Random Acts of Unkindness

by Jacqueline Ward

  ‘Aiden’s parents were engaged in a tug of love following their divorce and Aiden was upset about it, and this is the probably reason for him running away.’

  Sal. Fucking Sal. I resolve to watch his interview, although I know by heart the reasons he would have given for Aiden’s disappearance.

  Bloody hell. All those boys missing. I do the obvious thing and cross check the stats with other areas. It’s the highest in the country. This appears to have been spotted and blamed on high deprivation in the area.

  The thread running through this, the completing rationale, isn’t convincing. Someone in the report I’m reading argues that a quarter of a million people go missing each year. Someone else argues that most of those come back at some point, which brings what I’m looking at into focus. All of these missing boys have either never turned up, or are dead, presumed suicides.

  It doesn’t add up, not over such a long period. Even though it’s been investigated, something is wrong. I can hear Ted Scholes’s voice echo through my mind. ‘Few and far between.’ Not here. Boys are going missing all the time. And as far back as 1963, maybe even further. I really haven’t got the heart to look.

  I pull out the files of three of the boys who have eventually been recovered. I read the autopsy reports. All causes of death undetermined at first, then confirmed as a drug overdose. All found outside. All pallid complexions, as if they hadn’t been outside for a while. All with problem family backgrounds.

  On the surface of it, it seemed exactly like Jim had said, a product of a desperate generation, disadvantaged and numbing the pain with drugs until it all got too much. After all, the teenage suicide rate is at an all-time high, with the main cause reported to be depression and disadvantage.

  When I look a little bit closer, I see that all these boys have traces of white paint under their fingernails. Had this been linked? It links somewhere in the background of my consciousness with an image of the empty, stark rooms at Old Mill, and this strengthens my resolve. It had been investigated in each case—household paint, standard white emulsion. But they hadn’t been linked between the cases. Why would they be? As soon as they were found the assumption was made, some fucked-up junkie from a broken home. And the last two had fried chicken as their last meal, just like Darren. All of them reported no recent sexual activity, but had bruising between two weeks and a month old.

  I write it all down and print out the reports I need. But as I sit with this new evidence in my lap and a firmer link forming in my mind, I wonder what I can really do about it now. And I wonder how Aiden fits into all this. Will he be found under a railway bridge, all full of drugs and pale?

  Is this really a fucking social trend, a convenient line on some statistical chart that tells us poor equals desperately unhappy? Or is there much more to this, with scores of young men going missing over five decades and a few of them turning up dead in similar circumstances?

  The question is, what can I do about it? If I bring it up now it will just look like I’m clutching at straws and I’ll be suspended. I send some of the microfiche reports to print and push the papers into my bag. My phone rings and it’s Mike.

  ‘Good news about Aiden, eh? Bet you’re chuffed?’

  I pause and think. It’s not him, Mike, I think. I love you Mike, you’re my best friend, but I can’t trust even you with this. I have to do this on my own. An idea’s forming in my mind and I need to keep myself on side with everyone here.

  ‘Yeah. Case closed, then.’

  ‘So you’ll be back on Prophesy then, will you?’

  I laugh.

  ‘Already back. Currently in the archives doing collations.’

  He snorts.

  ‘Bloody hell. How did you get lumbered with that?’

  ‘Gives me a bit of head space. You know, think about something else.’

  ‘So come up with anything, have you?’

  I stare at my bulging bag, and the pile of papers on the table.

  ‘Not really. Nothing much at all. It’ll probably take days. What about you?’

  ‘Not much. There was a break-in at the mill last night and were all questioned. One of Connelly’s boys looked at me and did the ‘haven’t we met before act,’ but the guy I’ve been working for covered for me.’

  I sigh.

  ‘Oh. Break-in? Did they take anything?’

  ‘No. Not really. Anyway, there’s only fucking kitchens to take. Someone had accessed the computer, they reckon it’s a disgruntled employee. Don’t have no alarm system, either. They reckon everyone’s so scared of Connelly that no one would dare to break in.’

