Sweetie (16 page)

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Chapter Nine

An abnormal silence had fallen over the Columbia Row Estate. As the Sunday morning bells rang out from the few churches scattered amongst the com -

munity, people moved silently through the alleyways and side streets. No one wanted to speak. The unthinkable had happened again, and the whole area seemed to be shocked into silence.

Flower market traders set up their stalls quietly and efficiently. The vibrant colours of the flowers and shrubs shone in the morning sunshine. The smell of freshly made coffee and apple fritters filtered through the air and everything on the outside appeared normal. No respecter of grief, the sun beat down. By seven o’clock there was steam in the air and an oppressive heat hung over the streets.

Everyone’s thoughts were with the Williams family, but no one even wanted to imagine what they were going through, it was too dreadful even to contemplate. Women and children were walking towards the churches, heads covered with scarves or hats, their faces turned to the ground. Their need to say a prayer for the dead child was paramount today.

*

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Woodhouse was conscious of the smell of death. His suit jacket was still smeared with shit and vomit from where he’d wiped away the muck from his hands at the murder scene yesterday afternoon. The clothes would be cleaned but he would never be able to wash away the sight he had witnessed, which was without doubt the worst of his police career. Deep down Woodhouse knew it would never go away, never leave his mind. It would constantly be there as he rested his head on the pillow each night. That vision of Wayne Williams would haunt him for ever, would remain the last thing he saw before sleep released him from this mental torture every night. He had to catch this bastard, and catch him quick!

Right now, though, he needed to get to the family and give them a full update on the discovery of the body. In the immediate aftermath he’d been kept too busy. Young Kelly Gobber had stayed in hospital overnight, and he’d had to deal with her mother, Cath, whom he already knew quite well. The crime scene had been secured, and in the small hours the boy’s body had finally been moved to a more decent resting place. Woodhouse then had to go and relieve Watson and other junior officers at the Williamses’

home, to lend some kind of support and give such facts as he had to the family. Plus there was the dreadful fact that someone must formally identify the boy’s body.

Now he sat in the driver’s seat of his Ford Cortina.

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His arse was stuck to the cover with sweat, and despite all the windows being wound down there was still no breeze or relief from the heat.

He had rehearsed what he was going to say over and over in his head, but felt shaky and nervous. He knew he had to do this, though. His years on the force had toughened him up to most things, but he doubted he’d ever been in a situation as bad as this before. He stared at the closed door to the house and shuddered as he visualised the bereaved parents’

reaction to what he had to tell them.

If there was one thing Grace and Gillian knew how to do it was feed people. Iris ‘Nanny’ Parks had scrupu -

lously taught her girls how to prepare simple, plain, wholesome food, and followed a strict routine when it came to planning her menus. She hated the big supermarkets and loved to go round the markets and small shops, supporting local tradesmen and getting that friendly personal touch that you only got from people who knew and liked you. Besides, the local shops were great for a chinwag and a gossip. They were the hub of the community.

Sunday morning always meant a cooked breakfast with egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread and tinned tomatoes. The lunchtime roast was the best cut of whatever the butcher had on special offer, together with roast potatoes and lots of boiled veg which you made sure always came from the market where it was 152

fresher, cheaper and better. For tea there would be tinned salmon sandwiches, salad and a bit of cake.

Monday was cold cuts left over from Sunday’s joint, served with boiled potatoes and pickle.

Tuesday was shepherd’s pie made from the leftovers.

Wednesday was egg and chips, possibly with tinned fruit and custard for pudding. It was toad in the hole with mash and greens on Thursdays. The ends of the bread from the week would be used to make a bread pudding served with a bit of cream.

Iris’s Roman Catholic upbringing meant fish on Fridays, always, sometimes from the chip shop if her old man when he was alive hadn’t cleaned out all the money from her purse to go down the pub. She had often managed to hoodwink him over the years, though. She always stashed a few shillings in the tea caddy for emergencies, and if she ever got stuck there was always the local tallyman to lend you a few pounds which you could pay back monthly.

