What She Left: Enhanced Edition (13 page)

Southampton residents can sleep safer tonight.

Liam Bardsley, the man who attacked an 82-year-old great-grandmother, was sentenced to four years in prison this week.

This monster targeted as many as forty homes in our area during a burglary spree lasting over a year.

He left a trail of victims in his wake – including courageous octogenarian Dot Walker who confronted the 36-year-old when
she was woken by ‘movement’ in her kitchen. He knocked her to the ground and hit her, according to the prosecution, ‘at least five times in the face’ before fleeing the scene. He was described in court as ‘an inhuman creature who showed no mercy’.

He belongs behind bars. Why then, we all want to know, has he only been imprisoned for four years? Taking into account so-called ‘good behaviour’, he could be back out on our streets in less than two.

Readers who responded to our ‘Catch the Night Stalker’ campaign should feel proud of the part they played in sending this animal to jail. Without you bravely coming forward, we would never have been able to compile so much evidence against Bardsley – evidence that the police described as ‘vital’ in assembling their case.

The photo we published with the family’s approval of Dot after the horrific attack sparked a flood of calls to the police helpline (many of you also contacted the
Messenger
direct).

The four-year jail term he received for burglary and grievous bodily harm should have been much longer. Even twice that would seem too short for a man prepared to tell an old lady that he ‘would gut her if she as much as whimpered’.

We are today calling on the government to instigate tougher sentences for violent crimes against the elderly and are working with local MPs who have vowed to take the matter up in Parliament.

The last word must go to Dot, one of the bravest women we’ve ever had the privilege to meet – in many respects a typical pensioner, in others utterly unique.

Hearing about what happened in Court D of Southampton Crown Court this week, she said: ‘I only hope no one else will have to go through what I have.’

When asked for her reaction to her attacker’s sentence, she
replied with wisdom, dignity and compassion: ‘He’ll get his reckoning when he comes before his maker.’

• Do you have information about a crime? Ring Alice Salmon in confidence on the number at the top of page 7.
  

Your mum and dad’s house was the last place in the world I wanted to be, but I couldn’t
not
go. That would have merely aroused suspicion.

‘You look like you’ve been in the wars,’ your mum said when I arrived. I spun her some line about a mountain-bike accident, but fessed up later to having been in a fight.

‘Expect we’ll all do a few things we’re not proud of before we’re through,’ she’d said. ‘Sorry about all these wretched questions the police are asking, but it’s their job. We all need the same thing, sweetheart – the truth.’ And the word ‘sweetheart’ clawed at me because I could imagine her calling you it and I was never close to my mum.

‘You meant so much to her,’ she said. Her hair against my face was the nearest I’d ever get to you.

Secrets, Al. So many secrets.

‘You do realize Alice and I weren’t together,’ I admitted. ‘We were having some issues.’ My admission pinged around the kitchen, snapping off the bright white surfaces and bouncing back at me. It would have appeared odd not to have mentioned it. They’d have wondered why.

‘Of course I do. We’re a close family. Our daughter talks to us.
Talked
.’

‘I’d understand if you’d rather me not come to the funeral,’ I said, half hoping she’d seize on that.

‘No, we want you there, or
I
certainly do. I’m working on the principle that the pair of you would have made up sooner or later. David’s got a rather different view, of course.’

It was odd being in that house, the house we’d been in so many times, the house that I’d been initially nervous of visiting – I needn’t have been, your parents were fantastic, plying me full of booze even if it was some awful pale ale and stressing they wouldn’t consider me the slightest bit rude if I took myself off to the conservatory and buried myself in the Sunday papers. The house where we’d dog-sat, had a bath together, where you’d showed me your old school blazer and I’d joked about you wearing it for me and you’d called me a perv and we’d manoeuvred into your single bed at two in the afternoon, you diligently turned your toy rabbit away, that was such a you thing to do, and afterwards lay staring up through the skylight at the clouds scudding across the blue.

