by D. S. Butler
‘It sounds like you were fighting a losing battle,’ Karen said. ‘But you tried.’
‘I didn’t try hard enough though, did I?’ Without waiting for an answer, he continued. ‘When Oliver Fox disappeared the following year, I wanted that case. I cajoled, wheedled and basically made myself a thorn in my DCI’s side until he agreed to make me the lead investigating officer on the case.’
‘But you never got close to finding out what happened to Oliver Fox?’
DI Goodfield shook his head. Karen watched his expression carefully, trying to read him. Was he telling the truth? Was this a cover-up? She had to wonder what he would have done if he’d discovered Mark’s mother or perhaps the parent of another abused child had killed Oliver Fox. Would he have protected them? Their meeting today had shown Karen he had a strong sense of duty and justice, but she didn’t know how far he’d go. He’d certainly taken the death of Mark Bell personally.
She waited to see if he would offer more information and explain why he thought his search for Oliver Fox had been unsuccessful. But he stayed silent, staring at the floor.
‘What do you think happened to Oliver Fox? What’s your gut feeling?’ Karen asked.
‘I’d like to think he was overcome with remorse and topped himself, but that seems too convenient for me.’
‘What about an angry parent? Or even an ex-student?’
DI Goodfield shrugged and leaned across to pick up his cup of tea again. ‘I considered it. To be perfectly honest, I think he got what he deserved.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Karen and Sophie walked back to the car in silence. Once they were close to the vehicle, Sophie swore and bent down. ‘Just a sec, Sarge. I’ve got a stone in my shoe.’
While Sophie leaned on the car and dumped the offending stone back on to the gravel driveway, Karen pulled out her mobile and typed a text to her sister.
All right. You win. I’ll go on the date.
It was just one evening and it would get her sister off her back for a while. She was just fine on her own, but hearing DI Goodfield talk affectionately about his wife had made Karen consider her own future. Who would be there for her when she retired? Her thumb hesitated above the screen.
Sophie straightened up. ‘All ready now, Sarge.’
Karen hit send and put the phone back in her pocket.
‘What did you make of DI Goodfield?’ Karen asked as she executed a three-point turn on the driveway.
‘He certainly provided some unexpected information,’ Sophie said. ‘He was honest with us. I think the incident with Mark Bell and his mother has really eaten away at him over the years.’
Karen nodded as she drove slowly over the gravel, wincing as some of the stones were kicked up by the wheels and hit the bodywork.
‘What did you think of him, Sarge?’
Karen was still trying to work that out. She’d come here this afternoon expecting DI Goodfield to have forgotten the decades-old case, and had imagined they’d be meeting an officer who hadn’t taken his job as seriously as he should. That’s what they’d been led to believe by Detective Superintendent Robert Fox. But after meeting him, Karen felt DI Goodfield had been very dedicated to his job. The question was, how far had that dedication taken him?
Certain cases got to you more than others, but when it came down to it, a police officer’s job was to investigate the bad guys. It wasn’t their place to act as judge, jury and executioner. Had DI Goodfield taken the case too far? Had he decided to take justice into his own hands?
She glanced at Sophie. The young officer didn’t seem at all concerned about their chat with the ex-policeman. In fact, she seemed invigorated by the meeting. For the first time that week, Sophie was interested and involved in the case.
‘You do realise our conversation with DI Goodfield has opened a whole can of worms?’ Karen said as she turned right into Croft Lane.
‘What do you mean? He’s given us a new angle.’
‘He’s done more than that, Sophie. If Oliver Fox was abusing boys at Greenhill Secondary School, we have a lot of suspects to investigate. His killer could be any one of the students, or a furious parent.’
Sophie mulled that over. ‘True. If he was targeting Mark Bell, then the chances are he was doing it to other boys, too.’
‘It’s likely, don’t you think?’
