by Lisa Cutts
Chapter 53
We drove to the city centre, parked and made our way on foot to the library. A cheerful-looking middle-aged woman greeted us at the enquiry desk, where we introduced ourselves and asked for Linda Hussain. After a very short wait, a white woman dressed in trousers and a navy blouse, hijab covering her hair, hurried towards us, holding out her hand in greeting.
‘I’m Laura. We spoke on the phone. And this is Nina,’ said my friend, shaking Linda’s hand.
Linda greeted me and said with a slight local accent, ‘You’ve come a long way. I hope I can help. Come with me to my office.’ We followed her through a door marked ‘Staff Only’, and along a short corridor to her office. The three of us barely squeezed inside alongside the three chairs and the desk, which took up most of the space. Linda had to shut the door before Laura or I could sit down as there wasn’t enough room to do so otherwise. Clearly, this local council couldn’t be accused of squandering taxpayers’ money on decadent library facilities for its staff.
‘Can I get either of you a tea or coffee?’ Linda asked. Personally I didn’t want one, based largely on the fact that it would involve another furniture shuffle. Besides, three cups of boiling liquid in the room would further increase the temperature. The window didn’t look as though it had ever been opened. The heat didn’t seem to be bothering Linda or Laura. Both Laura and I declined her offer.
I began first. ‘Thanks for seeing us, Linda.’
She smiled at me. Her eyes were blue. I wondered what colour her hair was.
‘I know that police have been here before and spoken to you and your staff. I can’t go into details but we have reason to believe that Benjamin has been in or around the Home Counties since he went missing almost six weeks ago. Laura and I are part of the investigation team making enquiries for three linked murders we’ve had in our area. Please don’t think that Benjamin is in any way involved or has come to harm. We’re simply here double-checking any leads and trying to jog people’s memories for new information.’
Linda reached to her left and opened the desk drawer, moving to her right as she did so, to avoid being hit on the knee no doubt. She took a black mobile phone out of the drawer. ‘You’ll be wanting this,’ she said, placing it down on the ink blotter in front of her. ‘It’s Benjamin’s, I think. We emptied out his locker for the police when they were here the first time. Then we had a temporary member of staff replace him and gave him the locker below Benjamin’s. Yesterday, he found this wedged at the top, right at the back. He’s here if you want to speak to him.’
Laura and I peered at the phone in wonder, as if we’d never seen such technology before. I pulled a pair of disposable rubber gloves and an evidence bag from my folder.
‘Sorry,’ said Linda, ‘I didn’t think about fingerprints. At least two of us have handled it.’
‘No, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘Your fingerprints on it aren’t a problem, but mine are a different matter. My boss won’t be too pleased if I get mine on it. They’re on the fingerprint database, along with my DNA.’
‘I’ll show you the locker,’ said Linda. ‘Then I’ll get Mike in here. He was the one who found the phone. I don’t think there’s much else we can help you with. We’ve already given copies of Benjamin’s files to the police but we’re happy to supply anything again that you think may be useful.’ She stood up and hesitated. ‘Listen, I’d like to be present when you speak to Mike. He’s quite young and only been here two days. As I said, he was only assigned the locker yesterday when he found the phone. I’ve not had time to contact the local police. Then you called to say you were coming. Problem is, we won’t all fit into this room.’
My mobile started to ring, showing a Birmingham dialling code. ‘I think this is the call I’ve been waiting for,’ I said to Laura. ‘You have this room. Is there somewhere else I can take the call?’ I asked Linda, as we rearranged ourselves and the chairs.
‘Yes, next door,’ she said.
I answered the phone as we left the office. By the time I’d stepped into the room Linda showed me to, the caller had introduced herself as Judith Hazlewood from Leithgate Social Services.
I could hear Laura and Linda talking as they walked in the direction of the locker room. This office was even smaller than the one we’d been in previously. It housed only a desk and one chair. There wasn’t even a window. I sat at the desk, notebook open.
