Acid Row

by Minette Walters

  The women were less easily diverted. They continued to gossip among themselves and keep a watchful eye on the comings and goings in Humbert Street. Some of the social workers responded to their questions but few of the women believed the answers, which were unspecific and open to interpretation.

  ‘Of course they aren’t going to dump perverts on you just because it’s a sink estate. Trust me, if there was a dangerous paedophile in the area, I’d be the first to know . . .’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a dastardly plot to get you to keep an eye on your kids . . .’

  ‘Look, these days, convicted paedophiles are under constant supervision. It’s the wannabe psychos who come in from outside you really want to worry about . . .’

  These answers were repeated endlessly around the community, so no one knew how accurate the reported speech was. However, the fact that there appeared to be no outright denials was seized upon as evidence of what they had always believed.

  There was one set of rules for Acid Row and another for everyone else.

  Thursday 26 July 2001 21

  Humbert Street, Bassindale Estate

  Melanie offered Sophie Morrison a cup of tea after the doctor had let Rosie and Ben listen to the baby’s heartbeat through her stethoscope. She was lying on the settee in the sitting-room, laughing as her toddlers pressed their little fingers to her tummy to see if they could feel their brother or sister moving. ‘Ain’t they sweet?’ she said, dropping kisses on to their blonde curls before swinging her legs to the floor and standing up.

  ‘I’d love a cuppa,’ said Sophie with a smile as she saw two teenage boys pause to gawp through the window at Mel’s naked, swollen belly. ‘You’ve got an audience,’ she murmured.

  ‘I always do,’ said the girl, pulling down her top. ‘You can’t get up to nothing in this place without the world and his wife watching.’

  Melanie’s was one of the in-between houses in Humbert Street which had been divided some thirty years previously to create two maisonettes, one at the front and one at the back. A more sensible solution would have been to convert the properties into flats but that would have involved jacking up the faes to create new front doors and installing expensive sound-proofing under the upstairs floorboards. Some bright spark at the planning department had come up with a better idea. It would be quicker, cheaper and less disruptive to existing tenants, ran his argument, to divide the houses across the middle with breeze-block walls, fill in the gaps between the houses on either side with new front doors and stairs for each maisonette and utilize the existing corridor, stairwell and landing for kitchens and bathrooms.

  It was an unhappy solution for everyone, creating three classes of tenant in the street. Those, like the men at number 23, who were lucky enough to have a whole house and garden. Those, like Granny Howard, who lived in the maisonette behind Melanie, who also enjoyed a full-sized garden. And those at the front, with only a patch of grass and a small wall between them and the road. It had turned Humbert Street into a concrete tunnel, and resentment was enormous, particularly among those with no access at all to the gardens at the rear.

  ‘Is Granny Howard still giving you problems?’ Sophie asked, lifting little Ben into her arms and giving him a cuddle as his mother went into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, yeah, she keeps banging her hammer on the wall ’cos of the kids’ noise, but we’ve given up on the garden. She ain’t never going to let them have a bit of a play. My Jimmy had a go at persuading her before he got sent down for the thieving, but she called him a nigger and told him to fuck off. I wouldn’t mind so much but it’s all weeds out there. She don’t even go in it herself.’

  Sophie ran the back of her hand down Ben’s cheek. It seemed crazy to her that the Housing Department should keep an old woman, who never went out, at the back, when two little toddlers who yearned to run and play in safety were confined to the front, but there was no arguing. It was written in stone that Granny Howard had held the tenancy of number 21a since 1973 and was entitled to stay there until she died. ‘How are you doing on the booze and fags front? Is it getting any easier?’

  ‘Reckon so,’ said the girl cheerfully. ‘I’ve got the fags down to five a day, and the booze down to a couple of halves . . . one with my dinner, one with my tea . . . sometimes two. No more binge-drinking, though. Given that up totally. I still have the odd joint now and then, but it don’t amount to much ’cos I can’t afford it.’

