They both nod. Annie speaks first.
‘Yeah. Common knowledge. But would you want to stay there? You’ve got this nice place here, but if you lived on Northlands wouldn’t you want to leave? Nothing stopping the youngsters, is there? Well, not the boys.’
I nod.
‘Yes. I can see that. But what about the suicides? When they turn up dead?’
‘Not worked out for them. Tragic, it is. Tragic. But the national suicide rate for boys is high. I expect you know that?’
I nod.
‘It is. But maybe it only gets high when unexplained deaths such as these, deaths with an element of similarity, are added to the statistics. If you take that away, you’re left with a load of unexplained deaths and low suicide rates.’
I think about the amphetamine and the diamorphine. The white paint and the chicken. The way all the boys had died of exposure, except the one who had been impaled on railings. About how they were all practically unreported because they all happened at the same time as other, more newsworthy, events. As if someone was waiting for something big to happen before they got rid of a body. Or took another one. Something like the Moors Murders. Annie is holding the note out.
‘She gave me this to give to you.’
It’s my application form for Mothers for the Missing. Scrawled across it is ‘FUCK OFF POLICE SCUM.’ She’s pinned the blue slip of paper with Aiden’s name on it to the corner of the paper. On the back there’s a note. ‘You’re a liar. We’ve never turned anyone away before, but you lied about who you are coz you knew what would happen. We hope you find your lad, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. You’re no different from us at the end of the day.’
Annie sighs and sips her hot chocolate.
‘She was very angry. Very angry indeed. We told her that you weren’t here and you were at the station. She just spat at us. Charming.’
I look around. This is looking less and less like my home. There are some new plants on the sills and some place mats with cheery scenes on them. New cups sat on the drainer, and some mince pies. They’ve even turned on the fake flames inside the electric fire hung in the ultra-modern fireplace.
‘The thing is, she’s got a right to be upset. I went to see her today and she’s right, I lied. I lied to a bunch of grieving women. By omission. Didn’t mention I was a DS. Just to get information.’
They nod and smile. Annie puts her cup down.
‘Problem is, they’ve got nothing to do. If they had something to do, they wouldn’t be sitting around all day.’
‘But they’ve lost their sons. And daughters, some of them.’
Annie smiles tightly.
‘Not being funny, but they should make a move to get over it. I mean, look at you.’
I pull the file closer to my chest. I want to hit her over the head with it and tell her that I’m not over it. I’m not even started.
But I don’t. I’m in enough trouble already. It’s only a matter of time before Connelly finds out I’ve been on Northlands, if he hasn’t already, and passes that information on to Jim Stewart one way or another.
Anyone who’s busted on Northlands gets fed to the crocodiles by Connelly’s henchmen; he likes Jim to know exactly what he knows about our operations, and this will be no exception. Only it’s not part of the operation, is it? It’s not part of Operation Prophesy at all. It’s part of my private operation.
‘Yeah. I suppose. Anyway, how long you two posted here?’
I could really do with them gone.
‘Well up to this morning, we were ready for the off tomorrow, but DI Stewart says we should stay.’
Oh my God. He already knows.
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Yep. He called about threeish, just after she’d been. We were still a bit shook up, you know, having a strong cup of tea, and he called your landline. Said he couldn’t find you.’
Shit. He must have called the archive room. Maybe he’d even sent someone down there.
‘What exactly did he say? Exactly?’
They look at each other, eyebrows raised.
‘Just asked if you were there. Asked when we’d seen you last. Oh, and asked if anyone else had been at the house. So that’s when we mentioned that woman, but I don’t think he meant her. He asked if anyone apart from her had been round. And we said there hadn’t. That’s all really. We did try to ring you.’
I pull out my phone and there are seven missed calls. I go out the back and listen to the messages. One from Pat. Two from Jim Stewart asking me to contact him. One from Mike asking where I am. And two from Annie telling me to phone Jim Stewart. Shit shit shit. I listen to the message from Pat. She’s angry.
