Catch the Fallen Sparrow (15 page)

‘We haven't traced her yet. She had had no contact with Dean since he was two years old. The last address we have is from six years ago. She moved around a lot.' Joanna felt this was a great failure on the part of the police. The mother still did not know her child was dead. She may have failed to care for Dean, not given him love or money or even a father, but surely she had a right to know the child was dead. She had given him a name – and life. Someone else had taken that life away. She had a right to know.

Caro leaned forwards. ‘Joanna,' she said, ‘use the Press as they use you. We can find her. Let me offer a reward.'

‘And then you'll get an exclusive?' Joanna could not keep the note of cynicism out of her voice.

‘Yes, all right. But we can find her for you.' Their eyes met. ‘Do you want me to try and find her?' she asked. ‘You know the sort of thing. Is This Your Son? etc., etc. Would she come forward.' She narrowed her eyes, flicked some hair off her face. ‘I'm afraid much as people loathe cheque-book journalism it does bear fruit. She'll come forward for money.' She tightened her lips. ‘Given love or money they choose money every time. Sod love. We'll find her. I bet you twenty pounds she'll come to us for the money where she wouldn't have bothered attending the child's funeral just in case someone asked her to pay.' She glanced again at the picture. ‘Poor little bastard,' she said.

‘Probably.'

‘So you don't know the father? No family.'

Joanna shook her head. ‘No.'

‘Cause of death?' Caro asked briskly. And when Joanna didn't answer straight away she looked up. ‘The body was found burning,' she said, ‘by soldiers on exercise. You're not going to tell me he burned to death, are you?'

Joanna almost exploded then. ‘You know what,' she said, ‘you are as hard a woman as they come.'

‘I have a job to do.' Caro's voice was faintly defensive.

‘So have I,' Joanna said sharply, ‘but even I have some bloody feelings.'

‘Cause of death?' Caroline repeated.

Joanna frowned. ‘He was manually strangled ... We think the body was probably burned to try and destroy forensic evidence, possibly to delay identification.'

She paused. ‘We also believe it was pure chance that the burning body was found so early. The moors,' she added drily, ‘are not exactly crowded at that time of day. It so happened some boy soldiers were on exercises at five a.m.'

‘The boy soldiers are the under-eighteens.' Cam looked up. ‘Is that right – sort of cadets?'

‘That's right.'

‘And there's no connection?'

‘We're working on it,' Joanna said cautiously. But she knew this was the one area they would have to return to. They had had one brief interview with the soldiers – that was all. And Swinton had been the one who had burned Dean with the cigarettes.

Dean's body had been found alight – by Swinton. The long arm of coincidence?

Caro was watching her very carefully. ‘Rumour has it,' she said, ‘the boy had been molested – from an early age.'

Joanna looked hard at her friend. ‘I don't think anything can be achieved by printing that, do you?'

‘Joanna, you may as well come clean,' Caro said. ‘Is this promising to be another children's home scandal? Perhaps on the scale of Pindown?'

‘I hope not.' Joanna gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘I hope not. We've had enough of that particular Pandora's box in Staffordshire over the last few years. I believe this was an isolated case – not a full-blown scandal.'

Caroline glanced at her pad. ‘Is it true the shoes he was wearing were too big for him?'

Joanna nodded. ‘Two sizes too big,' she said. ‘Dean was a size five. The shoes were sevens.'

Caroline looked up. ‘New?'

‘Almost.'

‘Where did they come from?' Her eyes were blue and intelligent. ‘Had somebody bought them for him? Given them to him?'

‘We think,' Joanna said cautiously, ‘that it's possible he might have shoplifted them. We don't know.'

Caro's face grew rat-like, almost twitching in her anxiety to sniff out the truth. ‘Where from?'

Joanna knew she dared not say. With Keith Latos's previous record the Press would have hanged him before proving anything. Trial by headline. Even if – and she had to admit it was a big ‘if – he was guilty they still had to prove it beyond reasonable doubt, in a court of law. She had already applied for a search warrant to comb through Keith Latos's flat. And she would have laid a moderate-sized bet that they would stumble across something there with which to connect Latos with Dean. So to Caro she said, ‘We don't know that he did steal them – let alone where from. Enquiries are progressing.'

