‘She told me,’ came the woman’s voice, quite calmly, ‘that she’d confessed to murder.’
Jenny was first terrified, then she exclaimed, ‘That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe it. Ruth’s hysterical.’
The sister answered only, ‘Well, I think you should get here as soon as possible, Mrs Pickering.’ And Jenny Pickering, still refusing to believe that her fifteen-year-old daughter could have taken a life but feeling sure now that whatever secrets Ruth had been guarding were due to come out, picked up her bag, phoned a minicab, left a note for her children and went outside the house to wait. When she sat down in the cab she noticed her legs were shaking.
26
Some Mysteries Revealed
‘I told them she was upset and about to begin therapy,’ the sister reported to Jenny Pickering when she arrived at the hospital. ‘They won’t accept it. I can only assume when she phoned she said something which interested them.’
‘You don’t have to let them question her,’ said the woman in a blue linen suit standing beside the nurse. ‘She’s under age and in medical care. It’s your decision.’ She began to tell Jenny her rights, over-emphatically, as if she were not capable of understanding. Jenny became confused. She glanced from one to the other, then down the ward towards where she saw Ruth in bed, sitting up in a yellow cardigan, wearing the headphones Melanie had sacrificed to her. The sister advised, ‘Go and talk to your daughter.’
Jenny Pickering nodded and walked towards Ruth, afraid of what she might see in the girl’s eyes. When Ruth took off the headphones, put down the book she was reading and smiled, though wanly, Jenny was reassured. This was more like the daughter she used to know.
‘Hallo, Mum,’ Ruth said.
Jenny sat down. ‘Perhaps you can explain to me what you’ve done,’ she said, sounding more annoyed than anxious, or grieving, as parents can in such situations.
‘I had to tell them, Mum,’ Ruth said to her. ‘It’s on my mind. I haven’t had any peace since I did it. Oh, Mum,’ she said, leaning towards her mother and bursting into tears.
Jenny Pickering held her, but stared quite fiercely over her head as she wept. Finally she pushed her off and took her by the shoulders. She said, ‘Look, we’ve no time for all that. What’s been happening? What have you done? There’s a policeman waiting outside. What have you told them?’
Ruth stared at her, tears still running down her face.
‘What have you told them, Ruth? We must know,’ urged her mother.
‘Don’t get Dad,’ Ruth said in alarm, thinking Jenny Pickering’s ‘we’ meant herself and Ruth’s father. She stared at her mother in horror.
‘No worry about that. I can’t find him,’ declared Jenny, deciding on the spot to take Vanessa’s advice and pretend she did not know where David Pickering was. She looked at Ruth and remembered her big girl, at home with the others. In a pitying, domestic way as if she were talking to a child over-distressed about some petty guilt, like pushing her brother off a bicycle, or breaking an ornament, she said, ‘Oh Ruth. You’re a silly girl. Pull yourself together now and tell me what it’s all about. I don’t believe for one minute you killed anybody. You’ll have to tell me what happened. I’ve got to decide what to do.’
Ruth stared at her, looked at the sheet on the bed.
‘Come on,’ urged Jenny. ‘You’ve got to get it out some time. You know that.’
As Ruth began to speak, the ward sister and the woman in the blue suit looked down the ward, carefully watching both mother and daughter. The ward sister turned to the police constable behind her and said, ‘You’ll have to go back and sit down. The girl’s speaking to her mother.’
The woman in the blue suit added, ‘I’m afraid that’s the case. There’s no question of your being able to talk to her now.’ The policeman retreated back to the lift, radioed a superior, then sat down again to wait.
During the next half-hour Ruth Pickering told her mother a story which, very often, Jenny felt she could hardly bear to hear although she knew she must.
‘I was in this house – well, it must have been near London, because that’s where I was when they caught me and said I could come and live in this hostel but when I got there, it wasn’t – wasn’t a hostel and they never let us out except with Mrs Hedges and Mr Johnson,’ Ruth began in her clear voice, so like her mother’s. ‘She was always there, Mrs Hedges, in case we ran away. There were six of us and we had, like, little cubicles, the bedrooms were split up like that. We got ten pounds a week spending money, but we couldn’t ever go out alone to spend it. It was very clean. There were two bathrooms. A nurse used to come and inspect us. And a hairdresser, for our hair. I could have run away. I could. Somehow. I could have killed myself. But I didn’t. Sometimes what was happening didn’t matter. I made it like a dream, when I could.
