Guilty One

by Lisa Ballantyne

  ‘The witness has been asked and has answered, Miss Clarke,’ said Baron. Irene sat down, a brief flush on her cheeks. ‘Mr Jones?’

  ‘If I may, my lord, a point of clarification … ’

  Judge Baron fluttered his fingers in agreement. Irene shot a glance at Daniel.

  Gordon Jones once more assumed the lectern. ‘Dr Gault, very briefly, if the fatal blow was delivered with the aid of gravity, would this be consistent with the position of the body when it was found – face up, hands by the side?’

  ‘… yes,’ said Dr Gault, with some hesitation. ‘Several positions might have been possible, but certainly if the victim had been somewhat stunned or afraid, it might have been possible to deliver the blow while he was on the ground, either from a standing position or sitting … astride, as it were. This would have been easier for a … weaker assailant.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Gault.’

  Daniel brought home several newspapers and flicked through each until he found reports from the trial. Several of the stories focused on his and Sebastian’s relationship: the boy huddled close to his solicitor. One wrote of Dr Gault’s evidence: ‘The Crown pathologist, Dr Jillian Gault, speculated that the Angel Killer may have sat astride his victim in order to wield sufficient force to bludgeon him to death, face to face.’

  Daniel washed a hand across his eyes. The flat was dark, but he could not bear to turn on the lights. The kitchen table was covered in his work files. He stood at the window and watched the park in the vacillating moonlight. The lake turned like a penny in the changing light. He felt tired but it was a restless weariness and he knew he would not be able to sleep.

  He noticed the answerphone flashing. Cunningham had left a message. The line was bad and Daniel could not hear every word: ‘Danny, hi, I got your message … The house is cleared and I have a buyer lined up. Young couple from the city, who’ve been looking for a smallholding like this for a while. I sent you an email. It’s a good offer, so give me a call and let me know if we can proceed to sale.’

  Daniel exhaled. Automatically, he deleted the message. He wasn’t ready for this now. He needed time to prepare. He lay down fully clothed on the bed and stared at the ceiling, unblinking. He remembered going to Minnie’s house for the first time as a child. He remembered his tantrums and his rage. But after all that had happened between them and all that she had done for him, what he remembered most clearly were the last words that he had said to her face: I wish you were dead.

  Now that she was dead, he wanted to say he was sorry. The trial of the boy only forced him to think about her more. The trial made him realise how close he had come to being in Sebastian’s position. She had hurt him, but she had saved him too.

  He ran the palm of his hand across his chest, feeling the bones of his ribcage. He remembered Charlotte’s inappropriate advances at the back door of the cells. He was uncertain why he so pitied her. Daniel felt cheated on Sebastian’s behalf by Charlotte’s weakness and desperation, although the child showed her nothing but love.

  He put a hand underneath his head. He could understand Sebastian’s passion for his mother. As a child he had been willing to die to protect his own. He remembered standing barefoot, in his pyjamas, between her and the boyfriend. He remembered feeling the slow, hot vein of the urine down his leg, and yet still being prepared to take what was coming, if it would save her.

  After that he had been taken into care.

  He thought of his mother: the marks on her arms and her mood swings, the unclean smell of her breath. He pitied her now, as he pitied Charlotte. His desperate, childish love for her had been eclipsed long ago. He had been a grown man before he realised the harm that she had done him.

  Daniel sat up and ran a hand across his jaw. He changed out of his work clothes and then picked up the phone in the hall. He stood with the receiver in his hand, undecided, before dialling the number. It was Harriet’s husband who answered this time. Daniel stammered slightly, explaining who he was.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said the man, ‘I’ll just get her.’

  Daniel stood with a palm pressed against the wall as he waited. There was the sound of the television in the background, and the older man clearing his throat. Daniel bit his lip.

  ‘Hello again.’ Her voice was tired. ‘Lovely, but I’m surprised to hear from you again so soon.’

