Convictions

by Julie Morrigan

  ‘We’re going to have a girlie time,’ said Penny. ‘Shopping, the cinema, clubbing on Saturday night.’

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ said Ruth, adding milk to her tea from the jug on the table.

  ‘So, what brings you here?’ asked Penny.

  ‘I came to let you know that Tina’s trial date has been set.’

  ‘Don’t you mean “Christina”?’ Penny rolled her eyes. ‘What’s that all about?’

  ‘As far as I can tell, she wants to make a fresh start, put all the bad stuff behind her.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ said Penny, her mood changing suddenly.

  Samantha squeezed her hand. ‘There, now. Don’t get wound up about it.’

  ‘It’s that little cow, Leanne, that gets me. She’s like smoke. One minute I’m having a conversation with my daughter, next she’s materialised alongside us in the visitors’ room. She’s like a bloody ghost or something. Little freak.’

  ‘She does seem to be having a positive influence on Tina,’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Let’s wait and see,’ said Penny. ‘It’s early days yet and that little sod gives me the creeps.’

  ***

  ‘Thanks, Mrs McCluskey.’ Tina smiled as Mary McCluskey headed out of her room. She was replaced almost instantly by Leanne.

  ‘What did Irish Mary want?’

  ‘Just a pep talk about my exams,’ said Tina. ‘I like her. She’s really helped me since I’ve been in here.’

  Leanne rolled her eyes. ‘She’s paid to help you. Don’t get to thinking she cares, you soft cow.’ She sat on the bed next to Tina and put her arm around her shoulders. ‘You know who cares about you, don’t you?’

  Tina snuggled into Leanne and rested her head on her shoulder. ‘Yes, I know.’ She smiled. ‘You’re so good to me, Leanne.’

  Leanne snaked a hand into her jeans pocket. ‘I’ve got something nice for you, if you want it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Red Devils.’

  Tina grinned. ‘Fantastic! They make me feel so …’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Glad to be alive.’

  Leanne shook the small wrap of pills in front of Tina, then dropped them on the bedside table. Tina put her MP3 player into the docking station and selected ‘random play’ as Leanne closed the door and put the chair from the desk behind it, wedging it under the handle. When she turned back, Tina was holding a pill and a glass of water out to her. Leanne took them and each girl put a Red Devil on her tongue and washed it down.

  Tina held her arms out to Leanne and the girls danced for a short time, then Leanne broke the embrace and pulled her T-shirt over her head.

  Tina smiled and followed suit.

  Chapter 9

  Ruth spent the best part of the next few weeks acting as liaison officer for a family whose thirteen-year-old son had gone missing. He had left his friend’s house after spending the Saturday afternoon playing computer games and arranging to go to the cinema the next day, but had never arrived home. Unusually, for the most watched nation in Europe, there was no sign of him on CCTV footage. To all intents and purposes, the boy had simply vanished into thin air.

  Outside of a very small circle of people, everything went on as normal without him, the vacuum he left behind filling up quietly but completely. Television appeals had been made, houses searched, people questioned, with particular attention paid to known sex offenders, but there was no sign of him anywhere. It reminded Ruth of Annie Snowdon, who had also been plucked out of the world and had left little behind to suggest she had even been there.

  Ruth had long since stopped wondering how such things could happen, and why they happened to certain people. She had a simple philosophy: some people were bad, and some people were unlucky. When the bad and the unlucky came together, terrible things happened. People died or were killed, were maimed or scarred in some way, sometimes in full view of horrified witnesses. At other times such things happened in secret, the victims discarded and then discovered at some future time by people who wished they had chosen a different path through the woods. Ruth didn’t waste her time believing in such concepts as angels or demons. There was nothing but people, and those people would behave as their essential nature demanded.

  While the search for Ben Addams went on, a student was killed in a hit and run accident, the driver turning out to be an angry fourteen-year-old girl who had stolen her father’s car following a family row; two drunks went back to the woman’s flat after meeting in a bar and, when she ridiculed his inability to perform, he obliged her with a broken bottle, resulting in her, perhaps merciful by that stage, death from blood loss; and a bank worker, having been pushed too far once too often by his supervisor, received a round of applause from his colleagues and a suspended sentence from a magistrate after punching the woman concerned in the face and breaking her nose.

