Sins of the Fathers (21 page)

‘We’ve established that Christie was in fact Gordon Roberts, an SAS soldier who worked undercover in Northern Ireland some years ago,’ Thackeray said.

Smith shook his head. ‘You know we can’t confirm or deny that,’ he said.

‘Well, let’s just say I’ve confirmed it to my own satisfaction from two separate sources,’ Thackeray snapped. ‘So the next question is, what are the connections between Roberts, and an unidentified body in a burnt out car in Manchester, a brutally tortured pub landlord, also dead, and Roberts’ own family, the last member of which died in suspicious circumstances in hospital yesterday. Can you throw any light on any of that, Mr Smith, or are you under orders to continue to obstruct my inquiries?’

‘We now have six deaths being investigated here, Mr Smith, all connected to Christie or Roberts or whatever you choose to call him,’ ACC Rhodes said explosively. ‘I think the least we are entitled to expect from you people is some cooperation.’

Smith swallowed hard and gazed at the ceiling for a moment.

‘I am authorised to tell you that we had recruited Foster, the publican, on an informal basis. He was ex-army himself and well placed to help us, as he’d been in the village some time.’

‘Well placed to help you with what?’ Thackeray asked.

‘We wanted Christie watched. We wanted to know who his contacts were. It has to be admitted that we were taken by surprise when he turned up in this country again. Our information was that he and his family were settled in Portugal and we had no further information on him until quite recently. At that point we felt we ought to keep an informal eye on what he was up to here. He had enemies in Ireland and a lot of information which could be embarrassing to the British Government. We also had some evidence that he still had access to weapons. We instituted surveillance some months ago. Foster was willing and able to help us with that. Foster’s mistake was to get too close, to get involved with Linda Roberts. If Roberts himself is still alive, that may be why Foster is now dead.’

‘Roberts had been involved in at least one sectarian assassination in Derry which ended in the massacre of an entire family. In other words, he was a killer. Is that right?’ Thackeray asked.

Smith did not reply but Thackeray took his silence as assent.

‘And you suspected he might have access to weapons? Did you not think that information might have been relevant to my investigation when his own family was shot? You knew he was at risk living in Staveley, in spite of his attempts at an alias, and even worse that his wife and children could also be at risk. Didn’t the similarities between what happened in Derry and what happened in Staveley strike you as significant?’

The eyes of the three Yorkshire officers were fixed on Smith for a long moment, but he looked only slightly uncomfortable.

‘Roberts’ activities in Northern Ireland are still classified. Nothing I could have told you would have helped you find him. Your failure to do that is entirely your own, I’m afraid, Chief Inspector.’

‘But our failure to look for anyone else in connection with these deaths is at least partly because we knew nothing about his background,’ ACC Rhodes broke in.

‘I was not authorised to comment on his background,’ Smith insisted. ‘Any inquiries related to that would have been within our jurisdiction anyway, and anything which might have helped you would have been passed to you on a need-to-know basis. We had, indeed have, no evidence of a Northern Ireland connection to recent events, no evidence of anyone coming to the mainland from either faction over there. Nothing from our sources in Derry or Belfast which could have put us, or you, on red alert. We made the same assumption you did: that Christie had killed his family.’

‘You’ll forgive us if we take that with a certain amount of scepticism,’ Rhodes said. Smith merely shrugged.

‘Did your people help the family move abroad?’ Thackeray asked.

‘No. We offered help with a new identity here but in the end Roberts made his own arrangements because he wanted to keep his family together and went to Portugal. That suited us fine.’

‘Protecting women and children wasn’t on offer if they stayed here?’ Thackeray said sharply.

‘It’s difficult,’ Smith said, looking uncomfortable again. ‘Children are almost impossible to control. They chatter too much. Going abroad is much the best solution in these cases. Unfortunately Roberts, for reasons we’ve not been able to ascertain, decided to come back.’

‘He’s been in Staveley for almost three years,’ Thackeray said. ‘How long is it since you became aware of that?’

