‘When did you meet Linda?’ she asked him.
Ed had picked up the photograph and was staring like it was a masterpiece in an art gallery.
He wasn’t interested in the cuddle. What was it about Linda Pritchard?
‘Just answer the question,’ Ed said, still locked on the snapshot.
Elgin sighed: ‘About four months ago at some meeting.’
‘Which one?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know. I go to a lot of meetings.’
Ed finally looked away from the photo.
‘Surely not that many where you meet a future cuddling partner,’ he watched Elgin go red. ‘Where did you meet?’
Another sigh, heavier this time, Elgin looking at the ceiling, sitting back in the chair, his body language reaching for an air of indifference
‘Travellers Group Meeting. Linda is interested in their…plight.’
‘And did you know then that her husband had abused your grandson?’ Sam said.
‘Of course not! What are you suggesting?’ Elgin pushed against the table and was on his feet. ‘Oh I see. I’m like a foreign agent on a mission. Get close to the wife, get close to the husband.’
‘Sit down John,’ Ed said, leaning back into his chair, stretching his legs and putting his hands behind his neck. ‘You’re making the place look untidy.’
Elgin’s defiance lasted five unconvincing seconds before he sat back down.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you knew Jeremy Scott?’ Sam said.
The swift change of direction - deliberate on Sam’s part - did its job. Elgin was unnerved.
‘What?’ He floundered, head shaking. ‘I don’t know him.’
Sam leaned in close again.
‘John this is getting tiring and I am starting to wonder why you feel the need to continually lie.’
Elgin sat in silence, nerves jangling like wind-chimes in a stiff breeze.
‘Yesterday I went to your old school. Not the one here.’
She paused, allowed Elgin to digest her words, waited for a reaction.
Elgin stared at her.
‘The one in Hamble. St Augustine,’ she told him.
This time she got a reaction. Elgin couldn’t have looked more shocked if Sam had plugged him in and hit the on switch.
‘What?’ he barely managed the word.
‘We spoke to one Mr Stirling, the head now but a young teacher in your day. He told us you were pretty good on the piano.’
Elgin was breathing hard, looking for the escape hatch.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
It was Ed’s turn to jump to his feet.
‘Throw him in the traps,’ looking straight at Elgin. ‘I’m sick of listening to this shit.’
Sam rose slowly to her feet.
‘You might be right,’ she said, an air of something close to boredom on her face. ‘What do you think, John?’
Elgin’s resolve left him so quickly he swore he heard it snap, his head dropping in the same moment. ‘Could I have a glass of water please?’
Ed sat back down. ‘How about a cup of tea? Sugar?’
‘No sugar. Just milk.’
By the time Elgin was sipping his third cup he had told them everything about his time in the clutches of Jeremy Scott.
Sam and Ed had listed to many an adult relive a childhood ordeal but it didn’t get any easier.
‘You have no idea what it was like,’ Elgin said now. ‘You can’t have, not unless you were abused. The stale smell of cigar smoke before and then that mix…semen, piss, blood…I can still smell it now. It’s with me wherever I go.’
They watched Elgin bow his head and clear his throat, another victim wrongly carrying the guilt.
‘You’ve got to remember back then children weren’t often believed,’ Elgin told them. ‘The schools themselves, the institutions where it was happening, society as a whole, they all have to take some responsibility for that culture.’
He lowered his voice.
‘The school didn’t abuse me but they let it go on. My mother told the headmaster…’
He paused, lost in the memory of the nightmare.
‘Guess what happened? Nothing. The reputation of the school was all that mattered.’
He wiped his left eye and fell silent, the tiredness bone deep.
Sam offered Elgin a break but he wanted to go on, to get it over with and get out.
‘You were a boarder at the school?’ Sam raised her eyebrows.
Elgin nodded. ‘That’s right. I was six when I went there and left when I was about thirteen.’
‘I’m puzzled, Sam told him. ‘Please don’t think I’m being rude, but boarding school and all the fees I imagine go with it, but you live in a former council house.’
Elgin took a deep breath and explained.
He grew up knowing his grandfather had been a wartime ‘spiv’ in London and a good one, good enough to buy a small shop in a wealthy area of Southampton when the fighting finally stopped.
Ration coupons meant there was still a thriving black market and Victor Elgin sold more goods under the counter than he did over it.
By the time John Elgin was born to a single mother, his grandfather owned mini-markets, clothes shops and even a couple of small hotels. Victor idolized him and he wanted for nothing, nothing until he found the courage to speak about Jeremy Scott.
‘My grandfather refused to believe that a man of education and standing like that would abuse young boys,’ Elgin remembered crying at his grandfather’s reaction.
Stop telling tales boy!
‘All he wanted was for that school to get me to university, get the start in life he never had. He always had notions of me being an officer in the Royal Navy.’
Elgin wiped his eyes, his hands shaking as picked up his cup.
‘I think he fancied me being the First Sea Lord.’
He sipped on the tea.
‘When my mother said my happiness was more important than his idea of my career it all kicked off. Things were said between them and wounds were opened that never healed.’
Elgin never saw his grandfather again. Victor had married a secretary a third of his age who inherited everything when he died.
