by Casey Watson
But not nearly as arresting as the information it contained. For the police weren’t just here to discuss Spencer’s department-store thieving, they had a whole host of other misdemeanours on their minds.
I listened numbly as one of the officers, a pretty, smiley blonde woman, explained that there were a number of unsolved crimes in the area and that, in almost every instance, the perpetrator fitted Spencer’s description.
I looked across at him, then, expecting tears, the whole denial show, but it was as if there’d been some shift in how he decided to view the world now, because as the eye-boggling list went on – burglary, attempted arson, criminal damage, theft of a mini-moto motorbike – he wore an expression that was something akin to pride. Even Penny, with her long experience of counselling deeply damaged children, was beginning to look as pale as the snow outside. And, as ever, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: that this ‘perp’ was an eight-year-old child. As one of the officers later noted, there was ‘going off the rails’ and there was ‘being completely off the flippin’ sat nav!’ This little boy could not have been a more authentic version of a street kid if he’d been born in the slums of Bogotà.
The meeting went on for well over an hour. And after Penny left, the police officers made a strange request. What they wanted to do, with our permission, was to take Spencer and Mike out in a patrol car with them the following morning, and have him point out as they drove all the places he’d committed crimes. It was a request he acceded to almost happily. And I wondered, as we saw them out, having agreed they’d be back the next day at 11, about a book my children had loved, called There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon. In the book, the little boy finds a dragon under his bed, but the grown-ups he confides in tell him dragons don’t exist. Of course, the book has a message about listening to children, because each time someone says, ‘There’s no such thing as a dragon,’ the dragon grows a little bit bigger, so that, in the end, they all have to notice him.
And pay him some attention, of course. Was this key to all of Spencer’s behaviour? I’ll get worse and I’ll get worse and I’ll get worse, till you notice? Was that his goal, on some level? Just to be noticed? Because he seemed almost euphoric when I sent him off to watch some TV.
But the day wasn’t done with surprises. The meeting over, the thing I most needed to do was call John. These new revelations were serious indeed, and social services would need to be informed. I went into the hall and grabbed the house phone to ring him, taking it with me into the kitchen.
John answered after only one ring.
‘Ah, Casey,’ he said. ‘Thanks for getting back to me so quickly –’
‘Getting back? Did you call me, then?’
‘Yes, on your mobile.’
‘Oh, I see. I didn’t have it with me. We’ve been holed up in a meeting, so …’
‘Well, pin your ears back, because have I got news for you.’
‘News? What kind of news? Small news? Big, big news? Good news, I hope, because …’
‘Oh, extremely good, potentially. Not that we should jump the gun because it all sounds a bit incredible, but …’
‘What?’
‘Kerry Herrington. Spencer’s mum. She’s left her husband.’
I took this fact in, and considered it, and having done so didn’t find it quite as exciting as John clearly did. If she’d struck me as anything it was definitely as the sort of mother who’d at some point perhaps walk out on her kids. I said so.
‘No, no, it’s not like that,’ he corrected. ‘Quite the opposite. She has left him and taken the rest of the kids with her. And the reason she’s been in touch with us – well, with Glenn – is to find out how to get Spencer back!’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not. But there’s much more to tell, and I’d rather not do it over the phone. Is there a time I could pop by, when Spencer won’t be around? It’s obviously imperative he knows nothing about this …’
‘How does 11 a.m. tomorrow grab you?’
I honestly didn’t know what to think when I put the phone down.
Chapter 22
The following morning, after having had almost no sleep at all, I found myself down in the kitchen by 7 a.m., almost unheard of on a weekend. But then again, I told myself as I turned up the heating, every day had seemed like a weekend day just recently. I prayed that the schools would soon be re-opened, and I also prayed that whatever John had to tell me would be something, anything, to cheer me up a bit. I had been tossing and turning all night. Though Spencer, oblivious, had fallen asleep at 6 p.m., Mike and I had been discussing the latest turn of events for most of the night, attempting hundreds of guesses as to what could possibly be happening, none of which felt faintly plausible. Her leave him? And taking the kids? It just seemed so unlikely. If John had said it was the other way around, then perhaps. I couldn’t wait for the clock to creep round to 11.
Spencer came down just after Mike, at nine o’clock and, as I suspected, he was now in a more sombre mood. His cocky attitude when his long list of crimes was being totted up had been replaced with a look of deep concentration. ‘How long before the cops come, Mike?’ he asked over his breakfast.
Mike stared at him for a moment before replying, quite pointedly, ‘The police will be here at 11, Spencer. And if I were you, after breakfast I’d go and sit down quietly and make some kind of list. A reminder of things you need to tell them when they get here. It’ll look better on you.’ He paused. ‘If that’s possible.’
Spencer did. He got dressed and then sat quietly at the dining table with a pencil and a sheet of paper, carefully making his ‘list’. I sighed as I went up to get ready before they left. He looked just like a child who might have been carefully thinking about what to ask Santa for on his Christmas list – deep in thought, chewing the end of his pencil, and leaning forward to scribble when hit by a flash of inspiration. If only, I thought, as I went up the stairs, that was what he was doing.
