Sins of the Fathers (14 page)

‘That’s appalling.’ Laura’s outrage brought Thackeray back to the present with a jump.

‘So what’s going to happen, then?’ she asked. ‘You’ll never resolve it satisfactorily? You’ll simply have to settle for half the truth, or less? What sort of justice is that to that woman and her children? And everyone else in that village who’s been devastated by all this.’

‘There’s a distinct possibility that Gordon Christie is already dead,’ Thackeray said quietly. ‘You don’t know that either, officially. We’re waiting on forensics. But if the body that was found in his Land Rover turns out to be his, that’ll be the end of it. A quick inquest, no known motive for the violence, end of story.’

Laura looked at Thackeray in disbelief.

‘Covering up what, exactly?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe the case is just what it seems – the man flipped and shot his family.’

‘And maybe not,’ Laura said flatly. ‘You couldn’t leave it like that. There’s too many loose ends.’

‘If Special Branch or the spooks are involved, I may have to,’ Thackeray said.

‘I don’t believe this,’ Laura said. ‘I reckon someone in Staveley knows more than they’re saying about the Christies. Someone’s covering up. I’ll find out even if you can’t. I’ll go up there again tomorrow…’

‘Laura, don’t even think about it,’ Thackeray said
wearily. ‘Either there’s nothing at all to find out beyond what we already know, in which case you’d be wasting your time. Or there
is
something, and it’s far too dangerous for you to be asking questions. Leave it alone, Laura. This is one case you mustn’t interfere with. It’s far too risky.’

‘I want to write something about it,’ Laura said, her face taking on an obstinate look that Thackeray knew well. ‘If you can’t do any digging up at Staveley, I can. I’m sure I can find out what was going on. I can’t bear the thought of anyone getting away with anything with two children dead, and another one probably orphaned. You must understand that.’

Thackeray flinched at the spark of anger in her eyes. He had felt like that himself once but more and more felt that passion being leeched out of him by bureaucratic obstruction he did not understand.

‘I seriously thought of resigning this afternoon,’ he said. He pulled a piece of paper out of his inside pocket. ‘I got as far as writing the letter.’ He handed it to Laura and she read it in silence.

‘Oh, Michael,’ she said. ‘You can’t possibly end it all like that. You can’t just walk away.’ He took the paper from her and put it back in his jacket pocket.

‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll wait for the forensic results from Manchester and see where that leaves us. We’re in a sort of impasse anyway until we know whether or not the man in the Land Rover is Christie. As Jack Longley says, there’s plenty of other crime to be getting on with.’ He shrugged wearily.

‘You couldn’t possibly just junk your career over this,’ Laura said fiercely. ‘You’re too good at what you do.’

‘It wouldn’t be difficult right now,’ Thackeray said quietly.

Laura pulled a face but did not argue any further. She could see the tension in Thackeray and knew no way to defuse it. Sex used to be the answer, she thought, remembering the passion that had brought them together in the first place, but she no longer found that worked.

‘Do you want to eat now?’ she asked.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he said.

‘There’s no point in duplicating their inquiries.’ Superintendent Jack Longley’s expression was not one which left much room for argument and the sick feeling in Thackeray’s stomach intensified. He closed the brief report from Manchester police that Longley had handed him minutes earlier and took a deep breath, knowing he risked the super’s infrequent but fearsome anger if he argued any further. But somewhere here, he knew, there were lines which had to be drawn, markers which had to be put down, or his job would become impossible.

‘Manchester are happy with this, are they, sir?’ he asked. ‘They don’t want any help from this end? They don’t want us to help find the link there must be between their body and a vehicle belonging to Gordon Christie?’

Longley sighed heavily.

‘You’ve read the report,’ he said. ‘All the evidence points to this being gang-related and Manchester-based. The gun was one used in a Manchester killing, believed to be a contract shooting of a gang leader. It’s not the gun that killed the family in Staveley. True, we don’t know who the victim is yet. There’s no DNA match on the national database. But we do know it’s not Gordon Christie because there’s no match with his DNA either. On the two major issues, the gun and the body, there are no
connections between the murder in Manchester and the Christie shootings. Let Manchester get on with it, Michael. It’s not as if we’re short of other investigations, or
overloaded
with detectives sitting around with nowt to do. It’s a question of priorities and resources and that’s my decision. Scale it back.’

‘But this unknown victim just happened to die in Gordon Christie’s Land Rover.’ The two men stared at each other for a moment, both rigid with unspoken anger.

‘They’ll follow that up when they know who the victim is,’ Longley said, more temperately than Thackeray really expected. He knew how far he was pushing his luck. ‘If Christie abandoned the vehicle anyone could have picked it up. We’ll leave it to Manchester to pursue that. They’ll keep us informed. In the meantime, we’re still left with the problem of finding Christie. That’s our only priority now in this case. Our top priority, especially if he’s still got a gun.’

‘And this softly, softly approach has absolutely nothing to do with our friends in London?’

‘Never mind all that. Find Christie,’ Longley said. ‘Leave the rest alone.’

‘Not easy, without a photograph,’ Thackeray persisted. ‘A photo-fit, something to give the Press.’