‘My mother did her best for me,’ Elgin said. ‘We moved up here to make a fresh start but it was hard. Mum was used to having a private income. Up here she ended up spending the rest of her life working in shops. Ironic really.’
He shook his head, took another deep breath.
Elgin might have left a nightmare behind but his rebooted childhood still wasn’t easy, his accent and his manner making him an easy target for bullies in a very different kind of school.
But Elgin was proud he had come through, learned to fit in and pushed his old life as deep down as it would go. He had even spent hours working to lose his accent.
‘You adapt to survive,’ he said, while Sam and Ed sat in silence, letting the story go.
‘I reinvented myself. I’m still reinventing myself...a Labour councillor living in a council house, a man of the people. Can you imagine if the press found out I went to boarding school, that my grandfather was a spiv who made boatloads of cash? They’d have a field day.’
When he fell silent Sam waited to make sure he had finished before she asked him another question, asked whether his wife knew the truth about his past.
For the first time something different flashed in Elgin’s eyes.
‘Stupidly I told her before we got married,’ unmissable regret in his voice. ‘Now she has a hold on me for the rest of my life. You saw my name on the prize winners’ board down there. So could anyone else who looked.’
Sam watched Elgin and felt his pain. Her husband may have died prematurely but child abuse always seemed to be on a different level, victims moving with their dreadful secrets in a world that was oblivious.
‘How did you feel when you found Jeremy Scott was dead?’ Sam asked quietly.
Elgin looked at her, only hatred on his f
ace now.
‘How do you think I felt,’ he spat out the words. ‘I would pay to dance on his grave and piss all over it.’
‘And your relationship with Jill Brown?’
Elgin shook his head, bemused. ‘Why?’
‘Come on John,’ Ed joined in. ‘You’re abused, your grandson’s abused. Jill Brown’s son’s abused.’
Elgin never looked away as the tears came.
‘He’s my son too.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Scaramangers was like a half-forgotten church on a wet Sunday morning - empty save for a few older souls scattered around, lonely and lost in their own thoughts.
Harry sometimes listened to the woes of his congregation but today he wasn’t up for the Barman’s Confessional. Too much going on.
So the sight of Ray Reynolds walking through the doors almost gave him a migraine on the spot.
‘Pint of your finest landlord.’
Harry picked up a glass and stepped towards the pumps.
‘Another early start Ray, it’s becoming a habit. It’s not a weekend now you know.’
Reynolds tossed him a look.
‘Who are you, my mother? Just grabbing a quick one before the Pensioners’ Party.’
Harry passed him a pint. ‘On the house.’
‘Cheers.’ Reynolds raised his glass and gulped, heard Harry asking him where was the party?
‘The Ship,’ Reynolds said. ‘They’ve hired it out. Closed to the public for the afternoon.’
Harry was hoping another customer would get him off the hook, even for a minute or two.
What are you really after you nosy bastard?
‘Any more thoughts on your boss going missing?’ Reynolds asked him. ‘You know, after Dean’s memory suddenly came back.’
Here we fucking go…
‘He was excited Ray, shouting his mouth off like young lads do.’ Harry was squirming but doing his best. ‘He knows as much as I do, which is nothing. You know me. Keep my head down. You just having a solo one before the party.’
‘Couple of the other lads might come in,’ Reynolds glancing behind him when he heard the door.
Stuart McFadden, walking to the bar, seemed calm enough, relaxed even.
‘How are you, Mr. Reynolds,’ the greeting easy, respectful.
Reynolds said he was sound and then got right to it.
‘What’s happened to your boss then?’
He put his glass to his lips and waited.
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ McFadden told him. ‘He’ll turn up. Pint of cooking Harry.’
They always referred to non-premium lager as ‘cooking lager.’
‘Oh I think you can guarantee he’ll turn up,’ Reynolds said, the hint of a smile. ‘What state he’ll be in is anybody’s guess. But you know what they say, live by the sword.’
McFadden turned to face him.
‘Probably best you don’t overstay your welcome,’ McFadden said, picking up his glass. ‘Lots of people aren’t happy about Billy being snatched and if they thought you were gloating…’
Reynolds put his glass on the bar and stood up straight. ‘What would they do? Have a go at me?’
If McFadden was intimidated he was hiding it well.
‘Mr. Reynolds all I’m saying is that you’re out of the game now,’ the tone considered. ‘Don’t try and come back into play. It’ll only end in tears.’
‘I hope that’s not a threat Stuey.’
He smiled when McFadden’s grimace showed he’d hit a nerve. He knew McFadden hated being called Stuey.
‘And as you’re buying,’ Reynolds said, ‘I’ll have another beer, just to make sure I do overstay my welcome. Can’t have people thinking I’m running scared. Especially from plastic gangsters like you and your cronies.’
He turned to face Harry Pullman. ‘Same again landlord. Stuey’s in the chair.’
Harry pulled a pint and passed it across the bar.
Reynolds took a slow, single sip. ‘On second thoughts Harry, that tastes like shit. Not your fault. Maybe the pint had an allergic reaction to the person who bought it.’
He looked at his watch.