‘No more than six months ago,’ Smith conceded. ‘And then purely by chance. He was recognised by one of our officers based in Manchester who used his initiative and followed him home. We immediately offered again to arrange a safe haven abroad for them all. Roberts turned us down. He said his wife wouldn’t go away again.’

‘So for years he was living relatively openly in Staveley with his entire family at risk from reprisals from two terrorist groups?’

‘By his own choice, chief inspector. Entirely by his own choice. And under an assumed name. And as I’ve said, we have absolutely no evidence of Irish involvement in this case. We would have picked up some chatter, I think, if anyone from over there had tracked him down. I suspect that your first theory was in fact the correct one. For some reason Gordon Roberts flipped and murdered his family. It’s by no means uncommon, as I’m sure you know as well as I do.’

‘Especially amongst ex-soldiers?’

‘Some have difficulty in settling to civilian life,’ Smith said.

‘Did he have any sort of counselling after what happened in Derry?’ Thackeray asked.

‘I don’t know. I can check. It’s not compulsory.’

‘We take post-traumatic stress very seriously now,’ ACC Rhodes said magisterially. ‘We insist on counselling.’

‘You say you’ve had Roberts under surveillance…,’ Superintendent Jack Longley began.

‘Very informally. We simply asked Gerry Foster to keep an eye…,’ Smith broke in.

‘The same Gerry Foster who was horrifically killed,’ Longley said. ‘I can buy your theory that Roberts suffered some sort of breakdown as a result of his own experiences, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred like that the killer turns his gun on himself. But not this time. We’ve not found his body and we have three other related deaths. Those are not the actions of someone who has flipped, as you put it. Did Gerry Foster, or anyone else for that matter, come up with any evidence that Roberts had other enemies, maybe not Irish, but anyone else who might want to get rid of him and his family? Not forgetting that the child who died yesterday indicated that there had been someone else in the house when the shootings occurred.’

‘Gerry Foster came up with very little of value,’ Smith said dismissively. ‘If Roberts had other enemies we never heard about them.’

‘But someone hated or feared Gerry Foster enough to kill him in the most agonising way imaginable,’ Thackeray said, his face grim. ‘Whoever the psychopath is out there, and it may well be Roberts, he’s very dangerous indeed. I hope you sleep easily at night, Mr Smith. I’m not sure I would, in your position.’

The meeting over, Thackeray lingered for a moment in Longley’s office after the visitors had left. Longley looked at him warily.

‘We failed pretty miserably with the little girl,’ Thackeray said.

Longley glanced away. ‘I didn’t think she was at risk. We still don’t know she was at risk. Perhaps we made a mistake.’

‘I’d put money on it,’ Thackeray said, knowing he would get nothing approaching an apology for what he considered to be Longley’s massive error of judgement. ‘Her parents aren’t going to be in a position to complain, are they?’ He did not give the superintendent time to reply, turning on his heel and thundering downstairs to his own office where he found Kevin Mower waiting for him.

‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ he asked wearily, glancing at his watch.

‘I thought you’d want to know about Emma Christie,’ Mower said. ‘The hospital reckon it was a massive dose of insulin that killed her. It’s very unlikely to have been administered by accident.’

‘Murder then?’ Thackeray said, sounding as unsurprised as he felt. He looked at his desk where a white envelope lay on top of a pile of waiting files. He opened it slowly, anticipating more bad news, and was not disappointed. Mower watched his face darken.

‘Guv?’

‘It’s Val Ridley’s resignation,’ Thackeray said. ‘She reckons she was responsible for the leak to the
Globe
. She’s obviously blaming herself for Emma’s death.’ Mower nodded, recalling how distraught Val had seemed after Vince Newsom’s story had appeared.

‘She’s too good an officer to lose,’ he suggested. ‘Hang
on to the letter until I’ve talked to her.’

‘Maybe,’ Thackeray said distractedly. He folded the letter up and put it in his pocket. He said nothing to Mower but he was even more concerned by Val’s concise explanation of how information had reached the tabloid reporter than at the prospect of losing a good detective. In fact the panic which threatened him had nothing at all to do with Val Ridley’s guilty conscience and everything to do with why Laura Ackroyd had failed to tell him over the couple of days they had enjoyed together in Ireland that she too might have been implicated in providing Vince Newsom with his latest scoop. Following Mower down the stairs and out into the rainswept town centre, he knew that this was a night which might end very badly indeed if he let it.

