It had been a long few months, and he had succeeded, despite his past form, in resisting his attraction to Emma, and keeping his relationship with her purely professional while offering support and comfort. She had been distraught about the damage that the arrest and assessments were doing to her boy, and Tam, seconded to the case, had tried to give her as much news as he could on a daily basis without compromising the investigation in any way. Months had passed of limited visitation, meetings with lawyers, hearings and the presenting of medical information, until finally the decision had been taken that Nick was unfit to stand trial and he’d been committed to Broadmoor. Tam had seen him through those first few weeks, the trials of getting his meds right, and getting his room the way he needed it. It was helping Nick that had finally persuaded Tam that perhaps he could be of real use helping one person at a time.
It had been Tam who had broken the news about Nick’s detainment under the Mental Health Act, but Emma had been so terrified of him going into the prison system alone and vulnerable that it had actually come as a relief. Tam had explained to her that Broadmoor was a hospital, an NHS hospital, and that people ended up there for many reasons. It wasn’t One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the help that Nick would get there was second to none. Tam had seen plenty of cases over the years where criminals had gone to jail and been unable to deal with the chaos, the overcrowding, the noise and the people with whom they had to spend their days. Many of them had suffered breakdowns or resorted to self-harm, and it had been Broadmoor that had glued them back together.
It hadn’t been an easy decision to accept for the families of the victims, and it hadn’t been easy for Emma. Nick was oblivious in his sedated state in his isolation cell, albeit with a professional to talk to every day. Emma was still at her original address and the phalanx of reporters were there day and night; sniffing for scandal, their numbers had increased, when her father was charged with incest and paedophilia. Tam had used everything he had to get her into a safe house until the trial. He’d succeeded.
The Met had decided to set up a ‘Troubled Person Community Action Group’ and had asked Tam to head it, which was a feather in his cap, and in some ways he felt it was what he’d always needed. He could decide who needed his help and how he was going to provide it. Work had always been his love and, once he had changed the name to something which was less of a mouthful, he really felt his life was turning a corner. He just needed to get to the end of Nick’s grandfather’s trial and he could really put the past behind him.
He still had to concentrate every time he met Emma for a briefing or just a catch-up, so that lines didn’t get blurred between them. She was like a child in many ways, and hung on his every word. It was hard to resist her, but he did.
Friends rang, asked him to the pub, and Tam went. He didn’t feel like it, but soon the Met camaraderie kicked back in, and he accepted the claps on the back and congratulations for solving the case, and the thanks for putting the policing back into the police. He had often wondered what had happened to Sarah, and her mother, and had been really happy to receive a letter out of the blue from her five months later. She had thanked him for his help on that dreadful day, and it had given Tam some closure to know that things were much better for her now. She didn’t mention her mother, just her father, and Tam drew his own conclusions.
Meanwhile, the hospital had got Nick stabilised, and Tam had been quietly preparing him to give evidence by camera link so that he didn’t have to confront his grandfather in Court. It was still a difficult task, keeping Nick on subject and getting him to tell the story clearly, but Tam really wanted that bastard behind bars. He couldn’t believe he was pleading not guilty – who treated their family that way and then put them through a trial as well? Often, Tam thought of his own grandfather, and the evenings when he would sit with him in his two-up, two-down, by the coal burner, and pick questions from his puzzle book. He had been a bookkeeper, the best man Tam had ever met, and the happiness of the times he had spent with him seemed to make Nick’s experiences with a man he should have been able to trust even more horrific. Tam thought of his grandfather as a man without a blemish on his character, and you only needed one of those to guide you through life. Nick hadn’t had anyone, and God knew he had needed someone now. Tam was trying to be there for him.
Tam picked up his phone and dialled Emma’s number. It was Friday and the trial began on Monday. He wanted to see her one last time and go over what was going to happen. He met her at a pub near the safe house, and, as usual, when she came round the corner she took his breath away.
‘Hi, Emma. I really appreciate you coming. I know Monday’s going to be tough for you and for Nick, but I’ve tried to put everything in place to make it go as smoothly as it can. Your father will be in the dock, and you’ll be best sitting on the left-hand side of the court. I’m really hoping that Nick will be able to tell his story clearly and we’ll get a conviction.’
Even he could hear that he sounded doubtful.
Emma looked at him now, and put her hand on his arm. ‘I know you’ve done everything you can for us, Tam, and I just want to thank you so much. I don’t know how I would have got through it without you. I’m scared about the trial, I’m scared about seeing my father. I don’t know what I’m going to do afterwards without you to lean on. I won’t be able to do it.’
Tam looked into her eyes, which were full of tears, and for a moment he tried to think what to say.
‘Emma, listen. You’re strong. You’ve overcome things that would break most people and you’re still here. You think you failed your boys, as a mother? You didn’t. You got Nick out of that house as soon as you could. Billy’s death was not your fault: meningitis is hard to spot, and you called the doctor. All you need to think about going forward now is yourself. You’ve never been on your own, you’ve never found out who you really are or what you’re capable of. Get the trial over with, go back to school, travel, enjoy yourself. I’ll always be here, but the last thing you need in your life is a cynical old copper with the best part of his life behind him, not ahead. I’ll always be your friend, but you don’t need me. You don’t need anyone but yourself.’
