Sins of the Fathers (4 page)

‘So if we locate the Land Rover, we have to assume Christie’s armed? I need to tell county that,’ Longley said.

‘We have to assume that,’ Thackeray agreed. ‘Kevin
found a shotgun securely locked up inside the house, carefully cleaned and put away. But as I say, there’s no sign of the murder weapon, which seems to have been an automatic pistol, according to the cartridges forensics found. Until we find Christie and the boy we just don’t know. So we’ll leave everything else under wraps with the Press, and concentrate on the missing boy. We’ve got a photograph of him and the sister who’s in hospital, so we can use that. Nothing of the parents so far.’

‘A photograph of Christie himself would be useful,’ Longley said.

‘He seems to have been a retiring sort of man, does Gordon Christie,’ Thackeray said. ‘No pictures so far, sir.’

‘They’re often the ones who explode in the end,’ Longley said. ‘Bottle everything up for years…’ He stopped, realising he was treading on dangerous ground.

Thackeray allowed himself a wry smile.

‘Tell me about it,’ he said softly, as Longley opened the door and eased his bulk through it. He hoped he might be the only one to recognise aspects of himself in the portrait of Gordon Christie he was beginning to glimpse through the fog. But he would not, he thought, be so lucky.

The road to Staveley village swung into a hairpin bend at a gradient that Laura Ackroyd found slightly alarming in the grey slushy snow that still narrowed the carriageway at each side. At the top of the hill she found herself in a narrow square with a car park off to one side where she found a space facing up the main street, which twisted through stone cottages to end in a narrow single-track lane across the moors. To the left, the squat village church sat in its tiny overcrowded graveyard, the stone tombstones at random angles and black against the lingering drifts. To the right a red and gold post office sign hung outside a small shop right next door to the Fox and Hounds, another low stone building whose walls and gables seemed to have sunk and tilted over the years to offer a slightly drunken face to the world.

The shop or the pub? she asked herself as she crossed the road. The lights were on at the pub but inside the bar appeared deserted and she opted for the shop, where she could see the silhouettes of customers through the steamy windows. But if there had been, as she suspected, animated chatter before she arrived, there was total silence when she opened the door and stepped inside. Three women well muffled against the cold clustered by the checkout counter where a dark-haired young Asian woman fingered her
electronic keyboard nervously. Laura smiled and pulled her own scarf more loosely round her neck.

‘Chilly out,’ she said. The oldest of the shop’s customers offered a thin smile.

‘A bit parky,’ she conceded and Laura guessed that curiosity would overcome reticence in the end.

‘I’ll be off then, Doreen,’ one of the other women announced, picking up her shopping bag and opening the door. ‘I’ll see you next week.’ She closed the door quickly behind her, letting in a draught of icy air as she went, and the second woman in the checkout queue began to unload her basket onto the counter next to the till. The older woman, last in line, looked Laura up and down carefully with sharp blue eyes in a lined face but said nothing.

‘Dreadful business, this shooting,’ Laura said to nobody in particular. ‘It must be upsetting to have something like that happen out of the blue in a small village.’ Her best hope pursed her lips, which creased the peach coloured powder with which she had dusted her face liberally.

‘Sightseeing, are you?’ she asked, her voice as icy as the weather. ‘One of them ghouls they talk about in t’papers?’

‘Not exactly,’ Laura said. ‘I’m from the
Gazette
. I’m going to write something about crimes like this, whole families getting murdered. It’s a dreadful thing…’ Suddenly the second customer turned away from her shopping just as she was about to pay her bill, and Laura was startled to see tears in her eyes.

‘D’you know how Emma is?’ she asked. ‘She were one of our Samantha’s best friends at school and I don’t know what to tell her. She wouldn’t go this morning. I couldn’t persuade her. She thought someone would come after her with a gun.’

Laura took a deep breath, knowing she was treading on ground so delicate it could open and swallow her up.

‘She’s as well as can be expected, I think. You know how hospitals put it. That’s what I heard in the office this morning before I came out again.’

‘Poor little lamb,’ the older woman said. ‘It’s a dreadful thing to say, but she might as well be dead wi’ all t’rest o’t’family gone. How’s she going to get over that? How can anyone get over that, never mind a little lass like that? And the little lad? Is he still missing then?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ Laura said carefully. ‘Did you know the family, then?’

‘By sight, that’s all,’ the older woman said. ‘Kept themselves to themselves by all accounts. But that Gordon, he looked a right surly beggar to me. Though I did hear he were a good car mechanic. I don’t suppose that Weldon up at t’Old Hall would have employed him else, would he? He’d not put up wi’ owt shoddy, the brass he’s lavished on that place since he bought it. More money than sense if you ask me, but that’s the way it is these days. More money than sense, most folk. They change their curtains almost as often as they change their knickers, some of these youngsters. Never crosses their minds to wash’em instead.’

