PM Mrs Crawshaw, did you ever meet Michael Watson’s wife?
PC Meet her? I never knew he was married, apart from in his Kiddington days, of course. As I have said, we had nothing to do with the Cottees after the strike started. We’ve not been back to Benidorm until now and have certainly not had any dealings whatsoever with that mucky sod Mick Watson. So even if he had got married, or jumped under a bus or off a cliff, we’d never have heard.
PM Forgive me, Mrs Crawshaw, Mr Watson married his wife that year. He’d already been living with her for two years when you had your sessions with him in eighty-one. Did you never meet his wife?
Paula Crawshaw was again rendered speechless. It was clearly a territory so foreign that she could hardly recognise herself.
PC Believe me, when we came on that holiday we had no idea... Well at least three of us had no idea that we would ever meet Mick Watson, let alone that Suzie would have him in bed with us instead of Don. And none of us, including Suzie, I’m sure, had any idea whatsoever that he was a married man, rest assured. But I have to say that it would have been in character. He was married twice when he was still in Kiddington. His first walked out because she couldn’t take any more of his messing around, and the second was a real weirdo. They say she was a junkie. She topped herself and then he disappeared.
PM Topped herself?
Matarse, suicidarse, Sir.
PC Mick Watson never mentioned anything about being married again. But that, of course, would have been in character as well. He’s not the most forthcoming of men.
PM You are sure about that? No-one knew?
Paula paused again. The energy to speak seemed to have drained from her.
PC Have you finished with me? I think I don’t want to hear any more. It might be bad for my health.
PM I take it then that your answer was ‘no’. Please, Mrs Crawshaw, please do step down...and thank you. Please accept my apologies for my directness. I apologise also to you, Señor García and Señora del Mar. The urgency of the information I was given when I entered the building this morning was such that I had to raise it and I had no chance to brief you before we began.
As Pérez Molino spoke to his colleagues, Paula Crawshaw made her way slowly and dejectedly to the door. It was only when she reached for the handle that the official intervened, indicating that she should exit the hearing on the other side, thus forcing her to trudge across the entire width of the room. Pérez Molino was momentarily distracted, saying, “Thank you, they should not meet,” hurriedly as Paula shuffled her way, now embarrassed as a tomato, across to the other door.
The door had barely closed behind Paula Crawshaw when Pérez Molino nodded to his right to indicate that the next witness could enter. It was the ungainly figure of Maureen Voros that appeared to testify again. There was a tangible tension. If ever there had been a procedure, it was now nowhere to be seen. At the start of the session that morning no-one had expected to see Maureen Voros again. She took the stand. There was a new air of confidence about her that had been absent on the previous occasion.
PM For the benefit of my colleagues in this hearing, Mrs Watson, could you please tell us what you told me in private earlier today?
MV I can. There was a baby. It was born in the middle of nineteen eighty-two. It was a little girl. Mick and I had split up and Susan Cottee had moved in with him. She stayed on with my husband after that holiday. Well, of course, she was pregnant...
PM Was she sure it was your husband’s child, Mr Watson’s child?
MV No, not at all. She didn’t know. It could have been, but then it could have been Donald’s. There might have been someone else, even another bloke from just before the holiday. Who knows? Even she didn’t seem to know. She certainly didn’t want to tell. Not that I had anything to do with her, of course. I think we may have met once, but she didn’t know who I was. We were never introduced. She didn’t even know that Mick was married. He never told her and I certainly didn’t. But then I suppose we weren’t really married at that time. We’d separated.
PM But you did meet with her, even though she was living with your husband?
MV Not really. I had nothing at all to do with her. Mick was providing for me, paying the rent on the flat and paying me a salary, because I was still working for him. That’s what kept me quiet. But she lived with him for the full year. It was only right at the very end that I spoke to her, and it was just the once that we met.
PM When was that?
MV About August that year. It must have been then because it was just over a year after the holiday that she left. She said she couldn’t cope with another baby, that she’d never wanted one and should have got rid of it. She said it was Mick that persuaded her to have it so he could put pressure on her to stay with him, which is what he wanted. At least that’s what she thought. I never believed her. And I certainly had learned never to believe a single word he said. What she wanted, if you ask me, was his money. He always seemed to have plenty of money and she fell for his play-acting. She seemed to revel in any sense that it was her right to be well off, to be different from other people. The money was like a drug for her. When she could spend money, she was a different person. It was as if she came alive. And Mick was always flashing it around, so he could make her feel like she was someone she never was, never became. But the money wasn’t his. A lot went through his hands, but I doubt much of it ever stuck. But he looked rich compared to her husband, who never had two pennies to scratch his arse.
PM Scratch...?
Poor, Sir.
PM I see. So Susan Cottee walked out and left the child.
