A Dark Secret

by Casey Watson

  Mrs Gallagher puffed her chest out. ‘Mental health, my backside!’ she said, suddenly as sharp as the pots of cacti that sat on her conservatory windowsills. ‘I’d have assumed you’d have known that much. Pardon my French, but the woman was a fecking horror. Never a good word for those wee ones, not a one. Cold-hearted, she was, and the men she had! Oh, I can tell you, I lost count of the comings and goings long ago. Didn’t care what age they were either. Young ones, old ones, she didn’t care which. As long as she could palm those children off with me, she was happy. Mental health? No bloody backbone more like. Unless that’s a fancy term for being drunk as a lord on a daily basis.’

  My gaze landed on a crucifix hung in one of the alcoves back in the sitting room. The term ‘judge not lest you be judged’ came to mind. I was stunned, to say the least, at her uncompromising, brutal honesty, and, from the set of his shoulders, guessed Colin was too. But we’d come for some insight, and insight this was. She clearly had not a jot of sympathy for her neighbour.

  ‘I see,’ Colin said, as Mrs Gallagher poured the tea. It was teak coloured, steaming. Not my cup of tea at all. But perhaps she thought coffee was the work of the Devil too. I certainly wouldn’t have dreamt of asking for some.

  ‘Oh, I’ve seen it all,’ Mrs Gallagher said, warming to her theme. ‘Forgive me for speaking out, but it’s been such a long time coming. Please do have a cake. They’re gluten-free. I’m a martyr to my stomach, sad to say.’

  Colin duly took one. But I demurred, patting my own stomach as justification. And while he bit into it, I asked the question I’d burned to ask since we’d arrived here. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘little Sam’s mentioned a dog cage, more than once. A place he used to go into … And there’s been talk of him apparently being locked in there. Do you know anything about that? It’s been quite an ongoing thing with him.’

  ‘Oh, indeed I do,’ she said. ‘And yes, you’re quite right. I tell you what, why don’t you both come upstairs with me? I can even show it to you then.’ She got up. Colin put his tea and half the cake down. ‘Come along, then you’ll be able to see it for yourselves.’

  We duly followed her back into the hall and trooped up the stairs, past the watching eyes of what were presumably various relatives, whose images were behind glass on the staircase wall. ‘He was in there all the time,’ she said as she led us up. ‘I’ve no proof but then I don’t really need any. It was common knowledge that she locked him in there when she wanted a bit of peace. And, well, you’ll know he has his problems … Going off on one the way he does … Has he howled?’ she added, turning back to me as she reached the landing. ‘Such a fearful, fearful noise. It’s a wonder she held on to them as long as she did. It was a racket that could wake up the dead, let alone the social.’

  ‘Yes, he has,’ I said, as we crammed next to the window on the tiny landing.

  ‘Poor mite,’ Mrs Gallagher said, as she swept aside the net. ‘Hours at a time he’d be in there. And in all weathers, too.’

  We peered down, and Mrs Gallagher’s garden was revealed. And, beyond the fence, in the garden beyond it there was indeed a dog cage, sited at the end, and therefore in plain view of both this, and, presumably, the far neighbour’s upstairs windows. It was in two parts; a wooden kennel – quite a large one – with a caged area attached; a lockable enclosure that presumably formed a dog run. So this was the place Sam had talked about.

  ‘And there was a dog?’ Colin asked. ‘Sam’s mentioned having had a dog once.’

  ‘Oh, it pre-dates the Goughs,’ Mrs Gallagher explained. ‘The man who lived here before him had a pair of greyhounds. But yes, the Goughs did have a dog, briefly. Well, a puppy. They didn’t have it long before it got out and got run over. The woman couldn’t even find the wherewithal to keep a dog alive.’ Her tone was bitter. ‘Since then that thing has just sat out there, rotting.’

  Another sadness, I thought. But Mrs Gallagher tutted. ‘Look at it,’ she said. ‘No place to bring kids up, is it? Look at the muck and mess down there. More like a tip than a garden. It’s a wonder one of those little ones didn’t end up in hospital.’

