Towers of Silence (21 page)

At four-thirty the wind abated but the alarm shrilled on, a dog did an occasional duet with it. Impossible to ignore. I went down to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. Digger lay beside the armchair and made no protest when I used him for a footstool. I could feel his warmth through my slippers.

I sipped the tea and tried to think of things domestic. We could get the tree on Saturday. I’d promised them, after all. Ray could get it when he was doing the big shop. Would he prefer new music to Marvin Gaye? Would he think I was making a point if I got him Marvin Gaye? I looked through the pile of cards that needed stringing up. Another job. Laura wore hats a lot. There were some nice fleecy ones about. What did I really fancy for Christmas dinner?

It was too cold to stay up and there was nothing productive I could do in the middle of the night so I returned to bed and covered my head with the duvet to muffle the alarm. Slowly I slipped into sleep.

“Mummeee!” Maddie’s yell pierced like tin. I sat bolt upright, then went quickly to her room before she screamed again.

“Mummy, it was a dream. There was a giant ant and it was trying to eat me.”

I gave her a hug. “It’s just a dream. It’s gone now. You lie down and go back to sleep.”

“What’s that noise?”

“An alarm.”

“Why doesn’t someone stop it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it robbers?”

“No, the wind set it off.”

“What if I have another bad dream?”

“I don’t think you will.”

“I might.”

“Maddie, I’m really tired.”

“Can I come in your bed?”

“No, you’re too wriggly.”

“I won’t wriggle.”

“Lie down.”

“Can you get giant ants?”

“No. Even the very biggest ones are so small they couldn’t eat a person.”

“But if there were bizillions of them and they all had a small bite ... ”

“Maddie, I don’t want to talk about ants, I want to go to sleep. There’s no giant ants and that dream won’t come back. Think about something nice.”

“What?” Sulky tone.

“Christmas. We’re getting the tree on Saturday.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Think about that and the presents.”

She lay down and I covered her with the duvet. “Night-night,”

Sleep take three.

I must have got some. It was dawn when I awoke. I certainly hadn’t had enough though, not for the day that lay ahead.

I had two cups of strong coffee which might have kept me awake but also made me feel slightly nauseous. I joined the other poor sods whose work lies via the motorway network and set out for Birch Services on the M62.

I concentrated hard; the lanes were busy and plenty of drivers made manoeuvres that had me cursing and stabbing the brakes while adrenalin squirted into my stomach. I tried various tapes but nothing suited my mood. In the end I found a radio station with audible reception but the laddish drivel got to me and I snapped it off.

I was more or less on time, got myself a banana milkshake and egg on toast. I was already ravenous. Pale food. I seemed to be having a lot of it. Comfort food or invalid food. Okay, maybe I needed some comfort but, although tired, I had survived my night in the rain without a sore throat or anything. I was not an invalid. I usually try and eat colourfully - a rainbow diet is a healthy diet, well as long as the colours aren’t artificial. Blackpool rock wouldn’t count.

I scanned the cafe. The staff wore sprigs of holly or tinsel on their hats and the tannoy let out a trebly rendition of Christmas songs: Bing Crosby, John Lennon, Slade wishing it could be Christmas every day. Want their head examining, I thought. You could sense the seasonal tension in the air, most of the conversations you heard, especially between women started with ‘Are you ready for Christmas then?’ A frenzy of planning and buying and then wrapping and cooking, and when it was all over there was the huge gap in the bank account to worry about.

I was sucking on my milkshake and contemplating whether stuffed aubergine and ensalata verde would be nicer for Christmas than chestnut, mushroom and asparagus pie when Bryony Walker introduced herself.

“I’ll get a drink,” she said. “Do you want anything?”

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

She was older than I’d expected. Her hair was sprinkled with grey, cut into a practical bob. She wore rectangular gold-framed glasses and golden earrings, a striped cotton sweater, long, dark skirt and Doc Marten boots. The boots were a nice touch.

She returned with her tea and a pastry. “Where shall we start?”

“Can you tell me what happened at Horizons?”

