by Ben Cheetham
‘Jim Monahan?’ The voice had a gravelly Mancunian accent.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Lance Brennan.’ The man pulled out a battered leather wallet and flipped it open, displaying the silver star logo of the Greater Manchester Police and a detective inspector’s ID, which Jim noted had expired over twenty years ago. ‘I want to talk to you about Thomas Villiers and that list of names he’s on.’
His eyes pinching at the corners, Jim glanced over the ex-detective’s shoulder at the quiet Sunday morning street. ‘I’m alone,’ said Lance, and something about the way he said it suggested he was talking in the broader as well as the narrower context.
Jim’s gaze returned to Lance’s grizzled face. He looked genuine. Still, you never knew. Villiers and his scumbag pals would no doubt be looking for ways to discredit or disgrace their accusers. And there were plenty of hacks around who would stoop to dirty tricks to get a story. ‘Lift your arms.’
Lance did so. ‘I’m not wearing a wire.’
Jim patted him down and checked his pockets for recording devices. He was telling the truth. There was a lock-blade knife in one of his pockets. Jim eyed him narrowly. ‘What’s this for?’
‘Protection.’
‘From who?’
‘You know who.’
The two men stared at each other a moment. Jim got the feeling that Lance was checking him out as much as he was checking the ex-policeman out. ‘You’d better come in.’
‘What about my knife?’
‘I’ll hold onto it for now.’
Jim led Lance to the spartanly furnished living room. He gestured to the older man to sit on a faded floral patterned sofa – one of the few pieces of furniture he’d brought with him from the house. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘That’d be good, thanks. I’m parched. I’ve been travelling since six this morning.’
‘From Manchester?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Who gave you my address?’
Lance gave him a look as if to say, C’mon, you know I can’t tell you that. It was the response Jim had been looking for. No good cop – and as the cliché went, once a cop always a cop – ever revealed their sources. Somewhat reassured, he went into the kitchen, picked up a notebook from beside a phone and flipped through it until he came to the name ‘Don Hunter’. Don was a Manchester DI he’d worked in conjunction with on several cases over the years. He dialled the number next to the name. ‘It’s Jim Monahan,’ he said, when Don picked up. ‘Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, Don, but I need a favour. What can you tell me about an ex-DI from your neck of the woods named Lance Brennan?’
‘The name doesn’t ring any bells. I’ll see what I can find out.’
Jim thanked Don and turned his attention to the kettle. He made two mugs of tea and took them to the living room. Lance pulled out a hip flask and poured a generous slug of something into his mug. He proffered the flask to Jim.
Shaking his head, Jim sank onto an armchair. Lance took a swig of tea, then raised his wily old detective’s eyes to Jim. ‘You hate Villiers, don’t you?’
Jim made no reply. Yes, he hated Villiers. He hated everyone in Herbert’s book, savagely, uncompromisingly. But he wasn’t ready to admit that to a stranger.
Lance nodded as though he’d read all he needed to know in Jim’s eyes. ‘I do too.’ His voice was thick with bitterness. ‘I hate that bastard worse than anything, and I don’t care who knows it. That’s one of the benefits of growing old – not having to lie about how you feel any more. And I’ll tell you something else, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about using that knife of mine on Villiers.’
Jim frowned. ‘You should be careful what you say to me, Mr Brennan. Regardless of my personal feelings, I’m still a copper.’
Lance dismissed his words with a disdainful grunt. ‘It’s not a crime to think about something. Not yet. And anyway, what you’ve done is almost as good as sticking a knife in Villiers.’
‘If you’re implying what I think you are, Mr Brennan—’
‘Please, let’s dispense with the Mr Brennan crap. And all the rest of the horseshit too. I’m not here to put one over on you. I’m here to shake your hand. You’ve done what I didn’t have the balls to do twenty-odd years ago.’
Jim’s voice quickened as curiosity overcame his caginess. ‘Are you saying you knew about the names on the list back then?’
