One Bad Turn (23 page)

‘I’ve been working on the statements taken by Quinlan’s team from Kathleen Williams’ friends, family and colleagues up at the school.’

‘And you found something?’

‘Not at first, no. We’d been trying to find links between the women - which so far hadn’t resulted in anything positive, the addition of Kathleen in to the mix only made it harder, where we may previously have identified something that two of the women may have had in common, trying to find any similar trend with the third victim was proving impossible. Yesterday we widened the trawl to include the women’s leisure interests and social circle to see if there were any new links emerging.’

‘We already know there isn’t anything connecting the victims or their husbands,’ Coupland said irritably, ‘I don’t need a diagram to tell me what we’ve already worked out.’

‘Yeah, but what about this,’ Ashcroft wrote a name on the board that seemed vaguely familiar. Nathaniel Mathers. Coupland studied it for a moment, tried it out in his mind a couple of times but his memory wasn’t playing ball. Ashcroft had written it above Sharon Mathers, the first victim. He then wrote Harry Sandford above Maria Wellbeck, the second victim, and Coupland’s pulse quickened. By the time Ashcroft had added the third name, Lewis Carruthers above Kathleen Williams’ name, Coupland was standing as close to the board as a child in front of a toy shop window before Christmas. He watched in silence, his mind racing. Ashcroft picked up a red marker pen, ‘Can you tell what it is yet?’ he teased. ‘Steady, the last bloke who said that was sent down for a very long time,’ Coupland cautioned, but he didn’t need to watch Ashcroft draw a line from one name to another to know they would all join up. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered as it clicked.

‘You put em all away, Sarge?’ one of the night shift DCs asked, who’d been watching the exchange with interest. Coupland spluttered, the DC had missed the point completely. Ignoring the question he turned to Ashcroft, ‘Who are they in relation to the women?’ he asked but already he knew in the case of Sharon Mathers, her brother had told him when they were standing on the station steps.

‘Their fathers,’ Ashcroft said hurriedly, ‘it was something Sharon’s partner said when I interviewed him that got me thinking, about her upbringing being so strict because she was a copper’s daughter. All I needed to do was check with the others and, well, there’s your pattern.’

‘Good work,’ Coupland muttered, his head already full of the implications of this information. A thought occurred to him. ‘Curtis will self-destruct when he hears this,’ he said aloud. He turned to the night shift DC who’d asked if he’d put them away,

‘They’re all cops,’ he said simply, ‘and I suspect for a time they were based here’.

Chapter 14

‘Shit.’ Several detectives around the room reached for their phones at the same time to warn loved ones and other colleagues, causing a knot to form in Coupland’s stomach. ‘Our killer isn’t targeting the families of serving officers,’ he said quickly, adding ‘These men are retired now,’

‘One’s dead,’ Ashcroft corrected him, ‘natural causes.’

‘Either way this is probably related to something that happened in the past, not the present.’ He tried to sound reassuring, but his colon was twitching nonetheless. ‘Someone with one helluva grudge,’ one of Quinlan’s DCs muttered, ‘Someone they put away who’s just been released, more like,’ said another. Ashcroft nodded eagerly, ‘We can pull out the records for cases that all three of them worked on together, it might be laborious but it’s the best lead we’ve had,’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ the detective who’d spoken up earlier offered. He had a South Manchester ID card hanging around his neck from a lanyard. He was a big fella with thinning hair. His rolled up shirt sleeves marking him out as someone unafraid of getting stuck in. ‘Me too,’ said a woman with hair scraped back in a ponytail, freckles so dark they looked drawn on. Coupland nodded. These were Quinlan’s officers but beneath the rivalry they were all on the same side, and when facing a threat to their own it became tribal. When Ashcroft headed over to the records office there were six detectives in his wake. Satisfied, Coupland pulled out his phone, tapping it against his chin for a moment before hitting speed dial. It wasn’t yet 6am, but Mallender would want to hear this development immediately.

