by Shane Dunphy
I shuddered at the very thought. ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t suppose it’s a nice place to be at all. Here, I brought you these.’
I handed him the customary plastic bag of colourful comics. I had added a punnet of plums this time. He ripped the net covering without looking and put one into his mouth whole. He was flicking through the pages of the latest Beano, smiling contentedly.
‘What age is Dennis the Menace meant to be?’ he asked.
‘I don’t really know. Around nine or ten, I suppose.’
He looked up at me, with a huge smile on his porcine face. ‘Same as my Larry!’
‘That’s right. Just like Larry.’
Malachi suddenly spat out the stone from the now devoured plum with such force, it ricocheted off the wall, which was some ten yards away. Luckily, no one was in the pip’s trajectory, because being hit by the projectile would have been tantamount to getting shot.
The giant man took another plum. He seemed to have overcome his distaste of fruit, but I couldn’t see any weight loss to speak of. Vera was probably bringing him in a mountain of chocolate on her visits. I made a mental note to ask the warders.
‘Malachi, I was talking to the children’s social worker today.’
‘Were you? Vera says she’s a real nice lady.’
‘Mmm. Well, she’s thinking of placing Larry and Francey back with Vera. She wants the children to go back home.’
Malachi was still engrossed in Dennis and his illustrated high jinks. He nodded as I spoke.
‘Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think Vera will be nice to the twins if she gets them back?’
Malachi slowly raised his eyes. ‘She says … she says she’s mad at them for tellin’ you ’bout what we done. She tole me she’s goin’ to teach them how to keep their mouthses shut.’
‘And how would she do that? How does Vera teach lessons?’
‘Dunno.’ A shrug, his voice very small now.
‘Well, would she sit them down and have a little chat? Use a blackboard like in class at school?’
‘Or how Mr Buttle teaches me my letters!’
‘Yeah, like that. D’you think Vera would teach the twins like that?’
Malachi shook his head, and expelled the pip from his mouth. It clattered off the stone wall with a crack.
‘How would she do it, Malachi?’
Another shrug, this time accompanied by a grunt. I desperately did not want to put words in the man’s mouth – I needed him to say it, to tell me that the lessons Vera yearned to mete out to the children would be nightmarish tortures, agonies she had been concocting during the long, lonely nights she had spent walking the corridors of the Byrne homestead in Oldtown, tracing her old kingdom, checking to see if the work she had ordered was being done to her specifications.
I tried again. ‘Might she give them presents? And if they do what she wants, she might give them more nice things – maybe a new bike for Larry, rollerblades for Francey; a PlayStation …’
‘No, she wouldna’ do that.’
‘Has she taught them lessons before? Have you seen it?’
A nod. Tears were brimming in his tiny eyes. His lower lip had developed a tremble. I felt like a total bastard for putting him through this, but I had no choice. ‘How’d she do it?’
‘She … she hurted them.’
‘Badly?’
‘She hit them and kept on hittin’. She done bad things on them. Done sex with them, or made me do it. Hard. Till they screamed …’ He had to stop, tears rolling down his jowls, splashing on to the pages of the comics, smearing their garish landscapes.
‘Malachi, we can stop this, right now. We can make sure she doesn’t get them back.’
‘Can we?’
‘Yes. I’m going to ask you to do something, and I know it’s a hard thing. I’d like to bring a friend of mine here, my boss. I think that if you tell him what you’ve just told me, we might be able to stop Vera getting the children.’
‘That’s all? I wouldna’ have to tell no one else?’
‘You might … remember when you had to go to the courthouse, with the judge?’
‘I din’ like that so much.’
‘I know. But you might have to.’
‘And Vera wouldna’ know I tole anyone?’
I took a breath. ‘She’d have to know, Malachi. I’m sorry –’
The table, spilling comics and fruit, hit me broadside and knocked me flat on my back. For a moment I didn’t know what had happened, but then I felt, rather than saw, the table being swept aside and knew he was coming for me.
Shane, you fucking asshole, I thought to myself. You pushed too hard.
I tried to scramble into an upright position, but I wasn’t fast enough, and a kick lifted me into the air, knocking all the breath out of me. I landed on my side, hitting my hip painfully on another table as I fell. I tried to bellow for assistance, but I couldn’t take in enough air to shout, and I just had to roll into a foetal position and pray someone had noticed. I could hear footsteps as the other visitors scampered out of the way, and above that the whistling of Malachi sucking breath in and out of his misshapen nose. I readied myself for another blow, but it never came. Shouts and thuds added themselves to the ruckus, and, peering carefully up, I saw that three prison officers were attempting to subdue my attacker. Another grabbed me and pulled me bodily through the wreckage to the safety of the waiting room.
‘You are one lucky little fucker,’ the man said in a broad Navan accent. ‘I’ve seen him almost kill lads in a matter of seconds. He obviously didn’t want to hurt you, going so gentle.’
I rolled over on to my back, every inch aching. ‘Yeah, I’m blessed,’ I croaked. ‘Someone must be looking down on me.’
‘Damn straight.’
