A Cry in the Night

by Tom Grieves

  ‘Seen worse,’ she replied. She had, but she didn’t know why she said it. An attempt to alleviate the gloom, maybe. A need not to wallow in it.

  He nodded earnestly, his inexperience showing.

  ‘Your sergeant’s in a bit of a state,’ she added. Behind Gareth, she saw Adam come out of the one of the neighbouring flats. He caught her eye and shook his head. Nothing to work with. As expected. She looked down and saw the kids cycling around the cop car again. One of them had been in that flat, most likely. Smashing and grabbing. The carelessness was disgusting.

  ‘He doesn’t like it when they do it to young mums,’ Gareth said, and it took her a moment to rewind their conversation and remember what he was talking about.

  ‘Yeah, he can be surprisingly chivalrous,’ she said, but the joke was lost on the young PC.

  She looked back inside and saw that Jade had come into the corridor and was staring into her sitting room, inspecting the damage. She saw her start to cry and watched as Malcolm put a big arm around her shoulder. Jade leaned into him, but Zoe knew this wouldn’t make him feel any better. He wanted to be a champion. He always had been. She felt a pang of sympathy for him as she noted his grey hair and the creases around his eyes.

  ‘We’ll get them, won’t we?’ Gareth asked. ‘We’ll catch the cunts, right?’

  ‘Don’t say that word,’ she said.

  ‘Oh God, it’s political correctness gone mad,’ Gareth scoffed. ‘Cunt say this and cunt say that,’ he said, a little too pleased with his own joke. Zoe just shook her head.

  ‘But we will catch them, right?’ he said, serious again.

  Zoe looked down at the kids below. The ones on bikes rode in long slow, bored circles over and over. Not trying to run, not trying to hide. Slow circles leading nowhere.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Sam arranged the six files on his desk into two neat rows of three. He kept everything evenly spaced and ordered. His handwriting was small and neat. He underlined and circled facts and important details as if he were an accountant checking the books. Although he was no slob, he was rarely so fastidious. But this work needed some insulation against the details.

  He read again about the nanny and little Melinda, and how the poor young police constable had found the girl drowned in the bath. Then he cross-referenced the details with the death of James Harrison at the hands of his own mother in the local swimming pool. Both times, he found the same name defending them: Helen Seymour.

  He opened the third file where Jenny Smeeton, the aunt of a young boy (Leo, eleven years old), had been found shaking and shivering on the kitchen floor after repeatedly smashing her nephew’s skull against an old-fashioned butler sink. Blood was splattered across the ceiling as well as the floor and was all over her hands and body. Once again, Helen Seymour was listed as counsel for the defence.

  Case four. At first, Lucy Harvey’s death was considered a terrible accident. Her canoe had overturned during an adventure holiday just outside of Bolton, and because the incident had occurred on a bend in the river where there had been no witnesses, there had been no initial suspicions. However, the behaviour of Lucy’s elder stepsister, Annie, had been noted by the police and by the trip’s staff: a strange silence that might have been shock or grief but seemed colder and weirder. It was the small girl who had been sitting on the riverbank who eventually came forward – herself traumatised by what she had seen: a sudden lunge and attack; Annie holding her sister underwater until the little girl stopped struggling, and then letting her drift away, capsized, to be discovered later. Swabs under Annie’s fingernails found traces of Lucy’s skin.

  Helen Seymour defended the case.

  Case five found Yasmin Ng suffocated to death by the use of a plastic shower curtain. The prime suspect in the case, defended by Helen Seymour, was her mother, who had calmly phoned the police to tell them of her actions but then never spoke again.

  And case six was Sarah Downing, whose son was found drowned in a lake and whose daughter was still missing.

  Sam put a simple red line under Helen Seymour every time her name was listed.

