Guilty

by Conrad Jones

  ‘So, he has done it?’ someone asked.

  ‘He must have,’ Toni said, nodding.

  ‘Urgh, that’s so gross,’ April said, pretending to vomit. ‘I’ve stayed at your house and walked around in my PJs.’ Everyone took a sharp, dramatic intake of breath. ‘I even had a nightie on once – a short one too.’

  ‘Urgh!’ they all said in unison. ‘That’s so gross.’

  ‘I bet he was looking at me,’ April said, pouting.

  ‘He was not looking at you, April,’ Jaki said, wiping her eyes. ‘Don’t be disgusting. He is innocent. It is all a mistake.’

  ‘Whatever,’ April said, brushing her off. ‘Thinking about being in your house makes my skin crawl. My mum said I’m not to go there again, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Me too,’ Toni said. ‘My mum said it this morning. She said I can’t stay over again. Not ever.’ She lowered her voice. ‘She actually asked me if your dad had ever said or done anything weird while I stayed over.’

  ‘My mum asked that too,’ another girl added.

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘OMG, I’m so embarrassed for you,’ April said again. Her comments weren’t helping Jaki calm down, in fact, they were having the opposite effect. ‘If my dad was a paedo, it would be bad enough, but if he was one of my teachers too, I couldn’t show my face ever again.’

  ‘Are you okay, sis?’ Jake said, approaching the group. He had heard the chitchat and thought it best to take her away from them. Some of them meant well, some didn’t. Jaki let go of her friend and hugged her brother. He could feel her sobbing on his chest. ‘I think we should go home, don’t you?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Let’s go and get the bus.’

  ‘Isn’t that sweet? Look at the little paedo children,’ Tom Mathews said, loud enough to attract attention. The other pupils turned to look at what was happening. ‘Look at them, hugging in the yard. Incest – a game for all the family, eh, Vigne?’ Jake glared at him. Jaki looked up.

  ‘Go away, Tom,’ Jake said.

  ‘Hey, Jaki, who fucked you first, your dad or your brother?’ Laughter erupted from all sides. Jake was boiling up inside. Jaki’s bottom lip began to tremble.

  ‘Leave her alone, Mathews,’ April said, suddenly remembering she was supposed to be Jaki’s friend.

  ‘Listen to you, April “bury me in a Y-shaped coffin” Morris.’ The playground erupted in laughter. ‘I saw your name mentioned on Facebook last night,’ Tom said, turning to her. ‘Are you fucking Mr Vigne the paedo, April “Y-shaped coffin” Morris?’

  ‘You’re vile,’ April said.

  ‘Why am I vile?’ Tom asked. ‘It wasn’t me who sucked off Liam Wilson behind the sports hall last month. That was you.’ April looked stunned that he knew. ‘What’s wrong? Did you think nobody knew about it? Liam has told half the school.’ Tears formed in her eyes. ‘Sucking Liam’s smelly, little penis, now that is what I call vile. You should be ashamed of yourself.’ April was close to breaking. He turned back to Jake and Jaki. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves too. Your dad is a dirty paedo.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting, Mathews. Why don’t you go and have another bag of crisps, you fat creep,’ April said as she stormed off in tears.

  ‘Don’t be like that, April,’ Tom said, as she ran away. ‘Come to think of it, why would he bother fucking a minger like you when there’s loads of other girls?’

  ‘Fuck you, Mathews!’ April snapped.

  ‘I bet you both do a turn with him, don’t you, Jaki?’ Tom pushed. ‘Hey, Vigne. Do you take it in turns with your sister?’ Jake didn’t answer. He looked at the laughing faces all around them, some of them so-called friends. Tom laughed; the crowd went wild. Jake thought about running head on at Tom, punches flying, but it would be like punching a beanbag. Taking a hiding from him wouldn’t improve the situation. ‘Does your mum play, too?’

  ‘Tom Mathews,’ the headmaster said, as he approached the crowd. The kids parted like the Red Sea. ‘Get to my office, right now, and wait for me.’

  ‘What have I done?’ he asked, shrugging. ‘I’m just chatting to my friends.’

