Broken

by Martina Cole

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it, Lucas?’

  He looked at her with his cold eyes and all at once Suzy had trouble meeting his gaze. When he was like this he was dangerous, she knew that better than anyone. He drew you in with his jokes and his camaraderie, but she knew he could kill her without a second’s pause if he needed to.

  ‘It would be the first time I did it knowingly, love, that’s the difference. The films from Romania and Amsterdam were already well in circulation before I started shunting them out. Plus, I only provide the fuckers to the distributor, I don’t even watch them. Young girls are one thing, but kids are different. And anything to do with kids brings out the worst in everyone, ain’t you noticed that yet? I have judges I supply with everything from fucking drugs to boys and trannies, but they keep well away from little kids. Do you get my fucking drift? The man I asked for the favour today needs my assurance that you are sound and I mean to give him the truth, Suze. For all our sakes, yours included.’

  She was seriously frightened now.

  ‘You see, Suze, I have no morals. But I get them when my boatrace might be put in the frame, see. So now I am looking at the situation from a different standpoint. I am seeing it as others see it. Others who are not as enlightened as us. Now if you have half a brain in that head of yours you would start seeing things from my point of view. Dead kids cause hag and you are up to your neck.’

  His sarcasm was not lost on her.

  ‘So, if you know anything about the kids, you should share it with me. I might be able to make some sense of it all and prevent a catastrophe.’

  ‘I promise you, I have no idea what happened to them kids. I swear it on me mother’s grave.’

  Lucas sniggered. ‘Your mother is alive and well and playing bingo in Bournemouth.’

  Suzy grinned mischievously. ‘Same difference. Might as well be fucking dead.’

  ‘Same as her daughter will be if she tucks me up, eh?’

  Suzy raised her glass defiantly. ‘Up yours and all, mate.’

  ‘This is fucking ludicrous! Where the hell can the child have gone?’

  Kate didn’t answer.

  ‘Jesus, in all my years in this job I have never come across anything even remotely like this,’ sighed Jenny. ‘It’s just too weird. I mean, we have all these women who have tried to kill their kids, then we have a woman murdered and her kid missing. We find a child on a rubbish tip - a fucking rubbish tip! - and his mother dead at home, OD’d. Now I am thinking, did she OD or did someone, somewhere, help her along? Because either we are dealing with child abusers who murder their kids or we have a murderer out there who targets women and children who are abusers or abused. Fucking Freud would be hard pushed to make sense of this lot.’

  Kate stubbed out yet another cigarette and pushed open the window to let some air into the office.

  ‘Suzy is the answer to all this, we both know that, Jen. She could lead us to Barker.’

  Her friend nodded. Her usually cheerful countenance was disconsolate and she looked deathly white. Her eyes were ringed with black and her mouth curved down continually. At her best she wasn’t a beautiful woman but this last week she had begun to look haggard.

  ‘But how can we get to her if we’ve been warned off?’ the big woman fretted. ‘I mean, if it was a Home Office call then we’re talking big league here. Seriously big. And whoever gave the nod, considering the severity of the offence they must be pretty bloody sure of themselves to go out on a limb for her.’

  Kate smiled smugly. ‘I know who the call came from, Jenny. It was from Jeffrey Cavendish.’

  Jenny sat down in amazement, her mouth a small O of disbelief. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure as I can be,’ Kate said. ‘Golding got a printout of calls made to Ratchette. Cavendish rang him ten minutes before he called me in to warn me off. Why else would Cavendish contact anyone in Grantley?’

  Jenny looked out of the window at the car park and sighed inwardly as she saw Natasha’s solicitor arriving accompanied by Robert Bateman.

  ‘But he’s the big wig there at the DPP,’ she objected. ‘He wouldn’t lay all that on the line for a trollop like Suzy Harrington, surely? There must be someone else involved, someone in on this with her. She can’t have that much clout. Anyway, from what I’ve heard, when she was told she was out she was as shocked as we were. No, there’s more here than meets the eye, Katie, but what the fuck it is I don’t know.’

