Secret of the Dead (2 page)

“No you’re okay, I’d only just dropped off.”

“Barry, its Jeffery Howson. Do you remember me?”

He could recall the name but he couldn’t conjure up a face.

“We were in CID together at district remember?”

A blurry vision flashed inside his head but just as quickly disappeared. The memory was faded. Suddenly the cogs in Barry’s brain began whirring, snatching him completely out from his slumber. He was intrigued.

“I need to meet with you.” The voice broke off. There was a couple of seconds’ silence, then the cracked voice continued, “I wouldn’t have rung you but it’s important, really important.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“I don’t mean right now, but I could do with seeing you as soon as possible. I need to get something off my chest. Something I’ve been holding on to for a long time and I need to speak to someone I can trust.”

Another pause. Barry could hear deep wheezing at the other end - a throaty, rasping sound.

The voice came back on, “They tell me you’ve gone back in the job as a civvie?”

“Yeah I’m a civilian investigator with Barnwell Major Investigation Team. Been there almost six months.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was told. That’s why I need to see you. I remember what you were like in the job; I know I can trust you.”

That was the second time he’d used the word trust.

Another short pause as the man gasped for a breath. Then he said, “I need to tell you about the murder of Lucy Blake-Hall back in nineteen-eighty-three. The wrong man was convicted and I know who really killed her. I don’t want to say too much over the phone. I need to meet with you.”

Now fully awake, tightening his grip on the handset, Barry made a mental note of the arrangements the former detective outlined for the next day and repeated them back to him.

“Do you know Barry, this is such a relief. You’re the first person I’ve told about this. I have carried the guilt of what I have done for far too long and it’s time to set the record straight. Especially the fact that I know that Lucy’s killer is still free.” A short coughing fit followed and then the voice added, “Barry, do you ever think about dying?”

Before he had time to answer, the line went dead.

Barry hung onto the phone for a few seconds, listening to the soft burr of the dialling tone, his eyes studying the gloom of the bedroom while his thoughts mulled over the call. Setting the handset back in its cradle, he reached across and switched on his bedside light. He knew he was going to have difficulty getting back to sleep.

 * * * *

23
rd
November.

Pushing himself back in his seat, Barry Newstead watched as Susan Siddons, all petite, five feet of her, made her way back to him between the knot of people who were queuing at the bar.

It still amazed him that at fifty-one, despite giving birth and indulging in such an unhealthy lifestyle over the years, she still managed to hold onto her teenage size ten figure. And from the way some of the men glanced at her as she brushed past them, she also hadn’t lost any of her ability to turn heads.

He knew he shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it had been her dainty figure and natural beauty that had first attracted him all those years ago.

Looking at her now, weaving between the small throng towards him, it seemed she had hardly changed since that first day they had bumped into one another. True, her hair was now artificially coloured and cut a lot shorter, and there was a slight kink to the bridge of her nose, the result of a beating from a previous partner, but it didn’t detract from her prettiness.

He couldn’t help but feel smug. He considered himself so fortunate to get a second chance with Susan. Fate had brought them back together, he had repeatedly told himself over the past few months; she had been a key witness in a recent case and it had given them the opportunity to rekindle their friendship.

As she neared she threw him a beaming smile, followed by one of her mischievous winks.

She’s caught me;
he had been eyeing her far too long.

That smile of hers brought the memories flooding back.

He’d first met Susan in 1976. He had been twenty-two at the time and had just entered CID as an aide. She was eighteen, embarking upon a career as a journalist with the local paper and had turned up at a stabbing he had been called to. She had dogged him for the story. It had not just been Susan’s prettiness and persistence which had captured him, but she has also had an inner quality which he had found hard to resist. He gave her the story and she had become a regular contact with whom he shared information. They formed a clandestine partnership. He would drop a snippet her way or give background to some of the court cases he was involved in and in return she’d give him a lead on a suspect, which would help him clear up local crime.

