Suspect (31 page)

I could be home in three hours if I caught a train. I could stand on the doorstep until she agrees to talk to me. Maybe that’s what she wants— for me to come running back to fight for her.

We’ve waited six years. Julianne never stopped believing. I was the one who gave up hope.

10

A bel tinkles above my head as I enter the shop. The aromas of scented oils, perfumed candles and herbal poultices curl into my nostrils. Narrow shelves made of dark wood stretch from the floor to the ceiling. These are crammed with incense, soap, oils and bel jars ful of everything from pumice stones to seaweed.

A large woman emerges from behind a partition. She wears a brightly colored caftan that starts at her throat and bil ows outward over huge breasts. Strings of beads sprout from her skul and clack as she walks.

“Come, come, don’t be shy,” she says, waving me toward her. This is Louise Elwood. I recognize her voice from the phone. Some people look like their voices. She is one of them—

deep, low and loud. Bangles clink on her arms as she shakes my hand. At the center of her forehead is a pasted red dot.

“Oh my, oh my, oh my,” she says, holding her hand beneath my chin. “You are just in time. Look at those eyes. Dul . Dry. You haven’t been sleeping wel , have you? Toxins in the blood.

Too much red meat. Maybe a wheat al ergy. What happened to your ear?”

“An overzealous hairdresser.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“We spoke on the phone,” I explain. “I’m Professor O’Loughlin.”

“Typical! Look at the state of you! Doctors and academics make the worst patients. They never take their own advice.” She pirouettes with remarkable agility and bustles deeper into the shop. At the same time she keeps talking. There are no obvious signs of a man in her life. Photographs of children on the noticeboard are probably nieces and nephews. She is self-conscious about her size, but makes it part of her personality. She has a Burmese (cat hair), a drawer ful of chocolates (tinsel on the floor) and a taste for romance writers (
The Silent Lady
by Catherine Cookson).

Behind the partition is a smal back room with just enough space for a table, three chairs and a bench containing a smal sink. An electric kettle and a radio are plugged into the lone socket. The center of the table has a women’s magazine open at the crossword.

“Herbal tea?”

“Do you have coffee?”

“No.”

“Tea wil be fine.”

She rattles off a list of a dozen different blends. By the time she’s finished I’ve forgotten the first few.

“Chamomile.”

“Excel ent choice. Good for relieving stress and tension.” She pauses. “You’re not a believer are you?”

“I have never been able to work out why herbal tea smel s so wonderful, but tastes so bland.”

She laughs. Her whole body shakes. “The taste is subtle. It works in harmony with the body. Smel is the most immediate of al our senses. Touch might develop earlier and be the last to fade, but smel is hot-wired directly into our brains.”

She sets out two smal china cups and fil s a ceramic teapot with steaming water. The tea leaves are filtered twice through a silver sieve before she pushes a cup toward me.

“You don’t read tea leaves then?”

“I think you’re making fun of me, Professor.” She’s not offended.

“Fifteen years ago you were a teacher at St. Mary’s.”

“For my sins.”

“Do you remember a boy cal ed Bobby Morgan?”

“Of course I do.”

“What do you remember about him?”

“He was quite bright, although a little self-conscious about his size. Some of the other boys used to tease him because he wasn’t very good at sports, but he had a lovely singing voice.”

“You taught the choir?”

“Yes.”

“I once suggested singing lessons, but his mother wasn’t the most approachable of women. I only saw her once at the school. She came to complain about Bobby stealing money from her purse to pay for an excursion to the Liverpool Museum.”

“What about his father?”

She looks at me quizzical y. Clearly, I’m expected to know something. Now she is trying to decide whether to continue.

“Bobby’s father wasn’t al owed at the school,” she says. “He had a court order taken out against him when Bobby was in the second grade. Didn’t Bobby tel you any of this?”

“No.”

She shakes her head. Beads swing from side to side. “I raised the alarm. Bobby had wet himself in class twice in a few weeks. Then he soiled his pants and spent most of the afternoon hiding in the boys’ toilets. He was upset. When I asked him what was wrong he wouldn’t say. I took him to the school nurse. She found him another pair of trousers. That’s when she noticed the welts on his legs. It looked as though he’d been beaten.”

The school nurse fol owed the normal procedure and informed the deputy headmistress who, in turn, notified the Department of Social Services. I know the process by heart. A duty social worker would have taken the referral. It was then discussed with an area manager. The dominoes started fal ing— medical examinations, interviews, al egations, denials, case conferences, “at risk” findings, interim care orders, appeals— each tumbling into the next.

“Tel me about the court order,” I ask.

She recal s only scant details. Al egations of sexual abuse, which the father denied. A restraining order. Chaperoning Bobby between classes.

“The police investigated but I don’t know the outcome. The deputy headmistress dealt with the social workers and police.”

“Is she stil around?”

“No. She resigned eighteen months ago; family reasons.”

“What happened to Bobby?”

“He changed. He had a stil ness about him that you don’t see in most children. A lot of the teachers found it very unnerving.” She stares into her teacup, tilting it gently back and forth.

“When his father died he became even more isolated. It was as though he was on the outside, with his face pressed against the glass.”

“Do you think Bobby was abused?”

