by Anna Smith
She found herself dialling the number before she’d thought it through. Then she stopped and put the phone down. What was she doing? This was the kid of a ruined young woman who’d walked into her life six months ago and told her a story. It had cost Mags Gillick her life, and if Rosie had known at the time that was the price, she’d have walked away there and then. But she didn’t. Mags died with her throat cut in a back alley off the Drag, murdered by someone she thought was a punter but who’d been sent to silence her by the men Rosie was trying to expose. She had never forgotten the expression on Gemma’s face later that night when they roused her from sleep in the squalid flat where she lived with her mum. The tired little eyes that had lit up when they saw Rosie in the crowd in the street that night, and her forlorn look as the police car drove her away and Rosie had stood powerless.
But she could not allow herself to get involved in this. Gemma was with foster parents now. She wouldn’t grow up in a junkie house where her mother left her alone at night. The reality is she was getting a chance she might never have had if her mother had lived. She didn’t need Rosie to walk back into her life and give her hope of other things.
But then she lifted the phone again. What harm could it do to get in touch and just let the kid know she was still thinking about her. She remembered how alone she’d felt when she was taken away after her own mother died. The neighbours, the friends, everything she’d ever known was gone. She was left in a terrifying world where she knew no-one. No. Rosie wouldn’t let that happen to Gemma.
‘Hello?’ The woman on the other end of the phone said.
‘Oh. Hello. Er … Sorry to disturb you … I’m just making sure I’ve got the right phone number. Actually, can I ask if you are the lady who is fostering Gemma Gillick?’
‘Who’s this please?’
‘Oh. Sorry. My name is Rosie Gilmour. I knew Gemma’s mother. I … I’ve got a letter from her. From Gemma.’
The woman’s voice changed.
‘Aaah, yes, Rosie … My name is Alice Martin. I’m sorry about that. It was me who wrote the number on Gemma’s letter. She’s been driving me mad for weeks now to get in touch. I’m so sorry. Is it a problem for you?’
‘No.’ Rosie said quickly. ‘Of course not. I was delighted to hear from Gemma. I think of her often.’
‘Oh, she’s the most wonderful little girl. Bright as a button.’ She lowered her voice. ‘To be honest she was a bit of a mess when she first came, but she’s getting on so well now. She’s so loving, and such a beautiful little girl.’ The woman sounded sad.
‘Is everything alright.’
‘Yes.’ She paused. ‘It’s just that I’m not too well in myself at the moment.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Would you like to see Gemma? She keeps asking. I mean, I see your name in the paper and I’m sure you’re really busy.’
‘Yes,’ Rosie said. ‘I’d love to see her. Actually I’ve been away for nearly six weeks – that’s why I took so long to get in touch. Maybe we could meet in a cafe or something? Would that be alright? I’ll be back in a few weeks.’
‘That would be lovely. I have two other kids I foster as well. Do you want to say hello to Gemma? She’s in her room watching the telly.’
‘I’d love to.’
She heard Gemma’s voice babbling away before she came on the phone.
‘Hello?’ The voice questioning.
‘Hi, Gemma, how are you? It’s Rosie?’
‘Rosie! It’s you! I thought you wouldn’t phone. I wrote ages ago. Hiya, Rosie. How’s you?’ There was a little keyed up giggle to her voice and Rosie pictured her beaming at her foster mother and the thrill in her eyes that she had somebody, that she wasn’t alone.
‘So how are you, Gemma? Do you like your new home? Your foster mum says she’ll bring you to see me. We can meet in town or something.’
‘Really? Can I really come? Can I come to your house sometime? We never got the pizza. Can we still get the pizza? Or go to the cafe?’
Rosie laughed.
‘We’ll see, Gemma, we’ll see. Put your foster mum back on. I’ll see you soon. You be good now.’
‘I am, Rosie. You won’t forget? I told my pal at school and she said you’d forget, but I knew you’d come.’
‘Okay. I will. Bye, Gemma.’
‘Bye, Rosie. See you, Rosie. See you.’