‘Message for DS Pearce. Or Janet Margiotta. Take your fuckin’ pick. I don’t know what I’m more fucked off about, that you came up here snoopin’ or that the fuckin’ coppers won’t help us. Where’s my son, DS fuckin’ Pearce? Where’s your boy? Where’s all our boys? I know everything we tell you lot, everything Mothers for the Missing comes up with, gets ignored. But you need to listen very carefully to me. Something’s happening on Northlands. Something’s happening to our sons. Some of them. I’ve spoken to the mothers of them who are supposed to have topped themselves, but, without one fuckin’ exception, they say it’s wrong. I don’t get a copper’s number very often, and I can’t report it openly or I’ll get sacked. I can’t put me finger on it. I don’t know. But seriously. Look at it. Oh. And sorry about earlier, I was fuming. Don’t try to call me back, cos I can’t ever have owt to do with you publicly, but look at all the missing lads.’
It’s the first time anyone’s actually agreed with me. I suddenly feel a huge sense of relief, that it’s not just me and some misdirected paranoia. I want to call her and thank her, but I can hear the landline ringing in the house and I duck around the side of the conservatory. Annie answers.
‘Oh, hello, sir. No, she’s not here, she was a minute ago, but she must have gone upstairs.’ A pause. ‘Oh. Right. Yes, of course. Coming round. OK. Righty-o.’
I see her put the phone down in the reflection of the patio doors.
‘He’s coming round here. Says not to let her go out until he gets here. Sounds serious. Wonder what she’s done?’
Sharon crunches on a ginger nut.
‘Don’t know. Must be something to do with that awful woman. Or her son. What if . . . ?’
Annie’s hand goes to her mouth. I run around the side of the house and into the garage. The pull-over door isn’t automatic, and I haven’t a chance of raising it without being noticed. So I take the bike. I roll it up the road through the familiar black spots, my heart beating fast. What if it is Aiden?
I pull the bike around the side of a wooden fence and dial Sal’s number. He answers after two rings. If it was Aiden he would already know, as Jim’s been looking for me all day.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Sal, it’s me.’
He tuts.
‘Right. Speaking to me now, are you? I did wonder after the other day, I mean, you must be able to see my point . . . Where are you, anyway?’
‘Sal. Have you heard anything? About Aiden?’
‘Well, there’ve been a couple of sightings but nothing . . . Where are you, Jan? It’s very quiet. Are you outside somewhere, at this time? You want to be careful, you know.’
I end the call and push my phone into the bushes. No one would find it there. And no one would find me here. I’ve got a spare pay-as-you-go, just in case I need to call for help.
I ride and ride until I’m in Ney Street. I push Bessy’s back gate and it opens easily. I drag my bike inside, and push the back door. It’s locked, of course. It’s still early evening and I can see the outlines of birds gathering on the shed rooftop, their twittering almost deafening.
Suddenly they take off in flight and I watch them swirl above the dirty Northern terraces, in and out of the telegraph poles, high above the codes laid out by men too engrossed in land to look upward and see beyond themselv
es. They wind around the clouds and across the setting sun before coming back to land on the rooftops opposite.
There, they sit and watch me. Nearer and nearer.
I push open the door with little effort. The house smells damp now, but not of death. Someone’s been here and cleaned up the bird shit but left the black powder of forensics on the window edges. It’s on the outside too, and the birds have stood in it. Bird prints instead of fingerprints.
I laugh a little at this, then go into the lounge. It’s like a flashback to only a few days ago, when I stood here before Bessy’s body. I wish I could turn back time, to a different path where I didn’t go upstairs, and just called it in.
I’ve got Thomas’s file, along with the other boys’, and Bessy’s notebook, and before leave here I’m going to find out for once and for all what’s going on here. Where all these boys are. I need to know what the connection is between Thomas and Aiden, what made them, even momentarily, sit together on the wall of a back room of a community centre at Northlands.
