Ralph’s Children

by Hilary Norman

  Kate and Rob invited Michael and Bel to the cottage, swore them to secrecy and brought them up to date with the developments.

  ‘Tayton Park wasn’t where the teacher was murdered, was it?’ asked Michael.

  Kate shook her head. ‘Different prison – Oakwood.’

  ‘They’re checking in case Karen Frost was ever a visitor there,’ Rob said.

  ‘Nothing yet to link her to Alan Mitcham,’ Kate said.

  ‘It’s still promising news, though, surely,’ Bel said.

  ‘The main point for now,’ Kate said, ‘is that Helen Newton thinks Wilson is almost certainly either Jack or Pig.’

  ‘We already know he’s definitely our burglar,’ Rob continued. ‘They went through items found in his home after his arrest, and found our ultrasound picture.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Bel, and took a large swallow of red wine.

  ‘Wilson tried claiming it was from one of his own children’s scans,’ Kate said, ‘but his wife let him down, said it wasn’t.’

  ‘Good for her,’ Michael said.

  ‘Anyway, the picture had a date on it,’ said Kate.

  ‘And by that time,’ Rob went on, ‘they had a warrant to search Karen Frost’s home too – and guess what they both had in common.’

  ‘The book,’ Bel guessed.

  Kate nodded. ‘Not many novels in Wilson’s place, according to Newton.’

  ‘Is that enough?’ Michael, the former lawyer, was wary.

  ‘Of course not.’ Rob’s smile was grim. ‘But there’s more.’

  ‘Carol Marsh, Paul Wilson and Karen Frost were all at the same children’s home,’ Kate explained. ‘A place called Challow Hall.’ She paused. ‘About five miles from Swindon, a little way off the Ridgeway Path.’

  ‘And not a million miles from Caisleán,’ Rob finished.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Bel.

  ‘I’m betting Wilson is Jack,’ Kate said.

  ‘Why not Pig?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No solid, stand-up-in-court reason.’ She shrugged. ‘I just don’t feel that Pig was the type to be a burglar – which could be complete nonsense – but Jack was definitely more obviously violent, so the GBH seems more likely to be his thing.’

  ‘How are you coping with all this?’ Michael asked her.

  ‘Bit nervous,’ Kate said.

  ‘She’s very brave,’ Rob said.

  ‘Another identification?’ her mother asked.

  ‘I suppose,’ Kate nodded, her stomach already in knots.

  Ralph

  Ralph had known in her heart, however much Roger had denied it, that the younger woman would be unable to resist visiting Jack, but she had also known that she was as helpless to prevent that as she had been to halt the disastrous chain of events that had since come to pass.

  All down to Kate Turner.

  All of it.

  Kate

  It was almost the same as it had been with Roger.

  They were all tough looking in different ways, but only one was him.

  Jack, as she had believed, not Pig, who had, even in red overalls, looked thinner, seemed altogether weaker.

  This man had flame red hair and pale skin, and green eyes that were sharp and hard. And a straight, uncompromising mouth.

  A cruel mouth, Kate thought.

  Don’t choose him for that.

  But she had stood so close to Jack, had been slapped by him, menaced by him, dragged around by him, hog-tied by him.

  Threatened by him.

  ‘I wish to God I could kill you here and now.’

  Words she would never forget, any more than she’d ever manage to blot out the memory of the man who’d spoken them, the man who’d murdered Laurie Moon.

  Besides, something else was making it almost easy for her now.

  The way he had looked into the camera when they’d made their recording.

  As if he was looking at her, not into the lens.

  Looking at Kate, at the woman who had killed his friend, with pure hate.

  It seemed to her like a challenge, as if he wanted to be chosen.

  Kate watched the film right through three times.

  Knew she was making no mistake.

  Told them his number, and that it was the man she had known as Jack.

  And prayed with all her might that he would be found guilty, given life.

  He had been named Paul, they learned later, after the man who’d found him as an abandoned newborn in a supermarket car park, and Wilson after one of the nurses on duty at the Bristol Royal Infirmary to which he’d been taken.