Caro shot her another very sharp, perceptive look. ‘I see,' she said.

Joanna glanced enquiringly at Caro. ‘Is that all? I have a briefing at nine.' She looked at her watch. It was five past.

‘Just one more thing ...' Caro's voice was deceptively casual. ‘Whose was the ring?'

Inwardly Joanna groaned and then she thought very quickly. Use the Press, Caro had said. She could use them ... perhaps to flush a sly fox out of his hole. ‘The ring,' she said slowly, ‘has been positively identified by Mrs Gilly Leech as belonging to her late husband.'

Caro sat up. ‘So how did it get on the finger of the dead boy?' she asked.

‘All we know,' Joanna said carefully, ‘is that the ring was missing after a reported break-in at the Leech home, Rock House.'

Caro was quick to spot the flaw.
‘Reported
break-in,' she said, her eyes very clear, the pupils like pin-points.

‘That's right,' Joanna said deliberately. ‘Reported break-in.'

Caro's eyes flickered. ‘I see,' she said slowly. ‘I see.' She wrote something down in her notebook. ‘When was this?'

‘About a year ago.'

‘Mr Leech died ...?'

‘A little while after.'

Caro looked up. ‘He died of ...?'

‘Pneumonia.'

‘Rumour has it,' Caro said carefully, ‘that Robin Leech is consulting solicitors about a visit you recently made to his mother.' She looked up. ‘Would you care to comment?'

‘He's perfectly within his rights,' Joanna said calmly.

Caroline regarded her curiously. ‘So will you be interviewing Robin Leech?'

Suddenly Joanna grinned. ‘If you run half the story I think you will,' she said, ‘I expect Robin Leech will want to talk to me, probably with his own solicitor.'

Caro frowned. ‘I gather a murky separation followed by an even murkier divorce is about to hit your local rags,' she said.

Joanna looked at her. ‘Not the London papers?'

Caro shook her head. ‘He isn't big enough, and neither is the scandal. Nothing more than a teenage waitress.' She shook her head again. ‘The waitress, so rumour has it, isn't even very photogenic. Naive, a bit silly and stupid. In fact, I think you could say it was a sordid little kitchen-sink drama.'

Joanna smiled. ‘Well, thank you: she said. ‘I'm glad to be armed with this little fact before I meet Robin Leech for myself.'

‘For what it's worth,' Caro said, ‘he is one of the most pompous, snobbish and incredibly boring men I have ever met in my entire life. He is one of the by-products of the English caste system. And don't tell me all men are equal. No one meeting Robin Leech would ever believe that line. Not in a thousand years. Now,' she said briskly, ‘in exchange for that little opinion, perhaps you can fill me in with a detail or two. Off the record, of course. Rumour has it that Ashford Leech was homosexual with a penchant for young boys. I would imagine they were pretty young boys. Rumour also has it that Ashford Leech's terminal illness was due to the fact that he had Aids.' She was watching Joanna carefully, like a tiger stalking its prey.

‘No comment,' Joanna said, and Caroline closed her eyes wearily.

‘So he did,' she said.

‘Really?'

‘I do understand “police speak”,' Caroline said. ‘So please don't insult me.'

‘The trouble with you, Caro,' Joanna said suddenly, ‘is that I can never say something off the record. As far as you're concerned it's all “on the record”. So I have to guard my comments. You've tested our friendship too far'

‘It's got me some good stories,' Caro said smoothly.

Joanna stood up. ‘I do have to go. I have a briefing.'

As she reached the door Caro spoke again. ‘Good luck. I hope you get him.'

Joanna turned and gave her a watery smile. ‘Thanks,' she said. ‘So do I.' And she was left to wonder whom Caro had meant.

The briefing was held in the large office at the front of the building. Joanna stood near the blackboard and faced the assembled officers. Mike sat on the corner of the table.

‘The Gypsy's looking fierce today,' Alan King whispered to PC Cheryl Smith.

‘Did you see the blonde?' she whispered back. ‘Press.'

They looked at each other knowingly.