They soon began to meet in pubs to swap stories, until one night when they’d both had too much to drink and they had ended up back at her flat. From there, the relationship had changed to one which became intimate and sexual.

The first time it had occurred, Barry’s conscience had been pricked. He had been about to get married and for months thereafter he had tried to avoid Susan, dealing with her enquiries over the phone.

But they did meet again and the inevitable happened. Barry had been dealing with a nasty rape of a young mum. The rapist had forced his way into the twenty-one year old woman’s home and attacked her in front of her two year old son.

Making her own enquiries for the newspaper, Susan had got a lead on the suspect - a fifteen year old, living two streets away from his victim, who had been exposing himself to young girls from his school.

Susan had helped Barry crack the case. They had celebrated their triumph in the pub and after closing time they had jumped into bed together again back at her flat.

For the next couple of years they bounced in and out of each other’s lives, though neither of them wanted the relationship to develop any further.

Then, right out of the blue, in 1979 she had telephoned him and made it clear she no longer wanted to see him again. She had met someone else.

Her phone call was a relief. It gave Barry the chance to throw everything back into his marriage, though from a discreet distance he hadn’t been able to resist keeping track of her life. He learned of every one of her relationships with men, none seemed to last for longer than six months. Reports came across his desk that she was drinking far too heavily and there had been occasions when police had been called to domestic incidents with some of her partners. She had a habit of falling for the wrong kind of guy.

Barry had also discovered that she had given birth to a daughter and Social Services had been involved because of her regular drunkenness.

In 1985 he had dropped back into her life after a fashion. On an evening shift, the duty sergeant had requested he should join him at her address, uniform had attended as a result of a 999 call. Susan had suffered a vicious beating at the hands of her latest boyfriend.

She was a sorrowful sight and he had offered to take her to casualty for treatment. There, he had stood guard outside the cubicle, listening as the doctor checked her over.

“You’re going to be just fine Miss Siddons. We’ll clean you up and then send you for an X-Ray,” he had heard the doctor say, and then he had caught, “Now if I can just take down a few personal details.”

She had hesitated when the doctor mentioned her daughter. It wasn’t much of a hesitation, but it was long enough to arouse his suspicions. He had whipped aside the curtain and locked onto her gaze. She had tried to glance away but the look on her face instantly told him he was right.

He had a daughter. Carol was six years old.

The news had rocked him. Speechless and dumbfounded, he had sat beside Susan in the hospital cubicle, doing his best to focus on what she was saying.

She confessed she had ended their relationship because she was pregnant with his child and didn’t want to ruin his marriage.

After Susan had sobered up, been given treatment and discharged from hospital, she had apologised and made it clear no one would ever find out.

She had kept her word and allowed him to move on and he became a father for the second time when his wife Jean gave birth to Sarah.

He made regular appearances in Carol’s life, supporting her and Susan financially as much as he could, and he always bought presents for birthdays and Christmas. But he was never a father to her like he was to Sarah and knew he would have to carry that millstone around his neck until his dying day - especially after the tragedy.

Carol had gone missing on 12
th
October 1993; the date was ingrained in his memory. She had sneaked away from the Social Services residential care home, where she had been placed and had simply disappeared without trace.

Because of her background history, every officer who had picked up the file had written Carol off as a runaway, believing that she had fled the area to make her living off the streets. Barry had thought differently. He covertly monitored the case every day for weeks and had picked up the Missing from Home File once uniform had filed it away. Behind the scenes he had worked on it, even defying threats from his Detective Inspector to ‘leave it alone’ because it was not a CID job. After eighteen months of secretive investigation, he had got no nearer to solving Carol’s disappearance. Deep down, he always guessed that his daughter was dead, but he had never shared his suspicions with Susan.

So when the news came of her death, it was not a surprise to him, though the circumstances of her death were.

Five months ago, Susan had got back in touch and told him their daughter’s body had been unearthed. She had been brutally murdered and buried in a shallow grave.