‘Mrs Hedges would give us a treat, like the pictures, or we’d all go to Richmond Park. And these men would come in, two or three times a week. And then, one night … one of them was there and it came over me I hated him, and I hated what he was just going to do, so I ran at him with this knife I’d bought on the sly, when we were out. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it when I’d got it but I’d just pretended to get lost and bought it quickly and put it in my pocket and then caught up with the others, that was what I did, and then there I was, late at night, and I thought, I ought to be going to bed somewhere, watch the telly, go to bed, get up in the morning and go to school or work, or something, just like other people do, and I looked at his red face with its horrible stupid expression, and that big body coming towards me and I just thought – no. No. So I reached behind me into the little white dressing-table drawer, that was the idea you see, little white nightie, little white dressing-table, little white bedspread just like a young child might have, and I thought, I’m going to kill you. So I did. I stabbed him and stabbed him and he fell down and made a choking noise. I don’t care that I did it. He deserved it. I grabbed my clothes from the bathroom and shoes, and ran downstairs. The front door was locked, of course, so I ran in the dining room and I broke the window and got out, before they knew what had happened, and I just ran and ran.
‘There weren’t many people about, and the ones that were there didn’t seem to notice. I went round the back of somebody’s garage and put my clothes on. Then I just walked on and on not knowing where I was going, looking behind me all the time. Later on I met a couple of boys on some steps somewhere, and they didn’t have anywhere to go either. We found a place you could sleep and we hung about the streets, getting what we could. I don’t remember much about it. I was too afraid of the police and getting caught.
‘But since I’ve been here I’ve been thinking. I don’t care. I want them to go to that house and let the others out. They ought to be punished, them men, and Mrs Hedges and Mr Johnson, they ought to, didn’t they, Mum? They’re only young, Bob was only eleven. He’d run away from a children’s home and she kept on telling him if they caught him he’d be put in prison. She was taking a lot of money for keeping us all there. We hardly had any in case we ran away. That’s wrong, isn’t it? She should be punished. That’s right, isn’t it, Mum?’ She had been staring ahead of her as she spoke, as the scenes had gone through her head. Now she looked at Jenny and saw that tears were running down her face.
‘Don’t cry, Mum,’ came Ruth’s now composed small voice.
‘Oh, my God. My God – what’ve I done?’ wept Jenny.
‘You haven’t done anything, Mum,’ said Ruth bewildered.
Jenny Pickering brought her head up. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said bitterly. ‘Not enough, anyway. I’ve been a fool.’ She sniffed, brought a tissue out of her handbag and blew her nose. ‘Don’t worry, pet. Don’t worry. They’ll catch them and punish them. I’ll take care of you from now on.’
Not long after the blue-suited doctor came up on her long legs. She said, ‘Mrs Pickering. Could you spare me a word now?’
‘I don’t think I can leave her
,’ said Jenny Pickering. She paused. ‘But Ruth’s right. She has to talk to that policeman.’
The raid on the house in Hall Avenue was not a success. It was plain from the first that the house was empty. Ruth, stiff and terrified in the police car her mother beside her, muttered, ‘They’ve gone away,’ as the police walked at speed up the drive of the detached house, while others scrambled over the fence separating the back of the house from the front. To Jenny it also seemed that the house was empty. She sat gazing at the anonymous front – a green front door, and windows, painted green, curtains hanging tidily beside fresh net curtains – and tried, for Ruth’s sake, to stay calm.