  Sad stories, unlucky beginnings, for Wilson, Marsh and Frost.

  Probably for Pig, too, whoever and wherever he was.

  It began to appear likely, too, given their use of the same aliases with Alan Mitcham, that the gang’s obsession with the book and perhaps their bizarre game-playing, too, might have begun back in their years in the children’s home.

  ‘Maybe,’ Kate said, ‘they just liked being fictitious characters better than themselves.’

  She used their real names now, of course, whenever she spoke to the police or to Martin Blake, but she never thought of them that way.

  To her they were still Jack, Roger and Simon.

  Ralph

  Both charged now, awaiting trial. Roger in HM Prison Stonebridge, Jack still in Tayton Park, his court date for GBH and burglary imminent.

  More than a hundred miles apart but both locked up, out of Ralph’s reach for heaven knew how long.

  Forever, it seemed to her.

  ‘What can we do?’ Pig asked her on the phone, despair in his voice.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ralph answered. ‘Not a single thing.’

  ‘I’m not much for violence, as you know,’ said Pig, ‘but I think I could kill her.’

  ‘Promise me,’ Ralph said with passion, ‘you won’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said.

  ‘If something happens to you, too,’ said Ralph, ‘I’ll have no one.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Pig told her. ‘You don’t have to worry about losing me. I just can’t stop thinking about how they’ll be standing it in those places.’

  ‘They’ll stand it because they have to,’ Ralph said.

  Kate

  The whereabouts of Pig began to consume Kate.

  Newton’s team had tried to find staff who had worked at Challow Hall in those days who might remember a fourth child, or maybe even a fifth, remembering their ‘chief’ – any other children especially close to Marsh, Wilson and Frost – but as yet no one had come up with an answer.

  No one caring enough to notice, perhaps, Kate thought.

  They had cared, she knew that, about each other.

  She remembered Pig stroking Simon’s hair after he’d removed the stocking from her head, remembered feeling that he loved her, felt now therefore that she, Carol Marsh, was most likely to prove his Achilles heel.

  ‘Which is why I’m so sure,’ she said to Helen Newton in July, ‘that he’s bound to visit her grave one of these days.’

  There was nothing, Newton responded, to say he hadn’t already done so, since there were no CCTV cameras at the cemetery, nor was there any feasibility of keeping a physical presence there.

  ‘It’s almost as if they’ve lost interest,’ Kate fretted on the phone to Martin Blake afterwards, ‘now they’ve got the other two.’

  ‘I don’t think that for a minute,’ Blake disagreed. ‘Especially as they’ll have Laurie Moon’s parents on their backs too.’

  ‘Do you suppose Newton thinks Jack or Roger are going to give up Pig’s identity?’ she asked the lawyer. ‘Maybe as part of some kind of plea bargain?’

  ‘It could happen,’ Blake said. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘He’s no real help at all,’ Kate complained to Rob over dinner that night.

  ‘Not a lot he can do, I imagine,’ Rob said.

  He took a forkful of pasta, saw that she wasn’t eating, put it down
again.

  ‘All down to interrogation, then,’ he said, ‘or deal-making with the other two.’

  ‘They won’t give Pig up,’ Kate said definitely.

  ‘You can’t be certain of that,’ Rob said.

  ‘I can,’ Kate said. ‘I’m not sure why, exactly, and I know it sounds odd, but I just feel they won’t ever betray each other.’

  ‘Honour among thieves,’ Rob said.

  ‘Murderers,’ Kate amended.

  ‘I’m glad you said that.’ Rob picked up the bottle and poured more red wine into both their glasses. ‘You were beginning to sound as if you almost admired them.’

  ‘Not if I live to be a thousand,’ Kate said.

  Laurie Moon’s death before her eyes again.

  * * *

  The situation, Kate had come to accept, was probably as good as it was going to get, at least for now.

  Jack having been found guilty of GBH and burglary, serving ten years.

  So, one dead, two facing trial.

  Life, in the meantime, going on for her.

