by John Harvey
'Likes these, does she?'
'What...? What d'you mean? I don't understand.'
'Beatrice. A fan of these? Plain digestives? Not the chocolate kind?'
'Please, please, I...'
'Yes?'
Pierce's eyes were like birds, desperate for flight. His body shook inside his ill-fitting clothes. As Will came close, he turned his head suddenly aside, lurched forward, and was violently sick, vomit trailing from his mouth and nose.
'Jim, take him inside. Get him cleaned up. I don't want him stinking out the car like that.'
74
The doctor who examined Beatrice pronounced her fit and well, physically at least, no sign that she'd been assaulted or abused, a diet largely made up of cereal, tinned peaches, cheese, bread and water and cold baked beans enough to sustain her in captivity. As for the other side of things, he told Ruth, they would have to take them as they came, day by day. Social Services agreed. Watch over her, but not too closely, give her room, time to adjust; let her talk about what happened if she wants to, but never force it, never push. There were people who could help, if necessary, professionals; therapists used to dealing with children, young people, trauma.
What none of them said, not then, not in public: it could have been worse, much worse. Everyone knew, gave thanks as best they could, prayed if they'd a mind.
'Simon,' Ruth had ventured once, 'he didn't touch you or anything?'
'No, Mum.' A quick dismissive shake of the head. 'It's okay.'
She hadn't asked again.
For now it was enough for Ruth to watch her daughter as she walked across the room, pulled at a strand of hair, kicked her heels, smiled at nothing, frowned. So far Beatrice had said very little about the days spent in captivity, other than how boring it had been.
'Mum, I'm gonna watch some telly, yeah?'
'All right, yes, if you want.'
What Ruth wanted was to take her in her arms and hold her till it hurt. Instead, she went and sat by the window and picked up a magazine. Little by little, step by step: give her time.
Simon Pierce was abject, silent, filled with remorse. Unshaven, unkempt, he sat across from Will and Jim Straley, hands clasped in his lap, unable to look either officer in the face. Questioned, there was none of the self-assuredness he had occasionally shown before.
His solicitor, fresh-faced, eager, being offered such a high-profile case a decided feather in her cap, was anxious to intervene, draw attention to points of procedure, points of law, give her client all the protection he required. She was wearing her best suit, severe yet not too masculine, hair held in place with two silver clasps, a little discreet make-up around the eyes, red lips.
No one in the room paid her more than scant heed.
'I didn't hurt her,' Pierce said. 'I never hurt her, you know that, don't you? I wouldn't. Never. That's other people, other people, not me. I'm not like that. Well, you know, you can see. All that work I've done to try and help. Not so much since I came up here, but before. These groups. Little Angels. Others. They always want people who are willing to talk, share. Share their experiences, you see. Those who know, who've experienced that loss. Lost children and lived through it. No matter how bad, how bad it was, come out the other side.'
'Is that what you did?' Will asked quietly. 'Came out the other side?'
'Yes. Yes. After what happened to Heather. I did. I was strong. It was Ruth who couldn't face what happened, wouldn't, wouldn't talk about it, just wouldn't, and so it was all left to me, all down to me. To deal with things, you understand? You see? Not just the funeral, the church, the arrangements, no, after, afterwards, in the house, that bloody house, alone, the two of us and she wouldn't ...' A sob broke from his throat and he steadied himself against the table edge. 'She wouldn't ... It was as if she didn't know me any more. She just ... she turned in on herself, away from me, as if Heather had never been my daughter, as if she'd never had anything do with me. Her loss, Ruth's loss and not mine, and that's when I started to look for help. Started to look for help elsewhere. And work, of course. I tried to lose myself in my work, my job, but it all—I don't know—somehow it all unravelled ...'
He looked at Will helplessly.