  ‘Someone knows, Jen. We just have to suss out who that might be. Golding has offered to keep the beady on her if we give the say-so. He’s been following her since she left here. I’m waiting to hear from him, but he’s not ringing here. We decided it was too dangerous. Who knows if we are being listened to? Plus the calls are taped routinely these days.’

  She stretched. ‘How I miss the old days without all this blasted technology to fuck everything up.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Now for more bad news. Tash’s solicitor just arrived with that Bateman. I suppose we’d better go and give them a welcome committee.’

  Kate stood up. ‘I want to get to the hospital today, Jen. If it’s OK with you, I’m going to shoot off about five.’

  ‘Go whenever you want,’ Jenny told her. ‘I can deal with things here.’

  ‘There’s loads of food in the freezer, you know what my mum’s like.’

  ‘I think she’s great. Here, this’ll make you laugh. She told me that she’d just read this article in Reader’s Digest about a Greek island where all the lesbos go.’

  Kate smiled and groaned. ‘She means well.’

  Jenny was chuckling. ‘I know that, mate. I think she’s priceless. Her age and religion make it hard for her to understand me and my lifestyle and I respect that. But she did make me laugh, I don’t know how I kept a straight face.’

  They were both smiling as they walked from the office to the interview room. As they passed through the main reception area Kate saw Robert Bateman and found herself smiling even more widely.

  He was dressed in a bright pink shirt and lime green trousers. Over the shirt he had a red and yellow cardigan, and wore brown cowboy boots with the ensemble. He looked like a refugee from a circus. He waved at her, wiggling his fingers and smiling widely. He’d had his hair dyed recently and it was now a nut-brown colour that made him look like Barbie’s boyfriend Ken’s father.

  ‘Hello, Robert. Have you come to see Natasha?’

  He nodded. ‘Oh, she makes me so angry, that girl. But I never could refuse a damsel in distress. Even if the distress was of their own making.’

  As she walked him through the door to the interview room, Kate said in friendly fashion, ‘Some of the case-notes you gave me were incomplete. Was that deliberate?’

  He stopped and looked at her shrewdly. ‘Clever girl, how did you know?’

  ‘Call it an inspired guess. Just a feeling, really. Why did you do that?’

  ‘None of it was relevant to the case in question . . .’

  Kate interrupted him. ‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Mr Bateman? If it pertains to lifestyles or friendships, appropriate or otherwise, then it is of interest to me.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘I apologise and I’ll make sure you have the relevant information as soon as possible. But it was only stuff we had discussed, things they had done. Nothing that would interest you. Really.’

  Kate held the door open for him and ushered him into the interview room with her usual politeness.

  ‘As I said, Mr Bateman, let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘Natasha isn’t the one you want, Miss Burrows. I think the big fish have slipped the net. At least, that’s what I hear on the grapevine anyway. Tash has lost her kids, she’ll go down no doubt about it, but the real villains will walk away scot free as usual.’

  ‘You sound very sure about that.’

  He sighed. ‘I am. I’ve watched this stuff go on for years, dear, and time after time I see little people like Tash go away while the
king pins carry on doing what they do, day after day. It’s how things are. I accept it because I can do nothing about it. But it doesn’t mean I like it, dear, does it?’

  Kate got the distinct impression he was trying to tell her something, but what it was she couldn’t for the life of her work out.

  ‘I wish you’d level with me,’ she told him.

  ‘Not here, dear. I couldn’t talk here.’

  ‘Where would you?’

  ‘Ring me at home tonight. I’m in the book.’

  Kate couldn’t answer him as Jenny and the brief came into the room together just then.

  ‘Did you get signed in all right?’ she asked the lawyer, who nodded.

  After the preliminaries, Kate left Jenny to start the official questioning. Her own mind was working overtime.

