When She Was Good

by Robotham, Michael

  ‘Why are you bringing it to me?’

  ‘You might be the only person interested.’

  I don’t believe the answer but let him go on.

  ‘Green had been seeing a prison therapist and had started revealing more details about his crimes, stuff he hadn’t mentioned during the police interviews. The therapist contacted Hamish, but had to be careful about how much he revealed due to patient-doctor privilege.’

  ‘Hamish told you this?’

  Menken nods and glances at the coffee machine on the counter. I offer him one. He accepts. I take a mug from the cupboard and put a pod in the machine. Another new purchase. Insurance money.

  ‘Are you saying Green was killed because he was going to implicate others?’

  ‘I guess that’s possible but I’m not convinced. Bernard Travis confessed; had no choice; the whole attack was captured on CCTV. He told the police that his sister committed suicide in her teens because she’d been sexually abused by a teacher. Screwed her right up – bulimia, anorexia, the whole shooting match. When Travis came across Green, it brought it all back to him and he flipped out.’

  ‘You mentioned a contract.’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t think it had anything to do with there being an accomplice. One of Eugene Green’s suspected victims – Patrick Comber – was never found. His father, Clayton Comber, visited Green in prison, hoping to get information, but didn’t get anywhere. Clayton was obsessed with finding his son. He wrote letters to newspapers, lodged petitions, lobbied MPs. He could be a real pain in the arse, but I don’t blame him for trying.’

  Menken takes the mug of coffee and adds two sugars, stirring slowly. The teaspoon looks small in his hands.

  ‘Hamish asked me to look for any links between Eugene Green and Bernard Travis. I told him I found nothing, but that wasn’t true.’

  ‘You lied to him.’

  ‘I omitted certain details. Travis was a promising boxer in his teens and trained at a gym in Sheffield called The Fight Club. He made the Olympic qualifiers at eighteen, but when his sister died he went off the rails and didn’t get another chance. There was another young boxer at The Fight Club, a few years older. Clayton Comber.’

  ‘They knew each other.’

  ‘Stands to reason.’

  ‘You think Clayton Comber organised to have Eugene Green killed.’

  ‘I’m just telling you what I found. Maybe Comber wanted Travis to put the heavy on Green to discover what happened to his son, but Travis went too far. Maybe he wanted him dead.’

  ‘Where is Travis now?’

  ‘Serving twelve years for manslaughter. He escaped a murder conviction because the judge accepted that he’d been provoked by Green and mentally snapped.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’d call it a win-win. One nonce dead; one scumbag locked up.’

  We both hear a sound from the stairs. Menken turns towards the door as Sacha appears. He gets to his feet.

  ‘I didn’t realise you had company.’

  ‘This is a friend of mine.’

  I introduce Sacha. Menken bends at the waist and tilts his head but doesn’t shake her hand. I can see him trying to place her. Is she my girlfriend or a relative? Is she visiting or living here?

  ‘Any idea how I’d find Clayton Comber?’ I ask.

  ‘Try the gym. It’s still there.’

  30

  Cyrus

  High Wincobank Allotments are tucked on the side of a hill that was once the site of an ancient fort, overlooking the River Don. Vegetable patches and raised flowerbeds are divided into haphazard squares and rectangles, with grassy tracks in between the gardens. Some have plastic greenhouses or sheds made of plywood and sheets of roofing iron, while a few look like children’s playhouses with tiny verandas and proper windows with curtains.

  I spent yesterday tracking down an address in Sheffield for Clayton Comber. A phone call to the Fight Factory had come up with two different house numbers, several streets apart, but nobody answered the door at either place despite the earliness of the hour. A gossipy neighbour told us to look for him here.

  Sacha buttons up her coat and wraps a scarf around her neck as we navigate the paths between the gardens. A portly man in wellingtons is turning the soil with a hoe. He stoops and picks up a stone, tossing it into a wheelbarrow.

  ‘Clayton Comber?’ I ask.

  He points further along the allotment. We continue past a windbreak of fir trees until we come to an old man sitting on a kitchen chair, tying pieces of string together into a ball. His fingers are gnarled by arthritis and he’s clenching an unlit pipe between his teeth.

  ‘I’m looking for Clayton Comber.’

  ‘Senior or junior?’ he asks, lifting his face.

  I estimate his age – seventy if he’s a day, grizzled and unshaven. Behind him, a series of large wooden tubs have been planted with vegetables and each has a small tag showing what seeds are beneath the soil. Broccoli. Leek. Rhubarb. Runner beans. A scarecrow stands watch over the tubs. Made from hessian sacks stuffed with rags, the figure is dressed in old trousers and a blue Adidas tracksuit top with white stripes down the sleeves. Its head is a deflated volleyball with a pair of reflective sunglasses glued to the front.

  ‘I’m looking for Patrick’s father.’

  ‘You’re two months late.’

  I must look lost.

  ‘We were both called Clayton,’ he says. ‘My son took his own life in March.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ says Sacha.

