The Coffin Trail

Chapter Ten

Hannah was on the phone, trying to unravel the mystery of why her computer had crashed for the fourth time since lunch, when Nick Lowther strode into her room, flourishing a sheet of paper. Later, she mouthed, but he stood his ground. Drumming her fingers on the desk as she listened to a jargon-freighted explanation as unfathomable as it was unconvincing, she found another outlet for her frustration by glaring at her sergeant and shaking her head.

‘You’ll want to see this,’ he murmured. ‘Promise.’

At last the technical guru surrendered with a grudging promise to look into the problem. Hannah hung up and said, ‘What have you got?’

He handed over the sheet and she saw it was a typed note of a telephone conversation. A dedicated telephone hotline had been set up with some fanfare, as part of the awareness campaign surrounding the launch of the cold case review unit. Members of the public with information about any unsolved serious crimes in Cumbria had been urged to call. Predictable as rain on a bank holiday, the response had been a deluge of crank messages and hoaxes. Baseless hints, malicious allegations and wildly improbable confessions to felonies both known and hitherto unimagined had flooded in. The team had anticipated this in discussion before the media conference. The tedious task of sifting out time-wasters was the price to be paid for soliciting the community’s help. Infinite patience was essential when panning for gold. The hotline was a direct dial-in straight to the Cold Case

Review Team’s office. The only snag was that the team wasn’t big enough to man the phone 24/7, so anyone calling outside normal working hours found themselves talking to an answering machine. Each morning the tape was studied and calls returned by one of the DCs. If the phone rang during the day, it would be picked up by whoever was nearest. Because the calls didn’t go to the main station control room, routine taping was out of the question. Too much grief under the human rights legislation. The DC had to scribble notes during the conversation and then decide whether they deserved to be written up.

‘So Maggie took this call,’ Hannah said to herself as she scanned the notes.

‘And she decided it was worth a further look, even though the woman didn’t give her name.’

Typical Maggie, Hannah thought. Of all the DCs in the team, she was the most painstaking. So much so that Bob Swindell regarded her as a pain. Even her typing, every comma in the right place, was so meticulous that it put full-time secretaries to shame. Whereas Linz and the two men tended to rely on instinct, Maggie Eyre didn’t believe in taking chances. She was a hoarder by nature: rumour had it that she’d never thrown away a school exercise book, recipe, or knitting pattern. In the course of an inquiry, she never discarded any scrap of information until she could be sure that it wasn’t viable as evidence. Better safe than sorry, she argued, although Hannah feared that if everyone were equally cautious, the investigation would become even more cluttered than Marc’s book-stuffed attic room.

According to the note, a redial established the call as having been made from a phone box in the square at Brack.

Caller: I read in the paper about those…cold cases. Something has been on my conscience all these years, although I never said a word to a living soul. Not even…well, I was just afraid of what would happen and besides, I didn’t want to believe…maybe I’m wrong anyway, wrong in what I think. There could be an innocent explanation for what I saw. I’ve always hoped so. All the same, it’s been weighing on my mind.

Eyre: Take your time.

Caller: Thank you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing this.

Eyre: There’s no need to worry. You’re doing the right thing. I’m not going to hang up on you. This is all in strict confidence.

Caller: Well, you say that, and I’m sure you’re trained about confidentiality. But how can I be sure? This is serious. I don’t even think I ought to be talking to you at all. It’s not right. Oh God, all this time and worry and I’m still not thinking straight.

Eyre: One thing at a time. Can you just give me a few details? If you could just tell me who you are…

Caller: I can’t give my name. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t want to get involved, not any more than I am already. I shouldn’t even be making this call.

Eyre: You have some information about a crime, a crime that wasn’t solved?

Caller: Yes, a girl was killed here in Brackdale. Murdered. Her name was Gabrielle.

Eyre: When was this?

Caller: Seven years ago, it must be. You’ll have the records, anyway. The papers were full of it. The thing is, your people thought they knew who did it.

Eyre: Someone was arrested?

