Risk of Harm

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘So what is the answer, then?’

  Neil sighed. ‘We need to know what exactly it is we’re up against. Didn’t Deirdre say the Johnsons didn’t actually pose a danger, to Beckie or to us, in her opinion? What happened today supports that. They didn’t actually physically hurt you, did they? That supports what Deirdre’s said all along. But we didn’t listen to Deirdre. We listened to Saskia.’

  ‘You weren’t there. It felt like a pretty dangerous situation to me.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘And Deirdre never even met the Johnsons. Saskia knows much more about them than she does.’ She shook her head. ‘But you’re right. We have to know what the Johnsons are likely to do before we make any decisions.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ He sounded bone-tired too.

  ‘We need to talk to Saskia.’

  Chapter 15

  I’m raging so I am.

  I’ve got the Three Stooges in the front room, Travis and Ryan on the settee and Jed on the Lazee-Boy, but I cannae sit, I’m moving to the windae and across to the door and back to the windae. I cannae look at them.

  I’m fucking raging.

  ‘What did you say to her?’

  ‘I didnae say shit!’ goes Jed.

  ‘Aye?’ goes Ryan. ‘How was she greeting her face off then, Da? How was she pishing herself?’

  ‘Aye she was feart, any wee lassie would have been feart. But I didnae say nothing to her.’

  Jed’s back chain smoking and the air’s minging with it.

  ‘You’re no smoking round Bekki,’ I goes. ‘Put that fucking fag out.’

  ‘Bekki’s no here.’

  I’m in his face. ‘Put. That fucking. Fag. Out.’ And I’m snatching it from his gob and stubbing it out on the fucking Lazee-Boy, and he’s jumping up and in my face:

  ‘Get off my case Lorraine!’

  ‘Oh, I’m no on your case! When I’m on your case you’ll know about it!’ I push him back down on the Lazee-Boy.

  What did I ever see in the fucking prick?

  But I’m stuck with the bass. He’d no last five minutes out there on his own, so he wouldnae, the fucking loser.

  He’s the reason Shannon-Rose is the way she is – fucking mentalist DNA.

  I sit down in my chair and go to Travis, ‘Get me a rum and Coke, son.’

  While he’s up at the sideboard I eyeball Jed. ‘You’re no going near Bekki again. You’re outta this.’

  ‘Am I fuck.’

  ‘Aye, you are fuck. You want Bekki so feart that when we get her she’s gonnae go running off to the fucking polis first chance she gets? We cannae keep her locked up the rest of her life!’

  ‘Aye Da,’ goes Ryan. ‘Keep your neb out, aye?’

  Jed goes in a huff, sitting like a big bairn in the Lazee-Boy with his arms folded, eyeballing the carpet.

  Travis hands me my rum and Coke and goes to look out the windae. ‘Polis.’

  Through the nets I can see them pulling up in the street. ‘Right,’ I goes. ‘Yous were at the Botanic Gardens and then you –’ I point at Jed ‘– saw Bekki. Aye she’s a lot older but you’d know her anywhere. It wasnae an intentional breach of the court order. Aye?’

  Jed gives me evils.

  ‘You never touched they bitches. You never touched Bekki.’

  ‘We didnae,’ goes Travis.

  ‘But you’ve got to keep on about it, aye? We dinnae want no trouble, we’re just that upset. Seeing Bekki was hard for yous. But we’re no gonnae do nothing. We’re no gonnae snatch her. She’s best off where she is, aye? We’re no gonnae make contact again.’

  The doorbell rings.

  Ryan gets up, a wee smile on his face. The local polis are all shit-scared of Ryan. He goes out to the hall and I hear the door opening and Ryan going:

  ‘Gentlemen! What can we do for yous?’

  Travis sits back down on the settee. ‘What if they flit again, Maw?’

  I lean forward. ‘They’re no flittin’. They’re no going nowhere.’ I lean back. ‘Now shut it.’

  Flora and Neil were shown into a room dominated by a large table. The surface was some kind of cheap veneer, scuffed and scratched and lifting in places. There was a tray in the centre with mugs, a cream jug and a bowl of coffee-stained sugar. A plate of biscuits.

  The tall man asked: ‘Tea or coffee?’

  Neil shook his head. Flora asked if she could have a glass of water.

