by Jane Adams
‘It would help if I knew what you were looking for,’ she said, ‘then you might not have to ransack my bookcase to find it.’
Mike looked startled, then glanced about him at the mess he’d created — books on the table, on the floor. Scraps of paper with page numbers scrawled all over them. Strips of newspaper sticking out at all angles between the pages, marking references he thought he might have a use for.
‘Sorry,’ he apologized. Maria ignored him, closed her eyes and leaned back against the deep Chesterfield-style arm of the sofa, swinging her long legs up on to Mike’s lap and clearly preparing to unwind.
‘This is getting to you,’ she said. ‘This thing with Fletcher.’ She opened her eyes and looked at him sharply, her dark eyes curious and more than a little anxious. ‘Mike, do you have to push it this far? The case is closed, Fletcher’s inside and from what I’ve heard of this Pearson character his new evidence is likely to be no more than wishful thinking and hot air.’
‘And if it’s not?’ he asked. ‘What if Fletcher wasn’t bluffing? He talked about something very organized. Widespread.’ He paused, gestured helplessly. ‘He talked about kids being killed, Maria. About them being abused and tortured and their bodies dumped. Just like the boy we’ve found. I keep asking myself how many more are there? If Fletcher was telling the truth, how many other kids have there been raped and killed and dumped like this one?’
Mike looked at her, his eyes showing the strain and his mouth drawn into a tight line. ‘I don’t know how much truth there was in what Fletcher claimed,’ he said. ‘But I do know that I’ve got to find out.’
Maria nodded slowly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But you should start with what we can tell for certain before you go dashing off chasing maybes. I mean,’ she gestured towards the scattered books, ‘how much do you really know about all this?’
Mike sighed and began, automatically, to massage her feet.
‘To be honest, not nearly as much as I thought I did.’ He gestured towards the books. ‘I mean, when the Cleveland furore was at its height a few years back, this whole thing of sexual abuse became something everyone was talking about.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I mean, it’s like these things go in fashions. All the media hype, everyone that was anyone — or thought they were — having an opinion about it and, well, it seemed to me, anyway, that there was sweet FA they could agree on.’ He shook his head. ‘It was something you couldn’t get away from.’
‘And that bothered you?’
He gave her a wry smile. ‘Yes, doctor,’ he said, ‘that bothered me.’ He paused, trying to get his thoughts in focus. ‘It wasn’t just the thought of kids suffering that got to me. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t met up with this kind of thing before. I’d dealt with my share of rapes and sexual assaults and all the trauma that went with them.’
He paused again, aware that, maybe, he sounded glib and unfeeling. Maria continued to regard him, eyes thoughtful, noncommittal.
Mike stumbled on, feeling totally inept. ‘It was the effect, the broader effect it was having on people. I mean people who had never given it much thought, beyond the notion that “interfering with kids” was wrong. Before Cleveland it wasn’t something anyone talked about. Just another of those things that happened elsewhere. To other people.’
He could see her mouth begin to twitch, the corners dimpling. ‘Go on,’ she said.
He shrugged, suddenly very awkward. ‘So many people I talked to, it’s as though they suddenly felt the ground rules had changed.’
‘In what way?’
He gave her a sideways glance, amused and a little disturbed at how easily she fell back into being Dr Maria Lucas even off duty.
Maria recognized the look. She laughed, eased her feet off his lap and got up, heading towards the bedroom. Mike followed her, then lounged on the edge of the bed watching contentedly while she changed into jeans and sweatshirt and dragged a comb through her short, tight curls.
‘We’d got friends,’ he said, ‘with kids quite a bit older than Stevie. They must have been, oh, I don’t know, about eight and ten at the time. Well, the parents were invited to the school to hear this talk given by one of our lot. I seem to remember they dragged in a fatherly-looking DC for the job. And they planned to show this film called . . . Not Always Strangers, or something like that. The school was trying to decide whether or not to show it to the kids.’
Maria glanced at him again. She was foraging in her sock drawer to find a matching pair. ‘I remember the film,’ she said, then frowned as though trying to recall it. ‘Something about a neighbour who groped one of his kid’s friends, wasn’t it?’
Mike gave her a slightly startled look. It wasn’t quite the phraseology he would have used, but, yes, it must be the same film.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘these friends of ours, she’d got a part-time job. Cleaning or something, just a couple of hours a day. Jim would get home from work just before she left and take over with the kids till she got back. He’d let the two girls have their friends round to play and start getting dinner ready. You know. But not after seeing the film. After that, he was scared to have any of the other kids in the house unless his wife was there, and he wasn’t the only one. Maggie told me about someone she worked with. He was suddenly scared to play with his own children, you know, the way fathers do, tickling and just generally fooling about. It seems he’d been watching a documentary or something on incest and that someone on the programme had pointed out just what a fine line there was between normal play and impropriety.’
‘Impropriety!’ Maria laughed, suddenly.
Mike scowled at her and stood up. ‘I don’t happen to think it’s funny,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about something that can ruin a life for ever and you think it’s goddamned funny.’
