Blue Murder (11 page)

‘Grapefruit and eggs. Dire. Only thing that produced was methane,’ she giggled. ‘About later – have you booked somewhere?’

‘No, but if you think I …’

‘No, no. Play it by ear. Have to get the kids.’

‘Yeah.’

She patted her mobile. ‘Do some shopping.’ The kids would go bananas if they had to go another day without the essentials.

‘Right. Rain check?’ He asked her.

‘Hope not,’ she said quickly.

Richard grinned. ‘What d’you fancy?’

Janine raised her eyebrows and he rolled his eyes in response. Mucking about. She laughed, enjoying the flirtation, and hit the indicator – only it was the wrong lever and the windscreen wipers clattered noisily across the screen making her feel completely foolish.

The bevy of reporters surged forward hurling questions and taking photographs as Richard and Janine got out of the car.

‘Any news, Chief Inspector?’

‘Any leads?’

‘Was it a random attack?’

‘Have you found the weapon?’

‘Give us something, Chief.’

Janine held up her hand. ‘There’ll be a press conference tomorrow morning, time to be announced. No comment until then.’

Lesley Tulley seemed to have shrunk in the hours since they had last seen her. Already petite, she reminded Janine of a bird, fine-boned and nervy, on the edge of flight. Must be shattered, Janine thought, the shock easing now and the burden of grief settling.

They were in Lesley’s lounge, asking about Matthew’s friends and acquaintances. And enemies.

‘Matthew didn’t have any regular social engagements,’ Janine summarised. ‘Did you have your own friends, Lesley?’

‘Had. You know how people drift apart, once you all get married, harder once people have children.’ One hand gripping the other tightly.

‘You’re right,’ Janine acknowledged. ‘And you’ve none of your own?’

Lesley hesitated, she seemed shaken by the question. ‘I can’t have children.’

Janine cheeks grew warm, she was acutely aware of her own obvious pregnancy. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She gave a pause wanting to allow Lesley to regain the fragile composure she had.

Richard spoke next. ‘What about Ferdie Gibson, Mrs Tulley?’

Lesley stared at him, her eyes wide, confusion creasing her brow. ‘Who?’

‘He attacked your husband but you didn’t say anything yesterday.’

She shook her head slowly, overwhelmed. As if she genuinely hadn’t considered the possibility, thought Janine.

‘I’m sorry. You think?’

‘We haven’t ruled him out,’ Janine said.

‘Oh, god.’ Lesley Tulley bowed her head.

Richard looked at Janine – now they needed to ask the really tricky questions. The ones that, whichever way you phrased them, questioned the potential guilt or innocence of the bereaved family. Some people accepted this easily and were too stunned by their loss even to notice much; others went ballistic, the rage that accompanied sudden bereavement finding an outlet at those making the horrendous implication.

‘If you’ll just bear with us, it is usual in cases like this to establish the movements of family members,’ Richard said.

‘I told you,’ Lesley looked at him directly. ‘I was in town.’

‘What time did you arrive?’

‘Not long after nine.’

‘You went shopping?’

She nodded.

‘You’ll have the receipts, parking ticket...’

Resentment flashed through her eyes then and she pressed her lips together. ‘I’ll see if I can find them,’ she said quietly.

Janine glanced at Richard, feeling a little tense, watched Lesley go. Poor bloody woman.

*****

When DS Butchers tried 7 Gorton Avenue for the second time that weekend, a reedy voice called to him to hang on and after a few, moments the shabby green door was open. The old man looked ill: his complexion grey, bleary eyes, smell of stale hair and unwashed skin coming off him.

‘Mr Vincent, is it?’ A nod.

‘DS Butchers.’

‘Is it about that murder? Mr Tulley?’

‘That’s right,’ said Butchers.

‘Come in. I hoped you’d call. I was going to come down to the police station tomorrow if no one had been.’

‘We called before, sir,’ Butchers muttered, anticipating a long-winded complaint.

‘Only I’ve something to tell you about it.’

The room was shabby, a layer of dust coated everything, the low winter sun streamed in through grimy windows. Faint smell of gas. The floral carpet was worn threadbare in places. Old carpet tape curled away from one patch. Three piece suite, telly and table filled the space.

The mantelpiece, beige tiles, housed a gas fire and acted as shelf to a row of framed photographs. Wedding, holiday, group of men around an enormous table. Butchers remembered replacing a fire surround like that, in his last place. Did a lovely job with Welsh slate and a copper chimney breast. He waited while Mr Vincent lowered himself into his chair. Heard him gasp.

