Sins of the Fathers (10 page)

Hewitt didn’t know how or even where Bruce Weldon had made his pile, but he had no doubt that the pile was substantial. This was the second time since the tragedy at Moor Edge cottage that he had driven through those smoothly oiled electronic gates: he had been impressed the first time when he had asked Weldon about his contacts with Gordon Christie as an odd-jobbing mechanic, and he was still impressed, as he got out of the car, to be met by Weldon himself, in riding gear, striding across the gravel to face him, his crop tapping rhythmically against his glossy boots as he approached, followed by two black labradors who snuffled at Hewitt’s uniform trousers wetly, but amiably enough, but cowered away when Weldon called them off more sharply than Hewitt thought was strictly necessary.

‘Constable Hewitt,’ Weldon said. ‘What can I do for you? Have you found Gordon Christie yet?’

‘No, we haven’t, sir,’ Hewitt said. ‘We’re still looking, as far as I know.’

Weldon glanced up at the high fells which were visible beyond the stone wall and a stand of rowan and birch that had been planted to the north of the property as a wind break.

‘There’s a lot of room up there to hide yourself if you really try,’ he said. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m just off out for a hack. What can I do for you?’

‘Well, I don’t suppose it’s anything really, sir, but we had a call from someone in the village this morning saying they thought they’d heard gunfire last night. In this direction, they reckoned. I don’t suppose you heard anything yourself, did you?’

‘I didn’t,’ Weldon said shortly. ‘But the walls of this place are bloody thick. They knew how to build in the old days, even if they didn’t have a clue how to keep a place like this heated. I was watching a film last night and went to bed about eleven. I didn’t hear anything untoward. I expect it was someone out after foxes. It’ll be lambing time soon enough.’

‘In the house by yourself, sir, were you?’ Hewitt persisted.

‘Just me and the dogs,’ Weldon said shortly. ‘I don’t keep live-in help. Just a housekeeper and a cleaner who come in daily.’

‘Right,’ Hewitt said. ‘And your son’s still away, is he? I wanted a word with him about his car…’

‘I’ve spoken to him about that,’ Weldon said, his impatience becoming more obvious. ‘He reckoned a friend of his left the car there for a joke. He’d parked it at the Fox and walked home because he’d had a few. You should approve of that.’

‘Well, ask him to give me a call to confirm all that, would you sir, when he gets back? Just for our records. He’ll be back soon, will he?’

‘I’ve really no idea,’ Weldon said, and Hewitt wondered if he had imagined the faintest flicker of anxiety in his eyes. ‘Stuart lives here but I’m not his keeper. He comes and goes as he pleases. Doesn’t tell me what he’s up to half the time. Now can I get on with my morning, please? I’ve a friend waiting for me at the stables in Broadley. I’m already late.’

‘Right, sir,’ Hewitt said, making his way back to his panda car slowly while he cast an admiring eye over the immaculate frontage of the old house, the sparkling panes of glass in the mullioned windows reflecting back the
morning’s grey clouds and an occasional gleam of weak sunshine. He drove out of the gates, closely followed by Weldon, with the dogs on the back seat of his latest model 4x4, and watched in his mirror as the gates slowly swung shut behind them. Weldon overtook him in the village and roared off down the hill towards the town while Hewitt pulled up outside the shop and called in to his station.

‘Summat odd about these gunshots,’ he said to his sergeant. ‘I reckon CID will want to know. I spoke to Mr Bruce Weldon at the Old Hall, who said he’d heard nowt last night, watched a film and slept like a baby, he reckoned. But if you look closely at one of the downstairs front windows, I’d swear that there were two bullet holes in it. Now what’s that all about, d’you reckon?’

It was mid-afternoon by the time PC Hewitt’s report had filtered through to CID at Bradfield police
headquarters
and onto Sergeant Kevin Mower’s desk. He took it straight into DCI Thackeray.

‘Worth a trawl, guv?’ he asked.

‘What do we know about Weldon? Anything?’ Thackeray asked.

‘Nothing on record,’ Mower said. ‘I checked. The son’s had a few brushes as a young lad, public order offences, one assault, obviously had a drink problem at one time, but nothing for years now. I had a word with Hewitt to see what he knew about them but apparently Staveley gossip just laughs at the father’s efforts at being a country gent – the green wellies, the riding, the dogs. He seems to fancy that being lord of the manor goes with owning the biggest property for miles around, but no one takes him seriously. They take his money when it’s offered for the church roof or computers for the school, and otherwise ignore him.’

