After breakfast and a shower I rang the number that Pete Drago had given me for Herbert Mathews, and Mrs. Mathews answered. After the introductions and explanations I asked: "Do you think he'll be well enough to talk to me?"
"Oh, he'll be delighted," she said. "What he's missing most of all is shop talk. He's been a bit better over Christmas, but he's still in bed at the moment. We had a late night, last night. When would you like to come?"
"This afternoon, about two?" I asked, tentatively.
They'd moved house, after Herbert's retirement, to the bungalow in the country. Now they lived halfway between Burnley and Keighley, on the edge of Bronte country. The little brick cottage stood in a quarter of an acre and would have had long views if it hadn't been for the neighbours' cypress trees. I'd have chain sawed the lot the first time they went on holiday.
When I saw Herbert he reminded me of my father. He'd made an effort, bless him, and wore a shirt and tie, with a fawn cardigan over them.
But there was no disguising the sunken cheeks and the claw-like hand he extended, or the plastic pipe that ran across his face, bleeding oxygen under his nose to enrich the air, because his lungs were down to twenty-five per cent. I'd seen it all before. The muscles of my jaw tightened as I shook his hand, and hardly any sound came out as I tried to say hello. I sank into an easy chair opposite his shrunken figure and Mrs. Mathews went to put the kettle on.
I said: "Welcome to Yorkshire, Herbert. Was it a lifetime's ambition to live this side of the border?"
"Property prices are lower," he retaliated. "And now I know why.
Coming here gave me this." He tapped his chest, trying to smile and cough at the same time.
"I'd have thought all this fresh air would be good for you."
"You would, wouldn't you? But it's too late for that, even if it were so simple."
We chatted about the weather and the job for a while and his wife brought the tea. I told him that Pete Drago sent his regards. He wasn't impressed.
"How long have you to go, Charlie?" he asked.
"Couple of years. A bit less."
"Are you married?"
"No."
"I never rated Drago," he said. "Thought he was a waster. But now I'm prepared to admit I might have been wrong. He knew what he wanted from life and he went for it. Didn't care who he hurt. I don't agree with that, but I wish I'd been a bit more like him. If there's anything you want to do, Charlie, do it now. Don't put it off or wait for it to happen." He reached out and put a hand over his wife's and I raised the teacup to my lips, to hide behind.
"And another thing," he went on. "Choose your friends carefully. How many from the job do you think have visited me since I finished? Go on, have a guess."
"Not many, I don't suppose."
"None. Not one."
He became agitated and started to cough. Mrs. Mathews passed him a handkerchief and told him not to upset himself.
When he'd recovered I said, lamely: "It's a bit out of the way, up here."
"We haven't always lived up here, Charlie. Believe me, once you leave, you're history. Nobody wants to know you."
I had another cup and enjoyed a piece of Christmas cake with Lancashire cheese. It was nearly as good as Wensley-dale. When we'd finished I said: "Down to business, Herbert. What can you tell me about a character called Darryl Burton, or Buxton?"
His eyes widened and his body stiffened. "Darryl Burton," he repeated.
"Darryl Burton. Don't tell me you've managed to pin something on him?"
"No, I'm afraid not. But with your help I'm hoping to."
"What's he done?"
I related the story of the Christmas Eve attack and told him what we knew about the mysterious Darryl.
"It's Burton all right," he asserted. "He's changed his name. It's him, as sure as God made little green apples."
"Drago said he'd done something similar a few years ago. Is there anything else we ought to know?"
"Five times," he said. "He's done it five times, that we know of.
Yours makes it six."
"Five times!" I gasped. "Are you telling me he's been accused of rape five times?"
Herbert's breathing became laboured and his wife looked concerned. "Do you mind if he has a little rest," she said. His panting was shallow and rapid, hardly giving each fresh charge of oxygen time to get past his Adam's apple.
"Of course not," I replied. "Tell you what, I'll have a little walk round your garden, if you don't mind. It looks as if one of you has green fingers."
Herbert cleared his throat with a noise like a Sammy Ledgard bus changing gear on Blue Bank. I was glad to get out of there, into the fresh air. F d had enough of sickness. I recognised the signs: the bottles of pills on the sideboard; the get-well cards with ready-written messages to save the sender the trouble; the bucket hiding behind the settee, where it could be grabbed in an emergency.
Nature was reclaiming the garden, too. Herbert was a vegetables man, and orderly rows of sprouts, turnips, broccoli and onions were long past their best, overgrown and straggly, losing the battle against the local competition. I found a colander in the kitchen and filled it with sprouts and a few other things.
"Oh, you shouldn't have bothered," Mrs. Mathews told me, obviously pleased.
"It's no bother, and there's nothing like home-grown. How is he?"
"He's all right now. He just has these bad spells. They don't last long. Would you like some sprouts for yourself? It's a shame to waste them."
"I can't stand them," I confided. "I'd like to ask Herbert a few more questions, but I can always come back, if you'd prefer it."
"No," she assured me. "He's all right for a while. Talking to you is the best tonic he's had in a long time."
I went through into the sitting room and asked Herbert to tell me all about it.
Darryl Burton, as he was then, had stood in the dock accused of rape on three occasions. Each time the victim had been interrogated by Burton's barrister and reduced to hysterical weeping as he harangued her in ways that would have had the police hauled before the Council for Civil Liberties. She had led his client on, he accused her. She had been with many men before. He'd puffed and pouted, pleaded and pointed, spittle flying from his lips as he turned victim into villain and guilt into innocence. She had admitted that she liked a good time and regarded herself as 'fun loving'. She knew what to expect. And the judge went along with it and directed the jury to acquit.
On one other occasion the CPS had refused to prosecute, and the first victim, sixteen years old, had withdrawn the charges. How many women had failed to report an attack was anybody's guess, but it was almost certainly the hidden portion of the iceberg.
"Do you know this barrister's name?" I asked. "No, sorry," Herbert told me, shaking his head.
"What about the instructing solicitor?"
Herbert pressed his knuckles against his lips. "Sorry," he said, after a while. "I can't remember. My memory's going. It was a fancy foreign name. He was from Manchester they said he'd never lost an important case."
"I know the type," I said. It's the instructing solicitor who loads the gun and dumdums the bullets. The barrister just pulls the trigger in court. "What about Burton's juvenile record. Did he have one?"
"Mmm. He was a classic. We should have predicted how he'd turn out, except that there's thousands like him who mend their ways. He was cautioned for burglary when he was fifteen and should have been cautioned again for another, but he refused to be. We had no evidence so we had to NFA it. Later, he was suspected of an aggravated burglary and indecent assault, but we couldn't make it stick."