by Helen L Lowe
‘More wine everyone?’ Vickie topped up the glasses.
‘Everything ok, mate?’ Jeff was fairly new to the house and had moved in after separating from his wife.
Julian sensed the tension around the table and decided that they deserved to have some explanation as to why their usually amiable housemate hadn’t cracked a smile for weeks.
‘I bet a woman’s involved,’ Vickie said.
‘In a way, yes- but it’s not what you’re thinking.’ He paused. ‘In January I found out that I have a son. He’s sixteen and lives in London.’ He glanced around the table and almost laughed when he saw the look on their faces. Vickie’s jaw had dropped open.
‘What’s he like?’ Mike asked.
Julian smiled at the gentle giant he had shared a house with for the last four years. ‘Like a young me.’
‘That’s so exciting,’ Vickie said. ‘We thought something was really wrong - you’ve been so down. What about the mother, do you still see her?’
‘We met accidently in December and again a few weeks later when she told me about Sam, that’s his name, by the way.’
‘So that’s why you’re not interested in a steady relationship - you’re still in love with her.’
Julian decided to ignore her. ‘To cut a long story short, Sam is a heroin addict. I took him to a clinic in Petersfield because they have a good withdrawal program but today they called me to say that he walked out after only four days. Now I have no idea where he is.’
‘Bloody hell - that’s a bummer,’ Jeff said.
‘Sorry, Julian - me and my big mouth,’ Vickie said.
He said goodnight soon after that and went back to the sanctuary of his room. As irritating as Vickie was, she had an uncanny knack of hitting the nail on the head but only he knew how close she had come to the truth.
CHAPTER 3
Friday 17 February
Julian waited every day for a phone call, a letter or even a postcard, anything to tell him that Sam was alright. What he really wanted to do was go up to London and stay there until he found him. He was thinking of booking some annual leave when he was stopped outside the unit by his consultant, Mr Clarkson.
‘Congratulations, Julian.’
Julian looked at him blankly.
‘On the Registrar’s post - sorry, have I spoilt the surprise? I thought you’d have the letter by now.’
Julian looked down at the stack of post in his hand and sifted through it to find a white envelope marked ‘Confidential’.
‘Ah - that’ll be it,’ Clarkson said. ‘I’ll catch up with you later. We can have a drink to celebrate.’
Julian read the letter offering him the Registrar’s post with little excitement. At any other time he would have been overjoyed. A step up to Registrar was a big one and he had worked hard for it but now with Sam missing the news did little more than wave a deflated balloon at him.
He went home after a long day in outpatients with a heavy heart but as he was taking his coat off in the hall, the phone rang. It was Sam.
‘Look - I know you’re angry with me but I’m alright.’
‘I’m not angry with you. I’ve just been very worried - and in what way are you alright?’
‘I’m still clean.’
Julian hesitated. He was only in the clinic for a few days and it could take five to fifteen days to go through the worst stages of withdrawal. ‘That’s good to hear but you’re still vulnerable. Where are you living now?’
‘At a squat in Notting Hill.’
‘And who else is there?’
‘A few blokes and a couple of girls.’
‘Are they using?’
There was a pause. ‘Yes - that’s why I need to find somewhere else.’
‘What was wrong with the youth hostel?’
‘They’re full - they said they wouldn’t have any vacancies for at least a month but I’d rather have my own place. I’ve been offered a job at a Wimpy Bar in Edgware Road and I know of a bedsit going close by.’ He paused. ‘Dad, I was hoping you could help me with the rent.’
‘Ok, but I think it’s best if I come up to London and see the bedsit with you. I can pay the landlord and cover the rent until you’re earning enough.’
‘But we have to be quick because the landlord said he had a lot of people interested.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that too much - he’s just trying to persuade you to make a quick decision. I’m on-call starting tomorrow right through to next weekend but I can come up next Saturday the twenty-fifth. Tell the landlord we’ll be viewing it around two in the afternoon and see if you can find some other places we can look at so you have a choice.’
‘Ok - thanks Dad.’
Sam gave him the address of the squat and sounded very happy when he said goodbye. To Julian, who was still coming to terms with being called “Dad”, the relief was palpable.
* * *
Notting Hill Gate, London
1:30 p.m. Saturday 25 February
The squat in Ladbroke Road, Notting Hill Gate, was in a terrace of old three-storey properties. None of them looked like they’d seen a pot of paint for years, and number seventy-eight looked uninhabited with boards over the windows and the front door. Sam told him to go around to the back of the terrace to a narrow road that ran along the back of the houses. The gate for seventy-eight was the fourth garden along, and it wasn’t locked. However, Sam didn’t mention that the garden was completely overgrown and littered with rubbish and broken furniture or that the remaining clear spaces to walk on were covered in dog shit.
