Paying the Ferryman

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘It’s far enough along the river not to have figured in the initial search,’ Gregory said. ‘Might be worth mentioning.’

  Alec nodded. ‘I’m not sure what you can do to help,’ he said. ‘Did you know another attempt had been made on Sarah Griffin’s life?’

  ‘The girl? I heard something on the news.’

  They filled him in on events, including how Steel had been shot; the would-be assassin was now dead.

  ‘Does the shooter have a name?’

  ‘Not that we know yet.’

  Gregory nodded. ‘Well, it strikes me this policeman of yours needs a bit of a helping hand. If someone is desperate enough to try to make a strike at the hospital, they will try again. Sure as God made little apples.’

  ‘Probably,’ Naomi agreed, ‘but I don’t see …’

  Gregory drained his glass and set it down on the table. ‘You know my motto: every good man needs a friendly psychopath watching his back for him. Consider your friend Steel’s back well and truly watched.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Steel slept. He woke briefly to take some more pills and then again because he was thirsty and thought he might want something to eat. He stood at the kitchen tap and refilled his glass three times, took more pills and then decided that all he really wanted was to get more sleep. Glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece as he made his way back to bed, he noticed it was three fifteen in the morning. The next time he was conscious of anything was when he heard Sophie Willis calling his name and his bedside clock told him it was a little after ten.

  It took a moment to realize that she was standing in his bedroom doorway, leaning against the jamb, a look of great amusement on her pretty face. She’d braided her hair, he noticed, adding to himself that this usually meant trouble for someone. It was the equivalent of someone girding up their loins or getting into battle dress. It also meant she’d spent the night at her sister’s place.

  ‘I’ll get the kettle on. I’ll join you for breakfast too. Gracie never has anything more than cereal in the morning and I’m starved. I’ve left pills and water on your bedside cabinet,’ she added, turning to leave.

  ‘Thanks,’ he croaked. His arm burned and his throat felt like the bottom of a parrot cage: shitty and dry. Painfully, Steel lifted his head and shoulders off the pillow and rolled on to his side, just enough to reach the pills and water. Then he lay back trying to summon the energy to move and listening to the sounds of Sophie Willis moving around his kitchen.

  The smell of bacon finally roused him and he stumbled into the shower, remembering belatedly that he wasn’t supposed to get the dressing on his arm wet.

  She glanced over at him as he came through to the kitchen clad in sweat pants and a T-shirt and rubbing a towel half-heartedly over his mane of shaggy, light brown hair.

  ‘Weren’t you supposed to keep that dry?’

  ‘I forgot. Would you mind—?’

  She laughed. ‘First-aid box still in that cupboard?’

  Steel nodded. She set the bacon aside and crossed the kitchen, reaching into the cupboard for the first-aid box he kept there. ‘Why do you keep this thing on the top shelf? Who the hell can reach that?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Yes, well some of us are not giants. Let me see. Does it hurt much?’ She winced when he did as she pulled the plaster strapping free. ‘Messy,’ she said. ‘But it looks clean.’

  ‘I forgot you had a key,’ he said.

  ‘I forgot to give it back.’ She grinned at him. ‘We’ll have tongues wagging.’

  ‘I think I’ll be the one flattered by the gossip.’

  ‘Stop your flannel and eat your breakfast,’ she told him. She brought tea and plates of egg, bacon and assorted accompaniments to the table. ‘I can’t find the ketchup.’

  ‘I’ve probably run out.’

  ‘Shame on you. So, are you up to work this morning?’

  ‘I think so. Anything new?’

  She chewed, swallowed and then nodded. ‘We know who our man with the gun is. Got a hit on the fingerprints.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it leads right back to Terry Baldwin. His name is or was Ricky Lang. According to his record he had a bit of history, twoccing as a teen, and a couple of counts of ABH and one of GBH. I called our colleagues in the Met and talked to the arresting officer for his most serious offence. He reckoned Ricky Lang was strictly small time. He wanted to play with the big boys but frankly wasn’t up to it. He is rumoured, however, to be another half brother of our Terry Baldwin.’

