by Frances Vick
Sarah never forgave herself for the bald, brutal way she’d broken the news. She was angry, scared, bitter, in shock, but that shouldn’t have mattered; the only thing that should have mattered was Kirsty. And when Kirsty began to scream, and later lay, rigid and blank, still in her pyjamas, Sarah – too late – hugged and kissed and cajoled her daughter, all the while knowing that she had made a terrible thing worse.
Kirsty herself didn’t remember much of the next few days. Her only recollections were vague, dream-like montages of fear and tears and sudden, frozen calm. She seemed to be the small, dead star around which chaos orbited: Mum talking talking talking, alternately chatting about nothing and obsessing on the one thing that mattered: thank god it wasn’t you! And it could have been you, that’s what I keep thinking, it could have been you! Did he do anything to you, anything? Even a little kiss… or… anything? Dad walking from room to room, arms hanging uselessly, eyes reddened. The phone calling calling calling. The curtains drawn all day. She was brave. She was so brave, they kept saying that. It was all down to her that Tokki had been arrested! It was all down to her being brave and telling the truth and… This last was the only thing that eventually got through, pierced the numbness. Kirsty tried to remember what a good thing she’d done. She tried to feel brave. She told herself that the worst was over. Mum told her that. The police had told her that. And adults always told the truth.
Tokki had been found sleeping rough behind King’s Cross station. Word spread quickly enough that a joyful crowd was already waiting at the police station, keeping their spirits up by jeering at every vehicle they saw pulling into the car park, just in case Tokki was in it. When he finally did arrive, the police were thoughtful enough to draw the crowd’s attention by putting a pillowcase over his head, and their joy deepened as they screamed, pushed, spat. A couple of little girls were hoisted onto their parents’ shoulders. One of them – a blonde cherub who couldn’t be older than four – had been coached by her dad to shout at his command, and as Tokki was led to the door, her little piping lisp rose high and sweet over the shouts. ‘Nigger cunt!’ she trilled. ‘Go back to the jungle! Go back to the jungle, you baboon!’ and everyone laughed, pinched her cheeks, called her a little madam – ‘Out of the mouths of babes, eh?’ – while her dad flushed with pride.
That was the commotion Kirsty heard while she was being questioned by Detective Lepp, Tokki was being led to his holding cell just as Kirsty was being shown the back door. They were only metres apart.
And he did confess to the murder, right away – or so they thought. He was contrite, tearful, he begged forgiveness. He hadn’t meant to make a mistake and he shouldn’t have run. It was only when he registered the number of questions they seemed to be asking about his landlady’s little girl that he stopped apologising and merely smiled politely, uncomprehendingly. Because nobody thought to arrange for a translator, they reached an impasse; the police thought he was being obstinate, playing with them, refusing to tell them what he’d done with her. Tokki, mired in confusion, waited for more clues. What did this girl have to do with an expired student visa?
When a classmate had told him that the police were looking for him, he assumed it was because he hadn’t updated his visa. He made his way to London with a view to going back home to his mum in Oman – and that was as far as his plan went. He had no money, and a shaky understanding of English. When he was eventually found, scared, hungry, sleep-deprived, he was relieved, so happy to be out of the cold that he went willingly with the police, eager to make amends for ‘the bad thing’ he did. In the station he’d nodded through the interview, said sorry, even cried, asked for absolution, but of course, he had no idea what he was really admitting to. It was only, finally, when they showed him a picture of his landlady’s little girl, said the word ‘DEAD’, that he realised just how bad things were, but of course by that time he’d already said he was ‘very bad man’ that he ‘make mistake’ that he ‘deserve the bad’ and by then it was too late. He stopped speaking altogether then, sat silent and shaking, only offering a nervous, terrified smile that quickly made its way into the headlines as ‘The Smirk of a Killer!’ Once, on the way back from questioning, an impatient, disgusted constable hit him hard on the back of the neck with his truncheon, telling him he’d better start talking about that poor lass he killed, and Tokki swung one ineffectual punch back, which proved what everyone knew already: he was dangerous. A man with no limits.
