Carla stormed around the two girls so that she was looking at them from the side. “If you don’t tell him right now, I will.”
Shannon might have appeared fearless but inside her stomach wrenched with horror as she realised that she was about to be held accountable for what she had done. “I need to go home,” she muttered and proceeded to turn away from the kitchen table.
“Oh, no you don’t lady. You’re not leaving my sister to take the fall for what you’ve done.” Carla twisted her head round so that she could see Casey and clenched her fists. “For god’s sake, Case, stand up for yourself. Tell dad what happened. It’ll be better coming from you.”
Bob stood and walked around the table so that he was standing amid the three girls. “Somebody better start talking.” The trepidation that he might hear something terrible formed inside but he knew better than to let his girls see that he was frightened. He was the man in the house. That meant never showing fear even when your legs felt as if somebody was pouring hot oil into them.
“It was only meant to be a prank.” Shannon spoke dismissively as if she couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
“A prank?”
Carla and Bob spoke in unison so that the words echoed through the kitchen.
Casey finally let the tears fall down her broken face and she lowered her head in shame. She daren’t look up because she was terrified of the moment Shannon would admit to what they’d done.
“We wanted to teach Samantha a lesson.”
“A lesson for what?” Bob sounded angry, but he knew too little at this point to allow himself to blow a fuse. He needed the girls to speak to him.
Shannon was the one to unleash the truth in a gust of temper. “She needed to know that she couldn’t just turn up here and take what didn’t belong to her.”
Bob folded his arms. “What did she take that wasn’t hers Shannon?” He paused for a second and waited on an answer. It didn’t come. “Casey?” At that moment, he wasn’t sure he knew his daughter at all. She looked like a stranger to him. What could she possibly have done that would have turned her into this quivering wreck?
Carla stared from one face to the other and, when it became obvious nobody was speaking, she broke the silence. “Oh, for Christ sake. If nobody else is going to say it.” She paused and eyed both girls. This was their last chance to admit to what they’d done. “Okay, then. I’ll tell dad and he can decide what to do with you both. They’re the ones responsible for taking Archie. They took him from his bed.”
If Bob hadn’t been leaning on a chair, he might have keeled over. His heart sped up and the colour drained from his face. He looked at Casey, who had never looked more torn up, and prayed that it was a joke. “Where is he?”
Casey saw that her father was speaking directly to her. She lifted her eyelids and saw the devastation in his face. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a long pause.
He squinted angrily and finally found enough power in his legs to move round the table. “You don’t know. You’ve taken a baby from his house and you don’t know where you’ve taken him too?”
Casey pleaded silently with Shannon who had the expression of somebody who was becoming quite bored by proceedings. “Tell him, Shannon. You’ve gone too far.”
Shannon turned back to her and hissed. “I’ve gone too far? So, you’re playing it that way, Case? You know you played your part. I’ll leave it to you to tell your dad. I’m walking out of here now and if any of you try to stop me, my dad will explode.” She pushed past Carla who was so stunned that she didn’t attempt to stop her.
Bob was unconcerned by Shannon’s departure. He would deal with her soon enough. Right now, his main concern was his daughter and returning Archie Wilson to his parents. “Casey, you need to tell me right now where that baby is.”
Casey looked straight at him although she couldn’t see him very clearly because her eyes had filled with unspent tears. Her jaw was shaking as she tried to gargle back her snot. She was on the verge of a full-on meltdown. She was trying to find the words to make them believe her. “Dad, I promise you, I don’t know what she did with him. I wasn’t involved with it. She only told me about her plan to play a trick on Samantha. I swear to god she hasn’t told me where she’s hid him. I don’t know where he is and I don’t know where Samantha is.” With that, she slumped to the floor and fell apart.
TWENTY
“How long have you lived around here?” Irving sipped on another coffee as he waited on a call back from Wallace. He expected it wouldn’t be long. They just had to locate Greg Burns and then it would be all systems go.
