by Kate Helm
His lips are on mine. The familiar taste of him, of lust and love and hope that life could be different . . .
I pull away at exactly the same moment as he does.
‘I’m sorry,’ we both say.
The physical gap between us widens as far as the tiny balcony allows. I don’t even know who made it happen, but I know it was wrong.
‘Sri Lanka, right?’ he says, and I smile. ‘Just because we split up, I didn’t stop caring, Georgie.’
‘I know that.’
‘I came to make sure you were still alive—’
‘No escaping that.’
I laugh, but it sounds like a lie.
‘But also, I knew how important the Fielding thing was to you. Without it, I was worried something might have gone . . .’ He looks for the right word. ‘Well, wrong.’
I flinch. Has he guessed what I want to do?
‘It’s a painting, that’s all. Worse things happen to people than losing a commission.’
‘They do. They really do.’ He takes a drag on the cigarette, breathes out of the side of his mouth in a long plume, a trick that’s always made him look more like a hustler than a barrister. ‘I wasn’t entirely truthful about why I didn’t want you to go to Ashdean.’
Oli looks out to sea, and I know he’s doing what he always does in court – rehearsing his sentence. I tilt my head but I can’t read his expression.
‘As junior counsel on the case, I visited Gloucestershire to liaise with the prosecutor’s office, and go through evidence with the police. Perfectly normal. But while I was in Ashdean, this other police officer came to look for me. A beat copper. She’d arrested him, but wasn’t involved in the case anymore. I don’t know how she even got to hear I was there . . .’
I think of Danny: A policewoman tried before.
‘It’s not a big town. I think it runs on gossip.’
Oli nods. ‘Anyway, this officer, Jeanette, asked to meet privately. Suggested a place in the woods, bit of a trek. Did you see the children’s home while you were there?’
I don’t want to get involved.
‘Look, Oli, this isn’t anything to do with me anymore.’ But when I glance down at the garden square, a girl sits, staring right at us. Pink. I nod. ‘Yes, I saw the home. Copse View.’
‘That’s it. The police officer asked me to meet her in the copse behind there. I nearly didn’t go, but . . . Well, I’d read a couple of John Grisham novels back then, fancied myself as a hotshot. I was intrigued.’
I smile, despite myself.
‘It was pissing it down and the mud was going all over my suit trousers. But she made me keep walking until we couldn’t be seen. She tried to suss me out, asked me about why I’d become a lawyer. I was full of it, back then. Truth, justice. Perhaps my idealism made her trust me.’
‘Trust you how?’
‘She told me Ashdean was sick. She said they’d only stationed her there after training because they’d assumed she was a pushover. I thought she meant, I dunno, turning a blind eye to lock-ins, or letting people with the right handshake off the odd speeding charge. She told me I had no idea. She pointed at the kids’ home – we could just about see the whitewashed walls through the trees – and said that she was convinced something bad had happened there.’
I hold my breath. ‘What kind of something?’
Oli shrugs. ‘She was evasive. But she hinted that it was all linked to Jim Fielding.’
I don’t want to hear this.
But still I ask, ‘What did you do?’
Oli sighs. ‘I thought she was a flake. Reminded her that Jim wasn’t on trial, that there weren’t many men who’d have gone into a burning house to rescue someone else’s kids. She told me that the girls at the home were someone’s kids, too, and no one had been looking out for them.’
‘Did she have any evidence?’
‘I don’t know. She stomped off before I could ask. I was cross, too. My best shoes were ruined from the mud, and for what?’
I try to process whether what he’s said changes anything.
‘Did you know then that Sharon had been in the home?’
‘No. But what difference would it have made? It didn’t affect the case. Daniel Fielding was at the scene of the fire, he had a motive. When he changed his plea, it was all over. Plus, if you remember, I was pretty distracted at the time by a certain young courtroom artist . . .’
We half-smile at each other.