“St. Mary’s is in a very poor area, Dr. O’Loughlin. In some households just waking up in the morning is a form of abuse.” I know almost nothing about cars. I can fil them with petrol, put air in the tires and water in the radiator, but I have no interest in makes, models or the dynamics of the modern combustion engine. Usual y I take no notice of other vehicles on the road but today it’s different. I keep seeing a white van. I noticed it first this morning when I left the Albion Hotel. It was parked opposite. The other cars were covered in frost, but not the van. The windshield and back window had ragged circles of clear glass.

The same white van— or another one just like it— is parked on a delivery ramp opposite Louise Elwood’s shop. The back doors are open. I can see Hessian sacks inside, lining the floor. There must be hundreds of white vans in Liverpool: perhaps a whole fleet of them belonging to a courier company.

After last night I’m seeing phantoms lurking in every doorway and sitting in cars. I walk across the market square, stopping at a department store window. Studying the reflection, I can see the square behind me. Nobody is fol owing.

I haven’t eaten. Seeking out warmth, I find a café on the first floor of a shopping arcade, overlooking the atrium. From my table I can watch the escalators.

H. L. Mencken— journalist, beer drinker and sage— said that for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong. I share his mistrust for the obvious.

At university I drove my lecturers to distraction by constantly questioning straightforward assumptions. “Why can’t you just accept things as they are?” they asked. “Why
can’t
the easy answer be right?”

Nature isn’t like that. If evolution had been about simple answers we would al have bigger brains and not watch
You’ve Been Framed
, or smal er brains and not invent weapons of mass destruction. Mothers would have four arms and babies would leave home after six weeks. We would al have titanium bones, UV-resistant skin, X-ray vision and the ability to have permanent erections and multiple orgasms.

Bobby Morgan— I’l cal him by his real name now— had many of the hal marks of sexual abuse. Even so, I don’t want it to be true. I have grown to like Lenny Morgan. He did a lot of things right when he raised Bobby. People warmed to him. Bobby adored him.

Perhaps Lenny had two sides to his personality. There is nothing to stop an abuser being a safe, loving figure. It would certainly explain his suicide. It could also be the reason why Bobby needed two personalities to survive.

11

Social Services keeps files on children who have been sexual y abused. I once had ful access to them, but I’m no longer part of the system. The privacy laws are compel ing.

I need help from someone I haven’t seen in more than a decade. Her name is Melinda Cossimo and I’m worried I might not recognize her. We arrange to meet in a coffee shop opposite the Magistrates Court.

When I first arrived in Liverpool Mel was a duty social worker. Now she’s an area manager (they cal it a “child protection specialist”). Not many people last this long in social services.

They either burn out or blow up.

Mel was your original punk, with spiky hair and a wardrobe of distressed leather jackets and torn denim. She was always chal enging everyone’s opinions because she liked to see people stand up for their beliefs, whether she agreed with them or not.

Growing up in Cornwal , she had listened to her father, a local fisherman, pontificate on the distinction between “men’s work” and “women’s work.” Almost predictably, she became an ardent feminist and author of “When Women Wear the Pants”— her doctoral thesis. Her father must be turning in his grave.

Mel’s husband, Boyd, a Lancashire lad, wore khaki pants, turtleneck sweaters and rol ed his own cigarettes. Tal and thin, he went gray at nineteen but kept his hair long and tied back in a ponytail. I only ever saw it loose once, in the showers after we had played badminton.

They were great hosts. We’d get together most weekends for dinner parties on Boyd’s run-down terrace, with its “wind chime” garden and cannabis plants growing in an old fishpond.

We were al overworked, underappreciated and yet stil idealistic. Julianne played the guitar and Mel had a voice like Joni Mitchel . We ate vegetarian feasts, drank too much wine, smoked a little dope and righted the wrongs of the world. The hangovers lasted until Monday and the flatulence until midweek.

Mel makes a face at me through the window. Her hair is straight and pinned back from her face. She’s wearing dark trousers and a tailored beige jacket. A white ribbon is pinned to her lapel. I can’t remember what charity it represents.

“Is this the management look?”

“No, it’s middle age.” She laughs, grateful to sit down. “These shoes are kil ing me.” She kicks them off and rubs her ankles.

“Shopping?”

“An appointment in the children’s court— an emergency care order.”

“Good result?”

“It could have been worse.”

I get the coffees while she minds the table. I know she’s checking me out— trying to establish how much has changed. Do we stil have things in common? Why have I suddenly surfaced? The caring profession is a suspicious one.

“So what happened to your ear?”

“Got bitten by a dog.”

“You should never work with animals.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Mel watches as my left hand tries to stir my coffee. “Are you stil with Julianne?”

“Uh-huh. We have Charlie now. She’s eight. I think Julianne might be pregnant again.”

“Aren’t you sure?” She laughs.

I laugh with her, but feel a pang of guilt.

I ask about Boyd. I picture him as an aging hippie, stil wearing linen shirts and Punjabi pants. Mel turns her face away, but not before I see the pain drift across her eyes like a cloud.

“Boyd is dead.”

Sitting very stil , she lets the silence grow accustomed to the news.

“When?”

“More than a year ago. One of those big four-wheel drives, with a bulbar, went through a stop sign and cleaned him up.” I tel her that I’m sorry. She smiles sadly and licks milk froth from her spoon.