‘You all right, sir?’

A grunt. ‘Sit down,’ he gestured for Butchers to choose a seat. Butchers sat on the edge of the sofa took out his notebook. ‘Can I have your full name, sir?’

‘Vincent. Edward Compton Vincent. Everyone calls me Eddie.’

‘Date of birth?’

He reeled it off, noticed Butchers doing the sums and saved him the trouble. ‘Eighty-three, come September.’

‘Good age,’ Butchers said and wondered where he found these platitudes. They seemed to spring from nowhere, fully formed and out of his mouth before he’d thought about it.

‘Bloody awful age if you ask me. What would you know about it? Still you didn’t come to talk about that.’

‘Mr Tulley.’

‘Yes. My house overlooks the allotments; well, you’ll know that. Now, I can’t actually see Mr Tulley’s patch that well but I can see the gate that joins the back alley. ‘Course some of them climb the fences, some of these youngsters do, or come up the railway embankment.’

Butchers wondered where this was going. Wanted him to get to the point. Wanted to get some lunch.

‘So, Saturday morning I was up late. Had a bad night. Not that I ever really have a good night nowadays. I got dressed and I drew the curtains and that’s when I saw him.’

‘Mr Tulley?’

‘No. This lad, running he was, he runs up to the gate then he stops and looks out, like he’s seeing if anyone’s about, then he runs into the ginnel between the houses. I can’t see him then but he was going hell for leather I can tell you.’

Butchers sat further forward, all ears now, a shiver of excitement making his hand shake slightly. ‘What time was this?’

‘Twenty-five past ten.’

Butchers looked at him.

‘I’d just got up. I noticed the time, it being so late, like.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Youngish …’

‘Teenager? Younger?’

‘Older. Hard to tell an age.’

‘Twenty? Twenty-one?’

Eddie shrugged.

‘Younger than me?’ Butchers asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Go on.’ Eddie hesitated. ‘Short or tall?’

‘Average, I’d say.’

Butchers stood. ‘Like me?’

‘But skinnier, wiry.’

‘And can you remember what he was wearing?’

He could. ‘A cap, baseball cap. Don’t recall his top. And those …’ he waved his hand about searching for the right name, ‘sports trousers.’

‘Jog-pants?’

‘I don’t know what they call them. They’d a stripe down the side.’

‘What colour?’

‘White.’

‘White trousers?’ Butchers thought of cricket. ‘White stripe. The trousers were dark.’

‘Black?’

Eddie thought. Shook his head. ‘I couldn’t say.’

‘Anything else you remember?’

‘No.’

Butchers thought of the crime scene, the details on the murder boards. ‘What was he wearing on his feet.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Right. This is very good. We’ll come back to you, perhaps ask you to look at some photographs or attend an identity parade. Would you do that?’

‘Yes, if I can. Funny, isn’t it. Last time I’d anything to do with your lot, with the police, was at Agecroft colliery Miner’s strike. Trying to save the pit. I swore then I’d never trust a copper again. Place was thick with them, doing Thatcher’s dirty work for her, protecting the scabs. Bloody tragedy.’

‘Before my time,’ said Butchers, who had had more than enough of this sort of crap from his father-in-law.

‘Aye, but, you’re paying for it now. Closed those pits, took the lifeblood from those communities. We import coal now, when we’d no need. Families broken up, people shoved on the dole. All comes home to roost.’

‘You on the phone, sir?’ Eddie gave the number.

‘We’ll be in touch. This lad, would you say you had a good view of him, what he looked like?’

‘I did.’

‘Perhaps you could show me where you saw him?’

Eddie balked. ‘No, see, I’ll not manage the stairs. I get up them at night and down them in the morning and that’s it. You go up. Back bedroom.’

Butchers did. He pulled back the net curtain, gritty with dust, noted the corpses of flies strewn along the windowsill, the paint peeling and discoloured, tinged pink with mould. He looked out. Eddie’s small yard surrounded by a six foot wall led onto the alleyway he’d mentioned. Directly opposite was the allotment gate, a metal frame covered in mesh, interrupting the jumble of old larch-lap and palings that ran the length of the allotments. The gate was probably twenty feet away. Near enough to get a good look at someone.

Butchers admired the plots. He could see one in particular with a pergola and a formal pool. More of a garden than an allotment. He wondered if there were by laws governing what you could and couldn’t grow.

