Acid Row

by Minette Walters

  Harry felt queasy. ‘At the age of five?’

  ‘Yes. It’s sickening, isn’t it? But we’re looking at a very low grade of intelligence. There was no attraction to children per se, the son was simply expected to fill the sexual void after the wife left. A frightened child is always an easy mark, and it’s a lot simpler than going out and making new relationships. According to what Milosz told me – so I’ve no independent evidence of this – his father took to kerb-crawling and picking up prostitutes. That’s when his abuse of Milosz stopped. He was questioned several times after women ended up in hospital with battered faces, and Milosz was always expected to provide an alibi. He did it, of course, because it was the only way out of his own abuse, but he said he felt badly because it reminded him of what used to happen to his mother. The police may have records of the questioning. Could be worth a shot?’

  Harry made a note. ‘Was the father employed?’

  ‘On and off as a labourer.’ A sarcastic note entered Chandler’s voice. ‘More off than on, I gather. According to Milosz, he suffers from asthma so he was usually too sick to work, but it didn’t sound very convincing to me. I’d say he was working the system.’

  ‘Mm.’ Harry wondered how genuine the panic attack was that the son had given as the reason for needing a doctor. ‘Was the mother Polish?’

  ‘No, English. Milosz remembers very little about her except that she was blonde. His father won’t have her name mentioned. All he ever told the boy was that he spent the war in Spain to escape the Nazi persecution of the gypsies . . . made his way to England in the early 1950s . . . and married Zelowski’s mother in order to obtain residency rights. He said she was a prostitute when he met her, and went back on the game when he kicked her out after finding her in bed with another man.’

  ‘Why didn’t she take the son with her?’

  ‘Who knows? Wasn’t allowed to? Couldn’t afford him?’

  ‘What does he feel about that?’

  ‘According to him, nothing . . . and in a sense he’s right. He’s been so successful at repressing his emotions that his mother’s rejection seems no worse than anyone else’s. He’s learnt to cut people out of his head . . . puts music in their place. As a matter of fact, he registered higher emotional disturbance at the memory of being sacked from his music department than he ever did talking about his mother.’

  ‘In what sense is he wrong?’

  Another pause for thought. ‘He tried to cut off his penis when he was first convicted . . . sawed away at it with a plastic knife. It didn’t work, of course, but he told me afterwards that it was a serious bid to castrate himself. He wouldn’t explain why, except to say he was ashamed, but it does suggest he has some fairly powerful emotions that he’s not admitting to.’

  ‘What about his father? How does Milosz feel about him?’

  ‘Neutral. Neither loves him nor hates him – though I imagine it’s the most comfortable relationship he’s ever had. He’s been controlling his father since he was five years old, so the old man holds no surprises for him. It’s why I felt it was important to break the dependency . . . not because the abuse continues – it stopped when Milosz went to secondary school – but because he needs to externalize his feelings instead of masking them inside his head with jazz tunes.’

  Harry rubbed his hair anxiously into a bird’s nest. This was well beyond anything he understood about the human psyche. ‘So how do I handle them? What do I do if Bob isn’t here and Sophie passes her phone to one of them and leaves the negotiating to me?’

  There was a long pause. ‘In different ways, they’re both dangerously egocentric – the one extrovert and probably sadistic, seeking his pleasure outside . . . the other introvert and repressed, seeking his pleasure inside – which suggests neither of them will be seeing Sophie as a person. Merely as a means to an end.’

  ‘What end?’

  ‘Whatever they’ve decided . . . together . . . or separately. To one she may be an object of desire. To the other she may simply be the hostage that keeps them safe. Perhaps one sees her in both guises. Perhaps both do. There are several permutations, Harry. You’ll have to listen to what they say and try to work it out.’

