Stephen Booth - The kill call

‘I think you’d better tell us about it, David,’ said Cooper. ‘We’re going to find out now, one way or another.’

Headon stared into his glass. ‘Someone died. A boy got killed.’

‘I don’t really understand this, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘But we need to know more about these deaths. You’re right — there is some connection, isn’t there?’

‘I think so, Diane. But I just can’t see why, or what the link is.’

‘I’ll make a few calls. It should all be on record.’

‘What about Pauline Outram? Do you think she knows more than she told us?’

Fry thought for a moment. ‘No. She was genuine. Don’t forget, she never knew her mother, or her father either. She has no memories of her own from that time, and none that have been passed down to her, either.’

‘And everyone else in Birchlow seems to have decided not to talk about it.’

‘We’ll see.’

The archives took a lot of tracking down on a Sunday. Without the internet and digital archiving, they would have had to wait another day. But, over the course of the afternoon, they dug out newspaper reports of the original incident, an inquest report, photographs of some of the individuals involved. Bit by bit, they managed to piece together the story. The story of the Birchlow observer post.

‘June 1968,’ said Cooper. ‘They were dismantling at the end of an exercise. Three observers on a shift, as usual. The young man who died was Jimmy Hind.’

Fry had brought a drink of water to her desk. Archives made her mouth feel dry, even when they were digital. She could practically feel the dust on the back of her throat. But it was such a relief to be back at work properly. She felt much more at ease now, restored to her own environment, with Cooper back in his chair, head bent over a file. Enough socializing for now.

‘The other two people involved were…?’ she said.

‘The first was Leslie Michael Clay — he was leading observer, the number one in charge of the post during the shift.’

‘Leslie Michael Clay? But that can’t be the same Clay we’re looking for. He’d be well into his eighties by now.’

‘Our Michael Clay is fifty-one. He would have been too young in 1968.’

‘This was probably his father then, do you think?’

‘Could be,’ said Cooper. ‘Then there was the number two observer. Jimmy Hind’s friend, Peter Massey.’

‘Your farmer at Rough Side Farm. Go on.’

‘At the end of an exercise, the crew had to take down and dismantle all the equipment. The smaller items they took home with them for safe-keeping, but the larger bits of equipment were stored inside the post. When the accident happened, Clay and Massey were lowering the siren down the shaft, and it seems they hadn’t tied a very good knot. Hind was underneath it, waiting to position it at the bottom of the shaft.’

For a moment, they both studied the photograph of the post crew. Jimmy Hind was identifiable from the newspaper pictures. A slight young man in round, wire-rimmed glasses, with long hair sticking out from under his beret.

‘It was reported at the inquest that Clay was a lot bigger and stronger than Massey, so maybe there wasn’t an equal strain on the rope, but they could never be sure exactly what went wrong. Anyway, when it was halfway down, the siren bumped off the side of the shaft, and a knot slipped loose. Hind might have tried to dodge — there was a sort of toilet cubicle just behind him. But he didn’t make it. The siren hit Hind on the head, cracked his skull open. He went down, and the siren broke both his legs when it fell on him.’

‘And he was killed outright?’

‘Not outright. He lived on for a couple of weeks, before they turned off his life support.’

‘How old was Jimmy Hind again?’ asked Fry.

‘Seventeen.’

‘All his life ahead of him.’

Cooper nodded. ‘That’s what the coroner said, too.’

Fry looked at the printouts Cooper had gathered. She had the impression that he, too, was glad to be back at work. Since they’d both returned from Longstone Moor, their eyes had hardly met — the reports they’d unearthed had taken all their attention. With luck, some of the things they’d talked about today would never be mentioned again.

‘You’ve got another inquest there,’ she said.

‘I looked up Shirley Outram, too.’

‘Pauline’s mother?’

‘Yes. Shirley Outram died in 1970. Inquest verdict: took her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed.’

‘Pauline said her mother killed herself. That’s why she was brought up in foster homes.’

‘I wonder why she wasn’t actually adopted?’ said Cooper.

‘Some children aren’t. They just never find the right home.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘How did Shirley do it?’ asked Fry. ‘A drowning, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. They found her floating in Birch Reservoir.’

‘Floating. So she must have been dead a few days. And no one else was involved?’

‘Not that was ever shown,’ said Cooper. ‘There was plenty of evidence that she was depressed. The coroner heard witness statements from Shirley Outram’s parents, her GP, and one of her friends.’

‘Oh? Which friend?’

‘Peter Massey again. He seems to have been close to both Hind and Outram.’

‘What did he have to say?’

‘According to Massey’s statement, Shirley Outram had been having a bad time after the birth of the child. The child was illegitimate, as you know.’

‘Yes, the father was Stuart Clay.’

‘That wasn’t mentioned at the inquest,’ said Cooper, frowning. ‘It probably never came out at the time.’

‘Well, it was 1968 — that’s the way it was back then.’

‘Yes, you’re right. It was something that people didn’t talk about. It was still the 1950s, in some ways.’

Fry tapped the file irritably. ‘That was the trouble with public inquests then, too. In suicide cases, the coroner would fall over backwards to make the whole process more tolerable for the victim’s family. That meant being, well… sparing with the details.’

‘They suppressed evidence, you mean?’

‘If it was considered potentially distressing for the family, yes.’

‘It ought to have been covered in the initial police enquiry, though.’

‘Possibly.’

But Fry didn’t feel entirely convinced of that. The tacit agreement not to talk about things had probably included the police in these parts. She was sure that old-school officers like Cooper’s father would have been perfectly willing to leave embarrassing details out of their reports.

She felt the familiar surge of satisfaction running through her veins now, the feeling of an enquiry that was finally starting to come together.

‘Massey and Hind were about the same age,’ she said. ‘And this ROC post was on the Masseys’ land, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So does it still exist? Or was it demolished?’

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ said Cooper.

Fry raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Ben.’

The windscreen wipers on the Toyota were struggling to clear the rain sweeping across Longstone Moor as Cooper drove back towards Rough Side Farm.

He remembered his assumptions about Birchlow. The natural instinct to distrust the unfamiliar. Politeness on the surface, suspicion underneath. He wouldn’t have endeared himself to these people by asking questions, or by seeming to know too much. His worst crime was probably sticking his nose into something that no one ever talked about.

The pastures of Rough Side Farm were wet, their acres of deep browns and greens stretching along the hillside. Peter Massey met him near the gate, as if he’d been expecting a visitor. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap, but Massey seemed oblivious. He screwed up his blue eyes to examine Cooper as he got out of the Toyota.