Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Detective Sergeant Freya Sloan walked into the open-plan office of CID and was greeted by a sea of sombre faces. She stopped dead in her tracks. Something had happened.
‘Have you heard?’ DS Ritter asked.
‘Heard what?’
‘Henry Bishop died last night.’
Freya’s mouth fell open. It wasn’t news she’d been expecting, but she was hardly surprised.
Former DI Henry Bishop had been forced into early retirement eighteen months ago due to ill health.
Thirty years of heavy drinking and chain-smoking had finally caught up with him to the point that he wasn’t fit for work.
Yet, despite being pensioned off, he still came into the office on a regular basis, to keep an eye on his lads, as he liked to call it.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘We think he must have fallen asleep with a cigarette still lit.’
Freya frowned. ‘You don’t mean…?’
‘The whole house was gutted.’
‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed, slapping a hand to her mouth.
She didn’t like Henry Bishop one iota. He was a horrible man and there were many times when she saw him strutting around the corridors with a fag dangling from his bottom lip, struggling to hide a chesty cough, that she hoped he’d keel over so that order and method could be restored to the station, but she would never have wished him such a violent death.
‘We were thinking of having a whip-round.’
‘Yes. Sure. Let me know how much you want, and I’ll pop to the post office at dinner time.’
Freya headed for her desk slowly. She was struggling to take in what she’d heard. She sat down, dazed, and stared into space. She didn’t notice Eddie Ritter come up to her with a mug of tea.
‘I’ve put a sugar in it. Helps with shock,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ She picked up the mug and wrapped her hands around it. ‘It really is a shock, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. I mean, we all knew he didn’t live the healthiest lifestyle, but nobody expected him to go like that.’
‘No. That’s horrible.’
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.
‘Yes. It’s just going to take some time to sink in.’
‘Are you going to phone Chris and tell him?’
‘I suppose I better had, yes.’
She reached out to pick up the phone when her hand stopped in mid-air. A Post-it note stuck to the edge of her desk caught her eye. A message had been left for her. It simply said, Call Jennifer Ripley ASAP.
Not wanting to be overheard, Freya went to a side office and dialled the number on the note.
‘Jen, it’s Freya. You left me a message,’ she said, perched on the edge of a cold desk, her voice low so people walking by the closed door couldn’t hear.
‘Yes. I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
‘Good grief, not you as well. I don’t think I can take any more this morning.’
‘What’s happened?’ Jennifer asked.
‘Remember DI Bishop? He died last night. Fell asleep with a lit cigarette. The whole house burned down.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘I know.’ Freya nodded.
‘How are you?’
‘I don’t know. I’m a bit numb, surprisingly. I think it’s the shock of how he went rather than the fact that he’s dead.’
‘I know what you mean. Listen, I hate to add to your problems, but I had a phone call this morning from Blackmoor Prison.’
Freya gripped the phone hard. Over the years, Jennifer and Freya had grown closer and considered each other good friends, even though most of their conversations centred around Anthony Winstanley.
Freya knew that if Jennifer was calling her during working hours, then it wasn’t for a chat about last night’s Coronation Street.
‘Go on,’ Freya prompted.
‘Anthony’s been badly beaten up. He’s currently in Leeds General Infirmary. He has a collapsed lung and has lost the sight in his left eye.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Freya said. Tears pricked her eyes. She was more upset by this than the news of Henry Bishop’s death. ‘Does Pauline know?’
‘Yes. The prison called her yesterday.’
‘What are we going to do, Jen?’
‘I was hoping you could answer that question for me.’
A thought popped into Freya’s mind. She suddenly felt buoyed. ‘I’ve got an idea. Leave it with me.’
Freya waited until lunchtime, then left CID on the pretext of buying a sandwich and drawing some money out of the post office for Henry Bishop’s whip-round.
She reversed out of the parking space and headed for Tania Dove’s last known address, Carver Lane.
She doubted she still lived there. It was four years since she’d last appeared on the police’s radar, but it was a starting point.
Freya knocked on the door and stood back, looking up at the building.
The brickwork was in need of repointing, the door could do with a lick of paint and the wooden windowsills had borne the brunt of the harsh coastal weather and were crumbling.
There was no reply, so Freya knocked louder.
Eventually, the door was opened by a large woman in her forties.
She looked shattered, as if she’d just woken up.
‘What?’ she said in a tone that oozed bad attitude.
‘I’m looking for Tania Dove.’
‘Never heard of her,’ she said and started to close the door.
‘Wait.’ Freya slapped her hand on the door to keep it open. ‘She lived here about four years ago.’
‘Well, she doesn’t live here now. I do.’
‘Do you know where she went?’
‘Seeing as I’ve never heard of her, I’m going to say no. Now, do you mind, you’re letting the warmth out.’
Freya removed her hand and the door slammed in her face.
So much for a starting point.
