Darkness, Darkness (30 page)

Great times they’d had, the two of them, during the strike, haring around those back lanes, the police, like as not, in pursuit; sticking it to them at the pithead gates, bastards from the Met waving twenty-pound notes in their faces, bragging about their overtime. One copper’s helmet he’d knocked off with a half-brick, clean as sending over a coconut at Goose Fair that time they’d travelled down to Nottingham, Danny and himself, driving home in the early hours afterwards, half-pissed and happy, careful not to get stopped for speeding, no more able to walk a straight line than thread a sodding needle.

He missed him, that was the truth of it.

Thought of him not so long ago when that Jenny’s body was dug up in Bledwell Vale. Fancied her rotten, Danny had. Never quite seen it himself. Married, three kids. Who’d want it after all that? He’d done his best to get Danny to tell him what she was like, mind – you know, doing it – but he never would.

‘True love, then, is it?’ he’d tease him, and Danny would tell him to fuck off and clip him round the back of the head.

But perhaps that’s what it was. What it had been.

Aside from what he saw on TV, blokes moping around and making fools of themselves, Steve wouldn’t know true love if it jumped up and bit him in the backside. Didn’t want to. Messed with your head, that’s what it did. Wayne, for instance, poor bastard, what it had got him into . . . but he didn’t want to think about that either.

He was out by the van, the carburettor in pieces on an old tea towel, when the car drew up and the woman got out from behind the wheel, black as the ace of spades and tall. The man with her, broad-shouldered, bulky, the pair of them heading straight towards him. The woman, he didn’t know, couldn’t tell, but the man, the way he walked, a copper for sure.

A second car now, at the end of the street: blue and yellow squares of the South Yorkshire police.

‘Steven Rowland?’ She flipped open the small wallet she was holding in her hand. ‘Detective Inspector Catherine Njoroge, Nottinghamshire Police.’

‘Nottinghamshire, what’s that . . .?’

He saw her eyes drifting past him towards the van.

‘This isn’t about the insurance? You’ve not come all the way for . . .?’

But he could read it in her eyes. The man’s, too.

‘We’d like to ask you some questions . . .’

He scarcely heard the rest. Two uniformed officers were approaching slowly now along the far side of the street, all the time theirs to take.

He felt sick.

‘It’s about her, isn’t it? That’s what this is.’

‘Her?’ Catherine said.

‘Donna. Donna Crowder. Who else?’

An interview room was made available for them at the force headquarters on Snig Hill, one of the South Yorkshire team sitting in. Their case, but content for now to let Catherine make the running, the final kudos theirs not hers. Rowlands had barely been cautioned before it had all come pouring out. How many times over the past years had he rehearsed this story? In his sleep or wide awake and staring out, isolated, into the dark? The words tumbling over one another now, a dam let loose.

‘Slow down, slow down,’ Catherine said. ‘Start over from the beginning.’

She checked for the second time since his arrest that he didn’t want a solicitor present. When she’d told him he could make one phone call, he’d looked back at her vacantly, not quite understanding. Who on the good earth would he call?

‘We’d both been drinking,’ he said, starting over. ‘The night it happened. They’d had this row earlier, Wayne and Donna. ’Bout her goin’ off clubbing in Sheffield with her mates. When we met up I could see he was still angry. Near got into a fight over nothing with this bloke in the pub. Bloke, he was someone I knew, let it go. Wayne settled down a bit then, seemed to. Went on somewhere else, somewhere else after that. Time I dropped him off, his old man’s place, he was off again. Who did she think she was? What he wasn’t going to do to her when he saw her next. Wanted me to drive round till we found her, meet her and her mates, maybe, off the last bus. Either that or go down to Sheffield. Forget it, I said, you’ll never find her anyway. Course, thinking about it later, I wish I had. Gone with him, I mean. Things might’ve turned out different than they did.’

‘What happened then?’ Catherine said. ‘After you dropped him off?’

‘I went back to mine, started getting ready for bed – couldn’t stop thinking about it. Wayne going off, half-pissed, going crazy. I’d seen him like that once or twice before. I got dressed again, drove down there. His old man’s car had been parked up outside the house and it weren’t there any more. Stupid bastard, I thought. Drove round for a bit, looking for him, bus station and that, then went out on to the Sheffield road.’