‘It was only afterwards, when the Operation Yewtree abuse stuff started emerging, that I wondered if Jeanette was on to something. I did a case with the same Gloucestershire coppers a couple of years back and asked where she was now. They said she’d left a few months after the Fielding trial. Had a breakdown. Left the service.’
While we’ve been talking his cigarette has burned down to the stub. He looks down, surprised, and lights another.
‘I should have told you straight out, when you first asked about Ashdean. I never thought Jim would agree. But I feel bad I didn’t protect you from all that nastiness. You pretend to be tough as old boots but we both know it’s not the whole story.’
I turn away from Oli. On the square, Pink’s gaze holds steady, her arms crossed, as if to say I told you so.
Would it have made any difference if he’d told me this on the pier that day? I’d probably have been even more determined to get involved. And knowing it now doesn’t really change anything. Unless . . .
‘Georgie? Are you angry with me?’
‘No, of course not. But if the police ignored what was under their noses, then I am angry with them.’
And myself. I gave up too easily. Unlike the policewoman, still trying to do what’s right, thirteen years on. Because she has to be the one who sent me the photos and that list of the residents.
‘Do you remember Jeanette’s surname?’
‘Thorne. Look, she probably was a fruitcake. I came to tell you you’d had a lucky escape from the whole Ashdean mess.’
There is no escape from the whole Ashdean mess.
‘You don’t have to worry, Oli. With the commission off, I have no reason at all to go back.’
Oli nods. ‘There are better times ahead for you, Georgie. I know there are.’ He leans in for a final, brief hug. ‘I ought to go home to my girls. Now I know you’re all right.’
‘Safe journey,’ I say.
*
I watch him walk along the buttermilk terraces and then disappear. I must let him go, for his own happiness, and Imogen’s, and baby Millie’s.
But Ashdean isn’t quite ready to let go of me.
62
Jeanette Thorne isn’t that hard to find.
It takes me one Turkish coffee and less than an hour of squinting and swearing in the all-night internet cafe. I contact all the women by that name on Facebook, without saying what it’s about.
Almost immediately, my friend request is accepted and a message pops up:
Took you long enough.
I type a reply:
Why didn’t you tell me who you were?
The response is almost instant.
I had to know you cared enough to find me.
Jeanette works as a shop security guard and suggests meeting in her lunch break. I don’t sleep at all overnight. Copse View, Sharon, Jim, Daniel, Robert – everything might make sense after I talk to her. I keep having to remind myself that Jeanette can’t have enough evidence to take it further, or she would have done it already. Yet I have to know for sure.
When I board the train to Reading, the world seems louder and brighter after almost a week of self-imposed exile.
I find her in the furniture department of the store where she works.
‘Jeanette? I’m Georgia.’
She nods. ‘I know.’
She radios through to a colleague to say she’s going on her break and leads the way towards a cafe outside the mall. It’s a cheap place, all plastic fittings spray-painted in peeling chrome. Wh
en she goes in, the office workers and students clear a space for her to sit down – Jeanette has authority, with her over-embellished uniform and matronly figure.
But when she sits next to me, and I angle my head to examine her properly, I see her face is soft and unlined – though perhaps that’s my vision smoothing out her skin. Her huge brown eyes lock on to mine.
‘I didn’t think you were ever going to get in touch,’ she says.
‘Why approach me in the first place?’
‘I’ve got an alert set up, on email. If there’s any mention of Ashdean or Jim Fielding on the Web, I get a notification. I hoped one day it might bring a news story about him finally being nailed. Instead, I got a story about him being painted. It gave me the idea. I found your address with one call to an old mate.’
‘But how did you know I’d look into it?’
‘I didn’t. But journalists are even more suspicious than coppers. Another reason I left my name off. Added to the drama; like Watergate or something.’
I smile. ‘I’m not a real journalist. But I do care.’
‘Counts for a lot.’ Her stare is intense: at first I thought she was afraid, but now I think she’s bursting to talk to someone about this and has been for a decade. ‘What do you think of him?’
