Stolen Angels

by Shaun Hutson

  ‘Right, pick me up as soon as you can. I want to talk to her.’

  ‘Jim, if you don’t mind me asking, what the fuck is going on?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This case at Hackney. Why the interest? We’ve got enough shit of our own to deal with. This is Macpherson’s problem.’

  ‘Right, you get on with what you’ve got to do - just give me this woman’s fucking name’ rasped Talbot.

  ‘Jim, I just asked. It seems like you’ve become obsessed with this bloody case and-‘

  ‘The name,’ Talbot snapped.

  ‘Maria Goldman.’

  ‘Right. Look, if you’ve got other stuff to do, then get on with it. I’m going to speak to this Goldman woman.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up,’ Rafferty said, wearily. ‘We’ve been digging around on those three suicides, too. Remember, the case we were working on before this shit at Hackney came up?’ the DS said, sarcastically.

  ‘And?’ Talbot said.

  ‘Apparently, two of the three dead men had reported strange phone calls about a week before they topped themselves.’

  ‘What do you mean, strange?’

  ‘Parriam and Hyde both got calls warning them off.’

  ‘How come this has just turned up?’

  ‘We spoke to their secretaries.’

  ‘You mean it’s taken this fucking long?’

  ‘Hyde’s had been away on honeymoon; Parriam’s has just come back from sick

  leave.’

  ‘Were threats actually made?’

  ‘They were told to back off. That’s all.’

  ‘What about Jeffrey?’

  ‘Nothing strange there.’

  ‘Look, Bill, just pick me up as quick as you can, right? We’ll go over this shit later.’

  ‘I think it’s important-‘

  Talbot cut him off. ‘So is this abuse case, now get a fucking move on.’

  He slammed down the phone.

  Rafferty looked at the handset for a moment then slipped it gently back onto the cradle.

  Frank Reed held his daughter tight, feeling her warm breath against his cheek.

  ‘Did you have a good time?’ he asked her, glancing up at his wife who looked down at them impassively.

  ‘Come on, Becky, we’ll be late,’ said Ellen glancing at her watch.

  Becky kissed her father on the cheek. ‘I love you, Dad’ she said then turned towards the door.

  ‘Go on, run out to the car’ Ellen told her.

  ‘I could have taken her to school’ Reed said, irritably.

  ‘It’s on my way to work’ Ellen said, picking up her daughter’s small holdall.

  She turned to leave.

  ‘Thanks, Ellen,’ he said, almost grudgingly.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For letting me have Becky for the weekend. I know I’ve got every right to access but…’

  ‘I’ll be in touch, Frank’ she told him and turned away.

  He watched as she walked down the path towards the waiting car. Becky was already in the back, waving to him.

  He waved back.

  Christ, it hurt to see her leave.

  Ellen slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

  ‘That’s it, Becky’ she said, a smile touching her lips, ‘You wave goodbye to your Dad.’ She glanced across and looked blankly at Reed for a moment, silhouetted in

  the doorway. ‘It might be a while before you see him again.’

  The car pulled away.

  Sixty-three

  ‘As I explained to you when you rang, I can’t let you see any of the children’

  said Maria Goldman, holding open the door of her office.

  Catherine Reed entered, glancing around the small, immaculately tidy room. She accepted the chair offered to her and sat down opposite Maria.

  The journalist afforded herself a brief glance around the office. She spotted a small television set and a video, set up in one corner, the clock on the video flashing constantly. The walls were a mass of filing cabinets and shelves and what spare space there was seemed to be covered with a collection of posters and leaflets.

  ‘Have you finished with them all yet?’ Cath enquired.

  Maria nodded.

  Cath reached into her pocket and pulled out a small notepad.

  ‘You don’t mind if I use this, do you? I’ve got a lousy memory.’ She smiled.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Thank you. No sugar.’

  Maria got to her feet and headed for the office door.

  ‘The machine’s just down the corridor,’ she explained. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  As she disappeared, closing the door behind her, Cath sat motionless for a moment, then crossed to the door and peered through the tiny crack between frame and partition. She could see Maria standing in front of the vending machine, feeding coins into it.

  Cath hurried back to the desk, stepping around Maria’s side, glancing over the

  stacks of papers arranged there.

  She saw a large book that looked like a ledger of some description.

  Cath flipped it open, scanning it for anything which resembled a list of names.

  Nothing.

  She pulled open the top drawer of Maria’s desk.

  Manila files but no names.

  In the next drawer there was a framed photo of a man in his early thirties.

  Smart, good looking.

  She was about to open the next drawer when she heard footsteps heading back up the corridor.

  Cath scuttled around to the chair and sat down, sucking in a deep breath, picking up her pen and drawing rambling circles on the top of the page.

  Maria entered carrying two styrofoam cups of coffee. She pushed the door shut with her backside and handed one of the cups to Cath.

  ‘Now, what can I do for you, Miss Reed?’

  ‘Call me Cath, please’ she said, sipping her coffee. ‘I wondered if you’d finished interviewing all the children that were brought in.’

  ‘Yes, we have.’

  ‘And from what you’ve heard, are you satisfied that there is child abuse involved?’