  Her column, on the other hand, she realized, might not have that much longer to live. The Caisleán nightmare had made it not only emotionally difficult, but also legally impossible to share as many of her day-to-day thought processes with her readers as she had in the past. The strain had shown in Diary of a Short-Fused Female, and Kate felt sure it was only a matter of time until Fireman was forced to junk it.

  Which was why she had told him, in late July, that she’d decided to write a biography of Claude Duval, the French highwayman said to have owned a house in Sonning-on-Thames – where Dick Turpin’s aunt had also lived.

  ‘Curious in a way,’ Fireman said, ‘that you should be attracted to villainy now.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Kate told him. ‘Seductive and charming as he might have been, Duval went around terrorizing travellers, so I can assure you I won’t be painting him as a gallant romantic.’

  Rob, too, had come upon a new interest, sparked by a colleague working in his school’s office, Marie Coates, a long-time paraplegic who spent her time off helping disabled children to ride ponies at Lambsmoor Farm, south of Blewbury.

  ‘It’s a small, independent scheme,’ Rob told Kate. ‘She’s suggested I might like to come along one Saturday to take a look.’

  It was near the Ridgeway, Kate thought, not far from Caisleán.

  ‘Lovely idea,’ she said.

  Not far enough.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Rob checked.

  ‘Of course.’ She saw his doubt, knew it was because he disliked leaving her alone for too long these days, decided that was ridiculous, something she needed to stop before it got out of hand. ‘Rob, I’m fine with this, truly.’

  ‘If you liked riding, it would—’

  ‘But I don’t.’ Kate smiled. ‘And I certainly don’t want you turning down something you’re so incredibly suited to, just for me.’

  ‘I’d do anything for you,’ he said.

  She read the intensity in his eyes and knew that now, after the journey they’d travelled, both together and apart, it was true.

  ‘I’m hardly short of things to do,’ she said. ‘I’m behind on Short-Fuse, as usual, and I really need to get into my research for Duval. And the fact is, we have to get back to normal, at least until the trial.’

  No real normality so long as that was in the offing.

  * * *

  It was while she was in London in August, paying a visit to Claude Duval’s gravestone in Covent Garden Church, that Kate, glancing at the date of the highwayman’s birth, felt her mind drift to an entirely unconnected set of dates she appeared to have memorized, and realized that they were just two days away from another birthday.

  She phoned Helen Newton, was put through to Ben Poulter instead.

  ‘It’s Carol Marsh’s birthday on Wednesday,’ she told him.

  ‘We know,’ Poulter said.

  ‘So does that mean you’ll be watching in case Pig visits Simon’s grave?’

  ‘We’ll be doing what we can,’ the detective-sergeant said.

  ‘But what does that mean?’ Kate wanted to know. ‘You’ve got to be there the whole day, waiting, not just having some car drive past every hour.’

  ‘As I’ve said, Mrs Turner –’ Poulter was not to be budged – ‘we’ll be doing everything we can.’

  ‘Newton never called me back,’ Kate told Rob the next evening, pacing in their bedroom, ‘and I just know they’re not going to handle this properly.’

  ‘I think they might.’ Rob paused. ‘In fact, I know they will.’

  Kate stopped pacing. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because Helen Newton phoned me this afternoon—’

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ she accused.

  ‘She phoned to ask me –’ Rob remained steady – ‘to keep you occupied tomorrow, in case you’ve been having any crazy notions of keeping watch yourself.’

  ‘But did she actually say they’ll be keeping watch?’

  ‘She wasn’t specific on details,’ Rob said. ‘But she asked me to have a little faith.’

  ‘Really?’ Kate was surprised.

  ‘It’s what she said.’

  Kate took a moment.

  ‘Better occupy me then,’ she said.

  And sat down on the bed.

  Wednesday grew harder as it progressed.

  ‘Couldn’t we just drive by?’ Kate suggested at around eleven.

  ‘No, we couldn’t,’ Rob said. ‘For one thing, it’s exactly what Newton told us not to do. And supposing we pick just the moment when Pig’s arriving, and he sees you and takes fright.’

  Kate raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  ‘Faith,’ he reminded her.

