‘I’m sorry. You think?’
‘We haven’t ruled him out,’ Janine said.
‘Oh, god.’ Lesley Tulley bowed her head.
Richard looked at Janine – now they needed to ask the really tricky questions. The ones that, whichever way you phrased them, questioned the potential guilt or innocence of the bereaved family. Some people accepted this easily and were too stunned by their loss even to notice much; others went ballistic, the rage that accompanied sudden bereavement finding an outlet at those making the horrendous implication.
‘If you’ll just bear with us, it is usual in cases like this to establish the movements of family members,’ Richard said.
‘I told you,’ Lesley looked at him directly. ‘I was in town.’
‘What time did you arrive?’
‘Not long after nine.’
‘You went shopping?’
She nodded.
‘You’ll have the receipts, parking ticket…’
Resentment flashed through her eyes then and she pressed her lips together. ‘I’ll see if I can find them,’ she said quietly.
Janine glanced at Richard, feeling a little tense, watched Lesley go. Poor bloody woman.
When DS Butchers tried 7 Gorton Avenue for the second time that weekend, a reedy voice called to him to hang on and after a few, moments the shabby green door was open. The old man looked ilclass="underline" his complexion grey, bleary eyes, smell of stale hair and unwashed skin coming off him.
‘Mr Vincent, is it?’ A nod.
‘DS Butchers.’
‘Is it about that murder? Mr Tulley?’
‘That’s right,’ said Butchers.
‘Come in. I hoped you’d call. I was going to come down to the police station tomorrow if no one had been.’
‘We called before, sir,’ Butchers muttered, anticipating a long-winded complaint.
‘Only I’ve something to tell you about it.’
The room was shabby, a layer of dust coated everything, the low winter sun streamed in through grimy windows. Faint smell of gas. The floral carpet was worn threadbare in places. Old carpet tape curled away from one patch. Three piece suite, telly and table filled the space.
The mantelpiece, beige tiles, housed a gas fire and acted as shelf to a row of framed photographs. Wedding, holiday, group of men around an enormous table. Butchers remembered replacing a fire surround like that, in his last place. Did a lovely job with Welsh slate and a copper chimney breast. He waited while Mr Vincent lowered himself into his chair. Heard him gasp.
‘You all right, sir?’
A grunt. ‘Sit down,’ he gestured for Butchers to choose a seat. Butchers sat on the edge of the sofa took out his notebook. ‘Can I have your full name, sir?’
‘Vincent. Edward Compton Vincent. Everyone calls me Eddie.’
‘Date of birth?’
He reeled it off, noticed Butchers doing the sums and saved him the trouble. ‘Eighty-three, come September.’
‘Good age,’ Butchers said and wondered where he found these platitudes. They seemed to spring from nowhere, fully formed and out of his mouth before he’d thought about it.
‘Bloody awful age if you ask me. What would you know about it? Still you didn’t come to talk about that.’
‘Mr Tulley.’
‘Yes. My house overlooks the allotments; well, you’ll know that. Now, I can’t actually see Mr Tulley’s patch that well but I can see the gate that joins the back alley. ‘Course some of them climb the fences, some of these youngsters do, or come up the railway embankment.’
Butchers wondered where this was going. Wanted him to get to the point. Wanted to get some lunch.
‘So, Saturday morning I was up late. Had a bad night. Not that I ever really have a good night nowadays. I got dressed and I drew the curtains and that’s when I saw him.’
‘Mr Tulley?’
‘No. This lad, running he was, he runs up to the gate then he stops and looks out, like he’s seeing if anyone’s about, then he runs into the ginnel between the houses. I can’t see him then but he was going hell for leather I can tell you.’
Butchers sat further forward, all ears now, a shiver of excitement making his hand shake slightly. ‘What time was this?’
‘Twenty-five past ten.’
Butchers looked at him.
‘I’d just got up. I noticed the time, it being so late, like.’
‘Can you describe him?’
‘Youngish…’
‘Teenager? Younger?’
‘Older. Hard to tell an age.’
‘Twenty? Twenty-one?’
Eddie shrugged.
‘Younger than me?’ Butchers asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Go on.’ Eddie hesitated. ‘Short or tall?’
‘Average, I’d say.’
Butchers stood. ‘Like me?’
‘But skinnier, wiry.’
‘And can you remember what he was wearing?’
He could. ‘A cap, baseball cap. Don’t recall his top. And those…’ he waved his hand about searching for the right name, ‘sports trousers.’
‘Jog-pants?’
‘I don’t know what they call them. They’d a stripe down the side.’
‘What colour?’
‘White.’
‘White trousers?’ Butchers thought of cricket. ‘White stripe. The trousers were dark.’
‘Black?’
Eddie thought. Shook his head. ‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Anything else you remember?’
‘No.’
Butchers thought of the crime scene, the details on the murder boards. ‘What was he wearing on his feet.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Right. This is very good. We’ll come back to you, perhaps ask you to look at some photographs or attend an identity parade. Would you do that?’
‘Yes, if I can. Funny, isn’t it. Last time I’d anything to do with your lot, with the police, was at Agecroft colliery Miner’s strike. Trying to save the pit. I swore then I’d never trust a copper again. Place was thick with them, doing Thatcher’s dirty work for her, protecting the scabs. Bloody tragedy.’
‘Before my time,’ said Butchers, who had had more than enough of this sort of crap from his father-in-law.
‘Aye, but, you’re paying for it now. Closed those pits, took the lifeblood from those communities. We import coal now, when we’d no need. Families broken up, people shoved on the dole. All comes home to roost.’
‘You on the phone, sir?’ Eddie gave the number.
‘We’ll be in touch. This lad, would you say you had a good view of him, what he looked like?’
‘I did.’
‘Perhaps you could show me where you saw him?’
Eddie balked. ‘No, see, I’ll not manage the stairs. I get up them at night and down them in the morning and that’s it. You go up. Back bedroom.’
Butchers did. He pulled back the net curtain, gritty with dust, noted the corpses of flies strewn along the windowsill, the paint peeling and discoloured, tinged pink with mould. He looked out. Eddie’s small yard surrounded by a six foot wall led onto the alleyway he’d mentioned. Directly opposite was the allotment gate, a metal frame covered in mesh, interrupting the jumble of old larch-lap and palings that ran the length of the allotments. The gate was probably twenty feet away. Near enough to get a good look at someone.
Butchers admired the plots. He could see one in particular with a pergola and a formal pool. More of a garden than an allotment. He wondered if there were by laws governing what you could and couldn’t grow.
He turned away and took the stairs in a rush. Suddenly gleeful; it was he, not Shap, who had caught the call. Brilliant.
Lesley handed Richard a clutch of receipts and he thanked her. ‘Anything else you remember about the morning?’
‘No. Oh, I rang Emma, left a message.’
‘We need to take the clothes you were wearing yesterday for our forensics, to help eliminate evidence from the scene,’ he said.
‘But I wasn’t there,’ she looked from one to another of them, incredulous, wounded.