  ‘You don’t have any friends, Mathews,’ the head said. ‘My office. Now.’

  ‘This is harassment, sir.’

  ‘I won’t say it again, Mathews.’

  ‘Oh, alright, sir,’ Tom sighed dramatically. The kids were silent, listening to every word. ‘If I go to your office, are you going to bum me, sir?’ Tom said, turning away. The kids sniggered and tittered. The headmaster changed colour, his anger rising. ‘Mr Vigne would probably bum me, sir, because he’s a big paedo. I’m very concerned about being interfered with, sir.’

  ‘You’re walking a very fine line, Mathews.’

  ‘I think we have a right to know if one of our teachers is a child molester, sir.’

  The kids laughed and sneered noisily. Jake wanted to curl up in a ball and protect his sister. He covered her ears with his hands. The headmaster scowled at the crowd.

  ‘Silence,’ he shouted. Quiet descended across the playground. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves, encouraging that idiot.’ He turned around and made eye contact with as many pupils as he could. ‘I will not tolerate bullying of any kind. Do I make myself clear?’ No one replied but they nodded. ‘I said, do I make myself clear?’ he shouted.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they said, almost in unison.

  ‘Jake, Jaki, go to the office and have Mrs Kelly call your mother. I think you should take a half day while I sort out Tom Mathews. That boy will be excluded from this school and he will be lucky if he ever walks back through those gates, and that goes for anybody else who thinks bullying is funny. I will also find out which comedian put the photograph on the noticeboard, and we’ll see how funny it is when I show your parents the CCTV footage of you doing it and explain why they’ll need to find a new school for you.’ He looked around the crowd again, outrage in his eyes. ‘That will be hilarious, won’t it?’ No one dared speak. ‘Has anyone else given you a hard time?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Jake replied.

  ‘Jaki?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good. Go to the office. I’ll call your mother at home this evening.’

  Jake and Jaki walked through the silent schoolyard, knowing things would never be quite the same again.

  11

  Phil Coombes opened another Stella and took a mouthful. Everyone who knew him called him Coombes. Only his mother called him Phil, and he hardly spoke to her. The rest of his family hadn’t been in touch for years. There was that thing with his cousin, Susan, when they were teenagers. In truth, he was a teenager at the time and she was twelve. They had been mucking around and he went a bit too far. She’d told his Uncle Adam that he had fingered her, but it was only in there for a few seconds before she’d started balling the fucking house down, and that was that. The family had imploded, his uncle had threatened to call the police, and he and his mother had never heard from them again. Looking back, he wondered if that was where his hatred of paedophiles had developed from. Coombes didn’t see himself as a paedo because there had only been two years between him and Susan. They were both kids, playing doctors and nurses, and he had been a little bit too adventurous for her liking. That hardly made him a paedo, did it? He wasn’t like the dirty perverts he hunted today. They are grown men, purposely grooming youngsters to have sex with; that is very different. He wondered, if he could have explained the difference to his Uncle Adam over a few pints, whether things might have been different. He had been dead for five years, so it was academic, but he did think about it a lot.

  Fuck ’em. He raised one cheek from the camping chair and farted loudly.

  ‘Get out and walk,’ he chuckled to himself.

  The canal side was empty. He had seen one cyclist, and another couple of fishermen since arriving three hours ago. That was how he liked it. There were a few fishermen closer to the car park, but Coombes liked to walk along the towpath for about half a mile, to a secluded spot where o
verhanging trees made shadows on the murky water. That’s where the fish liked to hide. There was a tow bridge across the water so he could change sides when the sun moved. There were no canal boats on The Hotties; it was a stretch that had been unused for decades since the coal mines closed. It was a solitary pastime but he enjoyed the isolation. He was awkward in company and struggled to fit in. People found him abrasive and stand-offish, but the truth was he didn’t really like people, so it didn’t matter. He was happy in his own company. If he was honest, he would have liked to have had more relationships with females, but they didn’t like him either. He was a misogynist, and genuinely believed his girlfriends should cook, clean, be willing to give blow jobs whenever, and like it up the bum when the fancy took him – the women in the films he had watched since he was a teenager did. He couldn’t fathom the difference between them and the real women he’d attempted relationships with, and the few he’d had were short-lived and dull. Most of them had started with a drunken fumble after a night out and fizzled out from there. Before mobile phones arrived, lots of women he tried to chat up had given him the wrong landline number. It had taken years of being told he had dialled the wrong number before he realised they were taking the piss. More recently he’d tried a few internet dating sites, but every time he approached a woman, usually with a corny line or crude comment about their photographs, they told him to fuck off. In the end he gave up looking and stuck to fishing at the weekends.

