Buried

Chapter 32

It was almost forty-eight hours since Kurts, Wassan and Marchant had been escorted back to London and, just as Ridley had predicted, they’d all been ‘no comment’ the entire time. Kurts could be charged with perverting the course of justice, because Barry had been hiding in his flat — but they still needed to prove he knew Barry was there. Wassan was just hours away from being released. And Marchant was waiting for his lift back to Essex, after his good deed of playing chauffeur to his brother had finally exonerated him from any involvement in the train robbery.

Jack was head-down, checking numerous family statements supporting the fact that Marchant had never left the hospital at any point during his sister-in-law’s 27-hour labour. It wasn’t his aim to undermine Ridley or make him feel stupid; all Jack wanted was to be taken seriously.

Ridley sat at his desk, door open, and looked through the army service records of every man and woman who’d ever crossed paths with either Barry Cooper or Mike Withey. There were so many possibilities, but, as the hours ticked by, his gut got louder and louder. He was on the wrong track. He looked up to see Jack in the doorway.

‘Rashid Wassan’s solicitor’s saying we either charge him or let him go, sir.’

‘Release him,’ Ridley said. He had no option.

When Jack returned to the squad room, Ridley was standing by the evidence board. He’d added the photos of Marchant and Wassan to the discarded evidence pile, so that only Mike Withey, Barry Cooper and Thomas Kurts remained on the board, in pride of place, staring him dead in the eyes and challenging him to solve a 24-year-old train robbery and a brand new murder.

‘Once you eliminate the impossible...’ Ridley muttered. He sifted through the discarded evidence, picked up the photo of Dolly Rawlins and stuck it next to Mike Withey before completing the quotation. ‘Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

He let out a long sigh. He beckoned to Jack. The two men stood side by side, hands in pockets, looking at the women from The Grange. Laura and Anik could hardly believe what they were seeing.

‘Can we justify search warrants?’ Ridley asked.

‘We wouldn’t find anything, sir,’ Jack said, with an absolute certainty that made Ridley turn to look at him. ‘They’re smarter than that. Always have been. They hid in plain sight, then and now. They looked like a bunch of women opening a kids’ home, so that’s all we saw.’

Jack tapped the photo of Dolly Rawlins as he started to speak, and he swept a hand to include all of the other photos as he continued.

‘Dolly Rawlins, the grief-stricken wife of a criminal mastermind driven to murder because of marital betrayal. Ester Freeman, a two-bit madam running her own brothel. Connie Stephens, a dumb prostitute. Julia Lawson, a drug-addled ex-doctor who turned to dealing to survive. Gloria Radford, the downtrodden wife of a gunrunning husband. Angela Dunn, nobody of consequence. And Mike Withey, burnt-out drunk. Individually, they’re easy to ignore — but together...’ Ridley and Jack looked at all seven photos, side by side. ‘Leader, second in command, horsewoman, gun expert, seductress, inside man, and a babysitter to keep Kathleen’s kids out of harm’s way. Ester’s insane decision to shoot Dolly was something no one could have predicted and it was what pushed them into this waiting game. They had to wait for Ester to get out or she’d have grassed them all up. They had to wait for the local pub landlord to stop making cash on the side by traipsing hundreds of tourists through what quickly became a notorious murder scene. And they had to wait for Norma to die. When the coast was finally clear, Mike made the mistake of asking Barry to help burn down Rose Cottage. The only time two blokes were left to do a job, and they fucked it up!’

‘Sounds like you admire these women, Jack.’

‘I do, sir. They watched us underestimate them back in 1995 and they watched us do it again now. Me, sir. They watched me underestimate them.’

Ridley removed the photos of Dolly Rawlins, Gloria Radford and Mike Withey — leaving Ester, Julia, Connie and Angela.

‘So, who’s the mastermind now?’

‘Not Ester. They don’t like her, don’t trust her and, anyway, she was out of the loop for too long. Not Connie — she’s not capable. Julia or Angela. They’re both smart and organised enough to juggle families and jobs. Angela’s my guess — she was Dolly’s protégée and she still puts flowers on Dolly’s grave.’

Ridley stood, arms folded, legs apart, temples pulsing as the tension flickered through his facial muscles. He nodded.

‘Let’s bring her in.’

The drive to Angela’s flat in West London was short and silent. Ridley was driving faster than normal, which was an indication of how annoyed he was. From the car park beneath Angela’s third floor window, they looked up to see the flat in darkness. It seemed that Angela, Rob and the kids had gone. Within minutes, Ridley was requesting search warrants and co-ordinating simultaneous entries into Ester’s home on the Isle of Wight, Julia’s care home in Chester and Connie’s B & B in Taunton. Ridley wanted to be the one to search Angela’s flat; if she was the ringleader, as Jack suspected, then she’d be the one with all the answers.

