Silent Playgrounds Page 15

  ‘But you and your husband took the kids in,’ Corvin said, as if acknowledging the generosity of the gesture.

  Kath Walker looked at him stonily. ‘We were family.

  Those kids needed somewhere. “Just for a few months,” Carolyn said. “Give me a chance to settle in my job, get us somewhere to live. Just a few months.” Next thing we know, she’s gone back to America. Bryan and me, we couldn’t have another, so we thought … But those two …’

  ‘What was the problem, Mrs Walker?’ Barraclough thought she had seen a gentler side to the woman under those words.

  ‘Bad blood.’ Kath Walker’s mouth snapped shut.

  ‘Bad blood?’ The woman obviously hadn’t liked her sister-in-law, but what about the father, what about Phillip Reid?

  ‘It was in his family,’ she said. ‘In Bryan’s family. They all went wrong. Simon, the older lad, he was wrong in the head. We couldn’t have that, not with our Michelle. He’d just look at you, like you weren’t there, and he’d stare at things in this creepy way he had. He was always doing the same thing, over and over and over. And then if you got him mad …’ She looked at the two officers. ‘They put him away.’

  ‘When was that, Mrs Walker?’ McCarthy had said he wanted Simon Reid located.

  She squinted her eyes, calculating. ‘She, Carolyn, brought them to us in 1984. That was when it was, 1984. Once we knew she wasn’t coming back. We couldn’t manage Simon.’

  ‘So what happened to Simon. Is he still in care?’ Barraclough had not been able to locate Simon in the records.

  ‘He was only there for a few weeks, then Bryan’s mother took him on. He went to live with her.’ She waited, then added, ‘I don’t know any more than that. I had my hands full with the other lad. And Bryan.’ Simon’s grandmother was Catherine Walker, she told them, but she had been in a home for several years. Kath Walker had no knowledge of who had taken Simon in after this. Barraclough sighed, thinking of the paperwork ahead.

  ‘So what happened to Ashley in the end?’ Barraclough tried not to make the question confrontational. Their information said that Simon Reid was autistic. Could she have coped with an autistic nephew, along with a second, younger child, a child of her own, an alcoholic husband and a pub to run? She didn’t think she could have done it. Who was she to judge this woman?

  ‘He was trouble, too. We were watching him, in case he went the same way as Simon. Bryan wasn’t having that. Bryan always wanted a lad, but Ashley, he wasn’t a proper lad, not like we wanted. He wanted his brother and he wanted his mum. “You’ll have to want,” I told him in the end. She left him. She didn’t want him and the sooner he got that sorted, the better.’ She met Barraclough’s expression head on. ‘It’s not always best to be soft with kids. Sometimes they need to know the worst. Ashley needed to know his mum wasn’t coming back.’

  Barraclough nodded. Maybe the woman was right, but there were ways and there were ways. ‘So what happened with Ashley in the end?’

  ‘Well, you know about that.’ Kath Walker didn’t drop her gaze. ‘We had to let him go. He was wrong in the head, like his brother. Bad blood.’

  ‘How do you mean, Mrs Walker?’ Corvin’s voice sounded cheerful in Barraclough’s ears.

  ‘It’s that family,’ the woman said. ‘It came out with Bryan in drink. And his mother, she’s not been able to look after herself for years. Senile.’ She said it like an obscenity.

  ‘What about Carolyn? What about their mother? What happened to her?’ The social services hadn’t managed to track her down, but their resources were limited, Barraclough knew. Had she been in touch with her brother or her sister-in-law? Had she at least tried to find out what had happened to her children?

  Kath Walker’s face was set and cold. ‘We had a couple of letters, after she went back,’ she said.

  Corvin tried again. ‘And nothing after that?’ Kath Walker shook her head. ‘You don’t have a current address for her?’

  Again, the head shake. ‘I gave the last address we had to the social.’

  ‘What about her husband?’ Corvin asked. ‘Phillip Reid.’

  Kath Walker sniffed and raised her eyebrows. ‘Husband,’ she said.

  ‘But they were married,’ Corvin said.

  ‘Oh, yes, but only because they had to, for him to get into the country. She had work, but he didn’t. Passports and things. He was off as soon as she was expecting again. Bryan had to send her money. I ask you!’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘No, and I don’t want to. Nor did Carolyn. I said, “What about their father?” when she asked us to take the lads. “He doesn’t care,” she said. “I’ve got to do this myself.”’ She looked at Corvin and Barraclough. ‘And before you ask, the answer’s no, I haven’t heard from him since.’

  Polly Andrews had said that Emma stowed her belongings, or some of them, in the roof space when she was sharing a room with Sophie Dutton. The original search of Sophie’s room had not included the roof space – the search team had found no access to it. Now they were back, to see if Emma’s missing things were still up there, ignored or forgotten by the cleaners.