Joanna cleared her throat. ‘There are quite a few leads that need following up,' she said. ‘The first is we need to speak to the soldier again, Gary Swinton. I'd like us to get him in. He is the person who found the body. He also has tattoos identical to the ones on Dean's knuckles. Private Gary Swinton. We'd better get him in some time today, please.' She glanced around the room. ‘For those of you who are not aware, Gary Swinton was, until last year, living at The Nest.'

There was a mutter around the room and she held up her hand.

‘He is not the only suspect. But obviously he moves to the top of the list. DC King. Perhaps you'd visit the army camp. Speak to the other one ... what's his name?' She read from her notes. ‘Tom Mayland, the Welsh boy and any others who might have seen Swinton at the disco on Sunday night. Let's find out if he did have the opportunity to commit this crime. We have narrowed the dumping and setting fire to the body to around four a.m. Find out whether he could have got out of the camp. Also ...' she frowned at King, ‘see what you can dig up about him. What sort of person is he? Violent? Homosexual tendencies? You know the sort of thing. Look particularly for anything that connects him with Dean Tunstall.'

DC King nodded, scribbled something down on his notepad and folded his arms ... ‘Excuse me, ma'am.'

She waited too.

‘We've uncovered something about the warden at The Nest.' He surveyed the room, enjoying the expectation on the watching faces. ‘Mark Riversdale ...' He glanced at his pad. ‘Apparently he spent six months in a psychiatric ward – drying out. He was an alcoholic. I spoke to the psychiatrist in charge of his case. As usual ...' he made a face, ‘he was not keen on divulging information but he said Riversdale was an unstable character and that after one of his drinking bouts he suffered from amnesia ... didn't remember a bloody thing of what had gone on.'

DC King paused. ‘Riversdale referred himself to the psychiatric unit after he exposed himself to a young lad. No charges were pressed. I've checked. He doesn't have a record but the mother of the boy – a ten-year-old, by the way – threatened him with the law if he didn't do something about his problem. According to Riversdale he never remembered a thing about it.'

King sat down, pleased with the effect of his words. Everyone in the room was watching him.

Joanna nodded. ‘And he is the one in charge of the home.' She looked around. ‘I don't think I need to say anything more about Riversdale – except to say watch him. Is he still drinking? Have we any evidence of deviance since he became warden of The Nest?'

To Mike she said quietly. ‘Did they check him out before they put him there?' He shrugged his shoulders and she met his eyes. ‘It makes me so bloody cross,' she said. ‘Imagine – putting a man with that sort of record in charge of a children's home.'

‘Joanna ...' he touched her arm, ‘Riversdale didn't have a criminal record. When the council checked him out – if they bothered – he would have come out spotless. He had a medical record – not a criminal record.'

She stared at him for a minute before turning her attention back to the briefing. ‘So far the SOCs have covered the west side of the Roaches – that is the area between the Buxton road and the spot where Dean's body was found. However, due to information received from the landlady of the Winking Man – they heard a car travelling along the Flash road – I believe that the murder vehicle could have approached the Roaches from the Flash side.'

‘Excuse me ...' One of the DCs put her hand up. ‘We thought of that, but it's a narrow track. A car pulled up there would have completely blocked the road. Besides, there's nowhere to turn.'

‘Nevertheless,' Joanna said, ‘I think this is what our killer did. I'd like some of you to speak to Herbert Machin. He's a farmer from Flash.'

‘We already did.'

‘Ask more specific questions,' Joanna said slowly. ‘Ask him if a car or even a Land Rover turned round in his gateway. I feel it's worth a second go.'

The DC nodded and Joanna carried on. ‘So I want the search area widened to include the other side – the east side of the Roaches. Take a good wide sweep of the area after a corridor has been cleared and marked. Please,' she appealed to the clump of uniformed officers in front of her, ‘be thorough. I believe we will find forensic evidence that this is the route the murderer – or at least the person who dumped the body – took to X, the place where the body was set alight. I don't need to impress on you that the tiny fragment of evidence might just be the one item we need to connect a person with this place. It might make the difference between a conviction and none, the difference in a crime repeated or a person in prison.'

One of the probationers at the front put his hand up. ‘Inspector,' he called, ‘was it definitely a man?'