Julian picked his way through the garden carefully trying to miss the shit and was halfway up the garden when he heard a deep guttural growl. The perpetrator of the offensive deposits, a Rottweiler, was about twenty yards away by the back door, a big beast of a thing baring its teeth. Julian froze in his tracks and looked around for something to defend himself with. Just to his right was a broken kitchen chair with a leg hanging loose. He reached over and wrenched it free. The dog reacted to this sudden move as if being directly challenged. It took two leaps forward before stopping abruptly to snarl in unutterable rage with saliva dripping from its jaws. Julian tried to remain calm . . . don’t run . . . whatever you do . . . don’t run.
‘Down, boy,’ he shouted, pointing down to the ground. ‘Down.’
The dog stopped growling and tilted its head to the side, allowing a brief respite for Julian to move back. His move was like waving a matador’s cape at a bull and the Rottweiler broke into a run and latched onto the chair leg that Julian instinctively thrust towards it. His hastily thought of plan was to move back to get closer to the gate but in the ensuing tug-of-war the dog actually managed to drag him forwards. Out of the corner of Julian’s eye, in his peripheral vision, he saw the back door open and someone come out.
‘Ringo, leave it,’ a woman’s voice called out.
The dog didn’t react at first but when a young woman walked towards them and repeated the command, it released the grip on the chair leg and took several steps back.
‘Heel.’
With disbelief, Julian watched the dog run to her side and sit like an obedient puppy to wait for his reward. She stroked the Rottweiler’s head lovingly.
Julian could see now that she was just a girl with long bleach-blonde hair and the soft prettiness of youth. She was wearing a three-quarter length sheepskin coat with long fringes threaded with wooden beads, and she had bare legs and feet. He had the distinct impression she was naked under the coat.
‘Good boy, Ringo - good boy.’
‘You should keep him on a leash.’
‘He’s just doing his job - you shouldn’t have walked in like that.’
She continued to stroke the dog’s head while his eyes were firmly fixed on Julian, who kept hold of the chair leg as insurance.
‘Are you from the council?’
‘No. I’m looking for Sam.’
‘He’s not here.’
Julian hesitated. ‘I
arranged to pick him up here today. Do you know where he is?’
She shook her head. ‘He hasn’t been here since Monday - had a fight with Jethro and walked out, said he had somewhere else to live.’
Julian assumed Jethro was one of the squatters. ‘And you’ve no idea where that is?’
She shook her head.
‘If he comes back can you ask him to call his father, please?’
‘He said he’d found his dad - said you were a doctor.’ She gave him a head to toe appraisal. ‘Are you rich?’
He shook his head.
She shrugged and turned back to the house. ‘Come on, Ringo, dinner time.’
Julian waited to see the back door close before leaving the garden. As he walked back down the alleyway, his mind was reeling with possible reasons for Sam not being there when he had sounded so excited about today. Julian was nearly back on the road before he noticed the disgusting smell of dog shit was still with him and he glanced down at his shoes to see the squashed excrement protruding out from underneath both feet.
‘Fuck - fuck,’ he cursed under his breath while trying to wipe it off on various tufts of grass and weeds but when he got back to the car he could still smell it. In the car boot, he pulled out a pair of old walking boots and changed them for his shoes. The offensive articles were wrapped up in a rubber sheet that he kept in the car for trips with garden rubbish.
He drove over to Earls Court to the YMCA in Cromwell Road. A middle-aged man wearing a tired dark grey suit and thick rimmed glasses was reading a newspaper at the reception desk. He looked up as Julian approached.
‘Can I help you, Sir?’
‘Yes, I hope so. I’m looking for Sam Bennett, he might have moved in here over the last few days.’
‘Sam Bennett?’ He gave Julian closer scrutiny. ‘Are you a relative?’
‘I’m his father - Dr Hartmann. I’ve called a few times.’
‘Oh yes - I remember speaking to you on the phone a little while back. As I said, the last time Sam was here was in January.’ He looked through a large book on the desk. ‘Yes, here it is - he checked out on the thirty-first of January. We’ve got his forwarding address as The Wellbeck Clinic, Hampshire.’
‘I was hoping he might have moved back in over the last few days.’
The man shook his head. ‘Afraid not, if he’d come back we’d have put him up somewhere - we never turn a lad away unless he’s caused trouble here in the past. We’ve got spare fold-up beds we can use, even if we have to put them up in a corridor, and we encourage them to stay if they’re under twenty-one but we can’t force them.’
By now, Julian was beginning to realise that Sam had been economical with the truth and as he drove down Edgware Road looking for the Wimpy Bar, he prepared himself for further disappointment. The manager, Frank Baxter, actually backed up what Sam had said, and confirmed that he had spoken to Sam and told him that if he could give them a permanent home address, they would be able to employ him. The job was just cleaning pots and pans but it was regular hours. It was a relief to find out that at least that part of Sam’s story was true. On his way back to the car, Julian stopped at a street seller to buy a newspaper. A headline in the Daily Mirror had caught his eye.