  ‘Rumoured?’

  ‘Like, everyone knew, but Lang’s mother wouldn’t say. Baldwin senior seems to have paid her regular money but when the CSA tried to get her to name the father she told them she didn’t know, and stuck to it. After she stopped claiming benefits, they dropped her case. She worked part time, but it was, according to my contact, an open secret that Baldwin senior paid her rent and took care of most of her other bills. She, in turn, acted as a courier and when she was younger she paid her dues with sexual favours for one or another of Baldwin’s friends. She left London for nobody knows where about ten years ago and Baldwin began to take more of an interest in Ricky Lang’s career. Trouble was, as I said, he wasn’t a particularly apt pupil.’

  Steel nodded, remembering that the young man had seemed uncertain, nervous even. ‘Trying to prove himself?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘So, a kid brother to Terry Baldwin.’

  ‘Yes. You finished with your plate? Want more tea?’

  Steel replied yes to both. When she came back to the table she had several newspapers in her grasp and she laid them out in front of him. ‘Guess who’s famous?’

  Steel groaned. He’d made the front page of two local papers and one national. The picture they had used was one that had been taken of him at the motorbike project. They’d been celebrating a grant made by a local charity which meant they could buy essential equipment and the local press had come along to capture the moment. Steel looked like a grinning wild man. His hair had needed the services of a comb and scissors and his beard would have looked at home on a member of ZZ Top. He’d intended to stay out of the photos on the night, had been kneeling in the mud mending a puncture only a few minutes before, but because he was one of the organizers they had dragged him into the pictures.

  Sophie tapped the headline. ‘“Hero cop”,’ she said. ‘Look, it says so in black and white.’

  Steel groaned again. He skim-read the article, which gave a bare bones account of his adventures. ‘Joe Martin is handling the media, I take it?’

  ‘Don’t knock it. He’s doing a good job.’

  ‘I know. He’s got more patience than I have.’ He tried stretching, realized belatedly it was a bad idea.

  ‘Get into your work clothes and I’ll tidy up here. Then I’m going to take you with me to the Dog. Naomi and I have an appointment with Julia Tennant at the Winslow Trust. She’s agreed to talk to us about Lisanne Griffin, but only if Naomi comes along. You can sit at a nice desk in the church hall and get on with tracking down the name Victor Griffin is supposed to have had before he became Victor Griffin, and if you want company you can wander over to the Dog and talk to Alec. He’s still working his way through the old records.’

  ‘Got my day all planned out, have you?’

  ‘Well, someone has to,’ she told him. ‘And Stacy called from the hospital. Maggie and the boys stayed late and Sarah had a good night. She reckons Maggie got her to talk about Vic and about life before Vic. She’s made notes and will courier them over. Stacy says she has no idea if there’s anything useful in them but—’

  ‘But anything is worth a look,’ he agreed, and slouched off to his bedroom to get dressed.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The public face of the Winslow Trust was an old house with a rather ugly conference centre tagged on to the side. The house was built of rather drab grey sto
ne, castellated and craggy. The conference wing of glass and concrete and steel tracked off at an odd angle from the left-hand side of the building. Sophie described the place to Naomi as they drove up the narrow, gravelled track towards it. ‘God knows how they got planning permission,’ she said. ‘The old house isn’t what you’d call pretty, but the new bit is a real excrescence.’

  ‘I decided long ago that I didn’t get modern architecture,’ Naomi commented. ‘No, that’s not quite true. I can really admire plumbing and heating and rooms with big windows, but not the concrete and steel stuff.’

  ‘Don’t they call it “brutalism” or something? I dated an architecture student once. Didn’t last. I think he required his girlfriends to have an admiration for Bauhaus. Looks like our host is waiting for us on the front step.’

