by Anna Smith
‘Hallo, Trina.’ Rosie smiled. ‘I’m Rosie. A friend of Gemma’s mum.’
Trina looked at her, then at Gemma, approvingly. ‘Aye,’ Trina said. ‘Gemma said she had a pal that lived in a big flat with a balcony. But I thought she was talkin’ shite.’
Rosie tried to keep a straight face.
‘Have you got a balcony? Is it true?’ The girl looked from Gemma to Rosie, and said, ‘I know somebody who threw their baby off a balcony. She’s in jail now. She’s nuts.’ She blinked rapidly, two or three times.
‘Really?’ Rosie studied her face. Striking green eyes. They blinked again, rapidly.
‘Trina knows loadsa people.’ Gemma nodded proudly, sitting closer to her new friend. ‘She knows a lot of stuff. And she’s my best pal in here. She blinks. But she’s all right.’
‘Good for you,’ Rosie smiled. ‘Good for both of you.’
Rosie asked Gemma how she was settling in. It wasn’t too bad now that she’d met Trina, she said, but she’d wet the bed the night before last. Trina nodded as if she understood her friend’s worries. Rosie was struck by the dark circles under Trina’s blinking eyes.
The girls both talked excitedly about the kind of food they ate in the home, and about some of the other children. Rosie laughed as Gemma said she might get a boyfriend soon. They were so innocent. She could picture how they would be in a few years time, and her heart sank.
‘And sometimes we get sweets from the caretaker. He’s all right. He takes people out for the day. Just the good kids. I’m going soon.’ Gemma chattered on.
‘What do you mean, “out for the day”?’ Rosie said, the alarm going off in her head as she remembered what Mags had said in the cafe about judges and lawyers being involved with kids at a children’s home.
‘Not for the day,’ Trina said. ‘Just sometimes for the afternoon. And once I went and didn’t come back till night time.’ She blinked and looked away.
‘Who comes and takes you out?’ Rosie pretended to share their enthusiasm. Silence. Gemma looked at Trina. She looked around the room furtively, then leaned towards Rosie.
‘You’re not supposed to say anything about it,’ Trina said. ‘It’s not sore or anything. And they give you sweets and ice cream.’
Rosie felt a wave of sick apprehension.
‘You can tell me, Trina.’ Rosie knew she could be in court in a heartbeat for even beginning to question a child like this, but she couldn’t help it. ‘I’m Gemma’s pal. We talk a lot about stuff.’ Rosie moved her chair closer to the table.
Trina sat back and swigged from the beaker until it was empty. She belched and both girls giggled.
‘I don’t like the big fat guy,’ Trina said. ‘He’s all sweaty. But he gave me five pounds. I’ve hid it in a wee box in my locker. It’s mine.’
Rosie’s heart beat faster. ‘Where does this happen, Trina?’
‘In the big house.’ Trina looked out of the window, then back at Rosie. ‘It’s like them films. Like a palace or something. Miles away, past the woods and stuff. There’s big gardens and trees all cut in funny shapes.’
‘Whose house?’
‘The judge,’ Trina said, as if she was surprised that Rosie didn’t know.
Rosie’s stomach turned over. For the next five minutes she gently teased the story out of Trina. Gemma looked on fascinated, saying she was hoping to go on one of the trips soon. They didn’t happen every week, just about once a month. It was all organised by Paddy, the caretaker of the home, and usually when things were quiet. You had to be careful not to tell anyone or you would have to stay here for the rest of your life. That’s what Paddy said.
There were only about five or six got chosen and it was quite good fun. They all played games when they went into the big room with the huge crimson curtains. Then sometimes a man would take one of them away. He touched them a bit between their legs, just rubbing them, and it wasn’t sore. Sometimes you sat on their lap and you could feel something sticking into your back, and the man made funny grunting noises. It was all part of the game, but Trina said one boy started crying when a man told him to put his hand inside his trousers and feel him. That nearly wasted it for everyone. Paddy said you had to do what you were told or else it would all be finished, and there’d be no more trips, no more money and no sweets.
