by JANICE FROST
“Likewise. I’ll look out for you at the college?” Jess heard the question and wasn’t sure how to answer, but just then the lights changed, and she smiled at him and crossed the road. She didn’t look back but she had an uneasy feeling that if she did, she would see him still standing there, watching her.
Chapter Three
Jonty Cole stood for a while watching Jess cross the road. He considered following her to find out exactly where she lived, but he was afraid she’d turn around. How much did she really know? he wondered. When he’d spotted her on the bridge, his first thought was that Leanne must have contacted her. Why else would she be there? Curiosity? It was possible. Plenty of other people had gathered to gawp.
He churned over the facts in his mind. Jess hadn’t seemed afraid of him. She’d acted like she didn’t even recognise him, the bitch, yet he’d actually spoken with her more than once about Barney. Either she was a very cool customer and doing a fucking brilliant job of lying through her teeth or she really didn’t have a monkey’s. Which was it? One thing was certain, if Jess Stokes hadn’t been Barney’s favourite support worker, she’d already be dead.
Not for the first time, Jonty wondered if he’d acted in haste. Leanne wasn’t even onto him. It was Seth she’d been after. How the hell had things got so messy? He knew why, of course. It had been a bad move to get involved with Seth Conway again. At first, their partnership had seemed like the perfect solution to his problems. Then that bitch Leanne had gone on her bloody crusade to right the wrongs of the past and bring Seth Conway to justice. Jonty gave a bitter laugh. He’d gone out with Leanne for a while when they were just kids. He learned then that she wasn’t a victim. It hadn’t taken her long to get shot of him when she realised what he was. If only he’d had the guts to take care of her back then, he could have saved himself all this mess.
Just the thought of Seth made him feel like heaving. Where did he think he got off threatening him, Jonty? His words rang in Jonty’s ear, drowning out the noise of the traffic.
“If I go down, I take you with me.”
Jonty knew then that he should cut his losses. He could have dealt with Seth easily enough, but their arrangement was so convenient. He was reluctant to let it go.
There was nothing to prove that Leanne had been in touch with Jess. Jess had not been one of the girls in Seth’s group all those years ago. She couldn’t be a witness, or testify. But she was in Leanne’s mobile phone contact list. No messages, just her name. Had Leanne deleted the thread of their conversation?
Jonty came to a decision. For now he would allow Jess Stokes to live. For Barney’s sake. Only for Barney, he told himself. But there was another reason, one that he chose not to dwell on. Jess Stokes interested him. Immensely.
His feelings for Jess had taken him by surprise. Not since he’d fancied Annabelle Rivers at school had he felt anything at all for another person — except for Barney. He recalled how Annabelle had laughed at him when he asked her out. It had never entered his head that a timid mouse like Annabelle would actually reject him. He was Jonty Cole, the sensitive lad who looked out for his poor disabled brother. Most girls loved that he was so good with Barney. Well, he’d miscalculated with Annabelle. He’d had his revenge, though. Even now the knowledge that he was the cause of Annabelle Rivers’ limp made him smile. And the beauty of it was that no one had ever suspected him of hurting her. Not even Annabelle herself. When a girl was involved in an accident, no one ever suspected the nice blokes like Jonty.
His feelings for Jess confounded him because he’d never expected to feel that way about a woman again. It wasn’t about sex. He never had a problem with that. Besides, there were the girls Seth gave him access to. Who cared if some of them weren’t quite right in the head? There was nothing wrong with their bodies.
It was Barney who’d made him notice Jess. His brother had a crush on her. This was a problem. He’d miss his support worker if things didn’t go according to plan. Ah well, Jonty would deal with Barney when the time came, just like he always did.
Barney was Jonty’s Achilles heel, and he didn’t need another. If Jess turned out to be a second Annabelle, he’d get rid of her. Jonty didn’t take rejection lightly.
He didn’t resent his ‘special’ little brother. Barney wasn’t hard work, not really. He liked the way Barney loved him unconditionally, the way he hugged him and meant it.
