Beautiful Child

by Menon, David

  ‘How can you be so sure of that?’

  ‘Because I know that sort’ Bill emphasised.

  ‘That sort?’

  ‘The sort who try to extort money from those of us who’ve worked hard for what we’ve got.’

  ‘He was your wife’s son’ said Sara. ‘Didn’t that make a difference?’

  ‘Not to me it didn’t, no.’

  ‘Mr. Schofield, how do you feel now that you know the man you met in Australia and gave that money to wasn’t O’Brien but Andrew John Cook?’

  ‘Cheated.’

  ‘And his confession to the murder of O’Brien, your wife’s son?’

  ‘That leaves me cold to be frank.’

  ‘Money was extorted from you’ said Sara, unable to believe the continuing show of callousness by the man. ‘Not by O’Brien but by Cook who was pretending to be O’Brien.’

  ‘I’m sure O’Brien would’ve taken the money had he been able to.’

  ‘Did you have any contact with Andy Cook once he’d arrived in this country?’

  ‘Yes’ said Bill. ‘When Cook, who I thought was O’Brien, contacted me and asked for more money I had a private investigator check him out. He was stupid enough to give me his home address after I’d falsely agreed to give him more cash in return for him letting me know where he lived so I could hand it over to him personally. I also wanted to know whether or not there was in fact a child.’

  ‘And when you found out there was did it make any difference?’ asked Sara.

  ‘No’ said Bill.

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

  ‘The private investigator came up with quite a file on O’Brien, Cook, whoever the devil he is. All sorts to do with where he drank, where they shopped with the money I’d given them, who their friends were. That’s when I got the idea.’

  ‘The idea?’

  ‘It was me who told him that his tart was having it off with some other bloke.’

  Sara and Joe looked at each other in astonishment. ‘And why did you do that, Mr. Schofield?’

  ‘To cause trouble! To cause him the kind of trouble that would get him out of our lives. And it succeeded.’

  Sara raised her voice with agitation. ‘Only by Jolene MacKenzie losing her life and her child being orphaned in a strange country!’

  ‘I wasn’t to know that would happen!’

  ‘Do you know what happened to the child?’

  ‘He grew up I expect.’

  ‘And that’s all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘Detectives, I’m watching every member of my family go through a living hell right now,’ said Bill, ‘and I’ve got to live with the fact that it could all be my fault. So forgive me for not getting concerned over a child that means nothing to me.’

  *

  It had raised Superintendent Hargreaves’ eyebrows when Sara told him she was going to the morgue with Adrian Bradshaw when he had to take the clothes he wanted them to bury his wife Penny in. But she was going and if the superintendent had any real issues with it then he’d have to take them up with her when she got back.

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to this, Adrian?’

  ‘She’s my wife, Sara’ said Adrian, heavily. ‘I have to be up to it.’

  Sara’s heart broke for him. He looked so utterly dejected and the shadows round his eyes seemed to be blocking out the light from his entire face. He managed to hand over the clothes and glance again at her porcelain face and the jagged red line underneath her chin before he broke down and Sara took him out into the corridor and sat him down. She sat beside him and gave him the time to let it all out and then try and regain his composure. He was leaning forward with his head down between his legs. He was breathing heavily as if there was a machine inside him that was starting to go wrong.

  ‘We’ll get him, Adrian’ said Sara. ‘We will get him.’

  ‘What have you got so far, Sara?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you really want to hear all about that just now?’

  ‘I need to know, Sara,’ he said, defiantly. ‘I really need to know what’s going on.’

  Sara breathed in deeply. ‘Alright’ she said. ‘I don’t think Penny was the target. I think it was Matt Schofield. He heard what he thought was someone downstairs when he was having a shower a few minutes before Penny called round. He also said that when he was in his bedroom making a call he definitely heard something going on downstairs. Then he went down and found his back door open.’

  ‘And my wife’ said Adrian. ‘My God, why?’

  ‘Adrian, were Penny and Matt Schofield friends?’