‘No. But I knew about Villiers and…’ Lance’s voice faltered. A spasm of self-disgust passed over his face. ‘And I did nothing. Well, not quite nothing, but that’s what it amounted to.’ He looked at Jim with a kind of haunted appeal in his eyes. ‘You see, they gave me a choice: keep my gob shut or lose my pension. I couldn’t lose my pension. It was all I had left. They’d already taken the job away from me. I had a wife and kids to support. And I couldn’t even get work as a security guard because of all the lies they spouted to cover their arses. I tell you, for years I used to wake up every day thinking about suicide. Only one thing stopped me from doing it. Do you know what that thing was? It wasn’t my wife, God rest her soul, or even my kids. It was my allotment. That was my escape. The one place I could get away from thinking about how I let Villiers off the hook. There’s something about planting and growing that—’
‘So what exactly do you know about Villiers?’ interrupted Jim, eager to keep Lance on topic, but also uncomfortable with the talk of suicide – he’d entertained many dark thoughts of his own since Margaret’s death.
Slowly, as though arranging his thoughts, the ex-detective began, ‘Back in 1989 we arrested a sixteen-year-old boy named Dave Ward for—’
Lance broke off as a phone rang. Jim went into the kitchen to answer it. Don Hunter came on the line. ‘Lance Brennan served with the Greater Manchester Police from ’71 to ’90. He spent ten years in CID before taking release on health grounds. Is that enough for you, Jim? Or do you need me to do some more digging?’
‘No, that’s great, Don. I owe you one.’
When Jim returned to the living room, Lance eyed him knowingly. ‘Well, are you satisfied that I am what I say I am?’
Jim nodded. He’d already made up his mind that Lance was for real; the phone call just confirmed it. He motioned for him to continue his story.
‘Now, where was I?’ Lance took a swallow of his alcohol-laced tea. ‘Ah yes, Dave Ward. We arrested him for soliciting sex in a men’s toilet. Whilst in custody Ward started on about how he was the way he was because he’d been sexually abused. So I was called in to assist from the Sexual Crimes Unit. Ward came from a bad background. He’d spent most of his life in care. From the age of thirteen to sixteen he’d lived at the Hopeland children’s home in Manchester. It was there he claimed the abuse had taken place. I’ll bet you can guess who ran the place?’
‘Thomas Villiers.’
‘Got it in one. According to Ward, the abuse began with small acts that might have simply been interpreted as friendliness. And it wasn’t initiated by Villiers. There was a live-in caretaker at the home. A man who by all accounts was only a year or three older than the eldest children there.’
Lance withdrew a sheet of paper from the cardboard file and passed it to Jim. On it was a composite police picture of a man’s face. The man was white with short brown hair, brown eyes and black-rimmed glasses. He had a broad blunt nose and thick lips. His face too was broad, the cheeks smooth and round with puppy fat. He looked little more than a boy himself. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Older paedophiles often used younger accomplices – who many times had been victims of abuse themselves – to entice and ensnare children.
‘Supposedly his name was William Keyes,’ said Lance.
‘What do you mean “supposedly”?’
‘I’ll get to that in a bit. And besides, the children at Hopeland didn’t call Keyes by his name. They called him Spider because he had a spider’s web tattoo on his chest. So that’s what I call him too. Spider started working at Hopeland in October ’87.
He had a mixed relationship with the children. Some couldn’t stand him. Others got on well with him. Ward fell into the latter group. He used to go to Spider with his problems. And when they were talking, Spider would put a hand on Ward’s knee or an arm around his shoulder. The touching gradually became more inappropriate, until one day Spider groped Ward’s genitals through his trousers. When Ward pushed him away, Spider claimed it was an accident. Ward didn’t want to get him in trouble, so he didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Spider bought him some clothes as a thank you. A few weeks went by. Then there was another incident. And this wasn’t an accident by any definition of the word. One evening Spider invited Ward to his room to smoke cannabis and watch what turned out to be a pornographic movie. During the movie, he began to fondle Ward. When Ward asked him to stop, Spider pinned him down and forcibly masturbated him. Once again, Ward told no one what had happened. Do you know why?’
