakly as if he understood the situation, understood the relationship Tara had already established with Armour, but there was a warning in it for her. That this was not the way things were done, not in his squad. He would expect any established rapport, regardless of how tenuous it may be, to be handled most cautiously and professionally. Obviously Murray had told Tweedy about her visit to Armour’s house.

Alan Murray rose from the table as Tara entered the interview room. He shrugged to indicate he’d got nowhere. She glared icily at him. She would speak to him later about protocol and, more importantly, about having some common sense.

‘Good morning, Callum. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

Callum rolled his eyes at Murray, who frowned and sighed.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, opening the door and pulling it closed behind him.

‘You tell me,’ said Callum. ‘I was dragged here out of my bed, and those two started firing questions at me about the wee girl.’ It seemed that in anger his Belfast accent had gained the upper hand.

Tara knew the situation had been handled badly. Murray was too quick, bringing Armour in for questioning, but she wasn’t about to criticise her colleagues in front of him for trying to do their job. The washed out, distant and unhelpful character sitting before her knew more about the murder than he had so far revealed. She stared for a moment at the swelling above his eye.

‘Do you have something you want to tell me about the killing of the girl?’ He had yet to focus on her, his eyes set on an infinite point beyond the room as if staring the past full in the face, trying his best to square up to whatever evil had destroyed his life.

‘Callum, you asked to speak with me. If you’ve changed your mind I can always get DS Murray to come back in.’

‘Why should I help you, when you and all the rest of them have done nothing to help me?’

She saw the nerves rise in him, could hear the emotion breaking the last words in his sentence. She sat down, facing him across the table.

‘How do you spend your days, Callum? Do you work?’

‘Unemployed.’

‘So, what do you do with your time?’

‘I walk Midgey, I go to the library, the shops, the park and I go home.’

‘And your evenings?’ He looked at her for the first time. Incredulity flowed from brightening eyes.

‘I go out with my friends to the cinema, to the theatre, the opera and ballet. We have dinner in the best restaurants in Liverpool. We have a private box at Anfield. We drink in the liveliest clubs and get off with stunning women… What do you think?’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary. Something you may not have realised, Callum. You are a suspect in this murder. For your own good I think it’s best if we cut the sarcasm, and maybe we can rule you out of the investigation as soon as we can. Tell me what you were doing two nights ago.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I want to go home. Midgey will be looking to be fed.’

‘A young girl was murdered in a house close to yours. I want to know what you were doing around midnight on Tuesday.’

‘I was in my bed asleep.’

‘Can anyone vouch for that?’ She knew it was a stupid question for a man in his situation. He gave her a look of disgust, and took to contemplation of the blank wall once again. Tara rose from her chair. She thought that after yesterday she understood this man a little better than others around him. She had sympathy for his plight. Today, however, she found him rude and obnoxious.

‘I’ll pass on your request to the Superintendent. If there’s anything you want to tell me, Callum, you know where to find me. I won’t be making this offer every time we meet.’ She left him as she’d found him, staring into his personal oblivion.

CHAPTER 9

They kept him until lunchtime but didn’t happen to give him anything to eat. Didn’t bother giving him a lift home either. He had some change in the pocket of his trousers, enough to scrape the bus fare to Netherton and buy some milk for his breakfast. Walking to the bus stop, he wondered if it would ever do anything else but rain in this damn country. Incessant drizzle that soaked you through, bleaching the will from you to do anything but get indoors and stay there, waiting, urging life to hurry on by. He thought of his native Belfast, a city he hadn’t visited since he was thirteen, trying to imagine if a life spent there would have been any better. Different surely, but he doubted better. Callum didn’t need any of it. He didn’t need reminders of where he came from, where he’d been or what he’d done, but the great paradox of his woeful existence was that reminders were all he had, the things he collected, drew around him. Why did he need such things? He had no idea, but he hurried to get home to them.