  Life went on. And, eventually, life would recommence for those people for whom it was now frozen. Ben would show up or be found, either alive or dead, or his disappearance would begin to be accepted and a new way of life would start for the family. That way of life might incorporate the continuance of the search, efforts to keep his name alive and the case in the public eye, or might take the form of waiting, preserving his room and his things just as they were when he was taken, in the hope that it would act as a talisman, a beacon, that would somehow bring him home safe. Ruth knew of one family who had left their daughter’s room untouched, including the bed unmade, for seven or eight years. Other families fractured: unable to heal or restructure without their missing element, they fragmented, each finding in the faces of the others unbearable traces of what they had lost, evidence of failure and despair, and in the eyes a reflection of the pain and suffering, the sense of futility, that they themselves were struggling with.

  When a child was taken, it was only one element of what the eventual cost would be in terms of human suffering. Few relationships survived the pain. And heartbreakingly few children returned to their families to open the Christmas and birthday presents that accumulated in their absence, to look at the clothes that they had grown out of and laugh at their childish tastes, to wonder at the music they had chosen to listen to. They were trapped in the photographs in the family album as insects were in amber, unchanging, preserved for all time just as they had been when they went out into the world in all innocence and were unlucky enough to meet up with someone bad.

  A couple of weeks before Tina’s trial, Ruth once more pulled her car to a halt outside the YOI and headed in to see first Mary McCluskey and then Tina.

  ‘Her exams seem to have gone well,’ Mary told her. ‘She certainly worked hard enough for them and she seems to have come away fairly confident that she’s done as well as she could.’

  ‘Can’t ask any more of her,’ Ruth observed. ‘Did you get anywhere with trying to find out what was behind Leanne’s move here?’

  Mary settled back in her chair. ‘Yes, I did find out a bit more. It seems that she had some sort of a … crush on one of the other girls. You know how girls can admire someone a little bit older and try to be like them, especially when they’re in such close proximity?’

  Ruth nodded.

  ‘Well, it seems that’s what happened with Leanne and this other girl, but then they had a falling out. They both had supporters and the two sides started fighting, so Leanne was moved.’

  ‘And that solved the problem?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘It seems to have. Things there have settled down now, by all accounts.’

  ‘Who’s your contact?’

  ‘Jenny Thomas. Would you like her details?’

  ‘Please,’ said Ruth. She watched as Mary dug out a card from an index system and copied out the information for her.

  Mary McCluskey undoubtedly cared about the kids and she seemed to Ruth to be good at her job, but Ruth couldn’t help but wonder if her religion made her blind to certain aspects of the girls’ behaviour and the type of relationships they formed
. She planned to contact Jenny Thomas just as soon as she got back to the station to see what else might lie behind Leanne’s relocation.

  ***

  ‘Now, Simon Peter, I want you to read this passage and memorise it.’

  ‘For God’s sake! My name isn’t Simon Peter, it’s Ben. Ben Addams. I live at thirty-four Bankside Gardens, and my mum and dad are—’

  ‘Stop that!’ The backhander sent Ben reeling. ‘You will not take the name of the Lord in vain, do you hear me, boy? Now, read and memorise that passage. I’ll be back in half an hour to see you are getting on.’

  Ben blinked back tears. It was all so random. He didn’t think he even believed in God, he certainly had never spoken to anyone about Him in the street before. If only the blonde girl hadn’t been so friendly and pretty, he’d never have gone along with her to meet her friends. He wouldn’t have had the hot chocolate that knocked him out and he wouldn’t be here now.

  He turned to the book with the marked passage that he was to learn. He knew from experience that he had better do it, and do it right. He also knew in his heart of hearts that the man would win, and that sooner or later, he would become ‘Simon Peter’ and leave ‘Ben’ far behind.

  ***

  ‘This looks different,’ Ruth said, when she had a look around Tina’s room.

