Redemption Road

by Lisa Ballantyne

  Friday 4 October, 1985

  Two days since Molly Henderson had been taken. Search parties of neighbours, friends and police were still out looking for her, but hope was running out.

  The Hendersons had given tearful radio appeals, asking for the return of their daughter, but concern was deepening. In the recent similar cases of abducted children, the little girls had been sexually assaulted and then killed within twenty-four to forty-eight hours of their abduction. Tracey Begg, a little girl taken from Aberdeen just two years earlier, had been assaulted and killed within a day of her disappearance, but her body was found dumped in England, some ten days after her abduction. Angus suspected that the police would have very little to go on, until they found the body.

  Highlands Police were now coordinating with the national force, searching for the car and the man who had taken Molly, but the descriptions were imprecise and the witnesses had all been children.

  None of the statements that the police made publicly said anything about searching for a serial offender who had killed before, but Angus knew that this was merely a tactic to avoid panic. His police contacts had told him, confidentially, that they were looking again at the other unsolved child murders.

  There were three cases in particular which bore a resemblance to Molly’s abduction: Gillian Hardy, 1981, from Ballymena, Northern Ireland; Charlotte Martin, 1982, from Whitby; Tracey Begg, 1983, from Aberdeen. The police suspected these three murders were linked and it had been two years since the last abduction. It was time for the killer to abduct another child.

  As with the other children, witnesses to Molly’s disappearance suggested that she had been tempted away by a stranger. Tracey Begg from Aberdeen, taken only two years ago, had been just five years old. A tall dark man, described as having a scruffy appearance but wearing a suit, was seen paying for Tracey to ride on a merry-go-round, just before she disappeared.

  Angus had written a news article for the John o’Groat Journal based on the syndicated facts about the Henderson abduction and the ongoing national investigation, but he wanted a feature. He was collating a file on the Hendersons and the abduction and knew that he had it in him to make a breakthrough on the case, if only he could gather enough information. He was still writing his usual articles for the paper, about the petty goings-on in Caithness County, but he was working on the big story. The larger news agencies were still camped outside the Hendersons’ house, and Angus knew that the couple had been bombarded with requests for interviews. He wondered if his local connection meant that Kathleen might talk to him.

  It was mid-autumn, but the Hendersons’ large, walled garden bloomed as if it were still summer: chrysanthemums and fuchsias, roses and clematis. The rowan tree was still dark green but red berries hung heavy from its branches. A large wych elm in the corner of the garden had a makeshift swing attached to one of its branches.

  Angus stood on the doorstep and looked through the front window into the cream-furnished lounge before he rang the bell. He peered through the frosted glass of the door. The house seemed desolate: no lights on, and no sound from inside. The bell had an old-fashioned brass bell-pull and sounded loudly in the hallway. He waited a few minutes and was just about to ring again when he saw a shadow behind the glass, and heard the lock turn.

  Kathleen Henderson had shrunk into herself. Her collarbone and upper ribs were visible and her eyes were sunk into deeply shadowed sockets. She was well dressed, however, Angus noticed with some disdain. Wearing an expensive, low-cut jumper, she had adorned herself with pearls and long earrings, and swept her hair to one side.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she whispered. She held on to the door, not opening it fully. From her accent, Angus could hear immediately that she was an outsider. It had not been so noticeable at the press conference because she had been speaking through tears.

  He puffed his chest out. ‘Mrs Henderson, Kathleen, my name’s Angus – Angus Campbell.’ He held out his hand and she quickly gave him her cold fingers.

  He had thought carefully about what he would say, should he get the chance to speak to Kathleen Henderson in person. He had heard about journalists who door-stepped bereaved and fraught parents, who cared about the story more than its subject, and Angus did not want to be tarred with that brush. He wanted to win her over; to gain her trust.

  Angus was not accustomed to being so ingratiating with women. They were the weaker sex in so many ways, which the Bible helped him to understand. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet, Paul the Apostle had quite rightly said. As a child he had marvelled that when his father came home from sea his mother, with her strong arms and harsh criticism, stopped whatever she was doing to minister to the man of the house. As soon as his father returned she would busy herself cooking and washing, and hanging the fishing nets out to dry in the bitter sea wind. Every Sunday they would sit in church and Angus would suck a large pan drop as he listened to the sermon: ‘And unto Adam he said, because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife… cursed is the ground for thy sake,’ and of Eve, ‘in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’

  For thine is the kingdom, Angus would whisper fervently, the power and the glory. He was the youngest of three brothers and the smallest. As an adult, he had not grown as tall as his father had been, nor reached the height of his brothers in Barra. Since he had been a very small child, Angus had wanted to be the big man and in his own house he had insisted that he was honoured as such.