Interesting that she doesn’t want to say Jim’s name . . .
‘At first, I thought he was a tragic hero,’ I say, ‘and that he agreed to the picture to get the past out of his system. In Ashdean there’s no one he could talk to honestly.’
‘Huh. Honesty isn’t his thing at all.’ Jeanette picks up the sandwich I bought for her. ‘So, what was troubling his so-called conscience?’
‘Not preventing Sharon killing herself. Not realising Daniel was dangerous. Not saving Tessa.’
She unwraps her sandwich but then puts it down.
‘When the fire happened, I was one of the first on the scene. There was no doubt Fielding was distraught. I’ve never heard a man howl like he did when he was trying to get back in to rescue his wife.
‘It was me arrested Daniel, too. He stank of petrol – he was definitely there when the fire started. But when we were unloading him at the nick, he stumbled – on purpose – and pulled me down with him. While we were on the floor, he whispered, “Don’t let my dad fool you, this is all down to him.” ’
‘You think Jim started the fire in his own house?’
Jeanette shrugs. ‘It did seem far-fetched, but I couldn’t ignore it. I went to the cells later, to see if I could get in to see Daniel, but they’d already transferred him to Gloucester for court in the morning.
‘I tried to put it out of my mind but it wouldn’t leave me alone. One dead wife is a tragedy. Two starts to look like more than coincidence. And once I started tuning in to the whispers about Jim, I heard all sorts. Robert O’Neill disappearing, for one. Oh, and about Jim’s dad.’
‘What about his father?’
‘He was the local bobby until he died of a heart attack. On the surface, Ashdean was this crime-free oasis while he was in charge. I realised it was only because no crime got reported or recorded.’
‘You think his father was on the take?’
‘Or lazy. Maybe both. Anyway, back then, I was stubborn, thought I could change the world.’ She scoffs. ‘Started going through the old files at night, when there was no one else around. Felt a bit daft, like some American gumshoe, with my torch and my notebook. But then I realised that apart from the heroic Mr Fielding, one other thing connected Sharon and Robert O’Neill.’
‘What?’
‘Copse View.’
I blink. ‘I know Sharon was there. But Robert?’
Jeanette looks surprised. ‘I thought you knew. That’s why Robert came to Ashdean first of all. He lived in Gloucester, but he used to do handyman stuff at the home for the company he was apprenticed to. Old building like that, something was always going wrong. He was there most weeks.’
‘You think that’s where he became friends with Jim?’ I realise something else. ‘And was it him who took the party photos?’
She nods. ‘Yes. So when they were both nicked for joyriding, he had a way to get Jim to take all the blame. Better a few months for taking without consent, than years for . . . Well, whatever Jim had done at Copse View.’
I remember our first sitting.
‘Jim said he took the blame because there was no point both of them serving time.’
‘Pretty big favour, right? Plus, why didn’t Jim’s father pull strings to get his son off the hook? If anyone was going to be made to carry the can, you’d expect it to be Robert. He was older, and he wasn’t the son of a copper.’
‘Where did you find the photos?’
Jeanette reaches into her messenger bag, pulls out a manila wallet.
‘At the nick. It was down the back of one of the old cabinets. Old man Fielding died before retirement. I don’t imagine he ever meant to leave this behind.’
I take it from her: inside are the prints of the eight photos she sent to me on disk, plus the list of residents’ names.
‘What do these prove?’
‘You have to see them in context.’ Jeanette leans in and lifts out two pages torn from a notebook, and a copy of a document. ‘Read these.’
I hold up the page, angling it to the light.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Jim’s dad had terrible writing.’
On the top of both torn-out sheets, there are dates in 1979, five months apart. In both cases, the note underneath is the same: CALL TO COPSE VIEW, ASHDEAN. ASSAULT REPORTED BY RESIDENT. NFA.
