The Unquiet Grave (12 page)

At the station, according to the reports, Bannon and Laird had questioned McCleary closely. Brook frowned, imagining what
closely
might imply in the days before taped interviews. Whatever the tactics used by investigating officers, it was all to no avail. No matter what pressure was brought to bear on the young man, he refused to be cajoled into a confession to Billy Stanforth’s murder and was released a day later after making a statement.

Yes, he’d admitted to being outside the Stanforth house a half hour before the fire. Yes, he’d had cigarettes and matches with him. Yes, he sometimes supplied Billy with the odd one if asked, but Brendan insisted he hadn’t seen Billy that day and he hadn’t set the fire, claiming to have left after a brief conversation with Amelia. He claimed he didn’t know there’d even been a fire until the next day when DC Laird called at his father’s house to question him.

His girlfriend, Amelia Stanforth, had supported his testimony and, try as they might, Bannon and Laird couldn’t budge either from their version of events. In the end, they were forced to take McCleary’s word, though obviously he remained a
person of interest
.

Brook skimmed through the statements taken from the schoolchildren. Most were cursory and translated into police-speak;
no recollection
, was a common phrase, presumably supplied by the interviewing officer. Most were only capable of testifying as to their whereabouts when the alarm was raised about the fire.

Francesca Stanforth’s initial statement was more detailed than the rest. Like others she had not seen her twin brother leave the party and had no idea why he might have slipped away. However, Francesca claimed to have seen Amelia running to join the throng already gathered around the burning shed and, significantly, her older sister appeared to have been crying.

‘Boyfriend trouble,’ was Brook’s immediate assessment. Reading on, he saw that Bannon and Laird had come to the same conclusion – her assignation with Brendan McCleary had ended in some form of disagreement. Subsequent to this, Brendan McCleary had refused to confirm that Amelia had been in tears when he’d left her but he did admit he’d told her he didn’t want to see her later that night for a scheduled date and she’d been angry. He’d then watched her go back towards the house before setting off for home.

Brook reread Amelia’s statement but it confirmed Brendan’s version of events exactly. She denied, however, that she’d been crying and after further questioning, young Francesca was forced to admit that she may have been mistaken about seeing her sister in tears.

Brook turned to the statement given by Edward Mullen, Billy’s best friend. Shortly before Billy’s disappearance, Mullen had admitted having a row with Billy. Mullen had been angry that Billy had cheated during a party game and had stormed off upstairs to sulk under a pile of coats in one of the bedrooms.

Significantly, Mullen was the only
person at the party, adult or child, who, by his own admission, was alone around the time the fire was set. That, coupled with the recent argument with his friend, no matter how childish and pathetic, had served to briefly make him the prime suspect. Certainly Bannon and Laird had concluded as much and had interviewed him extensively. A further handwritten assessment was clipped to Mullen’s statement.

Edward Mullen is a strange and introverted boy with (to my way of thinking) an unhealthy obsession with his late friend. Talking to him you might be forgiven for thinking Billy Stanforth hadn’t died at all. Every time we mention his name, Mullen’s face lights up as though his friend had just walked through the door. Odd. However, the only time we see Mullen upset or tearful is when we accuse him of murdering Billy. He becomes hysterical at the idea that we’d think he’d hurt his friend. Doesn’t appear to be faking. DCI SB.

On the next page were details which threw doubt on Mullen as a suspect. He had an alibi. One of the party rooms fed directly out on to the bottom of the stairs. In Mrs Stanforth’s statement she remembered seeing Mullen stomping up the stairs with a face like thunder, and didn’t see him come down again until the alarm was raised for the fire.

But Mullen was still alone in the minutes leading up to the fire
.

With Mullen’s alibi, the murder inquiry began to peter out. There was no eyewitness or forensic evidence against any of the main suspects and, without a confession, Bannon and Laird had little option but to widen the net. Brook then read several pages of fruitless information about a couple of not-so-local pyromaniacs who were questioned and found to have watertight alibis.

