Off the Record

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Off the Record Page 19

by Craig Sherborne


  ‘What would I have to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Ideally you’d tell me everything. Talk me through the night it happened. Can you remember everything?’

  ‘That was the problem,’ said O’Bough. ‘She didn’t know what she’d done. The ambulance rushed Liam to hospital, and when he died Kelli couldn’t explain his injuries.’

  ‘What I’d need, Kelli, is it set out, the incident’s timeline. Are you up to that?’

  ‘I’ve told it many times. Police. Doctors. Psychiatrists. Lawyers.’

  ‘So you could do that for me? Perhaps write it all down.’

  ‘Already have. I had to do it. It was part of my evidence.’

  ‘If you have copies they would be a blessing and save us time.’

  O’Bough held a hand up: ‘Are we allowed to? Because they’re stamped Confidential. I’d have to ask the lawyers.’

  ‘They’re going to say no,’ I said.

  ‘Then we should say no.’

  O’Bough was losing his nerve for this. I had spoken too eagerly, he was withdrawing. I confess I couldn’t blame him, my nerve was also flagging, just a little: what kind of jail would I be in? Low-security, surely. Prison farm, where my job was feeding placid cattle. I wanted to stand up and ask to get some air. A stroll about the back lawn synthetic-green and swept shiny. I wasn’t cowardly so much as I was sober to reality.

  ‘I’m not backing away,’ I said. ‘This is a major risk for me, is all I’m saying. What I’m planning has not been done before, to my knowledge. It’s not like I’d be some coward using an alias by-line. I’d be myself, Callum Smith, and there’d be jail for me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want that, jail for trying to help,’ Kelli said.

  ‘That’s my burden. My decision entirely. The thing is, I’d need every detail. If I’m going to do this I’ll do it right. Half-hearted would mean jail for no good reason.’

  O’Bough took back his daughter’s hand.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘is all the shrinks said she should see the child.’

  ‘They said that?’

  ‘Every one of them. Best thing for Kelli. Best thing for Jade. Or else the child will grow up hateful and confused. It’s all written down in black and white. Their reports, their files. Every one of them. So why is it not straightforward? What’s the point of the system if the judges snub experts?’

  His wife said, ‘Easy, Danny. You’ll make yourself angry.’

  He was angry already but he closed his eyes and kissed Kelli’s fingers. Such delicate fingers for baby killing. I wondered if maybe she didn’t do the deed. Now there was an angle! The baby’s father did it. Kelli was taking the blame in a marital love pact. Too obvious, the first thing the cops would have asked. Such delicate fingers. The slenderest killing hands of all the violent hands I’ve known. I savoured that line and reached into my satchel, took out my notebook and jotted it down in shorthand. Kelli watched me and frowned. O’Bough said, ‘We’ve said something?’

  ‘Just details. Just small things. For my poor memory.’

  The benefit of scribbling lines in shorthand is that your O’Boughs or whoever can’t read it and ask for vetoes. The other benefit is the softening process. First you bring out a notebook and they get used to it. Once used to that you produce your voice recorder. No smartphone recorder for me. Mine is old-school and runs mini-cassettes. I file the cassettes in my vintage style. Good for saying ‘It’s all in here’ to claims ‘You misquoted me.’

  My nerve had returned. All that talk of reports and psychiatrists backing Kelli—reams of highbrow science for credibility: it fills you with a sense of justification.

  Peeko was up on a high horse now. ‘Heavens,’ she said. ‘Reports and psychiatrists. You’d think it would be straightforward, no need for a court case.’

  ‘Too right,’ O’Bough said, poking his finger on his knee. ‘It’s torture to drag it out this way.’

  He complimented Peeko on her decent nature. ‘You’ve been there. You see this through Kelli’s eyes.’

  An important component of winning people over is getting the pressuring right—force them, but not too strongarmed. You may have talked your way into their house this moment. Tomorrow they might have a change of heart. I’ve been promised full access to a family one day and the next day the door was slammed in my face.