‘It means no further action,’ she says. ‘So maybe they were just cat-fights between the girls, but it’s the lack of detail that made me wonder. If it had been scraps, then I’d have expected it to be mentioned, a throwaway line. A note of the girls’ names, maybe, in case they got in trouble again. But what if it was a girl trying to report sexual assault?’
Everything around me seems to go still. Even though I’d suspected abuse, it’s still shocking.
‘So perhaps a girl who’d been attacked asked for the police to come twice and both times the officer who turned up was her attacker’s father?’
‘Or it might have been two different girls,’ Jeanette says.
It’s hardly a comforting thought. I look at the third page, my eyes so tired now I can barely make it out. But I persevere and realise it’s a document recording that James Fielding was charged with burglary and taking a car without the owner’s consent, on the morning of 2 August 1979.
‘You found this in the same file as the reports about Copse View?’
Jeanette nods. ‘And the photos.’
I spread the documents over the raised cafe counter.
‘I’m struggling to make the connection. What do you think happened?’
Jeanette sighs. ‘What if old man Fielding knew what his son had done at Copse View and tried to deal with it himself? But then both lads were arrested together and, Robert threatened to expose Jim’s assults unless his dad organised for his son to take all the blame. Sergeant Fielding might even have thought a short spell inside would teach his son a lesson?’
A group of people at the next table burst into giggles at someone’s joke. I want to snap at them to be quiet.
‘Robert left Ashdean after that. Why come back?’
Jeanette stirs the coffee with a plastic spoon; it looks like the grimy water that goes down the plughole.
‘What do you know about O’Neill?’
I think about the one picture of him I’ve seen, in the neighbour’s photo album.
‘Not much. A craftsman. Nicely turned out. I have a gut feeling he loved his son.’
‘Maybe. Loved nice things, too. He’d gone before I came to Ashdean, but everyone I asked remembered his clothes better than they remembered him. He had all the labels. Top-of-the-range Sierra. But he was a chippie. A new dad. Where did he get the money from? I think he heard about his old mate doing well, and decided to
blackmail Jim a second time.’
I think it through.
‘But he got too greedy and . . .’
Jeanette raises her eyebrows. ‘Have we reached the same conclusion about Robert’s sudden disappearance?’
‘I think the whole of Ashdean reached that conclusion. Jim could kill two birds with one stone, right? Get rid of his blackmailer, and send a message to anyone else thinking of causing trouble.’
She drains the last of her coffee and packs her uneaten sandwich into her bag.
‘I never realised, until I was stationed there, that a whole town could keep a secret. What a hellhole.’ She looks at her watch. ‘Talking of hellholes, I need to get back to mine. They dock me an hour if I’m even a minute late.’
‘Was that why you left the police?’
‘I . . . I had a breakdown. It wasn’t what I had expected of policing.’
Jeanette closes her eyes. Bronze eyeshadow has settled into the creases between her lids. I want to hold her hand, to tell her at least she tried.
As we walk towards the store, Jeanette pulls her plastic epaulettes straight, and tucks stray grey hairs into her bun.
‘What now?’
‘Over to you. I’m out of ideas.’ She stops. ‘There’s no body. No proof of what happened to Robert. And I did try to match the dates on the photos with the paperwork about the assaults and the names on the residents list, but I didn’t get anywhere.’
I stare at her. ‘What dates on the photos?’
She shrugs. ‘On the back. It was the latest technology, then, to mark the date and time when the pictures had been taken. But you’ve seen the names. Copse View was mostly used for short-term placements. There are dozens of girls in the photos, and dozens of names on the list. I got nowhere.’
‘Could I borrow the photos?’
‘I already sent them to you.’
Telling her about the burglary might freak her out.
‘I need the originals, with the dates on the back. It’s a long shot but I’m willing to try.’
Jeanette looks dubious.
‘Needle in a haystack but if you think there’s a chance, then do all you can.’ She hands me the folder. ‘Just . . . promise me not to let it drive you mad. Fact is, some people just get away with murder.’