  Evelyn saw a strange woman walk into the ICU and glance about her. She stood up to greet the figure in the black suit and dangling earrings.

  ‘Can I help you, love?’ she asked pleasantly.

  She could see Violet and Grace coming up the ward out of the corner of her eye and was grateful. This woman did not look too happy. As she stood by Patrick’s bed and stared down at him Evelyn had the strangest feeling that he was in danger again, and when Everton came into the room she was relieved.

  The visitor was stocky, well-made, and looked fit to burst. Suddenly she pursed her lips and spat into Patrick’s sleeping face.

  ‘Here, what the fuck you think you’re doing?’ Grace’s voice was harsh.

  The woman turned on her. ‘Murdering bastard! My Tommy’s gone. He’s on the missing list and, believe me, he wouldn’t fucking dare do that to me. I heard a whisper on the street this cunt had him topped and I came to see him get his just deserts.’

  Her voice was breaking with emotion.

  ‘Now my kids are fatherless and I am without a breadwinner. You’d better hope he don’t wake up, lady, because if he does I’ll swing for him.’

  She pushed Grace forcibly in the chest to get her to stand aside.

  ‘I can’t even bury my Tommy, don’t know where he is. He could be anywhere: holding up a fucking motorway or slipped in East London crematorium with a legal stiff. I can’t mourn him, can I? I just have to go through the rest of me days wondering if he was tortured or frightened or scared. Did he call my name or the kids’ before he was topped . . .’

  She wiped her streaming eyes with taloned hands, the long nails stained crimson to match her lipstick.

  ‘You tell Kelly I’ll have him. I will have that ponce. My memory is long, and I won’t forget he robbed my kids of their father. You tell him I want me comp and all. I have school fees to pay and a house to keep up. You tell him he owes me. Big time.’

  She stumbled from the room on her impossibly high heels, grasping at the door for support. They were all left in shock. Violet made as if to follow her but Grace grabbed her sister’s arm.

  ‘Leave her, Vi. Let her get it out of her system.’

  Pondering what she had seen and heard, Evelyn sat back down. Suddenly she felt very old and very stupid. Was Patrick a murderer? And was her daughter aware of that fact? And torture - in this day and age?

  She knew Patrick was not one hundred per cent kosher, but a murderer?

  Violet was voicing these thoughts, too, and Grace hissed angrily: ‘Don’t talk out your arse, Vi! ’Course he ain’t done nothing wrong. Her old man’s probably gone on the trot. It happens. Imagine listening to the ravings of a deranged trollop like her. Compensation my eye! When he’s back on his feet Pat’ll laugh at this little escapade, you mark my words.’

  Neither Evelyn nor Violet answered her. Their silence spoke volumes.

  Willy was in his element. He had battered Jacky to within an inch of his life and was now happily eating the last of his sandwiches and drinking his tea.

  No one had been near or by them. It seemed the Russians were leaving him to get on with whatever he wanted. If they topped him afterwards, he didn’t care any more. He was paying those two bastards back for everything that had happened to him and Patrick.

  Joey, huddled on the floor, was trying his hardest to turn round so he could look Willy in the face. He hoped to talk him round. It was a long shot but he still had a few cards up his sleeve.

  Now Jacky was out of the ball game he was hoping to save himself. If he could sweet-talk Willy, there was always the chance he could persuade the Russians to go easy as well. He had always been an optimist.

  Joey heaved himself round and as he finally made it on to his left-hand side, Willy’s foot hit him square in the chin. Joey’s mouth filled with blood. It was acrid, tangy, and then everything went black. The last thing he heard was Willy’s laughter.

  Kate was on her way to the hospital when she realised that she was passing Robert Bateman’s house. It was after 8 p.m. and she was late, but part of her dreaded each visit to the hospital and what it might bring. When she saw the turning for Bateman’s street she drove into it, crawling along until she found his number. She parked her car and locked it while observing his home.