  14 Allenby Road, Portisfield

  Little had changed in the Logan house, except that Kimberley had ceased her crying. Barry and Gregory still sat morosely watching television in the front room, and Laura remained closeted in the kitchen. There was no question of any of them going outside. Photographers, their long lenses focused on the front door, were camped behind barriers at the end of the street, hanging like leeches on the family’s misery.

  Laura had moved to a chair at the table, her strained, white face showing her exhaustion. Tyler shook his head gently as he opened the door and saw hope leap into her eyes. ‘No news of her,’ he said, pulling out another chair, ‘but that’s a good sign, Laura. We really are optimistic that she’s alive.’

  ‘Yes.’ She placed a hand on her heart. ‘I think I’d know if she was dead.’

  He smiled encouragement, leaving her with her illusions. He’d heard the same sentiment expressed a hundred times, but the link between people who loved each other was in the mind, not in the body, and real pain only began when death was certain.

  ‘I need to ask you some more questions about Eddy Townsend,’ he explained.

  She dropped her head abruptly to shield her eyes and he cursed himself for letting her off the hook earlier. He should have realized that her obsession with hiding was too pathological to be confined to Rogerson alone. But he wondered what secrets could be so bad – or criminal? – that she would gamble on her daughter’s life by not revealing them. What lever would prise them out of her now?

  ‘We suspect Amy might be with him,’ he told her bluntly. ‘He returned early from Majorca, and a car similar to his was seen in Portisfield yesterday with a child answering Amy’s description in the passenger seat.’

  She stared at him with such a bleak expression in her dark eyes that he knew she had been afraid of something like this from the beginning.

  ‘I need to know what happened, Laura.’

  She dropped her face into her hands and ground the heels viciously into her lids as if she were driving out her devils. When she spoke, it was like an emotional dam bursting. ‘He was so handsome . . . so sweet . . . completely different from Martin. He really cared . . . about me . . . about Amy. It was all so different . . . so attractive . . . he called us his little princesses.’ Her voice broke on a half-sob, half-laugh. ‘Can you imagine how that felt after being treated like Martin’s hired help for ten years . . . making excuses for the fact we were in his precious house . . . walking on tiptoe so he wouldn’t know we were there . . . never opening our mouths so he couldn’t find something to criticize? I should have listened to my father . . . he said Martin only wanted a trophy . . . a bit of fluff on his arm that proved he could still get it up . . .’ She petered into silence.

  Tyler waited. He wanted the story in her words, not his.

  ‘Martin went completely berserk when I told him I was pregnant,’ she went on at last, ‘accused me of doing it on purpose. I knew the deal . . . no children . . . why hadn’t I taken precautions? He tried to force me to have an abortion . . . said if I didn’t he’d throw me out without a penny.’ A very hollow laugh. ‘So I went to a rival lawyer to see if I could get the house if we divorced.’

  This time the silence was interminable, as if she were replaying the entire episode in her head.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They were in the same Lodge. I should have known they would be . . . As far as I can see, the whole profession works on dodgy handshakes. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ She tugged her hair across her face. ‘Give my client a break . . . if you want a blind eye turned, I know this judge . . . I know these policemen. The law is corrupt.’

  He felt he had to defend his colleagues. ‘It really isn’t like that, Laura. Masons are bound by the rules just like everyone
else.’

  ‘Are you one, too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then don’t apologize for them.’

  He didn’t want to lose her. ‘Fair enough. What did this lawyer do?’

  ‘Told Martin why I’d consulted him . . . said I seemed to have a pretty good knowledge of how much he had and where he’d stashed it . . . warned him he could lose a lot more than the house if he didn’t mend fences.’ Her voice rose. ‘He wasn’t acting for me, he was acting for my husband. I could have been free . . . had a home . . . brought my baby up the way I wanted –’ a shudder ran through her body – ‘but it wasn’t my lawyer who told me that, it was Martin . . . afterwards . . . when he said what a fool I’d been. He loved that, you know. It made him feel powerful . . . getting his own back on the pathetic little woman who almost got away.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She dropped her hands beneath the table. ‘Offered a reconciliation before the divorce papers could be filed . . . said he couldn’t live without me . . . claimed it was shock that had made him react the way he did. God, I was stupid. I actually believed him. He said he wanted to do the right thing by his baby . . . and I was glad.’ She couldn’t keep the hands hidden for long. She was too expressive. She smacked the knuckles together in recrimination. ‘I used to blame it on being pregnant . . . you know, hormones out of kilter making you so desperate for security that you’ll do anything . . . now I know it’s me. I’d rather delude myself than face the truth.’

