Delayed & Denied

Set in an era of continuing cut backs, Hall becomes involved in a
Quixotic attempt to prove the innocence of a Whitehaven man convicted
years before of murdering his wife, before dumping her body in Crummock
Water. And when another woman is strangled to death in the town, Hall
and DI Francis begin to wonder if the cases could be connected? Told
with Salkeld's usual blend of gritty humour and social observation,
Delayed Denied casts a sharp, sideways glance at the dispensation
of justice in difficult times. 

Delayed & Denied

The Lakeland Murders: number eight.

By J J Salkeld

HERRINGBONE Press

© copyright J J Salkeld, 2015

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover photograph by R F Simpson

Cover art by Michaela Waddell,
www.verityproductions.biz

Wednesday
, August 1st

Outside Carlisle Crown Court

‘Is there a more satisfying feeling in the whole wide bloody world?’ said Sandy Smith at the courtroom door, much too loudly for DI Jane Francis’s comfort. Jane’s expression said as much, but Sandy didn’t pick it up. But then she never did. It was ironic really, because in the lab the woman never missed a thing. Although, Jane thought, at work she was usually dealing with the dead, and they told their stories in entirely different ways from the living.

And when Sandy spoke again the volume had, if anything, been cranked up another notch or two. ’We nailed that bastard good and proper didn’t we, love? He must have thought he’d got away with it, long since, like. But thanks to us he’ll actually do eight or ten years, and he deserves to serve every last day of it.’

Sandy smiled at the older couple who were just coming out, very much in the way that she reacted to the sight of an especially bloody crime scene. And it took Jane a moment to realise that they were the parents of Terry Thompson, the man who’d just drawn fifteen years for the rape of his niece, back in the late 1990s. They looked utterly shocked and defeated, like refugees from a battlefield. Two old people whose whole world had been reduced to rubble over three days in Court 1.

That settled it for Jane. She needed to get Sandy away from there before she commented on the judge’s wig, or the defence barrister’s curious vocal tic. There were two options open to her, she decided, the offer of coffee and cake or wine and crisps, and given the fact that it was now almost 4pm Jane went for the latter. It turned out to the right choice.

‘You’re on. We deserve a bit of a do after all that, don’t we? Are you bringing the boy? I could do with a bit of eye-candy, to brighten up my afternoon.’

DC Keith Iredale smiled. It was as if he wasn’t there. But he was well used to Sandy, and liked her too, even if she was she was marginally less politically correct than a leopard print thong.

‘I’m buying, I expect?’ he said.

‘Aye, of course you bloody are’, said Sandy, quickly. ‘And you’ll be giving me a lift home after, too, lad. Do you even have to ask? We are fucking ladies, aren’t we?’

Iredale left the question hanging, and they walked at Sandy’s surprisingly brisk pace to the wine bar round the corner. Although it was close to the court it was too expensive for most defendants, and too expensive for Iredale too, he thought, as he ordered the specific bottle demanded by Sandy, plus soft drinks for himself and his boss.

When he returned to the table for the second time, carrying the extensive range of snacks that Sandy also required, she was already holding forth to Jane.

‘Your lad here did well, lass. Twenty years ago we’d never have made that case stick, I’m telling you.’

‘Because DNA testing wasn’t up to it back then?’

‘No, not that. Although it’s a good thing that the clothing was properly stored all these years, or we’d have been properly buggered, like. No, I just meant that twenty years ago if a woman had rocked up at any nick in the county to report a rape that had actually happened years before, and had been ‘no-crimed’ at the time, then the bobbies would have just made her a brew with three sugars in it, looked like they were listening for ten minutes, and then sent her off home again, wouldn’t they?’

‘Well…’ Jane began, but without any real expectation of taking the sentence very much further than word one.

‘Come on, love, we all know it’s true. But young Keith here did listen to that woman, didn’t he? And when he’d listened he went away and did some digging, and he found out that those items of clothing had been kept, didn’t he? And you’ll have done your bit too, love, persuading your bosses to re-open the file. I bet that was a struggle, like.’

‘No, actually the new ACC was very supportive, and so was the CPS. Like you say, Sandy, things have changed.’

Jane watched Sandy take a big swig of that ripe Merlot, and wondered if Andy had been shopping, or at least had a supermarket delivery of food that day. Because she reckoned that she’d earned herself a glass of something decent that evening.