  ‘It’s much better, I think,’ said Tina. ‘It’s more in line with who I am now.’

  ‘Your MC Boyz poster has gone,’ Ruth observed.

  ‘They’re a kids’ band. I’m growing up and I’ve grown out of them.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Ruth asked, pointing to the poster of the band that had replaced them.

  ‘That’s Green Day. Their new album is awesome.’ She pointed to the other pictures on her wall and named the bands for Ruth. ‘That’s Good Charlotte. Limp Bizkit. Linkin Park. And Nirvana.’

  ‘That’s quite a change from what you were listening to.’

  ‘I know. I can’t believe how ignorant I was about music.’

  ‘I don’t see your bunny. Where’s he?’

  Tina laughed. ‘Leanne’s got him. We share custody of him now.’

  ‘You must be very close to let her have your bunny.’

  ‘Yes.’ Tina smiled shyly. ‘She’s the best friend I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Better than Hilary?’

  ‘Hilary’s mum won’t let her visit me in here. I haven’t seen her in ages.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Ruth.

  Tina shrugged. ‘Leanne says it’s typical of the middle classes to try to ignore things and people they consider to be problems.’

  ‘She sounds like quite the philosopher.’

  ‘I have my moments,’ came a voice from the doorway.

  Ruth started. She hadn’t realised that Leanne was there until the girl spoke. She wondered how much of the conversation she had eavesdropped on. ‘Hello, Leanne,’ she said. ‘And how is life treating you?’

  Leanne shrugged. ‘Okay. I just keep my head down and get on with it.’

  Ruth nodded.

  ‘I was just telling Ruth about our music,’ Tina said to Leanne. Then to Ruth, ‘It was Leanne who got me into these bands.’

  ‘Do you girls have somewhere to go?’ Ruth asked.

  Leanne nodded. ‘I just came to collect Christina. There’s something on television we wanted to watch.’

  ‘Is there?’ asked Tina. ‘I can’t remember. What is it?’

  ‘It’s on in ten minutes,’ Leanne replied. ‘We should go now.’

  ‘Well, I have to be going anyway,’ Ruth told Tina. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘At the trial,’ Tina said. She fidgeted, suddenly looking very young and very scared.

  Ruth took her by the shoulders. ‘It’ll be okay, love. Your defence team are doing a good job, and I’ll be there, and Karen Fitzgerald. Remember Karen?’

  Tina nodded. ‘She’s nice.’

  ‘And your mum.’

  Leanne snorted. Tina looked at the floor.

  ‘She’s still your mum,’ Ruth said, ‘and she might have a funny way of showing it sometimes, but she loves you.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Leanne sneered. ‘Christina, come on, we’ll be late.’

  ***

  As soon as Ruth got back to the station, she dug out the contact details Mary had given her and rang the number for Jenny Thomas. She was in luck: the phone was answered and Ruth explained who she was and why she was calling.

  ‘Leanne Davidson is a strange one.’ Ruth heard Jenny Thomas settle back in her chair. ‘The family are habitual criminals going back several generations, so her role models haven’t been the best.’ She barked a laugh. ‘To say the least. She’s also a manipulative kid. If you’ve been around her, you’ll already know what a sneaky little thing she can be.’

  Ruth thought of how each time she’d visited Tina in the YOI, Leanne had shown up as if by magic. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. She remembered Penny’s description of her. ‘She’s like smoke.’

  ‘That’s a good way to put it. She almost seems to seep into a room. She does the same with people’s heads, by the way. Insinuates herself into their hearts, minds and lives. Then, once she’s in there, she starts to fuck about with them.’

  ‘Is that what happened at your place?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘Pretty much. She attached herself to a girl called Tessa Clarke. Tessa’s a bit older but nowhere near as smart as Leanne. One day she’s hanging around, trying to be a part of Tessa’s gang, next thing you know, they’re having an affair.’

  ‘Mary McCluskey said it was a crush.’