  We both looked, as she suggested, and Colin and I exchanged glances. She was right. On the face of it, it was no place to bring kids up; choked with triffid-like weeds, full of junk, broken toys and bits of furniture, and bags of rubbish. The house also looked unlived in, because probably it was now. And would presumably stay that way till decisions were made about Sam’s mother’s future. If she wasn’t going back there, it would presumably be rented out to a new family. I wondered if it still contained things of Sam’s that he might be missing. Though as he hadn’t said, I doubted it. I doubted they’d had very much.

  I wondered about Mrs Gallagher’s forbearance in not reporting the family to social services before she had. Or had she? Had she acted on her fears and got nowhere? Or had she initially taken the view that it was none of her business how her neighbour had decided to live her life?

  ‘You say you looked after the children a lot?’ I asked as she lowered the curtain again and swept a hand across the sill. I knew the action well. Reconnaissance, in the perennial war against dust.

  ‘Oh, they were around here all the time,’ she said, her expression softening at the memory. ‘Dear little things. Loved to come and play here. All of them, Sam included. Oh, I know he wasn’t the easiest of children, but that’s not the point, is it? You get what God gives you and you do your very best with them. Your very best,’ she said again, as she led us back down the stairs.

  We followed and this time I looked properly at the photos we were passing. There were several of a little boy, around Sam’s age, but not Sam. ‘Who’s this?’ I asked as we reached the bottom most. ‘What a lovely-looking little boy.’

  Mrs Gallagher stopped, smiling fondly, then straightened the picture very slightly. Imperceptibly, to my eye. It had looked straight already. Her action seemed much more like a loving ritual. ‘Oh, that’s my Seany,’ she said. ‘A little stunner he was, wasn’t he? I dare say he’d have broken a few hearts, given half a chance. Spit of his dad, he was as a lad. Everyone used to say so.’ She sighed heavily and I sensed I’d stumbled on something very painful.

  ‘He has the most beautiful eyes,’ I added, when she didn’t add anything further.

  ‘Piercing,’ she said finally. ‘Aren’t they? The kind that folks used to say could see right into your soul. And they were right. Anyway,’ she finished, clearing her throat noisily, ‘that tea will be going cold. Come back on in.’

  ‘Oh God, do you think he died?’ I asked Colin once we were back in the car and safely out of earshot.

  ‘I thought exactly the same thing,’ Colin said, as he flipped down the indicator and pulled out into the road. ‘Or maybe her husband did. No evidence of one being around, was there? Maybe someone at the office will know. But she clearly didn’t want to talk about it, did she? So perhaps her son is dead.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ I said. ‘The poor woman. I feel really bad now.’

  ‘Why bad?’ Colin wanted to know. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Bad for her,’ I clarified.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He was silent for a moment – musing thoughtfully on life’s lottery, just as I was? – before glancing across at me. ‘Anyway – Sam. We didn’t learn a great deal, did we?’

  I shook my head as I clicked my seat belt. ‘I know, but sometimes it’s the things that aren’t said that reveal the most. I was just thinking – if she’s on her own, and has lost her own son – well, that speaks volumes, doesn’t it? She must have looked at the way those kids were being treated by their mother and it must have burned into her soul. You know – the unfairness of it all. Maybe that’s why she was so prickly about her. So unsympathetic.’

  ‘She was certainly that, wasn’t she?’ Colin said. ‘Borderline harsh, I thought. Not much empathy. And you’re right –
that does speak volumes, and might well be because she lost her own son, and feels bitter about her neighbour having three and treating them so badly. She might not have said anything incriminating but she was pretty clear that the whole mental illness thing doesn’t wash with her, wasn’t she? I mean, Sam’s mother is currently in an expensive mental health facility, so we have to assume they think she’s mentally ill, but Mrs Gallagher clearly doesn’t. Or even if she does have mental health issues, she obviously thinks they’re self-inflicted. The legacy of a party lifestyle that definitely didn’t include her kids.’

