Damaged Goods

by Helen Black

  ‘What angle could I use?’ she asked.

  He pretended to think about it. ‘I hear the police think her daughter did it, but they’re not pursuing it. Probably worried what the papers will make of it all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  He sighed at her incomprehension. She rarely grasped anything quickly and he often had to repeat and explain things as if she were retarded.

  ‘Social services and the police should have done something about this family years ago. They sat back and let a heroin-addicted prostitute keep vulnerable children. Can you imagine the life they’ve had?’

  Hermione nodded, but Barrows knew it was well beyond her wit to empathise with anyone who didn’t drive a BMW.

  He pressed on. ‘Those children will be damaged beyond repair. I should imagine the eldest was driven to killing her mother in sheer desperation.’

  ‘So what’s the point of pursuing it? What’s in it for …’ Hermione stopped short.

  Barrows prepared to deliver the clincher. ‘Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, the child is dangerous, she shouldn’t be allowed to wander the streets.’ He paused for emphasis. ‘The voters in Luton are already terrified of the young people from the estates and they’ll be very glad that someone is taking it seriously.’

  He saw ambition light her face. ‘Tough on crime. Yes, they love that,’ she said.

  ‘And when the press turn on social services you’ll be right in the middle of it,’ he added. ‘Everyone will want to know your opinion on the matter.’

  Hermione looked faintly puzzled and Barrows berated himself for over-egging the pudding. He need not have worried.

  ‘You really should go into politics, darling, you’re even better at it than I am,’ she said with a self-deprecating giggle.

  Of course I am. It’s hardly rocket science. Any fool can be a politician. But I don’t need the spotlight to validate myself. My longing is for something else. Something less complex.

  After much negotiation with Lilly as to how late was too late on a school night, Sam was finally asleep.

  Lilly made a vast bowlful of pasta, doused it in olive oil infused with chilli, poured a generous glass of wine and settled down to do some work.

  She spread her case papers across the kitchen table and took a mouthful of food, savouring the spicy zing of the oil as it touched her tongue. If not Kelsey, then who had killed Grace? Could it have been Max, the man Mrs Mitchell had identified as a drug dealer? It seemed more likely than a child, even Jack had admitted that. She knew from experience that the police would keep pursuing Kelsey until they had another suspect. She just had to make Jack see that Max was the one who murdered Grace.

  Lilly smiled to herself at the thought of him. They’d enjoyed their drink together, even if Lilly had spent most of the time haranguing him about this case.

  ‘Do you ever let up?’ he’d said.

  ‘Not often,’ Lilly replied. ‘Anyhow, I bet you take your work home with you.’

  ‘Only the handcuffs,’ he said.

  They’d laughed a lot, like they always did, finding humour in the darkest places.

  ‘Name your all-time worst witness,’ he’d asked.

  ‘The man who was so pissed he fell asleep.’

  Jack threw his head back in glee.

  ‘I thought at one point the old sod was dead … Or how about the bloke who barricaded himself in his flat with the kids,’ she said. ‘And the armed police had to break down the door.’

  Jack snorted on his beer. ‘And when you asked him if the children had been frightened by the helicopters, he said no, they thought it was better than the telly.’

  It was easy with Jack. Easier than Lilly could remember with anyone else since David had left, and Lilly found herself wishing she could spend more time with him. Something had changed. Maybe it was Jack, maybe it was Lilly, or maybe the time was just right, but she knew that she wanted to be more than friends.

  If he felt the same then she ought to do something about it. But how was she to gauge his feelings on the matter?

  ‘If you haven’t got a crystal ball, better ask the question,’ her mother had always said, but Lilly hadn’t inherited her bottle – or her years in the south had worn it away.

  ‘They’re all soft down there,’ her dad used to say.

  Trust him. The silly sod had never been further than Skegness.

  She took a gulp of wine and looked at some photographs of the Brand family. They had been taken by a social worker on a trip to the beach only weeks before Grace put the girls in care. The trip was funded by Sunny Days, a charity set up to help children like these escape the estates, if only for a day.

