Murder of Innocence

by Veronica Heley

  She said, ‘Sit down, Roy. You’re giving me a crick in my neck, looking up at you.’

  Roy sat on the arm of her chair, putting his arm along her shoulders and taking one of her hands in his. She could see he had decided to turn on the charm.

  ‘Well, I won’t allow it, letting all and sundry take advantage of you.’ He treated her to one of his long-lashed blue-eyed stares. It was supposed to reduce her to a simpering heap of pliant womanhood.

  Unfortunately it reduced her to the giggles. ‘Oh Roy, you are funny.’

  His thick black eyebrows – which all her friends thought a delicious contrast to his silvery hair – did their famous up-and-down trick. Now he could either laugh or be angry. He chose anger.

  ‘You simply have no idea of the real world, Ellie. You’re so naïve. Taking this man in against all our advice puts you at risk.You haven’t considered anyone but yourself. Think of the anxiety it’s going to cause your friends. We’re all going to be worrying ourselves sick about you till he’s gone. I’ll have to put off half my workload to keep dropping in on you to make sure you’re all right …’

  ‘I’m hardly ever alone,’ she said. ‘There’s the builders and Diana, and Aunt Drusilla and Kate and everyone. And Tod, too.’

  ‘Now that’s another thing …’

  Ellie stifled a yawn. ‘Sorry, Roy. Too tired to think straight. Thanks for coming and thanks for making me drink the brandy. I shall sleep now.’

  ‘Ellie …!’

  ‘That’s enough, Roy. I must ring Aunt Drusilla and reassure her. Take care how you go.’

  ‘If that’s your attitude …’

  ‘So sorry, Roy. It is.’ She handed him his coat and umbrella and saw him out into the cold wet night. She returned the calls on the answerphone

  – two calls from Roy, one from Aunt Drusilla, one from Rose and one from Kate – with soothing words and a promise to ring on the morrow. Then she rang Gilbert. He might already be tucked up safely in bed with his dear wife Liz beside him. Or out at a parish meeting. But he wasn’t. He was there and anxious to hear what had been going on.

  She told him everything, about Tod and taking Gus in, and all her misgivings.

  He was silent for a while. She waited, secure in the knowledge that he would give her good advice.

  ‘I’m proud to know you, Ellie Quicke. You’ve done a fine thing but you’ve poked the Devil in the eye and he might well poke back. There’s often a price to be paid for living your life as a Christian. Sometimes other people don’t like it. It shows up their own shortcomings, you see. In this case I worry because you’re not a professional who’s been trained to deal with the homeless. There are precautions you can take, removing valuables from open view, keeping your handbag and keys with you at all times. But you’ll have thought of all that.’

  ‘Yes, I have. Pray for me?’

  ‘Of course. And Liz does, too. She sends her love.’

  ‘See you both soon.’

  She rang off and went to bed.

  It took only a day and a half for the news to get around the parish. ‘Did you hear that Ellie Quicke has taken that paedophile into her own house …?’ Ellie was the last to hear the gossip, of course. She was busy with the builders, who had the usual tale of woe to tell.

  Sorry, the plumber couldn’t come to fit the water feature in the conservatory till Wednesday, which meant the tiler couldn’t start yet. The central-heating engineer who was supposed to be extending the radiator system had sprained his thumb and couldn’t work for a while but of course he would try to drop in at Mrs Coppola’s to inspect her little problem with the boiler, but couldn’t guarantee to do anything about it, and could she be there from ten to twelve as he wasn’t sure when he’d get there.

  She left Mrs Coppola’s key with the builders and dashed out on her rounds.

  Aunt Drusilla needed assistance. ‘I’m totally bereft of help, that stupid daily hasn’t turned up and I’m completely unable to move, so would you …’

  Diana: ‘We simply must talk, mother …’

  Kate: ‘Are you still OK?’

  Dear Rose: ‘How is Tod, and how are you coping, my dear?’

  And Gus grumbling about going out in the rain and borrowing dear Frank’s umbrella and coming back in a terrible temper without it, saying it had been stolen – oh, how that hurt, Gus losing Frank’s precious umbrella. Something so taken-for-granted, something that still reminded her so vividly of him – gone for ever. She would never see it again.

