The Unquiet Grave (11 page)

‘Do we know when and who last looked at a file?’

‘First thing you check. There should be a list of officers’ names and review dates on the front page. The second thing to do is—’

‘Check which suspects and witnesses are alive for re-interview.’

Copeland smiled. ‘You’re a natural, Brook.’

‘Next stop chief constable,’ snorted Brook. ‘Should I bother re-interviewing witnesses?’

‘If you like wasting your time. Memories fade and even if you know what to ask, you’re unlikely to get a better version of events than the one in the file. But sometimes it can bear fruit. Circumstances change and a witness who lied in the past might forget the details of what they said at the time. Or they might suddenly find a good reason to tell you the truth.’ He shrugged. ‘Either way, it can get you out of the office for a few hours, so please yourself. Otherwise just record all the information you can. Any questions?’

‘How long have you been doing this kind of work?’

‘I set up my first CCU in Nottingham about nine years ago so you can imagine how much work that was, with their murder rate.’

‘Most of those would be drug shootings though, surely.’

‘Of course,’ said Copeland. ‘But with that many guns on their doorstep, serving officers were usually too busy to look over traditional unsolveds.’

Brook nodded. ‘Do you enjoy the work?’

Copeland considered for a moment. ‘It supplements my pension and gets me out of the house.’ Brook managed to crack a smile. ‘Honestly, it’s pretty dull, most of the time, but occasionally you catch a break which can lead to a resolution. Pretty rare, though.’

‘And why leave Nottingham to come back here?’

Copeland hesitated, as though he hadn’t thought about it. ‘I still live near Derby and I’ve already reviewed a lot of the cases as a serving officer so I know the lie of the land, the people involved.’

Again Brook nodded. There was something in Copeland’s manner that told Brook he wasn’t being totally candid. ‘And when did you start the CCU? In Derby, I mean.’

‘Chief Superintendent Charlton recruited me a month ago. We attend the same church, so he knows me and my work. I’ve been setting up the unit for the last couple of weeks.’

‘Two weeks?’ said Brook, his smile fading. ‘He’s gone to a lot of trouble.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Never mind,’ said Brook. He yawned involuntarily.

‘Am I keeping you up?’ asked Copeland.

‘Sorry. I didn’t sleep so well last night.’

‘I’m not surprised, kicking your heels at home for five months.’ Brook caught his eye. ‘No, Charlton didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re thinking. But everyone else I’ve talked to did. Are you surprised?’

Brook shrugged. ‘I suppose not. You know the details?’

‘You searched a suspect’s home with your daughter in tow.’

Brook prepared to repeat the objection he made to Charlton but decided not to bother. ‘Something like that.’

‘If it’s any consolation, I sympathise. What you did. . . well, a lot of coppers won’t go that extra mile for a result.’

‘And you will?’

Copeland smiled with mouth only. ‘In my younger days, maybe.’ He locked on to Brook’s eyes. ‘Though nothing came back to bite me. Guess I must have been a bit luckier than you, Brook. A word of warning. If you think you’re just going to sit in here and catch up on your sleep, be advised. I’m to give Charlton weekly reports on your progress. He wants to know how you’re doing and he wants me to play tittle-tattle if you fuck up.’ Brook winced. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. I gather you have an aversion to swearing.’

Brook’s answering smile was tight. ‘Not to the swearing as much as what it tells me about the person doing it, Clive.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘It’s a symptom of a mind that’s not under control,’ replied Brook quietly. ‘And control is what they pay us for.’

Copeland hesitated as though he wanted to say something further but decided it wasn’t the right time. Brook knew then that Copeland had been made aware of the mental breakdown he’d suffered serving in the Met.

‘I’ll try and mind my Ps and Qs,’ said the older man eventually.

Brook was sombre. Obviously Copeland had decided to fling that particular barb at a later date. ‘And are you going to?’

‘Going to what?’

‘Play tittle-tattle.’

‘I haven’t decided yet but I’ll have to tell him something.’ Copeland made to leave but turned back at the door. ‘Just so you know, Brook, I’m a fair man. I’ll make up my own mind about you.’

‘That’s nice to know. Presumably you’ve sought other opinions.’

Copeland grinned. ‘Excuse my language but almost everyone I’ve talked to thinks you’re a prick.’

Brook nodded. ‘Including the Chief.’

