by Gayle Curtis
‘You seem annoyed.’
‘I’m tired of the police force being used as a punchbag, when it’s those very people doing the thumping who are so quick to call the emergency services when they need help. It doesn’t make sense to me.’
‘Let’s go back to that morning, the day Raymond was found. When did you realise Cara Fearon was missing?’
Rita took a deep breath and looked at the crew, staring at the people nearest who were the only ones visible to her due to the bright studio lights, all so keen to hear what she had to say.
‘Raymond would often abandon the tent in the night and get into his bed, leaving Cara outside to sleep alone. On occasion she would follow Raymond and sleep in the guest room, but not that night.’
‘A ten-year-old girl?’
‘That’s correct. But Kristen had woken in the night, found the tent empty and assumed both children were upstairs,’ Rita said, seeing Lester glance at the camera for dramatic effect. ‘It’s not for me to comment on someone’s parenting.’
‘Why didn’t Kristen Hammond say anything when you arrived? It wasn’t even her who phoned the police, was it?’
‘Shock? Maybe she thought Cara had gone home – the child didn’t live far away and on occasion would walk home in the mornings.’ Rita eyeballed Lester before she answered his last question. ‘We found Kristen Hammond on the green, cradling her son. “Devastated” doesn’t do it justice.’
Lester seemed to ignore what she’d said. ‘I think what the nation finds hard to understand, and is quite divided about, is why she allowed two children to sleep in the garden unattended. You must agree that was careless parenting?’
‘Firstly, and I feel quite strongly about this, Kristen Hammond’s garden was surrounded by a six-foot wall, with a locked gate at the side. Secondly, she had slept on the sofa in the sitting room overlooking the garden, with the doors open. Both children were a mere fifty feet away.’
‘Wasn’t it true that Kristen had been drinking heavily that night?’
‘There was a bank holiday party at The Globe next door, yes. And also one at the Drum and Monkey opposite.’
‘And Kristen had been there that night? In The Globe?’
Rita sighed. ‘Like I said, I’m not here to speculate on anyone’s parenting skills.’
‘I know, but we’re trying to build up a picture of what happened. Isn’t it true she was so drunk she staggered from the pub?’
Rita stared at Lester, suddenly aware that none of this had anything to do with anyone except the families involved, but here they all were, the crew and potentially a few million viewers, making it their business.
‘Lester, you’ve got two children? Have you and your wife both been under the influence of alcohol while they’ve been in your care? Thousands of parents drink too much or take recreational drugs while they’re at home and the children are in bed. They shouldn’t, but they do. Anything could happen. More often than not, it doesn’t, but on the rare occasion, something terrible occurs.’
‘Yes, but usually one parent is conscious.’
‘Have you ever left your children in the car while you’ve popped into a shop? Ever fallen asleep on the beach when they’ve been playing in the sea? From what I understand, Kristen Hammond was an excellent single parent – rarely drank, never took drugs – and on the one night she decides to relax, her birthday as it happens, her son is murdered and his best friend vanishes.’
‘Kristen Hammond is a friend of yours, isn’t she?’
‘We’re close, yes.’
‘Wasn’t your friendship another fact you hid during the case?’
‘It had no bearing on my work.’
‘You were one of the children identified in some of the video footage found in the secret room of Adrian Player’s house. Didn’t you deny that fact when you were asked about it?’
Rita looked at her hands folded in her lap; they suddenly felt detached from the rest of her body.
‘Your denial of these facts and your involvement with Adrian Player . . . had those details been known at the time they could have led to the collapse of Operation Ladybird and his acquittal.’
Rita looked up at Lester, unable to speak. She’d known he would ask these questions, she’d prepared herself, but now she was struggling to locate the words to answer him succinctly. ‘He’s still in prison though, that’s all that matters . . .’
‘He is indeed, but he’s been granted an appeal, based on new information. How do you think that makes the victims feel? All those people who were brave enough to come forward about the abuse they’d suffered because of Adrian Player . . . Rita, do you take any responsibility for anything that happened during this investigation? Do you accept you had and still have an unhealthy obsession with Adrian Player and that it could destroy this case and, along with it, the already fragile reputation of this country’s police force?’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Standing at the large picture window in the drawing room of her parents’ house, Rita peered out at the green, her eyes glazed, her mind somewhere else. She was picturing the scene in Kristen’s garden across the way, just two nights ago, and wondering what led the children to wander on to Blue Green Square in the middle of the night. Rita’s father was muttering in the background, but she barely heard what he was saying, she was so distracted by the view of the green from this angle and what her parents might possibly have seen that night.
Her mother came into the room, immediately tutting at the plate with the remnants of her father’s lunch on it. ‘I always forget something.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll take it out,’ Rita said, continuing to stare out of the window.
‘Leave it. Jody’s coming later. She’ll wash it up with the tea things.’
‘I don’t know why you’ve employed her. You have a perfectly good grandson whom I can send over when you need a break.’ Rita thought about Joe, just a few years older than Raymond and thought of the horror Kristen was facing.
‘Because, dear, it gives me a couple of hours to go out – pop to the library or call in on a friend – without worrying about your father. I wanted someone outside the family – Joe doesn’t need to be his grandfather’s carer.’