  It was a large detached house in an area that had once been select but was now rundown. Most of the houses were converted into flats. The others all seemed to be up for sale. But Robert’s home, though dilapidated, had a well-kept garden, not concrete off-street parking like the other houses, and there was a warm glow coming from behind the curtains.

  Kate rang the bell and waited. She heard him call out, ‘Who is it?’

  His voice sounded querulous and she wondered if she had come at a bad time.

  ‘It’s me, Kate Burrows. I hope I’m not intruding. I was just passing . . .’

  His voice changed to its usual high-pitched cackle. ‘Hang on, dear, let me get decent!’

  She found herself grinning. He was a case. Five minutes later he opened the door, a wide smile on his face.

  ‘Come in, come in.’

  She followed him through a bright yellow hallway into a lounge with walls painted burnt orange. It was like being in a kid’s painting. Everything was so bright, the sofa sky blue and the skirting board a deep red. It smelt gorgeous.

  She saw him looking at her. He was smiling indulgently. ‘I like a bit of colour,’ he explained. ‘Christ knows, this world is bloody boring enough.’

  Kate thought he had a point.

  ‘So it seems at times,’ she agreed. ‘This is vivid, but it works.’

  He seemed pleased. ‘It’s because it’s all so modern-looking. That’s the secret. Modern furniture can take colour. The older style can’t.’

  Kate heard his computer buzzing and said, ‘Have I interrupted you?’

  He was busy shutting it down and shook his head.

  ‘Glad you came. I work too much, really. I am a sad bastard when all is said and done. Can I get you a coffee?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t stay too long, I’m on my way to the hospital.’

  He nodded his head sympathetically. ‘So I heard. Is your chap any better at all?’

  Kate was surprised by his knowledge but just shrugged it off. She knew how gossip spread around the station and Robert Bateman seemed to know everyone.

  He must have read her mind, for he said in a friendly way, ‘It was the desk sergeant, Camilla Holder. She can’t resist a chat if you know what I mean. And be fair, dear.’ He rolled his eyes in mock horror. ‘She’s fifteen stone and with that nose, my God, she gives new meaning to the word drab! No wonder she gossips, eh?’

  Kate put her head back and laughed aloud. He was priceless.

  Robert put his hand gently on her arm.

  ‘You’re a nice woman, Kate. Sit down and have a quick G&T. One won’t kill you.’

  He was already at a large Art Deco cabinet, taking down glasses and mixing the drinks. Kate watched him. He was camp as a row of tents and yet he had an air of assurance that was wholly masculine. As he passed her the drink he smiled and his even teeth and fresh complexion made him look almost handsome.

&n
bsp; He grinned at her. ‘Drink up, love. A slug of alcohol never did anyone any harm. Though of course you didn’t hear it from me. Most of my clients think that life is unbearably boring unless they have a bottle of vodka, fifteen joints and a few sniffs of the okey-doke nightly!’

  Kate laughed again, aware that he was studying her closely. She took a gulp of her drink.

  ‘Down the hatch!’ Robert encouraged her.

  A loud crash from upstairs interrupted their jollity. Robert seemed unperturbed by it.

  ‘It’s me father, he’s bedridden. Won’t be a sec.’

  He hurried out and Kate sat down again. The crash had made her jump out of her seat, heart beating like the clappers with shock. She took a few deep breaths to steady herself. Five minutes later Robert was back in the room.

  ‘He has senile dementia. I have looked after him for the last nine years. I have a woman during the day.’ He chuckled at this. ‘To look after me father, of course!’

  ‘It must be difficult, Mr Bateman.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘It is, dear, believe me. It’s like living with a stranger.’

  Kate didn’t know what to say. Another thump from above brought him to his feet again. Placing her glass on the small table by her side, Kate stood up.

  ‘Look, I’ll let you get on. Have you the missing paperwork from the files?’