Straight Back (10 page)

“Look Liam, we know you and Leo both live in Littleborough,” said Ollie. “Do you drink in the same pub? Are you mates that way?”

“Come on now Liam, you’re not helping yourself here,” said Adrian. “But you could do if you opened up to us. Some serious crimes have been committed and you’re implicated in them because somehow someone got hold of a Mondeo from your yard. Now how did that happen, Liam?”

Liam shook his head.

“Have you got a girlfriend, Liam?” Ollie asked.

“Tracy behind reception is my girlfriend.”

I knew it, thought Ollie. “Do you prefer younger girls, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said,” said Ollie. “Do you like girls who are underage? Is that how you get your sexual kicks?”

“No!” said Liam, emphatically. “I’m not like that!”

“You haven’t reported the Mondeo as missing so you’ll probably lose out on the insurance,” said Adrian. “It was worth about three, maybe four grand? That’ll be a lot out of your pocket money when daddy gets home.”

Liam began rocking on the chair again.

“Liam, we can tell you’re bursting to say something to us,” said Ollie. “So come on, out with it. We can keep you here for hours if necessary until you talk.”

“He was a mate of my dad’s, alright?”

“Who was?”

“The guy who took the Mondeo,” Liam explained. “He’s been a mate of my dad’s for years, they go way back.”

“So it wasn’t Leo McKenzie who took the car?”

“No,” said Liam. “But Leo organised it all on behalf of this other bloke.”

“Why did he do that?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know. All I do know is that a whole group of them get together to pick up young girls. My dad offered to include me but I said I didn’t want any part in it. I thought it was disgusting. I thought my dad was disgusting and I still do.”

Ollie glanced fleetingly at the solicitor who’d gone as white as a sheet. “Your dad is on holiday in Florida, Liam.”

“Yeah, I know, but he left instructions before he left.”

“ Do you realise what you’ve just implicated your father in, Liam?”

“Yes,” said Liam, looking down and ashamed. “But somebody’s got to stop them.”

“What was the name of this other bloke you keep talking about, Liam?” Adrian questioned.

“I don’t know,” Liam answered. “I just know he was something to do with Leo McKenzie.”

When they went down to arrest Leo McKenzie, Jeff and DI Rebecca Stockton were communicating in that very professional way of clipped voices and avoiding any lapses into conversations about personal matters. ‘Just stick to the job’ is what they were saying to each other without saying anything at all.

They arrested McKenzie at the school he taught at just off the Ashton New Road. They had thought he may not come quietly but he protested rather more loudly than they’d expected. It must have been a reaction to the embarrassment they’d caused him by arresting him at the school in front of all the students and staff. Well, they didn’t use stocks anymore to humiliate apprehended law breakers but this was the modern equivalent and just as effective.

They brought him to the station where a DNA sample was taken. Then they put him in a cell and made him sweat for a while.   

TWELVE

DC Joe Alexander had been inwardly basking in his newly-emerging relationship with DI Rebecca Stockton. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like this and they’d spent every night together for the last week. And, much as they were telling each other that it was all meant to be very casual, with no strings and no promises, and no talk of the future, it was clear that something was happening between them that amounted to much more than a ‘
friends with benefits’
-type of situation. But, whatever it was, it was providing him with a great sense of wellbeing.

In the meantime there was an investigation to be dealt with and Joe was nothing if not a diligent police officer who liked nothing more than to link clues together to make a case against a criminal or group of criminals. And this was how the picture was emerging as he sat at his computer and went through everything of any potential significance that could get them to nail someone for the murder of Sheridan Taylor.

He was about to make a call to check some details with regard to Leo McKenzie’s employment record when one of the uniformed officers came upstairs and told him there was a woman waiting in reception who wanted to speak to the officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of Sheridan Taylor. Joe was the only one there at the time. DSI Barton and Rebecca had been back briefly but then went out again almost straight away when they received a call from a Jeanette Adams to say that her daughter, Hayley, was missing. Hayley had gone to the same school as Sheridan Taylor and was taught by Leo McKenzie who Mrs Adams had just heard had been arrested. Joe put on his jacket, straightened his tie and went downstairs. The woman was waiting in one of the interview rooms just off the reception area.

“Hello?” said Joe. “I’m DC Joe Alexander. I understand you may have some information regarding the murder of Sheridan Taylor? Please sit down.”

“Thank you. I’m Catherine McKenzie and you’re holding my son, Leo, here.”

Joe immediately pricked up his ears. This could end up being dynamite. She was a smart woman who Joe perceived to be in about her mid to late fifties and the dark blue of her two-piece suit contrasted with the white of her blouse. It looked like she’d come straight from work. Joe sometimes wished he didn’t make instant mental appraisals of people he’d just met but, then, he wouldn’t be a very effective police officer. In fact he wouldn’t be a police officer, he’d just be a nosybastard.

“Yes, we are holding your son,” Joe confirmed. “But how can we help you?”

“Officer, I brought my son up alone. I never had another relationship with a man after Leo’s father. My brother and my father have both provided male role models in his life but he’s never seen me with another man. I took the decision that I would devote myself entirely to Leo whilst he grew up and now I’ve probably missed the boat forever.”

Joe felt an overwhelming sadness for this woman, who certainly hadn’t lost her looks but who’d shut herself off from a romantic life to raise a son who looks like he may have turned out so terribly wrong. There must be a part of her that regrets making such a massive mistake. She’s thrown her life away.

“Did Leo ever meet his father?”