PC Gavin Hewitt was not best pleased. Up on the moors behind the village the forensic teams and uniformed officers were doing a fingertip search of the area where Gerry Foster’s mutilated body had been found. Down at the infirmary in Bradfield, Amos Atherton was meticulously dissecting Foster’s body to attempt to discover the cause of his death, while in other parts of the hospital a major investigative team was interrogating anyone who had been on the premises at the time Emma Christie suffered a catastrophic relapse in the children’s ward where, according to her nurses, she had last been seen sleeping peacefully. Meanwhile, Hewitt had been sent on what he regarded as the unforgivably routine assignment of taking a statement from the old boy who had stumbled across Foster’s body the previous afternoon.

Hewitt set off for the village early, in the hope of something more interesting coming in his direction later, and not even Major Wright’s warm welcome, which included a cup of tea and a plate of chocolate digestives, had completely mollified him as he had settled in the comfortable armchair offered and begun to record the major’s precise recollections of his horrifically curtailed afternoon walk. The proceedings did not take long, although it was obvious that Wright was happy enough to spin them out.

‘If you’ll just sign here, Mr Wright,’ Hewitt insisted at last, growing weary of the old man’s increasingly futile efforts to recall anything further that might be of significance. Wright glanced at the overtly impatient policeman, and did as he was requested.

‘Of course, you’ve saved me a phone call anyway, young man,’ he said, as he put his fountain pen carefully back on his small desk. ‘I was going to ring your station to report the gunshots.’ Hewitt was closing his folder and half on his feet when the full significance of what Wright had said hit him.

‘Gunshots?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean gunshots, Constable,’ Wright came back with some asperity. ‘At about 0900, heard them quite distinctly, four shots from, I would guess, a high powered rifle. And later, more shots from some weapon I couldn’t identify. An automatic pistol maybe.’

Hewitt looked at Wright incredulously until the major became impatient.

‘I’ve heard countless snipers in my time, young man,’ he said. ‘This sounded exactly like another.’

‘Were they close?’ Hewitt asked, recalling that he had been told to interview a major, though the rank had slipped his mind.

‘Close enough,’ Wright said. ‘Definitely in or around the village, I would say. And in a southerly direction. Difficult to place exactly, of course. I was in the bathroom at the time. But I would put the direction as south, further down the Bradfield road.’

‘I’ll get onto it straight away,’ he said.

But ten minutes later, after he had used his car radio to report exactly what Wright had told him, he decided that in the circumstances a little initiative might win him brownie
points back at the station. He started the car and rolled slowly down the hill through the meandering village street and pulled up again outside the gates of the Old Hall. Bruce Weldon, he knew, had denied all knowledge of gunshots to CID, and what evidence of them he had seen with his own eyes had apparently been very quickly obliterated. But just maybe, he thought, a second episode might have changed Weldon’s mind about reporting his problems.

As soon as he got out of the car and approached the wrought iron gates to seek admittance, Hewitt knew that he had struck gold. Across the neatly raked gravel of the drive he could see two burly men in jeans working clearing glass at the front of the house where two of the small paned windows had been shattered. Hewitt did not think that he was being over-imaginative to suppose that in the sitting room beyond there would be further evidence of damage caused by gunfire. But when he pressed the intercom, one of the workmen crunched across the gravel towards him with a surly expression.

‘Nah then?’ he asked.

‘We’ve had a complaint about shooting in the area,’ Hewitt said. ‘Is Mr Weldon at home.’

‘Out all day,’ the man said and began to turn away.

‘Did you hear…?’ Hewitt began.

‘I reckon if Mr Weldon needs you lot he’ll call you,’ the man said over his shoulder. ‘In t’meantime, I should bog off, if I were you. We don’t need you here.’

Hewitt took a sharp breath and turned back to his car. It was about time CID took some notice of his work in Staveley, he thought, and he reckoned he had something now which would make them sit up and take notice.

