“So, Mr Stoker,’ Sylvia asked politely, “how do I contact Mrs Sullivan?”
“My secret,” Paul said. “I found her. You didn’t.”
“But the police will,” Sylvia answered, wanting to hit him, “and so there’ll be no secret in a day or two anyway. But I have Sullivan’s daughter Tracy with me, and she wants to find her mother too. You tell me how to find her, and I’ll arrange a meeting for you with Tracy.”
“Wow. Put her on the phone.”
“Not until I have the mother’s address and phone number.”
“Look, where are you?” the voice demanded. “Let’s meet up. I’ll even buy lunch for you and Tracy if you like. Harry too. Have you still got him?” Sylvia admitted that she still had retained her husband. “Hopefully you don’t live too far away.”
“I expect we do,” Sylvia told him. “I live in Gloucestershire, but I intend coming up to London with Harry and Tracy sometime this afternoon. I could meet you tomorrow morning.”
“Fair enough. I’ll buy breakfast. It’ll be cheaper.”
They travelled that afternoon on the express to London, Tracy nervously walking the aisle, Sylvia dozing, and Harry listening to a book on his earphones. In spite of still excellent eyesight, reading at the same time as resting his eyes had become a favourite occupation. The train trundled and surged to a stop only a few times, when Tracy distracted her nerves by flirting with a young man in the same carriage and offering him a handful of Smarties. Once they arrived at the station, she leapt off the train and stretched, smiling.
With a comb-over hairstyle, Drink in one hand and nose in a large paper handkerchief, Paul Stoker waited the next morning in the corner café, having already finished his eggs, beans and bacon. It was his napkin, stained with a blob of bean sauce, that he used as a hankie.
Tracy had been ten minutes late, so now the whole party was roughly fifteen minutes late. “You’re late,” Stoker said, screwing the napkin onto his empty plate. “I was early. Been waiting for hours.”
Harry sat abruptly. “I might add that we’ve been waiting for nearly two days,” he said, seizing the coffee stained menu from its stand. “You could simply have told us what we need to know on the phone.”
“Too one-sided,” said Paul. “I need something in return. So, tea and toast for everyone? And then we’ll be off.”
Sylvia scowled. “You’re coming with us?”
“The only way you’ll get the woman’s address is if I take you there.” Paul looked across the table to Tracy. “I reckon I know who you are. So you want to meet up with your mum again?”
“That’s my business,” Tracy was scowling too. “But I’ll have scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and a large tea first.”
“Same for me,” said Sylvia.
“Bloody hell,” Stoker sighed. “OK. Your mum works all night anyway, so she’ll be home by now. And it’s only round the corner.”
Chapter Fourteen
Tracy knocked first. There wasn’t any answer, so she peeped through the window. It was a tiny two up two down on the outskirts of the large council housing estate where a narrow street of attached houses remained with no gardens, but a wisp of twiggy bush in front between pavement and front door. One ground floor window was heavily curtained. The upstairs window looked simply obscure.
Tapping again on the window, Tracy called her mother. Still there was no reply.
Paul banged hard on the door. “Open up, police.” He shouted through the letterbox.
There was a rattle from inside as if someone had possibly fallen from the bed, or woken up and reached out for the alarm clock, missing and knocking it to the ground. A long pause followed, then the sound of a cat meowing. Then a voice, “What the fuck do you want?” and another scuffle. It seemed that Gertrude Sullivan was feeding the cat before bothering with the police.
Finally the door opened a crack. Tracy looked at her mother and tried to smile. “Mum?”
“Oh well, better than the cops I suppose,” said the woman, and flounced off, leaving the door open behind her. The kitchen at the back of the house was in a state of astonishing mess, but neither Tracy nor Paul seemed surprised. They sat at the central table while Gertrude put the kettle on.
About eight saucepans, each shedding the remains of the previous meal cooked there, were piled on the draining board. Piles of dirty plates, cups and bowls filled the sink yet the tap swung aside, enabling the filling of the kettle. A small working surface was also covered, both in pots and crusted food. The floor was a clutter of whatever had fallen or been left without any other place to go. The small kitchen table was swirling with spilt tea, but Gertrude found and roughly rinsed five mugs, discovered the packet of teabags on one of the chairs, and the milk which actually sat upright in a half-empty fridge.