  ‘What I would normally like to do,’ I said. ‘Is go away and let you mull this over—the thing I want most is that you’re comfortable. And then I’d come back and I’d interview you.’

  ‘Your wife would be with you?’ O’Bough asked.

  ‘I couldn’t say. She has her commitments.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a guarantee.’

  Peeko was in the perfect swing of the acting. She knew to say, ‘Callum’s right. I couldn’t give a guarantee.’

  ‘It’s wonderful having my wife with me,’ I said. ‘That’s why we should make a start now. Don’t postpone it. I’ve been in my line of work for many years and the longer a story does not get told, the greater the risk it loses relevance. Don’t you think so, Peeko dear? It might take a few hours, sweetheart, but would you stay with us while I interview Kelli?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  And I had them. They nodded. To each other. To Peeko. Then me. Like the desperate bowing to a higher faith.

  28

  They made us coffee. Had one of those gargling-froth machines. I admired it, received a lesson on how it worked. I sipped my cup ambling about the kitchen. I couldn’t stop staring at the blank photo spaces.

  It was time to get this interview started. ‘I’m intrigued,’ I said. ‘Am I right to think these were child photos?’

  ‘Yes,’ O’Bough said. ‘Kelli wanted them all put in her bedroom. It’s like a shrine in there.’

  I put down my cup. I had to see this shrine.

  ‘Would you mind, Kelli, showing me these photos? It seems wrong to talk about Liam and Jade if I’ve not seen their faces.’

  ‘I guess I don’t mind.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Peeko I’m sure would agree. It’s more respectful of me to match a face to a name.’

  Peeko agreed on cue.

  We followed Kelli to the bedroom.

  *

  The kind of bedroom you’d normally wince at as over-cute and kitsch-happy. Pictures of babies in booties and babies in bonnets. Liam asleep in his bassinet swaddling. Jade in a fit of gummy laughter. Here Kelli was kissing them. Here wiping their bums. No space on the walls was left un-babied. Handprints and footprints from the first week after their birth.

  May I take photos of the photos? I asked. May I take one with Kelli in the foreground? One looking at the camera. Another at the shrine walls. Did she have any toys that belonged to the babies? Could she hold them, could she nurse them as she’d once nursed each child? There was risk in this—too much stirring up memories. But Kelli revelled in having a stranger witness her life. For this was her life, she said. May I quote her? Yes, I may. Could I ask her to put some lipstick on? It was important she had a normal look. Not sad-sack to the point of putting people off, but a face they could identify with: healthy and, most importantly, cared for.

  It was going very well. Peeko had a tear trickle from her eye folds. For real or not, it helped me. O’Bough and his quiet wife were reassured by this weepy display. Marie cheered her with ‘It’s okay, Peeko. Don’t cry.’

  It wasn’t a tear—it dried far too quickly. It was spittle she’d put on with her finger.

  This moment in interviews I call ‘crossing over’, where you’re now a new friend to the household. I felt confident I could turn on my voice recorder. I could ask sordid questions and not scare them. I could get the whole story, the lead-up to Liam’s death.

  I suggested Peeko, Marie and O’Bough take some coffee and go outside. I was in and wanted no distractions. No Peeko to interrupt me. No parents meddling and cens
oring. I got rid of Marie, who went with Peeko to keep her company. They went out through the ranch-sliders. There were banana chairs in the sun and Marie held Peeko’s elbow to lower her into one.

  I couldn’t get rid of O’Bough. He wasn’t leaving his Kelli, no way. He settled next to her on the opposite side of the table. He had a folder of papers. He unclipped it ready for showing. I asked if I might start proceedings.

  Kelli took a deep breath. I pushed the record button.

  ‘I fed Liam at eight that night. I had trouble breastfeeding, so he was bottle-fed. He got grizzly like he always did, which the doctors said was colic, and I gave him his medicine. Then I watched some telly and tried to sleep on the couch. I was so tired. I was always tired because Liam cried all the time. Day and night he would cry and cry. Jade curled up with me. Greg—their dad—slept in our bedroom with Liam. We’d do that sometimes so I got a break from having to wake and pick him up. By this stage I was…not in a good state.’