The house was full of people who loved you, your name on every breath, in every sentence, in every room. They all did a double take when they saw my face. Your mum had put her arm round me and took me into the garden at one point; all those people and she found time for
me
, and I explained how much I hated myself.
‘
Don’t,’ she said. ‘
Don’t
.’ I might have been different –
better
– if I’d had parents like yours. I’d felt a surge of warmth towards her, that she might not despise me for what I’d done. Later, I went to your dad in the garage chipping away at a piece of wood on his workbench and said: ‘Thanks for having me here.’

‘You’ve got my wife to thank for that. If it was down to me I’d have put you through that window.’ He gazed at a small discoloured square of glass. ‘Why couldn’t you have kept your damn stupid prick in your trousers?’

He’ll never forgive me; you can’t blame him – I’ll never forgive myself. Not that he knows the half of it. No one does.

He planed at the wood; shavings fell to the floor and layered up around his shoes. ‘Twenty-five,’ he said. ‘What sort of age is that? Answer me, you stupid little bastard.’ He raised his fist and I’d thought,
Hit me
. Hit me as that man in the pub had. It might do us both some good. But his arm slumped down and he made a noise like a wounded animal. ‘How could you do this to my baby?’

Can’t believe they’d even want me at your funeral, wasn’t as if we were related, not as if I’m next of kin, not as if we were
married
. That’s another thing you don’t know, Al. I was going to propose a second time. The morning you went to Southampton. We’d been apart for almost the two months you’d insisted on by then. No contact, they were the rules, your rules, but I was going to surprise you. Apologize, explain, make you see sense. You’d have been stunned – but in a good way, I reckon. I’d realized over those two months how there was one special person for everyone and you were mine, Alice Louise Salmon. Forget the trip to Rome. I was going to do it there and then on your doorstep. But Soph answered the door and claimed you weren’t in.

‘Where’s she gone?’

‘Southampton.’

It filled me with despair, the possibility of a whole life of us not knowing where the other one was.
I must find you
, I’d thought. I must find my Alice and propose. Soph eyed me suspiciously. I wasn’t sure how much you’d have told her; I certainly hadn’t broadcast what was going on. ‘Can I go up to her room?’

‘No.’

‘She’s in there, isn’t she?’ I said, the possibility of you being with another man stretching out in me. ‘Who’s she got in there?’
You’d been adamant that there wasn’t anyone else involved when you’d given me the heave-ho, when we’d last been in your room and you were crying and the mini Christmas tree was flickering and I was shaking you – I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. I lost it, that’s how much I loved you. You promised there wasn’t, but how was I to know what to believe? ‘I’m not pissing around here, Soph – who she’s with?’

‘Ask her yourself if you’re that desperate. Oh no, she’s not talking to you, is she!?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying another tack. ‘I miss her. You’ve got to help me
.
Please.’

‘You’ve only just missed her,’ Soph said, returning indoors.

The idea flashed into my head:
Go to Southampton
. I’d taken out my phone. Alice S you’d been initially, because Alice Kemp was already in there, but once we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend I changed you to Alice and her to Alice K, and then once we’d been dating a while you became Al. I texted you.
Our two months is nearly up. It’s killing me not seeing you. Have something important to say.

I’d stayed for an hour at your mum and dad’s, which was the minimum I thought I could get away with, but I had to get back to this, this table, this beer. Images of you keep bursting up in front of me – you on the London Eye; you drinking champagne at ten in the morning the day Kate and Wills got hitched; you instructing a man on the Tube to shift his fat arse to let a pregnant woman sit down; you dancing in the kitchen at that party in Peckham; you looking like a startled deer when you spotted me by the river on that Saturday, your voice, your smell – you, washed away now, washed away in that cold water with all our secrets.

Now I’m not feeling anything other than pissed and stoned and when I’ve finished these cans and this joint I certainly won’t be seeing your face looking up at me, hurt and terrified from the
edge of your bed or from the table we never got to sit at in the Campo de’ Fiori or that black water; I’ll be sitting in my kitchen and even the anger will have gone: there’ll just be the drone of the TV, the dull throb from the wounds on my face and the intermittent echo of a man sobbing in the room.

I’d stood for ages outside your flat. Soph kept peeking out of the window to check if I’d gone. You didn’t reply to my text. I turned towards the train station.
You like surprises
, I’d thought.
I’ll give you a fucking surprise
.