Saturday meant steak, which she beat with a meat hammer until you could nearly see through it, served with her own deep-fried chips and mush rooms. She disapproved of frozen food in any form but tins were fine as long as you knew which ones to pick.

Never buy a tin with a dent in it was her motto.

Woolworth’s always had a great selection of broken biscuits you could serve up on a Saturday morning with a cup of tea, to keep everyone going until lunchtime.

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She might not have been able to do anything about the fact that their dad was an unpleasant alcoholic, but she always made bloody sure that her children ate properly and would be able to look after themselves the same way when they grew up. Iris was a tough little cookie, with no time for fools. Strong, sturdy and dependable, she had a reputation for being big on family, despite the old bastard she’d married.

Lots of young girls visited Iris while pregnant for her to do the needle test on them. She dangled a large darning needle from a piece of thread near their bump. If the needle went from side to side it was a boy, and in a circular motion it was a girl. Iris Parks was never wrong! She was often called in to help out when a local woman went into labour, too.

Good cooks like their mother, Grace and Gillian spent Sunday afternoon in the kitchen at Grace’s, doing batch cookery with the back door standing wide open to let out some of the steam. It was like a Chinese laundry in there. Together they had worked out that with a few pounds of mince and lots of veg they could feed the Williamses for the next week.

Both of them needed to do something to occupy their racing minds in any case.

Gillian chopped onions, complaining about her eyes watering.

‘I told you to put a teaspoon between your teeth when you cut them, it stops the tears,’ said Grace as she stirred a meat mixture, looking all the while at 154

the lasagne recipe she had torn from the back pages of a magazine in the hairdresser’s last month.

Gillian scooped up all the vegetable peelings and put them in a bag to take down to the City Farm for the pigs. Nothing ever got thrown away. Even though Grace had plenty in her purse to feed her family, her upbringing had taught her to cover leftover bits of dinner in foil and put them in the fridge, ready to be reincarnated into the next meal.

‘Mind yourself, love,’ said Gillian, gently pushing her to one side of the cooker, ‘that shepherd’s pie’s ready to come out.’ Grace stepped lightly sideways, still stirring, still looking at the recipe but not seeing it. She was in a world of her own, lost in thought and determined to find answers.

As soon as news of the discovery of Wayne’s body had done the rounds the women worked out the best way of helping Sue, Terry and the kids. They themselves had been shocked and traumatised by the news, but the best way forward was to get stuck in and help Nanny Parks, who had been on the doorstep first thing Sunday morning. She had scooped up two bags of laundry and brought it back from the launderette a couple of hours later clean and folded.

Back in the house she had tiptoed around, opening drawers and putting away clothes, while Sue cried steadily in the bedroom, comforted by the young WPC. By lunchtime Gillian had arrived to collect TJ

and take him over to Grace’s where he played happily 155

with Benny Jr, Adam and baby Luke in the paddling pool, not understanding what was happening or even that Wayne had gone. Gillian looked at the boys and envied them the innocence of youth.

But her eldest son Jamie understood all too well.

He just lay on his bed, staring at his poster of Peter Osgood, feeling frightened and guilty, even though his mum had told him it was not his fault. Gillian herself felt wracked with remorse, knowing very well that if Jamie had not gone off in the first place, Wayne would not have gone looking for him and met his own grisly fate. She was relieved that it wasn’t her son, but racked with guilt for her own selfishness.

Jamie’s father, Benny Sr, had supported his son in the usual way – by having a lock-in at the Royal Oak.

Lucy Potts, by now exulting in her starring role in this ongoing drama, had acted immediately and picked up the Williamses’ girls, Penny and Ashley.

She took them over to Nanny Parks’s where they ate a roast meal and watched Bjorn Borg beat Ilie Nastase in the men’s final at Wimbledon. Through -

out the match tears streamed down their little faces as they were held in turn by Nanny Parks and Lucy, who fetched them beakers of juice and Club biscuits and stroked their hair and told them it would be all right. Lucy had been playing mother to her own little sisters for as long as she could remember so it came naturally to her.

Grace’s husband John spent the day sitting with 156

Terry Williams in his tiny front room while the police came and went, putting the kettle on and fielding enquiries from all the callers who came to express their shock and grief.

