The Unquiet Grave (42 page)

‘And try to get former colleagues involved in the case? That doesn’t make sense unless. . .’ He left the sentence for her to finish.

‘Unless he was insane,’ she said, her face tight. ‘Brook, for the last time, Dad was not crazy.’

Brook splayed his hands.
We’re just talking
. ‘OK, if we accept that your father was sane – troubled, obsessed but sane. . .’

‘I’ll settle for that.’

‘There is a way round it, a reason he could have expected a change in the MO before it happened.’

‘And what’s that?’

He sighed. ‘Not only did your father know who the Pied Piper was, the Pied Piper knew he knew and realised he had to alter his method. When Harry Pritchett disappeared, your father realised what was happening.’

Rosie was speechless for a second then shook her head. ‘But if Dad knew his identity, why didn’t he tell someone?’

‘Maybe he couldn’t prove it,’ offered Brook.

‘What does that matter? He would still tell
someone
in case anything happened to him,’ pleaded Rosie. Brook smiled quietly, waiting for her to catch up. When she did, the violence of her emotion took him aback. ‘Jesus. He did tell someone. That’s what got him killed.’

Later that afternoon, Brook parked the BMW in the former pub car park in Rawson Green and retrieved the tightly packed carrier bag from the boot.

Braced for a cool reception, Brook knocked on the plastic door two minutes later, hoping he wouldn’t have to talk his way past Laird junior. A moment passed before the door opened as far as the chain allowed. Walter Laird’s beady eye gazed balefully back at him.

‘Brook.’

‘Walter,’ said Brook cheerfully. ‘How are you?’

Laird tapped his chest and cleared his throat. ‘I’m not feeling so good this afternoon.’

‘Did Clive ring you?’ said Brook, still grinning as hard as he could manage.

‘Aye, but I’m not up to it, lad. We’ll have to do this another time.’ The door began to close.

‘So you’ll not be wanting these then?’ Brook drew one of the cigarette cartons from the carrier and waggled it in front of Laird. ‘Peace offering.’

The old man’s eyes lit up and he looked greedily at the carton and the other four hundred cigarettes in the bag. He held a hand through the chained door for the box of delights. ‘Very nice of you.’

Brook pulled the carton out of range, his smile rebuking Laird for misunderstanding the terms and conditions. With a resigned sigh, Laird drew back the chain and snatched at the first ingot of death, scuttling back inside to the warmth, clawing at the cellophane as he moved. Brook followed and sat down at the table as Laird lit up with a moan of pleasure then fell back into his armchair, face wreathed in ecstasy. ‘Can’t afford to buy these beauties usually. Thanks, Brook.’ He looked furtively across at Brook, who was still clutching the bag but relaxed when the younger man leaned over and dropped the rest of the bounty in his lap.

‘Any danger of a cup of tea?’ asked Brook, deprived of his usual flask and suffering withdrawal.

‘Just made a fresh pot,’ replied Laird with a nod to the tiny kitchen. Brook poured the tea and returned with two chipped mugs.

For the first time, Laird considered Brook with a kindly face as he took a mug of tea from him. ‘I’ve misjudged you, lad. Showing respect – it’s appreciated.’ His smile died slightly when Brook fished out his notebook. ‘And now you want to ask me about poor Tilly.’ His head lowered. ‘Aye. Terrible business.’ He took a long draw and exhaled towards the hearth.

‘Did Clive tell you what we spoke about?’ asked Brook.

Laird nodded.

‘Everything?’

‘Everything,’ confirmed Laird. ‘And you were right. I lied but I did it for a friend and I won’t apologise for that.’

‘Which friend are we talking about?’ asked Brook. ‘Sam Bannon or Clive Copeland’s father?’

‘Both,’ snapped Laird. ‘It’s called loyalty.’

‘Some might call it deceit.’

‘And some would call it an honest mistake,’ retorted Laird, trying not to lose his good mood.

‘We all make mistakes, Walter, but some of us learn from them.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You suppressed evidence in the Stanforth inquiry.’

‘I told you before, Tilly being at the Stanforth house that day was not relevant.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Brook. ‘But that act of suppression became very relevant when Tilly died two years later. Potential suspects had to be ignored because of what you did.’

‘They weren’t ignored,’ protested Laird. ‘Didn’t Clive tell you?’

‘They were ignored
officially
.’

‘I interviewed McCleary
and
Amelia Stanforth in nineteen sixty-five. . .’

‘But you couldn’t put it on the record because you’d painted yourself into a corner two years earlier.’

