‘So what was he doing out here?’
‘A couple of the people we’ve spoken to in the building recognised his name, but no one’s seen him here for years.’
‘Anything else found?’
‘No, sir. We’re doing a fingertip search of the square.’
‘Though the murder weapon was quite large, it seems.’
‘If it’s here we’ll find it, sir.’
‘I know you will.’
Grey spoke then to a neighbour woken by a disturbance shortly after half-past midnight, and then to the woman still tearful who had stumbled — almost literally so — upon Charlie as she came home from her late-evening shift as a packer in a warehouse in the town’s industrial district. Neither were sure if they knew the victim, though neither would either have been very old at the time he lived there.
Taking the scene in, Grey looked at the buildings around him, and at the faces looking back from behind the cordon. All towns had a “bad estate”, and it was not these people’s fault that in Southney it was theirs. He scanned the crowd, who showed no sign of returning to bed even on a worknight; and a lot of them were workers, not all claimants or layabouts as the residents of such areas were often stigmatised; and what’s more the work they did was often of the worst sort, the least secure and poorest paid.
Grey could be honest with himself though: he wouldn’t want to live here, nor could he just ignore the trouble that his uniformed colleagues habitually had in these parts, for this was a place not immune to depressing behaviour and rumbling civil unrest. Yet the people standing beyond the cordon that night were entitled to answers; for whatever trouble they and their children may at different times have gotten into, this act — the slaying of a man and the dumping of him on their doorstep — was of quite another order. Perhaps they were worried their sons would get the blame, perhaps that the crime would become associated with them and further tarnish their area’s name.
Grey decided he must trust them, speaking to the crowd as his colleagues worked behind him,
‘Hello, I’m Inspector Rase, some of you may know me. You’ll know a man was murdered here tonight. His name was Mr Charlie Prove. We believe he may have lived in the area once. If any of you knew him, or know why he might have come this way tonight, then please speak to one of us here, we would be very grateful.’
‘It’s different when it’s an outsider, isn’t it.’
Grey spun around to face the woman’s voice.
‘If it was someone from around here you wouldn’t give a hoot.’
‘We don’t know that he is an outsider. It’s true he doesn’t live here now, but…’ Grey was fumbling.
‘You’re asking a lot aren’t you, asking us to help you?’ This was a different voice. ‘You’re normally only around here to arrest one of us.’
As Grey turned to meet this second speaker he feared he had made a mistake and would now be called to answer for all manner of ills real or imagined. Yet a third voice saved him, a baritone, its accent formed in warmer climes, a voice that sounded to silence all others as its owner let himself beneath the cordon,
‘I knew Charlie Prove,’ the man continued, ‘and I knew Eunice Prove. Is there somewhere we could talk?’
The only private place in that odd location proved to be a standing police car in which the heater had thankfully been left on. Once both were sat inside, the man began,
‘Campbell Leigh,’ he introduced himself. ‘Before we start, I should say that I am here both for myself and also representing the H.E.C.F.’
Grey knew that Inspector Glass, his uniformed counterpart, and his men would have had frequent dealings with the Hills Estates Community Forum; however the lack of any really serious crimes in the area for a while had meant that he himself had not met the Forum’s leader before.
‘They all knew Charlie,’ Leigh began, gesturing back to those still behind the cordon, ‘and they’d have said so once they’d got a few things out of their systems. Fifteen years is the blink of an eye to those who’ve spent a lifetime here.’
‘You knew him well?’
‘Charlie was my predecessor as Forum leader, and would have been still had not the death of his daughter undone him as I’ve seen no man before or since undone.’
The man’s every word was emphasised and powerful, Grey appreciating the effect he’d have in his role as public speaker.
‘His family were Scottish Catholics, who came to England to find work. Mine came from Trinidad for much the same reason. I must have first met him, oh, way back in the Sixties. There were jobs here then, industry.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘We were roommates, Inspector, before he got married.’
‘And this was nearby?’
‘Probably not a stone’s throw away, though I couldn’t take you there now.’
‘Oh?’
‘This was before the Hills were even build, before they were ever conceived of.’
‘And so that’s not where he was running to this evening?’
Leigh shook his head with sadness, ‘He was running to where he’d lived with Eunice; and had nearly got there too.’
‘How do you know that’s the direction he was moving in?’
‘He was coming from the Cedars, wasn’t he?’
‘So, please continue: when you knew Charlie…’
The man began a narrative that didn’t immediately address the question,
‘You’re too young to remember the old Coalville Road. It ran somewhere under where Coalville Lane runs now,’ he describing what Grey knew to be the crooked spine of this part of the estate, ‘and all around here and under our feet leading off it were slums, Inspector, Victorian slums. This town had grown, expanded, opened factories, and yet the workers were clustered up in these same old streets.
‘We formed a group, with Charlie as our driving force, the Coalville Road Residents Association, calling for tenants’ rights and better housing.’
‘Which led to the Hills being built?’
‘Though not without a fight. We got Charlie elected to the Town Council, and from there he could take on the Council itself, challenge them on housing policy.’
‘And they agreed to pay for all this construction work, taking up the whole streetplan?’
‘Charlie was clever: he challenged them on economic grounds, asking how the town’s businesses could expand when there was nowhere for new workers to live?’ The man gave a hollow laugh, ‘Of course, we couldn’t know then that in a manufacturing regard the town was already at its peak.
‘And then of course there were the conservationists: people from nice areas, who didn’t want the buildings torn down.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Because the Coalville Road was historic, they said, pre-dated the Industrial Revolution, they said, had some of the oldest buildings in the town. Well, Charlie said to them, if they cared so much then why didn’t they spend more money looking after these building and the people in them.’
‘When was all this?’
‘Oh, it went on for years, Inspector, with campaigns on both sides. We had Labour MPs taking our case to Parliament; while they had a famous writer from London writing impassioned articles, he even claiming one of the houses had been rented by William Ruskin! Well, who could argue with that?’ Campbell Leigh fell back into his car seat laughing.
‘Sorry,’ he eventually said, ‘but I recall those times with joy, Inspector; and I recall my friend with Joy.’ He composed himself. ‘You want to know the year? The vote was passed by the Town Council in Nineteen Seventy- four; Her Highness Princess Anne opened the first part of the new estate in Nineteen Seventy-eight, as evidenced by our plaque you’ll see in daylight; and I am proud to say I’ve lived here since the first flats were finished.’
‘Seventy-four? So what swung it?’
‘Well, she left the Council didn’t she?’
