It took Geraldine a few minutes to persuade Mrs Bowen that it would be best if she accompanied her, if only to confirm that the body was not that of her son.
‘At least you’ll know then,’ Geraldine said. ‘Like this, you’re going to be plagued with uncertainty.’
‘It’s you that’s plaguing me,’ Mrs Bowen replied, before following Geraldine out to the car.
They reached the mortuary where they were met by Avril, the cheerful anatomical pathology technician, who led them to the visitors’ room.
‘I’ll just check everything’s ready for you,’ she said. ‘Please, make yourselves comfortable here for a few minutes. Help yourselves to tea or coffee.’
As she bustled away, Geraldine thought how well suited she was to her job. With her air of cheerful efficiency, there was something comforting about her presence. She returned about five minutes later and nodded at Geraldine. The body had been prepared for the viewing.
Mrs Bowen started when she saw her son’s white face. His injured neck had been neatly patched up so that the damage was scarcely visible. Only the uneven surface of his skin indicated where broken glass had sliced through his neck. His lips were curved in a faint smile, and his eyes were closed, so that he could have been sleeping, were it not for his extreme pallor. True to his word, Jonah had succeeded in smoothing over all but the worst of Daryl’s unsightly acne. The pathologist was right. In life Daryl’s appearance had been marred by unsightly pimples; in death he resembled a marble cherub.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Bowen whispered. ‘That’s my boy.’ She turned to Geraldine, her eyes filled with tears. ‘What did they do to him? What did they do?’
She was shaking so badly, Geraldine was afraid she might collapse. Gently she led her back to the visitors’ room and poured her a cup of tea.
‘What is it with you people and tea?’ Mrs Bowen asked, bursting into tears. ‘Can’t a person get a proper drink here? It’s for my nerves,’ she added plaintively. ‘Who did that to him?’ she asked, when she had recovered sufficiently to talk again. ‘Who did that to my boy? Tell me, I want to know.’
‘We’re doing our best to find out.’
‘You will tell me, won’t you? I know it won’t make any difference. Nothing’s going to bring him back now, is it? But I want to know who did that to my boy.’
The words sounded like a threat.
‘We’ll keep you informed at all times,’ Geraldine assured her cautiously.
Daryl’s mother had a right to know who had killed her son, but Geraldine was concerned that her curiosity might lead to further tragedy.
‘If your son was attacked, his killer will go down for murder,’ she went on. ‘Rest assured, whoever did this won’t get away with it. Daryl’s killer’s going to be locked up for a very long time, hopefully for life.’
She hoped that wouldn’t prove to be an empty promise.
‘Prison’s too good whoever did this,’ Mrs Bowen said fiercely, speaking through clenched teeth. ‘Just tell me who it was. I want to know. I’ll make sure he doesn’t live long enough to stand trial. Scum like him don’t deserve to live. Let me know who it is, and I’ll do us all a favour.’
‘We’ll keep you informed,’ Geraldine repeated. ‘But you have to leave us to take care of this now. There’s no point in trying to take the law into your own hands.’
‘Tell me who did it,’ Mrs Bowen repeated, becoming hysterical.
‘Is there a friend or a relative you can go to?’ Geraldine asked.
‘I don’t need anyone else. I’ll do the job myself. Finish off whoever did this. Who was it? Who was it?’ Her voice rose in a screech.
‘Come on,’ Geraldine said gently. ‘I’ll take you home. Is there someone who can come and keep you company for a while?’
Mrs Bowen’s fit of anger had faded as quickly as it had come. ‘I only had Daryl,’ she sobbed, rocking backwards and forwards in her chair. ‘There was only ever Daryl. I never had anyone else. Only Daryl.’
‘Come on,’ Geraldine said, ‘let’s get you home.’
She led the crying woman to the car and drove her back to her squalid home where she sat, dry-eyed and wretched, staring blankly into the distance.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ Geraldine asked, conscious that it was a crass question.