'I thought ... I really thought, Simon, you're in danger of falling apart, you've got to do something. Do something. And I tried to talk to Ruth then, but it was too late, she said it was too late, she was leaving me, leaving, she wanted a divorce. Well, all right, I said. Okay. I could go along with that. Understand. But then, after she moved away, she started seeing this other man, this Andrew, and the next thing I knew they were getting married. Married, as if we'd been nothing, nothing together, nothing. And she was happy. Happy. As if Heather...'
Pulling a shredded tissue from his pocket, he wiped the corners of his mouth, his eyes.
'Then I learned she was going to have this child. A girl. A little girl. As if all she had to do to finally rid Heather from her mind was give birth, put someone in her place. It was all so ... unfair.'
'Unfair?'
'Yes. She'd forgotten what it was like to suffer, to mourn. To feel that lack every time you looked across the street, every time you opened your eyes. There, in the queue at the supermarket, turning her head. Or on the bus, going into town, laughing with her friends. So, I decided she'd have to learn. Again. What it was like.'
'You wanted to hurt her.'
'I wanted her to remember, remember the pain.'
'And what about Beatrice? What about her pain? Her fear? That child, she must have been terrified.'
'Oh, no. I don't think so, no. At first, perhaps a little, but once she got to know me, know who I was ... I even think she got to like me a little, just before the end ...'
He covered his face with his hands.
The solicitor coughed discreetly and looked away.
Don't think, you sad bastard, Will said to himself, I'm going to start feeling sorry for you because I'm not.
There was the usual celebration in the local hostelry, the detective super showing his face for long enough to be noticed and carded as a good sport before making his excuses. Will, on this occasion, wasn't far behind him, arriving home in time to chase Jake up to bed and read another chapter of Comet in Moominland before the boy fell asleep.
Downstairs, he joined Lorraine on the settee, where she was sitting with her legs drawn up, watching TV.
'I wasn't expecting you home so early.'
'Yes, well ...'
'You tired?'
'Pretty much.'
'You look tired.'
Will nodded. 'How about you?'
'Oh, I'm okay, considering.'
'How did it go today? I've scarcely had a chance to ask.'
'It could have been worse, I suppose.' Turning, she stretched one of her legs across his lap. 'Fincham was pretty decent. Unlike that dyke he brought up from Kent.'
Will laughed. 'That what?'
'You heard me.'
'If I'd called her that, you'd have had a right go. Just because she's got short hair doesn't mean ...'
'Okay, it doesn't. But her—in her case I'll make an exception.'
'I don't know. You should have seen her cosying up to Jim Straley in the pub. Had her hand in his trouser pocket, more or less.'
'That's 'cause she wants to find out if the rumours are true.'
'What rumours?'
Lorraine grinned and held out both hands, palms a good foot apart.
'Yeah?'
'So they say.' She shifted position again. 'Anyway, Fincham made it clear, as far as he's concerned that should be the end of it.'
'Let's hope.' On the screen, someone who might have been Kenneth Branagh was driving around otherwise deserted country roads in a large Volvo, looking concerned. 'You watching this?'
'No.'
Will flicked the remote and went back to massaging her foot.
'What will happen to the man who took that girl?'
'Pierce? He'll be charged with child abduction. No previou
s, he might even get bail. By the time the psychiatrists have done with him, I shouldn't be surprised if he didn't get off pretty lightly, couple of years at the very most. The right judge, he might not do time at all.'
'He didn't harm her, did he?'
'Kept her a prisoner all that time, locked in a room with precious little light, not knowing what might be going to happen—sounds like harm to me.'
'What was he going to do with her?'
'Let her go. So he says. Tell the mother where she was.'
'And what?'
Will shrugged. 'I don't know. Hope that she'd be grateful, probably.'
Lorraine sighed. 'That poor kid.'
'Yes.'
She bent forward and kissed him, stroked his arm. 'When I think ...'
'Yes.'
Leaning back, she smiled. 'You know what you were doing a minute ago ...'
'This?'
'You couldn't do it a bit higher up, could you?'
Will thought that he could.