  ‘Mary McCluskey’s a bit naïve. It went much further than that. Leanne wanted to be Tessa’s girl because Tessa had a gang and with that went power. Where she tripped up was, she tried to manipulate Tessa and to make her fall out with her close pals. She drove a wedge between Tessa and a couple of the other girls before Tessa realised what was happening. Once she did, she and Leanne had a massive fight and the next thing you know, the girls in here are in two distinct gangs that are at each other’s throats. Leanne was loving it. She feeds on chaos.’

  ‘How did she cause the rift in the first place?’

  ‘She’s a little shit stirrer. She’ll say to one girl, “You know, so and so laughs at you behind your back”, then say the same thing or something similar to the other. Next thing you know, the two girls in question are eyeing each other up and spoiling for a fight. What they don’t do is ask each other if it’s true. She plays on people’s weaknesses and sets them up to fight just so she can enjoy watching the show.’

  ‘She’s very close to a kid in the new place.’

  ‘Well, if she’s a kid you give a damn about, you want to look for a way to split them up, and soon. Oh, and just so you know, Leanne was also known to be the primary resource for the pill poppers. We think her brother brings them in, but we never caught either of them with anything.’

  ‘How do you know for sure, then?’

  ‘Mainly what other girls have told us. She’s clever. Sly, manipulative and clever. Watch her closely, Ruth. She’s rotten to the core and I don’t think Mary McCluskey appreciates just what a little viper she is.’

  ***

  Tina’s trial was brief, as she pleaded guilty, and largely uneventful. She had the good sense to say she hadn’t thought things through and really hadn’t wanted to murder Cotter. A psychiatrist’s report said that when Tina acted, the balance of her mind was disturbed. As a good Christian, George Cotter even forgave her publicly from the witness box.

  The judge, however, took a very dim view of a young woman with a grudge taking the law into her own hands and his disapproval was reflected in the punishment he imposed. Tina was sentenced to be detained for thirteen years. The gasp in the courtroom was audible: under the circumstances, no one had expected her to get anywhere near that.

  When Tina was led out of the courtroom, the shock was visible on her face. Penny was in tears, being comforted by her sister. Even Cotter lo
oked surprised.

  Ruth Crinson and Karen Fitzgerald were quiet as they drove back to the police station. When they broke the news to their colleagues, the mood became very sombre indeed.

  ‘At this rate she’s going to spend more years inside than Cotter did,’ said Rob Winter.

  ‘Her team will appeal. The sentence might yet get cut,’ said Ruth. ‘I’ll go and see her, see how she’s coping.’

  ‘Make it sooner rather than later,’ suggested Fitzgerald. ‘The way she must be feeling right now, she’s going to be an easy touch for that other kid you were telling me about.’

  ***

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Penny was sitting at the kitchen table with Ruth and Samantha, a mug of coffee in front of her and a lit cigarette in her hand. She drew deeply on the cigarette and held the smoke in her lungs. When she released it, she muttered, ‘I need a drink’.

  Ruth sneaked a look at her watch: it was just ten o’clock.

  ‘Hang on a while,’ Samantha counselled. ‘We’ll go out for lunch and you can have a glass of wine then.’ She flicked a look at Ruth and picked up her concern immediately.

  ‘The sentence was harsh,’ Ruth agreed, ‘but we can be reasonably hopeful it gets reduced on appeal.’

  ‘Oh, you haven’t heard the best of it yet.’ Penny worked on the cigarette again, the tip glowing angrily between her fingers. ‘Little madam doesn’t want them to appeal. Reckons she couldn’t go through all that again.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No, it’s true enough,’ Samantha confirmed. ‘We spoke with Tina before she was taken back to the prison yesterday, and then Penny was on the phone to her for an hour or more last night. She was adamant that she didn’t want an appeal to be launched.’

  ‘That’s madness,’ said Ruth. ‘Even if she just gets a couple of years taken off the sentence, at her age that would make a massive difference.’

  ‘I know, I know, but she knows best.’ Penny blinked back tears, stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. She didn’t fully snuff it out and Ruth watched her through a plume of blue-grey smoke. ‘Will you speak to her, Ruth? Please? She listens to you far more than she does to me. Maybe you can get through to her.’