She nodded, took a bite of pastry and a drink of tea. She had the style of someone constantly in a rush. She swallowed a second mouthful of tea.

“Clive Edmonds joined us in ‘ninety-four. He was an excellent worker, enthusiastic, prepared to take the initiative, good rapport with staff and users. He built up a very successful arts project, regular workshops leading to fixed practical outcomes.”

I was trying to translate the last bit when she tutted at herself. “Sorry, jargon. Means they actually made things, there was a goal. Some workshops are open-ended, so the outcome there might be self-esteem rather than a painting. Anyway, he was even good at raising funds which is a godsend in a set up like ours. Year after year we have to raise the money to pay ourselves before we even think about funding projects. It’s precarious and it’s bloody awful as far as planning ahead goes. So, everything seemed fine. Then in ‘ninety-six, out of nowhere, one of the long-term centre users, girl called Katy, who’d been through the mental health system and back, told her mother that Clive Edmonds had been abusing her.” She sighed briskly. Took a drink.

I stared at her, my mouth half open, a falling sensation in my stomach.

“Unfortunately the girls’ mother, who should have known better, confronted Clive directly. He denied everything, said katy was making false allegations. It didn’t help that the girl had a fairly unreliable record. She’d been involved in petty crime, shoplifting, credit-card fraud at quite a young age and there was a background of abuse in the family.

“Anyway the management committee were all informed and they were running around trying to establish how the disciplinary procedures worked when Katy withdrew the allegations. She refused to put it in writing and didn’t want to talk about it to anyone.” She shrugged her eyebrows. “Social services had been informed but basically there was no case against Clive. The trouble was by this point I believed he was guilty.”

“Why?”

“Gut feeling. No more than that. He acted exactly as you’d expect an innocent person to act. He was patently hurt by what was being said. But deep down I believed Katy ...” She tutted. “Of course, any suspicions like that were taboo, completely out of order. If I’d breathed a word of it to anyone else and Clive got to hear of it then he could sue for constructive dismissal or defamation or whatever. As far as everyone else was concerned it was over, finished. Things carried on. Then Katy died. Took a bottle of Paracetamol. It was awful.” She shook her head slowly.

“One of her uncles came down to Horizons, barged in and laid into Clive. Clive fought back, more than was necessary. He hospitalised the guy. Another bloody awful mess. Clive left. Said the trust had gone and he couldn’t work with the shadow of suspicion hanging over him. Never mind that we could hardly let him carry on when he’d used gross violence like that. He didn’t work his notice or anything. Just went.”

“When was that?”

“Ninety-seven. It was almost another year before we found out anything else.”

I was all ears.

She drained her cup, set it down. “I’m a counsellor. Part of my role is to be available for people who want to talk. What I’m saying now is strictly confidential,” she looked at me. Her eyes were the muddy green of river water. “I have no proper proof for any of it and it won’t stand up as evidence.”

I nodded my understanding.

“It was about a year later, I was doing a counselling session with a young woman. She became very agitated and she disclosed to me that Clive Edmonds had sexually abused her on several occasions.” She drew breath. “Two months later, completely unsolicited, I had the same story from another user. Even though he had been gone so long they were both still extremely fearful of talking about it. It seems he’d threatened them constantly about what would happen if they ever told anyone. He would make sure they were sent to secure mental hospitals, they’d be detained indefinitely. No one would ever believe them. Only him.”

Miriam’s call to Hattie. “They’ll put me back in hospital ... he’ll punish me.”

“At the same time he was telling each of them how special she was, how gentle, beautiful, bright. How they had to be careful because no one would understand how they felt about each other.”

Oh, God. I pictured Miriam, getting into his car.
Fancy man
, Horace Johnstone had said.

“What could I do? The women flatly refused to make any complaint or have their accounts passed on to anyone. He was God knows where. I couldn’t break confidentiality so,” she gave another short sigh, “I tried carefully worded memos to social services in other counties because I knew he’d have started somewhere else doing the same thing.”

Was that what had triggered Miriam’s collapse?