Bannon and Laird then investigated the possibility of a sexual angle, even though the autopsy had found no evidence of what was discreetly referred to as ‘interference’. Nonetheless, several known sex offenders from the Derby area were brought in for questioning but nothing came of this line of inquiry either, and gradually the intensity of the investigation wound down.

For something to do, Brook turned back to the autopsy report. The pictures of the dead boy made for grim viewing and Brook tried not to linger over them. Billy Stanforth’s blackened mouth was fixed and contorted into an oval of mortal agony and Brook almost imagined he could hear him screaming.

Despite the charred condition of his young corpse, forensic scientists were able to conclude that young Billy had tried desperately to escape the flames. His knuckles were damaged and three of his fingernails had been ripped off as he tore frantically at the shed door. What wasn’t clear was why he hadn’t attempted to escape through the small window on one wall and the detectives had attributed this to the height of the window and panic. Had Billy remained calm, he might have noticed a small wooden stepladder that would have allowed him easy access to the window.

Brook emptied out an A4 wallet crammed with crime scene photographs showing serious-looking men with baggy trousers, white lab coats and thick, round spectacles sifting through the wreckage of the shed. The blackened, locked padlock, attached to the twisted remains of the metal hasp, was photographed on the ground next to a twelve-inch ruler.

Brook wondered aimlessly if the padlock was still in storage anywhere. Not that seeing it would be of any value. No fingerprints, partial or otherwise, had been discovered on any of the metal components.

Brook took out his notebook and a pen from the jar on his table but hesitated over the blank page. ‘Nineteen sixty-three! Am I really going to do this?’

After an internal debate, Brook wrote, ‘Screaming?’ then skimmed back over the witness statements of Billy’s parents, sisters and fellow partygoers. Not one report of anyone hearing screams. Had Billy already inhaled a lethal dose of toxic smoke by the time the fire was discovered? Possible. If he had screamed, had the noise in the house been so loud that Billy couldn’t be heard? What about neighbours? None of them had mentioned screaming in their statements either. Given the struggle evidenced by the damage to Billy’s hands, screaming in panic would be a natural response. But perhaps the intense toxic fumes had made it impossible to inhale sufficiently for an audible cry.

Brook reread the statements from four of the Stanforths’ neighbours. Several had seen Brendan McCleary walking along Moor Lane towards the Stanforth house before the fire. No one had seen him entering or leaving the Stanforth property or walking back to his home in Pole’s Road less than a mile away.

‘But it was winter and it would be dark and cold, so curtains would be drawn.’

Brook scanned the witness list at the front of the file again, stopping at Charlotte Dilkes’s name. Next to her entry, DC Walter Laird had recorded the date of her death – June 1964.

Only six months after Billy Stanforth’s death. Interesting
.

Brook thought no more of it before coming across a further note about her demise. He checked the signature at the bottom of the page. Again Walter Laird, now a DS, had written it.

Brook skimmed the account of Charlotte’s sad but banal death. She had gone out to play on her own in nearby fields and had fallen into a pond. The pond wasn’t large or particularly deep but Charlotte was small for her age and, unable to swim or clamber out, had drowned in just five feet of water. She was only thirteen years old. There were no witnesses and no signs of force or trauma on her little body. The inquest had returned a verdict of accidental death.

Interestingly, in spite of the inquest, DS Laird had seen fit to interview Brendan McCleary and Amelia Stanforth in an attempt to establish a connection between the deaths of Billy Stanforth and Charlotte Dilkes. Brook sat back to ponder this. Perhaps Laird had been convinced that one, or both, of them had murdered Amelia’s brother, Billy. Why they might then have decided to kill Charlotte was unknown but if she was a witness to Billy’s murder they might have decided to cover their tracks.

A moment later, Brook shook his head. It was a bit thin. If Charlotte Dilkes had witnessed something during Billy’s murder, presumably she would have given evidence to that effect during the original inquiry.

Brook finished reading Laird’s notes – neither Brendan McCleary nor Amelia Stanforth had an alibi for the approximate time of Charlotte’s death. McCleary, by then an eighteen year old, claimed he was out fishing, though nobody could be found to corroborate that, and sixteen-year-old Amelia said she was alone in her bedroom. So at the time of the drowning, the two were less than half a mile from the scene, although this wasn’t enough to affect the coroner’s verdict.

