Chapter 6

Sunday, for me, was another new beginning. I had breakfast, my man across the table, and he knew everything but still loved me for who I am now. It was as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The day was spent doing cleaning and laundry, kissing, and laughing. That night I got him worked up with my mouth before letting him have his way with me.

Monday, after breakfast, we kissed, and he left for his mudflats while I got my car to go to the Annex. Jackson arrived about eleven and we sat in my office to talk about the case. He had spoken to his Chief Superintendent, who wasn’t too happy with what was presented, but gave him permission to continue for only another two weeks.

“If we didn’t wrap the case by then, he told me, it will go back into the cold case files. The man’s a tyrant and determined that we keep within our budgets. No-one likes it, but what can you do, he is, after all, our boss.”

“I’m lucky that Dawlish is more appreciative of how long cases take. He did let me go to Sydney, and I found out a lot that has put us further forward. I’ll continue to mine the archives to see what comes up. How have your men done with the interviews at the dumping sites?”

“We spoke to the Sea Cadets. One of the officers did remember a big girl who wanted to join. Of course, she could do so now, but back then they didn’t have the female facilities that they do now, so they couldn’t allow her in. Havelock were good, they went back into their HR records from when they started up and found an application from her as a soccer coach. She didn’t have the CV then, that she created at the school, so she missed out there as well. It looks like you were right. Evans came by and took the details of the others, saying that he and Hannaford will look into them. He also asked if he could take the original case files, but I told him that I hadn’t finished with them, yet.”

During that week, I located some of the boys who had played other girls in the plays. Most told me that they had fun during the play, but that had been the last time they had been in a dress. They all said that Young Harry had stayed friendly but became distant once they got past sixteen. A couple, that had kept dressing, told me that once they had come out to their parents, they had stayed at home as a new daughter and that everything was good. They also said that Young Harry stayed friendly until she had been told that they now had a happy family relationship.

The witness, at Hewitts Circus, had never been listed on Tesco records. They suggested that he must have been a casual, brought in by their cleaning company. He did, however, turn up in the census records as the live-in gardener at Hawks Nest. I was certain that we could wrap this up if we were given permission to raid a few homes.

Thursday evening, Bill went off to Steve’s bucks’ night, while I attended an evening with Angela, and some of her friends, at a male review in Nottingham. She had organised a minibus, which was a good thing, because most of us were a bit squiffy by midnight.

Friday, for me, was a day off. Angela had organised a salon visit for her, her schoolfriend, and me, followed by a try on of our wedding outfits, to make sure they looked good. I was used to the salon in Boston, but the one we went to in Skegness was, as they say, a cut above. We were there for nearly five hours, and I walked out feeling more like a woman than I had ever felt, before. I thought that it was a pity I would have to tell Bill that tonight would not be the night, but I think he would be happier after the wedding.

The dress tryout was successful. I took both the peach and the ivory dresses that I had bought on the way out to Australia. Angela had decided that she would be in ivory, seeing that it was her second time at the altar, and her friend wore that colour as well. When we looked at ourselves in a mirror, the peach just didn’t work, but my ivory looked as if we were a genuine group. So, I could wear the peach for the reception, as the others would be changing, as well. When we put on the reception outfits, we didn’t clash.

On Saturday, Bill drove me to Angela and Steve’s house, where Angela was to get ready. Steve was at his Best Man’s place, and Bill would join them there. The wedding was set for three-o-clock, so we spent the morning getting ourselves tizzied up and had a sandwich lunch. At two, we went out to the two wedding cars, one for Angela and her bank manager, who was going to walk her down the aisle: the other for me and the Maid of Honour.

It was a lovely wedding, Steve, and the other men were elegant in their suits. The service was traditional, and the happy couple left the church in showers of confetti and good wishes. That was, of course, after the photographer took nearly an hour to get all the pictures he wanted. Steve had arranged for them to go to his family home to change, while the rest of us were taken to a hotel, where we had two rooms to change. My other dress, and all the accessories, was in a case in the back of the car. We girls changed in one room, helping each other with getting dressed, while the two guys changed in the other. We were told that the two rooms were booked for the night, should we want to use them.

The reception started at five and went until midnight. It was typical, bad speeches and all, but the food was interesting, and the DJ had a good playlist. Bill and I danced all night, and we did, indeed, ask for more once we were back at the hotel, using one of the rooms. We both had packed something for Sunday. At breakfast, we found the Best Man with his wife already eating, so joined them to talk about yesterday and the likely outcome of the marriage. I didn’t let on that I had been told that Angela was already pregnant.

