“Besides the incidents you’ve told me about Rachel is there anything else about Gabriel’s character which you found to be unusual or different?”
“Weird you mean?” She paused and ran a hand through her hair.
Grace couldn’t help but notice its lack of style and the abundance of split-ends. She knew from her experience of dealing with domestic violence that this was a girl who had lost her self-esteem.
“Well there were the pictures he kept in the briefcase of some of the girls he had photographed at school. And he also kept some local newspaper cuttings about girls going missing. I never told him I’d found them. I was too scared. That’s what’s made me come to you.”
Grace could feel the hairs prickle at the back of her neck. “Anything else about him?”
“He hates coppers — sorry police — he once told me he had been beaten up by a cop when he was a kid who had wanted him to confess to killing and cutting up a pet rabbit. He said the cop had been a close neighbour, a Mr Newstead.”
That has to be Barry, Grace said to herself.
For another half hour Grace back-tracked on everything Rachel had said, testing to see if there was anything that had been missed. She had taken copious notes in preparation for a formal statement, and though she tried her best to stay focussed on the important task in hand, from time-to-time her thoughts had drifted. She couldn’t help but bring to the front of her mind reflections of what might she might be facing within the next hour-or-so when she finally got home — late again.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
DAY THIRTY-THREE: 8th August.
“Does the name Gabriel Wild mean anything to you?” Grace grabbed Barry Newstead’s attention the moment he had walked through the door. He was the first to enter the office, after her and she could hardly contain her excitement. She had to share with someone what she had learned late yesterday. Everyone had gone home by the time she had finished talking with Rachel Beddows and she had tried to get hold of Hunter before she left work but his mobile had been diverted to voicemail. It had been her intention to ring him later from her home but she thought better of it when she saw the faces of Robyn and Jade, who sent her on a guilt trip for missing their netball practice. She tried to remind herself that she had already put her career on hold on two occasions in order to bring up her daughters — that they were old enough to look after themselves and that this is what she needed to do for her own fulfilment. However, she still found herself apologising throughout the remainder of the evening, promising to do something or other with them at the weekend.
“Don’t I get a good morning Barry how are you this fine day, instead of being quizzed about a little brat who once upon a time used to live near us?”
“Don’t be such an old grouch. I got some information last night, which could end this enquiry. I hardly slept last night and look at me I’m as fresh as a daisy, not a miserable old sod like you.”
“Less of the ‘old’ will you? Anyway what can’t wait long enough for me to even have my morning caffeine infusion?”
“Gabriel Wild’s ex-wife came in late last night telling me she thinks he’s our killer. She gave me loads of examples and there’s no doubt a lot of what she told me could fit the profile of our murderer, but I checked him out on the Intelligence system and he’s got nothing at all recorded against him. She did mention however that he had had a bit of a run in with a Mr Newstead years ago when he was a teenager.”
“A bit of a run in is an understatement,” Barry snapped, setting his lunch container down on his desk and then removing his coat. “He was a right little bloody tearaway, and a pervert to boot. He became the bane of my life.”
“Tell me about him and then I’ll fill you in what his ex-wife told me.”
“It really was a long time ago. I had just gone into CID when he turned up on my radar. He used to live a couple of doors down from us but I hardly noticed him as a youngster because whilst his dad was around he was a real polite kid. Then one day I remember his old man came home early from work and found his mother in bed with the guy from across the road. There was a hell of a bust up and he tried to throttle her. I was off duty doing the garden and could hear this commotion so I ran to their house and had to pull him off her. I managed to calm things down and I dealt with it there and then — like we used to in those days. I found out that a couple of days after the domestic he’d upped sticks and left. She was left to bring Gabriel up on her own.” His eyes drifted up to the ceiling momentarily. Returning his gaze he continued, “Over the next few years I kept getting complaints about him following girls and playing with himself in front of them and I can remember one neighbour catching him peeping through her ground floor bathroom window. I had words with him in front of his mother and I know she gave him a real good hiding for that.”
He paused a second and started stroking his bushy moustache.
“A few months after, I had to deal with him again. This time for giving a lad a right hammering. I think the lad had slagged off his mum. Well after that I used to see him hanging around the back of my house and when one day I told him to sling his hook he put two fingers up at me so I warmed his ear-hole for him.”
She saw his expression harden.
“About a week later I heard Sarah screaming early one morning from the garden. I dashed out wondering what on earth was happening and found parts of her pet rabbit had been nailed up on the Wendy house. It had been cut to pieces with a knife or something similar. I just knew it was that little bastard Gabriel and so I went straight to his house. I tried to get him to cough that he’d done it but his mother just kept covering for him. Anyway shortly after that they moved. She sold the house and the next thing I discovered was they had gone to a council house on the Tree Estate. I kept a watch out for him but that was the last I saw of him. What does his ex say about him?”
Grace tried to contain her excitement as she re-iterated what Rachel Beddows had told her the previous evening. “I’m just waiting for Hunter to come in and then I’m going to feed it into morning briefing. Fancy a cuppa?” she finished.
“Bloody hell Grace, that’s reminded me of something else involving him.” He peeled off his jumper and chucked it over the piled-up paperwork on his desk. “It must have been about ten years ago now but I’m sure that he was interviewed over a girl’s body that was discovered in some woods just over the border in West Yorkshire.”
Grace studied the thoughtful look on Barry’s face as he dropped silent. She could almost hear the cogs turning over inside his head. Then he raised a finger.
“I remember the gist of it now. A local peeping-tom out looking for couples having sex in a well known lovers’ lane heard a girl screaming and from what I can recall he either shouted or dashed towards the sound. Anyway the next thing he saw was a young man with a small dog sprinting off along the lane. He guessed something had gone off and started looking around where he had heard the screaming coming from, and that’s when he came across the body of a teenage girl who had been beaten and strangled.”
Barry dropped his eyes down to his desk deep in thought. “I think it was South Kirby way, just outside our Force area,” he continued, “I can remember seeing an e-fit of the suspect, but it wasn’t a good one and I know that Gabriel Wild was interviewed as part of the enquiry, but I never got the end result. I’m not sure if it was ever detected or not because it was West Yorks’ job, but I can make a quick phone call to one of my old buddies from there and get the heads up if you want?”