Number 63 Hall Avenue had been a child brothel containing three boys and three girls, the youngest eleven, the eldest a girl of fifteen, all of them, according to Ruth, runaways of one kind or another, picked up from mainline stations and public places in London. Three of them, Corinne, Peter and Susie, were London children and already prostitutes. Paul was a fugitive from a children’s home in Northampton, Celia from a remand home for girls on the south coast. It seemed to those who heard the story that Celia had been mentally subnormal, Paul just bewildered into numb stupidity. But now they, and Mrs Hedges and Mr Johnson, their exploiters, had all disappeared. Inside, said the policewoman later to Mrs Pickering, the house was clean and well furnished, with a neat lounge, three-piece suite, large television set and a clock on the mantelpiece. The dining room had a long table with eight chairs ranged round. The fridge in the kitchen had been cleared. Pots and pans hung on hooks. The electric stove was clean. Upstairs were four bedrooms, one double and three divided into two, with single beds and small wardrobes and dressing-tables, but there was nothing in cupboards or drawers, the beds had been stripped, pillows, duvets and bedcovers lay on them neatly. The carpets had been hoovered. The pane Ruth had said she had broken had been replaced. The place was bright and ordinary, with the appearance of a well-run bed-and-breakfast hotel, from the lightly flowered wallpapers to the medium-quality fawn carpet and the pot plant placed outside on the patio to give it a chance of life after the departure of the occupants.
One policeman, sent to look over the garden, stood in the sunshine on the lawn, which was tidy but long from not having been recently cut. He said to another, ‘Do you think the kid’s been having her mother on? You know, it’s all a story to explain where she’s been and what she’s been doing?’
‘She must have got the name and address right,’ said the other. ‘Anyway. There’s something wrong in there. I can feel it.’
Later, when the neighbours were interviewed, it turned out that they didn’t mix with the residents at number 63, but then, they barely mixed with each other. Mrs Hedges had moved in three years before, claiming to be the house mother of a small local authority hostel for young people with problems, designed to shelter them and reaccustom them to normal family life. The neighbours, relieved the place was quiet and well conducted, had accepted the story. From either side of the house neighbours would have found it difficult to see who came and went, but a woman opposite said she had been surprised at the number of good cars usually, though not always, containing only men, which drove up at night. Mrs Hedges, stopping one day to ask if the engines and opening and closing of car doors were disturbing her in the evenings, had explained that while some of the visitors were friends or relations of the young residents others were council inspectors, experts conducting research and psychiatrists and therapists supporting the young people. The woman said that at first she’d been slightly suspicious but knew nothing about what such experts might be, or what they did. She told the police officer, ‘The children looked happy and well cared-for. They were orderly and they wore quiet clothing. They seemed to get on well with Mrs Hedges and her husband. And she seemed such a nice woman. I still can’t believe it.’ But she paused then, in her front room, her library book on a table beside her, and added, ‘Actually I can believe it. That’s the awful thing. But there was nothing you could put your finger on. Not really.’
The police spoke to the milkman, who had delivered eight pints a day, the postman, who told them that the young people never had any letters, and the clergyman at the Methodist church on the corner. When he heard the story he looked grave. He told the police inspector that people in his corner of London were not neighbourly or, to put it more charitably, they saw not probing into each other’s business, not interfering or making unwanted visits to each other’s houses as the most neighbourly thing they could do. This sad affair, he said, proved just how wrong that idea was. Anyone who actually entered that house might have sensed something was amiss.
As it was, the police were not very welcome when they rang bells in the vicinity to make enquiries about 63 Hall Avenue. It had hardly been more than a month since they’d been round asking questions about a man found dead in a nearby street.
It seemed Mrs Hedges and Johnson had escaped the law. The police inspector who came back to the hospital with Jenny Pickering and Ruth said, ‘We’ll get her in the end, but probably not before she’s gone somewhere else and started up again.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere,’ he told her, ‘where the neighbours keep to themselves, near a town where there are kids on the loose and men who want them and can pay. I’m sorry, Mrs Pickering. As I say, she’ll be caught sooner or later if that’s any consolation.’
Jenny Pickering sighed. ‘My main concern’s my daughter. I’m sorry – I don’t care about you catching them. I don’t even care about the others, I ought to – but I don’t.’
‘Talk to the staff here,’ he advised. ‘Take their advice. They’ve seen it all. Is your husband available?’
Jenny admitted that he was.