Rita sighed. ‘How often do you actually go out when she’s here? It’s a waste of money.’
‘No, sometimes I don’t, but the option is there. It doesn’t matter to you, does it? And I can hardly go out anywhere at the moment, there’s police and reporters all over the place.’
‘You should have let us find someone for you, through an agency, someone who can be trusted. If you and Dad need carers, you only have to say, we can sort something out.’
‘The girl’s harmless,’ her mother said, tidying the table and ignoring Rita’s suggestion, not wanting to face the inevitable. ‘You can’t discriminate against her because of her father.’
‘Whose father?’ Rita’s dad piped up. ‘I wish you’d stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here.’
‘We’re not talking about you, dear. Rita doesn’t like us having Jody here because of what happened.’
He nodded. ‘Oh, yes, that awful business. Has he been convicted yet?’
‘No, Dad, the charges were dropped,’ Rita said, glancing at her mother, who quickly looked away. Whenever there was any mention of child abuse, the atmosphere between them changed. Rita remembered so clearly the day her mother told her what she was saying couldn’t be true, and it was never spoken of again.
‘I’ll make some more tea.’
‘Not for me thanks, Mum, I’ve got to get back to work. I just called in to make sure you and Dad are okay.’
‘Yes, dear. I gave a statement earlier, told the officer what I’d seen – nothing much in the great scheme of things I shouldn’t think.’
Rita watched her mother’s back as she wandered out of the room, plate in hand.
‘Bloody perverts – hang the lot of them,’ her father snarled under his breath, staring towards the window, u
nseeing, his beautiful blue eyes empty and lost to an internal world. ‘What do you think’s happened to those little mites, Rita?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. I really don’t know.’
‘This place is bloody well cursed.’
‘I’m beginning to think you might have a point about that.’ Rita kissed him and left, thinking about the area where she’d grown up. Green-on-the-Sea, a large coastal town on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk. It was a prestigious and sought-after place, but once people arrived they only seemed to stay for a few years, the novelty wearing off. Still, it was so flooded with people from London that the house prices had rocketed; locals called the area around the green ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’. Now she wondered if, with a murdered child and one missing, that tide might at last be stemmed.
Probably not. It was lovely, like a picture. City people would still flock to the place. Yes, it had been afflicted by tragedy the last few years, but up until then, it had seemed like an untouchable place.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It had been a peculiar bank holiday weekend, so strange that now – mid-afternoon on Tuesday – the entire atmosphere on Blue Green Square had completely altered. It was dark and heavy. Little of the usual post-holiday tidying-up had taken place. Any partying was long over, drowned by a tsunami of tragedy, with the debris of leftovers spread across the green.
Jody had wondered if Mr and Mrs Mackenzie would want her today, or if she’d even be able to gain access to their home, as they lived in one of the grand houses running along Blue Green Square, and she imagined swarms of press and police cordons there. But when she’d called Mrs Mackenzie in advance, the old lady had been baffled as to why she might not be required as usual.
The area of the green surrounding the giant oak tree was indeed off limits, and a large sign read ‘ACCESS ONLY’, with police tape marking out the no-go areas, but there were only a few reporters milling around, as the story, as yet, had only broken in the local news.
Once the washing-up was done in the kitchen, Jody was going to see if she could find a job in the drawing room at the front, so she could see the police and forensics team out of the window. She wasn’t usually permitted in there though, unless Mrs Mackenzie wanted the fire lit; unlikely at this time of year. The work she did for the Mackenzies involved the kitchen and sitting room, which was more like a library and overlooked the garden.
Mr Mackenzie was blind, only able to make out shadows, and – with them both being in their seventies – it was becoming increasingly difficult for Mrs Mackenzie to look after him alone. Mr Mackenzie had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and Mrs Mackenzie had also employed Jody to come over for a couple of hours a few times a week, so she could go out for a walk in the afternoon or visit the library in the evenings. Jody’s job consisted of making him a sandwich and reading the crossword clues from the Daily Telegraph, and any odd jobs Mrs Mackenzie might require her to do.
She waited for Mrs Mackenzie to go out before she set about getting Mr Mackenzie’s tea, which today consisted of a Marmite sandwich and a boiled egg. She’d asked him three times, but he’d insisted that’s what he wanted. Jody had thought about asking him if he fancied a change of scene, but she decided she was just going to manoeuvre him into the drawing room without comment; if Mrs Mackenzie asked, Jody would say that he’d wanted to go in there. She could get away with quite a lot now that Mr Mackenzie’s mental condition had deteriorated.
Laying the tea things on the table by the large picture window, Jody attempted to move Mr Mackenzie from his usual spot. He was surprisingly amiable and didn’t even enquire where they were going when she gently lifted him from the chair, allowing him to lean on her as she handed him his stick. Mr Mackenzie shuffled forwards and it took some time to get him to the front of the house, especially with Jade, his guide dog who was almost as decrepit as him, padding alongside them.