He left the room, made his way to the kitchen and began to fill the kettle, shockingly aware of just how pompous he had sounded. Maria had laughed at his rather coy choice of words, he knew that. Not at his feelings or at those of the children involved.
The truth was, he still found it difficult to speak objectively about anything that involved children. He would try. Make serious attempts to distance himself, but each time the general came back to the specific. The specific became someone he knew, or might know, or could recognize and care for.
Grief about the world’s children became grief about Stevie. A pain that was as raw now as when first inflicted.
He heard her enter the kitchen behind him. He carried on with his side of the conversation as though there had been no interruption, knowing that she would take her lead from him. For now.
‘And then I ended up at this conference,’ he said. ‘Spent three or four hours looking at diagrams of where and how to recognize a child that had been abused. Watched a film of the kinds of therapy they were using and got lectured on the problems of leading the witness.’
‘Pity it was so long ago,’ Maria remarked. ‘You could have had fun with false memory syndrome too.’
Mike turned and gave her a slight smile. ‘And there was a video. These little kids playing with anatomically correct dolls.’ He could feel his mouth curling with distaste and was uncomfortably aware of Maria’s gaze.
‘That bothered you a lot,’ she said.
Mike nodded. ‘Though I’d be hard pushed to tell you why. It just seemed so unreal. All so unrelated to what we were really doing. Just technical stuff. As though something like that could be pinned down and categorized.’
Maria grinned at him, the corners of her mouth twitching again. She said, her voice full of ironic tones, ‘I get what you mean, Mike. It’s the same all over. It’d make the paperwork so much easier if we could identify the IC1 sexual abuser or the IC3 would-be rapist.’
Mike sighed, began to make them coffee.
‘But it doesn’t work like that, does it?’ Mike said. ‘What one person can learn to cope with, even turn around and take strength from having survived, another person might end up topping themselves over.�
� He gestured irritably towards the other room. ‘And those damned books didn’t help. Half the so-called experts can’t even decide what the facts are. There’s some woman seeing Satan’s hand in everything and some other guy talking about societal reforms and lowering the age of consent. And it’s all nicely quantified and written up in neat technical language. What it doesn’t tell is how the victims feel. What damage it does and how likely they are to be abusers themselves because of — what did they call it? — “dysfunctional emotional responses” or some other damned rubbish.’
Maria listened for a few minutes more as he railed on. His anger at so many unrelated things spilling out. She knew better by now than to try to call a halt.
Finally, he seemed to run out of words, or at least out of breath. He paused, staring down into his coffee mug, a puzzled look on his face. The image of the sandy haired boy lying in the mortuary floated into his mind.
‘It matters to you,’ she said. ‘So you’ll run it ragged till you get your answers.’
He looked up at her, surprised, as always, that she should be so accepting of him, of his obsessiveness.
‘And as to understanding,’ she went on, ‘I don’t think you need any books to tell you what grief is like. You take something from someone by force, they’ll grieve for it. They’ll dream about it and they’ll wake up sweating like a pig, just the way you do, because they’ve just gone through it all over again.’
He stared at her, shocked for a moment that she should throw his own pain back at him. Surprised again that she should also be so right.
* * *
Tynan sighed contentedly. He took a drink and placed the glass down carefully, centring it deliberately upon the beer mat, then glanced about him as though seeing the pub for the first time. ‘Doesn’t change much, does it, this place?’
Andrews laughed. ‘The Fisherman? No, it doesn’t change, thank God. There was apparently talk of installing a jukebox back in the sixties. Almost started a riot, it did. They’ve had the sense to leave it be ever since.’ He paused, allowed his gaze to travel over the small, somewhat elderly crowd packed into the public bar.
‘Croft’s a good man, John. I like what he did in the Ashmore case. Cares more about the job than the career and that’s rare enough these days, either in his profession or in mine.’
‘But?’ John asked him.
‘Who said there was a but?’ Andrews smiled, then sighed. ‘It’s not a but, John, it’s a worry. He’ll stick with this thing till he’s cracked it?’
‘Figure you know that already.’
Andrews nodded. ‘I don’t like the smell of it, John. Not any of it. Fletcher’s where he should be, and if you ask me Pearson should be cell mate with him. Thought so at the time, and I think so now. And that Mike Croft of yours is heading for a fall if he pushes this thing too far.’ He paused, took another swallow of his pint.
‘He’ll not back down,’ John said again, the pride evident in his voice.
Andrews smiled at him. ‘Pity you and Grace never had kids of your own,’ he said. Then laughed at John’s startled look.
Andrews drained his glass, then got to his feet, preparing to leave.
‘You know, of course, that there was talk about Superintendent Jaques?’
John shook his head. ‘What kind of talk?’ he asked.
‘Oh,’ Andrews frowned, ‘nothing you could place bets on, John. Just talk. He and Fletcher knew each other socially and Fletcher made a lot of noise, demanding to see Jaques when he was first arrested.’ He shrugged. ‘Like I say, John. Nothing certain. Anyway, I’ll be in touch. Just tell that boy of yours to watch his back.’
* * *
Ellie sat up suddenly and put her hand on her chest, feeling the rapid thudding of her heart.