  ‘Unfortunately yes.’

  ‘In every case? There were seventeen children seized, weren’t there?’

  ‘Seized sounds a bit melodramatic,’ Maria said, smiling.

  ‘Well, dawn raids are pretty melodramatic, aren’t they? You obviously felt the need to go through with them.’

  ‘We felt that there were children at risk.’

  ‘Why were those particular homes targeted?’

  ‘They were random, apart from two. We had received reports …’

  ‘Was one of those houses the O’Brian house?’

  Maria looked stunned.

  ‘My brother was the teacher at St Michael’s who made the initial report,’ Cath explained. ‘I know that the O’Brian boy was one of the children taken into care.’

  ‘How much more do you know?’ Maria asked, cupping both hands around the styrofoam container.

  ‘Not enough. There are too many loose ends already, things going on which may or may not be linked to this child abuse ring.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was an abuse ring,’ Maria interjected.

  ‘You said abuse was involved, though.’

  ‘Not all of the seventeen children we brought in had been abused, at least not physically.’

  ‘How many had?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Including the O’Brian boy?’

  Maria nodded slowly.

  ‘Do you think it was the parents?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say, Miss Reed. You’ll have to ask the police.’

  ‘Have they been informed of the physical abuse?’

  ‘They’ve seen the medical reports. Whatever further action is taken, and who it’s taken against, is up to them.’

  Cath sipped her coffee, glancing around the office again.

  ‘What’s the video for?’ sh
e asked.

  ‘In certain cases, like this one, evidence is recorded on audio and videotape, as well as written statements being taken.’

  ‘But video evidence isn’t permissible in court, is it?’

  ‘It’s mainly to help our people here, to make sure we get all the facts, everything the children tell us.’

  ‘Did any of them mention graveyards?’

  The question was unexpected and Maria couldn’t disguise her surprise. For a

  long time she merely gazed at Cath.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she said, quietly.

  Cath sighed.

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said. ‘But the O’Brians lost a baby a little while ago, it was buried in Croydon Cemetery. I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’ve been… desecrations, for want of a better word, going on there for the past few weeks. Graves dug up, headstones wrecked, stuff written on them. Even the church itself there has been vandalised. The grave of the O’Brian baby was one of those dug up. I just wondered if any of the other children might have mentioned graveyards in their statements.’

  ‘What kind of vandalism?’ Maria wanted to know.

  ‘As I said, mainly the smashing of headstones, and graves being disturbed, but there was an incident with a cat. Some sicko nailed a cat to the church door.’

  ‘And cut its head off,’ Maria added.

  It was Cath’s turn to be shocked. She nodded slowly.

  Maria reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out some pieces of paper which she laid before Cath on the desk top.

  Cath noticed that some of the drawings were done in crayon. Some in pencil. A number were rough, almost impossible to distinguish, but others, in their crude way, were easily recognisable.

  One was of an animal spreadeagled. From the long tail she guessed it was meant to be a cat. There was a great scrawl of red crayon beneath it then a round object with two slits for eyes and a couple of ears. The long whiskers made it obvious the artist intended it to be recognised as a cat. The head was also surrounded by red.

  ‘That was drawn by a six-year-old’ said Maria.

  Cath looked carefully at the other drawings.

  She recognised a pentagram, drawn with remarkable dexterity.

  There were more pictures of animals, usually headless.

  Another pentagram.

  Then some writing.

  At first it looked like meaningless scrawl, then Cath looked more closely. She swallowed hard. I’ve seen this before’ she whispered, looking at the roughly drawn letters.

  ‘We couldn’t make it out’ Maria said.

  Cath reached into her handbag and pulled out a small make-up mirror then she held up the piece of paper, turning it towards Maria.

  ‘How old was the child who wrote this?’ the journalist asked.

  ‘Eleven,’ Maria told her, trying to pick out the letters in the mirror.

  She studied each one carefully, the words running into each other.

  ‘I still can’t see what it says’ she said, quietly.

  ‘I saw this in the crypt of the church at Croydon’ Cath explained, pointing out the reversed words. ‘“The power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.”’

  ‘The Lord’s prayer.’

  ‘Written backwards.’

  She lowered the mirror and the piece of paper.

  ‘Is that reversed too’ Cath asked, pointing at more words written on a piece of paper below a large grey block that had been carefully shaded in.

  Maria shook her head.

  ‘No’ she said. ‘It’s Latin. Written by a seven-year-old. The grammar’s probably wrong but we managed to work out the meaning. “Deus mihi mortuus.” It means “God is dead to me.” Now where the hell would a seven-year-old learn that?’

  The social worker got to her feet and crossed to the closest filing cabinet.

  Cath continued staring at the Latin words.

  From a seven-year-old?

  ‘Look at these’ said Maria, laying out five more pieces of paper before the journalist.

  Each one bore the sketches, some rough, some more detailed, that had invaded Maria’s dreams.

  The horned figure.

  ‘That’s the person the children say hurt them’ she told Cath.

  Cath traced the outline of the horns with her finger.

