by Martina Cole
A man appeared behind her. He was tall, of heavy build and he looked well groomed, smartly casual. It was only his eyes that seemed really alive. They were dark brown, almost black, and the DI felt as if he was looking through her.
‘And you are?’ she asked steadily.
He smiled at the question in her voice. ‘Do you have a warrant?’ he answered.
Jenny looked over him. ‘Do I need one?’
He grinned, displaying white dentures. ‘If you want to come in here, you do.’
‘I was following up a report on a child. Rebecca Collins.’
‘This is Rebecca. She is trying to sleep.’ He grinned again. ‘She’s been staying with a friend, all right? Or is that against the law now?’
Jenny knew there was nothing she could say. The child was home, well and, as the man had pointed out, trying to get an afternoon nap.
‘It’s that ponce Bateman, ain’t it?’
Kathy’s voice was shrill and the child jumped in her arms with fright.
‘Fucking wanker he is, snooping round all the time . . .’
The man pulled her away from the front door gently. ‘Come on, Kathy, come inside. It’s all over now, love.’ He looked back at Jenny. ‘If that’s all, officer, we’ll bid you good day.’
The DI nodded. Then she said courteously, ‘What did you say your name was?’
He looked into her eyes a moment before answering. ‘I didn’t.’ Then he pushed the door shut in her face.
Jenny was still smarting from the embarrassment. Bateman was going to get a bloody mouthful from her, a right bloody mouthful. Like they didn’t have enough to do. And to add insult to injury, that man had made them look even more foolish than they felt.
She fumed all the way back to the station.
She would love to know who the man was with Kathy Collins. There was something fishy going on and she had a feeling that it went far deeper than anyone could imagine.
‘So you are still not willing to tell us who is behind all this shit, Jeremy?’
The prisoner stared timidly at Kate and Golding said loudly, ‘Fucking Blank by name and Blank by nature, eh?’
Kate saw that Jeremy’s eyes never moved from her face. It was as if he was beseeching her to save him.
‘Go outside,’ she told the other detective.
Golding did as she told him without a word. Everyone seemed to do what she told them lately; she knew it was all down to the change in her. The change she couldn’t stop, and wasn’t sure she wanted to. If she hadn’t made that change, she would have gone mad by now, she was sure.
Alone, she sat down opposite Jeremy Blankley. He was shaking, really shaking, and in a distant part of herself she felt a moment’s compassion for him. What had made this man into the thing he was? When did he decide that children were preferable to grown women? He wasn’t even into young girls. His preference was for babies, children still in nappies.
Sitting before her was every parent’s worst nightmare; a nonce, a beast, a child molester.
Yet look at him, a wreck of a man. The power he’d wielded over others was gone. He looked as sad and pathetic as a beaten dog.
‘Jeremy, whoever is in on this with you will eventually be found whether you grass them or not. If you’re frightened about what will happen when you’re put away - which you really should be - you need to think long and hard about helping yourself now. Or else I can arrange for you to be remanded with the general prison population and, believe me, you’ll be there this afternoon if I don’t get some answers soon.’
Kate paused to let her words sink in.
He sniffed loudly. ‘You said you wouldn’t do a deal . . .’
‘I am not doing a deal, I am offering you the protection you are in desperate need of. I would offer that for a price to anyone in your position. What I won’t offer you is the promise of a reduced sentence. That, I am afraid, would be defeating the whole object. You will go away for as long as possible - that’s not in dispute. What is, is the level of comfort in which you’ll serve your time. My arm is long, Jeremy. I can have you put in the Scrubs, the Ville, anywhere I want. And I can make sure that everyone knows why you’re there. Funky Brixton should give you a sharp taste of what to expect once you’re sentenced.’
Sweat was glistening on his top lip and Kate knew that she had him. His face held the feral look of a trapped animal and despite herself she felt a small thrill of pleasure to realise that she had broken him. But he surprised her.
‘I want to tell you,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I do want to tell you. But it don’t matter a toss how long your arm is or what you can arrange for me. It’s nothing in comparison to what I’ll get if I open me trap. I’ll have to take me chances in nick. I don’t really have a choice. None of us does.’
There was a note of resignation in his voice that Kate picked up on. Whoever he was in league with had to be a very dangerous person because she had never met a nonce yet who didn’t want to deal.
She stood up and stretched.
He looked up at her and said in a strangled voice: ‘I want to help you. I don’t want to do what I do . . . but I can’t help it. I tell meself every day, it’s finished, over with, I am going to stop. But I can’t. Inside I know it’s wrong. I do know that - I don’t need anyone to tell me. But it’s a compulsion that I just can’t control.’
He was pleading for her understanding but Kate couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the prize.
‘Who is it, Jeremy? Who can frighten you even more than we can?’
His face was flushed, cheekbones jutting prominently. They’d given him the bare minimum to eat and drink. She could see him battling it out with himself, whether to tell her or not. But in the end his fear won.
He shook his head sadly. ‘I have nothing more to say.’
