Penshaw: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 13) Page 15

  Watson might not have been one for fancy technology or nights in watching Netflix, but one area in which he seemed to have been very committed was his work, and his activism, which must have been influenced by his father. Phillips reasoned that, if there was nothing to find at home, perhaps there might be something to find at the jobcentre in Sunderland.

  And he was right.

  The office was experiencing an early-afternoon rush when he stepped through the automatic doors, and it was a mission to find a member of staff who could spare a couple of minutes. He lingered beside the front desk, which he noticed was manned by a bored-looking security guard, and waited to cut in.

  “Here! Can’t you see there’s a queue?”

  Phillips turned to see a young woman pushing a wheelchair, on which sat an even younger woman, who was clearly very unwell.

  “Sorry, pet, but I’m with the police. I just need someone to point me in the right direction, then I’ll step aside and leave you to it.”

  She seemed mollified by that, and they stood patiently side by side until the manager at the desk finished with the customer she was seeing.

  “Police, eh?” she continued, curiously. “Should we be worried?”

  Phillips gave her a friendly smile.

  “No, lass,” he murmured, and decided he might as well make small talk. Sometimes, you learned the most helpful things, when you let people talk.

  “What sort of job are you looking for, then?”

  “I’ve already got one,” she replied. “I’m here for Maisie. She’s my sister.”

  Phillips smiled at the younger woman in the chair, who did not respond.

  “Carer’s benefit?”

  She let out a mirthless laugh.

  “Not quite,” she muttered. “Apparently, Maisie’s supposed to be applying for jobs, otherwise she’s lazy. It doesn’t matter that she was in a near-fatal car accident when she was only a baby, that left her with lifelong brain damage. She can’t read or write—she can barely talk. She can smile,” her sister said, reaching down to stroke the top of Maisie’s head. “But they need her to check in, so that the government can be sure she’s not leeching off the state.”

  Phillips was gobsmacked.

  “You mean to tell me they’re expecting her to apply for jobs?”

  The woman nodded.

  “It’s soul-destroying. I’m all for disability rights, and looking at the whole person, but Maisie…she just isn’t capable, and it’s cruel to put her through this.”

  “Next, please?”

  “Nice chattin’ to you, love. All the best,” he said, with another smile for Maisie. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe it.”

  The duty manager was a woman called Moira, who became tearful almost as soon as Phillips imparted the bad news that Simon Watson would not be coming into work, ever again. “To think, I was cross at him this morning,” she said, and blew her nose loudly. “I thought he hadn’t turned up, and I tried to call him—”

  Mobile phone, Phillips thought suddenly. Had they found Simon’s mobile?

  “It’s a job share, you see. Simon does Monday to Wednesday, and I’m only supposed to do Thursdays and Fridays.”

  “Sorry to inconvenience you,” Phillips said, with rigid politeness. “Did Simon have a locker or a desk?”

  “We don’t have lockers, but he has a permanent desk,” Moira said. “I’ll show you.”

  Phillips followed her to one of the wide desks set out at the back of the room, presumably situated so that Simon could keep an eye on the rest of the office.

  Immediately, his eye landed on the locked drawer at the bottom and he remembered the keyring they’d found in Watson’s bungalow, which was now bagged up with the rest of Simon’s belongings.

  “Do you have a master key for that?” he asked.

  Moira bustled off to find it, leaving Phillips to discreetly draw on some nitrile gloves. Luckily, being at the back of the room meant there were fewer people to goggle at what he was doing—or question why he was wearing gloves.

  The desk was as clear and unfussy, which seemed to have been Simon’s signature style. On his desk, there was a lamp, a pot containing some biros, a small bottle of antiseptic hand gel and some tissues. Phillips raised an eyebrow, and reasoned it would have been necessary to take precautions against illness, given the number of strangers the late Simon Watson might have met and shaken hands with, through the course of a day.

  Presently, Moira returned brandishing the master key.

  When she continued to linger, Phillips turned to her again.

  “Sorry to be a hassle, but could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

  “Of course!”

  Left alone again, Phillips opened the locked drawers in Simon’s desk and began to rifle through the first, which contained the usual assortment of stationery and notebooks he would expect to find. The second wasn’t much better, seeming to hold a collection of policy documents for reference, as well as a number of files marked ‘COMPLEX’ or ‘URGENT’ and a stack of freshly printed leaflets advertising the forthcoming Jobcentre Strike against Universal Credit, and a rally to be held at Penshaw Monument that Friday.

  But then, when he opened the bottom drawer, Phillips hit the jackpot.

  Lying at the top of a stack of odds and ends was a medium-sized brown manila envelope addressed to Alan Watson, Simon’s father. It was post-marked for the previous Saturday, and Phillips deduced that it couldn’t have been delivered to Alan before the fire. Perhaps it had been delivered to Simon instead?

  With careful hands, Phillips picked it up and peered inside the torn edge to see a small sheaf of papers and a covering letter bearing the government logo of ‘GCHQ’. Spotting Moira as she crossed the room, he slid the envelope inside a plastic evidence bag and decided to assess its contents later, in the relative privacy of Police Headquarters.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the proffered glass of water, which he duly sipped. “Tell me, Moira. Did you know Simon Watson well?”

