Murder of Innocence

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Dear boy, if only it were as simple as that. But you’ve destroyed your pretty looks, haven’t you? You’re not much use to me now, unless …’

  ‘No, don’t make me!’

  Ellie was getting frightened. ‘What is it you want him to do? Pose naked for you?’

  The man and the boy looked at her with a strange pity and she realized that the games Mr Pearsall played were outside her knowledge. She said, ‘I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘My dear lady, you have earned the right to know. I insist you know. Tod here—’

  ‘No!’ cried Tod and made a rush for the door. Mr Pearsall caught him by the wrist and deftly turned him round, holding the boy’s hand up behind his back.

  ‘Now, now. Don’t let’s be in a rush. I think this dear lady has earned the right to see what’s on my computer, don’t you?’

  Tod went limp. Mr Pearsall thrust Tod down the stairs, turning off the light behind him. Ellie followed. Down and down. They came to the ground floor and turned into a room at the back of the house. Ellie could hear the trains running along the tube line close by, but the windows were covered with drawn blinds.

  The room was a luxurious study, equipped with all the latest computer technology.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mr Pearsall, pushing Tod on to a chair in front of a computer. ‘Switch on. You know how.’

  Tod gave Ellie a miserable look and did as he was told. Mr Pearsall stood behind Tod and waited. He was smiling. ‘Go on, Tod. Don’t be shy.’

  ‘No,’ said Tod, sounding far older than his years. ‘I did it before because you made me and I didn’t know what I was going to see. Now I do know, and I won’t do it any more. You can’t make me.’

  ‘Can’t I?’ Softly.

  ‘Not with Mrs Quicke here, you can’t.’

  ‘She’s not going to talk about it, is she? She knows that if she talks everything will come out and those pretty pictures of you will be circulating the globe, being looked at by hundreds and hundreds of people, all knowing who you are …’

  ‘Stop it!’ cried Tod. With all his strength he tugged the computer off the desk and threw it on to the floor, taking printer and keyboard with it.

  ‘You …!’

  Ellie pushed the chair at the grey man, shouting, ‘Run for it, Tod!’

  Tod scrambled out of the room and ran across the floor. She stood in front of the grey man, keeping between him and the door. She could hear Tod’s footsteps on the tiles. Mr Pearsall picked himself up and flicked dust off his jacket.

  He made no move towards her but said apologetically, ‘He won’t be going anywhere. The front door’s locked and so is the back. All the windows have locks on them. I’m very security conscious. He’ll come back to me, you’ll see.’

  ‘That won’t do you any good, now he’s broken your computer.’

  He waved his hand at some filing cabinets.‘Computers can be replaced or mended. The pictures are all on disc, or hidden safely away upstairs.’

  Tod shouted from the hall, ‘I can’t get out! What do we do now?’

  ‘We leave,’ said Ellie, trying not to panic.The grey man’s calm assurance was frightening.

  ‘Of course. Did you think I’d try to keep you here against your will?’

  ‘With the pictures. And the negatives.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see them first?’

  Tod’s voice came from the hall. ‘Don’t trust him, Mrs Quicke. He talks and talks and he makes you think it’s all right to do what he wants, but it isn’t!’

  Ellie tried to think quickly. You’re absolutely right, Tod. But once we’re out of here, with whatever prints and negatives we can get hold of, then it’s straight to the police for us …

  ‘Prints and negatives, please,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. But first some pictures of you, don’t you think? For insurance that you won’t be going straight to the police.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Ellie. ‘I wouldn’t pose for you for all the tea in China.’

  ‘That’s what they all say at first, but a few minutes thought will show you that you have no option.’

  Ellie bit her lip. If I were the swooning type, now would be a good time. But I’m not. She looked at her watch.

  ‘Any minute now …’ she said.

  ‘Police?’ For the first time he showed signs of uneasiness. He fiddled with his tie.

  ‘I left a note for the boy’s mother as well.’

  ‘She’s usually back very late, sometimes not till he’s gone to bed. I always pick them from single-parent families. They’re only too happy to be fussed over by their precious Daddy.’

