Limestone Cowboy

by Stuart Pawson

  The dog leapt and grasped it by the tail. The cat screamed and fell to the ground, turning to face its tormentor. The dog went for a better hold and its jaws clamped round the cat’s back, severing its spine. The poor creature turned, its rear end paralysed, and raised one defiant claw as the dog finished it off with a bite to the head. As it shook the carcass a spray of blood arced away from it and the dog trotted proudly round the enclosure, stump of a tail wagging, more blood trailing on to the concrete floor from the lifeless body dangling from its jaws.

  “Fifteen seconds,” I heard someone announce, and there was a smatter of jeering from the audience.

  The next cat was a long-haired Persian type that had eaten too many chocolate drops and had never faced anything more threatening than Jerry Springer on daytime TV. Instinct kicked in as the cage was raised and the leash slipped, but it was no contest. The cat turned as it reached the wire, losing fur off its back as it dodged the snapping jaws, but the next time it tried the manoeuvre the dog cut the corner and grabbed a leg. The cat rolled on its back and tried to fight but dogs like that don’t feel pain and it ignored the flashing claws and went for the cat’s belly.

  “Eight seconds,” the MC told the jeering audience, and Tojo was declared the winner of Cats against the Clock.

  After that it was dog versus dog.

  I ate the meal but didn’t enjoy it. The last big case I had involved someone strangling young women. I couldn’t reconcile my feelings for the animals with those I had for the girls. Perhaps it was impossible, futile to try. Perhaps it was the perpetrators I should focus on. I didn’t know. Nobody did. It was a shit world with some shit people in it, that’s all you could say. I went for a walk around the estate for some fresh air. The weather was changing, as promised by the forecasters, and the threat of thunderstorms had passed. People were saying we needed the rain. They’re never satisfied.

  Rosie rang. She was still at the vicarage and staying another night. She’d come home Wednesday, she told me.

  “Thank you for coming down, Charlie,” she said. “I was really pleased to see you. The vicar, Duncan, is very nice, but he’s still, you know, a caring professional.”

  “Did you hold a service?”

  “Yes. They had the coffin back by ten a.m. The grave was filled in again before I knew anything about it. There were just the three of us, including the vicar’s wife, then they left me alone for a while. I said my goodbyes, Charlie. Now all we have to do is wait for the DNA results.”

  “Have they said how long it will be?”

  “No. As soon as possible, that’s all. What about you?”

  “No. They can do it in a day, if necessary, but they charge extra. They’re always busy, and this isn’t an active enquiry, so it will be low priority, but they’ll do their best.”

  We chatted for a while and I remembered an advert I’d seen in the Events column of the Gazette.

  “Did you ever get to play the part of Mustard Seed?” I asked.

  “Mustard Seed? No, I had to drop out.”

  “It just happens that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on at the Leeds Playhouse this week. It’s the RSC. How do you feel about going to see it on Saturday, if I can get the tickets?”

  “This Saturday?”

  “Mmm.” I was worried about the memories it might revive. People are irrational about some things; they look for something to blame. If Shakespeare had never written that particular play Rosie would not have stayed on at school on the fateful day, therefore her father might still be alive.

  She was silent for a while, before saying: “I’d love to, Charlie. It will be wonderful, a real treat, and I need a treat. But what about the gala? Isn’t that this weekend?”

  “Sunday,” I replied. “No problem.”

  “Have you finished the paintings?”

  “Not quite. I’ll have to spend some time on them. Hey, listen to this: the uniformed branch always have a display at the gala, and this year they were hoping to do something different. We tried to convince them that they’d look good all dressed up as cowboys, but they’ve refused.”

  “I think that’s a great idea. You could go as Wyatt Earp, Charlie. You’d look splendid in a frock coat.”

  “No way.”

  “Oh, go on!”

  “No way.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  “Thanks for ringing, Rosie. You’ve brightened my day, and it’s good to hear you sounding happier.”

  “Well, things are moving, aren’t they?”