“Dunno if I’ve got any sugar,” she said, managing to light a cigarette and speaking through lips clenched around it, “so you can’t have none.”
Tracy got up, rummaged in two cupboards, and found the sugar. “You moved. I didn’t know your new place. You changed your phone number too. I guess you hoped never to see me again.”
Her mother shrugged. “Reckoned you’d find me if you wanted to. I’m on Facebook.”
Tracy rolled her eyes. “Never thought of that. I’ve got no computer stuff.”
“That’s how I found her,” grinned Paul. “Clair Sullivan. I wasted the first month looking for Gertrude.”
“Bloody shit name,” the woman said, vigorously stirring the teabags. “Now, what the fuck do all you people want? And if it’s worth it, how much are you paying?”
“You’d like me to pay you for a mug of brewed yuck and the chance to see my mother again?” She sipped the tea with a grunt. “Are these second-hand tea bags?”
Her mother grinned. Her two front teeth were missing. “No, kiddo. Just a bit stale. I get ‘em cheap, and I like ‘em strong. Suits me fine. So drink it, don’t waste it.”
Drinking her tea without complaint, Sylvia rested her elbows in the spilt slops on the table and smiled. “I should introduce myself. I’m Sylvia, and this is my husband Harry. Paul Stoker here mentioned Harry in his book. Almost by mistake, Harry was the first to discover your husband, which is what led to his original arrest.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from him lately?” asked Harry.
Gertrude thought about it. “OK,” she said at last. “I have and I haven’t. I don’t reckon I can claim no fucking fortune. How about a hundred?”
“Pounds?” Tracy was aghast.
“Twaddle,” said Paul, crossing his arms and leaning back on the little wooden chair. “How about twenty?”
“I can get more than that for a blow job,” Gertie objected.
“I don’t want no pissing blow-job,” growled Paul. “Not from you, anyway. I’ll make it twenty-five and not one penny more.”
She glowered. “Thirty.”
Getting a little bored, Sylvia snapped open her handbag and pulled out two twenty pound notes. “Now,” she said, pushing these across the table to the other woman, “I need a good hour or more talking about you, Tracy and Lionel. I want to know every single detail you can give me. My husband has a little voice recorder, and Paul can take notes if he wants to. But,” and she stared solemnly into Gertrude’s tired eyes, “you speak only to me and to Tracy. Right?”
Gertrude nodded. “But call me Clair”. She held up one of the twenty pound notes and fluttered it at Tracy. “Nip round the corner, love, and get us some fresh milk and a small packet of decent T-bags.”
“Oh, shit,” sighed Tracy, who waved away the money and marched off, leaving the front door open behind her.
Sylvia continued as Paul scrabbled with his notebook and a pen which didn’t seem to work. “First and foremost,” Sylvia resumed, “have you heard from Lionel within the past month, or indeed, since he escaped gaol, and have you any idea where he might be?”
Gertrude began an afternoon of mumbled, “No’s” But she had some re
marks to offer while Tracy made cups of tea.
“I was just a kid on the streets. Lionel weren’t nothing more. But I felt sorry for him. His mum had been a worse bitch than you could guess, I reckon. His dad ran off. Now I do know one thing, he killed his mum. My poor lion, he was no more than thirteen. He’d come home from school after being bullied all day. He didn’t go to school often, but he’d gone on purpose ‘cos he wanted a job and decided school had to teach him maths and reading. Well, the kids had tripped him up and sniggered and called him names all day, calling him a deformed monster. One had thrown a brick and it hit his head. He come home to be alone and miserable, but when he got back his mum were on the floor pissed out of her head, and he had to climb in the window cos the door was blocked. So he got a carving knife and banged it in all over her. She never even woke up, just gurgled and bled out.”
Paul was writing furiously, having got his pen to work. “Did you know him then?” he asked.
“Nah,” Gertrude said, shaking her uncombed tousle of greying hair. “But he told me cos I felt so bloody sorry for him. An ugly sod, he was, with that nasty megallo thing he has.”
