Catch the Fallen Sparrow (24 page)

‘Do you remember who you sold the five to?' Farthing asked.

The man met his eyes. ‘Why?'

‘I can't say exactly at the moment,' Farthing explained. ‘But all I can tell you is it's part of a serious investigation.'

‘Not to do with that kid, is it?'

‘It might be.'

The man leafed through his book, pulled a notepad towards him, wrote five names. ‘I've a good memory,' he said. ‘Leek is a small town. It's an expensive coat and I don't hold with murdering kids...'

Farthing glanced down at the list of names. Top of the list was Robin Leech.

Alice Rutter walked into the police station at five o'clock in the afternoon, ignored the officer at the entrance and demanded to see ‘the lady officer in charge.' She flatly refused to speak to anyone else.

She seemed even more out of place here in the small, tidy office with its brick-wall view than she did up on the moors with a background of storms and weather, light and shade, dawn, dusk and the rocks. There she looked a wild woman, a troglodyte woman of nature, a throw-back to the man who surely must have been half-ape, half-human. Here, in the small modern office, she looked merely dirty, scruffy and unhygienic. And as she walked in through the door Joanna felt a wave of nausea at the unwashed scent.

‘I've come because I know I must help you,' Alice said slowly. ‘ 'E didna want me to come. Said I would not be able to 'elp you. I dunna know. But the child is dead.'

Joanna waited and Alice sat down stiffly in one of the armchairs, fingering the imitation plastic.

Joanna faced her. ‘We want you to help us identify the car,' she said clearly. ‘Do you remember? You recalled it was a long, white car.'

Alice shook her head slowly. ‘Light, I said. I did not remember it as bein' white.' She looked at Joanna. ‘If I 'elp, you must promise me. No tryin' to get us out of the Rock.'

‘It isn't up to me,' Joanna said. ‘We won't evict you. It would be social workers who worried you might not be safe up there.'

‘Pah.' For a short moment Joanna thought Alice might spit. Instead she sat silent, chewing her lips. Then she sighed and stared out of the window at the wall. ‘Why do they put a window where there is nothing to see?'

‘There was something to see once,' Joanna replied, looking in the same direction. ‘They had to build some more cells. There was nowhere else to put people. I've lost my view,' she said ruefully, ‘but I still have ventilation.'

Alice shook her head slowly. ‘That isn't ventilation. Ventilation's air. Clean air. Not dust and filth from cars.' She looked again at Joanna. ‘I can't breathe down here,' she said. ‘It would be cruel to take us away from the moor. We belong there.'

Joanna nodded. ‘I know, Alice.'

There was a moment of empathy between them then Alice licked her lips. ‘It might come again,' she said.

‘What?'

‘The car.'

‘How would you know if it was the same car?'

Alice Rutter blinked. ‘I know sounds,' she said. ‘The lapwing pretending to have a broken wing to protect its young, fox cubs lonely and frightened for their mother. Kestrel hungry for food. Sounds tell me all. And the car is loud and broken.'

Joanna stood up, the embryo of an idea taking shape. ‘Would you let me drive you around Leek?' she asked. ‘Tell me if you see a car like the one ... or hear something similar?'

Alice stood up heavily then lumbered out of the door. They drove around Leek, then five miles towards Macclesfield, looking at cars, the windows open to listen to engine noises. Alice gave each vehicle slow consideration.

Long, Joanna soon found out, was any car at all – except possibly a Mini. Alice picked out hatchbacks and estates, saloons and fastbacks. Similarly, a light colour covered fifty per cent of cars on the road, pale, metallic greens and greys, whites and creams, yellows and pale blues. So they stood on a street corner and Joanna asked her to close her eyes and identify a car that sounded right. But when Alice was convinced she had ‘heard the car', it turned out to be a motor bike.

Alice looked close to tears. ‘Jonathan was right,' she said. ‘I'm a silly old fool. I aren't familiar with cars. I never 'ad one.' Then she stopped. ‘I don't know nothin'. I can't 'elp. And I was near. I saw. I didn't do nothin'. I was scared. But I could 'ave saved the burnin'.'

Joanna tried to comfort the old woman and offered to drive her back to her home.

Alice looked at her. ‘You have a car?'

Joanna grinned. ‘I usually use my bike,' she said. ‘But I have had to use the car lately.' She smiled ruefully.