  ‘Mmm. Except someone with nothing to lose.’

  I kind of wish I hadn’t said that, and Mike passes over it.

  ‘Yeah. OK, well, I’ll see you in a couple of days when you’ve finished your admin. Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  I take the papers home, past the sky messages and past Connelly’s territory. When I arrive I see an unfamiliar orange glow from my lounge window. I go inside and Sheila is there, with a new woman called Annie. Sheila smiles. She’s wearing slippers. They’re pink, with a bunny rabbit face on the front and big fluffy ears

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I nipped to Housing Units to get some dimmer bulbs. Yours were a bit harsh, you know, hard on the eyes. Much more homely, isn’t it? Want a cuppa?’

  I nod and throw my bag on the chair, placing the pile of papers on the table. Annie is eating a Crunchie and watching a nature programme.

  ‘Did you know that fairy-wren chicks are taught a ‘password’ by their mothers while they’re still in their eggs. It’s a specific note that they must cheep in order to be given food after they hatch. It’s thought that this is a defence against nest parasites like cuckoos.’

  I focus on the TV and three fairy-wren chicks are calling to their mother. I’m tempted to take a maudlin dip into mother and child relationships, but I focus on something else. A password, is it? Like a code. Like a shared understanding, one that outsiders don’t get.

  There’s more to this than meets the eye. I think about the black T-shirts and scarves, the yellows and the greens, and the blacks, blowing in the wind high above the traffic, a secret language. It’s obvious really. I’ve been looking in the wrong place. We should have known at the end of Operation Hurricane that Old Mill wasn’t a crime scene.

  Like Mike said, there wasn’t even an alarm. It’s as if they want us to just walk in and see that they are doing absolutely nothing wrong in there. But where is it? Where is the fucking crime scene? Something must be pointing to it.

  All I have is three missing boys with a pattern in their crime reports that could be coincidence or could be crucial, four with Aiden, silent sky messages, and an invisible crime scene in an unseen world that I know nothing about, hidden somewhere between the kitchens, a makeshift protection racket, and the dead boys.

  The mother bird comes back and feed the babies and I feel a stab of pain in my soul. Where is my son?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After two nights of broken sleep, I sleep for ten hours. I when I wake up I can smell bacon. I shower and go downstairs and Sheila is just dishing out a full breakfast for four.

  ‘Mornin’. Do you want some?’

  It does look good. And I need to pick their brains.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Sausages, and a few beans. And some toast, please.’

  She’s dishing up and holding the hot pan with a new set of tea towels with robins on the edge.

  ‘There you go.’

  I sit at the table and pour myself some tea from the big earthenware teapot that has magically appeared. It’s lovely and warm and I almost feel at home. In my own home. Almost. I look around and see that they’ve moved Percy’s dish and his tray. Thinking about it, I hadn’t even had the heating on since Aiden disappeared. Most of my life had been centred around caring for him and Sal, then just him. Now it had stopped and the elephant in the room was me. Even the WPCs looked more at home than me, with their fluf
fy slippers under their regulation trews.

  ‘Thanks. That’s lovely. I haven’t had breakfast with anyone since, well, you know.’

  They collectively tilt their heads to one side. Sheila represents their expressions.

  ‘It must be so hard for you. Losing a child like that. Not that he’s . . .’

  I wave my handful of toast.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s fine. I’m gradually getting used to it, that he’s not coming back. I just feel like I need some support.’

  Annie smiles and touches my arm.

  ‘You’ve got us. Just think of us as sisters.’

  I nod. And I was becoming fond of them, in a strange way. You don’t have many friends in this job, but at least they were backing me up.

  ‘That’s very kind, and I will. But I was thinking some kind of support group. There’s so many boys go missing from round here, there must be some kind of group that deals with it. You know, like victim support, only for mums of the missing boys.’

