by Adam Millard
Wood reversed his scooter from the table and made his way toward the bar, stopping only for a second to answer. “You can read it first, if you think it’ll help,” he said. “Same again?”
“Cheers.”
When Wood returned from the bar a little over ten minutes later—The Walnut Tree was severely understaffed—he said, “So, what’s our next move?”
Tom took a sip of whiskey before speaking. “We’ll need a little bit of luck,” he said, removing a scrap of paper from his pocket, “but this is the last known address of Laura White. It’s the house she used to live in with Frederick and their daughter.”
“Where did you get that?” Wood looked almost impressed. Almost, but not quite. Tom felt as if he already knew Trevor Wood well, well enough to know it would take more than an address scribbled on a piece of paper to excite him.
“There’s this thing,” Tom said, “called the World Wide Web. You might have heard of it—”
“Okay, smart-aleck,” Wood said. “So you got the Whites’ old address from the internet. And what? You think she’s still living there?”
Tom shrugged. “We’re due a bit of luck,” he said. Did he really think it was a good idea turning up on Burke Street with the intention of dragging Laura White once again through the darkest days of her entire life? Of course not. Did they have a choice? Not really.
“And what, pray tell, do you think the wife’s going to be able to tell us?” Wood asked. “That her husband was unhinged? That she hates him with every ounce of her being, and that she’ll never be able to forgive him for what he did to their daughter?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said, drawing a finger through the condensation left upon the table by his glass. “She might be able to tell us something. Something to better understand how this happened, how Frederick was a father one minute, and an eater of children’s souls the next. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a helluva leap to make. I mean, could that happen to anyone? To any one of us when we die? Instead of moving on to Heaven or Hell or wherever the fuck it is we’re meant to go, we’re suddenly employed as demons, told to prowl the streets at night looking for innocent souls to add to the tally? Because that’s fucked up!”
“I don’t think it happens to just anyone,” Wood said. “Like you, I think there is more to this than meets the eye. Fine, you want to go pay the widow White a visit? I’m with you. All I’m saying is that, if she is still living there, don’t expect her to be forthcoming.”
“I expect her to slam the door in our faces almost immediately,” Tom said, for he did.
“In that case, you have no reason to fear disappointment,” Wood said. “Would you do me a huge favour? Put that book away somewhere nice and safe. People are starting to notice it, and I don’t want them to think we’re starting some sort of gay cult.”
Laughing, Tom secreted the book beneath his jacket, which sat on the chair beside him. They finished their drinks in silence. Tom had no idea what Wood was thinking—the old man’s face seldom changed expression—but all Tom could think about was how things had changed so irrevocably in the past few days, how easily his life had descended into chaos, and how much he missed Danielle and wanted her back right there and then, to hold, to kiss, to tell her he loved her.
He would call her tonight to let her know he was still alive, that there was nothing to worry about. He would even throw in a lie or two about seeing Kurian again late next week, just to placate her.
“Ready?” Tom had finished his drink. His glass now sat empty on the table.
Wood put his own glass down—half a pint remaining—and said, “Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
October 28th, 2016,
Havering, London
The house was nothing special; just a semi-detached in Havering, like hundreds of others. The only difference being its apparent deterioration, as if its owner cared little for outward appearance. The windowsills were rotten; paint flaked from the building as if it were trying, so so hard, to shed its skin. The front garden—if it could be called such—was overgrown with grass and weeds and unkempt hedges. Buried there, at the centre of the mess, was a child’s perambulator, the kind which a daughter would push proudly around while her dolly’s eyes flickered open and shut, open and shut. Had that tiny pink pushchair once belonged to Isobel White? Was that thirty years’ worth of rust eating away at its paintwork, at the aluminium frame?
“Hate to say it, kid,” Wood said, glancing up at the house from the pavement just outside its eroded gate, “but if Laura White still lives here, in this, I’m not sure we should be knocking on her door.” He sounded reluctant, sure, but also a little afraid.
