Random Acts of Unkindness (35 page)

‘No, sir. I told you already. I saw a picture in Mothers for the Missing at the community centre, you know, with Pat and the others. It matched up with some in the files I looked at, older files.’

‘And was Mrs Swain’s file one of the files you might have looked at?’

I shrug.

‘Could be, they were files about missing boys. So if her son was missing, then it’s a probability.’

He sighs.

‘How can I put this? You see, I have to wonder if you were looking for the missing boys at all. Because, back engineering it, we didn’t know about the missing boys until we found them, did we?’

I nod.

‘Actually, we did. They were all on the files. All I did was pull them all together.’

‘But how did you know where to look?’

I laugh.

‘I’m a detective. I covered all bases and I got lucky.’

He considers this. He knows full well he isn’t going to get any more out of me. We both know how this looks, but he’d have to prove it. As I suspected, he tries another route. He’s good.

‘And then there’s the forensics. When they came back, you were all over a box that had been in an upstairs cupboard in Mrs Swain’s house. How do you explain that?’

My heart’s beating fast now, but I keep my cool. I lean forward.

‘My DNA will be all over that house. I went upstairs to get a blanket to cover her up with. As you know, her body was damaged and I was trying to show her some respect. I touched the bed, the curtains, maybe even the cupboard. I certainly touched things in the kitchen, and probably leaned on stuff in the lounge. So maybe the forensics person transferred my trace onto whatever it was found on? I didn’t pick any box up.’

It was true. I didn’t pick up a box. Just half of the contents. Jim nods.

‘Yes, that is a possibility. But all this seems to be bound up with Mrs Swain, she seems involved somehow. Funny how . . .’

‘She is involved. The reason I was in the area was because I was looking for Aiden on Connelly’s patch. I had an inkling it was some kind of revenge kidnapping, so I was looking for him. Then I hear the woman talking about the smell and . . .’

He laughs.

‘You can drop that now. We all know you went for Connelly. All I want to know is who told you? Who made you think it was him?’

‘Made me think? No one. Like I said, I thought he had kidnapped Aiden as some kind of revenge for Operation Hurricane, and I was looking for him.’

Jim stands up.

‘So your husband didn’t mention it?’

I freeze.

‘Ex-husband.’

He sighs.

‘OK. Ex-husband. Sal. Did he tell you?’

‘No. Why? What’s Sal got to do with this?’

As if I didn’t know. But I have a feeling I’m going to hear something I don’t like.

‘We’ve got intelligence that Sal was involved with the Gables. He was the fixer. Arranging for clients to visit. Carrying around a catalogue. That sort of thing.’

I stare at him.

‘Sal?’

He nods.

‘Yes. For years, it seems. We’ve got pictures of him with Connelly as he left yesterday. Apparently, he’s high up in the hierarchy. Which means that we still can’t do Connelly for anything. We’ve still got nothing solid on him, nothing that would stand up in court. Nothing to connect him to the crimes or the crime scene. But plenty to connect Sal. And now he’s disappeared. Have you had any contact with him lately?’

I stand up now and spin to face him.

‘Hang on. What are you accusing me of? I want representation . . .’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything. You see, people like Sal, they plant a seed, get information out of people like you, without you knowing. I just wondered if you’d . . .’

‘If I’d told him any police business? Is that what you mean?’ He doesn’t say anything but his eyebrows rise. ‘Really? Me? What about you, and the cosy little chats you’ve had with him in here? Nodding and smiling while he tells you how mad I am, how I’ve lost the plot? Sound familiar, does it? With respect, sir, I think it’s you who’s been had here.’

He’s bright red now and I fold my arms and wait.

‘Well, he did have a point. I mean all that stuff . . .’

‘Over Aiden?’ I move closer to him and lower my voice. ‘Remember that day when we nearly died and you sent your family to Point C? Well, just imagine what you would do if one of them didn’t arrive. How far you would go to get your child back?’

He bends a little closer to me.

‘Why? How far have you gone? What have you been telling your husband? Enough for him to pass onto Connelly? Enough to ruin Operation Hurricane, eh?’

I take my phone out of my pocket.