Mrs Bowen picked up the half-empty beer bottle she had been drinking from earlier.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she mumbled. ‘My boy will be back soon.’ Tears trickled down wrinkled cheeks. ‘He’s not coming back, is he?’ she whispered after a few minutes.
‘No,’ Geraldine replied gently. ‘He’s not coming back.’
38
The police station was buzzing the following morning. Usually a time when everyone settled down to plan their week’s tasks, Geraldine’s colleagues were gathered together in small groups discussing the news about the gang of muggers.
‘It must have been an accident,’ Geraldine heard Ariadne say. ‘Why else would those other two boys have come forward to report the death?’
‘It was an accident waiting to happen,’ someone else agreed. ‘Those kids were never going to live to a healthy old age. It’s not going to end well for any of them.’
‘Accident my arse,’ another officer said.
There was a murmur of agreement.
‘If one of the other boys did kill him, surely the only sensible thing the two of them could have done would be to call us and report it as an accident right away?’ Geraldine said, standing up and joining the group. ‘I mean, the body was bound to be discovered pretty quickly. Don’t forget, the door had been kicked in and they hadn’t had time to repair it. Without any transport, they couldn’t hope to keep the body hidden for long, so what else could they do but report it? Unless they wanted to try their chances and run. But they’d have been on the run for the rest of their lives –’
‘So you’re saying the fact that they reported the death doesn’t indicate they didn’t kill him deliberately?’ Eileen interrupted her.
The detective chief inspector had entered the room without Geraldine noticing her.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Eileen said, and several other officers murmured in agreement. ‘So I suggest we question these two delinquents, and keep on at them until one of them cracks and tells us the truth.’
‘Innocent until proven guilty?’ someone murmured.
‘What if they stick to their story?’ Ariadne asked.
‘Then we keep a close eye on those two boys,’ the detective chief inspector replied briskly. ‘One false move and the borough intelligence boys will be down on them like a ton of bricks. A young boy died last night, and although we might not be able to nail his killers, we all know who’s responsible. They might get away with mugging people, and even with killing their friend, but it won’t be long before they find themselves behind bars, or my name’s not Eileen Duncan. In the meantime, we’ll be doing everything we can to get them to talk.’
‘Why are we wasting time on this? The boy who was killed would’ve ended up knifed sooner or later anyway,’ a constable muttered, ‘if he hadn’t ended up in prison costing us a bloody fortune.’
Without thinking, Geraldine turned on him. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say! We’re talking about a human being here. He was a sixteen-year-old boy, barely more than a child!’
She was afraid she might have spoken out of turn, but before the constable could retort, Eileen addressed the man who had spoken so dismissively of Daryl.
‘Don’t ever let me hear you speak like that about a victim again. Everyone is treated equally here. Everyone. You can think what you like in private, but as a police officer on duty you speak respectfully of everyone. Is that understood?’
The constable opened his mouth, then closed it again and looked down at the floor.
‘Now,’ Eileen said, ‘let’s see if we ca
n get those two wretched boys to talk.’
‘Come on,’ Geraldine muttered to Ian. ‘Let’s do what we can to nail them.’
Spurred on by an uneasy suspicion that earlier police intervention was partly responsible for Daryl’s death, she strode towards the interview room where Billy Whitelow was waiting. Geraldine and Ian stared at the heavily built boy facing them. The lower part of his face was covered in stubble, and he glowered at them across the table.
‘Your name is Billy Whitelow,’ Ian said.
‘My name’s Carver,’ he replied impassively.
‘Very well, then, Carver, tell us again, in your own words, what happened last night.’
The boy glared at them in silence.
‘You’ve been insisting Daryl’s death was an accident,’ Geraldine said. ‘But if you really are innocent as you say, then what possible reason could you have for refusing to talk to us?’
‘I don’t have to say anything to these pigs, do I?’