  The man went to a cooler in the corner of the room.

  The others sat down at the table, and the woman who’d introduced herself as Yvonne Richards smiled and said, ‘I’m so sorry this has happened.’

  ‘I don’t know how they can have found us,’ said Flora as she sat down and the tall man placed the water in front of her. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is Saskia not going to be here?’ said Neil. ‘Even if she doesn’t work for you any more, would it not be possible for her to be here?’ They’d been told that Saskia Mair no longer worked for Glasgow City Council. ‘She knows more about the Johnsons than anyone. We need to talk to her. We need to know how much of a danger they actually pose to us.’

  Yvonne exchanged a quick look with the other woman, Frances someone, then sat down at the table, placed her forearms on it and leant towards them. She was about Flora’s age, with a round face, big eyes and a Cupid’s bow mouth, like a child’s drawing of a woman. ‘Saskia Mair doesn’t work here any more because she’s been suspended. It’s – I’m afraid it’s a very sensitive matter and not yet in the public domain.’

  ‘She’s under police investigation,’ said the man.

  Yvonne flicked him a look. ‘We feel that it’s necessary, given the circumstances, to tell you what’s happened, but I do have to stress that this is confidential. Any media attention could jeopardise a future prosecution.’

  ‘Prosecution? For what?’

  ‘I’m afraid this is going to come as a shock.’ Yvonne looked past them to the door, as if wishing she could make a break for it. ‘Saskia Mair has been accused of harming a child to whose case she was assigned.’

  Neil grabbed Flora’s hand under the table. ‘Harming a child? Saskia?’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Flora. ‘I’m sure Saskia would never do that.’

  It was as if some evil god was playing with her, with her life, with the people in it. Taking everything and twisting it out of shape.

  Yvonne sighed. ‘There is video evidence.’

  The man said, ‘Saskia Mair was assigned to the case of a family with a small child, a boy of three, on the At Risk register. She reported that she felt he was at imminent risk of harm. After a visit to the family, she applied for an Emergency Child Protection Order, saying she’d found unexplained cuts and bruises on the child’s body.’

  ‘That’s what happened with Beckie,’ Flora said numbly.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘The family are saying it was Saskia? Who hurt the boy?’

  Yvonne nodded. ‘They’re not just saying it. They have video evidence. They’d set up hidden cameras in all the downstairs rooms because – well, it’s not relevant, but the child’s father suspected his partner’s brother of stealing cash from them. Anyway. The camera in the back bedroom, where Saskia was examining the child, caught her hitting him with a rolled-up umbrella and cutting his skin with nail scissors.’

  Flora gripped Neil’s hand tight. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Saskia has admitted it,’ said the man. ‘She said she did it to enable the child to be removed from the family. She said she needed evidence of harm, and there wasn’t enough.’

  ‘So she supplied it,’ Neil said hollowly.

  ‘She supplied it.’ Yvonne closed her eyes briefly. ‘Which is a terrible thing to have done. But Saskia – she was under a tremendous amount of pressure. The wellbeing of these children was in her hands. Their lives, in some cases. The strain of it evidently just got too much and she… I’m not excusing her. But what she did… She only did it b
ecause she thought, mistakenly of course, that it was the right thing to do for the children.’

  ‘She did it to Beckie,’ Flora said. ‘She hurt Beckie.’

  ‘She’s denying ever having done it before or since,’ said the man. ‘But there is a possibility – we feel it’s unlikely to have been an isolated incident. The police investigation will include Beckie’s case, I’m afraid. There are photographs of the cuts and bruises that were found on her. They’ll be compared with the injuries found on the boy…’

  ‘She’s going to be taken away from us,’ said Flora. ‘She’s going to have to go back and live with the Johnsons.’

  I skedaddle through the door from the lounge to the kitchen. When the polis come round the house for Jed or one of the boys, it’s best if I’m no there, so they’re no looking at me thinking, Lorraine willnae let them touch us so she willnae.

  I leave the door open and stand with my eye to the crack at the hinges.

  Ryan’s all: ‘Take a seat, gentlemen, take a seat,’ waving at the settee.

  One of them looks about twelve year old.

  Ryan goes, ‘Can I get yous a tea or a coffee?’

