Broken

by Martina Cole

‘We are reopening that enquiry - you should get a visit soon.’

  Kerry didn’t answer her but said brightly, ‘Bobby was in to see me last week. He said that you were all right. I was surprised, he don’t normally like Old Bill.’

  Kate smiled gently. ‘You like Robert, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s all right. Bit of a pain at times.’

  ‘He’s got you out of enough shit, I understand. He’s very protective of all you girls. The only person who has ever stuck up for any of you.’

  Kerry shrugged. ‘He has reason to. Good reason.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Kate frowned.

  Kerry leaned across the table and picked up the cigarettes. ‘I’ll swap you a bit of info, OK?’

  Kate nodded and Kerry took the cigarettes and placed them in front of her on the scratched table.

  ‘He gets his rocks off with us all.’

  Kate was puzzled and it showed. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I used to suck him off, you know. For a few pounds or help with stuff I needed.’ She was staring at Kate now, her face a mask of glee at the shock she saw registered on the woman’s face.

  Kate shook her head in denial. ‘I don’t believe you. He’s gay.’

  ‘No, he ain’t. In fact, now I think about it, he dyes his hair. Wears make-up sometimes, too. But I can honestly say I have never seen him dressed as a woman.’

  ‘But you have sucked him off, as you put it?’

  Kerry nodded. ‘On more than one occasion, dearie. We all have at some point. He calls us his girls. It’s one of his things that you have to put on lots of red lipstick so it goes all over his cock and his underwear. It’s what he gets off on. That and Appletise - he drinks it all the time. Been to his house? He has this thing about apples. The smell is everywhere.’

  Kate’s numb mind was already registering where she had smelled apples. It was at Robert’s house! That was what Trevor had remembered.

  As the enormity of what she was thinking hit her she felt sick. She had actually been round to his home and spoken to him and the chances were that Trevor had been there all the time.

  But then she was dealing with Kerry here. Hardly a trustworthy witness. And Kate couldn’t afford to let her see what a shock she had just been dealt.

  ‘So, you have nothing to say about poor little Lesley? I thought you were her mate.’

  ‘I ain’t got no mates, Miss Burrows, never did have. Ain’t you sussed that one out yet?’

  Kate opened her mouth to comment and thought better of it. Instead she asked: ‘Would Mary Parkes have had anything to do with Barker or Bateman?’

  Kerry shrugged easily, as if she were in her own home with a mate, chatting about inconsequentials. ‘Dunno. You’d have to ask her.’

  ‘Don’t you care what you’ve done, Kerry?’

  It was said seriously and the girl had the grace to think for a while before answering.

  ‘To be honest, no.’

  It seemed to Kate that her attitude summed up all the rottenness at the heart of this enquiry.

  Kate arrived home to find Kenneth Caitlin and Jenny sitting in the lounge drinking her mother’s Holy Water: a litre bottle of Black Bush whiskey from duty free.

  They were all pleased to see her. She took one look at the bright eyes and merry faces and regretted that she was going to have to piss all over their alcoholic fireworks.

  She sat down and sighed. Took a large sip of the drink they’d poured her and stunned them all by saying, ‘I think I know who it is. And I think they still have a child on the premises.’

  She looked into their eager expectant faces. ‘I think it’s Robert Bateman.’

  No one said a word for a few seconds.

  ‘This came from Kerry?’ Jenny questioned her.

  Kate nodded. ‘I went to see the nurse from the psychiatric wing this morning. She said the person who called herself Suzy Harrington was a man. A TV. She said they had the wig and the make-up but it was definitely a man. Now Suzy, ugly as she is, is definitely a woman, right? She’s well-built with curves in all the right places. Then I saw Kerry and, according to her, Robert asks the girls for sexual favours.’

  She saw the look of surprise on Jenny’s face and shrugged.