‘Thanks for calling me, Judith. I’m from Riverstone police station, investigating a series of murders, and enquiries have led me to Leithgate. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the former asylum in Leithgate which was later used as a children’s home?’ I asked.
There was a pause and, when she spoke, her voice was no longer clear. I pictured her on the other end of the line with her hand over the mouthpiece, shielding the words as she whispered them so they wouldn’t go astray. ‘I’ll talk to you,’ she said, ‘But not on the phone. We’ll have to meet. Tomorrow. Can I see you then?’
I put my hand over my other ear to block out any background noise. I felt I couldn’t risk missing a word of anything she said. ‘Tomorrow’s fine,’ I said. ‘What time and where?’ The sound of Laura, Linda and a man, presumably Mike, striding back along the corridor to Linda’s office covered some of her words. I asked Judith to repeat what she’d said.
‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning in the Bullring. There’s a café there called the Cup of Coffee. I’ll be sitting outside.’
‘Judith, it’s not a problem for us to come to your place of work, unless you don’t want us there,’ I said.
There was another brief hesitation before she replied, ‘I’d just feel happier talking to you out of the office. The whole children’s home thing is still in a lot of people’s minds here. Some can still be very touchy about it. I don’t want to upset my colleagues. When a child is murdered, even years later, it can still touch a nerve.’
Wondering now if I’d heard her correctly, I said, ‘Did you say a child was murdered?’
‘Yes. At the home. That’s the main reason they shut it down.’
‘I’m guessing that the staff were suspected?’
‘No, no. Not the staff, the other children. Have to go. See you tomorrow.’
For some time after Judith hung up, I sat with my phone in my hand, staring at it. I could hear muffled sounds coming from the adjoining office. Knowing that Laura would be taking a statement about the finding of the mobile, I snapped into action to make use of the time while she worked. I called Ray to tell him about the phone. As I suspected he would, he told me to let West Midlands download any information that was on the handset and that I should take a copy of the information, leaving the phone with them, as it probably wasn’t relevant to our murder investigation. I didn’t tell him about the children’s home in case he stopped me from looking any further into it. I did tell him that we had a meeting in the morning with Social Services. That was at least truthful.
Next I telephoned our liaison man to ask for anything he could tell us or find out about a child murder in the 1980s in Leithgate children’s home. Even as he was telling me that he’d find out what he could, it dawned on me that the best place on the planet to conduct research was a library.
I knocked on the door of the occupied office and through the inch-wide crack between door and frame told Laura that I was going to look something up in the public part of the library. Laura turned in her chair to look at me as I peered in at her. ‘Don’t worry, Nina, I’ll finish up here and see you downstairs.’
Having found a computer with internet access, it took me little time to come up with the basic facts: the former mental hospital had been turned into a short-term children’s home while another was being built following on from a non-suspicious fire at the city’s largest home. Initially Leithgate had only been intended to accommodate a handful of children, as it was deemed unsuitable. However, this was quickly forgotten and up to thirty children were placed there at any one time. The staff were mostly from the fir
e-damaged home, while the children were taken from various homes as only the older, more settled children were uprooted, or those intended to be ‘short stays’.
The home was shut down shortly after the death of nine-year-old Peter Woods. He had been found hanging by the neck in one of the disused parts of the former hospital. There was no mention of its having been a murder. It was a huge, tragic embarrassment for the local Social Services, who were mercilessly berated for allowing a former mental home to be used to house children, but it was deemed to have been simply an awful accident. Neither the local nor the national press articles shed much more light on it, other than Peter’s mother coming forward and telling the world that she’d left drink and drugs behind and found Jesus. According to the tabloids, Mrs Woods had been days away from collecting her treasured son, regretted how she had previously lived her life and was now a God-fearing woman. For some reason, she had decided to tell the world this over a double-page spread in a newspaper while lying down wearing transparent clothes, Bible in hand. Copies must have flown off the newsagents’ shelves. Clearly this was the Eighties, before the press cleaned up their act.