MV She walked out. I never knew, but I think she was right. It was Mick who wanted her to keep the baby. He wanted me to look after it, but I could only do so much. I went back to him for a while when Suzie left. He went downhill really fast. He was depressed for months. He’s that sort of fellow is Mick. Once he’s in your blood, he’s like an infection you can’t get rid of and, just like an infection, he passes it on. You get ill with him. But then he makes out he is so strong, so independent, but underneath he’s completely vulnerable. He can’t take a knock. He reacts, often wants to get his own back. Lord knows what he told that little girl about her mother.
PM And you looked after the baby?
MV I did not. I could not. We needed a wet nurse. She was only three months old, the poor thing. Pretty little thing she was as well. And placid with it. Never cried much.
PM And so what did you do? What happened to the child?
MV Well, given Mick’s line of business... Yes he was into that kind of thing as well all those years ago. He knew plenty of women who had had abortions, and others who had got pregnant, had gone through with it and had the child. You name it, he knew it. I told him straight up that I would come back to him, but that I wasn’t going to look after someone else’s baby. He had to make alternative arrangements.
PM And that’s what he did?
MV Exactly. There was one particular woman on his books at the time. She was single and had a new baby of her own, so she couldn’t work as much as she needed to make ends meet. She was one of Mick’s acts. She did the clubs. She was pretty well-endowed so she had enough for two. She took the little girl, temporarily to begin with. I went back to Mick and he used the money he’d been paying out for me to pay the rent on her flat. It couldn’t have been simpler, really. She was happy, because she didn’t have to work as many hours to make a living, and she’d wanted a baby in the first place. Now she had two. She was pleased as punch. But I had nothing to do with her. I never even saw her after she took the kid. Mick used to visit her privately. I think he might have been the father of her little boy as well, but he never admitted it. I might be wrong...
PM It could be important...
MV Look, I don’t know. I’m speculating. We never really discussed it. Mick never talks
about anything serious or personal. But I think she was an addict as well as a prostitute, as well as a performer. Mick effectively ran her entire life. She wasn’t on anything hard, but she was a regular user of something or other and Mick was her supplier. And it was her that brought up Susan Cottee’s daughter.
PM And what happened to her? What happened to them?
MV I have no idea. Mick visited regularly over the next few months. Soon after Christmas, Mick lost his job and was out of work for most of the following year. He ran out of money. I had a job, so I could support us, but I was damned sure I wasn’t paying the rent for that other flat, so I stopped it. The landlord made her life difficult to get her out. She disappeared, took both children and I’ve neither seen nor heard of her since.
Pérez Molino placed a piece of paper into the view of his two colleagues before passing it to the clerk. He made sure I didn’t see it. He nodded in its direction as he spoke.
PM And she lived at the address you gave me earlier?
MV She did. But as I said, I had no dealings with her after those first few months when she had the baby.
PM And her name was Tatiana.
MV It was.
There was a long and protracted lull in the proceedings. The three council members conferred for a full five minutes before Doña María continued. Maureen Voros spent most of her time applying lipstick clumsily to her ample lips, its brilliant red contrasting blood-like with the extreme pallor of her complexion.
MdM Señora Watson, this may be a delicate matter... Please feel free to tell me if this is none of my business... When did you and Mr Watson last live as man and wife?
MV Nineteen eighty-two. I left him again even before Tatiana did. Mick saw more of her than he did of me. He was always down at that flat. I spent most of my time alone so I left.
MdM And when did you come back to live here?
MV I’ve been backwards and forwards all along. At first I was working here over the summers and going somewhere else for the winters. I suppose I’ve been here full time for ten years or more. I’ve been at The Castle for seven years. It was me who got Mick the manager’s job.
MdM And did you not suggest to your husband that you live again as his wife?
MV No fear, love! Do me a favour. I wouldn’t go near him with a barge pole because you’d never know where he’d been. And now of course...
She hesitated. Doña María asked a question without speaking.
MV Well, he’s on borrowed time. He’s HYV, has been for a while.
PM HYV?
I was perplexed for a moment. Then I offered my best interpretation. It’s a variety of rice, Sir. It produces a lot of grains on each stem. Perhaps it’s a reference to the number of children Mr Watson has had.
PM Mrs Watson, what do you mean by HYV?
MV He was infected. He had the clap. Time and time again. He never got that sisyphus or anything. But a couple of years ago they told him he was HYV. You know. AIDS, but it hasn’t gone that far. His drugs bill must be thousands a month.
PM SIDA
MV No, AIDS. Except that it hasn’t developed into the full blow job, if you see what I mean, because he’s got these expensive drugs.
PM And who knows about his condition?
MV Well I did. And so did his business partner, Mr Squibb, the bloke we never used to see. He knew because he’s the one supplying Mick with his drugs, both the ones he sells and the ones he uses.
PM And no-one else knew?
Maureen Voros hesitated. Now I could have imagined this, but I feel certain I saw a hint of a smile on her lips as she stared blankly into space. I mentioned that she had re-done her lips just a few minutes before, so the edges were all very clear. She might just have accentuated the shape of her mouth, but I am sure there was a smile, and she suppressed it. It was almost half a minute before she stirred. Her eyes re-focused and then she looked around the room, almost calculatedly assessing whether people were listening, paying her the attention she believed her answer deserved. She clearly wanted this remark to be noticed.
