“Everyone’s seen the post-mortem report, guv. He was strangled with a piece of electric flex. No sign of anything similar in the house. No evidence of sexual activity immediately prior to death, in spite of his state of undress. No sign of a struggle but some curious marks on his arms, under the shirt sleeves, which Mr Atherton thinks are fresh cigarette burns. There’s no sign of a break-in and all the doors were locked so we have to assume Wilson let his killer, or killers, in and that he or they left by the front door, which has a Yale lock which would close automatically. No witnesses so far to anyone seen arriving or leaving the day before he was found.”
“What about regular visitors?” Thackeray asked. “Have the neighbours seen anyone coming or going at other times. My guess is that Stanley hadn’t given up his interest in young men, but it’s possible he never invited them home, I suppose. We need to know whether he had a boyfriend. And then there’s the computer stuff. How was he distributing that? Did people call to collect packets with videotapes in them? Or did he post stuff out? Try the local post office. See if he was a regular customer there.”
“The house-to-house inquiries are continuing this morning, guv,” Val Ridley said. “We’ll bear all that in mind. We’re still waiting on the computer unit at county to come up with details on what was in that machine. According to Foreman Security he was being paid into an internet bank, so it will take some time to get hold of his records although some of them may be in the machine as well. And if he was distributing the pornography— and the rest of the equipment and the copies of tapes he had stacked away there certainly indicates that he was— then there must be names and addresses somewhere.”
“If they come up with those sort of lists, you’ve been offered some help from the computer porn experts,” Thackeray said. “There are international databases available.”
“Some beggars get all the fun,” someone muttered but a scowl from Thackeray quelled incipient laughter.
“There might be hundreds of customers on Wilson’s list,” Val Ridley said.
“There might,” Thackeray conceded. “It’s a line of inquiry we’ll have to follow if the list exists and if it seems relevant to the killing. But in the meantime we’ll stick to the local angles. What about fingerprints?”
“A few apart from Stanley’s,” Val Ridley said. “They’re looking for a match with records.”
“Right. And it’s certainly worth chatting up the local gay scene. See if Stanley was known and who his contacts were. Whether there’s a boyfriend, or ex-boyfriends around. I think it would be a good idea for Omar to follow that line of inquiry, don’t you?” Thackeray glanced across the room at the young Asian DC who flushed in embarrassment as a ripple of laughter went round the assembled detectives.
“Nice one, guv,” someone called out.
“By the book, Omar,” Thackeray said.
“Sir”, Sharif muttered, through gritted teeth.
Thackeray made his way back to his own office, feeling slightly ashamed of himself for baiting Sharif. But he could see no other way of impressing on him the fact that prejudice worked in all sorts of directions than by forcing him to confront the reality. In a town where tensions were high and seemed to be rising, young Mohammed Sharif uncurbed posed a risk the police could not afford to take.
He sat for a moment at his desk before turning to the pile of files which had proliferated since Stanley Wilson’s body had been found. He had slept badly after a devastating evening spent bickering with Laura who had returned from her grandmother’s house aflame with indignation at the behaviour of the drug squad, who had released Joyce without too much delay but had decided to keep Donna Maitland and David Sanderson at Eckersley overnight for further questioning.
“You must know who the dealers up there are,” Laura had protested. “Donna’s one of the few people who might actually be willing to give evidence against them, if she had any to give. Joyce too. And Dizzy B’s an ex-copper and a mate of Kevin Mower’s. What sort of impression are you putting across if you arrest the good guys and ignore the crooks?”
“Donna has a responsibility to keep the stuff out of the Project,” Thackeray had said, toeing the official line. If he had misgivings about it, he did not think this was the moment to discuss them with an already outraged Laura. “Somebody took that heroin in there. Somebody must have seen something.”
“Perhaps the police took it in. No one saw them find it, Joyce says. They simply announced that it was there.”
“Come on, Laura,” Thackeray had protested. “Your grandmother’s view of the police hasn’t changed much since she was manhandled out of Grosvenor Square in 1969, has it? Be honest. Times have changed. I’ve no more reason to think the drug squad’s bent than I have to imagine you make up your stories as you go along. There’s a few dodgy characters in any profession, but thankfully not a lot.”
“Joyce said they were thugs, most of them.”
“You don’t get into the drug squad without being able to handle yourself,” Thackeray said. “They’re hard as nails. They need to be.”
“This was women and girls they were dealing with,” Laura objected. “Not armed criminals.”
“If there was heroin there, there might have been guns not far away. This is nasty, brutal, violent crime we’re talking about, Laura, not a Sunday School outing. This is why I was so anxious when you went snooping around up there. Perhaps you’ll believe me now when I say you’re taking too many risks.”
“And perhaps you’ll believe me when I tell you that some of those kids on the Heights were murdered.”
“Did you tell Ray Walter that?”
“I didn’t tell Ray Walter anything. They wouldn’t let me in to see Joyce. Victor went in and I sat kicking my heels for an hour till they both came out. Then I took her home and went back to the office where Ted Grant was doing his nut, of course, because I’d taken most of the afternoon off. I don’t think I can put up with him much longer either.”
“What do you mean, either?” Thackeray had asked quietly. Laura had looked at him for a long time before she answered.
“I feel, with you, sometimes, that there’s a brick wall between us,” she said at last. “I thought for a long time that we might be able to break it down. But now I’m not so sure. I think you’ve boxed yourself in there with your guilt for so long that you’re never going to be able to break out. Aileen and the Pope between them have killed something in you, and nothing I do seems to bring it alive again for long. It’s as if you’re in a glass coffin. I can see you, and talk to you but I can’t really touch you. Not in any way that really matters.” And with that Laura had turned away and gone into the bedroom where Thackeray, frozen by her unexpected assault, listened to her sobbing to herself for a long time before he dared to follow her, only to find her sprawled across the double bed, her face stained with tears, fast asleep. He had gone to bed himself, much later, alone in the spare room.
Wrenching himself back to the present, Thackeray suddenly thumped the desk in frustration and instead of turning to his files picked up the phone.
“Amos?” he said when it was answered. “Did you get anywhere with that little query I left with you?”
“I did, as it happens,” Amos Atherton said. “As you suspected, there was no match with the sample they provided from the putative father.”
“So tests were done, then?”
“Oh, aye. They were done when the babies were two months old.”
“But they weren’t Foreman’s kids and we don’t know whose they were?”
“That’s about it, unless they went elsewhere with a sample from another candidate, as it were.”
“Right,” Thackeray said. “I can think of one likely candidate but I don’t think there’s a cat in hell’s chance of persuading him to take a blood test. It wouldn’t do his case any good at all. Anyway, that’s a great help. Thanks, Amos. I owe you one.”