Flesh And Blood (4 page)

‘If there’s a prize.’

‘How about staying out of jail?’

‘Sounds good.’ McKeirnan took a packet of cigarettes from the top pocket of his overalls and held it out towards Elder and the officer with him, both of whom declined. McKeirnan tapped one out, set it between his lips and produced an imitation Zippo lighter. He liked the quick click of the lighter head, up and back with the side of his hand.

Elder asked him where he had been on the date that Lucy Padmore had gone missing, on the date that her body had been found.

‘Hull,’ McKeirnan answered without hesitation.

‘What doing?’

McKeirnan shrugged and glanced around. ‘This.’

‘And there are witnesses, people you worked for?’

‘I dare say.’

‘When you were up in Hull,’ the officer asked, ‘where did you stay?’

‘Caravan.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is it now?’

McKeirnan allowed himself a smile. ‘Burned out, didn’t it? On the journey down. Someone not too careful with a can of paraffin.’ He shook his head. ‘Lucky to get out in one piece.’

They found the caravan where McKeirnan had claimed it was, a charred wreckage with a twisted frame. Scene of Crime lavished attention on it for the best part of three days; labelled what remained of the interior and had it carried away for further scrutiny. Bloodstains belonged to the most common group, McKeirnan’s own. Lucy Padmore’s, too. ‘Cut myself shaving. Too much of a hurry, yeah?’ Apart from McKeirnan’s, the fingerprints of one other person showed up several times. ‘One of the lads from the fair, I was giving him a lift down, okay?’ There was no clear evidence that Lucy had ever set foot inside.

At an identity parade, whether through fear or some traumatic loss of memory, Michelle Guest failed to pick him out.

McKeirnan dropped from sight.

And a week later another girl went missing, a hundred or so miles north, another county, but the similarities were striking. Susan Blacklock was a little over average height, slim and fair-haired, sixteen years old; the last time anyone had seen her was on the coast path between Robin Hood’s Bay and Whitby at close to three in the afternoon.

Elder drove up the A1 and across the moors, where he liaised with Don Guiseley from the local force; he talked to the girl’s parents, Trevor and Helen, to the staff of the caravan site where they had been staying, to the retired teacher who had been walking the Cleveland Way and passed Susan close by Saltwick Nab, acknowledging her with a greeting that had been faintly returned.

Five days missing and Elder dreaded the sixth.

Then they got a break. Two stray threads recovered from beneath the blackened frame of the folding bed were found, under a microscope, to match those from the sweater Lucy had been wearing when she disappeared.

Further examination of the blood samples taken from the caravan discovered DNA which matched Lucy Padmore’s, not McKeirnan’s at all.

An appeal for information as to McKeirnan’s whereabouts led to another of his victims coming forward, a young-looking nineteen-year-old, Vicky Rawls, who, until then, had kept her own counsel about the terrifying day and night she had spent in the close company of Alan McKeirnan and his friend, Shane Donald. A fast flirtation that had gone horribly wrong.

It was not so long before McKeirnan was retraced, working at a garage north of Rotherham on the Rawmarsh road, bodywork mostly, beating out and welding, clocking on each day at seven, off at five. A youth answering Shane Donald’s description spent a large part of his days hanging round the garage, running errands, doing odd jobs, handing McKeirnan his tools.

The two of them were living in a basement bedsit close to the town centre, bathroom on the first-floor landing, nearest toilet in the yard outside.

Along with three other officers, Elder met up with his opposite number from the Notts. force at motorway services. ‘I’ll toss you for it,’ Terry Foster had said, and when the coin came up heads, ‘Right. McKeirnan’s mine.’ Foster grinning, savouring the thought.

Foster’s team were five strong. South Yorks. were providing backup, half a dozen uniforms and as many plain-clothes, an armed response unit standing by. Both garage and bedsit were staked out, officers well out of sight, no chance of tipping their hand too soon. At twenty to seven the message came through, McKeirnan had left for work alone.

Shane Donald, wearing grubby jeans and a grey T-shirt, trainers on his feet, had wandered, bleary-eyed, to the corner shop. Twenty Embassy, the
Sun
and a carton of milk. He was on his way back, glancing at the sports page, when Elder fell into step beside him.