‘Ex-husband. Ex-fucking-husband. And look. I don’t have his number on my phone. I don’t need it. I’m divorced from him and we don’t talk. I don’t even know where he is. How about you, sir? Have you got Sal’s number on your phone?’ His hand goes to his pocket and he covers his phone. I see him count back to the only time I ever had his phone, and my scrolling through the address book. ‘Let’s have a look then. Why would you have Sal’s number on your phone?’

He falls into his seat.

‘It’s not what you think.’

I nod.

‘But you don’t know what I’m thinking. All I know is that you told me that Sal’s a good man, has my best interests at heart, and he’s a friend of yours. Oh, and now I know he’s been selling kids to strangers, letting them use a building he has connections with to abuse children, and you seem to have his direct dial.’ I sit back down opposite him. ‘I’m pretty good at putting two and two together. Gathering all the information and forming it into a crime shaped theory, then investigating it. So before you start throwing accusations about, have a look at yourself. Sir.’

We sit there for a moment longer, staring at each other.

‘Is that all? Only I was going to go to organise Mrs Swain’s funeral, seeing as she died alone. Is that all right?‘

He nods.

‘Do what you want. You will anyway. I just want to say that I didn’t . . .’

‘You don’t have to say anything. I was just pointing out that some things aren’t what they seem to be. But if I were you, just to be on the safe side, I’d delete that fucking bastard off your phone. Just in case anyone ever questions your motives.’

He’s already doing it. I leave and go to my desk and watch him through the glass of his office door. I don’t think for one minute that he was involved with Sal or Connelly. He was a pawn in Sal’s game. But he’s right. All the threads of the case were woven together with Bessy’s story.

I see Mike and he waves at me. It’s his first day back too, and he looks tanned and fit. He sits down beside me.

‘How’s tricks?’

I laugh. Mike’s made tea. Everyone else is out at a people-skills seminar, and there’s a lapse in work in the wake of the storm. He’s stirring his tea carefully.

‘I’m thinking of leaving.’

He says it simply, not as a provocative statement, and somehow that’s worse.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

We look at each other, and the shared vision of the past two months flickers between us. I nod.

‘It’s just that I never thought I’d ever have to see something like that. Accidents, yeah, bad enough, and especially those with kids, but they are what it says on the tin. Accidents. No one meant it. It was. An. Accident.’

I draw him.

‘Like what though? You’ve seen loads of dead people. Hundreds, probably.’

His eyes are glazed over.

‘In there. Those kids. Not just the dead ones. Calvin. I’ve got a son. I just feel like I need to spend more time protecting him. And my daughter. It’s just that the world’s suddenly such a fucking dangerous place.’

I pour another sachet of sugar into my tea. I can’t look at him.

‘It always was, but I read somewhere that we’re programmed toward optimism. It’s the only way we can survive. Anyway, aren’t you doing that here? Protecting them?’

He nods.

‘Mmm. But so were the parents of those kids. And other kids who’ve been murdered. No parent wakes up one morning and thinks that today they won’t protect their child. It’s inbuilt. The problem is how dangerous the world is. Full of nutters.’

We sip in synchronization.

‘Yeah. And in this case, they were organised.’

Mike snorts.

‘Exactly. Like-minded psychopaths. Must have been over fifty people involved. High profile too, by the looks of the evidence. Two or three boys taken a year, a young girl every now and then, tall those men coming to . . . It’s horrible. Unthinkable, what them kids went through. And not just the people who went there, either. They’re just the people who operated the whole thing over time. There’s a whole shadow land of shady fucking characters who visited there too. Well. We all know what happened there. I just can’t imagine what made them do it. With young boys and girls. Children. They must have known what the score is, what happens to them? It’s just too horrible for words. I know I have to do my job, but this, it’s shocked me to the core. It must have you too.’

I know he means the scenes at the Gables, but I know he means Sal too.

‘I had no idea, you know. About Sal.’

He touches my arm.

‘God, Jan, I know, how could you have? But how can you bear it, on top of everything else?’

I stir my tea again.

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

‘Anything else on Aiden? At least he wasn’t there, you know . . .’

‘Yes. He wasn’t. And no, nothing else. Nothing at all.

