After dinner we have to spend an hour doing homework in the library, which is more of a sheltered workshop full of painting easels and board games instead of books. The jigsaw puzzles have so many missing pieces, we play a game called, What the Fuck Is That?
Ruby sits next to me for study period. She’s a good person and that’s not an easy thing to say about everybody in this place. I think she’s prettier than I am, but Ruby doesn’t seem to care about how she looks, not bothering to wear make-up or to wash her hair. She thinks Cyrus wants to marry me, which is laughable. Nobody will ever want to marry me.
On the screwed-up scale, Ruby is close to a ten, but she isn’t cruel, and she doesn’t bully people. She used a lot of weed when she was younger, which is why she suffers from memory loss and mood swings and something she calls the ‘black dog’. Nobody knows what sends her into her dark place, but mostly she hurts herself rather than other people. I’ve seen the scars on her wrists and I know she keeps a pocketknife hidden in the lining of her coat. I guess I should tell Davina about the knife, but Ruby would never speak to me again; and she’s promised not to use it without telling me first.
She was sent to Langford Hall because she set fire to her school. And before that, she crashed her stepdad’s car and got caught with a bottle of OxyContin, which she stole from her mum because her mum was addicted to the stuff.
‘Why didn’t you flush the pills?’ I asked her.
Ruby looked surprised, like the thought had never occurred to her.
Some nights she has nightmares, which are so bad that I’ve seen her levitate off the bed, her entire body arching upwards and her mouth locked in a scream. It’s like she’s being electrocuted or she’s that girl from The Exorcist, whose head spins around.
That’s why I occasionally let her sleep in my room – even though it’s not allowed. She sneaks in just before the doors are locked at night and sleeps nearest the wall, so that anyone looking through the observation window can only see one person in my bed. We’re not gay or anything like that. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with girl-on-girl action, or boy-on-boy, or them-on-them. Whatever floats your boat.
After study period we get to hang out in our rooms and watch TV for a couple of hours before the lights are turned out.
‘Can I sleep in your bed?’ Ruby asks.
‘We’ll get caught.’
‘Not if we’re careful.’
‘No spooning,’ I say. ‘And you have to stay in the bathroom until the lights go out.’
At nine forty-five the room goes dark. Ruby slips into bed next to me and lies nearest the wall. Her arms slip around me.
‘I said no spooning.’
‘This is hugging.’
All summer and autumn Terry drove me to my sleepovers, which is what Mrs Quinn called them. She woke me on those mornings, pulling back the curtains and flooding the bedroom with light. ‘You’re going out today,’ she’d say, opening my wardrobe and sliding dresses along the rail, choosing my clothes. Sometimes I had to dress younger. Sometimes older. Sometimes my age.
When I didn’t have a sleepover, Mrs Quinn gave me books to read and let me watch TV, or she tested me on my maths and spelling.
‘Is Uncle coming today?’ I’d ask. That’s what I was supposed to call the man whose house I lived in, which I thought was funny because Papa used to say, ‘In times of need, a pig is called uncle.’ I never told anyone that.
‘You’ll know when I know,’ Mrs Quinn said.
When Terry wasn’t driving me around, he was in charge of grocery shopping. Mrs Quinn gave him a list, and Terry would always get into trouble for forgetting things or buying the wrong brand of something.
I would hear the car coming and watch from my window as he carried the groceries inside. He waved. I waved back. It had to be secret. Mrs Quinn let him inside, telling him to wipe his boots. Then she studied the shopping receipt and counted the change, making sure he wasn’t ‘diddling’ her.
Creeping downstairs, I watched them through a crack in the door. Terry would try to make Mrs Quinn smile, teasing her. Then he’d sit at the table and eat leftovers, while she packed away the groceries. For some reason, I wanted to hug him. I wanted to bury my face in his shirt and smell his smell.
One morning, when he didn’t know I was listening, I heard him ask, ‘Where did she come from?’
Mrs Quinn told him to keep his ‘big trap shut’.