  ‘I know, it was just something that you said the other day. I’ve been thinking about it. Do you have time right now?’

  ‘Of course, love, what is it?’

  The sound of her voice reminded him of Minnie. He closed his eyes.

  ‘I spoke to Norman’s sister. She told me more about the crash … ’

  Harriet said nothing, but he could hear her breathing.

  ‘It’s just that I don’t think I ever fully understood what Minnie went through, and now I do and … I was thinking about something that you said … ’

  He could feel his heart beating. He paused to allow her to speak but still she remained silent. He wondered if he had angered her again.

  ‘What, love?’ she said finally. ‘What did I say?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘About her torturing herself by taking in all the foster kids.’

  ‘I know, God love her.’

  Daniel made a fist with his hand and punched it lightly into the wall. ‘Why me, do you think? Why did she adopt me, and none of the others?’

  Harriet sighed.

  ‘Was it because I asked her to? Or … because I was scared of being sent away? Had she considered adopting any of the others?’

  He waited for Harriet to speak but she did not. The silence lingered gravely, like the low note of a piano with the pedal pressed.

  ‘Don’t you know, pet?’ she said, finally. ‘She loved you like her own. You were special to her, so you were. I remember the first year you went to stay with her. She had a lot of trouble with you at first, I remember. You were a wild one. But she saw something inyou …

  ‘I mean, she wanted the best for you, of course. She would have given you up for your own good, like she gave up the others. She was on her own and she kept telling me how children needed families – brothers and sisters … a man around. I remember her trying to find a proper home for you, all the while desperate to have you stay.’

  ‘She was family enough for anyone … for me anyway.’

  ‘That day she adopted you, she called me after you were asleep. I hadn’t heard her so happy since before Delia died.’

  Daniel cleared his throat. Harriet began to cough: a rasping cough so severe that she had to put down the phone for a second. Daniel waited.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I can’t shift this cough. Mother of God … But you have to know, Danny … She wanted nothing more than for you to be her son. You were so important to her.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, almost whispering.

  ‘Don’t think of these things now, son. It does nobody any good. Put it behind you.’

  Harriet began to cough again.

  ‘You should go to a doctor,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be grand. Are you all right? I thought I saw you on the news the other day. Are you on that Angel Killer case, now? Was that really you? What a terrible business that is.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ said Daniel. He stood up straight; mention of the case shook him from the morose claw of his memory.

  ‘What is the world coming to? Have you ever heard the like – bairns killing each other like that?’

  Daniel slipped a hand into his pocket and said that he would need to go.

  ‘Right you are, love. You always did work so hard. You go and put your feet up now. Stop thinking about all this.’

  Daniel hung up. He went to bed, regret chiming inside him.

  When he woke, it was six thirty and he was late for his run. A dream was still fresh in his mind. He had dreamed of the house in Brampton. The walls of the house had been open, like a model nativity scene or a doll’s house. The animals h
ad walked freely inside and out. Daniel was grown in the dream, but still living there, caring for the animals. Minnie was outside somewhere, but he couldn’t see or hear her.

  In her kitchen, he had found a lamb: asleep, breathing audible contented snores, its abdomen rising and falling, and a gentle smile on its lips. Daniel had bent and carried the lamb outside, where bright sunshine was splitting the trees.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Daniel could still remember the tangible weight of the lamb in his hands and the warmth of its thin fleece.

  After breakfast he checked his emails, then returned Cunningham’s call and agreed that the farm could be sold. Daniel spoke very quietly when he said the words, in case he changed his mind. It was time to sell the house, he decided. He needed to move on. Perhaps when the house was gone, he would be free of regret. He would think about her no more.

  26

  Minnie had wanted to drive him to university, but Daniel knew that she was anxious about it. In the end he got the train to Sheffield, allowing her to drive him only as far as Carlisle. Blitz had whimpered all the way in the car, and then Minnie’s eyes glassed over with tears when they reached the platform.