  ‘And the abuser could so easily have been a boyfriend, couldn’t it?’ I mused. ‘It would hardly be front-page news, would it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Colin. ‘Far from it. But at least we have confirmation that there were different men coming in and out of Sam’s life. Which will add weight to what he’s disclosed to you, won’t it?’

  Which it would. Which was important – because I knew that things weren’t cut and dried, and that Sam would be believed wasn’t a given. Though, in truth, Mrs Gallagher hadn’t really told us anything I hadn’t already worked out for myself, other than her fierce attachment to the children whose apparently chaotic lives she’d watched being played out on the other side of the garden fence.

  And it did look chaotic. No wonder Sam struggled so much with normality. Had he ever known ‘normal’? Was that why he was always so busy building things with Lego, only to smash them down again? Perhaps that was all he had ever known.

  Chapter 13

  Though the visit to Mrs Gallagher hadn’t revealed as much as I’d hoped, it had, at least, painted more of a picture. Not a nice picture, obviously, and it was still light on detail, but at least I had an image in my head to refer to, and confirmation that Sam had suffered long-term abuse.

  Abuse takes many forms, of course, as do abusers, and I was mindful that it helped no one to do that knee-jerk thing of casting Sam’s mother as a villain. I knew nothing of her own background and it was possible, even likely, that she was a victim herself. Be it of her own damaged childhood, or drugs, or whatever, I still subscribed to the view that humans were rarely born evil – rather more often than not, they did bad things as a result of having bad things done to them in the first place – and so the cycle continued in perpetuity.

  Our job now – mine, social services, the carers looking after Sam’s siblings – was to do our level best to stop the rot. And, the obvious neglect aside, the priority for Sam was to get to the root of his demons. If we could do that (so went the theory, anyway), we could help him address them and deal with them, giving him the best chance to go on to live a happy life.

  And, while we continued with the socialising and self-control bit – using the chart, which seemed to be helping – this meant investigating his disclosures of sexual abuse.

  So I was pleased, just a couple of days after our visit to Mrs Gallagher’s, to get a call on that very subject from Christine Bolton.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve had it so tough, Casey,’ she started off. ‘I know it’s hard waiting around in the background for news, but I’m happy to report that we are at last making progress. I’m in a position to organise an interview so we can follow up on Sam’s recent disclosures.’

  ‘That’s good news,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Christine said, ‘though, as always, we have to tread carefully. And that’s especially true in Sam’s case, given his young age and limited capacity for understanding. So we’ve opted for the local family centre.’

  Christine went on to explain that a plain-clothed CID officer would meet us – Sam, Colin and myself – at the family centre close to where we lived. I’d been there before, of course, so I knew it well; it was a place with a variety of uses, including planning meetings, and contact between children in care and their relatives – so they could be conducted in a safe, neutral space. It was also the place where delicate meetings, such as the one arranged for Sam happened; where they could be sensitively, but also officially probed, about potentially actionable disclosures they’d made. The officer, a female, would use a variety of techniques to get Sam to open up and talk about the abuse.

  Well, at least in theory. In my experience, despite the deliberately homely nature of the venue, such interviews often proved tricky. Faced with a stranger, however well-trained and well-meaning, children would often clam up from fear. But Sam had already mentioned the ‘bad man’ to Colin as well as me, so perhaps we could dare to hope he wouldn’t – especially if both of us were there to support him.

  But that wasn’t the biggest potential problem. ‘At that stage, if Sam is comfortable,’ Christine went on, ‘Colin may be asked to wait in another room – and perhaps you too; the officer will tell you – and then, obviously depending on the outcome of the chat, she will decide how, or if, to proceed.’

  That ‘if’ wasn’t unexpected. Nor were Christine’s next words, as she described how she’d already spoken to the CID officer, and how, at the moment, they wouldn’t be discounting the possibility that Sam, like other children of his age and background, might have invented the ‘bad man’ as a way of explaining and focusing his hurt. How badly would it affect him, if, having spoken out, his testimony was dismissed as lies?

