Sins of the Fathers (20 page)

‘Our fell-walking major reckoned Christie had been in the army,’ Thackeray said.

‘My man says he’s not Gordon Robertson, Ulster terrorist, but Gordon Roberts, British Army undercover operator, discharged after the shootings in Derry and, as far as anyone knew, resident in Portugal with his family ever since, well out of harm’s way. Only he wasn’t. Not for the last three years anyway. For some reason no one
understands, he came back and the people who should have known didn’t know until very recently. Hence the panic and obstruction when they realised just who we were looking for and why.’

‘If they can’t keep track of their own people, how the hell can they keep track of terrorists?’ Laura asked angrily.

‘I dare say what happened in Derry was an embarrassment to them if one of their own people was involved,’ Mower said. ‘I guess they’d be terrified of being accused of collusion in a massacre. There’ve been enough suggestions like that over the years. The security people must be paranoid about Northern Ireland by now.’

‘What happened in Ireland is incidental,’ Thackeray said. ‘What it does do is give us even more grounds for thinking that maybe Christie – or Roberts as I suppose we should call him – didn’t kill his family at all. Someone else did.’

‘Well, do you want the good news or the bad news, guv?’ Mower asked. ‘There’s a lot more been happening since you went away. And I reckon the whole case is beginning to stack up quite differently.’

When he had finished running through the latest developments – Emma Christie’s suggestion that there had been someone else in the house the day of the shootings, the new forensic evidence and Emma’s sudden collapse – Thackeray seemed to have shaken off his tiredness and come back to life and even Laura, who had looked even more pale and drained than he had when they had got home, was sitting up in her chair again and taking notice. Thackeray glanced at her.

‘You’re not hearing any of this,’ he said, and she grinned.

‘Deaf as a post,’ she said. ‘But how’s Emma, Kevin? Is she okay?’

‘Last time I checked she was,’ Mower said. ‘But I can’t say they’re brimming over with confidence. They don’t even know what happened to her.’

‘But if this was all some Irish revenge attack why hang about to try to murder a sick child? Surely the killer would get away, back to Derry or wherever, where he’d be relatively safe,’ Laura said.

‘Assuming he’s not already dead,’ Mower said. ‘If the man in the Land Rover had been to the cottage he may well be our man. No one in Manchester seems to be claiming any knowledge of him. And Christie may also be dead, or else he’s got himself well away from Yorkshire by now.’

‘In which case why would someone still be trying to kill Emma? If that’s really what’s happened at the hospital? A dead man doesn’t worry about being identified,’ Thackeray said. ‘I don’t think this is as simple as that. I still want to know more about Christie himself. I want to know exactly where he’s been and what he’s been doing for the last six years. He’s had plenty of time to make other enemies and we now know that at least one of his friends or enemies, who visited the cottage, had a gun in the Land Rover with him when he died. A gun which has been used in serious crime in this country, according to Manchester CID. It may be the Irish thing which sent Christie into hiding but it may not be that which sparked this tragedy. He may have quite different enemies in this country who wanted him dead for reasons we don’t know anything about yet.’

‘There’s the unexplained money,’ Mower said. ‘Where did that come from? And what did he do to earn it?’

‘Quite,’ Thackeray said. ‘Tomorrow we see the super. And we tell him about the Irish connection, and we tell him there’s more leads in this case than roads to Rome.’

‘And we need the spooks to come clean about what they
know,’ Mower added. ‘So far they’ve been a hindrance, not a help.’

Just then his phone rang and Laura and Thackeray watched as he listened, his face appearing to freeze as he took in what he was being told.

‘Thanks,’ he said curtly as he switched off. He looked at the other two and shook his head, evidently horrified.

‘Emma Christie just died,’ he said quietly. ‘They couldn’t save her.’

‘Oh shit,’ Laura said, letting her hair fall forward across her face to hide her eyes full of tears. Thackeray just nodded, stony-faced, struggling to control a rage that threatened to overwhelm him.

‘So we may have ourselves another murder,’ Mower said.

‘They still don’t know what killed her?’ Thackeray asked.