Tam felt proud, and watched her face as she battled to believe him. He hoped she would find someone out there who would treasure her and let her grow, and he felt like a grown-up for hoping it.
Monday morning came around and Tam put on his only suit. He had left it in a bag taken from the Staverton Road flat just a bit too long, and it looked sorry for itself. When he arrived, Emma was standing on the pavement outside looking terrified. He gave her a smile, told her it was going to be fine, and they walked into the Court together.
When Emma’s father came up into the dock, his eyes darted round the courtroom until he found Emma. His eyes fixed on her, then he took in Tam, and then looked again at his daughter. Fury, menace and something else that was hard to read were written on his face. Later on Tam would decide that it was disgust, but as the jury was sworn in he was more intent on breaking the lock between the old man’s eyes and Emma’s.
He talked to her about Nick, and where she might go on holiday. Anything that would distract her for a few minutes until it was time for the camera link and Nick’s story. The evidence from Nick was tough to watch; Emma clamped her hand over her mouth, and Tam sat bolt upright, listening to the litany of cruelties that the man in front of him had visited on Nick and, by default, on Emma. Nick began to get very agitated when he explained about his grandfather correcting him, and mocking him, and when Emma’s eyes turned to her father the flicker of a smile played around his lips.
‘Emma, don’t listen to this,’ urged Tam. ‘Nick can’t see you; come outside. It’s not good to get upset like this, it’s really not.’
‘I have to know, Tam. I feel like it’s my fault.’
As hard as he tried, Nick did not make a good witness. The cross-examination of someone who’d already been deemed unfit to stand trial was over before it began. Dates,
times, specifics… Nick had been too young to remember, and he became increasingly frantic trying to explain just how painful his life had been, and the torment he’d been through. Emma was crying, and when Nick couldn’t go on any more she shouted out, ‘Nick, don’t worry, it will all be alright.’
The summing-up was quick and brutal.
‘In the light of the lack of evidence, and the medical condition of the main witness… ’
Before the judge could finish, Emma was on her feet. ‘I’m a witness too. Let me speak.’
The prosecution barrister asked for a recess, and Emma was led into Chambers to talk to him and the judge. It wasn’t until she was on the stand that Tam knew what she was going to say. Tam tried to meet her eye as she was sworn in, but she seemed to have moved to a place where he couldn’t reach her. She asked for permission to sit down, and some water. Then the questions began and Tam held his breath.
‘Ms Peters, could you tell me how old you were when your father first started sexually abusing you?’
Emma’s eyes turned towards her father and for a moment she looked scared, like a small child again, and Tam saw a flash of menace cross her father’s face. Emma hesitated, then pulled her face round to face the Court.
‘About eight years old. I would say eight years old.’
‘Thank you, and how long would you say the abuse went on?’
‘It started with my father coming to kiss me goodnight, and giving me massages, and back scratches, and it turned into sex when I was ten. That I remember. I was ten. It was on my birthday. My mother went out to pick up my birthday cake and my father raped me.’
Tam sat rigid in his seat while she tried her best to speak calmly and clearly.
‘If you were so terrified of your father, and presumably of sex, can you explain how you ended up pregnant at sixteen by a teacher at your school, and again five years later?’
Tam watched Emma take a breath and steady herself.
‘I wanted to get away from him, away from home. I got pregnant by my English teacher. He was the first person who had ever been kind to me. He thought I was clever, and lent me books, but in the end he did the same to me as my dad. It was as if men could tell … there was something about me, a “young girl who knows about sex” aura that seemed to surround me. I just wanted someone to love me, to rescue me. He told me he would marry me, we would live together, and I believed him. I even believed him when he told me he was so in love with me and that he hadn’t told me he was married in case it hurt me. I protected him. I hid the baby under baggy jumpers, learned how to be sick silently, until one day my father came into my bedroom and realised. He slapped me across the face and called me a whore, and from that day on he used my baby to control me.’
Tam listened to her, and as she talked she seemed to grow stronger, putting down this burden that she had carried all her life. More than anything Tam wanted to catch Emma’s eye, to reassure her somehow, but she was staring into a place far from here, reliving a horror from a time long ago.
‘Why didn’t you realise that your father was also abusing Nick? You were living in the same house for much of the time; surely you must have been aware that he was upset?’
‘I didn’t realise because by then I knew that Nick was different from other children and I thought his behaviour was because of that, not because of my dad. I thought because Dad had abused me, he liked girls… it never occurred to me that he would touch Nick. Nick had been like that since he was tiny. He didn’t smile, he didn’t respond to his name… he was different. Even at mother-and-baby groups I could see it. But he was so clever. He could do things no other kids of his age could do. His reading – he used to get a subject in his head and he could tell you anything about it. Ancient Egypt, dinosaurs – there wasn’t a statistic he didn’t know. He and I would sit by ourselves for hours, me asking him questions and him sitting apart from me on the sofa; we’d be in our own little world. The one thing he couldn’t talk about was emotions. If he was upset he screamed, and there was no comforting him, but if you weren’t there you would never have known ten minutes later that anything had happened. We had rules. No cuddling, but we would touch hands; dinner at the same time every night, same foods in a pattern on the same plate. He was my world, and if I had known that my dad had touched him… ’
Emma’s voice broke. She had done it. She had stood up and told the world that her father had betrayed her in the most profound way, and had abused both her and the child she loved when he was at his most vulnerable.