Stepping off the bus on Glover’s Lane, he wandered across to the row of shops and bought some milk, semi-skimmed, and
The
Daily
Telegraph
. Usually he read the paper in Netherton Library, but today he wanted sanctuary, he wanted to restore himself as an island. He made his way home. He met no one. He felt the rain trickle down his nose, dribble through his thick beard and saturate the worn collar of his T-shirt. When he reached the cul-de-sac he could tell there was something wrong. Billy Hughes, his next door neighbour, stood under his porch, sheltering from the rain, looking up and down the road as if watching for somebody. He sported a serious beer gut that he nourished each Friday and Saturday down at the Hungry Horse and after a match at Goodison. The last few drags of a cigarette hung from a small mouth under a podgy nose, purple at the tip from a burst vessel. He had the remnants of what once had been a black DA hairstyle, thick strands of long hair greased over his scalp. His wife Jean wouldn’t let him smoke in the house.

‘See your door?’ said Billy as Callum reached the pathway leading to his house. ‘Bloody kids did it.’

‘Midgey! Is he all right?’ He fumbled in his pocket for a key, slipped it in the lock and opened the door. The dog, tail wagging, sniffed the air as Callum bent down. ‘Hiya doing, Midgey? Think I wasn’t coming back? I’ll get you a drink and some food, and then we can go for a walk, eh?’ He patted him on the head, and the dog responded by attempting to lick his hand.

‘Went daft, barking and getting on,’ said Billy. ‘But he’s OK. Been quiet all morning. Imagine them shites doing the like of that in broad daylight?’

Callum examined the scorched wood of the door. Someone had forced the letter box open, and then tried to pour petrol, or lighter fluid inside. At least the word paedo was now obliterated, but how long before he or Midgey were burned to death?

‘My window,’ said Billy, ‘I saw them from up there.’ He pointed with his fag at the bedroom window above. ‘I came out after them, but they run like the beggars. Couldn’t run after them, not with my knees. Our Jean got a basin of water and chucked it at the door.’

Callum nodded his acknowledgement. He didn’t know whether to sound angry about the damage or grateful for Billy’s intervention. He thought that maybe he couldn’t care less. More important things to worry about. Thoughts carried him so far away he tuned out Billy’s continued explanation of the incident.

‘Thanks, Billy.’

He closed the door with Billy Hughes still looking on, straining the last drag from the butt of his cigarette.

*

Tara spent her afternoon reviewing her notes on the murder of the girl. Sadly, not much added since the first day. Murray sat with a flea in his ear on the far side of the office. She’d told him off for jumping the gun with Callum and giving her only lead a bruise on his face. He’d set her back at least a couple of days trying to cultivate some response from, potentially, their only worthwhile witness. At least he had the decency to apologise and to suggest a few less rash ideas for gathering information. Tara set him the task of tracing people who may be in the local pornographic movie-making business. She reckoned that should appeal to his facetious wit.

She had a post-mortem report on the girl. Cause of death was asphyxiation by direct interference of the main air passage ways: most likely smothered under a pillow as she’d thought. No bruises, except for the effects of lividity. There were no cuts, just the burn marks on her chest, inflicted after death, and red scuffs on both knees. It was apparent that sexual intercourse had taken place, traces of semen and gel or oily substances consistent with lubricant materials found on her thighs, lower abdomen and vaginal area. SOCO found nothing in the immediate vicinity of the body. No clothing, shoes or personal items such as handbag or make-up in the bedroom. A sweep of the remainder of the house revealed nothing that could be related directly to the girl. The three bed-room terrace was furnished with basic items: beds in each room, a sofa in the lounge, a cooker, refrigerator and washing machine in the kitchen, all consistent with a property used and advertised as a furnished let. There were sheets, pillows and duvets on the beds in each room except where the victim was discovered. It seemed plausible that the duvet and pillows had been removed from there, leaving only the top urine-soaked sheet on the mattress. There were some articles of food in the kitchen: milk, low-fat spread and an open carton of orange juice in the fridge. Cupboards held some basic utensils, crockery, several wine glasses and tumblers. There was also an electric kettle and a toaster; a box of eighty tea bags, already open, sat on the work-top beside a jar of instant coffee. All items had been removed for forensic examination. Fingerprints were lifted from the internal and external doors, from the kitchen work-tops and the banister on the stairs.

With no positive identification for the victim, Tara began to realise the enormity of the task ahead. The best lead they had was the suggestion about the activities carried on in the house, the making of pornographic films. Precious little to work on, and the idea had still to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt considering the dubious reliability of the witness, Callum Armour. A more definite piece of evidence was the Polish word,
kurwa
, burned into the flesh of the victim. With a Polish national identified as the house owner it suggested that the girl also came from Poland, and this was a murder within that particular ex-pat community. She knew that Tweedy would launch a public appeal for information if nothing was forthcoming soon.