  ‘It’s in the psychologists’ reports,’ O’Bough interrupted. ‘Let’s show him, Kelli.’

  He opened the folder. It was marked Confidential. This is heaven, I was thinking. Anything marked Confidential: heaven.

  ‘Read this here,’ O’Bough insisted of me.

  ‘I will in a minute. Keep going, Kelli. What happened next?’

  ‘Well, all I remember is that about one in the morning Greg came in and said Liam wasn’t breathing. He called triple-0 and did CPR. Then the ambulance came and we all went to hospital.’

  She asked O’Bough to get a glass of water.

  She took a sip and I said please keep going. A pause can lead to silence if you don’t prod the talker on.

  ‘What happened when you got to the hospital, Kelli?’

  ‘At some stage I rang Mum and Dad and they arrived and then someone came up to me—it was a doctor—and he said Liam had a fractured skull and would die. He said there were bruises on his body, and they found other fractures to his ribs and his arms and legs. One fracture was already healing which meant it was an old injury. He said how did this happen? I said I don’t know, and it wasn’t lies, I didn’t know. And he said: you must. He said that these kinds of injuries were not accidental. Then more doctors spoke to me and they took Jade away to examine her. She had no injuries but still they took her away. And that was the last time I saw her. I hugged her and off she went up the ward. That’s when the police got involved.

  ‘They thought Greg had done it. That’s what they said—the man’s always the suspect. Then I said something that made them change from Greg to me. I admitted I shook Liam when I couldn’t settle him and I was tired. I’d end up in a daze of never sleeping and I’d rock him and shake him. I sometimes thought he was possessed or something. Always crying and with his eyes popping out of his head. I really thought he’d been taken over. The police asked: did I sneak in and shake him that night?

  ‘Greg told the police I’d changed since having Liam. I was bad-tempered, which was not me usually. He said I’d verbally abuse Liam and Jade and him. If I’d known I was sick I would’ve put myself in hospital.’

  O’Bough pushed the folder my way and jabbed it with his fingertip. It was all documented, he said. The system, it failed Kelli. ‘You read it.’ He jabbed. ‘You read it. It’s all here.’

  I flipped the pages and speed-read where O’Bough pointed. How in his third week of life Liam wasn’t growing and wouldn’t straighten his legs when crying. How there were bruises on his body and Kelli couldn’t explain them.

  ‘Why didn’t the system pick it up?’ O’Bough asked the air. ‘They gave her a depression questionnaire and she failed it but they did nothing.’ He poked at a paragraph. ‘Kessler Distress Scale. She failed it so bad they marked her “severe”. But no doctor gave her medication. There was no safety plan. No nothing.’

  I asked to take photos of all the pages. Seventy-seven in all, including the judge’s suppression order. There were statements from child-protection services. Second, third, fourth opinions from shrinks supporting Kelli’s plea for access. I planned to upload them on pry and have the law crash down on me.

  It was time to get Peeko and go. It had all gone so well. You stay too long doing an interview and you might put your foot in it.

  ‘I don’t want to tire Kelli,’ I said. ‘I have all I need, for now. It’ll take a few days to give this the wordsmith treatment. A big feature and a news splash. I’ll do a good job, I promise you. You can count on me.’

  ‘Anything else you need, you just call us.’ O’Bough almost smiled.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘We appreciate your help.’

  ‘Peeko dear, shall we take our leave?’

  They kissed our cheeks goodbye.

  29

  I drove Peeko home. She lived by the river in a skinny terrace house. I kept the car idling, double-parked to get going quickly. I wanted to start the O’Bough piece and not be in the ‘experiment’ mood with my pure original sending my hormones fizzing. But fizzing they were and I failed to control them. Peeko leaning forward for my mouth. Me touching her left breast, then taking a handful. Touching her leg, the inside of it, up her dress, her groin. I closed my eyes and enjoyed having human contact on my fly region. There was even a swelling of the warm and tingling kind. Swelling, for Christ’s sake. Then my eyes flicked open and my mind screamed, It’s Peeko, stupid! This was worse than if I’d walked into Miss Kisses brothel.