Tam sat and listened as she then told the Court about Billy, and his sad, short life. She told them about using her mother’s money to help Nick move into his own place, just so that she could make sure that he was away from her father and not bullied any more. It was the story of someone who was used to putting herself to one side to try and keep the people she loved safe. Tam had never been prouder. He waited until she had finished, and watched her look straight at her father for one final time. He didn’t look arrogant any more, and there was no smile on his lips.
Emma sat back down, and the verdict was delivered. Guilty. She had found her courage, and Tam felt the pride of a job well done. Outside the court they said goodbye. Tam looked down at her and could see a strength that was growing with every passing day.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘I told you all you needed was yourself. Life is going to start from here. Look after yourself, Emma. You know where I am if you need me.’
Emma smiled and walked off into the crowd of reporters. She only looked back once, and Tam saw that her smile was even broader and her eyes were full of tears. Happy tears.
18 | Karen
‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’
— William Shakespeare
‘Fuck it!’
Karen screamed the words at her computer. Another email from the Prison Authorities explaining to her why visiting Nick was ‘completely inappropriate’ and how it would be ‘detrimental to his recovery’.
Karen sat surrounded by the latest studies on the increase in autism rates. No sooner did she include one in her monolithic paper than it was discredited by a different scientific body. All she had now was her work. Charlie had stuck to his word and ignored all help she had offered. Jamie was in a school in south London which was exclusively for children on the autistic spectrum, which almost made her cry on a daily basis. A child whose mother had made a life’s work out of demonstrating how well children with Asperger’s could contribute in all arenas of life had a son who’d been taken out of mainstream society and segregated. The irony wasn’t lost on Karen, and she’d long ago decided it was a revenge strike, however happy Charlie told her Jamie was. Sarah hadn’t spoken to her since that visit at the hospital, and Jack seemed happy going to football matches with Charlie and his new girlfriend.
‘Fifty per cent of all babies born in the US will be autistic by 2025.’ It seemed an extraordinary claim, but it wasn’t just a headline in the Daily Mail, it was a study by an MIT scientist, and Karen set about extrapolating the data and checking the maths. Frustrated in her attempts to research ways to integrate autistic people into society, she had changed the focus of her work and had been collating all she could on the causes of autism. A few weeks after Nick had been arrested, feeling lost and blocked, she had stumbled across a graph which showed the rise in the use of a weedkiller containing glyphosates and the rise in autism in two parallel lines. They ran almost exactly concurrently, and the night that Karen had first looked at it had been the defining moment of her life.
The main problem was that no one had put all the many theories, hypotheses and facts together. Karen lay awake at night running through the history of the autistic spectrum since it had first been given a name in 1908. The stock phrases from those early days, ‘a powerful desire for aloneness’ and ‘an obsessive insistence for persistent sameness’ remained true today, and for a moment Jamie’s face popped into her head, looking through the car window int
o the middle distance as his father drove him away.
She went downstairs to put the bin bag out. The word ‘aloneness’ resonated with her. Every time she went onto the landing, the aloneness of being the only person left in the house tried to catch her; but she would turn her thoughts back to her work, and her eyes front. She never looked towards Tam’s door, or hesitated at Nick’s any more, but it sometimes felt as if they were still there, when she was drifting off to sleep, and the echoes of a slamming door, or footsteps on the stairs outside her flat comforted her. She even longed for the noise that had accompanied her children’s visits, although those thoughts never lasted long.
Karen sat back down at her desk. She took down the sub-file on abuse and violent behaviour in autistic adults. Children with autism were forty-five per cent more likely to be abused than children without it. Eighty per cent of adults in prison for violent crimes were on the spectrum. The figures flashed round in her head. These things really mattered. Certain children had a particular vulnerability, that was obvious, but what that susceptibility was she hadn’t yet discovered. She did her nightly search for new articles that might contribute to her body of empirical evidence and an article jumped out at her. If you drove from Aberdeen to London in your car, you could now do the whole journey without washing your windscreen once – the air was no longer filled with insects. This might be the connection she needed. Perhaps she could find a link between weedkillers, declining insect populations and autism. She took down an empty box file, and printed the article to add to it. Weedkiller was present in the urine of pregnant women, in breast milk, in the glucose syrup in your bread, in the meat you ate, in chips, in cereal. It was in rivers, ditches, water treatment plants. She had now gathered so much circumstantial evidence that it gave an urgency to her work, and even when one article seemed to contradict another she filed them, feeling that she was working towards a conclusion. She hoped to offer herself as an expert on all things autistic to the evening news programmes or breakfast television. The time was coming, she was sure when everyone would listen.
The Man on the Middle Floor Page 23