  Sheila’s chewing her sausage, thinking deeply.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve heard there’s one at the community centre on Northlands. Mothers for the Missing. It’s been going awhile now, funded by that lovely Mr Connelly.’

  I stare at her.

  ‘Lovely Mr Connelly? You do know that he’s a criminal, don’t you, Sheila? You were slagging him off the other day.’

  She nods.

  ‘Oh yes, so everyone says, but you know, there’s something that makes me think that he’s not all bad. Us lot think he’s a bloody menace, but how many people have actually seen him do anything? I mean, he lets people rent those cheap houses he’s done up and he provides things like Mothers for the Missing. And he’s always speaking up against crime. If anything happens, you can guarantee he’s there in the front of the Herald. Here’s last week’s. You know, when that house was raided and all that heroin and coke was found, he was on the front of the paper, and inside it, waging a war against drugs. I know everyone thinks it’s him and he does run the estate, but I sometimes wonder if we’re on the wrong track and it’s not him at all. He seems so nice.’

  She pushes the paper toward me. I look at Sean Connelly’s face, his eyes bulging with anger, staring from the front page. Inside there’s a double page spread of him handing over an oversized cheque to the local councillor. I flick through the pages. Darren’s death is reported on page twenty-three. I turn back to them.

  ‘So. Mothers for the Missing. Who runs it? And what do they do?’

  ‘It’s a woman called Pat Haywood. Her son Steven went missing twelve years ago, around the time of all that Shipman business, and he’s never been found. Oh. Sorry.’

  I smile at her.

  ‘No. Go on.’

  ‘Some of them are mums of them lads who killed themselves. That’s the hardest of the lot, isn’t it?’

  Sheila intervenes.

  ‘I don’t reckon. It’s the mums who never know. And the dads. It’s harder for them. Anyway, Pat’s there every day for a drop in. Never met her. Us pigs not allowed up there, are we?’

  I smile around the table.

  ‘Thanks, ladies. And thanks for the breakfast.’

  I get up and walk past the new cushions, big and fluffy, past the film channel—it’s Pretty Woman this time—past a new hedgehog boot scraper. I notice that they’ve cleared all the autumn leaves out of my garden and cut the last of the grass. It looks very neat. They’ve even spray cleaned my driveway and the back patio.

  I look back at them and they’re sipping tea and watching Julia Roberts arrange herself across a piano. I wonder if they have any kids, any family. I wonder if they actually know what I’m going through. I suppose I did give them free range of the house, but I didn’t expect them to be here all night and day.

  On the other hand, nothing had happened since they were here. No break-ins, no damage to my car. Not that I had any pets left to kill or maim. Or any children. Just me.

  I drive over to the station and make a show of parking my car in the ops car park. Then I walk through the operations room and use my pass to go out the back and down the stairs to the archive rooms.

  I take a file from the desk and stand on the chair under the CCTV, twisting it to the left so that it’s facing the door, but not facing the research area. Then I open the window and climb out, leaving it open a fraction for later. I pull up my black hoodie and walk across the grass at the side of the station and toward the tram, making sure I keep looking at the ground. I jump on the first tram that arrives and get off in the city centre.

  I walk around the back streets as much as I can and, when I reach my destination, I take off the jacket and sling it over my bag, revealing a cream Fair Isle jumper. I head for reception in the social services building and flash my police card. The receptionist barely looks up and I keep looking forward. This isn’t my territory at all, but I need to know what happened to Bessy’s baby. The twin that I haven’t already seen.

  Like the police archive centre, there are microfiche records. I quickly skim through them to find the right year. These records are filed by chronological cases, and I soon locate a baby that’s been abandoned on a doorstep.

  There’s even a newspaper cutting attached, appealing for the mother to come forward. Of course, she never did. I follow the trails, a tiny baby turns into a toddler, fostered by someone in Duckenfield. Then adopted by a couple in Mosley. Went to junior school in Mosley, then to Ashton Grammar, then disappears from the social services records aged fourteen. Pauline Green. I wonder if she was ever told she was adopted? She’d be around fifty now, probably settled down with a family of her own.