  On the other hand, if Sam was believed it would be equally traumatic. Better in the long term, of course – and not just for Sam, but because justice would be done – but in the short term, if his abuser was identified and found, it would involve him in giving even more formal testimony – being put ‘through the mill’ in the way the law rightly demanded. There was no escaping it – he was damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

  ‘I know your gut feeling is strong,’ Christine conceded, ‘as is mine. Would that it wasn’t, eh? But we now have to leave them to get on with their job, I suppose. Anyway, the main thing is that we’ve taken a step forward with all this. How are you fixed for next week? I have a couple of possible dates in mind. Does Tuesday work? I’m thinking the sooner the better.’

  ‘Tuesday’s fine,’ I said. ‘Sooner is definitely better. Oh, and while I’m on,’ I added, putting my anxieties about it aside by seizing what seemed like the perfect opportunity, ‘is there any chance you could find us an overnight respite carer, please? My niece Chloe is getting married in a little under a month, and all our lot will obviously be going. And it’s a long way away, hence the overnight stay. I’d obviously take Sam if I could, but what with everything that’s been going on, it doesn’t seem sensible. I’m not sure he’s quite up to that kind of thing just yet. Sorry to spring it on you. It’s all been a bit short notice.’

  ‘Of course,’ Christine said, without so much as a shred of hesitation. Perhaps things weren’t quite as bad as I’d feared. ‘Can’t have you missing a family wedding,’ she went on. ‘That would never do. Tell you what, email the dates to me. I’m bound to forget otherwise. Anyway, got a pen? I’ll email the details of all this to you obviously, but for the moment – I have to double-check it’s still okay for him, obviously – Colin will meet you at the centre at half eleven for twelve o’clock. The officer’s name is Kim Dearing. Oh, and one thing she mentioned – could you try to prep Sam in advance? Well, as much as you can, obviously. She just wants to be sure he’ll be prepared for what she’ll be talking to him about.’ Christine chuckled then. ‘As if you, of all people, need telling any of this, eh? I’ll bet you’ve done more of this sort of thing than any of us!’

  Which might well be true, but, at the same time, the word ‘try’ was key. I might have experience of such matters, but it meant next to nothing because different children reacted to stress in all sorts of ways, and I had no idea which way Sam might go. Tuesday was still days away, so did I start prepping him now, in the hopes that he’d get used to the idea, or wait till the last minute to spare him angsty anticipation?

  Having worked with children on the spectrum many times before I
knew that fear of the unknown played a big part in their make-up, as did anxiety about any change to routine. So, whichever way I played it, this would probably be upsetting – it was just a coin toss as to which would prove worse. If I sprang it on him an hour before the meeting he might get so worked up he wouldn’t be able to talk in any coherent manner, but if I told him today, that would give him several days to worry about meeting a stranger and sharing his hidden secrets with her.

  So I decided on a halfway house of drip-feeding little bits. But casually, as if it was really no big deal. Just something not-very-important that was happening next week.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Sam,’ I said over our lunch that day, ‘remember the other night when you had that bad dream?’

  Sam looked immediately suspicious. ‘I never counted to a hundred,’ he said. ‘I didn’t, Casey, honest.’

  I filed that snippet of peculiar information away for the time being. ‘I know you didn’t,’ I said lightly. ‘I was just talking about what. About that bad man? Anyone would have been scared about that, anyone. So, anyway, because I care about you, I told this important lady. Just so she might have some good ideas about stopping those nasty dreams from frightening you.’ I touched his arm. ‘Just wanted to check, really. Was that okay?’

  Sam sighed – one of his theatrical ones – but then he nodded. ‘I s’pose. But who’s the special lady? Is she a doctor?’

  I tipped my head, feigning thought. ‘No, I don’t think she’s a doctor,’ I said. ‘Just a really clever lady with a lot of good ideas about how to help little boys who have nightmares. Anyway, we’ll see what she says, eh?’

  Sam took a big bite of his cheese and ham toastie and chewed. ‘So, like a superhero who kills bad guys?’ he asked once he’d swallowed.

  ‘Yes, a little bit like that, I suppose,’ I agreed. ‘Though as far as I know she doesn’t wear a cape.’