‘Because Spider threatened him.’
Lance shook his head. ‘He didn’t need to. Ward was ashamed because he’d ejaculated. He thought the other kids would call him a puff if they found out. Can you believe that?’
Jim could believe it only too well. He’d encountered similar stories across the whole spectrum of abuse – victims who kept silent through fear of ridicule or not being believed; victims who’d been manipulated into blaming themselves; victims whose shame irrationally led them to believe silence was their best defence against a world that had betrayed them.
‘So anyway,’ continued Lance, ‘the next day Spider bought Ward some trainers he wanted. And that was the pattern from then on. The incidents continued and grew more serious, and after each one Spider would buy Ward a present. After a couple of months it must’ve been deemed that Ward was ready for the next step in the…’ His broken-veined nose wrinkled as he sought a suitable word. ‘Process. One night, after plying Ward with alcohol, Spider took him for a drive in his van.’
‘What type of van?’
‘It was a blue Peugeot that was provided by the home for Spider’s use. Ward was made to sit in the back so he couldn’t see where they were going. After what he reckoned to be an hour or so, they pulled up at a house. A big place. It was dark and Spider parked in a garage connected to the house, so Ward didn’t get a proper look at its exterior. There was a party going on, with lots of what Ward called “important-looking people in suits”. He was fed alcohol and drugs until he barely knew up from down. Then the poor sod was subjected to a series of sexual assaults, including multiple anal penetrations. Basically, they used him like a piece of meat. And when they were done he was given a couple of hundred quid and returned to the home. He was warned too that if he told anyone about what had happened, he would find himself facing prostitution charges. And he believed it. Over the next two years, Ward was taken to the house on eight or nine occasions. Sometimes there were only one or two people besides himself and Spider there. Other times parties were taking place, where he and other children, males and females, were – as he described it – passed around like joints.’
Jim felt a fist of anger pushing up his throat. The description was horribly apt. To their abusers, Ward and his fellow victims weren’t human beings. They were objects, things to be enjoyed and disposed of. He swallowed the feeling. Now wasn’t the time for anger. Now was the time for calm, rational thought. One thing Lance had said struck him as particularly relevant: the house Dave Ward had been taken to had a garage connected to it. Whereas the Winstanleys’ house had a detached garage. ‘Did you try to find the house?’
‘Of course. I took Ward out several times in search of it. But we never found it.’
‘What about the other children? Did you find out who they were?’
‘No. But I interviewed dozens of current and former residents of the Hopeland home, and I did manage to find others who were willing to talk about how they’d been groomed and abused by Spider.’
Lance withdrew three mugshot-type Polaroids from the folder and handed them to Jim. One was of a black boy of about fifteen or sixteen. ‘Jamal Jackson’ was written on the Polaroid’s margin. The others were of white girls. Both had blonde hair. Both also looked to be in their mid-teens. Their names were Heather Shanks and Debbie Tompkins. All three had the blank-eyed thousand-yard stare that Jim had seen so many times in abuse survivors. Again, the fist pushed up his throat. Again, he swallowed it back down.
‘I took those at the time I interviewed them,’ explained Lance. ‘Shanks was thirteen when the abuse began. Tompkins fourteen. They’d both been taken on separate occasions to parties at different houses to Ward. Jamal was twelve. Things hadn’t got that far along with him. He’d engaged in masturbatory and oral sex with Spider, but not penetrative sex. That seems to have been the final test, as it were. If they were willing to take part in penetrative sex, they were ready for the next step.’
‘I don’t suppose you found the houses the girls were taken to either?’
‘No. Not for want of looking.’
‘What about names? Did they give you any?’ When Lance replied in the negative again, Jim said, ‘So they didn’t implicate Villiers.’