  No client ever spoke again once Helen had talked to them. Even when the evidence against them was undeniable, she found loopholes and technicalities to lessen their punishments. Both Elizabeth Harrison and the nanny who murdered Melinda were put into psychiatric units after being deemed unfit to stand trial. The evidence found by the police which incriminated Annie was deemed unreliable after Helen contested it. The veracity of the little girl’s evidence against her was then derailed in court and a jury was unable to come to a verdict. Annie walked free. However, so traumatised was she by the events that she subsequently had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide.

  Yasmin’s mother was due to stand trial later that month, but the case had been delayed due to her deteriorating health (she’d been assaulted in prison) and the withdrawal of her previous confession – which Sam assumed was directly related to Helen Seymour’s appearance as defence counsel – and the police were in chaos after vital evidence had gone missing.

  The case against Jenny Smeeton should also have been cast-iron: blood on her clothes, found with the victim, no denial or alibi. But police were also troubled by the lack of motive, and once Helen was brought on board, a statement was released which claimed that Jenny had found the boy already dead and the blood found on her was only there because she had picked him up, desperately hoping that she might help in some way. The trial was due to begin in three months’ time.

  Sam took a clean sheet of paper and began writing.

  1. Nanny. Bath tub. Drowning. Does not speak. Mad? Helen Seymour.

  2. Mother. Swimming pool. Drowning. Does not speak. Mad? HS.

  3. Aunt.

  He stopped and went back over the file. A boy’s head repeatedly smashed against a kitchen sink. He found the pathologist’s report and checked it out. The sink had been full of water. A small amount had been found in the boy’s lungs. The realisation shook within him: she had tried to drown him first. Clearly he had put up too much of a fight so she resorted to bludgeoning him to death.

  3. Aunt. Sink. Drowning attempt? Does not speak. Mad? HS.

  4. Stepsister. River. Drowning. Does not speak. Suicide. HS.

  5. Mother. Shower.

  A shower. Water again. Sam looked through the reports, looking for the connection, looking for water. The girl died while having a shower. But she was strangled, suffocated to death. He reread the files again and again, but there was nothing more.

  5. Mother. Shower. Suffocation (??). Does not speak. HS.

  6. Sarah Downing.

  He stopped there and put the pen down. He ran his finger down the list. Women in a position of trust, brutally killing young children. Water was a key factor, though there was no obvious reason why. And each time, their cases were defended by Helen Seymour QC.

  No connection beyond female. No age, no race. No motive in any case.

  Children. Murder. Water. Helen Seymour.

  Outside his office, two detectives raced past, talking excitedly about a case. They spoke high and fast, laughing with the adrenalin of the moment. Sam watched them and felt trapped behind his desk. All of these cases had been high-profile. They’d created hours of media coverage and reams of press print – the gruesome facts, latest speculation, debates about the monsters in our society, it ran and ran. The internet had been ablaze with interest. But despite a geographical link of sorts (the North-West) no one seemed to feel there was any real connection. The fever eventually passed. And Sam was now the only one still watching. The connection wasn’t just Helen Seymour. It was water. And it was women.

  Sam wrote another word on the piece of paper: ‘Witches’. Then he crossed it out and ran his pen heavily across the word until it was completely illegible. That bloody lake, he thought to himself. Those fells, that cold water and those silly, ancient fairytales. He was annoyed with himself for considering such nonsense. Why write it down? Why even think it?
r />   He turned the other way and stood up, craning his neck to see out of the tiny window that offered some light and a tawdry view out onto the city. From where he stood, Sam could see cranes and church spires, poking up above dull lines of red tiles. The sky was a uniform grey, low and flat. Sam remembered the thick clouds that soared so high above the fells and the way the sun would make the lake change colour from grey to blue to gold. He remembered the water. He remembered Arthur Downing’s body and he worried about Lily, maybe somewhere in the deep. Waiting for him.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Zoe caught Sam trying to slip out of the back entrance and she grabbed his arm playfully, telling him she was coming along for the ride. Uniform were working themselves up into a lather over the vandalism case, so she was glad to be away from them. She also wanted to keep an eye on him.