Monday, I went to see Dawlish and spoke to him about the edict that Jackson had been given. He told me that it was all right for me to continue looking into the archives, but that without Grimsby on board, there wouldn’t be any on-the-ground policing. We agreed that, unless I could come up with something concrete that would sway their boss, we may have to let it lie.

I was working at my desk on Tuesday when I got a phone call. It was Evans, and he told me that Hannaford wanted me to meet him at a site where they had found some good evidence. He gave me the directions, to a shed north of Grimsby, off the A1173 and on to Rosper Road, then right into Station Road, until I went over the railway line, to a track on the right. I told him that I would be there in an hour, or so, then sat back.

“What’s wrong, Polly,” asked Julia, from the other desk. “You look worried.”

“That was Evans, from the Grimsby Vice Squad. He wants me to meet his Inspector at a site outside Grimsby, which, if my memory serves me well, is isolated and ideal for an abduction. I don’t trust Evans, he was around when Ramsey, one of the suspects, was at the station. He has asked for the original files and seemed to know a lot about Frawley when I went up to brief them. What I want is a tracker, for me, which is invisible.”

“Don’t fret, Polly, I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

She got up and went off, coming back about fifteen minutes later.

“This, I think, will do the trick. My boyfriend works at one of the nearby buildings, and they do electronic stuff for surveillance. He showed me this, a few weeks ago, and I refused to have it inserted, telling him that I was happier with him inside me.”

She opened a box, and I gasped, then had to throttle a laugh as I looked at what looked like a small butt-plug. Julia called through to Cathy to set the computer to track a frequency, then turned it on. Cathy called through that she had locked on to it. The other two then came through to see what we were playing with. They had a laugh, but it became serious when I told them what I was worried about. We made sure that the computer in the van could follow me and I went to the toilet to lube the plug and insert it. I walked funny when I came out but was sure that I’d get used to it if I sat on it all the way to Grimsby. We locked up the Annex and they got the van out, with one at the computer. I told them that if anything happened, they should use their mobile phones to contact back-up, because Evans would have a police radio.

They gave me a head start, then rang me on my phone to tell me that they had a good trace on both me and the car transmitter. I drove out to the rendezvous, as directed. I called them when I turned into Station Road, and they confirmed that they had my position. At the track, I turned and went along a little way until I came to a shack, with a police van standing outside, with two officers in forensic gear standing next to it. I stopped, turned off, unbuckled and was about to get my bag when the car door opened, and Evans said the words that I didn’t want to hear.

“Glad you could make it, bitch. This is where the case goes cold.”

That’s when he sprayed something in my face, and I blacked out.

I came around to find myself in a standing position, tied to an upright post, with tape across my mouth. When I could focus, I looked around. I was in a building that had the look of age, even wartime, by the colour on the walls. It was an old saw-tooth roof, and I was tied to one of the roof supports. In front of me was an open space to a set of big doors. I didn’t feel so good, it could have been the after effect of that spray.

“Make sure you don’t vomit. I would hate for you to drown in it before we’ve had our fun. Besides, you’re not a big enough rock star to go out that way.”

I turned towards the voice, to see a person wearing a robe, no, it looked more like a long evening dress. The head was that of a hawk, and the voice was electronically created.

“You’ve been a right pain in the arse, bitch. I have to say that you’re a damn good detective, but tonight that means nothing. We haven’t had one of these occasions for too many years, and we’ve been missing them. Stay where you are, and all will be easy.”

The person was marking out designs on the floor around me. When I looked down it was quite ornate, but not like the pentangle I might have expected. I stood, against my post and tried desperately not to vomit, while the second figure came in to view, in a similar outfit, and went to the doors. One by one, the door was opened and four new figures drove in and parked off to one side, next to the police van.

The last car in was a Bentley, and the person who got out looked resplendent on a shiny dress, with sparkles and gold chains. They came and stood in front of me, in a silent line, six murderers in a row. Then the resplendent one spoke.

“Polly Ibbotson, tonight you will meet your maker, but not before you hurt, a lot. With you out of the way, our little escapades will go back into the vaults. From what I’ve been told, you were three quarters of the way to solving the case. I congratulate you on your skill and commiserate you on your coming experience to the afterlife. Let the ceremony begin!”

They started with two of them making a droning sound, then the others adding a chant. All it needed was the lights to be dimmed and I would have been really scared. I wondered how long I had been unconscious because I had been standing here for quite a while. I hoped that the girls had been able to track me and call for back-up. Frawley was getting worked up and he had pulled a knife from his gown when an armoured Land Rover crashed through the doors, followed by Armed Response Police who shouted for everyone to get down or else they’d be shot. That put a damper on the party, I must say!

