‘I think I can resist the temptation,’ she assured him, ‘and don’t give up. I know it’s really tough right now, but it’s often when life is at its lowest ebb that things suddenly start to take a turn for the better.’
‘Thanks,’ he said and she kissed him on the cheek, lingering there for just a second. Tom put his arm out and placed his hand on her waist. She glanced down but didn’t move from him and when her head came back up again he leaned in and kissed her.
Helen did not push him away or fight him off, she allowed the kiss to happen, even returned his kiss, but suddenly it was as if a spell had been broken. Helen broke free from him and took a step back. ‘What are you doing?’ There was hurt and confusion on her face and he was shocked by it.
‘I thought that …’ but he already knew no words could dig him out of this one.
‘I have a boyfriend!’ she insisted, as if they had not just been talking about the idiot. ‘I thought you …’ And she shook her head angrily as if to clear it. ‘Unbelievable … just unbelievable.’
Helen climbed into her car, slammed the door and drove off.
‘Oh shit,’ he said as he watched her go, knowing that he had just ruined everything but still clinging to the not-entirely-certain notion that she had kissed him back. He was sure she had kissed him back.
As he ambled back to the Greyhound, he caught himself absentmindedly putting a hand up to his lips. ‘Idiot,’ he cursed himself for that and the kiss that preceded it.
The wind was up, bending the branches of the trees at the edge of the common and rustling the leaves noisily, so he didn’t hear the footsteps until the man was almost upon him. Tom managed a half turn but wasn’t quick enough. The blow to the back of the head was delivered with such force it sent him sprawling forwards. He barely had time to put his hands out in front of him before crashing onto the concrete. Tom’s palms took some of the force of his landing and he fell sideways on impact, with a searing pain in his head and a sick feeling in his stomach. Before he could pick himself up a boot went into his side, knocking the wind from him, leaving him sprawled helplessly on the pavement.
‘Fucking bastard!’ shouted Frankie Turner and there was another furious kick from the man he had humiliated. As the pain moved from his stomach to his ribs with the new impact, Tom was dimly aware that Frankie must have waited outside in the cold all this time, hoping he would leave the pub, which told him everything he needed to know about the man’s fury.
‘Don’t you ever … take the piss out of me,’ Frankie hissed, kicking Tom every few words, ‘else I’ll kill you … got that!’
For Tom, the fight had been over before it had even begun. This was not about having the will or the courage to fight back, he couldn’t even get up. All he could do was use his arms to try to defend himself against the kicks while Frankie railed at him.
Then Frankie landed a kick right on the end of Tom’s chin and the blow almost knocked him unconscious, ending his ability to even put his hands up. Frankie wasn’t finished. ‘You’re leaving tomorrow. If you don’t, you’ll get more of this,’ then he stamped hard on Tom’s hand.
Frankie spat on the floor inches from Tom’s head and walked away muttering to himself, ‘Fucking mess with me, you little prick.’
It was minutes before Tom felt able to roll onto his front then gingerly press down onto the concrete path with his undamaged hand, so he could push against it and attempt to haul himself to his feet. Everything hurt; his head, ribs, stomach, both legs and arms and especially his hand. There was sheer hatred in Frankie’s blows and the man’s retribution had been thorough.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Day Eight
Tom woke in his room at the Greyhound the next morning. As he opened his eyes the memory of the one-sided fight with Frankie immediately came back to him, along with the pain, and he groaned. Every bit of him ached. The next thing he recalled was Frankie’s threat: leave town or face another beating. As if he didn’t have enough problems already. What was it Helen had said to him just before it, about life often getting better when you were at your lowest ebb? Surely his ebb couldn’t get any lower than this.
He thought of Helen then and their aborted kiss. What had he been thinking? He’d probably blown it with her too. Was there no end to his troubles? He climbed out of bed, gingerly surveyed the vivid bruises on his torso in the mirror then turned on the television to catch the news. With typical bad luck, the first voice he heard was Timothy Grady’s.
