Random Acts of Unkindness (34 page)

They ignored me, tutting at the brown rings on my white kitchen surfaces, the smell of bleach cutting through the ciggie mist. I took one out of the packet and lit it up. One of the women turned.

‘Could I ask you not to do that, Bessy? This is our workplace and we reserve the right to be respected in our workplace.’

She turned back to her scrubbing, the other one pulling a mop out of a bucket, breaking the cobwebs and scattering dust everywhere. Respect. That was a good word. Where was my respect?

All I wanted to do was live here quietly until the day I didn’t wake up in the morning. I just wanted to carry on with the deep groove I’d driven into the world, my routine, my time.

I’d managed to keep out of sight mostly for the biggest part of my life, hiding in my home, visiting the usual places, no variation because it always ended like this. The normal people, those who were charged with the care of us slightly imperfect human beings, taking over and shovelling hardcore into the groove we have ordered our lives with, smoothing over the crack with whatever means they can.

I know they mean well, and I know it’s their job. I know that they do deserve respect in their workplace, as they’re now calling my home, so I stub out the cigarette.

‘You shouldn’t leave that door open, Bessy, someone might come in and steal your things.’

I snigger at the thought of someone stealing piles of old newspapers and Thomas’s clothes from the sixties, and they look knowingly at each other. I could almost see them ticking the dementia boxes on their sheets, neither of them having asked me anything at all about my life, what I’d been through, or anything.

‘We’ve had a bit of a tidy up and we’ve brought some forms with us, applications for sheltered accommodation, where you’ll be with other people your own age. They have bingo and even karaoke.’ She makes a swaying movement with her body and they both laugh. ‘They’ll make your meals and you’ll have some limited cooking facilities, a shared laundry, and suchlike. Is that OK, Bessy? Do you know what karaoke is, love?’

I nodded and sipped the tea they’ve made. One of them is telling a story about how her sister is good at karaoke, and I was dying for a ciggie. I open the window again and one of the birds flew in and sat on the sink. I broke up a cracker and sprinkled it on the side. The woman in blue stood behind me.

‘Shoo. Out, go on, out. Bessy, that’s not very hygienic. Birds in your house. And all those crumbs.’ Her hands were on her hips and she turned to her friend. ‘We’re going to have to action this sooner rather than later. I’m gonna have to ring social services.’

They got their coats on and the other one smiled at me.

‘It’ll probably take a couple of months to set you up, Bessy, and sort this place out, but in the long run it’ll be better for you.’ I just looked at the floor as they opened the front door. She turned back quickly. ‘Oh, and that letter on the mantelpiece, behind the clock, I’ve run up the road posted it for you.’

The door slammed shut behind them and I thought, ‘Well, that’s that, then.’

Someone else had made the decision for me. I was glad in a way, because if she hadn’t posted the letter I’d be in the old people’s home by now, or the bottom block if they had their way.

I got a lot of letters from them, about the sheltered accommodation and hospital appointments, but I just went out all the time, on the moor, to the market, even into Manchester. I went to Daisy Nook, lying on the grass, looking at mine and Thomas’s clouds, seeing faces and flowers and even a giraffe. All the colours seemed brighter now it was all settled. I’d sometimes lie there until dusk, and wait for the moon, so that I could be sure that Thomas, wherever he was, would have looked at the same thing as me recently. It was my favourite time, but twice people walking dogs had called the police, thinking I was ill, and I had to hurry up home.

I’d sit on the forms on Ashton Market, newly built again after a fire that left only a shell. I knew how it felt. I’d look into the crowds but I didn’t know who I was looking for now. The seventeen-year-old boy had grown into a man and I had no real idea what he looked like.

I’d met with people I’d gone to school with, and not recognised them from my memory of them as a teenager. Now, anyone could be Thomas. The middle-aged man with his wife, the grey-haired loner, the alcoholic sitting in the bus shelter his dirty Mac with a bottle of cheap wine—all these people could be him, in any part of the world. I still kept waiting for the postman, waiting for a letter from Thomas and I still didn’t lock the back door, just in case. Because you never know.

