Stalked By Shadows (21 page)

‘Oh, not Sally!’ shrieked Lucy, plonking herself down on the sofa, and curling her legs underneath her.

‘You know about her?’ Millie asked, taking an armchair across from her and Julie-Ann.

‘Yes, Will thinks it’s hilarious. The poor woman’s obsessed.’

‘Has he ever been concerned about her?’

‘No, it’s just a joke.’ Lucy stopped in her tracks. ‘You don’t think she . . .?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ said Millie, staying casual. ‘No more than that. I agree that on the face of it she seemed harmless. I’ll probably go and talk to her. Where’s the band playing tonight?’ she asked, to change the subject.

‘Oh, they’re up in the north, Will called me from Bolton.’

And from that point the talk of the investigation ceased, and, thanks to a bottle of Merlot or two, Julie-Ann seemed to relax and Millie saw a whole new side to Lucy. When she let her hair down, she and Julie-Ann were wild together. They drooled over Millie’s photographs, and listened sympathetically to her account of her rocky relationship with her parents which had all come right in the end.

‘I need a man,’ said Julie-Ann, as they finished Millie’s pictures. ‘Here’s both of you settled down and I haven’t even got a bloke.’

‘Millie’s boss is pretty hunky,’ Lucy said drunkenly.

Millie pulled a face. ‘He’s all right, but hunky isn’t really a word I’d use.’

‘Oh, he is. He’s tall, slim, still got all his own hair.’ She turned to Millie. ‘Unless you know something I don’t?’

Smiling, Millie shook her head.

‘You’d really like him, Jules,’ Lucy went on. ‘A bit on the serious side, but he’s got these amazing blue eyes. Is he married?’

Millie sighed. ‘No, as a matter of fact he’s not, but I think he might be seeing someone.’

‘Serious?’

‘I don’t know. It’s none of my business really.’

‘There we are then,’ Lucy said triumphantly. ‘We could fix you two up. What’s his name again?’

‘Tom Mariner.’

‘Tom and Julie-Ann, Julie-Ann and Tom. Yes, I like it.’ And to Millie’s great relief she seemed content with that.

What Julie-Ann and Lucy had in common was their shared history and inevitably they got around to reminiscing.

‘Your mum showed me all your cheerleading trophies,’ Millie said.

Lucy cringed. ‘The burden of being an only child,’ she groaned. ‘Mum collects and archives everything. She and Dad must have recorded my every breath from the time I was born. Did she take you up to the spare room? It’s entirely taken up with photo albums. And those trophies really should go.’

‘No!’ Julie-Ann cried. ‘They remain a shrine to your achievements. The cheerleading was so much fun!’

‘How on earth did you get into it?’ Millie asked, knowing that nothing like that ever went on at her own school.

‘We came up with it ourselves,’ said Lucy. ‘They had some cheerleaders on
Blue Peter
or something, so we decided to set up our own troop.’

‘Only because “Foxy” Foxton disapproved,’ put in Julie-Ann. ‘And it looked so cool! We did it all ourselves; held the auditions - only the prettiest girls allowed to join.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Lucy objected. ‘It makes us sound really exclusive.’

‘It’s true,’ Julie-Ann contradicted her. ‘You might be all politically correct now, Ms Health Visitor, but, at the time, the whole point of it was to attract boys! God, we were so shallow then. And the costumes only came in one size, so everyone had to be thin enough to get into them.’

‘Oh, that was terrible,’ said Lucy, suddenly shamefaced. ‘The poor girls we had to turn away.’

‘It was only fair,’ Julie-Ann insisted. ‘You had to be fit enough to do the routines. They were really energetic. And you had to be able to dance a bit of course, even though neither of us was much good. The auditions were hilarious. Everyone was desperate to join so it was such a feeling of power. I don’t think I’ve ever had a buzz like that since.’

‘We were good for a while,’ Lucy admitted.

‘You won enough competitions,’ Millie said. ‘So why did you stop?’

‘The exams came along so it kind of fizzled out.’

‘We grew up,’ Julie-Ann reminded Lucy. ‘Maybe we should start it up again.’ She giggled. ‘I bet we can still do it. Come on, I’m sure Millie would love to see one of the routines.’

Millie was caught up in their enthusiasm. ‘Oh, yes! A demonstration!’