  ‘That’s what I thought. Then she said he has some weird hang-ups and one of them is his love of apples. His house smells of apples, I noticed it when I was round there. When Trevor said something about an apple smell it bugged me. But in Robert’s house it’s an underlying smell, if that makes sense. You don’t notice it immediately, it’s just there.’

  She watched them look at her in amazement.

  ‘He also told me about Barker, and about Barker’s wife being named Debbie not Mavis. Well, I phoned Ally Palmerston . . .’

  Caitlin grinned. ‘. . . and she told you what she had told me. That Barker’s new squeeze is called Debbie. An ex-child prostitute from Lancashire.’

  ‘How the fuck would Robert know that unless he had seen Barker recently or dealt with people who had contact with him? I think we have the murderer and abductor of the children, I really do. It all makes sense. We have to go and get a warrant now.’

  ‘We have no real evidence, though,’ Jenny objected.

  Kate looked into Kenny’s face. ‘There are still children missing. I think that’s enough.’

  ‘I can’t believe it, can you?’ Jenny was completely poleaxed. ‘He was the one person who looked out for the girls, he was there in front of us all that time.’

  Kate nodded. ‘I know. But we have him now.’

  Caitlin replenished his glass. ‘When you’re finished I’ll give you all I’ve dug up on Barker. It makes an interesting story, as Jenny already knows.’

  Kate pushed her hands through her hair.

  ‘I’m still going to see his ex-wife, Mavis, ask her about the murder of young Lesley Carmichael. See if he’s in with the girls and our paedophile ring. I still want him. I want them all.’

  She finished off her drink and stood up.

  ‘We’d better go. Robert Bateman can’t be left at liberty for another night.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Robert Bateman was rinsing his father’s hair in the bath. The old man was emaciated, his body a mass of bruises and scratches. As Robert looked down on him he felt a great tide of emotion wash over him. Sometimes he loved him so much. So very, very much.

  After all, he was the child now.

  The thought made Robert frown.

  Not that Dad had cared very much for his own child, of course. He felt angry then. Dad had used him, beaten him and hurt him whenever he’d felt like it.

  Robert was shaking his head now, as the bad thoughts began taking him over again. Oh, he had not been a happy bunny when he was young. Tears stung his eyes and self-pity overwhelmed him.

  His mind wandered back to his first memories of his father and mother.

  He had been very small, sitting on the bed watching as his mother had carefully applied her make-up. She would take ages drawing a lip line, making her mouth look far poutier than it was. She would then paint it a vivid red, a blue-based red that made her even teeth look whiter than ever. Then she would smile at herself in the mirror.

  He would clap his fat little hands and she would put some lipstick on him, smiling as she painted his face. Brushed his hair and painted his toenails. Then she would envelop him in her slim arms, a wave of cheap perfume washing over him, livening his senses.

  He loved the feel of her, the way her soft large breasts bunched up as she hugged him, showing the cleavage she was so proud of.

  He loved the way her merry eyes watched him as he played in the park. He loved the way she attracted attention wherever they went, from women as well as men.

  He had adored her.

  But his father hadn’t adored her or his small son. He had given them grief, so much grief. He had attacked his lovely young wife. Beaten her. Abused his son. He had been like a dark cloud hanging over the household.

  Robert would
wait patiently outside the bedroom while she had her fun. He would listen to her laughing and joking, hear the noises from the men she had fun with. Then she would bring him into the still warm bed and hug and kiss him. She would squeeze him to her naked body and make him laugh. What he’d felt for her was adoration.

  The man in the bath was whimpering now and Robert felt a moment’s guilt. He glanced at his watch. The water must be freezing. He’d lost over an hour again. It was happening more and more lately.

  He helped the old man up and wrapped the emaciated body in a towel. At that point his father started shouting, pushing his son away, lost in his own world.

  ‘Bethany, you whore, where are you?’

  Robert closed his eyes in distress. ‘Stop it, Dada!’

  The old man looked at him, a cunning look in his eyes.