Copeland’s answering smile was tight. ‘Like I said, I’ll make up my own mind.’

‘Don’t bother,’ replied Brook. ‘Charlton’s right.’

Brook picked up each of the folders on the trolley in turn and skimmed the front pages. Some senior investigating officers on the files were unknown to him, some weren’t. His heart sank when further inspection revealed which officers had subsequently revisited the cases. Brook found that, down the years, ex-DCI Copeland had reinvestigated all but one of the six cases. It was telling that he’d reviewed only two of the cases more than once so Brook put those in a pile with the case he hadn’t reviewed at all. The three cases Copeland had reviewed just once were tossed on to the bottom shelf of the trolley.

Brook returned to the first three files. In one, he saw the name of Detective Inspector Robert Greatorix and let out an involuntary moan, sagging back on to his chair and recoiling immediately from the unforgiving metal.

Nine

Detective Sergeants Noble and Morton were deep in conversation when Brook pushed open the door with his knee. The metal chair appeared over the threshold first, Brook following a moment later.

‘Don’t mind me,’ said Brook. He retrieved the padded office chair from behind his old desk and replaced it with the metal one.

‘Back already,’ said Noble. ‘Those cases weren’t cold for long.’

‘Funny,’ said Brook. He nodded at Morton. ‘Rob.’

‘Getting on OK with Copeland?’ inquired Noble.

Brook stopped wheeling his chair towards the door. ‘We’re feeling each other out. He seems viable.’

‘Rob knew him.’

‘Oh?’ said Brook, raising an eyebrow to Morton.

‘Not well, I should say,’ said Morton. ‘But he was a good sort. Loyal to his team, good at his job.’

‘Worth knowing,’ nodded Brook. ‘Ever on his team?’

‘He was only a couple of years off retirement when I started here and I never worked under him,’ answered Morton. ‘But I rarely heard a bad word.’

Brook held his eyes. ‘Rarely?’

Morton looked around, as though the room had suddenly filled with spies. Then, his voice lowered. ‘Copeland has a temper, especially if the case. . .’

‘What?’ asked Brook, when Morton showed signs of finishing there. ‘We’re talking in confidence, Rob.’

‘Well, he has a blind spot,’ continued Morton. ‘His teenage sister was murdered when he was a kid and they never found the killer. Hilda, Matilda or something. It was why he joined the force. After that, if he was on any case with a young female victim and you messed up, he could be a bit twitchy about it, as though you were letting down his own sister.’

‘Never solved, you say,’ said Brook.

‘No,’ said Morton. ‘He looked at the case often enough, on the QT, but never got anywhere with it.’

‘Copeland reviewed the case?’ exclaimed Brook.

‘You ask me, he was never off it,’ replied Morton.

‘You’re telling me Brass let Copeland investigate his sister’s murder?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Morton, lowering his voice again. ‘Brass never knew. Not officially. Copeland knew personal involvement would disqualify him so he’d review the file then get another officer to sign off on it.’

‘And these officers would put their names to Copeland’s work even if they hadn’t re-interviewed a single witness,’ said Brook, tight-lipped.

Morton shrugged. ‘To be fair, Copeland wouldn’t let any other detective near it once he was in CID. We’re talking about his sister. He was obsessed. Who was going to argue? He was a DI at thirty and a DCI five years later.’

‘Even so. . .’ Brook halted, declining to pontificate further after his own fall from grace.

‘Maybe you’ll get to see the file,’ suggested Noble.

‘You think?’ replied Brook doubtfully. ‘I’ve got six cases. He reviewed five of them but only two of them more than once.’

‘Was he SIO on any?’ asked Noble.

‘Not one,’ replied Brook.

‘He’d keep those to himself,’ added Morton.

Brook raised an eyebrow in mock incredulity. ‘Really?’

Morton smiled sheepishly. ‘I mean, obviously. Who wouldn’t?’

‘So what cases are you looking at?’ inquired Noble.

‘I’ve not got that far,’ said Brook.

‘I’d forget the cases he only reviewed once. They’re almost certainly duds,’ said Noble. ‘Stick to the two he investigated more than once, he must think there’s some mileage there.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Brook. ‘Although there’s one drawback. Ex-DI Greatorix also looked at one of those cases before he retired.’

‘He’s in the files?’ queried Noble. ‘Not as SIO, I hope.’

‘No, thank God!’