The six were face-down on the floor and handcuffed before the officer called “Clear” into his radio. That’s when more police and my girls came in, followed by Bill, who rushed up to me with a look of horror on his face. He put his hands either side of my face and pulled the tape away. That’s when I did the one thing I had been holding back. I vomited on him.

Julia was trying to untie me when two paramedics with a stretcher came in. One of the police undid the cuffs that held my hands behind my back, and I was finally able to move. I was given some water to rinse my mouth, then they got me on the stretcher and put an oxygen mask over my face. As they trundled me out of the place, I saw one of the Squad with a set of coveralls, waiting for Bill to rid himself of his soiled clothes. Julia came with me in the ambulance, and I asked her to remove the plug, seeing that it had done its job. She put on a glove as I rolled to one side while she pulled up the hem of my dress, pulled my pants down enough to get a grip on the item, pulled it out and put it in an evidence bag for cleaning, later.

At the hospital, they checked me over and decided that it would be good to keep me overnight. I was put into a private room, given a hospital gown to put on. Then it was a cup of tea and an injection, and I was in the land of nod.

The next morning, I had a visitor. It was Assistant Commissioner Strachan, who smiled as he sat next to the bed.

“You’ve gone and done it again, Polly. If you keep this up, we’ll have to put you in charge of the murder squad. I got a phone call, last night, from Inspector Jackson in Grimsby. What he told me was almost too much to believe. He sent me a report, which I read this morning. He was full of praise for your research and investigating, as well as for your bravery by going to a meeting that you were sure would end badly.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ll try not to do it, again.”

“Polly, just this once you can call me Charlie. I want you to continue to do what you do, and if it decimates my force, then they shouldn’t be doing bad things. You were about to be killed by Augustus Frawley, a councillor and the chair of the police oversight committee. With him was his gardener, who Jackson tells me is implicated in several other murders. Then, there was the Chief Superintendent of the Grimsby Station, Detective Sergeant Evans of the Grimsby Vice Squad, a retired Inspector Ramsay and, last but not least, the very religious headmaster of a boy’s school. From what Jackson and Dawlish have told me, they conspired to abduct, rape, and kill up to eight boys, as well as one of the schoolteachers. That’s quite a haul for an afternoon’s work.”

“It took more than an afternoon to get to that point, Charlie, sir. I expect that the media will have a ball when this hits the street.”

“They will, Polly, but we must rejoice in the fact that we can clear deadwood. It lets the public know that we mean business, and it lets the other members of the force know the same thing. I just want to say thank you, from me and all of the senior members, it’s good to know that the future of the force is in good hands.”

“Thank you, Charles, there are many more good men and women in our ranks than the bad ones.”

“Right, now I’d better go, so your young man can come and see you. I have a uniformed outside, holding him back. I’ll see you again, at the commendation service.”

When he left, there was a short conversation outside, before Bill came in. I held my arms out and we clung together as if our life depended on it. Maybe it did.

“Bill, darling, I’m sorry I barfed on you, I just couldn’t hold it back. It was the spray that they knocked me out with.”

“That’s perfectly all right, my love. It did have a bright side. Once I was in the police coveralls, Cathy got the guys together so I could be in the group as she took some pictures. Those guys were really jumping, especially when they took the headwear off the prisoners. There were a couple who weren’t anybody’s favourite, I can tell you.”

“How did you get to be there, anyway?”

“Jessica phoned to tell me that you could be driving into danger. They stopped to pick me up from where I had parked, and I spent the rest of the trip helping out where I could. It was more than I could bear when your tracker went off on its own. We managed to pull into a sideroad so that the police van didn’t spot us as it went past us. You were being held in an old building at the old North Killingholme air base. It took a while, with the girls on their phones, to put together the team to go in and save you. I was at my wits end. I am so in awe at how calm those girls were. They kept on telling me that it was likely that there were four or five in there, and one guy with three girls weren’t going to overcome them. When I saw you, tied to that post, my heart nearly burst. I was about to kiss you when you threw up.”

“So, what’s stopping you from kissing me, now?”

We were interrupted, a few minutes later, by a cough. It was the doctor, who took my blood pressure and temperature, then told me I was good to go. Bill went outside and came back with a small bag with clean clothes for me. He waited until I had a shower, then I dressed, and the uniformed officer accompanied us out of the hospital. He told us that he had been ordered to stay close and followed us home. He must have radioed in as Dawlish was parked outside when we arrived.