  Sophie was impressed. The girl had been smoking forty a day at the start of her pregnancy, and the highlight of her week had been to get comprehensively drunk and stoned in the clubs every Saturday night. Even allowing for the addict’s habit of self-delusion, it was a huge drop which she seemed to have maintained successfully for the last two months. ‘Well done,’ she said simply, sitting down on the settee and making space for Rosie to join her.

  Like Fay, she thought both children in urgent need of a bath, but they were robust and confident toddlers, and she had few worries about their physical or mental health. Indeed she wished that some of her middle-class parents could learn a little about the Patterson way of child-rearing. It maddened her how many of them raised their children in disinfected, germ-free environments, then insisted on allergy tests because the kids had never-ending coughs and sneezes. As if bleach was some sort of substitute for natural immunity.

  ‘Yeah, well, I wish that cow Miss Baldwin thought the same,’ said Melanie crossly as she reappeared with mugs of tea. ‘She gave me a right dirty look because I was having a fag and a beer in front of Neighbours. If she’d asked I’d have told her it was my first smoke of the day, but she’s not like you . . . She thinks the worst of people whether she needs to or not.’

  ‘When was she here?’ asked Sophie, lifting Ben to the floor again and accepting a mug.

  Melanie plonked down beside her. ‘Can’t remember . . . last week sometime . . . Thursday . . . Friday. She was in a right fucking mood. Snapping away at me like a bloody little terrier.’

  After Fay knew she was going to be replaced then, Sophie thought with annoyance. ‘Did she mention that I’ve asked one of the younger health visitors to take over from her?’

  ‘No. Just gave me a lecture as usual. What’s this new one like then?’

  ‘Wacky,’ said Sophie, sipping at her tea. ‘Pink hair . . . black leathers . . . Doc Marten boots . . . rides a motorbike . . . adores kids. You and she’ll get on like a house on fire.’

  ‘Bit of a change from old fart-face then.’ Melanie cradled her mug between her hands, staring into its milky depths and trying to decide how to put the question she wanted to ask. Subtly or bluntly? She chose subtle. ‘What do you reckon to paedophiles?’ she demanded.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Would you treat one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even if you knew they’d done stuff to kids?’

  ‘ ’Fraid so.’ Sophie smiled at her disapproving expression. ‘I wouldn’t have much choice, Mel. It’s my job. I’m not allowed to pick and choose patients. Why are you asking, anyway?’

  ‘I just wondered if you’ve got any registered with you.’

  ‘Not as far as I know. They don’t have black marks beside their names.’

  Melanie didn’t believe her. ‘So how come Miss Baldwin knows about the one in the road and you don’t?’

  Sophie was genuinely startled. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I thought maybe you could give me his name . . . the one he’s using, anyway. See, everyone’s assuming he’s a newcomer, but me, I’m wondering if he’s been here all along.’ She waved her hand towards the window. ‘There’s an old geezer in number 8 who vanished for about six months last year then said he’d been visiting his folks in Australia. I reckon it could be him. He’s always smarming up to our Rosie and telling her how pretty she is.’

  Sophie was bewildered. ‘What exactly did Fay Baldwin say?’

  ‘That there’s a paedophile in the road and he’d take our Rosie whenever he got
the urge.’

  God almighty! ‘What started it?’

  ‘Usual stuff. Lecture . . . lecture . . . lecture. Tried to quiz Rosie about her dad, then tells me what a lousy mother I am when I gave her a bit of my mind. I told her to fuck off more or less . . . then . . . wham! . . . she hits me with this pervert who’s gonna seduce Rosie with sweets. Frightened me bloody sick, she did.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sophie apologetically, visions of lawsuits floating in front of her eyes. ‘It was after I fired her from your case, so she was probably feeling unhappy. She shouldn’t have teased you though, particularly not like that.’ She sighed. ‘Look, Mel, I’m not going to excuse her behaviour, but she does have some problems at the moment. She’s frightened of retirement . . . feels her life’s a bit empty. Things like that. She’d love to have married and had babies herself . . . but it didn’t work out for her. Can you understand that?’

  Melanie shrugged. ‘She was bugging me something chronic, so I took the mickey about her not having any kids. She got really huffy. Started spitting at me.’

