by M. P. Wright
I tore off my burning coat and turned to follow Vic up the stairway. It was then that I saw, standing in the furthest recess of the cellar, my wife, Ellie. She was holding the hand of our little girl Amelia. I screamed out their names and went to run back into burning catacomb, but Ellie calmly raised her hand to stop me, shaking her head, telling me to come no closer. She smiled and drew our beloved child close to her side. Amelia held on tightly to the crisp white linen of her mother’s long, flowing skirt with her tiny fingers. Then I watched as they both disappeared into the flames.
41
Our drive back to St Pauls was made in silence. The only noise that disturbed our otherwise peaceful nocturnal journey came from the intermittent banging that occasionally emanated from our fellow passenger, the crooked cop Mickey Warren, who Vic had dumped, bound and gagged, into the boot of the Cortina. We had left the Blanchard estate at speed and drove out into the night with the house ablaze, the fire destroying any trace that we had ever been there, just as Terrence Blanchard had foretold.
I was sitting on the back seat being shunted to and fro as Vic sped through the darkened country lanes. I was holding Stella in my arms, and she was still out for the count from the soporific drug that Blanchard had given her. Looking at her sleeping face, I could not imagine the cruelty that she must have endured, and I drew her close to me like a parent with a sick child.
It was just after ten thirty by the time Vic pulled up outside my digs. He got out and opened up the rear door, and I slid out, still holding onto Stella tightly. As we began to walk towards my front door, I felt something drop from out of the blanket and fall to the ground. Vic bent down and picked up a small cloth rabbit. He looked at it, then handed it back to me, shrugging his big shoulders, puzzled. Something told me I’d seen the toy before somewhere as I tucked it back in between the blanket and let it nestle close to her. I stood in the street, thinking for a second or two.
When I looked down at the toy again I realised it was the same as the one in the photograph I’d found underneath the wardrobe in her house a short while ago. Stella was the young child sitting on the knee of the guy who resembled Earl Linney. I lifted my head and looked across at Vic, who said nothing but nodded towards my bedsit. Standing there, with her frail hand opening the door for us, was Mrs Pearce.
I lay Stella on my bed. Safe now and gently breathing, she looked to be in a dreamless sleep. I chose to let her rest for as long as was necessary before calling for a doctor. I closed the bedroom door behind me and walked into the kitchen, where Vic and Mrs Pearce sat across from each other at the small dining table.
“Mrs Pearce . . . Can you do me a small favour?”
I stood over her tiny frame and smiled down at her.
“Is it to do with that poor girl? Your cousin ’ere says she’s had a bit of a time of things. What is it you want me to do?”
“Yes, Mrs Pearce, Stella’s a little shook up, but she’s fast asleep now. Could you stay here? Then look in on her in the next quarter of an hour to check she’s OK, but I’m sure she’ll be fine. I need to go with Vic to the family, but I won’t be long . . . I promise.”
“She’ll be fine with me, Mr Ellington . . . You run along now, I’ll see you shortly.”
She nodded at me gently, and I looked over at Vic to let him know I was ready to leave. As we were walking out of the kitchen, I stopped and turned to my neighbour.
“Oh, there’s another kindness you could do fo’ me, Mrs Pearce.”
The old woman looked up at me. “And what’s that, Mr Ellington?”
“Call me JT . . . All my friends do.”
Vic and I sat in the car outside of my place on Gwyn Street. He looked across at me from the driver’s seat.
“OK . . . JT, what do we do now?”
I took in a deep breath, working my game plan out in my head.
“Listen, Vic, I want you take that bastard we got stashed in the back o’ the boot and drive him over to Bridewell police station. You leave the motor outside in the street, find the nearest phone box, then call the operator and ask to be patched through to the station. When you git through, say you wanna speak to Detective Inspector William Fletcher. Tell ’em that it’s real urgent. If he ain’t there, you say to whoever’s on the front desk to go git him, no matter where he is! Understand?”