‘Bit of a fan, then?’

‘Eh?’

‘Soccer? Bit of a fan? United? Liverpool?’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

But then Donald saw the two men outside the house, no more than fifty yards away, and he knew. Instinctively, he turned to run, milk and paper spilling from his hands, one corner of the carton splitting as it landed, leaking semi-skimmed on to the pavement.

Elder grasped Donald’s arm between elbow and wrist.

‘Don’t. Don’t be stupid. You’ll only get hurt. No need for that.’

♦

They took them to separate stations, McKeirnan with abrasions to his face and hands, a swelling over his left eye, the impression of a metal toecap faint alongside his groin. Whistling ‘Summertime Blues’ through splintered teeth.

‘My client’s already been waiting forty-five minutes to see a doctor,’ the duty solicitor blustered, pink-faced.

‘My old man waited eighteen months for a hip replacement,’ the custody sergeant replied. ‘The way it is these days.’

‘This isn’t funny…’

‘What my dad said. Especially when the bastard thing kept slipping out of joint. But keep your shirt on. The police surgeon’s on his way.’

Three-quarters of a mile away, in the bowels of another station, the custody sergeant asked Donald to confirm his age.

‘Seventeen.’

‘The truth, son.’

‘Seventeen next birthday.’

‘Is there anyone you’d like informed that you’re here?’

Donald shook his head.

‘Your parents?’

‘What the hell for?’

Elder leaned across the desk. ‘Let’s get on to social services sharpish, explain the situation. Someone to attend the interview. When they show up, make sure he’s cautioned again. Meantime, let’s see if we can fix him up with a cup of tea and something to eat. Bacon sandwich, something of the sort.’

‘Thought you were going to tuck him in,’ the custody sergeant said, nodding towards Donald’s cell, the formalities over. ‘Read him a bedtime story.’

‘Kiss him good-night, if I thought it’d help,’ Elder said. ‘And whichever solicitor’s assigned, let’s try and make sure it’s not someone fresh out of law school, out to make a name for themselves.’

♦

It took till mid-morning to get it sorted: a senior social worker in a black skirt and crisp white blouse, rings of tiredness around her eyes; the solicitor late fifties, genial, semi-retired, doing his bit for legal aid. Elder had asked Maddy Birch, a bright DS with soft eyes, to run the interview with him. The room was windowless, low-ceilinged and bare-walled – table, chairs, twin-deck recorder, overhead light. Elder identified himself for the tape and invited the others in the room to do the same, Donald’s voice so faint that Elder had to ask him to say his name again.

For the first fifteen minutes Elder led Donald through basic background information about himself, nothing challenging, encouraging him to relax a little, lose some of the tightness across his shoulders, the defensiveness in his voice. When Maddy Birch asked him to tell them about his first meeting with McKeirnan, Donald wriggled in his chair and ran his tongue around his mouth and answered haltingly. Maddy smiled and drew him on. A good laugh. All the fun of the fair.

‘Lucy Padmore, Shane,’ Elder said, slipping in the name without warning. ‘What was she like?’

‘She was nice.’

‘Nice?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Nice to you?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Is that why you did those things to her?’

‘I…’

‘Pay her back for being nice to you.’

‘I dunno what you mean.’

‘Why you killed her?’

‘No!’ The chair skewed beneath him as Donald pushed himself to his feet, the social worker reaching out a hand, whether to save him or ward him off unclear.

‘Shane…’

‘No. Don’t say that.’

‘About killing her?’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘She died, Shane. No bringing her back.’

Donald was breathing unevenly, open-mouthed, a rasp of air sucked in and then expelled; eyes wild, one hand to his mouth, the other rubbing at his crotch.

‘Shane,’ Maddy Birch said gently, ‘why don’t you sit back down?’

‘She is dead, Shane, you know that, don’t you?’

Not looking at Elder, at anyone, Donald slowly nodded his head.

‘And if you didn’t kill her, somebody else did.’

It was quiet in the room, quiet enough to hear the running of the tapes, the slightly asthmatic wheeze of the solicitor’s breath. Elder thought he could smell peppermint, peppermint and sweat.