  None of the girls had ever seen the sea before, and one photograph showed them playing in the waves with excitement and abandon.

  Lilly thought of her own early holidays in a caravan on the east coast. Sometimes they took Nan, who snored like a drill and the whole tin can would rattle. In the distance the fog horn at Robin Hood’s Bay would sound and the donkeys in the next field would start braying for their food around five. Dad would throw open the door, the pee bucket swinging from his arm. ‘There’s nothing like a rest at the seaside.’

  Lilly laughed and picked up the next picture. All four girls with their mother, sitting on a wall, eating ice cream. Kelsey, Gemma, Sophie and Scarlet. Peas in a pod. The same mousy hair covering most of their faces, the same tight mouths revealing chipped teeth. Grace at the end, squinting into the sun.

  Kelsey seemed different in the picture, somehow lighter than she was now. Lilly wouldn’t have described her face as happy but the despair wasn’t there.

  Lilly chased the last strand of spaghetti around her plate and picked up a housing transfer refusal. She placed it on top of the others and counted them. Five. In the past year Grace had made five applications to the council to move and had kept all five letters of refusal.

  There was even a letter from Grace’s MP thanking her for attending the surgery but apologising that she was unable to help as Grace had rent arrears, and it was local authority policy not to move anyone until all rent payments were up-to-date.

  Lilly was puzzled. Junkies rarely pursued anything so persistently, except their drug of choice. To make and actually keep an appointment with an MP was unheard of.

  Chocolate called. Lilly opened the fridge and fingered the small mountain of Kit-Kats, Snickers, Picnics and other bars she kept, as though it were pornography, on the top shelf.

  David had found her love affair with such confectionery downmarket. He described it as ‘cheap chocolate’ and encouraged her towards the dark, Belgian or Swiss varieties. Lilly had pointed out that Roald Dahl had shared her passion and he was a genius. And anyway, she couldn’t care less about the percentage of cocoa solids, she’d always been crap at maths.

  Now David was gone she could do what she liked. Apparently Cara didn’t eat chocolate at all, it played havoc with her chakras.

  Lilly took a bar and read the list of ingredients. Sugar, hydrogenated fat, emulsifier and salt. ‘Delicious,’ she said, and turned her mind once again to the housing applications.

  Had Grace been trying to escape from her life of drugs and prostitution or was she trying to escape from Max? She’d suggested the latter proposition to Jack and hoped he could nudge the powers-that-be away from Kelsey towards Max.

  The main obstacle, of course, was Mrs Mitchell. She may be poisonous but Lilly doubted she would have made the whole thing up, which meant Kelsey was undoubtedly at the flats the night Grace was killed. She swallowed the remaining chocolate whole and dialled Miriam’s number.

  ‘Kelsey was there the night her mother was killed.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Miriam asked.

  Lilly thumbed the police statement, leaving brown smudges that she tried to scrape away with her nail. ‘She was seen by one of the neighbours.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she killed Grace,’ said Miriam.

  ‘No, but it
does mean she might have seen who did,’ Lilly replied.

  ‘You know what else it means.’

  Lilly did. She closed her eyes and pictured a fourteen-year- old watching while her mother’s dead body was cut to ribbons.

  She arranged to meet Miriam the following evening and went back to the case papers. The idea of Kelsey as a witness to the murder was horrible, but better than the alternative. Maybe when Kelsey was less traumatised she’d be able to help the police, and with some therapy there might still be some hope of a foster placement for her. Somewhere she could feel safe and rebuild her life. Things didn’t have to turn out badly.

  Feeling positive, Lilly placed the papers back into their file one by one. Suddenly her eyes widened and she gasped at the remaining document on the table. The handwriting was poor and the grammar worse but there was no mistaking what it was. Lilly was reading a letter written by Kelsey to her mother, threatening to cut her into pieces.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday, 10 September

  The next morning Lilly dressed in a navy blue wool suit. The sun was shining and Lilly was hot but she had a meeting with the pathologist at eleven and needed to boost her confidence. Experience had taught her that looking the part helped her to feel the part.