Vic nodded at me.
“Then tell ’em that Fletcher needs to git his ass outside the nick and that in the boot o’ this Cortina is Mickey Warren, awaiting arrest for his involvement in the murders of Carnell Harris, Clarence Mayfield, Jocelyn Charles and Virginia Landry and the attempted murder of Joseph Ellington. Fletcher’s gonna shit when he sees a serving police officer tied up in the boot of a car on his doorstep and he’s bound to come looking fo’ me soon afterwards. I’ll worry ’bout all that later. Once you done that fo’ me, you don’t say another damn ting and you walk away, you hear me?”
“Yeah . . . I hear you. But I ain’t too pleased having to be so close to no police station, let alone speaking to ’em. I’m only doing it cos you my kin. I woulda slit that pig Warren’s throat and not thought another ting ’bout it. You know that, don’t ya?”
“I know . . .”
I put my hand into my jacket pocket, pulled out my notebook and flipped over the pages until I found the slip of paper with the address I needed on it. I tore it out and passed it over to Vic.
“Now take me to this place in Montpelier, brother.”
I sat back in my seat and shut my eyes. The thought of what I had to do next was eating at my guts as Vic pulled away and drove me over to Earl Linney’s home.
*
It was just after eleven as I watched Vic pull away, leaving me outside of the Linneys’ house. A hard frost had crept in and the ground below me sparkled with ice crystals as I made my way across the road to the old Georgian town house that stood behind a tiny garden, which was surrounded by a four-foot-high red-brick wall. I opened the gate and walked down the short path to the front door, then took the brass lion’s head knocker in my hand and let it fall against the door a couple of times. A few moments later a light came on and shone out through the stained-glass panel above me, and a small, thin, well-dressed black woman opened the door. She peered out at me suspiciously over her half-rim reading glasses. I stared back at the slight and unassuming lady who faced me and wondered if this could really be the inhuman monster that Terrence Blanchard had described to me earlier. I stood back from the doorstep and tried to force a smile, but failed.
“Mrs Linney . . . ?”
“Yes, can I help you?”
Her tone was polished and formal, and she spoke without the Caribbean accent I’d previously heard when she’d answered the telephone to me a few days previously. She nervously stood back into her hallway, unsure of my reason for calling at such a late hour.
“Good evening, Ma’am, I’m hoping to speak to your husband on an urgent matter. Is he in?”
“I’m sorry, no, he’s not. He’ll be on his way home shortly; he’s attending a social event at the council chambers. Can I tell him who called?”
“My name’s Ellington, Joseph Ellington . . . I’ve been working fo’ Mr Linney these past few weeks. You and I spoke recently on the phone, I don’t know if you remember me?”
“No . . . No, I’m afraid I don’t remember, Mr Ellington . . . Would you like me to pass on a message to him when he returns?”
Her tone had hardened, like she was suddenly ready to be rid of me.
I decided to play my ace and walked up onto the step directly in front of her.
“Yes, if you don’t mind. You can tell your husband that I’ve found Stella.”
Alice Linney took another step back from the door, visibly shaken. I watched as she swallowed hard, then, without being asked, I walked by her into the hallway and set the door ajar to allow us a little privacy.
“I don’t know what your game is, but you can get the hell out of my house!”
I ignored her and continu
ed to walk boldly on through into the cosy sitting room; then I felt her fingers jab into my arm. I turned to face her as she waved an accusatory finger in my face.
“Who the hell do you think you are pushing your way into my home at this time of night? I’m going to call the police.”
She spun on her heels, marching back towards the telephone in the hall. I called after her, stopping the old woman in her tracks.
“Make sure you ask fo’ a Detective Inspector William Fletcher out at Bridewell station. Now, I know he’s gonna be busy tonight, but he’ll sure be mighty interested to hear your story, Mrs Linney, I can promise you that . . . After you git round to telling him that you got an unwanted guest in your house, don’t forget to mention to him ’bout how you took young Stella and hocked her on to a depraved animal like Terrence Blanchard!”