It was pretty impressive, even though they were rusty after all this time, and, when they did the final leap and whoop at the end, Millie clapped and cheered unrestrainedly, to make up for being the sole member of the audience.

But the excitement was short-lived. Lucy had gone a funny colour. ‘Oh, God, I think I’m going to be -’

She ran to the bathroom and they heard the sound of the lovely Merlot being regurgitated. Julie-Ann was staying the night, so, having ensured that Lucy was OK, Millie left them to it and drove home.

First thing on Monday morning Mariner called through to Tony Knox.

‘We’ve got something else to work on.’ He filled Knox in on what he had learned from Coleman. ‘I want to look at all the archive material we’ve got on that case and find out what the dead man’s family are up to now.’

‘Oh good,’ his sergeant said, and Mariner pictured him eyeing up the pile of paper on his desk. ‘I could do with something to read.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Mariner said. ‘This is one for me. If anyone needs me I’ll be at Lloyd House all morning.’

Hughes’ CPS case file would be stored alongside the thousands of others in the basement of police HQ in the city centre. It was the early morning rush hour, and the journey in took Mariner a protracted hour. As he inched his way through the Queensway tunnel, he thanked God he didn’t have to make this journey every day.

It took the archivist some time to retrieve Hughes’ file. Mariner couldn’t begin to imagine how many records were stored here, but the one he was given was pretty substantial. He settled himself in one of the half-dozen booths designed for the purpose, and began to read.

The first thing that smacked Mariner in the face was the date of Hughes’ death. According to the CPS report, Billy Hughes, aged nineteen, had been arrested by officers, Ronnie Silvero among them, called to a brawl outside a nightclub, and in police custody in the early hours of the morning of Saturday, 3 April 1988, exactly twenty years ago last Sunday, he had slipped into a coma. His life-support machine was switched off a week later. That was interesting, or might be if they could pin down the exact date when Nina Silvero received the flowers. Last year dead flowers, this year murder?

Mariner began with Ronnie Silvero’s version of events, as taken in his statement that fateful night. It was, according to the report, the day of a Midlands derby, Notts Forest had travelled to the city to play Birmingham City in an FA Cup semi-final, along with thousands of fans. Trouble had been expected, which explained why Silvero, by then an inspector, was out on the streets at all. But the expected hooliganism never kicked off, and all that was reported that night were a series of minor scuffles, the usual Saturday-night fodder.

Ronnie Silvero had been in the vicinity of a nightclub when he and the two constables he was with were called to a fight outside the Dome. Hughes was drunk and abusive, behaving in a violent and aggressive manner towards the officers, and had resisted arrest. It took the three of them to restrain him, handcuff him and get him into a squad car, using batons and at one point even CS gas. Reading the report, it seemed ridiculous that all that should be needed for just one man, but Mariner had been there enough times. Some men and, increasingly these days, women could behave like wild animals in that context, and generally speaking the aggression was directed at the arresting officers. Mariner had no trouble at all envisaging the scene.

Back at Steelhouse Lane, Hughes was briefly uncuffed while being processed, but turned his aggression on another detainee, so again he was wrestled to the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back in the classic ‘prone restraint’, and he was removed to a cell to cool off. So far so routine. But the detail that followed in Silvero’s report became suddenly skimpy, making reference instead to the duty sergeant’s log. Hughes was checked, he said, at ‘regular intervals’, but when the duty sergeant looked in at two forty-five, the prisoner was found to be apparently unconscious. The alarm was raised and the sergeant attempted resuscitation, but at eight minutes past three an ambulance was called and Hughes was taken into intensive care at Dudley Road Hospital. A week later he was pronounced brain dead and the machinery keeping him alive was turned off.

What surprised Mariner was that the inquest that followed, considering all the evidence, had so definitively reached a verdict of unlawful killing. There were a number of reasons why Hughes might have died, including injuries sustained during the brawl. The prosecution was two pronged; the officers had used undue force on the hapless Hughes, and that they had neglected him when he had been left in the cell. One of the cornerstones of the prosecution case was the evidence from Arthur Rhys, the only other man arrested on the same night, who had been occupying the cell next door to Hughes. Rhys had given a statement, from where he was, by that time, on remand for burglary, about what he’d heard on that night. He claimed that, shortly after Hughes was placed in the cell, he heard a rasping noise, and Hughes calling for help and shouting that he needed an inhaler. The duty sergeant came and looked at Hughes, said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ And went away again.