‘There's been so much haring around.'

It was a fine evening but September was turning cool. Joanna slipped her coat on and walked slowly up the grey slope of the moor, towards the Winking Man, outlined in black against the grey sky.

At the top Alice called out, ‘Jonathan ... Jonathan. I 'ave the police lady with me.'

His head appeared through the gloom from behind the rock, hostile and suspicious. He glared at Joanna. ‘What are you 'ere for?' he demanded.

‘She brought me home.'

He looked from one to the other. ‘You find the car then,' he mocked.

Alice shook her head, iron-grey dreadlocks bouncing off her cheeks.

‘I knew she wouldn't.' It was Joanna he addressed.

‘Sit down a minute.'

Joanna sat on the rock and gazed across the wide view, lake and town, mountains and valleys.

Alice watched her face like a hawk. ‘That is a view,' she said proudly. ‘Not bricks. Not dirty air. Not even people at all. Just the hills and the land and God.' She glanced at Joanna. ‘You married then?'

Joanna shook her head.

‘You want to be married?'

And suddenly the anguish of Matthew flooded back – the old confusion and uncertainty. She shrugged her shoulders while Alice watched her – puzzled.

She touched her with a gnarled, wrinkled hand. ‘ 'Ard world, isn't it?'

Joanna laughed. ‘But our worlds are different, Alice.'

Alice Rutter gave a slow chuckle. ‘Don't be daft,' she said. ‘It's the same world. We all has different ways of livin' in it but it's the same world all right.'

Joanna stared down at the hollow where the town sat. ‘How do you live up here, Alice?'

The old woman blinked. ‘The animals does. Why shouldn't we? We can survive too. It's just that people like you have bred too fine. You forgets you has legs for walkin'. Because you use cars. You never learn how to catch food and store it through the winter. There's things you knows, I dare say,' she said, winking at Jonathan ‘but there's an awful lot of things you don't know.'

Joanna looked at the woman's face and read something there – something wise, a hidden, superior knowledge – something she didn't understand but could respect. ‘Two children are missing,' she said, ‘from the same house that the boy was from.'

Alice was watching her steadily.

‘I'm worried about them.'

Alice stood up, Jonathan too, towering over her, bulky in their layers of clothes.

‘You'll find them,' Alice said. ‘Soon enough and ...' she wagged her finger at Joanna, ‘when they wants to be found. You'll find them when they lets you.' There was a stern hostility in her face and Joanna felt unnerved, lonely. She was standing on alien territory.

‘I have to go now,' she said, ‘but I'll come back.' Joanna ran down the side of the blackening mountain, conscious all the way of the woman's powerful presence behind her. When she reached the car the phone was crackling. She answered it and heard Mike's voice. They had found another body.

Flashing blue lights lit the front of the sports shop already sealed off with tape. Mike met Joanna as she drew to a halt.

‘A customer alerted us.' His voice was shaking. However many murders they investigated, violent death was always a shock.

She stared at him. ‘How was he killed?'

‘Slit throat, Jo. God, there's blood everywhere.' He stopped for a moment. ‘I never saw such a messy murder,' he said softly. Latos must have been covered in blood.

She walked inside. She had steeled herself for a gruesome spectacle but nothing could have prepared her for this. The knife had slit an artery. The heart had pumped out blood. It had spurted and hit the ceiling in a great splash. Joanna stared at it then at the small body of Keith Latos, his neck a gaping pulp, his T-shirt drenched.

‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him,' she said softly.

‘Sorry?' One of the SOC officers looked up.

‘Never mind,' she said. ‘Another murder.'

‘I don't think this one was,' he said. ‘For a small chap he was pretty muscular. But he never had a chance. Quick flash ... Phhht.' He whistled through his teeth. ‘Bloody quick end.'

‘I don't suppose it was burglary?'

The SOC officer shook his head. ‘Not a chance,' he said.

‘Pathologist sent for?'

‘I'm here.' Cathy was standing behind her with her small black scene-of-crime case in her hand. She smiled at Joanna. ‘Leek's getting pretty ghastly,' she said with a thin smile. ‘Matthew promised me it would be a complete holiday.' She looked down at the bloodied corpse. ‘I don't call this much of a holiday, Joanna.' She knelt down beside the corpse and slipped on some surgeon's gloves. ‘I suppose you've heard the good news. Matthew should be home in a couple of days.'