  They were, but I wasn’t sure in which direction. “I’ll try for those tickets,” I said.

  I slept well. I didn’t expect to, but I fell straight into a contented sleep and was deep in the arms of Morpheus when the alarm woke me, early Wednesday morning. Had I been deep in the arms of Goldie Hawn I would have hurled it through the window, but it was only sleep and it had rained through the night, the sky was clear again and Charlie Priest was ready to raise hell amongst the thieves and robbers of Heckley.

  He wasn’t ready for what was waiting for him.

  Chapter Twelve

  “There’s been another,” Dave announced as I strode into the office.

  “So I’ve just been told. Any details?”

  “A baby. Swallowed some glass from a tin of baby food. That’s all I’ve heard.”

  “And he’s in the General?”

  “Oh, yeah. And that.”

  “Look on the bright side, Dave,” I said. “It’s not Ebola. They’ll be giving us a parking place down there soon. C’mon, let’s go.”

  The doctor in charge came to meet us at the front desk and took us up to the paediatrics ward. He was black, with delicate hands and a soft, almost inaudible voice.

  “The child was brought in yesterday evening,” he explained as we exited the lift, “bleeding from a cut inside his lower lip. His mother said she found pieces of broken glass in a tin of baby food she fed him with and that she found blood in his nappy. We’ve X-rayed him but small pieces of glass don’t show up very well.”

  “How serious is it?”

  “Hard to say. Small pieces in his stomach will make him feel unwell, but in themselves they need not be dangerous.” He stopped, his hand on the door handle. “Have you ever seen a goat eating leaves off a thorn bush, Inspector?”

  “No,” I admitted, stooping to hear him, hoping I hadn’t misunderstood.

  His face split into a grin. “Neither have I, but they do it without hurting themselves, even though their mouth parts are extremely soft. Babies’ mouths and digestive tracts are similar. Ingesting broken glass is not to be recommended but it should not cause any damage if the pieces are small enough, and it should pass through relatively harmlessly. Powdered glass is not considered a problem. Bigger pieces may cause damage, of course, and we will analyse his stools for blood. Otherwise we just wait and see.”

  “There’s been a spate of contaminated food at supermarkets,” I told him. “No doubt you’ve read about it in the papers. It’s what started the Ebola scare. We thought it had subsided, but evidently not.”

  He pushed the door open. “I’m afraid this was something more complicated than contaminated food. I’ll show you.”

  Rory Norcup was asleep in an oversize cot, wearing only a disposable nappy and an adhesive strip that underlined his bottom lip. He kicked his legs and waved his arms as if deep in a disturbing dream. Sadly for him, it wasn’t a dream.

  “He’s thirty-one weeks old, but has the weight of a baby half that age. There is also evidence of bruising on his arms, as if he has been gripped tightly, plus some old bruising on his back. He was clean when he came in but he has a severe nappy dermatitis, as if it was rarely changed.”

  “Where’s his mother?” I asked.

  “She brought him in and sat with him most of the night, but we sent her home not long ago.”

  “How was she?”

  “Distraught with grief and concern for her poor baby.” He paused between each word, implying that they
meant exactly the opposite of what they said.

  “You think she had something to do with it?”

  “Almost certainly. Take a look at his face.”

  We peered at him, his eyes screwed shut, his expression contorted as he fought with demons that he had no name for.

  “He’s not the bonniest baby I’ve ever seen,” Dave said, “but he’s not Down’s Syndrome, is he?”

  “No, he’s not a Down’s baby.”

  “Alcohol whatsit?” I suggested.

  “That’s right, Inspector. FAS – foetal alcohol syndrome, caused by his mother drinking whilst pregnant.”

  “How serious is that?” Dave asked.

  “It’s a setback,” the doctor replied, “but it can be overcome with a caring, nourishing upbringing.”

  “Which he won’t get.”

  “Not with his present mother.”

  “You reckon she was trying to get rid of him?”

