Michael Fowler - Secret of the Dead

“Bloody hell! Just look at this I’ve found Grace.” He held up the photograph at chest height. The next one in the pile caught his eye as well. He selected it. There was another of interest below that. The three photographs seemed to be a sequence of shots taken only seconds apart. They depicted three men standing close together on the top of some steps, at the front of what appeared to be a club entrance. The clarity was exceptional and there was no mistaking who two of the men were — Alan Darbyshire and Peter Blake-Hall. And the third man in the group especially caught his eye. Hunter couldn’t be certain, but he was a similar height and build to the fellow he’d chased at Jeffery Howson’s funeral and who had recently assaulted him. This was a golden nugget, he told himself, scooping up the remainder of the photographs.

* * * * *

It was another early de-briefing session. SIO Michael Robshaw bounced on the balls of his feet as he made his way to the front of the incident room.

He said in an elated voice, “Eyes and ears guys, important things to discuss.” Excitedly, he rubbed his hands together. “Not one, but two breakthroughs today. Firstly, Road Policing Unit took a call from a man who lives in Wentworth. He’s told them that about eleven o’clock on Monday night, he’d just let his dog out, and was standing on his doorstep, when a dark coloured four-by-four went speeding past on the High Street, travelling towards Harley. He describes the vehicle as going like the clappers, and said it was not displaying any lights. Although he wasn’t able to clock its number, he’s been able to identify the make and model of the vehicle because he’s got a similar one. It’s a Mitsubishi Shogun Sport and he says it’s got blacked out windows. That’s the second time a four-by-four has featured in this enquiry. If you’ll recall I mentioned the day before yesterday, that a couple had seen a dark coloured one parked near to the entranceway of a footpath, which leads up to the bottom of Jeffery Howson’s garden, on the evening of the night we believe he was murdered. Now, as I’ve said before, this may just be a coincidence, but I don’t like coincidences, especially where murder is involved, and so I’ve sent someone round to his house straight away to get a statement from him and see if he can tell us any more than what he’s already told Traffic. And for the second piece of good news, I’m going to hand over to Hunter.”

Hunter sprang from his seat, holding aloft two of the photographs he had found in Guy Armstrong’s house. “These were among a dozen-or-so similar shots we found in his lounge and I’ve picked out these two for a reason.” He separated the photos, placing one in each hand. Raising them before his audience, he continued, “I think you can all make out that it features our main suspect Alan Darbyshire, and the person who is poking him in the chest is Peter Blake-Hall. I recognise him from our interview the other day. And, although I can’t be one-hundred-per-cent sure, the third person, who has his back towards us, looks a lot like the man I disturbed at Jodie’s. These photographs are all timed and dated digital shots and were taken at eleven-oh-four on the morning of tenth November. Now to me, looking at the actions of Peter Blake-Hall, and by his facial expressions, this looks as if he and Alan Darbyshire are in a heated discussion. On the back of the photos, the names of Alan Darbyshire and Peter Blake-Hall have been penned, plus one other, Ronald Fisher.”

As he sat down, he could see, from the faces of the team, that the significance of all this was starting to sink in.

“I know what you’re all thinking,” said Detective Superintendent Robshaw, holding up his hand. “But there’s just one more person I want to bring in before I outline what the next lines of enquiry are.” He turned to Barry Newstead, “Barry, you’ve spoken with retired DCI Burrows today.”

Until the SIO’s invitation to speak, Barry had been hunched over his desk, listening intently. He now jerked back in his seat, tugged a finger at the collar of his shirt and cleared his throat.