  ‘No’ said Adrian. ‘I was friends with Matt. You know, this is all Penny’s sister Natasha’s fault. Penny always felt that her parents didn’t love her. She always thought that Natasha was the favourite. And Natasha can be a nasty piece of work. She told Penny that I was more than just friends with Matt and Penny must’ve gone round to confront him about it.’

  ‘And are you more than just friends with Matt Schofield, Adrian?’ asked Sara, believing that Adrian wasn’t telling her the whole truth.

  Adrian swung round, ‘ No! Sara, I’m straight. One hundred percent straight!’

  ‘Okay’ said Sara who didn’t believe a word of Adrian’s fervent denial. A simple no would’ve sufficed. Some people were absolutely gay, some were absolutely straight. But Sara now viewed Adrian as one of those men who was mostly straight. She wasn’t so small minded that she didn’t believe it was possible for a straight man and a gay man to be just friends. Of course it was possible and of course it did happen. But she didn’t believe that Adrian’s wife would’ve gone round to see Matt Schofield if she hadn’t been suspicious that her sister’s allegations were true. ‘It was perhaps the wrong time to ask you that question and I’m sorry.’

  ‘Whenever you ask me, the answer will still be the same’

  ‘Why did Penny believe that her parents didn’t love her?’

  ‘Because they could be pretty nasty to her just like Natasha could be,’ said Adrian. ‘They even told her that she wasn’t good enough for me. Can you believe that? She was a saint compared to me. And yet she kept on hoping that things would get better. She was always optimistic despite some of the awful things they said. But she would always have had me. I would never have left her.’ He leaned forward with his hands clasped back together. ‘I just can’t believe she’s gone, Sara. I just don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  ‘How are the kids doing?’

  ‘They’re broken hearted,’ said Adrian, bringing his hand to his mouth, ‘she was such a good mother. My Mum is with them at the moment.’

  ‘Well you’d better get back to them’ said Sara. It was obvious the poor bastard was in a right state. He needed his family just as much as they needed him. ‘They’re really going to need their Dad now.’

  ‘I know’ said Adrian, his voice faltering. ‘But I’ll never be as good as Penny.’

  Sara leaned forward with her hand on Adrian’s back. ‘You’ll be the Dad that they need, Adrian. Just like you’ve always been.’

  Without turning round Adrian placed his hand on Sara’s.

  ‘Now take as much time off as you need, Adrian’ said Sara. ‘I mean that. Don’t come back to work until you feel really ready. I’ll sort everything out with the Superintendent. Don’t worry about anything.’

  *

  Susie got herself showered and changed for the first time in three days. She at least wanted to start making an effort on the outside, although whenever she thought of her darling Angus she had to drag herself back from square one. For as long as she lived she’d never forget his face. She dropped down to the floor and held her head in her hands. This was supposed to be the time of all her dreams coming true. She was going to build a life together with Angus. They were going to have a family. They were going to dream the same dreams and see them all come true. But instead of all that she felt like she’d been buried alive. If he’d died in an accident or developed some kind of illness tha
t claimed his life she could’ve somehow made sense of it. Accidents and illness are things that happen because of external factors or because of a body that becomes diseased. But her life with Angus had been snatched away by an act of evil. The act of someone who’d deliberately singled her beloved out for execution.

  Her thoughts were drifting in and out of here and there when she realised there was a horrendous amount of shouting going on downstairs. She went down tentatively, not knowing what the hell she might be walking in on and when she went into the living room she found her parents and her brother Matt bawling each other out like she’d never seen them do before.

  ‘Will you lot tell me what the hell is going on here?’ she shouted.

  Susie and her brother Matt sat side by side on one of the leather sofas in their parents’ living room. They’d sought each other’s closeness when their parents’ said that there was something about their family they needed to tell them about. They’d always done it when they were children. If one of them had been in trouble then they’d stick together against the common enemy. They both knew though that this time it was going to be a great deal more serious than who’d broken a window during a game of football.