We went into the house and Bill put the kettle on as Dawlish sat at the kitchen table.

“Sorry we only have cream biscuits, sir, if I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.”

“Polly, I’d chew stones to sit here with you, alive and well and in good spirits. What happened yesterday is going to have huge ramifications. When you spoke to me, the other day, I fully expected them to hold off until the case was buried. This case was broken with the thing that broke your last murder case, the overblown ego of the main lawbreaker. If he hadn’t demanded your hide, they could have continued to live as they have been.”

“That’s just the sort of thing that alerted me to their plan, Hannaford would have just called, or emailed me, if there was something he had found. I couldn’t see him asking me to go all that way to look at something he’d found. Evans had raised my suspicions, as well, that’s why we took precautions, just in case it went pear-shaped.”

“You do realise, Polly, that there will be some changes in rank, coming from this. The AC has already put you forward for a bravery award, and there’s room for you in the Murder Squad, should you want it, possibly as Chief Inspector.”

“No, thank you, sir. This case was broken with a little bit of detecting, a lot of talking and many hours on the computer. I want to stay with my team, as they are the best around. Bill has as much respect for them as I have, now.”

“Yes, sir. I watched them, yesterday, put together a team, from scratch, without hardly breaking into a sweat. They are, I must say, almost as awesome as my fiancée, here.”

We drank the tea, ate the biscuits, and discussed the end of the case and the start of the prosecution case. When Dawlish left, we stood at the door and waved him off. The uniform gave us a wave and left, as well. I turned to Bill.

“What was that about me being your fiancée, darling. For that to happen, you should have gone down on one knee, asked me properly, and then bought me a nice ring.”

He got down on his knee, there and then, on the front step.

“Polly, my darling, will you be my wife?”

“Of course, my love, now take me to bed and then take me shopping for a ring. I don’t mind something cheaper, as long as it looks good.”

So, that’s what we did. We did need another shower before we dressed again, and the ring wasn’t too cheap, but we laughed and hugged and then went off to the Annex to see the team and flash the jewellery.

They were all pleased to see us, and more pleased to see the ring. I thanked Julia for her idea about the tracker, and she told me that her boyfriend didn’t want it back after he’d been told where it had been for several hours. She gave the box to Bill, telling him that anytime he wanted to have me tracked, to insert it and the give them a call. The girls had already seen Dawlish and were all excited about what may happen in the future. We all knew that there would be presentation to prepare, to show the prosecutors what they had to work with, and it would be a couple of weeks before that was ready. Cathy had done one before, so Jessica was nominated to do this one.

Over the next few weeks, we put together a presentation that outlined the facts, as we knew them, linked the prisoners to the timeline of the plays and the murders. We couldn’t pin the murder of Harriet Young on any of them, nor that of Jason Parsons. We were helped by Frawley and the policemen all saying that the gardener was the ringleader, then the gardener turning on his friends and pleading guilty, outlining all the events where he was present, so stitching up all of the others at different times, even Adrian Jeffries, a late comer who had been the one to cut Jason up and render his bones, being, as Inspector Jackson was told, a task that would allow him to be a member of the group.

Over the weeks we would get things told to us from other officers. Frawley was still full of himself and blamed Evans for not finding the tracker. Evans and Ramsay saw the way the wind was blowing and would plead guilty. The Chief Super was adamant that he would get off, while the headmaster spent a lot of his time on his knees, praying and confessing his sins. Unlike the confessional, the tape recorder that picked up every word was not bound to secrecy, so making any not guilty plea impossible to back up. They all ended up inside.

Bill, and I married in September, with a lovely wedding, where we were joined by a lot of well-wishers from our friends and our colleagues. The AC walked me down the aisle and we had a police guard either side of the pathway to the car when we left. Strachan was in full dress uniform, as was I, with my medal ribbon prominent. Bill had a snappy suit, as did Steve, as Best Man. My team were my bridesmaids, as they were all equal, in my eyes. In the eyes of the force, as well, with Cathy getting a commendation, Jessica going to Acting Detective Sergeant and Julia on the team as a full detective constable, in her own right. We were given a new WPC to break in.

There had been a huge shake-up in Grimsby, with both Jackson and Hannaford being upped to Chief Inspector, and a new Chief Superintendent brought in from outside, to make sure the house was truly clean.

I started helping Bill, at Donna Nook, on weekends, as the seals gathered to pup. Sometimes we’d wave to the cameras as we sealed our partnership, with a kiss.

Marianne Gregory © 2023