  “No, she loves him, she says, but she’s inadequate, has as many problems as he has, so she uses him to alleviate her own difficulties.”

  Dave leaned over the cot’s high side and started making noises. “Hi, Rory,” he whispered. “We haven’t given you the best start in life, have we?” He reached in and covered the child’s legs with the cellular blanket that he’d kicked off.

  “I know what you’re getting at, Doc,” I said, “but my brain’s not working. Tell me its name.”

  “Munchausen syndrome by proxy. She damages the child to win sympathy for herself. I’ve come across it before.”

  “That’s a serious accusation.”

  “I know, and Munchausen mothers are plausible liars. They appear to be overly protective of their children, take great interest in their treatment and become familiar with medical procedures. It’s not always to win admiration as a wonderful mother – sometimes they do it to strike up a relationship with medical staff and impress them with their concern. I’d say Mrs Norcup is a classical example.”

  “Have you seen her before?”

  “Yes. Rory was in about a month ago, with an undiagnosed rash on his back.”

  “And you think she caused it?”

  “It cleared up in two days with minimum treatment. She stayed by his bedside throughout.”

  “Perhaps we ought to talk to her GP.”

  “I’d think you’d find, Inspector, that he’s completely taken in by her. He’ll say she’s a caring mother.”

  “We see the self-inflicted part often enough,” I said, “but not the by proxy bit. Will he go into care?”

  “Yes. We’ve notified social services.”

  “You’d better give me the mother’s address.”

  “Why do they have kids if they don’t want them?” Dave said as we drove through Heckley towards Gaitskill House, where Mrs Norcup lived. “There’s no excuse for it these days. They teach them birth control before they teach them their times tables, hand out free condoms to the juniors, and still every teenage girl you see has at least one youngster following her around.”

  I looked sideways at him. “It just happens.”

  “Well it happens too often. Booze and sex, that’s what does it, if you ask me.”

  “Well, yes, sex does play a part,” I agreed.

  A traffic light fifty yards ahead turned amber and Dave braked. Two cars behind us in the right hand lane accelerated through as it turned to red.

  “Look at those two bastards,” he cursed. “Did you get the numbers?”

  “The second one,” I told him, reaching into my pocket for my notebook. “Tell me the make and colour.”

  The light switched to green and we moved off again. “We could always adopt him,” Dave suggested.

  “Who?”

  “Young Rory.”

  “What? You and me?”

  “No, Dumbo. The police station. Not adopt him, just buy him treats, keep a weather eye on him, wherever he goes. Uncle Police.”

  “Or Uncle Nick?”

  “Something like that. It needn’t cost much. The surplus on the coffee money would cover it.”

  “Uncle Bill?”

  “Are you taking the piss?”

  “Not at all, Dave. It’s a great idea.” I shook my head and smiled. There was a temptation to say that he’d probably have another of his own clinging to his legs before much longer, but I resisted.

  Gaitskill House was one block in what was known as the Project, on the opposite side of Heckley to the Sylvan Fields estate. The tenants of the Project aspire to live in the Sylvan Fields. It had sounded like a noble idea, back in the Sixties. Housing for everyone, at an affordable price because of new construction methods. Modular design, prefabricated units, pre-stressed concrete. The councillors banded the terms around as if they knew what they meant, and the ugly, pebble-dashed façade of the Project soon scarred the landscape.

  The underfloor heating was expensive and unreliable, the joints between the prefabricated sections leaked and you could hear your neighbour clack his false teeth. In the eighties the half-empty flats were condemned and marked down for demolition, but sociological trends were at work, the sanctity of marriage was under threat and there was an upsurge in demand for accommodation for one-parent families. Now the council regarded them as a dumping ground for problem tenants, and the influx of asylum seekers had put a further demand on them.

  A researcher had estimated that one parking place for every two flats would be generous, but the single burned-out Sierra standing in front of them showed the error of that calculation. Dave parked well away from it, where his car was highly visible from the upper balconies. Mrs Norcup lived in number 419.

