Landslide Read online

  ‘That’s still a pretty broad sweep, boss’ said DCI Ollie Wright.

  ‘I know’ said Barton. He sighed. ‘But we don’t have much else to go on until we speak to the wives of Gary Makin and Terry Matthews who might be able to give something up to us. We also need to investigate all the old haunts of Connelly to see if anything comes up from that. Terry Matthews is still missing and I wouldn’t rate his chances if he’s got on the wrong side of Connelly. So that’s the other reason why we need to pursue that line of inquiry and because whoever was the associate of Connelly was responsible for the murder of Gary Makin’.

  ‘Do you think that Terry Matthews had something to do with the murder of the girl, boss?’ Bradshaw questioned. ‘I mean, if he was involved in transporting the body then it’s possible’.

  ‘I agree, Adrian, but I’m keeping an open mind on that one. To be transporting the body means he was involved in the murder but to what extent? What’s the bigger picture? See if you can find that out from interviewing the real housewives of crime’.

  There was a rumble of laughter at their boss’s reference to the wives of Gary Makin and Terry Matthews. There would probably be some kind of reality TV show bollocks about that kind of wife before too long but as far as Barton was concerned he wouldn’t be watching it. He absolutely hated that kind of thing on TV. The real wives of Cheshire or Chelsea or God knows where. He couldn’t for the life of him even begin to understand why brainless overly made up young girls who were dressed up in skimpy little outfits that made them look like an all you can eat buffet, and who trawl the trendy bars in places like Alderley Edge looking for a rich man instead of going out to work, why they were made into celebrities? He couldn’t understand the men either for seemingly wanting nothing more than a highly polished brainless trophy attached to their credit cards.

  ‘Okay boss’ said Bradshaw. ‘Joe and I will get down there to see the wives as soon as we’re done here’.

  ‘Good work’ said Barton. ‘Now Ollie, what’s the latest on the incident room?’

  ‘It’s up and running, boss’ Wright replied. ‘The landlord of the Oak Tree Inn has given us a space in his car park and we’ve parked the incident room van there. The landlord, Martin Clarke, is a bit of a one I must say, sir’.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well the place is decked out inside with every bit of British style memorabilia you could imagine. Union jacks everywhere, pictures of the Queen and the rest of the royal family stuck on every bit of wall there is, and the decor is all blue with splashes of red and white. Clarke kept me there for over a quarter of an hour yesterday whilst he explained how proud he was that Britain had voted to leave the EU and that he couldn’t vote Conservative anymore because they were too left-wing for him. He said he was always happy to help the police but I’m guessing that because I’ve got a black skin he didn’t start banging on about immigration because to people like him that’s probably what sums up everything that’s wrong with this country’.

  ‘Oh here we go again’ groaned DC Joe Alexander. ‘Why do you have to bring the race card into everything?’

  ‘DC Alexander that’s enough’ warned Barton.

  DCI Ollie Wright held up his hand. ‘No its okay, sir, with all due respect’ said Wright who was determined to answer the charge against him even though he was way more than just a little hurt by Joe Alexander’s stance. He had thought they were friends but it just goes to show that if you scratch the surface of an average white person who claims not to be racist then an average white person with questionable views on race is exactly what you’ll find underneath. He walked over to the white board where the picture of the murdered black teenage girl found in the boot of the abandoned car was stuck in the middle. ‘Why isn’t anybody missing this child? Why hasn’t somebody called in and identified her? We should’ve had calls in from schools, parents, somebody. Why does she appear to be invisible? Because whatever the circumstances surrounding her murder it will probably all come down to the same old thing. She’s black. And in the pecking order of the human race poor black people and especially poor black children, are right at the bottom of recognition. If she’d been a pretty white kid from one of the middle class suburbs then we’d have probably been inundated with offers of help and information. As it stands the phone is remarkably silent. But if she’d been a pretty white kid we’d have been hearing these phones ring in our sleep’.

  ‘Is that why you’ve adopted a white kid?’ Joe threw back.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well surely after that little speech you’d be more inclined to take on one of your own’.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed my husband Richard is white’ said Ollie as the anger began to rise inside him. The sonofabitch would get his if he wasn’t careful with what he threw out of his mouth.

  ‘And you’ve gone for a white kid to complete your pretty little alternative picture. Was that deliberate or was what you’ve bored us all stupid with these last few minutes just a load of old twaddle?’

  ‘Don’t you dare bring my daughter into your petty small minded bullshit and can I remind you that you’re talking to a senior officer’.

  ‘Oh but it’s okay for you to accuse junior ranking officers of racism and they have no recourse?’

  Wright turned to his boss. ‘Can I make one more point, sir?’

  Barton nodded his agreement. He had to let this run its course. If he tried to close it down now it would cause even more resentment. He’d deal with the matter in a more appropriate way once everyone had let off their steam. And besides, it was always more interesting to get to the truth of what people actually thought.