Caller: No, he died. An accident, I think, but some folk say he killed himself out of shame. Couldn’t live with the guilt.

Eyre: What was his name?

Caller: Barrie, Barrie Gilpin.

Eyre: And you say that Barrie Gilpin…

Caller: Everyone blamed him, said he’d murdered her because he was a pervert. But he wasn’t, he was kind, he just had problems, that’s all. It was so — so unfair. What I saw…oh God, I felt so terrible when I…

Eyre: Please don’t upset yourself. It’s all right, it’s not…

Caller: I’m sorry. I just can’t do this.

Eyre: Don’t cry, madam. You can take a break, we could speak later on, when you’ve had a chance to calm down. Please, would you just tell me this. How can I get back to you?

Call terminated.

‘Now you see why I thought you’d want to know straight away?’ Nick asked. ‘I remember you telling me how Ben Kind obsessed about the case. He didn’t buy the official line, that Gilpin was responsible.’

Hannah nodded. ‘He always said that our job in a murder case is to see justice done for the victim. It plagued him like an ulcer, the thought that he’d failed her.’

‘He was waiting for a call like that.’

‘One piece of information, that’s what he reckoned, we just need one little titbit of evidence to show that Barrie Gilpin couldn’t have been the culprit. Marc and I were talking about Barrie only the other night. And now a call has come, but Ben wasn’t here to take it. Question is — is this the call? Or just a red herring?’

‘What do you make of what the woman has to tell us? She doesn’t exactly give much away.’

‘She says here in Brackdale, which suggests she lives there. If Maggie’s note is accurate.’

‘It will be. And we’re told that the woman saw something.’

‘Which she may have misinterpreted. Or invented.’

‘Okay, it’s not much, but Maggie thought…’

‘She was right to make the note. What else does she have to say? You and I both know that most anonymous callers are just out to cause problems. Either for us or someone they have a grudge against.’

‘Maggie said the woman seemed genuine. Genuinely worried, anyway.’

‘Age?’

‘Maggie thought thirty-something. Flustered, but then plenty of people are when they call us. She spoke slowly, the sentences were nervous and broken. At least it helped Maggie to make a good note.’

‘She did well. Even so, the woman couldn’t have given us much less to go on.’

‘True.’ Nick nodded at the note. ‘Bin?’

‘Of course not. Listen, I’m not jumping to any conclusions. This may be a dead-end, probably is. Fingers crossed, she’ll ring again. Brief the team, just in case anyone else answers the phone if she rings back.’

‘Already done.’

‘And we need to dig out the old files on the case, see whether anything jumps out at us.’

‘I asked Maggie to set the wheels in motion. You’ll have them on your desk first thing tomorrow.’

‘You can read my mind.’

He winked at her. ‘Spooky, huh?’

She grinned. ‘Scary.’

After Nick had left, Hannah tried to finish entering up her replies to a diversity monitoring questionnaire. Impossible: the memory of Gabrielle Anders’ dead face blotted out everything else. She had been pretty once, even her passport photograph couldn’t conceal that, but someone had hated her enough to destroy her looks as well as her life.

Gabrielle had been killed a fortnight after Hannah’s promotion to sergeant. It was the first time she’d ever worked with Ben Kind on a murder. Until then, she hadn’t known him well. People tended to be wary of him and although she’d been advised to keep her distance, she couldn’t help being intrigued by his reputation. Everyone reckoned he was a good cop, tough and relentlessly honest. Too honest, Hannah decided, to make it right to the top. You needed to be a bit of a diplomat if you wanted to build a brilliant career. Professional competence could only take you so far. His Achilles heel was that single-minded focus on catching criminals. It didn’t allow time for winning friends or influencing people. Worse, he was famous for not suffering fools gladly, even if the fool in question was responsible for his annual performance review.