  ‘He fucked Peeko!’ the journo rumour mill would go. ‘He’s that desperate? Pathetic. Lost respect for him.’

  I did not pick her fingers from my trousers where she was fiddling with the zipper. I did not remove my hand from her wet inside. I went up deeper. I said, ‘Let’s go into your house.’

  The sheer smuttiness of the moment got to me. My penis was out and stiffening—yes, stiffening—as I bid her to bend forward on the bottom four stairs. Kneel there, knees on the second step. Elbows on the fourth. She wanted the whole bed experience, she said. More kissing and touching. Nakedness, rubbing. Sex that is slow and soft and ends in sleep. What I was doing I could have done at Miss Kisses. What I was doing was a mistake for both of us. But she knelt and said, ‘Go in slow, it’s been a while.’

  It only lasted a few minutes. I orgasmed in the air and it landed on her clothing. I did not risk pregnancy. Not with Peeko. She was puffing and said, ‘That’s it?’

  No tears from her as I tucked my shirt in, pulled my belt buckle closed. Her slit-bitter stare had dead glitter deep in it. She smiled—her sign for being hurt—and lifted one leg then the other off the stair carpet. She pushed herself upright.

  ‘I’d better go write this story,’ I said.

  She was still smiling and slit-bitter.

  I was at her front door and turning open the locks.

  ‘I’m no angel, Words, but I’m no spittoon either. A one-night stand can at least have bedsheets.’

  I knew to keep quiet. No antagonising with a sorry or contradicting her.

  She knew to keep quiet and stretch my shame out.

  She didn’t slam the door but closed it softly as I left.

  A clicking of the locks.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered going back to my car. ‘You stupid man. Peeko for an enemy. You idiot.’

  I drove to the office arguing with myself.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m pissed off. She’s useful. I’ve burned her.’

  ‘Who cares! You’ve got your O’Bough yarn. Peeko’s served her purpose.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Forget her.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘There’s hand sanitiser in the glove box. Pull the car over. Disinfect your face. Disinfect your privates.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘All clean again.’

  ‘Clean slate.’

  ‘How many slates does a man get in a lifetime?’

  This shut me
up. I’d no answer.

  My phone rang. Ollie. Keeping his voice down.

  He had another pass mark, he said. For a maths test. Out of ten he got seven when he’d usually get three.

  He didn’t sound as chuffed as he should be.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’

  ‘Nothin’,’ he grunted. Teenage boys. Always grunting when they should be verbose with explanation.

  ‘What’s wrong. Answer me.’

  He said Dad? In a troubled way.

  ‘Yes, son?’

  ‘Dad, are you and Mum breaking up?’

  ‘No, no, no. Sometimes a tiff gets out of hand. With mums and dads it happens regularly.’

  ‘It’s just, Mum’s been on the phone with that guy Gordon. I heard her and she said she was fed up and she said…’

  ‘Hold it. You’re telling me that your mother and that old sleazy bastard—she has communicated with him? What did she say? Don’t tell me. I can guess. Tax department. Yes?’

  ‘That was part of it.’

  ‘Well, I’m proud to say I have been a good citizen and informed on Mr Gordon effing Grace. Tax evasion is theft from each and every one of us. How do we have roads and hospitals if the Gordon Graces of this world are not held to account?’

  ‘Dad, just shut up, will you?’

  ‘What did you say? You do not ever speak to me that way. Do not ever use that language to me.’

  ‘You cheated on Mum?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In a beer garden, that’s what Mum told him. You cheated on her and she’s never been the same.’

  This coming out of the mouth of my fourteen-year-old. How dare Emma make a phone call where my only son could listen.

  ‘I…I did not cheat on your mother. A man in my position has women flirting and always trying it on. Your mother is a jealous woman and has conflated some scenario. By that I mean got ideas into her head. Not based on real events but mere fantasy.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Come on, son. You trust your old man, don’t you? I can’t believe your mother would say such things. In my business it’s called defamation.’

 

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