  ‘You’re all right,’ says the adult one. He’s got his notebook out. ‘Now, Mr Johnson… We’ve had a complaint regarding a breach of a court order. We have witness statements to the effect that three white males, matching the descriptions of yourself, your father and Travis here, confronted the adoptive mother of your niece Bekki, and the child herself, yesterday afternoon in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Aye,’ goes Ryan. He sits down in my chair and leans forward towards the polismen. ‘Hands up, that was us right enough. I’m no gonnae lie to you. But it was a pure accident so it was. My brother, he’s starting a market garden business and we’d gone for a deek at the Botanic Gardens for a wee bit inspiration. Took the old guy along because he doesnae get out much these days.’ He nods at Jed. ‘But he was “tired and emotional”, if you get me, and we have to leave him in the motor while we’re in the Gardens. Then when we get back he’s only gone and clocked Bekki, and he’s out the motor giving it: “Wee Bekki-hen!” and aye, maybe he’s out of order. But he’s no all there. He’s a vulnerable adult so he is. And God, you can maybe understand the shock of it, aye? Here’s this old jakie wakes out an alcoholic stupor and there’s his wee granddaughter that was taken off of him six year ago standing right there on the pavement? He’s looking for the pink elephants and giant fucking bunnies, but naw, it’s Bekki and she’s fucking real. No one with her, mind. Eight-year-old lassie on her own in the street? That’s no right.’

  Ryan sits back in the chair.

  The adult polisman goes, ‘So, Mr Johnson. You’re admitting the breach of the court order?’

  ‘Aye. But it was unintentional, like. We’re no out to make trouble for Bekki or her new family. We dinnae want no hassle. Even Ma and Da have accepted it now, so they have, that she’s better off with they folk. We’re no going to go hassling them again. Aye? Could you tell them sorry like, it was just the shock, eh, after all these years? Da maybe was out of order, but as I say, he’s a vulnerable adult.’

  The two polismen eyeball Jed.

  ‘Right. Yes. I see.’

  ‘Aye,’ goes Ryan. ‘Forty year on the bevvy will do that to you. Take a good look, gents. There’s a walking public health warning right there, eh?’

  ‘And is Mr Johnson able to understand why we’re here and what we’re saying?’

  ‘Course I’m fucking able to –’ goes Jed.

  ‘Okay Da, okay.’ Ryan smiles. ‘Kids call him Father Jack. Wee rascals.’

  ‘Ah… Hmmph. Well. I think, in the circumstances, we’ll be able to offer you the option of a caution rather than involving the courts. Now, you don’t have to accept the caution, which will be entered into the record, including the Police National Computer. You can go to court if you so wish. And you don’t have to decide right now. You may wish to take legal advice.’

  ‘Naw naw,’ goes Ryan. ‘You’re fine. Caution’s fine.’

  ‘Mr Johnson?’ He looks at Jed.

  ‘Aye,’ goes Jed.

  ‘That’s barry,’ goes Travis. ‘We have to sign it, eh? God, I could recite what’s on that form so I could –’

  ‘Aye, I think we’re all fine with cautions, thank you,’ goes Ryan. ‘And please pass on our apologies to the family and wee Bekki. We’re hoping when she’s eighteen maybe she’ll get in touch, but we understand that’s her decision.’

  ‘And you understand that the court order prohibits any contact in the meantime?’

  Ryan’s nodding. ‘It wasnae that we were intending making contact. It just happened, eh? We hold our hands up but. Da shouldnae have spoke to Bekki. God, I wish he hadnae, causing trouble and that. Poor wee lassie. We only want what’s best for Bekki, you know?’

  Belter.

  And as the polismen are getting out their forms and that, and Travis is going, ‘Naw, I dinnae need to read it, I’ve seen it afore,’ Ryan turns and gives me a wee wink.

  That boy’s something else so he is.

  When it’s his turn to sign he squeezes onto the settee next the twelve-year-old and goes, ‘Cosy,’ and signs the form and then he goes, ‘You’re Raymond Bain’s laddie, eh? I was at the school with your cousin Isla. Went with her a while. What’s Isla up to these days?’

  The laddie’s got a beamer on him so he has, and the other polisman is getting up and giving him evils, and the laddie jumps up off the settee and goes, ‘She’s fine, aye.’