She would never forget that first day up by the Sacrifice Stone. The picture remained as vivid in her mind as a snapshot stuck down in an album, and at the same time as unreal as a dream. Even by mid-afternoon, the mist had not quite cleared. She remembered the cold bite of the winter on her cheeks as she patrolled the crime scene perimeter, watching scenes of crime officers in their white suits, moving along the slope of the fell like ghosts. She had to watch every muddy step. The downpour was washing traces of the crime away and yet the gathering of evidence could not be rushed, lest something was missed. Walkietalkies hummed, above the valley a helicopter droned. Whenever the photographer’s flashbulb popped, she shut her eyes, but each time she opened them again, the corpse was still there. Anger stabbed her like a knife in the ribs, at the sight of the naked limbs splayed across the top of the boulder. The victim’s face had been hacked at and her head almost severed at the neck and now the poor creature was exposed to all these prying eyes. She was being photographed and probed and measured while her sightless eyes stared up to the heavens. No one treated her any more as a living and breathing human being. She had become an exhibit, a problem to be solved.

It didn’t take the forensic specialists long to break the news that the victim hadn’t died here. Trouble was, this information provoked more questions than it answered. Most murderers move their victims for the purpose of concealing their crime. Not this one. If fell-walkers hadn’t been deterred by rain and the thick morning mist, Gabrielle’s body would have been found even sooner. So what was the purpose of bringing her here? A symbolic ritual? An ironic nod to the myths of a godless past?

Hannah remembered wild conjectures jumping in her brain like fire crackers. She knew better than to voice her ideas. Ben Kind was a Puritan amongst detectives, addicted to facts and scathing about enthusiasts who got off on theories. Speculation was a dangerous self-indulgence in his book, draining an investigation of time and resources, leeching all the energy out of it. No one ever solved a crime by guesswork. You might as well hire a psychic or peer into a crystal ball.

As Hannah exchanged a word with the DC recording the scene on video, she kept an eye on Ben Kind. He was standing on the fell-side, arms out-stretched, directing his team to their tasks as though conducting an orchestra. Nothing about his gestures was flamboyant, but his self-assurance was unmistakable. She didn’t see anyone to whom he gave an order hesitate or ask questions. They did what they were told, not out of fear, nor even out of unthinking self-discipline, but because they knew that he was very good at his job. Although he might not have made it quite to the top of the greasy pole, Ben Kind commanded loyalty from those who liked him and respect from those who didn’t. His face was a mask; you would lose a lot of money playing poker with him. But as Hannah moved away, she caught a hint of suppressed fury in the set of his mouth and jaw.

Within hours it emerged that Barrie Gilpin, who lived in the nearest dwelling, had disappeared from home. He was the obvious suspect and before long his body was found. Mystery solved? The powers-that-be were content: the Press climbed off their backs and turned their attention to other stories. Ben Kind was unhappy, but there was little he could do. The inquiry ground to a halt. Barrie’s death had cheated them all.

Hannah hauled herself out of her chair. While wading through the reports about the most promising calls to the hotline, she’d missed her lunch and now the hunger pangs could no longer be ignored. Maybe she’d cope better with the bureaucracy if she had something in her stomach.

In the canteen, she bit into a Cox’s orange pippin. In her head she could hear Ben’s voice.

‘Everyone remembers who was in charge of an undetected murder.’

He never spoke a truer word. Failure to trace a murderer gnawed away at any senior investigating officer who cared about the job. Sometimes he’d talk to her about it and once she asked how he squared his doubts about who had killed Gabrielle with his mistrust of intuition.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but is it just because your son played with him as a boy?’

Without flinching, he said, ‘I never said that there’s no room for a detective’s instinct. Gut feel, based on experience, it’s the most valuable asset we’ve got. When you analyse it, a sound instinct is always based in fact. Like Barrie’s record of violence.’

‘He hasn’t got a record of violence.’

‘Shades of the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time. A crime like this doesn’t come out of the blue. Ask any profiler.’

‘I thought you loathed profilers.’

‘The ones who let their imagination run away with them, sure. Barrie Gilpin was a mystery to most folk in Brackdale. He could seem cold and he was often rude. It’s the nature of the condition, I’ve read up on it. But none of that makes a young man a murderer.’