‘Do we know where the money comes from?’

‘He claims to be a retired businessman. Hewitt reckoned he made a packet in Manchester, but he doesn’t know how. Stuart Weldon doesn’t seem to work either, although he’s always got a number of flash cars on the go, some of them top of the range sporty numbers. A Lamborghini amongst them at one time, allegedly, though that seems a bit unlikely.’

‘Well, I think it’s worth asking Greater Manchester if they know anything about Weldon. If there’s any suspicion he’s living on the proceeds of crime we can take it further, look at his accounts, and the rest. We still don’t know where Gordon Christie was getting large sums of cash from. And you could go up and have a look at these alleged bullet holes. See what you think.’

‘Right, guv,’ Mower said. But when he and DC Omar Sharif returned from a sortie to Staveley later in the afternoon, it was only to report a number of frustrating negatives. Weldon had not been at home when they had arrived, although the motherly looking housekeeper had let them in willingly enough and even shown them into the sitting room where Hewitt had thought he saw damage to the window. But when Mower, who barely knew a daffodil from a petunia, had stood apparently admiring the garden outside while in fact inspecting the small panes of the windows, he had found nothing unusual except a single rectangle of glass held in place by putty much softer and newer than the rest. In response to Mower’s inquiries, the housekeeper confirmed that she had heard no shots because she had left Weldon’s house as usual soon after six.

‘You had a broken window,’ he had said mildly to the woman as she stood close behind him, and watched him press his thumbnail lightly into the soft putty.

‘We think it was cracked by gravel thrown up by one of
the cars,’ she said, with an easy smile. ‘The glazier came to mend it this morning. They’re very quick if it’s anything to do with security.’

‘So when do you think it happened?’ Mower persisted.

‘Well, I only noticed it this morning, but it could have been any time over the last couple of days. I cleaned the windows on Monday but Mr Weldon generally opens the curtains before he goes to bed so I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed.’

‘But surely he would,’ Sharif had broken in quickly. ‘A broken window’s not something you’d miss, is it?’

‘I noticed it this morning and sent for the glazier straight away,’ the housekeeper said firmly. ‘Mr Weldon hadn’t mentioned it, and I didn’t bother him with such a little thing. He was in a hurry to go out. He leaves the general running of the house to me.’

‘You don’t live in, do you?’ Mower had asked.

‘No, I come up every day. I live over Wilton way. I drive up, work and get off home again. I’ve a family of my own to look after. I don’t want to be at anyone’s beck and call all hours.’

‘So you wouldn’t have heard these shots we’re interested in?’

‘Oh, no, I go home at six. Mr Weldon didn’t mention anything, though. I expect it was someone out shooting vermin. It’s surprisingly countrified round here, you know, although we’re so close to Bradfield and the motorway. That’s why Mr Weldon likes it, I think. He and Mr Stuart travel quite a lot.’

‘Right,’ Mower had said. ‘And Stuart Weldon’s travelling now, I understand?’

‘I believe so,’ the housekeeper said. ‘He’s always off somewhere. I’ve not seen him for t’best part of a week
now. But that’s not unusual. They keep themselves to themselves, the two of them. I get on with my job and they get on with their affairs. Best way, I always think, with this sort of job. You don’t want to get too involved, do you? I don’t, any road.’

‘Did you know Gordon Christie? The man whose family were shot? I believe he did some work for Mr Weldon.’

The woman shook her head slowly.

‘I was thinking about that when I heard. A terrible business, wasn’t it? I think I did see him when he came to do some work on the mowers last summer, but I don’t think I’d recognise him if I bumped into him in the street. I don’t take much notice of what goes on with the outdoor staff. I’ve got enough to keep me busy indoors.’

And with that Mower had had to be content. But when he and Sharif were back in the car and heading down the steep hill towards the centre of Bradfield, he glanced at his companion.

‘Did you believe her?’ he had asked.

