No Questions Asked (12 page)

The incident of an apparent suicide isn’t something that usually crosses Jeff’s desk but Ollie Wright had left a file number on top of a stack of paperwork with a brief note that suggested Jeff look into it. Jeff fed the number into his computer and began to read about Terry Latham. Once he’d finished reading he was confident enough that there was something in there that they should know about that he called his officers to a meeting round the conference table at the opening of which he distributed copies of the file he’d been reading and which had added such purpose to his feeling of unfinished business where the Gary Mitchell case was concerned.   

‘Okay people’ Jeff began. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and as usual wasn’t wearing a tie. ‘Two nights ago a man called Terry Latham was killed after he fell from a bridge over the M62 west of Salford. When his body was recovered his head had been crushed and the rest of him torn into several pieces after he’d been gone over by an articulated lorry. It was a sorry end the man went through’.

‘My first question would be did he fall or was he pushed, sir?’ said Rebecca to the gentle amusement of those around her. ‘Sorry. I read a lot of PD James’.

Jeff smiled. ‘Good point, DI Stockton and one which I intend for us to prove one way or the other’.

‘Is this a murder investigation or a tragic accident or a suicide?’ said Ollie.

‘It could be any one of those’ said Jeff. ‘Terry Latham was a paedophile albeit one who hadn’t committed any offence since he last came out of prison five years ago. He was fifty-six years old and an alcoholic but again for the last five years he hadn’t touched a drop. He’d been attending regular therapy sessions but for the last year he’d also been running group sessions himself for other paedophiles who were trying to break with their past. He was having some success too. Several of the men he counseled had not reoffended. He was using his own experiences to help others and according to his mother he’d never been happier in his whole life’.

‘And we’re certain he didn’t offend in the last five years, sir?’ said Rebecca.

‘As certain as we can be’ said Jeff. ‘He hasn’t even been suspected of anything’.

‘So why would a man like Latham who seemed to have made a lot of progress in turning his life around suddenly commit suicide by throwing himself over a motorway bridge?’ Rebecca went on.

‘Exactly’ said Jeff. ‘The suicide theory makes no sense to me at all given the life Latham had been leading recently. And I don’t buy the tragic accident theory either because how did a man who didn’t drive and whose body was absolutely riddled with alcohol find his way to a pretty out of the way place like that? It was also late at night and we have no reports of him using any form of public transport’.

‘So somebody took him there’ said Adrian.

‘And you’re thinking it’s something to do with Bernie Connelly, sir?’ said Rebecca.

‘I’m saying I wouldn’t be surprised’ said Jeff.

‘Latham could’ve relapsed for some reason and gone back to his old ways?’ Adrian suggested. ‘And the sense of self loathing that came from that could’ve made him snap’.

‘Well like I said his blood was absolutely riddled with alcohol’ said Jeff. ‘June Hawkins confirmed that in her autopsy report. She said he must’ve been drinking quite heavily on the night he died’.

‘Which could back up what Adrian’s just said?’ said Rebecca.

‘It could’ Jeff agreed. ‘But I come back to wondering how he got to that bridge when he was so clearly lashed’.

‘So suicide is too convenient a fit?’ said Joe.

‘I think so, yes’.  

‘So sir, are you saying that the death of Terry Latham could be related to the murder of Bradley Thompson?’ Joe asked.

‘Well do you believe that Gary Mitchell is the right suspect, Joe?’

‘The evidence all points to him being so, sir’.

‘But do you think so?’

‘No’.

‘And neither do I’ said Jeff. ‘Despite all the circumstantial evidence’.

Rebecca smiled inwardly in admiration. Even though she’d been the senior officer who’d charged Gary Mitchell and Jeff was now pouring doubt all over that, this was what made Jeff one of those exceptionally annoying police officers who has to charge people on the basis of what he thinks is the truth rather than what the evidence suggests. That’s also why he was so bloody good.

‘Justice has to be based in truth, people’ said Jeff. ‘Otherwise it isn’t justice. That’s why I’ve asked June Hawkins to perform a second autopsy on what’s left of Terry Latham. I want to know if there’s any trace of Bradley Thompson’s DNA on him. He lived on the other side of the woods from where Bradley Thompson was found. His previous victims were all ten, eleven, twelve years old’.

‘And did any of them involve murder or violence of any kind beyond the sexual?’ asked Adrian.

‘No’ said Jeff. ‘So if he was involved with what happened to Bradley Thompson then I accept that it would be quite a departure for him but not one that’s beyond the bounds of possibility. I want all the men he was counseling to be interviewed. I also want to stage a reconstruction of Bradley Thompson’s movements last Sunday and start door to door around where Latham lived. There has to be something we’ve missed or we’ve yet to find out. I don’t care how painstaking it is. It’s our job to make sure an innocent man doesn’t go down for a crime he didn’t commit. And lastly, I’m aware of the shadow that Bernie Connelly is casting over this whole investigation. If anything is found out that can be attributed directly back to him then I want to know about it straight away. If he was Bradley’s father then he has the resources and the contacts to serve up his version of justice. And this time I want to be waiting for him’.

Martha Langton took her kids to school and then caught the train from Piccadilly to start the week’s work at Westminster. She sometimes felt a little self conscious sitting in the first class cabin but the fact was that it offered her the chance to work without having to field too many interruptions. There were occasions when members of the public thought it okay to march up to her and start shouting and screaming at her about whatever they thought was wrong and could blame politicians for, often using swear words in front of her children. She’d argued with someone once who said she shouldn’t complain because that’s what she’d signed up for as a politician. She’d come back at them and said that she hadn’t signed up to be verbally assaulted in front of her children who on that occasion had become very distressed and frightened. She didn’t care what the problem was she wasn’t going to stand there and let that happen to them. The man who’d attacked her eventually walked away cursing to himself and anyone else who’d listen about how useless politicians were and why the fuck did we ever vote for them.