“I’ve lived on this estate most of my life, before they brought it to the ground.” Ida always felt nostalgic and wistful when she spoke of the old houses that she grew up in. She wasn’t sure why because, as children, they longed to live in the type of house that she now resided in. She knew her memories had probably softened with the passing of time.
“What was it like back then?” Ida reminded him a little of his grandmother. She was a portly woman with grey bobbed hair and a cheeky twinkle in her eye. He also sensed that she had an acerbic wit that probably came out of its shell after a sherry or two.
“Well, it was different. We talk about it as if it were a better time. As if the children were better behaved and the adults were more responsible. It’s not true what people say. You couldn’t go out and leave your front door unlocked. We lived next door to a pack of thieves. They’d have robbed the fillings from your teeth. Their mother, Violet Marsden, was the hardest woman on the estate. Even the men feared her. If anybody said anything about her boys, she was liable to clout you with the first blunt instrument she could lay her hands on. She frightened the bloody life out of us.”
Irving laughed. “She sounds a charm.”
Ida nodded in acknowledgement and then continued, “Oh, but she’d have done anything for you if you were in trouble. I never heard of her closing her door on one person. No matter what they’d done or what she’d done to them. That’s the only difference between those days and now. People stuck together when things got hard. They took those less fortunate in and gave them their last. You don’t get that nowadays. People also don’t tell the truth now. They’re too busy keeping up appearances or keeping up with the next-door neighbour. They forget to look after those that are less fortunate.”
“Like Greg?”
“Like Greg,” she noted. “I was boiling with anger over the way some folk on this street treated him. You would never have seen such a disgraceful display when the scheme stood. This nice new housing estate brought a lot of snobbery with it.” She paused and let out a large sigh as if her rant had taken the life out of her.
“You seem very protective of him,” mused Irving. As he spoke, he looked once again at his phone.
She hissed. “Who else was going to look after him? You know, I heard that Joanne Wilson talking about the value of her house going down. As if it were Greg’s fault that his mum had died. Not that I wish her any harm, or her baby for that matter, but to have spoken like that when your next-door neighbour had been murdered. Well it made me feel sick.”
Irving agreed. It did sound crass. He could sense her underlying anger. Nobody other than Mary Bradley had said a bad word about the Wilson’s. Not until now. It was evident Ida wasn’t a fan.
“That’s something you learn in this job. People are more often thoughtless and selfish. I’m sure Joanne Wilson would be mortified if she knew that she’d upset anybody.”
Ida laughed haughtily. “Yes, because she’s had a crash to earth. She had not a care in the world for Greg’s troubles. I told her once. Had it out with her. Told her he was a child in a man’s body. She said if that were the case then he should be taken into care. I’m sure he must have heard her say it because it wasn’t long after that he left. I couldn’t understand it. Their fear is ignorance because he’s the gentlest boy I’ve ever known. Even if he did take that baby, he wouldn’t harm a hair on
his head.” She rose from her chair and took his empty mug. “More coffee?”
Irving looked at his phone again, urging it to hurry up and ring. “I’m fine, thanks. I wish they’d hurry up and call me back with Greg’s address though.”
“Now, remember you promised me. You will be gentle? Part of me hopes that he does have Samantha and the baby because I know with absolute certainty that they’ll be safe with him. Why else would he have been buying a trolley full of baby food if not to look after the baby?” Her eyes tightened with concern as she stood by the kitchen door.
“We don’t make a habit of hurting people Mrs Webster. It’s our job to protect the public, not injure them.”
As she left the room, Irving’s phone sprang to life. It was the station. He quickly grabbed his notepad and pencil from Ida’s table. “Okay, I’m ready.”
When Ida returned to the lounge, Irving was ready to depart. “We’ve managed to get his address. Do you want me to pass on any message to him?”
“Would you mind telling me where he is?” Ida looked sad then. As if she, herself, was looking for a long-lost child.