‘I’ll pursue that higher up and let you know,’ Longley said.

‘Sir,’ Thackeray conceded, getting to his feet abruptly and spinning on his heel. He did not slam Longley’s door behind him but he might as well have done. His discontent was clear enough as he left the office and Longley sat for a moment in silence before picking up his telephone and asking to be put through to county headquarters to pass his own uneasiness on up the line. But what worried him
most was how close Michael Thackeray seemed to breaking point. And he wondered whether the strain written all over his DCI’s face was due solely to the unpleasantness of the deaths in Staveley, or to something deeper.

Kevin Mower watched Thackeray come down the stairs from Longley’s office with unfathomable eyes. He followed the DCI out of the main CID office and into his own without waiting to be invited, closed the door and leaned against it, feeling the wood press hard against his spine as Thackeray took his chair behind the desk, leaned back and closed his eyes.

‘Are you all right, guv?’ Mower asked. Thackeray opened his eyes again and offered the sergeant a slightly grim smile.

‘Not really,’ he said. He passed the file he had brought down from Longley’s office to Mower and pulled out his cigarettes. Mower could see that his hands were shaking.

‘The body in Manchester isn’t Christie,’ he said. ‘So we’re back to square one. Find the bastard. And leave the rest alone. Manchester will handle the shooting at their end. We haven’t the resources to waste time on looking at Christie’s background.’

Mower took the report and raised a sceptical eyebrow.

‘And what about the child?’ he asked. ‘Do we take the attempt to see her seriously? Or put it down to coincidence? I’ve got Sharif going through the hospital CCTV tapes to try to find whoever dumped the supposed Asian woman’s gear, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Do you know how many people go in and out of that place in a day?’

‘I can imagine,’ Thackeray said wearily. ‘Keep the watch on Emma Christie. I want to know as soon as she really can
talk. And we need to keep the Press away. Vince Newsom swears innocent on this one, but I don’t really believe him. He’ll try anything to get a story and he’s still around.’

‘And so are plenty of others, according to the Press office,’ Mower said. ‘Poor little Emma still seems to be a good story, by the tabloids’ standards.’

‘The
Gazette
won’t hold back either,’ Thackeray said wearily. ‘They’re sitting on a photograph of Christie the super’s asked them not to use, but Ted Grant’s not going to hold on for ever without a bloody good reason. Why should he? We’re making out this man could be dangerous if he’s alive and pulling our punches when it comes to finding him. It makes no sense. I feel as if I’m being asked to handle this case with one hand tied behind my back.’

‘So where now, guv?’

‘Well, we know now that at some point Christie and the Land Rover got separated, but we’ve no idea where. He may have driven it to Manchester himself, or abandoned it somewhere else and someone nicked it. But we know he must have left Staveley in it with the boy and it seems unlikely he’d head into Bradfield. He’d be much more likely to head west to get out of sight quickly, and the boy’s body was found in that direction, so talk to uniform and get the search on the moor roads extended as far as they can go. And circulate farmers and shepherds up there again. The sheep are in-bye at this time of year…’ He smiled faintly as Mower looked puzzled.

‘They bring them down from the high ground for the winter,’ he said. ‘To save them getting trapped in the snow. And to keep them fed during the bad weather.’

‘Right,’ Mower said, thinking that this was really more than he wanted to know about sheep.

‘Even so, someone might have seen some unusual movement up on the fells, tracks even. If this man really is ex-army he may fancy his survival skills even at this time of the year. But there’s a limit to the length of time you can survive up on the tops in this weather. Talk to as many people in the isolated farmsteads and hamlets as you can.’

‘He may be lying dead up there.’

‘That’s still a possibility,’ Thackeray said.

‘I’d still like to know who the hell he is,’ Mower grumbled.

‘We’d all like to know that, but until the spooks tell us – if ever – we may have to manage without that information. It doesn’t mean we can’t track him down. You can bank on that, at least.’

And to judge by the fury in Michael Thackeray’s eyes, Mower thought as he left the DCI’s office, his boss would not be averse to scrambling around the sodden moors and crags himself in search of this particular quarry. In fact it might make him feel much better.

After spending the morning reinvigorating the hunt for Gordon Christie, Kevin Mower picked up his leather jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and left the CID office alone. Outside police headquarters he pulled out his mobile phone and made a call. Laura Ackroyd answered almost immediately, sounding surprised to hear who was at the other end.

‘D’you fancy a quick drink?’ Mower asked.

Laura hesitated for a second, and then agreed to meet him in the Lamb, the pub closest to the
Gazette
office.

‘I haven’t much time,’ she said.

‘Nor me,’ Mower agreed. He broke the connection with a faint smile. There remained at the back of his mind the
conviction he had come to years ago that Laura Ackroyd deserved someone better than the morose and complex man he worked for who was apparently less willing to commit himself than he had ever been. Laura deserved fun and laughter and a good time, he thought, although he knew it was more than his career was worth to make such a suggestion to her. Romance with a senior officer’s partner had almost put paid to his prospects in the force once already, and he had no wish to repeat the experience which had brought him from the Met to this alien county, where his boss understood the over-wintering habits of sheep as well as he knew the predilections of the druggies and prostitutes on the run-down estates and backstreets of Bradfield.