  I gazed up at the bleak concrete walls, streaked with rust from the reinforcing bars, and felt as if I were part of Rumania’s secret police when Ceausescu was in power. “Third floor,” I said, warning my nostrils to brace themselves. “We’ll walk.”

  “Just a tick,” Dave said, and strolled over to where four industrial-size dumpsters stood, next to the stairwell. He lifted a lid, looked in, closed the lid and looked in the next one. “Bugger!” he declared. “They’re empty. Looks as if the bin men have just been.”

  Mrs Norcup answered the door at the fourth knock, probably after doing a high-speed tidy of the flat. Her face was flushed pink but etched with concern as Dave made the introductions.

  “Is it about Rory?” she demanded, a hand nervously raised to her face, her hair untidy. “Is he all right? Has something happened to him? I was just about to go back to the hospital…”

  “Rory’s fine,” I assured her with a smile. “We’ve just left him and he was chatting up the nurses. May we come in and have a word?”

  She looked at me, bewildered.

  “Rory’s fine. Can we come in, please?”

  The flat was about what I expected: cheap furniture; untidy and smelling of cooking. I try not to be judgemental, lest others judge me. It was reasonably clean and the carpets didn’t stick to your feet as you walked across them, for which I am always grateful. The electric fire was on low and the television on high. A man with a toupee and an orange face was talking about antiques. Dave switched off the telly and settled into the only easy chair that didn’t have something on it, giving me a smile that said: “Beat you to it.” I found an upright one and invited Mrs Norcup to sit on her own settee.

  “The doctor told us that Rory should make a full recovery, Mrs Norcup,” I said, “with no after-effects.”

  “Oh, thank God for that. I’ve been so worried about the little mite. I wanted to stay with him but I had to tell his daddy what had happened. I hadn’t taken his phone number to the hospital.”

  “Where is Rory’s dad?” Dave asked.

  “He lives in Sheffield.”

  “Are you together?”

  “No, we split up just before Rory was born. It was amicable. No one else was involved.”

  “Did you get through to him?”

  “No, I missed him. I’ll go back to the hospital and try him again tonig
ht. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Rory. I just don’t know what I’d do.” She started to cry and excused herself. Dave pulled a face at me. I walked over to the window and looked down to where the car was parked. It still had its wheels on.

  Mrs Norcup came back looking slightly tidier, her face newly washed and her hair tied back, dabbing her nose with a tissue.

  “You told the doctor that Rory had eaten some baby food with glass in it,” Dave said.

  “That’s right. Can you believe it? Who’d do something like that to a little baby?”

  “What happened?”

  “I was feeding him. Do you have any children?”

  “No,” Dave lied and I shook my head.

  “It’s a special time, feeding them. It’s when you bond. I loved to feed him, watch him watching me. I’d tease him and he’d laugh. He has a lovely laugh. It was peach and banana, Rory’s favourite.”

  “From a tin?”

  “Yes,” she replied, looking at me as if to say: “What other sort is there?”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s it. Suddenly he was crying and blood was pouring out of his mouth. I poked my fingers in, cleared his mouth out, and cut my finger on a piece of glass.” She looked at her finger but decided not to offer it as evidence.

  “How much had he eaten?” Dave asked.

  “About half the tin.”

  “Have you kept the rest of it?”

  “Yes, it’s in the fridge.”

  We moved into the tiny kitchen and she produced the offending item. It was one of those with a pull-tab on the top and she’d saved the lid, too.

  “Did you open the tin yourself?” I asked.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Was there any evidence of it having been tampered with?”

  “Not that I noticed. You don’t look for things like that, do you? You don’t expect anybody to poison your baby’s food, do you? What sort of people are there who could do such a thing?”

  “There are some strange people about, Mrs Norcup.” I spooned some of the gooey mixture out of the tin and rubbed it between my fingers. I found a piece of glass, about four millimetres square and gave it to Dave.

  “Where did you buy this?” I asked.