Tom felt it, too. “She’ll be an old woman by now,” he said.
“She’d be the same age as me,” Wood said. “And if I wasn’t in this fucking chair, I’d teach you some manners.” He was joking, of course, but Tom made a mental note to choose his words more carefully from here on.
After the pub, Tom and Wood had gone back to the former copper’s ground-floor flat to, as Wood called it, ‘part-ex vehicles’. In other words, he wanted his wheelchair, which was easier to manoeuvre and made him look less like a lazy fucker and more like a man who could not walk.
Wood’s flat-cum-bedsit had been just as Tom pictured it. No soft furnishings, a complete lack of colour, and files and folders scattered everywhere. Wood might have left the police force a long time ago, but old habits die hard. He was still investigating. Still looking into things which shouldn’t concern him, and not just the missing children cases. All around Wood’s room there were notes and pictures, newspaper cut-outs and scribbled theories. This was the room of a man very much still working—albeit without pay, and with no real jurisdiction.
“We can stand her all afternoon,” Tom said, “but I’m pretty sure it’s going to start raining in a minute, and we didn’t come all this way to look at someone’s overgrown garden.” For Tom, it wasn’t a case of whether they were going to knock the door of 7, Burke Street. It was a case of whether he was going to be doing it alone, while Wood sat out here, waiting, probably getting wet.
“Go on, then,” Wood said, motioning to the rust-worn gate. “What? You want me to open the damn thing?”
There was nothing, not even a suggestion, of a pathway leading up to the house, and in places the grass was up to Tom’s chest—and the top of Wood’s head. Though Wood was adamant he didn’t need any help getting through the forest of regular and timothy-grass, Tom latched on to the handles of the wheelchair and pushed through it toward the house.
By the time they arrived at the front door, both Tom and Wood were covered with sticky buds and greenfly, and there was a strong smell of meadow clinging to them, such an incongruity out here in East London. Tom was breathless, for the wheelchair and its contents were heavy, especially over such uneven terrain.
The porch was lined with old, dirty shoes. Here was a pair of filthy stilettos, there a pair of steel-toe-capped work-boots, but it was the tiny pink wellies which caused Tom’s heart to falter. Printed upon their side, and just about visible, were a pair of glittery butterflies cavorting around one another.
“Look,” Wood said, pointing up at a sign stuck to the front door. NO SOLICITING OF ANY KIND. NO RELIGION. WE WON’T BUY FROM YOU. WE DON’T NEED ANY ADVICE. NO EXCEPTIONS. “Looks like someone’s had enough of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“I’ve got to get me one of those signs,” Tom said, and he meant it. He was just about sick of cold callers. The owner of this house—Laura White or not—had the right idea. “But we’re not here to sell anything, are we?”
“After a sign like that,” Wood said, “you really think she’s going to come to the door?”
“Only one way to find out.” Tom reached in through the open porch and knocked lightly three times on the front door. There was, he noticed, no bell, no knocker; was that to prevent people from taking liberties? So that those who missed the sign, that great big y
ellow-and-black thing in the middle of the porch door, realised they weren’t welcome to knock at this house. Move along, nothing to see here.
Some time passed, and Tom listened for movement from within. The opening of a door, the insuppressible cough or sneeze of a hiding woman, the oblivious clatters of a lady hard of hearing—for there was always that possibility—working away in the kitchen at the rear of the house and unable to hear the knocking at the door.
“Knock again,” Wood said. “Harder.” But he didn’t wait for Tom to do so. The ex-copper reached down, picked up one of the tiny pink wellington boots, and flung it hard at the door. There was an almighty thump as the boot hit and then bounced off.
“What the—”
“Just wait,” Wood said, seemingly unaware of the curious way he was acting. Tom ascribed it to fear. Fear and uncertainty. Neither of them knew how this was going to pan out, whether they had made, what would turn out to be, a wasted journey. Whether Laura White even lived here any longer. This—their being here—was one of their only leads; if it came to nothing, they were back to square one, with nothing but a library book and a newspaper clipping.