  Tyler wondered suddenly if he’d been misjudging her. He had thought her an intelligent woman – calculating even – who had some control over the events in her life. Now he saw her as a piece of flotsam, directionless, passive, waiting for events to change her. It would explain her tirade against Gregory and his children, he thought. She had been willing to bottle up her hatred and frustration indefinitely, until Amy’s disappearance allowed a confrontation.

  ‘Why didn’t you pursue the divorce when you realized the reconciliation wasn’t genuine?’

  She shook her head. ‘You keep trying . . . hoping things’ll get better. In any case, I felt guilty because I loved the baby more than I loved him . . . and he knew it. The same thing happened in his first marriage.’

  ‘Is that why he didn’t want any more children?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a different kind of attachment, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not to someone like Martin. He needs to be the centre of attention.’

  ‘What does he do when he isn’t?’

  ‘Makes life hell,’ she said simply.

  He watched her for a moment, recalling her words of last night. ‘By exercising power without love?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes.’ A sigh. ‘It’s verbal abuse. A constant drip-drip-drip of insults. You’re stupid . . . you’re slow . . . you’re an embarrassment. He used to tell Amy how thick I was . . . then get her to say something clever to prove she took after him and not me. You end up believing it after a while.’ She gave an unhappy shrug.

  ‘Did Amy believe it?’

  ‘I didn’t blame her. All she wanted was her father’s approval. Sometimes I wished he’d hit me so I could prove he was abusing me . . . Confidence is very shallow.’

  ‘Is that why you liked Eddy Townsend? Because he gave you your confidence back?’

  She nodded. ‘It was so easy for him. He used to come to our house regularly on business, so he knew what Martin was like.’ Another hollow laugh. ‘All he had to do was be pleasant, and I turned him into a saint. It’s pathetic, isn’t it? Maybe Martin’s right . . . maybe I am thick.’

  ‘Or lonely,’ said Tyler. ‘We’ve all been there at one time or another. You shouldn’t put yourself down.’

  She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes again and he guessed she was holding back tears. ‘He started coming round when Martin wasn’t there . . . that’s how the affair started. Then he said he wanted to take videos of me because he couldn’t stand being away from me . . . needed something to remind him that I loved him.’ Her voice faltered. ‘Oh, God! I was so flattered. Can you believe that? What sort of sad little bitch flaunts herself naked in front of a camera because a man says he loves her?’

  Franny Gough, thought Tyler soberly. It was one hell of an MO. Persuade a woman you loved her, then make movies of her masturbating. Did any of them ask what happened to those images? Did it cross their minds they might end up on the Internet to be drooled over by millions?

  ‘Thousands every day,’ he said unemotionally. ‘Men do it, too. It’s no big deal. We’re fascinated by our bodies. We love them. We hate them. Most of all we want to know what they really look like . . . and you can’t tell that from a mirror.’

  His kindness destroyed her. It was a while before she was composed enough to speak again. ‘I should have known, though.’

  ‘What?

  ‘That he didn’t want me . . . he wanted her. He was for ever asking her to dance for him or sit on his lap and tell him stories. She loved it . . . it’s all she ever wants to do . . . make people smile. And I thought what a fantastic man he was . . . so patient . . . so kind. Martin just got angry when she showed off. It took the limelight away from him.’

  ‘When did you first start to worry about Eddy?’

