Who Needs Flowers When They're Dead

by George Lincoln

  ‘I’ve been on the department six months,’ he continued. ‘I’ve had no complaints about my work rate or case management, apart from a few women think I’m too mean to them. To give me a mentor at this stage would suggest you should have given me one earlier, rather than wait six months before doing anything about it. Nobody else has a mentor so you would be singling me out for special treatment, despite a lack of any formal disciplinary or capability proceedings against me. I note that a Police Federation representative has not been invited to this meeting. I respectfully urge you to reconsider, sir.’

  Use cover.

  David had rehearsed this, knowing which buttons to push at the right time. Mentioning the Federation made him inwardly chuckle to himself – they were fucking useless. Fat fucks whose sole contribution to improving police pay and conditions was a big knees-up every autumn by the seaside at each member’s expense, regaling each other with war stories and the ‘good old days’. When called into action their standard advice was to be a good boy, toe the line, do what he say, do what he say. A blancmange on the chair next to him would have more impact on the outcome.

  But this was how the game was played.

  The DI contemplated David’s carefully-crafted response for a few moments. He didn’t really have a problem with David; they actually got along quite well on a personal level. They both read books from time to time, which set them apart from the rest of the fascisti. But certain appearances had to be made. The rest of the team found David difficult to work with so it fell to him to try and resolve it. Like he wasn’t busy enough.

  ‘OK, David, I only said I was considering it. Nothing is decided.’

  It was true, he had given himself that wiggle-room from the outset. But David’s speech had the desired effect. He created enough doubt and raised a few questions that might later have to be addressed. The DI could do without the headache, he thought. Just run along and play nicely, he may as well have said. They had to be seen to be offering support, but there had to be a genuine professional reason for doing so. Not just the whim of some menopausal old sweat throwing her teddies out of the pram. David doubted that she would have been much pleased with working so closely alongside him anyway; their antipathy was mutual. This was the Met Police book-of-management-skills way of dealing with the situation; to make the potential outcome less appealing for all parties than the current status quo. That way, people tend to complain less in future.

  Kath kept her fucking mouth shut for a while after that meeting.

  Transmit.

  CHAPTER 14

  The boy shivered in the cold winter night. His dad’s car wasn’t the warmest place to spend the night, the windows steaming quickly as his warm breath instantly met with temperatures rapidly pushing below zero. He hadn’t really had time to plan this; he had no blankets, no means to keep himself warm. The back seat of his dad’s battered old Ford Escort estate wasn’t long enough for him to stretch out at all, but it was slightly softer than lying in the boot. It was three a.m. He was cold and tired. But he didn’t cry.

  Eight hours earlier the boy was inside his dad’s flat playing his guitar. It was an Encore copy of the classic Sunburst Fender Stratocaster shape used by Kirk Hammett from Metallica, amongst many others. Obviously, his version was a little cheaper in build and quality than what Kirk might be accustomed to, but we all have to start somewhere, the boy figured. His dad had wanted to get him this horrible purple guitar which was about twenty pounds cheaper in the second-hand shop they went to, but for once the boy managed to convince his dad to part with a little more cash, seeing as it was Christmas and all. The boy wasn’t a particularly good guitar player, but he wanted to get better. And the only way to do that was to keep practising, the guy in the guitar shop had told him.

  ‘Stop making that racket, you’re shit,’ were his dad’s typically warm and supportive words.

  The boy had learned not to expect praise from his dad any more. His younger brother was falling further and further down the downward spiral, and his dad just seemed angry all of the time. His brother had been permanently expelled from three schools by the age of thirteen for things like hitting teachers and bringing drugs onto school premises.

  It wasn’t his fault; his mum would always say. It was the teacher’s fault. They all had it in for him, she would insist.

  His dad thought beating him harder might solve the problem. It didn’t.

  Eventually, his mum decided his brother needed a fresh start somewhere else and moved back up to the North East where she grew up, taking his brother with her. The boy was glad. He didn’t speak to his mum or brother anymore anyway.

  ‘I need you out of here tonight, Karin is staying over,’ the boy’s dad told him with a fixed glare.

  ‘I don’t have anywhere to go, I haven’t made any plans,’ the boy offered hopefully.

  ‘Tough shit. Make some plans. Don’t come back here tonight.’

  By now the boy was out drinking fairly regularly most weekends. It was a small town up north. There wasn’t a great deal else to do. He used to do loads of things every evening when he lived with his mum and dad together. On Mondays and Thursdays, he did karate. Tuesdays and Fridays was scouts. Wednesdays was football training. Sometimes he had a football tournament or karate competition at the weekends. He was good at karate, especially doing the kata forms. He won loads of trophies and certificates for kata, which was all about memorising a set routine of moves and executing it perfectly for the judges. Everything in the correct order, he was good at that. He wasn’t so great at fighting. He found it too unpredictable.

