Trophies: a gripping detective thriller (The Wakefield Series Book 1) (2 page)

Atkinson waited for Montgomery to compose himself once again. “Can you tell me where you were on the night of 27
^th
July last year?”

“July, you say? Last year? The 27
^th
?” He was well into his act now. “Let me see … nope. I don’t keep a diary and like I’ve said, my memory
isnae what it used to be.”

“How about August 23
^rd
?”

“Sorry.”

“September 4
^th
?”

“Can’t help you.”

“Okay, let’s try something more recent. What about November 28
^th
?”

“What day was that?”

“Sunday.”

“Sunday? I’d have been at home watchin’ telly.” Montgomery coughed yet again. “With Rosie. You see we don’t get out much now.”

“Rosie?”

“Aye. She’s my, what you call it these days, my partner.”

“So she can confirm you were at home that night?”

“I would say so.”

Atkinson glanced across to Strong as if searching for assistance.

Strong’s eyes moved briefly from Montgomery to the young DC and back again in acknowledgement. He pulled his chair nearer the table and placed the file in front of him as yet another tissue was thrown into the bin.

“Your record’s pretty impressive, Billy, if you don’t mind me calling you Billy?”

This drew a slight shrug and a brief smile.

“Plenty of previous for burglary, even one of aggravated burglary. Lately though, your career seems to have taken a more, shall we say, tangential path. Sent down for 12 months for handling in 1994.” Strong paused and studied the old man’s face. “Come on, Billy. Look at you. You’re obviously not a well man. With your record you’ll get another custodial sentence. How do you think you’ll cope with that?”

Montgomery rolled his head, avoiding eye contact but said nothing.

Strong picked up the piece of paper the burglar had been shown earlier. “So, Billy, once again, where did you obtain the items on this list?”

He became agitated. “Lord! How many more times, I bought them from some bloke in a pub!”

Strong looked sharply at Atkinson as the old man once more burst into a fit of coughing so severe, his eyes watered. It wasn’t so much what he’d said as the manner in which he’d delivered it. These last phrases had been spoken in his native northeast accent. It was a voice Strong thought he’d heard before; and not just by him. Millions in the late seventies had heard a similar voice on a cruel taunting tape, played to the media in this very city by Superintendant George Oldfield. He waited until Montgomery had wiped his eyes and blown his nose before continuing, “Do yourself a favour, let’s have some names from you.”

“I’m no’ a grass, Mr Strong. Never have been, never will be.”

Strong raised his eyebrows and shook his head, resigned to the fact that Montgomery probably never would. “Okay, Billy. You’ll be charged with handling stolen property and remanded in custody for the time being, pending further enquiries. Interview terminated at thirteen seventeen.”

Atkinson accompanied him back to the cells while Strong remained in the interview room, thinking. After a few seconds he partly rewound the interview tape and listened,

“Lord! How many more times, I bought them from some bloke in a pub!”

Back in his office, he sifted through Montgomery’s file. The bald facts were there but he wanted to know more; needed to know more. His marital status was noted as divorced. More questions began to form; divorced from whom? When? And is she still around? He read on – first offence, a caution for assaulting a prostitute in Glasgow, 1972, followed by a six month suspended sentence the following year for theft from a bar in Govan where he was employed as a barman.

Rising from his chair, he wandered over to the window and opened it a few inches. He couldn’t stop the voice repeating in his head.
“Lord!”
Over and over. He lit up a small cigar and blew the smoke out into the chill, rain-soaked air.

He returned to his desk and continued to read. Montgomery’s career had progressed rapidly after his misdemeanours in Glasgow. A move south to Carlisle resulted in two more theft charges in 1976 and one of deception plus, interestingly enough, a caution for kerb-crawling the previous year. He flicked back to his Glasgow record – assault on a prostitute. So, he thought, a penchant for the ladies of the night. After serving his sentence in Strangeways, Montgomery moved to Headingley in 1977. Following a further 12 months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for burglary, he settled in Sheffield in 1982. He certainly seemed to be in the right place at the right time – in and around West Yorkshire at the height of the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry. His last spell inside was a twelve-month stretch for handling, back in Armley, released in 1995.