I open Thomas’s file at the first page. Bessy’s account of him, and Colin’s. Black-and-white photographs of him and Bessy and Colin at the seaside. A couple out on the road. A drawing of his Billy can. A statement from his friend, and one from a former teacher. Another from his boss at the joinery where he worked.
One from a girl Thomas had dated for a short time. They say parents only ever know about 10 percent of what their children get up to. Mine certainly did. Looks like Bessy was no exception.
Then a report on the connection with the disappearance from the area of several young men from the area from Inspector Little. It’s linking the disappearances to those of some children. Their names are listed and I realize that they turn out to be the victims of the Moors Murders.
Little has pushed this, pushed for the disappearances to be investigated, but by the looks of further reports, this has been constantly vetoed. In the end, by the time the Moors Murderers have been to court, Thomas’s case has been closed. He’s a runaway, a boy who ‘tired of his restrictive home environment.’
Following this, there are a few reports about Bessy’s visits to the station and a possible reopening of the case, but this too is prevented. Then, there’s a redacted section of the file. I can read enough to know that Inspector Little has been moved off the case for suggesting that a local man is involved in the disappearances. The local man’s name has been crossed through with black pen all through the report.
Little has suggested that there is a connection between Thomas’s case and Bessy’s persistence that he’s a victim of the Moors Murderers. That she’s being egged on by her supporter, the same name that’s been redacted. I think about the photo on the community centre wall, Bessy standing beside a huge man with a tiny hat, her half the size of him.
Founder of Mothers for the Missing. Staunch hater of the Moors Murderers and, later on, other criminals. I flick through the file and there are more pictures of them, at ‘Bring Back Capital Punishment’ rallies and appeals for missing boys. John Connelly.
I feel a chill run through me. This is the house Bessy lives in. Owned by the Connellys. I bet he’s even been in here. I sit down below the net-curtained sash window and pick up Bessy’s notebook. I’ve got a feeling everything I want to know is right here. Straight from the horse’s mouth is always best.
On the Make
This next part is about me on my own, and what I did, not so much to do with any gory details about them, I don’t know if anyone’s interested in that?
I had to pull myself together, quick, after the babies, and crack on nothing had happened. It was in the papers and everything. Baby found in phone box. They didn’t know the bloody half of it. It doesn’t matter either way now, but I sort of feel like someone should know what really happened, and why I did what I did.
By the next day I’d had a sleep and a wash and checked to see everything was all right down there. I kept going to the wardrobe and meaning to move the little mite, out of the way, till I could tell someone or bury her. But I was scared and I remembered that no one had been in the house since Colin left, so what odds was it where the poor little sod was, in the ground or in a box? No one cared about me or her.
On Thursday morning I washed my hair and had a bath, and went up to the police station just to check nothing else had happened. I’d come to my senses a bit, and I was ready to start the search for Thomas in earnest. Once I’d found him I could get my daughter back and bury the poor little mite up there.
One thing at a time, Bessy, that’s what I thought. There was a big void, a gap, where I’d thought his dad had been looking for him. I’d trusted Colin to help me, but he hadn’t. Thomas had been out there somewhere and no one had been looking for him.
I’d given up asking the police for help; they’d been busy with other things and not interested in a missing boy. Now all that was over, I was stuck in a prison of not knowing what to do. I’d found out that she was being kept in Durham Prison, and I’d thought about writing to her, but hadn’t yet.
She was the only person who could tell me if they’d had Thomas or not. The only person. Rumour had it that he was a psychopath, mad as a bloody hatter. He must be to have done what he did to children. So there was no point asking him.
I’d read in the paper that she had a publicist, someone who dealt with it all for her, managed her affairs. I found out their name, and the prison governor’s name. I put all this information in a drawer for when I felt strong enough to do something. If I ever did.