The portly lawyer who had defended the boys before was back, seated beside the boy known as Carver, and looking half asleep.
Now he grunted. ‘My client has already made a statement. He is under no obligation to repeat what he has already told you. My client is a very young man –’
‘He’s nineteen,’ Ian cut in.
‘And he doesn’t wish to talk about this anymore. He’s given his statement.’
‘Why doesn’t he want to talk to us, if he’s got nothing to hide?’ Geraldine asked.
‘He’s young –’
‘Oh, change the record,’ Ian muttered.
The lawyer gave him a dirty look. ‘He’s young,’ the lawyer repeated, ‘and he’s traumatised by the death of his friend.’
‘But why won’t he speak to us?’ Geraldine insisted. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Is it that you’re afraid you can’t remember the story you and your accomplice fabricated?’ Ian asked.
‘Bollocks,’ Carver said. ‘You think you can scare me with your big words?’
‘Why are you so reluctant to talk to us?’ Ian pressed him.
‘I’m shy,’ Carver said.
And that was all they could get out of him, however hard they pressed him. It was frustrating, but they couldn’t force him to talk to them. The boy who called himself Carver wasn’t officially a suspect, as the lawyer kept reminding them.
The second boy, Andrew Nelson, was garrulous, but equally unhelpful.
‘It was an accident,’ he said. ‘It was horrible, but it was Daryl’s own stupid fault. He was pissed and he tripped and fell on the broken bottle I was holding.’
‘So you were holding a broken bottle in your hand?’ Ian asked quietly.
Nelson shrugged, looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘It broke,’ he said. ‘It was glass, you know. It was a bottle. And it broke. Bottles do,’ he added, sounding more confident. ‘Daryl dropped it and it broke. Then he fell over and –’ He shrugged.
‘You just said Daryl dropped the bottle and it broke, so how did it end up in your hand?’ Geraldine asked.
‘I picked it up, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to leave it there. I was going to tidy the place up. Broken glass is dangerous. Only Daryl slipped –’
‘So you were holding a broken bottle?’ Ian repeated.
‘Yeah, I was clearing up the mess. Carver should’ve been doing it. It’s his place, but he was too busy laughing at Daryl.’
‘Hardly,’ Geraldine interjected. ‘You were trespassing.’
‘Yeah, well, whatever. Anyway, Daryl was so pissed he couldn’t stand up straight. He tried to walk and fell over. He couldn’t hold his booze and he had a tankful. It was a stupid thing to do, and look what happened to him as a result. He always was an idiot. That’s why it happened. He had it coming.’
Geraldine sat forward slightly. ‘What are you saying? What do you mean?’
‘He brought it on himself. It was his own stupid fault.’
She could hardly breathe. ‘How? What had he done to you? How did he bring it on himself?’
‘He couldn’t hold his drink, that’s what. And look what happened to him. It served him right. He should never have drunk so much. He was just a kid. He couldn’t hold his drink. I warned him. I kept telling him not to drink any more, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘So, he tripped?’ Ian asked. ‘What happened then?’
‘Yeah, he tripped. He was pissed and stumbling around, so we were laughing at him, and he got mad at us. Then he went for me –’
‘So you were fighting?’ Ian asked.
‘No, I told you, we were both laughing at him and he got mad and went for me but he slipped and fell and – well, he never got up again. And then we saw the blood, and it was obvious he’d croaked.’ He shrugged again. ‘So that was it. We called your lot and… well, you know what happened after that. Daryl was dead, wasn’t he?’
Geraldine stared at him, trying to discern any trace of emotion in his face, but he returned her gaze calmly.
‘It’s one of those things,’ he went on. ‘Like I said, it was his fault. He was the one who went for me. And now we’re being harassed by you lot. That’s hardly fair, is it? We just lost a good mate. We should be getting sympathy not hassle. How does that work? It’s not like we’re to blame for what happened to him. It’s not like we treated him badly or anything. We took him in. We looked out for him.’
