by Shelley Day
‘Sorry,’ says Geoff. ‘I’m stressed out. Totally stressed out. This bloody job gets to you sometimes.’
‘Don’t let it,’ says Gareth in his calmest voice.
Geoff has slit open an envelope and is reading a letter closely. He bangs his palm against his forehead. ‘That’s all I bloody need!’
‘What’s up, mate?’ asks Gareth.
‘Jamie bloody Benson’s trial’s been brought forward. I might have known that would happen. As if I didn’t have enough on…’
‘I’ve just about finished the Charlton report,’ says Gareth, ‘I can give you a hand.’
‘Thanks Gareth, but you don’t know Benson. It’s a really shite one. I’ll have to get the stuff ready for Friday. Shit. It’s going to have to be all-nighters. Bloody damn and hell. What a disaster.’
Geoff picks up the phone, dials a number, listens for a while then bangs the phone back down.
‘And that sodding psychiatrist is never bloody there.’ Geoff leans back in his chair and runs both hands through his hair.
‘Tell you what, Geoff. I’ll be finished this Charlton thing by this afternoon. I’ll help you out. You do Benson, I’ll take one of your other ones. What else have you got on? And what about your car?’
‘Oh, shit and double shit!’ says Geoff, jumping up. ‘I forgot, I’m meant to pick it up at half past. Be a mate and get me a taxi, will you?’ Geoff grabs his jacket and runs down the stairs three at a time.
So Stella Moon didn’t show up at the housing thing. Queer: she seemed pretty desperate for somewhere to stay. Gareth hopes it’s not his fault. He can’t exactly remember what instructions he left her with. He should have made a note, put it on the file. More than likely she’ll come back shivering cold and homeless, pleading some pathetic mitigating circumstance, the way they do. All the same, Gareth hopes nothing bad has happened. This Frank she mentioned, he sounded dodgy, reading between the lines. But the girl’s a survivor. He could take her case over to help Geoff out, just while Geoff’s doing Benson. Gareth could offer anyway, he won’t mention the Case Study. A killer. It’d look good on his CV even without the actual Case Study.
If he’s going to take the case over, Gareth had better have a proper look at the file again, legit now. He puts the Charlton report to one side, clears his desk, puts his pens and his pencil in the mug with the broken handle, his rubber and his stapler in the top right hand drawer, and adjusts his Anglepoise. He brushes a few biscuit crumbs off with the side of his hand and goes to get the file. He’s been in the office since six thirty this morning, so he could leave the office early, he could take the file home and read it in comfort. Gareth doesn’t usually take files home, in fact he never does, but this is an exception. This is a favour he’s doing for Geoff. This is beyond the call of duty. He could leave Geoff a note, though it’s unlikely that Geoff will be back tonight. Gareth rings the housing officer, but there’s no answer. He looks at the clock. It’s nearly 6.30pm, so they’ll have closed long ago. He hadn’t realised it was that late. He’s been at work more than twelve hours. Gareth bundles the Moon file into his briefcase, writes Geoff a quick note, turns the lights off and leaves the office. He takes the bus home, the briefcase held tightly between his feet. He could just have another little look in that file, kill some time whilst he’s on the bus.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Night has long since closed in and Frank still doesn’t know how to handle the whole situation. The baby is gone, it’s thrown him into a panic. Realistically, he tells himself, he can’t do anything till the morning, so he might as well go to bed and try and get some sleep since he got precious little last night in that frigging bus station. But he’ll not get any sleep, not in this particular place, not with thoughts of that Macalinden plaguing him. He could be snooping anywhere. He was the kind of bloke who’d stop at nothing, once he’s got the scent.
Frank remembers him from before, from when the baby was ‘abducted’. That’s what they’d led Stella to believe, that Baby Keating been taken from his pram outside the boarding house. Ruby Willoughby, with her wily ways, even set it up so it was Stella – not much more than a bit bairn herself at the time – who was the one who found the pram empty on her way to school. Frank remembers the shocked look on Stella’s little face as she came running back through that morning to tell Hedy her baby’s pram was empty.
