Dying Fall Read online

  "It's been a long time, Harry," Thackeray said. "How does retirement suit you?"

  "It doesn't, lad," Huddleston said flatly. "I'm bored out of my bloody mind already, looking for a job in security or summat like that. I can't be doing with all this gardening and house-painting my missus has got lined up, and it'll be even worse when the cricket season finishes. She wants to wall-paper the bloody lounge."

  Thackeray gave a thin smile. His unease made the heat seem even more oppressive that it really was and he hoped that Huddleston did not think that the beads of sweat he could feel on his forehead were caused by nervousness. He brushed his unruly hair away from his brow with careful casualness.

  "What can I get you?" he asked. Huddleston did not contest the offer, settling himself complacently again in his seat and handing Thackeray his already empty pint glass for a refill of Tetley's bitter with every appearance of unconcern, although when Thackeray turned away he watched his progress to the bar through narrowed eyes, full of suspicion.

  When Thackeray returned to the corner table Huddleston had selected, with a pint of bitter, a lemonade for himself and a plate of ham sandwiches, Huddleston had pulled a small transistor radio from his pocket and was holding it to his ear with a satisfied smile splitting his broad face like a trench.

  "No play before lunch," he said. "They'll inspect the wicket again at two. Wi'a bit of luck it'll be raining again by then." He laughed but Thackeray thought there was no humour in the sound, and a coldness about Huddleston's heavy features which did not alter, even at the good news from Chelmsford and his apparent satisfaction that God was still on the side of His own county.

  When Huddleston had taken a draught of his beer, given Thackeray's drink a disgusted glance and demolished half a sandwich in a single gargantuan bite, he switched the radio off again and stowed it away, his expression hardening. He was a big man, as tall as Thackeray and distinctly heavier around the waist and belly, his hair a streaked iron grey and his pale blue eyes watchful above the broad fleshy nose and thin lips.

  "So why's Jack Longley sent a lad to do a man's job?" Huddleston asked offensively. "Summat's come back to haunt him, has it? Some alleged miscarriage of justice?" Thackeray did not reply for a moment, keeping his resentment at this assault well-concealed while he absorbed the evidence that firstly Huddleston was no fool and had quickly worked out why he had requested the meeting, and secondly that if his professional judgement was about to be questioned he would fight for his reputation every inch of the way.

  Huddleston's glance relaxed the tiniest fraction as he took another gulp of his bitter, the sharp eyes never leaving Thackeray's somewhat non-plussed expression for an instant.

  "He was always a bit of a mardy bastard, was Jack," he said. "Too bloody scared to come and see me himself, I suppose."

  Thackeray smiled faintly at this assessment of the superintendent and guessed that where the belligerent Huddleston was concerned there just might be a grain of truth in it.

  "There's a TV programme called Case Re-opened," he said.

  "Aye, I know it," Huddleston said. "So what are they pushing their dirty little snouts into? Summat to do wi'me?"

  "The death of Tracy Miller," Thackeray said quietly, watching Huddleston's face intently as he took in this information. But there was little enough to be gleaned from his impassive expression.

  "Bollocks," he said flatly. "That little toe-rag was as guilty as hell. He confessed, for Christ's sake. Has no-one read the case file?"

  "Read, marked and inwardly digested," Thackeray said. "I can't pick any holes in your case unless....."

  "Unless what?" Huddleston asked, his colour rising and the real anger beginning to thicken his voice now. "Unless what? What are they saying?"

  "Unless you pressured him."

  "Thumped him, you mean?" Huddleston snapped back. "He didn't complain. No-one laid a finger on him that I know of."

  "You know it doesn't have to be as crude as that," Thackeray persisted. "I think what Jack Longley wants to know is that we're fire-proof: that the confession won't turn out to have been written at different times if it's tested, that if there's any possibility of genetic finger-printing after all this time we won't find that this lad couldn't possibly have done it, like that poor sod in Lancashire who did sixteen years for nothing."

  "She wasn't raped," Huddleston said angrily. "Interfered with, but not raped. There'll be nowt to test as far as I can remember. You must have read the forensic report."

