by Sarah Hilary
‘That’s some good news at least,’ Debbie said. ‘He’s spoken with her and she’s okay. She’s not scared of Vokey, “He’s a changed man,” so she’s kidding herself, but at least she’s safe. At home, and Ron doesn’t think Vokey’s with her. She was too calm on the phone, and the church mission’s open twenty-four seven to anyone who wants to walk in. Not a good place to hide out.’
‘He doesn’t need a whole house,’ Noah said. ‘Just one room. We need to be sure it’s not Ruth’s, no matter how safe she’s telling us she feels. Too many people have made mistakes about the sort of man we’re dealing with. Let’s not fall into the same trap.’
The traffic had slowed to a single lane crawl, London’s arteries hardened where they weren’t clogged, a tailback of fumes and frustration.
‘Noah’s right.’ Marnie flexed her fingers at the wheel. ‘We’ve all seen the pictures from inside Cloverton. We need to operate on the assumption he’s capable of killing, and motivated to do it. Worst-case scenario, but we’re taking no chances. Get a response unit to the church mission and tell Ron to bring Ruth in, for her safety and to answer our questions.’ She found an opening in the traffic and turned left. ‘We’re on our way now. Call us if you get news of Alyson or Lara before we reach you.’
9
I was thinking about Ruth today, her letters to Mickey, and the letters he sent back. My lucky nurse wears a crucifix, you see. I didn’t notice it until this morning. She’s bending over me, checking my tubes, and there’s this yellow worm wriggling at her throat where the light’s catching on a gold chain and crucifix. I wonder if she prays for me. She’s so close I can smell her skin, pear drops and peach shampoo. It’s a lovely, lucky smell.
Ruth’s always saying she’ll pray for Mickey. He puts on a preacher’s voice when he reads her letters, a God-fearing soul from the Deep South: ‘I know you’re searching, I know that’s what this is. I’ve felt that way myself. Until He found me and brought me home. I want to bring you home, Michael. You’re lost and feeling little, I know. You’re searching for something bigger than yourself. But you need to stop searching and stand still. You need to let Him come and find you.’
You might think Mickey would make fun of letters like that. You might think, Of course he loves Lara’s letters, because they’re filthy. He’s stuck in here with no one but you and your plants for company, and her letters are porn. Of course he reads them and sniffs them and sleeps with them close to his cheek. Ruth’s letters about the Lord finding him, you can’t imagine him feeling the same about those. He did, though. Re-read them just as often, slept with them as close, sniffed them even though they smelt of nothing, just the fingers of whoever was on duty in the post room, or else of Daz Quayle. Dazza liked to handle Mickey’s post, part of the personal service he offered because he couldn’t get enough of being Mickey’s favourite.
My nurse prays for me, that’s what I think. Not down on her knees, not like that. Ruth says you don’t need to kneel to pray, you don’t even need to be in church. You can be anywhere at all, up a mountain or in a cellar. You can be in prison. I reckon lots of people pray in hospitals. Harder not to here. Either you’re sick, or you’re visiting someone who’s sick. You’ve lost someone, or you’re losing her. I haven’t had any visitors. My nurse is sad that no one comes to see me. Even a bastard like me, dog-chained to the bed, deserves a visitor at a time like this. Other patients get their loved ones holding their hands, whispering words of encouragement, waiting for them to wake up. I get two detectives and a gaggle of student doctors watching from the foot of the bed as I’m poked and prodded and pronounced upon.
Mickey always said his sister would come if he got sick. After the batteries, when they brought me back from the hospital. Dazza must’ve told him I’d had no visitors there, and of course Mickey knew I never had any in Cloverton because neither did he.
‘You’re lucky,’ he says.
‘How d’you figure that?’ I’m being careful, but I can see he wants to talk. He’s missed me, or he’s missed having an audience. Did he read their letters aloud to himself on those nights when I was gone? I bet he did. But it wasn’t the same, how could it be?
‘My sister wouldn’t leave me alone. Until I made her stop coming.’ He catches my puzzled silence and adds, ‘Up North, in Leeds. It wasn’t so far for her to come and visit me up there, but she’d be down here if I let her.’
He’s never this talkative. I turn on my side to look down at him in the bunk that’s mine.