Sharif shook his head. ‘I might have done,’ he said. ‘She seems straightforward enough. But when you two were over by the window I noticed something else. Right opposite the window there were two patches of new paint on the wall. Just where a couple of shots would have knocked lumps out of the plaster. The housekeeper may not know owt about it, but I reckon someone took a couple of pot shots through that window, maybe at someone inside. And Mr Bruce Weldon obviously doesn’t want anyone to know about it.’

‘And the question then is whether an honest man would be as reticent as that,’ Mower had said thoughtfully. ‘I think the Weldons merit a closer look after all.’

The photograph was spread across three columns of the front page of the
Globe
in colour which was, in reality, no colour at all: a pale face with a bandaged head against a white pillow with only the blue of the half-open eyes to indicate that Emma Christie was no longer quite as deeply asleep as she had been for almost a week. But the picture, and its accompanying headline ‘I want my mummy’ exploded like a grenade amongst Bradfield’s police and hospital managers and reverberated around the newsroom of the
Gazette
where Ted Grant was apoplectic at being out-foxed by Vince Newsom. ‘How the hell did he get that?’ was the question on everybody’s lips to which there was no obvious answer. Vince Newsom, whose by-line graced the exclusive story, was keeping his head down this morning, if he was still in Bradfield at all.

‘Did anyone see him on the ward?’ DCI Michael Thackeray demanded of DC Val Ridley when she responded to his summons to his office. Sergeant Kevin Mower watched proceedings from the back of the room where he half-perched on the windowsill as if distancing himself from what was going on.

‘Apparently not,’ Val, who had just returned from the hospital halfway through the morning, said defensively. She looked even paler and more tense than usual and
Mower felt a niggle of anxiety himself as he realised how this case was taking its toll in unexpected ways.

‘It was very busy in there yesterday,’ Val went on. ‘There’d been a bad smash on the M62 and they had two patients brought in around teatime. It’s not impossible to go in and out without being noticed. The nurses are often too stressed out to notice who’s coming and going. They have more important things to do.’

‘And we had no one there? You haven’t set a rota up yet?’

‘The doctors didn’t think it was worth it yesterday. She’d slipped back into the coma. I went in after work for half an hour about six, but she seemed deeply unconscious then. You said…’

‘Yes, I know what I said,’ Thackeray came back quickly. ‘I said take the doctors’ advice. But what that means is that Newsom could have walked in and out yesterday pretty well any time without being challenged. He must have had this photograph by yesterday evening for it to appear in this morning’s paper.’ If he had learned nothing else from Laura Ackroyd, he thought, he had absorbed some knowledge of how newspapers were produced.

‘He could have done. But he may not have needed to,’ Val suggested. ‘He might have paid someone else to take pictures, someone on the staff maybe. Someone who could wait for a good moment and snap her when her eyes were open.’

‘Is the child actually conscious or not?’ Thackeray asked angrily. ‘Or is this stuff in the
Globe
a complete invention?’

‘She’s not really conscious,’ Val said. ‘She’s opening her eyes occasionally but she’s not actually saying anything coherent yet. Just mumbling. The doctors aren’t that optimistic, really. The
Globe
’s just making things up.’

‘Surprise me,’ Thackeray said with unusual venom. ‘Anyway, get the hospital security people on the case, can you Val? They should be able to keep the Press out, at least. And we’ll take over as soon as there’s a chance she can tell us something useful.’

‘I suppose the upside is that the publicity may flush some relatives out of the woodwork,’ Val Ridley offered. ‘I can’t understand why she’s still all alone in there. She must have some other family. I don’t know why no one’s come forward.’ She sounded slightly distraught at the thought.

‘It’s probably because as far as we can see Gordon Christie doesn’t exist officially,’ Kevin Mower offered from his slightly detached vantage point against the windowsill. ‘Or any of the rest of the family, for that matter. Social services haven’t been able to find a birth certificate for Emma, which implies that they’re not really called Christie at all. Granny is hardly likely to come running to the rescue if she doesn’t even recognise the child’s name, is she? The question then arises as to what or who Gordon Christie was going to such lengths to hide from. And whether, in the end, someone caught up with him.’

‘They’ve still not identified the body in Manchester?’ Val asked.

‘The latest is that they’ve found some possibly usable DNA samples from it, which they may be able to match with samples we can provide from the Christie’s house – hairs from his hairbrush, that sort of thing,’ Thackeray said. ‘But it will take time. Days, if not weeks. So we still don’t know if Gordon Christie’s dead or alive.’