‘I’m curious,’ he said.
‘You’re poking your nose where it’s not wanted. You don’t ask about her. You don’t touch her. You don’t talk to her. Understand?’
‘What about when she falls asleep? Someone has to carry her inside.’
Mrs Quinn made a hmmmmphing sound.
‘Is she his daughter?’ Terry asked.
‘His niece.’
‘Really?’
Mrs Quinn whispered harshly, ‘Are you deaf !’ She looked at the partly opened door, as though frightened someone might be listening. She stepped closer, reaching for the handle. If she opened it, she’d find me, but she pulled it shut. I couldn’t hear them any more.
Back in my room, I took out the button from my mother’s coat and my collection of coloured glass and lined them up on the windowsill. I squeezed the button in my fist and tried to remember what she looked like and the sound of her voice, but the pictures kept blurring in my mind.
Later, when Mrs Quinn called me for supper, Terry had gone. His motorbike was still near the garage, so he must have taken the car. Why didn’t he take me?
Mrs Quinn had baked cupcakes with pink and blue icing and a jellybean on the top. I ate two and hid another one in my pocket, saving it for Terry, who liked cakes. He said he had a sweet tooth. When I asked him which one he laughed and said, ‘It means I like sweet things like you.’
I’m not sweet, I thought. I’m dirty and disgusting, but I didn’t say anything.
12
Cyrus
A night without dreams. Luxury. Awake now, showered and shaved, I leave the house early and navigate my way towards Manchester, through farmland and satellite towns, where mist has settled in the deeper valleys like sunken clouds.
I’m following a map that I printed out last night, but get lost twice before asking a farmer for directions. The cottage backs on to open fields where two horses, draped in winter blankets, lean over a fence, regarding me with lazy disdain.
A woman answers the door. Middle-aged with a solid frame and crinkly eyes, she’s wearing a nurse’s uniform in blue tones and a lapel watch tilted at an angle that makes it readable by simply lowering her gaze.
‘I hope you haven’t parked me in,’ she says, looking past me at my car.
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Is that short for madam?’ she asks, her eyes twinkling. ‘A madam runs a brothel. A madam is a bossy little girl. I hope you’re not suggesting.’
‘Of course not,’ I say, looking appropriately chastised.
‘Can I call you Mrs Menken?’ I ask.
‘I’m not Mrs Menken because we’re not married. My choice, not his. We’ve been together thirty years and raised three children. You don’t need a piece of paper to do that.’
‘Any grandchildren?’
‘Don’t be cheeky. I’m too young to be a grandmother.’
Her reaction startles a laugh from me.
‘I’m Marcie. Who are you?’
‘Cyrus Haven. Is your husband in? I mean, your partner, ah, DI Menken …’
She glances over her shoulder. ‘Does his nibs know you’re coming?’
‘No.’
‘That’s very brave. He doesn’t like being bothered on his holidays.’ She collects her car keys. ‘I’m not hanging around. He’s outside in his man-cave making sawdust.’
‘Pardon?’
‘He’s trying to turn perfectly good firewood into furniture. Take some home, will you? We don’t have enough room in this place.’
She steps past me, hooking a bag over her shoulder a
nd glancing at her lapel watch, muttering, ‘Late again.’
Once she’s gone, I follow the sounds of machinery coming from the back garden and knock on a shed door. Nobody answers. I push it open.
Bob Menken is wearing blue overalls that look like police-issue, along with safety glasses that wrap around his head. Wood shavings arc across the room, as he holds a chisel to a spinning block of wood. I glance at a half-assembled dining table in the corner, which is missing a fourth leg.
Noticing me, Menken lets the lathe idle and takes off his glasses, spitting bits of sawdust out of his mouth. ‘This had better be important.’
‘It’s about Hamish Whitmore,’ I say, handing him a business card. ‘I know he was a friend. I’m sorry.’
He looks at the card. ‘A psychologist! I don’t need a shrink.’