I carried on and avoided social services and my only sadness was that I had never told anyone all this. Then when I knew I was going, and that someone would find her upstairs, about the moor and
them
, I thought it was a good chance to get it all out before I set off. It took me some sleepless nights to write it all down, I tried to write it as if I were there and it took me right back, tears an’ all, but I hope it explains that upstairs and, well, things in general. I’ve enjoyed meeting all those people who live by the moor, who I see every day. That bloody Sarah, be careful of her, not all she’s cracked up to be.

Listen to me, telling people what to do! So I’m off now to catch my flight. I’ve heard it’s nice, they take you to this flat and play music while you’re on a machine that does it all for you.

They give you a drink to have. I’ll just drift off and not wake up, and all the pain will be gone. I’m ready for whatever’s on the other side. I’m not scared for myself, I’m bloody glad, but I’m sad for the birds, and for the moor—I think I’ll be missed.

That’s why I’m asking you to arrange for someone to stay at the house for a couple of days, to see to the birds. I’ve arranged for them to send me back, arriving a week on Tuesday, and by then everything should be taken care of.

So, Cheerio, and don’t worry, it’s what I want. Anyhow, whoever you are, thanks for your help and I hope you can do this little thing for me. Even if you don’t I expect the world will turn like it always has without me. I’m just going to have a little sit down and a piece of toast, say my goodbyes to Thomas and this house, then I’ll be off.

I never did tell Jim about Aiden and Sal. Even though I know Aiden’s alive, I still need to protect him. I don’t know if he was with Sal when he murdered my colleagues, no one does, so the way I figure it is innocent until proven guilty. They’ll find Sal soon enough, but I’m not taking any chances.

I know he’s complicit in all this, that no one’s forcing him to go with his father, but I can’t completely know he’s guilty. Or believe it. That he’s taken part knowingly. Another maternal defence, maybe? I don’t know, but I need to keep him safe still, in case one day he remembers me and comes back into my life. So I didn’t tell.

I got together with Mike and we went through the papers that were confiscated from the Gables. I felt sick to the stomach, looking into the faces of those poor young people, tying them into my notes and building the background to a case. I turned the pages, willing Thomas not to be there. But I carried on. Turing back time until 1963. August. Don’t be there, Thomas, be alive somewhere, with a family. Don’t be there, or buried on the moor. Don’t fulfil your mother’s worst nightmare. Don’t be there.

But he was there. Right at the back of the book. The first boy. 30th August, 1963. Thomas Swain. A black-and-white picture of him, surly and smiling slightly. Thomas Swain. Aged seventeen. Bessy’s instincts were wrong, but somehow right.

She knew exactly what had happened to her son, but not the who. She was egged on by her fear and John Connelly. Preyed on. I turned the pages, back through the years to the present day, all those boys, and their mother and fathers trapped in a perpetual wondering about what had happened to their child.

After I finished Bessy’s notebook and realised what had happened to her, I had a good long think about things. I went out walking on the moor, just like she did every day, with Piers stumbling along behind me. He might be a crack shot with big muscles, but he’s not very good at fell walking.

One day we were walking along and I recognised the skyline. I knew where we were, right at the point where all the pictures were posed in the sixties. As soon as we stepped into the heather I felt a fear.

It’s like those icebreakers you do at college, where you fall backward and trust someone to catch you. I never really knew what to expect, even though there were only two choices. My fear of doing it was disproportionate to the outcomes.

This was the same. I would either find a good, clear foothold and confidently make good progress, or feel something nasty, something furry or slimy against my leg. Or worse, the crunching of bone.

My legs are already sore from days and days of walking, and this is a real test. I tried to see through the dense plants, past the brightness of the tiny purple flowers, past the pale wooden trunks of the bonsai trees, onto the dry ground. Suddenly, right in front of me, a flock of small birds erupt from the heather; all around them is a halo of pollen, clouds of it billowing into the atmosphere.

It scared me so much that I started to cry. Huge sobs for Aiden, and for Thomas. For Bessy, who never even got to make her own decisions, even at the end. It was the first time I’d cried since I’d found my police colleagues murdered, and I just stood there and bawled my eyes out.

