The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  There was, in fact, nothing for me to do. I had read the report on the central Crime Reporting and Incident System, which was by no means as informative as I could have wished, and I had requested the file from the general registry. There was precisely no chance that it would appear on a Sunday, and I would have to be very optimistic to count on getting it the following day. All I could do was wait for DI Stone to get back to me, and hope his wife remembered to pass on the message.

  In the meantime, I tried to stay out of the way of the officers who were heading out to arrest the brothers. I didn’t want to think about it. Derwent was right; I hadn’t done my job properly and I didn’t deserve to go with the others, but it still burned. Loss of face was one thing; loss of Godley’s trust was another. I would apologise – I had apologised – but I didn’t expect anyone to forget about until I had proved myself all over again.

  I sloped back into the squad room once I calculated they were likely to have left, and found it all but deserted. The only desk that was occupied belonged to Liv, who was working away industriously.

  ‘Why didn’t you go with the others?’

  She turned in her chair. ‘I wasn’t feeling too good, funnily enough. I volunteered to do the paperwork. The CPS are going to need case papers if they’re going to rush through our request for authority to charge.’

  I pulled a face. ‘Most people would run a mile from that sort of job.’

  ‘I don’t mind it. I like filling in forms.’

  ‘That’s unnatural.’

  ‘It appeals to me. I have a tidy mind.’ She turned back and kept working, stopping occasionally to sip water. Clearly she was still pinning her hopes on rehydration to make herself feel better. I smiled wryly. I had started to feel more human as the day went on, right up until the moment when the arse fell out of my world. And that was without even thinking about the fact that I had somehow acquired a creepy admirer. Which was all he was, I told myself sternly. I was irritated by the photographs, and a little unsettled, but not scared. But I was still glad Rob lived in Battersea, all the way across the river from where I currently lived.

  I sat down at my desk and put my mobile phone in the middle of it. There was no point in staring at it until it rang. I knew that.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Liv came over to my desk.

  I explained what I was doing and she nodded. ‘I’m sorry. If I hadn’t dragged you out for a drink you’d have got around to looking them up.’

  ‘Don’t even suggest that. I made a decision to go out. You didn’t force me. You just provided the opportunity for me to skive off work and I did the rest myself.’ I shook my head at her, pretending to be annoyed. ‘This is why women don’t get ahead. We take responsibility for other people’s fuck-ups. You should be taking advantage and trying to suck up to Derwent while I’m in the dog house.’

  She gagged. ‘Do you mind? I’d appreciate a bit of warning before you suggest something as disturbing as that.’

  I grinned. ‘Even so—’

  ‘Even so, I’m still sorry.’

  ‘Okay. Completely unnecessary apology accepted.’

  She looked at me with a slightly puzzled expression. ‘You haven’t said anything about the pictures – aren’t you a bit freaked out?’

  ‘Yes and no. I’m obviously not thrilled that someone’s been following me around, but most of that is annoyance with myself for not spotting him. I mean, it shouldn’t be that difficult.’

  ‘They’re pretty good at hiding themselves, though. It’s not like he was wandering around with an SLR or something – you know they have all sort of tricks to disguise camera equipment. And most of the pictures were taken in your neighbourhood, so you wouldn’t have thought it weird to keep seeing the same person around the place.’

  ‘Yeah, but I didn’t see anyone. I haven’t even had a tingle at the back of my neck. My intuition has conked out.’ I was trying to make a joke of it, but it did bother me that I had been so oblivious.

  ‘Well, you have got a lot on your mind.’

  ‘I’ll have to make room to watch my back.’

  ‘Seriously, though.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  The phone in front of me hummed, vibrating against the desk and I snatched it up. ‘Kerrigan.’

  ‘Tony Stone. You were looking for me.’ He sounded pleasant, infinitely calm and not at all surprised to be tracked down on a Sunday. It was part of the job, especially if you had years of experience behind you. Criminals re-offended. Cases recurred. You never really left any of them behind, not the big ones. And the bad ones, I was starting to realise, followed you around like a comet’s tail, unfinished business you couldn’t forget.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a case where you arrested one of the main suspects as a juvenile, and there’s a note on the file that you wanted to be contacted if he ever came to our attention again.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ His calm manner had sharpened to interest. ‘Who’s that, then?’

  ‘Lee Bancroft. Alexander Bancroft, officially –I don’t know if he was going by Lee when you dealt with him. It was up in—’

  ‘Enfield. Yes, I remember. Must have been in ’96. No – 1997.’

  ‘That’s right. The file says he raped a twelve-year-old girl.’

  ‘Just hold on a second.’ I heard footsteps and a door closing. ‘Right. I didn’t want to talk about it where the kids might hear. Alexander Bancroft.’ He sighed. ‘I knew he’d come back some day. What’s he done?’

  I told him what we suspected, about Cheyenne and Patricia and the possibility that she was still alive.

  ‘Absolutely nothing you’re saying surprises me. Maybe just the fact that it took this long for him to crop up again.’

  ‘What happened in Enfield? What did he do?’