CHAPTER 26
In the stuffy waiting room at Barlinnie prison, Rosie waited among the visitors sat in rows of plastic tubular chairs watching for the doors to open.
Angry young men sized up the prison warders, bristling with hate for anything and anyone in authority, especially if they wore the uniform of a cop – even worse if it was a screw. Today they’d be visiting someone who had graduated to the next level, someone doing time who had earned their respect. The only certainty for most of the boys in this room was that tomorrow, or some day soon, it would be their turn. And when that time came they’d stick out their chests and walk the walk in ‘C’-Hall. They’d do their time and they’d earn their stripes like everyone else. And so it would continue, as it had done for generations. Like following your father down the pit or into university, depending on how your particular cookie crumbled.
Children ran up and down the aisles, excited. For all the crap that was going on in the lives of the adults around them, there was something resembling a party atmosphere here. Their dad was a hero, and soon he’d be getting marched from his cell to take them onto his knee and fill their head with stories of all the great things that were going to happen when he got home. Young mums, faces made up and dressed sexily, chatted with each other, swapping stories. Then there were the tired faces of mothers visiting sons, disappointment written all over them. Soon they’d be fighting back tears as they sat with their boys, ruined lives unfolding at every table.
Rosie looked around her and wondered how many of them were here to visit a sex offender, and what it must feel like living with the stigma of having a loved one who was a beast. Rapists, child murderers and perverts who made your skin crawl, yet somebody loved them enough to come and see them.
When the doors opened, everyone filed through to the adjacent area where they emptied their pockets and handbags under the scrutiny of a prison warder. Rosie had left her handbag in the boot of her car and now emptied her jacket pockets for the prison officer, who put everything into a locker and gave her a ticket. She had to open her mouth to be examined inside to make sure she wasn’t carrying any drugs to pass on to the prisoner via a kiss. Fat chance, Rosie thought, knowing the pond life she was about to encounter.
Along with about twenty other visitors, she was taken to another room, separate from the mainstream visitors. The sex offenders were kept in the segregation wing of Bar-L, away from the hardmen in other halls who would cheerfully rip them open, convinced they were doing society a favour. And the truth is, they probably would be.
Rosie looked at the weary faces of some of the older women – mothers, who could scarcely believe that the baby they’d carried in their womb would turn into the twisted monster of tabloid headlines. Yet still they visited, listened, refused to desert their sons.
In the large, airy hall, the visitors sat at tables, waiting for their prisoner to appear. Rosie had photographs emailed to her in Spain of Frankie Nelson leaving court after his sentence, so she hoped she’d recognise him.
The door at the end of the hall opened and a procession of prisoners came in, some waving as they recognised their visitors. Rosie’s eyes scanned the cons in their blue-and-white striped shirts, prison issue for convicted prisoners as opposed to the red and white stripes of those on remand. She’d visited cons several times before, and though some looked fit from working out at the gym, nothing could take away the pasty pallor all prisoners wore from being in jail.
These men looked the same, but they were different. They were the sickos she’d written about when she’d covered trials where the ordeals of their victims were revealed i
n court, and where jurors sometimes fainted at scene-of-crime photographs of the brutality inflicted on an innocent child or woman who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The last prisoner to come through the door was Frankie Nelson. Rosie’s eyes made contact with his, and his lip curled a little, sending a shiver through her. He seemed to pull back his shoulders as he came towards her, with a confident stride bordering on a swagger. He didn’t look left or right, but kept his eyes on Rosie.
‘Rosie.’ Nelson stuck out a hand as he sat down at the table facing her.
‘Frankie.’ Rosie didn’t squeeze his hand. It felt fleshy and damp. She had the creeps already and he hadn’t even said anything. She hoped her disgust wasn’t written all over her face.
‘You don’t like this, do you?’ he sniffed, ‘guys like me. Beasts.’
Nelson held onto her hand for a second too long until she pulled it away. His dead eyes looked at her from beneath thick black eyebrows.
‘You meet all kinds of people in my job, Frankie,’ she said, looking straight at him.
‘Are you scared of me, Rosie?’ He sized her up. ‘You look edgy.’
