Straight Back Read online

  The name certainly rang a bell with Joe as being part of the investigation and his eyes were opening wider with each revelation Catherine McKenzie made. “So you’re saying that Leo’s father, Frank, was a member of a grooming gang back in the early eighties? But why is that relevant to us now?”

  “Because he carried on,” said Catherine. “I’ve brought you a file giving you details of this sort of thing happening in different parts of the northwest at regular intervals since that case in nineteen eighty-three. I’ve regularly checked the newspapers for this particular kind of crime for the last thirty years and that’s how I’ve managed to put my file together. I also know that Frank has been in touch with Leo recently. I’ve seen text messages on his mobile. I’m sorry to say that Frank may have swept up his own son in his vile, sickening behaviour.”

  “Miss McKenzie, why did you collect these crime details for your file? And have you ever reported any of your suspicions to the police?”

  “The answer to your second question is ‘no’. The answer to your first question is that I was hoping to be able to hand it over to the police one day.”

  “I don’t understand? What stopped you before?”

  Catherine took a deep breath. “Someone has been protecting Frank and the rest of the gang for the last thirty years.”

  “You believe it was someone in the police?”

  “The gang members never been prosecuted, never been investigated, and none of them have any criminal record. How could that have happened for all these years if there wasn’t someone protecting them? We know it can happen, Officer.”

  “But how do you know it’s happened with this gang?”

  “Because I went to the police with my initial findings thirty years ago,” said Catherine. “I was threatened. I was told to go away and keep quiet or else. I was pregnant and alone. I didn’t have much choice but to do what they told me to. But, now Frank has involved his own son, I have to try again to see if someone can do something to stop them, once and for all. Also I could be rather ill, you see? My doctor thinks I may have cancer. I’d like to see justice for all these girls before it’s too late for me.”

  “Leo, a lot of new information has come to light with regard to your relationship with Frank Leadbetter,” said Jeff as he and DI Rebecca Stockton began their interview of Leo.

  “You’ve already kept my client waiting here for an intolerably long time, Detective,” said Marcus Dewsbury, the duty solicitor. “It’s time you got to the point of why you’ve brought him here.”

  “And we will, Mr Dewsbury,” said Jeff. “But the new information we have is very pertinent to our investigation and the possible case against your client. So bear with us please.” He turned to Leo. “Leo, who contacted who? Was it you or was it your father, Frank Leadbetter?”

  “I always said I’d never try and find my father,” said Leo. “A lot of my friends had urged me to but, out of respect for my mother, I never tried. I thought it might embarrass her because I knew something terrible must’ve happened because she would never talk to me about him. I thought that if it didn’t actually embarrass her, then it would probably hurt her and then I’d feel like I’d slapped her in the face and been very disloyal.”

  “So I take it your father contacted you?” said Jeff, who was watching Leo McKenzie as he went over every word. His earlier bravado at the school had been replaced by a solemn kind of sulkiness. At the school, when they arrested him, he didn’t know his mother was talking to them at the same time and probably didn’t know much else about what she told them.

  “About six months ago, I got a call from him, out of the blue,” said Leo. “He said he’d seen me in the paper when I got an award for being a good teacher. I’ve never asked him how he got my number so I can’t tell you that. All I do know is that I was as pleased as punch to hear from him, even after all these years.”

  “What was your first meeting like?”

  “It was in a pub in the city centre,” Leo revealed. “I immediately recognised him because we are very alike. You can tell we’re father and son and, after thirty years of not knowing him, I kind of really got off on that, you know?”

  “Yeah, that’s understandable. Go on.”

  “We went out drinking a couple of times and, in that short time, we became very close,” said Leo. He reached out for the glass of water that was sitting on the table. His hand was shaking. “He introduced me to the ….”

  “To the what, Leo? He introduced you to the pleasures of what?”

  “Of … of pre-pubescent teenage flesh,” Leo stammered. His eyes were filling up. “I’d always secretly been into underage teenage girls but I’d never acted on it, I swear I’d never acted on it until my father urged me to.”

  “And did you start with Sheridan Taylor?”

  Leo nodded his head. “Yes. I had a thing for her right from when she joined our school. I knew she was unhappy at home and I knew she was vulnerable. She seemed to like me and one night I went for it. I made my move.”

  “Where was this?”

  “At my father’s flat in Alexandra Park. That’s where I took her.”

  “We’ll need the address, Leo.”

  “Oh, I can give you that and I can give you a picture of my father too. That’s not a problem.”

  DI Rebecca Stockton was having a problem listening to all this. The filthy bastard had just admitted to liking underage girls like someone would express a liking for anything that was innocent. Except this wasn’t innocent. This was about using children for the sexual gratification of adults. This was sick.

  “Did you know she was pregnant, Leo?”

  “No,” said Leo. Tears started running down his cheeks. “No, I didn’t, I swear I didn’t.”

  “What happened last Sunday afternoon, Leo?”

  “My father said that the pleasures we were now both fond of should be shared,” Leo explained. “He said he wanted Sheridan.”

  “And you agreed, just like that?”