Macalinden – sly, he was – had quizzed Stella on more than one occasion, though by rights he wasn’t supposed to speak to her, Stella being not only a minor but one of the main witnesses to the baby’s disappearance. Macalinden had been relentless, hanging about in the back lane at all hours on the off chance of seeing Stella. He hadn’t given the kid a minute’s peace. And Ruby’d been reluctant to bend Macalinden’s ear in case he smelled a rat. But in the end it hadn’t been that difficult, feeding Stella the bones of the story of how poor Baby Keating had disappeared, been stolen from his pram, right under their noses, breaking his mother’s heart and such, and Stella in turn had fed the story to Macalinden with the innocent conviction of which only children are capable.
The polis had swallowed the same story, then they’d gone straight after the estranged Mr Jim Keating when Stella suggested maybe she’d caught a glimpse of someone who looked a bit like him that very morning. But they’d never found anything and Baby Keating’s disappearance remains, to this day, one of Newcastle Constabulary’s unsolved crimes. Frank’s got a good right to be dismayed to find the Macalinden man has rekindled his interest.
It wasn’t until the séance went wrong a while later that Stella discovered the truth – the baby wasn’t abducted, he’d been killed, and it was Stella herself who’d administered the fateful dose. That anyway was Muriel’s story, and Frank had come to believe it. At the time, Frank was prepared to believe the killing had been done unwittingly. But Frank no longer believes it was innocent, not given what Stella went on to do to Muriel.
The shock of it all had caused Stella to have some kind of breakdown. Whether the whole sorry episode was forgotten or wiped out, or what happened to Stella’s memory, was anyone’s guess.
So meandered Frank’s thoughts that night as he lay on the damp bed with all his clothes on, boots included, the front door locked and wedged, the back door locked and the key in his trouser pocket in case he has to make a quick getaway. For a second night, he can’t sleep. The place stinks of memories, and Frank’s now living a whole new episode of the horrible saga that goes on and on.
It seems to Frank now that he had loved Muriel. He’d loved her in his own stupid, selfish, clumsy, inadequate way. He’d never told her. He’d never realised it himself until tonight, not really. Now, lying in this bed, remembering how things were, thinking how they might have been.
Frank had even loved Stella. No-one would believe that he’d actually cared about her, not with his history, but it’s true – he had. He’d loved Stella, he’s just always gone about those sorts of things in the wrong way.
He can’t face another stint in prison, no way. He’ll top himself first.
Towards dawn, Frank drops into that strange place between waking and sleeping, his head still in turmoil. The thought of filling that bloody hole in has put his memories on action replay.
‘Bury the baby?’ Frank had said. ‘What? Without a funeral? What are you talking about? That’s not right, Mrs Willoughby, it’s not right, and you know it.’
Yes, Frank had been against it from the start.
‘Look at it this way,’ Ruby said, ‘there’s been a death in this house, the death of a baby, in circumstances we don’t want going into. We’d all be under suspicion…’
‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing,’ Frank interrupted. ‘Bury the bairn, and him not even christened.’
Ruby was desperate to conceal the baby’s death from the authorities, who hadn’t yet even been informed of his birth. Ruby’s line was that they’d all –
everyone in the boarding house – be under suspicion, so the simplest thing was to bury his little body and be done with it.
‘What the hell are you talking about, woman, under suspicion?’ Frank had challenged her, ‘How can we possibly be under suspicion? The baby’s died of some illness. We should just get the doctor.’
‘With respect, Mr Fanshaw, it’s not for us to be deciding what the little mite’s died of. As far as that goes, the least said, soonest mended.’
Frank was beginning to understand what Ruby Willoughby was made of. Tough as old boots. You couldn’t argue with her.
‘The point is, we’re all suspects,’ Ruby was saying. Frank’s attention had wandered. ‘All of us. Including Muriel. Including Hedy – she wouldn’t be the first mother to act in desperation. Yes, we’ll all be investigated. Including your good self, if I might say so. Especially your good self, Mr Fanshaw.’
Good God. Frank was beginning to get the picture, and a pretty ugly picture it was. He’d never laid a finger on that baby, and Ruby knew it. She must have found out about his conviction. Or about Stella. Or both. Jesus Christ.