  ‘God I was mad for Isla. Right clever wee bint. She went the University?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Computer Sciences, aye?’

  ‘Naw, Geography. She was gonnae do Comp –’

  ‘Thank you Mr Johnson,’ goes the other polisman. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’

  I give it a wee minute and then I’m out the kitchen and high-fiving Travis and going to Ryan, ‘Vulnerable adult, oh God, vulnerable adult,’ and me and Ryan and Travis are pissing ourselves and Jed’s like that: ‘I’ll give you fucking vulnerable, ye wee bass, I’ll give you fucking vulnerable.’

  And aye, you can see it in his bangstie wee eyes, he’s going radge, but he’s no fit for the boys and hasnae been for years, and Ryan’s in his face giving it ‘Oh aye, Da, go on then, you fucking old vulnerable bastard,’ and Jed’s raging so he is, kicks the door on his way out the room, and Travis is giving him the finger.

  What goes around comes around, eh?

  Chapter 16

  Saskia’s house looked different in the daylight. It was a 1960s semi in a nice area in the north of Glasgow, on a housing estate circling a wooded hill. There were lots of grassy areas and a small park across the road from the house, complete with a children’s assault course. A view of the distant hills of the Highlands from the front door. You’d be able to hop in the car and be climbing a Munro in less than an hour.

  But the white paint on the wood cladding was peeling, there were weeds all up the path, and the doorbell didn’t seem to work.

  Neil tried it again, then pounded on the frosted glass door.

  ‘Try to stay calm,’ said Flora.

  But it was so hard, having to rethink everything they’d believed. The way Beckie had been when she came to them, that traumatised, withdrawn little girl – had she been nothing more than a child wrenched from the people she loved, a child who didn’t understand why they didn’t come for her, why she had been abandoned to yet more strangers?

  A figure appeared behind the glass. The door was opened by a tall thin man in bare feet, with an incongruous little beer gut nudging at his T-shirt. He had the pasty, spotty complexion of someone who never saw daylight.

  She barely recognised him as Saskia’s husband.

  ‘Hello. Is Saskia in please? It’s…’ Flora realised that they’d had different names last time they’d met. ‘It’s Alec and Ruth Morrison.’

  His shoulders slumped. ‘Beckie’s parents.’

  ‘Yes. Look.’ N
eil grimaced. ‘We’re not here to make a scene. We just need to talk to her. Please.’

  ‘She’s not here. We’re not together any more.’ He reached behind him. ‘She’s renting a flat in Haghill. This is the address.’

  A dank, deeply shadowed close led from the street between a warehouse and the high wall of a tenement. The concrete underfoot was slimy with algae and slippery, and littered with wrappers and Lucozade bottles and cigarette ends. Flora’s foot crunched on a piece of broken glass. On the wall was a grubby sign with an arrow on it and ‘Nos 34a−h, 35a−h’.

  The close ended in a tiny courtyard surrounded by high tenements which must never get the sun. There were two doors faced with hardboard and painted blue. The one on the right, Number 34, was tattered along the bottom as if a large animal had been gnawing it.

  What an awful place to have to live. But Flora couldn’t summon any pity for Saskia.

  She pressed the buzzer for 34g.

  After a long moment: ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Saskia? It’s Flora and Neil. Parry. We need to talk to you – is that okay? Can we come up?’

  As the door buzzed open, Neil said, ‘I guess we could go back to Alec and Ruth Morrison, couldn’t we? Now they’ve found us, now they obviously know who we are –’

  Flora shook her head. ‘Let’s just leave it for now. Beckie doesn’t need any more upheaval. She’s just got used to being Beckie Parry.’

  The stairwell was lit by a flickering fluorescent light. The windows on each half-landing were so grimy it was impossible to see through them. But the stairs themselves were clean enough, and on the first landing someone had put a sad little loop of fabric bunting above a door painted a tasteful powder blue.

  Flora looked up the stairwell. It spiralled up and up, several more stories. A lot of these high old tenements had been demolished in the Glasgow slum clearances, but many remained. When this tenement had been built in the 19th Century each household would probably have had just one room – ‘single ends’, they’d been called, with a range and a sink and a bed recess, with communal toilets out the back or, later, at the bottom of the stair, to be shared among them all.