Sweetie (4 page)

Adam eyed the nurse with glowering suspicion and fear but her soothing tone and deft handiwork had the sweet removed in less than a minute. He cried out only once when she had to dislodge the sticky mess at the point it had become stuck to the skin above his ear, but she was quick and soon he was being rocked and soothed again by Grace, who mouthed her thanks. The nurse, feeling utterly at a loss for the right thing to say or do, stood up and declared briskly, ‘Right, I’ll get us all a cup of tea then.’

The police insisted that they should stay at the hospital until a medical officer was able to give the child a thorough examination and take tests and swabs. They were very kind to Grace and John, but things became tense between PC Watson and a casualty registrar when hospital staff insisted Adam be taken to surgery. Having just got him back, Grace did not want to let him go, and the police wanted to get what information they could from Adam as to who might have done this to him, but the hospital doctor was adamant that the wounds to his genital area and anus needed immediate attention. They could not risk delaying any longer.

PC Watson, on uncertain ground, tried to reason with the doctor: ‘I have strict orders, sir.’ To 20

which the doctor immediately replied, ‘No doubt, Constable, but I have a child in urgent need of medical attention.’ There was a slight pause and the doctor continued in a no-nonsense manner, ‘Prepare him for surgery . . . immediately, Nurse.’

PC Watson stayed with Grace and John in the small ward, drinking tea and wondering aloud what kind of animal could do this to a child, but couldn’t get a word out of either of them. Shock, he supposed.

This was only his third year with the force, and though he had seen a couple of murder victims and some pretty horrific battery cases, this was his first experience of a sexual assault on a child, and such a young one at that.

He spoke of his own small children and his deter -

mination to catch the attacker: ‘We’ll get him, don’t you worry. There’ll be clues everywhere; it’s just a matter of time. DCI Woodhouse is a top-drawer bastard – there’s no way he’ll let a pervert like this one roam loose for too long.’

John’s resolve was beginning to weaken, the odd strangulated sob breaking from him, but Grace just sat there in silent agony, memories of her own shattered childhood running through her mind, numb with disbelief that this could be happening again.

Meanwhile Detective Chief Inspector Albert Wood -

house was waiting for feedback from his officers in 21

Dalston. They were searching the Haggerston Park area, looking for anything that could confirm that the child had been taken there to be assaulted and for any suspicious sightings in the area. Five officers were conducting door-to-door enquiries and he expected news to filter back soon. This was a neighbourhood where not much went unnoticed. Most of the residents knew each other by sight if not by name.

Cases in these two square miles of densely populated East London terraced housing and tower blocks were notoriously difficult to close down unless you could get the right people to talk. A lot of covering up went on, but in a case like this, Woodhouse thought he could rely on local help.

He had worked at Bethnal Green for the last fifteen of his twenty-five years in the force and was a known figure in the area, respected if not liked. The gangs of organised criminals locally preferred their coppers bent, but nobody could ever accuse Woodhouse of that. A humourless man, he was a tall, lugubrious-looking individual whose suits and shoes were worn but well-kept.

Twenty-five years on the force exposed a man to the worst in human nature but there was something especially sickening about this case. A second sexual assault, the first resulting in murder, in a small area in the same week was suspicious despite the differ -

ences. Chantal Robinson was a young woman, hers could be a straightforward rape case that had turned 22

nasty if the girl had put up a fight, and Adam Ballantyne was so much younger. Woodhouse had yet to hear back from the medical officer, but it seemed clear from initial reports that the child had been anally penetrated. What kind of man got his kicks from buggering a four-year-old boy? However, although Woodhouse was uncertain, at this stage he suspected that the attacks had to be linked.

Woodhouse knew that a PC was holding the parents for him at the hospital while he scoured the area for any positive evidence he could present them with. Families of victims always bayed for immediate blood and Woodhouse knew from long experience that you had to be able to give them some proof that the case was progressing. Besides, he lacked the sympathetic touch necessary in these cases. Although he thought PC Watson was a bit too much of a soft touch to make a really good copper, he was just the ticket for work like this and could be relied on to make all the right noises. It wasn’t that the DCI didn’t care or have feelings; he just preferred to keep them to himself. In his job it was better not to give way to emotion.