Grace pushed her long, black hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand and sighed with the heat.

However dark their lives had become, the glaring sun continued to beat down remorselessly, almost defiantly. It was so hot she couldn’t think. Nobody could. They had never known a summer like it. She took a packet of peas out of the large chest freezer and placed them on the back of her neck.

‘I can’t stand this, Gill.’ Her sister knew she didn’t just mean the heat. Despite their differences while growing up, Gillian knew Grace, and knew her well.

‘None of us can, Grace, but we’ve just got to get on with it, haven’t we?’

‘Yeah, but who the fuck is doing this? Chantal, Adam, Lucy, now Wayne. Our kids, right here.’ She gazed out of the window above the sink as if the answer lay in the garden.

Gillian filled a bowl with soapy water and started loading saucepans into it, shaking her head.

‘It’s someone we know or who knows us, gotta be.

Something in my head keeps telling me that.’

‘But we don’t know anybody that sick. Whoever is doing this has the Devil in him. I mean, he has no heart and no soul.’

Outside baby Luke began to cry because TJ had 157

splashed him. Grace went out, gently told TJ, ‘Be careful, eh?’ and brought Luke back in where she squeezed him and held him close to her, putting her nose into the side of his little neck and drinking in his milky, baby smell. Like Gillian, she felt grateful and then guilty to feel that way. Both she and Gillian knew that Jamie and Adam were lucky to be alive.

‘It’ll get worse once they break up next week.

There’ll be kids roaming around all day long. At least you know they’re safe when they’re at school,’

Gillian sighed.

‘Well, we’ll just have to make sure one of us is always with them, that’s all we can do.’ Grace took the dishcloth out of the bowl and wiped the baby’s face and hands.

‘It’s not all we can do. We can get out there and find this bloke – stop him ourselves!’ Gillian put out her cigarette end under the tap; it made a short hissing sound before going out. Her face flushed with anger, she looked straight at Grace. ‘For God’s sake, are you always going to take the back seat, or will you stand up and face this with us?’

It had always been the same; Grace was more resigned to setbacks while Gillian had always been the fiery one, the little sister with plenty of fighting spirit. Gillian was the one who used to challenge their father, tell him to stop hitting their mum. She was the bolshie little girl who always said when something was wrong. Gobby Gillian Parks! Grace, her own 158

fighting spirit quashed by Uncle Gary, just wanted to keep her head down, avoid trouble, become invisible.

And so their roles were set for life. Grace was responsible, cautious and lovely. Yet Gillian, for all her ‘I won’t stand for this’ attitude, had gone and married an alcoholic, so who was she to talk?

‘Do you always have to mouth off, Gill? Can’t you just be a little easier on people? You don’t always win by being mouthy and aggressive, you know.’ Grace stared at her as Gillian reached for yet another cigarette. Gazing at the end of it and watching the smoke filter into the air as she took a drag, Gillian made her move. ‘I’ve no secrets from no one, Gracie.

I married a no-good shit, I was bad at school, I ran roughshod over Mum, smoked and drank, had the odd spliff . . . but no one ever took advantage of me.’

She dragged again on her fag, not shifting her gaze from her sister’s shocked face.

Grace flushed bright red. That knowing tone in Gillian’s voice. Did she realise about Uncle Gary?

Had she known all this time, and if she did, why hadn’t she said something? ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ replied Grace in a hushed tone. ‘The mince is burning, Gill, you’d better stir it and turn the heat down.’

Potty had dispatched Lucy as soon as the news had reached her, early Saturday evening. Grace had agreed to take the girl home with her for an overnight 159

stay. She would come in handy, watching the other kids. Lucy’s ordeal had faded into insignificance compared to what had just happened to Wayne.

Potty’s baby, her girl, was alive. As usual, Michael had bolted for the door, taking himself to the local pub to seek out Benny Sr and get slowly pissed while trying to put right the wrongs of the world.

After a restless night in the terrible heat, and with her sleep constantly interrupted by a drunken Michael and visions of a stricken Sue, Potty got herself up at the crack of dawn. Something had clicked inside her. She gazed at herself in the mirror.