“Acromegaly.” Everyone ignored Harry.
“She tried to cut his prick off, you know,” Gertrude said, “when he was just a little kid. And she never took him to no doctors. Anyway, he dragged her body upstairs, bunged it in the attic, and washed the blood off the lino downstairs. They didn’t have no carpet. A year later before he was going to move, he flung her outta the window into the back yard and burned the remains. I reckon that started him off liking the wrong stuff.”
“Was he a good husband?” asked Sylvia with considerable doubt.
“Hardly.” Gertrude laughed. “He beat me rotten and got me working the streets for money. He worked on building sites for a bit, but when we had enough cash, then he got driving lessons and went off on them coaches. I stopped work when Karyn come along. She was a pretty little tot. He didn’t see her much.”
“And then Tracy?”
“Leo got the sack,” Gertrude continued. “He come home after ever so long away. I didn’t want him no more, but it were mighty hard saying no to that bugger. So yes, I had Tracy, and I put Karyn on the game. I joined her when I could. Leo wouldn’t babysit so I left Tracy alone at nights. But she was alright. Nice little kid. Always alive when we come back in the morning.”
Tracy was biting her lip, then jumped up abruptly and put the kettle on again. Gertrude looked up. “Yes, child of rape, you are, kiddo. But I’d had rotten kid deaths before and I didn’t want another – so I kept you. Be thankful.”
Turning with sudden vehemence, Tracy said, “You were on the game too, Mum. How do you know I was Dad’s? With a bit of luck he’s not my father at all.”
Sylvia raised an eyebrow. “Well, Gertrude. Or Clair, as I’m happy to call you. Can you be sure who Tracy’s father is?”
Her voice was just audible over the sound of the boiling kettle. “Dunno. But I used condoms and other stuff when I was working. I didn’t with that pig, ‘cos he raped me. I couldn’t stop him. Then he buggered off. It was nice for a little bit, with Karyn looking after Tracy and me working and getting the dole, and that bugger gone away. But then he came back.”
Nodding, Sylvia said, “And then Karyn?”
Interrupting, Paul said, “You told me. You took some of the blame. Don’t go changing that.”
“I always take some blame,” Gertrude muttered. She wore a thick flounced nightdress, cream flannelette with pink roses patterned over. Now she began to pick at the lace on the bottom of the cuffs. “Karyn was out working. She did most evenings, but never till late. She kept it to a couple of hours a day, and if it was raining, she didn’t go off at all. She never brought the blokes back here either. She went to a room in a place nearby. Anyway, she went out one night. Lionel had been here on and off for a couple o’ weeks, but I didn’t see him that night. I knew some of what he’d been up to. He liked talking about it, but I never asked. It was sick. I wanted a divorce, but I never dared ask. He went off more than he was at home, so at least that helped. Well, Karyn never came home that night, but she came the next morning. She were hurt and she said it were her dad. I was shocked. Of course I was. “
Paul was grinning. Harry looked sick. Sylvia said, “Claire, did you help actually murder your daughter? Was it to keep her quiet?”
Gertrude burst into copious sobs, but they did not sound entirely natural. “Karyn told me Lionel done raped her, and nasty too. He hurt her. She told him she never wanted to see him again, and she told me she was going to the police. Well, I knew he’d kill all of us if that happened, so I done shouted and screamed at her. Naught else I could do. I did lash out. Well, it were just a bit o’ temper. Frantic, I was. So I hit her, but nothing terrible. She went up to bed. Then later Leo, he came home and sniggered about what he’d done to Karyn. I told him I wanted a divorce, and I said as how if he refused, Karyn wanted to go to the police.”
“So you knew what he’d do.”
“No.” Gertrude continued to fiddle with her lace cuffs. “I thought as how he’d march off and never come back. He slapped me a few times, sort of nasty but I’d had worse off him. Then he marched upstairs. I hear bangs and thumps but no screams. He came down about half an hour later and told me I’d better not do anything about it, and he went out. I went upstairs to talk to Karyn. She were on top of the bed, all undressed, poor little thing.”