The man, who, I noticed, was probably no more than five foot two or three, held out a hand and pulled me up. Through the reinforced glass, I watched as Malachi, still crying as he fought, was finally brought to his knees with a taser. I looked away.
‘What set him off, hey?’ the little prison guard asked.
‘I guess I just pushed the wrong buttons,’ I said, tapping a cigarette from its pack.
‘I’d steer clear of any buttons at all if I were you, lad,’ my rescuer said. ‘’Cause that is one villain you just don’t want to get on the wrong side of. He’s as thick as a plank of wood, and he just hasn’t a clue of the harm he can do. Most kiddiefiddlers get a divil of a time in here, but he’s so scary, the bad boys leave him alone, in the main. An’ you know what, if he’s left to his own devices, he’s not so bad, really. Kind of like a big baby. Hard to believe he done what they say he done, know what I mean?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘The problem is, I need something that’s locked up inside his head. He’s the only one that can save some kids from a pretty awful fate.’
The diminutive man slapped me on the back, causing my stomach to scream with such pain, I thought I would vomit. ‘Let me give you some advice, lad, free, gratis and for nothing,’ he said. ‘If you need some info to save these kids, look for it somewhere else. He’s got nothin’ to give you. You continue tryin’ to get into his skull, he’ll do for you, sooner or later. He was only toyin’ with you this evenin’. Next time ’round, he’ll rip your head clean off.’
In the visiting room Malachi’s hands and legs were being fastened with plastic cuffs.
‘What if there is no other way?’ I asked.
‘Then I’d say your kids are rightly screwed,’ the warder said brightly, and went in to start righting the furniture.
10
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror the next morning. I still bore the fading signs of my physical therapy with Katie Rhodes: claw marks etched their message across my forehead. Now I had a patchwork of bruises about my abdomen and a black, bloodied splotch on my hip. There was also a raised lump on the back of my head, where I had landed on the floor when Malachi pitched the table at me. I felt as if I had been chewed up
and spat out, and looked about as good.
I showered and drove to the office. I had no meetings scheduled for the morning, and needed some time to get my thoughts together. The prison officer had been right: approaching the Byrne problem through Malachi was as useful as tapping a dry well. There had to be another way.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, took a banana someone had left in the fridge, and went to my desk. I am not particularly well organized at the best of times, and a bundle of files sat precariously on the corner of my workstation. I sat down painfully and pulled them over, opening the filing cabinet behind me with my other hand, immediately regretting having stretched that way. On top of the heap was Katie’s case file. I flipped it open, and an hour later was still poring over it and jotting down notes on a piece of paper. Katie was an enigma, and, though I had drawn a blank with Larry and Francey, perhaps I could make some headway with the fierce, dark-haired elf.
The main problem I faced was that Katie had presented me with a litany of abuse, both at the hands of her family and of others, none of which showed up on her files. This in itself would not normally be problematic, as children often disclose abuse years after the fact. Katie, however, had chalked up years of social-work intervention before I had come into contact with her. At three, she had made a disclosure of sexual abuse to her mother and pointed the finger of blame at Una, the female babysitter. There was no mention of ‘Jumbo’, and, while Katie’s parents were recorded as being neglectful, there was no reference to either sexual or physical abuse on their part. It seemed odd, although not impossible, that Katie would name one abuser, while never mentioning the others.
There was also a severe lack of physical evidence. All children are given a medical examination on being placed in care, and the results of Katie’s exams (she had been institutionalized three times before her parents died) were all on file. There was nothing out of the ordinary in any of them, although the final medical exam showed her hymen had been broken, which was certainly indicative of sexual abuse. Yet young girls can sometimes rupture the hymen through strenuous physical activity, so even that was hardly conclusive. There was no bruising that might have been the result of beatings, and, while thin, she was not underweight.
Yet Katie presented with unspeakable physical aggression and a deep-rooted abandonment complex. While she no longer played out the ‘drunken parent’ game every time we met, it still surfaced regularly. She refused to return to the beach when I suggested it, but I had written up the results of her previous visit, and they made for grim reading.
The questions I was left with were fairly simple and echoed Clive Plummer’s predicament eerily: was Katie recounting real events or were these games depictions of disturbed fantasies? The staff at the unit seemed to believe the latter. Dorothy had proposed to me that the onset of adolescence might be the catalyst. Katie, who had spent the bulk of her life in care, had never had the usual male/female role models, and, combined with sexual abuse at the tender age of three, was simply not equipped to deal with such extreme physical and emotional changes. Her confusion and fear had manifested themselves in aggression and dark mental fictions.
Yet I was not convinced by this hypothesis. The stories were too detailed, too urgent. I had enough experience to know that when a story keeps on recurring, it is because the child is trying to tell you something. It should never be written off as a fantasy without first being thoroughly investigated. I had a feeling that these stories were, in fact, linked to things that had actually happened to her, events buried so deep in her subconscious they could be expressed only through the safe language of play.
I started at the beginning again, and went through each piece of correspondence in the file, each report, and made a note of the names. Finally, I had a list of six different social workers and a couple of childcare workers who had had contact with Katie during her short life. I pulled over the phone and dialled the first number.
