Darkness, Darkness (9 page)

It was the precursor of what would happen, more spectacularly, more worryingly, later.

On Monday 18 June some ten thousand miners, their numbers augmented by men who had been bussed in from as far off as Scotland and South Wales, had gathered near the entrance to the coke works and in the fields to either side. Arranged against them were four thousand police officers on foot, all with batons, many with Perspex shields; twenty-four dog handlers and forty-two mounted police.

Watching the television news that evening, Resnick was reminded of a scene from the film of
Henry V
they’d been shown when he was still at primary school: volley after volley of arrows soaring in a great arc through the sky, the sound of them like so many birds. Except here, instead of arrows, it was bottles, half-bricks, ball bearings, pieces of broken fence hurled like misshapen spears.

Horses charging headlong through a field of corn, their riders with reins held tight in one hand, a baton swinging from the other.

Men running as if for their lives.

Broken heads, blood-masked faces.

At the sight of a police officer standing over the crouched figure of a miner, striking him with his baton, again and again, Resnick had turned away, sickened, from the screen.

‘No two ways about it, Charlie,’ one of the Notts police who’d been present told Resnick later. ‘There was some – both sides mind – got right carried away. Lost control. A wonder more weren’t badly hurt than there was. Wonder nobody died.’

Surely that will end it, Resnick thought, said so to his team.

Surely now they’ll get together round the table, come to terms.

Surely . . .

Months on, leaves turning towards autumn, winter not so far behind, there was still no sign.

SO FAR, THE
search for Keith Haines’ missing person’s report had proved fruitless. Two boxes purporting to date back to a similar era had been found, waterlogged, in a basement storage space, their contents close to papier mâché, dandy for a project at the local junior school, but of neither use nor ornament to the investigation. Whether Haines’ report was amongst them, they had no sure way to know.

Haines himself had proved easier to track down, living for some time now in fenland north of Cambridge, a two-hour drive from where they were based.

‘Some kind of smallholding, that’s what it sounds like,’ McBride had said, favouring Catherine Njoroge with a jaundiced eye. ‘Market garden, something of the sort. What with that and Hardwick’s bloody allotment, case’s turning into
Gardeners
’ bloody
Question Time
.’

Sandford and Cresswell were busy locating as many of the Hardwicks’ former neighbours in Bledwell Vale as possible, setting up interviews; contact had been made with members of the local miners’ support group and a meeting arranged. The youngest of Barry and Jenny Hardwick’s children, Brian, was still proving elusive, but the address of the oldest, Colin, had been confirmed and he was due to be interviewed shortly.

After consultation with Martin Picard and the CPS, the coroner had agreed there was no longer anything to be gained from Jenny Hardwick’s skeletal remains and the Hardwick family had been told they could go ahead and set the funeral arrangements in place.

As for Geoff Cartwright, last heard of in Canada, the province of Saskatchewan – a vast area of prairie and forest, with most of its population living in the southern third, the remainder scattered far and wide – checks were still being made.

Needle, Resnick thought. Haystack.

Catherine had been distant but polite during the morning’s briefing, tight-lipped ever since.

‘You okay?’ Resnick asked as they were leaving.

‘Okay? Yes, why?’

‘I don’t know, I just thought . . . Maybe a bit under the weather.’

‘I’m fine. Fine.’

He left it at that. Whatever was affecting her, if it was something to do with the investigation, sooner or later she would take him into her confidence, he felt sure. If it was something else, something private, then that’s what it was, something else.

He leaned back in the passenger seat, happy to have Catherine drive, leaving him to his thoughts and the passing scenery, the land, beyond Peterborough, flattening out the closer they came.

At Downham Market they stopped for petrol, Catherine reparking the car at the far edge of the service station, stepping out on to the thin strip of grass for a cigarette.

According to the map, the road took them close by the path of the Little Ouse River, between Feltwell Anchor and Burnt Fen. All around was criss-crossed with drainage ditches, skimpy hedgerows that barely raised themselves above the ground, narrow lanes that seemed to lead nowhere, empty horizons, a paucity of trees.

‘God, Charlie, look at it . . .’