  He was paying household bills at the table after lunch, believing her to be in the office working on Duval, when he saw her through the open doorway coming down the staircase, car keys in hand.

  ‘I could lie,’ she said. ‘Tell you I’m going to get some milk.’

  ‘Kate, please.’ Rob got up, came into the hallway. ‘Give me the keys.’

  She shook her head. ‘Just once round the cemetery, to see if they’re there at all.’

  He looked at her furrowed brow and intent eyes.

  ‘We’ll take my car,’ he said.

  * * *

  There was a junction with traffic lights near the gated entrance.

  ‘Good,’ Kate said as the lights changed to red and Rob slowed the Saab to a halt.

  A man was walking in their direction, a bunch of flowers in one hand.

  ‘Don’t stare,’ Rob said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter if I do,’ Kate told him. ‘It’s not Pig.’ She looked around, craned her neck, shook her head. ‘I don’t think the police are here at all.’

  ‘What about him?’ Rob said about the man with flowers.

  Kate made a sound of derision.

  The lights began to change.

  ‘Round the block one more time,’ she said.

  ‘You said just once.’

  ‘Please.’

  Rob sighed, began to move away slowly. ‘Once more, and that’s it.’

  His mobile phone rang.

  ‘In my pocket,’ he told Kate.

  She fished it out, hit the receive button. ‘Rob Turner’s phone.’

  ‘Kate, this is Helen Newton.’

  ‘Newton,’ Kate mouthed at Rob.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘Which is where you’ll both be,’ Newton told Kate, ‘if you don’t stop behaving like idiot children right now and go home.’

  ‘Tell her we’re leaving,’ Rob said.

  ‘Now, please,’ Newton said sharply.

  ‘She’s watching us,’ Kate said.

  Rob sped up a little, moving away from the cemetery.

  ‘But what if he shows up?’ Kate said. ‘You’ll need me to identify him.’

  ‘If someone shows up who might possibly be your man,’ Newton said, ‘we’ll handle
it, Kate, in the appropriate manner.’ She paused. ‘Tell Rob to turn left, please.’

  Kate told him.

  ‘Good,’ Newton said. ‘I’ll call you when we’re done.’

  ‘But when—?’

  Kate was talking to a dead phone.

  The cemetery had been closed for over five hours, Rob had made dinner, watched his wife unable to eat or settle, and had resigned himself to a sleepless night because Kate had pointed out earlier that a man who’d been part of that gang might not let a little thing like a locked gate or stone wall stop him.

  It’s not going to happen, is it?’ she said quietly, just after eleven.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rob said. ‘It’s still Simon’s birthday for another hour.’

  ‘Do you think the police are still watching?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged. ‘Easier for them to be unnoticed in the dark.’

  ‘Maybe just one poor PC now,’ Kate said, ‘hiding in the bushes near the grave.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rob said. ‘And no, we can’t take them a thermos of coffee.’

  She smiled. ‘I know we can’t.’

  They were in bed, awake, when the phone rang at one fifteen.

  Rob answered, listened for a moment, then said: ‘I’ll pass you to Kate.’

  Her hand trembled slightly as she took the phone.

  ‘He came,’ Newton said.

  Rob turned on his bedside light, his eyes glinting with excitement.

  ‘Tell me.’ Kate’s heart was thumping hard.

  ‘At twenty to midnight,’ the DCI expanded. ‘He came over the west wall, made straight for Marsh’s grave, got down on both knees and began weeping.’

  Kate found she couldn’t speak.

  ‘He’s already said enough for us to be fairly certain it’s your man.’

  ‘You mean he’s confessed?’

  Rob was out of bed, watching Kate expectantly.

  ‘Nothing quite so cut and dried,’ Newton said.

  Kate shook her head, saw Rob’s face fall.

  ‘I’d say we’ll be talking to him for some considerable time before I have much more to tell you,’ Newton said, ‘but I wanted to let you know.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate said. ‘So much.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure.’ Newton paused. ‘So, more patience needed. I know it’s hard, but it’s the safest way.’