  The attic room looked dustier, less bare and empty than Corvin remembered it. The smears from the fingerprint powder were still on the windows, and the carpet and mattress looked dirty. The housing officer looked round and clicked his tongue. ‘The standard of cleaning gets worse each year,’ he said. ‘OK, access to the roof space.’ He indicated the wardrobe against the dormer wall, and two of the search team braced themselves against it, staggering a bit as it moved more easily than they expected. ‘It’s only cheap, pre-fab stuff,’ the housing officer said apologetically. ‘Right.’ He pointed to a small, vertical trap that was flush with the wall and hard to see. ‘We sealed off the roof space in the other room, but this trap-door provides access where it’s needed. Private landlords use these as fire exits – you used to be able to get right along the row through the roofs – but that’s illegal now.’

  Corvin nodded, and one of the team unlocked the trap and it fell onto the floor. A puff of dusty air blew out. He shone his torch into the darkness, illuminating the sloping roof, the beams with insulation fibre running between them, and saw, stuffed round the corner for ease of collection, a suitcase and a rolled-up sleeping bag. He reached in and pulled them out. A torn piece of paper fell onto the floor. Corvin looked the case over. There were no identifying marks on the outside, no address or name label. The case was blue, a weekend case, plastic, scuffed, but not too heavy, suggesting it was full of clothes or something light.

  He opened the suitcase. As he’d suspected, it contained clothes: a pair of jeans, a couple of sweatshirts clearly in need of a wash, and some towels, also dirty. A pair of worn trainers were stuffed into the bottom of the case. These weren’t Emma’s clothes, or Sophie’s. These belonged to a man and, judging by the size of the trainers, a big man, or a tall man at any rate. At the bottom of the case there was a zip-lock bag. The bag was stuffed full, and Corvin could see through the transparent surface that there were bundles of pills wrapped in plastic bags inside, and a notebook with a red cover. Well, well. Emma’s stockroom. An analysis of her supply might lead to their supplier.

  Carefully, he pulled out the notebook and flicked through the pages. He was hoping for a list of customers, or something else that would give them more of a lead into Emma’s drugs life, but most of the pages had been torn out. Those that were left were blank. He looked inside the cover. Under the pencilled-in price was the name s. DUTTON, and the address, 14, CARLETON ROAD, then, in larger figures, the year, 1999. He remembered Polly Andrews saying, ‘Sophie wants to be a writer.’ This could have been her diary. But she, or someone else, had made sure that no one was going to read it. He picked up the piece of paper from the floor. It was a small piece, lined, ripped across. Closely written words in blue ink: … and the park was beautiful We talked, really talked, for the first time. We talked about the river and t
he trees and the birds … The writing ran off the edge of the torn page … just like me. I didn’t know, I really didn’t know… Corvin shrugged. It meant nothing to him. ‘Get forensics to go over this lot,’ he said. ‘And get copies of this’ – he indicated the paper – ‘straight away.’

  One of the team called him over. The man had found marks on the carpet that they’d missed last time, marks of a piece of furniture that had stood there for some time, leaving its impression indelibly etched on the cheap carpet. This was obviously the place where the wardrobe had once stood. Corvin had wondered why, if Emma and Sophie used the roof space regularly for storage, the wardrobe had been pulled across it. He looked at the carpet where the wardrobe now stood. The carpet didn’t have the same, single set of deep marks. Instead, there was a larger flattened area, as though the wardrobe had been regularly moved and put back not quite in the same place.

  It was gone half past three by the time McCarthy’s car pulled up outside the Fielding house. Jane Fielding had known Sophie for nearly a year and Emma for several months. There were things McCarthy needed to know that maybe she could tell him. He wasn’t unhappy with the timing. He wanted a chance to talk to Lucy. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say – he didn’t have a lot to do with children. He thought about his occasional – very occasional – visits to his sister’s, when he became this stranger called Uncle Steve, and found himself the object of the curiosity of his nephew and niece who, disturbingly, carried traces of his sister and his mother in their faces. He played football, he bought presents and they seemed to like him. He remembered how strange it felt when four-year-old Jenny had thrown her arms round his neck and told him she loved him. ‘Cupboard love,’ Sheila had observed, drily. She had no illusions about her brother.

  Brooke, as senior investigating officer, had decided that Lucy would not make a credible witness in court; McCarthy was in full agreement with that. Thirty seconds’ innocent prattle about monsters and the defence would have a field day, but an informal, unofficial chat might just give them some pointers. She was, apparently, a bright child. Her story of monsters, of ‘the Ash Man’, of ‘Tamby’ interested him and frustrated him. He wanted someone to translate those stories into terms he could understand. He wanted to find out if all of this existed only in Lucy’s imagination, or if she was trying to tell them something they needed to know, only they couldn’t hear her.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ he said to Barraclough, ‘that there seem to be children involved round the edges of this case?’ He wanted Barraclough’s perspective.

  She thought. ‘There’s Lucy, of course, and then that earlier child Sandra Allan had. And Sophie Dutton was adopted.’

  ‘Have you completed that search? For the first child?’

  Barraclough shook her head. ‘I’m getting back onto it tomorrow,’ she said. They had both done the arithmetic. Sophie Dutton had been born in 1980. Sandra Allan had been pregnant sometime in the late 1970s. Sophie Dutton could have been that missing child, and if so, it would explain the bond that had apparently developed between her and Emma. And had Sandra’s death been the push that finally drove her away?