‘Mrs Christie was a nice lady,’ the girl on the till said suddenly, causing three pairs of eyes to swivel in her direction. ‘She was always a pleasant lady. And her children were well behaved in the shop.’

The unspoken comparison with other children hung in the air for a moment before Samantha’s mother snapped her purse and her expression shut before picking up her shopping bag.

‘You can never tell with men, can you?’ she flung over
her shoulder as she pushed her way out of the door. ‘You just never know.’

The second woman put her purchases on the counter to be paid for.

‘D’you want a cup of tea, love?’ she asked Laura unexpectedly. ‘You look fair starved. Warm you up a bit?’

Laura snuggled into her scarf again and tried not to smile too enthusiastically.

‘That’d be very kind,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

The woman, who introduced herself as Dorothy Emmett, pulled her coat hood up over her tightly permed grey hair and led Laura across the slushy village street to one of the stone cottages on the other side. Even the handle on the sturdy wooden door gleamed with much polishing and, inside the chintzy living room, a myriad knick-knacks and ornaments sparkled – and covered every inch of horizontal space in the room and much of the walls as well in a kaleidoscope of shape and colour.

‘Sit yourself down, love,’ Dorothy said, taking off her coat and hanging it on one of the hooks provided by the front door. She bustled into the kitchen and Laura heard her put the kettle on and the chink of cups being arranged. When her hostess came back with a loaded tea tray she felt duty bound to accept a piece of the heavy fruit cake which was passed in her direction.

‘You look as if you need building up,’ Dorothy announced, helping herself to an equally generous hunk. ‘You’re much too thin, you modern girls. I can’t see the attraction of looking like a clothes prop, myself.’ She was not a woman to spare herself the duty of offering helpful advice, Laura thought wryly as she bit tentatively into the cake and found it delicious, though she hoped it would not push her far towards Dorothy’s ample proportions. She
settled back in her soft and capacious chair.

‘So don’t you think anyone had any idea the Christie family was in trouble?’ she asked.

‘Staveley’s a close village,’ Dorothy said, after a long pause for consideration. ‘You could say we don’t take to strangers right quickly. Mebbe we’re at fault there, but I can’t say as I know anyone who’d got to know the Christies well. You used to see her wi’t’pushchair on the mornings the playgroup were running in t’church hall. She’d bring the little one down at t’same time as the other two came to school. The other mornings she let them walk down thisselves. It’s safe enough down that lane, I dare say. There’s no traffic to speak of between the cottage and the school and Emma looked like a sensible little lass.’

‘Did Mrs Christie not have any women friends then? I thought they’d lived here two or three years.’

‘I saw her talking to Doreen, that’s little Samantha’s mother who were in t’shop just now. But I’d not say they were right close. And I think she knew Dawn Brough from t’new houses up at t’top there. But as I say, they seemed to keep themselves to themselves mostly. You’d see t’whole lot of ’em going off to t’supermarket on t’Bradfield Ring Road on a Friday after school finished. She didn’t use t’village shop much. I don’t think I had more than a couple of words with her all t’time they were living here. She were very quiet, and he were an evil-tempered looking fellow, though I don’t like to speak ill o’ t’dead. You’d bid him good morning and get nowt but a grunt back. He looked the type to go doolally with a gun, if you ask me. A nasty bit o’ work, by t’look o’ him. Ruled those kiddies wi’ a rod of iron an’ all, so I’m told, though that’s no bad thing these days, wi’ most of ‘em running wild before they’re out of nappies.’

‘You must have lived here a long time,’ Laura said.

‘All my life,’ Dorothy said with satisfaction. ‘There’s not a lot of us left now, though. ‘Most o’ t’village is newcomers. Live out here and rush off to work in Bradfield or Milford, or even Leeds, some of ’em. Can’t do ’em any good, all that rushing about, but it’s all change these days, isn’t it? Change for changes sake half t’time, if you ask me.’ She passed the plate of cake towards Laura who shook her head.

‘Where did the Christies come from?’ Laura asked. ‘Does anyone know?’

‘Someone said they’d been abroad, but I don’t know where. Came back because she didn’t like it, apparently. I don’t know why folk are so set on living in hot places myself. All them snakes and insects.’ Dorothy shuddered. ‘Any road, they came back with enough brass to buy that place. It’s a good solid house, is Moor Edge – belonged to the Fawthrops for years. They had sheep up there until young Jim Fawthrop went off wi’ some bit o’ stuff from Leeds. Wi’ all them outbuildings at t’back it were ideal for Christie. He set himself up there with a repair business and seemed to be making out well enough, by all accounts.’

