On Eden Street Page 10

  Denise asked him, ‘When did you last hear from Michael?’

  ‘New Year’s Eve. We had my parents over. Michael called on the phone about half past eleven. I spoke to him for a couple of minutes and then he had a word with our mum. She was upset about it but pleased, you know, that he’d called. He’s only been back once since he left the Anglians.’

  Freeman said, ‘That was two years ago. He only came home once since then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A pause, and Waters thought, keep quiet, don’t push and he’ll tell us.

  ‘Things were never good between Michael and our dad. Not since Michael was in his teens and… He came home sometimes when he was on leave. Like soldiers do, all in the uniform and that. Mum loved it and used to show him off to the neighbours! But dad, he never got over it. I think you know what I’m saying. From what you said earlier, the Army told you all about it.’

  Freeman nodded to Waters because it was him the Army had told. He said to James Wortley, ‘The Army major who knew Michael told us about his being gay.’

  Wortley said, ‘Yes. That’s it. Michael came out at home when he was about eighteen, I think. After that, it was never the same between them. To be honest, we had a couple of years of hell. Then Michael joined up. They changed the law, something like that, and I remember him saying to me he was going to do it now. Excited he was, and I said you might not get in, you might not pass the physical, but he did, first time. I knew he would really, he was a good athlete, at school and all that…’

  Denise said, ‘Is that why he joined up? To escape the situation at home?’

  ‘Well, he did escape it, of course, but that’s not why. He was always into it, the military thing, even as a kid. When we played soldiers, Michael did it for real. He knew all the flags and regiments.’

  After a moment Waters said, ‘The major also told us Michael was an outstanding professional soldier. The backbone of the Army, he said.’

  James Wortley nodded his appreciation at what Waters had just done. Denise Sterling said then, ‘Did Michael get any vocational training while he was in the Army – anything he might have used afterwards? A trade or any skills?’

  ‘Not that I know about. He loved the light infantry role, the front-line stuff. He put his name forward to get sent back to Afghanistan. I don’t expect they all did that.’

  Freeman wasn’t making notes but Greene was, and Waters saw another look between them at what James Wortley had just said. It was Freeman who asked the next question.

  ‘Can we assume that your brother knew how to take care of himself, James?’

  Wortley saw the point of the question.

  ‘You mean, was he tough? Yes, he was. People have this idea that blokes who are gay are a bit, you know…’

  ‘Effeminate?’

  ‘That’s it. Some are, of course, but not all of them. You’d never know, just talking to him. When he was eighteen and came out, you can imagine what it was like when it went public. The lads on the estate, and all the comments. Some people you thought were your friends taking the mickey. It didn’t last long. They soon learned not to say anything to his face.’

  Freeman said, ‘I wouldn’t be doing my job, James, if I didn’t now ask you whether Michael was capable of violence in situations like that.’

  That was taking a chance, a question not without risk, and Waters watched James Wortley’s reaction – it was considered, careful and unhurried.

  ‘He could be, yes. He wouldn’t back away, he didn’t turn the other cheek. But he was not a bully, never. He didn’t start any fights, not that I know of, but if you started one with him, you’d better be ready to see it through to the end because he would be.’

  Freeman said, ‘I’m not surprised the Army valued him highly. When his career came to an end, he must have been devastated. How much do you know about why that happened, James? And I should say, if you think I’m prying, just say so – you wouldn’t be the first to tell me to mind my own business. As I explained to you, this isn’t a formal interview. But the Army have confirmed that the ID we found on the body you saw today is genuine – it was Michael’s. We’re trying to understand how it turned up here, and to do that we need to know something about what happened to Michael after he left the Army.’

  She had confidence beyond her years, and Waters wondered where that came from. Wortley had been reassured once more. He said, ‘I knew he’d got involved with someone on the base. He used to phone me sometimes – no one else in the family, just me. Then one day I got this long call, it must have been half an hour. This was just after he’d decided to stop the tribunal or whatever it was. Basically, someone had had a quiet word and told him he wasn’t going to win. He said, James, I’m done. I’ve put my papers in.’

  He didn’t need to use the word Freeman had used – devastated – because it was there even now, in the retelling. Wortley shook his head at the memory before he continued. ‘Then I didn’t hear from him for… I don’t know, it must have been weeks. That wasn’t unusual, but it was all done pretty quickly. The next time I spoke to him, he was out.’

  Waters said, ‘Where did he go after that? Do you know?’

  ‘Nothing certain but I’m sure he stayed in Bury for several months. I don’t know whether he was still seeing the other person or even just hoping to, but I got some post from there, from Michael. It was documents and stuff about his discharge and pensions – he wanted me to keep it safe. I’ve still got it all if…’

  Freeman thanked him for the offer but said she didn’t think they’d need to see anything like that. She asked whether James knew where Michael was calling from last New Year’s Eve.

  ‘No, I don’t. It was a mobile number. I wrote it down. I was thinking, if anything happens to mum, I might need it. You know? He was in Norwich last summer, though. I had a call from a landline and I looked up the exchange. It was Norwich. He told me he was all right, that he’d moved on. He said he was working in security but he didn’t give me any details.’

