Doors Without Numbers

by C. D. Neill

  Thomas eyes were red and swollen but he was no longer crying. He kept wiping his nose on the back of his hand, ignoring his mother who offered him a tissue that she had taken from the box placed beside them on the table. Hammond was doing his best to look relaxed, he was conscious of the video camera set up behind him recording the scene. DS Dunn was seated opposite to Thomas, she was asking the questions, she had a calm, almost melodic voice that made Hammond wonder if she had ever tried hypnosis on anyone.

  “Thomas, do you understand why you are here?”

  Thomas nodded his head, his eyes suspiciously darting from Hammond to Dunn, then his mother. The accompanying social worker sat quietly on the other side of Thomas but both officers were aware that the woman had sat forward in her seat. Hammond recognised the look of anguish in the boy’s eyes as he shifted his body further away from his mother who sat still and quiet beside her son, overwhelmed by the situation she was finding herself in. “You should have protected me.” The boy’s eyes were screaming at his mother, it was evident she heard it, maybe not in sound, but through maternal empathy, for she winced and looked down at her hands. Mrs Taylor had been warned to be quiet throughout the interview unless any questions were directed at her. She had obeyed this instruction, but only after a warning that if she did not comply, the social worker would take her place.

  “Thomas, you do not have to speak to us if you do not want to, but we are hoping you will help us to understand why you lied to Detective Inspector Hammond when you said you didn’t recognise Mr Roberts.”

  Thomas looked up indignantly and questioned Dunn how did she know he had lied. His voice sounded small and weak, he wasn’t a proud twelve year old anymore but a frightened boy who felt cornered.

  “Thomas, we have spoken to the boys you claimed to have spent the weekend with. They denied being with you.” Dunn ignored Thomas’s answer that the boys had been lying, instead she continued to maintain eye contact with the boy in front of her.

  “We know that Mr Roberts, the man in the picture Inspector Hammond showed you, used to watch the boys practise on their BMX bikes in the woods. We think he liked to watch you too. But at the weekend, you were on your own, weren’t you Thomas? Perhaps you were practising your bike stunts so you could impress the boys when you next saw them, to stop them laughing at you maybe.”

  Thomas eyes widened at the last remark, his face flushed. His eyes flicked to Hammond who kept his face devoid of expression, just listening. Dunn continued, she leaned forward slightly, resting the back of her forearms on the table between them. “We have evidence that we think will prove you were with Mr Roberts at the weekend. It is only a matter of time before the Forensics team trace the evidence back to you. Why don’t you tell us everything that happened? We just want to listen to you, Thomas. We don’t want to trap you in any way. All we want is for you to tell us what happened at the weekend. You saw Mr Roberts in the woods, didn’t you?”

  Dunn spoke the last sentence as a fact, rather than a question. Thomas licked his lower lip. His forehead was perspiring; his hands were being wiped repeatedly on the lap of his trousers. Hammond waited, he felt that Thomas was about to break.

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Thomas asked for a drink, Hammond allowed Mrs Taylor to pour water from the dispenser and hand her son the filled paper cup. Thomas took it; he looked at his mother for a long time as he swallowed. It was as if he wanted to rid himself of the burden he had been carrying the last few days.

  “I hurt him. Mr Roberts. I didn’t mean to, but he was crying and kept asking me to understand, he told me I should feel sorry for him. I wanted him to shut up.”

  Hammond leaned forward. This was the information he had waited for, but now it was coming out of Thomas’ lips, Hammond felt an inexplicable urge to tell him not to say anything further. Instead he took over the questioning.

  “Why was Mr Roberts crying Thomas?”

  “I caught him...doing things to himself. I didn’t mean to, but I wanted to try the jump again so I went back along the track and saw him.”

  “What kind of things was he doing?”

  Mrs Taylor stifled a sob, her hand was over her mouth as she began to realise what her son had been withholding from her. All the years of nurturing her son, trying to keep him safe, making him wear hats in winter, telling him to not lick the knife at mealtimes, and this one time he had needed her protection, she hadn’t been there.

  “He was having sex with himself.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to go away without him seeing me, but instead he smiled at me and asked me to go closer towards him. He was showing me his...bits...so I shouted at him to leave me alone. I left my bike there and ran away from him.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I ran home, but I wanted to get my bike back. So after a while, I went back, he was there with my bike. When he saw I had come back, he said he would give me my bike if I did something for him first.”

  There was a long pause. Hammond felt sick to his stomach. He had to allow Thomas to give a spontaneous account, without stopping him recalling significant details freely. Despite his wish to prompt Thomas further, he knew that the boys account had to be said in his own words without any provocation.

