Cry of the Children (3 page)

The smaller of the two glanced sideways at his companion before he said, ‘Yes, sir. We acknowledge that, but there are certain extenuating—'

‘I'm not interested in your extenuating circumstances. They don't apply for policemen. Still less for experienced CID officers. Still less for an experienced Detective Sergeant. You should have learned that a long time ago. How old are you, DS Padgett?'

‘Twenty-seven, sir.'

‘And you, DC Kennedy?'

‘Twenty-four, sir.'

‘Quite old enough to know better. I wouldn't try offering callow youth as your defence when this comes to court. Because it's going to come to court, you know. The Crown Prosecution Service told me that yesterday. And so it should. No one should get away with this, and least of all experienced CID officers.'

He let the rebuke drop like lead into the silence, which extended until DS Padgett felt an overwhelming need to break it. ‘We were provoked, sir.'

Lambert looked at him for a moment, which stretched out long after Padgett had begun to regret the phrase. ‘Do you know how much you sound like those young thugs we arrest in Gloucester every Saturday night? You'll need to come up with something much better than that in court. Otherwise, you'd better keep your mouth shut and leave it to your brief.'

Kennedy felt an unwise impulse to support his colleague in the face of the chief superintendent's contempt. ‘We were off duty at the time, sir. It all blew up out of nothing. It happened very quickly.'

‘I'm sure it bloody did. Brawls usually blow up out of nothing. And they invariably happen very quickly. All of which you know very well by now. That's why they warn you in the first weeks of police training that you have to keep cool and keep control of yourselves. Both of which you signally failed to do.'

Lambert tried not to think of himself in his twenties, tried to shut out any thought of the impulsive things he might have done then, when there were fewer checks on coppers and fewer people anxious to provoke them. He looked at the cut above Kennedy's eye and the blue-green bruising that coloured Padgett's left cheek. ‘You didn't even have the sense to choose the right side, by the looks of it.'

It was the first semblance of humour he had accorded them. Padgett was encouraged to say, ‘We didn't have time to choose sides, sir. It all happened so quickly. That's the way with football violence.'

‘Don't talk to me about football violence, DS Padgett. We were handling football violence in the bad old days, before all-seater stadiums and segregated crowds and all-ticket entrance. Before you two were even in nappies.' He looked at the two pale faces, which looked so out of place on these young, powerful men. They were gazing at their feet like chastened schoolboys. He was suddenly even more annoyed that grown men should have reacted like this. ‘You got yourself involved in a bar-room brawl; you behaved like particularly ignorant sixteen-year-old schoolboys. Every police instinct should have told you to back off, but you let your fists take over. Wanted to bully someone, did you?'

DC Kennedy felt it was his turn to speak. He had an odd feeling that they should alternate in confronting the Lambert wrath. ‘We were trying to keep order, sir, not disrupt it.'

Lambert stared at him for so long that DC Kennedy eventually felt compelled to lift his eyes and look at the man on the other side of the desk. He immediately wished he hadn't done that and dropped his gaze again to the shoes he had polished so assiduously before coming in to confront the chief.

John Lambert wished he hadn't mentioned bullying. It made him feel he was using rank now to do a little bullying himself. But he was genuinely fiercely annoyed with these men and he hadn't yet reached the real reason for that. He said, ‘You were a couple of fools to get involved and you know that, whatever you try to trot out in the way of mitigating circumstances. I expect you'll be happy to let your brief use all the arguments you find so contemptible when they're used on behalf of common criminals. But that's not the worst of it. That isn't what will lose the two of you your jobs, is it?'

‘No, sir.' DS Padgett knew better now than to try to defend himself or Kennedy. He had caught the genuine anger that was driving Lambert's tirade.

‘No. You tried to cover up your role in this brawl. You put pressure on a witness to retract his evidence. The two of you sought out one of the men you had hit and used a combination of bribery and threats to try to get him to change the statement he had made in this station.'

