Darkness Falls

by David Mark

  She flips the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and turns back to me. She wipes a hand on her apron and comes forward. She’s even smaller than I thought. A quarter of the size of the vast brute she gave birth to a quarter of a century ago. He must have sucked her dry.

  “You had to pick teatime, did you? Busiest time, love.”

  “Sorry,” I say, floundering. “I could come back…”

  “No, you’re here now. Savio!” She shouts over her shoulder to the young man, not taking her eyes off mine. “I’m shutting for a few minutes. You go and see how much scampi we’ve got left in the freezer. Then take your break.” She raises her hands and gives a shrug, then mutters, almost to herself: “Not exactly bloody heaving anyway.”

  She points me through the hatchway and the kitchen to a side door. She puts a hand on my arm as I pass, to steer me, and I have to stop myself jolting at the contact. I’m led down a corridor. I find myself wishing she’d take my hand, and let me float behind her like a balloon on a string. I’m gazing at my feet as I walk, my boots leaving wet footprints on the blue patterned carpet, getting dizzy in the swirls.

  The carpet comes to an abrupt stop at the foot of the stairs. The patterns don’t match up as it starts up the single flight.

  I hold the bannister as I follow Lena. Her arse is three steps in front of my face, and I’m feeling weird, trying to think of something to say. She’s muttering about excusing the mess and hoping we can keep this brief.

  I close my eyes and bump into a wall, knocking a pencil sketch of a horse and hounds askew. Lena looks at me and I mumble an apology, and then I’m bumbling into the darkened living room, plonking down on a rocking chair too close to the electric fire. It’s the only light in the room.

  “Are you all right, love?” she asks with genuine concern. “You don’t look too good.”

  “Really?” I say, squinting up at her. “You look fantastic.” I smile as I say it to let her know I’m not a twat, but I sense it looks like a grimace, and stop. I purse my lips to fight down the nausea, and wish she’d offer me a glass of water.

  Lena looks taken aback but not offended. She unfastens her apron and pulls it over her head. She lays it down on the sofa and sits next to it, hands clasped between her knees. She doesn’t seem to mind the half gloom, but it’s too heavy for me. I can’t really make anything out. There are lumps in the darkness. I can see the shapes of pictures on the wall but not their contents. I can’t get a sense of my surroundings. There are squares of deep jet against charcoal.

  “Any chance of a light on?” I hear the whine in my voice as I say it, and give a cough. I give myself a more manly lilt as I carry on. “I look better in the light.”

  Lena gives a shrug, gets up and switches on the big light. It’s garish. There’s no shade. A single bulb hangs in the centre of the room and its glow is harsh, aggressive.

  Lena returns to her seat and gestures up at the light. “I never have it on myself. I like it cosy.”

  The brightness hits me like a slap. I let my face become charming, open my eyes wide and fix them on Lena, giving her a shake of the head and a gentle smile. “I can see again.”

  “It’s always so bright in the shop,” she says, by way of explanation. “I get these awful headaches. I just use the telly and the fire when I’m up here.”

  “Even for reading?”

  “I’m not much of a one for reading. I used to read the Hull Mail. But then it got too hard.”

  “Too hard?”

  “All the nasty things. All the violence. When you live alone you don’t always want to know there are psychopaths walking the streets.” I hear it as cycle paths. I always do.

  “There’s just you, then? No man around.”

  “No, not for a while.” There’s regret in her voice. Acceptance, too. “Never had that much luck with the buggers.” She looks me up and down for the first time and I can sense her weighing me like a fish. I’m happy to play up to it, to be on display. There’s a certain quality to her gaze. Perhaps a hunger. She doesn’t seem as defensive as I’d feared. I might be done in half an hour. Maybe less. Say my goodbyes and then go and visit my sister. Work out my frustrations.

  I look around the room as I stick a hand in my pocket and retrieve my notebook. My fags are in the way and I pull them out and lay them on the arm of the chair. Lena looks at them and I offer her one. She nods furiously. I half get out of my chair to reach across to her and she does the same. We meet in the centre of the room, half-crooked. I light hers first, but the lighter dies before my own ignites. I start patting my pockets with the unlit fag in my mouth. Lena takes the end between finger and thumb and leans forward, pressing the glowing ember of her own cigarette to mine. I breathe deeply and our eyes lock, only inches apart. We both smile, and then she’s embarrassed and retreats to the chair. I do the same, feeling better.