Resnick nodded. He had known a police officer, a detective inspector, who had moved here, this region, with his family, looking for space, fresh air, room for the kids to grow; years later, he could still find himself turned around, completely lost, within a stone’s throw of his home.

A quarter of a mile on, they realised they too had missed their turning; backtracked to what had seemed no more than a broken gateway leading into a field.

A few hundred yards along, beyond the remains of what had once been some kind of dwelling, a barn perhaps, the path broadened out and led up to a flat-roofed bungalow, an area of cultivated land behind. Twin greenhouses, reflecting back the blue-grey pallor of the sky, the low watery sun.

‘You know him, don’t you, Charlie? Haines?’

‘A little. Long time ago.’

‘Get on?’

‘After a fashion.’

Almost of necessity, he had met Keith Haines from time to time as the strike had progressed: local incidents that Haines, copper on the spot, had been called upon to deal with and whose reverberations had reached Resnick through one or other of his team and eventually brought the two men face to face. The seven-year-old child of a working miner who had spoken out strongly against the strike, and who had been pushed into a car on his way home from school, finally found twenty-four hours later, wandering, dazed and hungry, on the far side of the village. A fracas that had escalated beyond all control; a man, defending his property, left blind in one eye.

‘Maybe you should do the talking? At first, anyway.’

‘Better you, perhaps. Clean slate.’

As they got out of the car, a heron passed by low overhead, the slow flap of its wings clear in the surrounding silence.

Then the opening of a door, the clicking of a gate.

Haines walked towards them, favouring his left side, hand raised in greeting, two dogs – black Labrador retrievers of differing ages – following close behind.

‘Charlie, still in harness.’

‘Not exactly.’

Explanations, introductions.

‘Charlie for your bagman,’ Haines said to Catherine, ‘not go far wrong.’

They followed him inside, the dogs interested, pushing with their noses, busy with their tails.

The room was surprisingly large: stepping into it, the whole place seemed to expand. There were armchairs, wide, with well-stuffed arms, floral fabrics beginning to fade; tables, large and small, busy with seed catalogues, magazines. Half a dozen framed watercolours rose up, like a covey of ducks, along the far wall.

‘The wife’s,’ Haines said, following Catherine’s gaze. ‘She’s the artist round here. First prize five years running, local art show. Had to talk her into not entering in the end, give the others a decent chance.’

As if on cue, Haines’ wife came through from the kitchen. About the same age as Haines himself, same decade, grey hair in a loose bun, wattle of freckled skin on her upper arms, she wore a flowery apron over an equally flowery house dress. If she sat in one of those chairs, Resnick thought, she’d disappear.

Something about her jolted his attention, made him look twice: a recognition he couldn’t yet place.

‘This is Jill,’ Haines said proudly. ‘Artist, horticulturalist, gardener – all that out there, fruit and veg enough to feed a small army through the year, all down to her. I just sit here and watch the racing on TV, once in a while get to swing a spade, dig the occasional trench, heft a sack or two of manure.’

‘Keith, for heaven’s sake! Don’t pay him the least attention, please. A lot of nonsense. Showing off, that’s all it is. He does as much as anyone else. Couple of lads from the village help out from time to time but most of the heavy work’s down to him. Now, does everyone want tea? There’s a few scones, fresh out the oven. Let me see to all that while you get settled, and then I’ll be out of your way and you can talk.’

It was the eyes, Resnick realised, even as she turned away; small, bright, steely blue. She and her sister, they had the same eyes.

‘Once the strike was finally over,’ Haines was explaining to Catherine, ‘first thing on my mind, I don’t mind telling you, was to get away. Moving back into the village, Charlie’ll tell you, eh, Charlie, so much ill feeling, not’ve been easy. Clearin’ right away seemed best.’ He smiled a lopsided smile. ‘Never see another slag heap in my life, for all they’re mostly grassed over, not be too soon. It was Jill’s idea we ended up here, mind. She was the one with green fingers, like I say. Ambition. And with her sister gone, no sign of her coming back . . .’

‘Jill and Jenny,’ Catherine said, suddenly realising, surprised, ‘they’re sisters?’

‘Yes, thought you’d have known.’

We should have done, Catherine thought; someone should.

‘You must’ve known the family well, then?’ she said, recovering.

