Random Acts of Unkindness (18 page)

Pat nods again.

‘‘Bout all you can do then. ’Cept keep coming here and praying.’

I feel a pain in my chest, the stress of loss, and in a way I know all these women are feeling exactly the same thing. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable about being here now under false pretences, here in what is obviously an honest spot in Connelly’s hotbed of corruption. Pat sits down now, which signals the end of the induction. She places her hand over mine.

‘Have a look round. Come here as often as you want, I’m here nine to five every day.’ She presses a business card into my hand. ‘You can call me any time.’

I smile.

‘Thanks. Is all this voluntary, then?’

She shrugs.

‘Nah. Mr Connelly pays me a wage to keep this place going. It’s very important to him.’

‘Right. Will I get to meet him, then? I’ve heard a lot about him.’

She laughs now.

‘Huh. No. He leaves it to me. Not seen him round here for a few years. She comes in the centre now and again. His wife. Morbid cow. She hardly ever speaks, looks like she’s got a poker shoved up her arse.’

I smile.

‘Thanks. It’s good to know there are other people like me. Not that I’d wish that . . .’

‘I know what you mean, love. You’re a bit posh, but in the end we all love our kids just the same. Don’t we? If you need anything, yeah?’

I stand up and wander over to the news clippings. Hundreds and hundreds of browned scraps, pasted onto hardboard, detailing all the missing boys over the years, interspaced with old advertisements for kitchens. Every so often there would be a black card with a silver calligraphy date pinned over the cutting. Pat appears behind me.

‘That’s the date their bodies were found.’

I pull up each piece of paper and see beneath it there’s a copy of the newspaper cutting from the local newspapers. Pat voices my thoughts.

‘Not got much publicity, any of them. All somewhere in the back of the papers, always something else more important.’

‘Like what, Pat?’

‘Well, usually Mr Connelly’s good causes. He’s always on the front page raising them. Protesting about something or other. He does it for us as well.’

I nod and make my way around the board, like stepping back through time four decades. Right at the beginning of the wall, every cutting has a picture of a large man with a pork pie hat, accompanying the mother in question. I look at Pat for guidance.

‘Old Mr Connelly. Dead now. He set up this place and helped the mothers in the old days.’

I look at all the young women, strained smiles and puffy eyes, all wearing the same desperate expression as everyone here today. Regular rallies for missing children. Then something catches my eye. A tiny woman, half the size of old Mr Connelly, clutching her handbag. Her beady, dark eyes stared out at me accusingly. I read the caption underneath the picture.

‘Bessy Swain, mother of missing boy Tommy Swain, attends a rally against the Moors Murders with John Connelly on Bonfire night.’

I stagger backward and Pat catches me.

‘Sorry, Sorry. It’s just all too much for me.’

I rush out of the room, through the community centre, and stand outside against the wall, breathless. I walk back through Northlands, trying to make the connection between Bessy and Connelly, and take the tram back to the station. I need to get back and read more of her story. I put up my hoodie and hurry across the grass at the back of the building, where the window is still slightly open. I climb back in and look up at the camera. The phone rings and I jump.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi. Jan?’

It’s Mike. I sigh.

‘Yep. It is. Whadaya want?’

He laughs.

‘Ah, Jim Stewart said you were in the archive room, I tried before, but couldn’t get you.’

‘I might have been in the loo. Or had my headphones in. It’s so boring, Mike, and I’m getting fucking nowhere. There aren’t any links. Nothing at all.’

I can hear him tut.

‘Me neither. Bloody hell, I thought I was in there. I honestly thought that those blokes would be bringing in something illegal. But there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Just fucking kitchens.’

‘So why does he use private contractors then?’

Mike laughs.

‘Cheaper. Just cheaper. And he can just change them when he likes. He uses private contractors for everything. But honest, there just nothing dodgy about it.’

‘So what next?’

‘Well, Stewart said I should just finish this week to make it convincing and then I’m back on obs with you. But I’m not archiving. We’ll take another bit of the operation. I’m not sitting in the fucking archive room all day. No way.’