‘They’ll have test results tomorrow, they said. Personally I’d put money on them finding something, which means that either Christie’s managed to finish the job off himself or we’re one step further away from nailing a serial killer. She’ll never tell us anything useful now, poor little beggar. What a mess we’ve made of protecting her. Val Ridley will never forgive us.’

Major Donald Wright took off his small backpack and wriggled his shoulders to ease their stiffness, before sitting down on the step of the stile which took the footpath over the last drystone wall and onto the open moorland beyond. For a few moments he took regular, deep breaths, feeling his heart rate slow after the steep climb from Staveley. It was one of those rare winter days of blue skies, soft westerly winds and sunshine bright enough to bring the dun-coloured winter landscape of the high hills briefly back to life. Overhead a hawk circled, a black crescent spinning against the sun, and Wright felt high enough here, on a spur that gave an unimpeded view of Bradfield and its neighbouring villages spread out in the river valley below and the land rising again in blue hills to the east, to be a bird of prey himself.

He was finding these climbs harder than he used to, he had to admit, and much harder than when he and his wife had walked for miles over the hills together. He used to make it up as far as this viewpoint most days, but had not achieved it for a week or more. Today he had determined to make the effort, even though the climb made his heart race. It still filled his lungs with pure air and that sense of exhilaration he had always found in high country. He seldom met anyone on these winter walks, although in the
summer the moorland paths were popular with ramblers who often came great distances to walk the Pennines. And today was no different. He felt alone in the vast landscape, but liberated, rather than overwhelmed by it. This was a place he loved.

Breath regained, he climbed over the stile, determined to make it to the summit of Brough Top, half a mile and a steep gradient in front of him, but as he set off briskly his attention was attracted by a raucous flurry of crows, evidently disturbed by his approach. The object of their attentions was concealed by a clump of gorse bushes, and Wright would have ignored it if it had not been for one particularly persistent bird which flew in frantic circles round his head as if trying to drive this human intruder away. Cautiously Wright left the rough track and scrambled across dead moor grasses made slippery by the recent snow until he could see the object of the crows’ attention more clearly. He had expected to be faced with the rotting corpse of a dead sheep, although he knew that it was too early for the flocks to be let out up here to graze. But what he found was far worse and set his heart pounding again.

The body lay half concealed under the gorse, the spines snagging on a torn dark anorak and badly stained trousers, although whether with mud or blood Wright could not decide. The old soldier was not unused to death but this find sickened him because as far as he could see, without approaching so close that he would obliterate anything that he guessed the police would find valuable, the corpse had no face and only bloodied stumps for hands. He guessed the crows were to some extent to blame, but knew enough of battle injuries to know that the man’s exposed flesh had been badly burned, so badly that parts of the
mouth had disappeared, leaving a skeletal grin on the remnants of the face. He hoped devoutly that the victim had been dead before that happened.

Shaken, he backed away and regained the footpath, scrambling as quickly as he could now back down the track to the village below. He had never grown accustomed to carrying a mobile phone and he had to retrace his steps back to his own house to make his emergency call to the police. Meanwhile, on the hillside above, the crows fell silent and resumed their grisly feast under the wide blue sky.

By four that afternoon, with the sun fading in a welter of gathering pink and orange cloud over the looming hills to the west, the pathologist Amos Atherton was peremptorily demanding that the police lights be focused more directly on the mutilated body he was examining
in situ.
DCI Thackeray and Sergeant Kevin Mower watched his endeavours from a slight distance, standing close to the gorse bushes that had hidden the body for an indeterminate length of time from anyone passing by on the footpath twenty yards away. Eventually Atherton hauled his heavy form upright and struggled back up the slight incline towards the police officers.

‘There’s nowt more I can do here,’ he said. ‘The light’s too poor. I need him on the table to be able to judge what the hell happened to him.’

‘Has he been there long?’ Thackeray asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Atherton said. ‘There’s no decomposition to speak of beneath his clothing. The bloody birds have gone for his hands and face, which were severely burned anyway, so they’ve made a bad job worse. I’ve never seen anything like it, Michael, if you want the honest truth. There’s no damage to speak of to his jacket,
just a bit of singing at the collar and cuffs. No signs of fire that I can see in the immediate vicinity. Just severe burns to the face and hands in a sort of overlapping circular pattern. It’s bizarre. The poor beggar must have been in agony.’