‘So you’re leaving us for a bit, young Keith?’ said Sandy, when she’d very nearly finished a mouthful of nuts.

‘Aye’ he said cautiously, and waited to be berated for his lack of loyalty. And Jane must have expected much the same response, because she jumped in before he could explain.

‘He’s coming back to us again, Sandy, don’t worry. It’s just three months, down in Manchester, working in the online offences unit down there. Good experience it’ll be, I’m sure.’

Sandy did not look at all convinced.

’Aye, I’m sure it is, in its way. But I prefer offences where there’s real, physical evidence. A bit of blood on the ceiling, you know.’

Jane nodded, noncommittally, and hoped that Sandy wasn’t about to launch into one of her war stories. Because she knew from bitter experience that they’d only get gorier, the emptier the bottle became. And this time she was in luck.

‘So how’s Andy doing? Up to his ears in dirty nappies, I expect.’

‘He’s fine, ta, and so’s Grace. They seemed to have settled into a nice little routine since I came back to work last month, anyway.’

Jane regretted her choice of words as soon as she’d spoken, but it was too late now.

‘Routine? Shit, Jane. I’d be going out of my bloody mind, stuck at home with a screaming baby all day. Grace looks like a lovely wee scrap, don’t get me wrong, but they’re all the same really, aren’t they? Just machines for turning milk into shit, and peace and quiet into noise and chaos. I don’t know how your old man does it, honest I don’t.’

Jane smiled, having no alternative, and wondered how much longer she’d have to stay. It was a lovely afternoon, based on the minute or so that they’d spent walking from the courtroom to the bar, and she fancied getting out that evening. It would be just the way she’d imagined it, coming home from work, then heading out for a walk with Andy and Grace, maybe over to the mushroom, or up Gummers How, or even along the lake front at Bowness with the tourists. And perhaps an ice cream, or a sneaky bag of chips, to finish. They were simple pleasures, but they still gave her a feeling of well-being, and a rounded kind of contentment, that work had never quite brought her.

But as to stimulation, and excitement? There was no contest. Sandy was right about that of course, and cases like this one just made the point. Three months of hard graft to start, the ups and downs of preparation for the trial, then the case itself, the verdict and the sentence. And now the feeling afterwards. That was the best bit. The elation, the jolt of joy, and the sense of being part of a winning team, playing in a game that actually mattered. Jane wasn’t really a hugger, not usually, but she’d hugged Iredale when they’d come out of court, and she didn’t care how surprised he was.

So as Sandy talked on, Iredale dutifully refilling her glass between draughts, Jane thought again about Andy. How was he really getting on? He certainly didn’t say much, but that didn’t mean anything. And he most definitely loved Grace, just as he loved his older daughters; unconditionally, irrevocably. She could see it in his face, sense it in his smile. It was what she loved about him most, and she guessed that he knew it. But, even so, they both were well aware that he’d need more than full-time parenthood to feel really fulfilled, and they’d discussed it more than once already. They’d agreed to wait and see what happened, and to enjoy the first months of their daughter’s life to the absolute maximum. After all, Andy never stopped banging on about how he could barely remember his own children as babies. So now was his chance, wasn’t it?

Back in Kendal, in a noisy, brown room in the town hall, Andy Hall felt his phone buzzing in his pocket, and reached for it even more quickly than he would have before he’d retired. Back then - and it was only seven months since he retired from Cumbria Constabulary with the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent - he would have answered with that mixture of unspecific dread and equally ill-defined excitement that, for him, just came with being in the job. And Hall had been the kind of copper who was never off duty. He’d always been like that, from the time he was a probationer, right through to the day that he’d handed his Warrant Card back to that sour-faced young girl from Personnel, who’d treated the occasion with all the solemnity of emptying a wastepaper basket.

It would be Jane texting, he knew that, and he was grateful for it. Grace was asleep in her pushchair, and the coffee that they made at the parent and toddler sessions tasted as bitter as the biscuits were dry. He wanted to get out of there, and as soon as he could. Mind you, he’d felt like that from the moment he’d pushed open the heavy doors to the town hall, and had a flashback to a time, almost 20 years before, when he’d come here with his two older daughters and his then wife. It had been to dancing classes in the very room in which he was now sitting uncomfortably. They came to him all the time now, the flashbacks, like parental PTSD.

