‘I don’t know. We lost touch. I haven’t seen him since then.’
‘You knew Frank Dowson, right?’
‘I knew who he was. He was Billy Dowson’s older brother. But I didn’t know him.’
‘You knew his brother?’
‘Only because he was mates with Wendy’s brother Mark. They were both eleven. They were in some sort of silly gang, and they used to meet in Billy’s dad’s garage. He never used it to keep his car in there. It was an old banger and he left it in the street. People said he had a lock-up across town where he stored stolen goods, but I don’t know if that was true or not. Billy had a key to the garage. They just used to sit around and smoke and tell dirty jokes. He thought we didn’t know about it, but Wendy and Susan and me listened outside once.’
‘Who else was in this gang?’
‘Just local kids. Mark, Billy, Ricky Bramble, Susan’s younger brother, Tommy Jackson and Mick Charlton. Maybe others. I don’t remember. They wouldn’t let girls in. As if we’d want to be a part of it. They were just little kids.’
‘Maureen, you do know that Frank Dowson was arrested for Wendy’s murder just a couple of years ago, don’t you? And that he died in prison last year?’
‘I saw it on TV.’
‘Was Frank in the gang?’
‘No way. He was a grown-up. Maybe twenty-one or something. And he didn’t come home very often. We hardly ever used to see him. He was in the merchant navy. We were all a bit scared of him.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. The way he looked at us. How he was so big and quiet. We’d heard there was something wrong with him. You know, in his head.’
‘Did you see him that day you were supposed to meet Wendy?’
‘No. Wendy and I had arranged to meet at the bus stop just before half past one. That was when the bus went. There wasn’t another one for twenty minutes. It was nearly quarter to when I got there. I thought she might still be waiting and we’d get the next one, but she was gone. I just thought she’d gone home. I didn’t see anyone around.’
That was something that simply couldn’t happen today, Annie realised, in the age of mobiles, of constantly being in touch. When she found out she was running late, Maureen would probably have texted Wendy and got a response — either she would wait or she was going home. They would probably have been in touch earlier, too, and Wendy would have texted Maureen that she’d taken a nasty hit on the hockey pitch and didn’t feel too well, so she’d have to cancel the trip to town for today. It might not have made any difference to the outcome, if she had taken the short cut and bumped into Frank Dowson, but communication might well have brought about a different course of action entirely. Still, it was pointless speculation. With today’s methods, Frank Dowson would have been caught pretty quickly, too — but it hadn’t happened in the twenty-first century; it had happened in 1964.
‘What did you do when you found Wendy wasn’t there?’ Annie asked.
‘I went home. I didn’t feel like going into town by myself.’
‘Did you walk through the woods?’
‘No. Our house was in the other direction. I walked along the main road.’
‘And you’re sure didn’t see Frank Dowson or anyone else you knew?’
‘No.’
‘What about afterwards? Did anyone ever say anything to make you think Frank Dowson might have hurt Wendy?’
‘No. We moved away not long after, and I never saw any of the old crowd again.’
‘And you’ve been blaming yourself all these years?’ Jenny asked.
‘It was my fault,’ said Maureen. ‘I shouldn’t have lost track of time. I can’t be trusted. If I hadn’t been so selfish, Wendy would still be alive.’
Annie couldn’t help but notice the helplessness in her voice as it cracked, and as Jenny came over again to mutter more words of sympathy and comfort, Annie also couldn’t help thinking that if Maureen had carried her guilt with her through her whole life, and if it were somehow linked with her nerves and obsession with punctuality, then maybe someone else had been nursing a festering blame for her for just as long, and perhaps that, too, had had deep psychological effects. But who? Wendy’s younger brother had seen Maureen with Danny, and Susan Bramble had spoken with Wendy at the bus stop and seen her walk towards the woods. Did someone else know Maureen’s secret? If so, how? And why wait fifty years before taking any action? Why bother now that the killer had been brought to justice? And why not shoot Maureen herself, if she was to blame? To make her suffer?
It was always possible that Frank Dowson hadn’t killed Wendy Vincent, that despite the DNA evidence, someone else had done it. Maureen? She certainly couldn’t have committed the rape, but who was to say that the person who had raped Wendy was the same as the person who had killed her? There was no apparent motive for anyone around at the time — not, as far as Annie knew — but sometimes motives don’t become clear until much later. In addition to Maureen, there were Billy Dowson and Mark Vincent to consider, though they were very young at the time of Wendy’s murder.
Whatever had happened, Annie thought, Banks would want to know about this new information as soon as possible. She took out her mobile.
Chapter 13
The first old ‘gang’ member Gerry had managed to trace for Banks was called Mick Charlton, or Michael, as his wife had insisted on calling him when Banks dropped by the house later. Mrs Charlton had told him that her husband was at work and had given him directions to the workshop. Michael Charlton had done well for himself since leaving Armley Park Secondary Modern for an apprenticeship as an electrician, and he now ran his own business not far from the estate where he grew up.
Gerry had trawled through the case files and newspaper articles for Banks quickly again after Annie and Jenny had passed on Maureen’s story, and, as expected, she had found no mention of Maureen’s secret meeting with Wendy, or of her tryst with anyone called Danny. Clearly, Banks thought, the most important details of that day were not in the public documents, or even in ex-Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s memory, but were known only to those in the two close-knit groups — the eleven-year-old boys, on the one side, and the fifteen-year-old girls on the other.
As Banks drove to Leeds, listening to Al Stewart’s Love Chronicles, he couldn’t help but dwell on what Annie and Jenny had told him about Maureen Tindall’s secret meeting with Wendy Vincent, and the reason why it had never happened. He also wanted to know whether the sketch of the man described by Paula Fletcher rang a bell with anyone, and Michael Charlton was someone who might know. He might even know who ‘Gord’ was. All Banks knew so far was that Maureen had said Mark Vincent saw her and Danny holding hands and heading for an old house where the kids went to kiss and canoodle. What he would have made of that at the age of eleven, Banks had no idea. He wasn’t sure what his own feelings towards girls were at that age. Had he ever held a girl’s hand, other than his mother’s? He couldn’t remember for certain, but he felt all that had come a bit later.
Banks turned off the music in the middle of the title track, just after some nice guitar work from Jimmy Page. As he parked in front of the low brick office block on Stanningley Road, he reflected that some people never move far from where they started out. That was certainly the case with Michael Charlton. His old estate was no more than a couple of miles up the road, and Armley Park Secondary Modern School was even closer, only a hundred yards or so from his offices just beyond the busy junction with Crab Lane and Branch Road. Of course, it was no longer a school but an office complex. According to Mrs Charlton, he had been running his own business there for over forty years.