“No,” said Catherine. “His father was never interested but I think it’ll turn out to be highly relevant to your investigation if I tell you about him.”

“Then please do.”

“Frank and I went out together for about a year. This was back in the early eighties and I was besotted with him. We had what the young ones today would call ‘
a wild time’
. But then he suddenly started to lose interest in me sexually. I was pregnant with Leo by this time, although I didn’t yet know it, but Frank started spending more and more time away from me. It was hard because we’d become so close but, looking back, I think he was using me.”

“In what way?”

“To try and feel normal,” said Catherine. She looked down and hesitated for a moment. “I found a stash of magazines. Don’t forget we didn’t have the internet back then and it sounds very old fashioned now, but I looked at these magazines and I threw up. They were devoted to men who are into having sex with underage girls.”

“That can’t have been easy, to say the least.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t. I was absolutely horrified. In the meantime, I discovered that I was pregnant and I confronted Frank. There was a case at the time concerning the disappearance of seven underage girls in our area of Hyde. The case was never solved. It wasn’t all that long since the Moors Murderers and people in this part of the world were still jumpy about children disappearing because of Brady and Hindley. We had the most flaming row but, during it, Frank admitted that he and his so-called friends had been behind the disappearance of the girls. This was probably one of the first cases of what they now call ‘grooming’ in this country. And these were all white men, including John Nightingale who owns Farndale Motors in Littleborough. I’ve known John a long time and he knows I know what he’s always got up to.”

The name certainly rang a bell with Joe as being part of the investigation and his eyes were opening wider with each revelation Catherine McKenzie made. “So you’re saying that Leo’s father, Frank, was a member of a grooming gang back in the early eighties? But why is that relevant to us now?”

“Because he carried on,” said Catherine. “I’ve brought you a file giving you details of this sort of thing happening in different parts of the northwest at regular intervals since that case in nineteen eighty-three. I’ve regularly checked the newspapers for this particular kind of crime for the last thirty years and that’s how I’ve managed to put my file together. I also know that Frank has been in touch with Leo recently. I’ve seen text messages on his mobile. I’m sorry to say that Frank may have swept up his own son in his vile, sickening behaviour.”

“Miss McKenzie, why did you collect these crime details for your file? And have you ever reported any of your suspicions to the police?”

“The answer to your second question is ‘no’. The answer to your first question is that I was hoping to be able to hand it over to the police one day.”

“I don’t understand? What stopped you before?”

Catherine took a deep breath. “Someone has been protecting Frank and the rest of the gang for the last thirty years.”

“You believe it was someone in the police?”

“The gang members  never been prosecuted, never been investigated, and none of them have any criminal record. How could that have happened for all these years if there wasn’t someone protecting them? We know it can happen, Officer.”

“But how do you know it’s happened with this gang?”

“Because I went to the police with my initial findings thirty years ago,” said Catherine. “I was threatened. I was told to go away and keep quiet or else. I was pregnant and alone. I didn’t have much choice but to do what they told me to. But, now Frank has involved his own son, I have to try again to see if someone can do something to stop them, once and for all. Also I could be rather ill, you see? My doctor thinks I may have cancer. I’d like to see justice for all these girls before it’s too late for me.”

“Leo, a lot of new information has come to light with regard to your relationship with Frank Leadbetter,” said Jeff as he and DI Rebecca Stockton began their interview of Leo.

“You’ve already kept my client waiting here for an intolerably long time, Detective,” said Marcus Dewsbury, the duty solicitor. “It’s time you got to the point of why you’ve brought him here.”

“And we will, Mr Dewsbury,” said Jeff. “But the new information we have is very pertinent to our investigation and the possible case against your client. So bear with us please.” He turned to Leo.  “Leo, who contacted who? Was it you or was it your father, Frank Leadbetter?”

“I always said I’d never try and find my father,” said Leo. “A lot of my friends had urged me to but, out of respect for my mother, I never tried. I thought it might embarrass her because I knew something terrible must’ve happened because she would never talk to me about him. I thought that if it didn’t actually embarrass her, then it would probably hurt her and then I’d feel like I’d slapped her in the face and been very disloyal.”

“So I take it your father contacted you?” said Jeff, who was watching Leo McKenzie as he went over every word. His earlier bravado at the school had been replaced by a solemn kind of sulkiness. At the school, when they arrested him, he didn’t know his mother was talking to them at the same time and probably didn’t know much else about what she told them.

“About six months ago, I got a call from him, out of the blue,” said Leo. “He said he’d seen me in the paper when I got an award for being a good teacher. I’ve never asked him how he got my number so I can’t tell you that. All I do know is that I was as pleased as punch to hear from him, even after all these years.”

“What was your first meeting like?”

“It was in a pub in the city centre,” Leo revealed. “I immediately recognised him because we are very alike. You can tell we’re father and son and, after thirty years of not knowing him, I kind of really got off on that, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s understandable. Go on.”

“We went out drinking a couple of times and, in that short time, we became very close,” said Leo. He reached out for the glass of water that was sitting on the table. His hand was shaking. “He introduced me to the ….”

“To the what, Leo? He introduced you to the pleasures of what?”

“Of … of pre-pubescent teenage flesh,” Leo stammered. His eyes were filling up. “I’d always secretly been into underage teenage girls but I’d never acted on it, I swear I’d never acted on it until my father urged me to.”

“And did you start with Sheridan Taylor?”

Leo nodded his head. “Yes. I had a thing for her right from when she joined our school. I knew she was unhappy at home and I knew she was vulnerable. She seemed to like me and one night I went for it. I made my move.”