‘I met with the Prime Minister this morning to tender my resignation from the cabinet,’ he told a reporter standing outside the Palace of Westminster. ‘I did this to prevent any distraction to the business of government. The Prime Minister reluctantly accepted my resignation but agreed with me that, until this matter has been satisfactorily resolved, I will be unable to devote myself fully to my ministerial position. The Prime Minister has made it clear that I continue to enjoy his full confidence and he has not ruled out an immediate return to government. That is all.’ And Grady walked briskly away from the camera, ignoring the questions that followed him.
Tom grabbed the mobile phone and jabbed at the buttons. It rang first time for once.
‘Hello,’ Terry sounded preoccupied.
‘It’s Tom, I’ve just seen that Tory wanker on the TV.’
‘Just a minute,’ and there was silence for a moment while Terry presumably turned away from his colleagues, ‘everyone has been watching it here too,’
‘So he’s gone from a position of “I will never resign” to one of “I am quitting to clear my name”; bloody marvellous!’
‘Not for us it isn’t.’
‘Doesn’t it show that nothing he says can be trusted?’
‘Well no, he didn’t want to go. He’s been forced out by the PM.’
‘Obviously,’ said Tom, ‘we’ve made him an embarrassment to his own government.’
‘And that’s exactly why it’s so serious, Tom.’ Terry sounded agitated. ‘Don’t you get it? If he wins his case against us, they’ll say we ruined a previously unblemished political career and he will take us to the cleaners. This is a guy who could have been Prime Minister before we stuck our size nines into him. How do you put a price on that?’
‘I don’t believe this. The man sleeps with hookers then pulls up his trousers and goes off to make speeches about family values. Nobody has been more vocal about the harm single mums are doing to society.’
‘With the possible exception of us,’ Terry reminded him.
Tom ignored this, his anger at Grady rising, ‘have we forgotten what makes it a story? Nobody cares if Joe Bloggs shags a prostitute but this is a government minister who’s been telling us how we should be living our lives, the fucking hypocrite.’
‘No one has forgotten that, Tom. We’re just worried that’s all, you know, about our futures, if the newspaper goes bust or most of us are sacked, trivial things like that. Can’t you for once put yourself in our shoes? If he wins, everybody is fucked.’
‘Well he won’t win. A jury will see right through him.’ Tom was expecting further argument from Terry but strangely there was silence on the end of the line. Tom started to wonder if he had lost the connection. ‘Hello?’ he prompted.
‘We can’t run that risk,’ Terry’s voice was calmer now and that was more chilling somehow.
‘What do you mean by that?’ there was another long pause, ‘what do you mean by that, Terry?’
Terry sighed, ‘the Doc is going to settle.’
‘He’s actually going to pay the man? You are not serious?’
‘A sizeable damages pay-out, a very large retraction and an apology in a prominent position, maybe even the front page then perhaps all of this will go away,’
Tom couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘This can’t be happening.’
‘All we have is some photographs that show Grady emerging from an apartment block on the same evening as a prostitute. That’s not much. MPs stay overnight when the
y are working late.’
‘He’s MP for Kensington for God’s sake. He’s got a townhouse there.’
‘But his main home is out in the country, he has an apartment and he stays in hotels as well.’
‘The apartment isn’t any closer to the House of Commons than his town house,’ protested Tom. ‘He uses it for his shags.’
‘It doesn’t matter as long as he has friends to corroborate it if he says he has meetings. His lawyers are claiming he’s been canvassing support for his re-election campaign.’
‘That’s bollocks. Grady has one of the biggest majorities in the House of Commons. He doesn’t canvas, he doesn’t have to. He’s MP for one of the richest parts of London. His constituents practically goosestep their way to the polling stations.’
‘Yeah, yeah and they’d vote for Stalin if he wore a red rosette up your way too,’ said Terry wearily.
‘What about the girls? We have three of them willing to stand up in court and testify he paid them to have sex.’
