Demolition, page 18
The housing estate he turned into was called Silverwood, and all the streets and avenues were named after places on the Bowland Fells – Tarnbrook Close or Whitendale Avenue; the one he was after was Brim Clough Close on which a certain family resided, namely Dale and Andrea Renshaw, their names being on the voters’ register. Anyone under eighteen was not listed, so Henry had no clue if the Renshaws had kids or not.
He didn’t know much about Dale, even less about Andrea.
Dale had started to frequent The Tawny Owl in the periods when it was allowed to open during the pandemic. He was mid-forties, Henry guessed, which was a similar age to James Twain, and Henry thought he was a landscape gardener but wasn’t certain. He knew nothing at all about Andrea, though he’d seen her with Dale a few times at the pub, and she seemed a bit younger, nice and attractive. As a couple, they came across as morose and unhappy.
‘Number eight,’ Blackstone said. ‘This one.’
He drew in outside a decent but bland detached house, lawned garden, wide driveway, two vehicles on it, one a flat-back SUV with Renshaw Landscaping on the side, confirming Henry’s vague knowledge of Dale’s occupation; the other was a small Renault.
‘You want to take the lead on this?’ Henry asked.
‘Let’s keep it fluid.’
‘Whatever.’ Henry knocked and rang the doorbell, a little fizz of excitement in him as, once more, he would be stepping into another person’s world. The joys of policing. Dale Renshaw came to the door in a pair of mud-caked overalls. He looked warily at the pair; he recognized Henry but seeing him out of context made him frown.
‘What?’ he said abruptly.
‘Dale Renshaw?’ Blackstone asked. He nodded. She stepped in ahead of Henry, flashed her warrant card and introduced herself.
‘OK, but you’re the pub landlord, aren’t you?’ Renshaw asked Henry.
‘I am, but I also work as an investigator for Lancashire Constabulary. May we come in for a chat?’
Renshaw sighed. ‘I’m assuming this is about James Twain? So just let me get one thing clear: I’m glad the dirty bastard’s dead and I only wish I’d had the guts to do it, but I didn’t.’ Having made his point, he smiled, took a step back and said, ‘Come in.’ Then called out, ‘Andrea, we have visitors.’
‘You guessed right, we are investigating James Twain’s murder,’ Henry said, looking at Renshaw, then at his wife, Andrea, who was sitting meekly on an armchair. Henry and Blackstone were on the settee, Renshaw on the other chair positioned directly opposite Andrea, so she was constantly in his line of sight and seemed to be cowering under his glare.
‘And, of course, I’m a suspect,’ Renshaw said with contempt.
‘With what happened in The Tawny Owl, we’d be remiss not to show you some interest,’ Henry said reasonably.
Renshaw nodded.
‘So, shall we begin with why what happened in the pub happened?’
Renshaw said to his wife, ‘Do you want to tell them or should I?’
She hunched down further and opened her mouth to speak, but Renshaw cut her off with a jerk of his hand and said, ‘No, I’ll tell ’em because that way it’ll be the truth, eh? Fucking bitch!’
Henry could see Renshaw was almost boiling with rage and he cut in, ‘We keep this civil, Dale; otherwise, we talk at the cop shop.’ Renshaw seemed on the verge of challenging that, but Henry said, ‘Yes, we can, in case you were wondering, and yes, we will if we have to.’
That seemed to make him take a breath.
‘Right, right,’ he said, rocking. ‘We came to live here from Manchester – yeah, to get away from all that gang shit our lad was getting into, for a nice, easy, simple fucking life in the country in a new build that has more problems than a fucking maths exam.’
‘Language,’ Blackstone said.
‘Sorry … anyway, here we are. I’m a builder, joiner, plasterer and landscape gardener, and I knew I could get work, especially with all these new houses being thrown up, and I ended up contracted to Twain, the cu—’ He stopped his profanity mid-C-word. ‘Doing all sorts of shit for him – him and his partner have all sorts of stuff going on around the place. Thought I’d hit the jackpot.’ Then he glared at Andrea again. ‘I was wrong – you hit the jackpot, didn’t you, dear? But you got bored first, didn’t you? I mentioned this to Twain, who said she could come and do some of his admin.’ He paused. ‘Which she did … only I didn’t realize that admin meant blow-jobs and arse-fucking.’