Irving squinted at her. He suspected he would be breaking one of the cardinal rules. Yet this woman seemed to care so much for a man who might just be in the worst trouble of his life. “I can’t give you that information,” he said as he held the piece of paper in her direction.
Ida stared at his scribbles and made a mental note. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that he might be living there. Yet, in that moment, it made perfect sense. Where else would he have gone but to be closer to his mother? He lived in the cottage at the front of the cemetery. That way he could evade society and be with his mother 24 hours a day.
TWENTY-ONE
Joanne hadn’t said a word in hours. She also hadn’t cried in that time. She was completely spent. When Myra returned, she made Joanne a sandwich which she rejected. Dan had offered her everything but the kitchen sink. She still didn’t want to be in the same room as him. She knew she was being unfair. What was fair about any of this?
Was this a punishment she wondered as she rolled back the years? For as long as she could remember, she had always said she didn’t want children. Her career came first. She had worked in recruitment for a little while before joining one of Scotland’s leading banks. She wanted to be one of those high-flyers who collected air miles on the job and who escaped these miserable winters. Then Dan had come along. It all seemed so shallow now.
She hadn’t fallen in love with Dan right away. In fact, the first time she introduced him to her friends, she had found herself apologising because he had an awkward sense of humour and didn’t really fit in with her crowd. The real bang to earth came when she overheard her two best friends call her an inverted snob and comment on what a lovely guy he seemed to be. If she carried on like that, she’d heard them say, she would be left on the shelf forever. So, she bit the bullet and let herself fall in love.
Archie had been just as accidental. She was seven months pregnant before she’d really felt a connection with him. She would never dare tell anybody that. Nor would she tell anybody that a week after giving birth she already longed for the heady days of her work life and feared she would never be the mother that Archie deserved.
“You okay?” Myra broke her solitude and sat down at her feet.
It hurt to smile because her eyes felt so swollen but Joanne managed to nod. “You know I feel like I’m being punished.”
Myra frowned “No, no. You cannot think like that. This is not your fault. It’s not Dan’s either. You need to remember that this happened TO you, not BECAUSE of you.”
Joanne was shocked. She had said it out loud and the world hadn’t crashed down around her. Maybe she wasn’t as bad a mother as she felt.
“I know. I am being terrible to Dan. I just cannot look at him right now. He’s a reminder of Archie and he’s a reminder that Archie’s gone.” She tugged a strand of her hair and wrapped it around her finger.
“I can understand that Joanne but you have to find a way of surviving. What good will you be to Archie if you fall apart? He’ll need his mum to be strong.”
Joanne sniffed. “I don’t know if I can,” her voice rose and it looked like she might cry again.
“Now come on. Let’s get you in the shower. At some point the media might get involved and we’ll want you to be ready for that. We’ll get you freshened up and something to eat in your belly. It’s bad enough that you’ve not slept all night.” Myra almost had to wrestle her from the sofa. As the two women walked towards the bathroom, Joanne saw Dan cower in the kitchen. She walked slowly towards him.
“Dan?” She saw him turn and look in her direction. Then she threw her arms around him. “Hold me, please,” she whispered into his chest and gripped on to him as if her life depended on it.
TWENTY-TWO
As Irving waited for Wallace to pick him up, he tried to put together all the little strands that he held. All of his gut feeling pointed towards Greg Burns. After all, the baby who had been taken belonged to the woman who had probably driven him out of his family home. Not to mention the girl who now slept in his former room. Maybe he wanted revenge on Joanne Wilson for being so cruel. Maybe Samantha had just got caught in the crossfire.
It was the baby food that had been the cruncher. He had listened to Ida’s theory on Greg’s issues with food. He wasn’t buying it. Baby food would be an upgrade on raiding the bins, but why not just buy the foods that he liked if he were now able to shop for himself? Ida had planted the seed, but she appeared to regret it shortly afterwards. She would have regretted it more if something happened to Samantha or Archie.