  ‘Mam, I’ll be back in ten weeks. Christmas is in ten weeks.’

  ‘I know, love,’ she’d said, reaching up to hold his face in both hands. ‘It seems like such a long time, and the time I’ve had with you now seems too short. I can’t quite believe it.’

  It was a warm day. Blitz was straining on his lead, turning to the sounds of people and trains. Daniel smelled the diesel and felt a brief frightened thrill at the thought of leaving Brampton and living in a city again. He watched Minnie putting a knuckle to her eye.

  ‘Are you going to be OK?’ he asked.

  She heaved a sigh and beamed at him, her cheeks pink. ‘I’ll be just grand. You make sure and enjoy yourself. Call me once in a while so I know you’re alive and not taken to drink or drugs.’ She laughed, but Daniel could see the sheen come to her eyes again.

  ‘Will you call me?’ he asked.

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  He smiled, chin down to his chest. He wanted to leave now, but it was a few minutes until his train. Leaving her was harder than he had imagined and now he wished that he had said goodbye at the farm. Part of him worried that she would be lonely, part of him was filled with apprehension for himself. Some childish part of him did not want to go. He didn’t know anyone who had been to university: he didn’t know what to expect.

  ‘And don’t start thinking you’re not worthy,’ she said, as if she had been reading his mind again. Her eyes split with mirth and wisdom. ‘All you needed was this one chance. Take it and show them all just what you’re made of.’

  He held her, bending down to squeeze her, feeling her body yield to him. Blitz yelped and jumped on them, trying to break them up.

  ‘You’re nothing but a jealous fool,’ she derided Blitz, roughly patting his head.

  It was time. Daniel had smiled, kissed her wet cheek, stroked Blitz’s wary ear, and then he was gone.

  At Sheffield University, although most of the students he became friends with were a year older than he was, having had gap years abroad, Daniel still felt strangely older than they were. He joined the football team and also a running club and would go out drinking with friends from both. Carol-Ann stayed in Brampton and he saw her occasionally during term and during the holidays when he went back to the farm, but he slept with other girls at university and said nothing to Carol-Ann, who knew him well enough not to ask.

  One of the girls he slept with got pregnant and then had an abortion, early in his second year. He was living in a shared flat on the Ecclesall Road at the time, and had gone along with her to Danum Lodge in Doncaster to get the procedure done. They had both been frightened and afterwards she had bled and been in pain. He had taken care of her but after a few weeks it was as if it had never happened.

  Daniel was not sure if it was this which caused him to begin thinking about his mother again – his real mother – but shortly before his second-year law exams, he called Newcastle Social Work Department and asked to speak to Tricia. He was told that she had left the department in 1989.

  Daniel remembered being told that he would have the right to trace his mother when he was eighteen. Although she was dead, he still wanted to know how she died and if there was a memorial. He decided he would visit Newcastle again, to see what he could find out about his mother’s death. Some part of him wanted to return. He didn’t tell Minnie what he was doing – knowing that it would upset her too much. He didn’t want to hurt Minnie, but away from Brampton he felt more able to make the call. He called social services back three times, before he managed to speak to someone who could help him.

  ‘Daniel Hunter, did you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And your birth mother was Samantha. You were adopted in 1988 to Minnie Florence Flynn?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’

  The social worker was called Margaret Bentley. She sounded exhausted, as if the very words she spoke cost her precious energy.

  ‘All I can find on your mother is notes from the drugs team, but nothing recent … ’

  ‘It’s all right, I know she’s dead. I just want to know how she died, ’n’ maybe find out if there’s a memorial. I know she was cremated.’

  ‘I’m sorry, we don’t keep that information, but you could ask at the register office in Newcastle. They’d have her death certificate. The council would tell you where she was cremated and if there’s a memorial … ’

  ‘Well … the last report from the drugs team, was it bad?’

  ‘We’re not really supposed to give out that kind of information.’

