dead the papers are saying terrible things about him. These are not true but he cannot defend himself. Peter was a good son and I know he could not have done these terrible things. He was kind and gentle, and wouldn’t hurt a fly, and was always good to me. Please catch the proper murderer and prove that my son, Peter, did not do it.
Yours faithfully
Jean Hullah (Mrs)(Matron) p.p. Grace Latham
Dave came in and I handed him the letters. He read them in silence and shrugged his shoulders.
“Mothers,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Which would you rather be: the murderer’s parent or the victim’s parent?”
“Don’t ask me. I wonder if Hitler’s mother said that she always knew he’d turn out to be a bastard, or if she loved him right to the end. What do you want to do with it?”
“Drop her a reply, please. Not the card. Make it a letter, in my name. Then show it to Annette and stick it in the file.”
“OK. Nigel rang,” Dave said. “Wants to know if we’re going to the Spinners tonight. He says long-time-no- see.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Eight thirty.”
“Looks like we are, then.”
“Oh, and he says not to laugh, but he’s grown a moustache.”
“A moustache?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Nigel?”
“Mmm.”
“This I’ve got to see.”
But I didn’t, because he never came. We’ve developed a new routine for our Wednesdays out. The Spinners is about two miles from each of our houses, so we walk there. It’s a half-hour power walk and that first pint slides down like snow off a roof when you stroll into the pub and lean on the bar. Towards closing time Dave’s wife, Shirley, comes in the car for an orange juice and takes us home.
Dave had arrived first and was sitting in our usual corner. I collected the pint he’d paid for and joined him.
“Sophie heard from Cambridge this morning,” he told me before I was seated. “We’re going down at the weekend to look at her accommodation.”
“Fantastic. I’ll have to buy her a present. Don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you what she might want.”
He looked glum. “Just about everything. Pots, pans, microwave. You name it, she needs it. Then there’s a small matter of books, tuition fees, meals, rent. It’s never-ending.”
“That’s the price of having brainy kids,” I said.
“Brainy kid. Daniel wants to be a footballer or snooker star.”
“He could be in for a rude awakening,” I warned.
“He’ll take it in his stride. We did.”
“That’s true.” We were both failed footballers. Dave had his trial with Halifax Town the same time as me, with a similar result: don’t call us, we’ll call you.
“This beer’s on form,” I said, enjoying a long sip.
“It is, isn’t it.”
“So where’s Golden Balls with this flippin’ moustache?”
But at that very moment Detective Sergeant Nigel Newley’s full attention was elsewhere. He was gazing into the green eyes of Marie-Claire Hollingbrook, her face framed by the riot of golden hair heaped upon her pillow, her full lips parted and her naked body languidly spread-eagled across the bed. They were the first green eyes Nigel had ever seen, and he was stunned by their beauty. They were unable to return his gaze, because Marie-Claire had been strangled, several hours earlier.
“Do you ever regret not making it as a footballer?” Dave asked me.
“Nah,” I replied. “This is a lot better. Do you? They’d have taken you on if you hadn’t fluffed that goal.”
“No, I don’t think so. Can’t imagine how I missed it though. An open goalmouth in front of me, and I kicked it over the bar.”
“As I remember it, you kicked it over the grandstand.”
“It was a wormcast. The ball hit a wormcast and bobbed up, just as I toe-ended it. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Sentenced to a lifetime of ignominy by a wormcast.” I said.
“I know,” he replied, glumly raising his glass and draining it.
“Just think,” I continued. “Of all the millions of worms in the world, if that one particular specimen hadn’t crapped on that one particular square centimetre of grass on that one particular day, you might have married one of the Beverly sisters.”
“Blimey. Frightenin’, innit?” he replied.
“Innit just. Same again?”
“Please.”
“Pork scratchings?”
“Cheese and onion crisps.”
I went to the bar to fetch them.
The phone call we were hoping for but not expecting came next morning, just as I was having my elevenses. I went downstairs to control, to catch the action. Arthur, a wily old sergeant, was in the hot seat. He slid a filled-in message form towards me as I moved a spare chair alongside him.
“Anything come in about the dead girl in Halifax?” I asked. There’d been a report about it on the local news.
“Just the bare details, pulled off the computer. We haven’t been asked to assist, yet.”
“Our young Mr Newley will be up to his neck in that one,” I said, secretly wishing that I was there, too.
“Ah! Nigel’ll find ’em.”
“So what have we here?”
“From the Met Regional Crime Squad,” he said as I read. “One of their men thinks he’s seen Kevin Chilcott at the Portsmouth ferry terminal. He rang in from a phone box and is now trying to follow him. Last report came from the arrivals concourse at 10:37 hours.”
“So what do they expect us to do?” I asked.
“Be alert, that’s all. He could be going anywhere.”
I explained to Arthur that we were responsible for raising the APW on Chilcott, because of the messages from Bentley prison, but the phonecalls were to London, and that was probably where he was heading. “Stay with it,” I told him, “and keep me informed. I’ll be in the office.”
I went back upstairs and finished my coffee. One by one, for no reason that I could think of, I rang Dave, Annette, Jeff and three others on their mobiles and told them what was happening. “Keep in touch,” I told them, “he might be coming this way.”
The super was unimpressed when I told him. “He’ll be heading for London,” he declared, dismissively.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed.
But he wasn’t. Arthur rang me on the internal at 14:20 hours, saying that Chilcott, with the RCS chief inspector tagging along behind him, had boarded the 13:30 express from Kings Cross to Leeds. I went downstairs again and spoke directly to the RCS control, in London. Their man, I was told, was starting his holiday, but had found his way into the arrivals section hoping to meet his parents, who were coming home. He’d seen Chilcott come off the boat and followed him. They caught the train to Waterloo and transferred to Kings Cross, where Chilcott had purchased a single to Leeds. The DCI was unable to communicate from the Portsmouth train, but he could from this one. He was, they said, wearing holiday clothes, which made him somewhat conspicuous.
Our own Regional Crime Squad, based in Leeds, went on to full alert, borrowing our ARVs and booking the