Hearing the news had made Barry focus on his life for the first time in a long while. He had been retired from the force for almost six years and in that time had lost his wife to a stroke. With his second daughter married, the past four years had been boring and lonely. He needed to get back into the job; get involved in the murder enquiry and catch his daughter’s killer.

Barry contacted his favourite CID protégé, Hunter Kerr - now a Detective Sergeant - heading up one of the squads of Barnwell Major Investigation Team and persuaded Hunter to take him on as a civilian investigator so he could immerse himself in the case. After three months, he had finally discovered her fate. Carol had been the first victim of the infamous ‘Dearne Valley Demon.’

He and Susan had buried Carol in a proper grave and supported one another in their grief. Two months ago she had moved into his home and they had begun the slow process of rebuilding their lives.

“Are you sure we’re at the right pub?” Sue asked as she picked up her bottle of orange juice and slid into her seat.

“Definitely. The George and Dragon he said to me. It’s where everyone in CID meets whenever they’re on evenings. Or at least it was in my day.”

“And he definitely said he wanted to talk to you about the murder of Lucy Blake-Hall?”

“Yeah he said something about the wrong person being convicted. Why, do you remember it?”

Susan pondered the question. “Hmm,” she mused through pursed lips, and continued. “I’ve forgotten a lot of the finer detail, but I recall the story. It was a case I followed religiously back in the early eighties. I used to follow our crime correspondent around like a little lap dog. I’d pick up all the crime stuff when he was off or on holiday and that was one of the crime stories of the year for the Chronicle.” Susan took a sip of her orange through a straw and then nursed the bottle. “From what I remember, Lucy was in her early twenties, married with a kid, a daughter I believe. She was having an affair with a local guy - I can’t remember his name now. From what I recall she was last seen arguing with him outside a pub in the town centre and then no one saw her after that. Husband reported her missing, and within days they had tracked down her lover, arrested him and charged him with her murder, but he pleaded not guilty and there was a long court case. He made allegations he had been fitted up by the police but the jury found him guilty. That’s it in a nutshell. He got life but he might be out by now, what with sentencing these days.” She took another sip at her drink, never taking her eyes away from his. “One thing about the case,” she continued, still clenching the straw between her teeth, “And which kept the story running in the Chronicle for quite some time, was the fact that they never found Lucy’s body.

Barry slowly nodded his head, “Interesting.” He took another look at his watch. “Howson should have been here over half an hour ago. He definitely said half twelve to me.”

“Did you say this Jeffery whatever his name is is retired?”

“Jeffery Howson,” Barry reminded her. “Yeah, long time ago. He’ll be well into his sixties now. He was a senior detective when I went to district CID. He was on another team so I didn’t have that much to do with him and can’t really remember that much about him but he can obviously remember me.”

“Weren’t you involved in the Lucy Blake-Hall case, then?”

“No, I had a couple of years away from the department. I went on attachment to Headquarters Serious Crime Squad for a few years.” Barry picked up his beer and eyed it. There was a quarter of a pint left. He drained it in several swallows, then set it down, letting out a satisfied sigh as he wiped the residue from his thick, bushy moustache.

“Do you know I wish you’d shave that thing off, it would take years off you.”

He set down his empty glass. “This morning you were having a go at me, saying I could do with losing a few pounds. Are you fed up with me already?”

“Now we’re an item, I’m going to lick you into shape so you can keep up with me.” She twinkled her hazel eyes at him. “Either that, or I’ll trade you in for a younger model.” She reached across and mussed a hand through his dark mop of unruly hair.

He shrugged away from her and picked up his empty glass. “I think you’d best remember your place, young lady” he retorted with a smirk. “I’m going to get another beer. It doesn’t look as though Jeffery Howson is going to show up.” Pushing his 6’ 1” seventeen stone frame up from the chair he added, “I have to say he didn’t sound too good on the phone last night.”