“We’re off home,” she said firmly. Into his ear, she said, “You’re drunk. Okay? Time to head home.” She spotted Jade and signalled her to help. The two of them marched Wayne to the car and threw him into the back seat. Maddie mentally counted the glasses of wine she’d imbibed and decided to pay strict attention to her driving and to keep off the main roads.
“Dad, you’re disgusting,” Jade said, struggling to shove his legs in so she could close the door. “Ruining what was a really good party. Why did you have to drink so much?” Her voice rose in anguish. “Tell me that! Why, bloody, why?”
Wayne answered with a crescending snore.
Jade turned to her mother. “Why can’t he be more like Donald?”
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning Maddie found it thoroughly therapeutic yanking out the biggest, deepest rooted weeds. Somehow being angry at Wayne helped in some stupid way. Her anger now suitably quashed, she looked back at her efforts with some satisfaction and decided to call it a day.
In the cold light of morning, her tying Donald Dymock to the stranger who financed Kathy’s trip seemed an over-reaction. He had muscles (totally appropriate for a gym teacher); he was fascinated by his own genealogy (like thousands of others) and, besides, he was wearing trainers not farmer’s boots. Duh. She really needed to get a grip. Focus.
She had two things in her life that were top priority: preparing psychologically for the Wednesday meeting with Bettina and the union rep and, for Henry’s sake, gathering the facts around little Linsey Benton’s murder. She’d keep on with her attempts at making contact with Kathy, for sure, but she needed to do something active about Brody Frederickson.
Jade had complained over and over again to her mother that they’d never be invited back to the Dymocks. And now her time with the Dymock family was limited, she was doubly furious at her father’s behaviour. Maddie was well aware it was displaced annoyance that Freya hadn’t warned her ahead of time about her family’s plans.
“Is Freya planning on applying to American universities?” Maddie had asked Jade earlier.
“She says not,” Jade said. “But I always knew we wouldn’t end up at the same college. She’s applying to places like St Andrew’s in Scotland and Imperial College London. Oxford and Cambridge, of course. She’ll never get selected for any of those.”
“Why? Is she not being realistic?”
“She’s just giving her parents bragging rights. You know, ‘my daughter is weighing up whether Oxford or St Andrews would suit her’.” She’d bent over and stuck her finger half way into her mouth, saying, “Yetch.”
Maddie had laughed.
Once out of her wellies, she looked at the time and rang Shirley. They arranged to meet at ten the next morning. Usual place.
Wayne appeared looking like he always looked after tying one on.
“Breakfast?” Maddie asked brightly. And deliberately.
He looked even more nauseous, if that were possible. “Black coffee,” he said. “No. Forget it. I’ve got to get going.”
“You’ve had three calls from someone called Chrystal Morley asking where you were.” She handed him the note where she’d written the name and number.
He nodded. “Singer. Promised her work today.” He straightened, grabbed a jacket and ran to his car.
Maddie smiled wryly. Nothing like a new singer, presumably young and pretty, to motivate a hung-over middle-aged man.
She pulled up the Horscliffe website on her phone. She clicked on ‘teachers’ and found each had provided a short bio with a photograph. Good.
“Hi Shirley,” Maddie said when Shirley sat down opposite her. “Can I show you a photograph of someone?” She handed her phone to Shirley with Donald Dymock’s photo enlarged so it filled the screen. The bios on the school site had obviously demanded formal studio shots. Donald was staring into the camera with a serious expression, dressed in suit and tie, and the black and white photo did nothing to express his personality. Just like all the other photos of teachers.
“Who is it?” Shirley asked.
“Anything recognisable about this chap at all?”
Shirley fumbled for her glasses hanging on a strap around her neck. She peered closely at the screen.
“I presume this is either your client or Kath’s benefactor.”
“You’ve seen both,” Maddie said, only now realising Shirley was absolutely right. There were two middle aged men they had in common.
Shirley slowly shook her head. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen this particular chappie ever before.” She handed the phone back to Maddie. “Sorry. I guess you had a theory I’ve just shattered.”
Maddie laughed. “I found this picture on the net and thought I’d see your reaction. I don’t think it’s particularly illustrative of the man I know. Too formal. A mug shot with suit and tie.”
“So you had hopes this was Milhousen?” Shirley asked. “I was down in the middle of the church hall when the meeting broke up. I didn’t see his face clearly at all. My only impression of him was that he was tall – certainly taller than most yet without looming over people – and he had the muscles of a … oh, I don’t know, some sort of athlete. Not a weight lifter or anything like that. Rugby maybe? Tennis?”
Maddie pointed to her phone. “This fellow has muscles. That’s really why I wanted to show him to you. But that’s just about the only clue.” She put the phone back into her bag. “Now, Shirley, you have some news about Kathy?”
“She’s on her way to Pretoria now,” Shirley said, “to stay with yet more rellies. What a wonderful trip this is turning out to be. I’m so happy for her.”
Maddie agreed while inwardly cursing. “If you ever can contact her, would you let her know I’d really appreciate it if she could give the police a ring? Or drop them a note?” She handed Ethan’s details to Shirley and explained how Henry was back in prison. “I can’t see how he could have committed the murder given it happened when he was in your charity shop.”