  And Midge the cat deciding that the only place for him in this appalling wet weather was on her bed, which meant she had to find a big towel to cover her duvet with, because when he came in all wet, he left paw prints on everything …

  And she got out the hoover to do the ground floor and the bag burst. And she couldn’t find a spare. And when she managed to get to her solicitor’s, he was busy and could only spare a moment to say he’d ring her later …

  And the builder wasn’t happy about having Gus around. ‘I know you said he’d been cleared of attacking the little boy, but that don’t mean he’s got the conscience of a newborn babe.’

  Ellie suppressed a smile. No, Gus and that sort of innocence didn’t seem to go together.

  And then when Jimbo, the central-heating man, did come – late – he said it was only Mrs Coppola’s pump that was knackered and he could install a new one if she wanted, but he couldn’t personally do anything for at least a week because of his sprained thumb and what did she want to do about it, he might be able to recommend someone to do it for her, though he didn’t like letting old customers down … and the man he recommended couldn’t do anything for three days at least …

  And Gus enthroned himself in Frank’s chair and moaned that Mrs Dawes had stolen a pair of his socks and he’d have the law on her, he would.

  Ellie thought, What a misery this man is. Then she wondered if she would have been any more gracious in his situation. An outcast, really. No home, no property, no real friends. Despised and rejected. She sighed and made a resolution to try harder with him.

  A tiresome day, but at least it was a day in which she wasn’t being asked to track down a murderer on top of her everyday duties. Although, come to think of it, being a freelance investigator would mean a lot quieter life than the one she was having to live at the moment. She would have an office all to herself, and tell her awful family that she was working and far too busy to attend to their trivial problems, and perhaps there would be a girl to dictate reports to and …

  She giggled. What a fantasy!

  Frank would have said she was getting above herself, girl. And of course she was.

  It was a considerable relief to go to choir practice at church on Monday evening and think about something else for a change. She didn’t notice that two of the choir were whispering about her at the back of the pews or that one of them ostentatiously moved away from her side afterwards.

  Tuesday started badly and descended into farce. First of all, Mrs Coppola rang to say she had to leave for work but couldn’t get Tod out of bed, he just refused point-blank and she had to go, she really did. She’d told Tod if he wanted any breakfast he’d just have to get himself along to Ellie’s, but he showed no sign of having heard her and she was at her wits’ end she really was, because she’d taken a day off work yesterday to get him to the hospital and the police and he wouldn’t help them, not a word could they get out of him, no matter how hard they tried, and she couldn’t think what to do about it, she really couldn’t.

  Ellie thought, No builders here today. Dare I leave Gus in the house alone? I have to, I suppose. I can’t leave Tod at his house all by himself. Ellie let herself into the chilly Coppola house. Dust on every surface. Muddy footmarks on the carpet. Well, she was not going to do any housework in here. She had enough to do at home.

  Tod was hunched up in bed under his duvet. The little electric blow heater was working manfully away, producing a nice old fug. The curtains were still drawn at the
window.

  Ellie sat on Tod’s bed and tried to stroke his head. He pulled himself further down the bedding till only the top of his head was visible. She looked for his panda, but couldn’t see it. Perhaps he had it under the bedclothes with him? Was that a good sign?

  ‘Tod, dear one. It’s only me, Ellie. What would you like for breakfast? Eggs, bacon, porridge? I think I’ve got some porridge oats somewhere, if they’re not out of date.’

  No reply. She didn’t think he was even listening. No, he wasn’t. He’d put his Walkman on under the duvet. She could hear the beat through the bedding. Contrary child. First he didn’t want it, then he used it as a weapon against her.