  ‘The children have been kept apart ever since they were brought in’ Maria told the journalist. ‘They couldn’t have copied this figure from each other. They would have to have seen it.’

  ‘But each drawing is almost identical.’

  ‘In other abuse cases children have reported being touched or hurt by people dressed as clowns, even Father Christmas, but this is the first time I’ve seen any draw …’ She was unable to finish.

  Cath gazed blankly at the drawings.

  ‘The Devil,’ she whispered.

  Sixty-four

  For a long time the two women stared at the pictures of the horned figure, then Cath pointed to something else on the sheet nearest to her.

  It was in the top left-hand corner.

  About half-way down the page on another sheet.

  At the bottom on another.

  ‘What are these meant to be?’ she asked, indicating the shapes.

  They were all rectangular, box-like constructions, all of them shaded in black or grey.

  In one or two, windows had been drawn.

  ‘The children say that’s where they were taken,’ Maria explained. ‘We don’t think they’re houses. Children usually draw very simplistic houses - a square with a slanted roof, four windows and a front door.’

  ‘Coffins?’ Cath offered.

  Maria shook her head. ‘Whatever they are, they’re on nearly every drawing.

  There’s a uniformity about what they’re telling us that makes it difficult to think they’re lying.’

  ‘Why should they lie?’

  ‘It has been known. Kids with a grudge against their parents have screamed abuse. The parents have been pilloried by the press.’ She looked at Cath and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘But you don’t think these children are lying?’

  ‘The stories have too many common threads, too many similarities, and they’re too detailed. In some statements, children talked about smells and tastes.

  Sensations they could only know by having experienced them. They didn’t see them on TV or read about them. They went through them’

  ‘And the Latin? The backward writing? The figure?’

  ‘They would have had to have seen them.’

  ‘Here?’ Cath said, pointing at the grey rectangular shapes on the paper before her.

  ‘Possibly’ Maria muttered, taking a sip of her coffee. ‘If only we could find out what that is.’

  There was a knock on the office door and Nikki Parsons stuck her head inside.

  She smiled at Cath, then at Maria. ‘There are two policemen here to see you.’

  ‘I am popular this morning, aren’t I?’ Maria said, wearily.

  Before she could say anything else the office door was pushed open. Talbot strode in, Rafferty close behind him.

  He shot a withering glance at Cath.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped.

  ‘My job, the same as you’ she told him.

  They locked stares for a moment.

  ‘You two know each other?’ Maria asked.

  Talbot ignored her question, pulling his ID from the inside pocket of his jacket. Rafferty did likewise.

  ‘It’s getting a little crowded in here’ Maria commented, an amused smile on her lips.

  ‘Yeah, it is. Why don’t you piss off, Reed? This is none of your business anyway’ Talbot hissed.

  ‘Hackney’s not your usual beat is it, Talbot?’ she said, scornfully. ‘What’s wrong, don’t you trust the local coppers to do the job as well as you?

  Frightened there might be some suspect you’ll miss? One you could slap around a bit?’

  ‘Why don’t
you fuck off, you’re in the way.’

  ‘I had an appointment with Mrs Goldman, I haven’t finished yet.’

  ‘You have now. On your bike.’ He hooked a thumb in the direction of the door.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt’ said Maria. ‘But this is my office, and if you two are going to have a running battle, I’d rather you didn’t do it here.’ She smiled efficiently at Talbot. ‘Miss Reed and I had almost finished, if you could wait just a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Talbot, nodding. ‘We’ll wait here.’

  He picked up his chair and moved it to one side of the desk.

  Rafferty stood beside him.

  There was a moment of awkward silence, broken by the DI. ‘Well, go on, don’t let us stop you’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t want to get in the way of a great journalist doing her job.’

  ‘Why don’t you make yourself useful?’ Cath hissed at him. ‘What do you make of that?’ She handed him one of the drawings of the horned figure.

  ‘If this is evidence you shouldn’t even be looking at it’ he barked, snatching it from her.

  ‘What does it look like, Talbot?’ the journalist persisted.

  ‘A kid’s drawing’ he said, dismissively.

  ‘What of?’

  ‘The Devil’ said Rafferty, looking over his colleague’s shoulder.

  ‘How the hell do you know?’ Talbot demanded.

  ‘That’s what a kid would draw. I should know, my Kelly’s five’ the DS told him.

  ‘And the child who drew that was a year older’ Cath informed him.

  ‘So, that’s our suspect, is it? The Devil’ Talbot sneered. ‘Well, we should be able to pull him in pretty quick, we’ll just put out identikits of a bloke with a goat’s head, a cloak, a pitchfork and cloven hooves. Should have him banged up by the end of the week. Well done, Reed, you’ve cracked the case.’

  She glared at him.

  ‘What’s your explanation, then?’ she demanded. ‘How come five different children have, independently, all drawn almost identical pictures of the person they say hurt them? They’ve seen this, Talbot. Whatever it is. They haven’t imagined it.’

  ‘I’m sure they have seen it’ the DI snapped. ‘As you probably know, amongst the stuff seized from some of the houses were horror videos including The Devil Rides Out, To the Devil a Daughter, The Exorcist, Devil Within Her.