‘Not directly. But he was well aware of what was going on. You see, not all the kids were willing to put up with Spider’s accidental touching. Some complained about it to Villiers. But their complaints fell on deaf ears.’
‘Did you speak to Villiers about the complaints?’
‘Yes. He claimed he’d investigated them and found them to be unjustified.’
Jim tapped the composite sketch. ‘And what about Mr Keyes? Did you speak to him too?’
‘That would have been difficult, unless I could talk to ghosts – which I can’t.’
‘He died?’
‘In ’83 in a car accident. Four years before Dave Ward was first abused.’
Confusion momentarily creased Jim’s face, then realisation gleamed in his eyes. ‘Spider was using a dead man’s identity.’
Lance nodded. ‘I first visited Hopeland three days after my initial interview of Ward, by which time Spider and all his belongings were gone.’
‘Did anyone there know you were coming?’
Lance shook his head, tilting his eyebrows into a crooked arch, as if to say, Make of that what you will. ‘His room had been cleaned top to bottom too. I can still remember it now. Every surface sparkled. We didn’t manage to recover a single usable fingerprint. What’s more, all of the caretaker’s equipment had been replaced. The mops, the brushes, the cleaning fluids, the tools… everything was brand spanking new. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure no trace of Spider was left behind. And no one at the home knew anything about where Spider came from or where he’d gone. I spent months searching for the bastard without success. To all intents and purposes, he might as well have been a real ghost. So I decided to focus on building a case against Villiers. I didn’t do a bad job of it either. Spider had a reputation amongst the kids as a “toucher”. Three complaints had been made against him during the two years he worked at the home. All three complainants had subsequently been moved to other homes. There were no records of Villiers formally investigating their accusations. At best, Villiers’ actions amounted to criminal negligence. At worst, they implicated him as an accomplice to the abuse. I was ready to prosecute, but then…’ Lance’s voice and eyes trailed away. Lines gathered on the lines of his craggy face.
‘Then what?’ pressed Jim.
Lance heaved a sigh. ‘Ward was found dead with a needle hanging out of his arm. There was a coroner’s inquest. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure.’
‘But you thought otherwise.’
‘You bet I bloody did. Traces of heroin were found in his bedroom. It was ninety per cent pure. Potent enough to kill him before he could even remove the syringe from his vein.’
‘Someone sold him a hot-shot.’
‘Exactly. Of course, it was impossible to prove.’ Lance sighed again. He pulled out his hip flask and drank directly from it, befo
re going on, ‘A few days after Ward’s death, Jamal Jackson withdrew his statement. Then Debbie Tompkins and Heather Shanks followed suit. It was as clear as day that they were being pressurised. They were all of them scared half to death. You could see it in their eyes. The final nail came when I was informed that the case was being dropped.’ Contempt drew his lips back from his yellowed teeth. ‘The powers that be had decided it wasn’t in the public interest to proceed with a prosecution. Insufficient evidence. So the file was marked “No Further Action” and shelved. But I wasn’t willing to take no further action. I kept on talking to former residents of Hopeland and following Villiers in my spare time. One day I went to consult the case-file on some detail or other and found it was gone. My superiors would only tell me it had been taken elsewhere for safe keeping. After a lot of asking around, I learnt a couple of Special Branch officers had shown up at the office and left with it. I called Special Branch and got stonewalled. They refused to even admit they’d been to the office.’
‘You’re saying they buried the file.’
Lance nodded. ‘That’s when I realised how big this thing was. The next thing I knew I was summoned to my Super’s office. He had photos of Villiers looking like he’d been ten rounds with a gorilla. The bastard claimed I’d done it to him. And he had a witness who’d seen me following him the night he said it happened. I was suspended from duty while an investigation was carried out. I was sure I was going to be cleared. After all, it came down to my word against Villiers’. And I was a copper with almost twenty years’ service. I thought that counted for something. I was wrong. It was decided there was enough evidence to charge me. But Villiers was willing not to press charges as long as I bowed out quietly. So that’s what I did.’