Sophie was silent for a moment. ‘What are we going to do? Will we have to track down everybody who attended the school thirty years ago? That’s going to be practically impossible. And who’s to say they’re going to want to talk to us after all this time. If it was a student who killed him, they’re not going to admit they were abused, because that would just point the finger at them.’
Karen let Sophie talk through the problem, trying to come at it from different angles. This was the type of experience books were unable to teach.
Karen didn’t doubt Sophie felt overwhelmed, because she certainly did. She felt sick. A heaviness sat at the bottom of her stomach, and it had done since DI Goodfield had told them of his experience dealing with Oliver Fox.
‘Of course, we need to speak to Albert Johnson now more than ever,’ Sophie said. She turned to Karen. ‘What if Albert Johnson caught him with one of the children and decided to deal out his own punishment? Maybe he found him with a young boy and lost his temper?’
Karen nodded slowly. ‘It’s possible. But a lot of people seem to have motives for wanting Oliver Fox dead.’
The next stage in this case was going to take a lot of work. And it wouldn’t be the exciting police work Sophie longed for. For the next few hours, and possibly days, they wouldn’t be visiting suspects and drilling the truth out of them with clever questions. Instead, most of their time would be spent online, tracking down people who had attended the school decades ago and looking for families who had left the area.
This suddenly seemed to dawn on Sophie. ‘I have a feeling I’m going to be doing a lot more paperwork, aren’t I?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Karen said. ‘The scope of this investigation just got a whole lot bigger.’
At home in Skellingthorpe, Elizabeth Fox picked up the telephone. Her hand was shaking as she dialled her eldest son’s mobile number.
‘Stephen?’ she asked breathlessly when he picked up.
‘Mum, what is it?’
‘I need you to come home straightaway.’
‘I’m at work. We’ve just got a new contract to handle the sale of an office building. I’m in the middle of a meeting. They’re important clients. I can’t just leave.’
‘Please, Stephen.’
She heard him moving at the other end of the phone. Probably leaving the meeting room to get some privacy. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Elizabeth gripped the cordless handset and walked along the hall towards the kitchen. Her eyes filled with tears as she stood and stared out of the back door.
‘You need to come home, Stephen. I can’t cope.’
‘Now? What if I come by after work?’
‘No, you don’t understand. You need to come now. It’s your brother . . .’
There was a heavy silence, then Stephen said, ‘What’s he done?’
‘Nothing yet.’
Stephen sighed. ‘All right. I’ll get away as soon as I can. I just need to wrap things up here.’
Elizabeth watched her youngest son pacing back and forth on the lawn, talking to thin air. She didn’t like to admit it to anyone, not even herself, but he frightened her.
‘He turned up twenty minutes ago. I couldn’t calm him down. He’s in the garden. You know he doesn’t listen to anybody but you. Please, come now.’
Martin terrified her. The tablets usually kept him on an even keel, but he hadn’t been taking them. He’d lied about it when she’d asked him. He told her he’d taken his usual dose that morning, but from his wild expression, she’d known it wasn’t true.
He had that sinister look in his eyes again. The look that struck the fear of God into he
r.
Martin made a loop in the garden, his movements lumbering and slow, until suddenly he whipped around and stared straight at his mother. She wanted to look away, but his gaze locked with hers and she felt an icy trickle of sweat making its way down her spine.
A smile stretched across his face, but it wasn’t a normal smile. It wasn’t a happy smile. She hated herself for thinking it of her own son, but the thought came anyway.
It was an evil smile.
Rick yanked on the handbrake, turned off the engine, jumped out of the car and strode to his front door. The spilled coffee was now cold, and the wet shirt clung to his skin. He checked his watch to see how he was doing for time. He didn’t want to keep Farzana waiting for too long. She was already giving up her lunch break, and he didn’t want to get her in trouble for being late back to her shift as well.
He opened the door and prepared to call out as he usually did when he got home, but something made him stop. There were two coats Rick didn’t recognise hanging on the rack by the front door. Then he heard voices.