‘No Tom, no, we don’t have three girls who are willing to testify. We have three prostitutes who are willing to testify, against one highly respectable pillar of society. The first thing any decent barrister will ask these girls, who are prepared to have sex with strangers for cash is, “Were you paid by the paper for your story?”, which of course they were. That barrister will then speculate that they, their bodies and their words are all easily bought. The jury might just conclude that these immoral people are likely to say anything in return for payment. By that point they will be adding another nought to the damages.’
Despite his mounting frustration and anger, Tom could see that everything Terry had said was true. He just didn’t want to believe it. ‘Are you sure the Doc’s going to settle?’
‘It’s the only option that’s being discussed but no offer has been made yet and we don’t even know if Grady will accept it. He might still want his day in court.’
‘And if the Doc does settle,’ asked Tom, ‘where does that leave me?’
Again, there was a sizeable pause before Terry said, ‘That’s pretty hypothetical at this point,’ and Tom didn’t need to read too far between the lines to know he was fucked.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
They boil the kettle a lot in a home that’s had a tragedy. It was what you did when your world was turned upside down by unexpected death or horrific injury or, in this case, the sudden disappearance of your daughter with the odds against her safe return worse than one in a million. You put the kettle on, made everyone a cup of tea, then you put the kettle on again. Tom had learned you should never offer to help, never try to take the job of making the drinks away from the person who has offered to make them. They were the ones in agony, trying to work out why everything they had ever planned or dreamed of for years had suddenly come to an abrupt and shocking end. Filling the kettle, boiling the water, popping tea bags in the cups and carrying the drinks in on a tray with a sugar bowl and a spoon was the one thing they could manage to accomplish between the bouts of weeping, cursing of fate and railing at their god. It made them feel useful again, for about two minutes.
Tom was standing alone in Michelle Summers’ bedroom while her mum made the tea. He knew coming down here to see Fiona like this was clutching at straws but maybe he’d discover something from this visit and, if it proved to be a dead end, then it was likely to be one of very many before someone finally blew this investigation wide open.
Tom was meant to be meeting Helen at Mary Collier’s house that afternoon but he seriously doubted whether she would show up. While he waited for Fiona to return, Tom looked around the missing girl’s room but didn’t touch anything. The place already looked like a shrine to a dead girl. His eyes took in the posters, the cheap ornaments she was probably a little too old for now: a snow globe, an old music box with a ballerina on it. The room spoke of the kind of hard-up childhood he recognised. It wasn’t poverty exactly: there’d be food on the plate and they could probably afford to heat the place but there wasn’t much left once the bills were paid. The things Michelle owned probably came from market stalls and the bargain bins from cheap store sales. Tom knew this because he’d experienced something very similar.
‘I didn’t know if you took sugar.’ Fiona handed him a mug of very milky tea. ‘Forgot to ask,’ she added, in a tone that indicated she was forgetting a lot at the moment. Tom had never met Fiona before but she looked so worn out, he’d have been willing to bet she’d aged a decade in the past few days.
‘It’s fine as it is, thank you,’ he said, taking a sip.
Fiona looked at him now as if he had suddenly come into sharp focus and he wondered if she was on strong anti-depressants. ‘What was it you wanted again?’ She seemed to be zoning in and out and, if she’d noticed his bruises at all, obviously didn’t see them as worthy of comment. Instead, she’d meekly let him in as soon as he told her he was a journalist.
‘I was wondering if you had a more recent photograph of Michelle,’ he said. ‘The one the police are using looks a bit out-of-date. A newer picture could help to find her.’
‘We stopped buying the school photos,’ she admitted, ‘they’re always so expensive. I don’t know if I’ve got anything recent,’ and her lip quivered as the realisation hit her. She had no up-to-date photographs of her daughter and might never get the chance to put that right.
‘Can I have a look at these?’ asked Tom, indicating a row of four cheap photo albums that took up half a shelf on a rickety wooden bookcase.
