Past Mortem (30 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he offices of Kidcall occupied a floor of Centre Point. Newson was visiting Kidcall because he had decided that he needed to understand more about the psychology of bullying and bullies, and this was the principal charity dealing with the issue.

‘Everybody else does child abuse,’ said the counsellor he had spoken to over the phone, ‘but, you see, to us, bullying
is
child abuse. It just happens to be other children who do it.’

Newson had arranged to meet a senior counsellor and full-time employee of the charity. As he entered the offices he was relieved to see no sign of Helen. He’d known that by contacting Kidcall he ran the risk of bumping into her, but he felt he had no choice. He wanted to speak to experts.

The offices consisted of a phone room where four counsellors were permanently on call, a large administration office and a small office for Dick Crosby, the President.

‘He’s here quite often,’ Henry Chambers said as they entered Crosby’s office, ‘but when he’s not I get to use his room. So, Inspector? What can I do for you?’

‘Well, Mr Chambers.’

‘Please. Henry.’

‘Henry. I’m interested in the psychology of bullying.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. That’s our business. Bullying…Well, of course, I should say the prevention thereof.’

‘Perhaps you could tell me a little…’

‘You’re a friend of Helen Smart’s, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I…’

‘I mentioned you to her this morning. You know, said that you’d called and were coming round and she said she knew you. Small world, eh? To coin a cliché, ha ha.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?’

‘She’s a lovely girl, Helen.’

‘Um, yes, yes, she is.’

‘Best thing that happened to this charity, her coming to work for us. She’s terrific on the phones, talking to the kids, you know. She’s a great administrator and, well, just really, really nice.’

‘Yes. I don’t know her very well now. We were at school together.’

‘That would have been nice.’

‘What?’

‘To have known her at school.’

It could not have been more obvious to Newson that Henry Chambers had a crush on Helen if he had written it across his forehead. Newson knew that grim habit of feeling the need to talk about the object of one’s love and sing their praises to anyone who would listen because he recognized it in himself. He wondered if it was as glaringly obvious to Helen as it was to him.

‘I’m trying to build up a profile of the typical victim of bullying,’ Newson said.

‘I’m afraid there’s no obvious answer to that, Inspector. How long is a piece of string? What we’ve come to recognize is that bullying can happen to anyone. Kids who’ve never experienced it before might swap schools and get into trouble completely unexpectedly. Parents are often astonished when they discover that their child has been bullied. Look at the case in the paper today. The girl who cut her wrists. It’s amazing how it takes a child to kill herself to get bullying on to the agenda at all.’

‘Yes, amazing.’

‘From what I’ve read, that girl wasn’t a typical victim at all. She was popular, she was beautiful, which incidentally is another reason for the media interest. It’s sad that we seem to find the death of a child more upsetting if that child is beautiful.’

‘I suppose we’re all attracted to beauty, aren’t we?’

‘Beauty and the appreciation of it are very subjective things,’ Chambers said primly. ‘Anyway, this girl Tiffany Mellors suffered in silence. Nobody knew anything about her torment and they were not on the look-out for it because she didn’t fit any kind of victim profile.’

‘But there must be some characteristics that are ‘more common to victims than to others.’

‘Obviously some kids are more vulnerable. Common sense tells us that. Kids who have problems physically are always targets. Slow kids, too, but also sensitive, clever ones get picked on. Helen could tell you more about that. You should talk to her. She was bullied at school, you know. Were you aware of it?’

‘Not at the time, no.’

‘You see, it’s often a secret crime. Secret victims, secret motives, although in Helen’s case it’s pretty obvious that the other girls must have been jealous of her.

Newson knew it was pretty obvious that this was absolute nonsense. Christine Copperfield had not been remotely jealous of Helen Smart, she had merely despised her and resented what she saw as Helen’s feelings of superiority. But in Helen’s case Henry Chambers was looking through the eyes of love and hence saw everything exclusively in that context.

‘You simply can’t tell who’ll be the next victim,’ Chambers continued.

A loud voice could be heard in the outer office greeting the staff. Newson recognized it immediately. Assured, confident, well-spoken but with the tiniest carefully protected hint of proletarian roots. Dick Crosby had arrived to pay a visit to his charity. He entered the office and recognized Newson before Chambers had even had a chance to introduce him.

‘Are you following me around, Inspector? Should I be worried?’

‘Not at all, Mr Crosby. Actually, I’m not here to see you.

‘And sadly you don’t have your gorgeous colleague with you, either, so nothing in this for me at all, then.’

For a moment Newson was taken aback. How on earth did this man know Natasha? And then he recalled that when he had last met Crosby backstage at the eighties concert claiming to be on police business he had been in the company of Christine. Naturally Crosby would have assumed that Christine was a police officer too. Poor Christine. How she’d have loved to know that Dick Crosby had remembered her, that the first thing he’d done was bring her up in conversation.

‘I never forget a face,’ Crosby added, ‘but in that girl’s case I haven’t forgotten the rest of her either. Definitely my kind of copper.’

Newson wanted to tell Crosby that Christine was dead, to smother his joshing in the thick blanket of sorrow that had wrapped itself around him. But he didn’t. What would have been the point?

Henry Chambers spoke up from the corner of the room. He had removed himself from Crosby’s desk the moment the great man had entered the room. ‘Inspector Newson is investigating a case that involves bullying,’ he said, sounding apologetic.

‘Yes,’ Newson added. ‘I’m anxious to learn about the psychology of the subject.’

‘Ah, tricky. Very tricky,’ Crosby mused, crossing the room in a proprietorial manner and dropping elegantly into his chair. ‘The only thing I know for sure about the psychology of bullying is that I don’t know anything about the psychology of bullying. No two bullies are ever alike, no two victims either.’