  He tipped his last can of Stella down his throat and swallowed the warm, fizzy beer. It had been a hot one and he hadn’t caught anything. The fish were being lazy today. He looked around his chair just in case he had miscalculated and there was a full can left. There wasn’t. He checked the time on his phone and decided to give it another hour. The roads would be quieter then and he had less chance of being pulled for drink driving. He was debating what to have for tea when he heard footsteps approaching and turned around.

  ‘Are they biting?’ a man wearing a green wax jacket and a baseball cap asked. He had a fishing pole carrier tucked under one arm and he carried a cool box in his other hand. He smiled, but it was a strange smile.

  ‘Quiet today,’ Coombes said, disinterested. The last thing he wanted was to be making small talk with a stranger. All the fishermen he had encountered on the canal were boring fuckers. Boring, or on the other bus. One of them had been very odd and he was sure he had been propositioned by him, but it was in such a subtle way, he hadn’t realised until he was sober. This fella looked odd too.

  ‘This might sound like an odd question,’ the man said, ‘but do you have a bottle opener? I’ve left the bloody thing in the car.’ He opened his cool box and pulled out a bottle of Stella. Iced water dripped from the glass.

  ‘I’ve got one on my keyring,’ Coombes said. He took his keys from his pocket and passed them over.

  ‘You’re a lifesaver,’ the man said, opening four of the bottles. He placed them back into the cool box. ‘I’ll loosen the tops on a few so I can twist them off later.’ He spotted the empty tins of Stella beside Coombes. ‘Do you want me to leave you a couple?’

  ‘I don’t mind if you do,’ Coombes said. Suddenly, the stranger wasn’t so bad. He was a man after his own heart. ‘Very kind of you, thanks.’

  ‘Here,’ the man said, handing over two bottles. He stood up and started to walk away. ‘One good turn deserves another,’ he said. ‘Enjoy the beer.’

  ‘Will do,’ Coombes said, sitting back in his camping chair. He took a long swig of the ice-cold beer and swallowed it, smiling to himself. ‘That was a bonus ball.’ He closed his eyes and let the sun warm his face. Twenty minutes ticked by. Halfway down the second bottle, he felt very drowsy. He noticed the man in the green wax jacket coming back with a strange grin on his face. Coombes realised he couldn’t move his arms, and he suddenly felt very frightened.

  12

  Braddick walked into the MIT office and looked around. It was getting late. Most of the desks were empty but there was still a buzz of chatter as information was passed around. There was no sign of the Smiths. They were out chasing down everyone they had interviewed seven years ago. He headed for Google’s desk. Sadie was already sitting there, sifting through sheets of information while Google cross-checked the details online.

  ‘How are we doing?’ Braddick asked.

  ‘The DNA on our body came in two minutes ago,’ Sadie said. ‘I was just about to call you.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Braddick asked. He knew it was a miss or Sadie would have called immediately.

  ‘He’s not in the database.’

  ‘It’s never that easy.’ Braddick sighed.

  ‘On a brighter note,’ Google said, looking up. ‘I have narrowed down our missing persons list to two possible people.’

  ‘Two?’ Braddick asked, surprised. ‘I thought there were hundreds. How have you eliminated the others so quickly?’

  ‘I haven’t eliminated them. I’ve narrowed down our starting number.’

  ‘Okay. How did you do that?’

  ‘Duckweed.’

  ‘Duckweed?’

  ‘Yes. Duckweed.’

  ‘Can you expand for us,’ Braddick said.

  ‘Sadie gets it already,’ Google said, smirking. Braddick shrugged, his patience wearing thin. ‘Duckweed,’ Google repeated.