Alice Linney turned to face me, then slowly walked back into her living room and stood a few feet from me, her face contorted with anger.
“What d’you want from me . . . money?”
Her clipped colonial true-blue accent used for guests and callers had been lost and replaced by a more familiar Jamaican twang.
“No . . . I want what I’ve been looking fo’ this past few weeks: just simple bit o’ truth.”
“The trute . . . oh you want the trute, do you, Mr Ellington? Well, the trute can be twisted in all kinda ways. You wanna hear my side o’ tings or the man who’s been payin’ you your wages?” She sneered at me, her eyes burning with anger and contempt.
“I wanna know how you could sell a pretty young woman’s freedom to an insane pervert like Terrence Blanchard and think you could git away with it, fo’ a start.”
“You call Stella pretty? She a lot tings, brother, but she ain’t pretty . . . She a stupid dirty girl! Ever since she was a little pitney, she was trouble. Always messin’ her drawers, needing attention and to be bathed every couple o’ hours, constantly crying and causing trouble. Couldn’t do a damn ting fo’ herself; she put me t’ru hell!”
She jabbed her skinny finger at me like she was about to sentence me to the gallows.
“What you talkin’ ’bout? Why would she put you through hell? Yeah, the little ting was deaf and dumb . . . but that wouldn’t make her a monster. Stella hardly came into the world blessed, did she?”
“Stella shouldn’t o’ come into this world at all, damn retard! Victoria, her mama, she couldn’t cope with her when she was a child, had some silly kinda breakdown. Doctors t’rew her into the nuthouse at Stoke Park; she was locked up with the rest of the mental defectives inside o’ there fo’ nearly ten years. My husband said he wanted to help, and like a fool he told the authorities that we would bring her up here with us, in my home. In the end it came down to me to wipe her filthy arse, comb the lice outta her hair, make sure she wasn’t stinkin’ while her worthless mama rocked away in that loony bin and I took care of her brat . . . Woman only took the child back when all the hard work was done!”
I was confused; none of what was being said to me made any sense.
“Why’d your husband agree with Stella’s mother to look after her? She wasn’t your kin . . . I don’t understand, Mrs Linney.”
“Why would you?”
She walked over to the far side of the room, took a photo frame from the back of a teak sideboard and returned with it outstretched in her hand and shoved it at my chest.
“Here . . . here’s ya damn trute!”
I took the recognisable photograph from her. It was the same as the one I’d found in Stella’s bedroom. I looked up at Alice Linney, who stared back at me bitterly.
“So Stella . . . is Earl’s daughter?”
“Don’t be a bloody fool, man . . . That’s not my husband in that damn picture . . . It’s his brother, Patrick!”
I stood motionless, staring down at the snapshot, while Alice continued to rant on at me.
“Patrick was in the Royal Air Force same as my man, Earl. The two of ’em was the only family either of ’em had, an’ they was inseparable. After the war they both went back home to Jamaica. Earl an’ I married, an’ his brother met a lovely woman from Spanish Town, they got hitched and Patrick became a Baptist minister. We all came to Britain in 1948. Within months, Patrick had met Stella’s mama, Victoria, starting seeing her on the quiet. Stupid fool, he got her pregnant and she refused to git rid of it. Patrick panicked, packed up everyting he owned and took him and that poor ignorant wife o’ his and sailed back to Jamaica. Earl, being so close to his brother, made him a promise: he told him that he’d keep an eye out fo’ the child. We ended up doing more than that . . . Earl treated that ting like it was his own, and my feelings were never considered, not fo’ a moment. He stupidly thought that I’d be agreeable to his madness and took it fo’ granted that I’d go along with it all, just like he does with so many other tings.