‘The burns killed him, then?’ Mower asked.

‘Well, I wouldn’t have said so normally. They’re severe but not that extensive. Quite survivable, I’d have said, though he’d have been in hospital for months and not have much of a face left at the end of it. But I’ve not found any other signs of injury so maybe his heart gave out. It happens. Or his throat and lungs were damaged. Can’t tell you much about that till I open him up.’

‘Identification?’ Thackeray asked.

‘Nothing in his pockets,’ Atherton said. ‘You can have a look at him if you like, but it’s not a pretty sight.’ Thackeray nodded and dropped down the slight incline Atherton had just scrambled up and gazed down for a moment at the ruined face of what had once been a human being and was now a red and black grimacing caricature of a man. He shuddered slightly and climbed back up to where Mower was silently watching him. Thackeray shrugged, his mouth dry.

‘It could be Christie, I suppose. Or Roberts, whatever we’re supposed to call him. What’s left of his hair is dark, he’s about the right build. Apart from that it’s impossible to tell. But I don’t reckon those burns were accidental. I think he was deliberately burned to death.’

Mower said nothing as the stretcher bearers moved down into the hollow to remove the body, but drew a sharp breath as the horror of what Thackeray had said sank in.

‘Cordon the immediate area off, Kevin,’ the DCI said. ‘We’ll give it a thorough search at first light. Whether we’ve found Gordon Christie or not makes no difference,
really, does it? It’s odds on there’s some connection so close to the cottage, and we’re still going to be looking for a psycho with a blowtorch in the morning. That’s the only weapon I can think of that would leave a man looking like that.’

Atherton gave Thackeray a sharp look.

‘I reckon you’re right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think of that. You could do a hell of a lot of damage very quickly with a blowtorch. With a steady hand and a strong nerve.’

‘As strong a nerve as you need to shoot children in the back, do you think?’ Thackeray asked.

Laura Ackroyd had gone into work that morning with a sense of foreboding. The death of Emma Christie and speculation about her fate was about to make the front page headline in the
Gazette
’s first edition, and there was that subdued hum of excitement in the newsroom which always emerged when a big story broke. Laura was grateful that the task of attending the police press conference fell to the crime reporter, Bob Baker. She was furious to see that he returned to the office in the company of Vince Newsom and organised herself an early lunch so that she could avoid both men. She had still not told Michael Thackeray what had happened the night he went away and the knowledge that sooner or later she would have to confess to an episode which filled her with shame almost overwhelmed her. As she left the office the two of them had their heads close to Baker’s computer screen, but she knew that they had watched as she put her coat on and heard them break into muted conversation as she left the newsroom.

Out in the bustling streets of the town she used her mobile to try to contact Thackeray only to be told he was
not available, and she still got no reply from the home of her friend Vicky Mendelson. She bought herself a sandwich and a coffee and sat glumly over her lunch for ten minutes, gazing at the scurrying town centre shoppers, before joining them in an unenthusiastic trawl of the fashion shops in search of clothes she didn’t really need. How could she have allowed Vince Newsom to wheedle his way back into her life so disruptively, she wondered, as she tried on a chiffon top in a shade of apricot that she knew she would never wear. As she sat in the changing room trying to extricate herself from the clingy fabric which she reckoned was a size too small anyway, her mobile rang and when she recognised Val Ridley’s voice her stomach clenched.

‘I’ve been trying to get you all weekend,’ Val said, her voice harsh with suppressed anger.

‘Sorry, I was away till last night,’ Laura countered quickly, knowing all too well what was coming next.

‘How the hell did the
Globe
get hold of that story? It wasn’t from the stuff I gave you was it? I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.’

‘Where are you?’ Laura asked. ‘We need to talk.’

‘I think we do,’ Val agreed, her voice low now. ‘Ten minutes in the Lamb?’