He stopped, rubbed the knuckles of his right hand along the tabletop hard.

‘I didn’t see him at first. Across the other side of the road where it runs along by the canal. Drove right past. Turned round first chance I got. He was just standing there, not doing anything. Just standing. At first I thought he was on his own, but then I saw her. Close by the canal, the canal path. Stretched out. You could see the blood, sort of leaking from the back of her head. The way she was laying there, you could see . . . see, you know . . .’

He blinked.

‘There was this piece of wood down by Wayne’s feet. Part of an old oar, paddle, something like that. Blood at the end. Dark. Oh, Christ, Wayne, I said, and I could see he was crying. Not making any noise, just like some kid, crying. Frightened, I s’pose. I told him to go and sit in the car. Checked to make sure she wasn’t breathing, Donna, covered her as best I could. Waited till I thought Wayne had calmed down enough to drive and told him to follow me back into town. The piece of wood I took home with me and burned. Don’t say anything, I told him, not to anyone. Never mentioned it to me again, not a word.’

‘
YOU EVER GET
a tune stuck in your head?’ Resnick said. ‘No idea how it got there or why?’

Catherine smiled softly. ‘Only all the time.’

He’d woken that day with it firm in his mind and been unable to shake it free. ‘I Can’t Get Started’, Mingus at the piano, not his usual instrument, hesitant, stumbling, like a man searching for the exit in a darkened room. He knew how he felt. Things that would lurch into sight and then be gone.

Charlie Mingus, New York City, July 1963. The same month Philby had been revealed as the third man. Stuff that he remembered, useless, cluttering his mind.

They were in a café in an old industrial building on St James’s Street: high ceilings, white walls; veggie food, but neither of them had been hungry; wanting just coffee, space, a change of scene.

They’d questioned Steve Rowland about his friendship with Danny Ireland during the strike, days that had started early morning, often before dawn, driving down from Yorkshire in Steve’s van, Danny and maybe half a dozen others in the back, off to join the picket at Silverhill, Manton, Clipstone; asked him about the couple of afternoons they’d worked, Danny and himself, at the back of 20 Church Street, digging down around new drainage pipes, clearing the ground for where the foundations, the new concrete would be set. Wanting to know how close to Christmas had that been; how close to the date of Jenny Hardwick’s disappearance, how far away?

When asked about Danny’s relationship with Jenny, Rowland had reckoned it mostly went off inside his head. Had he ever known them to argue? Only one time he could remember: a bit of a row in the street; nothing important, at least it hadn’t seemed so at the time.

The $64,000 question next: if Danny had ever ended up in a similar kind of situation as Wayne Cameron had with Donna Crowder, would Rowland have helped him out in the same way?

He hadn’t needed very much time to consider his answer.

‘Yes, prob’ly. Prob’ly would. But it’s all – what’s the word? Hypo-something.’

‘Hypothetical,’ Resnick offered.

‘That’s it, hypothetical. ’Cause he didn’t, did he?’

Asking then for another Pepsi; all that talking, making him thirsty.

And did they believe him? Much as they might have liked not to, the probability was, yes, they did.

Catherine finished her coffee. ‘Let me just go to the Ladies.’

Resnick waited out on the pavement. It was clouding over. The cold case team would be taking Rowland back through all the events surrounding Donna Crowder’s murder, taking a final statement prior to talking to someone from the CPS, determining which charges to bring against him. Perverting the course of justice? Accessory to murder?

‘“Sky is Falling”, Catherine said when she joined him. ‘That’s what I’ve been stuck with. Since I got out of the shower. Natalie Duncan. You know her at all?’

Resnick shook his head.

‘You should. Comes from Nottingham. Great voice. You’d like her.’

When they got back to Snig Hill there was a message from John McBride. Danny Ireland’s body had been found in a remote area of the West Highlands.

‘Some climbers came across him,’ McBride told them later. ‘Been there several days by the look of things. Less than a quarter-mile, if that, away from shelter. Climbers’ bothy. Poor visibility, didn’t see it. Likely never knew it was there. Either that or just too exhausted. There’ll be a post-mortem, but from the sound of it, most likely cause of death was hypothermia.’