  ‘And of course there was the bond of the stamps this time.’

  ‘I buy them in bulk on the Internet for my niece who runs a stamp club at the school. Sometimes I go along to the baths when she takes her class there. It’s best to see them in swimming trunks before you decide whether it’s worth your while to groom them for play.’

  ‘The police told me they had a major incident to deal with first, but would be along after that.’

  He took two steps to the door, bit his lip and turned on her so quickly that she hadn’t time to escape.

  She screamed, ‘Run, Tod. Hide!’

  She heard Tod scream in response and his footsteps pounding up the stairs.

  The grey man slapped her, first one side and then the other. ‘I wouldn’t normally hit a woman, but you have provoked me beyond endurance.’

  His attitude was that of a dispassionate adult chastising a naughty child. He thrust her out into the hall and across it into the cloakroom. As he closed the door he said, ‘Forgive me, but I have to leave you in the dark while I find the boy and get one or two things together.’

  She tried to rush him, but he pushed her back with ease. He was a lot stronger than he looked.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘You’ve forced my hand, and left me no option but to burn the evidence. Not just the pictures, of course. You and the boy as well. You needn’t worry about me. I’ll take my stamps along when I leave – best exchange currency there is. You really ought to have listened to me, but there …’

  He sighed and shut the door. She was totally in the dark. She lunged for the door and beat upon it. She found the doorknob and turned it. There was a keyhole just below the doorknob. But no key in this side of the door. And no light switch. That was in the hall.

  She felt around for the lavatory seat, dropped it and sat down. He was bluffing, of course. He’d let her out in a minute. Or Tod would release her.

  She felt her way to the door again and yelled, ‘Tod!’ Then she thought, I oughtn’t to have done that. She’d told him to hide, and he must know that if he replied, the man would be able to locate him.

  The police would come. Or Mrs Coppola.

  There was a scraping sound and the door opened, light flooding in. The man thrust Tod into her arms. ‘The stupid boy tried to hide under my bed.’

  He shut the door on them again.

  Darkness. She could feel Tod was crying in her arms. ‘There, there,’ she said.

  ‘He was too strong for me!’

  ‘For me, too.’

  She passed him a tissue from her jacket pocket. His sobs subsided. ‘How are we going to get out? He’s got the big hall table wedged under the door handle.’

  ‘Let’s see if we can shift it together.’ They tried. And again. And again.

  ‘It’s no good,’ said Tod.

  ‘Someone will come.’

  ‘Of course they will.’

  Nobody came.

  They sat on the floor eventually, Ellie with her arm around Tod. It was very dark and rather on the warm side. She remembered that the light switched on the fan and without the fan, there was no ventilation.

  Time passed. She thought, how do we conserve the air that’s in here? By expending as little energy as we can?

  Tod whispered, ‘This is all my fault. He was at the swimming gala. He was with my form teacher. She call
ed him uncle. He gave some of us a lift home. Ms Thomas told him I collected stamps and he said he’d got some swops I could have, so when he turned up at an ordinary swimming lesson, I thought it was all right to get a lift home with him. He did give me some stamps. Good ones. He showed me his computer and let me play games on it. He asked me about my dad and said he’d like to have been my father and perhaps he could be a pretend father for me. He said not to tell anyone, that it was our little secret.

  ‘He said he sometimes helped coach swimmers, and if I was there he’d give me a lift back. He was good to me at first. We had some fine times. He let me see his stamp collection and I helped him with it, a bit. Then he said would I like my photo taken as a surprise for Mum, and I said yes, of course. But he wasn’t best pleased with the pictures he took and he said he wanted me to pose as a faun, against a painted background. He said I looked just like a faun in a book he had. I had to take off most of my clothes but of course he’d seen me at the swimming baths, so it wasn’t very different, was it? I wasn’t sure about it at first but he made it seem like I’d be rude to refuse when he’d been so kind to me. So I did, though it was dead embarrassing.