Shirley looked uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong, Shirley?”
“I didn’t know he was that awful sex offender,” she said, looking down. “I’m sure Kathy didn’t know either.”
“He has paid his debt to society,” Maddie said stiffly. “You don’t want him to be punished for a crime he could not have committed, do you?” She forced herself to calm down.
“How can you work with such a person?” There was anguish in Shirley’s voice.
“Because he is a person. And I can do my bit to see his life is as worthwhile as possible. But all that is about the crime he was convicted of some years ago, not a crime he could not have committed recently.”
“Yes, I see,” Shirley said in a small voice. “And I do take your point.” She sighed. She got up from the table, in spite of not having finished her coffee. “And I do trust you, Maddie. I just find it very confusing.”
Maddie sat, somewhat non-plussed at Shirley’s reaction to Henry. But Shirley was voicing an opinion about child sex abusers held by, most likely, a majority of people in the UK. In the world.
As Maddie finished her coffee, she reflected on her own journey, the part concerning Henry, at least. A decent man. A middle-class man who shared many of her own hopes and aspirations, and, yes, prejudices. An educated man. In other circumstances, a man she would feel happy to invite to dinner. And her discomfort about his guilt. She accepted he was convicted; but, given the evidence, had she been a juror back then, she was not sure if she would have convicted him. She was only too aware of the minds of twelve-year-old girls. And how difficult it would have been for any non-psychopath to carry off a normal social evening after having committed such an atrocity, putting his job at risk if not his liberty, to say nothing about what it did to the child.
Her phone rang.
The union rep. He introduced himself as David Player. “Thanks for copying the email to me, Madeleine. Any chance you could pop in before Wednesday?”
Her car was par
ked behind John Lewis; his offices were walking distance away “I’m in Kingston right now, David. Should I come over straight away?”
As Maddie set out to walk to the union’s offices, she felt almost weak at the knees. Shocked deeper than she’d realised about Shirley’s reaction to Henry’s background. Such a primitive reaction. She tried to shake it off but couldn’t. As had gone through her mind when seeing Shirley’s reaction, if she’d been on the jury, she would have had severe doubts about the child’s story. Not because of facts, but how she told the story. And that had been years before she was assigned to his case.
If she delved down into the details of the case now, would her reaction be the same?
Another thought pierced her equilibrium. The police had automatically thought Henry was implicated in Linsey’s murder because of the similarities of the two crimes and the proximity of where he lived and, of course, the fact that both girls went to Horscliffe. A natural reaction. But using that same argument took her to a new perspective. What if Henry had been wrongly convicted of orally raping Geneva Hopworth? If both crimes were committed by the same perp, he must be guilty of the second, much worse, but similar, crime. But what if he was innocent of the first? Tying the two together clarified the answer. It meant Henry was in prison for a crime he did not commit.
She paused before she entered the building where the union had its offices. She had a moral duty to look into it. At the moment, and who knows for how much longer, she had some of that most precious of commodities, time.
A few minutes later she was sitting across from a young man with the deep voice she recognised from their phone conversation.
“I like that you’ve included your CV as reference. Mostly because it’s remarkable. Extraordinary. I have one question about this CV of yours,” he said, holding a printout of it in one hand. “With these qualifications, why didn’t you ask for a review when Romania was given the job instead of you? Your CV is twice as impressive.”
Maddie warmed to him. “I just accepted they wanted someone other than me. Simple.”
“You could have asked for a review. I wish you’d discussed it with us.”
She shrugged. “It didn’t even cross my mind. Sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I think, maybe, I should write an opinion piece in the next newsletter about the various times members should let us know something is happening. Keep it all theoretical, but use this instance as an example.” He put the CV down. “Okay, let’s talk about what precipitated this whole scenario we find ourselves in now. The tipping point incident. Tell me in your own words.”
She found herself talking it all through. He took copious notes. Her resentments at being asked to do so much work out of hours; the distain with which she was treated by Romania. Reaching what he’d called a ‘tipping point’ after which she threatened to work to rule. And all the detail about the Service Officers and her attempts to educate them and the resultant explosion by Romania.
“I recorded a conversation I had with her.”
He looked troubled. “She knew she was being recorded?”
“I was on my landline; impossible to record a conversation on it. But I had my mobile phone on so it recorded my side of the conversation, not hers, of course. But you can get the gist if you want to hear it.”
His face cleared. “Yes.” He paused. “What a very good idea to turn your phone on. Do you have it here?”
Maddie pulled her phone onto the desk between them and they both watched her end of the conversation. One-sided maybe, but, as she knew, it spoke volumes. She felt only slightly guilty about the explanatory extension to the conversation.
“Thanks for letting me hear it, Madeleine,” he said. “Keep it safe, okay?” He touched his notes. “I can go over these later and ring you if I can’t make sense of them. I want to be fully briefed when we go into that meeting on Wednesday. Know as much about it as you do.”
Driving home, Maddie realised her mood had lifted knowing someone was batting on her side. Still not confident, and slightly surprised she found such a young man a comfort, she did feel as if she could walk into Bettina’s office with her head held high. Somehow going over it all reinforced her judgement. Confirmed, to herself at least, that her actions had been appropriate.