‘I’m scared of nobody, Frankie.’ She leaned closer to him and could smell his sweat. ‘Not you, not anybody.’
She raised her eyebrows for added emphasis. Fuck him. A scumbucket like him wasn’t going to put the frighteners on her. She clasped her hands on the middle of the table so they were almost touching his.
‘So talk to me, Frankie. It was you who asked to see me.’
Silence. Rosie watched him. He looked at her, then down at the table, then back at her.
‘How’s Spain?’ He flicked a glance at her hair then a quick glimpse at her body.
‘It’s not exactly a holiday,’ Rosie said, flatly.
Nelson nodded. ‘Aye. That wee lassie. They’ll need tae get her soon or they can forget it.’
Rosie waited for him to say more. Tiny beads of sweat appeared above his top lip. It took her by surprise. There was weakness somewhere in his armour.
‘I didn’t come all the way from Spain for you to tell me that, Frankie.’ She spread her hands out. ‘What’ve you got to tell me? If it’s useful for the investigation, then every minute is important. You know that.’
He ran his index finger across his top lip, removing the sweat.
‘Aye, I know.’ He shifted in his seat.
If Rosie didn’t know better she’d have thought he was squirming. But this was a monster, who’d just been jailed for fifteen years for his part in the murder of a woman twelve years ago, because she’d threatened to tell police that he and his homosexual partner were abusing boys. People like him didn’t squirm. Or did they?
‘Do you know anything, Frankie, that you think might help in the hunt for Amy Lennon? Time is running out, if it’s not already too late.’ Rosie looked at the chewed fingernails on his fat hands.
He took a deep breath.
‘There’s a big market out there for porn films with kids in them. I used to sell them.’ He paused, looking at Rosie for a reaction. ‘And I made a few myself. Me and Vinny, before I fucked off. Me and him made films and sold them.’
Silence. His words hung in the air like pollution.
‘Did you make the films with the kids you had sex with Frankie?’ Rosie couldn’t hide her revulsion.
‘Fuck you, Rosie.’ His eyes grew darker. ‘I know you and your kind. You think you can put the world to rights, but you’re all fucked up yourself.’ His lip curled again, more of a snarl than a smile. ‘Hey. I know you nearly got done over in Glasgow, by the way. You rattled a lot of cages. You might rattle one too many one of these days and someone will rip you to bits.’ He made a tearing gesture with his hands.
Rosie held his stare.
‘It’s not about me, Frankie. It’s not about you. It’s about a frightened wee lassie who doesn’t deserve to be taken away from her mammy.’
‘Is that what you were, Rosie? A frightened wee lassie who wanted her mammy?’
He smirked. Evil bastard. Rosie wondered if he knew of her past or if he was just pushing any buttons to see if he could rile her.
‘Look,’ Rosie said, trying to sound less confrontational. She put her hands up. ‘Listen. What you are and what you’ve done is for you to sort out, Frankie. It’s not my business. But you want honesty? No. I don’t like it, and no, I don’t like people like you. But I care about the life of an innocent kid. You want to hate me for that, fine. There’s nothing more to say here.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘I’m sorry to have taken up your time.’ She stood up knowing it was a risky move.
‘Wait. Sit doon.’
She sat down.
‘I’ll tell you what I know.’
Rosie listened as Nelson told her how he and his homosexual lover, Vinny Paterson, had moved to Tenerife to escape the heat over the disappearance of the woman neighbour they’d killed twelve years ago in Ayrshire. Vinny was still on the run. They hadn’t meant to kill her, it had just got out of hand. They’d only been trying to frighten her because she was going to shop them. He shrugged, and said the boys were all about twelve to fourteen and they were alright with the sex as long as they were getting money. Rosie tried to keep her expression impassive.
‘It was Vinny who lost the plot that night,’ Nelson said. ‘She was drunk when she came in to our house and we had been taking pictures of some boys. She started shouting that she was going to shop us and Vinny slapped her. Then she grabbed the bread knife and lunged at him, and I managed to grab her and get it off her. I shoved her and she hit the floor. I heard her head crack. I didn’t know if she was dead but there was blood. Then Vinny just went berserk. He took the knife and stabbed her chest about ten times, so we had to get rid of her. We put her in a wheelie bin and took her to the sea and weighted her down and dumped her.’