I laugh again.

‘OK. Calm down. I’m not finding anything so I expect I’ll be moved on anyway. So see you Monday. Good luck.’

I put the receiver down. Like Mike says. Nothing at all. But there must be something, somewhere. The threads are coming together a little tighter and I need time to think. About Bessy and Thomas. What was Connelly doing with Bessy? What did he have to do with the Moors Murders?

It’s creeping me out now. I have to find out about this for once and for all. I go upstairs into the archiving lockers with the number of Thomas Swain’s case file. The uniformed PC on the door waves me through and I check which way the cameras are pointing as I walk through the huge hall full of records.

We only come here if we really have to now that everything’s computerised. I’m just old enough to remember when all the files were still paper; only current stuff was written down, then transferred to some kind of storage.

Microfiche, magnetic tape, we’ve tried them all. No doubt the information I want is stored somewhere on magnetic media, but from past experience I anticipate the flaws this carried. The archivists drafted in to transfer the paper to tape or microfiche were told to scan the police records.

That’s exactly what they did. They scanned pages and pages of documents with the police logo at the top of them. Interviews, reports, all sorts of official documents, carefully signed and witnessed on every page.

What they didn’t do is scan the other stuff. Every case has a central core of witnessed documents and is surrounded by scribbled phone numbers, notes, photographs that are not admissible as evidence, scraps of material, references to objects that were stored in evidence bags.

All kinds of seeming superfluous items that would never get past the Public Prosecution Service but form a vital part in understanding exactly what has gone on. They’re the pieces of the jigsaw that pull the threads together ever tighter.

They didn’t scan it because they didn’t think it was important. They were just carrying out instructions to the letter. Scan the police documents. So that’s all they did. But these items remain in the original case files, all stored here in a temperature-controlled area.

I find Thomas’s file easily and flick through it. I see some handwritten pages; those won’t have been scanned. Also, I see some photographs of three people. I stare at them, I feel like I know them so well. Bessy, Thomas, and Colin, the bastard, who ran off with someone else.

Bessy looks so happy in the black-and-white photograph, nothing like the hunched-over older woman in the photograph in the community centre. And there could only be maybe five years in between. Then I remember about the babies, about Pauline. Which makes me remember about the money I stole from her house. I left the woman in this picture downstairs while I stole her life savings.

My God. What am I turning into?

I press Thomas’s file close to my body out of sight and move along the row to current files. They are all in bright yellow folders, and the old files are in bright red folders with ‘DO NOT REMOVE’ printed on the side.

Even though I know it’s gross misconduct, I slide the contents of the red file into the back of the yellow one I take from the drawer. It’s the file about Mike’s current exploits, so I have a reason to have it if I’m asked.

I go back and push the red folder into the space I took it from and make for the doorway. The PC on reception eyes the yellow file.

‘Partner’s file. Wanted me to take a look. OK?’

I let the front cover flap down so that he can see Mike’s name and number. He taps it into the database.

‘And you are? Can I see your card, please?’

I show him my warrant card and he nods.

‘Thanks. We have to check.’

I smile.

‘No, no. I completely understand. I’m glad you did.’

It’s true. I’m glad he did. Because now no one will ever suspect what I’ve done. I’ve been careful, but you can never be too careful. Always backtrack. I don’t even know if I was missed today, how many people tried to find me in the archive room.

Usually people ring my mobile if they can’t get me. Mike wouldn’t have been able to as we don’t ring each other’s mobiles for undercover, but anyone else who saw me logged down there would have tried the landline first. Also, there’s a remote possibility that someone might look for Thomas’s file. Then I remember about the forensics in Bessy’s house. I hadn’t checked if that was in yet.

I hurry my pace to get to my car and get out of the station car park. I’m driving along, reading the sky messages. They’re coming closer now, with a black scarf hung close to the telegraph pole outside the station. A lone crow sits beside it, taking an occasional peck, as I drive directly underneath.

I need time alone to think, time to just try to understand what all this means, not least my own strange behaviour. I retrace my steps in Bessy’s house. Why did I take that money? Why?