‘Not really. I mean, Jill and Jenny, they were close, of course. Sisters, after all. Somewhere like the Vale, fallin’ over one another’s feet all the time, or so you’d have thought. But Jill had a job down in Nottingham, not always full-time, but more or less, and there’s Jenny with a husband and three kids – well, you can see, not living out one another’s pockets, not at all.’

‘You and Jill, you were together when her sister disappeared?’

‘Not together together, if you get my meaning. Jill had been living with her mum and dad – hers and Jenny’s – their house, really, I suppose. Then, spring of eighty-four, they got this little place just outside Mablethorpe. Ingoldmells. Her dad, he was having problems with his chest and they thought, you know, sea air . . . Wasn’t till after that Jill and I started getting to know one another a bit better. So much flak going down I’d had to move out of village by then. Not always welcome back, either.’

He turned his head. Jill had just appeared in the doorway with cups of tea and warm scones on a tray, butter, home-made blackberry jam.

‘Not easy, was it, love, eh? Seeing one another back then. Strike on. Not without a bit of sneaking round.’

‘If you say so.’ A faint blush on her cheeks, Jill passed around cups, plates. ‘If there’s anything else you need, just give me a shout.’

‘Why don’t you stay?’ Catherine said. ‘Join us.’

‘Oh, you know how it is,’ Jill said, straightening, backing away. ‘A hundred and one things to do. Besides, police business . . .’ She looked towards Resnick. ‘He’s been fair made up you were coming, you know. Chance to talk over old times.’

Resnick smiled appropriately. Jill turned and closed the door at her back.

‘Jenny’s husband,’ Resnick said.

‘Barry?’

‘You got on?’

‘Well enough, I suppose. Not that we spent a lot of time socialising. If at all.’

‘Knowing the family, though,’ Catherine said, ‘even a little, when you were tasked with carrying out the inquiry into Jenny’s disappearance, you didn’t see that as putting you in an awkward position? A hindrance, maybe?’

Haines shook his head. ‘I was there, wasn’t I? Johnny on the spot. My job, had to be. As for knowing them, no, helped not hindered, I’d’ve thought.’

Carefully, Catherine split her scone and added butter, a lick of jam. ‘Your report,’ she said. ‘So far we’ve had no luck tracking it down.’

‘Landfill by now, most likely,’ Haines said.

‘Maybe you could give us the gist of what was in it? Any conclusions you might have come to.’

‘You know all the basics, I suppose? Dates and the like?’

Catherine nodded to say that they did.

‘Well, the gist, as you put it, the gist of it was – most likely scenario it seemed to me at the time – she’d done a runner. Gone off, had enough.’

‘And you thought that because . . .?’

Haines shrugged. ‘Attractive woman, still young, bright. Things between her and Barry – Jenny up on her hind legs, calling them as was working blacklegs and such while he was still pulling shifts – I doubt they had two civil words to say to each other. And that was without a few rumours flying round . . .’

‘Rumours?’

‘Word was she was having it off with one of the lads down from Yorkshire. Whether Barry got to hear of it, there’s no way of knowing, bar his say-so, but it’s difficult to believe he didn’t.’

‘He says not.’

‘Case of not wanting to, maybe.’

‘And was she?’ Catherine asked. ‘Having an affair? As far as you could tell?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. There was this young bloke, set his cap for her, no denying that. Too many witnesses agreed. Ireland, that was his name, Danny Ireland. Doncaster lad. Or Rotherham, was it? Should know, but I can’t be sure. Red hair, though, certain of that. Whether it all came to anything, anything more than wishfulness on his part, I couldn’t say.’

‘You heard his version of things?’

‘Danny? Oh, yes. Fancied her rotten, that’s what he said. Come right out with it. Barely get to sleep at nights for thinking ’bout getting into her knickers. Snatched a bit of a kiss once, but, that aside, reckoned she’d not give him the time of day.’

‘And you believed him?’ Catherine said.

‘Lads like that, bit of a chancer, not like to admit they’ve not had their end away without it were true. More the other way round. Still, he could have had his reasons, I suppose.’ He set down his cup. ‘Ireland – you might have come across him, Charlie. Any bells?’

Resnick shook his head. ‘Not right off.’

‘No possibility she’d run off with him?’ Catherine asked.