  She checked that Naomi was all right getting out of the car and then came round to take her arm and lead her towards the building and Julia Tennant. The woman took them inside and into a side room with a view of the garden.

  ‘I’ve only got about a half hour,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve got a train to catch then.’

  ‘It’s good of you to spare us the time,’ Naomi said blandly.

  ‘Well, to be truthful, I wasn’t keen on the idea of talking to you at all, but—’

  ‘This is a murder investigation,’ Sophie remarked. ‘A woman that your Trust helped has been killed.’

  Julia laughed, mirthlessly. ‘Many women die, are killed, every week,’ she said. ‘Men too, though they hardly ever get the reporting they deserve. Their deaths rarely make the headlines.’

  Sophie shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘But we’re here about one particular woman,’ Naomi said firmly. ‘I tried to help Thea Baldwin and her child and your Trust took them to a place of safety. What we need to know now is who found them. How and why?’

  ‘It happens,’ Julia said. ‘Sometimes no matter what we do their past catches up with them, and the results are rarely good.’

  ‘There have been other deaths?’

  ‘A few over the years. I suppose that’s inevitable given the men and women we deal with. Those for whom all other options have run out. Some abusers can be unbelievably persistent. It’s the idea that those they abuse are somehow property. You come between them and their property and you are the guilty party. For some it’s almost a matter of – you can’t call it a matter of honour, it’s the opposite of that, but it’s a matter of personal and absolute necessity that they either get their property back or make certain that no one else benefits from it.’

  She paused, shrugged. ‘I’m aware that sounds crude, but it’s the closest explanation I can offer.’

  ‘And that was the case with Thea Baldwin?’ Sophie Willis asked.

  ‘Well, I’d have thought Naomi here could answer that better than me. She knew the family.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘Property, yes. Terry Baldwin was quite as obsessive as that. He was lazy, impulsive, jealous. He might not actually have wanted his wife and child, but the thought of them having a life separate from him, that they might be able to take control of their own lives … I think he’d have found that impossible to accept.’

  ‘So you have your answer. I can’t tell you much more. You know how important confidentiality is to our clients; to the operation of the Trust?’

  ‘I know that,’ Naomi told her. ‘And I was always terribly careful not to overstep the mark and break your rules. But we do need to know more. Sarah says that her mother found it really hard to settle anywhere until she met Victor Griffin, and that the Trust continued to help them all that time, finding them places to live and finding Thea jobs. Is that normal?’

  ‘There is no normal. Not really. Lisanne – Thea – well, she was unusually unsettled for a very long time, I suppose. But you have to understand, there is no central organization, not after we have helped people get away from their abuser. What happens is that Trust members make contact with their own circle of “friends” – that’s what we call our active volunteers. Some of those circles overlap, some are completely separate. A woman like Thea Baldwin would have been passed from friend to friend for a while, until it was deemed enough distance had been put between her and her husband. Each circle member typically knows only one member of another circle. We keep contact to a minimum. It’s usual for each circle to know people who will accept short-term lets on flats or who regularly employ casual workers. We help our clients create new identities for themselves. And each will have a key worker, though they are told only to contact them in real need. The idea is not to have a chain; a trail for anyone to follow.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘And when Thea Baldwin wanted to go to Bristol, do you know who organized that?’

  ‘That would be confidential information.’

  ‘Thea Baldwin is dead. Surely—’

  ‘And there are others who are very much alive and whose well being depends on silence.’ Julia rose. ‘I have a train to catch,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, but I really must go.’

  ‘We have to ask this,’ Sophie said. ‘But has there ever been evidence of a breach in the organization? Of someone betraying—’

  ‘Never,’ Julia said firmly. ‘We go to great lengths to protect those we help. Our security is tight and our people are vetted. Now, I really do have to go.’

  Back in the car Naomi could feel Sophie seething with frustration.

  ‘Well, that was a waste of time.’