  The old man seems to notice her for the first time. ‘I didn’t realise you were a miss,’ he says, getting to his feet. ‘My apologies.’

  ‘Don’t get up because of me.’

  ‘A man should always stand when he meets a woman. I’d offer you a chair, but I only have the one.’

  Instead, he pulls up two rusting drums, which he sits side by side.

  I give him my card. He hands it back. ‘I don’t have my reading glasses.’

  ‘I’m a psychologist.’

  ‘Clayton saw enough of your kind. Did him no good.’

  He takes a leather pouch from his pocket and his arthritic fingers pluck and push tobacco into the hollow of a polished wooden pipe.

  ‘You know anything about gardens?’ he asks, pointing the stem of the pipe at the nearby tubs. ‘They don’t look like much now, but come back in two months and I’ll have more veg than I could possibly eat on my own. It never ceases to amaze me how I can plant these tiny seeds and they grow into beautiful things.’

  He is carefully packing the pipe with tobacco.

  ‘I wanted to ask about Patrick – your grandson.’

  ‘Have they found him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing left to say.’

  ‘Do you think he was taken by Eugene Green?’

  The mention of the name distends his nostrils. He gazes past me, as though admiring the view of the city, while he cups the pipe in his hands and holds a match to the bowl. His lips make a popping sound as he sucks in smoke that leaks from the corners of his mouth.

  ‘I avoid saying that man’s name. He’s done enough damage to my family.’

  ‘Is he the reason that Clayton took his own life?’ I ask.

  There is another long silence. More smoke billows and dissipates in the breeze.

  ‘It destroyed Clayton, losing Paddy. He couldn’t let it go. First it broke his heart, then it took his sanity and his marriage. He wrote to Green in prison. He even went to visit him. I went with him.’

  ‘You visited Eugene Green?’ asks Sacha.

  The old man nods. ‘Afterwards I wanted to shower and douse myself with lice powder.’

  ‘Did he talk about Patrick?’ I ask.

  ‘Clayton begged him, but Green said he had no idea what happened to our boy. He was lying. He was laughing at us behind that fat face.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘Our Paddy was born with one arm shorter than the othe
r – a birth defect. The doctors discovered it during one of the early scans, but Clayton and Becca made light of it because the baby was perfect in every other way. They gave Patrick a nickname, even before he was born. They called him Nemo after the fish in that movie, you know, the one who had one fin shorter than the other. It began as a joke, but the name stuck after Paddy was born. And as he grew up, he was Nemo to his family and friends.’

  ‘What does this have to do with Eugene Green?’ I ask.

  ‘The fact that he had a shorter arm was a detail that was never mentioned in the papers when Paddy went missing, but when we saw Eugene Green in prison, he knew about it.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing in words, but as we were leaving, Green shortened his left arm and waved to us. Clayton was pleading. Made no difference.’

  The old man stares at his pipe, which has gone out. He takes another match from the box, but doesn’t light it.

  ‘Clayton was a different man after that. Obsessed. He wrote dozens of letters every day to newspapers. He pestered the detectives who worked on the case.’

  ‘Hamish Whitmore?’

  ‘Yeah, that was one of them. He and his partner.’

  ‘Bob Menken.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  Holding the stem of the pipe, the old man knocks the bowl against the sleeper at his feet. Then he takes a small pocketknife from his trousers and scrapes hardened carbon from the bowl.

  ‘It cost Clayton his marriage. Becca filed for divorce. Then he lost his job. The final straw came when Green was murdered in prison. Clayton felt his last hope of finding Patrick had been snatched away.’

  ‘The man who killed Eugene Green – Bernard Travis – did you ever meet him?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Apparently, he was a good junior boxer. Got as far as Olympic qualifiers. He used to train at a gym not far from here in Sheffield.’

  Clayton Snr scratches his cheek with dirty fingernails, making a sandpaper sound.

  ‘Place called The Fight Club,’ I add.

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Your Clayton was also pretty handy with the gloves in his teens. He was a few years older than Travis, but I figure they may have known each other.’

  The old man studies the dirt beneath his fingernails. ‘It’s a long time since Clayton entered a boxing ring.’

  ‘You were his trainer?’

  ‘No. I dropped him off. Picked him up. Wouldn’t watch him fight.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Boxing is a different sport when one of your own is in the ring.’

  He pinches tobacco from his pouch and rolls it between his fingers, holding it under his nose. ‘Why are you so interested in who Clayton knew or didn’t know? What difference does it make?’

  ‘The police think someone put out a contract on Eugene Green to silence him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he had an accomplice.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Clayton?’

  ‘Another officer has suggested that your son might have hired Travis to exact revenge, or to find out what happened to Patrick.’

  The statement lights a spark in the old man’s eyes. His eyebrows knit together.

  ‘Why would we want Green dead? He was our last chance of finding Patrick.’

  ‘You said Clayton gave up hope.’

  ‘Of finding Paddy alive, not of finding him.’

  His chin juts forward, as though he’s challenging me, and I see muscles knot in his forearms.

