Gregory had been interviewed very thoroughly. How long had Laura been living there? ‘Two months.’ Where had he met her? ‘She travelled on his bus a few times.’ Who made the first move? ‘Not him. He didn’t think she’d give him a second glance.’ Who suggested she move in? ‘He couldn’t remember. It cropped up in conversation one day.’ Was he surprised when she said yes? ‘Not really. They’d got to know each other pretty well by that time.’ How would he describe his relationship with Amy? ‘OK.’ How would he describe his relationship with his own children? ‘The same.’ Had Amy ever travelled on his bus? ‘Once or twice with her mother.’ Who did he meet first, Laura or Amy? ‘Laura.’ Did he know Amy’s father? ‘No.’ Had Laura told him how and where she and Amy were living before? ‘Only that she’d been in an abusive relation ship.’ Was he aware that Kimberley was bullying Amy? ‘No.’ Had he ever tried to comfort Amy? ‘He might have put his arm round her a couple of times.’ Did she like it? ‘She didn’t say she didn’t.’ Would he describe her as an attractive child? ‘She was a good little dancer.’ Did she dance for him often? ‘She danced for everyone . . . She liked showing off.’ Had he ever made excuses to be alone with her? ‘What the hell sort of question was that?’
Laura’s answers confirmed Gregory’s except in regard to his relationship with his children. ‘He can’t stand them,’ she replied. ‘He’s afraid of Kimberley and he despises Barry for being a coward . . . but he’s a coward himself, so I suppose it makes sense. He’s always been very sweet to Amy. I think he feels sorry for her.’
She was being interviewed in the kitchen by the same inspector, DCI Tyler, who had questioned her six hours previously to elicit information about Amy’s father. Now, better informed, he sat beside the counsellor at the table and asked rather more testing questions about her relationship with her husband. Perhaps Laura knew what was coming, because she refused to get off the floor or move away from the kitchen door, and her almost permanently lowered head with its curtain of dark hair made it impossible to read her expression. It gave a sense of indifference, or, worse, deceit.
‘Why does he feel sorry for Amy?’
‘I told him her father abused her.’
‘Was that true?’
She gave a small shrug. ‘It depends how you define abuse.’
‘How do you define it, Laura?’
‘Exercising power without love.’
‘As in bullying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is what you’ve accused Kimberley of doing.’
She hesitated before she answered, as if fearing a trap. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘She and Martin are two of a kind.’
‘In what way?’
‘Inadequate people need to dominate.’
Tyler recalled his first impressions of Martin Rogerson when the man opened the door in his shirtsleeves and extended a friendly hand. Policemen were used to shock or evasion when they produced their cards – everyone had something to fear or feel guilty about – but Rogerson showed none of these. He was twenty-five years older than his wife – in his late fifties – a bluff, confident solicitor with an easy manner and a firm handshake. Certainly he gave no impression of being the inadequate bully his wife was describing. ‘How did Martin bully Amy?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
Another hesitation. ‘He made her beg for affection,’ she said, ‘so she thought his love was worth more than mine.’
It was such an unlikely answer that Tyler believed it. He remembered seeing an ill-treated dog that had crawled on its belly towards the boy who was whipping it; remembered, too, how when he had intervened the dog had bitten him. ‘And yours was rejected?’ he suggested.
She didn’t answer.
He sprang the trap half-heartedly. ‘If you knew Kimberley was a bully, then why did you leave Amy with her?’ he asked.
Laura used the point of a finger to sketch circles on the floor. Each one apart. Each one contained. Tyler wondered what they represented. Martin? Herself? Amy? Distance?
‘I’ve been saving for a deposit on a flat,’ she said shakily. ‘It’s our only way out . . . Amy wants it as much as I do.’ She opened her other fist to reveal a sodden tissue which she pressed against her eyes. ‘She kept promising me Kimberley was different when they were on their own. I knew she was lying . . . but I truly believed the worst that was happening was that she was sitting on her own in her room all day. And that didn’t seem so bad . . . not after . . .’ She broke off, vanishing the tissue inside her fingers again as if it were a piece of dirty laundry that needed hiding.
‘Not after what?’
She took time to answer and he had the feeling she was inventing an explanation. ‘Just life,’ she said tiredly. ‘It hasn’t been easy for either of us.’
Tyler studied her bent head for a moment, before consulting some notes on the table. ‘According to your husband, you and Amy haven’t lived with him for nine months. He said you left him for a man called Edward Townsend, and as far as he knew you were still with him.’
‘He’s lying,’ she said bluntly. ‘He knows Eddy and I split up.’
‘Why would he lie about it?’
‘He’s a lawyer.’
‘That’s hardly an answer, Laura.’
She waved his remark away. ‘I was supposed to inform him if our situation changed . . . but I didn’t. It’s a technical point. Martin can argue that, because he didn’t hear it from me, I acted against Amy’s best interests by withholding information.’
‘Who would have told him?’
‘Eddy. Martin’s still his solicitor. He talks to Eddy more than he ever talked to me.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘He’s legal adviser to Eddy’s company. They’re always on the phone to each other.’