But what was the alternative? Where else could he be at that moment, and what else could he be doing? He’d completed all the chores at home, the garden was squared-away and the washing was hanging on the rotary line. He’d expected retirement to be a time of freedom, of new possibilities, and in a way it was. Because he’d never expected to have another family, or even another relationship, not on the far side of fifty, and as he thought back over the previous two years he wasn’t absolutely sure how it had happened. Normally Hall was a man who considered every decision, but this one, probably the most momentous of his adult life, seemed to have crept up on him, unseen and unremarked upon.

And he was happy when he read the text. Partly because Jane told him that they’d got the conviction, but mainly because she was already on her way home. He looked at his old Omega, and calculated that Jane would be back about ten minutes after him, if he started packing up now. So he said awkward and brief goodbyes to a couple of the women, almost young enough to be his daughters, and checked that he’d remembered everything that he’d left the house with. He had very little to tell Jane when she got home, but that most certainly wouldn’t stop him.

Thursday, August 2nd

Riverside, Kendal.

DS Ian Mann had strolled along the river from the police station to the residential address on the edge of Abbot Hall Park, where he was due to meet PC ‘Nobby’ Styles and DC Gail Foster. He was a minute or two late, but he didn’t rush, even though he usually hated being late for anything, even a dentist’s appointment. But he’d only just finished his lunch, and he knew that Gail, who’d been promoted out of uniform just the month before, was plenty keen enough for both of them. So she’d already be there. And there was no risk of the others starting the fun without him either, because Nobby was much too sensible to go in on a job like this until Mann was there too. The bloke had done almost thirty years in the job without spending a single day off sick due to being assaulted by an offender, and Nobby would have no intention of doing anything to put that record at risk.

Sure enough Gail was sitting on a park bench, trying her best to look inconspicuous. But even in plain clothes, it wasn’t really working. She looked like a pervert, or the police. Ian made a mental note to teach her a few of the tricks of the trade, or else she’d be useless for any sort of surveillance, and then he looked around for Nobby. He certainly seemed to be blending in with the scenery for once, if he was there at all.

‘Where’s he at?’ Mann asked, as he sat down next to DC Foster.

‘Gone to get a pie. He was going on about how he was missing his dinner break, because of this job.’

‘Well I hope he’s got me one, and all. How about you, love? You hungry?’

‘No, I’m fine, ta.’

Mann laughed. ‘You mean you’ve got too much sense to eat one of those pies? Aye, well I don’t blame you. Our man is still at home, I take it?’

‘Yes, Sarge. Went into the flat an hour since.’

‘All right, that’s good. But drop all the Sarge stuff, Gail. We don’t bother with that in CID, and there’s a good operational reason for it. We’re not bloody communists, like. But if we’re out on a job together I want you to call me Ian without even thinking about it, OK? There’ll be times when we won’t want folk to know we’re cops.’

‘Aye, Ian, I’ve got you.’

‘Good. Now, is our lad on his own?’

‘As far as I know, aye. Nobby’s had eyes on for the last hour, or he did until he nipped off for his pie, and I took over. Look, there he is now.’

Mann looked over towards the road, and saw Nobby parking up. He got out of the patrol car with what looked like a half-eaten pie in his hand. Talk about scruff order, thought Mann.

‘Cumbria’s finest’, he said, laughing. ‘Come on, Gail, let’s get this lad nicked. He’ll be no bother, you just watch.’

‘You know him then, Sarge? I mean, Ian?’

‘Aye. He’s a proper minor-league master criminal, is Tony Jones. I first nicked him for passing dodgy cheques, then credit card fraud, and now he’s on with the loan sharking job. And I can tell you for certain that he’ll not give us any hassle. Shall I tell you why, or can you guess?’

Gail
thought for a moment.

‘He’s never been any trouble in the past?’

‘That’s one reason, certainly. But it’s mainly because Tony doesn’t do any of the hands-on work himself, and that’s because he’s about as intimidating as a brown cardigan. You see, lass, for the loan sharking job to work the punters need to be properly intimidated. They need to be too scared not to pay, even if it means nicking or whatever to pay Tony back. In fact, a good loan shark needs to be scarier than us. But it’s just not working for him, is it? After all, the only reason we’re nicking him now is because we’ve got a complaint from one of his punters, and a proper pro would never let that happen. He’s more koi carp than shark, is our Tony, I’m telling you.’

Nobby was still chewing purposefully on his final mouthful as he walked up to them.

‘Is our boy on his own?’ asked Mann, and Styles swallowed, then nodded.
It was another moment before he was able to speak. ‘
How do you want to play it, Ian?’