  I walk out of social services, pulling on the hoodie again. Over to the registry office, to find out if she married.

  ‘Pauline Green. No, sorry, I don’t have her date of birth, but she’d be late forties.’

  The man behind the desk stares at me.

  ‘Any relation?’

  I don’t know if it has to be for me to look, probably not, but I lie anyway.

  ‘Cousin. Thing is, I need to find her.’

  He smiles.

  ‘Ah. Doing your family tree, are you?’

  I nod.

  ‘Yeah. You got me there. I am.’

  He flicks through several books and eventually comes to a wedding in 1973 between John Lewes and Pauline Green. He turns around and taps this into a computer.

  ‘You might be in luck. This woman’s been married for twenty-nine years. Still is. They live on Mosley Road.’ He looks at me, trying to see if I am for real. ‘Number ninety six.’

  I smile.

  ‘Thank you so much. I’ve got a big surprise for her.’

  It would be a big surprise when I turn up with forty thousand pounds. I get a bus to Northlands and walk up Acre Road toward the community centre. All the cameras are sprayed here and I wonder what would happen if I was spotted. It’s not likely, though.

  They’re looking for a flash copper in a nice car, someone who looks like authority. Not some woman in Adidas trainers and a black hoodie. I could be anyone. I trudge along with my eyes on the floor, shoulders hunched, the trademark of downtrodden life on Northlands.

  No one here has a spring in their step, and everyone owes Connelly something. He’s got protection down to a fine art; cause trouble then charge people to protect them from it. There are some people who work, mostly at Old Mill. Making kitchens, it seems. Or arranging for kitchens to be made. The rest of them are on the dole with a sideline. Selling drugs, ringing cars, protection.

  But that’s only the men. Equality hasn’t quite reached Northlands, and the women sit in their pristine homes while their children are at school and the men are out doing whatever racket they are into. Or in the pub.

  You won’t find Northlands women in the pub except for Saturday nights. There are barmaids obviously, but they are invisible women, there only for decorative purposes. Wives and girlfriends stay indoors. The last time I was here was to investigate a woman who had app
arently killed her own children.

  When Mike and I got to the house, she was sitting in the lounge in a forensics suit with blood still on her hands. The bodies of her two children, aged seven and five, were still upstairs. She had wounds to her lower arms, which she refused to have treated. She was just staring in front, straight ahead, but when I walked in she looked at me for a second.

  When I’d been upstairs and seen the boy and girl, throats slit neatly as they lay in bed, not sign of a struggle, which later turned out to be due to an earlier dosage of Mogodon, I sat down on a buffet in front of her.

  ‘Why? Why have you done this?’

  Mike tried to read a caution, but I held my hand up. She shook her head slightly.

  ‘I couldn’t let them live through this.’

  ‘What?’

  I watched as her eyes covered the room.

  ‘This.’

  She was taken to the station, but hanged herself in her cell. Later I found out that her husband had abused her two elder daughters from a previous marriage and had raped one of them, getting her pregnant, then passed the baby off as their youngest child, the little girl she had killed.

  None of the girls or women in that scenario had reported any of it to the police, fearing for their lives if they did. In her case, it was damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either way you end up dead. Women in Northlands didn’t report, unless it was rows between neighbours, or missing children. The only place they are allowed to frequent are their own houses and the community centre.

  It isn’t a centre as it’s at the far end of the estate. I follow the telegraph poles, keeping to the main road and eventually it’s looming in front of me, an oblong block made of uncovered breezeblocks. Why make something pretty if it’s somewhere as desperate as Northlands?

  The steel door is half-open and I step inside. The hallway is covered with flyers for well baby clinics and smear tests. All the agencies know that this is the only place they can make contact with these forgotten women who never leave here, not even to go into the city nearby.