  The room is almost bare. Neat. Simple. Brown carpet, Ikea rag-rug. Old-fashioned sideboard against one wall. Portable TV next to the fire. A frosted glass window set in one wall, next to a bare white door. Floral wallpaper on the chimney breast, pale pinky colour on the others. Half a dozen birthday cards on the mantlepiece over the fire. All of its bars glowing red. All of the pictures on the wall are classless classics. Monet’s lilies. Cezanne’s bathers. Van Gogh’s chair. Ophelia, floating in death.

  No photographs.

  “Right,” I say, suddenly business-like. Making a start on the pre-prepared bullshit. “As I explained, what I’m wanting to do is put the other side of the story. So often with these high-profile court cases, the accused is demonised to such an extent that nobody ever stops to think that they’re still a human being, or asks themselves what tragedies in their life led them down a certain road. As you’ve no doubt seen, your Shane has already been portrayed as an out-and-out monster. What I want is to get a piece written from your point of view, looking at his childhood, his background. As I’ve promised, we won’t identify you. It took a lot of courage for you to call me, and believe me, we’ll respect your wishes. Now I’ve done quite a lot of research already and I know about which schools he went to, getting expelled at fifteen, floating between a few jobs and apprenticeships, and then…”

  “And then?”

  “Well, and then, erm, the problems. The convictions. We’ll come to that later though. For now, it’s his childhood that intrigues me. Do you want to talk me through it?”

  “Where do I start?”

  “Well, am I right in thinking Shane was an only child?”

  “Yes.”

  Wait for more.

  Nothing comes.

  “And his father?”

  “Not around.”

  She’s looking down, now. Seems to be chewing on something but there’s nothing in her mouth. Picking at a stubby hangnail on her right hand. Scratching a spot on her hairline. All the little twitches that seem to bring comfort in times of strife. Grieving mothers, angry fathers, broken loved ones turned inside out with emotion; they all give the same performance, and I conduct it like an orchestra. I’ve seen it all before. It’s punctuation for their pain. As much a part of the dance as my soft voice, my understanding eyes, warm palms laid on their cold hands – giving the odd choke on a syllable as I lay myself bare and share their pain, pretending to give a fuck about their little Jimmy.

  “Lena,” I start…

  “I’m sorry,” says Lena, suddenly looking up at me. Eyes the colour of stone-washed denim fill with apologies and shame. She looks at my notebook as though it’s a doorway she’s afraid to pass through. It feels conspicuous in my hand. My pen is cumbersome, an irritation; a lance held between finger and thumb. All at once I’m horribly aware of myself, of her, of the nature of our association. We’re not friends. Not colleagues. Not lovers. I’m a stranger asking questions in her living room and idly wondering if her cunt smells of haddock or cod. It all feels real, as though I’m actually living my own life.

  She leans forward in her seat, like a jockey. Elbows on her knees. Rub
s her hands on her leggings.

  I put the pen down.

  Lower the notebook like a sail.

  Stand up.

  Cross the room.

  Take the seat next to her on the sofa, close enough for my hand to brush the soft hairs on her bare arm.

  And she starts to talk.

  It’s fucking good.

  Dynamite copy.

  Revelations and remorse. Anger at herself. At me. At her son and the devil that sired him.

  Disappearing into her bedroom more than once; returning with hankies, touched-up make-up, a lop-eared stuffed rabbit that she asks me to put on Ella’s grave.

  Say I will.

  Probably won’t.

  By the time I start writing things down, she’s opened the drinks cupboard and we’re necking Taboo. I’ve told her about Jess. Kerry. Created a fictional brother who died of leukaemia. Given her absolution and held her as the sobs came.

  Cherry-picked from her pain until pound signs danced in my eyes.

  20

  Back in the car, scribbling in the dark.

  Getting it down while it’s still fresh and raw.

  Before it gets swallowed up and diluted.

  I have to get Cadbury out of me. I don’t want his secrets to meet my own.