‘Which means a result isn’t completely out of the question,’ laughed Noble.

‘In the Cold Case Unit we prefer the term “resolution potential”,’ replied Brook drily, wheeling his chair out of the office.

Brook picked up the first folder from the heap and pulled out a three-inch stack of cheap, now yellowed, paper. He glanced at the date on the dog-eared top sheet and his heart sank: 1963.

He read quickly through the first couple of pages, soon realising the reason for the file’s thickness.

William ‘Billy’ Stanforth had died on 22 December 1963, burned to death in a garden shed at his parents’ home on his thirteenth birthday. The party had been attended by twenty school friends so the number of potential witnesses that had to be interviewed, no matter how fruitlessly, had contributed to the mass of paperwork. Brook skimmed through the papers for nearly half an hour before turning back to the typewritten summary on the top to begin a more detailed read-through.

Billy had gone missing at the party while his sisters, Amelia and Francesca, and invited friends were eating jelly and trifle and playing party games inside his parents’ house in Kirk Langley, a small village a few miles north of Derby. He was last seen playing a party game in the house at around four thirty on the fateful afternoon by his elder sister Amelia and his best friend, Edward Mullen. Nobody present – including the only adults, Billy’s father and mother – had seen him leave the house and certainly nobody had seen him arrive at the shed where he perished in the flames.

The initial theory was that Billy might have slipped away to have a cigarette – he’d just begun to dabble, according to Edward Mullen’s statement – and once inside the shed, Billy had knocked over a jar of paint thinners which may have been ignited by the cigarette.

The old shed had burned down to the ground within minutes, with Billy trapped inside. To add to the pathos, the Stanforth family and all the party guests were soon alerted to the fire and stood watching the blaze, unaware, at first, that Billy was dead or dying inside. Initially no one thought the fire anything serious. Nothing of value was stored in the shed, and it stood alone in the large garden with no chance of the flames spreading. When it was discovered that Billy was missing, the alarm was raised and the dreadful realisation that the young man had been trapped in the blaze began to dawn.

In the early hours of the next morning, forensics officers had found Billy’s blackened, charred remains amongst the smoking ruins. But what appeared to be a tragic accident took a sinister turn when officers searching the debris found the metal hasp of the shed door, which, though misshapen by the blaze, was clearly still attached to the staple by the locked padlock. Billy had gone into the shed and been padlocked in from the outside. Although there was no clear indication as to how the fire inside the shed had been started, the coroner had been left with little choice but to record a verdict of unlawful killing.

Brook turned to the autopsy report which confirmed that Billy Stanforth had died of smoke inhalation as the fire took hold inside the shed. The presence of toxic chemicals had accelerated both Billy’s suffocation and the intensity of the inferno.

Brook returned again to the front of the report. The SIO was a DCI Samuel Bannon. Next to the typed text of his name was the handwritten addendum DECEASED in brackets. The junior officer on the investigation was a DC Walter Laird. There was no report of his death. The file had last been updated and amended four years previously by Brook’s former colleague, DI Robert Greatorix.

‘And what did you turn up, Bob? Let me hazard a guess. Nothing.’

Brook continued reading. In the days following the fire, DCI Bannon and DC Laird interviewed Billy’s parents, Bert and Ruth Stanforth, and cleared them of any suspicion, even though talks with occupants of neighbouring houses revealed Billy was a wayward child and often in trouble with his parents for fighting and not getting to school on time.

Brook couldn’t prevent a smile at what passed for anti-social behaviour in 1963. He wondered at the reaction he’d get if he were able to transport some of the drug-taking, knife-wielding teenagers he encountered in Derby back to those times.

After ruling out the Stanforths, who by all accounts did not leave the house that afternoon, until the fire, Bannon and Laird had then interviewed every child at the party including Billy’s twin sister Francesca and fifteen-year-old elder sister Amelia. After interviewing Amelia, DC Laird did eventually identify a suspect.

Seventeen-year-old Brendan McCleary was a local petty criminal. He’d left school at fourteen without a trade and been unable to hold down a job for more than three months. At the time of Billy’s party, he was unemployed. He was also Amelia’s boyfriend and was seen in the vicinity of the house during the hour between the last sightings of Billy playing party games and the fire. Other witnesses claimed that Amelia had left the party around that time, presumably looking for McCleary, and had arrived at the fire after everyone else.