Behind Dead Eyes (11 page)

‘You wouldn't vouch for him?'

‘How could I?' said Birkett as he walked Tom to the front door and opened it onto the unfinished street.

‘I persuaded my wife to buy this place,' he said. ‘She wanted an old townhouse but I told her we'd get more value for money round here, if we bought a newbuild, off-plan.' He sounded desolate.

‘Well you probably will,' Tom assured him, ‘once it's finished.'

‘Finished?' he said and he looked at Tom as if he was mad, ‘Does this look new to you?' And it was not until he'd asked that question that Tom fully noticed his surroundings. A handful of weeds trying to grow through cracks in the pavement was the first clue. Then he realised some of the brickwork on the unfinished houses looked faded and battered by the weather.

‘No, it doesn't,' Tom admitted.

‘And do you see any work going on? We've been here two years,' Birkett told him, ‘and they haven't laid a brick in twelve months.'

‘What happened?'

‘Developers ran out of money.' He surveyed the cul-de-sac with a renewed sense of disbelief.

‘Is there any chance that anyone else could …?'

‘Buy the place and finish the work?' asked Birkett. ‘It would be cheaper to start afresh somewhere else than pick this mess up. There are properties here that have had the wind and rain battering them for months. You'd have to knock them down and start all over again. No one is going to do that.'

‘Won't your insurance company …?'

‘They say I have a structurally sound house and they did not insure the surrounding infrastructure for me. They are only interested if I get burgled, experience subsidence, the house collapses or it burns down and, if it does catch fire,
they pretty much implied I would be their first suspect,' he concluded, ‘just in case I were to get any ideas.'

‘That's awful.'

‘We're trapped here,' Birkett said. ‘I am paying a mortgage every month on a house that is literally worth nothing. Who is ever going to buy it from me when this is what they see when they draw back the curtains? There's nobody else living in this street. We thought it would be a nice place to bring up kids but it's a building site. My wife cries herself to sleep every night.' He smiled grimly. ‘We are here to stay. Unless we win the lottery.'

It was dark and getting late by the time Tom finally returned home. He'd stopped at a pub for a pint and some food. He hadn't felt like cooking and wanted some quiet time to re-read his notes and try to draw some conclusions about his client. If anything, Richard Bell looked guiltier than ever.

He walked wearily up the darkened driveway and a burly figure suddenly stepped from the shadows.

‘Jesus Christ!' yelled Tom as he flinched from the sudden movement and stepped quickly back.

The man came fully into focus then.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?' demanded an exasperated DS Bradshaw.

‘What
were you doing hiding in the shadows like that?' demanded Tom as he handed Bradshaw a bottle of beer. ‘I nearly had a bloody heart attack.'

‘I wasn't hiding,' protested Bradshaw, ‘I was about to try your door bell for the umpteenth time when you came walking up the drive. You should get one of those security lights installed that come on when someone reaches your front door.'

‘Good idea, I'll do that in my spare time,' he said dryly so that Bradshaw would notice the chaos in his living room.

‘I heard you were doing a place up,' said Bradshaw. ‘Big job is it?'

Tom ignored the question. ‘How did you find me?'

‘I'm a detective.'

‘Alright then,
why
did you find me?'

‘Because I needed a word.'

‘I remember the last time you had a word,' Tom told him, ‘there were a fair number of them, in fact. You called me an arrogant, treacherous idiot as I recall.'

‘Did I?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then I should never have called you an idiot,' Bradshaw said reasonably. ‘I take that bit back. I've always thought you were very intelligent.'

‘For an arrogant traitor,' said Tom. ‘Look, Ian, what exactly do you want?'

‘Have you heard of Frank Jarvis?'

‘The politician? Of course,' said Tom, ‘I heard him on the radio recently talking about his missing daughter.'

‘Well, pin back your lugholes then, because I've got a tale to tell.'

It didn't take long before the two men became embroiled in an argument. The detective began positively enough, explaining that Councillor Jarvis had asked for help to find his daughter. ‘We think a fresh pair of eyes is what is needed here,' he said then he handed Tom a picture of Sandra Jarvis. The ten-by-eight colour photograph showed a pretty young blonde girl with green eyes. Her face was serious, as if she wasn't expecting the camera's presence and resented its intrusion.