No, what Jonty had resented was the fact that the care had been expected of him. Almost from the day Barney was born, Jonty became his caregiver. His parents had explained to him that Barney was ‘special’ and that he would always need looking after. One day, when they were too old to look after Barney themselves, Jonty would have to take their place.
He was five when Barney was born. It was the day Jonty’s childhood ended.
By the time he started secondary school, Jonty was beginning to lose friends because he was always rushing home to see to his brother. Sometimes the other kids made fun of him over it.
Time and time again, he heard them say, ‘Jonty’s babysitting his retard brother again.’ It made him seethe with anger.
One Saturday morning he was walking along the High Street with Barney when he overheard a particularly cruel remark. It came from two girls from his class — Kelsey White and Courtney Lane. Even now, he could still see their stupid, sneering faces.
“I just lost it.” It was the only justification Jonty could summon for what he did to those girls, Kelsey especially, before some passers-by pulled him off.
Kelsey needed stitches to her face. She lost a couple of teeth and had had extensive bruising. There was a lot of blood, and a lot of screaming. Amidst all the commotion, Jonty had been aware of Barney’s anguished cries of distress. It had taken two men to restrain the ten-year-old boy.
His mother called it ‘kicking off,’ as in, “Watch out, Barney’s kicking off again.” Jonty knew how to calm his brother down, but on that occasion he too was being restrained. Worse still, he had been the cause of Barney’s distress. He should have walked away from those girls like he usually did. Instead, he had to stand by and watch helplessly as a couple of burly men wrestled his brother to the ground.
“Fucking psycho!” A paramedic was helping Courtney stand and walk slowly away. She spat at him. "Fucking freak. Just like your brother.”
A policeman had appeared, and bystanders were giving statements.
“He just went for them out of the blue.”
“Never seen anything like it. Just set on them like a wild animal.”
“Two young girls.”
“Look what he did to her face.”
“Crazy bastard.”
And on and on. Jonty heard it all through a thin mist. Barney lay on the ground, in the throes of a fit, with another paramedic tending to him. Jonty understood Barney better now, the way his little brother felt when he ‘kicked off.’ Barney’s rage was all about frustration, his inability to make sense of the world around him and articulate his feelings. But Jonty hadn’t expected the exhilaration his own rage brought.
In the days and weeks after the incident, Jonty found himself replaying it over and over in his head. It took some time for his pleasure to diminish. He told himself there was only one way to achieve that level of intensity again. He would have to hurt other women.
Jonty knew he couldn’t simply go out and beat up women in the street. He did try it a couple of times, on some homeless druggies. He made do with a succession of weak girlfriends, lowlifes as he liked to think of them, girls no one cared about, who wouldn’t complain about being knocked about a bit because even that was preferable to no attention at all.
But it wasn’t enough. Jonty wanted to beat his girls to a bloody pulp. But how to go about it? How to take the next step and not be caught?
Then he met Seth.
Jonty attended a party organised by Seth and his friend Henry, who was introduced to Jonty as the ‘captain.’ It was held on one of those long canal boats.
Ove
r the sound of loud, pulsing music, Seth had shouted, “This is Jasmine. She’ll do whatever you want.” Jasmine was scantily dressed, dark-eyed and pear-shaped. She gave him a slow, seductive smile, but in her eyes Jonty saw something trapped and fearful. It made him want to hurt her. He led the girl into a tiny cabin and closed the door.
Less than half an hour later, Seth burst in and pulled him off her, alerted by the girl’s screams. Jonty’s shirt was dishevelled and bloody.
Seth’s exclamations of horror brought the captain to the cabin door. When he turned back to Jonty, his face was livid.
“Get off my boat.”
Jonty hesitated, and looked to Seth for support.
“Now!” Seth took Jonty by the arm and jostled him up the stairs to the deck.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked. Jonty stared at him, genuinely puzzled.
“You said—”
“I didn’t say to beat her half to death. A bit of rough stuff, that’s all I meant.”
Define ‘rough stuff,’ Jonty wanted to yell.
“What the hell are you anyway, a fucking psycho?”