‘She likes seeing me in prison.’ He snaps his teeth and touches one of the photos on his wall, one of his women. Lara, or Ruth. He screws the ball of his thumb to her face. ‘Bitch.’
‘Is that her?’ I ask, even though I know it’s not.
He punches the underside of my mattress, hard. ‘I wouldn’t have her picture on my wall, would I? Bitch like that.’
‘What’s her name?’ I ask. ‘Your sister?’
‘Alyson.’ He hisses the last syllable.
‘Is she your only sister?’
‘She’s enough.’
‘Is she older than you?’
‘Yes.’ He punches the mattress again. ‘Bitch.’
I can’t tell if he means me, or her.
‘Did you get any more letters?’ I ask, to calm him down. ‘While I was away?’
It always calms him to talk about the letters. Days when he doesn’t get mail, those are the worst. I dread those days. I’ve even thought about writing letters myself, getting Dazza to pass them off as part of Mickey’s mail. I reckon I could write a convincing fan letter, the kind of thing he’d like. If he can get off on a soppy prayer from a Bible-basher, how hard can it be? I’d make a good Lara, I’ve got her voice down now. That’s why he’s missed me so much.
‘Did you? Get any more letters?’
‘Some shit from Ruth,’ he growls. ‘About my sins.’
I think about his sins, what I know of them. Julie was nothing, in the scheme of it all. I wonder about the letter Ruth would write if she knew what he’d done, the full extent of his sins. If she knew about the boy in Leeds, say. ‘Dear Michael,’ she’d write, ‘I can’t help you and neither can God. Burn in hell. Ruth.’
Unless I’m wrong. Unless anything can be forgiven if you work at it long and hard enough. If you get on your knees and pray. Up a mountain or in a cellar, by a hospital bed or at the side of the road with a hidden dip where cars can’t be seen until it’s too late. You can pray anywhere and maybe if you do it right, like you really mean it, anything can be forgiven. I’d like to believe that for my sake, if not for his. That nobody is beyond the grace of God. Not even Mickey Vokey.
10
‘This is Michael Vokey.’ Marnie pinned the mugshot to the evidence board. ‘And this.’ A second photo. ‘And this.’ A third. She didn’t stop until she’d pinned eight images to the board.
Vokey looked like a different man in each one. Not just his hair – varying lengths and colours – but his bone structure. Rapid weight loss and gain explained some of it, giving him cheekbones then taking them away, but the overriding factor was the insipidity of his features, as if he wore a mask on which he drew a face each morning depending on his mood, the cocking of an eyebrow or curling of a lip transfiguring everything. As boys, Noah and Sol had shared a passion for a game called Fuzzy Face: moving metal filings with a magnet to bring a beard or bushy eyebrows to an otherwise featureless face. Vokey’s photos reminded Noah of that game. Here was Michael with a full beard. Now the beard was gone. Here was Michael with sideburns, with a moustache. Here he was with a shaved head looking like a priest in a black and white film. Noah’s eyes ached. He’d been looking through pictures for the best part of a week, snow-blind from searching.
‘No CCTV sightings in London, or Cumbria,’ Colin said. ‘We’ve been through hundreds of hours of traffic cam footage already.’ He removed his spectacles, massaging the bridge of his nose where the skin was red and indented. ‘Ditto service stations, train st
ations, ports and airports.’
‘We know he’s not in Danbury.’ Debbie glanced at her notes. ‘Ron says the church was clean, no trace of him there. He’s on his way back with Ruth. We’re waiting for an update from DS Coen in Kendal. Alyson’s in a stable but serious condition post-surgery for swelling on the brain. No sign of an intruder at her house in the last forty-eight hours, but they’re not ready to rule out an assault. Aggravated burglary, maybe. DS Coen says he’ll keep us in the loop.’
Aggravated burglary was the name they’d given to the offence committed by Michael Vokey against Julie Seton. It covered a multitude of sins, from robbery to abuse.
‘What news of Lara?’ Noah asked.
‘She’s with friends up in Scotland,’ Colin said. ‘A shopping weekend. It’s why we couldn’t reach her. That and the fact her house is out of range of most networks. Oh, and the local telephone exchange floods every time it rains, which it does a lot in Keswick. She’s on her way home, but she was in Edinburgh on the day of the riot.’