  “I thought it was a way of … well, a way of keeping him close, keeping him with me after being without him all those years.”

  “Even though you knew fine and well what he was like?”

  “I guess he had some kind of hold on me,” said Leo, who then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It’s what happens when your father comes into your life after thirty-two years. You fall under a kind of spell. “Anyway, we followed her to the petrol station but then I couldn’t handle it anymore. I got out the car and legged it.”

  “You left Sheridan to your father’s mercy?”

  “It’s not like she didn’t know him. She’d met him on several occasions.”

  “Oh, so that makes it alright then,” said Leo. “If a girl knows the man, it’s alright for him to rape her in the back of his car and then set fire to it. How do you think she felt, Leo? How do you think she felt in those final few moments of life after she’d been raped by your father and was then about to burn to death?”

  “I don’t know!” Leo cried. “I don’t know! I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? It’s a bit late for that, Leo. You see, we’ve received a report of another young girl who’s been found dead in the bedroom of a house in Moston. Thirteen years old. Remind you of anyone? Perhaps you’d like to come with us when we go and tell her mother? She’d been sexually assaulted repeatedly and had been plied with so much alcohol that she ended up choking on her own vomit. I repeat, Leo, she was thirteen years old. Her name was Hayley Adams and she was in your class at school. Did you introduce her to your father, Leo? Is that how it worked? Is that how the process started that meant she ended up dying in what must’ve been the most terrifying of circumstances?”

  Leo cried again. “Yes! Yes, that’s what happened. And I’m sorry. I can’t say anymore than that. I’m just really, really sorry.”

  “What made you confess now, Leo? What made you decide to come clean?”

  “I sent my father a text when I saw you driving up to the school,” sa
id Leo. “I knew you were coming for me. I asked him what I should do and he texted me back with five short words.”

  “Which were?”

  “You are on your own.”

  “I see,” said Jeff. “So he left you out there, on a limb.”

  Leo started to cry again. “And that’s when it hit me. All those years I had with Mum who brought me up, loved me, cared for me, did everything she could for me, made sure I did something with my life and became a teacher. All those years and then, five minutes with my father, and he turned me into a pervert. I’m sorry Sheridan killed that bloke and I’m so, so sorry for the way she died. I didn’t know she was carrying our baby, I swear I didn’t. And I’m sorry for Hayley who, I know, was so unhappy.”

  Jeff sat back in his chair. The job was almost done.

  “Leo, we’ll be typing up a statement for you to sign and then we’ll be charging you.”

  “Well, it’s no good going after my father,” said Leo. “He was always saying that he’d never go down for anything.”

  “How could he be so sure?”

  “I don’t know.”

  THIRTEEN

  “It all fits,sir,” said DS Ollie Wright after he’d helped DC Joe Alexander take the relevant facts from the file that Catherine McKenzie had given him and put them all together for the DSI who’d just come up from charging Leo McKenzie. “The disappearance of young teenage underage girls having certainly been groomed across several cities in the northwest during the past thirty years. Some were as young as ten. Some have never been found but those that were have normally been in the same state as little Hayley Adams.”

  “The house in Moston where Hayley was found was full of empty Coke and lemonade bottles plus empty bottles of vodka, gin, and Bacardi, sir,” Joe added. “The press cuttings that Catherine McKenzie has collected down the years are all of similar scenes.”

  “How does it add up in terms of how many girls disappeared in this way over the years?” asked DC Adrian Bradshaw.

  “Almost a hundred,” Ollie revealed.

  “What?” asked Jeff incredulously.

  “It’s true, sir,” said Ollie. “And there’s nothing on the system to say that any enquiries have been carried out by the Greater Manchester force or any other in the region. It’s as if the various police forces collectively turned their backs on it all, sir.”

  “But why, for God’s sake?” Adrian pressed.

  “And how can that be?” asked DI Rebecca Stockton, who was having none of this. She stepped on the line every second of every working day and she had no time for those of her colleagues who weren’t as strong or as diligent about the rules that they all had to abide by if they were to have any credibility as police officers. Especially when she was facing an official enquiry for taking a calculated risk that may or may not have paid off whilst others may be getting away with turning their back on the grooming of underage girls leading to murder. “Alright, thirty years ago, I can imagine, from what I know about what went on back in those days, that it could’ve happened. But over the years, we’ve tightened up so much on internal corruption. And I just can’t get my head around it happening today, on this scale. I just can’t.”

  “But these are the ones we know about,” said DC Adrian Bradshaw. “I don’t like to think of it but there’s probably hundreds more.”

  This was one of those occasions when Jeff really wished he didn’t know what he was beginning to find out. He’d already busted a senior officer for corruption a few years back and it had taken him a while to live that down amongst some of his colleagues. But this was completely on another level and he knew he had to do something about it.

  “DSI Barton?”

  They all looked up at the sound of Chief Superintendent Chambers’ voice and she stood in the doorway.

  “DSI Barton, could I speak to you in my office, please?”

  Taking the file with him, Jeff followed the Chief Super to her office where she asked him to close the door behind them and take a seat. She gestured to the two armchairs in the window. Jeff wondered what this was all about but had a sneaking suspicion that it was something to do with the file in his hands.