‘I’m not here to counsel you. I wanted to ask you about what Hamish had been doing.’
Menken stares at me wordlessly and turns off the machine, which slows and stops.
‘When did you hear the news?’ I ask.
‘Two detectives come around yesterday morning. They showed me an artist’s impression of some guy who has been masquerading as a detective. He told Eileen Whitmore that Hamish had committed suicide. What sort of sick fuck does that?’
He doesn’t expect an answer.
‘Why did Hamish Whitmore have doubts about the Eugene Green conviction?’
‘That’s a bullshit question.’
But not a surprising one.
Menken’s thick eyebrows drop lower, hooding his eyes. ‘The conviction was solid. Green got what he deserved.’
‘He was beaten to death.’
‘Prison-yard justice. Nothing to do with the police.’
‘The fake detective stole Hamish’s files. What was he looking for?’
‘What makes you think I know?’
‘You were partners.’
‘Hamish retired.’
‘Only six months ago.’
Menken glares at me for a moment and exhales, before pulling up a drum and taking a seat. He points me to a recently finished chair, sanded but unvarnished. I settle. He speaks. ‘Hamish and I spent eight years looking for Eugene Green. Working long days. Weekends. We didn’t stop until we nailed that bastard. For Hamish it was a crusade, you know. An itch he couldn’t scratch. Do you remember how they caught him?’
‘No.’
‘Green was washing his van at a hand car wash near Preston. It was October 2018. He noticed a girl walking home from school, Cassie McGrath, aged eleven. Both her parents were at work. A latch-key kid, you know.’
I nod.
‘Green followed her home and knocked on her door. He said he had some packages to deliver. He asked if she could help him carry them. Only when Cassie reached the van, Green bundled her inside and held a rag over her mouth soaked in chloroform. A woman who lived across the road saw everything and called the police. Within fifteen minutes we had roadblocks around the entire village. We boxed him in. Spiked the road. They found Cassie trussed up in the back. Barely breathing.’
‘How did you link Green to the other murders?’
‘Credit card receipts. CCTV footage. We could place him within five miles of every abduction.’
‘What about DNA?’
‘We found a strand of Samantha Doyle’s hair on the floor mats of the van and clothing fibres from her school uniform on a blanket he had in the back. Not that it mattered – he confessed.’
‘Hamish Whitmore’s son-in-law, Jack Bowden, said there might have been loose ends.’
‘Not as far as I was concerned.’
‘There was a whiteboard in Hamish’s room. It mentioned two other children: Gina Messud and Patrick Comber.’
‘They were possible victims, but we couldn’t prove it. Gina went missing from a supermarket car park in Brighton in 2014. Patrick Comber was last seen at Meadowhall, an indoor shopping centre in Sheffield, on 29 November 2012. The CCTV footage showed him talking to a man in a car park. We traced every vehicle that passed through the gates but couldn’t find Patrick.’
‘Why would Green confess to three murders and not these two?’
Menken shrugs with a tired casualness. ‘We pushed hard. He kept denying it.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘Gina Messud went missing in Brighton, which is a long way south of where Green normally operated.’
‘What about Patrick Comber?’
‘I wish I could tell you.’ He gazes through the open door into the garden. ‘Eugene was an odd fish. Sometimes he almost revelled in the details, telling us exactly how he kidnapped his victims, what he said to them, how he tricked them into his van. But he wouldn’t speak about what he did to them, where he took them and how they died.’
‘Did that bother you?’
‘It worried Hamish. He was obsessed by the missing weeks.’
‘What missing weeks?’
Menken gets to his feet and crosses the workshop where he reaches up to a shelf lined with paint tins. He shakes one of them and looks inside, retrieving a crumpled packet of cigarettes.
‘Marcie doesn’t like me smoking,’ he explains. ‘She works in the Oncology Department.’
Retaking his seat, he lights up, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth and letting it leak from his nose.