  Impasse. If he didn’t want to get up, she couldn’t physically make him. She got off the bed, pulled back the curtains and started picking clothes up off the floor. ‘This lot need washing, and what you wore yesterday … this is only fit for the rubbish bin … I suppose this needs dry-cleaning …’

  She opened his cupboard door and sighed anew. What a stir-fry on the floor. Everything seemed to have been thrown in regardless. Shoes, trainers, socks. Pants. Sweatshirts, shirts. School books. Yuk. A heavy waterproof jacket with a fleece lining had a torn sleeve and a nasty stain down the front. She pulled it out, wondering if it might be possible to get it invisibly mended, but decided it was only fit for the dustbin. Where was his good jacket? Missing. He hadn’t been wearing it when he was found, so probably he’d lost it. Or left it at school. Or left it at the place where … the bad thing had happened. Shudder.

  It was automatic to empty the pockets before she threw the ruined waterproof away. Chocolate egg wrappers, a toy from a breakfast-cereal packet, stamp hinges, something which looked remarkably like chewedup chewing gum, ugh! A screwed-up paper tissue containing something so disgusting that she exclaimed in horror.

  She put the stamp hinges on his table and tipped the rest of the stuff into a plastic bag to take downstairs because the waste-paper bin was full. Then set about folding jumpers and hanging up shirts.

  At last she could see the floor of the cupboard. She needed a cup of coffee.

  There was silence in the room now. He’d turned the Walkman off but hadn’t come out of his cocoon.

  Now was the moment to get through to him, but what words could she use? She found herself getting angry with him, which she hadn’t intended to do. ‘Tod, I know you’ve been badly hurt, but it really isn’t necessary to commit suicide because of it.’

  He threw his Walkman at her. It hit her on her wrist and rebounded on to the floor. It hurt. How dare he! She wanted to give him the walloping of a lifetime.

  ‘I’m not,’ he said. Or at least, that was what it sounded like, muffled by the duvet. There was more, but so indistinct she couldn’t make it out. Then something about a promise.

  ‘What promise?’

  ‘You lied to me.’ His head emerged from the duvet. ‘You said you’d buy me a new computer. You said you’d mend the central heating.’

  ‘Yes, I did, and I meant it, both times. I’m so pleased you’ve remembered about the computer. I hoped you’d hear what I said, but I wasn’t sure if you were awake then or not. We’ll go and have a look at them after we’ve had some breakfast, shall we?’

  He scowled.‘Don’t want any breakfast. What about the central heating?’

  ‘The man came to look at it. It needs a new pump, but he couldn’t fix it himself, so he’s given me the name of another man who’ll come as soon as he can to put it right.’

  She held out a T-shirt and he reached for it, taking it under the bedclothes to put on.

  ‘You promise not to go on at me to remember? Because I can’t. It was the knock on the head that did it. Concussion. It’s made me forget.’

  She thought, It might have. Or on the other hand, it might be that he simply can’t bear to remember and so has blocked it out. I don’t blame him for that.

  ‘Jeans? Sweatshirt? Trainers? I suspect you’ve grown an inch or two while you’ve been in bed. Do you think your mother would mind if we did a bit of a shop for clothes as well?’

  He got out of bed, shivering, to put on his trainers. Wrists and ankles stuck out of his clothes and he had to jam his feet in hard to get his trainers on. ‘Bathroom.’

  He stuck his baseball cap on over his ruined haircut, sighed but obeyed. She used a disreputable T-shirt of his to wipe the dust off the furniture, stacking his books neatly on the wide window ledge, chucking more sweet papers into the bin. The broken computer was so old it would have to be thrown. She went to add some screwed-up paper hankies to the bin before she remembered it was full. It was filled with sheets torn from his cherished stamp albums, with the stamps still on them. A dark-blue looseleaf album lay open on the worktop, devoid of its sheets of stamps.

  She pulled the torn sheets out of the bin. Surely they must have been put in there by mistake? But who would …?

  ‘Tod, why are these in the bin?’

  He didn’t even glance at them. ‘I don’t want them any more. Can we go now?’

  Anything to get out of that chilly house. She switched off the blower heater and they left. But she couldn’t forget those torn-up sheets of stamps. Only last week he’d been bragging about completing a valuable set from some obscure part of the world. South America? South Africa? Ellie hadn’t really paid attention, except to be pleased that he was enjoying himself. Mauritius? Can’t remember.