‘So we keep looking?’ Kevin Mower asked. ‘On the assumption he’s still out there somewhere.’

‘I’ll talk to the super this afternoon about issuing the
photograph. That should help,’ Thackeray said. ‘We can’t assume he’s dead on the evidence of what was in that car. And if he isn’t dead, he may well still have a weapon. So yes, we keep looking for Gordon Christie. He’s either a deranged killer himself or the victim of a particularly vicious killer who’s wiped out most of his family. Either way he’s not likely to be very rational and, with a gun in his hand, he could be very dangerous. I want him found.’

Laura Ackroyd drove out of town to Staveley with a feeling of familiarity. As she had hoped, her discovery of pictures of the Christie family at the previous summer’s school fête had gone down well enough with Ted Grant, in spite of his early morning tantrum at being scooped by Vince Newsom’s coup on the front page of the
Globe
. Slightly to Laura’s surprise, though, Ted had decided not to run the
Gazette
’s photographs immediately, but to send Laura back up to the village to research a long feature for the following day.

‘Get me quotes from the family friends, try to get hold of the kids who were at school with Emma, I want to know what people feel when summat like this happens in their community, you know the sort of thing. Find out if the funerals are going to be in the village church and if the school will close for the day. All that background stuff.’

‘Right,’ Laura had said, without too much enthusiasm.

‘And when you’ve got the lie of the land brief Phil and he’ll organise some pics to go with these.’ Ted gestured at the shots taken the previous summer. ‘Before and after the tragedy, that sort of thing.’

‘What are the police saying about their search for Gordon Christie?’ Laura had asked Bob Baker, the crime reporter, who had also been called in for this particular
discussion. He had looked at her oddly, and she knew she had carelessly asked the wrong question.

‘I thought you’d be up to date on that, in your position,’ Baker had said with a smirk. Laura flushed slightly and did not pursue the point. There might have been a time when Michael Thackeray would have discussed his problems with her, but for the moment those times seemed to be over, and the reminder turned her cold inside. And as Baker followed her back into the newsroom at the end of the meeting, she realised she might have betrayed far more than she had intended.

‘Cooling off a bit, is it?’ Baker whispered in her ear. ‘Couldn’t have anything to do with Vince Newsom turning up again, could it? He told me about the thing you two used to have going. Smart cookie, Vince. You could do worse. I’d really like to know how he got that picture of little Emma, wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s an awful picture,’ Laura said. ‘It breaks every rule in the book. And I’ve about as much interest in Vince Newsom as I have in something that crawled out from under a stone.’

‘Right,’ Baker said, with a smile which was closer, Laura thought, to a sneer. ‘I’ll tell him that then, shall I, next time I see him?’

‘If he’s stupid enough to still be hanging around Bradfield after this morning’s effort, you can tell him anything you like,’ Laura had said as she packed her tape recorder into her bag and pulled out her car keys. She turned her back on her tormentor, but Baker could not resist the last word.

‘I’ll give Vince your love then, shall I?’ He had laughed uproariously at his own joke as Laura turned away, but as she drove out of town she was still thinking far more about
her own problems than she was about her assignment. She desperately needed someone to talk to but Vicky Mendelson was still away, and her grandmother – who in any case had always maintained a sceptical detachment from her relationship with ‘her policeman’ – was in Portugal on a visit to Laura’s parents and a much needed rest in the sunshine. She felt suddenly alone and vulnerable in the very place she had always regarded unequivocally as home.

‘Damn you, Michael,’ she said to herself as she pulled into the deserted car park at the Fox and Hounds. She got out of the car and slammed the door with a satisfactory thud, a substitute, she knew, for a well-aimed kick at her increasingly exasperating lover. ‘Damn and blast you.’

She glanced around. It was a cold morning and a light rain was falling, casting a steely sheen across pavements and roofs but blotting out the hills beyond the huddle of houses and cottages. Most people, she guessed, would be indoors if they were at home at all. But a light shone through the misted window of the shop, and the door of the pub was open. She decided to tackle Gerry Foster first, but when she went into the bar there were no customers in sight, nor even anyone behind the bar. She took one of the high stools at the counter and cleared her throat to attract attention.

Eventually a woman emerged from the rear of the bar without much evident enthusiasm for her solitary customer. Laura asked her for a coffee, was told it was not available and settled for an orange juice instead.