Strong felt a surge of adrenaline.

Montgomery’s voice replayed in his head,
“Lord! How many more times?” “Lord!”

And then another, similar voice from that hoax tape of over twenty years before,
“Lord! You are no nearer catching me now.”
That was how it went, he was sure.

He read on. Montgomery was currently living with one Rosemary Hudson; now there was a name from the past. She’d been working the streets when he was first on the beat. She’d plenty of convictions for soliciting plus two for running a disorderly house but nothing since 1990, probably too old by then. Still, he thought, interesting company for Montgomery to keep. He made a mental note to have a word with Rosie at some point.

Just after six, Strong sauntered in to the Black Rock pub. The aroma of beer and smoky atmosphere gave a comforting feeling to many. It was a good Tetley’s house frequented by many of his colleagues. True to form, the man he wanted was sitting in the corner below a print of Westgate in the early 1900’s that seemed to adorn every public house in the town. Pint in hand, he joined Sergeant Bill Sidebotham.

“Now then, Colin,” Sidebotham said, “we don’t often see you in here.”

“I thought I’d have a better chance of finding you here than back at the office.”

Sidebotham laughed. A jovial character in his early fifties, of rotund build and a permanently flushed face, left Strong wondering if he suffered from high blood pressure. Whenever he saw him, he couldn’t help thinking of childhood days listening to the old Light Programme on the radio, Junior Choice and The Laughing Policeman.

Sitting down on a stool at the beaten copper-topped table opposite the sergeant, he took a gulp of his beer before carefully centring his glass on the cardboard beer mat. “Not many in tonight,” he remarked, looking round.

“A lot o’ lads have taken overtime. Trinity game tonight agin’ Cas.”

Strong nodded. Cas – Castleford – local rivals, and many of the shift were rugby league fans. “Not your game then?”

“Naw, have you seen the weather out there?” The sergeant pulled a face. “My arthritis doesn’t cope with standing out on the terraces on a night like this, let alone crowd control.”

Strong smiled before taking another drink and broaching the subject he’d come to quiz Sidebotham about. “How good’s your memory?” he asked, knowing full well there wasn’t a case in the last twenty-five years that he didn’t know the ins and outs of.

“How far back d’you want me to go?”

“Remember the Ripper enquiry?”

“Go on.”

“We got a couple of letters and a tape from some perv with a Geordie accent taunting George Oldfield.”

“I remember it well. But, listen,” Sidebotham lowered his voice and leant closer, “I don’t know if anyone told you but we got someone by the name of Sutcliffe for that, and he didn’t have a Geordie accent.”

“Very dry, Bill. Do we still have a copy of the tape somewhere?”

“Should do. They had phone lines and everything so the public could ring in and listen to it.”

“See if you can dig one out and drop it up to me tomorrow.”

“What’re you up to, Colin? We never did track that bastard down. Got someone in mind for it?”

“No, just something that’s niggling away at me. Maybe something and nothing. Anyway,” he paused to finish his pint, “I’m starving. I’m off home for some grub. I hope Laura’s made something a bit more substantial than my salad lunch.”

The twenty-minute drive home afforded him the opportunity to sift through his thoughts. Could it be, that after all this time, he had the chance to solve one of the most puzzling aspects of the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry? Stranger things had happened. In fact, it was only by pure chance that Sutcliffe had been caught when he was. A routine check of a suspicious car’s number plates that night in Sheffield in 1981 ended the hunt that had begun nearly six years earlier. Montgomery was sixty-three, which meant that in 1979, when the hoax tape was made, he had been forty-two, well within the age limits of the suspect. Also, if he didn’t live in the Sunderland area, nor had done for years, when the search focused there, he wouldn’t have been considered. Not unless he was interviewed for something else. There again, his accent had changed, the result of living in Glasgow for some fifteen or twenty years.

It was just after seven when Strong pulled onto the drive in front of his modest detached house on the outskirts of Wakefield. As he opened the front door, the delightful aroma of one of Laura’s savoury dishes came wafting out to greet him, evaporating all thoughts of Billy Montgomery.

3

“Just over there. Behind that Escort,” Jean instructed the taxi driver, her voice trailing off. “Shit,” she said quietly, almost to herself.