  “What did he ask you to do Thomas?”

  “Touch him...you know...there.” His hands pointed to his crotch.

  “And did you?”

  “No. No. I shouted at him, I called him names and tried to get my bike off him, but he held on and asked me to understand that he couldn’t help it. That it wasn’t his fault. He was crying like a baby.”

  “What did you do Thomas?” Hammond spoke very quietly and gently. He could feel Mrs Taylor’s fear at what her son was about to divulge.

  “I threw the bike back at him, and then I tried to get away but he kept coming towards me and begging me not to go. But I wanted to go away; I wanted him to leave me alone. I hit him.”

  “What did you hit him with?”

  “The wood. There was wood on the ground so I used it to hit him.”

  It was past 10pm when Hammond left the station. The freezing air bit his face as he opened the door and stepped out where Mother Nature’s hostility was waiting for him. The snow had been cleared and heaped on the sides of the main roads to allow the gritters to get through, his feet crunched their way on the rock salt that had been spread across the forecourt. He checked his mobile for any missed calls and considered phoning Paul. He needed to be told that arresting Thomas had been the right thing to do. As a police officer, yes, he had completed his duty, but as a man, as a father, he knew he had condemned a young man and his mother to an uncertain future and it gnawed at his conscience with sharp, unforgiving teeth. Only a week ago, he had been ordered to back down from an investigation into an arson attack on two boys, it wouldn’t surprise him if the perpetrators would be offered a lighter sentence in exchange for giving information on the suspected drug trafficking they were involved with. In comparison, Thomas was not a cold blooded killer whom had taken pleasure in causing suffering but he would be answerable to his actions regardless of whether he believed he had acted in self defence. The injustice went against everything that Hammond believed in. It sickened him knowing that he was part of a game that ruled against the vulnerable.

  Thomas was young yet he had defended himself with the rage of a grown man. This fact alone disturbed Hammond. Thomas’s account did not support the claim of self defence; he gave no indication during his statement that he had been in fear for his life. Roberts hadn’t threatened to harm Thomas; he had only tried persuasion which would have been escapable. Hammond believed that Thomas had felt fear when confronted by Graham Roberts, but what he couldn’t understand was why the boy had not simply run away and reported the incident. There was no doubt he was proud, it was evident through his persistence in trying to impress the other BMX riders despite their rejection of him. Was it possible that Graham Roberts ha
d been killed in an act of pride? To eliminate the possibility of others knowing about Thomas’ humiliation? He wished he had more evidence to prove that Roberts had been a danger to children.

  The thoughts in Hammonds mind were consuming and distracting him from his objective to getting to the shelter of his car quickly and escaping the cold. Would it have made a difference if Thomas had a father figure in his life? Hammond wondered. He quickened his pace across the car park, striding purposely, now considering the following day. Hammond knew that he would face the wrath of Beech in the morning; admittedly the arrest had been a shambles. It had attracted too much attention, Thomas’s name would be withheld from the media, but it would only be a matter of time before people started gossiping.

  His hands were pushed further up the sleeves of his coat as he unlocked his car, wishing he had brought gloves with him and reminded himself to bring them with him the following morning. His wrists ached from where he had stabbed at the computer keyboard with two opposing fingers, but at least the reports had been completed. He sat in the car, not wanting to go home. He needed distraction from his thoughts, perhaps he could see Kathleen tonight despite having cancelled their meeting earlier. He had been partly relieved that he had a good reason to cancel the dinner arrangement but felt ashamed at having disappointed her and Lloyd. He checked the digital display on the car dashboard and considered whether it was worth travelling to Charing where the Harris’ lived but then he remembered Jenny was at home and turned the ignition. It would be better to accept Kathleen’s gracious offer to wait until another day before meeting her.

  He parked the car outside his house and smiled weakly when he saw Jenny seated on the porch step smoking. She looked at him through the fog of smoke and read from his face that he wasn’t in the mood to talk. Instead she shuffled her body sideways, enabling his access through the front door. As he passed, Hammond placed a hand on the top of her head and bent to kiss her forehead lightly. “Thank you for not smoking inside the house.” He said simply. She stood up, squashing the spent cigarette under her foot and followed him into the house, closing the door with a gentle kick.

  “All arguments are meaningless until we gain personal experience.”

  Henry Havelock Ellis. The Dance of Life. 1923

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hammond’s arm wormed out the bedclothes and fumbled their way across the top of the bedside table until his fingers grasped the mobile that had rung him awake.