It was all Jonty could do to keep from jumping on Seth and battering him. Instead, he jumped onto the towpath and strode away towards Stromford.
For a few days he was afraid of repercussions. He’d gone too far with that girl, much further than he’d intended. The sight of her blood spraying over his shirt as he burst her nose had sent him into a frenzy. He hadn’t wanted to stop. He’d had to punch the wall a couple of times to stop himself killing her. If Seth hadn’t intervened . . .
For a couple of days afterwards he expected to hear from Seth, but he never did. There followed a few years of restraint and intense frustration. Jonty tried — for Barney’s sake. What would happen to Barney if he went too far and got himself put away? He’d gone back to giving selected girls a beating, always careful, always holding back.
Then he met Seth again.
Barney loved musicals, and he loved Lex Thorner, a local lad made good. Thorner made a guest appearance at a night club in town, and Jonty introduced them. While Barney listened to Lex singing that famous song from Les Mis, Jonty gazed around the room and his eyes alighted on Seth Conway.
Seth didn’t recognise Jonty at first. It had been a few years, and he’d been a boy the last time they met. Now he was a man. Jonty reminded him about where they’d last met. They got talking and Jonty saw an opportunity.
When you know all about someone’s secret life, it’s almost too easy to blackmail them.
“Alright, so what do you want to keep your mouth shut?” Jonty knew that people like Seth never changed, so to add weight to his threat, he hinted that he knew things about Seth’s current activities.
Jonty smiled. “You couldn’t afford it. But there is a service you can provide for me. I think we could come to an agreement that might benefit us both.”
And so, they entered into an uneasy alliance. Every so often, Seth invited Jonty to a party and left him alone with a girl. He even took care of her when Jonty was finished — in his other life he was a nurse. Typically she would have some kind of mental problem, so no one would notice — or care — if she was injured. People with mental health problems are the new lepers, Jonty said to himself, thinking of his brother and how people looked away. They were shunned, invisible. People were either afraid of them or simply didn’t want to know about their problems.
Then that bitch Leanne spoiled everything with her snooping. Jonty told Seth not to panic, that he’d take care of it, but Seth baulked. So Jonty had to do it alone.
Chapter Four
Tom Knight refused to park their unmarked car anywhere near where Leanne Jackson’s mother lived. It was a new BMW, but at the end of the day it was police issue.
“What?” he said, catching PJ’s amused look. “You wouldn’t leave your baby somewhere it might get hurt, would you?”
“I don’t have a baby.”
“Yeah, well, this little beauty is like a baby to me, and I’m not leaving her on this estate to get scratched up by some smartass kid with a shank. I know what I’m talking about from personal experience.” He caught PJ’s eye again. “Yeah, that’s right. Before you ask, I mean personal experience as in I did it myself back in the day.”
PJ grinned. “We all have skeletons in our closets.”
“Doubt it in your case.”
“Huh. Think I’m Little Miss Prim and Proper, do you?”
“Er . . . yes?”
PJ raised her chin. “I’ve done stuff.”
It was Tom’s turn to be amused. “What sort of stuff?”
“Just . . . stuff.”
“Yeah, right.”
Sometimes it irritated PJ that people judged her by her looks. She had brown wavy hair and a round cherubic face, and the kind of body that once would have been called voluptuous. She was also sweet-natured, which reinforced the angelic image. PJ often wished she could be more like Ava. Her friend and colleague was blonde and feminine but she still managed to kick ass. No one would ever accuse Ava of being ‘sweet.’
Still, PJ knew that there was a vulnerable side to Ava. No doubt it was this combination of toughness and vulnerability that made her so appealing to men.
“This is it.” She stopped at a broken fence, beyond which lay a neglected garden, strewn with rubbish. A grey wheelie bin lay on its side partially blocking the path to the front door. PJ stepped around it, wincing at the sight of maggots wriggling among the pickings of a takeaway pizza.
“Shit. I hate bloody maggots.” Tom’s face mirrored PJ’s.