The DCI’s familiar MG pulled into the car park heading for the reserved bay close by the station’s entrance. Either he had already been up and dressed when he got the call or he shaved on the drive over but either way he arrived at the station as immaculate as ever, freshly pressed shirt, clean suit, hair with just enough product on it to not look like he was trying too hard. Coupland waited for him in the car park; he’d needed a smoke to put his thoughts in order. He cast his memory back to when the retired policemen had been serving officers. They were a good twenty years older than Coupland, probably preparing to hang up their boots while he was just a probationer. Prison was the perfect place to hold a grudge and let it fester, many a con carried that anger with them during their sentence but upon release found their contacts - and their strength - long gone. At best the threats made from the dock as they were being led away amounted to nothing, yet on this occasion someone had the will - and the ability - to see it through.

Crushing the remains of his third cigarette underfoot Coupland approached Mallender. He’d already briefed him on the phone, and the DCI informed him that Superintendent Curtis had been updated and was expecting a full report on his desk by the time he arrived in just under an hour. It was to be expected, for once Curtis escalated this information up the food chain he would be summoned to HQ to brief the ACC before most organisations would have had time to switch their coffee machines on.

There was no time for normal pleasantries. Mallender got straight to the point. ‘How far back are we looking?’

‘I know one of the men retired around the mid-nineties.’

‘So we could be talking about someone who was put away as far back as 1970?’ Mallender regarded Coupland keenly.

‘In theory, yes, sir, but if that was the case they’d have been released the same time as the men retired, so why not do something then?’

Mallender nodded in agreement. ‘That was my thought. Besides, it suggests our killer was a young man back then, otherwise he’d be operating a mobility scooter now and presumably be no threat to anyone - apart from other road users.’

Coupland blew out his cheeks. ‘Yeah, and it also means he got a hefty sentence, which I’m guessing was for murder. I joined the force in ’90, but I wasn’t let loose on anything major till I had a few years under my belt.’

A look came over Mallender’s face that Coupland couldn’t fathom.

‘Sir?’ he prompted.

A sigh. ‘If you must know I’m wondering why you hadn’t picked up the police link earlier, just as well your wing man’s thorough.’

Coupland ignored the rebuke, Mallender was right. He’d been aware that Sharon Mathers’ father had been a beat cop - Damian Mathers had told him so on the day of the press appeal - but he hadn’t made the connection to the other victims’ fathers the way that Ashcroft had. Too busy letting Amy’s boyfriend distract him from doing his job properly, though as an excuse that was pretty lame and he knew it. He followed Mallender inside; staring at the back of the DCI’s head as they walked by the CID room. With floor to ceiling glass it was commonly referred to as the goldfish bowl, most of the inhabitants were used to being gawped at, though some of Quinlan’s team had taken offence and begun staring down passers-by. The lack of progress was making everyone edgy. Right now the office was deserted. Coupland explained that a small team had been dispatched to the records office sifting through case files from 1970 - 1995 looking for investigations where all three officers had been involved.

‘Christ, what’s that going to cost in overtime?’

‘It’s not my job to keep a smile on the Chief Super’s face - that’s yours,’ Coupland threw back, ‘besides, most of the records will be computerised, the challenge will be whether we can rely on the cross referencing facility. In my experience it’s better to sift through it by hand, all it takes is for one of them to have been sloppy with his paperwork one day and it’ll be like he never existed. Assuming statements and court files have been stored away correctly we should be able to trace back to the serving officers who worked each case.’

‘Fool proof then,’ Mallender’s mouth was a grim line, ‘not like anything ever gets misfiled or deleted in error these days, eh?’

‘Granted,’ said Coupland, ‘but we’ve got to start from somewhere…’

Mallender nodded, blowing out his cheeks. ‘Curtis is going to need names and dates… I know I’m asking the impossible…’

Coupland looked at his watch. It was 6.30am. ‘Give me an hour,’ he suggested, ‘we may not have a suspect by then, but I hope to Christ we’ll have some background on the retired officers.’

Ashcroft’s grin split his face in two when he popped his head around the goldfish bowl door some thirty minutes’ later. ‘I’m starting to worry about you,’ Coupland said, ‘you’re getting more like Pollyanna the longer you’ve been here. I don’t have that effect on people as a rule, normally by now they’ve got the Police Federation rep’s number on speed dial.’ Nobody enjoyed digging around in old record files, but Ashcroft appeared to be relishing the task. He approached Coupland’s desk, waving a piece of paper under the senior man’s nose. ‘Human Resources don’t open until nine, so I can’t be sure when all three men joined and left the force exactly, and I’m even less certain whether they started here or they transferred here at a later date, never mind whether they transferred elsewhere later.’