Just then, and not a second too soon as far as Tom was concerned, there was movement beyond the door. Tom glanced down at Wood, who arched his eyebrows and smiled.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to throw a boot at the door,” he said.
A voice from the other side of the door—female, cracked, and not at all welcoming—said, “Go away.”
Go away.
“Mrs White?” Tom said. Was that even right? Would it still be Mrs White, or would it be Ms White? Tom hadn’t a clue, and it was too late now to change it. Should have just gone with Laura, he thought.
“Read the sign,” said the voice. “I don’t buy or bullshit with cold-callers—”
It was Wood’s turn to speak. “Mrs White, we’re here to talk to you about your husband, a mister Frederick White.”
A beat.
Tom and Wood exchanged a glance, one which said, She’s not going to open up for us, and if she does it will be a miracle.
“Frederick died,” came the voice after the longest time.
“We know that, Mrs White,” Wood went on. “That’s what we’re here to discuss. You see, there have been a couple of new developments, and we really need to speak with you to—”
The sound of a key turning; a chain sliding across, and then the door swung inward to reveal Laura White, standing there with a cigarette in one hand while the other hand teased nervously at her unkempt silver hair.
She looked, Tom thought, like a woman of eighty, and not sixty-three. Her thin lips overlapped one another—Laura White obviously wore dentures, though not today—and dark bags sat beneath her eyes like shadows. The long white dressing gown she wore gave her a somewhat ghostly appearance, as did the gnarled and veiny arms protruding from its sleeves. Her skin seemed to stretch taut over her skeleton and looked as brittle as centuries-old parchment. She was a woman who had lived a hard life, a woman who had not forgiven herself for what had happened to her daughter—her husband—and a woman to whom death could not come a moment too soon.
She looked at Tom long and hard, then turned her attention to Wood, who squirmed a little in his chair as she appraised him. Tom could tell the ex-copper was uncomfortable with this whole thing; gone was his usual severity, replaced by insecurity and hesitation. All those years on the police force, questioning people, taking statements and generally making a menace of himself, all now lost. Was he doubting himself? Doubting what they were trying to do here? Tom didn’t know, but he knew someone was going to have to say something soon or he was certain Laura White would shut the door in their faces.
“You policemen?” Laura said, taking a long drag on her cigarette before exhaling a plume of blue fog back into the hallway.
“I was,” Wood said. “A long time ago.”
Tom didn’t know what to say. Did he lie, tell the old lady he was a copper, or did he tell her the truth—that he was here as a concerned citizen, concerned that her husband was about to return from beyond the grave once again to wreak havoc and transport children to his netherworld, where he would feast upon their souls for all eternity, or until they were wholly devoured, whichever came first?
Thankfully he didn’t have to do either.
Laura White stepped aside and motioned them to enter.
* * *
If the exterior of the house was like something from one of the myriad daytime home makeover programmes (the BEFORE stage, not the AFTER) then the inside was just as bad, if not worse. Newspapers were stacked throughout the ground floor; they lined the hallway, the tiny kitchenette in which no cooking had apparently been attempted for quite some time, and the living-room, which was the worst of the lot. No sooner had Tom followed Laura White into the living-room than he smelt it. An assault on his nose—shit, piss, rotten food, Lord knows what else—made him gag, but he swallowed it back down, for it wouldn’t be polite to walk into someone’s house and immediately throw up in their most cherished of rooms.
How Wood managed to traverse the decades’ worth of junk and tat which filled up the house was a mystery to Tom, but there they were in the living-room, and Wood was the lucky one! He was already sitting down; Tom couldn’t see a seat anywhere and resigned himself to standing until one was pointed out to him.