75
Suddenly, it was winter, or so it seemed. Instead of fluctuating, the temperatures went down and stayed there, five, four, three degrees. The sun, when it appeared, was never more than low in the sky. Standing water was covered with a skim of ice. Night seemed to begin midway through the afternoon. The remains that had been unearthed out at the old labourers' cottages on the edge of Upwell Fen were confirmed as those of Rose Howard: Mitchell Roberts, already back in prison, was charged with her murder.
Will spent more time with Lorraine and the kids than he had before, stayed close whenever he could. Helen was increasingly unsettled, stricken with an itch she didn't know how to scratch.
It was a Wednesday morning when Trevor Cordon called on her mobile and some moments before she recognised his voice. 'The results, DNA, just come through from Birmingham. Thought you might like to know.' Several microscopic samples of blood had been found on Heather Pierce's outer clothing, sufficient to obtain a low-copy profile.
'Might want to meet me, I reckoned,' Cordon said. 'See it through.'
'When?'
'I'm on the train now.'
North London was busy and grey: people hurrying this way and that, heads down, anxious to be out of the cold. Only a bare-chested man, blubber hanging over the top of his jeans and little more than his tattoos to keep him warm, seemed oblivious to the freezing temperature, waving a can of lager high above his head as he wove, unsteadily, between the lines of traffic on the Holloway Road.
'This sample,' Helen asked Cordon when they met, 'enough for a conviction?'
'Not on its own.'
At first, she thought Lee Efford was not at work that day, failing to spot him on the floor of the shop, but, when she asked, she discovered he was out at the back, helping inventory some new supplies.
They went and sat on the selfsame bench, defying the cold. Cordon fetched tea in polystyrene cups from the café on the main road. Their breath hung on the air when they spoke.
No sense in beating around the bush.
'We found blood,' Cordon said, 'on Heather's clothes. No doubt but that it's yours.'
Lee's cup came close to slipping through his hands.
'What you should do,' Helen said, 'tell us what happened. Take your time. We're here to listen, that's all.'
Not quite the truth. Not all.
Lee hung his head, asked for a cigarette and then had trouble getting it to light.
'There's nothin', he said finally. 'Nothin' much to say. After they got lost, Heather and Kelly, I went out after 'em. My old man, he'd had such a go at me, right? An' I felt, well, guilty, I suppose, though it was their own stupid fault for pissin' me around and that, but still ... I must've stayed out there for ages an' then I more or less bumped into her, Heather. One minute there was nobody there and then there she was, right in front of me. Cryin' like, in a real state. Reckoned as how she'd told Kelly to stay where she was, not to move, like, but when she got back she'd gone. I told her not to worry. Said I'd wait with her till the fog got better or someone else come out and found us. I didn't know where we was by then, neither, didn't have a fuckin' clue.
'Anyway, we sat down, by this bit of rock—more or less fell over that, too, in the first place. An' we're sittin' there an' I can see she's still really frightened, cryin' a bit, you know, shakin', and then, after a bit, she asks me to hold her hand. An' I do, and I puts my arm round her, just, you know, givin' her a bit of a cuddle, make her feel better, an' then all of a sudden I'm kissin' her, not even meaning to, not thinking about it, kissin' her and she kisses me back. Properly, you know, like she's done it before, and I suppose, after a while ...'
He stopped and looked at Helen, as if gauging the expression on her face.
'After a while, I started, you know, feeling her up ... just outside her clothes, but she knocked my hand away and jumped up and started to run, so I grabbed her and that's when she caught me one. Swung right round, yeah, an' hit me in the mouth so's I could taste the blood, an' I spat it out an' called her a stupid bitch and she ran off and I went after her and that was when she fell. Smack against this other rock. I could hear it, right? Even there, in all that fuckin' fog. Smack. Her head on that rock. I felt sick, didn't know what to do. Went chargin' off, fell arse over tip, hurt my ankle, my leg, finally went crawling back. Found her. She weren't breathing. I panicked, right? Thought, you know, no one's going to believe ... not going to believe it happened like it did. So I more or less felt my way around, not far. Found this sort of opening, covered up, most of it, leaves and shit—I pulled her in there, covered her up best I could. I know it was wrong, I know now ...'