Freya climbed back into her Fiat and headed for Chris’s work.
After Chris Tyler had been drummed out of the police force, thanks to Henry Bishop’s underhand tactics, he’d sunk into a pit of depression.
The only work he could get was mini-cabbing and he hated it.
He and Freya kept in touch and grew closer.
She helped him see that there was more he could do with his life.
He may not like being a cab driver, but that didn’t mean to say he couldn’t start up his own business.
They pooled their resources and bought a swanky BMW.
Chris hired a suit and rented himself out as an executive chauffeur.
Work was slow to begin with. Freya offered him her sofa so he could give up his flat and didn’t have to live off his savings.
He could just give her a few pounds towards the heating.
It wasn’t long before he gave up the sofa and they were sharing a bed.
Within a year, Chris bought a second car and hired a second driver.
Within eighteen months, they drew up a business plan and got a loan from Midland Bank.
He bought two more cars, employed two more drivers and expanded his range, covering East and North Yorkshire.
Within another year, he had a fleet of five cars and he and Freya were engaged.
They’d now been married for a little over two years and were blissfully happy living in a two-bedroom flat overlooking the North Sea.
TS Executive Cars ran from the forecourt of an old petrol station. Freya pulled up and went into the former shop that was now a luxury office. Although today it felt far from luxury as it was freezing cold.
‘Problem?’ Freya asked. Chris was bent over the radiator. He gave it a kick. ‘I’m not sure you’re supposed to do that.’
‘You are when it’s decided to go on an unofficial strike.’
‘Have you tried bleeding it?’
‘I’ll bloody twat it if it doesn’t come on soon.’ He gave it another kick.
‘Don’t do that. Look, give Larry the lothario plumber a call. Ask him to come out. Tell him I still haven’t told his wife about where his car was parked last summer, if he mentions an extortionate call-out fee.’
‘You’ve become very dodgy since you got promoted.’
‘Just looking after my hubby,’ she said, kissing him on the forehead. ‘By the way, I’ve had some surprising news.’
She filled him in on what had happened overnight to Henry Bishop.
Chris winced at the thought of the horror. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m sad or anything, but that’s a hell of a way to go.’
‘I know. Also, I had Jennifer Ripley on the phone this morning; Anthony Winstanley’s in Leeds General Infirmary. He’s been beaten. And by beaten, I mean badly beaten. He’s been blinded in one eye.’
‘Jesus. You’ve had a fun morning, by the sound of it.’
‘Yes. It got the cogs turning in my head, though,’ she said, popping into the back room and flicking on the kettle.
They needed something to warm them both up.
‘Cast your mind back to that rumour where Henry bribed Tania Dove to give a false statement. Now he’s not here, she can retract her statements and we can try and get a retrial. ’
‘You think that’s possible?’ Chris asked, looking through his address book for the plumber’s number.
‘I know Pauline’s testimony didn’t help, but the prosecution made him out to be a disturbed sexual deviant based on the statements of the prostitutes. If we can prove one of them made it up, it’s a massive hole in their case.’
‘You really need to watch your back, Freya,’ Chris said.
He walked towards her and lowered his voice despite there being only the two of them in the whole building.
‘I know Bishop was a bastard, but he had a lot of friends in the police, and they’re still there.
They won’t like you trashing his name – even more so considering how he died.
They’ll probably want to put a statue of him in the car park. ’
Freya frowned as she thought. ‘I think a lot of them only went along with what he did because he was such a bully. He isn’t around anymore to intimidate anyone.’
‘No, but they’ll be seen as complicit in allowing witness statements to be falsified. Their careers will be screwed because of Bishop’s actions.’
‘But that’s their fault for not having the balls to stand up to him in the first place.’
‘When you see what happened to me, can you blame them? He fucking planted drugs in my locker, Freya. If I hadn’t resigned when I did, who knows what else he would have done. You can’t blame others for protecting themselves, their families.’
Freya made the tea in silence and handed her husband a mug bearing the slogan ‘I’m backing Britain’. ‘So, what do I do? Where do I go from here?’
He took a sip, worry lines appearing on his forehead as he racked his brain. ‘You need one of the prostitutes to come forward of her own accord and say she was coerced into making a false statement.’
‘What’s the likelihood of that happening?’
‘About as likely as me being asked to represent Great Britain in the next Miss Universe competition.’
‘I don’t know about that; you’ve got a good pair of legs on you.’
Chris smiled. ‘What I’m saying is, you need to plant the idea in their heads. Alternatively, tell someone else about what Bishop did who might be more vocal in getting the case fresh attention.’
‘Who?’
‘I can think of two people: Anthony’s mother and Jennifer Ripley. By all means, provide them with the bullets, but don’t be anywhere near them when they start firing. Don’t ruin your own career for this. Just in case.’
Freya swallowed hard. This was going to be more difficult than she first thought.