‘Can I speak to a social worker called – um – Wanda Holden, please?’
‘Wanda doesn’t work here any more. She’s based in Dublin now, I think.’
‘D’you know which office?’
‘No, sorry. I heard she’d moved to Disability, though.’
And so it went. I spent the rest of the morning tracking down each worker, and asking them if there was anything unusual they could remember about Katie, something that might shed some light on her intense, frightening games. Three social workers were out of the office, but I left messages, asking them to call me back. Of the others, none had anything to add to my existing knowledge, but they all said they’d check over their records and get back to me if anything occurred to them. I was placing the file, and the others in the pile, back in the cabinet when my telephone rang. Thinking it was a reply to one of the voice messages I’d left, I snatched the receiver from its cradle. ‘Shane Dunphy, Dunleavy Trust.’
‘Shane, it’s Gertrude Bassett. I’ve had enough; the boy is impossible. I’m sorry, but I want him gone.’
I sat back down. ‘I don’t follow you, Gertrude. Start again.’
‘What I’m saying is simple enough, Shane. I want you to come out here and take Patrick away. I’ll not have him under my roof for one more day. He’s at school now, but when he gets home, I’d like him to be taken someplace else to live.’
I scratched my head. This was a bolt out of the blue. I had never expected that Gertrude would actually end the placement. She’d had Patrick for so long, I assumed she’d ride out the difficulties.
‘Why don’t I come out and we can talk about this? Let’s not be hasty. You’re upset. I can organize some respite care, perhaps. You’ll regret losing him the moment he’s gone.’
‘I’m not being hasty. I’ve thought about it carefully. His clothes and odds and ends are packed; he’ll be home at four o’clock.’
The line went dead. She had hung up on me.
‘Shit,’ I said to the empty office. Everything I attempted seemed to be coming to naught these past couple of weeks. I reached for the phone and dialled a number.
‘Marian?’
‘How’s it goin’, Shane?’
‘Get your arse back to the office. The Bassett placement has broken down, and you are not leaving this one sitting in my lap.’
‘I’m on my way,’ she said.
While I waited for Marian to arrive, I rang the fostering section of the city’s Health Service Executive, only to find that Gertrude had already called them. An emergency placement had been established for Patrick, and I requested that Marian and I be permitted to be the ones to take him there, and make sure he settled in.
I was furious with Gertrude but even more so with myself. I had failed the Bassett family, and there was no other way to look at it. Their problems were relatively simple, and I had not given them my full attention, seduced by the more exciting and volatile features of my other cases. It was a weakness I had recognized in myself before, and here it was rearing its head once more. This time, however, the results of my complacency were grim indeed. Patrick did not deserve to be cast aside again, and I worried about how he would react to the rejection.
Bethany was another victim. She and Patrick obviously shared a close relationship, relying on one another to keep the history of their existence before fostering alive. I didn’t know what this forced separation would do to them.
I couldn’t face lunch, so I got some more coffee and sat in the kitchen smoking until I heard Marian chatting with Mrs Munro, the receptionist.
‘Okay,’ she said, plonking herself down opposite me and unwrapping a sandwich. ‘Tell me all about it.’
I did. She ate and listened, getting up only to get herself some water from the cooler.
‘Well, it’s a fine mess, at any rate,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘There’s no hope of talking the old dear down, then?’
‘I’m sure as hell going to try, and you’re going to help me, but I don’t rate our chances.’
‘Right. There’s no point in
hanging about. Let’s see if we can’t save the day.’
As we were going out the door, she stopped. ‘I thought I’d left a banana here this morning.’
‘Some bollix obviously pinched it,’ I said, and, smiling to myself, led her out to the Austin.
Gertrude must have been watching from the window, because she had the door open before we were even through the gate.
‘I know ye’ve come out early to try to talk me out of my decision, but I can tell you both, it’s a waste of all our time,’ she said.
‘Gertrude, this is my colleague Marian Brodbin,’ I said. ‘She’s come to help me move Patrick.’
‘I wish we could have met under more pleasant circumstances,’ Gertrude said, taking Marian’s hand.
‘Let’s go inside and have a chat, shall we, before Patrick gets here?’ Marian said, and Gertrude stepped aside.
Marian sat beside me in the room where I had attempted mediation, gazing out at the bizarre sculpture garden, while Gertrude fussed about, getting tea and Battenberg cake. Finally, we were all seated.
‘Would you like to tell us what’s been happening since I last spoke to you?’ I asked.
‘He got violent with me again,’ Gertrude said, actually smiling. ‘That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I always knew it was going to be. I will not be terrorized in my own house. And he’s getting so big now. What if he was to attack little Bethany? I don’t think I could protect her. And poor old Percy isn’t the man he used to be.’
‘Where did he hit you?’ I asked.
‘I was struck about the chest,’ Gertrude said demurely.
‘He punched you in the chest?’
‘No, he used a missile.’
‘Oh. He threw a rock?’
Head shake.
‘A shoe?’
‘No.’
‘A heavy book?’
‘Is it important?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, if you must know, he threw an item of clothing.’