‘In-bye,’ he muttered scornfully, as he crossed the town hall square and headed towards the Lamb. ‘What sort of a word is that?’

Laura was there before him, her copper hair pulled back severely and an anxious look in her green eyes.

‘Hi,’ she said without much enthusiasm. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You tell me? The DCI’s acting stressed out and you look the same.’

She shrugged and her face closed tight.

‘We’re okay,’ she said. ‘I meant why are we having this drink? Just for old times’ sake or is there something special?’

‘Gordon Christie,’ Mower said. ‘The boss is hunting him round the sheep folds of the Pennines without so much as a snapshot to go on.’

‘But Dawn Brough found you a picture, didn’t she? What’s the problem with that?’

‘Let’s just say it’s been mislaid, or so I’m told,’ Mower
said. ‘Funny how that happened after the funny fellers started taking an interest. Could you get me a copy of the one you found in the
Gazette
archive?’

‘Well, I’m sure Ted Grant will give Michael a copy if he needs it…’

‘No,’ Mower said quietly. ‘Not Ted to the DCI, just you to me, on the quiet. I need a copy and I’m not too keen to let anyone at the nick know I’ve got it.’

Laura looked at him in silence for a long time.

‘Don’t do anything silly, Kevin,’ she said at length, knowing she was echoing Thackeray’s warning to her of the evening before and that Mower was as unlikely to take any notice as she was herself.

‘Just a few inquiries,’ he said as lightly as he could manage. ‘Nothing desperate. I hate the idea of Christie getting away with this because the powers that be are locked in some sort of internal turf war of their own. I guess the DCI feels exactly the same but he’s stuck in the middle of it. I’ve got a bit more room for manoeuvre.’

Laura thought of Thackeray’s letter of resignation which, as far as she knew, he still had in his jacket pocket and she shivered suddenly.

‘It’ll be difficult for me to run a print off without anyone noticing,’ she said quietly. ‘What about email? Have you got a colour printer?’

‘Yes, that would be fine,’ Mower said. ‘I’ll give you my personal email address. I don’t want this going to the office.’ He wrote it down for her on a page from his notebook.

‘Delete the file when you’ve printed it,’ she said. ‘I’ll do the same at my end.’

‘That’s not infallible, but let’s hope no one’s ever so
keen to find out how I got the picture that they decide to ransack my hard disc,’ Mower said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on around this case, Laura, but I don’t like it.’

‘Nor does Michael,’ Laura said. ‘That’s pretty obvious.’

Laura went back to the newsroom in a thoughtful mood and, after checking that no one was close enough to see her computer screen, sent DS Mower the picture he had requested. She did not seriously expect any repercussions in her own office even if her email came to light, but she knew that what Mower seemed to be considering would take him into perilous territory. That he was prepared to take the risk convinced her that Michael Thackeray was not alone in his anxieties about just how the Christie case was being run and she too began to wonder what was being covered up by the shadowy figures who seemed to be manipulating what ought to be a simple manhunt for a domestic murderer. There must be, she concluded, much more to it than that.

She finished the feature she had been working on and then crossed the newsroom and tapped on Ted Grant’s half open office door. He waved her in with an impatient gesture.

‘I was thinking of going up to Staveley again this afternoon, and then checking at the hospital to see how Emma Christie is,’ she said.

‘You think there’s still mileage in that?’ Grant asked without great interest.

‘The nationals are up in force now. They seem to think there’s still a story there.’ She had seen the London pack assembled outside police headquarters the previous day harassing the
Gazette
’s Bob Baker for more crumbs of information than the force seemed prepared to divulge.

‘Aye, well it would be good to get one over on Vince Newsom, though you’d better come up with something with a bit more substance to it than he’s had so far. The police are denying that the kiddie’s said anything coherent yet.’

‘Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ Laura shot back with more asperity than she had intended and Ted gave her a quizzical look.

‘Not getting much pillow talk on this one, then?’

Laura did not reply.

‘Aye, well, you can have another snoop around if you like. Bob Baker’s off today so he’ll not come up with anything for tomorrow’s paper. You’ll get a human interest story out of it, I dare say, if nowt else.’

With that less than enthusiastic encouragement Laura drove up to Staveley through a drifting drizzle, which reduced visibility far enough to demand headlights soon after lunchtime and left Staveley shrouded in a mist that blotted out the dark humpbacked hills beyond the village completely. She parked at the pub and went into the bar, where Janine Foster, looking even more faded and distraught than the last time she had seen her, was serving one of the handful of customers who had decided to cheer up a dismal afternoon with a pint of Tetleys. She glanced at Laura with hostility in her eyes.

‘You again,’ she said. ‘Can’t the newspapers leave us alone?’

‘I don’t suppose they’ll do that until Gordon Christie’s found,’ Laura said, ordering an orange juice. ‘Have you had the tabloid pack in?’

‘Some beggars from London came careering around t’village yesterday,’ Janine said. ‘It’s like being in a bloody zoo.’