  ‘After that, I didn’t see him for a while and I sort of forgot about it. But then he turned up again one day and said I ought to see the pictures as they were amazing, and he could give me a copy that evening. I hadn’t got anything much else to do and you were out, so I went with him.’

  He was silent for a while. She stroked his head.

  ‘There was another man there this time. They wanted me to pose with him but somehow I didn’t want to. I’d grown up a bit since that first time, I suppose. But there were two of them and I couldn’t help it. They made me take off my clothes and the other man did nasty things and I screamed and tried to get away so they said I was a naughty boy and if I wouldn’t let them do what they wanted, I’d be punished. So they tied me up by the wrists and then …’

  His whole body convulsed, remembering.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did it hurt a lot?’

  ‘Yes and no. It was weird. The other man kept saying that no matter what I said, I was enjoying it.’ He shuddered again. ‘Mr Pearsall didn’t do anything to me himself. He just sat there, filming it. Ugh!’

  ‘Shush, shush.’

  ‘When they’d finished, they let me get dressed again and said I could see myself on the Internet the next day. They were laughing. They had a drink together. Mr Pearsall said he was going out somewhere that night, but he’d drop me off at the church. He said he’d see me again. He said that no matter how much I’d pretended I didn’t like, it, I really did. That I’d be back for more soon.

  ‘I wanted to die. I got to the bottom of your garden but there weren’t any lights on in the house and I could see you were out. There was no one at home, either. Mum had said she was going to be out late. The shed was nice and quiet. I got in, but then I thought people could easily find me there, so I opened the window, put the padlock back on the door, crawled through the window … and then I slipped and hurt my head as I was getting in. I thought then that I’d be able to die. I pulled the rug round me and got under the table and tugged the pots back in after me. Midge came and sat on me and purred. I don’t remember anything after that.’

  She rocked him in her arms. What misery!

  Eventually they heard the front door bang shut. And smelled smoke. The man had done exactly what he’d said he would do. He had fired the house and left them inside.

  Someone must come soon.

  Smoke seeped under the door.

  She’d always been afraid of fire. She got the boy to help her, and in the dark they felt around on the hooks to find something, anything, to prevent the smoke suffocating them. They took the towels out of the plastic bags and stuffed these under the door. The sides of the door fitted pretty well. Not so much smoke came in now. Would it be better to die of suffocation than to burn alive?

  Ellie tried the door again, and again. The house was empty, except for Tod and herself. The door was a heavy, panelled, solid affair. Immovable.

  They were shut into that small room with no means of escape. There was no window, and the fire was gaining ground around them.

  Hysteria threatened.

  Calm down!

  How long since that fiend in human form had shut them in? How long would it take for the fire to reach her … or the smoke to suffocate her … and Tod?

  Breathing wasn’t getting any easier …

  Then she remembered it. She shucked off her jacket. In her haste she’d put it on over the handbag which she’d slung across herself before she left home. Fumbling around in it in the dark, she told herself to keep calm. Trembling fingers wouldn’t help.

  ‘What is it?’ Tod asked.

  ‘Looking for something.’

  She picked up and identified item after item by feel. Small-change

  purse. Wallet. Notebook. Make-up bag. Indigestion tablets. Diary. Pen. Cheque book.

  She laid them down on the floor beside her.

  It was a deep bag. She’d never liked very deep bags. Things got lost at

  the bottom. She tried not to cough. It distracted her. Her eyes were streaming. Diana’s mobile phone. The phone Gus had stolen and left behind in his bedroom. She’d meant to mention it to Diana or hand it in to the police, but had forgotten all about it.

  She’d always said she couldn’t work one of these things to save her life, but in this instance, she thought she could probably manage it … if the battery weren’t quite dead …

  ‘Tod, do you know how to work a mobile phone?’

  ‘Give it here.’ She found his hand and pressed the phone into it. He turned it round and pressed a button which lit up a tiny screen. Now there was enough light to locate the ranks of buttons. He said, ‘Nine, nine, nine? Right?’