  ‘Friends at my church try to comfort me by saying that Clayton is in Heaven looking after Patrick. Father and son reunited, riding skateboards and kicking footballs. It’s a nice thought, you know, but I can’t picture it in my mind. People who commit suicide don’t go to Heaven. Clayton knew that, but it didn’t bother him at all. Want to know why?’

  He looks from Sacha to me, but isn’t waiting for an answer.

  ‘Clayton wanted to go to Hell. That’s how I picture him now – stoking the fires, heating up the branding irons and swinging the barbed-wire whips. He couldn’t punish Green in this life, so he chose the next one. He’s torturing that man like he tortured our family.’

  His anger has gone, punctured like a blow-up pool toy. He drops his head into his hands, sobbing without making a sound, except for a whimpering in the back of his throat.

  He looks up at us, fighting his tears.

  ‘I am almost seventy-two and I would give up every one of those years if I could bring my son and grandson back. I would swap my life for theirs. I would … I would …’

  31

  Evie

  ‘Terry?’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Terry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is Uncle still looking for me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He thinks you belong to him.’

  We were both sitting at the kitchen table where Terry was cleaning his gun, breaking it into parts and wiping down the pieces with machine oil and a torn T-shirt.

  ‘Terry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Am I ever going to leave here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When it’s safe.’

  ‘When will it be safe?’

  ‘What did I tell you about asking so many questions?’

  He held up the barrel of the gun and peered inside like it was a telescope before suddenly changing the subject, explaining the inner workings of the pistol, and showing me how the magazine slotted into the handle.

  ‘This has fifteen rounds while a revolver normally has five or six rounds. That’s the sort of gun that you see cowboys using in Westerns. It has a cylinder in the middle that spins around with the bullets inside.’

  Gripping the barrel of the pistol, he held it towards me.

  I hesitated.

  ‘It won’t bite,’ he said.

  I needed both hands to hold it steady.

  ‘This is the safety switch, and this is how you clear the chamber and make sure there isn’t a round inside.’ He pulled back a slide. ‘When you want to aim, you look along the sighter to that front post.’

  It was getting heavy in my hands.

  ‘If you need to shoot someone, you aim here,’ Terry said, pointing to the centre of his chest. ‘It’s the biggest part of the body. Aim at my chest and pull the trigger.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘There’s no bullet in the chamber. Remember?’

  I couldn’t do it.

  Terry’s jaw grew tight. ‘God damn it, Scout! This could be your life. Pull the fucking trigger.’

  I pointed the gun at the ceiling and heard the click as the hammer hit the empty chamber. Then I dropped the pistol on the table and ran upstairs, crawling into my room. Terry came up later and apologised, talking through the wall.

  ‘Listen to me, Scout. It’s not how strong you are, or how fast you are. It’s how you react when you’re scared. You might have piss running down your legs, and your heart is in your throat, and you’re shaking so hard you can’t think straight, but when the time comes, you can’t hesitate. It’s not about your aim, or your speed, it’s about your conviction.’

  I didn’t know what conviction meant, but I didn’t say anything.

  ‘When the time comes you pull the trigger, OK? You fight like a demon. You fight like a rat in a corner. You fight like a caged lion. You fight like your life depends upon it – because it will. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. Good. Now come on out and we’ll play a game.’

  ‘What game?’

  ‘I’ll teach you to play poker.’

  ‘What’s poker?’

  He laughed. ‘Poker is life. Poker is art. Poker is a war.’

  We went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. He shuffled the cards and showed me hands, explaining how a full house beats a flush, which beats a straight and so on.

  ‘This game i
s called Five-Card Draw,’ he said, dealing the cards. ‘Normally you play for money, but we’ll use matchsticks.’

  He went easy on me for a few hands, until I understood the basics of the game; when to bet, check, call, raise or fold. I thought it was strange that small cards could beat picture cards if they fell in the right order or you had enough of the same ones.

  Terry dealt. I kept a pair of queens and swapped the others. Terry only wanted one card. He peeled up one corner of his hand, studying them, before pushing all his matchsticks into the centre of the table.

  ‘You must have a good hand,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This is poker. I might be bluffing.’

  ‘What is bluffing?’

  ‘Maybe I want you to think I have a good hand, so you’ll fold and I get the money.’

  ‘Are you bluffing?’

  ‘No.’

  I pushed all of my matchsticks into the centre.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ he asked. ‘You can change your mind.’

  ‘No.’

  He scooped up his cards and threw them on to the table in disgust.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘You won.’

  ‘Because you were bluffing.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I could tell.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just could.’

  He made a scoffing sound and pushed away from the table, getting himself a beer from the fridge. He opened it against the edge of the worktop and gulped it down, the lump in his neck moving as he swallowed. He turned on the TV.

  ‘Are we going to play some more?’ I asked.

  ‘Do your spelling.’

  ‘But it’s my turn to deal.’

  ‘Nah.’

  Pretty soon Terry didn’t want to play poker with me, so I began to lose to make him feel better.

  32