  Ann Schofield was visibly shaking as she played around with a paper tissue in her fingers. She looked up at her husband Bill who was standing with his back to her, staring out of the window.

  ‘It’s time you both knew,’ said Ann.

  ‘Knew what, Mum?’ asked Susie.

  Ann sucked in a breath and tried to draw inspiration from somewhere. She tried to go deep into her faith but all it was telling her was that the truth had to come out.

  ‘When I was a young girl,’ she began, ‘I fell pregnant. Nothing remarkable about that you might say but this was the late fifties and girls like me from nice, Catholic families didn’t get pregnant. And if they did then there were always consequences to be paid. I had my son. I called him Sean Patrick.’

  Susie was shocked. ‘So Matt and I have a brother?’

  ‘A half brother’ her father corrected without turning round. ‘He was only ever your half brother.’

  ‘Why do you talk about him as if he was part of the past?’ Susie persisted.

  ‘Because he was murdered by the man who’s been pretending to be him ever since,’ said Bill. ‘Andy Cook. He was part of the past, Susie. And that’s where he should’ve stayed.’

  ‘I want the whole story’ said Matt.

  ‘And so do I’ said Susie. ‘Go on, Mum?’

  ‘Your grandmother never forgave me for what I did,’ said Ann, her eyes filling with tears as she recalled her mother’s disapproval that carried on right up until the day she died. ‘She loved the two of you dearly but she never forgot that you weren’t her only grandchildren and that I’d sent the other one away.’

  Susie shook her head and ran her hands through her hair.

  ‘And then he was sent to Australia as an orphan. Except he wasn’t an orphan. He had a mother.’

  ‘And you’re saying, Dad, that Andy Cook has been claiming to be our brother Sean Patrick for all these years? Why?’

  ‘To get money out of the family,’ said Bill.

  ‘Andy Cook?’ Susie exclaimed. ‘ Isn’t he on the run?’

  ‘Yes’ said Ann. ‘The police say they have no idea where he is.’

  ‘He can’t have committed the murders but… are there any other members of the family that Matt and I don’t know about?’

  ‘Apparently,’ said Ann, ‘Sean Patrick had a son. He was taken into care after his mother was murdered by Andy Cook, or Sean Patrick as he was claiming to be.’

  ‘They don’t know yet what happened to the child’ said Ann. ‘My grandchild.’

  ‘But he could’ve grown up with a pretty big sense of grievance?’ said Susie. She was joining it all up in her head and it didn’t paint a pretty picture. ‘It could’ve led him to carry out desperate acts of revenge.’

  ‘Susie, please let me explain before you start ripping into me,’ said Ann, ‘it isn’t easy for me to tell all this to the two of you.’

  ‘Well, we’re listening,’ said Susie, ‘but it had better be good.’

  ‘I lived at your grandmother’s house with Sean Patrick for the first couple of years of his life. But your grandmother lived in a council house, as you know, and the council were threatening her with eviction because of the overcrowding. They said that Sean Patrick had to have a room of his own and that it wasn’t appropriate for him to be sleeping in the same room as me or your grandmother. He wasn’t an infant anymore. He was a child and all the rules changed.’ She looked up and noted the apprehensive looks on their faces. She also noted that her husband of almost forty years was still staring out of the window. ‘So they gave me a flat of my own. I never took to it. Every sound at night made me think there was someone trying to get in. Some people are not disposed to living on their own and I’m one of them.’

  ‘But you weren’t alone’ said Susie. ‘You had your son.’

  ‘But that’s not the same!’ Ann insisted. ‘It’s not the same as living with another adult.’

  ‘But lots of women out there live on their own with their kids,’ Susie continued.

  ‘Well I couldn’t be one of them,’ said Ann. ‘Then I met your father. Things weren’t all bad. I had some hope in my life.’

  ‘You also had a son,’ said Susie. ‘ What was the matter? Did he get in the way?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that’ said Ann.

  ‘Oh so what was it like you sanctimonious cow!’