He turned away and took the stairs in a rush. Suddenly gleeful; it was he, not Shap, who had caught the call. Brilliant.

*****

Lesley handed Richard a clutch of receipts and he thanked her. ‘Anything else you remember about the morning?’

‘No. Oh, I rang Emma, left a message.’

‘We need to take the clothes you were wearing yesterday for our forensics, to help eliminate evidence from the scene,’ he said.

‘But I wasn’t there,’ she looked from one to another of them, incredulous, wounded.

‘Your husband will have carried material from home, from you,’ Janine explained. ‘It’s just standard procedure. We can take them when we leave.’

Lesley sat down, folded her arms across herself.

‘How long had you been married to Matthew?’ Janine saw the tears start in her eyes and heard the choked sob. ‘I’m sorry, Lesley. I realise how intrusive some of the questions might seem but we have to ask them.’

Lesley nodded, wiped at her eyes and sniffed. ‘Nine years. I gave up college to marry him.’

‘And how would you describe your relationship?’

Janine heard the chatter of magpies from outside, loud in the quiet intense atmosphere of the room. Lesley Tulley struggled to speak.

‘I’m sorry,’ Janine apologised again. ‘We’re nearly finished.’

‘He was a good man,’ her voice trembled.

‘Nine years is a fair while,’ said Richard. ‘There must have been some ups and downs?’

‘We were fine, happy,’ she broke down. ‘I loved him, I loved him so much.’

Janine swallowed hard, moved by the woman’s plight but determined to remain unruffled – at least on the outside.

Janine stretched, eased the seat-belt round and clipped it shut. ‘We need to have another look later.’ Before she could turn the engine on a loud, rendition of The Birdie Song chirruped electronically through the car.

Both Janine and Richard waited, each assuming it was the other’s phone.

‘Oh, God!’ Janine scrabbled for hers. ‘Kids!’ she hissed. They were always messing about changing her ringtone.

She listened while a triumphant Butchers related his news.

‘Yes!’ She turned to Richard, her eyes alight. ‘Butchers. We’ve an eyewitness. Saw a lad running from the scene. Time’s good and the description fits Ferdie Gibson.’

‘We could go for a line-up?’

‘Let’s see whether Ferdie will come in tomorrow afternoon?’

‘He’ll probably tell us where to stick it.’

‘Might see it as a chance to get us off his back?’ She said. ‘Who knows how a mind like that works. Probably does shifts.’ She spoke back into the phone. ‘Butchers, see if the afternoon would suit Mr Vincent?’

‘He’s not a well man, boss.’

‘Well, tell them to treat him like cut glass. Don’t want him pegging out before he gets to the station.’

*****

‘Nearly there,’ Jade encouraged her mam. Who had gone all quiet again and was walking so slowly.

‘I know where we’re going, Jade,’ she snapped.

Jade said nothing. She was thirsty and she wanted a drink of fizzy. Sometimes Nana didn’t have any and Jade had water or tea, dead milky with three spoons of sugar. They turned into Nana’s street and Jade darted ahead. She could run really fast, nearly as fast as Carice who was the fastest in her year. She ran all the way to Nana’s, seventy-six.

‘Like the trombones’ Nana always said. It was from a song about a band. Not a pop band, a band like the Boy’s Brigade one that sometimes went down the road. All dressed in blue and playing things and kids at the back with no uniforms marching anyway.

She knocked on the door then pushed. Nana left the latch off when they were coming, in case she didn’t hear them.

‘Nana,’ Jade called.

‘Hello,’ her voice sang out from the back. Jade found her in the kitchen. Jade sniffed, there was something in the oven.

Nana beamed, held out her arms and gave her a hug. She smelt of cigarettes and mints and baking. ‘How’s my little jewel?’

‘Thirsty.’

‘I’ve no pop but there’s Lemon Barley or water. Where’s yer mam?’

‘Coming. Lemon Barley.’

‘You know where everything is.’ Nana let her do it.

Jade pulled herself up to reach across the sink for the bottle. Heard Mam come in. ‘It’s freezing out there.’ Scrape of the chair across the floor. Jade wondered what was in the oven. Pies? Or belly pork and Yorkshire puddings? Or maybe hot pot? She poured some cordial in the glass.

‘I’nt it awful,’ Nana said to Mam, ‘that murder, that Mr Tulley. They showed your allotments, on the news. They haven’t caught anybody yet, then?’