  She had given up even trying to sleep at 4 a.m. and had instead paced the kitchen, alternately drinking red wine and rereading Kelsey’s letter.

  She looked every bit as terrible as she felt and the suit was already starting to itch.

  She scraped back her hair from her face and secured it in a tight knot at the nape of her neck.

  ‘I like your hair better the other way, Mummy,’ said Sam.

  ‘I like a lot of things I don’t get,’ Lilly snapped.

  ‘I only meant you look prettier with it loose.’

  Lilly turned to apologise but Sam had already gone outside and was standing by the car.

  The drive to school was torture. Lilly tried to make the peace but her attempts were rebuffed.

  ‘I’m sorry I was grumpy, big man, but I’m very tired,’ said Lilly.

  Sam refused to face her. ‘You’re always tired.’

  ‘I’m working very hard at the moment, trying to help a little girl whose mummy died.’

  Sam’s expression said it all. He didn’t care about the girl or any of the other children his mother was always talking about, and he didn’t want to share her with them.

  ‘Nothing will ever be as important to me as you. You know that, don’t you?’ Lilly said.

  Sam chose not to answer and collected his bags together to get out of the car.

  ‘Maybe I could leave early tonight and we could do something nice. How about a movie?’

  Sam reached for the handle before the car had even come to a stop. ‘Last time your phone rang three times, and when the man behind told you to turn it off you had fallen asleep.’

  ‘What do you want me to do, Sam?’

  He said nothing but watched Penny Van Huysan approach the car, her linen shift complementing a healthy tan and an athletic figure. Was the woman having an affair with her tennis coach?

  At last he turned to Lilly. ‘I want you to be like the other mums.’

  Penny waved. ‘You haven’t forgotten coffee this morning, have you?’

  Lilly looked at Sam’s forlorn expression.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said.

  * * *

  Hermione Barrows chooses her outfit with care. A black jacket, sharply tailored and begging to be taken seriously, over the crispest of white shirts. She has been taught from a young age that appearance matters. Her mother had almost bankrupted her father with her endless shopping trips for clothes and her demands for bigger cars and holidays in far-flung islands where they would all be bored senseless.

  When it became clear Hermione wouldn’t have children her mother didn’t ask why, didn’t actually care, but advised her to give the impression she’d at least tried.

  ‘Say you love kids but it wasn’t meant to be,’ she said. ‘People don’t trust women who don’t like babies.’

  Yes, Hermione’s mother would have made a fantastic campaign manager.

  Hermione drapes a silk scarf around her neckline to soften the edges and pick up the aqua flecks in her eyes. The clothes say everything she wants to project. She’s a tough politician but at the same time human. A no-nonsense woman of the people.

  The previous evening, at a local party meeting, she had given a rousing speech on law and order and called for the police to investigate the death of Kelsey’s mother. William is right, this is an opportunity she can’t afford to miss.

  ‘We cannot allow lawlessness to take over the streets of this constituency,’ she’d announced. ‘The police must take all crimes seriously, no matter how insignificant the victim seems, and this includes Grace Brand.’

  A local reporter had recorded every word and Hermione had been overjoyed to receive invitations to speak on both the local radio and television stations. If both run the story and include her involvement her profile will demand serious attention, maybe from the national press.

  She pulls on kitten-heeled slingbacks and struts downstairs. In the hallway, William is on the telephone. He smiles up at her and she remembers to smile back. He places his palm over the handset. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Direct it to Nancy, darling, my media need me,’ she says with a laugh. Nancy Donaldson will have to tear herself away from the nail bar today. Hermione’s parliamentary assistant is going to have an unusually busy day.

  ‘It is Nancy. She’s had a call from central office,’ William says.

  Hermione snatches the telephone from him. Today is going to be a very good day.