  Sophie remembered how Fay had spat when she’d been talking to her. ‘It’s a touchy subject with her.’ She stood up and placed her mug on a table. She was careful not to show how angry she was. She could imagine the senior partner’s fury if the practice got hit for compensation for ‘pain and suffering’. The bloody woman ought to have been locked up years ago. ‘Do me a favour, Mel. Forget she said anything. She was way out of line . . . shouldn’t have done it. You’re too sensible to get hung up on anything Fay Baldwin says.’

  ‘She looked shit-scared when I said she shouldn’t be shooting her mouth off about stuff like that.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Sophie glanced at her watch. ‘Look, I have to go. I’ll have a chat with Fay’s replacement, tell her what’s been going on, ask her to come out ASAP. You can speak to her about anything – she’s a great listener – and I promise she won’t give you any lectures. How does that sound?’

  Melanie lifted a thumb. ‘Wicked.’ She waited for the door to close, then pulled her daughter on to her knee. ‘See, darlin’. That’s a conspiracy. One silly bitch gives the game away ’cos she’s a frigid cow and everyone else makes out they don’t know nothing.’ She recalled Fay’s terror as she ran from the house. ‘But the frigid cow was telling the truth and the rest’re fucking lying.’

  The message Sophie left on Fay’s phone when she got back to her car was a blisterer.

  ‘I don’t care what your problems are, Fay . . . as far as I’m concerned your mental health would be vastly improved if your milkman fucked you rotten tomorrow . . . but if you ever go near Melanie Patterson again I will personally march you to the nearest loony bin and have you committed. What the hell do you think you were doing, you stupid, stupid woman?’

  Half an hour later and a mile away in the Nightingale Health Centre, Fay Baldwin’s hand trembled as she wiped the message from her voicemail. Melanie had betrayed her.

  Three

  Friday 27 July 2001

  Portisfield Estate – midday

  THE CAR WAS PARKED for twenty minutes outside the Roman Catholic church in Portisfield. Several people walked past it, but none of them gave it a second glance. One described it afterwards as a blue Rover, another as a black BMW. A young mother, pushing a pram, had noticed a man inside, but she couldn’t describe him and, under police questioning, changed her mind and said it might have been a woman with short hair.

  When the twenty minutes were up, a thin, dark-haired child opened the car door and slipped on to the passenger seat, leaning over to plant a kiss on the driver’s cheek. No one saw her do it, although the young mother thought she might have seen a little girl answering that description turn the corner from Allenby Road a few minutes earlier. Under the same questioning, she vacillated, saying the girl might have been blonde.

  ‘All right?’ the driver asked.

  The child nodded. ‘Did you get me the new clothes?’

  ‘Of course. When have I ever not kept a promise?’

  Her eyes lit with excitement. ‘Are they nice?’

  ‘Just what you ordered. Dolce & Gabbana top. Gucci skirt. Prada shoes.’

  ‘Wicked.’

  ‘Shall we go?’

  The child looked at her hands, suddenly hesitant.

  ‘You can change your mind at any time, sweetheart. You know I only want you to be happy.’

  The child gave another nod. ‘OK.’

  Four

  Friday 27 July 2001

  14 Allenby Road, Portisfield Estate – 6.10 p.m.

  THE SUN WAS still high in the western sky at six o’clock, and tempers grew short as air-conditioned shops and offices emptied into the sweltering temperatures of that July evening. Tired workers, anxious to be home, boiled in overheated cars and buses, and Laura Biddulph’s progress along Allenby Road slowed as she braced herself for another round with Greg’s children. She couldn’t decide which was the more depressing, an eight-hour shift at the Portisfield Sainsbury’s or going home to Miss Piggy and Jabba the Hutt.

  She toyed with telling them the truth. Your father’s disgusting . . . Don’t even think I want to be your stepmother . . . For a brief and glorious moment, she pictured herself doing it, until common sense returned and she remembered her alternatives. Or lack of them. All relationships were built on lies, but desperate men were more likely to believe them. What choice did they have if they didn’t want to be lonely?