Kennedy said desperately, ‘We didn't offer any direct bribe, sir. We simply suggested that—'

‘I'm not interested in what you simply suggested, DC Kennedy. You know as well as I do that the CPS wouldn't have charged you unless they thought they had a strong case. Contrary to what you might think, they don't like bringing cases against the police. It's tiresome, time-consuming and a waste of resources that should be applied to other things. I suggest you now get together with your brief and either refute the charge or produce the best “mitigating circumstances” plea the bugger's ever heard.'

‘Yes, sir. I think we can show that we—'

‘I'm not interested in hearing what you think you can show or what you intend to cobble up. Consult your bloody brief about that, not me. I'll take the verdict of the court on this, in due course. You've brought disgrace on the police service as well as yourselves with this. It's that service that is my concern, not your miserable skins. Don't expect any sympathy from me if and when the Crown Court finds you guilty! Now get out of here!'

They shuffled to their feet and departed as rapidly as his fierceness indicated they should. John Lambert stared at the blank wall opposite his desk for a long five minutes. Police corruption always appalled and depressed him. Yet, despite what he'd said, he knew he'd end up doing his best for Padgett and Kennedy in due course. He'd be telling whoever would listen in the hierarchy that they were foolish rather than vicious young men, who would surely learn from this experience and give good service in the future.

And yet … and yet. If they were found guilty of trying to pervert the court of justice, they would deserve no sympathy, so that he hoped his routine pleas would be ignored. It was a ridiculous contradiction. He slammed the door behind him and went home very depressed. He thought as he drove, ‘God give me some real crime and let me dispense with this sort of rubbish!'

By the end of the weekend, he would be heartily wishing he had entertained no such thought.

Lucy Gibson went to the fair that Saturday. She waited all day to go whilst she did other things that were boring.

She was forced to go into Hereford with Matt and her mum. There she had to walk round shops, when she wanted to go to the cathedral or the castle. She wouldn't even have minded a walk by the river, where there were lots of things to see and people to watch, but she had to trail round shops with her mother, holding on to her hand, whilst the adults tried to buy things that were of no interest to her.

She had to sit and watch her mother try on winter coats and parade up and down for Matt to decide which one was best. Her mum was like a silly girl with Matt, prancing up and down and giggling at his comments. Lucy would never have thought of that, but she heard one of the mums at the school gates saying it about another woman who'd got herself a new man. So that's what her mum was being, in this shop and in front of other people – a silly girl. Lucy tutted silently to herself with all the righteous puritanism of a seven-year-old.

Then she had to watch the terminally boring business of Matt buying himself a new electric shaver, whilst her mum giggled and asked questions that Lucy did not understand but which the salesman's reactions told her were silly. Matt made a great show of trying out different models and discussing with the man behind the counter what you got for the extra money with the dearer ones. Then he bought the cheapest of them, which Lucy felt she had known from the start he would do.

They had their lunch in a café in the middle of the town. Lucy was told it was a treat for her and she would normally have enjoyed it. But the place was crowded and it took them a long time to get served. Lucy couldn't help thinking of the summer and her visit here with just her mum, when they walked round the grounds of the old castle and then had tea in a much nicer café beside the river. Matt bought her a milkshake at the end of the meal as a special treat, then asked her when she'd finished whether she'd enjoyed it. ‘Too sweet!' Lucy said decisively. Her mum told her that was rude and ungrateful. Probably it was, Lucy thought to herself. She couldn't remember ever saying anything was too sweet for her before.

It seemed ages before they finally reached home. Then her mum insisted on parading up and down in her new coat, to make sure she'd made the right choice. Lucy asked again about the fair, even though she'd been forbidden to mention it again. She was told she must be tired and needed a rest before she went out and got excited. She was sent to her room to read her book and calm down. She talked to Donna, her favourite doll, and told her how stupid and annoying grown-ups could be.

When she went down again, Matt was sitting with his arm round her mum on the sofa. Mum had her head on his shoulder; her eyes were closed and she was nearly asleep. She had what Lucy thought was a stupid smile on her face. She scrambled up when she heard her daughter and said she would make them tea and cake. Lucy followed her into the kitchen, not daring to ask the question that shone out from every feature in her small, anxious face.