Jody seated herself next to Mr Mackenzie and, once she’d poured the tea, began to hand him pieces of sandwich, most of which he passed to Jade under the table. Witnessing him eating a hard-boiled egg was too much for Jody, as most of it fell from his mouth half-chewed, almost making her run to the toilet to gag.
‘I’ll just fetch you a slice of cake, Mr Mackenzie, be back in a minute,’ Jody practically shouted as she kept her gaze on the activity on the green across the road. Nothing much was happening, and any movement was lost on her as she didn’t understand what they were doing. Her dad would be able to explain it to her if she asked him. He had been in the police for over ten years and before that he’d been a sports coach, something he’d continued with on his days off. Then he’d been accused but not charged of conspiracy to groom a child at Adrian Player’s club, where he’d done a bit of coaching on his days off – but it wasn’t true, he’d been set up and the police had made an example of him, to show the public that they dealt with their own. Jody knew her dad better than anyone, and he just wasn’t like that, it was all lies. That was eighteen months ago, and Jody had cultivated a hatred for anyone who even dared to flash Jason Brunswick an uncharitable look.
Mr Mackenzie was one of the very few people she liked and respected. She mainly appreciated his frankness and unfiltered comments, but not today.
By the time Jody returned with the cake, there were only the faintest remnants of egg on Mr Mackenzie’s chin. She swallowed down the saliva that always rushed to her mouth when he was eating.
‘Not doing the crossword today?’ he said, taking a large bite of the cake and blowing crumbs into his teacup, making Jody snap her head back to the window.
‘If you like,’ Jody said, picking up the folded paper, scanning the cryptic clues that ran down the side of the puzzle.
‘I suppose there’s a lot of commotion out the front, is there?’ Mr Mackenzie asked her. She wasn’t sure how much he understood.
‘A bit, but not too much. There are a few police officers wandering around and people in white overalls. The tent is still there. It’s not how it looks on the detective programmes . . .’ Jody said absent-mindedly, as there seemed to be more movement outside.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be,’ Mr Mackenzie said, reaching for more cake, ‘there wasn’t any of that years ago. We just had the local bobby sorting things out, relying on other rozzers to help.’
‘Did you have many murders around here?’ Jody couldn’t believe anything like that happened; in her opinion nothing exciting ever went on in Green-on-the-Sea. It was a large town, practically a city in its entirety, but it was so dull and boring.
‘No, of course we didn’t. We just read about things in the papers, but most news didn’t venture from its own area. I expect this will be national by the end of the week if they don’t find that girl. Your dad been hauled in yet? I would have thought he’d be top of the suspect list.’
These last words hit Jody’s face like a splash of acid and she did a double take, unable to believe what Mr Mackenzie had just said.
Moments later, the door flung open and Mrs Mackenzie appeared, breathless and red-faced, waving a library book in the air. ‘I’ve found that number plate, dear. I need to call the police back and tell them.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The police car Kristen was riding in stopped in her parents’ driveway. She saw her mother peeking from behind the nets. She dreaded going inside. Everything about her childhood home made her feel nauseous – the artificial flowers in vases, the 1970s dark furniture, the mismatched beige cushions and the boring deep-green lampshades. Nothing had changed since she was a child, and it always felt cold and unwelcoming. More so today than ever.
It had been a gruelling day. Kristen had been driven to a specialist unit so Forensics could carefully remove her clothes to retain any evidence from the scene. From there she’d been taken into the police station and questioned. By the end of it, she had felt empty but full of pain. Every cell in her body hurt. The only place she could think of going when she was released was her parents’ house, and a police officer had
been allocated to give her a lift there.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ the officer asked.
‘No. But thanks,’ Kristen answered, seeing her mother’s horrified glare through the sitting-room window. Raymond’s name hadn’t been released and it was unlikely her parents would have seen the news report in any case. They spent most of their time in the garden. And even if they had seen it, they wouldn’t have thought for a moment it could have anything to do with them. Yet here was their daughter, being dropped off by a police car. The only explanation her mother would arrive at was that Kristen was in trouble, followed by horror over what the neighbours might think. Especially when she saw Kristen get out of the car in a fetching grey standard tracksuit, given to her in exchange for her own clothes.
Bad things like murdered children didn’t happen to people like them – that was the middle-class mentality of her parents.
Kristen turned back to the car and spoke through the open driver’s window. ‘Sorry about earlier.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’ This was the officer she’d attacked when he wouldn’t let her go to her dead son. He brushed it off now, but she could see by the look on his face she’d made him aware of her volatility. ‘There’ll be a family liaison officer over within the next hour. They’ll explain what’s happening and keep you updated.’
Kristen thanked him and made her way to the front door, which her mother had left ajar, so she could let herself in quickly. Yet she stalled there on the threshold. She felt completely hopeless. She’d lost her purpose in life as soon as she’d found Raymond dead on the green, laid out on his side like a miniature Superman, his arm outstretched.
Her boy, her Raymond. The one person who had made her life worth living. She couldn’t take it in; none of it seemed real.
‘Whatever is going on, love?’ her mother said to her through the gap in the door. ‘You haven’t been doing drugs again, got yourself into trouble?’ She reached out and dragged her daughter through the door, giving the street a quick glance before she closed it.