Mingling within her frustration over the girl’s murder were the bits and pieces of stories she’d read in that morbid box-file presented to her by Callum Armour. Much of it was a muddle of facts with his supposition and outlandish theories, but she found it hard to dismiss the account of his wife’s death. Yes, it was declared an accident, but Callum was so adamant about the blank sympathy card and the time at which he took possession of it.

Deciding that for the moment she’d reached an impasse with her case, she ran a quick search on her computer, looking for any stories relating to the accident which claimed the lives of Tilly Reason and her daughter. A couple of items from the archives of the
Oxford
Mail
displayed the original report on the deaths, and she found also the account of the inquest. It may have been the same report she’d read from the box-file, but she skimmed through it anyway looking for anything to give credence to Armour’s beliefs that his family had been murdered at the level crossing in Shiplake. She found plenty of articles on the dangers of un-gated level-crossings and noted with astonishment that out of eight thousand level crossings in Britain, two per cent did not have gates. Over three hundred accidents and near misses occurred each year. Police and motoring organisations blamed much of it on the contempt drivers had for the warning systems in place at level crossings. It was a sad fact that many drivers and pedestrians played
Russian
Roulette
in using them. Shiplake had long been cited as a disaster waiting to happen, and Tara was relieved to note that major improvements were planned for the crossing that had claimed, among others, the lives of Callum’s wife and daughter. Undoubtedly tragic, everything pointed to it being an accident, and in the three years since then Callum Armour had failed to come to terms with it. His claim about the sympathy card, however, still rankled with Tara.

She wondered how she might help him, not in finding the murderer he claimed to be out there, but in more practical matters. Could she sort his problems with the local troublemakers who were causing him to live in constant fear? Could she arrange for the community policing guys to sit down with Callum and, for the first time, talk through his concerns? Perhaps she could find someone, or some organisation to help him put his house in order, clean it up and advise him on a healthier lifestyle. Did Callum really need some form of counselling? She was beginning to think more like a social worker than a detective. She would have a go anyway.

Before leaving her research into Callum’s past, she typed his name into the search engine just to see what came up. The first few hits were impressive. Callum Armour: ‘
Matrix
ion
suppression
in
the
detection
of
drug
metabolites
,
case
studies
,’ published in the
Journal
of
Mass
Spectrometry
. There was a list of several other scientific publications:
The
Analyst
,
Food
Chemistry
,
Journal
of
Chromatography
,
Analytica
Chimica
Acta
, and
Food
Additives
and
Contaminants
, all dating back at least three years, some as far as eight. There were a few references to the Department of Chemistry at Oxford University, a couple of links to children’s writer Tilly Reason, and one to a conference on drugs and food analysis held four years ago in Brussels. Finally, although she couldn’t recall the name of the victim, she typed in ‘Canterbury Cathedral murder’ only to see hundreds of hits referring to the killing of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Scrolling down, however, she found a BBC news report on the more recent murder of the Cathedral Precentor and Liturgist, Peter Ramsey. As she mulled over the lack of evidence for the murder of the girl in Treadwater, so it appeared detectives of Kent Police were finding it difficult to establish a motive or to identify any suspects in the murder of the clergyman.

Strange, she thought, that Callum Armour should think it plausible that she could and would help him, simply because she had been a student at Latimer College. Did he believe in some kind of brotherhood among the alumni, dedicated to helping each other through thick and thin? Or was he suggesting a direct link between the college and the deaths of three people? She now knew what he had studied during his time there, and perhaps he already knew she’d studied law, and had read all about her in the Alumni magazine. She was beginning to regret up-dating her profile and submitting the photograph of her in police uniform. Maybe she should get to understand Callum Armour a little better. Why, for instance, was he pointing an accusing finger for the murder of Peter Ramsey at this student who had disappeared? What possible motive? What motive to kill a children’s novelist? And there were years between the disappearance, Tilly Reason’s accident and the killing in Canterbury. If she were into pulling coincidences together, no matter how outlandish, why not consider Callum Armour as the link between his wife’s death, the murder of Peter Ramsey and, of much more relevance to Tara, the death of a young girl on the Treadwater Estate?