After the police station I went to see a solicitor. Colin was gone and I had no income. It turned out that the house was in both our names, and he still had to pay half the mortgage, but I would have to go to court to make him.
On top of that, he could say that he was providing for his new partner. And her children. For the first time, I realised that Lizzie had three children. Two teenage boys and a girl, about twelve. I’d inhaled sharply when I realised, as if water had gone up my nose. Colin was their dad now. Not Thomas’s. I left the solicitor’s and, on his advice, went to the bank.
In those days, you could still see the bank manager. I had to wait nearly two hours, but I was used to waiting. I’d been waiting since 1963. I’d never stopped hoping and expecting.
As the bank manager ushered me into his office, I wondered how I was going to survive. I’d never worked and I was forty. Harry Pearson, Manager of the North West Region, if a little plastic sign on his desk was anything to go by, shook my hand.
‘What can I do for you, Mrs Swain?’
I sat up straight.
‘Well, my husband’s left me and I need to sort out what’ll happen about the house.’
He shuffled some papers.
‘Mortgaged. In both your names. Have you an income?’
I looked at my feet.
‘No. My solicitor says Colin will have to pay half of it still. But I’ve no other way of paying the other half.’
He leaned back in his chair now.
‘This is the problem with divorcing. Very sad business. I’m afraid your only choice seems to be to either get a job or sell the house.’
I stared at him. Instead of upset or pain, I actually felt fear.
‘I can’t sell the house; it’s out of the question. You see, my son Thomas is missing. He disappeared around the time of the Moors Murders. When they found that young lad in that house, we thought it was him. But the police say he’s just missing. Just missing. They don’t know what’s happened to him. The thing is, Mr Pearson, if he is still alive, and he comes home . . .’
Mr Pearson’s features had changed. I’d noticed that. People talked a lot about the murders, gossiped and told each other the details they knew. It became like Chinese whispers; you didn’t know what to believe.
But when they were confronted by people who had been involved in the investigation, those who had been next to death, they became afraid. Mr Pearson had looked horrified.
‘My goodness. Well.
I’m sorry to hear than. I never read that in the paper, but I suppose . . .’
‘It wasn’t in the papers. Why would it be? No one ever found his body. He’s still missing. You can ask Ken Little at the station. He’s been in charge of it all for us. Me.’
Mr Pearson looked paler.
‘I’m very sorry for your circumstances. And in the middle of all this, your husband’s left?’
I nodded.
‘Yes. He’s set up home with someone else. And her own kids.’
‘Bastard.’
I nodded again.
‘I will get a job, it’s just that at the moment, I’m not feeling . . .’
He stood up, seething.
‘Don’t worry about it, Mrs Swain. I’ll hold this in abeyance for six months, because of the circumstances. If you can pay anything, then please do, but if not, come back in six months. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do. Get you some support.’
‘Support?’
‘Yes. You shouldn’t have to deal with this on your own. I’ll get people involved. People who want to make them pay. I’ll make sure that you find out what happened to your son. What’s he called?’
‘Thomas. Thomas Swain. He was seventeen when he went.’ We both glanced at a photograph of Mr Pearson’s family, three sons flanked by his wife. ‘I’m sure you can imagine what I’m going through?’
This was the first time it happened. That shared knowledge that implored someone to help. Someone recognising, through their own life, how much pain is involved in my life. Mr Pearson wanted to help, and this was something I was unfamiliar with. Until now, I’d had Colin and his mam bickering at my heels, and the police not knowing if they were coming or going.
I’d left the bank a little bit more relieved, more sure that I had six months’ grace. Mr Pearson told me he’d write to me when the time was up, and I was to go and see him again.
I’d walked most of the way home, but turned off at Newmarket Road. There were rows and rows of rhododendrons, and I followed it for about a mile, into my familiar childhood playground. Daisy Nook was a wood, with the River Medlock running through it.
Random Acts of Unkindness Page 15