Brook turned to the final wallet in the file – photographs of the partygoers taken
before
the fire. He took them out and picked through them. There were only a dozen, mostly taken by Mr Stanforth because he was only in one of them – a family shot taken of Bert and his wife Ruth, smiling happily with Billy and his twin Francesca, each sitting on a parent’s knee. Presumably elder sister Amelia had taken this snap because she was missing from the family group.

All four wore a folded newspaper, in lieu of a party hat, and the kind of jovial, crooked-toothed grins that traditionally made Americans bemoan the complete absence of dental surgeries in the UK.

Other pictures showed bright-eyed, thin-limbed children enjoying the luxury of orange squash and trifle, playing various party games and generally grinning happily for Bert Stanforth’s camera. Unlike digital cameras, however, there was no data that could give a clue as to what time, and in what order, these pictures had been taken so Brook had to piece them together the best he could.

He turned to the back of each photo. There was a developer’s stamp on all of them, J.E. Browns of Derby, and a date – 20 January 1964 – nearly a month after Billy’s death. Assuming it wouldn’t take as long as a month to develop photographs, even in those days, Brook surmised that these pictures had been forgotten about in the aftermath of the tragedy. Later, they must have been sent for processing, whether by the Stanforths or detectives, Brook couldn’t be sure.

The final three photographs in the pile were shots of the entire gathering, much like schools would take an end-of-year picture of an entire class. One had been taken inside the house and two had been taken earlier in the afternoon, in the garden, while still light. Bert Stanforth was absent from all three and presumably behind the camera. The rest of the family, including Amelia, were in shot, as were all of Billy’s friends and schoolmates. Billy was arm in arm with one particular lightly built boy as they leered at the camera.

One of the garden pictures was similar to the image taken in the house – a group shot. The other picture was clearly a dry run, a failed attempt to take the ensemble photo, which had ended in disarray. The assembly had broken up and children were scattering in all directions, looking towards a dog which had run across the garden and distracted them. The dog was visible at the edge of the shot being collared by a young arm out of the frame. The arm sported a bracelet so – assuming boys didn’t wear jewellery in 1963 – must have belonged to one of the girls.

In both outdoor pictures, the sky was darkening and the wind was getting up. Several people were hanging on to their paper hats and some girls were pushing down their billowing skirts.

Brook plucked a large fist of used Blu-Tack from a drawer and arranged all the photographs on a large whiteboard, putting them in the best chronological order he could come up with. He looked carefully at each picture in turn.

Brook found a sheet of tracing paper at the bottom of the packet of photographs. It had been used to trace around the figures in one of the group photographs and, helpfully, whoever had gone to that trouble had put a name to each member of the shot. Brook looked at the three group photographs then Blu-Tacked the sheet of tracing paper above the second picture taken in the garden. Everyone but Bert Stanforth had been named on it.

When he’d finished, he turned again to the list of witnesses at the front of the file. In the fifty intervening years, the list had been amended many times by reviewing officers, as people who were there that afternoon had passed away.

Brook scrolled down the list of names. Amelia Stanforth and Edward Mullen, Billy’s best friend, were both still alive four years ago when Greatorix had reviewed the case. So were three other school friends of Billy’s though only Edna Spencer (nee Hibbert) still lived in Derby. Brendan McCleary was also alive and living in the city. All the other people in the photographs were either dead or untraceable.

Bert Stanforth had died, in 1976, at the age of sixty-five. His wife Ruth had followed in 1981. Beside both their names and dates of death were the initials ‘NC’ – natural causes.

Brook’s finger came to rest on the name of Billy’s twin sister, Francesca Stanforth. She had died in 1968 at the tender age of just eighteen. Significantly, she had died on her birthday which, as Billy’s twin, was also the fifth anniversary of her brother’s death – 22 December. Her date of death was followed by the initials ‘AD’ – accidental death. There were no other details, which suggested that her death had been properly investigated before being deemed an accident.