‘Dale,’ Henry warned him.
‘I should’ve known. Twain had a rep for shagging around – usually clients’ wives. Guy had no conscience, just a very big dick. Am I right, love?’
Henry noticed that Andrea’s expression had changed from meek and mild to one that mirrored her husband’s as a result of the belittling she was enduring.
‘Anyway,’ Renshaw said, cooling down slightly, ‘that’s what the thing in Th’Owl was about. He was there, lording it about with his dim missus in tow. I’d just come out for a couple of pints with a few mates after a barney with bitch-face here!’ He sneered at Andrea. ‘A row during which I told her my suspicions and she cracked instantly, sobbing like the pathetic bitch she is …’
‘Right,’ Blackstone interjected, ‘you speak like that again and we’re down at the station.’
Renshaw looked at her, sizing her up, then sizing up Henry, and he nodded. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t resist going for him when he came out of the bogs. Lucky I didn’t kill him there and then, actually. It would have saved you the job of finding out who did kill the cunt.’
‘I saw you watch him leave later. You were hiding in the shadows,’ Henry said.
‘I know. I know you saw me, but then I realized he wasn’t worth the effort – and you!’ He stabbed a finger at Andrea, making her jump. ‘You aren’t worth it either, are you? So I decided our marriage is over. She can fuck off back to Manchester where she’ll be less bored, and she can wallow in shit there because she’s getting nothing from me.’
‘OK, but what did you do after I saw you leave the pub? What were your movements from then up to, say, lunchtime the day after?’ Henry asked.
‘Came home. Argued. Slept on the settee. Went out to work early next morning – I’ve got a contract to do some gardens on an estate in Lancaster. I was at work just after six.’
‘Witnesses?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Two workmates. I’ll give you their names and phone numbers.’
‘OK,’ Henry said. ‘We still want a statement from you, so come up to The Tawny Owl at, say, two p.m. and we’ll take it then. One of the small function rooms is going to be used as a satellite office for the main murder investigation.’
‘I’ll come.’
‘We will want to take your fingerprints and a sample for DNA to eliminate you from the scene of the crime, too … just procedure, and I’m sure you’ll consent. They’ll be destroyed once you’ve been eliminated from the enquiries,’ Blackstone told him.
‘No worries.’
Henry glanced out of the front window and spotted Jake Niven doing a slow cruise past in the Land Rover, prompting Henry to change the subject and ask Renshaw some questions about the little gang that seemed to have evolved in the neighbourhood following the influx of new people from other areas.
As he did, he heard a movement upstairs – the shifting of a chair – and then the sound of someone coming down the stairs.
Before he could ask anything, the lounge door opened and a young man stuck his head in.
‘Dad? Who’s—?’ The lad stopped mid-question as Henry turned to look at him. They locked eyes and both froze for an instant in a moment of recognition.
The lad said, ‘Shit!’ and slammed the door.
Blackstone had also recognized him.
Henry shot to his feet, but Blackstone – younger, quicker – was up a second ahead of him and bounded around the settee and through the door after the lad who had shot out through the front door and was legging it down the avenue.
‘What the fuck?’ Renshaw said, rising quickly.
‘That your lad?’ Henry asked, pausing at the door.
Renshaw nodded worriedly. ‘Yeah, Callum.’
‘Well, he’s wanted for several serious offences including assault and burglary and for almost chopping my head off!’
It was obvious that Callum Renshaw knew his way intimately in, around and through the estate as he leapt over garden walls, low hedges and through back gardens in order to escape Blackstone’s clutches. As Blackstone ran, she somehow managed to call Jake Niven on her phone as she skidded after the lad.
She was as relentless as Callum was slippery.
Just as she thought she had him in her grasp, he dinked sideways and changed direction, but she was always there or thereabouts, closing in remorselessly like a hunting dog, never giving up, biding her time until her prey was exhausted. And, finally, he ran out of steam when, with Blackstone only feet behind him, he emerged from a back garden to find Jake’s Land Rover parked across the bottom of the drive.