‘Where does that leave us now?’ Catherine said, shaking her head.

‘About as lost as he was, poor bastard?’

Resnick turned away.

All dying, Charlie.

An echo, slight, beneath the piano music continuing to play somewhere deep inside his head.

JENNY MET HIM
in the pub close by the station. The instructions passed to her as she was leaving the Welfare, last minute, urgent. Peter Waites in the loop no longer. Not wanting to be. Instructions on a single sheet of paper, train tickets, cash in reserve, emergencies only. Where to go and when. What to do in case of something not working out as planned. Both paper and envelope she’d burned before hurrying along to Mrs Jepson and asking her to keep an eye on the kids until Barry was back off shift.

The man she’s meeting, the same as once before. Thirtyish, glasses, sweating a little, top button of his shirt unfastened behind his tie. Ring on his wedding finger, dull, forgotten. She doesn’t like being there on her own, not round King’s Cross, worried what people might think. On the game. But the bar’s crowded, thick with smoke.

‘You’ll have a drink,’ he says. His accent’s flat, normal, no accent at all.

‘Best not.’

He pushes back his cuff to look at his watch. ‘Plenty of time before your train.’

‘No, really.’

The suitcase is on the floor by his feet. Dark brown with a strap.

‘Suit yourself.’

The handle is smooth with use, still slightly warm from his hand.

‘You know the arrangement?’

But already she’s walking away. Self-conscious but doing her best to convince herself no one will notice anything out of the ordinary: a youngish woman, wisp of scarf, coat buttoned against the cold, making her way home.

At the entrance to the station, she buys a bar of chocolate, peppermint Aero, as a treat. A newspaper to read on the way.

She passes through the barrier, boards the train.

Not wanting to leave the suitcase with the others at the end of the carriage, she takes it with her to her seat. The man opposite offers to put it up on the rack for her, but it won’t quite fit.

‘I’ll keep it here,’ she says. ‘By my feet.’

At Nottingham, the station seems dark, as if the lights are only on half-power. After the usual rush for the exit, people anxious to catch their bus, not wanting to wait too long for a taxi, she’s left with a few last stragglers; a woman with kids, one that won’t stop crying, no more than a baby; a man in a wheelchair, one of the station staff pushing him towards the lift. Wait on the platform and someone will meet you. They’ll use your name, Jenny Hardwick. Just hand them the case, then it shouldn’t be too long a wait for your next train. There had been money for the taxi to Bledwell Vale.

She looks up and down the platform. Walks along to the stairs and waits. Comes back. Someone coming out of the Gents, tightening the belt on his raincoat. She looks at him expectantly, but he walks past. Up the steps and away.

How long has she been there?

Five minutes?

It seems longer.

She could get a cup of tea from the buffet, but it’s closed.

She paces, sits, paces again. The case is heavy but she doesn’t want to let it be.

One of the station staff, hovering. ‘All right, miss?’

‘Yes, yes. All right, thanks. Just waiting for a friend.’

He nods and continues on his way.

Her throat is dry and she’s sure he’s not coming. Something’s happened. Something unavoidable. Unavoidably detained. She puts the case down, holds her face in her hands. The instructions, in the event of this happening, are clear. Do nothing to draw attention to yourself, take the connecting train to Worksop, then a taxi to Bledwell Vale but an address not her own.

She checks the time on the screen overhead.

Platform 5.

Give it a few minutes longer, she tells herself. A handful of people come down the steps from the entrance, singly, together. A woman around her own age with dyed blue hair, laughing loudly at nothing in particular. A young man with a mohican. Two older men with briefcases, talking earnestly.

She hurries between them, up the steps, along and down, arriving moments before the train pulls in; finds a seat in the last carriage and closes her eyes. Inside, she’s shaking.

When the taxi pulls up outside 20 Church Street, it’s all she can do to prise herself from the seat. How easy to lean forward – sorry, she’s made a mistake, give the driver her own address.

Instead she slides the suitcase out on to the pavement and follows suit.

The key is where she’s been told it will be, beneath an empty plant pot to the right of the front door. Although it’s late, there are lights behind several curtained windows further along the street. The Peterson house is dark. Gone off to visit relatives; no danger of them coming back. Let yourself in and wait.