Fiona nodded her assent. ‘They’re just daft pictures of her and her mates,’ she said.
Tom picked up the nearest album and leafed through it. It was a house party. The birthday girl looked about fifteen and so did the other kids who were smiling out from the first four pictures Michelle had taken, which had been carefully pressed onto the page then sealed in place behind a clear, plastic cover. The girls had made an effort to dress up but they were still learning how to look the part. Make-up was either non-existent or there was way too much of it. The boys mugged for the camera or wrestled each other in front of it. There were excited smiles and laughter but at their age the lads and lasses looked like two alien species that treated each other warily and had no idea how to communicate with one another. Tom turned over a page and then another until finally he recognised her.
Michelle Summers was standing next to a friend, grinning at the camera. Her stance and smile were still a little awkward but this was a very different Michelle to the girl in the picture that had graced the pages of every newspaper in the country. Made up like this, with her hair carefully styled, she looked closer to a woman than a girl. She had folded her arms across her breasts self-consciously for the photograph, as if she wasn’t yet confident about the way her body looked. Michelle Summers was still a child but she didn’t look a bit like the other victims of the Kiddy-Catcher.
‘Could I take this?’ asked Tom, ‘I’ve got a contact at the Daily Mirror. They’ll print it for you.’
‘If you think it will help,’ she said.
He didn’t know if it would but he peeled back the protective film and put the photo in his pocket anyway.
They went down the stairs together and talked some more about Michelle but he knew what he was hearing was a distraught mother’s edited version of a young girl’s life: the cheeky grin, mischievous sense of humour, loving nature and occasional memory from a childhood holiday long ago but it didn’t tell him anything that might reveal the reason why she’d run away from home or been murdered by someone. Michelle and Denny ‘got on,’ her mother said. Michelle’s boyfriend was ‘all right, I s’pose but she hadn’t been seeing him that long.’
They talked for five minutes or more before the subject turned to school, which Michelle didn’t like, ‘but then they don’t, do they, kids, I mean? Can’t wait to be out of there, I was the same when I was her age,’ so Tom asked her about the junior school, to fill gaps in the conversation while he finished his tea.
Fiona seemed to bristle at the memory. ‘Michelle didn’t like him at all. Had it in for her, he did.’
‘Who?’
‘Nelson, the headmaster. He was a bully. I went down there once.’
‘What happened?’
‘He hit her,’ said Fiona.
‘Nelson hit Michelle?’ Tom had been brought up in an era when teachers routinely hit pupils with slippers, blackboard dusters and even hard-backed books but Michelle was a child of the late eighties and that sort of behaviour was supposed to be over by then.
Fiona nodded, ‘slapped her right across the face he did. I can’t even remember why but it was something-or-nothing. I went right down there to have it out with him. I threatened to report him and he couldn’t say sorry quick enough; said he’d been provoked but admitted he shouldn’t have done it and apologised.’ She seemed to feel the matter had been resolved to her satisfaction.
Tom knew Nelson well enough and this behaviour was uncharacteristic, which meant Michelle had somehow managed to push her headmaster until he had done something that could have cost him his career.
Fiona took the empty mug from Tom and disappeared into the kitchen with it. It was while she was gone that he noticed the piece of lined notepaper on the dining table close by. It had been folded in two but he could still make out the word that was written on the front of the note in pen, Fiona.
The sound of clinking cups and a tap being turned on came from the kitchen.
Tom took a step towards the table, glanced back at the door and when no one stepped through it, lifted the note up with a finger so he could read the words that had been hastily scribbled on the other side, I am so, so sorry but I can’t stay here no more. Please forgive me. D.
Tom remembered the stepfather he had seen in the press conference footage. He heard a footstep on linoleum then and immediately took his finger from the note, which closed obediently, then he took a step away from it and smiled as Fiona re-entered the room. ‘If there’s anything else I can do …’ he offered.
No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Page 26