Hunter noticed Barry had started to salivate. He watched him take another swig of his beer and then wipe droplets from his moustache with one of his shovel-like hands.
“Then one night,” he continued, “he gave her a real good hiding. Hospitalised her. Broke her nose, an eye socket and a couple of her ribs. I was on evenings and got the call out. He was pissed up when I got to his house and spouting off that she’d not complain about him. I gave him a taste of his own medicine and then took him in. I told the custody sergeant that he’d resisted arrest and that he’d confessed to me about the assault on Sue whilst coming back in the car. He made a complaint, but it was my word against his and the upshot was that he got eighteen months in Armley. When he went down I managed to persuade Sue, who had her daughter Carol by then, to move into her own place. For the first time she took advice from someone in authority. Unfortunately for her, her lifestyle began affecting her job. She started to drink a little too much and they gave her the push. She carried on drinking even more, and in some real dives, but she used to give me some real good info and in return I slipped her the odd tenner, or bought Carol, her daughter, a bit of something from time to time. I later found out she was touting round blokes for beer money, who in return would go home with her at the end of the night. But she wasn’t shagging them. She used to give them a large nightcap with some of her sleeping tablets in and they’d go spark out, and then next day she’d spin them a story whilst they nursed their thick heads. That was fine, until one night when one old guy, who’d got angina, took a turn for the worse and was rushed into hospital. Doctors there got a little suspicious and called in the police. A young sergeant went to the house and recovered a whiskey glass, which had the remnants of some of her anti-depressant tablets. I have to confess I tried to intervene in the case, and try and make the sergeant see the job for what it was, but he could only see ‘jobs-worth’ and she got two years for administering a noxious substance.”
“What happened to her daughter?” asked Hunter finishing off his second beer.
“Got taken into care. She was twelve years old. It changed her totally. She could already look after herself. Well she had to because of Sue’s lifestyle. But you know how it is. She’d entered a system that was full of young kids who were beyond the control of their parents, who were either on bail from court for violence or thieving, or self-harmers, and she became one of them. A real tearaway. She became promiscuous, regularly went shoplifting, got drunk, fought with kids, fought with staff, even fought with the police. Regularly went missing from home, and so when she went missing in the early nineties no real effort went into looking for her until she had been gone at least ten days. Sue contacted me, and as a favour to her and for old time’s sake I put in a fair bit of effort in my own time to try and track her down. But I hit a brick wall. I did have some concerns but the gaffers wouldn’t hear any of it. They just thought she’d buggered off to one of the big cities and was working as a teenage prostitute. For years Sue tried to get the police, and the papers interested, but because of her history got nowhere.”
“A sad story Barry,” sighed Hunter.
“Very,” agreed Barry. “When you see Sue tomorrow, a little bit of warning, she’ll more than likely be in drink. I contacted you, Hunter because I can trust you to deal with her sympathetically. But I also have to tell you that during the initial enquiries when Carol was first reported missing, Sue told a few lies and I covered for her.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DAY SIXTEEN: 21st July.
Before leaving for work that morning, nursing a thumping head, Hunter had telephoned Grace Marshall and given her the ‘heads-up’ of his meeting with Barry Newstead. When he gingerly sauntered into the MIT office Grace was already in, searching through a huge pile of missing-from-home files. He wasn’t surprised, she had already told him on the phone that she and Mike Sampson had decided that they could not spend another day in that dump of a store room and had got the van driver to transfer all the remaining folders to the office.
He found her beside her desk, sat crossed-legged on the floor, amongst foxed and yellowing folders, sliding report after report into separate piles.
Hunter eyed her carefully. He had known Grace a long time. In fact they had both joined the job on the same day and had trained together as new recruits. They had lost touch for a short time because she had chosen to take two career breaks to be with her two daughters’ during their pre-school years.
He had first been blessed with working alongside Grace when they had done their CID aide-ship together — she had worked hers at District CID, whilst he had done his at the smaller Barnwell CID department — they had been put together on a rape enquiry. The victim had been a woman with a history of sexual activity with many men in the area, and some of the older detectives on the case, had viewed the complaint as spurious. Yet Hunter had watched Grace approach it with such objectivity. At first, because he had wanted to impress the gaffer, he had tried to compete against her, but she had taught him a valuable lesson. A lesson he would never forget. She matched him for tenacity, flair, and enthusiasm and it had been she who had finally caught the perpetrator. The twenty-one year old offender had initially been a witness in the investigation. He had been drinking in the same pub as the victim. When she had left in a drunken state he had told detectives he had gone home in the opposite direction and used his mother to alibi him. Grace had been the one who had the ‘feeling’ about him, and she shared her cops’ instinct with Hunter. Between them they broke his mother down and she arrested the young man for rape. He was given an eight year sentence.
Since then, he had occasionally enquired of her, and when he had become a DS, covertly monitored her performance. Eighteen months ago, when he had learned he had secured one of the Sergeants posts in the newly formed Major Investigation Team, he hadn’t hesitated to call her up and suggest she should apply to join the squad.
She had walked the interview and since then they had been regular partners.
She glanced up from her work and fixed her brown eyes on him. She had a wide grin. She showed no signs of tiredness, unlike him.
The previous evening he’d had far too much to drink and had to get a taxi home. He’d apologised profusely as his wife Beth had driven him to pick up his car from the village pub that morning and he knew he’d overstepped the mark from the stern look she’d given him and the deathly silence throughout the journey. When he’d tried to kiss her she turned only to offer her cheek. ‘I’ll phone for a table, somewhere nice, this weekend’ he thought to himself as he ambled towards the kettle.
“Fancy a brew?” he asked without looking at Grace. “How are you getting on?”
“I’m sure I’ve seen Carol Siddons’ folder amongst this lot it’s just a matter of putting my hand on it. Your meeting with Barry has certainly made the job easier. And yes I will have a coffee as you’re offering.”
“I want to keep where I got the info from just between us two at the moment. It’ll only complicate the enquiry. Let’s just let them think you found the link, okay?”
He poured the boiling water into two cups, adding a tea bag to his own and coffee granules to Grace’s. He slipped two paracetamols into his mouth.
“Feeling under the weather?” asked Grace.
“I feel absolutely shit. I’d forgotten just how much Barry could drink. It was a cracking night and I had a real good laugh with him but I’m paying for it this morning. To add to it, Beth isn’t speaking to me. I had to ask her to drop me off for my car this morning, which meant she would be rushing about sorting the boys out before she went into work. I’ll have to do some real sucking up for the next few days, but I’ll get round her. I always do.”