  ‘She was a whore - slept with everyone. My boss, my friends, everyone.’

  Robert didn’t want to hear this.

  ‘She used my child, you know, in her games. Used him against me. Tried to make me accept what she did with threats of taking him from me.’

  The voice was old, high-pitched now. Gone was the deep threatening bellow from Robert’s childhood. Gone was the strength that had accompanied it, too. He remembered running to his mother and wrapping his arms around her legs, to try and protect her from his father. He remembered her laughter as she would pick him up and sneer in her husband’s face.

  ‘No one could satisfy her, she was insatiable. Man after man she would have. One after the other, sometimes two or three in an afternoon. She was a whore. A whore who looked like an angel.’

  The voice was quieter now, as if Dada was talking to himself, telling himself the story. Robert wiped a sweaty hand across his face. He was sick of listening to this. Since his father had gone senile he had dragged up all their old life. The life they had lived before his mother had left them to go off with the tall man, the one with thick black hair.

  The man who, it turned out, had been a pimp.

  The man who had wanted her to leave her small son with her husband. But he couldn’t cope with a child because his own grief at the loss of her was still too acute, still far too painful. He didn’t know what to do with the little boy who cried constantly for his mother. Who pushed him away with pudgy hands and refused to acknowledge him. The same child who constantly tried to get out of the house so he could search for the woman who had in effect abandoned him.

  Robert relived the final dreadful scene again as he had every day of his life: Bethany, her face a mask of disgust as she looked at her husband.

  ‘Give him to me, Johnny. I’ll take him with me. He’ll soon adapt to another life.’

  But his father had refused, even though Robert was fighting him, trying as hard as he could to tear himself from arms that gripped him like steel bands and run to his mother.

  ‘Take him off with your pimp, Beth? Take my son and bring him up in your filthy world? Never! Not while I have breath in my body.’

  She was laughing then, lovely head thrown back, eyes bright.

  ‘OK, you have him. I can have more children if I want them. I can have anything I want from life. I’ve already proved that to you. Have him. Keep him. He’s yours.’

  Robert had listened to this, stricken, and over the years he had rewritten it all to make his mother the heroine. He never saw his austere father as the man who was trying to protect him. He saw instead someone who was trying to take him from his mother - the only person to ever really love him. Living with his father and his grandmother, a woman who saw him as the fruits of sin, was a bleak existence. Gone were the hugs and the leisurely mornings in his mother’s warm bed, eating toast and having sips of tea. Gone were the afternoons rifling her make-up bag and waiting for her friends to leave. Gone were the intimate baths and the love she gathered round him like a warm moist cloak.

  In its place was school, prayer, and a cold, cold house. Food was plain and lukewarm, breakfast a quiet solitary affair. And John Bateman was a broken man. A broken and bitter man who looked at his young son as if he couldn’t work out where the hell he had come from.

  Robert’s natural ebullience died a slow death in their company. His mother became the focus of his existence; she grew into a beautiful and longed-for stranger.

  He missed the way she used to light up his life. Forgot the times she’d left him alone to fend for himself or slept leaving him beside an unguarded fire. He forgot the times she didn’t feed him properly, plying him with sweets to keep him happy while she entertained the latest man friend. Forgot the times she slapped him - hard, stinging slaps - because he wasn’t quiet enough for her. He even forgot the times he had peeped at her, sprawled naked on the sofa as a strange man assaulted her roughly and without love. He would hear the groans and run in thinking she needed help.

  Or thought he had forgotten. But these memories would assail him sometimes. He would wrestle them away, forcing himself to see something different.

  He forgot the times his father had walked him to school, made sure he had pocket money, taken him on long and interesting bike rides. He had been determined not to love his father and it had worked.

  He also forgot the times his grandma had taken him to church and watched him proudly as he made his First Communion, his Confirmation, or read the Gospel during Midnight Mass.