Obviously, at the time, I had it in my mind that it would be for a ransom, for Aiden, and that I was convinced that I would receive a note any moment demanding a huge sum of money. They say you will do anything when your child is in danger, and it’s true. I stole from a dead woman. Now it doesn’t make sense.

There is no ransom note, and there is no proof he’s been kidnapped or murdered. He’s rapidly turning into another statistic, another piece of blue paper on the community centre notice board flapping in the breeze. I won’t let him. I know that the answer is somewhere. I just know it.

I rush home and park up in the drive. I can see Sharon and Annie in the house, eating toast and nodding their heads along to what appears to be MTV. I turn my key in the door and Sharon is in the hallway before I even get in.

‘I’d park your car in the garage if I were you. You’ve had a visitor.’

I do as she says, opening the pullover door and moving Aiden’s bike and my motorbike further back. I look around. Aiden’s cycling gear. Aiden’s football boots, still muddy from weeks ago. Aiden’s wax jacket. It’s no good. I have to find him. I back the car in and lock the door. Back inside, Annie’s muted the TV.

‘Good job we’re here. That bloody woman’s a nightmare.’

I flop onto the sofa.

‘Woman? What woman?’

‘Blonde. A bit brassy. Maybe forty-five. Could be a bit older. Blue shell suit. Holding a hammer.’

Pat. It has to be.

‘What did she say?’

‘Well, she was in a car driven by a male, midforties. He stayed in the car while she got out and came running toward the house. Luckily we just caught her in time. She was just about to put your front window through. She kept shouting: ‘where is she?’ over and over again.’

I nod.

‘It’s Pat Haywood. I saw her today.’

Sharon snorts.

‘Bloody hell. You didn’t go up there, did you? You’ve more balls than we thought.’

I smile.

‘Yeah. I went up there. Very interesting. Found out some stuff about lots of people going missing on Northlands over the years. Boys.’

They both nod. Annie speaks first.

‘Yeah. Common knowledge. But would you want to stay there? You’ve got this nice place here, but if you lived on Northlands wouldn’t you want to leave? Nothing stopping the youngsters, is there? Well, not the boys.’

I nod.

‘Yes. I can see that. But what about the suicides? When they turn up dead?’

‘Not worked out for them. Tragic, it is. Tragic. But the national suicide rate for boys is high. I expect you know that?’

I nod.

‘It is. But maybe it only gets high when unexplained deaths such as these, deaths with an element of similarity, are added to the statistics. If you take that away, you’re left with a load of unexplained deaths and low suicide rates.’

I think about the amphetamine and the diamorphine. The white paint and the chicken. The way all the boys had died of exposure, except the one who had been impaled on railings. About how they were all practically unreported because they all happened at the same time as other, more newsworthy, events. As if someone was waiting for something big to happen before they got rid of a body. Or took another one. Something like the Moors Murders. Annie is holding the note out.

‘She gave me this to give to you.’

It’s my application form for Mothers for the Missing. Scrawled across it is ‘FUCK OFF POLICE SCUM.’ She’s pinned the blue slip of paper with Aiden’s name on it to the corner of the paper. On the back there’s a note. ‘You’re a liar. We’ve never turned anyone away before, but you lied about who you are coz you knew what would happen. We hope you find your lad, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. You’re no different from us at the end of the day.’

Annie sighs and sips her hot chocolate.

‘She was very angry. Very angry indeed. We told her that you weren’t here and you were at the station. She just spat at us. Charming.’

I look around. This is looking less and less like my home. There are some new plants on the sills and some place mats with cheery scenes on them. New cups sat on the drainer, and some mince pies. They’ve even turned on the fake flames inside the electric fire hung in the ultra-modern fireplace.

‘The thing is, she’s got a right to be upset. I went to see her today and she’s right, I lied. I lied to a bunch of grieving women. By omission. Didn’t mention I was a DS. Just to get information.’

They nod and smile. Annie puts her cup down.

‘Problem is, they’ve got nothing to do. If they had something to do, they wouldn’t be sitting around all day.’