Rosie was trying not to show anything in her expression, and she was inwardly cursing herself for not bringing a tape recorder with her. But even if she had it on record, she knew it would incriminate her as much as anyone else. Here she was, sitting in a children’s home with two minors, listening to a story of sexual abuse. And one of them involved some judge or other. She knew that it broke just about every rule of child protection law, and she would get the book thrown at her.
Trina couldn’t tell her much more than that one of the men was called the judge, and she described the journey to the house. It seemed to be away from Glasgow towards Edinburgh, and Rosie got the impression it was somewhere deep in the countryside. Maybe Lanarkshire. When she got back to the office she would try to find out who the judge was. McGuire would need to be given sweet tea when she told him this.
‘Okay,’ she said, eventually. ‘Listen, Gemma. I’m going to ask in the next couple of days if I can take you out for the afternoon, and maybe Trina could come too. Would you like that, Trina?’
‘Aye. Brill.’ Gemma nudged Trina who smiled broadly, still blinking.
‘Right. I’ll ask someone in charge for permission, but you’re not to say anything yet. Okay?’ She looked at Trina. ‘And I don’t think you should be saying anything about what you told me just now. That wouldn’t be good.’
‘I know.’ Trina seemed happy to have shared her secret.
Rosie got up and Gemma hugged her. ‘Will we go out soon?’ she said, looking up at her.
‘We’ll see. I’ll try. Now you be good.’ She blew her a kiss and gave Trina a wave as she turned to walk away.
‘Can we sit on your balcony?’ Trina shouted after her. ‘Maybe with a pizza? Maybe even get a video or something?’
Rosie turned to look at the two wide-eyed children.
‘Sure,’ she said, swallowing. She remembered her own childhood, the waiting and hoping someone would come. ‘Sure.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jack honked the horn impatiently for the second time as he sat in his driveway waiting for Myra and Alison to come out. He felt as though he was going to explode, and he had to grip the steering wheel to keep a hold of himself. That was happening all the time now. The least little mishap set him off. He was losing it. Big time. The other day at work he almost freaked out in the lift because it wasn’t getting to the third floor quickly enough. How was he ever going to get his life back with all this bearing down on him? In bed at night he lay awake, panic raging through him, sweating and shaking while his wife slept. He couldn’t even begin to respond to her if she touched him, and she had already accused him of having an affair because he showed no interest in her, though she only ever wanted sex if she was in the mood – and that wasn’t very often.
At work, he was biting everyone’s head off, and even when Bill coaxed him to go out for a drink to let off some steam, he refused. It had been building up slowly over the past six months, but now every day it was getting worse. Only the phone calls from Foxy kept him going. Foxy’s consoling voice, promising him everything would turn out fine. One day at a time, Foxy had told him. But right now, hour by hour was bad enough.
‘Hurry up for fuck’s sake,’ he murmured as the door of his house opened, and Myra came out followed by Alison.
‘Look at the face on him, Alison,’ his wife said as she opened the passenger seat door. ‘Face like fizz at every turn.’
Alison smiled at her father and he tried his best to soften his expression. He loved her more than anything in the world, but if he could have, he would have been a million miles away from his wife years ago. He despised her. He even blamed her for the prostitutes. If she wasn’t such a
routine, boring bitch who only wanted sex every Thursday after her aerobics class, maybe things would have been different. It wasn’t that he was kinky, but Myra wouldn’t even discuss doing anything remotely different, far less experiment. She’d never given him a blow-job in his life, and was horrified when he tried to push her head down one night when she’d had a few drinks and was looking frisky. That was five years ago, and he hadn’t tried it again.
Alison was different. She was everything to him. They had a kind of secret affinity with each other, as if Alison knew the pressure Myra put on him and how unhappy he was. He adored her. She had made him proud the way she had studied at school and made it to university with flying colours. She was going to be a doctor, and Jack felt that would raise him to a different status altogether. A daughter who was a doctor. And him just a boy from the back closes of Maryhill.