  The boy knew that he could get served at most pubs in the area by now, but he hadn’t had a chance to borrow any of his dad’s clothes that evening to make him look older so he was just going to have to chance it. For a small town of about twenty thousand people, there were loads of pubs everywhere, as if people around here had nothing else to do except drink and moan about some woman called Margaret Thatcher. Apparently, she took away all of their jobs, but the boy wondered if that was true, how come they could all still afford to sit in the pub most days.

  He made his way down to the Coach and Horses where pretty-much everybody was underage so he got served, no problem. Years later they were shut down for serving minors and it turned into an Indian restaurant. Bit of diversity needed in the area, apparently.

  He didn’t really have a plan. He couldn’t exactly just invite himself round to someone’s house to spend the night. He didn’t have much money and hadn’t even planned to be out, so he had to drink really slowly to make his pints last longer. He could take his beer now, he was used to it.

  The night dragged on. It was early January; everybody was skint. Not many people were out, another reason he hadn’t planned anything. The bell rang for last orders, and the boy just wandered around the cold, dark streets for ages. He did get invited to a party at somebody’s house but he didn’t really know them, and they were a lot older than him. They said they had loads of booze and drugs at the house; he could have whatever he liked if he went with them. The boy had never really taken any drugs. He didn’t see the point and never understood why people would trust a tablet from a complete stranger. His mum had mistakenly fed him a sterilising tablet when he was young once; he had to have his stomach pumped out at hospital and he nearly died. His mum said she thought it was a paracetamol. Since then the boy didn’t really trust any tablets he was given by other people.

  The boy thought the people having the party seemed a bit dodgy so he didn’t go. Why would they just randomly invite along a boy half their age, he wondered? He remembered reading about another boy called Ben who lived not far from them who disappeared on holiday in Greece. His parents never saw him again. The boy thought to himself his dad would probably be pleased if that happened to him, then Karin could come and stay over whenever she wanted.

  The boy was running out of options. His dad had always told him not to go to strangers’ houses. But then his dad had told him not t
o go home that night either. Then he remembered his dad’s car passenger door didn’t lock properly. He’d be able to sleep in there and then just walk in tomorrow morning as if he spent the night at a friend’s house. His dad never bothered asking where he’d stayed out anyway. Good job they didn’t have a nice car like his friend Tim whose dad just got a brand-new Vauxhall Vectra. Tim’s parents were really nice. They always used to give the boy a lift home at night if he went around to their house to make sure he was safe. Tim was really lucky, the boy thought to himself.

  Sure enough, the passenger door opened and the boy climbed into the back seat. It was freezing cold and uncomfortable but eventually he managed to fall asleep. A few hours later he was woken by a police officer standing next to the car, tapping on the car window. Somebody had seen him climb into the back seat and reported it to the police.

  ‘Can you tell me why you’re sleeping in this car, young man?’

  The officer’s voice was friendly; he seemed more concerned than annoyed. The boy thought quickly what to say. He couldn’t say that his dad had kicked him out for the night. Then the police would knock on his dad’s door and wake him up, and the boy would get in loads of trouble once the police left. He couldn’t say that he had just tried any car door, then they would think he was trying to nick cars. Some of the people in his year at school used to brag about nicking cars all the time. They didn’t come in to school very often any more.

  ‘I live here. I lost my keys so thought I’d just sleep in here tonight, that’s all.’ The boy nervously indicated towards the flat as he spoke.

  The male officer spoke to the female officer he was with for a few minutes and then talked into his radio for a bit. The boy just sat in the car waiting. He remembered worrying that he was going to get into loads of trouble when his dad found out about this. But it wasn’t his fault. The boy didn’t understand what else he was supposed to do. The police officers seemed really kind. He heard one say to the other ‘no signs of forced entry’ or something like that. They asked for his name and how old he was. The boy told them the truth.

  He thought at least if he got arrested, he would have somewhere warm to sleep that night.

  ‘I think you need to go inside your house now. It’s not safe for you sleeping out here at your age.’ The female officer spoke to him this time. She had a really soft, kind voice.

  The boy had told them he had lost his keys. Even though they were in his pocket, he knew he could get into trouble for lying to the police. And he had been drinking underage so he could get into even more trouble. He agreed to go inside.

  The officers knocked at his dad’s flat and spoke to the boy’s dad for a few minutes. The boy was really cold by now and started shivering. His dad looked really angry at first when he saw the boy stood with two police officers, but then when they explained to him what had happened, he seemed really embarrassed and kept thanking them for bringing him home safe.

  ‘Fucking hypocrite,’ the boy thought to himself.

  The boy spent the rest of the night on the sofa, warm at last. He kept thinking how kind the police officers had been to him. His dad was always moaning about the police saying they were pigs. Which didn’t make any sense because his dad was obsessed with pigs. There were framed pictures of pigs all over the flat. In the morning, his dad never mentioned anything about the night before. In fact, they never spoke of it again.

  CHAPTER 15

  First thing to do once a case was allocated to you was to work out your investigation strategy and show that you had done this on the crime report. Accountability. Arse-covering. If you say you were going to do something, it was as good as doing it. If you say you planned to move the heavens and the earth in order to find an outstanding suspect, they were as good as found. But this problem was rare in the child abuse world because the suspects were most often well-known to the alleged victim and usually living in the same house as them.