‘Leave HR to me.’ Coupland informed him.

Ashcroft nodded, ‘I was hoping you would say that,’ he smiled, ‘I just wanted to give you a heads up that the men were certainly here in the 90s, and at one point were involved in a team targeting the football violence that was rife at the time. At the moment we can place two of them on the same case but not all three.’

Coupland nodded, it wasn’t much but it was a start, and that’s all they needed. Just then Krispy Kreme walked into the room, wiping his hands down the side of his trousers. Coupland guessed he was returning from the toilet. He waited while the DC settled himself at his desk before walking over to him with a large smile. Krispy looked up at him alarmed, his eyes darting to his desk drawer where Coupland suspected he now stashed his sugar fix. ‘I need you to look up football hooliganism in and around Salford during the 90s. Who the major players were, what stories the press were peddling back then.’ Coupland remembered something he’d heard Breeda say when he called into her pub looking for Lynn, ‘See what comes up relating to The Grey Mare.’ The DC nodded eagerly, scribbled some notes onto a pad and set to work immediately.

Human Resources didn’t exactly put out the flags when Coupland called but they didn’t give him as hard a time as he expected. He hadn’t bothered waiting until 9am to phone them, he knew the HR manager of old, she was married to a beat cop, travelled in with him on earlies to save on petrol - if she answered the phone she’d not send him packing. ‘DS Coupland?’ she repeated, as though her ears were deceiving her. ‘What’s wrong?’ Her tone changing to suspicious, no one called HR voluntarily. An incident the previous year involving Coupland and a civilian call handler had got messy. HR had needed to step in to stop it blowing up in his face. Still he cringed at the memory. The HR manager wasn’t known for bearing grudges, she treated Coupland the same as anyone else - apart from a few wise cracks.

‘Is this about the email I sent you at the start of the year about annual leave?’

He laughed politely. She was someone he’d have to tread around with care but she was married to a cop so she couldn’t be all bad. Her tone was friendly enough, though he did suspect at one point she was recording the call to play back to any disbelieving colleagues. When she realised the serious nature of his enquiry she ceased with the teasing, her voice taking on a serious tone. ‘OK, so you want to know when these men joined the force and when they retired, and specifically the dates they were based at Salford?’ Coupland grunted a yes. ‘Give me thirty minutes, an hour at most; I’ll put the information into an email. Whether you open it or not is up to you,’ she added.

Forty minutes later she was as good as her word. Her email confirmed:

Nathaniel Mathers joined the force in ’74, Henry Sandford, (known as Harry) joined the same year as Lewis Carruthers, in ’78. All men were stationed at Pendleton but did stints at Little Hulton, Swinton, and Salford Precinct when required. Mathers retired in 1999, followed by Lewis Carruthers in 2003. Henry Sandford had taken early retirement in 1995 due to ill-health.

Coupland reached for his mobile, dialled Ashcroft’s number. The DC picked up straight away. ‘You said one of the men had passed away, was it Henry Sandford?’

‘No, Lewis Carruthers, why do you ask?’

‘Sandford took early retirement on the grounds of ill-health, made sense that it was him, that’s all. How did Carruthers die?’

‘Open verdict,’

‘And what does that mean exactly?’

Ashcroft faltered,
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’
he admitted.

‘You told me originally it was natural causes.’

‘Hang on a minute,’

Coupland heard the sound of paper shuffling alongside a slow outward breath. Pollyanna was in the process of leaving the building. Ashcroft came back on the line
, ‘I knew I’d made a note of it somewhere, he died of exposure on top of a hill somewhere in the Peak District.’
His power of detail was beginning to rival Turnbull.

‘Okay,’ Coupland filed the information away in his head. ‘I’m going to forward you the email I’ve just got from HR,’ he typed Ashcroft’s email address into the mail recipient line as he spoke - together with Mallender’s, for onward transmission to Curtis.

‘How come you managed to get hold of them so early?’

‘Sometimes having a reputation for all the wrong reasons has its advantages,’ Coupland said grimly, ‘the email’s got the dates all three men were serving officers, can you pass it onto the rest of the team you’ve got working on this then meet me in the car park? I think we need to pay Lewis Carruthers’ widow a visit.’