The Sun Will Still Shine Tomorrow (14 page)

Tom had been backpacking the Silk Road for three months before returning home to Northumberland the final two weeks of his life. He smiled as he looked at the cash withdrawals from around the world and remembered a telephone conversation with Tom on his mobile as he bivouacked in the Taklimakan Desert.

The Silk Road. The ancient trade route between East and West. He’d promised to meet up with Ashley as soon as he returned home, tell him about the great adventure. He’d hiked and hitch-hiked along the route for nearly three months and, despite his great friend lying in his coffin, Ashley couldn’t help but envy him.

He fingered the statements. His heart skipped a beat.
Jesus, a cash withdrawal in Tehran. How dangerous was that?
And further down, several Chinese towns and cities, some of which Ashley had never heard of: Xian, Jiayuguan and Turpan.

But it was the entry at the very bottom of the page that hit Ashley like a prizefighter’s finest shot. Not a cash withdrawal in a potentially volatile, political Third World country or a war-torn Middle Eastern state. No. It was the final entry. The cash withdrawal long after he’d climbed aboard the Boeing 737 for that twelve-hour flight back home. The cash withdrawal back home in his home county. The hundred-pound withdrawal from Barclays Bank in Marygate, Holy Island.

The display read ‘Holy John’. He pressed call.

“We need to talk.”

“What is it, Ash?”

“I’ll tell you soon enough. Depends when you can get away, John. I’ve got all the time in the world, remember?”

John Markham walked into the Monkey Bar precisely ten minutes after his six till two shift finished at Market Street Police Station.

“You don’t look so happy, Ash,” he announced, with a half-hearted smile etched across his face.

Ashley stood up, shook his ex-partner’s hand warmly.

“I’m fine, John. It’s just something I found in Tom’s flat. I think you should see it.”

“Tom’s flat, do you have keys or something?”

“No. I was helping his mother empty it. It’s rented, we needed to clear it, said I’d deal with the paperwork and stuff.”

Ashley handed the folded document across.

“A bank statement. I don’t understand–”

“Look at the last entry, John.”

Ashley watched as Markham’s eyes traced the entries at the bottom of the page. His eyes came to rest in a hypnotic-type stare. The colour drained from John Markham’s cheeks.

“Fuck me.”

“My words exactly, John.” Ashley smiled. “I don’t suppose anything’s amiss but I just can’t believe no one on Holy Island has ever seen or spoken to Tom Wilkinson.”

John Markham didn’t answer. He just nodded in the direction of Ashley and sat in silence for a few seconds contemplating…thinking…rubbing his hand over the statement. He looked at it again as if not believing his eyes the first time round.

“It won’t go away, John. It’s there in black ‘n white.”

Ashley got up from his seat and walked over to the barmaid, ordered and collected two beers and sat back down. He placed the two beers down on the table.

“Help me here, Holy John, help me.”

Markham reached across for the glass, didn’t say anything, instead took a drink from the glass.

“He was my mate, John, my best mate at school. You understand I need to get to the bottom of this. I need to do it for his mother. You know what they say: a mother can’t get on with her life unless she can tie up all the loose ends, no matter how nasty they are.”

“What makes you think there’s a nasty ending?” John Markham asked as he placed his beer on the table. It was a token effort at a drink, a nervous effort. Ashley watched carefully, staring into his ex-colleague’s eyes. He waited. Waited for what seemed like an eternity, determined not to speak. His patience paid off.

“I’ll go up again, Ash, square it with Roddam. If anything dodgy is going on up there, then I want to know about it. I’ll show him the bank statement.”

John Markham pawed at his glass, looked as if he would take another drink but the moment passed. He reached across and Ashley placed the statement in Markham’s hand.

“Thanks, John, thanks, I really appreciate it and we can go up together and maybe–”

Markham held up a hand. “Whoa, Ashley… don’t even go there. I’m in your head already and you ain’t going up there.”

“But it’s not as if I’ve–”

“–anything to do. I know. Like I said, I’m in your head, buddy, and there’s no way are you getting into any more trouble. I shouldn’t even be in here with you; you’re tarnished, mate. You’re bad news, and what if Roddam found out we were carrying out a nice cosy, joint investigation? Where do you think that would leave me? I tell you where it would leave me: on the scrap heap, buddy, that’s where.”

Ashley realised it was futile, realised that what John Markham was saying was right. Jesus, why hadn’t he thought about it? Here was Markham offering to help him yet again and he hadn’t even thought the plan through.

“Sorry, John, I hadn’t thought about that.”

Ashley placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“You know, John, the only thing I regret about finishing with the force is not getting the opportunity to work with you longer. I don’t miss the job. It’s changed, you know that, everybody knows that but we got off on the right foot. I regret not being able to repay you for what you did with Bulldog’s numpty.”

John Markham reached for his glass, blushed a little as he raised it to his lips.

“You’re a great mate, John, and a good cop. You’ve stuck your neck out for me on more than one occasion. It must–”

“Stop slavering, you big southern mongrel puff.”

Ashley leapt from his seat and locked Markham’s head in a playful stranglehold.

“Calling me a puff, you bloody island inbred redneck?”

Markham swept a gentle leg under Ashley and the two of them crashed to the floor in a fit of laughter. The noise was enough to bring the barmaid scurrying from behind the counter.

“Stop it now,” she screamed, unaware the two men were only playing.”I’ll call the police.”

Markham whipped his warrant card out from his back pocket, laughing.