‘That what I said,’ Chambers chipped in. ‘How long is a piece of string?’

‘Was there much bullying at your school, Mr Crosby?’ Newson asked. ‘I remember your speech at the benefit show in Hyde Park. It was very inspiring.’

‘I suppose we had our share and I copped the usual quota. I wasn’t a billionaire then, you see, just a scholarship boy at an expensive public school. We’re always targets, us social climbers, aren’t we? But, as you can see, I got over it.’

‘I think perhaps that’s something of an understatement.’

‘I didn’t expect to see you here today, Dick,’ Chambers interjected.

‘I came in because of this awful Tiffany Mellors business,’ Crosby said. ‘The media want some comment and I thought I’d do it here to give Kidcall a push. It would be good to get something positive out of such a tragedy. I looked her up, but she’d never contacted us. If she had perhaps she’d be alive now.’

Newson took his leave of Crosby and of Henry Chambers, intent on heading back to New Scotland Yard. However, on emerging from the office he saw that Helen Smart was waiting for him.

‘Can we have a coffee?’ she asked.

Newson had not wanted to have this conversation, but it could not be avoided. He accompanied Helen reluctantly to a nearby Starbucks, expecting further unpleasant recriminations or possibly a demand to stuff her orifices with white chocolate muffins and ejaculate into her skinny latte. Fortunately, however, she was in a relaxed, almost conciliatory mood.

‘I wanted to apologize,’ she said, attacking a bucket of mocha-flavoured soymilk foam. ‘I’ve been acting appallingly.’

She still looked tired and unwell but she’d washed her hair and was nicely dressed, a contrast to the casualty she’d appeared to be when Newson had interviewed her at her flat only two days before.

‘You reported me to my superiors, Helen. You said I was harassing you. I could’ve got into terrible trouble.’

‘I know, it was a shitty thing to do. Totally shitty. But I was angry. I’m not angry now.’

‘So what’s brought about this change, then? Not that I’m not happy to accept the apology.’

‘Well, they’ve put me on Prozac for a start, but that won’t kick in for a while. In the meantime I’m doing my best with what inner resources I have.’

‘So you did see a doctor, then?’

‘Yes, she’s given me medication and arranged for counselling, which I’m dreading. I’m suffering from depression, you know.’

‘Yes, I rather think I’d worked that out.’

‘But the point is that suddenly I can see that what I’m depressed about is myself. I’m my own problem. I have to get out of it my own way.’

‘What happened, Helen?’ Newson was now used to Helen’s mood swings and he took nothing for granted.

‘The kind of wake-up call only a mother can get,’ she replied. ‘It happened straight after you left on Sunday. Kelvin was really pissed off about cops being round.’

‘Yes, I noticed. Who was Kelvin, by the way?’

‘I’d met him the night before at a club in Camden.’

‘I see.’

‘I know, I know, picking up strangers, eh? Not a good look.’

‘Certainly not strangers who look like Kelvin.’

‘I did it after the Hyde Park show. After I saw you with Christine.’

‘So, my fault again, then?’

‘No, that’s what I have to come to terms with. I mean, I still think it was a pretty shitty thing to do, turning up with her and all — ’

‘Look, I’m sorry but — ’

‘It doesn’t matter, Ed. Like I say, I need to start recognizing that what happens to me is my responsibility. I’ve been acting like an angry schoolgirl. In fact, not
acting
like one.
Being
one. I’ve been a jealous, angry schoolgirl all my life.’

Newson said nothing. This was a new Helen, contrite, self-analytical. The edge of bitterness had gone. Was he meeting the real person at last, or was this just another paranoid creation from a disturbed mind? Was there any such thing as the
real
Helen? Had there ever been?

‘I had a check-up by the way,’ she continued. ‘At a clinic…you know, after that evening we had together…‘ She stopped there. Neither of them was anxious to relive the details of that particular night. ‘I felt I owed it to you. You know, to get checked up.’

‘Slightly a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.’

‘Yeah, well, anyway the result was clean on all counts and you and Kelvin have been the only blokes I’ve been with in a long time.’

Newson was not at all sure he believed her about this, or what a ‘long time’ might mean. The sort of things that Helen seemed to feel the need to do and to have done to her were not urges that could be easily suppressed.

‘So what about this wake-up call? What happened with Kelvin?’

‘Short story. He was angry and weird about you guys being around in my flat and he was being a bit aggressive and then suddenly he got his works out of his bag and started free-basing. I told him to stop and that I didn’t want that shit in my house but he just told me to piss off and kept right on cooking up just lying there on my couch, with no shirt on and his jeans unzipped, sneering and doing his drugs and refusing to budge, and I thought, oh my fucking God, another bully, I’ve gone and got myself another bully.’

‘Trouble really likes you, doesn’t it, Helen?’

‘That’s right, it does, doesn’t it? But you make trouble for yourself. It’s obvious. Anyway, I knew that Karl was coming back from his nan’s at teatime. I had no food in the house and this aggressive stoned weirdo was hanging around doing the worst kind of heavy and highly illegal grade-A shit, and then he said that we should get back into bed and I thought I was going to be raped, so I started looking around for a knife and all I could think of was that I had actually brought this bastard into my home. Into Karl’s home. I’d done it, it had been
my
choice, and I was the worst fucking idiot on earth.’

‘Kelvin certainly didn’t look like good news to me.’

‘He looked shit even when I was pissed and stoned. And I picked him up in a crappy club and paid for a taxi to bring him into my son’s home. But sober on a Sunday afternoon after a visit from the police and with no food in the house, he looked like the fucking devil come to take me to hell. And
I’d
picked
him
up! I mean, what’s all that about?’