Then I went back to the cottage and packed up all my belongings and booked a ticket to Cuba. Even after all this, I can’t let Aiden go. I just can’t let my boy go. If I send people after him, bring him back, he’s in trouble. All I can do is go to him.

I go home, but don’t go in. I merely take my bike out of the garage and load it with the same bag I brought with me. I stop at the travel agent’s to pick up my ticket, and my excitement builds. Of course, I have no idea where they are in Cuba, but I can go to the Embassy and try to find out. I just need to see him, make sure he’s all right.

I drive along the M60 and take the correct turn off, held in traffic for what seems the longest time. I’m scanning the skies as usual, force of habit, but this far out there is only the occasional hanging signal, looking almost accidental.

I feel a little bit more optimistic; I’m doing something, taking action. To find my son. It feels like the right thing, a pull inside me that I can’t ignore. The traffic starts up again and we drive along at snail’s pace, sun shining and the light dancing on the chrome handlebars of my bike.

I see a small boy peering at me through the back window of the car in front and he pulls out his tongue. I pull a face and he waves at me. I wave back and we’re at a roundabout approaching Terminal 1. The car pulls onto the roundabout and I’ve got a clear view ahead, clear enough to see a low wire with a sign that tells me that no vehicle over a certain height can enter.

Suspended from the wire is a small brown shape, two arms, two legs and a head, with a noose around its neck. Even from a distance I can see that it’s Jezzer, Aiden’s teddy. As I pull the bike off the road underneath the wire, an image of Aiden, asleep in his bed with Jezzer, flickers into my consciousness and I wonder how we got from there to here. How did that happen?

There is no way on a busy airport road to scale the pole, skim across and release it, but I stand and stare for a while. It hasn’t stopped. The messages are still there and this one is clearly for me. This is the only road into Terminal 1. I’d have to come this way to follow them. I look at the airport buildings, so near, and wonder what I should do.

I so desperately want to follow Aiden, reason with him, find him, bring him home, but this is a definite sign that I should not be doing that. A warning. My heart is breaking, and, as I turn the bike around and ride away, I can’t see the road for my tears. I will find him one day, I will follow him, when all this is done and Connelly is brought to justice, I will. It’s not over.

So I went home. It had been almost a month since my house was turned into a crime scene, and when I had turned the key in the lock I hadn’t really known what to expect.

At first glance it was as if nothing had ever happened there. Some things were different, like the new carpet, light blue, and the new sofa, almost the same as the old one. Some of the furniture had been replaced, but the insurance had taken care of it all.

I’d been advised not to go back there, to sell the house and move somewhere else, but I couldn’t. Things on Northlands had returned to normal now, in fact, better than normal. Without Connelly dictating, the whole place was more relaxed.

Crime figures had fallen and Jim had put liaison officers on the estate to try to help people understand what had happened. So today is my first day back at work and I feel a little bit nervous. I knew I’d have to face the music sometime, but I’ve already made my decisions about how much I’m going to tell. After all, it’s my prerogative.

I pull out of the drive and watch the neighbour’s curtains move. I expect they’re not best pleased to see me back, what with their quiet little avenue being shot up only a month ago.

I drive down the road and park up at the corner shop, the Tesco Metro that has two doors, one on the front and one on the side, grabbing a carrier bag from the self-service terminal on the way.

I nip through to the side, and out into a blackspot. I rush across the road and down a narrow overgrown alleyway and reach under a thick privet bush. It’s still there. I pull out the money and push the damp package into the carrier bag. Then I hurry back by the same route and get into my car.

Once at the station, there’s a small silence as I enter the ops room. I’m unsure as to whether it’s dismay or reverence, until someone starts clapping. There’s more clapping and smiling, and I nod and smile back as I tap on Jim Stewart’s door. He waves me in and I sit down.

‘Back to work, is it?’

I nod.

‘Yes, sir. Glad to get back.’

He’s got his hands clasped in front of him.

‘Just a few things before you do. I wanted to ask you how you found out about the Gables? And if it’s got any connection with that deceased woman from Ney Street? Only we’ve found out that her son was one of the boys who . . .’