With trembling fingers, he lit another cigarette.
'I went back out there the next night, snuck out of the tent, didn't think I'd find her, but I did. She was cold. Like some statue. Didn't seem, you know, real. I picked her up and carried her, she didn't weigh a thing. Carried her to that tower, that engine place, whatever. Threw a stone down, so deep you never heard it drop. I thought, if I push her down there no one's ever gonna know, right? No one's ever goin' to say, what happened, it was anything to do with me. Leavin' 'em out there aside. And she was dead now. It couldn't hurt her, right? Right?'
For the first time, Helen glanced away.
'You didn't realise,' Cordon said, 'the body had landed on a ledge?'
'I thought it hit somethin', right? Thought it just, you know, bounced off an' carried on down.' He wiped a hand across his mouth. 'I wasn't gonna hang around an' find out, was I?'
Someone seemed to have done something about the smell on the stairs, Helen didn't know what. When Alan Efford opened the door, just a crack at first, he looked a sight better than he had before; unshaven still, and still in rumpled clothes, but brighter, Helen thought, more alert, as if he might be about to re-engage with the world.
Just as well.
'Hello,' Efford said cheerfully. 'Hadn't expected to see you again so soon.'
He invited her in, offered tea which she refused, listened with growing concern while she spoke.
'And he's where now?' he asked once she'd finished. 'Holloway nick?'
'Yes. Hornsey Road. Making a statement.'
'I should get down there.'
'Yes. He'd appreciate it.'
'I doubt that. But I'm going anyway.' He scooped a coat up from the floor, bent to tie his shoes. 'You?'
'No, I'm done here. I'll be getting back. Just wanted you to know.'
'Yes, right. Thanks.' He shook his head, just the once. 'The stupid young sod!'
'He panicked. He was just a boy.'
'No excuse, though, is it?'
'It might be.'
'How d'you mean?'
'If the rest of the evidence fits his story—and to my memory, it just about does—well, there's no malice aforethought, nothing that could be called unlawful killing, I doubt he's going to be charged with murder. Manslaughter's a possibility—was the girl killed because she was running away, in fear of her life?'
Efford was watching her like a hawk, hanging on her every word.
'No, I'd say the only offence they're going to stand a chance with in court is deliberately hiding the body, moving it first.'
'He'd get jail time for that?'
'Concealing a death from the coroner? Eighteen months if he's lucky, two years if he's not. Either way, best part he'll likely do on remand.'
'Poor bastard.'
'Yes, well,' Helen said, 'at least he's alive.'
She followed Efford down the stairs and out on to the street and, as he hurried away, she crossed and went down into the tube. Any luck she'd catch the next train back to Cambridge with time to spare.
***
They were in the same lay-by, the refreshment van long closed for the evening, the almost constant headlights illuminating across their faces.
'We've got to—' Helen began.
'I know, stop meeting like this.'
'People will think we're slipping around.'
'As if.'
Helen's lighter flared in the momentary dark.
'You think the lad'll be charged?'
'Bound to. He's not going to just walk away.'
'You reckon he was telling the truth? Think it happened like he said?'
'Yes, I think so. But then, it's not my call. CPS might see it differently. If he hadn't been chasing after her, she might never have fallen, hit her head.'
'Hard to prove.'
'I know.'
'I ought to be getting back,' Will said.
'There is one other thing.' Her face was suddenly lit up in a glow of amber and yellow, someone going past with their lights on full beam. 'That transfer request I've been on about since God knows when—I've finally put it in.'
'Cornwall?'
Helen laughed. 'The Met.'
'Which section?'
'SO7. Serious and Organised Crime.'
'Promotion?'
'Not right away.'
Will angled his head towards the road, the fast stream of traffic almost uninterrupted. 'Bigger area, more scope. You'll do well.'
'That's all you've got to say?'