  “I see you’ve made an arrest,” said Chambers.

  “Yes, ma’am. Leo McKenzie. He’s a bit of a sad case but that doesn’t make any difference when you break the law.”

  “Good, well leave it there, Jeff.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I don’t want any more arrests to be made in connection with this investigation.”

  Jeff could feel the anger rising in him. “Ma’am, the body of a thirteen year-old girl, Hayley Adams, has been found in a house where she’d been sexually assaulted repeatedly and plied with alcohol which she eventually choked on. Are you really saying to me that I have to piss this investigation down the drain?”

  “Can you please choose your words a little more delicately, DSI Barton?”

  Jeff had always found it curious when people object to you using swear words and yet have no problem listening to the evil things human beings do to each other. He found it so bloody hypocritical and so very bloody British.

  “Can you at least tell me why, ma’am?”

  “I’m not at liberty to do that, no.”

  “So what am I going to tell my team who’ve been working all the hours God sends to crack this case?”

  “That there’s insufficient evidence to support taking the investigation any further and, with resources being stretched, you’ve decided to wrap things up.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” said Jeff. “I’m not taking the flak for this. They will be outraged.”

  “Then tell them what you like, Jeff, but this investigation stops here and now.”

  “So what do I do about Leo McKenzie’s father, Frank Leadbetter who Leo has given me more than enough evidence to bring him in on?”

  “I said it stops here and now, Jeff.”

  “And what about justice for Hayley Adams and, indeed, for Sheridan Taylor?”

  “I’m not going to keep on repeating myself, Jeff.”

  “No wonder you wouldn’t give us any extra resources,” said Jeff. “What’s behind all this, ma’am?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We are law enforcement,” Jeff emphasised. “We uphold the law and bring the guilty to face justice. We don’t ignore it and let the guilty go free.”

  “For once, DSI Barton, I’m asking you to heed my orders without your usual questioning!”

  Jeff was absolutely seething. He went back to the team and told them the bad news. Then they were all seething too but he emphasised the need for them all to go home, lick their wounds and come back in the morning to face a new challenge and a new day.

  “That was a load of old bullshit,” said Rebecca, after the other three had gone. She had decided to stay behind for a bit of a chat with the boss.

  “Aren’t you going off with Joe?”

  “I said I’d catch him up in half an hour,” said Rebecca. “They’ve all gone to the pub.”

  Jeff took out the bottle of scotch and two glasses he kept in one of his drawers and poured out a measure in each. He handed one to Rebecca.

  “It can’t end here, Jeff.”

  “It has to, Becky.”

  “But, for fuck’s sake, Jeff! We can’t ignore this. We can’t let Frank Leadbetter walk away with being a possible multi-murderer. Not to mention John Nightingale and the countless others.”

  “Well, we’ve got to because we’ve got no choice!” Jeff repeated, firmly.

  “He said he’d get away with it, no matter what he did,” said Rebecca. “So someone has to be protecting him.”

  “Yes, I had worked that out, Becky.”

  “Someone who needs exposing.”

  “Yep, I’d got to that one, too.”

  “Then there’s got to be something we can do,” Rebecca pleaded.

  “Not that I can see at the moment, Becky. Maybe we’ll find something but not as it stands now. Chamb
ers made her position crystal bloody clear.”

  Rebecca then had an idea but she didn’t want to run it by Jeff in case he expressly forbade her to even think about it. So instead she supped the rest of her scotch and put her glass down on Jeff’s desk.

  “Are you coming over to the pub?”

  “No,” said Jeff. “I’m going to go home to my son.”

  Rebecca smiled. “I thought that would be your answer.”

  “I know, I’m a sad bastard who won’t get off his arse and get a life, and when he does finally decide to, he finds he’s too late.”

  Rebecca blushed. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “No, I know you didn’t. Now, get off to the pub and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  After Rebecca left, Jeff sat back and closed his eyes for a moment. He daydreamed about his late wife, Lillie Mae, and wished he could reach out and touch her. Then he was brought back to real life by the phone ringing on his desk.

  “DSI Barton.”

  “Oh, hello, is that DSI Jeff Barton?”

  The voice was that of a woman. A confident sounding woman. “Yes, that’s me. Who am I talking to?”

  “I’m Martha Langton. I’m the Shadow Home Secretary and Labour MP for ...”

  Jeff suddenly sat up. “Oh, yes, look, of course, I’m sorry. I had a note to say you’d called when I came back from leave. I should’ve called you back.”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay,” said Martha, who liked the sound of this police officer’s voice. “Can I call you Jeff?”

  “Of course you can,” said Jeff.

  “Great. And I’m Martha. The thing is, Jeff, I’ve got some information and I think you’re the person I should share it with.”

  “Information about what?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it on the phone,” said Martha, who’d been checking up and found out what Jeff was working on. It gave her the perfect way in. “But, as a matter of fact, it has to do with the case you’re dealing with at the moment.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I think I have some information you need to know,” said Martha. “But can I ask you not to tell anyone that we’re going to meet? The reason will be clear once I’ve shared the information with you.”