  Denise said, ‘That mobile number – do you still have it?’

  He did, he said, it was in his phone and he had tried to ring it a few times but there was never an answer. He thought Michael must have got rid of it and was using another phone now. But they were welcome to take it, and he handed his own mobile to Tom Greene so he could make a note of it.

  Freeman said, ‘All this is hard on your mother, isn’t it? You said earlier that she and Michael were close.’

  For the first time, James Wortley seemed to hesitate. He stared down at his hands, and Waters noticed there were traces of paint around the edges of the nails, light green paint. Perhaps that was the man’s line of work – a painter and decorator.

  Then, ‘They were close. There were three of us – we have a sister lives in Keswick – but Michael was the favourite. We used to joke about it when we got older. But she’s not well these days. She doesn’t always follow what’s going on. She doesn’t always… She’s got dementia.’

  Waters looked at Freeman without thinking but she didn’t react – she said something sympathetic to James Wortley, said they were nearly done now and asked if he’d like more tea. But on that Friday night in The Chequers after Graham Fletcher was charged, Freeman had given him fifty pounds and said make sure everyone gets another drink, I have to leave now. She was leaving because it was her mother’s carer’s night off – Freeman’s own mother was suffering from early onset dementia. He thought about his own parents. The only illness they could manage between them – that he knew of – was a bit of high blood pressure and a bad back if one of them did too much gardening. We take it all for granted at our peril.

  DI Greene asked about the ID card. Was it likely Michael would have given it away? James Wortley said, ‘I doubt it. Something like that would still have mattered to him. You know what people say – he might have left the Army but he was still a soldier. You can take the man out of the Army but… That sort of thing. I can’t see him just handing it over t
o someone.’

  ‘So, we need,’ said Freeman, ‘to find out how it got into the pockets of the man found in Lake yesterday morning. Obviously, there might be an innocent explanation but we will see if we can find some traces of Michael, and if we do, we’ll be in touch. And of course, if you hear from him…’

  Greene took James Wortley out of the office and down to reception, leaving the three of them with plenty to discuss. Freeman said, ‘Working in security in Norwich, maybe a year ago? That’s a longshot – we don’t have the resources to go into that one at present. We’ll see what’s happened to the mobile number. What else?’

  Denise was quick off the mark again, Waters noticed, and he couldn’t be sure how much of that was down to trying to make an impression or simply being competitive by nature. She said, ‘How long before we get the basic DNA from the body, ma’am? We might not know who he is but-’

  ‘He might be known to us. Yes, we need to speed that up. Go and introduce yourself, have a word with that Markham woman. She saw what happened this afternoon. See if there’s any way to get the initial tests done quickly – this week would be good. She’s a bit of an odd one, isn’t she?’

  This was to Waters. He’d been studying the photographs of Michael Wortley on Freeman’s desk.

  ‘Who is, ma’am?’

  ‘Miss Markham in the mortuary. Did you think I meant Denise?’

  ‘No. I … Olive Markham? She has a lot of experience. DC had a high regard for her. On more than one occasion, she’s found things that… Other people had missed.’

  Denise Sterling had a smile now. She said, ‘DC Smith? I met him a few years ago. We were at a drugs seminar in Norwich. He was a discussion group leader, and so was I. Clive Betts was in his group – we were talking about it yesterday.’

  Freeman said, looking at Waters, ‘Yes… And no doubt when the clock strikes midnight, his spirit still walks the lonely corridors of Kings Lake Central. Ideas, Chris? We need to be moving on other fronts, not just on CCTV.’

  She would put you under pressure without a moment’s hesitation – he had learned that much already. He said, ‘I think the first place we should show that picture, the one of Michael Wortley in uniform, is on Eden Street.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s where we found his ID card. It makes sense – it’s a connection. I’m not thinking someone will say, “Oh, it’s him!”, but the card was there, so Wortley might have been.’

  Freeman wasn’t convinced – that side of her was easy to read. She said, ‘Certainly get some copies made, enough for everyone in the team. I’m not sure about hitting the streets with them yet.’

  Waters said, ‘One of the people we interviewed yesterday expressed doubts about whether he, the man they called Michael, was really a soldier. Finding out he wasn’t might jog a few more memories about him.’

  Denise said, ‘Who was that?’ and Waters told her it was one of the women in the florist’s shop. Freeman was still weighing up what Waters had suggested – and perhaps, he thought, just seeing how far he was prepared to push it.

  Freeman said, ‘Isn’t one of them blind? Showing her a photograph won’t achieve much, will it?’

  Conceal the irritation, especially when it’s what someone was trying to provoke; perhaps there was a side to DCI Cara Freeman he wouldn’t like as much as he did some of the others.

  Waters said, ‘The blind girl gave us more useful information on the victim than anyone else we spoke to. Ma’am.’