‘Then we need to find whoever posted her last letter to Michael. Because that was postmarked in Keswick on the day of the riot.’ Marnie nodded at Colin, who made a note. ‘What about the prison officer who’s giving interviews online?’
‘We’re still searching. It looks like the one Julie saw was taken down.’ Colin’s frustration showed itself in a rare frown. ‘I’m waiting for the chance to talk to her about exactly when and where she saw it. Her phone’s switched off. According to the patrol, she’s at work until late tonight.’
‘We’re sure she’s okay?’ Noah asked.
‘The surveillance team like their chips.’ Colin nodded. ‘They’re watching the house, the fish shop and Julie.’
‘She wouldn’t go to a safe house,’ Debbie remembered. ‘We offered one for her and Natalie, as soon as we knew he’d escaped. She wouldn’t even think about it, just turned us down.’
‘She’s trying to hold it together,’ Noah said. ‘Her job, her family. We were offering a safe house on the other side of London. She’d have lost her job, apart from anything else.’
‘Still.’ Debbie raised her eyebrows. ‘She didn’t even want the police presence outside her house. If DCS Ferguson hadn’t insisted on it, she’d be on her own with Natalie.’
‘She’s had enough of the attention. Can you blame her? And she doesn’t trust us not to make it worse.’ Between the press and patrol cars, and the kids hounding their local celebrity, it wasn’t likely Vokey would get close to Julie, if that was his plan. But Debbie had a point. Julie’s lack of fear made Noah uneasy. It didn’t look like bravado, but he hadn’t seen enough of her to judge. He wished he’d known her before the assault.
‘I’ll try her again,’ Colin said, ‘in the morning. Then we can track down this online interview with the prison officer and see whether it’s any help to us.’
On the evidence board, Michael Vokey’s eight faces were so dissimilar they didn’t even look like members of the same family. Alyson’s was the ninth face, resembling none of the eight belonging to her brother.
‘Something we found out about the sister,’ Debbie said. ‘She was the key witness in a prosecution thirty years ago, when she was in her early twenties. The victim of malicious communications, hate mail.’
‘Letters, again?’ Noah turned from the board. ‘Who was writing to her?’
Debbie pulled a face. ‘It was her best friend, Jo Gower. She and Alyson had been mates for years, since nursery school. Like glue, everyone said. Then Alyson started getting these threatening letters. Silly stuff to start with, offers of a make-over, help with failing relationships, adverts for incontinence and acne, all that sort of thing. Jo gave her a shoulder to cry on. Except it was Jo who was doing it. Sending the flyers for accident insurance, even bereavement counselling. It went on for months. Alyson wanted to go to the police but Jo talked her out of it, persuaded her to hand over all the letters, said she’d look into it, she had a cousin who knew about harassment. It went on and on. By the end, Alyson was more or less having a breakdown.’
‘How was Jo Gower caught?’ Noah asked. ‘Did she confess?’
Debbie shook her head. ‘She denied it right up until the trial. But they found stacks of evidence in her house. It was an easy conviction. She got a prison sentence, eighteen months.’
Almost the same sentence Michael Vokey had been given for terrorising Julie Seton.
Marnie had listened in silence to Debbie’s account of the harassment. Now she asked, ‘Did Jo know Alyson’s brother, Michael?’
‘His name didn’t come up in the trial.’ Debbie examined her notes. ‘But if Jo was that close to his sister he must’ve known her. Michael’s only a couple of years younger than Alyson, and they all went to the same school. They’re bound to have met at her house.’
‘Marion’s house, where we found the photos. That’s where they were living at the time?’
Debbie nodded. ‘That’s the address on the system, Mum’s house. Dad’s been out of the picture since the kids were tiny. Alyson looked out for Michael back then, that’s what she said.’
‘Do we have a picture of Jo Gower?’ Colin put his spectacles back on. ‘I can check it against the ones we took from the house, see if we get a hit.’
In the photo on the board, Alyson’s expression was distrustful, her mouth pressed shut, cheeks flushed. Noah felt a jolt of déjà vu, but blamed the snow-blindness; he was seeing faces in his sleep. This was a recent picture – salt and pepper highlights in her hair – Alyson didn’t look like this now, not after the accident which had put her into hospital. Falling down her own stairs, or being pushed. Blunt trauma to the back of her skull, swelling on the brain.