  They had loved him but he had forced that love away in his quest to keep his mother’s memory alive.

  Then he had found her and it had been the turning point of his life.

  Robert heard the knock on the front door. Put his father naked on the bed and placed the restraining straps on his arms.

  The old man looked at him pitifully. His body was like that of a victim from a concentration camp. All ribs and bruises.

  ‘Don’t . . . please don’t leave me.’

  The voice was thin, quavering with fear. He hated the cold so much. Sometimes Robert ignored him for days at a time. Then guilt would force its way through and he would go in and deluge the old man in care and attention. Until he wet the bed again or defecated while Robert was in the room with him. Then that temper would emerge, the violent temper that made his son into a demon of anger and hatred.

  This had been the pattern of their life.

  Walking down the stairs, Robert picked up his can of Apple Tree room spray and he sprayed it everywhere, savouring the smell.

  Enjoying the memories it evoked of his mother, of her perfume.

  When he saw Kate through the glass he put a smile on his face and answered the door.

  ‘Hello, dear. Come in. I was just dressing my father.’

  He saw Golding and Jenny behind her and his expression altered. Without a word he walked back inside and through to the kitchen. He was putting the kettle on when they came to join him. Turning around and looking at Kate, he said gently, ‘You know, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m glad, to be honest. I don’t think I am very well really.’ He pointed to his temple. ‘I hurt, in here.’

  Against her will Kate felt sorry for him then. He looked so harmless, so forlorn, that he engendered only pity in her heart at that moment.

  ‘Where are the children, Robert?’

  He shrugged and turned to the small window that overlooked the garden. ‘They died. So I buried them.’

  Kate closed her eyes.

  ‘Shall I make us all a nice coffee before we go?’ Robert offered brightly.

  Patrick lay in bed, his eyes open and his mind alert. He was tired but otherwise he felt OK. He lifted his head from the pillow and waited until the dizziness had passed before sitting up carefully.

  He caught his reflection in the mirror and surveyed himself dispassionately. He was greyer, thinner in the face, looked older. The image depressed him. He put one hand to his jaw and gently squeezed the loose skin. Then he relaxed back against the pillows, registering the fact that whatever he’d thought before, he was finally getting old.

  He could rem
ember being shot now. He remembered the fear, the noise and the humiliation he had experienced. He remembered that he had evacuated himself at the final moment, from fear that he was going to die in the street like an animal.

  He closed his eyes to try and blot out the images. Felt the trembling begin once more in his hands.

  He knew that emotionally it was going to take time to recover. Physically, he was already on the mend. He was strong, very strong. He had proved that by his incredible survival.

  But he still broke out in a sweat if he remembered that day’s events. Still shook inside and out as he remembered the stinging sensation of the bullet hitting him. The terror that he was going to die without ever telling Kate he was sorry, or Willy that he’d always cared for him like a brother.

  Patrick was aware for the first time ever of his own mortality and that was a frightening thing.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture Kate. He found that if he thought about her and her calmness, he relaxed. When she touched him he felt revived, happy inside. She gave him the constancy he needed. Had given him the feeling of security he craved from a relationship. He always felt complete when he was in her company.

  From the first time he’d met her, when his daughter was missing and he was terrified to think what could have happened to her, Kate had been able to calm him. It was just part of her considerable charm.

  The last few years had been the happiest of his life in many respects because in her company he had finally and irrevocably relaxed. No longer worrying about what he looked like or having to consider everything he said.

  They had talked all the time, travelled together, loved each other. One thing he had realised early on: he needed her in order to be happy. Without her he was adrift and he knew it. Nearly losing her had finally made him realise that he had to prioritise his life. He had to put her first.

  But that could only happen after he had sorted out his Russian friend.

  He knew inside that until he had paid back Boris he would never feel anything even remotely like peace. He had to get his revenge on the Russian bastard who had put him in this hospital, though it could just as easily have been his coffin.