She arrived home to laughter coming from the kitchen. Jade, Freya and a tall young man.
“Oh, hi, Mum,” Jade said while her face and neck flushed red. “This is Brody Frederickson.”
Chapter Sixteen
Maddie stared at the young man. “Nice to meet you, Brody,” she made herself say, furious with her daughter. What had Jade been thinking inviting a murder suspect here?
Jade, her face flaming, turned to her mother. “I know what you’re thinking, Mum. But things aren’t as simple as you like to think.”
Maddie gave a wry smile at that comment and weighed up whether to get into the whole sex with under-aged girls thing. And immediately dismissed it. Not appropriate. But there were other ways. “I think the police are more interested in the murder than anything else,” she said looking at Brody, wanting him to realise she was telling him the sex thing was not important. At least at the moment. “Better to face up to everything if you’re innocent.”
“If?” he said, his voice a growl.
“Yes, ‘if’, young man,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Of course, ‘if’.”
“Shit on you,” he said, shoving his face inches from Maddie’s, his voice rising. “I don’t have to take this. You can bloody well think what you want, but the cops are never straight. Not ever. If they want to take it further, they’ll bloody have to find me.” He whirled out of the room and slammed the front door. Freya and Jade followed, yelling his name.
Maddie collapsed onto one of the kitchen chairs. How did that deteriorate so quickly? Because he was guilty?
That’s when she did the math. Seven years ago, Brody was ten years old. She dropped her head onto her hands. Could a boy of ten orally rape a girl who was a couple of years older than he was? More basically, would a child of ten have been sexually motivated?
Unlikely.
That is, given the similarities in the two crimes were overwhelming and thus had both been committed by the same perpetrator. Using this logic, Brody Frederickson was not the murderer.
Maddie found her mind drifting back to her reaction to the details of that original oral rape. She thought of twelve-year-old Geneva Hopworth and her ordeal at the school gym. The child had suffered, Maddie had no doubt about that. Medical testimony showed bruises where no bruising should be. No DNA evidence, but nobody doubted she had been orally raped.
The child’s courtroom testimony at Henry’s trial had been by video link and the court’s questions had been put to her by a trusted female psychologist rather than the lawyers. To Maddie, at the time mother to ten-year old Jade and eighteen-year old Olivia, young Geneva had sounded unsure. That tone of voice was significant. If either of her daughters had used it with her, she’d know something wasn’t as it seemed. Further, at the end of the questioning, the child became defiant. Not that Maddie would wish psychological stress on any child, especially one who had undergone such an ordeal at the hands of an adult male, but the defiance felt like a loud protest for her lie to be believed. Anyway, that’s what her own kids would have done if a lie was being questioned.
But, what had bothered her ever since was, what lie? The child had been raped. That was not a lie. Its timing was not in dispute, sometime between most students and teachers leaving the school and her arrival home. No lie there. Henry had used the showers. No lie there. She was after her shoes. Certainly her shoes were found near the gym. By Henry. The rape took place at the gym … or did it? The child said it was Henry … but displaying those tell-tale signs as if a lie lay somewhere….
A doubt. Maybe even a reasonable one.
Maddie had to do something about it. Wondered why she hadn’t protested at the time. Knew she’d gained in becoming confident
in her own powers of deduction since then. It seemed pathetic to say she hadn’t protested back then because of a lack of self-confidence, but she certainly did not feel that way any longer.
Geneva would now be nineteen or twenty. A young woman. Maddie knew her parents had withdrawn the girl from Horscliffe well before the trial. To get away from it all, her parents had sent Geneva as a boarder to a girl’s school somewhere in Buckinghamshire, at least that was what Olivia had remembered.
Maddie entered ‘Geneva Hopworth’ into a google search, pleased the girl wasn’t a Susan Smith or even an Olivia Something-or-other. Geneva’s Facebook page came up first in the search and she clicked on it. A more mature, but easily recognisable Geneva was in countless photographs on her Facebook page. Maddie scanned the news feed. Geneva loved her new job. Great people to work with. Adored being part of the mayor’s office. Enjoyed being in the heart of London which was ‘made for young people’ or so she claimed. Etc. Oh, how Maddie loved google and Facebook for making searching for someone so absolutely easy. Oh, how Maddie hated the idea that her daughters, especially immature Jade, could be found so easily.
She realised she hadn’t checked Jade’s Facebook account for ages. Although they messaged each other at times, she berated herself she’d been distracted from this most imperative of parental duties.
Jade’s site was also full of pictures, mostly of Freya, Kim, the other girls she knew and herself. None of Maddie or Wayne, she was grateful to see. In her last little talk with Jade about social media, she had pointed out how dangerous it would be if some disgruntled crim was able to trace her. That little discussion must have been effective.
Jade’s comments were universally about only two subjects: school and stars, that is, stars in the movies and popular music. Thank goodness.
Maddie looked up a number and entered it into her phone.
“The Mayor’s Office, Samantha speaking. How can I help?” said a young voice.
Death in Cold Waters Page 10