Laura pulled on her own clothes quickly, dumped her unwanted bargain with the indifferent shop-girl outside the changing room, and hurried away through the lunchtime crowds to meet Val standing by the door of the pub.

‘Let’s walk,’ Laura said. ‘We don’t want to be overheard in there.’ The police officer nodded grimly and they hurried in silence across the town centre until they found an empty bench in the windswept square in front of the
gothic town hall. Val had a crumpled copy of Saturday’s
Globe
in her bag, and she pulled it out angrily as they sat down.

‘You know Emma’s dead?’ she asked. Laura nodded.

‘The
Gazette
will be out soon,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘It’s the front page lead. I’m sorry Val. I really am. I thought she was recovering.’

‘So did everyone,’ Val said. ‘I don’t believe it’s natural causes. I think someone killed her, though no one’s found any evidence yet.’ For a moment she seemed about to disintegrate, making a noise in her throat that was half moan, half scream, and grabbing Laura’s arm for a moment with such force that her companion winced and pulled away. With an effort, she pulled herself together again and spread Saturday morning’s
Globe
across her lap with trembling fingers and stabbed her finger at the picture of Emma in her hospital bed, which had been repeated for a second time on the front page.

‘This bastard Vince Newsom,’ she said, ‘where did he get this from, for God’s sake? It’s word for word what Emma said to me. No one’s going to believe I didn’t tell him. Was it you? You promised you wouldn’t do anything with what I gave you, for God’s sake. It was for the boss’s eyes only. You promised. Did you give him the details? Or did you
sell
this bastard the story?’

‘Val, you’ve got to believe me,’ Laura said, frantic herself now at the implications of Val’s suspicions. ‘I didn’t tell him anything. I promise you. But you’re right, it was from your notes. He stole them out of my bag and I was too drunk to notice. It was unforgivably stupid of me, but I never suspected he would do anything so awful. You have to believe that. Please.’

Val Ridley got to her feet and stood in front of Laura for
a moment, her hand poised, almost as if she was going to hit her across the face. But then she crumpled again, her face drawn and her eyes full of tears.

‘I should never have trusted you,’ she said. ‘She died because I trusted you. I killed her.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Laura said desperately. ‘She was seriously ill. Anything could have happened.’

‘You’re all the same, you journalists,’ Val said, systematically ripping the newspaper into bits and throwing it into a waste bin. ‘Conniving, cheating, lying – anything for a story. I must have been mad to think you’d be any different. And now a child is dead.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Laura said desperately but Val was already turning away, her face contorted with anger and grief.

‘I’ll see you in hell,’ she flung back over her shoulder.

Reluctantly, Laura walked back to the office just after one, only to meet Baker and Newsom coming down the stairs from the newsroom as she went up.

‘Hi, babe,’ Newsom greeted her with an expansive smile as they met. ‘Not still smarting, are we? Get over it, sweetie. Stuff happens.’ She did not respond, conscious of their laughter as they swept out of the building in obviously high spirits, the tragedy they had been writing about having as little effect on them as any lingering memories of Friday night’s betrayal. Maybe I’m too bloody sensitive for this job, she thought. Maybe Vince is right. But as she settled back at her desk she knew that the job was not the problem. She knew that the only way to break the hold Newsom now had over her was to tell Michael Thackeray the truth, and she shuddered to think what the consequences of that would be.

The lights in Superintendent Jack Longley’s office burned late that evening as he presided over the crisis meeting he had insisted on after Janine Foster had identified the body of her husband from his clothing and his wedding ring, all carefully removed from the mutilated body now lying in the morgue, awaiting the ministrations of Amos Atherton. Facing him across the conference table were DCI Michael Thackeray, whose unscheduled return from holiday Longley had greeted with apparent relief, Assistant Chief Constable (crime) Percy Rhodes from county HQ, and a representative of the security services whom Rhodes had apparently summoned urgently from Manchester and who admitted only to the name of Smith. But Smith, Thackeray was delighted to see, was at last beginning to look uncomfortably flustered by the ACC’s staccato enumeration of the facts they had so far established since the shooting of Gordon Christie’s family just over a week earlier. Rhodes glanced at Thackeray and indicated that he should carry on.