Still I failed to find any mention of murder. Pondering whether Judith Hazlewood could be mistaken, or even if I had heard her correctly, I flicked from article to article, so engrossed that I didn’t notice Laura and Linda approaching.
Laura placed her hand on my shoulder, making me jump. ‘Sorry.’ She laughed. ‘We’ve just finished. What are you looking at?’
‘It’s Leithgate children’s home,’ I said, directing my words at Linda. ‘Benjamin was once there.’
She frowned and leaned towards the screen. ‘He never spoke about it,’ she said, ‘but I do seem to remember some sort of scandal there when a child died. He hanged himself, I think.’ She straightened upright, staring down at the floor while she tried to recall what she knew. ‘No, can’t remember anything else,’ she said, shaking her head, her hijab brushing against her shoulders as she did so.
‘Well, thanks, Linda. We’ve taken up enough of your time, but we’re here for another day or two so we may come back or call you if there’s anything else.’
The three of us shook hands, then I said, ‘If you don’t mind, I just want to stay here for a bit longer to show my colleague what I’ve found.’
‘Take as long as you need. It was good to meet you.’
When she was out of earshot, I brought Laura up to speed on the children’s home.
‘This hanging is a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’ she asked.
I chewed on my bottom lip for a couple of seconds before I said, ‘Well, there’s no suggestion at all that the Lloyds had anything to do with the place. From all that I’ve read, it seems that little Peter Woods’ death was just a very sad accident. We’ll know more when we get the paperwork from the local nick and then meet Judith tomorrow.’
‘Don’t know about you,’ said Laura, ‘but I’m knackered. Shall we call it a day and head for the bar?’
‘Best idea you’ve had all day.’
We left the library, got the car and made our way back to the tartan palace.
What the hotel’s rooms lacked in style and presentation, the bar more than amply made up for. The bar staff were helpful and friendly. The criteria for getting a job seemed to be being young, beautiful and Asian. Giggling after my second glass of wine, I decided we should go out and eat before I got too plastered. I was drinking alone, as Laura had a headache and wanted to take it easy given that we had to be at the nick by 8am, get the necessary information, give ourselves time to read it and get to the Bullring for 10am. At least one of us was being sensible. I’d ploughed my way through enough working days in the past with a hangover to even accept it as the normal way to feel at work.
Before I knew it I was back in the Scottish nightmare again. I slept badly, dreaming I was being chased by a haggis. I wasn’t even really sure what a haggis looked like, but it could race along when provoked. Rubbing my eyes next morning, I tried to remember what I’d done to goad the haggis into chasing me but couldn’t. I texted Laura to make sure she was up and got ready to find out whether the local police had found anything suspicious about the sad death of little Peter Woods.
Chapter 54
1st October
Back at the local nick, we found Robin Cox, our liaison. Once I was settled in his office, he handed me the pile of paperwork he’d been able to put together since I called him the previous day. He had gathered a lot of information in a short space of time.
‘I’ve managed to track down the post mortem photographs if you want to see them, too,’ he said. He carried on without waiting for a reply; I was considering whether seeing photographs of a nine-year-old’s body would carry us any further forward. Probably not. ‘They’re in storage, but someone can get them out later today if you need to see them.’
‘Thanks, Robin,’ I said. ‘Why are there post mortem photographs if there wasn’t a police investigation?’
‘Oh, but there was an investigation to start with.’ He blinked three or four times, took his glasses off and laid them on the desk. ‘It was a suspicious death in the beginning. After a few days, when all of the staff and kids had been spoken to, bit of digging about into what an inquisitive sort of child Peter had been, ligature marks examined, that kind of thing, the incident was shut down. It was before my time. Haven’t had a chance to read through that lot.’ He pointed at the three-inch-thick bundle of paper I was holding. He picked his glasses up and put them back on.