He kicked off his shoes, a habit his mother had instilled in him when he was young. The carpet had seen better days, but he always took his shoes off when he came inside.
He walked down the hallway slowly, feeling awkward. Did Priya have friends visiting? He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. She was supposed to be working, concentrating on looking after his mother. That’s what she was being paid for.
He wondered whether he was going to find out that she kept his mother locked in her room all day while she used the house as her own to entertain her friends.
But Priya wasn’t like that, was she? She seemed a genuinely kind person. Rick didn’t like to think he was having the wool pulled over his eyes.
The voices were coming from the living room. Rick paused by the door, feeling oddly out of place in his own home.
It was ridiculous.
When he stepped into the living room, he stopped and looked at the visitors with surprise. They weren’t Priya’s friends, after all. They were old friends of his mother’s.
Mrs Mackintosh, who used to be the office manager where his mother had worked, and Jenny Limer, whom his mother had known since her schooldays. He hadn’t seen them in donkey’s years, and neither had his mother. Aware he looked gormless, but unable to stop himself, Rick just stood there gawping at them.
His mother’s friends sat side by side on the sofa. His mother was in her wheelchair, and Priya was kneeling in front of the coffee table pouring tea.
They’d all turned to look up at him, smiling and saying hello, and were waiting for him to say something in return.
But he was finding it hard to process the situation. Early on, after his mother’s diagnosis, she’d continued to see her friends and even stayed at work for a time, but as she got worse, she’d taken Rick to one side and made him promise something.
‘Whatever happens, Ricky, I don’t want people to see me like this. Not people I’ve known all my life. It’s bad enough you and your sister have to see me changing into someone I’m not. I want to keep my problems private.’
His mother was a very proud woman. The diagnosis had terrified her, but the thing she hated more than anything was changing and losing her identity. She hadn’t wanted to tell people, not straightaway, and Rick had gone along with it. It was his mother’s condition to deal with, after all.
After she started going downhill, there were still times when she was perfectly lucid, but that almost made it worse because she was aware of what was happening to her. She knew she was losing that essential sense of self and she hated it. She didn’t want anyone else to see her like that, and so it had been her choice to cut people off.
She didn’t make a big song and dance about it. She just stopped returning telephone calls. She didn’t meet her friends for lunch and stopped going to her local book club. Slowly but surely, she cut herself off, but now two of the women she had deliberately stayed away from were sitting in the living room.
His mother didn’t seem bothered in the least, but Rick wasn’t sure if she even remembered them.
‘Rick? Is everything okay?’ Priya was looking up at him with a frown on her face.
He gave her a tight smile. ‘I had to come home to change my shirt.’
‘Was that tea or coffee?’ Mrs Mackintosh asked from her perch on the sofa.
‘Err . . . um, coffee,’ Rick said.
He knew he sounded distracted but he was looking at his mother, watching for any signs of discomfort or distress, but right now she seemed to be perfectly happy. For some reason, that niggled at Rick.
He continued to watch his mother as the two women on the sofa offered up laundry tips and techniques to get the stain out of his previously pristine white shirt.
‘Do you have time for a cup of tea?’ Priya asked.
Rick shook his head. ‘No, sorry, I’d better go and get changed.’
He backed out of the room and tried to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth. He took the stairs two at a time and attempted to push away the anger that was encroaching on him. It wasn’t Priya’s fault. She didn’t know that his mum was proud and didn’t want her old friends to see her this way. He felt caught between two people. The woman his mum used to be and the woman she was now.
His mother was downstairs, now perfectly happy in the presence of her visitors, but the woman she used to be would be horrified that they’d seen her while she was ill. It wasn’t that Rick believed she should be cut off from her friends – after all, they had been good friends to his mum for years – but he felt like he was going against his mother’s wishes, and the very thought made him sick.