  The table was laden with croissants, pastries and preserves, but Lilly noticed that she was the only one actually eating. A cursory glance at the other women who sipped their black coffees told her that she alone weighed more than nine stone. She helped herself to butter and smiled at them. No doubt they didn’t have raging hangovers to quell.

  ‘Have you gone part-time?’ asked Luella Wignall, the mother of Cecily, who Sam always referred to as ‘Onion Face’.

  Lilly assumed Luella was smiling but it was so difficult to tell. Whatever her facial expression, Luella’s mouth always turned down at the ends like a cross between Cherie Blair and the Joker from Batman.

  ‘Afraid not, but my first meeting’s not until eleven, so here I am,’ Lilly said.

  ‘And we’re all very glad to see you,’ said Penny Van Huysan.

  ‘Where do you have to be at eleven?’ asked Luella without interest.

  ‘Path lab,’ said Lilly. ‘I mean, pathology lab.’

  Luella was aghast. ‘You mean where they cut up the dead bodies!’

  ‘Not exactly. They do perform the autopsies there but they do all sorts of other forensic tests as well. It’s not like in CSI,’ said Lilly.

  Luella’s eyes were wide with horror. ‘You won’t see any dead bodies, surely?

  ‘No. I’m not allowed in the actual lab, to avoid contamination, I suppose, but I’m meeting one of the pathologists to talk about one of his reports,’ Lilly said.

  ‘How exciting,’ giggled Penny.

  Lilly shook her head. It amazed her how other people saw her job. ‘Not really. The reports are turgid but I’m hoping he can clear a few things up on one of my cases.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ asked Penny, her tone somewhere between the Secret Seven and Dan Dare.

  Lilly put down her croissant. ‘I represent the eldest child of a woman who was murdered on the Clayhill Estate.’

  ‘The prostitute!’ said Penny.

  Lilly was surprised that the women seemed to know who she was talking about. She’d assumed their contact with the outside world stopped at the hairdresser’s; maybe she’d been too hasty in her analysis of them. David had always said the chip on her shoulder was so big it was a wonder she didn’t lean to one side.

  ‘I suppose we, the taxpayer, will hav
e to keep the girl living in the lap of luxury from now on,’ said Luella.

  Lilly pushed away her plate, her appetite gone. She warned herself not to react. These were the mothers of her son’s friends, she’d come along today because he wanted her to fit in, not pick fights.

  ‘It will cost thousands to keep her and she doesn’t have to contribute a penny. Not a penny,’ said Luella.

  Don’t do it, Lilly. Don’t do it.

  ‘I wish someone would give me some free money,’ said Luella, whose husband had just become a tax exile in Dublin.

  Lilly couldn’t stop herself. ‘She’s fourteen, Luella, are you suggesting she fend for herself?’

  Luella reddened.

  ‘Have you ever been inside a children’s home?’ Lilly asked.

  Luella shook her head.

  ‘Then what makes you think it’s the lap of luxury?’

  Luella shrugged. ‘You see things in the papers.’

  Lilly was caught between amazement and exasperation. ‘Can I suggest you don’t believe everything you read.’

  Yes, the chip was heavy, but it was perfectly balanced by the weight of other people’s prejudice which she carried on the other side.

  * * *

  Jack finished a can of Coke and crunched it in his fist. Not a healthy breakfast, he conceded, but the only other choice in his fridge had been the leftovers of last night’s chicken korma.

  He was looking forward to seeing Lilly and although the path lab was not the most romantic place for a date, even by his low standards, he felt pleasurably nervous.

  That morning he’d intended to make a bit of an effort and iron his shirt, but when he’d pulled out the old Phillips steamer he remembered he’d used the plug for his radio alarm and there wasn’t time for a regraft. Still, he’d had a wash and combed his hair.

  He waited for Lilly in the foyer, skulking in the shadows. From the outside the lab looked like any other government building, three storeys high, dull red bricks, an identical plastic blind at each window. Inside was grey and eerily noiseless, the sound of footfall muffled by nylon carpet tiles. Jack hated it and had no intention of going in alone. He would have waited in the street but for the overwhelming brightness of the day.