“But of course he’d changed his name. And to be frank, as far as Social Services are concerned he is way, way down the wanted list. They’ve loads of people they are already trying to nail with a lot more evidence; documented abuse stretching back years, survivors willing to testify, and even then it’s not easy.” She leant forward. “The only hope of stopping him is to do every step by the book. Get enough evidence to drown him and bring in the police. And that is only a hope. Half the time the police don’t want to know, or they cock it up. See it as a woman’s job, not macho enough, hunting abusers. This woman, the one whose family you’re working for, she’s made a complaint - will she testify?”

“She can’t. I should have explained. She’s dead. She committed suicide back in October.”

“Oh, God, I am sorry.”

“And I’ve no idea whether he was abusing her.”

“If not her then he’s found someone else.”

I shook my head. “What you’ve told me just now ... there’s never been so much as a whisper of anything like that from anybody. Nothing.”

“But I’m confused now,” she peered at me. “What made you ring me in the first place? Why were you interested in Clive Edmonds?”

“The family wanted to know more about the hours before she died. That’s why they hired me. Eddie Cliff, Clive Edmonds was the last person that we know of to see her alive. But he lied to me about that afternoon. I don’t know why but he lied about when he’d seen her and where and I thought I’d try and find out more about him.”

“I got completely the wrong end of the stick. So no one where he works has made any complaints? Or made any allegations?”

“No.”

“So he just carries on.” She bit her lower lip.

“It’s so hard to believe,” I said. “He’s so ...”

“Nice? Great guy, solid.” She said bitterly. “Only last year I had the same sort of conversation with someone who had heard of him, in Bristol, back in the eighties. Rumours, but it was him.”

“I was completely taken in.”

“So was I. I went out with the bastard.”

My jaw dropped.

“Oh, yes. Hook, line and sinker. So this is personal too.”

“What now?”

“Be vigilant.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She lifted her glasses, rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “Until there’s any complaint, your hands are tied. Do you know anyone on the Management Committee?”

I thought of Sharon but she was a worker now. And she thought Eddie was the bee’s knees.

“Not really.”

“In some authorities the police and social services have mechanisms in place to work together on this sort of thing. You could alert them. A sympathetic police officer with the clout to act can make all the difference. You must prepare so that if and when allegations are made, everything is in place to protect the victims and prosecute him.”

It’s not going to be up to me, I felt like saying; I’m a PI, this is just one of my cases, I don’t work at the centre.

“But, basically, we have to wait for it to happen?”

She looked bleak. “Unless someone comes forward from the past and is prepared to go to court.”

“It’s like a trap.”

“Stinks. But that’s how they get away with it. No report, no crime. No evidence, no testimony, no crime. It’s all hidden. And no one wants to look.”

And Miriam? The picture I had of her was not some lonely girl desperate for attention. She had raised a family single-handed, worked for much of her life. She had friends, a place in the community. She was happy. Even that morning she’d been happy. No hint of depression. I found it hard to believe Eddie Cliff had been regularly abusing her. So maybe it had only happened the once. With such a severe reaction.

“There was no forensic evidence,” I said.

“Maybe you’re right and she wasn’t one of his victims. His pattern was the same according to the two I heard from. No full intercourse. He’d,” she cleared her throat, “he’d feel them up, touch them and then they had to perform oral sex on him. That plus the threats and the promises.”

I didn’t know lots about forensics but presumably sperm would disappear from the mouth more quickly than from the vagina. How long would traces remain? And if he used a hanky?

The sense of purpose with which our meeting had begun had dwindled into a shared sense of despair.

“There doesn’t seem to be much you can do,” she said.

“There’s the false references.”

“That could cost him the job but he’d move on, up to his old tricks.”

“Could the deception be publicised to prevent him applying for other posts?”

“The networks aren’t there. You could notify social services but there are all the voluntary sector outfits, charities as well. It wouldn’t be any hindrance to him. And until he’s convicted he can’t be put on the sex-offenders register. Square one.” She looked at her watch. “I really ought to make tracks.”