MORE BODY PARTS FOUND IN THAMES
. . . the dismembered body parts recovered from the Thames yesterday, which were originally thought to belong to the torso that children discovered in December on the shoreline near Execution Dock off Wapping High Street, have been identified as belonging to the torso that was discovered last August, at Limehouse. The police are linking all recent body parts recovered to the ones that have been washed up over the last two years confirming that the murders have been committed by a serial killer. All the body parts so far recovered are from five victims. They are young men in their late teens or twenties but so far none of them have been identified. The police would not comment on the rumour that the killer had contacted them with a warning that eighteen-year-old Prince Charles will be a victim. Prince Charles is expected to perform at a charity concert with the Elgin Orchestra at Elgin town hall in Moray, Scotland, on 29 March, and in September he will be enrolling in Trinity College, Cambridge. When asked if the security for Prince Charles would be stepped up, the palace refused to comment.
There was a centre page spread on the history of bodies washed up in the Thames focusing particularly on dismembered bodies. Some of them dated back to the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s. He chucked the newspaper on the back seat of the car and took a moment to calm himself. It was ridiculous to start worrying that Sam was a victim of a serial killer but ridiculous or not his mind had started on a treadmill that he was powerless to stop. The only other thing he could think of was to officially report him as missing to the police.
Paddington Green police station had moved since his medical student days. It used to be at the junction of Bishop Bridge Road and Harrow Road and his overnight stay in one of their smelly cells was indelibly printed on his brain. There were seven of them on a stag night and they were arrested in Paddington’s mainline station when they decided the bridegroom would enjoy a trip to Scotland. Unfortunately, while trying to lift him into a carriage he slipped and ended up wedged between the platform and the train. All of them ended up in cells overnight and were released in the morning with cautions.
The new Paddington Green police station was still in Harrow Road but by the junction with Edgware Road. It was a massive new building that was still not finished and when Julian walked through the doors he was welcomed by the sound of hammering and drilling from below ground level.
There was a queue of five people waiting at the enquiry desk and he had twenty minutes of listening to their problems before he finally stood in front of the policeman at the counter.
‘Good afternoon, Sir, how can I help?’ The man looked weary and bored.
‘I’d like to report a missing person.’
The policeman picked up a form off the top of a pile in front of him.
‘Name?’
‘Mine or his?’
The policeman gave Julian a look that said . . . don’t mess with me . . . but he actually said politely, ‘his name first, please.’
‘Sam Bennett,’ Julian said, laying a photograph of Sam on the counter. It was one that Lizzie had taken in January.
‘How long has he been missing?’
‘About five days.’
‘About?’
‘The people he shares a house with said they haven’t seen him since Monday.’
‘What relationship is he to you, Sir?’
‘I’m his father.’
There were other questions covering Sam’s age, his last known address (Julian omitted to say it was a squat) and his contact details. The policeman gave a speech about how difficult it was to trace missing teenagers in London and although Sam was a minor and would be on their priority list, the chances of finding him were slim.
‘It might be worth checking the local shelters and soup kitchens,’ the policeman said. He walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘Here’s a list of shelters, hostels and soup kitchens. The one in Praed Street in Paddington is very popular.’
Julian thanked him and left the police station feeling decidedly depressed. The list the policeman had given him had seven shelters and five soup kitchens, three of which were mobile food vans, and that was just in Central London. There were another thirty in the Greater London area from Enfield in the north to Croydon in the south. It would take more than a few daytrips to check all these out, and there were no phone numbers.
It started to rain, just a light drizzle, but the grey clouds building up overhead looked heavy, matching Julian’s mood. He stood on the steps of the police station and fought with his craving for a drink. It was too early for the pubs to be open but he could probably find an off-licence down Edgware Road. His thoughts turned to Sam . . . isn’t your addiction to alcohol just the same as Sam’s addiction to heroin with the only difference
being that you can buy your drug of choice at any pub or off-licence and Sam has to get his from an illegal source? So, basically, you both have the same weakness that makes you prone to addiction in one way or another. It was a sobering thought.
* * *
Soup Kitchen, Praed Street, Paddington
6:15 p.m. Saturday 25 February
Harriet Johnson was busy serving a meal to around forty homeless who came to the soup kitchen every day. They were an orderly bunch, patient to wait their turn, confident that there would be enough for all of them. As they walked past the table they accepted plates of hot food, today’s offering was chicken casserole, and helped themselves to bread and fruit. They were about halfway through the long queue when she saw a tall good-looking man walk through the doors and knock on the office door. He was in the office for only a couple of minutes before he came out and walked through the food hall. She tried to keep her mind off him and concentrate on serving the food but every now and then she missed someone standing in the queue and had to follow them along the serving table to give them their bowl of chicken casserole. When the queue came to an end and the long dining tables in the food hall were full, she glanced over to the man. He caught her eye and came over to her.
‘Excuse me – I’m looking for my son and was hoping you would recognise him.’ He showed her a photograph of a youth.
‘Well, now – I think I do,’ she said, beckoning to the other three women who had been working with her. She passed the photograph over to them. One by one, the women shook their heads and Harriet saw the disappointment on the man’s face.