  As twisted child abuser Shane Cadbury begins a life sentence for an horrific murder, reporter Owen Lee spoke exclusively to his mother about how she feared him even as a child…

  There is little about Lena Winstanley to suggest she once gave birth to a monster – a violent sexual sadist who butchered and decapitated a young bride-to-be in her wedding gown and kept her corpse for his own sick pleasures.

  Petite, polite and proud of the fish shop she runs in her home city of Hull, East Yorkshire, Ms Winstanley, 44, is a popular member of her community and a good friend to her neighbours and customers.

  But Ms Winstanley has a secret she hoped to hide from the community she calls home. 26 years ago, she gave birth to Shane Cadbury, the man whose horrendous slaying of young Ella Butterworth shocked the city and led to a high-profile court case which this week ended with Cadbury being sentenced to…

  At the culmination of the trial, Presiding Judge (**check name**) Skelton labelled Lena’s son a “**wtvr he fukng calls hm**.”

  The jury, who wept as they were showed photos of the beautiful and innocent young victim, were told how Cadbury had a long history of violence towards women and had spent time in young offenders’ institutes and adult prison for vile sex attacks on children.

  Ms Winstanley, who adopted her mother’s maiden name when Cadbury’s crimes were first exposed, said last night: “Every young girl who gets pregnant is afraid of how their child might turn out, but they do the best they can and will stick up for them regardless. I did that for so long. I kept saying people got it wrong, that it wasn’t his fault. But I was lying to myself. He was an animal, and when I think of what he did to that young girl, I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror.”

  Lena was just 17 years old when she fell pregnant during a brief relationship with a visiting seaman. A much older man, he beat and raped her when she told him she was expecting a child, and then left the city.

  Lena believed she had miscarried in the wake of the attack, but several months later discovered she was still pregnant, and it was too late for the termination she admits now she desired.

  Disowned by her family, Lena struggled to raise Shane on her own and debts forced her to move to a succession of flats around the city.

  She said: “I tried to give him what I could, but I couldn’t work because there was nobody to watch Shane. We were together all the time, and he was a hard baby. He didn’t sleep much and he would scream like no other child I knew if he didn’t get what he wanted.”

  Shane grew into an even more difficult child, who earned a reputation as a neighbourhood bully.

  She said: “Parents were always knocking on the door and saying he had been attacking their children. He didn’t really play with them, so they would call him names, and then he would get them, one by one. He was a big boy.”

  A poor performer at school, who suffered from what Lena now believes was Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Shane was frequently in trouble. He began smoking at nine years old, when he was also involved in a physical confrontation with a man who was then Lena’s partner.

  She said: “He hated the man I was seeing. He didn’t want to share me. He would pretend he was ill if he knew I was supposed to be seeing him. My friend stayed over one night, and Shane came into our room and attacked him with a hammer. It was like something from a horror film. He was shrieking and crying and trying to kill him.”

  Following the incident, Shane withdrew into himself. He became fascinated by the occult, and in his teenage years spent most of his time in his bedroom, sketching images of women in horrific poses and listening to music.

  When he was 13 years old, he was expelled from school and charged with indecent assault after molesting a younger girl in an empty classroom.

  A similar incident followed at his new school, and he was sent to a young offenders’ institute. When he was released, he was a much more sociable person, and found a group of friends from the surrounding East Hull estate, but they barely went to school and spent most of their time at an older friend’s home, watching pornography and horror films.

  By now an obese but muscular young man, Lena came to fear her son.

  She said: “He was still my son and I loved him but I was becoming so ashamed. I couldn’t make excuses. He would tell me that the girls had wanted it, or that he was being set up, but it was happening all the time. He would watch girls from his bedroom window and I would know what he was doing to himself. It was vile, but I couldn’t get through to him. He ignored me, and was always out with older mates.

  “The police were constantly knocking on the door. He was getting done for theft and assaults and drinking more and smoking cannabis, and I didn’t know who he was. He’d come home while I was asleep and draw symbols in red paint on the wall, just to scare me.

  “He wouldn’t get a job, and just drifted. I could go weeks without seeing him, and then when he was 22 I just reached the end of the road with him.”

  At 22, Cadbury was arrested and charged with raping the eight-year-old daughter of one of his friends. Remanded to Wakefield Prison, he bullied other inmates and was frequently in trouble.