  Women were infernally weak and he did not like to indulge them, but Kathleen Henderson was a special case that called for delicacy on his part, if only as a means to an end. He remembered his beloved, pregnant Maisie, and imagined that he was speaking to her instead, in the barn filled with warm straw, sweetened with the smell of dung.

  ‘Kathleen, if I may call you that…?’ Angus paused and raised both eyebrows, and Kathleen nodded once, with a sharp jut to her chin. ‘I work at the Journal and I worship with the Thurso congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. I wanted to let you know that you are in our prayers, and we are taking a collection to help with ongoing support. Together we can find Molly. We can bring her home. I truly believe that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kathleen managed, her eyes glassing with tears, her words clotting in her mouth. ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘I know you’ve been bothered by a lot of press in the last two days, and you look very tired, but I wondered if it might be worthwhile for you to talk to someone like myself, someone local, who understands the area. The police are fantastic, but they’re casting their net wide. I just wondered if it would be worth going over the facts once more?’

  ‘You mean, write another story? There’s been so many already… just two days and it seems like every paper, every TV station…’ Kathleen’s eyelids fluttered, as if she were on the verge of fainting. ‘I don’t have anything else to say. I feel as if I’ve said it all a hundred times.’

  ‘What I’m suggesting is a local take on your story, to bolster awareness and support, and look at things afresh. I’m sure the police have told you they’re doing their best, but they don’t have much to go on. What’s needed is a local campaign focused on jogging people’s memories from the day of the abduction. You don’t need to sit around waiting for news; we can be proactive. Someone else must’ve seen something. It’s Thurso after all: when the streetlamps go on an hour early complaint letters are written, and I should know… The right kind of article… with the correct approach could mean the difference between…’ the words life and death were on his lips, but he swallowed each of them, like pips in an apple, ‘… between finding her sooner rather than later.’

  Kathleen sniffed and dabbed the end of her nose with her knuckle. She looked down at her feet and Angus wondered if she was indeed faint, and as the moment lingered he thought she might simply close the door o
n him. Yet Kathleen coughed and pulled open the door, inviting him inside.

  The house was immaculate, and smelled of citrus fruits. The fireplace was swept clean and on either side stood tall, thin oriental vases with dried bouquets of honesty and catkins. There were photographs of Molly on the mantelpiece, one taken when she was a baby, and the other a school photograph: posed and turned towards the camera, her glasses on, one side of her fringe sticking up.

  Kathleen served him weak tea and offered a plate of chocolate biscuits that rustled as she held them out to him, because her hands were shaking so much. He took a Blue Riband, but dared not taste it until she began to speak. The large, high-ceilinged room had three sofas and a coffee table in the middle. Kathleen sat on one sofa, Angus on the other nearest to her. He took out his notepad and pen, as she sat forward, hugging herself as if she were chilled, chest near her knees.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she sniffed. ‘The words have gone. I’ve used them all up. I can’t tell it any different from what I’ve said already, and it hurts so much…’ She made a sound that reminded Angus of the noise Maisie made when the vet examined her.

  Despite the chill of the autumn air, Angus brushed some beads of sweat from his upper lip before he began his questions. He had already decided that he would not mention the other child murders from the past few years, although he knew the police were working on comparisons with the Thurso abduction. He didn’t want to alarm Kathleen; he wanted her to open up to him. ‘I want us to take it easy. Nice and relaxed. Let’s go over it, not from a police point of view but from a human point of view, a local point of view. Let’s think about the details: what has been missed? Let’s think about the connections we could make locally or further afield. Let’s consider the jigsaw pieces and make a picture.’

  Kathleen seemed to be shivering. He considered offering her his jacket, but didn’t for fear that it would seem inappropriate.

  Angus poised his biro.

  ‘Is there anyone you know that might want to take or harm Molly?’

  ‘No… not that I can think of. She was just a wee girl. I can’t think of anyone that would want to harm her… take her away from her family.’ Kathleen began to break down as she spoke, but she finished her sentence.

  Angus took notes in shorthand, marking the paper faster than Kathleen could speak, never taking his eyes off her. In his notes, he also included descriptions of what Kathleen was wearing, how her face looked and whether or not she seemed on the verge of tears.

  ‘What about the girls who witnessed the abduction?’ Angus said, ‘Did you know them, have you spoken to them about what they saw?’

  ‘They were girls in Moll’s class… When the police told me about the child witnesses, I knew who they were exactly, but I hadn’t met them in person.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Angus, his eyes wide and his breathing even and steady, as if he was stroking Maisie’s flank. ‘Just take your time.’