“It’s okay, darling, they’re here already.” Ashley collapsed in a fit of laughter. He thought about pulling his warrant card out too and fumbled in his back pocket as he remembered he hadn’t handed it in to the station as instructed. He brushed the smooth leather of the holder and eased it from his pocket about an inch. But Ashley figured the card might just come in handy a little later on, and pushed it back down into the pocket.

The barmaid placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side, patting her chest sarcastically.”The country is in safe hands, eh? Our boys are the best in the world. Bloody grown men acting like kids.” She cursed as she grabbed the two pint pots and walked away.”You can come back in when you start acting like adults. You’re lucky I don’t pick the phone up and ring Market Street, tell them there are two of their lads acting like twats.”

* * *

Markham called Ashley the following day. He explained that Roddam wouldn’t entertain yet another investigation.

They needed to get the crime figures down, an instruction from the suits above. Why open up a crime that stood very little chance of getting solved, assuming a crime had been committed, that is. Why create a damn new crime, he’d said by way of an explanation.

John Markham had relayed the story to Ash and explained that Roddam had sent the uniforms out that morning to target motorists using mobile phones.

“An easy nick,” Ashley said,” not like they can deny it.”

“Exactly, Ash, and a one hundred per cent crime-detected and crime-solved rate. That’s all they’re bloody interested in these days. Zero tolerance to the poor bastard going thirty-four in a thirty zone, a crime detected and a crime solved.”

“So that’s it, John, case closed.”

“I’m afraid so, Ash.”

“But what did he say about the bank statement?”

A pause at the other end of the phone line and then a deep breath.

“He said there could have been a dozen reasons.”

“Like?”

“Like he could have gone on a day trip there, maybe spent a couple of hours, had a pub lunch then returned to the mainland. That would explain why nobody remembered him.”

“Okay, I accept that’s possible. What else?”

“The card could have been stolen or even lent to his new girl. Clara, I think you said she was called.”

“Yeah, Clara, that’s right, John, only there’s no Claras on the island, is there?”

A deep sigh from Markham.

“How do you know?”

“The electoral roll, John, it wasn’t too difficult. There’s only a few hundred people living there at any one time.”

Ashley detected a slight hostility in John Markham’s voice now, a man concerned.

“Jesus, Ash, have you been poking around? I told you–”

“Not me, John, Kate Wilkinson, she checked it out. No Clara on the island, at least not over the age of eighteen anyway.”

Markham changed tune, laughed a little. “So he got a hold of a seventeen-year-old. They have the nicest arses, remember?”

Ashley smiled. He remembered being on duty with Markham a few weeks before he’d resigned. They’d been undercover in Newcastle city centre casing out a joint frequented by some local villains. They’d been there over seven hours and still the villains hadn’t shown up.

They’d resorted to silly games and nonsense talk to try and relieve the monotony. They’d asked why you never see a baby pigeon, counted the cars coming into the city and debated why the most popular colour was white. It was a hot day; the city centre was full of girls and young women shopping. They’d had a debate on what age the average female of the species had the perfect figure or, more particularly, the perfect backside.

They’d spent the next hour debating the issue and both agreed it was seventeen.

John Markham interrupted his pleasant thoughts.

“Or maybe she wasn’t an islander after all.”

“No, his mum definitely said she was from the island, John.”

“Possibly. But maybe she was just someone working there. We get dozens of girls every season working in the pubs and hotels, the gift shops and they don’t appear on the electoral roll.”

Ashley hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps there was a Clara after all.

“My advice is to just leave it, Ash. The mother wanted a body, wanted to lay him to rest. What good will it do her, bringing everything back again? By the way, Ash, there was another possible sighting of your pal in Whitburn near Sunderland. The timeframe fits in with his disappearance.”

“Go on.”

“A young girl walking her dogs along the cliff top path claims she saw a young man fall from the cliffs. It was a piss poor foggy day, visibility down to about fifty metres. Anyway, this girl phoned the police from her mobile and the local plod contacted the coastguard. A helicopter was scrambled from RAF Boulmer but the search found nothing. As no one had been reported missing at the time, it was assumed the girl must have been mistaken. We contacted the girl again only last week. Roddam himself went down to Sunderland nick to question her.”

“A chief super went to interview her?”

“Yeah, Ash, that’s what I said. Anyway he did and he also persuaded her to try and describe the man she’d seen falling.”

“And you’re gonna tell me now it could have been Tom.”

“It’s right there in the statement, Ash… I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, John. At first you say visibility was poor and now she gives a detailed description of the body. The police dismissed her story at first and now, when it suits them, she has the fucking eyes of an eagle.”

There was a pause at the other end of the phone and again Ashley regretted putting his voice into gear before engaging his brain.

“I’m sorry, John, I’m not getting at you. It’s just–”

“No offence taken, Ash, but, like I say, I suggest you let it lie… it’s for the best, that’s my advice, friend to friend, so to speak.”

Another pause and Ashley once again struggled for any words to thank his friend for his understanding. As he opened his mouth to speak John beat him to it.

“When does the coroner sit? When’s the funeral?”

“The coroner sits next Tuesday, John. Kate will arrange the funeral as soon as they release the body. What do you think he’ll record?”

“I dunno, Ash, my guess is accidental death or possibly an open verdict, more likely an open verdict because of the marks on the body. We–”

“Whoa, John, just hold it there a minute. What did you say about marks on the body?”

“A few marks on the body, Ash, maybe consistent with a fall into the sea.”

“And maybe not.”

Markham sighed. “Maybe not, Ash, but we’ll find out soon enough. Either way it’s time for everyone to move on. Another door closed, no happy ending but no nasty one either. Another hurdle overcome. She can then face up to the funeral, Ash. You’ll be there to support her, I take it?”