“I’d offer you a drink,” said Laura, “but I have no idea where the kettle is.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tom said. The last thing he wanted here was a drink. Several flies danced around the light fixture at the centre of the room, their buzzing a distraction, their infuriating circling and plunging a good advertisement for flyswatters. “We really appreciate this, Mrs White. There really is no easy way to go about it, so we’re going to be as brief as possible.”
“You talk funny,” Laura said, lighting a new cigarette from the butt of the one she had just smoked. Her grin made her look almost crazy, as if life had managed to get the better of her.
Wood took a deep intake of breath before speaking. “Mrs White… well, there’s no really easy way to put this, but…” So hard were the words to find, that Wood seemingly gave up mid-sentence.
“We believe,” Tom said, taking over, “that the death of your husband is related to several disappearances in the area, dating back to 1988.”
Laura White almost choked on a mouthful of smoke. “What?” she said. “Frederick died in ’87. How the hell could he have anything to do with something which happened afterwards?”
Tom and Wood exchanged a glance; they were, Tom realised, doing that a lot lately. “I don’t quite know how to explain it,” Tom said, “but we’re sure your husband’s death, and the death of your daughter, are directly related to the missing children.”
“Bullshit!” Laura White couldn’t have placed any more venom behind the word if she tried; perhaps it was the mention of her daughter. “That day, the day that bastard killed my little girl, was the end of Frederick White. And good riddance! As far as I’m concerned, he can rot, if he hasn’t already.”
So there was no love lost between husband and wife. Laura White despised the man, had never forgiven him for what he’d done, and wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire right now and standing in that cluttered living-room, screaming for mercy.
One thing was bothering Tom. He had never found out why Frederick White had run from the police on that day, had put it down to a domestic disturbance and nothing more. It was a good idea to clarify that point right now. “Mrs White—”
“Knock it off what that Mrs White horseshit,” she said. “Nobody, at least nobody from around here, has called me that in years. It’s Laura. Laura Dixon. Has been ever since the coroner signed the papers.”
Tom nodded his thanks, for he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up the formalities. “The last thing I want to do is drag up events from three decades ago, but what happened? On the day Frederick ran from the police?”
/> Reluctant at first—as if she was considering covering for her ex-husband momentarily—Laura sighed deeply and said, “Frederick was not a nice man.” As easy as that. “Oh, everyone who knew him thought he was this great guy, this gentleman, just an Ice Cream Man, hard-working, good with kids, but… there was more to Frederick than that. He had what some doctors would call, I suppose, mental issues.” She paused, lit yet another cigarette and extinguished the second in an over-spilling ashtray before continuing. “He kept that part of him hidden from the rest of the world, let everyone think he was perfect when, in fact, he was sick. Of course, I didn’t know that when I married him, otherwise I’d have told him to get up off his knee and jump in the fucking river.
“It was less than a month after our wedding that I realised I’d made a big mistake. He put me in hospital with three broken ribs, a fractured cheekbone, and two black eyes. I covered for him. Of course I covered for him. I told the police I’d tumbled down the stairs, and they believed me. Frederick was even there at the hospital, putting on this great façade, bringing me flowers and grapes, the way any good husband would. The nurses would come into my room after he’d gone and tell me how lucky I was, how much they liked Frederick. ‘Such a good husband,’ they would say, and I would fight back the urge to leap off the bed, grab them by the throat, and shake some sense into them.
“No one could see it, you see. How this man could be anything but good. He even had me fooled. I left the hospital—I remember it well because we had a really bad storm that day, thunder, lightning, rain, the whole shebang—with the promise it would never happen again. And it didn’t, not for a couple of years, but I never truly trusted him after that. I kept a wide berth, you know what I mean? I made sure his dinner was on the table when he got back from selling lollies and twisters to the kids in the neighbourhood. I made sure his apron was clean, ready for the next day, when he’d go out again, putting on smiles and telling the kids all these great stories as he served them. I ran his baths for him and made sure he had the TV remote control on the arm of his chair, just how he liked it, because I was terrified of him. I’m not going to lie to you, I feared for my life, even back then, before Isobel came.”