  ‘Susie!’ Bill roared. ‘Don’t speak to your mother like that!’

  Matt leapt to his feet to defend his sister. ‘You take one more step closer to her, Dad, and I will flatten you.’

  ‘All of you, please!’ Ann cried.

  ‘Oh no, you’re going to get yours now!’ said Susie. ‘All these years you’ve threatened us with your precious God! All these years you’ve done everything you could to make us feel guilty for the smallest, most inconsequential piece of nonsense. The Catholic guilt trip. It comes gold plated,’ she turned to her father. ‘Did you make her do it? ‘

  ‘I thought it best that we started out with a clean break,’ Bill spluttered to his daughter. The look in her eyes was crushing him. She looked like she held him in complete contempt.

  ‘But you dumped a child!’ Susie emphasised, enraged at her mother’s disclosures.

  ‘But he wasn’t mine and I didn’t want him as part of our family,’ said Bill.

  Susie slapped her father across the face. ‘Matt and I had a brother who we didn’t get to know because of your… I was going to say selfishness but it doesn’t seem strong enough a word.’

  ‘Susie,’ said Ann, standing up and moving next to Bill. ‘Please don’t hate us!’

  ‘Hate you? If I find that my Angus died because of something you started years ago then you will have to forget you have a daughter, just like you forgot you had a son.’

  ‘That goes for me too,’ said Matt. ‘We have a nephew who we don’t know what happened to and a brother who died in God knows what kind of circumstances. All my life, Mum, you’ve made me feel bad about myself because I’m gay and in your eyes that goes against what God wishes. Well when I die I’ll be able to look St. Peter in the eye with a clear conscience whereas you, well you’ll be standing in line with all the other hypocrites. You disgust me.’ He then turned to his father. ‘Both of you do.’

  *

  Sara was about to go into a briefing at the station when her mobile rang. It was Manchester Social Services whom she’d asked to look into what had happened to the child that had witnessed his mother, Jolene MacKenzie, being killed by Andy Cook.

  ‘We have found some significant information for you,’ said the young female voice who identified herself as Danielle.

  ‘Yes?’ said Sara.

  ‘Well, after his mother was murdered he did get taken into care as you might expect and seeing as his father had been a British c
itizen it was decided he should stay here in this country.’

  ‘Were there no relatives of Jolene’s in Australia he could’ve gone back to?’ asked Sara.

  ‘Apparently not’ said Danielle who was reading from a computer screen on her desk. ‘A couple of years later he was adopted by a couple in North Wales.’

  ‘Do we have a name?’ Sara asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Danielle, ‘it was Evans. And his new parents called him Philip.’

  ‘Phillip Evans?’

  ‘Yeah’ said Danielle. ‘And now here’s the thing. His parents were quite religious, very strong Catholics. I suppose you could say he was pushed but he became a priest.’

  The penny dropped inside Sara like an atom bomb. ‘Don’t tell me. Father Phillip Evans currently attached to the Holy Saints church in Salford?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Danielle. ‘That’s him’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sara, ‘I now have my prime suspect.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sara woke up early the next morning and decided to go straight into the office. It was barely past six but the building wasn’t empty. A police station of that size never is. There are always suspects in cells and diligent police officers like Sara driven by their hunches to the point of distraction and insomnia. No sightings had been reported overnight of either Andy Cook or Father Phillip Evans who, not surprisingly, had now disappeared. A full scale manhunt was now underway for them both.

  Sara’s lover Kieran was on front desk duty and he called Sara to say that a Matt Schofield was there and wanted to speak to her. After they’d finished with the business of the call they whispered a couple things to each other that they shouldn’t and then hung up. Sara smiled at the phone. Kieran was such a filthy bugger and what he’d said to her had nothing to do with ‘sweet nothings’. She’d also noticed him getting a bit moody though lately and she had no idea what that was all about.

  She went downstairs and took Matt Schofield into an interview room just off the front desk area. She couldn’t help looking at her watch. It was just before eight o’clock.