Joanna stared at her. ‘He rang?'

‘Yes ... He had to let the hospital know when he'd be back.' She touched Latos's face. ‘Cold,' she said, then looked up at Joanna. ‘Didn't you know?'

Joanna couldn't tell whether her voice contained a hint of malice. ‘No,' she said shortly. ‘I didn't.' So Matthew was coming home and he hadn't even had the courtesy to ring her. He had contacted colleagues – made sure they would expect him back. And he hadn't lifted the telephone to let her know. She gritted her teeth, feeling as though she had been punched. Fortunately Cathy did not notice.

‘Been dead around two hours,' she said. ‘One very sure slice to the neck. Probably with a carving knife. The sort you carve the joint with. Strong too. Gone right through the carotid artery, jugular vein, trachea ... Look.'

She tilted the head just a little. ‘See that. Spinal column. One hell of a blow.'

One of the police officers ran out of the room rather quickly.

Cathy looked up at her. ‘I'll be able to tell you more about the knife when I get him to the mortuary. Just tell me one thing, Joanna,' she asked curiously, ‘was he connected with the boy?'

‘One of the chief suspects,' Joanna said gloomily.

Cathy looked at her. ‘Well, he didn't do this,' she said.

Joanna found DC Alan King with the police photographer.

‘Turned up anything?'

He shook his head. ‘Must have been close to closing time,' he said. ‘Whoever it was was in and out quickly.'

‘Any prints?'

King shook his head again. ‘Not a bloody thing to go on,' he said. ‘If it wasn't connected with the Tunstall case, I'd think it was a homicidal maniac.'

Joanna looked at the blood-drenched corpse and came to a decision. ‘Mike,' she said. ‘I'm going to ask the Super for some extra men. We have to find the two children. I think we should return to The Nest. I want to speak to Mark Riversdale and make another search of their rooms. We must have missed something.' She stared down at the white face. ‘I didn't expect this,' she said through her teeth.

Mike touched her shoulder. ‘None of us did.'

Outside she sat in the car and looked at him. ‘Why was Latos killed?' It was a simple question. She felt she should know the answer, but no brainwaves, no inspiration came, only the ugly vision of the opened neck. She sat for a while, pondering as pictures moved in front of her eyes, neatly boxed shoelaces unthreaded, knotted in skeins as they arrived from the manufacturer. Pairs of trainers tossed together in the basket outside the shop, neatly laced, tied together in pairs ... a photograph album, a ring ... She put the car into gear and headed towards the Ashbourne road.

To Joanna's surprise Maree O'Rourke opened the door to The Nest. She seemed confused at the appearance of the two police officers. And embarrassed too. ‘Hello,' she said, dragging her fingers through her spiky hair. ‘Have you heard anything about Jason and Kirsty?'

‘I'm sorry,' Joanna said.

Maree looked close to tears. ‘God,' she said, ‘what the hell's happening to them?'

Joanna said nothing. Mike merely stared.

Maree gave him a glance then quickly looked away. ‘Was there anything ...'

‘We wanted to speak to Mark,' Joanna said. ‘And we would like to search Jason and Kirsty's rooms.'

‘Again?' She paused then nodded. ‘Of course – fine.' Now she was over-friendly, almost effusive ... ‘Come in ...' She stood back against the door. ‘Mark isn't exactly available at the moment.'

‘Is he in or not?' Mike pushed forwards.

Maree flushed. ‘He isn't terribly well: she said. ‘He's upset. Look, why don't you search the rooms first? Then you can speak to him.'

The boys' room seemed empty now. Dean and Jason both gone. Twin beds, neatly made up, clothes out of sight. Even the posters seemed characterless –
Terminator, Edward Scissorhands
... an unknown character with blood dripping from his nose, and strangely a soft poster of a bright blue bird flapping its wings over water. It looked out of place against the aggression portrayed around it. Joanna studied it for a while. ‘I wonder which of them put this one up.'

She opened the wardrobe. School uniform, school shoes, shirts, T-shirts, jeans. Some were probably Dean's – the rest Jason's. She stared at them and wondered whether he would ever wear them again. Damn it, she thought, where was the boy?