‘Tell us about it, Shane,’ Elder said. ‘Tell us how she died.’

Donald jerked back his head, chewed on the remnants of a nail.

‘Shane,’ said Maddy Birch. ‘You don’t need to be afraid.’

Tears welled up in Donald’s eyes.

‘Shall I tell you what I think?’ Elder said. ‘I think you were fooling around, the three of you. You, Lucy and Alan. Drinking, having a laugh. A spliff or two maybe, I don’t know. You were excited, all of you, and then – I don’t know, Shane, and this is where you’ve got to help us – somehow it all got out of hand. Somebody got hurt. Lucy got hurt.’

Donald closed his eyes.

‘And you liked her, didn’t you? Lucy. You said so. You didn’t want that to happen.’

Donald’s eyes flickered open, focused on Elder for a moment, then away.

‘You see, Shane, I think you got yourself mixed up in something you weren’t happy with. Something you thought was wrong, but you were afraid to say. Alan was older, you looked up to him. He liked you, too. But what happened with Lucy… what he did… Shane, I don’t think it’s right if you take all the blame, do you? Murder, Shane, that’s what it was, what it became. Murder.’

Elder reached out and, for a moment, took hold of one of Donald’s hands.

‘Help us, Shane. Help yourself. Tell us the truth.’

When it was over, twenty or so minutes later, they had a version – broken, repetitive, littered with gaps – of what had happened inside the caravan. McKeirnan having sex with Lucy, then persuading her to do the same with Donald before joining in. Then, later, after a few pills, some smoke, McKeirnan again, the music turned up loud to drown his laughter, her screams. His fist. A bottle. The handle of a broom. McKeirnan looking over his shoulder at Donald’s face. Lucy’s fingers scratching at his eyes, trying to escape. McKeirnan’s anger. Rage. Then blood. The knife. McKeirnan cursing her for what he’d done.

In the interrogation room the silence held.

Elder knew they would get nothing more, not then. He got up, stretched, walked around the table, placed both hands on Donald’s shoulders and squeezed. ‘Good. You’ve done well. Now we’ll try to help you. If we can.’

A sob broke from Donald’s throat.

Elder’s eyes, looking back across the table towards Maddy Birch, clear and hard as polished stone.

‘See he gets something to drink,’ Elder said, stepping away. ‘To eat. A rest before we talk to him again.’

♦

‘You know he’s talking his way out of it, don’t you?’ Maddy Birch said. They were standing at the rear of the building, Birch smoking, Elder with a mug of dishwater coffee barely touched.

‘You think so?’

‘You’ve read Vicky Rawls’s statement, heard the tape. He hit her with – what was it? – a piece of rubber hose.’

‘Because McKeirnan told him to. Threatened him.’

‘He did it just the same. That and more.’

‘I know.’

Birch stubbed out her cigarette beneath the sole of her shoe. ‘They killed her, Frank. Between them. That’s what I think.’

‘I expect you’re right. In law, if nothing else. But if we need Donald to give us McKeirnan…’

‘We have to go along with his lies?’

‘We may have to buy his version of events for now, at least.’ Not a man who noticed these things as much as, perhaps, he might, Elder was aware of the green of Maddy Birch’s eyes.

‘Are you going to finish that?’ she asked, nodding towards the coffee in his hand.

Elder shook his head and tipped it out over the ground.

‘You didn’t ask Donald about Susan Blacklock,’ she said once they were back inside.

‘All in good time.’

In the Gents, Elder scrubbed his hands with almost exaggerated care.

♦

He pushed it all he could. The path between Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay. The end of August. You were up there, that way. The North York coast. That time. Susan, remember? He showed Donald photographs, watching him closely for some tell-tale sign of recognition, realising the possibility that he had never known her name. Sometimes he would begin the session with it, at others wait and slip back to it amongst other things. And never succeeded in shaking him once. Shane Donald who was so shaky on so many things.

Even then, Elder couldn’t shift it from his mind. The coincidence. The chance. The almost certainty gnawing at his insides. He had never been able to let it go.

When he showed McKeirnan the photograph, all McKeirnan did was leer.

‘You know her, Alan?’

‘Like to.’ With a wink.

‘Where is she, Alan? What happened to her?’