  Because you don’t get to choose your family. They are allocated to you.

  David preferred to work alone. He had a system that played to his strengths and minimised exposure of his weaknesses. The Standard Operating Procedures insist everything should be done in pairs for officer safety reasons, until there weren’t enough staff. Then the Standard Operating Procedures didn’t give a fuck about your safety. David figured he was a big boy; he could handle himself. Most nonces are generally not noted for their excellent fighting skills. If it was convenient for the job to send him out alone when it suited them, he figured it was convenient for him the rest of the time too. He didn’t need anybody else’s help.

  One of the reasons David had first moved to London was the sheer diversity of the populace he would eventually serve. He grew up in a small northern town, one road in and one road out. Zero diversity. Everybody from the same place, worked at the same steelworks, drank at the same pubs, kids went to the same school. In the north they call this ‘community’ but to David it was too much, too claustrophobic. Everybody in each other’s pockets, everybody knowing each other’s business. He longed for the anonymity the metropolis offered and took full advantage of it.

  He certainly wasn’t here in the big city to make friends. People couldn’t be relied upon.

  What struck David about London when he first arrived was how close to each other the rich and poor lived, often along the same street. Massive Georgian townhouses worth millions opposite dingy red-brick council estates with burnt-out cars and old mattresses littered about the place. He found it fascinating. You didn’t need to wonder how the other half lived. You could just look out of the window and see for yourself.

  London had poverty like he’d never really seen before, but it had riches beyond his wildest expectations in equal measure. Take the Evans family for example. Large townhouse near the tube in central London. Large country house in Kent. Holiday home in Switzerland, handy for Lake Geneva during summer and the Alps for skiing in winter. Mummy is a writer and spends her time between the three houses. Daddy only appears at weekends, spending most of his time in the City earning the big bucks. Two lovely young children need a nanny, of course.

  Somebody has to look after them.

  It always struck David how the richer people were, the less time they spent with their own children. As though childcare was too menial a task for them and should be delegated to some poor immigrant nanny. These were the people who took full advantage of the common market.

  A succession of young female nannies from Eastern Europe joined the Evans household as paid employees. Mr Evans fucked all of them.

  In the marital bed. In the kitchen. In the bathroom. In London. In Kent. In Switzerland. Any opportunity he got really. Mrs Evans was not amused. He barely even bothered to conceal the affairs, as if he wanted her to know the consequences of bringing another woman into the household. Betrayed, humiliated, shamed – she hatches a plan of pure genius. She can’t possibly throw him out, far too embarrassing. What would the neighbours say? As Mr Evans seems determined to fuck every female that enters the household, what better than a gay male nanny instead – maybe that will stop his errant ways, she hoped.

  The nanny in question hailed from Spain. It seemed the Evans had had their fill of former Eastern bloc countries for now, time to try sunnier climes. Roberto arrived. Mrs Evans delighted with herself – a more tactile, camp and extravagant gay man you could not hope to meet, she boasted to her upper middle-class friends over afternoon tea. Roberto is introduced to everybody with gleaming smiles all round by Mrs Evans. This should do the trick, she thought.

  Roberto was great with the kids, at first. Until he started fucking them.

  Five-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl in equal measure. In London. In Kent. In Switzerland. Any opportunity he got really. It wasn’t always fully penetrative, but it was sometimes. In fact, the only person not getting any action in this twisted household of iniquity was poor Mrs Evans, David wondered to himself.

  Eventually Roberto is outed and on the next plane to Spain,
duly returned and dragged off the tarmac at Gatwick by David. There was no misery for him to take any pleasure in here; this man was a monster, a predator of the worst kind. A very well-paid predator who had been brought into the home by a very wealthy family.

  David blamed the parents. It was always the parents. They fuck you up.

  They put their children at such risk because they didn’t want the inconvenience of spending too much time raising them. Parents who wanted for nothing and could provide everything in the end provided only suffering of the worst kind imaginable.

  Those children fucked for life by a double-betrayal. David pondered the utter senselessness of it all over a large glass, after seeing Roberto led down to the cells from the dock earlier that afternoon. He had developed a penchant for fine French brandy. As they peered across the street at the have-nots, those two young Evans children growing up would have expected to see the lion’s share of suffering in that street take place over there.

  Across the street.

  In the other place.

  The place with all the poor people.

  Not in their perfect little world of ski trips and country houses.

  David downed the contents of his glass and replenished them quickly, as he sank deeper into despair.

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.’ [John A Simone Sr, American writer and broadcaster]

  Things had begun to settle down and improve for the boy around the time his final year of school began. The council had finally relented and given them a bigger house; he had his own room again. His mother and brother were both out of the picture, having moved away. Even though his dad still wasn’t around much, the boy was used to this by now and knew how to look after himself. He could survive on just one meal per day now, usually something meagre he ate at school. The new house was much closer to school as well so he didn’t have to walk too far again.