  ‘You’re not tellin’ me anything I don’t know, like,’ Daniel said. ‘I knew me mam took drugs. It’s just … ’

  ‘Well, this last report was very good. She was clean.’

  ‘Really, when was that?’

  ‘1988, same year you were adopted.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Daniel and hung up.

  He thought about his last meeting with his mother; the way she had struggled to face what was happening. He wondered if she had tried to get clean for him; if losing him had scared her away from the drugs. But if she hadn’t overdosed, Daniel wondered why she had died so young. He thought of the men in her life and pressed his teeth together.

  He had revision to do, but he got up the next morning and took the train to Newcastle. Returning was a strange joy. As the train pulled in, he looked north towards the Cowgate estates. The city still seemed to be under his fingernails and in between his toes. He walked differently when he was here: he kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, but he knew instinctively where to go. He had not been in Newcastle since the day that Minnie adopted him. He felt a delicious, conflicted thrill, as if he was trespassing, but at home.

  He didn’t know where the register office was, but he asked at the central library. It was on Surrey Street and he went straight there. He had written down his mother’s full name and date of birth as he remembered it.

  The register office was a Victorian building of pale, unblasted sandstone. It seemed to have shouldered the grime of decades with appropriate resignation. The hallways were institutional, civic, minimally clean. Daniel felt slightly inhibited as he walked to the desk. It reminded him of his first visit to the university library; his first tutorial, before he learned that he did know enough and had a right to be there. He was wearing a long-sleeved football shirt and jeans. He stopped on the steps to smooth back his hair, which was getting long at the front and starting to fall into his eyes. Inside he went to the gents, where he tucked in then untucked his shirt. While he waited in line, he wondered at the source of his anxiety: whether it was because he was about to query the dead, or because he had been abandoned by the dead.

  Abandoned.

  When it was his turn, Daniel stepped up to the desk. Suddenly he felt abnegated, cast out. He remembered his mothe
r’s long nails, tack, tack, tack on the table.

  ‘Yes, can I help you?’

  The registrar was young. She leaned on the desk with both her elbows and smiled up at Daniel.

  ‘Yes, I wanted to get a copy of my mother’s death certificate.’

  Forms were filled in and Daniel had to wait, but then he was given the certificate, folded into a clean white envelope. He thanked the young registrar and left, not daring to open the envelope until he was outside, and even then he felt inhibited, as people pushed by him on the busy street.

  There was an old-fashioned teashop off Pinstone Street and Daniel slipped inside and ordered a coffee and a bacon roll. There was an overweight man with purpled cheeks eating a pie and beans and two women with the same dyed-blonde spiky hairstyle sharing a cigarette.

  Daniel carefully opened the folds of the paper. He could taste the smoke from the women’s cigarettes in his mouth. His heart was beating but he didn’t know why. He knew she was dead and he could guess how, but still there was a feeling that he was uncovering something hidden. The typeface swarmed at him. His fingers were trembling and the paper shook.

  She had died of a drug overdose, as Minnie had told him. Daniel stared at the paper, imagining the syringe rising valiantly from his mother’s arm and her blue rubber tourniquet releasing, as one hand releases another over a cliff.

  His eyes scanned and then re-scanned the dates: born 1956, died 1993, aged thirty-seven years.

  He pushed his roll away, left his coffee and ran back to the register office, where he skipped up the steps just as they were closing for lunch.

  He pushed his way to the desk. The young woman who had served him called over. ‘I’m sorry, we close for lunch. If you can come back later?’

  ‘I just wanted to ask … one question, just one, I swear.’

  She smiled and came to the desk again. ‘I’ll get in trouble,’ she said, her eyes sparkling at him.

  Daniel did his best to play along, although he wanted to shake her. ‘Thanks so much; you’re great.’ The registrar’s lids lowered and lifted. ‘I just wanted to check, like … This certificate says 1993 on it, but me mam died in 1988 at the latest.’