He paused.
‘So you moved to Tenerife.’ Rosie didn’t want to hear any more of the murder of his neighbour or his earlier life. She had read about all that in the newspaper cuttings.
‘Aye,’ Nelson said. ‘That’s when we really got involved with the porn flicks.’
He told her that he and Vinny made porn films in the basement of an apartment in Las Americas, with kids they had picked up at train stations and on the streets. There was a huge market across Europe where you could buy porn movies with kids in them from almost anywhere in the world – Asia, Africa, India. Take your pick, he said. It had been organised in recent years by Russian and Albanian gangsters who were involved in everything from drugs to people-trafficking. Making porn films with kids was just another strand of their organisation.
‘Can you tell me any names, Frankie? Where the main players are?’
‘Morocco,’ he said. ‘People out there who work with the Russians. That’s where Vinny is now. Or he was …’ His voice trailed off.
‘What do you mean?’ Rosie asked. ‘What happened?’
Silence. She waited.
‘Okay, I’ll tell you something. It’s up to you what you do with it, but it’s dangerous.’
Rosie nodded.
‘Snuff movies.’
She felt an uncomfortable tightness in her chest.
‘Vinny wanted us to go into that. Killing weans on film.’
‘Jesus,’ was all Rosie managed to say.
Nelson shook his head.
‘That’s not me.’ He looked at Rosie. ‘You think I’m a monster. I don’t care what you think, but I don’t kill weans.’ He paused. ‘But Vinny did.’
‘Vinny killed a child? Who did he kill?’ Rosie whispered.
‘A wee boy in Tenerife. He was always in the papers as reported missing, if you check back. He was never found. But I know what happened to him. Vinny killed him. He filmed it. That’s when I left. That night. He filmed it. I haven’t seen Vinny since, but I know he’s still in this.’ He shook his head. ‘There was always a streak in Vinny. He wanted to push things further and further. He didn’t
know when to stop.’
‘Do you think Vinny or any of the people he works with could be connected to the missing girl?’
Nelson nodded slowly. ‘You find Vinny, and you’ll find that wee lassie.’
The bell rang to sound the end of visiting. Nelson stood up and stretched out his hand.
‘That’s all I can tell you.’ He shook Rosie’s hand. ‘You still think I’m a monster, don’t you?’
Rosie looked at him.
‘Thanks for your information, Frankie. I hope it helps.’
CHAPTER 27
In the steady drizzle, Rosie drove down London Road in the East End of Glasgow towards St John’s Hostel. She’d tried to brace herself for what she might find there when she asked for a man called Martin Gilmour, but how could she really prepare herself for a moment she’d waited for all her life. Now all she had to do was knock on the door.
Part of her wanted to drive past and keep on going. She already had more than enough on her plate. But a much bigger part of her wanted to see what he looked like, to hear his voice, see what childhood memories it would trigger. For so long he’d been like a phantom to her, and when she’d tried to picture him older, the way that Marion had described him when he’d come to the Post, she couldn’t. The only way to find out was to do it now. By tomorrow night, she’d be back in Spain. Whoever it was she was going to meet now was not a part of her life any more.
She parked her car close to the hostel and hurried through the rain to the front door. She pressed the bell and the door buzzed and unlocked without any voice coming through the intercom. Security obviously wasn’t a strong point.
The smell hit her as soon as she stepped into the dingy foyer. Stale cigarette smoke and unwashed clothes mingled with a vague odour of onions and cooking fat. The black and white tiled floor in the hallway looked dirty in the gloomy light, and the reception appeared to be in semi-darkness. If you ended up here, just looking around you would tell you how crap your life had turned out. Rosie shuddered to think what the rooms must look like – though in a place like this there probably weren’t rooms, dormitories more likely, with rows of rancid, festering down-and-outs sleeping off the booze.