‘I don’t know. Why don’t I abseil down from the roof, like, and go in through the window? Then Gail can chuck in the flash-bangs and we’ll take it from there.’

Gail
looked surprised, but Nobby just smiled. He knew a wind-up when he heard one.

’Or we could just knock on the door.’

‘Aye’, said Mann, ‘let’s do that, shall we? There’s only one door, the flat’s on the top floor, so it certainly sounds like a plan. What could possibly go wrong, like?’

Less than two minutes later they had their answer, and Mann was immediately reminded of just a few of the reasons that he still loved the job so much. The variety, the unexpected occurrences, and of course the stupidity and pointless violence of so many of their regulars. It really was half the fun, was that.

But it wasn’t Tony who was the problem. As Mann had predicted he was

compliant to the point of subservience, so Mann stepped to one side to let Gail make the arrest. It would be interesting to see if she could quickly assert her authority, even with a push-over like Jones. But she was only half way through the caution when Jones was pushed out of the way from behind, and a big, shaven headed man came out, swinging. He caught Gail a glancing blow on the side of the head, and she fell against the wall in the corridor.

Mann reacted much faster than Nobby, and managed to get close to the man, who tried to grab him in some kind of half-arsed wrestling hold. That didn’t go too well for the bloke, although as it turned out Mann didn’t actually need to hit him to get him subdued. He just grabbed the man’s tattooed arm and pushed it up behind his back, the man swivelling, sinews crackling, and ended up with his face hard against the wall. Finally Nobby reacted, and moved in and cuffed the big man.

Gail was conscious, and was getting up slowly by the time Mann reached her.

‘I’m sorry, lass. That should never have happened.’

‘I’m fine, Ian. He barely touched me.’

‘We’ll let the quack be the judge of that. Do you need to sit down?’

‘I’m fine. Come on, let’s get this lot out of here.’

Tony Jones stood in the corridor and waited quietly. He even smiled at Gail as she cuffed him, and asked if she was all right. She looked at him sharply, but he actually seemed to mean it. And then Jones shook his head sadly at the shaven-headed lad as Nobby pushed him towards the stairs. ‘They never rock up on their own, do they, Gary? You should have bloody known that, mate.’

‘Aye, well. And you say nowt, lad. Not a word, mind. That bitch’ll never stand by her statement, I promise you that.’

‘Shut up, Gary’, said Nobby. ‘You know sod all about what we’ve got on Tony. And as for you, it’s assaulting a copper that you’re looking at today, so I hope you’ve packed your toothbrush, like. Because you’ll not be home in time for tea, I promise you that.’

It was another four hours until Tony was ready to be interviewed. Gail had been seen by the police surgeon, pronounced fit to continue her shift, and then she’d had her own statement about the assault taken by the DI herself. Jane Francis had then charged Gary personally, and a CPS manager from Carlisle had turned up as well. They didn’t want any cock-ups, and Gail appreciated that show of support every bit as much as the cheery comments about learning to duck that came her way from other cops that she met around the station. But Gary Pratt wasn’t denying assaulting her, or even claiming that DS Mann had used excessive force in making the arrest. ‘I was asking for it, like’, was all he said when Jane asked about the manner of his detention. ‘He’s a right bloody ninja, is that lad, mind. He had me in an armlock in the blink of an eye.’

Tony Jones didn’t mind the wait either. This wasn’t his first time, not by a long shot, and he knew that now he was in the system it would grind away at its own, slow pace. There was no point complaining, or even asking questions. Nothing he said would make any difference. It was a bit like being inside, in a way. No worries, no need to plan ahead for anything. Not that he’d be going back to jail because of this, though. What Gary had done was down to him, and him alone.

Eventually DS Ian Mann and DC Gail Foster came in to the interview room, and Tony asked her how she was feeling.

‘You know that had nothing to do with me, don’t you, love? I didn’t ask him to go for you like that. He’s a right bloody animal, is Gary.’

Gail said that she did know, and that the assault wasn’t what they needed to talk about. She was calm, and almost - but not quite - friendly. DI Jane Francis watched from the observation room, as she and Mann had agreed she would. So far, so good, she thought.

Gail got all of the formalities right, and the Duty Solicitor sat silently, looking bored, like a cabbie waiting for an early evening fare.

‘So, Tony, you know why you’ve been arrested?’