‘Do we have a good reason to think Michael would want to hurt her?’ Noah wondered. ‘She was on his visitor list at Leeds, at his request. But she never visited him there, that’s been confirmed. He wanted her to, but she refused. When we contacted her last week, she didn’t want to know, said they’d been out of touch since before his conviction.’
‘She could be ashamed,’ Debbie said. ‘With the papers full of what he’s done. Not just to Julie. At the prison. The fire, those poor men with their eyes . . .’ She shuddered.
‘Alyson didn’t tell us about the house,’ Colin pointed out. ‘Or the photos we found. Either she didn’t know her brother was living there after their mum died, or she’s covering for him.’
‘The house is in probate,’ Marnie said, ‘is that right?’
Colin nodded. ‘Their mum died without a proper will. It’s pretty clear Michael wanted the house, going by what he was up to in there. They couldn’t find any definitive paperwork after their mum died, so the solicitors piled in. They’re making a small fortune now.’
‘In other words, there’s definite enmity between Alyson and Michael.’ Marnie rubbed at her wrists. ‘Even if we discount his fondness for violence, that’s a motive for him to attack her.’
‘He’s on a vengeance kick,’ Debbie said. ‘That’s what it looks like to me. Those men he maimed at Cloverton, the grave he dug at the house. It’s like Ron said, if he hadn’t been caught after Julie, he’d have escalated to killing. I don’t see prison having cured him of that.’
‘The opposite’s more likely,’ Colin agreed.
He hadn’t set foot inside HMP Cloverton, before or after the riot. Hadn’t felt the narrowness of its walls, the low roof pressing down, or come away with the taste of the place like scalded metal in his mouth. Marnie had; Noah could see its shadow in her face. He’d smelt the prison on her clothes when she returned from interviewing Aidan Duffy. It made him think about how often she’d visited prisons over the last six years. Not only to interview men like Aidan. To see Stephen, her foster brother, who refused to give up the answers she needed about why her parents had died so violently at his hands. If Stephen died without giving up those answers, what would it do to her?
‘We need to concentrate on finding Michael.’ Marnie nodded at D
ebbie. ‘When is Ron due back with Ruth Hull?’
‘In the next hour, boss.’
‘And Lara Chorley? How long until she gets home from Edinburgh?’
‘Late tonight,’ Colin said. ‘She’s driving, but she wants to avoid the rush hour. Might not be home until midnight, she said.’
Julie would be locking up the chippy and catching the last bus home as Lara, with her shopping bags, drove leisurely back to her cottage in Cumbria where it was just her now, two children grown and gone, husband divorced and out of the picture. No one to ask about the letters she was writing to the man who’d terrorised Julie in front of her little girl. Letters inviting Michael to do the same and worse to Lara, full of promises of all the things she’d do for him when he found her, all the things she’d let him do to her. What sort of man did she imagine Vokey to be? Which of these eight faces was the one she pictured in her mind’s eye when she wrote those letters, inviting a savage stranger to hunt her down? Noah’s skin crawled as he studied the faces. He thought of Natalie lying on the carpet with her crayons, Julie dragging the zip on her fleece, getting ready to go to work, leaving her mum in charge because she had no other choice, because life had to go on. Those khaki curtains at the windows, Noah wanted to tear them down, let the light back in to their lives.
‘It’s late,’ Marnie said. ‘Get some rest and we’ll regroup first thing. Noah, I’ll drop you home.’
He nodded, straightening up. ‘That’d be great. Thanks.’
More photographs were waiting when Noah reached home. Dan had commandeered the kitchen table to plan the prisoner art exhibition, spreading glossy prints across its surface. Propped against the table leg was a canvas, twelve inches by ten, layered oils set in a soft glaze.
‘A present,’ Dan said. ‘From John.’
Noah didn’t know John’s surname, only that he was one of the inmates whose work Dan was curating for this exhibition. They’d become friends, Dan and John.
‘He says he’s mucked up the depth, but I told him in the right light it’ll look great. Here.’ Dan moved the canvas to a spot where its surface swam with shadow, softening the brushstrokes to lure something less ambivalent from the heart of the picture. ‘He’s calling it Sea, as in Irish.’