  ‘Let’s go back to the ebola crisis in West Africa a couple of years ago’ said Wright who realised he was speaking to the whole room and not just to Joe Alexander. They were all looking and waiting for what was going to happen next. It wasn’t often that they got to witness this strong an overspill of tension in the office. ‘I got talking to someone in our local pub one night who said it was nature’s way of culling some of them, meaning black Africans, before their numbers got out of hand. Excuse me? Was he talking about some kind of dangerous animal? Did he not see the colour of my face? Of course the idea of a cull of white people in an area that was densely populated by them wouldn’t even enter his head because whites are the superior race. So when I encounter situations like that Joe, am I supposed to just smile and accept it as being part of the realism of being black? Am I not permitted to speak out against racism because some white people are finding it all so boring? If the boot was on the other foot then white people wouldn’t let black people forget about it. And isn’t it curious that ebola, like AIDS, only started to matter to the wider public when white people started to be infected by it? Curious, very curious. .

  A pretty ominous silence fell on the room once Wright was finished.

  Barton took both DCI Ollie Wright and DC Joe Alexander into his private office and read them both the riot act. He wasn’t prepared to let the personal feelings of his officers have any impact on their investigation but he was sure that the skirmish between Wright and Alexander could be contained. The last thing he needed was for two of his officers to start needling each other about something as significant as race. He’d have to keep a closer eye them all from now on.

  ‘DCI Wright and DC Alexander?’ said Barton. ‘Now you’ve both had your say and you’re both entitled to your own opinions. Let it rest there please or I’m warning you, I’ll have no alternative but to take action because I will not have this kind of unprofessional behaviour divert our attentions away from finding the killer of a child. And if you can’t respect each other as police officers then I don’t want you back here tomorrow’.

  ‘I apologise, boss’ said Alexander.

  ‘Me too, sir’ said Wright.

  ‘Okay, well let’s leave it there. But don’t forget I’m warning you both’.

  ‘Okay everyone’ said Barton when he led Wright and Alexander back into
the conference room. ‘The show is over. Now, Louisa? What about the mystery DNA found on the young girl’s body?’

  ‘There’s absolutely no match for it, sir’ said Louisa Pilkington, the team’s civilian administration support. She really wanted to give her boss something positive to go on but she just didn’t have anything. ‘And I’ve run it through the system twice now. I can confirm the other two sets of DNA found on her body belonged to Gary Makin and Terry Matthews’.

  ‘Okay’ said Barton. So why wasn’t the DNA of this third person who he took to be the murderer, on the system? It was hard for Barton to believe that this was a first time act of revulsion but did that necessarily mean that they were looking for a serial killer? A serial killer who was involved with local gangsters? Something really didn’t ring true about that theory but what known theory would fit what had happened? ‘Any progress yet on our attempts to identify the girl? I should say child of course’.

  ‘Sir, I’ve looked into the reported disappearances of young black girls in the Greater Manchester area and who haven’t been found. I’ve gone back three years and I haven’t got through them all yet because there are more than you might think, but so far I’ve found no match with our victim. I’ll keep going but what I’ve also been looking into is the whole issue of female genital mutilation. It’s believed that a number of children are taken from the northwest to places in West Africa for this so-called procedure to take place, so much so that the force mounted a specific operation at Manchester airport at the start of the summer holidays earlier this year to try and identify young girls in their early teens travelling maybe with a grandma or an aunt and asking them why they were travelling. It’s never been felt before that criminal gangs were involved in this activity but maybe that’s something for us to find out about’.

  ‘But I take it that some of these girls don’t come back to the UK?’

  ‘Well I think it’s safe to assume that, sir, given that there are so many of these cases that are unsolved. So some of them are probably living an existence that’s been imposed on them in some West African country’.

  ‘But this girl could be a local girl who’s been taken out to West Africa and brought back again’ said Barton. ‘But like you say, where does the link with any criminal gang come in?’

  ‘Boss?’ said Wright. ‘She might not have been a local girl. She might’ve been an African girl who was brought over here by traffickers’.

  ‘And we do know that trafficking is something that all sections of the law enforcement agencies are struggling to get a grip on’ said Alexander. ‘So it may not be just a killer that we end up finding’.

  ‘Interesting point, Joe’ said Barton who was relieved to see that the two officers were both firing on all cylinders again. ‘And coming back to the central focus, what kind of killer are we looking for here?’

  ‘Some kind of functioning psychopath, boss’ said Bradshaw. ‘You can have a functioning alcoholic where the contradiction is that they seem to be alive through the intake of what’s slowly killing them, so you can have a functioning psychopath who really doesn’t care about the pain they’re inflicting on anyone. It’s just a game to make them feel superior’.

  ‘That’s certainly what we’ve come to believe about psychopaths, Adrian’ Barton agreed. ‘And this is all pretty unsavoury as it is. But yes considering what was done to that child I think we can safely assume that this is the work of what you’d call a functioning psychopath’.

  ‘Like Bernie Connelly, boss?’ said Wright.

  ‘No’ said Barton. ‘I just can’t see Connelly being part of this somehow. But I do think there’s some sort of background pattern here and I’ve thought it for the past few days’.