“Patrick came back to Britain in 1955 to see her, the year that photograph was taken. Only time he ever saw Stella. He gave her that damn silly cloth rabbit she carries round with her. It’s never left her side since the day he gave it to her. We told everybody Stella was our ward, that we were fostering her. It was easier to lie than admit the trute ’bout how we’d ended up stuck with the child. It also allowed my husband an excuse to not have to face the trute ’bout me. You see, I’m what you call a barren woman, Mr Ellington. Earl and I could never have a child of our own. So he took to caring fo’ another woman’s bastard offspring!”
I could feel her stare burning into me. I kept looking at the picture in my hands and I stumbled for the words when I spoke.
“I found a copy of this photograph at the back of an empty scrapbook in Stella’s bedroom a short while back. I thought that the man in the photo looked like your husband, but I was wrong.”
I kept staring at it and spoke to Mrs Linney without raising my head.
“Stella’s home, it was filled with bleach and other kinds a cleaning stuff, it was all over the place . . . Why’d that be?”
“Her useless mama died in that house . . . in that very same room riddled with cancer, she was. The stupid girl used to try and scrub the stench o’ death outta that place day and night. Even took to washing down her skin with it, but like I told you, she was always a dirty little ting, so a bit a bleach wasn’t gonna harm that thick witless hide o’ hers!”
I began to shake my head at her bitter words.
“So because you thought that Stella had been a thorn in your side fo’ so many years and a constant reminder of the child you couldn’t have, you decided to palm her off to some crazed old bastard to defile and abuse . . . What the hell were you thinkin’, woman, how did you really think you’d git away with such madness?”
“I didn’t have to think, man! You haven’t had to suffer the humiliations I have. I was tired of seeing the foolish child’s face about and my man still doting on her like he was her daddy all these years later. I encouraged Terrence Blanchard to renegotiate the land deal with my husband after he’d previously turned his offer down. Earl has had great plans to offer many people in the community a better chance of owning their own homes. I didn’t wanna see his dreams tumble just because some old racist didn’t wanna part with a few thousand feet o’ dirt to a black man. Stella was the key to realising those dreams fo’ my man. So I parlayed another deal with Blanchard using that worthless deaf simpleton as surety to git what I needed. He promised me that she’d be well looked after and I believed him when he said she’d be cared fo’.”
Alice Linney tried to justify her actions with an arrogant belligerence that I’d never seen in a woman before.
“Cared fo’ . . . You sick, evil old bitch, Blanchard couldn’t have cared fo’ any living soul, no more than a gator could keep his mout’ away from dead meat! You knew when you made that trumped-up land deal with him that you were selling that poor child into a living hell!”
I felt the fury tighten in every muscle in my body and my fists clenched. Something snapped inside my head and I shot towards Alice
Linney. My arm outstretched, I grabbed hold of her clothing and pulled her towards me. She screamed out as I lifted up my bunched knuckles ready to rain down my rage upon her slight body – then I froze as I saw Earl Linney standing in the doorway of his sitting room, neither of us aware of how long he had been there. I held onto his wife tightly, my breathing heavy and laboured.
“Where’s Stella, Mr Ellington?” He spoke softly, the water welling up in his eyes.
“She’s sleeping over at my place. I gotta friend of mine watching over her.”
“Take me to her . . . please.”
Earl Linney looked at his wife; with a face past pity and hate . . . Loathing was what came to my mind. She threw out her chest at him defiantly. His head sank to his chest as the tears began to flow from his eyes, and I watched as he slowly walked back out of his home and into the street. The sound of his desolate sobbing would stay with me till the end of my days.
I offered to drive Earl Linney’s Austin Cambridge back to my place. He threw the keys over to me as we neared his motor and got in, and he stared straight out of the windscreen, his body trembling. During our ride I asked him how much of my conversation with his wife he had heard.
“I heard enough,” was all the man whispered to me.
The car journey seemed endless. A fresh dusting of snow began to fall out of the sky as the car wipers worked hard to knock it away. I knew what it felt like to have your life taken from you: one day we think we have it all, then when it is gone we wonder if it was all just a dream, a mirage.