Laura Ackroyd was finding it difficult to concentrate on work that morning. She had not seen Michael Thackeray for more than twenty-four hours, or heard from him since a brief phone call to tell her that he would be at a late meeting the previous evening. He had not come back to the flat nor attempted to contact her since, and she had wondered over her snatched breakfast why their relationship seemed to have plunged back to the same level of chilly non-communication which had dogged it for months now. The fear, which kept her mind switching away from her computer screen all morning, was that he had somehow discovered what had happened with Vince Newsom the previous week.

Whatever she did, she did not seem to be able to escape from the ubiquitous presence of Newsom, whom Ted Grant appeared to be allowing to work closely with Bob Baker. The two of them glanced occasionally in her direction, their smiles smug and their whispered conversation jovial, but she had no idea in what direction their inquiries were taking them.

Halfway through the morning her own phone rang and she immediately recognised the voice of Janine Foster, the now widowed landlady of the Fox and Hounds in Staveley.

‘Could you come up? There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ Janine said, her voice husky with emotion.

‘Are you sure?’ Laura asked, full of uncertainty. ‘Shouldn’t you be talking to the police?’

‘No,’ Janine said sharply. ‘I don’t want them just now. It’s you I want to speak to. I need some help.’ Laura hesitated and glanced across the office to where she could see Bob Baker and Vince Newsom listening shamelessly to her conversation. There might be a story in this, she thought, and with a flash of dislike for both men she thought of a way
of disarming the pair of them, at least temporarily.

‘Okay,’ she said to Janine. ‘Give me half an hour. I’ll see what I can do.’ But when Janine hung up, Laura did not. She kept the receiver at her ear as she pulled a local map out of her desk drawer and spread it out in front of her, pen in hand. For a minute she made affirmative noises into her phone and notes on the map. Finally saying goodbye to her now non-existent caller she drew a ring around a site on the map and hung up. She sat for a moment as if thinking about her next move, and then made her way over to Ted Grant’s office, to check that he had no objection to her taking an early lunch break. She was fully aware, glancing out of the corner of her eye, that either Bob or Vince was taking a close interest in the map and other notes she had left on her desk, although when she strolled back across the newsroom to pick up her coat the two men were
head-to
-head again at Bob Baker’s workstation.

She picked up the map and notes on her way out, not looking back but knowing very well she was being watched, but when she got to her car she stuffed the bundle carelessly into the glove box. As bait they had served their purpose. As she drove out of the car park and headed across the town centre she glanced in her mirror before committing herself to the Staveley road. Just as she had suspected, she was not being followed and she relaxed, with a maliciously self-satisfied smile. After all, she thought, they did not need to take the risk of following her, as they thought they knew exactly where she was heading. The only trouble was that the goal she had set for them was thirty miles into the hills in the wrong direction, and the weather forecast was for more snow. She sincerely hoped there would be a blizzard.

Janine Foster was waiting for her by the front entrance of the pub, to which she had attached a large notice
announcing
its closure until further notice. As Laura got out of her car Janine grabbed her arm.

‘I think I’m going mad,’ she said. ‘Either that or some beggar’s playing tricks on me.’ She pulled a mobile phone out of her pocket and thumbed it for a second before handing it to Laura.

‘It’s a text message from Gerry,’ Janine said. ‘Only it can’t be, because he’s lying dead in the morgue in Bradfield, the police said. I identified all his stuff last night, didn’t I? But then this arrives. They wouldn’t let me see his body yesterday. Said it was unrecognisable and would be too upsetting for me. So what’s this about? D’you think they’ve got the wrong man? Could he still be alive?’ There were tears running down Janine’s face now, smearing the carelessly applied mascara, and Laura handed her a tissue as she stared at the message on the phone. It was very brief, simply asking Janine to meet the caller at the back of Moor Edge cottage. It was signed simply with the letter G.

‘Did he always sign himself G?’ she asked. Janine glanced at the phone distractedly.

‘Yes, yes, he did, and I signed J. Saves time, dunnit?’

‘How many people would know that?’ Laura asked. Janine shook her head.