He hesitated just long enough for Blackstone to power into the back of him, slam him into the side panel of the vehicle and enjoy wrenching his hands behind his back, telling him he was locked up and putting Jake’s handcuffs on him.
From their faces, Henry could tell Dale and Andrea Renshaw knew their son had been up to no good, and although they might not have known the full details of what he was up to, they knew it was serious.
When Jake drew up in front of their house with Callum handcuffed in the back, shouting, cursing and kicking the inside of the cage, Andrea began to weep. Dale had a look of disgust on his face, although Henry wasn’t sure who the expression was aimed at.
‘How old is he?’ Henry asked him.
‘Eighteen.’
‘In that case, he’s an adult and he’ll be given his rights when he gets to the station.’
‘He’s just a baby,’ Andrea whined.
Henry went cold and furious. ‘Yet old enough to deliberately try to drown an old lady, then attack her in her own home,’ he said. His voice quavered.
‘Jesus,’ Dale Renshaw uttered under his breath.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Andrea said.
Renshaw spun on her. ‘That’s exactly why we brought him up here, to get him out of the cesspit of Manchester, you stupid woman.’
‘What do you mean?’ Henry asked.
Renshaw’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head despairingly. ‘Among a ton of other shit, he likes hurting old people. You’ll find out when you check him out. He’s a lost cause.’
Henry pointed at Renshaw. ‘Don’t forget – two o’clock at Th’Owl, and your son will be at Blackpool police station … and if I have my way, he won’t be coming home soon.’
Blackstone jumped in with Henry, and Jake set off with Callum in the back of the Land Rover, still kicking and screaming and generally being obnoxious.
‘Two birds, sort of,’ Blackstone said. ‘Result.’ She was already interrogating her phone for any mention of Callum Renshaw.
‘If he’d come down five minutes later, we’d’ve walked out of there none the wiser,’ Henry admitted. ‘Sometimes you just get lucky, but I still think we would’ve got him sooner rather than later.’
Still concentrating on her phone, Blackstone said, ‘What d’you think about Dale Renshaw for James Twain? Suspect or not?’
‘He certainly seems like a man capable of hitting someone on the head with a spanner, and I think we need to ask Jake to keep an eye on the domestic situation.’
‘Maybe we should have locked him up just to be on the safe side?’
Henry made a ‘harumph’ noise and said, ‘Balancing act. We might yet come back; you never know. Certainly, we need to check with those workmates now before he primes them.’
‘I’m on it … but I’ve just accessed Greater Manchester Police’s intel system to see if there’s any mention of Callum – and there is.’ Blackstone read the screen for a few moments and then said bleakly, ‘Oh, wow!’
By this time, they had reached the centre of Thornwell village and the burnt-out remnants of The Swan’s Neck – just the outer walls with a collapsed roof, the whole sorry mess surrounded by linked industrial but temporary fencing. Henry stopped the car, briefly recalling his time there when he was a real cop investigating the disappearance of a female police officer. That had been a horrific job and the then-landlord, who had run the place down, had been on the periphery of all that. In some ways, Henry was glad The Swan’s Neck no longer existed as a pub, and maybe the best result would be to flatten it and turn it into new houses – give it some new life.
Blackstone looked up from her phone, realizing they had stopped. ‘What?’
‘Why do they want to save this? No one ever went in the place anyway,’ Henry murmured.
Blackstone looked at it. ‘It’ll fall down of its own accord soon.’
‘Whatever, it will need demolishing.’
Henry got out of the car and walked nose-up to the fencing. He found a gap between two sections, squeezed through and began to walk around the pub. At the back, there was a large car park, now overgrown. Under some bushes in the hedge, which had previously formed the perimeter of the car park, Henry had found the missing policewoman’s cap where it had rolled when she’d been abducted. There was still a gap in the hedge, through which Henry now sidled to find the remnants of a large outdoor eating area where several picnic benches still existed but were clearly rotting away. Beyond that area was a children’s playground with a rusting slide and the framework of some swings, but no actual swings.