  “Where are you? Beech is on the warpath!” Dunn was obviously not pleased, Hammond forced his eyes to focus. The sun had intruded into his room through a crack in the curtains and warned him too late that he had overslept. He groaned and sat up in bed.

  “I’ve overslept. I will be there soon.”

  He hung up and stumbled to the bathroom. He hoped the delay would give Beech a chance to calm down before he saw him, Dunn was good with words maybe she could use her hypnotic voice on his superior officer.

  A half hour later Hammond’s car nosed its way past the melting snow heaps into the Head-quarters car park. The overtired Inspector ambled his way towards the building looking up at the office windows as he did so. There was a chance that Beech would not have seen him arrive, if so, this would allow him an opportunity to sneak in unnoticed.

  Emma’s face showed him he was in trouble, she held up two crossed fingers to wish him luck as he made his way toward Beech’s office. The Detective Superintendant was talking on the phone as Hammond looked through the glass door. Beech signalled to him to come in, his face was red and blotchy. Not a good sign Hammond reckoned, he gingerly sat down on the chair in front of Beech’s desk and waited until the telephone was returned to its cradle.

  “Good Morning Wallace. How are you? I hope you feel rested?”

  Surprisingly devoid of sarcasm, Beech’s voice sounded pleasant but he didn’t wait for Hammond to respond before coming around the desk and perched on it forcing Hammond to look up at him.

  “I apologise for the delay Sir, I left a report from last night’s questioning”

  Beech nodded an acknowledgement seemingly interested. “I read it. I understand the boy confessed, yet you haven’t submitted everything over to CPS.”

  “The evidence has to be confirmed. I want to go through the forensic reports first before they’re notified.”

  “You have a confession. That should be enough to collaborate the evidence you have gathered so far. Why are you stalling?”

  Hammond looked at Beech and without invitation, stood up from his chair and walked behind it, preferring to maintain eye contact from a mutual level.

  “We only have evidence that the pedal that caused bruising on Robert’s thigh was caused by a similar pedal to the pedals found on Thomas Taylor’s bike. Thomas confessed to beating Roberts with a piece of wood. However, despite Forensics examining all the wood they found at the scene, no fingerprints or DNA has yet been identified, possibly from degradation.”

  “The log was taken from the scene?”

  “Possibly, although evidence could have easily been contaminated by the bad weather. Wood splinters were found on Robert’s clothing but they can’t be matched to one particular piece of wood.”

  “So, what do you need?” Beech was impatient but willing to listen to Hammond.

  Hammond’s hands found their way to the warm comfort of his trousers pockets, he stood looking at Beech as he contemplated aloud.

  “We still haven’t found Robert’s wallet. Thomas’ bedroom was searched but we haven’t found anything yet. The nail clipping is more than likely to be Thomas’; he had a torn nail on his right hand but it still needs to be compared with the DNA sample we took from him. Trace evidence on the pedal needs to be confirmed and I am waiting for the blood screening report. Hopefully we can identify the weapon, but most importantly, we haven’t got a motive.”

  Beech scoffed and was about to interrupt Hammond by reminding him of Thomas’s account in his confession but Hammond ploughed through. He had concerns about the case, despite believing Thomas was guilty of the attack on Roberts. Thomas hadn’t mentioned covering Robert’s body with the branches that were found lying across him when his body was discovered. It was important to identify who had done it because it showed that Roberts was either dying or already dead when someone attempted to hide him, in which case the attack wasn’t as spontaneous as Thomas had led him to believe. Collecting enough wood and debris to cover a body took time and some rational thought. It wasn’t the actions of someone who had hit out in panic and then run away. Either Thomas had since forgotten covering the body, which could be due to memory loss brought on by trauma or someone had approached Roberts following Thomas’ attack whilst Roberts was still alive. Why did they not find Nitrates in Robert’s pockets? Surely a patient with unstable Angina would carry Nitrates in case of an attack, yet none were found at the scene. If Roberts had been having an attack, and someone had removed the nitrates as he lay defenceless, that was undoubtedly an act of murderous intent, yet Thomas Taylor had not mentioned removing anything from Roberts, including his wallet and nothing was found at his home.

  “There is a suggestion that Roberts had paedophilic tendencies. He was questioned in 2001 for exposing himself to a child and I doubt it is a coincidence that Adam Schaffer caught Roberts loitering near the library which is next to a children’s play park. Thomas had reason to believe that he was in danger, perhaps of being sexually molested. However he had the opportunity to run away. His statement doesn’t add up, it could be that he said what he thought we wanted to hear. If I could find some concrete evidence that Roberts was a threat to Thomas, to children in particular, it would help to understand why Thomas behaved the way he did.”