“At least we agree about something. Oh God, the smell’s gonna make me puke.” She took a large white handkerchief out of her pocket and put it to her nose, withdrawing it quickly when an angry face poked through the half-opened door.
“Who the fook are you?” His eyes darted from PJ to Tom and back.
“Police, mate.” Tom discreetly flashed his ID card. “We’re looking for Tina Jackson.”
“What the fook do you lot want with our Tina?”
Tom ignored the question. “Is Mrs Jackson inside?”
The man turned away but left the door open. Tom looked at PJ and shrugged. “Ladies first.”
“If you were truly chivalrous, you’d insist on going first to protect me. If there’s maggots outside the house, who knows what horrors might be lurking inside.”
“Exactly,” Tom retorted.
The hallway carpet was shiny and smelled of ammonia. “Dog?” PJ whispered.
“Hope so. Alternative’s grim.”
Their host had disappeared, but a door at the end of the hall stood open. It led into a dimly lit living room. The man had placed himself behind a two-seater sofa, and was leaning with his arms outstretched over the back. On the sofa sat a stick-thin woman with the ravaged face of an alcoholic. Limp, shoulder-length hair, brittle as dried seaweed, framed a face blooming with broken capillaries. She gave PJ and Tom a bleary-eyed look over the rim of her lager can.
Tom cleared his throat. “Mrs Jackson?”
The woman belched and nodded, lowering the can shakily to the arm of the sofa. “I told the copper who came earlier everything I know.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Jackson.”
“I ain’t. Little cunt meant nothing to me. Good riddance, I say.”
Her words took PJ by surprise. “We’re talking about your daughter—” She checked herself. They needed Tina Jackson to cooperate.
“May we?” Tom nodded at another two-seater sofa facing Tina. Tina gave a disinterested nod and Tom and PJ sat down, sinking almost to the floor on the sagging cushions.
“We’re aware that you and Leanne were estranged,” Tom began.
Tina glared at him. “What’s that mean, estranged? Talk English.”
“You and your daughter didn’t talk.”
“Ain’t seen ’er for years. We wasn’t good enough for ’er. Became quite the lady after she’d done ’er time, or so I
’eard. Never come near me, ungrateful cow.”
Leanne Jackson had served time for brawling in the street, resisting arrest and being in possession of an illegal substance. Since then, she’d somehow managed to turn her life around. It was quite a feat considering she hadn’t exactly started from a level playing field. If she really hasn’t seen her daughter for years, it’s unlikely she’ll be of much help, PJ thought.
Tom coughed again. “Okay, so you haven’t been in contact with your daughter recently. Is there any other information you could give us that might help us with our investigation?”
Tina put her head back and drank, raised her backside off the sofa and broke wind loudly. “Needed that.” It was unclear whether she meant the alcohol or the fart. “What did you say? Oh, yeah, Leanne. Search me. Right little madam, she was, from the start. Couldn’t do a thing wiv her. All the other kids around here was happy to sit in front of the telly all day, but not our Leanne. Then when she hit eleven or twelve, she was proper out of control.”
“Did she upset a lot of people, do you know? Make enemies?” PJ asked.
Tina rolled her eyes. “You kidding me? She pissed off everyone she met.”
“What about boyfriends?”
“She was a little whore, so yeah, plenty of boyfriends, if that’s what you’d call them.”
“Right.” PJ took a breath.
“I wouldn’t know who she’s seen recently, would I? There was one as used to knock her about a bit. He was in her anger management group when she were about fourteen.” She snorted. “Anger managed her right well.”
Like Tina could care less, PJ thought. “Can you remember the boy’s name, Mrs Jackson?”
“No idea, duck. Why? D’you reckon it was ’im as done her in?”
“No, we’re just trying to . . . I mean, we’re just considering possibilities.” PJ doubted whether it was worth pursuing, but she jotted it down in her notebook anyway.
“Mr Jackson? Do you have anything to add? You’ve been very quiet.”
Tina snorted. “’E ain’t me ’usband. No point asking ’im owt about Leanne. ’E never set eyes on ’er, duck.”