‘Why did you keep knives?’ Ian asked.
‘Haven’t you got knives at home? Haven’t you got knives in your kitchen?’
‘These weren’t in a kitchen.’
‘What did you have all those knives for, if you never intended to use them?’ Geraldine asked.
‘We collected them,’ Nelson replied.
‘Why?’
‘We liked collecting them. It’s interesting, collecting things. Don’t you collect things?’
‘We’re talking about dangerous weapons.’
Nelson shrugged. ‘Whatever. It was just a collection.’
39
Exasperated, Zoe hung up. Really, her mother was becoming even worse, constantly fussing. Zoe had thought she would be free from her parents’ nagging and restrictions while she was away at university. That had been her main reason for choosing to study so far from home. Her phone rang again.
‘We don’t like to nag,’ her mother said.
‘Well, don’t then.’
‘But we keep hearing on the news about all these murders in York –’
‘Two people, mum, and it’s not as if they were anywhere near the university. People get killed all the time in London and you’re happy to live there.’
‘In a suburb, darling, a suburb,’ her mother replied, as though that made any difference.
‘Listen, mum, I’ve got to go. I’m meeting someone.’
That wasn’t true, but she wanted to end the call.
Her mother sighed audibly down the phone. ‘Well, just be careful. And call me this evening.’
Zoe rang off without answering. It hadn’t been her choice to come to university at all. She was only doing it for her parents’ sakes. Everything she did was to please them, and they still refused to let her get on with her life. With a sudden burst of irritation, she spun round and nearly barged into a tall woman in a long brown coat.
‘Are you all right?’ the woman asked her, in a low gentle voice.
Zoe scowled. ‘I would be if my bloody parents would leave me alone.’
It was a stupid thing to say. Her problems with her parents had nothing to do with anyone else, but the woman smiled in sympathy.
‘Parents can be a problem when they’re intrusive,’ she agreed, ‘but I’m sure they have your best interests at heart.’
‘No, they don’t. They’re only thinking of themselves and how they can impress their frie
nds. They just want to be able to boast that I’m doing well. It’s never been any different with them. They never listen to what I want.’
She knew she was speaking out of turn, venting to a complete stranger, but it was a relief to have someone to talk to, and the woman’s interest seemed genuine. It was different with her tutors at university. She didn’t like to discuss her parents with them. It felt too personal.
‘Let’s walk and talk,’ the woman suggested. ‘Where are you going?’
Zoe shrugged. ‘Nowhere in particular,’ she replied. ‘I was just on my way home, actually, but I thought I’d go for a walk first.’
‘I live not far from here,’ the woman said, ‘or we could go into town for a coffee, if you prefer.’
There was something slightly odd about the way she seemed to assume that Zoe would accompany her, when they had never met before.
‘It might help to talk a bit more,’ the woman added, seeing Zoe hesitate. ‘I work as a counsellor and, while it’s clear to me that you don’t need any professional support, it can be useful to talk through your problems, and get it off your chest. Would you like to talk about it?’
Zoe nodded.
‘I thought so.’
The woman seemed to know what she was talking about, and Zoe had nothing else to do. Besides, the woman worked as a counsellor. She would have been vetted to check she wasn’t a weirdo.
‘It’s just my parents,’ she muttered. ‘They won’t leave me alone.’
‘Growing up is a process,’ the woman said. ‘Sometimes it helps to take a step back from the problem and gain some perspective on the situation.’
The woman began to bug Zoe. She didn’t want to stand in the street listening to a stranger spouting homespun philosophy, and she didn’t need any help growing up. She was eighteen and had left home. But she didn’t want to be rude. The woman had been kind to her and, besides, it wasn’t as if Zoe had anywhere pressing to go, or anyone else to talk to. Nevertheless, the woman was a stranger, and she was being over familiar.
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