  "Nothing under the finger nails? No sign she'd scratched him?"

  "Nowt. You know how she was found. She'd not have had much of a chance to scratch anyone." Huddleston's restraint was beginning to wear thin now and one or two of the other drinkers in the bar glanced curiously his way as he stuffed the last of the sandwiches into his mouth as if to prevent the glowing fires of anger within from bursting into an unstoppable conflagration.

  "But they'll test the confession statement, if it comes to a formal investigation," Thackeray said. "Will it stand up? All his own words? No-one suggesting anything to him. All written up contemporaneously? You know all the bloody silly things people have been caught out at recently. You know why Longley's worried. It was ten years ago. Things were done differently then - sometimes."

  "There was corroboration, lad," Huddleston snarled. "We didn't rely on the bloody confession, did we? We had witnesses. Go back and read the file again and get your facts straight. Webster was seen. He lied about where he was and when, and his story fell apart because his step-father contradicted it - at least he did when he got his timings sorted out - and because Jerry Hurst saw him where he wasn't supposed to be. Unless the witnesses were lying through their teeth, that lad was as guilty as Old Nick himself."

  Abruptly the big man got to his feet, rocking the table and sending the glasses sliding dangerously close to the edge as if on a ship in a high sea. Thackeray steadied them and himself as he stayed seated, allowing Huddleston to loom over him threateningly, keeping his breathing steady.

  "Tell Jack it's water-tight," Huddleston said through clenched teeth. "And tell him to come and do his dirty work himself next time." Fascinated, Thackeray watched the sweat roll down the older man's brow to be dashed away with an impatient hand, before he spun on his heel with surprising lightness for one so heavy and marched out of the bar without looking back.

  Thackeray sighed and finished his drink. So much for tact and diplomacy, he thought. Though on reflection, he conceded wryly, there may not be any inoffensive way of asking an ex-copper if he had knowingly put an innocent boy away for life.

  Restless and dissatisfied, he called back at police HQ instead of heading back to his empty flat. To his surprise he discovered the rangy figure of Kevin Mower half sprawled across his desk with the telephone clamped to his ear. The call was evidently not an official one and the sergeant hung up quickly with a look as close to embarrassment as Thackeray had ever seen him achieve.

  "I thought you were off duty, guv," Mower said, sliding into his chair and affecting nonchalance. "I came in on the off-chance of catching you, but they said you had a couple of days off."

  "I have," Thackeray said shortly, not willing to admit that the prospect of hours of free time filled him with more dread than pleasure. "I just came in to pick up a file." He rummaged not very convincingly in one of the drawers of his desk. "You look as if you've slept in those clothes," he said, casting a chilly eye over Mower's torn jeans and grubby sports shirt. "Has something come up?" Mower shrugged.

  "It's all rumour, guv. The young lads are full of threats. They're going to get the pigs for what happened to young Mark and Gavin. There's talk of a protest march, petrol bombs, you name it. And the mothers are all in a state of high old tension anyway because of the assaults. There's a couple of traumatised little girls up there being shown off like prize exhibits in a bloody peep show. The victims. It's sick. And its racking the tension up another couple of hundred notches."

  "Have you told uniforme
d?" Thackeray asked wearily. "They'll be the ones who'll have to deal."

  Mower nodded.

  "I'll talk to the duty officer," he said. "The Gazette doesn't help much either. Have you seen this?" He tossed a crumpled copy of the local paper onto Thackeray's desk and pointed at Ted Grant's vitriolic editorial. Thackeray cast an eye over it without much interest. The scatter-shot of blame and recrimination which Grant aimed at the police amongst others was familiar enough and offered no solutions.

  "Talking of the Gazette, guv," Mower said slowly as Thackeray passed the paper back. He was aware he was pushing his luck, as Thackeray's expression perceptibly froze. "Did you know Laura Ackroyd was snooping around asking questions about an old murder case? Tracy Miller, was it?"

  "How do you know that?" Thackeray asked, giving no indication whether what Mower was telling him was news to him or not.

