An Act of Silence

by Colette McBeth

  Jay stares at the letter, his eyes catching on a few choice phrases: ‘witch hunt’, ‘national security’, ‘spurious claims with no foundation in fact’.

  ‘Linda Moscow is an opportunist with a grudge. She fell on her own sword years back – cash for contracts scandal, you may recall it.’ Curtis assesses Jay and shakes his head. ‘Anyway, doesn’t matter if you can or can’t, the point is she accused Henry and me of tipping off the News of the World and exposing her. I mean, who knows how they get these stories, but it wasn’t our fault they found out that she had awarded several contracts to . . . Are you following?’

  Jay nods. The last thing he wants is for Curtis to start the story over again.

  ‘Good . . . well, the whole episode caused an outcry and Henry was forced to establish the Warren Inquiry, which investigated standards in public life. Let me tell you, that was the end of it for Linda. The woman was corrupt. To think she used to be our Home Secretary and spent years pontificating to others.’

  ‘So what is it you want me to do?’ Jay shifts uncomfortably under the pin of Curtis’ stare. His boss wears a look of disbelief, as if the stupidity of others never ceases to amaze him.

  ‘I was rather hoping that was clear. You arrange to meet this Charlie woman. You show her the letter so she can see for herself that Linda isn’t on her side.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No, for God’s sake, man, you don’t tell her you’re working for me. A few strategic lies never hurt anyone. I want to know what Linda is up to and Charlie might be the very person who can tell us. Got it? Let me spell it out for you. You’re Detective Sergeant Huxtable, investigating Linda Moscow and the men Charlie accuses – that’s me and Henry and God knows how many others. You get an in with Charlie so we stay one step ahead of them. Don’t look at me like that, it’s not difficult. You’re still technically a police officer, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m suspended.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘They took my warrant card.’

  ‘And now you have another.’ From the drawer of his desk he produces an envelope.

  ‘I’m reinstating you.’

  It is indeed a warrant card.

  He is Detective Sergeant Jay Huxtable once again.

  John calls him a few weeks later while he’s sitting in front of the TV eating a takeaway chicken chow mein. ‘You need tae go on to the message board and explain why jennypenny is taking a break,’ he says.

  ‘She is?’

  ‘A long break. She won’t be talking any more.’

  ‘What did you do?’ The words are out before Jay edits them.

  ‘I’m a very persuasive man when I want to be.’

  ‘You met her?’

  ‘Not exactly. Her son. Nice wee lad. Tray. Imagine calling a kid Tray, for fuck’s sake. I took him for a ride after school. Bought him an ice cream, so I did. Sent her some photos. Told her to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to see him again. She didn’t even thank me. The manners of some people,’ he laughs.

  Jay pushes his plate away. His appetite has deserted him.

  ‘You’ll do it tonight, yeah, before those women start asking questions . . . Jay, are you there, man?’

  ‘Understood.’

  Jay sits back on the sofa. He wanted this, didn’t he? To be in Curtis’ inner circle. Except he hadn’t expected it to be so dark. Dark like he’s never known. He searches around but can’t find even the smallest spit of light.

  Nine Months Before

  Charlie

  Linda warned me that bringing the men to justice wouldn’t be quick or easy. ‘As you have discovered, they have friends everywhere,’ she wrote in one email. ‘Far better to gather as much evidence, as many testimonies as possible, so you become impossible to ignore.’

  I assured her that time wasn’t an issue. ‘I’ve waited half my life already. I’ve got as long as it takes to see them punished, and the people who covered for them too,’ I told her. ‘In my eyes, they’re as guilty as the men themselves.’

  After her meeting with Jennifer Patcham, Linda suggested that it would be good for us to talk face to face. Eager to push ahead, I agreed, but she postponed the day before our first date. She’d been struck down with a stomach bug, would I mind delaying until the following week, she asked. We settled on a date two weeks from then. I didn’t turn up because by that time I had found out what kind of woman Linda Moscow really was.

  It was evening, dark smudging out the last of the day, when I first saw him. I was almost home, jaded and feet throbbing from a shift at the Langdale Hotel where I’d been working for the past year. As I approached the block of flats where I lived, he emerged from a BMW. He was smart like his car, wore a casual shirt, jeans, a Barbour jacket. I thought he might be Marjorie’s son. Marjorie was my neighbour. ‘Very bright, my Ryan is. He’s a businessman, you know,’ she was fond of telling me.

  ‘Charlie?’

  I stopped. Felt the key in my pocket, ran my finger over the sharp end of it. Just in case.

  ‘Who are you?’

  He raised his hands in surrender. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Detective Sergeant Jay Huxtable,’ he said, and held his warrant card out to prove his point.

  I studied it. Detective Sergeant Jay Huxtable, Metropolitan Police. ‘I promise you, it’s me,’ he laughed. ‘Do you know a woman called Jennifer Patcham?’

  Jennypenny.

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s fine, but there are a couple of questions I need to ask you . . .’

  It was near closing time in the café around the corner, but to my relief a few stragglers remained. The waitress shot us a dirty look when we took a seat.

  Been there.