  They pushed past a stream of PCs who came flooding out of their vans, laden with heavy riot equipment that was battered and scarred, and found Sam’s car near the gates. Soon they were out and away. Zoe glanced back at the station in the car’s side mirror as they set off: a dirty-grey monolith of concrete, squatting miserably amongst its polite neighbours.

  ‘So where’s the adventure?’

  ‘Just checking through the details of an old case. One that got away.’

  ‘I didn’t think you ever let them get away.’

  ‘It wasn’t my case,’ he replied, and she laughed before he told her the details. A boy who had his head caved in on a kitchen sink. His aunt had been arrested for his murder. One of those damn files, she thought.

  They drove for about forty minutes, finally stopping in a middle-class suburban street. It had trees planted tastefully in the pavement and semi-detached houses that cared about their small front gardens. The parked cars were oversize family models with bumper stickers warning of ‘baby on board!’ and there were Neighbourhood Watch stickers on view in several ground-floor windows.

  Sam pointed Zoe towards a house in the middle, a forlorn ‘For Sale’ sign hanging at an angle outside.

  Sam had a set of keys and he let them in. The house had been stripped bare – the parents had taken their other child, a daughter, far away – and there was, of course, no sign now whatsoever that anything untoward had happened here. But still, when they entered the kitchen, Zoe’s eyes went straight to the sink, and then to the floor, as though she expected to spot some evidence of the crime. There was, of course, nothing.

  Sam walked around the room slowly. Zoe watched him go to the window and stare out.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘There were no witnesses to the case,’ he replied.

  ‘None?’

  ‘Not one.’

  She went and stood next to him, and together they looked out at the overgrown garden at the back of the house. At the bottom was a small child’s swing. The wind caught it and blew it ever so slightly, as though a ghost were riding it.

  Behind the garden – which was only ten, maybe fifteen metres long – were other houses, flats, most likely. Sam and Zoe scanned the windows. Most were glazed with opaque glass: bathrooms or toilets. It was clear that nearly all the flats followed the same design and layout and that the views were on the other side of the building. But one window caught both their eyes. It was larger than the others, a study or sitting room – you could just make out the shelves and bookcases. It stared straight down into the kitchen. If someone had been in there, they would have seen everything.

  They walked over to the next street and rang on the appropriate bell. After what seemed an age, a thin, crackly voice answered the intercom. A man.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Police. I’m sorry to bother you, it’s nothing to worry about, but we’d like to ask you a few questions, please.’

  There was always a pause when you told them who you were. Always that intake of breath and panic, no matter how innocent. Zoe waited for it, got it, and then heard a small mutter before the electronic buzz on the heavy front door let them in.

  Sam and Zoe took the lift to the third floor and found the front door open and a small, bespectacled man in his fifties waiting for them. He wore a dull shirt, cardigan and neat brown trousers. He held a battered book in his hands and smiled nervously.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ Sam said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Sam Taylor, this is my colleague Detective Constable Zoe Barnes.’

  They put on their most polite faces and showed the man their warrant cards, which he inspected carefully. Satisfied, he introduced himself as Arnold Heath and led them into the main room; a straightforward rectangular space which was lined, wall-to-wall, with shelves and books. It smelt a little musty. Arnold, a slightly effete fellow, explained that he worked as a lecturer at the university.

  Zoe looked at him and then at Sam. The difference couldn’t have been more stark.

  There was a comfortable armchair positioned by the window. The cops went and stood by it and saw how it afforded a perfect view into the kitchen opposite. But when Sam asked Arnold whether or not he’d seen anything, they were disappointed to hear that he had only moved into the flat one month after the murder had taken place.