  ‘How do you mean, sir?’ asked Wright.

  ‘Something about the way these girls were murdered has triggered something in my memory that I can’t picture yet’.

  ‘So we could be looking at two distinct lines of enquiry that may or may not be connected with each other? Is that what you’re saying, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ollie’ said Barton. ‘But something is playing at the back of my mind. Louisa? Check the system for unsolved murder cases involving young black girls, in similar circumstances to this, right across the north of England over the last ten years. When I find what my consciousness is trying to remind of then I’ll know it’.

  ‘Not a problem, sir’.

  ‘Thanks, Louisa’ said Barton. ‘It’s just a hunch but it’s one that won’t go away’.

  Barton never enjoyed going in front of the press. They always asked such bloody awkward questions that he didn’t know the answer to and then made him feel like a politician who made up a cock and bull packet of shit when they either didn’t know the answer or didn’t want to give it for some reason. But this time it wasn’t the usual press conference that the force’s ‘media relations unit’ had organised. This time he was going to be making a statement on camera to one reporter at a time from the BBC, ITV, Channel 5, Sky News, and local regional TV. The statement would also be carried by the newspaper side of the media and local radio stations. It was going to be full-on without being in Barton’s face for which he was hugely grateful.

  ‘ ... we are appealing for anyone who knows or thinks they know this young girl to please come forward as quickly as possible and give your information to the police, no matter how small or how insignificant you think it might be, there’s every possibility that it might prove useful to the police. Now I’m a father and I appeal to all fathers out there to take a close look at the face of this young girl. Her father clearly wasn’t able, for reasons we’re not aware of, to protect from the evil intent of others, but you could play a vital part in bringing to justice those who made her short life so unbearable. We also need to talk to a man by the name of Bernie Connelly who may or may not have been involved in the crimes against this young girl, but we need to talk to him about the death of Gary Makin and the disappearance of Terry Matthews. Bernie Connelly is a name that will be known to many in this city but I want to assure anyone who comes forward with information on where we might be able to find Connelly that they can come forward in the confident knowledge that their evidence will be treated with the upmost professionalism and they will be protected if that is what is required’.

  Barton finished the last of the more than half dozen presentations to the various media outlets and then returned to his office. By the end of today he wanted to have made progress on the case but given the complexities he certainly wasn’t holding his breath. But that young girl was screaming out at him from the other side of life and he was determined to find out the truth and get justice for her.

  LANDSLIDE FIVE

  Brendan stirred and turned over in bed to find Jaime looking at him.

  ‘Good morning’ said Brendan. He shifted his body around until he was fully face to face with his lover.

  ‘Good morning, gorgeous’ said Jaime. He kissed Brendan and then caressed his cheek with his hand. ‘Did you sleep alright?’

  ‘Well haven’t you been watching me?’

  ‘Well yes but I thought I’d ask anyway’.

  ‘I slept like a log, like I always do since you came into my life and now I’m waking up in a fireplace even though it’s probably freezing outside. It has been the last few mornings’.

  Brendan had been seeing Jaime for over a month now and he’d never been happier. He met him on a very busy and noisy night in a pub on Canal Street which was the most renowned and famous street in Manchester’s gay village. Brendan hadn’t really been looking for anything in particular that night. He certainly hadn’t been looking for something that would change his life. But the moment that he’d first laid eyes on Jaime he knew this was something special. He stood there in his white polo shirt and faded denim jeans and Brendan wanted him there and then. They managed to get talking after negotiating their way through the packed crowd and the sheer volume of people forced them into being up close and personal. It was one of t
hose classic moments when two people clap eyes on each other and they each say to themselves ‘I know what I like and he is it’.

  ‘You know, when you smiled at me in the pub that night’ said Jaime in that soft wistful early morning voice that he knew Brendan loved. ‘I couldn’t believe you were actually smiling at me’.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re young, cute, and that means you’ve got the whole world at your feet’ said Brendan. ‘I’m two years shy of my fortieth birthday and that means I’m about two thousand six hundred and three in gay years’.

  Brendan laughed. ‘Well then it’s a good job I’m into antiques’.

  ‘You know what I mean’ said Jaime. ‘The whole gay scene thing is orientated around youth and body shape’.

  ‘And not all of us are into all that gay fashion police shit’ said Brendan. ‘I’ve always wanted a bloke. I don’t care if you leave your clothes lying about because that’s what men do. I don’t care if you leave stuff all over the place just where you’ve used it instead of putting it away because again, that’s what men do. I want a bloke who looks like you with your black hair going a bit grey and your chest covered in all this thick fur and your face permanently covered in shadow’.

  ‘You want to be a wife’.

  ‘Yeah, I think I do. I like to look after someone’.

  ‘That’s why you’re a Nanny and a housekeeper’.

  ‘I think it probably is’ said Brendan, thoughtfully. ‘I’ve got four younger brothers and sisters and I looked after them a lot whilst my parents were both at work. I landed on my feet getting this job though, believe me. Jeff is one in a million bosses. A really cool guy, you know’.