  At the trial, where his counsel told of his drug addiction and low IQ, he spoke only to confirm his name, and his conversion, through the prison chaplain, to Catholicism. Conflicting reports and a mix-up over forensic evidence meant the charge was reduced to indecent assault. He entered a guilty plea to the lesser charge and spent 14 months in prison.

  Upon his release, he made no attempt to contact his mother, who had now opened her new business.

  She said: “Despite the trouble he’s been in I know he feels no guilt. I know he has done truly evil things and I can’t stand the thought he was once a part of me.

  “When that young girl was missing I had this feeling, this hollow, empty feeling, that he was involved. I was just waiting for it to be confirmed. I’m not his mother. He’s taken my life too. I was his first victim.”

  Bang.

  Job done. Most of it true and all of it juicy. Exclusive. Mine.

  Gun in my waistband, humming, softly.

  Jobs to do, people to see.

  Needing a drink.

  The press of flesh and stink of ale.

  Need to fish in the sea of humanity.

  Reel something in.

  21

  “Good evening, this is Inspector Dave Simmonds on the Humberside Police media line. The time is now 6.57 p.m. on February 6. Just a brief update, as promised, on the ongoing inquiry into the two suspicious deaths at the Country Park. Many of you have been calling me to ask me to confirm two names that are currently doing the rounds. As I’ve explained, until all of the families have been informed and certain fore
nsic tests completed, I will be unable to release any identities and would request that you do not print any names in association with this case until we are ready to formally release them. I can only say at this stage that a post mortem examination has been carried out by Professor Murray, that’s John Murray, with an ‘h’, and spelled M.U.R.R.A.Y, before you ask, of Sheffield University, which showed that one of these men died from a brutal and sustained attack, and that the other met their death as the result of a gunshot wound. This is now a murder inquiry. There will be an informal press conference at Priory Road police station at 9 a.m. tomorrow. I am aware that many of you may be covering the Shane Cadbury murder trial at the moment and I’m sorry for the inconvenient time, but Detective Superintendent Doug Roper is heading this investigation personally and unfortunately this is the only time he will be available. Further to the questions I have been asked about the CCTV tapes which cover the car park, I can confirm that yes, a tape has been recovered and will be viewed by officers. I would like to thank you for your patience. I will update this media line as soon as I am able to do so.”

  8 p.m. One elbow on the bar at the Tap & Spile on Spring Bank. Full of disenfranchised liberals seeking asylum and finding solace in conversation with the like-minded; the lefties who don’t want to admit they’re getting secretly pissed off at the amount of olive-skinned faces on the street beyond the leaded glass.

  Decent boozer, this. Walking distance from the Hull Daily Mail main office. Quick stroll from Kerry’s. Never more than two feet from a fuck.

  Busy. Must be sixty people milling about in the two rooms, spilling beer on the wooden floors, squeezed in at tables and leaning against columns, shredding the labels off bottles of Budweiser, and building pyramids with beer mats on the varnished tables. It’s a theme pub, and the theme is drinking and having a laugh. Mixed crowd tonight. Students in corduroy flares and tiny tops, middle-aged women in jeans and Monsoon dresses, blokes with long hair and leather waistcoats, old blokes nursing a pint of Smooth and talking about the rugby. Lots of ornaments and knick-knacks on the walls. Turn-of-the-century bottles and tin cans, huge keg of beer standing in the centre of the back-bar. Got a yellow feel about the place. Got a good reputation for music, too. Holds the infamous ‘Tap on Wood’ acoustic competition every year. I caught the final a couple of years back, when one of Kerry’s mates came second, losing to a skinny bloke who did a ballad version of ‘Ace of Spades’ to end his set. It was a good night. Kerry hadn’t unravelled yet, though some of her stitching was beginning to come loose. She still believed, then. Still wore the CND badge and posted leaflets through doors for the Legalise Cannabis Alliance. Still ate food when she needed to, rather than when she remembered. Still had arms that didn’t look like tea bags. Still laughed at what was funny, instead of giggling at silence and empty air. Still worked at the animal shelter and spent most of her wages on toys and treats for the cats that nobody wanted. Still called Dad every couple of days. Still kept her legs shut until somebody opened them nicely. Still my sister.