I tidy a few papers on my desk.

‘So are you really leaving, Mike?’

He sighs.

‘I don’t know what to do. This has changed everything. I used to think that people were basically good.’

‘We’ve all got our flaws, Mike.’

Too true. Mine’s sitting in the boot of my car right now. A big bag of stolen money.

‘Yeah, yeah. I know. But it’s almost as if the bogeyman’s around every corner. There’s always another weirdo wanting to have sex with kids, or to kill and rape women, or to shoot or stab someone for no reason.’

‘But we’re the police, Mike. We already knew that.’

He’s holding his hands out now, pleading.

‘But it used to be the exception. Didn’t it? The odd case. Now it’s fucking everywhere. All the stuff with young girls lately, now this, with young boys. Then the ticking time bomb with the old cases and the children’s homes. Same old story. All over the news, victims coming forward but can’t pin it on anyone because they’ve buried their tracks. People asking why we’ve not done anything about all this. But when it’s run by big-time fuckers like Connelly, they get other people to do their dirty work and hide behind them, living the high life. We’ve still got to work our way through the client list from the Gables yet, and someone on that might talk but I doubt it. I really doubt it. And Connelly’s still out there, with no charge sheet.’

I tap my teaspoon on the desk. I don’t even want to think about Connelly and his freedom. It makes me think about Aiden and Sal.

‘Few and far between. No murder without a body. Problem with that is, what if you’re clever enough to hide the body. Or bodies? What do we have then?’

Mike nods.

‘A few solved crimes and a shedload of unsolved. Lulls us into a false sense of security.’

‘And the evidence was there all the time. All someone had to do was take an interest. Pull it together.’ I look at him. He’s sullen and disheartened, the way I had been when my old boss had explained it to me, and I suddenly realise the reality. I need Mike. I need him as my partner. ‘The plus side is us, mate. For every one of them, you know, big time, boys at the top, there’s someone like you and me who will do anything to help stop them. All we can do is keep on keeping on. Yeah?’

He nods and waits a while, then he swings around to face me.

‘So do you think Aiden’s dead, even though they haven’t found a body? Because that’s the test, isn’t it? Will you carry on looking for him? When nobody knows for sure, it’s the hope that keeps them alive.’

I answer him quickly.

‘No, Mike. I don’t think Aiden’s dead. No.’
Dead to me, though. Dead to me
. ‘And I’ll never stop looking for him.’ It isn’t over.

It’s quiet at the station so I go home early. I need some time to find out where everything is in my house, to see what’s missing and what’s been added. As I drive back, alongside Northlands, I look to the skies.

Even after the airport, it’s a habit. Looking for CCTV, mentally mapping the cameras and their ranges. They’re all shiny and new, part of a vamped-up system, replacing the spray-painted lenses and twisted metal that failed us previously. Looking for the messages along the telegraph wires and on the phone masts.

They’re back. Not so many, but a couple of hats slung over the newly strung wires. We’re going digital now, aren’t we? Going back underground. What will the birds do then, when there are no wires? I wonder how people managed to pull down the cameras and some of the wires in the first place. It must have taken a lot of effort.

Someone must have wanted to make a clear path out of Northlands for Connelly. Someone who’s still here.

Bonfire night’s been and gone, this year without bodies burned up at the Gables, and at least I’m thankful for that. I’m looking for the birds, the various kinds that haven’t flown away for winter, but are still sitting here on the high wires, watching. Ever watching.

They’re here and there, and every now and then I see a crow or a baby magpie. One for sorrow. As I drive away from the city and into the suburbs the numbers of birds increase, as if they somehow want to live where we are, scavenge in our yards and gardens, ready to swoop at any minute.

Bessy loved them, her birds. But look what love does to you. Look what love did to Bessy. The same birds she loved pecked her eyes out, probably before she was cold.

I park up and slam the car door. Fucking neighbours. They’re all at the windows, seeing that DS Pearce is doing today. Is she being tailed by some gun-toting crazy today?

Their disgusted faces somehow blame me for the behaviour of someone who was trying to kill me. But I’m quickly learning that this is what this fucked-up world is like. Don’t turn your back or someone will peck your eyes out.