He responded, “Yeah boss, I caught up with Ted Burrows earlier today, he’s living over in Ecclesfield. He’s seventy-four now, but his mind is still sharp as a knife and he can certainly remember the Pendlebury case.” He shuffled forward. “You’ve heard most of the story already, from what Hunter read out in the papers, and judging by what Mr Burrows told me, the headline of the first article we saw yesterday adequately sums up what was discovered that morning. Ted Burrows says it really was a vicious attack — blood everywhere. He described the place as like a slaughterhouse. The couple had over fifty stab wounds between them and in old man Pendlebury’s case his head had almost been severed.” Barry stretched his neck from his loose shirt collar and cleared his throat again. “The robbers had got away with quite a bit of gear. As well as some of the jewellery from the displays, the safe had been expertly blown and virtually emptied. The Pendleburys, however, had kept good records. The couple had written and described all their stock in a ledger upstairs, which meant that the investigation team were able to compile a list of what had been stolen and get it circulated quite quickly. Within a couple of days they were given a name of someone who was trying to sell on some of the stuff — Ronnie Fisher.” He paused and wiped his mouth. “Ronnie, back then, was known to Sheffield police, but only as a car thief. He’d been pulled a few times but led a bit of a charmed life. Even as a youngster he was known as a ‘no comment’ merchant. When he was first mentioned for the Pendlebury job, despite him being twenty years old he’d already had one spell in borstal. He’d got twelve months for nicking a couple of cars when he was fourteen. However, Ted says that once they started doing some digging about him, they learned that a few months before the Pendleburys’ job, there was a rumour circulating that he’d stabbed a man during a pub fight. The man he’d supposedly stabbed was himself a well-known villain, with a bit of a hard-man reputation. But there hadn’t been a complaint, so as part of the enquiry, they visited him. The villain’s name was Shaun Brown — he’s dead now — died of cancer a couple of years back. He was more than happy to grass on Ronnie Fisher, not only confirmed that Ronnie had stabbed him in the shoulder, and in the leg, after an argument over a girl, but he also told the team that it was common knowledge that Ronnie carried a knife and it was all round the grapevine that Ronnie had been involved in the Pendlebury robbery and was desperate to get rid of the gear. He not only dropped Ronnie’s name but also George Blake and his son Peter. In George’s case, everything fitted together. They had lots of intelligence about him. He’d done time in his early twenties for house and shop burglary and had apparently learned how to blow safes during his first prison spell. In the early seventies, there’d been a spate of safe jobs at working men’s clubs up and down the country and George’s name had been put forward on quite a few occasions. Unfortunately, despite him being pulled in, the evidence hadn’t been there to convict and so he’d got away Scot-free. There was also a rumour that he was doing jobs down in London for some of the gangs there, but again they couldn’t get enough evidence against him to convict. The Flying Squad had even given him a tug, but he was clean as a whistle and so never did any time. That was until the Pendlebury job.” He wiped his mouth again. “The team raided George’s house in High Green and Ronnie Fisher’s mum’s house at Ecclesfield. Peter Blake lived with his dad back then. He was an apprentice mechanic working for a local garage. Although they didn’t find any of the stolen jewellery at their homes, they also had info about a lock-up garage which Ronnie used and they searched that as well. It was there they found most of the gear from the Pendlebury job. All three were arrested and the upshot was that George confessed. To be fair, they did find a pair of boots belonging to George, which perfectly matched a shoe print they found in old man Pendlebury’s dried blood, so it was obvious he had been at the scene, but Ted Burrows tells me it took the team completely by surprise as to how quickly George had rolled over and admitted everything. There were a lot of inconsistencies about George’s story, but no matter how hard they pushed him, he stuck to his confession. Even when they charged him, they believed he was only admitting it to protect his son, Peter, and Ronnie. In fact the more digging around they did into Ronnie and Peter’s background, the more they realised that was the case. They pulled Peter and Ronnie in on several occasions throughout the enquiry, however, they couldn’t get a cough out of the pair — both alibied one another and George indicated he was happy to plead guilty to the Pendlebury murders. In nineteen-seventy-five he got life. Ted Burrows told me that the sad thing about the case was that he knew they had not got to the bottom of the job. They were convinced that Ronnie and Peter had been involved in it and that they believed it had been Ronnie who’d murdered the Pendleburys. They did a couple of prison visits to George, but he stuck to his story and that was it. Then, in September ninety-ninety-eight, he was found dead in his cell. Someone had cut his throat. It’s believed a razor was used on him. They never found who’d done it.” Once more he wiped his mouth this time with the cuff of his jacket sleeve. “That’s it regarding those murders, but I’ll tell you what else I’ve found, and I’ve been able to check some of it out with the Intelligence Unit.” Barry glanced down at his jotter. It was full of his scrawling handwriting. He put on his glasses, focused on a section of it for a few seconds, then looked up and removed his reading spectacles. “In nineteen-eighty-six there are several entries in the system linking Peter and Ronnie to drugs. It’s low-grade intelligence from a couple of users, and it’s not supported by hard information, but they all state the same thing, and that is that they were bringing in amphetamine from Holland and banging it out in Wigan and Leeds at soul night venues. Now we’ve already been told that Peter was importing cars from Germany during the nineteen eighties. The suggestion was that he was bringing in the drugs hidden inside those cars. As I say, none of the intelligence is corroborated by any of the agencies and there’s nothing on the system indicating if it was acted upon or not. There was a marker on the intelligence though. It would appear that the pair had been flagged up by the Crime Squad, at that time, who operated out of the Wakefield office. As you’re aware, it no longer exists now, The Serious and Organised Crime Agency has been set up in the place of Crime Squads, so I’ve spoken to someone from the Intelligence Unit there and they’ve told me that, sadly, Ronnie and Peter are not on the new system. When the new organisation was formed there was a trawl through the old intelligence and if it wasn’t current and hadn’t been updated for three years then it was discarded. So I’m trying to track down those members who were part of number three crime squad back in the eighties, to see if I can get the full sp on Peter and Ronnie.”