In the end, it was 11 a.m. when John arrived. Having seen off Mike, the police and the diminutive felon, I opened the front door again, sending yet another swirl of freezing air to eddy round my ankles. The snow was falling more thickly now, and Spencer and Mike’s footprints had already disappeared. John, who’d obviously had to park around the corner as so many cars were snowed in on our road now, looked just about as cold as I felt. ‘Come on, come straight into the conservatory,’ I told him. ‘I’ve already brewed a pot of coffee. And I’ve got the heater going hell for leather. You’ll soon be toasty.’
‘That sounds wonderful,’ he said, following me in, rubbing his hands together. ‘And I hope it’s not a problem for you, me coming round on a Sunday. I just thought we ought to crack on with this really. What with Christmas coming, and things needing to be put in place and so on …’
I poured out two coffees while he shrugged his arms out of his coat. ‘Listen to you,’ I admonished. ‘You’re the one turning out to go to work on a Sunday.’
‘Well, needs must,’ he said, as I handed his mug to him. He curled his hands around it gratefully. ‘How long d’you think they’ll be gone?’ he asked. ‘Because, boy, have I a story to tell you …’
I had no idea what to expect, I realised, as we settled down on the two sofas in the pleasingly warm conservatory. The only news I had so far was the one thing he’d already told me: that Kerry had left Danny and that she’d been on to social services to enquire about how she could go about getting Spencer back. Which had been something of an astonishing development in itself, but tantalisingly light on all the details.
But John, it seemed, was now about to supply them.
‘So,’ he said, ‘this is the position. She and the younger two children – the older ones are with their auntie, but we’ll come to that in a bit – are currently staying at a battered women’s refuge, about half an hour from here. You probably know it, Rebecca House?’
I nodded, taking it in. ‘Okaaaayyy …’
‘They lef
t in something of a moonlight flit, by all accounts, aided by her sister.’
‘That’s the auntie, then?’
‘Yup,’ he answered. ‘Couple of years older than Kerry. Been living in Spain for the last decade, by all accounts. Never had kids, recently divorced. But I’ll come to her in a minute. Better if I start at the beginning, don’t you think?’
I nodded. ‘Go on, then. I’m all ears.’
And it turned out to be quite a story. I’d been doing what I do long enough to have seen a few things, but what John began telling me – if it was true, at least, and John seemed completely sure it was – then it made for some pretty depressing telling. It also made me realise that however switched on you thought you were about people, in some cases you really should not assume anything – not if you didn’t want it turned on its head. And the first shock was one that I’d never have guessed. Spencer’s dad – the one he so idolised – wasn’t actually Spencer’s dad at all.
Spencer’s mother had married Danny Herrington very young. The younger of two daughters, with an absent father and an alcoholic mother, now deceased, Kerry had been a little like a lamb to the slaughter. Perhaps desperate to escape, and for a life that felt more secure than one she’d so far lived, she got married at just 18 – to this capable, charming, man who seemed so keen to take care of her – and had her first two children with him very quickly. But it soon became apparent that behind closed doors things were going badly wrong. Though to the outside world Danny was affable and popular, at home he was increasingly violent and controlling. He wouldn’t allow his wife to go out anywhere without him, to see friends, or even family, and she gradually grew more and more terrified of crossing him. At that time, though Kerry’s mum was in a residential home some way away, her sister didn’t live too far off, so there was at least that family connection. But once the sister moved abroad – she went to Spain with her husband’s job, apparently – there was nothing in the way of family nearby and Kerry became more and more isolated.
‘And turned to the bottle, like her mother?’ I asked John. I knew this sort of tendency often ran in families, whether through genes or through upbringing, perhaps both. But John shook his head. ‘Apparently not,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Though with two small children to bring up, and him not earning much, they did start to struggle financially. It was then that he realised they couldn’t manage on his wages, and grudgingly allowed her to take a part-time job. And that’s when the trouble really started.’
John explained that Kerry had got a job in a local garage, doing bookkeeping and general admin, for a few hours a week. She was in her early twenties by then – her prime – and about six months into this she met a man – a new mechanic there – and began an affair. ‘So what do you think happened?’ John asked me, pausing to sip his coffee.
It didn’t take a great deal of thinking, after what he’d told me. ‘She fell pregnant?’ I answered.
John nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘With Spencer?’
‘With Spencer. By now she’d been seeing this guy for several months, by all accounts. He was a divorcee, no kids, early thirties, and of course she saw this as her chance to escape. So while hubby was at work one day she packed up all her stuff, hers and the children’s – I think one might have started school by now, but that doesn’t matter – and took them round to the home of her boyfriend.
‘But it wasn’t to be. Call her naïve – I think I probably would, but perhaps that’s understandable – but she’d really thought that when she explained she was pregnant with his child he’d scoop her up, take care of them all, the whole hearts and flowers thing –’
‘John,’ I interrupted, ‘you’re sounding horribly cynical.’
‘Forgive me,’ he said, shaking his head ruefully. ‘I know I shouldn’t. But when you see how many kids’ lives are blighted in the aftermath of this sort of adult mess …’
‘Fair point,’ I agreed. Poor Spencer. Poor Spencer.