‘No one. How could they?’ Laura flicked to the menu and brought up the number that had transmitted the call.

‘Is that Gerry’s phone?’ she asked. Janine looked at the tiny screen again and nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘His phone wasn’t amongst the other stuff they showed me last night. He must be alive, mustn’t he? The body must be someone else. It’s all a horrible mistake and he’s not dead at all.’ Laura looked at the
distraught woman and knew that her hopes were very unlikely to be realised. It was far more likely that someone else had acquired Gerry Foster’s mobile phone than that the police had misidentified the body of a murder victim who just happened to be wearing Foster’s clothes. But she knew that it might be impossible to convince Janine of that.

‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ she said cautiously. ‘So soon…?’

‘I want to know what the hell’s going on,’ Janine came back fiercely. ‘I know Gerry were no angel. I wasn’t surprised he was having an affair, though what he saw in that pale little bitch I don’t know. But to be killed for that? And the way he was killed? It makes no sense. I can’t get my head round it. There has to be more to it than that.’ Laura nodded, thinking that however distraught Janine might be, there could possibly be an element of truth in what she was saying, and that in any case she was not going to be convinced otherwise without some sort of proof.

‘So let’s do what he wants you to do,’ she said. ‘Let’s go up to the cottage and see if he’s there.’ At least this time there was no possibility of going inside the house, as she had so reluctantly done with Gerry himself two days ago. She shuddered when she recalled how he had come away with Linda Christie’s scarf and wondered what had happened to that. Today at least a quick look round the outside of the house should soon establish that there was no one there and the phone message was the cruel hoax she was sure it would turn out to be.

She drove Janine to the cottage and parked outside. The police tape was hanging in shreds now, most of it whipped away by the wind, and the cottage windows were still curtained and in darkness. The two women got out of the
car and Laura pushed open the wooden five-barred gate which gave access to the side of the building and the yard and outbuildings at the back. There, too, there was nothing to be seen or heard except the faint soughing of the wind over the bracken and gorse behind the buildings, and the sudden flap of a bird disturbed by their arrival.

‘There’s no one here, Janine,’ Laura said. ‘I’m sorry. It really is just a hoax.’ But Janine picked her way on high heels through the mud and peered into the back windows of the cottage, which gave onto the kitchen and dining room, and then stepped carefully across the rutted yard and did the same at the grimy glass of Gordon Christie’s workshops. Laura saw her stiffen suddenly and draw back, to stand rigidly against the wooden wall where no one inside could see her. She seemed to take a couple of deep breaths and then waved at Laura urgently to approach. Nervously, Laura picked her own way across the muddy concrete and stood beside Janine, her heart thumping.

‘What is it?’

‘There’s someone in there,’ Janine said, grabbing Laura’s arm fiercely. ‘It’s not Gerry but there is someone, lying behind the sort of workbench thing on the far side of the room.’

‘Lying?’ Laura hissed. ‘D’you think he’s dead? D’you think we’ve found another body?’ Janine shook her head fiercely.

‘He’s moving,’ she said. ‘I could see his head. That’s how I know it’s not Gerry. No beard.’

‘Right,’ Laura said. ‘So who…?’

‘Gordon Christie maybe,’ Janine suggested. ‘I don’t know, do I?’

Laura twisted herself away and cautiously peered through the window herself. The light inside the workshop
was dim but as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she could make out the huddled shape that Janine had spotted in the far corner of the room. It was a man, curled on what looked like a couple of sacks, but what horrified her most was that there appeared to be a pool of dark liquid – which at first she assumed must be oil but then realised with a shudder was probably blood – around the upper part of his body. And when she looked more closely there were more dark stains between the corner where the man was lying and the door. She turned away again and glanced across the yard and was not surprised to see more red splashes, almost indistinguishable from the mud, all round them.

‘He’s hurt,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to get help. Does the mobile really not work up here?’

‘It’s dodgy all round the village,’ Janine said. She flicked the phone on but quickly shook her head. ‘No signal,’ she said.

‘Go back down to your place and call the police and an ambulance from there,’ Laura said. She reached in her pocket. ‘Here, take my car.’

Janine nodded distractedly.