“She was dead?”
“Quite dead. Head near off. Lots of stabs. Real nasty. I went running downstairs and cried meself to sleep.”
“No phoning the police?”
“He done killed her. I’d be next. He come back the next day. I went into the kitchen and got a knife to defend meself. But he picked Karyn up and said as how he’d bury her, and I couldn’t never say a word or he’d roast me alive. So I never said nothing. Not till I met up with Paul and he paid me for the true story. And I never said as how I helped kill Karyn. That weren’t a fair way to put it. I just said as how it was part my fault ‘cos I said as how Karyn threatened to go to the police.”
Tracy was now sitting crying quietly in the corner. “You must be my mum,” she mumbled to her knees, “but I hope he ain’t my dad. And I never want to see any of you ever again. I’ll never phone and I’ll never come here, and I’m never walking the streets again neither. That’s your example, and I hate it. I’ll be a waitress or something. And I hope Dad finds you and does you too.”
“Bitch.” Gertrude snapped, but didn’t look up. Tracy stayed in the corner on the floor. She made no further attempt to clean up or make the tea. In miserable silence, she waited for Sylvia and Harry to finish.
Sylvia was saying, “And have you spoken to the police lately?”
“Not since about a month ago. Two months maybe. They came around and I couldn’t stop them looking all over the house, but they didn’t say much.”
“So the last important point is just that,” Sylvia sighed. “Have you the slightest idea how he’s evaded capture all this time, and where he might be hiding?”
Pretending to blow her nose and wipe her eyes, Gertrude scowled. “No. He ain’t gonna contact me, is he! Besides, if he got on the phone, I’d hang up. After all that happened as a kid, he don’t mind living in junk and old sheds and stuff. He lived on a cold beach once. And he steals easy, bits o’ food and cars and so on. Money. Clothes. Just takes stuff that’s easy to grab. With a stolen car, he could’ve done the tunnel. Might be in France. Switzerland. All sorts.”
“He has no passport, nor legal identification papers, and a stolen car would be identified as soon as he tried to leave the country.”
“I bet there’s plenty as manages it.” Gertrude stood, waving her arms. “I reckon you’ve well had your forty quid and more. So you can all buzz off. No I ain’t got no idea where the bugger is, and I don’t want to know. Ask that floozy kiddo of mine, I reckon she knows. I doesn’t. Now bugger off and leave me in peace.”
“Not the sweetest woman I’ve ever met.”
“The whole day was rather a waste of time, I’m afraid,” Sylvia said. “But if we hadn’t done it, we would have kept on thinking it should be done. So OK, now it’s over and done with.”
“And apart from upsetting Tracy, it had very little purpose.”
“I’m not upset,” Tracy interrupted. “It proves me right, doesn’t it? I slept in a pigsty, under the stairs. I didn’t always have anything to eat. My mother was a whore and a real bitch. My father – or step-father, whatever he is, was and still is a maniac. A bloody sicko. I hope he gets shot. Or chopped in little pieces like he does to other people.”
“So you’ve met her,” said Paul, sulking slightly. “That’s what you asked for, isn’t it? And she’s OK. She put up with a lot from that monster.”
“I’m not interested.” Harry shook his head. “Look, thanks and everything, but you got a lot of facts wrong in your first book, and I don’t recommend another one. In the meantime, I want a decent dinner and a decent night’s rest, and then I fancy going home.”
“Sounds like an intelligent choice,” said Sylvia, hands in pockets.
Tracy scurried after. “Do I come to dinner with you?”
Sylvia smiled. “Yes of course. A slap-up dinner. But then we’re off to Gloucestershire again. I expect the police will be visiting you soon. You won’t get bored.”
“I’d sooner come back with you.” She looked drained, miserable and lost.
“After meeting your mother again like that, I suppose it’s damned depressing,’ Harry conceded. “But you can’t keep jaunting between Gloucestershire and Nottingham and London. Nor can we. It’s confusing. I want my home comforts, and you should enjoy yours.”
“We’ll meet up for dinner,” said Sylvia. “We can discuss everything else over a decent roast beef.”
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