‘Is Gerry around?’ she asked when the glass was put in front of her and the woman had closed the till with a heavy hand.

‘He’s out,’ the woman said. ‘Who wants him, any road?’
Laura explained who she was and the woman’s pale features under straggly blonde hair, became even more tense.

‘Gerry’ll not have anything to say to the
Gazette
,’ she said.

‘He seemed happy enough to chat last time I spoke to him,’ Laura said.

‘Oh, he did, did he?’ the woman said as if that did not surprise her.

‘Are you Mrs Foster?’ Laura persisted.

‘For my bloody sins,’ the woman said. ‘Janine. They say the wife’s the last to know, don’t they? I expect the news’ll be in t’bloody
Gazette
next, will it? Everyone else seems to know about it. P’raps you’d like to print an advertisement, would you?’

‘Sorry?’ Laura said, taken aback by this unexpected tirade. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You mean you’re not here to ask him about his little fling wi’ Linda bloody Christie? Confessions of murdered woman’s lover? All over t’front page? Isn’t that what you’ve got in mind?’

Astonished by this, Laura took a sip of orange juice to give herself time to collect her thoughts. Dawn Brough’s vague suspicions, which she had passed on to Thackeray as no more than that, must have turned out to be accurate after all.

‘I’m sorry, Janine,’ she said. ‘I really didn’t know about that.’

‘Well. You’re t’only one for miles around, then,’ Janine said wildly.

‘Will your husband be back soon?’ Laura asked cautiously.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Mrs Foster snapped. ‘He buggered off this
morning after we had a blazing row and I’ve no idea where he’s gone. He’s left me to open up on my own and there’ll be no food at lunchtime if he’s not back to mind the bar. He’s turning into a waste of space, is Gerry. It’s been the same since he came out of the army. Can’t settle to owt for five minutes. This is the third time we’ve tried to run a business and it’ll be t’last as far as I’m concerned.’

‘D’you think he’s blaming himself for what happened to the Christies?’ Laura asked quietly, knowing all too well the coruscating effects of guilt when a child has died.

‘I’ve no bloody idea,’ Mrs Foster said again. ‘And I can’t say I really care. He’s made his bed, he’ll have to bloody lie on it, won’t he. But he’ll be doing it without me, the way we’re going.’

‘Did you know Linda Christie?’ Laura asked.

‘By sight, that’s all,’ Mrs Foster said. ‘I knew her husband, and a right miserable beggar he was an’ all. Pity is he didn’t turn the gun on himself first off. I can’t say that would have surprised me at all.’

Laura sipped her juice with a sigh. She would not write about Linda Christie’s extra-marital affairs although she knew if Vince Newsom got hold of the same information he would not share or even understand her scruples. But the vision of a deeply depressed man whose suicide would apparently not have surprised his neighbours was a haunting one. She wondered why no one in the village had thought to offer him any help before he cracked so irretrievably.

‘It’s not something I really need to know for the piece I’m writing, Janine. What I’m trying to find out is what effect something like these shootings has on a village like Staveley. Does it affect trade, somewhere like this, for instance? Do people come to their local to talk about it?’

‘Well, I can tell you that, any road,’ Janine Foster said with a grim smile. ‘Our regulars have abandoned us and the place has been packed full of gawpers, coming up to look at the Christie’s house. There’s a pile of flowers outside the front gate, I’m told, but I don’t reckon they’ve been left by anyone from t’village. What’s the point of leaving teddy bears for dead children? It’s just these ghouls who pop in and out, peering in folk’s windows, taking photographs. It’s like living in one of those reality shows on telly. And you’re just another version of that, any road, aren’t you? Give the public a few extra snippets in case they can’t get up here in person? It’s disgusting, if you ask me. Why can’t you leave us be?’ It had obviously not needed the
Gazette
’s two-penn’orth to bring the horror tourists out in force, Laura thought, and felt faintly relieved at that.

‘I’m sorry you feel like that,’ Laura said. ‘But people do need to know some of the details when something as horrific as this happens. And it’s better if it’s in the paper rather than through gossip. I don’t think the interest will die down till they’ve found Gordon Christie. Or even till after the trial, if there is one. People must still be very worried, especially in the village, if they think he’s still out there somewhere with a gun.’