Impression (DI Gardener 4)

“You heard,” said Reilly. “Face it, your brother was a complete mystery to you. Now you’re either telling the truth, or you’re the best actor I’ve ever seen. And I’m telling you now, son, believe me when I say I’ve seen a few fine actors in my time, so I have.”

“So you know for a fact that Barry had nothing to do with the disappearance of the five-year-old?” Gardener persisted.

“He’s not like that,” shouted Morrison, still on his feet. “He’s not a ponce.”

“Let’s hope that’s true,” said Gardener, rising to his. “For your sake. Because we found this photo underneath the prostitute when she was killed, and we also found it underneath a dead Frank Fisher, and all of the people mentioned in this interview room today are connected to a murder investigation that involves the girl, and very possibly you.

“And you’re the only one left alive at the moment. So when I tell you I am going to get to the bottom of this, you need to believe me, because I will. There will be no stone unturned, Mr Morrison. A lot of people will have sleepless nights before I get to the truth. So when you tell me you are not involved, then you’d better be telling the truth. You’d better hope for your sake that I don’t find a single thing on you. Because like I said, you are the only one left alive. You’ll go down for the lot, and you know what they do to people in prison who kill children.”

Despite everything that had happened in the interview room, Gardener was quite happy that Billy Morrison had been telling the truth. He and his partner had cross-examined literally hundreds of people over the years, and he knew a liar when he saw one.

He turned to his partner.

“Sort out his release papers and see him out, please, Sean.”

Chapter Forty-four

Rydell glanced at the clock on the fascia panel of his bike: one-fifteen.

He was in a foul mood. He hated change, anything that interrupted his day. An emergency delivery to Oldham’s in Guiseley represented that. Being a Monday, traffic was light. The call had come at eleven-thirty. He’d been at the warehouse around twelve-fifteen, but wasn’t loaded up until twelve-forty. Another thirty-five minutes to reach his destination, all of them filled with resentment and terror.

The delivery was small but he still needed the trailer because he had a passenger. He could not leave her on her own in the middle of the day. She was awake, and anything could happen. She was too precious for that. All through the night was different. She always slept soundly and was never awake before he arrived home. There was never any evidence that she had been up during the night.

He parked the bike and retrieved the parcel from the trailer, and asked if she was okay. She was loving every minute of the journey. She had her doll, some sweets, and a drink, and she was quite happy.

He entered Oldham’s and was pleasantly surprised. A couple of pensioners waited in a queue for prescriptions. A young woman with a pushchair was eyeing up the perfumes, her baby asleep. The only other person in the shop was a man in his thirties, dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. He wore a pair of tinted glasses and had the beginnings of a moustache and beard. He was vaguely familiar. Oldham was in the corner, talking to none other than the author of all the blogs he’d been reading recently, Vincent Baines.

“Oh, yes, John, I know exactly who it is,” said Baines, full of his own importance.

“What? Who robbed my shop?”

“Yes, but more importantly, I know who is responsible for the double murder in Batley a couple of nights back.”

“Then why aren’t you down the police station?”

“I’m just on my way, but it’ll be all hell and no notion right now.”

“Not because somebody’s pinched some tablets, surely?”

Rydell removed his helmet and lifted his parcel to indicate to Oldham that he had something for him. Oldham nodded.

Baines leaned in closer. So did Rydell. “There’s been two more.”

The man in the tinted glasses dropped a bag of menthol sweets on the floor. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Two more what?” Oldham asked. “Murders?”

“Yes, not far from here either, one of them.”

Oldham offered to take the package from Rydell. The man in the tinted glasses had his back to them, but Rydell reckoned he had an interest in the conversation as well. He wasn’t doing much else; he certainly wasn’t putting shopping in the basket he held.

Rydell took his time in sorting out the paperwork. He wanted to hear what Baines had to say.

“They found one of them in Kirkstall Abbey, battered to death. Black and blue he was.”

“What’s the world coming to?”

The pensioners thanked the counter assistant for their prescription and glanced over at Baines before leaving. The young woman with the pushchair had made her choice of perfume and passed it over for payment.