Nobody could have predicted how big this story would become, what it tapped into and just how much people wanted to talk. This was a small city in a disregarded area; the industry that had once underpinned it, that had swelled it to city size in the first place, was in its death throes, and bringing everything down with it. The Victorian terraces, built to house workers for factories that no longer existed, stood in decaying rows like bad teeth, and relatively recently built estates like Beacon Hill, which had been optimistically designed to accommodate yet more workers, were now merely slums in the making. When the core of the community was ripped out, bad things filled the gap. Most of them were depressingly ordinary outrages – rapes, burglary, the odd spot of arson, all the old favourites – and this city had more than its fair share of them, but now it also had something special – it had a straightforward Good vs Evil Child Murder, and it had an energising effect on the locals. Because the murderer wasn’t One of Them, it was an easy case to follow and wallow in with no grey areas, no room for doubt. Even before he’d been found and arrested, the public’s mind was made up: Toqueer Al-Balushi was a killer. Even the fact that there was no body was OK; he’d crack eventually and tell the police where he’d put her. No-one doubted that. In the meantime they could undo their moral buckles and let all those luxurious prejudices flop out… They weren’t racialist but that college was an accident waiting to happen… never wanted to mix, never wanted to fit in, and I swear to god I saw one of them eating a baked potato with his hands! I smelled curry on my Woman’s Own!
It was exciting that this worst nightmare came true. It was exciting to talk to journalists, exciting to see your street on the news, to peer over the sober shoulders of reporters and wave at the camera. It was exciting to know that you lived somewhere where things still happened, and this excitement ran through the city like electricity through a corpse, until everything was permitted, anything could be said, anyone could be listened to.
Throughout all this, Kirsty was supposed to be kept safe. Mum told her she’d be safe and her name was meant to be a secret. The fact of her was meant to be a secret, but secrets can’t be kept in a place like that, not when the sudden light of publicity turned on its glare, and stayed long enough to burn. As soon as the neighbours saw the police car outside her house, they jumped to conclusions… What if that little girl had done something? They watched her walk out of the front door, only just visible between uniformed bulk, and thought, ‘What does she know?’ They watched her mother following behind, head down as if ashamed, and wondered what she knew. Someone swore they’d seen handcuffs on Sarah’s wrists! And calls were made – to sons and daughters who’d moved away, to old friends, distant family… ‘Whatever’s happening you’re not getting the full story from the papers, I’ll tell you that… that girl knows something…’ and soon Kirsty’s name was an airborne virus, and after Tokki was arrested, all bets were off. Kirsty was the last person to see Lisa alive, and there were plenty of reporters who wanted to know everything about her – sudden, interested strangers who scribbled shorthand in notebooks and asked just the right questions to get just the right story.
The police failed to protect Kirsty, not from malice but from ineptitude; they were simply out of their depth.
But that’s an explanation, not an excuse.
Bryan became the first stop for national journalists. Loquacious, energetic, angry, he would talk to and at anyone, he enjoyed posing for pictures and had no scruples about spilling family secrets. It was Bryan who gave them family photos, and let them into De
nise’s home while she was out, allowing them to take photos of Lisa’s bedroom, Tokki and Mohammed’s room (‘Only One Thin Wall Between Tragic Tot and Killer!’). They took pictures of Lisa’s Care Bear collection, her never-used roller skates in the wardrobe, the small, lipsticked kisses smeared around a picture of George Michael she’d cut out from Look-in magazine, and all on the promise of fifty quid. Bryan – for a while – was perfect source material.
Bryan outlived his usefulness quite quickly though. He gave away everything too soon and exhausted his small value. That first fifty pounds was all he made, but rather than get angry at the journalists, he turned his bewildered rage on Kirsty. That girl, she was hiding something! She was the one who got Lisa into this, ask her, ask her! Perhaps it was an attempt to stay relevant, part of the story, or maybe that was crediting him with more cunning than he had. Either way, the press did indeed turn from Bryan to Kirsty, and this made him madder still, in both senses of the word.