  ‘Alex – he was Alex then – was a bit of a troublemaker in school. Andy was the opposite: butter wouldn’t melt, but actually he was always up to mischief. He just never got caught. Alex was disruptive, challenging authority, always getting into fights. The head was one of those do-gooder types who wanted to reach out to him, especially because of his home life.’

  ‘His home life?’

  ‘The parents were dead – they died when the boys were eleven and thirteen. There was a history of domestic violence and drug abuse. The two of them had separated and got back together again more times than the boys had hot dinners. Eventually, Mum had enough, said she wasn’t going to take him back this time and she wanted a divorce. Dad strangled her, hanged himself. The boys found the bodies.’

  ‘Jesus. If you weren’t a bit off-balance before, you would be after that.’

  ‘Oh yes. There’s plenty of background there to explain why Alex turned out the way he did. Not that I think he wasn’t responsible for what he did. Lots of kids have traumatic childhoods and don’t turn into violent rapists, but it did help with the mitigation when he came to court.’ He hesitated. ‘Where was I? Oh yeah. The head. Vita Mountford. She had a bee in her bonnet about Alex. Thought she could give him some stability, a bit of discipline, bring him round. She made him stay after school three afternoons a week so he could do his homework in her office and do chores around the school instead of just having detention. She wanted to separate him from Andy because he had a tendency to let Andy do the talking. She wanted him to start thinking for himself. Which was a mistake, let me tell you.’

  ‘Who was the girl?’

  ‘Carly Mountford. The head’s daughter. Not a very confident girl, not very streetwise. Little thing, barely spoke when I interviewed her. He got her alone in an unused classroom and barricaded the door. He kept her there for over an hour, until her mother finally tracked them down and phoned us. During that time, he raped her repeatedly and beat her black and blue. The level of violence was shocking, even to me.’

  ‘Punching? Kicking?’

  ‘That and biting. For fun, according to him. He left marks all over her body.’


  I was starting to see why the case had worried Stone so much. ‘He bit her for fun? Aged fifteen?’

  ‘He said he liked it. Ordered her about, made her do things for no real reason, just to control her. I asked him about it in interview and he said he liked telling her what to do.’

  ‘So he cooperated.’

  ‘He was very forthcoming. He said he’d wanted to do something like it for a long time. He’d been waiting for an opportunity. I asked him why he’d chosen Carly and he said it was to teach her mother a lesson about trusting people.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I don’t remember ever meeting a teenager who was so obviously dangerous. He was totally matter-of-fact about what he’d done. There was nothing behind his eyes, when you looked. No feeling at all for the girl. He thought it was funny. That’s why it stayed with me, I suppose. I could see a mile off that he wasn’t going to change.’

  ‘How long did he get?’

  ‘Five. Out in two and a half.’

  ‘Is that all? Even given the level of violence and his reason for choosing the girl?’

  ‘That’s all. He had the sob-story background, and he did plead guilty. The judge was in the mood to believe in happy endings. Mrs Mountford left the school and I believe the family moved to the States not long after. She had a total turnaround. The woolliest Guardian-reading liberal you ever met, but if we’d had the electric chair for Bancroft she’d have flicked the switch herself.’

  ‘Not that surprising, is it? I presume she felt guilty about him being there in the first place.’

  ‘Indeed she did. Not a nice case.’

  ‘Did you ever get the same sort of feeling from Drew – from Andy? That he was dangerous?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve got to be honest on this one. I wasn’t sure. He seemed very shocked by what his brother had done. He wrote Mrs Mountford a letter of apology, even, but I didn’t let her see it. Nothing would have made her feel better and I didn’t like the thought of him trying to manipulate her, even if he was genuine. Better leave well enough alone. Then I got a call about five years ago from someone in the GMP. Andy was at university in Manchester, and someone had accused him of kidnapping their daughter. They saw Alex on the PNC and wanted to know the story.’

  ‘Kidnap? What happened? I didn’t see anything when I looked him up.’

  ‘Andy was never charged. The girl was located and said she was fine. She said she had chosen to break off contact with her parents. They were seriously concerned that he had undue influence over her and that he’d stolen from her. She said it wasn’t true – she’d voluntarily given him her savings, which included a nice little inheritance from her nan. It was a five-figure sum, if I recall correctly.’

  ‘Wow. Not bad for a student.’

  ‘Indeed. She’d dropped out and got a job as a barmaid, and Andy was pocketing her cash too. The whole thing stank, to be honest with you, but there was nothing they could do when the girl was so definite that she had no complaints. People can be stupid when they’re in love, and she was in love. And Andy was pretty plausible when he was interviewed, so the case disappeared.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think they’re both trouble. I think Andy is better at hiding it. That’s all part of the fun for them.’

  ‘Who looked after them when their parents died? Were they taken into care? Fostered?’

  ‘There was a great-uncle, Michael Bancroft. He had a big house just outside Enfield, in the middle of nowhere. He took them in. Didn’t want to see them go into care, he said. They ran rings around him. He was devastated when Alex was convicted. Eventually he admitted he couldn’t cope with Andy either and social services got involved.’