  The woman gave a half shrug.

  “Not really,” she said. “We were like ships in the night, working on different days. People liked him, though, and he was popular with the staff. He was organising that rally.”

  “You taking part?” Phillips asked, out of sheer curiosity.

  “Of course,” she said, as if it were a silly question. “Everybody in this office will be turning out. We might have to do the government’s bidding, but it doesn’t mean we agree with it, and it’s about time we said as much. Simon’s sister, Sally, is going to talk at the rally,” she added, with a touch of admiration. “She’s head of the local council, and every little helps.”

  Phillips nodded, and thought that, for all their misfortunes, the Watsons were a close-knit family who clearly supported one another. It reminded him of his own family, and the family he was still building.

  “I hope it’s a success,” he said, thinking of Maisie and her sister, who were by now seated at another desk across the room speaking to a man who appeared to be shaking his head an awful lot.

  He dragged his wayward thoughts back to the matter in hand.

  “Do you know if Simon had been particularly worried about anything, or anyone?”

  Moira pulled a face while she thought.

  “No, I can’t say that I do. He was very sad to hear what had happened to his father, of course. Dreadful thing, that.”

  “Mm, terrible,” Phillips agreed.

  Interviewing witnesses was like a dance, he thought. People needed a bit of back-and-forth, to help draw them out.

  “He’d been preoccupied organising the rally ahead of the strike,” she continued. “But, if anything, he was optimistic about it. I wouldn’t say he was worried but, as I say, I didn’t know him well. You might have more luck speaking to Sean—they were good friends, I think.”

  She pointed across the room to a young man.

  “He’s the
one to speak to.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Sally and Mike Emerson left the hospital in Durham and didn’t speak until they were safely inside their brand-new SUV. It was a bit of a risky purchase, given that Sally’s reputation had been built largely on the presumption that she was ‘one of the people.’ The people in her borough liked to believe she was ‘one of them’; a miner’s daughter who understood what it meant to work—really work—as hard as you could, and still not be able to buy trainers for your kids’ feet.

  Sally had come to understand the power of persuasion very young in life.

  Her father had been a classic idealist, and her mother wasn’t much better. They both subscribed to the notion that there was no shame in being poor. They used to tell her that, so long as they had each other, they were rich.

  She’d hated it.

  She’d hated seeing pictures of pretty clothes in Jackie magazine that she’d never be able to buy. She’d hated seeing adverts for summer holidays on the telly, in far off places they’d never be able to visit. She hated seeing the Queen giving her ruddy speech from her golden palace, the likes of which she’d never know.

  What made them so much better?

  Soon enough, she’d realised that all those people she envied weren’t better, they were just smarter. They’d educated themselves and taken whatever chances came their way, to get ahead in life. The problem was, she didn’t even have GCEs.

  That’s when she’d enrolled in night school, and Simon had tagged along too.

  She’d always been the one to push him on, she thought, with a sad little sigh.

  “Looks like she’s going to pull through,” Mike said, interrupting her reverie.

  Everything about her husband was an irritant, and had been since they were children knocking about in the playground. Michael Emerson had been a poser all his life; a flirt, a braggart, a man other men tolerated but did not necessarily like. Living with him had been a penance, and she’d paid it for long enough.

  “I want a divorce,” she said, very clearly.

  She heard his shocked intake of breath, and he shifted in the driver’s seat to look at her.

  “What?” he blustered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on, Mike. You know there’s nothing between us. There hasn’t been for a long time.”

  Ever.

  He sat in absolute silence for long, tense seconds as she stared out of the windscreen and watched a light drizzle coat the glass.

  “You haven’t thought this through,” he said, but didn’t bother to argue with the sentiment. His girlfriend had been asking for him to get a divorce for months, now, but he’d never actually planned to go through with it.

  Their lives were too entwined. Too dependent.

  “You need me,” he said, simply. “It’ll look bad for your next campaign.”

  Sally laughed.

  “I need you?” she said bitterly, but stopped herself from launching into a tirade, not wanting to go too far.

  “Listen, Mike. This can work for both of us,” she said, in a placatory tone. “We can sell up and share the proceeds. We can still work together as business partners.”

  “Oh, aye,” he said. “What about your new partner? What would he have to say about that?”

  Sally said nothing.

  “Well, he needs me too. You both do,” Mike said, arrogantly, and turned the ignition. “Remember that, next time you think you can brush me off.”

  They both jumped when there came a sharp tap on the side window.

  * * *

  Phillips had been on his way to check on Joan Watson’s status, but had spotted Sally and Mike Emerson seated inside their parked car and decided to kill two birds with one stone.

  “Sorry to startle you,” he said, when she lowered the passenger window. “I wondered if we could have a quick chat. Is this a good time?”

  “Jump in,” Mike said, and Sally shot him an angry glare that he chose to ignore.