The press were nice about Kirsty at first. The received wisdom was that she, too, must have been sexually abused. She should be respected, cared for, given time. One ‘expert’ from the News of the World ‘reached out’ to her and her family, saying that the paper would pay for counselling. Sarah – mindful of the police’s guidance – didn’t respond to that or to any requests for interviews, but this silence was interpreted as coldness, as arrogance. This family weren’t grateful enough! What were they hiding? The public deserved to know! Kirsty went from victim to assumed perpetrator in a series of editorial meetings on Fleet Street… It no longer mattered that she was as much a child as the missing girl. Being dead afforded you a respect that being alive, and stubbornly silent, didn’t.
Thanks to Bryan, they knew where she lived and they thought they knew just what to ask her – Kirsty, why didn’t you tell anyone about the abuse? Kirsty? Did she cry when she told you? Kirsty? Kirsty! We deserve to know! And Kirsty would keep her head down, shield her face, not say a word as she struggled out of the front door. They were outside the school holding pictures, shouting, Is this the coat Lisa was wearing when she was killed? Waving a photo of them both, arms around each other, dressed for last year’s school disco. Was it this coat, Kirsty? Was she wearing a coat, Kirsty? Was she wearing any knickers, Kirsty? Why won’t you talk, Kirsty? It doesn’t make you look like a good friend if you don’t talk, Kirsty! Don’t you even care?
The teachers tried to break it up, failed. The local police were stretched too thin. Parents complained and Miss Farnell called Kirsty and her mum into her office to say that maybe she should stay at home for the next few weeks? All this, it was disruptive for the other pupils, surely she could understand? And so Kirsty lost the only respite she’d had. They were outside the house and the neighbours complained, shouted. The shouting proved to the journalists that Kirsty lived in a ‘violent area’ (‘As if it is!’ Sarah said. ‘We own our houses round here! If you want violence, go to Beacon Hill!’) while the neighbours blamed Sarah and Kirsty for the intrusion, even while they made mugs of tea for the journalists and let them use their toilets.
All they could do was endure it. Kirsty couldn’t leave the house and neither could Mum. She did her practical best, mixing and matching metaphors with increasing desperation: ‘We’ll just hunker down and weather the storm.’ ‘It’ll all be water under the bridge by tomorrow.’ ‘Today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s chip wrappers. And next year it’ll be forgotten.’ Like most promises made by anxious parents to frightened children, it almost, but never fully, came true; Kirsty never, ever, truly recovered. She’d been pushed off the main road of her life, thrown into some muddy, interminable lay-by, she’d lost momentum, she was too injured. At the time though, she nodded when her Mum told her that nothing lasts forever… ‘Give it a month, a few months, a year…’, ‘You won’t always feel like this; time is kind; time is the best healer.’ Tomorrow Kirsty would wake up and Lisa would be the second thing she thought of; another day she would be the third or fourth thing. And one, magical, mystical day, What Happened to Lisa simply wouldn’t pop up at all, and Kirsty would know she was healed. ‘It will happen, my love. I promise.’
Kirsty believed it. She was young enough to still believe then.
Seven
Toqueer Al-Balushi was charged with the murder of Lisa Jade Cook, to which he pleaded not guilty, but seeing as he’d already confessed, that made no difference at all. The police let it be known that they now suspected him to be involved in the murder of another little girl – Tracy Spellar – in a neighbouring county a year earlier. Her body had been found, cut in two neat slices and buried by the railway lines. The police pressed him to confess and fully expected him to do so, but he never did and he rescinded his confession to Lisa’s murder.
Of course, Mohammed, who had also been targeted by the press in those early days, had the presence of mind to distance himself as far as he could from his friend. Tokki was merely an acquaintance, they weren’t in the same class at Marlborough House and didn’t see much of each other because, unlike Tokki, Mohammed was a Good Muslim, a Sunni who attended prayers daily and volunteered at a local youth group. He made sure to mention that he had been at the house every minute of that fateful weekend, even forgoing prayers, in order to support Denise – a good woman, his English mother. Just before he left the country, he gave one grave interview to the Mirror which appeared under the headline ‘Beatings, Torture “Normal” in Child Killer’s Secretive “Cult” claims classmate!’ – in which he threw Tokki even further under the bus. ‘He is Ibadi Muslim. They are different. They do things which we true Muslims could not abide. I am glad he has confessed and I hope he has asked forgiveness from Allah also.’