By the time she made it to London’s Euston station she’d cleared a lot of paperwork that had been hanging around and she caught the underground feeling rather pleased with herself. As she boarded the tube with her small suitcase in one hand and her bag containing her laptop and all her paperwork over the other shoulder, she smiled at the memory of a girl she’d met over the weekend. On the Friday afternoon she’d been to one of the smaller universities in her constituency and fallen into conversation with a group of young women who were taking a course in travel and tourism. One of them, a really friendly and sweet girl with an enormous bosom which Martha subsequently learned had been enhanced in a Leeds clinic, thought that Vladimir Putin was the capital city of Russia. She also hadn’t been able to name the British Prime Minister, she didn’t know if Italy was a member of the European Union and she couldn’t name one single country in South America. Now Martha wasn’t the kind of politician who laughed these things off so as not to appear high handed or even arrogant. She challenged the perceptions of young women like the one she’d encountered because she did think that some basic knowledge about the world might be useful if someone was taking a degree in travel and tourism. But the girl’s lecturer was quite relaxed about her student’s lack of geopolitical perspective. She made it clear to Martha that she was teaching her students to pass an exam and not to give them an overall outlook or depth of awareness. Martha thought this was shocking but the student in question further damaged herself in Martha’s eyes when she admitted that she didn’t know what the Underground was. Martha explained that it was a system of trains running under the ground of big cities like London and Paris and New York and Moscow and which is sometimes called a metro system. The girl had looked troubled and said that she had so many ‘issues’ with that whole concept. When Martha asked what those ‘issues’ might be the girl answered that she couldn’t possibly conceive of riding on a train under the ground with ‘loads’ of strangers. Her car was her ‘security’ and in any case she just didn’t do public transport. That kind of attitude infuriated Martha. What did she mean by she didn’t ‘do’ public transport? Who did she think she was for God’s sake? She then really cooked her chips with Martha, though, when she said that she was going to vote UKIP at the next election. She didn’t know anything about them or what they stood for but her Dad said they were the only party speaking the truth to the British people. Martha had worked all her political life to ensure girls get equal chances to boys and the struggle for gender equality still wasn’t really over. But girls like this one were still making voting choices on the basis of what their Dad told them. Martha thought it was absolutely shameful that people were being brought up to have such limited horizons and then educated to focus on one thing without gaining an all round knowledge of life and the world around them. There was still so much social change that needed to be made but in her darker moments over a late night scotch she wondered if Labour would do anything other than change the furniture around in the living room of politics. Martha wanted radical change that would make more than a cosmetic or financial difference to the lives of her constituents. She wanted to end the poverty of aspiration amongst the working class. That’s what she’d become involved in politics to do but how easily could it be done when girls like the one she’d met on Friday at the university were cheerfully disinterested in anything beyond their own little world..

Her office manager Ashley was on the phone when she got to work at the House of Commons and she waved to him before going into her private office next door. She switched on the coffee machine. She didn’t know why but drinking coffee on those tilting pendolino trains made her feel rather sick and she was always glad that the journey was over in a little over two hours. Ashley had prepared the coffee machine for her in anticipation of it being the first thing she’d need. He was such a good guy.

‘Good morning’ Ashley greeted a few moments later when he walked through from his desk. ‘How was your weekend?’

‘Morning Ashley, oh you know, busy, exhausting but don’t tell the public because they won’t believe we politicians do actually work for our living’.

Ashley smiled. ‘Your secret is safe’.

‘And how was yours? Sit down for a minute and tell me what it’s like to be an intelligent young person with no responsibilities’.

‘Are you sure that’s me?’

‘I don’t see any other intelligent young person in the room’.

Ashley could swear sometimes that Martha flirted with him. He wouldn’t be averse in an ideal world but he had a beautiful girlfriend who he’d never be unfaithful to and having an affair with your boss, especially in the political world, could only lead to trouble. Still, the odd fantasy was enough to take the tedium out of the day.

‘Do you want the full version or the censored one?’

Martha smiled. She and her fellow politician husband Nick almost had to put it in their diaries when they could have sex these days. She’d bet young Ashley and his girlfriend were at it like rabbits. Who could blame them? They were both very attractive young people.

‘I’ll settle for the censored one, thanks’.

‘Well we had dinner and several drinks with some mates on Friday’ Ashley explained. ‘Then we went to the pro-Palestinian demo on Saturday before having dinner with Maria’s brother and his girlfriend. Then yesterday we spent the whole day in bed except when I got up to get the Sunday papers and either I or Maria got up to get some food or wine which we brought back to bed’.

‘Oh what it would be to be young and in love again’ said Martha. ‘Come to think of it though I don’t think Nick and I ever had that moment of lightning striking’.

‘Really?’

‘No’ said Martha thoughtfully. ‘We just met and that was it really. Three kids and a mortgage the size of Manchester later and we’re both as busy as hell. Enjoy your days in bed with Maria whilst you still can, Ash. There’ll come a time when they’ll get stopped by life’.

‘Well I hope that’s a long way off’.

‘I hear the pro-Palestinian demo was very well attended?’

‘It certainly was’ said Ashley who was wearing a badge depicting the Palestinian flag on the lapel of his jacket. ‘There was a great crowd there. Got to be a good ten thousand I reckon’.

‘It was one of the best things we’ve ever done in terms of foreign policy to support recognition of the Palestinian state’.

‘No argument from me there’ said Ashley. ‘I just wish we could do more’.

‘Well I for one will be pushing for just that when we get back into power’ said Martha who shared Ashley’s support for the cause of the Palestinians. ‘But anyway, how’s the petition going?’