‘Matt's going to take you to the fair,' said her mum. ‘That's good of him, isn't it? And you must promise to be a very good girl for him.'

Lucy clenched her lips and nodded firmly three times. She didn't want to go with Matt, not on his own. But she wouldn't risk being told she was a naughty, ungrateful girl and wouldn't be allowed to go, as had happened two weeks ago when she'd been hoping to go to the cinema. ‘Won't you be coming?' she said.

‘No. I'll stay here and wash up and tidy the house. You'll be going after tea, like a big girl. You are a big girl now, aren't you?'

Not again, thought Lucy. When do you get old enough for people to stop telling you that? She nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak, not wanting to say anything that might see her forbidden to go to the fairground. The fair had been withheld from her for so long now that it seemed the only thing that mattered in her life. Eventually, her mum said, ‘It will be a good chance for Matt and you to get to know each other better, won't it? Well, I should say even better, because you already know each other quite well now, don't you? It's very important to me that you two get on with each other, you know.' And then she suddenly bent forwards and hugged Lucy so hard that her daughter felt she couldn't breathe. Grown-ups did things like that. As she smoothed her dress, Lucy felt that they should give you some sort of warning before a hug like that one.

She put on her prettiest blue dress for the fair, with the pale blue beanie her mum had bought her in the summer. She wondered as she set off with Matt whether she should have put on her trousers, but it was too late to worry about that now. He'd said she looked very nice when she had stood waiting to go, and Lucy had managed to produce a small, tight smile for him by way of thanks. Mum said she should put on the coat she wore for school, but she said she'd be all right with the dark blue fleece, which went better with her dress.

Matt held her hand tightly in his when they got to the common. When Lucy saw the number of people at the fair, she was suddenly glad of Matt. She didn't like crowds, especially crowds of grown-ups. The rides, which had looked so attractive when they were being built, seemed very noisy now, with people clinging on for dear life and other people shouting and laughing at them from the wooden paths at the sides. Everyone except Lucy seemed very much at home here. She held on to Matt's hand and leaned against his leg, feeling a reassuring warmth through his trousers.

‘We'll be all right, won't we, Lucy?' said Matt. Before she could answer, he bent down suddenly and hoisted her high in his arms, holding her against his shoulder so that she could see over the heads around her. She pulled her dress down as low as it would go over her legs, but there still seemed to be a lot of them bare. It was cold now. It wasn't quite dark yet, but the raw bright lights above the raucous noise of the fairground made it seem so here.

Matt took her on a ride called the Caterpillar. The carriages went up and down and round and round, and it wasn't really frightening, once you had got used to the noise. Then the canvas cover came up over the top of them and everyone screamed, and Matt put both arms round her and held her tight against him. She was glad he was there in the sudden darkness, which might have been very frightening with the cars still rattling forward on the bumpy track. But she wished he wouldn't hold her quite so hard, or pull her legs against him with his big rough hand. She wished it was her dad who was there in the noisy darkness, but she knew it would have been rude and ungrateful to say that to Matt. Her mum had warned her about being rude and ungrateful.

Matt wanted her to go on another of the rides, where motorbikes went up and down and round and round, but she was frightened of that. ‘I can't ride a bike yet,' said Lucy. ‘Not even an ordinary pedal bike.'

‘They're not real bikes, Lucy,' said Matt with one of his big, loud laughs. ‘They're fastened to the floor and they just go round and round and up and down like the other things. You'll be perfectly safe. I'll come on with you and ride right behind you. I'll make sure you don't fall off.'

The ride had stopped whilst he spoke and the people who had ridden were coming excitedly down the steps and shouting to each other. A big boy said there was ‘nothing to it', and Lucy moved hastily out of his way as he jumped the last two steps and flung his arms up into the air. She saw one of the girls in her class away to her right with her mother, but before she could make any contact they had disappeared into the noisy darkness.