‘Best be off. Places to go, people to see. Cheers Harry.’
Reynolds walked away from the bar, pushed open the door and shouted ‘see you later Stuey.’
He didn’t turn around. He knew McFadden would be raging.
Sam walked along the pier, coffee in hand. She needed to be alone, out of the office, process the information that was bouncing around her head.
The sea air always cleared her head like a vapour rub eased congestion. She smiled. Three things cured every ill as far as her mother was concerned: Vicks, Germolene or a good night’s sleep.
At the end of the pier she leaned against the railings and watched a yacht half-a-mile-out sail by on a starboard tack. The white sails look well-trimmed, the yacht making good progress through the water. She sipped the coffee, wondering who was on board, where they were headed. Could she really do it again?
Maybe I can, maybe…
She thought about John Elgin. Started off with a life of privilege, wealth and future all mapped out, then everything snatched away because he had the audacity to be abused. He even had to watch his grandfather use his money to destroy his mother.
Sam stared into the water and shook her head at the rank injustice.
Elgin’s revelation he was Curtis’ father had been a gob-smacker, Elgin only finding out himself later in life. When Jill Brown had discovered she was pregnant she had chosen to end their affair and tell her husband the child was his.
For Elgin to learn he had a son and that his son had been abused would have been hard for anyone to handle. To find out his son had been abused by Jeremy Scott, his own hated predator, would have sent anybody over the edge.
His grandson’s ordeal at the hands of Julius Pritchard and Hans van Dijk took Elgin’s story to somewhere unimaginable.
Sam shuddered and searched her pockets for the Marlboros. Commonality - the sharing of features or attributes - was important in complex investigations.
Sam knew she had them in spades with this one.
Three generations of the same bloodline, all victims of child sexual abuse. All three abusers murdered, each dying horrific, violent deaths.
She lit a cigarette.
One murder reported by a known drug user, Curtis Brown, Elgin’s son. Was he really there to buy drugs? The other two reported via an anonymous phone call.
Who rang that in?
The call had been traced to a call box different to the one used to anonymously ring Elgin, if that call had ever really happened.
The more she turned it over, the more it was clear.
John Elgin was slap bang in the centre of the whole conundrum.
He had the motive big time and the connections to the Skinners and Harry Pullman. Was Elgin capable of burning a man alive? Who knows what was going through his mind when everything came out but for Sam, picturing Elgin turning Jeremy Scott into a screaming fireball of smoke and flame was a stretch too far. The Skinners, even Harry Pullman, on the other hand…
And Curtis Brown, putting himself there at the time of Scott’s death by ringing the police. Was he involved? Another with the motive box ticked but if he was involved why make the call? Double bluff?
Pritchard and van Dijk, the abusers of Elgin’s grandson, strung up with their throats cut; another gangland-style punishment.
Elgin and Linda Pritchard in the park added another thread to the tangle and now Billy Skinner had been abducted, his wild son Mat possibly missing. Had the two soldiers, Jeremy Scott’s former pupils and possible victims, used their military know-how to stage the slick ambush?
Sam returned her gaze to the yacht, suddenly wishing she was aboard, nothing to think about but the sails, the wind and the tidal flow, the sound of the boat moving through the water and the movement of the boom, salt spray and coffee on her lips. She stared as the yacht sailed f
urther away, destination unknown.
She was about to discover wind and tidal flows would mean nothing where she was going.
PC Tom Evans had driven from job to job since he started at 7am.
He’d joined the police with the noble intention of helping people and their communities; instead he was permanently firefighting, helping almost nothing but response targets.
He gripped the wheel, flexed his forearms and tried to forget his hunger. Oversleeping had left him with a tough decision on his morning ritual. He’d settled for shit, shower and shave at the expense of the porridge, blueberries and scrambled eggs.
Now he was in no hurry. The anonymous call to control room about a body being in a deserted factory was inevitably a hoax, the local urchins taking the piss.
On the approach he slowed even more; the little bastards could be hiding, watching him, ready to laugh and leg it.
He drove through the two-tone matt red and rust gates and negotiated the bricks, stones and broken green glass scattered around what was once the car park.
He’d lived in Seaton St George all his life, recalled that somewhere nearby was where the boss-man used to park his shiny red Jaguar XJ6.
That was back in the day when he was a child himself and the factory employed hundreds of seamstresses. He glanced at the sleeve of his police issue shirt, wondered whether it was made in China.
His mother and grandmother had both worked here, both made redundant the same day, their skills amounting to a big fat zero in the profit and loss column.
He got out of the patrol car, stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets and idly kicked a stone. He knew people who had left here and had never been employed again, sentenced to a lifetime of low self-esteem whilst the clothes they used to make were manufactured thousands of miles away on the cheap.
He walked through the doorway, past the rusting clocking-in- machine that still hung on the wall, no use even to the scrap metal thieves.
Stepping onto what had once been the huge factory floor he mentally heard the deafening clatter of a hundred and more machines, women’s hearing left permanently damaged in the days before Health and Safety at least gave them a chance.
The sight in front of him dragged him away from memory lane in a heartbeat.
Angels and Apostles Page 22