Down at one of the local pubs, the Birdcage, the unofficial investigation was proceeding less dis

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passionately. ‘It’s gotta be that spastic kid Steven Archer, my Sue’s convinced.’ Terry Williams, father of four and husband to Sue, was standing at the bar 23

with his close friend and workmate Paul Foster, step-father to the recently murdered Chantal.

Privately, Paul had been rocked to his foundations by her murder, but for the sake of his wife Michelle, and for his own sanity, he was maintaining a calm approach. Beneath seethed anger and a fierce deter -

mination to find the bloke who’d done this before the police did. A life sentence would be too good for him.

All the same, Paul wasn’t going to batter somebody on the say-so of a busybody housewife and know-it-all. He thought the world of Terry but kept his feelings about Sue to himself.

It was talent night and the pub was packed, the stage with its mirrored backdrop reflecting the crowded bar and beyond to the pool table and darts board. Paul checked his watch to see if there was time for another drink before the first act came on. He usually liked to duck out before the show got going, not being a particular fan of middle-aged men crooning Frank Sinatra and Elvis favourites. The women tended to favour Shirley Bassey and Peggy Lee numbers, and liked to dress up for it.

‘Who’s she then, bloody Columbo? Same again.’

Paul tilted his pint glass at the barmaid.

‘No, but it’s funny how none of this happened before
he
came home for the summer holidays. Sue says he gives her and the other women the creeps, the way he’s always just standing around staring at the 24

kids.’

‘Might be because no bugger wants to play with him, poor little sod.’ Paul handed a pound note over the bar and waited for his change.

‘Yeah, but he’s fourteen and wants to join in with little kids? Cheers, love.’ Terry winked at the barmaid.

‘That’s because he’s got a mental age of about five.’

‘What are you sticking up for him for?’ Terry grew instantly confrontational. ‘I thought you’d be the last person, what with . . .’ he paused here, unable to speak about Chantal ‘. . . well, you know.’ Paul didn’t reply, just stared into the mirror behind the bar reflecting back the sea of bodies in the pub behind him. It could be any one of these blokes in here, he thought to himself. Or none of them. The police had told him that in the vast majority of rapes and murders, the assailant was known to the victim. But who could it be?

Terry shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, sensing he had gone too far and at a loss for what to say next. Finally he managed a feeble, ‘Fancy a quick game of pool?’ Paul knew that in his way Terry was trying to apologise. He turned and touched his friend’s shoulder. ‘Nah, you’re all right, mate. I’m just gonna finish this then shoot off. Don’t like to leave Michelle on her own too much, ’specially not with the funeral tomorrow.’

25

‘Yeah, yeah. Course, mate. I’d better be getting home myself or Sue’ll have my bollocks on the chopping block again like she did last night. But, listen, we’ll see you there, mate. Christ Church, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, eleven o’clock, then we’ve got the wake in here after. Maggie and John are closing the pub

’specially for us. Michelle wanted to do it at home but our place isn’t big enough and I don’t want a load of people in the house anyway. The other kids are upset enough as it is.’

‘Are you bringing them?’ Terry was fishing on instructions from Sue who wanted to bring all four of hers including the baby in a show of family solidarity.

Terry didn’t think it was right but wasn’t going to go up against her.

‘I dunno, mate. Aisha’s definitely coming, but I think Trinity’s too young. Still, it’s Michelle’s call.’

Aisha was Chantal’s younger sister, Paul’s second step-daughter, a beauty like her. At nine she was old enough to understand what had happened to Chantal.

Instead of forever riding around the estate with her mates on the Chopper she’d got last Christmas as she used to do, Aisha had refused to leave her room since Chantal’s murder. Michelle wanted her to see a friend, do anything, just be normal for a while. But it was early days, they supposed.

Trinity, Paul’s daughter by Michelle, was four and too young to understand what was really going on.

26

Her mum had tried to explain but Trinity just kept asking, ‘When’s Chantal coming back from heaven?’