The Chester police arrived in force, expecting to have to herd unwanted children into the back of a police van just to stop them from scattering like rats, but what they actually found was an English lesson in mid-flow. Julia’s two helpers, who she ‘trusted with her life’, kept the children entertained while the police searched the three adjoining houses. The female helper escorted the police while the male helper, Daniel, continued the class as though nothing untoward was happening at all.

Daniel spoke as if he was reading a quote from a textbook.

‘The police burst in through the door, all red-faced and sweaty. Burst.’

A sea of tiny hands shot into the air and Daniel pointed to a young Asian lad, who was dressed in clothes at least three sizes too big for him.

‘Verb!’ the boy shouted with pride.

‘Brilliant!’

Daniel caught a glimpse of the overweight PC in the corner of the room scowling at the children, as though they were not worth the effort Daniel was putting in.

‘Sweaty,’ Daniel continued.

Again, tiny hands reached for the ceiling. Daniel nodded his head towards the PC and asked if he knew what sort of word ‘sweaty’ was. All the while, the children’s hands strained into the air, begging to be chosen. The PC flushed with embarrassment as a girl, no more than 6 years old, explained to him what an adjective was.

There was nothing suspicious at Julia’s. Her paperwork was meticulous, there were no drugs or alcohol on the premises and the kids were well looked after. The sergeant questioned everyone to try and ascertain where Julia was, but no one knew a thing.

The bleached blonde at The Grange B & B in Taunton told the local police that Connie had probably ‘nipped to the shops’.

‘Well, I dunno, do I? I’m up at five to do the breakfasts, then it’s the bedrooms, then packed lunches for the walkers, then general stuff, then the dinner prep! I’m sure I saw Connie yesterday on the third floor. Maybe I didn’t. We sometimes don’t see each other for days and we’re in the same building! She’s gone then, has she? Where to?’

She was still gibbering away to herself when the police left.

On the Isle of Wight, Sergeant Henderson knocked on Ester’s front door for a fourth time before deciding to send his accompanying PC round the back to try and find an alternative way in. They had the paperwork to force entry, but an open window would be the best solution seeing as no one was home.

Through the kitchen window, the PC was faced with Geoffrey pinned flat against the side of the fridge-freezer, his eyes screwed tight shut. He had taken Ester’s advice about hiding his fetishes in order to bag himself a nice woman, so was dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, a black V-neck jumper and black brogues. He looked good. But the smart clothes couldn’t hide the fact that he was a broken man. The PC tapped gently on the window, so as not to frighten him further.

Like a greyhound out of the starting gate, Geoffrey bolted for the front door, raced outside and barrelled straight into Sergeant Henderson. Once Geoffrey was down, he stayed there. He lay on his back, his arms wrapped around his face, sobbing, ‘I miss her! I miss her! I miss her!’

Henderson got to his feet and dialled a number in his mobile.

Ridley looked out of Angela’s balcony window, across the grey, rain-filled skies of West London, and tried to maintain his trademark calm demeanour — but his fist was clenched tight around his mobile phone as if he was about to explode. It wasn’t something Jack had ever seen before, and it wouldn’t last long, he was sure of that. Next to Ridley was Angela’s stack of transparent plastic sewing boxes, neatly labelled by client name. The stack stood seven boxes tall and when Ridley kicked out at the third one up, he sent the top four flying across the lounge. He then returned to the balcony window. His shoulders were tense beneath his coat and they moved rhythmically up and down as he took deep, controlled breaths.

While Jack waited for Ridley to calm down, something made him glance upwards at the high shelf, out of reach of sticky fingers. The worn teddy bear and yellow teething ring had gone. Jack smiled in admiration for what the women had managed to achieve. The patience, the mutual trust, the mutual love, the organisation that lay behind this was staggering. Of course Jack was frustrated at always being several steps behind them but, my God, what special women they were!

‘Geoffrey Porter-Lewis is being escorted across to us,’ Ridley said when he finally spoke. ‘He’s all we’ve got. You’ve met him, Jack — will he give us the women?’

‘He won’t know anything, sir. Geoffrey will snap like a twig and Ester would know that.’

‘I’m going to send you some uniforms. Tear this place apart. And when Geoffrey arrives I want you to interview him.’

And Ridley left without another word.

Jack pushed his hands deep into his pockets and took his place by the balcony window. On the balcony, next to a child’s bike, a bunch of flowers stood in a bucket. Jack could see the handwritten label in its plastic pocket on the side of the wrapping: ‘To Dolly. Never forgotten. X.’

The rain started to fall just as Ridley stepped outside, forcing him to jog across the car park to his BMW. Jack felt sorry for him, even though his own arrogance — no, not arrogance; Ridley wasn’t arrogant — his own blinkered self-belief was responsible for this monumental mistake. Ridley was an excellent officer, but he played by the rules and the truth was that anyone can learn them. And once you learn the rules you can predict what someone might do. The women had predicted Ridley, move by move, and that’s why he’d failed. Jack was different. Jack, for the first time in his career, was thinking outside the box... He was thinking like them.