Laird hung his head. ‘I can’t deny that,’ he said. ‘But I did my job and all the right people were spoken to.’

‘Trevor Taylor?’

‘Especially Trevor Taylor,’ snarled Laird, sucking on his cigarette. ‘He killed Matilda, I’m sure of it. He gave me the shivers every time I saw him. Fucking pervert.’

‘And is that what you told Clive when he joined the force?’

‘Clive didn’t need telling,’ said Laird. ‘Everyone who lived on the Mackworth Estate knew he was a wrong ’un.’

‘But you couldn’t prove it.’

‘No. But he was the last to see Tilly alive, running up towards the heath.’

‘Towards Kirk Langley.’

‘Yes,’ answered Laird quietly. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another immediately, his hand shaky.

‘Towards a rendezvous with Brendan McCleary.’

‘So it seems,’ said Laird.

‘But she never made it.’

‘No.’ Laird shook his head. ‘Poor kid. Taylor probably followed her and had his way with her. . .’

‘And borrowed his mother’s car to move her body,’ said Brook.

‘We could never prove that.’

‘We’ll come back to that,’ said Brook. ‘Clive said you saw Taylor a couple of days before Matilda disappeared.’ Laird’s brow furrowed. ‘You were moving house.’

‘That’s right,’ said Laird, pointing a finger, his face brightening. ‘I’d cleared up all the odds and sods from the house and I left the spare keys with George, Clive’s dad. Asked him to keep an eye on the place until the new owners moved in.’ He shook his head. ‘It was getting late and Tilly had just taken the dog out. When I drove past, I looked back in the mirror and Taylor was right behind her, drooling all over her like the dirty old bastard he was. Made me sick to my stomach when I thought about it later.’

‘Presumably you went after him hard when Matilda’s body was found.’

A ghost of a smile crossed Laird’s face. ‘I’ll say. And I dare say we might have cracked him if that gamekeeper hadn’t done a runner. We wasted a lot of time and resources trying to connect Colin Ealy to Tilly.’

‘So you don’t think Ealy killed Matilda.’

Laird took a long pull on his new cigarette. ‘I couldn’t say for sure. But it seems a bit of a stretch putting Ealy so far from his place of work on a Tuesday night at the exact time Tilly Copeland walked past. And what little I saw of him, he didn’t seem the type. Not like Taylor.’

‘Or Brendan McCleary,’ added Brook.

Laird shot him a sidelong glance. ‘No.’

‘You and Sam made a big thing about transport in your paperwork. Presumably you cleared McCleary and Amelia Stanforth on those grounds.
Unofficially
.’

‘Right,’ said Laird through pursed lips.

‘But then Taylor didn’t have a car either, did he?’ said Brook. ‘For a body dump in Osmaston he’d need a vehicle.’

‘His mother had one.’

‘But you couldn’t prove Taylor borrowed it the night Matilda disappeared,’ stated Brook.

Laird’s features darkened. He knew what was coming. ‘Not according to the mother. I interviewed her.’

Brook nodded. ‘That’s what Clive said. Only I can’t find a report of that conversation either.’

‘It were near fifty years ago, lad,’ said Laird, finally losing patience. ‘Papers get lost, destroyed. The old battleaxe said the car hadn’t been out of the garage and we couldn’t find a neighbour to say different, you’ll have to take my word.’

Brook nodded. ‘But by this time the focus had switched to Colin Ealy.’

‘The minute he disappeared we thought we’d cracked it,’ said Laird. ‘He had transport and he knew the dump site. So we went over the van for a week and put out a nationwide alert. We tested everything he ever owned – and retested when DNA rode over the horizon. We got nothing, Brook. No connection to Tilly. No fibres, no prints, no DNA.’

‘But he remained a suspect.’

‘Oh, aye,’ conceded Laird. ‘But only because he’d dropped out of sight. If he came back tomorrow we’d still have had a job to convict without a confession.’

‘Why do you think Ealy disappeared if there was no evidence against him?’

‘I’ve tried to figure it out for nearly half a century, lad.’ The old man shook his head. ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Was it because he got scared when he recognised DCI Bannon at the lake?’

Laird’s eyes widened. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Never mind. I can guess,’ snarled Laird. ‘You’ve spoken to Graham Bell, haven’t you? Jesus, Brook. Bell never made it past DS because he was useless and Sam Bannon said so when he came up for promotion. That’s why Belly always had it in for Sam. Always had something to say when Sam was on the sick.’ He took a long draw on his cigarette. ‘What did he tell you?’