Tyler let that go for the moment. The vagaries of human nature had long since ceased to surprise him. In Rogerson’s shoes, he’d have punched the other man’s lights out, assuming of course there was any passion left in the relationship. ‘Why didn’t you inform Martin you’d left Eddy?’
‘I was trying to protect Amy.’
It was an extreme phrase, he thought. ‘Is there some other abuse that you haven’t told me about?’
‘No.’
Tyler allowed a silence to develop while he referred to his notes again. It was a very decided negative and he wondered if she had prepared for the question. He would have expected a rather more shocked response, a rush to explain why the suggestion couldn’t be true. It raised doubts in his mind, particularly as her husband had reacted very angrily to a similar question.
He traced his finger down the lines on the page. ‘According to your husband, Mr Townsend’s on holiday at the moment. He’s gone to Majorca with a girlfriend.’ He looked up but Laura didn’t react. ‘Townsend’s been a client of your husband’s for over ten years,’ he went on. ‘A property developer. He and his wife divorced two years ago. You and he began your affair shortly afterwards and you moved in with him last October. He lives in Southampton. Your husband agreed to your having custody of Amy while you were living with Townsend. His only proviso was that if the relationship failed, you would return Amy to his care until the issue of your own divorce was settled. He says you returned his maintenance cheques while you were with Townsend and weren’t in a position to support Amy on your own. Is that correct?’
She lifted her hand in a small gesture of protest. ‘Martin was never as – ’ she sought for a word – ‘reasonable as that.’
‘You were sleeping with his friend. He was hardly going to be pleased.’
‘I didn’t expect him to be,’ was all she said.
‘So what happened?’
‘It didn’t work out with Eddy so we came here.’
‘Is there a reason why it didn’t work out?’
She fingered the hair in front of her face. ‘It never had much of a chance. We wanted different things from the relationship.’
‘What did you want?’
‘An escape,’ she said simply.
‘Why did you return the maintenance cheques?’
‘It wouldn’t have been an escape.’
‘What did Eddy want?’
‘Sex.’
‘Is that what Gregory wants?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a fast worker,’ Tyler said mildly. ‘One minute you’re with a developer in Southampton, the next you’re with a bus driver in Portisfield. How did that work exactly?’
‘We stayed in a hotel for five weeks.’
‘Why?’
‘It was anonymous.’
‘Were you hiding from Martin?’
She shrugged.
‘Because he’d have taken Amy back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who paid?’
‘I used my savings.’ She paused. ‘I couldn’t work because there was no one to leave her with, and we were running out of money. That’s why I needed somewhere else.’
He glanced about the kitchen. ‘Why another man? Why not put yourself on the housing list and find a child minder?’
She set to drawing circles again. ‘I couldn’t risk Amy telling the housing officer about her father. They’d have taken her off me if they knew she had somewhere else to live.’ A tiny laugh fluttered from her mouth. ‘In any case, Martin’s a snob. I knew he’d never come looking for us here. It wouldn’t occur to him that I might be willing to live in a council house and work in a supermarket just to be free of him.’
‘How does Amy feel about it?’
‘Even your daughter knows you’re only sleeping with him to keep a roof over your head . . .’ ‘I don’t know. I’ve never asked her.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’ve seen Martin’s house.’ She flicked him a quick, assessing glance. ‘Which would you choose if you were a ten-year-old girl?’
Rogerson had asked the same question after learning where Amy had been for the last two months. ‘Your husband’s of course, but if that’s what she wants then she should have been given the choice. She has the same rights as you, Laura, and to be a prisoner of war between her parents isn’t one of them.’
‘If she were a prisoner,’ she flashed back, ‘she’d be locked safely in her room and you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
‘That’s not what I meant, Laura.’
‘I know what you meant,’ she murmured, turning up the volume on the radio to shut him out. ‘But you’re using Martin’s words, so perhaps you should ask him what he means by them.’
‘. . . two hundred local people joined police during the night to search the surrounding countryside . . .’
‘. . . police believe Amy may be heading for her father’s house in Bournemouth . . .’
‘. . . home owners in the south are being asked to look in sheds, garages, abandoned fridges, derelict houses . . . not given up hope that Amy may have fallen asleep . . .’
‘. . . NSPCC spokesman said that, while it’s an appalling tragedy when any child goes missing, the public should remember that two children a week die from cruelty and neglect in their own homes . . .’
‘. . . police spokesman confirmed that all registered paedophiles in Hampshire were visited within eight hours of Amy’s disappearance . . .’
‘. . . no leads . . .’
Saturday 28 July 2001
10.00 – 19.00
Six
Saturday 28 July 2001
Glebe Road, Bassindale Estate
MELANIE PATTERSON SHARED a cigarette with her mother on a bench seat outside the Co-op in Glebe Road. It was an unvarying Saturday morning ritual during which they caught up on news before doing their shopping together. It was like the old days, when they still lived together. Gaynor would stretch out on the settee with Melanie curled against her, and they’d drink a beer and split a fag and set the world to rights. They’d always been close and never understood the hassle the Social gave them about their ever increasing family.