‘We know that he fancied Gabrielle.’

‘And that he’d made a play for a number of girls in the village, most of whom turned him down flat. Sometimes mockingly. Each time he crept away with his tail between his legs. He must have felt wounded, but he didn’t threaten any of them, let alone harm a hair on their heads.’

‘One witness said he was a Peeping Tom.’

‘Okay, so he might have liked to hide in the bushes and wait for a pretty woman to take her clothes off without bothering to draw the curtains. Not very nice, but it doesn’t mean that he was a murderer.’

‘His body was found near the scene.’

‘He was the sort who was always likely to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If that’s what happened here, someone took advantage of him to get away with murder.’

‘Penny for ’em.’

Lost in the past, she hadn’t even heard Les Bryant march up to her table. He plonked down his polystyrene cup and sat down opposite her without asking if it was all right. As yet she hadn’t made up her mind how to play things with him. He was leaving it to her to speak first. Elbows on the formica surface, jaw cradled in his palm, studying her face as if it were a cipher that he’d been tasked to decode.

Pushing her plate aside, she said, ‘We had a call about a case I once worked on.’

‘Yeah, I heard. You and Ben Kind.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Our paths crossed a long time ago.’ Bryant pondered and for a moment she wondered if he was teasing her, making her await his verdict. Had he — somehow — picked up on gossip about her and Ben? It seemed unlikely, but after all, he was a detective. ‘Yeah, he was all right. So — what do you think he would’ve made of Sandeep Patel?’

The question knocked her off balance. She took a breath, telling herself not to let this man rattle her. That was his game, for sure. He’d been asking questions, checking up on the woman he was supposed to report to. He meant to see what stuff she was made of, test her out. No way would she let him walk all over her.

‘He’d have wanted to see him put behind bars. If you mean, would he have taken the risk of staking so much on Ivan Golac’s confession, God only knows. I think he’d have done the same as me.’

Bryant shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

The smart thing was to leave it there. She didn’t want to be forced on to the defensive, but he’d succeeded in needling her. She couldn’t help saying in a cold, flat tone, ‘Hindsight’s wonderful, but someone had to take a stand. No regrets.’

Swinging on his chair, he said, ‘Suppose that’s right. Tell you the truth, I’d have done the same myself.’

He had this knack of taking her by surprise. ‘You reckon?’

‘What was there to lose?’

‘Vast amounts of public money.’ She hesitated. ‘Credibility. Career progression.’

Did she detect the glimmer of a smile? ‘So you think that this new job is all about keeping you out of harm’s way?’

‘The thought’s crossed my mind.’

‘Mine too.’ He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s still an opportunity.’

‘You’ll be telling me to think positive next.’

A bite of cynical laughter. ‘I don’t give a toss for all that motivational crap.’

‘Well, then.’

He jerked a thumb in the direction of his heart. ‘If you ask me, a detective’s either got it here or he hasn’t. You wanted Patel locked up. It didn’t work, but I’ll bet you had him wetting himself for a few months.’

‘That’s not the object of a prosecution.’

‘No, but it’s not a bad consolation prize.’

She laughed as she thought back. ‘You should have seen his face the day he was arrested. Sheer panic. That’s when I thought — yes, you’re guilty! For a while I believed, I actually believed, we were going to get the right verdict.’

‘You know what they say about the judicial process.’ He made a face, as if spitting something out. ‘A system designed to find out which is the better of two lawyers. Tell you this, though. I don’t see it as a game.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning, I don’t see this as a way of competing with the poor sods whose inquiries got nowhere in the past. Like your old boss and that murder up on the fells. We’ve not been put on this review team to see how clever we can look, thanks to all the modern forensic stuff. That’s not what I’m about.’

‘Nor me.’

He belched comfortably. ‘Thought not. You ask me, this is more like a chance for us to put things right. I’ve never been keen on loose ends. Let alone the thought of people getting away with murder.’