  "I bumped into her yesterday," Mower said innocently. "She'd been talking to the kid's father for Case Re-opened - you know, Channel 4? Got that woman who killed her husband off last year?"

  "I remember," Thackeray said. "So how long has Miss Ackroyd been working for television?" He spoke quietly, aware of his heart quickening slightly. Damn Mower, he thought. He had an uncanny knack of probing that extra millimetre too far into areas which Thackeray would rather keep deeply buried. Mower continued with apparent insouciance, but Thackeray was aware that he was watching him intently. He glanced down at his hands to make sure they were not shaking as much as he imagined.

  "She's not working for them," Mower went on. "Just doing some preliminary research, she said. Though I should think she'd like it to turn into something more permanent. They all want to go on telly, don't they, journalists? Wasn't it one of old Harry Huddleston's cases?"

  "I think so," Thackeray lied non-committally. "I was on the other side of the county then." And not conscious enough most of the time to know what was going on in my own home, let alone in Bradfield, he thought bitterly.

  A tap on the door put an end to a conversation which Mower was as eager to pursue as Thackeray was reluctant. But as Thackeray took his leave to resume his interrupted day off he could not restrain the smallest of smiles at the thought of Laura Ackroyd confronting the formidable Huddleston. Beauty and the beast, and no bets on who would triumph, he thought, wondering why he felt unaccountably more cheerful as he ran down the steps and out again into the humid afternoon.

  Laura Ackroyd floated on her back in the shallow end at the local swimming pool, keeping a lazy eye on two dark-haired little boys who were playing ducks and drakes close by. The pool was a modern one, all glass and tubular steel balconies painted bright blue, and in spite of the hot weather was less crowded than she had expected it to be when she had agreed to take her friend Vicky's two small boys swimming on her day off.

  There had been a time when the pool would have been a magnet to every holidaying child in Bradfield and for miles beyond on a day like this with the temperature in the eighties, but she had noticed that since the pool had been sold to a private firm and the entrance fees had been raised, the patrons had diminished in number and become distinctly older.

  Vicky, luxuriantly pregnant in a loose flowing cotton dress of bronze and gold, which flattered her honey coloured skin and rich brown hair, was sitting close by in the front row of the viewing balcony, watching what had started as a swimming lesson turn into a joyful splash-about. Catching Laura's eye she waved and held up her watch.

  "Boys," Laura called. "I think your mum wants you out. Tell her I'm going to do a few lengths. I won't be long." She shepherded six year old Daniel and four year old Nathan to the steps, their dark curly hair plastered to their heads like seal-skin and the water dripping off their sturdy bodies, deeply sun-tanned after a recent holiday in France. She watched as they joined their mother who wrapped voluminous towels around them before they all made their way to the changing rooms.

  Laura launched herself strongly back into the water and did a length of the pool in a powerful crawl, exultant at the feel of the water parting to let her through. As she kicked vigorously, she could feel a faint twinge from the ankle she had recently broken. But she felt fit and healthy again, she thought with a sense of relief. She should get back into the habit of swimming here, as she used to do before the leg injury put her in hospital for a week and out of the country for a month. All that, she thought, was behind her now and best forgotten, a time of torn loyalties as well as physical pain, and of disillusionments that were still too tender to explore. She was not one to brood, she told herself, and almost believed it.

  She had almost believed it the previous evening, too, as she had let Kevin Mower wine her and dine her, not lavishly, it was true, but generously nevertheless at Bradfield's classiest Chinese restaurant. He had been good company, with a fund of sharp, ironic stories about his time with the Metropolitan Police, a ready wit with the less grim aspects of his work and the sensitivity, which she found surprised her somewhat, to edit out the harsher detail. He was sparing, though, with details of his own private life, and more cautious still about his current ambitions, although it was plain that he did not anticipate remaining a detective sergeant for long.

  On the way out of the restaurant, Mower had put an arm lightly around her waist, and she had not objected. But when she had asked him if he wanted to come back with her for coffee he had hesitated for a moment and then refused. She had glanced quizzically into those dark eyes, which had been openly admiring all evening but now revealed a reticence which she was sure was uncharacteristic.

