Fever of the Bone

It was, Tony thought, as well that Ambrose didn’t know the truth.

CHAPTER 13

In her lowest moments, Carol imagined the worst fate James Blake could have in mind for her. Promotion. But not the sort of promotion that would let her lead her troops into battle. The sort that would have her sitting behind a desk, fretting about policy, while all the important work was being done elsewhere.

Like those times, thankfully rare, when her team were occupied on the front line, doing what needed to be done to find Daniel Morrison’s killer and she was sitting in her office trying to fill the time before she was due at the boy’s post mortem. Usually she tried to occupy her mind with administration and paperwork. But that day, she had something more pressing on her mind.

Leading her team in their cold-case work had added new weapons to Carol Jordan’s detective arsenal. She’d always been good at digging into the backgrounds of victims and suspects, but now she’d learned how to direct her archaeological skills backwards to a time when there were no computerised records or mobile phone bills to speed the plough. Like the years when Edmund Arthur Blythe had been living and presumably working in Halifax. Libraries were the most fruitful source, often leading to living experts who could fill in remarkable details. But there were also obscure electronic gateways to information. And Carol had access to the best of those.

Stacey was surrounded by a battery of screens. She’d now built a barricade of information between herself and the rest of the team. She’d started with two, expanded to three, and now there were six monitors arrayed in front of her, each of them showing different processes in action. Even though she was currently concentrating on filtering the city-centre CCTV footage through the face-recognition software, other applications were running, whose function was a mystery to Carol. Stacey glanced up as her boss approached. ‘No luck yet,’ she said. ‘The trouble with these CCTV cameras is that they’re still not very high res.’

‘We’ll just have to keep plugging away,’ Carol said. ‘Stacey, is there somewhere online where I can access old telephone directories?’ She made a mental bet with herself that Stacey would show no signs of surprise at the request.

‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes returning to the screens. Her fingers flew over the keyboard and one of the screens changed to display a map with a flashing cursor.

‘And that would be?’

‘Depends how far back you want to go.’

‘The early 1960s.’

Stacey’s hands paused above the keys for a moment. Then they started typing again. ‘Your best bet is one of the genealogy sites. They’ve digitised a lot of public domain social information: phone books, street directories, electoral rolls. They’re also really user friendly because they’re aimed at—’

‘Idiots like me?’ Carol said sweetly.

Stacey allowed herself half a smile. ‘Non-ICT professionals, I was going to say. Just google “old phone books” and “ancestors” and you might find something. Don’t forget, back in the 1960s, most people didn’t have phones, so you might not get lucky.’

‘I can only hope,’ Carol said. She was pinning her hopes to the fact that Blythe had re-emerged in Worcester as an entrepreneur. Perhaps he’d started in business back when he’d been courting Vanessa.

Half an hour later, she was thrilled to be proved right. It was there, on the screen, in black and white in the 1964 directory. Blythe & Co., Specialist Metal Finishers. Carol checked the years either side and discovered the company was listed for only three years. So when Blythe left, the company ended. It looked like a dead end. What were the chances of tracking down anyone who had worked there forty-five years before, never mind someone who had known him well enough to remember anything useful?

Still, she’d faced more hopeless pursuits. Now it really was time for the library. A quick online search and she had the number of the local reference library. When she got through, she explained that she was looking for a local history expert who might know about small businesses in the 1960s. The librarian um-ed and ah-ed for a moment, had a muffled conversation with someone else and finally said, ‘We think you need to talk to a man called Alan Miles. He’s a retired woodwork teacher, but he’s always been very keen on the industrial history of the area. Hang on a mo, I’ll get you his number.’

It took Alan Miles almost a dozen rings to answer his phone. Carol was about to give up when a suspicious voice said, ‘Hello?’

‘Mr Miles? Alan Miles?’

‘Who wants to know?’ He sounded old and cross. Great, just what I need.

‘My name is Carol Jordan. I’m a detective chief inspector with Bradfield Police.’

‘Police?’ Now she could hear anxiety in his voice. Like most people, talking to the police provoked worry, even for those who had nothing to worry about.

‘I was given your number by one of the staff at the central library. She thought you might be able to help me with some background research.’

‘What sort of background research? I know nowt about crime.’ He sounded eager to be gone.

‘I’m trying to find out anything I can about a man called Edmund Arthur Blythe who ran a company of specialist metal finishers in Halifax in the early 1960s. The librarian thought you were the best person to talk to.’ Carol tried to sound as flattering as she could.

‘Why? I mean, why do you want to know about that?’

God preserve me from suspicious old men. ‘I’m not at liberty to say. But my team specialises in cold cases.’ Which was nothing less than the truth, if not the whole truth.

‘I don’t like the phone,’ Miles said. ‘You can’t get the measure of a person over the phone. If you want to come over to Halifax, I’ll talk to you face to face.’

Carol rolled her eyes and suppressed a sigh. ‘Does that mean you can help me with information about Blythe and Co?’