Now he was driving her to the station so she could catch the train back to university in Edinburgh after spending the weekend at home. Recently, even she had seen how tetchy he was and had asked him if everything was all right. Fine, he’d told her. He was just working on a difficult inquiry. She was not to worry. And Alison had accepted it.
‘So what’s the plan tonight, Alison?’ Jack tried to sound cheery. ‘Out with your flatmates? Mind, you’ve a lot of studying to do.’ He knew he didn’t need to remind her, but he wanted to. Myra sat beside him, leafing through a magazine, seemingly uninterested in the conversation.
‘Just out for a couple of hours, Dad. There’s a quiz night at the local boozer.’
‘Just be careful. That’s all.’ He smiled in the rear-view mirror and she grinned back.
‘Listen to him,’ his wife piped up. ‘You’d think he sat in playing dominoes every night. Sure, you’re never home. If it’s not that bloody boat with the boys, then it’s some other policeman’s farewell drunken party night. Who are you to lecture?’
Jack looked at her and looked away. He wasn’t going to be drawn into this argument because right now he didn’t know if he could keep his temper. He pushed away the vision in his head of stopping the car and slapping his wife hard. Christ! How he would love to do that.
At the station they all got out of the car, and Jack hauled Alison’s bag from the boot. He watched as she hugged her mum. Myra patted her daughter’s back, but didn’t hold her close. Jack knew that Alison’s biggest hug was always reserved for him.
‘Come on then, my darlin’.’ He swept her up and held her tight. ‘Jesus, Alison.’ He felt his chest tight with sudden emotion. ‘I miss you when you’re through there. I really do.’ He hugged her hard and buried his head in her hair.
‘I know, Dad.’ She squeezed him. ‘I miss you too, but before you know it I’ll be running the show at the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow.’ She released herself from the hug and looked into his face.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Dad?’ Alison scanned his face. ‘You look done in. Really tired.’
‘Just work, pet.’ Jack sniffed. He felt like crying. If she only knew the kind of man her daddy really was she’d be repelled. It would destroy her.
‘I’m fine, Alison.’ Jack held her hand. ‘Just you get back to uni now, and work hard. See you next weekend.’ He let her go and she walked away, turning to wave before disappearing into the crowd.
* * *
Several hours later, Jack sat in his car in the Cathkin Braes, staring into the middle distance. The sun had never really broken through the cloud, and now the darkness was coming down, spreading across the landscape. He had driven here because it was one of the spots that had always been so much a part of his life, and it was where he felt he could see things more clearly. Sometimes he would just come here and sit, and in the silence he could see images of his entire life. He knew who he was when he sat here. And even the view was great. You could look down and see the whole of Glasgow, from the East End right up to Partick in the distance. Over a million lives were being led out there. Over a million stories, every one different. None like his.
He remembered coming out here with Myra when they were young and in love. It was here they had their first sexual encounter, in the back of his car. Now he smiled at the thought of it. How different things had become between them in recent years. She was so buttoned up, so grasping, and so demanding – she wanted the best of everything in the house. Jack couldn’t keep up with her. Every time he got a promotion, she’d spent his salary increase almost before it went into the bank. And she never questioned where any extra money came from if he handed her a few quid to go and buy herself a new outfit or something for the house. Every week, his cut of the pay-off from the sauna boss went into her pocket. He hated her now.
Jack remembered the good old days with Foxy and Bill, when they were coppers on the beat. How they used to bring young neds up here and give them a good kicking. They couldn’t stand the way these punks used to thumb their noses at them while they robbed and slashed their way through the housing schemes. It was here, too, that they had made deals down the years with the Big Man. He would pay them off in wads of twenty-and fifty-pound notes for work they had done, for blind eyes that had been turned. Then there was the gun amnesty that made Strathclyde Police the envy of the rest of Britain. Gangsters had agreed to hand in their guns. Every other day, more shotguns and pistols were discovered after tip-offs to the cops. Mostly it was to Foxy and Bill, and it brought them huge accolades in the force and beyond. Nobody but them and Jack knew it was all organised with the Big Man. They scratched his back and he scratched theirs.
