'Ah!' he replied. 'That's one small blot on the landscape. I thought you might like to talk to the investigating officer who took the statement, one Chief Inspector Henry Bernard Ratcliffe, so I looked him up.'
'Goon.'
'Apparently he was pensioned off on, um, ill health about two years after this case.'
The way he pronounced the words gave them added meaning. 'You mean it wasn't ill health?' I said.
'This was back in seventy-six, Charlie, when ill health was a convenient way of sidelining somebody with minimum fuss.'
'So what did he do?'
'Not sure. I've mentioned it to a couple of the lads who were around then and they think he was involved in the death of a vagrant in Swansea. Apparently he had rather strong views on things and didn't care where he aired them.'
'That's interesting, Derek, I'm very grateful for all the trouble you've taken. Is this Henry Bernard Ratcliffe still alive, do you know?'
'Pensions will tell you that.'
'So they will. You're a treasure.'
He lived at Crest View, Tarporley Road, Chester, I learned next morning when our pensions department rang me back. I bit my lip, dithered awhile and dialled the number.
'Matron,' came the reply. Not what I'd expected.
'Oh, er, good morning,' I blustered. 'My name is, er, Priest and I'm trying to locate an old colleague. I was given this number but was expecting it to be his home.'
'It may very well be,' Matron replied. 'This is the Crest View Hospice. What is your colleague's name?'
'Ratcliffe. Henry Bernard Ratcliffe.'
'Yes, we do have Mr Ratcliffe staying with us. Do you want me to try to find him for you?'
'Um, not for the moment, please. Can-you tell me what's wrong with him?'
'No, Mr Priest. I'm not at liberty to discuss a patient's medical details.'
'Of course not,' I agreed in my most understanding tone. 'I shouldn't have asked. Fact is, Matron, I'm a police officer, as was Mr Ratcliffe, and some questions have arisen about one of his cases. Would it be possible for me to come and discuss it with him?' I struggled to find the correct expression for having all his marbles and settled for: 'Will he know what I'm talking about?'
'Oh yes, Mr Priest. Chief Inspector Ratcliffe has all his mental faculties. It's his body that's letting him down. I'm sure he'll be delighted to see an old colleague.'
I wasn't so sure, but three hours and seventy-eight miles later I was turning the two handles on the door of Crest View Hospice. They put two handles on the door to stop the inmates escaping. When I haven't the wit to get round that one I'd rather be out of it. Unless… unless the idea is that if you take both hands off the Zimmer frame you fall to the floor. I shuddered and pushed the door open.
It was an old building, probably built in the thirties, but the inside was shiny-clean and smelled of furniture polish and boiling vegetables. It was nearly lunchtime and one or two patients were already seated at a long table that I could see through an open door. I knocked on the Matron's door, also open, and she looked up and smiled.
'Mr Ratcliffe is sitting outside,' she told me after the introductions. 'I told him he had a visitor coming.' She led me through a lounge dotted with easy chairs, mostly unoccupied, and down a short corridor. An impossibly tall, thin man coming the opposite way stood to one side and snapped me an impeccable military salute. He was wearing a red beret with a feather cockade in the front. I smiled and gave him a rather sloppy one back, like President Reagan used to.
'Major Warburton,' Matron explained as we walked along.
The husk of what had once been Detective Chief Inspector Ratcliffe was hunched in a wheelchair in the corner of a courtyard, catching the sun. Matron pointed to him and then left me, as if she didn't want to be there, but I suppose she had work to do. He was wearing a shirt buttoned to the neck, a straw trilby and grey trousers that hung over his bony knees. A walking stick leaned against one of them.
'Hello, Henry,' I said, pulling a plastic chair nearer to him. 'I'm DI Charlie Priest, from Heckley, and I'd like to ask you a few questions.'
'You and the others,' he replied, not offering a handshake.
I didn't know what he meant but filed the comment for later use. I nodded towards his legs, saying: 'I'm sorry to see you like this, Henry, it must be hard for you.'
'Aye, well…' His voice was clear, with a touch of gravel in it.
'I want to talk to you about a job you did in South Wales, back in seventy-three.'
'Glynis Evelyn Williams. That's who you mean, isn't it?'
'That's right. Questions are being asked about the result. How well do you remember it?'
'There's nothing wrong with my memory. Abraham Barraclough did it and when I stand in front of St Peter — which won't be long, now — and he asks me what I did with my life I'll tell him that I'm the one who nailed Barraclough. He'd've got life, been out now, if he hadn't hung himself. Good riddance, I say.'
'He had scratch marks on his neck, I believe.'
'He had, and his blood group matched. Group B, eight percent of the population. And then there was the confession.'
'Were any pictures taken of the scratches?'
'No. Why did we need pictures? And they'd nearly faded away by the time we caught him.'
'Did the pathologist look at them?'
'Not that I know of.'
'How did you catch him?'»
'He gave himself up. We were taking' Islood samples of everybody in the village and he knew the net was tightening, so he walked into the station and said he'd done it.'
'And you believed him? Every murder attracts nutters who confess.'
'He had the scratch marks. He was dead by the time we matched the blood group, but the coroner was happy.'
'You took the confession, I believe.'
'That's right.'
'Were the words yours or his?'
'I… helped him. He just kept saying that he'd done it, didn't want to go into details. He saw her and wanted her, he said. She struggled and he suddenly realised what he was doing, but she was dead by then. She had blue knickers. Pale blue, not dark ones. Not navy blue like most of the other schoolgirls. He kept going on about them. That's about it.'
'Was he right about the knickers?'
'Of course he was right about the knickers. Have you seen a picture of her?'
'Of Glynis? No I haven't.'
'She was lovely. Lovely. Long blonde hair. A daughter any parent would be proud of, and that monster snuffed her out for his own gratification. What did you say your name was?'
'Charlie. Charlie Priest. Why didn't you let him write his own statement, he was an intelligent man?'
'Intelligent! You call that intelligent!'
'Tell me.'
'He was a commie. Didn't you know that, Charlie? A commie bastard. Every dispute there was he was in the thick of it. Council meetings, championing all the down-and-outs; on the picket line with the miners the year before. Gave them cheap bread, he did. I'd have given them bullets, not bread. Shot them all, that's what they deserved, and what happened? They brought the government down, that's what. Democracy! You call that democracy!'
'When I said I wanted to talk to you,' I began, 'you said something about the others. What others?'
'Huh! Television people. They've written to me three times, asking me to contact them. The Post Office forwarded the letters here but I haven't replied. Why can't they let sleeping dogs lie?'
'That's why I'm here, Henry. I want to find out the truth before they do.'
'You know the truth. It's staring you in the face. Abe Barraclough strangled poor little Glynis Williams and then hung himself in his cell. End of story.'