She hardened herself then. ‘In that case get ready for your transfer to the Scrubs, Jeremy. And God help you! Whoever it is who’s frightening you will seem like fucking Santa Claus after a week on remand there.’
She walked from the room, heels ringing on the cement floor, drowning the sound of Jeremy Blankley’s sobs.
Patrick was made ready for theatre. Grace and Violet watched everything in silence. As the porter moved him from the ICU they both took out their rosaries and started to pray.
Kate’s mother Evelyn watched them impassively. Since they had removed the ventilator and Patrick had managed to breathe on his own there had been a general air of optimism. Now it was diminishing as they all realised the enormity of what he was about to undergo.
They had wheeled him away on his bed and the small side room looked strange without it and all the apparatus that usually surrounded it.
Walking down the ward Eve made her way to the public phone so she could give Kate the news as and when it happened. She knew her daughter was in turmoil over the operation but, whatever the outcome, at least they would all know more about what was going on inside Patrick’s brain.
Deep in her heart, Eve hoped if he was going to be left unable to talk or fend for himself, that merciful death would take him on the operating table. Someone like Patrick Kelly, with all the heartache he had suffered in the past, did not deserve to drag out his existence in that state.
As she reached the phone she felt a tap on her shoulder. It was Grace and the two women sized one another up like boxers before a fight.
‘You can tell your daughter that if she really cared about him, she’d be here with him now. When he most needs her.’
Eve pushed the other woman’s hand away roughly.
‘He doesn’t need her now, he needs his mother - and I understand that’s you. So stop acting like a silly adolescent and go and keep vigil for your boy.’
She saw Grace’s lips form a thin white line, and for a split second regretted her own words.
‘That’s a rumour from years gone by, but hearing it from your lips does not surprise me. He’s my own flesh and blood whatever you think he is, son or brother. And the truth
about that is something you will never know. It’s my business and no one else.’
Eve didn’t answer and the other woman stalked stiff-backed towards the ward.
As bad as Grace was, she was hurting deep inside and Evelyn acknowledged, with a touch of shame, that she should have made allowances for that fact. She was near to tears when she picked up the telephone.
Jeremy Blankley was on his way to prison and Kate was getting ready to go to the hospital. Depression had settled on her after her run-in with the prisoner. She felt isolated, cut loose from reality, looking on as if everything that was happening around her was happening to someone else.
She managed to smile as Golding launched into a lengthy explanation of why some of the case notes were missing, and even found herself nodding assent to Leila, without giving away the fact that she had no real interest in what they were saying.
She drove home from the station, forcing herself to concentrate on the road. At home she changed her clothes and applied make-up without even looking at what she was doing. When she glanced up she saw a stranger’s face in the gilt-edged mirror, pale and drawn, dreading what the day might bring.
She stood in the hall in her little red suit. Patrick had always loved seeing her in that. She had worn it just before the split, to a friend’s engagement party. She checked herself over a final time. Applied some red lipstick, retouched her mascara.
She realised now she had never stopped wanting him. If he’d had fifteen affairs, she would still want him. She didn’t even have to be with him to want him.
If he came through the operation and told her he never wanted to see her again, she would still thank God every day that she was at least breathing the same air as him.
She didn’t care any more what he had done. Even the knowledge that he had murdered Tommy Broughton didn’t concern her. Just to see him smile one more time would be more than enough for her. She wanted him back in the world even if she couldn’t have him back in her life.
Walking out of the house, Kate slammed the door behind her as if closing it on part of her life. She got into her car, turned off the radio and her phone, and drove to the hospital in screaming, crashing silence.
His face was all that she could see. Seeing him smile at her again would more than repay every sacrifice she had made, every rule she had broken, just to save Patrick Kelly’s skin.
Dave Golding took one look at the scene before him and stumbled, retching, into the back garden.
Lying across the kitchen table was the body of a man. He knew that because they’d received a call from someone named David Reilly who told them that he’d just killed his father. What he had not expected was to see someone beaten so badly it was impossible to say whether they were male or female, young or old.
David Reilly followed him outside and took a few deep breaths to steady himself. Golding knew that two PCs and the other CID were waiting outside for him to let them in. David had told him he wanted them to have a talk alone first. Now Golding was wondering if he’d made a big mistake in agreeing to it.
He breathed in deeply to calm himself and walked back inside, taking the blood-soaked floor and gore-sprayed walls. It looked as if a canister of red paint had exploded in the room.
David followed him in and gestured to an envelope sticky with blood.
‘Look at these,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I found them in his room. He was a fucking beast, me own father.’
As Golding glanced at the photographs the body on the table gave a loud groan, making both men jump with fright. Golding was amazed to see blackened, swollen eyes open in that ruined face.
Running through to the front, he shouted, ‘Get a fucking ambulance and get it quick!’
Then pandemonium broke out.
All the time David Reilly stared at his father as if he had never seen him before and couldn’t for the life of him understand how this man had ended up on his kitchen table.