Tom listened silently while Bradshaw continued, ‘Sandra was a model pupil at school, and left for university with a seemingly bright future ahead of her. But in her second term she completely changed. She missed lectures, shunned her friends and became sullen, moody and introspective, apparently. Then she disappeared during the reading week.'

Bradshaw appealed to Tom's better nature then and asked him to put his feelings about the falling-out with Durham Constabulary to one side. ‘We would like you to do what you do best: unravel a mystery. You would be helping a suffering father in the process. There's a fund the force uses to pay for outside experts so we could put you on the payroll. What do you think?'

‘You've got to be kidding,' said Tom. ‘I mean, seriously?'

‘I'm not kidding.'

‘After the crap you lot put me through?'

‘What crap?'

‘Mmm, let's see.' And Tom pretended to think for a moment. ‘I've been ostracised by the police contacts I need in order to have any kind of career in journalism, which
renders me pretty much unemployable in that profession and this region …'

‘Well, can you blame them?'

‘… I have been verbally abused by detectives I've investigated for corruption then threatened with violence by those same men …'

‘O'Brien didn't threaten you, Tom.'

‘Detective Sergeant O'Brien told me he was going to kill me …'

‘It's a figure of speech. He didn't mean it.'

‘I was hauled into your DCI's office and, instead of being congratulated for uncovering serious malpractice within this force, Kane closed ranks, backed his own men and threatened me with arrest for obstruction …'

‘He has to stand by his men,' Bradshaw protested, ‘unless there is concrete evidence, which you couldn't provide!'

‘… Plus, I've been stopped three times for speeding in the past two months …'

‘
Were
you speeding?'

‘That's not the point!'

‘I think it is.'

‘Not when I haven't been pulled over once in the preceding ten years!'

‘Well,' said Bradshaw weakly, ‘we've been having a bit of a clampdown on speeding.'

‘I'm a bit late returning my library books this month,' said Tom, ‘if you're having a clampdown on that then now is the time to warn me.'

‘Trouble with you, mate,' Bradshaw said, ‘you're your own worst enemy.'

‘How's that exactly?'

‘You don't do yourself any favours.'

‘You mean I don't do enough favours for the police,' countered Tom, ‘like suppressing stories about incompetence or turning a blind eye to corruption.'

‘Corruption?' asked Bradshaw. ‘If you could prove corruption you wouldn't have left the names out of the stories.'

‘I would have thought you'd approve of that approach.'

‘No one's perfect, Tom, coppers included. This job has a way of getting to you. Some people cut corners when that happens or they throw their weight around a bit too much, but it's usually because they are under pressure and desperate to get a result.'

‘Does that make it right? Do you behave like that?' When he received no answer from the detective Tom added, ‘So why should they?' Then he said, ‘I spoke to a lot of people.'

‘And how many of them were criminals?' Bradshaw shook his head. ‘I hope that one day, if anybody questions your conduct, they will give you the benefit of the doubt before they ruin your career on the word of a bunch of crooks.'

‘Most of them were crooks, yes,' admitted Tom, ‘pissed-off ones: drug dealers who were shaken down instead of arrested, streetwalkers who had to give freebies so they could carry on working for a living …'

‘So they claim …' said Bradshaw ‘… and most criminals will say anything to get a police officer into trouble.'

‘You have detectives in Durham Constabulary who use blackmail and extortion on a daily basis, expect a cut of a criminal's enterprise instead of locking him up and that doesn't concern you?' asked Tom. ‘Or are you only interested in catching
real
villains.'

‘You think we're all the same, don't you? All coppers are bastards, all of us bent and on the take?'

‘No!' snapped Tom. ‘But what I don't understand is why
honest cops always bend over backwards to save the crooked ones. I don't believe you're all on the take, or even half of you. I'm willing to subscribe to the rotten apple theory. The vast majority of serving police officers are more honest than me but let's just say that five per cent … no … make it one per cent of detectives are as corrupt as I believe these men were. There are more than one hundred thousand police officers in the UK, so that's a thousand people like them. Get rid of those guys, instead of quietly ignoring the problem, and I'll stop writing the articles!'