  ‘I didn’t expect she would tell us much.’

  ‘She didn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘Um, maybe not.’ Naomi sighed. ‘And I suppose we can’t blame her for that. She has a responsibility to others.’

  ‘Something bothering you?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Probably nothing. It’s just that when we talked to Julia she spoke about Thea Baldwin as Thea for most of the time and then, just once, she said Lisanne and then corrected herself.’

  ‘And? I told her the name Thea Baldwin was living under.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But it bothers you?’

  ‘Just a bit. It’s like, if you’ve been used to knowing about someone by one name, it takes time for you to think of them as anything else.’

  ‘There’s no evidence she knew her as anything. No evidence she was ever directly involved with Thea Baldwin.’

  ‘That is also true,’ Naomi acknowledged. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m clutching at straws,’ she said, but as they drove away she could not fully dismiss that sense of unease.

  ‘Did you believe her when she said there’d never been a breach?’

  ‘No more than you did. Oh, I’m sure it’s been a rare occurrence and I’m sure they dealt with it, but I don’t believe you can run something like this – well, this underground railway, without someone at least getting careless from time to time. Or doing something unintentionally that has consequences. She admitted there’d been deaths. That others had been found.’

  ‘But you can also understand that she might not want to talk about it.’

  ‘Not want to, yes. But she might have to eventually.’ Naomi sighed. ‘As I said, I’m clutching at straws, and Thea’s death had nothing whatever to do with the Trust.’

  ‘But you have a feeling.’

  ‘I have a feeling I know something. I have a feeling that if I could actually see the files, I’d know what it was. I’d recognize it, you know.’

  ‘Must be frustrating.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘Most of the time, I’m fine. I just get on with life. I’m happy and settled and I’ve come to terms with being blind, with the fact that everything has changed and there’s not a bloody thing I can do about it. But just occasionally, you know?’

  ‘I think I can guess. Bluntly, I hope I never have to find out. Sorry, maybe that didn’t sound—’

  Naomi laughed. ‘It sounded like the way I used to feel,’ she said. ‘I’d see people overcoming problems and I’d think, wow, they are amazing. You know, li
ke they were another species, or something. It was only after my accident I realized that they were amazing because life had fucked them over and left them with no option. You could either get bitter and twisted or you could figure out how to live.’

  ‘And you chose.’

  ‘I suppose I did. Though to be fair, at the start it was other people doing the choosing for me. My sister, Alec, other friends. They told me what to do when I needed telling and helped me when I wanted to decide for myself. And it sort of worked out.’

  Sophie nodded. ‘I hope it works out for Sarah,’ she said. ‘What happened to you, I guess, if I had to, I’d learn to deal with. What happened to Sarah – well, I’m not sure how I’d cope.’

  ‘You just would,’ Naomi told her. ‘You would, because the only other choice is to lay down and die.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Back at Ferrymouth incident centre, Steel was catching up with calls. Twice, colleagues had attempted to contact the ex neighbour of Thea and Sarah Griffin who had left her new number and good wishes for Sarah’s recovery. He finally managed to get through just before lunchtime, and introduced himself.

  ‘How well did you know Thea Baldwin? I spoke to Sarah; she remembers you.’

  ‘Does she? I’m glad about that. She was a lovely little girl.’

  ‘And Thea? Did you get on with her too?’

  There was a momentary hesitation. ‘She was a nice woman, but that husband of hers … wouldn’t allow anyone in the house and you never knew where you were with anything. I’d invite her for coffee or get chatting at the school gate, but if he was around, she’d clam up like … he didn’t want her to be talking to anyone.’

  ‘And Sarah? Was he as controlling of her?’

  ‘Not in the same way, no. When he was there she had to be quiet and stay out of his way. We’d often see her out in the street. He’d told her to get out of the way, you know. She’d be out there for hours sometimes. All weathers.’

  ‘And did you invite her in?’