It all looked very sad.
He made his way back to the car. Blackstone had not moved, but he could see she was speaking on the phone. Henry got in and set off just as she ended the call.
‘Renshaw’s two workmates confirm his story. He was at work from six that morning, so he’s got a good alibi. He was with them until about one p.m.’
Henry thought about it, working through the timeline. ‘So Twain was last seen alive, by me, leaving The Tawny Owl at eleven-ish in the company of Celia who was, as far as we know, and according to her, the actual last person to see him alive. She allegedly found his body when she came back from a shopping trip to Lancaster next day and drove to see me immediately in a panic, which, if she is innocent, is just about understandable, but if guilty, was all an act. And I saw her before all that at the war memorial, when she said she hadn’t actually seen him that morning but knew he’d got up early and gone into his workshop because she’d heard the sound of the Spitfire engine. She didn’t go and see him because she was still angry with him; he had knocked her around after getting back from the pub, hence her bruises. She turns up at Th’Owl smeared in blood consistent with having discovered his body but not with having whacked him with a spanner.’
Blackstone interrupted. ‘Is this what’s known as stream-of-consciousness thinking or just the incoherent ramblings of an old man on the cusp of losing his mind?’ she enquired sweetly.
‘It is what it is.’ Henry grinned, then checked his watch. ‘How do you feel about sorting out Callum Renshaw?’
‘I feel good about it.’
‘Oh, what did you find out about him?’
‘Hmm … crikey … previous convictions as a juvie for assaulting old ladies … released less than two years ago from a young offender institution … involved in teen gang activity on Moss Side … I’d say he’s leader of the pack here, as Jake thought.’ Her phone bleeped. ‘Ooh, an email from the ballistics people.’ She read it to herself. ‘Blah, blah, blah … well, fancy that!’
‘Tell me or your death will be brutal!’
‘The bullets found at the scene of James Twain’s murder, the ones fired at you … which missed … match the ones found in Marcus Durham’s body and in his pool … let that sink in … the same gun fired them all, a thirty-eight.’
Henry did let it sink in.
‘Which seems to confirm that whoever killed Durham was on track to kill Twain but got there to find the job done, which is very interesting,’ Henry said.
‘And puts Celia right back in the frame, big style.’
THIRTEEN
Henry drove Blackstone to The Tawny Owl where she got into her car and set off for Blackpool. Meanwhile, Henry made his way to the MIR at Lancaster and spent a couple of hours with a DI discussing tactics. He also checked where everything was up to with searches, house-to-house enquiries and the scientific side of the investigations in the murders of James Twain and Marcus Durham.
There was a lot of stuff coming in, as expected, although there were few eyewitnesses to anything because of the dearth of actual people in the rural locations and the way in which the houses and farms were so spread out; however, looking through the forms, Henry did spot one farm that had been visited by a couple of Support Unit officers that was quite close to the Twain household. The resident there confirmed he’d heard the engine of the Spitfire running that morning and gave approximate times that fitted with Celia’s story. The farmer also stated he had seen a motorcyclist haring across his land in the early afternoon, which coincided with the time that Henry had disturbed the shooter in Twain’s workshop and then heard a motorbike leaving the scene. Henry immediately deployed the same two Support Unit officers to revisit the farmer and ask if he could point out exactly where the biker had been spotted. If there were any tyre tracks, Henry wanted plaster casts to be taken, which would be a job for a CSI.
When he was more or less happy that things were on track, he called Rik Dean and updated him on the arrest of Callum Renshaw, which was a good one even if it was unconnected with the two murders, and let him know that Dale Renshaw was not a suspect in Henry’s estimation, thanks to his alibi.
‘And your plans now?’ Rik asked. He sounded slightly better.
‘Go and see Veronica Gough – we haven’t heard from her, and she should have been discharged this afternoon – then on to Blackpool to see how Debs and Jake are going on with Callum. After that, if I’ve got time, I’ll speak to another member of SONAG at random and ask them if they killed James Twain.’