‘That's exactly what we are doing, Tom.'

‘So where are those men now,' asked Tom, ‘on remand or bailed to appear before magistrates at some later date?' Bradshaw didn't answer. ‘Go on, tell me.'

‘Currently off sick,' the admission hurt Bradshaw, ‘as if you didn't know.'

‘Well, there's a shock. Let me guess: depression? No, stress! You get more sympathy for stress. How long before a guilty man quietly slips away into early retirement? That's what your lot always do, isn't it?'

‘Jesus, I hate it when you say
your lot
like we are all in it together!'

‘You know that old saying: about being part of the solution or part of the problem?'

‘Look, Tom, I didn't come here to have a row with you. I didn't even come here to ask for your help. It's Frank Jarvis who needs that, not us. He's the one who'll suffer if he never finds his daughter. He just wants to meet with you – but if you won't help him because you still bear a grudge against Durham Constabulary, then that's your prerogative.' Tom didn't respond to that. Instead he left the room with the beer he had been drinking and went into the kitchen.

Bradshaw hoped he was thinking it through. He drained the dregs from his beer while he waited and when Tom returned the journalist said quietly, ‘It's just … I've got a lot on at the moment.'

‘I can see how the DIY might be taking up all of your precious time but I'll leave this here just in case.' Bradshaw placed a Manila folder full of documents on the table in front of him. ‘There's enough here to give you an overview. Like I said, a man is suffering right now so if you wake up in the morning and change your mind about working with us … then I'll see you at the Rosewood café. Breakfast will be on me if you are mature enough to accept it.'

Ian Bradshaw left, but as he was walking down the driveway, Tom appeared at the door behind him. ‘Ian,' he called and when Bradshaw turned back to face the journalist, hoping he'd had a change of heart, Tom called, ‘you're a sanctimonious prick at times. Has anyone ever told you that?'

‘No,' replied Bradshaw cheerfully, ‘but I've been called far worse things.'

‘I'm bloody sure you have,' replied Tom as he closed the door firmly behind him.

Tom Carney didn't sleep that night. Instead he lay awake while reminding himself of numerous good reasons for avoiding another partnership with Durham Constabulary, even if they had sent a bloke he usually had a high opinion of to act as peace maker.

Tom was busy enough with the Rebecca Holt case. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced the jury had convicted Richard Bell of murder on the strength of a collective aversion to his personality, coupled
with previous evidence of a loss of control against a woman years earlier. The lack of an alibi didn't help either. To be truthful, Tom Carney did not know whether Richard Bell was a murderer or not. Bell could very well be conning him to evade justice but Tom was intrigued enough to probe deeper to find out what really happened to Rebecca.

But, and there was a big but, he would struggle to do this without cooperative contacts in the local police force. In the past he could have called up Ian Bradshaw and asked him to check a fact or give him a bit of inside information, but that avenue was now closed to him. In fact, he knew that if he reopened an old case like the Rebecca Holt murder this would only serve to annoy Bradshaw's superiors further, since they already had their conviction and would not want its veracity threatened by a meddlesome reporter.

There was also his financial situation. Richard Bell's family would pay him a retainer while he worked on the case and he was glad of this, since it might help him to keep his home, but even working on the case part time would rob him of the hours he needed to finish the seemingly never-ending project. If the police were willing to pay him too Tom could hire someone to finish all of the jobs in the house. Then he could sell it and go back to what he was really good at. He couldn't do that while he was embroiled in an ongoing feud with Durham Constabulary though.

Finally, there was the girl to think of. Tom knew a favourable outcome was unlikely at this stage but whatever had happened to Sandra, her family deserved to learn the truth, however painful that might be; rather than see out the rest of their lives in a terrible limbo, not knowing if their daughter was alive or dead.

Tom sat up then, pulled back the covers and climbed out
of bed. ‘What's the bloody point?' he asked himself, as he gave up on sleep and trudged downstairs. He made a cup of tea then picked up the photograph of Sandra Jarvis that was next to the file Bradshaw had left him. The girl's unsmiling face gave her an enigmatic appearance, as if she was deliberately harbouring a secret.

‘What happened to you?' he asked Sandra's picture. ‘Where did you go?'