‘Well, that’s a good thing,’ he told her.
Jenny Pickering didn’t think so. She was exhausted, her feelings were confused. She blamed herself that things had gone so terribly wrong for Ruth. She was her mother. She was to blame. She should have prevented her from leaving home, and, if not, have found her when she had. But another part of her felt that, had it not been for Ruth’s father’s behaviour, Ruth would never have run away. Yet, when he heard the story, he would blame her for what had occurred and she knew that she would believe him. The thought of this additional burden was unbearable. Could she bear it? She felt she couldn’t but knew, for Ruth’s sake, she would have to.
Dr Smith told her Ruth would soon be well enough to leave hospital. She could, she said, refer her to a hospital near home, where Ruth would receive help to get over what had happened to her. But Jenny Pickering knew she trusted Dr Smith and needed her support herself. And Melanie was happy in London. Would it not, she wondered, be better to stay? But her husband would insist they went north. Finally, on the day before Ruth was due to leave hospital, she rang David Pickering.
He listened to the story of what had happened to Ruth one evening at Rutherford Street, while Melanie and the boys hid at Vanessa’s. He expressed no sympathy, only impatience. ‘Silly little bitch,’ he remarked.
‘Haven’t you got any blame for the villains who took advantage of her?’
‘If a girl of fourteen runs away from home to London what the hell else can she or anybody expect? She’s damn lucky she didn’t kill that man, otherwise she’d be in real trouble. As it is, you take her home and look after her properly this time.’
‘Dave—’ his wife appealed.
‘What’s done cannot be undone,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got a good job down here. I’m sending money. Ruth’s found, Melanie’s going home with you before the same thing happens to her and we’re out of the wood, so let’s stay out, for Christ’s sake. I know what that kid’s been through, and it hurts me. Why not? I’m her father, aren’t I? But like I say, it’s done. We can do nothing about it. And the less said, to anybody else, the better. I don’t want you going blabbing round what’s happened to her,’ he warned, ‘and if I find you have I’ll have something to say, I tell you that. We’ll keep this little lot to
ourselves – you can tell Ruth to keep her mouth shut, too. That’s what I’m saying. We’ve paid the rent arrears back home, we’re getting straight. There’s this new job on a big site starting next month and it’ll last six months at least. So with what I send home and your own bit coming in, we’ll be all right. And what we don’t want is a lot of gossip and scandal about our Ruth.’
‘So I’m to go back?’ his wife asked.
‘Go back? Of course you’ll go back,’ he declared. ‘There’s nothing for you here. My God, look what’s happened to Ruth. Go back up north and try to bring the kids up decently—’
‘But I’d like her to stay with Dr Smith—’
‘If she’s got to have a doctor, let him be one back up home. And you can keep that lot quiet too. We don’t want folk thinking our Ruth’s gone barmy – you’d better say she’s getting treatment for something else, a leg injury or something. Physiotherapy,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing.’ He paused. ‘I hope you’re listening, Jenny.’
‘Yes. I’m listening,’ she said in a neutral tone.
‘Really listening,’ he said, somewhat grimly.
‘I am listening,’ she told him. He glanced at her sharply. There was a sullen note in her voice he did not like.
And so, a few days later, Jenny, Ruth, Colum and John and Melanie left from King’s Cross. Vanessa was sniffing. Annie looked shocked. Melanie tried not to cry.
‘Do well, Melanie,’ Vanessa said.
‘We can try and get you into a sixth-form college in London,’ Annie told her. ‘But you’ll have to do well in your GCSEs.’
Melanie nodded. She was bewildered now, at leaving, and because there was a secret concerning Ruth which no one had told her, and because Ruth was so tired and so strange. At the barrier, when David Pickering was away buying sweets for the journey, Vanessa said, ‘There’ll be a document arriving in a week or two, Mels. Keep it carefully. It’s your share of George’s and the Arcadia. We’re giving you five per cent, that means you own a bit of both the businesses. Not much to get excited about at present, seeing the bank still owns half the Arcadia, and there’s the VAT, protection money, etc’.
In Search of Love, Money & Revenge Page 33