  ‘What happened to Alex?’

  ‘He did his time. By the time he came out, he’d turned eighteen. The two of them kept in touch with Michael and moved back in with him once they were old enough to leave the care system.’

  ‘I’m surprised he let them move back if they were so hard to control.’

  ‘I don’t think he had a lot of choice. They bullied him something chronic. He used to say blood was thicker than water. He was a lovely man. He’d be able to tell you what they’ve been up to since they last came to our attention.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea.’ I tapped my pen on the desk, considering it. ‘The thing that worries me is that we know about Cheyenne, and we know about Patricia, but there’s a gap, isn’t there?’

  ‘There is indeed. Neither of those two boys was the patient sort. I can’t imagine they were sitting on their hands.’

  And at some stage Andy had become Drew, Alex had become Lee, and they had started lying about their date of birth. Nothing as dramatic as a change of surname, nothing that required an official stamp of approval, but camouflage, nonetheless. I wanted to know when the change had taken place. I wanted to know if they’d had something else to hide.

  ‘Do you know how I could get in touch with Michael Bancroft? Do you remember his address?’

  ‘You’d have to check the voters’ register. It was somewhere north of Enfield, that I do remember, but it was in the sticks. A big house, falling to bits. Funny place for two teenage boys to end up. It was an old man’s house. But they said they liked it.’ He thought for a second. ‘Bonamy Lodge. That’s what it was called.’

  I thanked the DI for his time and he wished me luck. ‘Let me know what happens, if you get the chance. Alex Bancroft is one of those people – you sleep better for knowing they’re a long way away from you.’

  I promised I would and hung up. The voters’ register was a quick and easy way to confirm that Michael Bancroft still lived at Bonamy Lodge, and once I had the postcode I was able to get directions to it in a couple of seconds. Directory enquiries broke the bad news that the landline was out of service. The drive up to Enfield cut straight through North London, and if I hadn’t been so completely in the doghouse I might not have bothered with it, given that I would be going on spec. But I needed to do anything and everything to make myself look better in the eyes of the bosses. If that meant dashing around on a wild goose chase, so be it. I turned to see Liv tidying her desk with the air of one who has finished a task. ‘Done?’

  ‘All ready for the boys when they get back.’

  ‘In that case, do you feel like taking a trip with me?’ I explained quickly where I wanted to go, and why.

  ‘Sounds like fun. What are we waiting for?’

  I piled my things together and stood up. ‘Absolutely nothing. Let’s go.’

  There was something liberating about fleeing the office. I should have taken a bit more time, though, because I might have noticed that my phone was perilously low on battery. Ten minutes into our journey it began to beep despairingly.

  ‘Shit.’ I picked up my bag and shoved it at Liv without taking my eyes off the road. ‘Make it stop whining, for God’s sake. Can you have a look in the glove box and see if my charger is in there?’

  ‘I have and it’s not,’ she announced a couple of seconds later. ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘I lent it to Derwent a couple of days ago. I usually charge my phone overnight, but …’

  ‘Yeah, I know. You were distracted. I’ve got mine.’

  ‘Good for you. Did you bring a radio?’

  ‘Yes.’ She waggled it on the edge of my vision.

  ‘Okay. So at least one of us is behaving professionally.’

  Liv was poking at the radio handset. ‘The only thing is, this one isn’t working.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  She turned up the volume so I could hear the static. ‘That’s the main set.’

  It should have been constant transmission to and from the control room, not featureless fuzz. She went through the channels. Click … click … click … Every one was white noise. ‘Sorry. I knew it was playing up, but I thought it would be okay.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t bring one at all.’ I sighed. ‘Never tell anyone about this. We’ll get a reputation for being d
im birds who don’t remember to check their equipment.’

  ‘Er, and you’re saying we’re not? We’ve got one phone between us and no radio. I don’t think we should be patting ourselves on the back.’

  ‘All right, I wasn’t going to go that far. I’m just warning you not to give anyone a reason to think we’re bimbos. They don’t need much excuse. No unforced errors.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember.’

  ‘I bet Special Branch wasn’t like this.’

  ‘Are you kidding? It was twenty times worse. At least Godley treats you like a human being. My last boss was a total pig.’

  We spent the remainder of the journey swapping horror stories. It was hard for anyone who wasn’t in the job to understand the pervasive culture of chauvinism, the lip service that was paid to equality. By its very nature policing was a profession that attracted conservative-with-a-small-c types, those who appreciated traditional values that included women knowing their place. It didn’t do to be too sensitive about that sort of thing. It was too easy to get a reputation for being humourless, for being touchy, for being a pain. So you learned, even if it didn’t come naturally, to laugh when you were mocked, to give as good as you got, and to be on your guard against giving anything away. I took it in my stride. Liv had found it tougher to get used to.

  ‘For the first few years, I never wanted anyone to find out I was gay. Then I decided there was no point in hiding any more.’

  ‘Yeah, but why should you tell people? I don’t tell everyone what I do and who I sleep with. Why should you?’

  ‘Because it has to do with who I am. And it keeps the creeps at bay.’