  ‘What’s happened to Jennifer?’ The air was fat with the stench of fried food.

  ‘She’s a bit shaken up, but she’ll survive.’

  ‘Shaken up?’

  ‘You run the website, don’t you? That’s why I’m here. I understand she met a woman called Linda Moscow a few weeks ago?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘You helped set up the meeting?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘No one is blaming you, Ms Pedlingham.’

  ‘I put them in touch with each other, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Jennifer’s son Trey was picked up from school a few days after they met . . . by a man who said he was a friend of Jennifer’s. He wasn’t.’

  ‘Oh my God . . .’

  ‘He’s fine. Returned safe and well. But Jennifer was beside herself, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Thank goodness.’ I paused for a beat, let the information roll around my brain. ‘I don’t understand what this has to do with her meeting Linda.’

  DS Huxtable handed me a look full of pity. A band of sickness wrapped around me.

  ‘This is confidential, do you understand?’ I didn’t want to know what was coming next.

  ‘I am part of an investigation looking into allegations that a sex ring, operated by influential people, took children from residential homes and abused them . . . It’s all right, you don’t have to say anything. I know you were at Kelmore and I can confirm that is one of the establishments we are focusing on. The nature of the investigation, given those involved, is highly sensitive. Very few people within the force even know it exists. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Do you?

  His words ricocheted through me. And I wanted them to be true, no question. This was everything I was working towards.

  And yet.

  Not here. This wasn’t how I had imagined it. I was exposed, caught off guard. All the work with the website, with fellow survivors, had put me in control. I was driving our case forward. To be told the police were one step ahead unsettled me, shunted me to the back se
at again.

  DS Huxtable paused for encouragement, continued when I gave him none.

  ‘Our inquiries have led us to Linda Moscow. We’re confident she never met any of the children. She didn’t abuse them herself, but—’

  I raised my hand to stop his flow. ‘Linda is helping us.’

  ‘We have evidence to suggest that she was part of a cover-up. We believe Linda Moscow abused her power to put a stop to an investigation that could have exposed these men years ago.’

  I shook my head to dislodge his accusations.

  No. No. No.

  ‘The allegations were brought to her attention in 1996 when she was Home Secretary.’

  1996. Insufficient evidence, they said. It’s not her fault, the reporter had told us.

  Her.

  ‘Are you familiar with a man called Henry Sinclair?’

  His name passed between us like a vibration.

  ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Do you know Linda’s connection to him?’

  ‘They worked together. She doesn’t have anything to do with these people now.’

  ‘This was taken two months ago.’

  He handed me a photograph. All I could see was the back of a man’s head entering a house. A dishevelled woman, surely not her, standing in the doorway.

  ‘That doesn’t tell me a thing.’

  ‘Let me show you this one then.’

  Another photograph of the same man, leaving this time, face in full view.

  Henry Sinclair.

  ‘Do you know how much money Curtis Loewe gave to the Conservative Party in the 1990s? Millions. Guess who was instrumental in tapping him up for that money: Linda Moscow. We think he threatened to cut off the flow of funds if she didn’t step in to stop the investigation.’

  His words became white noise. A relentless drone. Heat trampled over my body, bubbled up, gathered in a lake in the small of my back.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  The lull in conversation fanned me like a cool breeze. But it wasn’t enough. The heat marched on, spreading up to my head, my brains, gushing down to the tips of my toes.

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  I don’t want to believe you. Can’t believe you.

  ‘It’s a lot to take in, I understand. Perhaps this will persuade you I am telling the truth.’

  He produced a letter, what looked like a copy of the original. The paper was the same shade as the coronation chicken sweating under the counter lights.

  It was from Linda Moscow to Chief Superintendent Bill Joplin.

  November 1996. A few months after Bex and I made our complaint.

  Dear Chief Superintendent Joplin,

  I’m writing to you about a delicate matter that has been brought to my attention. I understand your force is investigating two allegations of abuse made against Curtis Loewe and relating to incidents at his home in the Cotswolds and various other locations. Mr Loewe has given me his word these spurious claims have no foundation in fact. For my part, having spoken to him and reviewed the evidence, I am satisfied of his innocence.

  You will be aware that Mr Loewe contributes a considerable amount of money to various children’s charities. A public investigation of the nature you are undertaking would not only be fruitless but harmful to the prospects of hundreds of children who continue to benefit from his generosity.

  I would ask you to consider the sensible use of police resources in this matter. Would they be better directed at tackling the spike in violent crime we saw last year or engaging in a witch hunt that will only serve to embarrass the force?

  Yours sincerely,

  Linda Moscow

  The Rt Honourable Linda Moscow MP

  Home Secretary

  I opened my mouth to say, I don’t understand, but the words disappeared in DS Huxtable’s steam.

  ‘You think it’s a coincidence that after Jennifer met Linda her son was taken? Jennifer showed Linda a picture of her son. She told her where he went to school. She trusted Linda. These people will go to any lengths to protect themselves.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  The look of concentration on his face gave way to something softer, relief maybe, as if he’d been digging away and had finally struck gold.

  ‘We want you to help us, Charlie.’

  Linda.