Wallace pulled up to the kerb and threw open the door so Irving could climb into the passenger’s seat. When they were locked in the warmth of the car, Wallace sat in the driving seat and then spun round so that he was facing Irving. “Spill.”
“Okay, so you know most of it. He lived next door to the Wilson’s. His mother was murdered by her boyfriend who tried to pin the blame on him. He was treated pretty abysmally by the locals. So he moved away.”
Wallace didn’t want war and peace. He only wanted the part that told him how they had connected Greg Burns to the kidnapping. “Apart from you, who else worked the murder case?”
“I did a lot of the leg work myself, as you probably know. Pursuing leads, taking statements and basically getting to know the neighbours. Phil Morris was the lead detective. It was him who sniffed out a rat with the step-father. They were near as damn it to locking the kid away. Morris discovered that she hadn’t been murdered where the boyfriend claimed to have found her. He also found out that Greg was left handed which made it impossible for him to have been the culprit.”
Wallace started up the car. It was a five-minute drive to the cemetery. “How did he manage to get the job as grounds keeper at the cemetery? If he’s as learning disabled as people say he is, how the hell would he have made it through a job interview let alone do the job competently?”
“His father is a big wig at the council. Probably pulled a few strings. It’s better there than in a facility.” Irving had spoken to Jimmy to get Greg’s address. He had also managed to get the name and contact number for Greg’s father. A quick phone call to the man revealed exactly how Greg had gotten the job at the cemetery. It had been a quick polite conversation. Really what he wanted to ask the man is where the hell he was when his kid was raiding through bins for food.
“Nepotism is alive and well. So, did Mrs Webster actually see the jars of baby food in Greg’s trolley?” Wallace turned the corner and spied the long road ahead. The Bluebell Woods circled round so that the road would eventually run straight down the centre of it. The cemetery was the smallest in the city. The council had tried to flatten some of the woods so that they could extend the burial grounds, but conservationists had protested against it.
“Kev, she said that the only thing in the trolley was baby food. There was nothing else. She didn’t think any
thing of it because she didn’t know anything about Archie being taken. She also didn’t find it that strange because eating baby food was at least an upgrade on what he used to eat.”
Wallace sighed. “At least we know he’s feeding the kid if he has him. It’s better than the alternative.”
Irving fidgeted with the radio but couldn’t get a good signal as they approached the gates to the cemetery. “Which is what?”
Wallace shrugged his shoulders. “Everything we really know about this kid is based on the word of a do-gooder and the unreliable rants of a drunk. He gets his kicks out of hanging about his old house where only three females live. Don’t you find it all a bit strange?”
Irving had to agree that it wasn’t looking good. He watched the small cottage come into view and thought over what Wallace had said. He was counting on Ida Webster being right about Greg. If she was wrong, then he dreaded to think what they would find.
TWENTY-THREE
Paul threw the bedroom door open and ordered Laura out of bed. He never understood how she could sleep through the racket of Shannon getting ready for school. He couldn’t recall a time that he hadn’t woken bleary eyed to the sound of teenage chaos. “Come on you. We’ve got visitors.”
Laura rolled over in bed and saw his stern face. Something was wrong. Usually he let her sleep because mostly he didn’t want to have to interact with her. He was glad of the quiet and she was glad of the rest. It was the only time they were happily married.
She pulled her dressing gown on and checked herself in the mirror. She noted that she hadn’t fully wiped off her eye make-up from the night before. She was hardly going to let somebody see her in this condition.
Paul left their bedroom which allowed Laura to slip into the en-suite bathroom. She quickly washed her face and then pulled on a pair of jeans and a brown woollen sweater. She then scraped her hair back and bundled it on top of her head. Not a bad transformation, she thought to herself, as she skipped past the mirror and crossed into the hallway.
The Dead Of Winter Page 6