  ‘Fire service and police, don’t you think?’

  Ellie was holding a party to celebrate the completion of her new conservatory. She had bought some pleasantly rustic chairs and matching table to furnish the place. On the right-hand wall, a pottery lion’s head trickled water out of its mouth and down into a deep cistern in which seven goldfish swam around a miniature water lily. On either side of the French windows, large teak containers held a lemon and an orange tree and from deep troughs overlooking the garden, sprang climbing geraniums, stephanotis and jasmine.

  It had all cost a hideous amount of money but Ellie was – if a little guiltily – enjoying it enormously.

  The French windows from the sitting room had been thrown open, and Tod was helping to pass round plates from the buffet of sandwiches and canapés which Ellie had bought from Waitrose. Ellie picked up Midge, who had been about to jump on to the table to investigate the sandwiches and pushed him out into the garden, locking the cat flap after him.

  Inside the sitting room, the Reverend Gilbert Adams was in charge of the drinks table, talking to Bill, Ellie’s solicitor. They were getting heated about a white wine Bill had been advised to buy. Liz Adams was asking Tod about the extra cricket practice he was putting in nowadays, courtesy of his new friend Jojo. Tod had had a decent haircut, and looked thinner in the face.

  Mrs Dawes poked at the labels on the plants. In a minute she would tell Ellie that she’d chosen the wrong variety or that she, Mrs Dawes, could have got them cheaper somewhere. Armand was checking out the water feature. He and Kate wanted a conservatory something like Ellie’s though they intended it not for plants, but for use as an outdoor dining room. He seemed to like the water feature, however, so perhaps something like it would be incorporated into his plans.

  Aunt Drusilla said she thought the plants were a little overdone but dear Rose, sitting beside her, thought they were just lovely.

  Diana was there; from the look on her face, you’d have thought her drink was battery acid. Stewart was joggling little Frank who was almost asleep in his pushchair, the dear little boy. Diana looked as if she’d rather be elsewhere.

  Kate put her arm roun
d Ellie. ‘You’re looking much better, dear. I was worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine. Have some more of these smoked-salmon titbits. Such an extravagance but we’ve a lot to celebrate, haven’t we?’

  Ellie was particularly thankful that Tod was beginning to pull out of his depression. Liz had arranged a couple of sessions for him with a local therapist, but Ellie was privately convinced that his burgeoning friendship with Jojo would do as much if not more than therapy to complete his recovery. Or get him through it as well as possible. Ellie didn’t think you could ever really forget it, or get over it. But you could deal with it. Not let it ruin your future.

  Roy got his glass refilled and started talking to Armand about the benefits of joining the golf club. As if Armand would be interested. But Armand was on his best behaviour today and probably wouldn’t say anything untoward. She hoped.

  Ellie picked up a tiny sausage roll and popped it in her mouth. She had a moment’s sadness thinking of poor Gus, once more on the difficult cycle between drink and theft. She’d refused to prosecute him for the things he’d stolen from her, even though the police had not been able to recover her jewel box or the lapis lazuli necklace. She’d put it down to experience, and drawn a line beneath it.

  At least the registration number of the car which she’d given the police had led to Mr Pearsall’s arrest at the airport, and the fire had failed to destroy more than the kitchen and bedroom above it, so that his secret files were still intact and would be used against him at his trial.

  ‘A toast!’ cried Gilbert, from behind the drinks table. ‘Or rather two toasts. One to our hostess with the mostest … of course. And the other to the man the Bishop is about to appoint to my old church here. A good man. I know him of old.’

  ‘Not Timothy, we assume?’ said Rose.

  ‘Certainly not. But I expect Timothy’ll get another move up the ladder when he’s seen the new man safely in. So here’s to Ellie, and to the future!’

  ‘To Ellie. To her shining future!’

  ‘Thank you all,’ said Ellie, blushing. ‘Now I’ve got a toast to propose myself. As you know, there’s been a lot of rumours going around about the money I inherited from my dear husband. Taking advice from all and sundry …’