  Phillips settled himself in the back seat and took his time getting out his notebook and pencil, while he read the mood inside the leather-clad interior.

  “Please accept our condolences again,” he said, thinking of an ardent man who was now lost to the world. “How’s Mrs Watson keeping?”

  “The doctors say she’s stabilised,” Sally replied, speaking quietly. “My mother’s always been the strongest person in our family.”

  “She seems a very fine woman,” Phillips agreed.

  When neither person offered any comment, he changed tack.

  “Ah, well, I really need to ask you a few questions surrounding your brother’s last movements,” he said. “We’re still a bit unclear about what happened last night.”

  “Seems obvious that he fell off the wagon again,” Mike said, not unkindly. “It’s was hard to get him clean. Maybe he’d been struggling these last few days, and we just didn’t notice.”

  “He seemed depressed, the last time we spoke,” Sally said. “I didn’t think too much of it, because I wasn’t exactly feeling top of the bill, myself.”

  “That’s to be expected, with the loss of your father,” Phillips said, sympathetically. “When did you last speak to your brother, Mrs Emerson?”

  “Sally,” she corrected him. “Ah, it would have been yesterday afternoon. He rang to ask after mum, and to let me know what time he’d be back to take over. We had a sort of system in place, where either Mike or I would try to be there for mum during the day, to let the nurse in when she arrived and make her meals, then Simon took over the evening shift. He was ringing to let me know he’d be home a bit late.”

  “Did he say why he’d be late?”

  “No—I asked him, but he told me it was just work stuff.”

  Phillips frowned. He happened to know that the jobcentre closed at a regular time each day, and the staff there didn’t tend to work overtime due to the service nature of their roles.

  “Did you sense anything strange about his general demeanour?” Phillips asked. “Did he seem anxious?”

  “He was definitely out of sorts,” she said. “He was being very philosophical about life, talking about whether any of it made any difference—the rally he was organising, for instance.”

  “Were you in fear for his safety?”

  “You mean, did he seem suicidal?” Sally asked, and then blew out a shaky breath. “I—I don’t know, sergeant. Now that I know he took an overdose, I’ve been thinking back over the conversation. Should I have said something different? Should I have known?”

  Sally shook her head, battling tears.

  “Simon was very unwell, trapped in a cycle for years,” she said. “My mum and dad tried everything to get him off the drugs. I’d given up on him, for a while. We both had.”

  “He nicked off with a hundred quid out of my wallet, that time, and I said it was the last straw,” Mike said, pensively. “But then, once he went through the programme and out the other end, he paid me back. Paid us back every last penny.”

  “Seems like, for all he had problems with addiction, your brother was a good man, Mrs Emerson.”

  Sally closed her eyes, trying not to remember the final image of her brother as a thousand images of them together washed through her memory. Fifty years of living, not all of them good ones, but they’d never been parted—until now.

  “He was a good man, sergeant. Simon’s problem was always that he never knew when to stop.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The two men stood behind one of the large, concrete pillars that supported an office block on the northern side of the River Tyne, directly overlooking a large roundabout that gave access to the bridge and the centre of town. In the middle of the roundabout, another tall concrete tower housed one of the area’s local radio stations, as well as a couple of restaurants. Come Friday night, glamourous men and women would make their way down through the underpass and emerge to enjoy a haven of cocktails and Asian cuisine, as traffic passed them by.

  Food was far
from their minds as the two men spoke quietly beside the network of concrete walkways. Yards away, the site of a former Victorian soup kitchen took up a large plot on the other side of the road, where people could go and look around the old walls and talk about how sad it must have been in the nineteenth century while, in the tunnels beneath their feet, the city’s present-day homeless set up their sleeping bags in preparation for another cold and hungry night.

  “You’re sure about this?” Blackett asked.

  “I’ve documented everything,” Ryan replied, while his eyes roamed the immediate vicinity, lingering on the shadowy corners.

  “Hard to believe Lowerson would do it,” Blackett said, thinking of the young detective constable he’d always viewed as more of a victim of circumstance than anything else.

  “Yeah, well. It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?” Ryan muttered. “Are you happy to keep the status quo, for the moment, and see how it pans out?”

  Blackett rubbed his chin, and then nodded.

  “Yes, I think that’s for the best,” he said. “My officer on the inside reckons they’re close to getting some of the others to come on the record. They need some more time.”

  Ryan frowned.

  “On the inside?”

  Blackett smiled.

  “Did you think we’ve been sitting on our hands, these past twelve months? I’ve had somebody on the ground since last June.”

  Ryan ran through all the men and women assigned to Operation Watchman and tried to work out which of them it might be, knowing full well it would be a waste of breath to ask Blackett.

  “You did the right thing, coming to me with this,” Blackett assured him. “We’ll take the appropriate steps, when the time comes.”

  Ryan thought of Jack, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “Don’t drag this out,” he said. “I want this tied up, sooner rather than later.”

  “You don’t get to make that call.”

  Ryan treated Blackett to an icy stare.

  “And you don’t get to play with people’s lives, Andy. Remember that.”