  There’d been stamp hinges in his heavy-duty anorak. All the paraphernalia of an enthusiastic collector littered his worktop. Magnifying glass, catalogues, albums.

  She tried to picture the worktop as it had been on Sunday evening when she’d collected him and brought him back. There’d been much the same clutter, but the dark-blue album had then been … where? She rather thought it had been lying flat under one of the catalogues, complete with its full complement of sheets. Sometime between Sunday evening and Tuesday morning Tod had discarded his previously much-loved stamp collection.

  So what did all that mean?

  Liz had told her that she was good at ‘reading the picture’.

  Well, if Ellie were a fanciful sort of person, she supposed that she could read something into what she’d seen. Or not.The sort of experience Tod had been through might well have brought about a new maturity in him. A shedding of childish values, and with them a shedding of childish hobbies. Off with the old. On with the new. Out with collecting stamps. On with a new computer.

  ‘Cereal, porridge, eggs?’

  He nodded so she got busy.

  Or, she thought, if you had a suspicious turn of mind, it could mean that the events of his rape were linked in some way with collecting stamps.

  Midge clattered in through the cat flap and made a leap for Tod’s lap.

  ‘Grrm, prrm,’ said Tod, hugging the cat close. Midge responded by nibbling his ear. Tod laughed. ‘Gerroff, you! Ouch, you’re heavy! And wet, ugh!’

  Ellie proffered a clean tea towel. ‘Dry him off, will you? Or he’ll leave paw marks over everything. Oh, that reminds me. I think I had a letter the other day with a foreign stamp with a cat on it. Sri Lanka or something? No, not Sri Lanka. Where was it? Australia? Now where did I put that envelope?’

  He hunched his shoulders, finished rubbing down the cat and got down to his cereal without replying. She had half expected an airy, Oh, I’ve got bored with stamps. He ate two mouthfuls, pushed the bowl away.

  Ellie thought he might eat some more if she left him alone. Besides, she wanted to make a phone call. She told herself she was being nosy and over-suspicious, but it wouldn’t do any harm to phone a friend and ask a question or two about stamps, would it? Hadn’t Kate once mentioned that Armand had an interest in collecting stamps before he met her? Something about going to a stamp fair – whatever that might be. Neither Kate nor Armand would be at home on a weekday morning, but they had an answerphone. Ellie left a message for whoever got home first, asking for information as to who might collect stamps locally.

  W
hen she went back into the kitchen, Tod had almost finished his bowl of cereal, so that little ploy had worked. Gus loomed in the doorway from the half-finished conservatory and at that same moment the doorbell rang.

  It was Mrs Dawes on the doorstep, panting with the effort of shaking drops off her umbrella.

  ‘Ellie, thank God you’re in. I’ve just heard the most terrible – oh, not that I believe it for a minute, but …’ She stamped her boots clear of the wet on the doormat and then caught sight of Gus lurking in the kitchen. Putting her hand to where her heart might be under layers of clothing, Mrs Dawes whispered, ‘I didn’t believe it. He’s not still here? Ellie, don’t you realize …?’

  ‘Come in, dear. Let me take your coat. I’m just making breakfast for Tod …’

  ‘You’ve got the boy here? But …!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ellie in a false, cheerful voice. ‘I’ve got company, as you can see. Tod, can you put the kettle on for me? And put some toast under the grill for yourself. Gus, you’re on your way out, aren’t you?’

  Gus cringed. ‘Got no umbrella. And what’s that woman done with my socks, eh? Tell me that.’

  ‘I’ll ask her,’ said Ellie, soothing Mrs Dawes into the living room and shutting the door on the others. ‘Is it too early for a sherry, dear?’

  Mrs Dawes gobbled, her shaking finger pointing at the door. ‘You don’t know? No, you can’t know or you wouldn’t have let that man …’

  ‘He’s staying here on a day-to-day basis till he can move into the hostel. If he’s sober, I give him a bed. If not, I throw him out. All right?’

  The threads of red on Mrs Dawes’ cheeks began to glow. ‘How can you take such a man into your house and expose that poor lad to …?’