‘Sorry,’ John said, grinning. ‘Off on my soapbox! Anyway, yes, the guy, of course, was having none of it. Was horrified. Made it clear that he had no interest in taking on her kids, or her having a baby, for that matter. No interest in her either, except on one condition: that she left the kids with their father and had an abortion. Otherwise, no go. He was planning to move away, and did shortly after, apparently. Probably couldn’t run fast enough.’
‘So she went back to Danny?’
‘Not exactly. The boyfriend had at least let her stay at his place till she could work out what to do – I think at that time she’d had this plan that she might take the kids to Spain, to be near her sister. Though as far as having the cash, or the courage, or even the wherewithal … Anyway, while she was busy vacillating, Danny tracked her down and, like the boyfriend, he had his own plan of action in place. Soon as he knew she was pregnant, he said pretty much the same. Either she had an abortion and she and the children came back to him, or it was simple. He’d go to court and, given the history – her affair, her unstable upbringing, her general fecklessness, etc. – he’d make sure she didn’t see her children again.’
‘But he couldn’t have pulled that off, surely? Why would the courts have awarded him custody?’
‘Oh, they could have, and, from what Kerry’s sister says, they probably would have. Could have charmed the birds out of the trees, by all accounts. She was pretty frank about it all. For a long time she refused to believe her own sister about him. This was a man, by all accounts, that was a very popular guy. And, well, you’ve met the couple, haven’t you? What conclusions did you and Mike draw?’
I shook my head and groaned. ‘Point taken …’
‘Exactly. Me too. Anyway, by now of course it was too late to have an abortion, because Kerry had kept everything quiet for so long. Which left her effectively homeless and penniless, with two children and also pregnant. So she did what she thought was the only thing she could do. She went back to him, with her tail between her legs.’
‘And then had Spencer.’
‘Indeed. And of course another rule was put in place: that no one must ever know that Spencer wasn’t Danny’s. Happy families and all that. His pride and his reputation kept in place.’
It beggared belief. ‘I just don’t see it,’ I told John, still astonished. ‘It just seems so at odds with the mild-mannered man we’ve met. He always seems so concerned, and so polite, holding it together.’
‘Oh, don’t be fooled,’ said John. ‘I’m now beginning to see the bigger picture. Now we’ve spoken properly to the sister – and seen some of the evidence, for that matter – it’s all begun falling into place. That boy no more put himself in care than flew to Acapulco. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Danny Herrington had been scheming how to get rid of him for years. Cuckoo in the nest, wasn’t he?’ John smiled, but without mirth. ‘You know what the psychologist said about Spencer probably being a sociopath? Well, there’s your sociopath. That man. Right there.’
I tried to take this in – comparing the man I’d met and the picture John had painted, with the psychologist’s words about how sociopaths could mimic normal emotions, and behave as people expected them to, clamouring for attention in my brain. ‘But it’s all so unexpected. I mean Kerry, from what I’ve seen, is really in no state to –’
‘It’s down to the sister. She got divorced and she’s now back in Britain. And she’s tenacious – you’ll probably meet her, and then you’ll see – and she didn’t like what she saw. Started with some bruises, apparently.’ He made a motion with one hand on his other forearm. ‘Bruises on Kerry that she didn’t like the look of, and which Kerry couldn’t – or wouldn’t – explain. Plus the state she was in, of course, the heavy drinking – lots of experience of that, of course, and also – in fact mainly – the fact that Spencer had been taken away by social services. She was – still is – the only other person who knows he’s not Danny’s. So, as you can imagine, she wasn’t going to let it rest. And eventually it all came out �
�� the whole sorry mess of it, and how he’s been paying back that poor woman – and her love-child, poor innocent little Spencer – since pretty much the day he was born.’
‘And she went on to have two more with him …’ I mused.
‘I know. Grim, isn’t it?’ And John grimaced himself at this point. ‘Perhaps not in much of a position to refuse him.’
‘’To do anything about him,’ I said, as it hit me. ‘How could she? She must have been living through a nightmare. Because if she had tried to take him on she probably would have lost her kids. Either to him, through the courts, or ending up with them in care. God, you just never know, do you?’
And suddenly everything began falling into place: Spencer trying to explain how he was his dad’s favourite but that he had to ‘act bad’ to show he wasn’t. Did his mother tell Spencer that? It suddenly seemed so clear she must have. How she’d done that deal with him about how if he promised to be good social services would let him come home again. I thought back to the day when he ‘threw a brick at his sibling’. His mother hadn’t seen that. Danny had told her he’d done it. And like a robot she’d done what she was probably programmed to do – do as she was told. Give her poor child merry hell. What would have been the consequences of her showing him affection? A beating from her husband? It made me shudder. And, worse, in her befuddled state, had she come to despise him too? For all the pain his very existence had caused her.
The more I thought, the grimmer were my thoughts about Spencer, treated like an outcast in his own home by his own parents. No wonder Spencer had turned out the way he had. Not the devil’s spawn – just the product of an ill-starred affair. For which he had paid a brutally heavy price.