Brook, pleased to be able to keep Rosie out of it, decided against contradiction. ‘That Ealy saw Bannon arrive at the lake and became edgy because he’d recognised him.’

‘That’s because Sam was always in the papers,’ replied an exasperated Laird. ‘Look, Ealy didn’t see anybody the night Matilda’s body was dumped or he would have mentioned it before then, whether he knew who it was or not. Jesus! I can’t believe you rang Australia to talk to that shithead.’

Brook shrugged. ‘So Bell’s lying.’

The old man hesitated. ‘He’s exaggerating.’

‘Then there
was
a reaction to Bannon.’

Laird was quiet until, ‘Yes. But you can’t mention this to Clive. He’ll get the wrong idea. And that’s not why Ealy did a runner.’

‘Why then?’

‘For God’s sake, Brook. Why not? He was a seventeen-year-old kid, good-looking. He probably wanted to see the world.’

Brook smiled. ‘So he headed for the wilds of Scotland.’

‘You know about that?’

‘It’s in the file.’

Laird laughed. ‘Clive’s left nothing out. You’ve got to hand it to him.’ He looked into his mind’s eye. ‘Crianlarich. I went there. Nice place, if you like it remote. There’d been a phone call, a report that Ealy had been seen but by the time I got there the bird had flown.’ He shook his head. ‘Clive took a couple of holidays there as well, looking for Ealy, and we’re talking fifteen years after the sighting. Poor sod. He thought about little else but Tilly before and after he joined CID.’

Brook drank his tea without taking his eyes from Laird. ‘Did you find out how Ealy got away?’

‘He disappeared.’

‘And left his van behind,’ said Brook. ‘Didn’t that strike you as odd? I mean he must have got to Scotland somehow.’

‘Maybe he took the train. . .’

‘But how did he get to the station? Was he noticed buying a ticket? How many people saw him on his journey? How many remembered him arriving somewhere so remote, a young Englishman in the wilds of Scotland?’

Laird stared hard at Brook. ‘I don’t know. We never found a witness. Maybe someone gave him a lift.’

‘John Briggs?’

‘He said not.’

Brook didn’t come back with more questions and the two men considered each other across the waves of blue-grey poison drifting on the air between them.

Investigating the investigation. Tough beat
.

‘Is that it?’ inquired Laird, almost cheerful now. He’d answered all Brook’s questions and was six hundred fags up on the deal.

‘The night Sam Bannon died, he called you.’

Laird closed his eyes. ‘I don’t want to talk about Sam. It’s too painful.’

‘Then I’ll be brief,’ insisted Brook. ‘He called you.’

Laird sighed. ‘He did. I wish I’d. . .’ He shook his head, unable to go on.

‘You wish you’d done something differently,’ suggested Brook. Laird nodded. ‘But he was out of his head.’

‘Raving. I tried to calm him,’ said Laird.

‘What was he raving about? The Pied Piper?’

Laird looked at Brook, his eyes narrowing. ‘You’ve been talking to that junkie, Rosie Bannon, I can tell.’ No answer from Brook. ‘That bitch! I should never. . .’

Brook raised an eyebrow when Laird halted. ‘You should never have perverted the course of another inquiry to help her out. I agree. Funnily enough she said the same. She didn’t want the insurance money.’

‘It’s easy to say that when you’ve got plenty.’ Laird’s lip curled. ‘Besides, the money didn’t matter to me either. I was helping my friend save his reputation.’

‘Decent of you.’ Brook paused for effect. ‘So tell me what you thought about Sam’s Pied Piper theory.’ To his surprise Laird threw back his head and laughed.

‘Not you an’ all. I thought you had brains, Brook. That fantasy was dreamt up by a sick man and kept alive by a drug addict with too much time and money on her hands. I should have let her make her own way.’

‘Is that why you had her warned off?’

‘She was wasting police time and dragging her father’s reputation into the mud,’ growled Laird. ‘There is no Pied Piper. We had two boys murdered on the same day ten years apart. That’s not a serial, it’s a coincidence.’

‘And Harry Pritchett?’

‘Who?’

‘The boy who went missing in nineteen seventy-eight, the week before Sam died.’

‘Is he dead too?’ crowed Laird. ‘Where’s the body then?’

‘Hidden,’ said Brook hesitantly. ‘Maybe.’

‘That’s bloody convenient,’ sneered Laird.

‘Did Sam tell you Pritchett was the next kill?’

‘There was no kill because there wasn’t a body,’ insisted Laird. He panted, getting his breath back. ‘Look, the Pritchett lad was missing. Still is. So Sam signed him up to his fantasy.’