Underneath it lay a bicycle pump. It was rusty and broken. It was also covered in blood. As he noticed it, David remembered his father giving it to him one Christmas and then telling him that the bike that went with it, a Raleigh racer, was in the garage waiting for him.
He couldn’t equate that kind generous man with the animal he now knew his father had become. He was bending down to pick up the pump again when Golding pulled him out of the room.
He put one arm across David’s shoulders and said gently, ‘We understand what you’ve done and why you’ve done it. Now you have to tell us all that you know, OK?’
David nodded. He still looked dazed, but he knew what was going on around him.
As Golding glanced through the photographs again he stifled a spark of excitement. Here was another link in the chain. Maybe this would be the break they needed to put away a whole herd of beasts. He wanted that so badly he could taste it.
When the ambulance arrived they let the paramedics into the house. No one had attempted any kind of help whatsoever though they were all trained in first aid as a matter of course. No one had wanted to even touch the victim, such were their feelings towards the man they knew to be a child molester. They were happier helping his son who, deep inside, they believed to be a bit of a hero. Though no one would admit that out loud, of course.
In the squad car Golding told him, ‘You can smoke if you like, mate.’
David smiled. ‘Thanks.’
‘We’ll get you a nice cuppa when we get to the station, OK?’
He smiled again.
They were quiet for a while then David said heavily, ‘He was a good dad, you know.’
But no one answered him.
Jenny was over the moon with the new developments. It was as if finally, after all their work, a higher force had seen fit to give them a break.
David Reilly sat in a holding cell with a big mug of tea and a pack of cigarettes. He contemplated the graffiti-adorned walls. One wag had written Kill the beasts and his eyes strayed to it over and over again.
When Jenny came in he looked at her expectantly. ‘Is he dead?’
She shook her head. ‘No. But you nearly managed it, if that makes you feel any better.’
He didn’t answer.
‘How did you find out about him?’
David said tiredly, ‘Ask Natasha Linten from the estate. Those kids in the photos . . . well, some of them are hers.’
Jenny nodded. ‘The duty doctor is going to talk to you. We must make sure you’re well enough to be interviewed.’
He nodded. ‘How’s me fa—Billy?’ He couldn’t bring himself to use the word father.
‘He’ll live.’
David shrugged and sipped at his tea. ‘I knew I should have finished the cunt off,’ he said in a dead voice. ‘But I suppose he’s more use to you lot alive, eh?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘What will I be charged with?’
She put one hand on his shoulder and said gently, ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we? You’ve had a big shock, mate, and you need to get your head round what’s happened. Don’t commit yourself until you’ve talked to a good brief. I can recommend one if you don’t want the duty lawyer.’
‘Thanks.’
As she banged on the door for it to be unlocked he said in a brighter voice, ‘He’ll go away though, won’t he? I mean, for a long time. He’ll get what he deserves?’
‘If I get my way, love, they’ll throw away the key on the lot of them.’
David nodded happily and lit another cigarette.
Natasha Linten was frightened.
Robert Bateman was standing in her lounge telling her that the police were outside and she was going to be arrested for child abuse, negligence, and a whole host of other charges relating to her children’s use in pornographic literature.
Even his terminology frightened her.
Robert, her mainstay, the man she phoned when she was in trouble, the one who listened to her problems and always found a few quid to tide her over when she was skint, was looking at her n
ow as if she was something he had found on the bottom of his shoe.
‘What on earth made you think you could get away with it? Treating those beautiful children like that, allowing them to be used by grown men and women . . .’
She put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it, please. I only borrowed them out. I never knew anything was happening to them. Please, Robert, you have to help me! Believe me, I would never hurt them for the world.’
He pushed her away from him petulantly.
‘Oh, save it for the police. I’m finished with you now.’ He stared around her flat. ‘Look at this place! A bloody dump has more class. I should have made sure you lost those kiddies a long time ago. You really are a piece of bloody work! Well, they’re settled in with foster-parents now and are well away from you and what you dragged them into, though the repercussions will go on for years. And you will have yourself to thank for that, my dear. No one but yourself.’
Tash was hysterical. ‘I didn’t know, I tell you! Rob, please, you must help me!’
He opened the front door and let in the waiting police. Kate, in her red suit, had been paged at the hospital and such was the atmosphere there she had been glad of the excuse to leave. As she looked at the sobbing girl before her she felt the now familiar disgust.
‘You can’t just come in here without a by your leave.’
Kate ignored Tash and watched as her men systematically tore the flat apart. She felt it was good for Natasha to watch the process. She wanted to impress on this ignorant girl that they were leaving no stone unturned in their quest for the gang of paedophiles.
As Natasha witnessed her home being destroyed she also heard their scornful comments about her slapdash housekeeping.
‘This place is like a fucking tip!’
Kate watched the girl listen to all that was being said.
The children’s urine-soaked beds were torn open with blades as they searched for anything that could make the case even tighter, though they all knew they didn’t need much more.