MV I told Susan Cottee.
PM So Donald and Susan Cottee knew that Michael Watson was HIV positive.
MV Watch my lips, Señor. I told Susan Cottee. That’s what I said and that’s what I meant. I did not tell Donald Cottee.
PM Why?
MV It was a mistake, a slip of the tongue. I could have kicked myself when I did it. But once the cat was out of the bag... Susie was very upset. There was something she’d found out...
PM Her own illness?
MV Maybe. Maybe something else. I don’t know. But what she said, if I can remember, was something like, “I should have stayed with Mick... He gave me everything that’s been good in life. He gave me...” And then she stopped. I think she was going to talk about her daughter, the one she left behind when she went back to Donald.
PM So she knew that you were aware of the child?
MV Perhaps. I did meet her those years ago, but she didn’t remember. Before I was always Jackson and now I’m Voros again. She never knew my maiden name. And I had red hair in those days. This black is all dye.
PM Ah ... so it is possible...
MV ...that she didn’t know that Maureen Voros was Maureen Jackson, the woman she met a couple of times twenty-seven years ago, were one and the same person? Correct. Hardly needs a law degree to work that one out, if you ask me!
PM Sorry, I interrupted... you were telling us what Susan Cottee said.
MV She said that Mick had given her some good times in her life. And now he’d given her the chance to live a dream by becoming a successful businesswoman if she could make a success of The Castle. She got all weepy, and said that all she’d ever had from Don was poverty and a daughter that hated her. I think she wasn’t being serious. Maybe she’d been drinking. She did drink, you know. She drank on the quiet. She had a bottle, always just a half bottle, usually Bacardi, sometimes vodka - never gin because you could smell that... She kept it in the drawer of her desk in the room she converted into her office. She had to have an office. She was the boss, you see, the stuck up... But there again, it might have all been down to the drugs she was on. She was taking them all the time. I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but I felt she was saying things to me to put me off the scent of something. That’s what I think. But she did say in passing that she had seriously thought of leaving that stupid caravan of hers and moving into Mick’s house where there was plenty of space, heating, hot water and some comfort. But she wasn’t serious. I know she hated his guts. You could tell.
PM And you advised her not to go, obviously.
MV I did. I said she shouldn’t go near the man with a barge pole because of his HYV. It stopped her dead in her tracks. “Since when?” she asked me. “A couple of years ago,” I said. I said he was on drugs for it. She nearly dropped through the floor. She was speechless.
PM Through the floor?
Surprised, Sir.
PM And then she will have told Donald.
MV I’ve no idea about that, Señor.
PM She will have told Donald. Thank you, Mrs Watson, Miss Voros. We are over our time. The hearing is adjourned.
García López slammed his file shut and almost shot out of the room. Pérez Molino and María del Mar continued to confer. Maureen Voros smiled and simultaneously wept as she left the room.
Three
Hi Joe. Here’s details of the third day. It proved to be a fundamentally different kind of day from the previous two. Until today, Pérez Molino was the dominant member of the council. Today, we had open warfare. There was real competition about who was going to push the hearing this way or that. I have the feeling now that García López came with a point to make, and perhaps another to prove. But the big surprise was Señora del Mar’s eventual domination of the day. The first
testimony came from Doctor Steven Car. He was a small man in his late forties or early fifties. He wore a dark suit, light grey shirt and red tie. Surely this indicated some political statement. He carried an old fashioned briefcase, the type that has two straps with buckles at the front. He took the stand quietly, opened his case and retrieved a pair of reading glasses and then began to extract files from the bag, eventually selecting two bound in plastic wallets with clear covers and coloured backs. The green one was clearly his copy of the Cottee blog. The blue one, on the other hand, was much slimmer and clearly contained his own notes, material that he was obviously going to share with the hearing. He consulted this file throughout his presentation, but insisted, before he offered any acknowledgement of the existence of the three council members, that he should have the time and space to flick through its contents. Only then, after two or three minutes, did he look up to face the questioners. María del Mar began.
MdM Would you please introduce yourself.
SC My name is Steven Car, Doctor Steven Car of the University of Punslet.
MdM And your position?
SC I lecture in linguistics. My specialism is socio-linguistics, particularly the nature and context of the dialects of Yorkshire.
MdM And you are responsible for the Cottee blog, the document that has already been distributed, and now forms Part One of our report?
SC I am not responsible for it... I assembled it, but I used only the material that was supplied to me on the memory stick. I, myself, neither constructed nor re-constructed any of the material.
MdM Can you describe how the material came into your possession?
SC Certainly. I received an email and then, once I had replied accepting in principle, several phone calls from police officers, consular staff and others, some from Spain and others from within the United Kingdom. They asked if I would be willing to analyse a document purportedly partly written in a Yorkshire dialect. In addition, my participation was officially requested via my employer and so I was both willing and pleased to accept the commission.
A Search for Donald Cottee Page 59