But if he was really honest with himself, it had all got out of hand in the last two or three years. Since Foxy had been made head of the CID, the whole game had got out of control.
Hookers on the boat and the odd bit of cocaine had been fine. They’d used whores all their lives and it was one of the perks of the job, but they’d been doing it more and more recently. Then, after the girl had died on the boat, something died inside him. It wasn’t just that she died, it was the fact that they threw her over the side. He kept thinking of Alison and how she was at that age. His conscience had never bothered him all the time he was using the prostitutes, but dumping a wee lassie into the sea like that haunted him. He had actually considered going to Special Branch and spilling the beans, but he knew he couldn’t do that, they wouldn’t believe him. And the way he had been behaving this past few months, they would have said he was ready for the laughing academy. He might even have got locked up. Then when the bird Mags was killed, Jack knew there was no way out.
But now, for the first time in a very long while, he felt clear in his mind. He was glad he’d written the letter to Alison. He knew she would be devastated that the father she knew and loved was very different from the one he had just written about. In time, he hoped she would understand. But he had to confess, and to pray for her forgiveness. It had been a very long letter, eight pages, confessing what Foxy, Bill and he had done over the years. Everything about the pay-offs from Big Jake and the sauna boss; the prostitutes, the boat, the drugs; the fit-ups, naming names of some of the men they had framed on murders and armed robberies. He spared her the fact that he too went with prostitutes. He couldn’t bear to write that, he was too much of a coward. But he knew she would assume he must have done. He wrote details of the night with Tracy, from the moment he picked her up in Glasgow until they threw her into the water. He confessed it was Big Jake who was behind Mags Gillick’s murder. He said how he couldn’t go on any longer with all this on his conscience. He couldn’t live with the guilt, so he would die with it. This was about telling the truth.
When he stuck the letter in the post box he hoped she would do something with it. He included a photograph he’d taken of Big Jake on Fox’s boat. It was time for retribution, for punishment for the lives they had led. They didn’t deserve to get away with it, and he was ready to take his punishment. He would burn in hell. He sat back and switched on the engine of his car. He adjusted the hosepipe he had attached from the exhaust pipe
, and pushed his seat back so that he was in a relaxed position.
It didn’t take long. He barely noticed it happening. He felt sleepy. With his eyes half shut he looked out once more, and saw the whole of Glasgow begin to flicker under the street lamps. Night was coming. It was over. He was glad.
The following morning, as Rosie plonked herself down in her seat at the Post, the phone rang. She recognised Don’s voice.
‘Jack Prentice is dead. He’s done himself in. Found in his car in the Cathkin Braes. Hosepipe.’
Rosie didn’t answer, and the phone clicked off.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘The shit has hit the fan,’ Rosie said, going into McGuire’s office and closing the door.
He looked up from his desk, then sat back, motioning with his hand for her to sit down. ‘Talk to me.’
Rosie’s insides were churning. She took a deep breath and sat down on the sofa to compose herself.
‘Jack Prentice has killed himself,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a call. And I’ve checked it out through another source. Hosepipe job. Up in Cathkin Braes.’
‘Fuck me!’ McGuire said. ‘Not very imaginative. Typical plod.’ He spread his hands out as though waiting for Rosie to toss him an idea. ‘What next? Did he leave a note?’
‘Christ knows. Too early for that. It just happened last night, late.’
Rosie’s head had been spinning since the phone call from Don a few minutes ago. She had been trying to have a plan of action before going in to see McGuire, but she couldn’t get her head around it. Prentice was dead. Mags was dead. It was clearer than ever now that Mags was telling the truth, and that Gavin Fox and the other two were in it up to their necks. Not that she had ever been in any doubt. But since she’d visited the children’s home and listened to the disturbing story Trina had told her, she had been pre-occupied by that all weekend. That was an even bigger story, one that would rock the country, and when the time came she would bust her gut to expose these people.