‘And Mrs Christie didn’t work?’

‘No. T’little one were only a babby when they blew in. There’s not much work for women out here unless you’ve got your own car. Buses only come up every hour and sometimes not even that if t’mood takes ’em. Some of them go down to that call centre place in Thornton, but Linda Christie never did, as far as I know. He must have been doing all right with his repair work. They never seemed to go short, those kiddies.’

Dorothy shuddered and her face creased with genuine pain.

‘How could anyone do that?’ she asked and Laura shook her head helplessly. She could offer no answer at all.

Ten minutes later she lifted the latch on the wooden door of the Fox and Hounds and found herself in a dimly lit bar entirely empty of customers. Oak tables and stools clustered around the huge open fireplace, which was still filled with the ash from what she assumed had been the previous night’s roaring fire. She glanced around the bar curiously. It was decorated to overflowing with slightly tarnished horse brasses and pewter tankards, notices about village events and photographs of long-superannuated cricket teams. TV advice on décor and the fashion for turning country pubs into trendy restaurants didn’t seem to have penetrated as far as Staveley, yet, she thought wryly. This was an old English pub, unexpurgated in its scruffiness and no doubt the haunt of unreconstructed countrymen for miles around.

Eventually, the thick red curtain at the back of the bar was pushed aside and a heavy set dark-haired man with a full beard and appraising blue eyes, came towards her. She assumed from his proprietorial air that he must be the landlord, the Gerald Foster whose name was on the license board over the door.

‘What can I get you, love?’ he asked, without much enthusiasm and certainly with no hint of a welcoming smile. She ordered a vodka and tonic and perched herself on one of the tall stools next to the bar and introduced herself.

‘I’m covering this shooting at Moor Edge Cottage,’ she said, taking on board the landlord’s frozen expression at the mention of the
Gazette
. ‘Not the police investigation so much,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m not a crime reporter. I’m much more interested in some background about the
family. How something so dreadful can happen to a perfectly ordinary family, which the Christies seem to have been. Did you know them at all, Mr Foster?’

‘Not for quoting in the newspapers, I didn’t,’ the landlord said, not disputing his status. ‘I’d not want anything I said about my customers repeated in any rag, would I? Stands to reason.’

‘Off the record, then?’ Laura said. ‘It’s only for background. I want to write about how quite ordinary families suddenly explode like this. Not just the Christies – there’s been quite a few cases like this in Yorkshire recently. Apparently quite normal fathers, in most cases, suddenly losing it. Don’t you think it’s a frightening thing?’

‘Frightening?’ Foster asked grudgingly, as if the thought had never occurred to him. ‘You never know what’s going on in anyone’s head, do you? That’s a fact, if nowt else is.’

‘Was Gordon Christie a customer of yours? Was he a regular?’

‘I told the police all I know about Gordon Christie when they came round yesterday,’ Foster said. ‘And that’s not much. I doubt if any beggar got the chance to find out what went on in his head, any road. He came in, ordered a pint of Tetleys and a whisky chaser and sat in that corner over there and drank them. Sometimes he’d have two, but not often. Many customers like him and I’d be out of business.’

‘He didn’t come in to see friends then?’

‘I don’t think he had any friends, and that’s a fact. He were a right loner.’

‘But he must have talked to someone,’ Laura said, getting desperate.

‘No,’ Foster said, vehemently. ‘I don’t think I ever heard
him say owt to anyone, certainly nowt pleasant. He was a loner, was Christie, I told you. And surly with it. If he’d just blown his own head off he’d not be missed. Doing it the way he did it, I reckon most folk in the village will wish him in hell.’

Laura drained her glass thoughtfully as she digested this vehement denunciation, but she did not get the chance to follow it up as the door opened, wafting cold air into the bar. She half turned as two burly men in green Barbours and heavy boots made their presence known with much huffing and puffing and blowing on hands.

‘Morning,’ the landlord greeted the newcomers, with only slightly more enthusiasm than he had offered Laura. He might, Laura thought, usefully turn his complaints about taciturn and surly customers in his own direction. A beaming benevolent host he was not.

‘Morning Gerry, a bit parky out,’ one of the newcomers said. ‘Who’s this you’re sending to perdition today, then?’ He picked up on Foster’s last words which he had evidently overheard. He nodded at the empty fireplace. ‘A few flames in here wouldn’t come amiss on a day like this.’

‘My missus has gone down to t’cash and carry. She generally sees to all that,’ Foster said huffily.