  She threaded her fingers through her hair, yanking at it. ‘When I found him making a video of her in the bath,’ she admitted. ‘He’d been bad-tempered for weeks – nothing I did pleased him – then I saw him looking at her . . .’ She petered into silence again.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Two weeks before we left.’

  ‘Why didn’t you leave immediately?’

  ‘I couldn’t be sure. He’d filmed her everywhere, you see . . . playing in the garden, playing in the house . . . always with her clothes on. I thought maybe I was over-reacting, because I knew the sort of videos he’d made of me. And she wasn’t a bit upset . . . rather the opposite, really . . . she liked being filmed . . . so I didn’t think he’d asked her to do anything bad.’ She raised haunted eyes. ‘I should have known,’ she said again.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Nothing much for about a week, then he started being unkind to her. He wanted her to sit on his lap one evening after school, but she refused and he smacked her. After that, he just kept picking on her for no good reason.’

  Sexual frustration? wondered Tyler. Did he find children more attractive than the girly-looking substitutes? Or was a child who masturbated on film more profitable? ‘Did you ask him why?’

  ‘No.’ It was a whisper.

  ‘Why not?’

  Her eyes filled with tears. She opened her mouth to say something but the words seemed to gag in her throat. Instead, she shook her head.

  ‘You were too frightened?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Of him or of what he was going to say?’

  ‘I thought he’d try and keep us there,’ she managed.

  ‘How could he have done that?’

  She shook her head again, but whether because she didn’t want to say or didn’t know wasn’t clear. Tyler allowed the silence to lengthen.

  ‘Amy loved him,’ she said at last. ‘If I’d said I was taking her away, he’d have told her.’

  ‘What would she have done?’

  ‘Made life unbearable . . . like Martin. They’re very alike.’ Another long pause. ‘I lied to her. I said Eddy was bored with her and had told me to take her away before he started hitting her.’

  ‘Which is when you went to the hotel?’

  She was on surer ground. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did Amy feel about that?’

  ‘She was difficult for a few days, but only because she was unhappy about leaving school without telling anyone. She was worried that if we kept moving she’d never make any friends . . . kept asking why we couldn’t go back to Bournemouth.’

  ‘Not Southampton?’

&n
bsp; ‘No. She never mentioned Eddy.’

  ‘What explanation did you give?’

  ‘I said if she wanted to go back to Bournemouth it would mean her living on her own with her father . . . and she said she’d rather be with me.’ She looked to Tyler for reassurance. ‘She wasn’t lying, you know. In all the time we were living with Eddy, Martin made no attempt to see her or contact her. She phoned him a few times . . . but he was always busy. She knows he doesn’t love her . . . didn’t want to be with him . . . not on her own anyway . . . even if this –’ she gestured round the kitchen – ‘wasn’t what she wanted either.’

  Whatever Tyler’s feelings for Amy before – more objective than involved, as he would admit himself, if he was to do his job successfully – he was appalled by the terrible turmoil the child must have been suffering. What was love? Her mother’s resigned dependence on men? Her father’s indifference? Townsend’s lust? Ephemeral schoolfriends? Was a smile synonymous with affection? Did she dance and tell stories to feel wanted?

  ‘Did Eddy try to contact you after you left?’ he asked Laura.

  ‘He couldn’t. He didn’t know where we were.’

  ‘Nor did Martin?’

  Laura shook her head.

  ‘Would Amy have given either of them the number here? Did she write letters? Did she have the means to pay for a call or buy a stamp?’

  She clasped her arms across her chest and rocked in misery. ‘I told her not to,’ she said.

  ‘But you didn’t ask?’

  ‘I was too— I hoped . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘She thinks I’m stupid . . . and I truly can’t bear it when she lies to me.’

  No, thought Tyler, you’d rather delude yourself than face the truth. At least to that extent she understood herself, although whether she would ever be able to forgive herself for it was another matter.