Tokki’s confession and Mohammed’s careful approaches to the press should have made Denise’s life a little better, but they didn’t. Ever since she’d had a phone line installed – the police told her to do it so they could get in touch with her ‘if anything happened’ – it rang endlessly and was rarely the police, but strangers who hated her, who hissed at her. Notes were shoved under her door. Twice someone posted shit through the letterbox and once someone set fire to the backyard. ‘Nigger Lover’ was spray-painted on the side of the house and both her dogs disappeared and were found later in the scrubland outside Beacon Hill, mutilated, their collars placed neatly next to their little corpses, the address still visible on the blood-flecked ID disc. Denise was spat at in the street, followed by cars. It seemed that people hated her more than they hated the man who’d killed her daughter. She’d let him in, after all, taken his money, let him do god knows what to her little girl.
It was another violent attack that seemed to have put an end to Denise’s torture. In June, Marlborough House was firebombed, the remaining international students fled, and the place burned solidly for two hours before the fire service ambled up. Each day, as the bricks cooled and the scorched grass powdered, the calls, the notes, the threats lessened, and eventually ceased. Like a cast of some Pompeiian corpse, the blackened hulk of the building crouched on the edge of Beacon Hill, and over the years it crumbled, but remained. Much like Denise herself. Kirsty wasn’t so lucky.
Long after the press had abandoned the town, Bryan trailed her, suddenly popping up from behind bushes, lurching out from alleyways to scream, and shout, and chase her. Sometimes he just stared. Stared and spat obliquely at her, never hitting her, but making sure he made her flinch. A few times he’d thrown rocks – sharp, flinty rocks, as big as a bird’s egg – and he was a good aim. One of them smashed her forehead open and she’d stumbled home, blind with blood, claiming to have fallen. Mum didn’t ask her any questions, just drove her to casualty, where she was stitched up and told to be more careful. She still had a scar.
Kirsty couldn’t fathom this hatred. She’d never met him before. All she knew about him was that he got into fights and Denise had thrown him out as soon as he turned sixteen, and since then he’d lived in a squat near the station. He had a shaved head, wore Doc Marten
s and hung about with skinheads in the park, drinking Special Brew. Bryan had attended the same primary school as his sister, and he still hung over the place like smog. Tales were told about how he’d thrown a chair at Mr Wolverson, and how he’d nailed a dead frog to the bonnet of Miss Farnell’s car (it was rumoured that she was French, and that was enough for Bryan). Once he called Mrs Butler a rotten old bitch. The tables were still scarred with his vividly misspelled graffiti. Bryan got his first professional tattoo at thirteen – a smudgy British Bulldog wearing boxing gloves. It joined the rest of his clumsy body art – an ear crookedly pierced with a darning needle, a couple of scratchy swastikas on his hands. But that’s all he was – a vaguely thrilling myth, a ‘Bad Lot’.
When Bryan wasn’t torturing Kirsty, he was outside Denise’s house. She still didn’t let him in, so he’d position himself on the opposite side of the street and rant, throwing rocks and cans at her front door, screaming, wheedling, or merely staring at the curtained windows in silence. Before long he took his show on the road so the whole town had a front-row seat… he was in the park, in the pubs, in the streets, dashing about in a crook-backed speed-walk, rage seeming to pump out in his wake like a hateful exhaust pipe.
People complained about him – not only Denise’s neighbours, but shopkeepers tired of his disruptive antics taking away trade. The police would arrive then and tell him to move it, but they didn’t arrest him. There was a tacit feeling that Bryan – though undeniably a terrible human being – had been further unhinged by loss. Lisa’s murder was his get-out-of-jail-free card, and he should be put up with. Even Sarah seemed to agree: ‘Not the sharpest tool in the box. Never has been. You’ve got to feel sorry for him really. After what happened. He’ll calm down eventually.’ But Kirsty knew different. She knew Bryan was mad. Not angry-mad, but crazy-mad, and where adults saw a wounded animal that would heal, Kirsty saw dangerous insanity that could never heal. Children understand the madness of other children, they know that it’s untethered from life experience, common sense, and the only thing on your side was their deficiencies – their lack of care and attention to propriety, their lack of subtlety. These were the things that attracted the censure of adults, and that censure was the only thing that would stop them killing you.