  Kathleen took a deep breath. ‘Moll… told me that some girls in her class called her names, bullied her…’

  ‘And these were the girls responsible?’

  ‘I’m sure of it, but…’ Kathleen turned to him, two thin lines suddenly appearing between her brows. ‘Don’t print that… The important thing is to find Moll, not to start some idiotic thing over name-calling. Their parents would… I can just imagine…’

  ‘It’s off the record,’ said Angus, nodding at Kathleen to reassure her, and he saw that her face and shoulders relaxed. ‘Don’t worry. You can speak freely.’

  ‘It’s just that I know those girls, and they were cruel to her, and I can’t get over the fact that…’

  ‘What names did they call her?’ said Angus.

  Kathleen was startled by the question and looked at him strangely, but then wiped her nose and continued.

  ‘Och, just names, you know what weans are like. They called her “pirate” because of her eye. My daughter wears an eyepatch – you’ll have read in the papers – because she has a lazy eye. And the patch, well, it’s supposed to cure it over time. She won’t keep it on, that’s the problem. She takes it off whenever she can and her eyes are not getting better… and the name-calling seemed harmless enough at first, but it really affected her. She felt singled out and I think the girls were quite vicious and now I am at the stage of realising that…’ Kathleen inhaled deeply and put a hand over her mouth to stop herself from sobbing. ‘They were among the last people to see my daughter alive and could have done something to stop her being taken… but they were children who tormented her and probably wished her harm. I’m not saying it’s their fault, but I don’t believe everything those girls say. I don’t believe everything they told the police.

  ‘They said that she just went off with a strange man, arm in arm, but Moll is a shy girl. I told the police as much – that those girls must be lying. There must be other, more impartial witnesses than the bullies that picked on my daughter each day she went to school.’

  Kathleen put her hands to her head. It seemed to Angus as if she was pulling her hair. ‘And there was a police car in the area investigating a burglary at one of the houses near the school. Why didn’t they see or hear her?’ Her eyes were raised towards the ceiling, as if asking God rather than questioning Angus.

  She let go of her hair and took a sip of tea for the first time. The cup shook in her grasp.

  Angus continued: ‘The description that the girls gave was very rough, very general: tall with black hair and blue eyes, dressed in a suit. Did the description sound like anyone you might know?’

  Kathleen shook her head.

  ‘Even the sketch?’

  Again, Kathleen shook her head. The police had commissioned an artist’s sketch based on the schoolgirls’ descriptions, which all of the papers had printed. The Journal had printed it under the headline, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

  ‘Let’s concentrate on the local context. You are both local people – your husband has lived here for many years. What has been missed? What should people have seen that the police and the press haven’t mentioned?’

  Kathleen wiped her hands over her face. ‘You’re right. The local context is everything. What I find absurd is that my daughter was taken from this small town in broad daylight, before witnesses. I’m from a big city, but here? Thurso? How is it possible?’

  Angus sat back an inch. The tendons were standing out on the backs of Kathleen’s hands.

  ‘And my daughter’s shy but she’s not naive. She’s sharp as a tack. She just wouldn’t be sold on puppies or sweets or all the other things they say these perverts offer a wean. Moll’s different…’

  Kathleen held her forefinger out, pointing at the coffee table. ‘Astute, that’s what she is. She’s astute.’ She turned to look Angus full in the eye and he felt an urge to look away. There was a glare in the woman’s pure blue eyes, like looking at the sun. He could only stand it for a second or two.

  ‘Moll’s not like some other girls: she’s vulnerable but she’s not soft, she’s accepting but she’s not gullible. She has a strength that I have always marvelled at… She’s stubborn, I suppose people would say, and maybe that’s true. I didn’t ever try to break her spirit. She’s a good girl, but she’s tough, and, as much as I fear for her, I know she’ll fight this man if he tries to subdue her. Every second of every day, I will that, and I know that she will find the strength to do it.’

  Kathleen was agitated now. Her breath was rasping in her throat. Her eyes were dry, but Angus could tell that she was close to breaking down again. He tore open the wrapper of his chocolate biscuit and took a bite, then turned to her and smiled.

  ‘She does sound like a good girl – and tough,’ said Angus, trying to be understanding, ‘but she’s still wee… a wee one, just seven years old. It’s…’

  ‘She’ll be eight on the twenty-ninth of December,’ said Kathleen, whispering. She turned to Angus with a smile. ‘It’s just after Christmas so it’s hard because it seems like all t
he presents come at once.’

  Angus pursed his lips, as he tried to return the smile.

  ‘She wants a blackboard and chalk for Christmas this year,’ said Kathleen, sniffing noisily. ‘She’s told me already.’