Frank was beginning to get the gist of it. There really was no stopping Ruby Willoughby once she got started.
‘We need to bury the body – you need to bury the body, Mr Fanshaw. And that’s all there is to it.’
Frank hadn’t stood an earthly against Ruby’s manipulations. He’d allowed himself to be cajoled – it was a kind of blackmail – into doing something he knew was on the far wrong side of wrong. But there it was, his past had caught up with him. She’d found out, there seemed no way out. So Frank had taken the baby the very next morning and buried him behind the civvy. The place, a bit of waste ground where people dumped stuff – rubble, old prams, mangles, bikes, – was only ever used by the street girls. Frank had carried Baby Keating to the furthest corner, laid him on the ground wrapped in his blankets and started to dig.
But he couldn’t dig. The ground had been frozen and was chokka with hardcore: he couldn’t get the spade in, and the gravity, the momentousness, the sheer damn idiotic stupidity of what he was doing kept crowding out his mind. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe. What the hell did he think he was doing? Digging a bloody grave in the middle of the night for a baby that had nowt to do with him? And God only knew exactly how and why the poor little beggar had met his untimely end. Poor little bastard. Frank knew deep down he’d never get away with it. Even all the years he hasn’t been caught, he’s tormented himself,, he’s punished himself ten times over, more than if he’d been found out, locked up and the key chucked down the sewer.
After his earlier stint at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, Frank had sworn he’d keep on the straight and narrow, and he’d been doing not too badly. Until he’d gone to that bloody boarding house. Until that little bitch Stella Moon came along. Sly little madam, knocked him right off track, coming in from school in that little uniform, climbing onto his lap, wiggling herself about and looking at him with those eyes, whispering how she loved him and did he want to play with her? It was Stella who had been his undoing. Frank rues the day he ever clapped eyes on her. And Ruby Willoughby would never be satisfied until she made Frank pay the full cost of everything and more.
Frank had been trying very hard to go straight, to behave like proper men are supposed to behave. The very night before he buried poor Baby Keating, he’d felt himself footloose and fancy free. He’d been with Nina, paid her, and been determined to keep his focus on the women, exclusively, nothing, no-one else.
Where was the proper man now, then? Frank was no more than a cowering loser, still at the behest of Ruby Willoughby. Frank didn’t feel like a proper man now any more than he had that night he’d stabbed at the solid earth with the spade again and again, trying to dig a frigging hole that wouldn’t be dug. Frank Fanshaw couldn’t even dig a hole in the godforsaken waste ground. He’d had to conceal the body though, hole or no hole. Mrs W was right, if the death came to light, they’d all have their necks on the line, like a load of frigging chickens, Frank more than anyone. He cursed the day he’d had relations with Hedy Keating. He’d give his right arm never to have set eyes on her. He didn’t even like her: he’d felt sorry for her, he’d only gone with her to wind Muriel up. It had taken him weeks of cajoling to get Hedy to do anything in the first place, and he’d never even enjoyed it. It was just a convenience, pure convenience – an act of charity. Mind you, after Baby Keating arrived, Frank had rather liked lying there, sucking at those milk-filled tits. That’d been a new one on Frank. Very enjoyable. You couldn’t get none of that from Nina’s kind. That lot wouldn’t even kiss a bloke. Anything but. Everything but. Those milk-filled tits had been something else. Now look at where they’ve landed him.
Frank curses the thoughts of women – Muriel, and bloody Hedy Keating – crowding out his head. They’re making him go hard and right now he can’t be bothered with all that rigmarole. He shouldn’t be wasting his time thinking about bloody women who want everything and give you sweet fuck all. They’re all the bloody same. Suck every last drop out of you and then what? Leave you with their dead fucking babies to get rid of. In the end, Frank had just covered the baby up with rubble, bit by bit with his bare hands, he’d piled it all on top and got away before the light came properly up. The poor little bastard.
The burial place now being common knowledge, Frank had to shift it double quick, so the next thing was he and Muriel were speeding off up the road with the exhumed body of little Baby Keating in the back of old Ruby’s Austin. Under strict instructions from Ruby to get rid of it, dispose of it good and proper, they’d gone straight to the Beach Hut, where Frank had been pulling down the old lean-to with a view to putting a kitchen on.