  The information left me clutching at the air for breath. Incontrovertible proof that she choked off the investigation. And Bex. My mind was alight with images of my friend, lost, desperate to be found, for someone to listen. It was Linda who silenced her, who pulled the investigation, who put pressure on Jonathan Clancy to spike his story. Suddenly, I was back in Hyde Park planted in that pivotal moment where all Bex needed to hear was, I believe you, I will help you, and she could have walked down a different path, had a brighter future. But the police and Jonathan Clancy said, No, I don’t believe you, I won’t help you. Together they pushed her down the route that led to her death. And for what? Power. Money. Ambition. To keep the millions flowing into the party coffers.

  The force of my hatred stunned me.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ I told DS Huxtable.

  Because the only thing that mattered now was making them pay.

  Linda lived at 14 Ruthermore Road, Clapham, in a house that stood out like a beacon of protest against the street’s gentrification. No bay trees guarding the door. No neat path lit by downlighters. Heavy curtains instead of shutters. Untamed bushes blocked the ground-floor windows, as if the garden was trying to swallow the house. In this neighbourhood, it was tantamount to a crime to resist gentrification so blatantly.

  The woman herself cut a pathetic figure, unrecognisable from her politics days. I had expected the business hair, maybe not a suit but slacks, a wool cardigan, a few pearls. An air of refinement at the very least. Not so. On colder days, she wore a man’s old ski jacket, way too big for her scrawny frame, and a hat, trainers of no decipherable make. She ventured out very little. You could have drawn a two-hundred-metre radius around her house and she wouldn’t have stepped out of it. Few visitors were admitted to her home. I saw her son once. There was also a woman around Linda’s age, who stood outside and knocked (and knocked) and shouted, ‘I know you’re in there. I’ve brought a fruit loaf,’ until Linda answered the door and let her in.

  I’d been watching her ever since DS Huxtable had told me what she had done. It wasn’t hard to find an address if you were committed. And committed I was. Oh, the times I’d considered bumping into her as she waited to cross a road, pushing her towards an oncoming bus, letting fate work its magic. I had an image of her flattened by the number 94, a crowd gathered around gawping at her trainers sticking out from beneath the wheels. On the other hand, I figured it would have been a shame to throw everything away on such a tawdry death. The revenge had to fit the crime. Ordinary wouldn’t do. I wanted to get close to her, hear the beat of her heart. I wanted to know what she loved, so I could destroy it.

  Obviously, I didn’t tell DS Huxtable what I was up to. It was unlikely he would approve. Besides, I wasn’t altogether sure what my stalking was going to achieve. I considered it to be a reconnaissance mission, one that involved a certain reorganising of my day job at the Langdale. Thankfully, no one expressed surprise when I volunteered to take on the role of duty night manager. It wasn’t exactly a sought-after position. For me though, it was perfect. My shifts finished at two in the morning, which gave me enough time to sleep, and watch Linda all day.

  One particular morning, I woke up with a stinking cold. My bones, lead-weighted, begged me to stay in bed. It can’t hurt to miss one day, can it? I made a deal: if it was raining, I’d stay indoors; sunny, I would go. I whipped back the curtains. The sunshine stung. I dragged myself out of bed and started my journey from my flat in Hammersmith to C
lapham.

  At eleven o’clock Linda emerged in the usual state. I should point out, I wasn’t hanging around outside her house inviting arrest. There was a café on the corner of her street and if I muscled in on the right seat, which I always did, I could see her front door. With a laptop in front of me I looked like your average freelancer eking out a latte and clogging up table space. Once, I even ordered a vegan sweet potato brownie to help my cover. But they’re not the kind of things you order twice.

  She headed down the street and I gathered my things to follow her at a safe distance. She was on her way to the supermarket, where else. Once inside, she selected her goods and took them to the till. There she spoke to the cashier, whose name I knew to be Pauline, courtesy of her name badge. Linda handed her a small card. Whatever it was, Pauline didn’t look impressed. ‘You sure . . .’ was about all I could pick up because there was a kid in the shop screaming for chocolate buttons and his mum was making a big show of refusing him. She was dressed in slim black trousers and an olive padded jacket with a ring of luxurious fur around the collar. Stiff leather tote bag on the crook of her arm. ‘That kind of behaviour gets you nothing, Bertie, how many times have I told you?’ She threw her blonde hair back in defiance. I glanced in her basket to make a final assessment: olives, Parma ham, ciabatta, your everyday working lunch.

  ‘Anna, my goodness, this can’t be your baby.’ Another woman, almost identical save for the brunette hair (glossy and smooth like mine never was), stood in front of the screaming Bertie proclaiming what an absolute poppet he was. ‘You want chocolate buttons? Oh, let me treat him, won’t you?’

  The sideshow almost cost me the sight of Linda – who had by now collected her groceries and packed them into her bag – exiting the shop. As she left, Pauline inserted Linda’s card into the window alongside the offers of French tuition and window cleaning.

  I fought the urge to leave immediately, counted to fifty and considered who would pay the astonishing price of blueberries (people like Anna, who’d force-feed them to Bertie – no wonder he howled for chocolate) before I skipped outside to read the advert.