“What’s wrong?” the man sitting next to her asked.

“Oh, nothing.” She turned to face him. “Look,” she said, “I’ve had a great time …”

“I can feel a ‘but’ coming on.”

“…but, do you mind if I don’t invite you in tonight? It’s just … well, my big brother’s turned up. And that usually means complications.”

“Is this the bit where you say, you’re a lovely bloke but …”

She laughed. “No. Have a bit of confidence. Listen, give me a call tomorrow. Okay?” With that, she kissed him long and hard. “That’ll have to do you for now.” She smiled, opened the door and stepped out.

Jean watched the taxi drive off before strolling over to the driver’s door of the car parked on the driveway in front of her house. The huddled figure inside didn’t stir. She rattled the glass and giggled at her brother’s shocked return to consciousness.

Bob Souter was in the deep sleep that can only be induced by extreme tiredness. The drive from Glasgow had seen to that. His heart rate surged with the rude awakening. He looked bleary eyed through the window at his smiling sister.

She opened the driver’s door. “Come on,” she said, “Tell me all about it.”

While Bob brought his belongings safely inside, Jean brewed two mugs of coffee.

“You’ve cut your hair; it looks nice,” Bob said.

She sat down on the cream mock leather sofa, her legs tucked underneath her. “Thanks.”

He took a drink and began to search for a position to place the mug on the carpet.

“Not there!” she snapped. “Put it on the table, on a mat. I’ve just had this carpet cleaned.”

He rose and did as instructed. “So who’s the bloke?” he asked, settling back down beside her.

“What bloke?”

“Come on, Jean. You’ve lost the dowdy image you had with Trevor The Tosser. It must be a new bloke.”

“Piss off, Bob.”

He held up both hands. “Whoa. Bit of a raw nerve there?”

“Grow up will you. I just had a night out with some girl friends of mine, that’s all.” Jean scowled.

He had the distinct impression she was lying.

“So what’s this visit all about?”

“I’ve got a new job.”

“Good for you. Whereabouts?”

“You remember John Chandler?”

“Vaguely.”

“He was my boss on the Star. Anyway, he rang me up out of the blue a few weeks back and said he was looking for a Crime and Home Affairs Correspondent on the Yorkshire Post. He’s got a top job there now.”

Jean took a sip of her coffee. “That’s a bit of a change from the Glasgow Herald. So what about Sandra?”

He took a deep breath but said nothing, his eyes avoiding his sister.

“Oh not again, Bob,” she said in sympathetic tones.

He looked all round the room as if searching for what he wanted to say.

Jean sat quietly, waiting for him to find the right words.

Finally, he began. “Do you know, my life seems to have been peppered with smooth-talking bastards.”

Again, Jean didn’t react.

“You got any cigarettes?” he asked. “I know I should give them up but this isn’t the right time.”

She took a packet from her handbag and passed them to him.

He lit one up. “I reckon it was last September when it all started to go wrong,” he said. “Sandra joined a new practice as an associate architect. Then she started working late. Meetings with clients after work. ‘All part of my new responsibilities,’ she’d said.” He paused and took a long drag on his cigarette. “Trouble was it all involved some smart arse. ‘Frankie needs me to be with him,’ she’d say. It was all, Frankie this, Frankie that. It always seemed to be Frankie. And just who was he? Frankie bloody Buchanan that’s who, principal of Buchanan Associates, her new boss.”

“I’m sorry.”

He turned towards his sister. “I really thought she was the one, you know.”

He got up and walked slowly round the room. “She was gorgeous, Jean.”

“I know.”

“That first time I saw her…” He leaned against the wall, shook his head and smiled. It was lust at first sight he thought. Out loud, he said, “It was at a barbecue. One of those do’s with all ‘nice couples’. I didn’t really fancy it but I’d nothing better on. She was standing next to some wimp, being bored to death, when I kind of rescued her.” He looked up, straight at Jean. “Two years we’d been together, you know?”

“You don’t need to do this,” she said.

“But it’s like a boil, full of poison. It needs to be lanced.”

“If you’re so keen on medical analogies, be careful it doesn’t become a scab. Keep picking at it and it’ll never heal.”