  While Arnold fidgeted with excitement, no doubt keen to embellish the adventure for when he later saw his colleagues, Zoe found that she was watching Sam more than him. As her boss questioned and drew polite, slightly breathless answers from the academic, so she saw the way his eyes would always flick back to the window, to the flat opposite, to the sink. It was as though the crime was calling to him.

  Zoe stared out of the window herself. The sun was shining into the kitchen and it reflected off the sink’s taps. She remembered the paper’s excitement at the gore and the now iconic photograph of the boy and aunt together, him wrapped tight in her embrace. In the photograph, it looked as though she was strangling him and the press had delighted in the misinterpretation.

  Sam pushed on until Arnold had nothing more useful to offer. They took details of the estate agent who had helped let out the flat and excused themselves. They left him hopping with excitement at his proximity to a real murder. Zoe wished he’d seen it for real, then his ardour would die quickly enough.

  Arnold waved to them as they got in the lift, hot and excited by their visit. Once the lift doors closed, Zoe sighed.

  ‘Dead end.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe? But he wasn’t there.’

  ‘He arrived a month afterwards, he said. Say someone moved out, they have to give a month’s notice, right?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Zoe saw where he was heading.

  ‘So if they gave a month’s notice, then they’d have left immediately after the murder. What do you make of that timing?’

  *

  The estate agent was a boorish man called Robin Shepherd who was extremely keen to get the police out of his office for fear of losing custom. He found the details of the previous tenant and handed as much over as he could to get them out of the way. They had a name, bank details, references and a mobile phone number. The man’s name was Richard Howell. Sam didn’t budge when the agent tried to move him towards the exit and instead rang the mobile number he’d been given. The line was dead. They also had no forwarding address. The agent tersely described Mr Howell as a problem. He had often been late on rent, had let the property run down and had then disappeared without any explanation.

  ‘That’s all I’ve got, I’m afraid,’ he said, his hands stuffed deep into his red corduroy trousers.

  Zoe sighed. This was going nowhere.

  ‘So he just vanished?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘So how did you get the house on the market so quickly?’ he asked. ‘You couldn’t just let it unless he’d given you formal notice, surely.’

  ‘Well obviously he did.’ Mr Shepherd turned and walked over to his desk and made a show of flicking through papers. But Sam didn’t move. He seemed to grow, standing there, dead still in the centre of that office, saying nothing, just waiting. Eventually the
agent looked up. He saw Sam staring at him and faltered, blustered something about checking some more and came back with a few more details – a phone call on behalf of the tenant saying that he was leaving and to put the house on the market with immediate effect. Sam pressed for the written confirmation that would be needed for such a request, and the agent, rather tetchy at this point, disappeared into the back room again to retrieve the required papers.

  Zoe wondered why Sam was pushing like this, but she was also impressed by his actions. She’d have let this one go by now. But not her boss. It’s what made him better than all the others and why she loved to work with him.

  The agent returned with the forms, making it clear that he had nothing more to offer. He handed the papers to Zoe, avoiding Sam. They thanked him graciously, just to rub in how unhelpful he’d been, and left.

  Sam took the papers off her once they were in the car and flicked through them.

  ‘What a dick,’ Zoe said. ‘I bet he drives a bloody Range Rover.’

  Sam wasn’t listening. His eyes were locked on the last page of the papers.

  ‘What have you got?’

  He held the paper up for her to read. It was a simple letter, typed, asking for all post to be forwarded to a specific address. The address was the legal chambers of a certain Helen Seymour.

  ‘She hid a witness,’ Sam replied.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Zoe whispered. ‘No, hang on, we don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘No? How else did her company’s letter paper end up in that estate agent’s hand?’

  It was odd. It was undeniably contentious.

  ‘Maybe, boss,’ she said. ‘But even if she did, how the hell would we find the witness to prove it?’

  Sam didn’t reply to this, he was too busy flicking through the papers again. Zoe could feel the heat burning off him. Usually she was the same. They were like bloodhounds chasing a newly laid scent. But this one was becoming special for him without an obvious reason why.