  ‘Get on with it,’ Braddick said.

  Google stopped smirking. ‘Okay, sorry. The weed forensics found tangled in the mesh was identified as duckweed.’ He paused. ‘And it only grows in fresh water. Are you with me so far?’

  ‘Do I have to shoot you to get the answer?’ Braddick asked. He looked at Sadie. ‘Do I have to shoot him?’

  ‘Shall I call armed response?’ Sadie asked, picking up the phone.

  ‘No need, grumpy,’ Google said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on his tie. ‘Duckweed only grows in slow moving rivers, and this strand is only found in freshwater. When I cross-checked that information, there are only two stretches of the Mersey, up river of the estuary, where that could apply.’ He pointed to a map on his computer screen. His finger followed a stretch of river that ran from the source near Stockport, to the Mersey estuary where it merged with the sea. Braddick looked at him, eyebrows raised.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Google said.

  ‘What am I thinking?’

  ‘You’re thinking that’s a lot of river, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am thinking that,’ Braddick said. ‘In fact, I’m thinking that’s most of the river.’

  ‘It is most of the river,’ Google said. He raised a finger. ‘Technically, it’s all of the river before it becomes an estuary.’

  ‘So, you’ve narrowed it down to all of the river?’

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Most of the river is slow moving, however, most of the river doesn’t have soap residues and metals in it. The duckweed showed traces of both in its cells. This stretch here, after Warrington, has traces of the old industries that used to pollute the river, in the silt.’

  ‘It was famous for wire making and soap manufacturing, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Google nodded. ‘That narrows it down significantly.’

  ‘To two people?’ Braddick was still surprised.

  ‘There are only two people missing in the area after the weir at Wilderspool, here,’ he said, pointing to the map. ‘Two people in the right age group, fitting the physical description: hair colour, eye colour and significantly overweight. I thought we could start there and work outwards.’

  ‘That’s impressive, Google,’ Braddick said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘Well done. Can we get to their properties tonight?’

  ‘They both lived alone but we’ve got the local plod onto it. As soon as we can gain access, we’ll be there,’ Sadie said. ‘How did you get on with the Boyd information?’

  Braddick pulled up a chair and sat down. He looked around the room.

  ‘I’ve put out some tentative enquir
ies. If he has popped up on anyone’s radar in the last few years, we should know about it tomorrow. There’s no record of him returning to the UK, no tax returns, no bank activity. If he’s alive, he’s still abroad.’

  ‘Shame,’ Sadie said. ‘It sounded so plausible.’

  ‘Like Alec said, there’s no substance to it. It was nothing but a hunch.’

  13

  Richard was sitting at the dining room table. Celia was sitting across from him, Jake to his left, Jaki to his right. Jaki was still sniffling, her eyes red raw from crying. Richard knew it was her reputation she was grieving for, not his. That didn’t make her a bad person. She was very sensitive to how the world perceived her. He understood that. The ordeal they had suffered at school wasn’t lost on him or Celia. She promised to contact Tom Mathews’ parents and threaten them with an injunction. He could feel the tension coming from his family. They blamed him, no matter what the circumstances. It was his fault they were being ridiculed. He wanted to scream his innocence from the rooftops but he knew no one was listening. Everyone questioned it.

  ‘I know this has been a difficult day for you,’ Richard said. He looked at them individually. Only Celia held his gaze; there was suspicion in her eyes – they were dark and angry. ‘I need you to understand that this has been a difficult day for me, too.’ He paused. There didn’t seem to be much empathy in the room. ‘This is a nightmare situation for all of us, as a family.’

  ‘Are you going to tell us what the police said to you at the station, or not?’ Celia asked, angrily. Emmerson Graff had refused to divulge anything until she had spoken to her husband. That didn’t bode well in her mind, it indicated there was something of substance to the allegations, they had something she didn’t yet know.

  ‘Yes, of course I am,’ Richard said, nodding. He didn’t know where to begin. There was no way to tell the story without sounding guilty. How could he explain an abortion? ‘That is why I’ve asked for us to sit down as a family, so I can explain to you what has happened.’