He’d wanted to do as Ruby said, get it over and done with. But no, Muriel had never been one for doing what she was told, especially when she was told by Ruby. The only reason she’d agree to anything was to protect Stella. But she’d have it her way, or nothing. Instead of burying the baby, Muriel taxidermied it, she got all her instruments out and she skinned the little body, and she boned it and wired it up. She stuffed it, she preserved it and she dressed it, washed its blankets and all its clothes and put them all back on, nappy and everything.
Frank had looked on in disgusted fascination, not at the body itself, which he couldn’t even bear to look at – no, it was the meticulous care Muriel lavished on that little stuffed baby that was beyond anything he’d ever imagined could happen: so much care she’d lavished. Frank had feared she’d keep it, that she wouldn’t let it go. He’d dug a good hole under what would become the new kitchen floor, and he’d backed off, just hoping that Muriel would let go and see sense. It took a while, but in the end she wrapped it in the crotchet shawl Ruby’d made long ago for Stella, and she allowed Frank to bury it under the kitchen floor.
No wonder Frank can’t sleep properly. The shock of arriving at the Beach Hut to find that gaping bloody great hole in the kitchen floor, being surrounded now by the stink of those same chemicals in every particle of poisonous air he is breathing. And Christ knows where Stella’s gone or where Ruby is. And that Macalinden, sniffing round every corner.
Frank gets up. He’s going to fill that hole back in for starters. Put the floorboards back. Eliminate all trace.
Then make himself scarce. To Brighton. Find Ruby.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gareth’s sitting on his couch, his brain boggled with Stella Moon. He’s been reading the file ever since he got in. He puts it down on the coffee table and takes another sip of whisky, followed by a gulp of Carlsberg. He’s probably doing this the wrong way round, but what the hell. He leans back on the sofa and looks at his watch. He should make himself something to eat. It’s not a good idea to be drinking on an empty stomach. Too late to worry about that now, though. Gareth is finding it hard to rouse himself. He needs a nap. He’s been overworking, all this not sleeping right, going t
o work before it’s even light, bringing work home. He’ll go out and get a fish supper. But first a bit of shut-eye.
It’s exhausting when you get engrossed in other folks’ traumas. They get under your skin, some of them. You feel sorry for them. Some of them you develop an understanding for and, when that happens, you just know you’re the first person, the very first person ever to take the trouble even to try to understand. And as that person, that’s where the possibility lies of making a difference. On the other hand, Gareth, that’s where you yourself can get lost. Gareth drains a third can of Carlsberg, shoves a cushion under his head and stretches his legs out on the couch. His eyes shut of their own accord. He pulls his coat from the back of the sofa, half covers himself up and falls immediately to sleep.
He sleeps uneasily. He’s half aware of tossing and turning: the sofa’s no good. He wakes up more tired with a crick in his neck and starving hungry. Thirsty as hell. And he’s woken up angry with Stella Moon. All his life Gareth has had it drummed into him that anger is rarely an appropriate response to anything, but there he is, waking up angry about someone he hardly knows. Well, he does know her. He knows her better than she knows him. He’s read her file, or most of the important bits. The kid’s had a tough time of it, he can see that. Gareth is angry because he feels badly that he let her down over the accommodation thing. Gareth opens another Carlsberg, takes a few gulps and remembers he was going to get fish and chips. He finishes off the can, grabs his coat and he goes out. Evil night, he’ll go in the Zodiac. He shouldn’t have drunk so much, but no matter, it’ll be alright, he can risk it. Gareth runs back into his flat, grabs the car keys and rushes off down the stairs again. He meets old Mr Dickinson from the second floor on his way up.
‘Evening, Mr Dickinson,’ says Gareth as he hurries by.
‘And a very good evening to you too, my lad.’ Mr Dickinson seems glad of an excuse to stop for a moment, rest his weight on the banister and get his breath. ‘You off to meet your lass, then?’ Mr Dickinson chuckles. He knows full well Gareth isn’t courting.