  She had not repeated the invitation, half-relieved it had been rejected. He had walked her back to her car and said good-night without touching her again, leaving her to drive home with a faint feeling of dissatisfaction, as of business unresolved, which, she thought wryly later as she got into her solitary bed, was perhaps precisely what he had intended.

  Surging through the water head down to begin a third length, she grinned to herself, exhilarated at the thought of the previous evening's entertainment and by a sheer physical energy that had been drained away in the humidity of the day beyond the pool and its echoing coolness. Two lengths more, and slightly breathless now, she pulled herself from the water and made her way to the changing rooms where Vicky was still supervising the boys' dressing. She showered and wrapped herself in a towel and released the clips with which she had fastened her hair up, letting it fall in damp copper filaments around her face.

  "I'm beginning to feel fit again at last," she said.

  "Well if you feel like bringing these wretches here regularly until the baby arrives, feel free," Vicki said, patting her bulge proprietorially. "I'm not much for maternity cozzies - they tend to float around you in the water like a barrage balloon." She sent the two boys to put coins into hair dryers, which would keep them occupied for five minutes, and when they were out of ear-shot looked at her friend with some concern in her eyes.

  "Is this telly thing likely to lead to a new job?" she asked.

  Laura shrugged as she slipped a tee-shirt over her head, aware that however ambitious Vicky might pretend to be on her behalf, she would be devastated if and when she did decide to leave Bradfield. They had been close since their student days when Laura had stood side by side with Vicky against her family's icy reservations about her proposed marriage to David Mendelson, an ideal match to a lawyer fatally flawed by the fact that he was a Jew. They remained determinedly oblivious to David's family's equally fierce objections to Vicky's status as a Gentile whose children would not truly be of their father's faith.

  "Chance would be a fine thing, " she said. "All they want me to do is a bit of snooping around for them. It all depends on what I think of the boy's mother. She may just have got herself into a panic because she thinks he's never going to get out of goal." Vicky's eye's shifted to her sons, jumping up and down beneath the drier, their dark curls swirling in the hot air.

  "I can imagine," she said quietly.

  Laura took a brush to her own d
amp hair before tying it back loosely. She looked thoughtful.

  "Is it worth it?" she asked. "Motherhood? All that pain?" She glanced at Vicky's bulge but it was not just her forthcoming labour that she was thinking about. Vicky smiled the pre-raphaelite smile of contentment which often infuriated Laura but which today she half envied. She called her sons to her to have their hair combed and their hastily donned teeshirts and shorts straightened out from the damp tangle they had achieved alone.

  "Oh, it's worth it, isn't it boys?" she said over the two bright-eyed, inquisitive faces which held no comprehension of what they were agreeing to so eagerly.

  "Do you want to come again, Daniel, Nathan?" Laura asked, and was rewarded with a boisterous hug from the younger boy and a grave "Yes, please," from Daniel, who at six was already taking his responsibilities as the first born seriously.

  "It's a date," she said, lightly, pushing to the back of her mind the half-formed conviction that she was using Vicky's children as some sort of surrogate for those she had not herself conceived and in her darkest moments feared she never would.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "You'd best come in," Paul Miller said grudgingly. "I know I'll get no peace else." He was a small man, gray haired, parchment skinned, a sharp nose and chin giving him the air of a ferret or some other small rodent, pale eyes quivering behind round glasses with slightly tinted lenses, as if hiding from a world which had served him ill.

  Still damp and glowing from her swim, although the freshness was soon dissipated by the cloying heat, Laura had driven up to the Heights and parked outside her grandmother's bungalow. She knew that Joyce would not be there: it was her morning for attending a women's committee meeting at the Town Hall, an appointment she kept with dogged determination as her ability to get about unaided declined.

  Laura had decided to begin with what she guessed would be the more difficult of the two interviews she had been commissioned to conduct. Surprisingly, she thought, Tracy Miller's father still lived in the top floor flat in Bronte House that the whole family had shared at the time of the murder. He had opened the main door promptly when she rang and announced herself on the entry-phone and was waiting on his threshold when she emerged from the creaking, smelly lift.