‘How about we go and read through this in the canteen, give you a shout if we think of anything else?’ I suggested.
As I said this, a police officer in uniform came in to speak to Robin. I got the impression he was reluctant to do so in front of me and Laura. He was clutching his paperwork to his chest, eyes flitting in our direction. Robin was already engaged in conversation with the newcomer as we stood up to leave.
Reckoning we had about an hour until we had to drive to our next appointment, we sat in the canteen, split the paperwork in two, and attempted to find something to link the children’s home to Operation Guard. For the first twenty minutes or so, we read the odd line out to each other but nothing of great importance was jumping out. Laura grabbed my attention when she said, ‘Bloody hell. I’ve just got to the witnesses’ accounts. These names ring a bell? Benjamin Makepeace, Anthony Birdsall, Adam Spencer?’
‘Tony Birdsall was here? I thought he was from our neck of the woods.’
‘He is, but so is Adam Spencer and we knew about him. That’s Alf’s son, isn’t it?’
‘We need to see Judith this morning and then make some calls. This isn’t right.’ We were running out of time before we met up with her. Ordinarily we would just visit her a second time, but she had sounded on edge as it was, so the more we were able to ask her now, the better. As I talked to Laura, I fanned through the remaining pages I hadn’t got round to reading. ‘If you drive, I’ll read the rest of this.’
‘Nina,’ I heard Laura say, ‘You look terrible. What’s wrong?’ She leant across the table and uncurled my fingers from the creased sheet. Feelings of sadness were engulfing me. I felt very sad for the loss of life, especially the life of a little boy. I found myself wondering if his death all those years ago really could have been an accident. If it hadn’t been, then it forced me to accept that the child had been murdered. We’d left three corpses behind in our own force and had been met with another unexplained death here in Birmingham. I was finding the thought of what could drive a person to mutilate another living human being, and watch their life blood drain away, more unsettling that I’d imagined possible.
I was struggling to think clearly. Judith had mentioned something on the phone about the children being responsible. Three decades on and those children were grown men. One was missing, possibly living a stone’s throw from all three murder victims; another we knew was staying in the same area as the victims; and the last one was the son of the local pol
ice station’s caretaker.
I feigned pulling myself together. ‘Let’s go see Judith. We can make some calls on the way,’ I said to Laura.
‘You really look ill, you know?’ she said.
‘Knew I’d brought you along for a reason,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘I’m OK. Come on. I’ll even let you drive.’ I took the car keys out of my pocket, slid them across the canteen table to her and stood up, making an extra effort not to allow my knees to let me down.
During the journey, I tried and failed to clear my mind and focus. I could feel a terrible burden pushing down on my shoulders. You know when you get that ‘can’t quite put my finger on it’ feeling? That was what I had.
Chapter 55
I kept my feelings to myself. I had a job to do. After Laura parked, we found our way to the Cup of Coffee café using the map at the entrance to the Bullring. As we got nearer, I saw a woman of about fifty-five perching on the edge of a metal chair outside the coffee shop. Although five of the six tables were occupied, I spotted her at once: she was alone, and continually glancing from left to right. She watched us as we walked towards her, and smiled tensely at me as I said, ‘Hello, Judith. I’m Nina and this is Laura.’
‘Hello,’ she said, relaxing her shoulders and loosening her grip on her handbag. She settled back into the chair, crossing her legs.
‘Are you OK talking here?’ I asked. It was busy in the coffee shop as well as on the shopping centre concourse. Once Judith agreed to staying put, Laura went to get us some drinks and I pulled another two chairs closer to the table.
‘Thank you for meeting with us, Judith,’ I began. Just as I was about to say that we’d wait until Laura returned, she narrowed her eyes and beckoned me closer with a nod of her head. I perched on the edge of my chair, moving towards her. I got the impression that she was about to say something I couldn’t miss, and I teetered on the chair to hear her.
‘Stan McGuire told me I could trust you. That’s good enough for me,’ she whispered.