Gaynor was an older version of her daughter, not so tall, but with the same lush blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. Her fifth child, a little boy, was born six months after his niece, Rosie, but none of the Pattersons found this particularly odd. There was no logic to any of the generations. Melanie’s great-grandmother, herself the mother of ten, wasn’t born until five years after her eldest brother’s death in the First World War, yet she kept his photograph beside her bed and spoke as if she were closer to him than any of her surviving brothers. And maybe she was, because Patterson men were renowned for their feuding – ‘It’s the Irish in them,’ Great-Grammer always said, making a tenuous link to some distant ancestor who had crossed the sea to Liverpool during the nineteenth century. ‘They’d rather be fighting than home in their beds . . .’ – and Patterson women for taking lovers out of boredom – ‘. . . the good Lord wouldn’t have given us wombs if he hadn’t meant us to fill them.’
It was a view shared by Melanie and her mother. Bossy health visitors could say what they liked about contraception, but child-bearing answered a basic need in both of them. As indeed it had for the long line of women before them. There had never been a perception among Patterson women that personal fulfilment lay in taking a regular job and making money. A woman’s role was to make babies, particularly when someone else was prepared to pay for them. Indeed, Gaynor’s most perfect achievement was this, her eldest daughter, who adored and was adored in equal measure. Men came and went in both their lives but their constancy to each other was unshakeable. They agreed on everything. Loves, hates, beliefs, prejudices, friends and enemies.
On hearing from Melanie the previous Saturday that paedophiles had been housed just one door away from her grandchildren, Gaynor had reacted with predictable anger.
‘It makes you sick,’ she’d said. ‘The Social’s got no business sticking psychos in your road and expecting you to guard your kiddies twenty-four hours a day. That says the nonces are more important than you, Rosie and Ben put together . . . and that’s not right, darlin’. Men like that should be locked up for life . . . simple as that.’ She took a drag and passed the cigarette to her daughter. ‘I don’t want you and the babes in danger,’ she said with sudden decision. ‘You’ll have to come home. You and the wee ones can take Colin’s room, and he can move in with Bry and little Johnnie.’
But Melanie had shaken her head. ‘Jimmy’s due out in a couple of days. He’ll take care of us. Anyways, I reckon it’s the nonces should move, not us . . . which is what I told the cow at Housing – the Social’s got a fucking nerve, I said, giving us lectures about –’ she drew quotation marks in the air – ‘ “parenting”, then dumping sodding paedophiles on the street without telling anyone. So she tells me to stop swearing or she’ll hang up.’
‘She never!’
‘She fucking did, and I said, if she thought swearing was worse than murdering little kids then she ought to be in therapy. I bet she wouldn’t like it, I said, if the council stuck perverts next to her. So then I get the usual wall-to-wall bull . . . she didn’t know what I was talking about . . . it wasn’t her responsibility . . . the person to ask was my social worker. I was well pissed off and said if she didn’t fucking move them out herself, then us as lives in the street’d fucking do it for her. I mean, they can’t rate our kids very high if they reckon it’s OK for dirty old men to shaft them whenever they get a sodding itch . . . and that’s when she hung up . . .’
Seven days later, fuelled by radio and television reports that a child had gone missing in Portisfield, the swell of opinion against the paedophiles had reached fever pitch. It was known, courtesy of a postman who had shown a redirected letter to a neighbour, that the men’s previous address had been Callum Road, Portisfield, so late on the Friday night the same neighbour phoned the former occupant of number 23, Mary Fallon, to find out what she knew.
Mary was full of it. Portisfield was crawling with policemen, knocking on doors, showing the kid’s photograph, and asking if anyone had seen her or k
new where she’d spent the last two weeks. They were talking about a ‘friend’ that her family didn’t know about, but even a moron could work out that ‘friend’ was a euphemism for a predatory paedophile. There were two evicted from Portisfield near on a month ago after one of them was recognized from a photograph, and Mary wasn’t the only person who’d told the police to track them down. The kid had been living cheek by jowl with them for God knows how long, and paedophiles being what they are – on the lookout for lonely and vulnerable children – you could bet they’d picked her out for attention. It didn’t make sense to assume she’d gone to ground in her own neighbourhood, when the chances were she’d been collected and driven somewhere else every day.
Mary was speechless for all of five seconds when her friend told her the Portisfield paedophiles were living in her old house. She couldn’t believe it. Her house! Home to bloody nonces! What kind of idiot had decided to move them into the Row? The place had more children than adults. It was like putting a junkie in charge of a drug store. How had they been sussed? Had they tried it on with a kid? Did they have a car? Did they leave the house every day? Had anyone seen a skinny little girl with dark hair there?
The answers to her questions were largely negative but there was always room for doubt. The men’s arrival had been so secret that it stood to reason they could come and go at will. The younger one did the shopping occasionally, scuttling along and never meeting anyone’s eyes, but who was to say where he went when he turned the corner out of Bassindale Row or if he had a car parked secretly away from the estate? The older one, white-faced and black-haired, had been spotted through the window from time to time, standing in the shadows and scowling at passersby, but who knew where he went at night when decent people were asleep? As for a little girl . . . well, they wouldn’t bring her back to the house in daylight, would they?
Acid Row Page 5