According to Rhys, the rasping noise continued for several minutes, then there was a noise like choking, before everything went quiet. Rhys claimed to have yelled, ‘We need help in here. I think he’s in trouble,’ and banged repeatedly on his cell door. He claimed that nothing happened until about ten to fifteen minutes later, when he heard the duty sergeant open the viewing hatch on Hughes’ door, and say, ‘Oh fuck,’ before pressing the emergency bell. During the commotion that followed, Rhys claimed to have heard an officer saying, ‘We shouldn’t have left him like this, we shouldn’t have left him like this.’

The problem with this particular piece of evidence, of course, was that it was unlikely to be unbiased. Rhys himself was also under the influence of alcohol at least, and, as he didn’t have any form of timepiece, the chronology couldn’t be relied on.

So what had happened during the time in between the duty sergeant’s visits to Hughes’ cell? For enlightenment, Mariner rifled through the file for the duty sergeant’s report. Finding it, he gave a start. The name at the top of the report in distinctive handwriting was that of Sergeant John Coleman. Christ, so Coleman had been personally involved with this. That was why he’d been so reluctant to talk about it. But he must have known that Mariner would find out at some point.

Mariner read Coleman’s report carefully. Everything tied in with what Silvero and Rhys had recorded. It was when he got to the part about leaving Hughes in his cell that things got tricky. At this point, according to Coleman’s notes, he had gone back to the custody desk and rung through to Inspector Ronnie Silvero, who was, by this time in the canteen for R&R.

I told Inspector Silvero that I was concerned about Hughes remaining in that position, suggesting that, now he was in a cell and could do no more damage, the cuffs should be removed. We discussed the situation. There was some concern about whether the prisoner might harm himself and it was felt that he could reasonably be left in the restrained position a little longer. I also had concerns about the prisoner’s breathing and asked if anyone knew if he was asthmatic. No one did. A fellow officer, I can’t remember who, also suggested that Hughes might be ‘playing to the gallery’. Inspector Silvero suggested I relax, have a cuppa and then check on Hughes, at which point we would remove the handcuffs
. . .

And by which time, it was too late.

So Coleman had done what he could to avert the tragedy. The responsibility for the decision-making had been Ronnie Silvero’s and Silvero’s alone. The statement from a WPC who had been present in custody at the time corroborated Coleman’s version of events, confirming that the conversation had taken place, and that Coleman had proposed removing the handcuffs from Hughes. The subsequent prosecution would have put Coleman in an impossible situation. Tell the truth and incriminate Silvero, or protect Silvero and incriminate himself? Coleman had chosen the way of commonsense and integrity, but he wondered what Ronnie Silvero had thought about that. Was that why Coleman had been so attentive to Nina Silvero after Ronnie’s death, because he, too, felt responsible?

There had been an outcry, of course, with Hughes’ family and their supporters calling for a public inquiry, which an apology from the then chief constable didn’t dampen. The subsequent inquiry concluded that ‘errors of judgement’ had been made and the CPS began assembling a case against the three officers involved; Silvero was charged with manslaughter and suspended from duty, and the two arresting constables faced lesser charges. Jack Coleman, Mariner noted, was not charged. Eighteen months on and shortly after the date for the trial was set, Ronnie Silvero had died. There was no detail, just the simple words ‘deceased’ and ‘file closed’.

Also contained in the file were copies of the hate letters that Rachel Hordern mentioned had been sent to her stepmother. They didn’t make pleasant reading, the general themes being that Ronnie Silvero had got off lightly and that the hope was that he would rot in hell. They were not very imaginative, but the subject was definitely Ronnie and not Nina. They were also handwritten and Mariner took them to compare with the handwriting on the florist’s card. The letters were unsigned but the next of kin recorded on file were Eva and Eric Hughes who had an address in Rubery, once a village, but now the southernmost suburb of Birmingham. Alongside notes he’d already taken, Mariner wrote it down together with the phone number and, for the moment, closed the file on Billy Hughes.

Mariner rubbed his eyes. He was getting a headache; the sooner he picked up those glasses the better. Leaning back in his chair, he considered the single most useful piece of information he had gleaned from all this; that Billy Hughes had died of asphyxiation, and Nina Silvero died a similar, choking death.