  Freeman glanced at Denise and then said, ‘All right, then. But just you, for a couple of hours. Show the picture around, see what you get. Get Serena onto the homeless support organisations with the new photo, and keep everyone else on CCTV. That’s it – we’re done.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Once upon a time – and it seemed now like a time long, long ago – everything about a case had been fascinating and new, and every aspect of the business of investigation had intrigued him. But experience alters us, whatever we do – the decisions we take and the actions we carry out change us minute by minute, as each drop of rain alters the course of a river and every frost re-shapes a mountainside. Waters knew now that he didn’t want to spend his days in offices driving desks. Sometimes that’s where the answers are found, and he already had the feeling that Detective Inspector Thomas Greene was a master of that sort of investigation, but it wasn’t for everyone and it wasn’t for him. Crimes are committed by people against other people, and to catch the criminals you need to get out there and amongst them. He remembered Smith saying more than once, I’m not asking him that over the phone – I want to see his face when he hears that question, ma’am.

  As he took the last turn that would lead him out of Kingsgate and into Eden Street, Chris Waters was thinking these things and finding himself a little surprised. He wasn’t what anyone would call ‘a people person’. At school, there had been a small circle of friends and a slightly wider one of acquaintances, and university had been the same – those three years had left just three names in his contacts list, and two of those would be surprised to hear from him now. He had been on the force for five years but he wouldn’t require all his fingers to count the number of occasions on which he’d socialised with fellow officers other than in relation to an investigation – the exception, of course, being the times he had spent with Smith. Some of those were odd and others were unfortunate but they added up to more than all the others put together. And then he could hear the voice saying, and no doubt that’s why you’re in a bit of a pickle – you need to get out more, sonny.

  He arrived at the doorway where the body had been. Someone had been over it with a mop and bucket but there were traces of a brown stain in the cracks between the tiles, and he knew that was blood. Blood is remarkably persistent. And even when you think it’s gone, it hasn’t – it lingers in recesses and seeps deeply into any absorbent surface. Blood does not glow conveniently in UV light as the television writers would have you believe, but a spray of Luminol does the job even months after they wiped away all visible traces. He saw that for the first time in the bathroom of James Bell’s flat in The Towers. The question here, though, is whose blood is it? When we can put a name to him, we can find him, because he’s in the system somewhere. We all are.

  Waters turned and stood facing the street. There was a late afternoon gloominess and the threat of more rain was hanging in the air – the savage intensity of the summer seemed to have burned out the prospect of a long, fine autumn and it looked like early winter already. As if to underline the thought, a gust of wind lifted and flapped the awnings of the shops, and the burger wrappers and crushed paper coffee cups littering the pavements spiralled around. Most of the people were travelling from his left to his right, leaving their jobs in the town centre and heading out to cars parked in the backstreets of Fairhills or to the train and bus stations. He suspected that not a single person had noticed the absence of the homeless man and his dog. They come and they go, pop-up people like pop-up shops, here today, somewhere else tomorrow, the poor who are always with us.

  Looking across at the florist’s shop, he could avoid confronting it no longer, the knowledge that he wanted to see Miriam Josephs again. Like a chipped tooth, it had been bothering him since he drove away from the market square yesterday. He couldn’t leave the idea alone, couldn’t stop touching it with his tongue. Last night he had lain in bed with all the lights off, staring into the darkness and wondering – is this what it’s like? And that wasn’t the most embarrassing thing. He’d tried to make a cup of coffee with his eyes closed and ended up knocking over a carton of milk. All this had only made matters worse, had only left him with more questions as he thought about how she managed, how she lived a life without light. It felt like another investigation he must carry out, and soon. If he was going to be completely honest with himself – and how difficult that can be – it was the main reason he was here and not watching CCTV back at Central.

  As a penance, he went into the bett
ing shop first. A large woman was perched precariously on a small set of steps, wiping the screens of a line of wall-mounted monitors that were still switched on. She half-turned and told Waters they’d be closed in a few minutes, and he wondered to himself whether the same might be true of the shop next door. When he showed his card and asked to speak to the manager, instead of climbing down, she shouted, ‘Bob, the police are here!’ as if this was an event that took place two or three times a week.

  Sullivan appeared from a back office, followed shortly by the smell of cigarette smoke. He squinted up at Waters as if he too had a problem with his vision but it was apparent he didn’t miss much – he said, ‘You was out there on the street yesterday. This about the old boy who died?’

  Bob Sullivan must have at least twenty years on “the old boy”, whoever he was. Waters said it was, yes, and that they, the police, would be around for a few days asking follow-up questions. He took out the copy of the photograph and showed it to the bookie, giving nothing away, simply asking whether he’d ever seen this man on Eden Street. The woman was interested now. She climbed down from the steps and looked over Sullivan’s shoulder.

  Sullivan said, ‘No. Don’t get many soldiers down here. Don’t think we’ve had one in the shop for years. We used to have a sailor, but he was merchant navy. I’d remember a soldier. What’s he got to do with it?’

  Waters angled the picture so the woman had a better view. She shook her head and said no, she’d remember him as well because he was a good-looking boy. Sullivan asked his question again, and the smell of stale tobacco on his breath was faintly nauseating. Waters put the picture back into his pocket and stepped away.

  ‘He’s someone we’d like to speak to. He might have known the man who died.’