It was months since the nightmares had woken her, but the events of the last few days had been so unsettling it was no wonder they should come back now.
The house was quiet.
Beside her, Rezah slept deeply. Across the room in the travel cot Farouzi grumbled in her sleep and turned over.
Dimly, through the wall, Ellie could hear her father-in-law snoring and there was just the faintest hum of late-night traffic to be heard as it raced swiftly along the main road, far enough away to be almost soothing.
Ellie lay down again, images still in freefall at the edges of her memory. She lay, staring at the ceiling, listening to the late-night sounds of the house, the faint creaks and moans of cooling timbers and settling floors.
Rezah felt warm beside her and his steady breathing invited sleep.
Ellie turned over on her side and settled back close to him. She knew what had brought the nightmare this time and with it the dread she had lived with for such a very long time.
It was what they had said about Eric Pearson. The things they had accused him of and, despite that police man’s claim that Pearson had never been charged with anything, Ellie knew that in her mind he would always carry with him the taint of possible guilt.
It was what they said that brought it back to her. That, and sleeping in a strange house, where the floorboards creaked just the way they had done in her parents’ home.
Creaked when her father came up the stairs after her mother had gone out. Creaked just outside her bedroom door when he paused and knocked before coming in. And then creaked again as he crossed the room to where she lay in bed.
Ellie could feel her heart thumping, hear the echo of it as she pressed her ear closer to the pillow.
Cold sweat stood out all over her body, chilling her in spite of Rezah’s warmth.
Ellie closed her eyes, but she could still see her father’s face, feel his hands gripping her shoulders and his breath, hot against her cheek.
‘It isn’t me,’ she whispered, keeping her voice low, making her words barely more than breath. ‘It isn’t me.’ Just like, as a child, she had said over and over again in her head until, almost, she could believe in it.
‘It wasn’t me!’ Screamed out loud at her mother, stony-faced and disbelieving, blaming Ellie for what the man she loved had done.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Ellie whispered, angry now rather than afraid.
‘None of it was me.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Tuesday late evening
It was the moment Mike had been both seeking and dreading.
‘We’ve got the boy’s parents,’ Price told him, his voice cracking up slightly over the bad phone line.
‘You sure?’ Mike demanded.
‘Well,’ Price conceded, ‘there’s still the formal ID. Jaques wants you there. But they know about the sweatshirt. About the label being cut out and the green stitching on the neck, and he went missing at the right time for it to be him.’
‘Shit!’ Mike whispered. ‘OK, OK. What time’s the ID?’
‘Soon as you can make it there, guv. They’ve driven down. He’d hitched all the way from Birmingham, guv. Daft kid. He used to come on holiday round here. I suppose he thought it was always going to be like that, like some long holiday.’
Mike could hear the tension in Price’s voice even over the line.
‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’ He paused for a moment, then asked, ‘Do we have a name?’
‘Ryan.’ Price told him. ‘Ryan Sanderson. Fourteen years old. Just fourteen fucking years old.’
* * *
Price stood next to Mr arid Mrs Sanderson. Mike faced them across the body of their son.
Ryan lay in the little chapel close to the mortuary, swathed to the chin in a white sheet, his head was covered with another, leaving only his face and a curl or two of sandy hair visible.
‘You’re certain that this is your son?’ Mike asked gently. But the woman’s stricken face and soft moaning and the man’s sudden pallor told him all he needed to know.
‘Come on, love,’ Price said. ‘We’ll get you some tea.’ He began, gently, to coax them from the room, his arm slipping around the woman’s shoulders
.
Mike stood a moment longer looking down at the boy’s pale face. White even against the whiter sheets.
‘You got any kids?’
Mike looked up. Mr Sanderson had paused in the doorway and was staring at Mike with a mixture of anger and resentment in his eyes.
‘Have you got any kids?’ he asked again. "Cause if you have then you’ll know about it. Know it isn’t always easy. You know. They get out of hand now and then and . . . you know . . .’ He paused, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand, then straightening himself deliberately. ‘He was never a bad kid, though. Not really. Not a bad kid.’
Mike stared back at him. I lost my son too, he wanted to say. I know what you’re going through.
But he couldn’t ever say that. Not to this man. Not to his wife. Not to anyone in circumstances like these.
He sighed deeply and then moved around the body to stand with the other man close to the door.
‘Your wife needs you now,’ was the best he could manage.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Wednesday morning
Netisbrough Head was just over an hour’s drive from divisional HQ in Norwich.
It had been a pleasant drive, the air cool and slightly damp from early morning rain and the sunlight still hazy and undecided.
By the time Mike and his sergeant reached Netisbrough, the wind had strengthened and changed direction. Now it veered from seaward and as the coast road climbed up on to the headland Mike could see rainclouds massing on the horizon.
Less than an hour, he guessed, and there would be rain. Sea rain, fast driven and falling straight and hard as stair rods, soaking anything it hit in seconds.
The grey light gave a mysterious look to the headland. There were stories about this place. Mike had yet to find any spot in the region that didn’t have stories told about it. But this place, they said, had been the haunt of wreckers, the cove beyond the headland the grave of many ships and men.