Thinking of the kids suddenly caught Paul by the throat. He felt he might choke on the lump in it. He finished his pint with one long swallow, banged the glass on the bar harder than he’d meant to and, without saying a word, touched Terry’s arm by way of goodbye. His friend started to say something but his mouth just opened and closed again. What could he say? Paul opened the door, ignoring the sym

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pathetic glances of well-wishers, and walked quickly out on to Gosset Road where he cried all the way home.

Grace was having the opposite problem. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t feel. John was doing enough of that for both of them. She had never seen her husband sob like this before and could only gaze at him in curious detachment as he crumbled before her eyes. She didn’t even try to comfort him but spent her time instead just staring at her little boy as he lay sleeping in a hospital bed with metal bars at the sides. It reminded her of seeing him in his cot as a baby.

When John left, Grace spent the long watches of the night alone in the side ward with her boy, listening to the faint hum of the hospital incinerator somewhere in the distance. The night nurse popped in from time to time to check his temperature and 27

make sure no infection was taking hold. Adam had needed eight internal stitches and three around the opening to his anus to repair the damage there. The doctors had warned Grace that they’d need to be very careful about what he ate in the next few weeks while the stitches healed, as going to the toilet was going to be exceptionally painful although he would be given medication for that. His penis had been badly bruised and was painfully swollen. There was no tearing to the skin, but puncture holes had been made in it deliberately, though hopefully surgery had corrected these.

John had finally gone home around 2 a.m. to relieve Lizzie Foster who had been looking after baby Luke. Lizzie was Paul Foster’s mother, a tough old bird with a tight perm and flinty eyes. In their panic to find a sitter for Luke when the call came that Adam had been found, Grace and John had forgotten that Lizzie, as Chantal’s step-grand

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mother, would be at the funeral the following day and would probably want to rest up beforehand. It was only after Adam came out of surgery and was left sedated and in a sound sleep that the thought occurred to them.

John didn’t want to leave Grace and Adam, but she was insistent. ‘No, you go, see to the baby. I’m all right.’ She was too, or so it seemed to John who had to suppress a flicker of anger at his wife for staying so composed – not thinking for a moment that what she 28

was displaying was not composure at all but the numbness that comes by way of grace when feelings would be too hard to bear.

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Chapter Three

The Fosters lived in a spacious Guinness Trust Housing Association flat at the eastern, residential end of Columbia Road. Its red-brick foundations and façades were dotted with the white freshly painted windowframes of the sixty or so flats it contained.

Michelle and Paul had slowly moved up the housing list during their first five years together with Michelle’s two daughters by her first marriage to Darren Robinson. When their own daughter Trinity was born it tipped the scales that had moved them from a damp, cramped, noisy flat above a green -

grocer’s on Brick Lane to the relative luxury of this newly refurbished Guinness Trust block.

Tower Hamlets Council had referred them to the housing trust and they were rewarded with three bed -

rooms, a kitchen/dinette, and a twelve-foot lounge –

unimaginable luxury after years of living on top of each other. The flats housed mainly young families like themselves and Paul and Michelle quickly established firm friendships with their neigh bours, doing favours, lending and borrowing tools, food and clothing, and of course minding each other’s kids. Everyone was part of the community here, from 30

the small post office to the reproduction furniture factory outlets. Everybody knew every body, and

until a week ago none of them had any reason to think that their children were anything but safe. They might come in late for their tea; they might come back with rips or stains in their clothing, or even cuts and bruises from boisterous play, but they came back in one piece. Children here used to be seen pushing open a letter box and pulling the door key through from inside where it dangled on a piece of string.

They’d let themselves in and wait alone for their mothers to get back from work. Now, though, hardly anyone went unsupervised, the younger children only rode their bikes in twos, and there was a general sense of foreboding and anxiety.

That old sense of security, taken totally for granted before, had quickly evaporated and fear and anger had taken its place. Now neighbours stood round in conspiratorial huddles, speculating on who could have done such things to Chantal and then Adam. Since Chantal’s brutal rape and murder, the Fosters’ neighbours had roughly fallen into two camps – the first too stricken, shocked and embar -