  Outside, the sunlight gave the uniform council houses a spurious glamour. Inside, Miss Piggy and Jabba were closeted in the front room with all the curtains closed and the television tuned at high volume to one of the music channels. The stench of sausage fat assaulted Laura’s nostrils as she let herself in through the front door, and she wondered how many visits they’d made to the kitchen that day. If she had her way, she’d lock them in a cupboard on rations of bread and water until they lost some weight and learnt some manners, but Greg was consumed with guilt about his failings so they got fatter and ruder by the day. She peeled off her cotton jacket, replaced her flat shop-assistant’s shoes with a pair of mules from under the coat rack, and rearranged her baleful scowl into the vacuous, pretty smile they knew. At least if she went through the motions of caring, there was hope of a change.

  She opened the sitting-room door, poked her nose into hot, stagnant air, ripe with teenage farts, and shouted above the noise: ‘Have you made your own tea or do you want me to do it?’ It was a silly question – greasy plates, smeared with tomato ketchup, littered the floor as usual – but it made no difference. They wouldn’t answer whatever she said.

  Jabba the Hutt, a thirteen-year-old boy with rampant eczema where his double chins chafed his neck, promptly ratcheted up the volume on the set. Miss Piggy, fifteen years old and with breasts like dirigibles, turned her back. It was a nightly ritual aimed at freezing out the skinny wannabe stepmother. And it was working. If it weren’t for her daughter’s easy acceptance – ‘They’re OK when we’re on our own, Mummy’ – she’d have cut her losses a long time ago. She waited for Jabba to mouth ‘fuck off ’ to the air – another routine that never varied – before, with relief, she closed the door and headed for the kitchen.

  Behind her, the television was immediately muted. ‘I’m home, Amy,’ she called as she passed the stairs. ‘What do you want, sweetheart? Fish fingers or sausages?’ It was the love they hated, she thought, as she listened for the muttered taunts of ‘Sweety . . . Sweety . . . Mumsy . . . Mumsy . . .’ to come from the sitting-room. Terms of endearment made them jealous.

  But for once the teasing didn’t happen and, with a flicker of alarm, she peered up the stairwell waiting for the rush of boisterous feet as her ten-year-old pounded down the steps to fling herself into her mother’s arms. Every time it happened, she persuaded herself she was doing the right thing. Yet the nagging doubts never went away, and when there was no response she knew she’d been deluding herself. She gave another call, louder this time,
then took the stairs two at a time and flung open the child’s bedroom door.

  Seconds later she burst into the sitting-room. ‘Where’s Amy?’ she demanded.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Barry carelessly, flicking up the sound again. ‘Out, I guess.’

  ‘What do you mean “out”?’

  ‘Out . . . OUT . . . Not fucking in. Jesus! Are you stupid, or what?’

  Laura snatched the remote control from his hand and killed the picture. ‘Where’s Amy?’ she demanded of Kimberley.

  The girl shrugged. ‘Round at Patsy’s?’ she suggested with an upward inflection.

  ‘Well, is she or isn’t she?’

  ‘How would I know? She doesn’t ring in every hour to keep me posted.’ The panic in the woman’s expression persuaded her to stop teasing. ‘Of course she is.’

  Barry shifted uncomfortably on the sofa and Laura swung round to him. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing.’ He gave a shrug. ‘It’s not our fault if she doesn’t want to stay with us.’

  ‘Except I’m paying Kimberley to look after her, not pack her off to a friend every day.’

  The girl eyed her maliciously. ‘Yeah, well, she’s not quite the little angel you think she is and, ’cept for tying her up, there’s not much I can do to keep her here. It’s about bloody time you found her out. She’s been at Patsy’s every day since the end of term, and most evenings she only gets in a few minutes before you do. It’s fucking hilarious listening to you make a fool of yourself.’ She dropped into exaggerated mimicry of Laura’s more educated speech. ‘Hev you been a good gel, darling? Did you prectise your ballay? Air you enjoying your reading? Lovey . . . dovey . . . Mummum’s little pumpkin.’ She pointed two fingers at her open mouth. ‘It’s bloody sick-making.’