He threw his dirty shirt in the laundry basket and selected another from his wardrobe. Once he’d buttoned it and replaced his tie, he made his way reluctantly downstairs.
What should he do? What would his mother want him to do? Asking them to leave would be very rude indeed.
He stuck his head back into the living room to say goodbye, but before he could leave, Mrs Mackintosh heaved herself up from the sofa, walked towards him and grasped his hand. She looked at him, staring into his eyes. ‘I had no idea she was this bad, Rick. I’m so sorry.’
He could see the pity in her eyes, and though he knew Mrs Mackintosh’s heart was in the right place, he was angry.
His mother hadn’t wanted this. It was so unfair. Not only did she have to suffer from this awful disease, but she couldn’t even keep her suffering private.
People would talk.
They wouldn’t say anything nasty, of course. No, they would be compassionate and concerned.
‘Did you hear about Mrs Cooper?’ they would say. ‘Oh, it’s awful. The poor woman! I don’t know what I’d do if it happened to me.’
Rick didn’t want his mother diminished to nothing more than a sad story a group of women talked about over lunch, but there was nothing he could do about it.
He looked again at his mother, who was sipping her tea, looking perfectly content.
He removed his hand from Mrs Mackintosh’s grip, said thank you and then walked towards his mother. He knelt down by her chair, kissed her on the cheek and whispered, ‘Is everything all right, Mum?’
She gave him a smile. ‘Everything is smashing, love.’
‘I’ve got to get back to work now.’
‘All right, I’ll see you later. Don’t be late. We’ve got steak for tea.’
He kissed her once more on the cheek and stood up. He nodded at Priya and the two visitors. ‘Lovely to see you. Sorry I have to rush off. I need to get back to work.’
‘If there’s anything you need, Rick,’ Mrs Mackintosh said, grabbing on to his sleeve as he passed, ‘you only have to ask.’
‘I appreciate that. But we’re doing okay, thanks.’
He meant it. He did appreciate the offer of help. There had to be something wrong with him for resenting them coming to visit his mum. They were being kind, and they weren’t there to gawp at someone less
fortunate than themselves.
But still, he couldn’t shake the sense he was betraying his mother.
He tried to swallow the lump in his throat but failed. Unable to talk, he raised a hand to wave goodbye and quickly left the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rick made it back to the hospital by three o’clock. He dashed along the corridor towards the cardiac care unit and was relieved to see DC Farzana Shah was exactly where he’d left her.
‘He didn’t wake up?’ Rick asked as he walked towards her.
She put down the magazine she’d been flicking through and picked up her handbag before standing up. ‘I’m afraid not. I looked in on him every five minutes or so, but he hasn’t stirred.’
‘Thanks for covering for me. I appreciate it.’
‘It’s the least I could do after throwing coffee all over you. I am sorry about that.’ She pulled a face. ‘I was trying to be helpful, not boil you alive.’
‘It’s the thought that counts,’ Rick said with a smile, but he was distracted. He couldn’t stop thinking about the pitying look he’d seen in Mrs Mackintosh’s eyes.
After DC Shah left, Rick had a quick word with the nurse on duty and then entered Albert Johnson’s hospital room.
He sat in the visitor’s chair beside the bed, taking care to avoid the drips and wires that connected Albert to all the machines.
‘I’m back,’ he said to Albert. ‘I hope you didn’t miss me too much. I had to go home and change after a mishap with some coffee.’
Rick saw the old man’s eyes flutter, and he was more convinced than ever that Albert was faking sleep.
‘You know, I’m going to stay here until you wake up. I don’t mind, I’m getting paid for it. But surely there’s a limit to how long you can keep your eyes shut.’
Nothing.
Rick pushed on. ‘It’s only a few questions, nothing to worry about.’
Still nothing.
‘I’m not going anywhere, so maybe you should just get the questions over and done with.’
Maybe he should keep nattering on until Albert Johnson couldn’t bear it anymore and told him to shut up.