‘Aye. But I’ve done nowt, like.’

‘You’re not a loan shark then?’

‘No, I bloody am not. I’m a pillar of the bloody community, I am.’

Jane glanced at Mann, to see his reaction, and he winked up at the camera. He always enjoyed moments like that.

‘Do you not loan money to folk, then?’

‘Informally, aye, it has been known. But it’s just helping out a friend, once in a blue moon. I try to give something back, like.’

Jones glanced across at the Duty Solicitor, who nodded unsmilingly back.

‘So we won’t find anyone else in the community willing to make a complaint against you? No-one else will say that you’re actually a loan shark?’

‘Me? Of course not, love. I’m a popular bloke, I am.’

Gail glanced across at Ian Mann, who was looking at Jones as if he was something he’d trodden in. Jones avoided any eye contact, even when Mann finally spoke.

‘Will you be just as popular round town now though, what with your mate going away, do you reckon?’

‘He’s not my mate. I keep telling you that. He just popped in, unannounced, like.’

‘All right, without your enforcer, your collector, call it what you like.’

‘Bloody hell, Mr. Mann, have you not been listening to a word I’ve been saying? I’m telling you that I don’t run any kind of organised lending operation. What I do is just a bit of simple, old fashioned neighbourliness. That’s all it is. Whoever it is who’s made this complaint, they’ve got the wrong end of the stick, like.’

‘So it’s neighbourly charging twenty pounds interest on a twenty pound loan?’

‘I don’t charge interest. That would be illegal, I bet. But if folks want to show their gratitude, well, I can’t stop them, can I? Now, am I free to go?’

‘Aye, while we make further enquiries. But if we get one more report that you’re loan sharking round the estates then you’ll be charged, Tony, as sure as eggs.’

‘There’ll be no more complaints, you just see. And anyway, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Not really, like. When I was a kid we had this bloke who came to the door, Teddy Riley was his name, and he helped me mam out once in a while. And that was before all these bloody benefit cuts happened, like. That’s what’s criminal, if you ask me.’

Later, DS Mann knocked on the DI’s office door.

‘I was just off’, she said, ‘can it keep?’

‘Aye. I was just going to ask you what happens next with Jones. He’s at it, no question about that. It’s all round the estate, like. Robbing people blind, he is.’

‘But is anyone else willing to go on the record? Can we find another complainant? The CPS won’t touch it otherwise, we both know that.’

‘Not at the moment, no. There’s no-one else. But with Gary going away it’ll be his mate Brian Capstone who’ll be acting as enforcer for Jones. Has to be. He’s a right nasty bastard, and all, Jane. So I was thinking, if Capstone was out of the picture as well, like, then Jones would be totally exposed, wouldn’t he?’

Jane, who had been chucking her phone and notebook into her bag stopped suddenly, and looked sharply up at Mann.

‘Out of the picture how, exactly?’

‘Maybe he’ll decide to move away, something like that.’

‘And you’d persuade him to do that, would you? Nip round and have a quiet word?’ But she didn’t give Mann an opportunity to reply. ‘Look, love, let’s talk about this properly tomorrow, but you did well today. That idiot went for young Gail, and six months or a year ago you would have beat him bloody as you were nicking him, wouldn’t you? They would have carried him out of those flats on a stretcher.’

‘Maybe, aye.’

‘But you didn’t. You showed huge restraint, and the result was that we’ve got a nice, clean collar. He’s going guilty, he’ll get a decent stretch for thumping Gail, and it’s a good result for everyone. Whereas if he’d presented to our quack with a few bust ribs and an eye hanging out or something, then we’d be looking at all sorts of trouble right now.’

Mann smiled. ’I know that, Jane. I’m not talking about any vigilante shit. I’m too old for all that. I’m just talking about a bit of proactive policing. Having a friendly word with Capstone, that’s all.’

‘Friendly? You? And say what? I’m sorry, Ian, but it’s a waste of time. You could say that we’ll be watching him, but he’ll know that’s bull. They all do now, the cons, even the really stupid ones. We can barely keep eyes on the two or three target criminals that we’re supposed to be monitoring, and the situation is only going to get worse. Word is we’re losing ten officers at this station over the next year. Ten. Can you bloody believe it? At this rate all we’ll be able to do is process cons who come in and give themselves up, out of the goodness of their bloody hearts. And even then, they’ll probably have to complete their own charge sheets. But at least that way the spelling would improve, mind.’