‘Abbie Harper, the first victim, went missing on the fourth of August. Her body was found in the middle of October, dumped in a drainage ditch beside a sewage plant, left for the insects and the animals. She’d been dead for a month when we found her. That left a window of five, maybe six weeks between when she was kidnapped and when she died.’
‘Green must have kept her somewhere.’
‘Exactly. But Eugene Green lived in a bedsit in Leeds and we found no evidence of Abbie being there. Meanwhile, Green was working – doing deliveries up and down the country and into Europe.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing. We took him back to every scene – the drainage ditch, the lay-by near Preston, the culvert outside of Newcastle … He gave us sod all. He didn’t point out the locations. He didn’t explain how he dumped them. It was like we were showing him what he’d done.’
‘Hamish thought he had an accomplice.’
‘It explains some things, but not others.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I told him to leave it alone.’
‘But if Green had an accomplice …?’
‘He’s either dead or in prison.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘You’re the psychologist. You know that paedophiles don’t suddenly stop. Once a nonce, always a nonce. If Eugene Green had an accomplice, we’d have seen the evidence before now. More missing children. More bodies showing up.’
The detective stares at the cigarette as though disgusted with himself but drags on it anyway.
‘When did you last see Hamish?’
‘Three weeks ago. He wanted me to run some names through the PNC.’ The Police National Computer.
‘What names?’
‘I can’t remember Marcie’s birthday – how am I expected to remember random names?’
‘Did you run them?’
I see a glimmer in the corner of his eye. He clears his throat, as though about to reveal a secret, but then sighs.
‘I told Hamish I wasn’t going to jeopardise my career by helping him chase rabbits down rabbit holes. He was questioning a successful conviction. Pissing people off at every level. Ex-colleagues. Old bosses. The Crown Prosecution Service. The judge. The jury. I told him to stop this nonsense and enjoy his retirement. Play golf. Prune the roses. Spend time with Eileen …’
The cigarette is crushed beneath the heel of his heavy-treaded boot. He picks up the butt and drops it in a different can.
‘That’s all I’ve got to say.’
Pulling on his gloves, he lowers his safety glasses and flicks a switch, setting the lathe into motion. I’m almost at the door
of the shed before I turn.
‘When you were investigating Green, did you ever consider whether Angel Face could have been linked to him?’
‘The girl in the box?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No. Why?’
‘An idea, that’s all.’
I’m looking at his face, trying to judge if he’s telling me the truth. I wish Evie were here. She’d recognise the signs.
Menken frowns. ‘I always wondered what happened to that girl. You ever meet her?’
‘What makes you ask?’
‘You brought her up, not me.’
His eyes linger on mine for a beat longer, before he takes a sharpened chisel and holds it across a metal guard. It touches the wood, creating an explosion of wood shavings that fill the air like confetti, turning a century of sunshine and photosynthesis into the leg of a dining table.
13
Evie
‘It’s not coming off,’ I say, scrubbing at the brick wall with a heavy-duty brush and soapy water that sloshes out of a bucket, soaking my canvas shoes.
‘That’s because you’re not trying,’ says Davina, who is sitting on a deckchair, overseeing the operation.
Three of us have been allowed outside Langford Hall because someone has daubed graffiti on the outer wall facing the street. Some of the locals don’t like having a secure children’s home in their neighbourhood because it lowers their property prices. They’ve sent us a message in red paint, calling us scumbags, criminals and delinkwents.
At least I can spell.
‘Don’t you find it ironic?’ I say, working the scrubbing brush back and forth. ‘We’re here for antisocial behaviour and people go and do this.’
‘What does ironic mean?’ asks Ruby, who is next to me.
‘It means fucked up.’
‘What’s antisocial behaviour?’
‘Criminal shit.’
‘I didn’t commit a crime.’
‘You set fire to your school.’
‘No, I set fire to my hair, which caused a fire in the toilet cubicle, which sort of spread.’
‘Stop dawdling,’ says Davina, looking up from her phone.
When She Was Good Page 7