  As they pulled into Carleton Road, McCarthy saw that Lucy Fielding was sitting on the steps outside number twelve. She was tugging at the lace on her roller boot. He shelved the matter of Sophie Dutton. He wanted to talk to Lucy.

  Lucy looked up as he opened the car door, and he saw a blank watchfulness come over her face.

  Suzanne listened to the rattle of Lucy’s skates on the paved yard, on the asphalt of the passage and on the flagstones at the front. Jane was shut away in the room she used for a studio, working, and Suzanne was keeping an eye on Lucy as she played in the yard and on the street. Using the sound as a guide to Lucy’s whereabouts, she wandered through to the front room, worrying at a ragged nail with her teeth and thinking again about what Jane had told her, about someone else, about another body in the park. She had listened to the local news the evening before but there was nothing. The paper, that morning, had carried a brief, uninformative story. She could see Ashley’s face in her mind, the way his eyes came alive as he saw her, so like the way Adam’s used to light up as she came through the door from school or, later, from work. Suzanne, Suzanne, look what I’ve done! Look at me, Suzanne! Listen to me, Suzanne!

  She realized she had let her attention drift, and she could no longer hear the rattle of Lucy’s skates on the paving stones. She looked out of the window and saw that the police van that had been outside the student house all morning was gone, but two squad cars were parked higher up the road. She’d been aware of disturbance for most of the day. The houses were all linked, and noise travelled easily from one to the other.

  Lucy was outside on the pavement, she saw with relief. But she was talking to someone. Suzanne squinted through the branches of the cotoneaster that grew raggedly in her front garden. McCarthy! What was he doing here? He was leaning against his car, and he and Lucy seemed to be involved in some kind of discussion. Was he supposed to talk to her without Jane? Suzanne tried to see what was happening. Tina Barraclough was in the car, her chin on her arm in the open window as she listened to what Lucy was saying. As Suzanne watched, she saw McCarthy lift his foot up and point to his shoe. Lucy responded by lifting her roller-bladed foot and apparently demonstrating some quality of her skates that McCarthy had been asking about.

  They were talking about skating. It seemed so incongruous, somehow. Since their encounter in the coffee bar, McCarthy had grown in her mind into a figure like her father, someone who filled her with an undefined unease. But as she watched him amiably chatting with Lucy about skating, he looked friendly and approachable. He knelt down and tightened the lace on one of Lucy’s boots, talking to her as he did so. Lucy nodded, looking solemn.

  Suzanne thought about calling Jane, then she decided it would be quicker if she went out herself and saw to what was happening. She took a deep breath and went through the side door into the passage, and then out into the bright sun of the road. McCarthy and Lucy both looked at her, and she was disconcerted to see the same sudden blanking of their faces. She was used to Lucy, who always responded to the new behind a closed and uncommitted mask, while she decided how to react. In McCarthy, she found it unnerving.

  He stood up as she came onto the pavement. ‘Suzanne,’ he said, by way of a greeting. His tone was neutral.

  ‘Did you want something?’ She kept her voice cool, aware of the contrast between her middle-class accents and the northern ones around her.

  ‘I was showing him my skates,’ Lucy said, apparently deciding that Suzanne’s intervention was benign. ‘His skates had the wheels in the wrong place so he kept falling over.’

  ‘Spent most of the time landing on my arse,’ McCarthy agreed with a companionable grin at Lucy. Lucy giggled.

  ‘You can have a go with mine,’ she offered. Suzanne was surprised. Lucy was usually very self-contained and unwilling to make overtures of friendship to people she didn’t know.

  ‘Not with my big feet,’ McCarthy said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got further to fall now.’ Lucy nodded, seeing the sense in this. McCarthy suddenly turned his attention to Suzanne. His face was impassive again. ‘I’m here to see Miss Fielding,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t seem to be in. Are you looking after …’ He nodded at Lucy who was showing off on her skates, doing turns and twirls.

  ‘I’m … yes. Jane’s in, but she’s working. She won’t hear the door. You’ll need to—’

  He interrupted her. ‘It’s not very bright having her out here with no one looking out for her after what happened on Friday.’

  Suzanne flushed. She had remembered, as he joked with Lucy, how much she’d liked him that morning they’d talked in the coffee bar, but now her misgivings came flooding back. ‘I was watching her from the window,’ she said, aware that she sounded defensive, but also feeling that his implied criticism was unfair.

  He was about to say something but, before he could respond, Lucy came skimmin
g up and brought herself to a stop, staggering slightly as she’d been moving faster than she usually did, to impress McCarthy with her skill. ‘It’s easy,’ she said.

  ‘You’re a good skater, Lucy,’ said Barraclough from the car window, joining in the conversation for the first time. Lucy gave her a closed look and declined to comment.

  McCarthy crouched down again in front of Lucy and said, ‘Remember what I said, Lucy, OK?’

  Lucy nodded, her face serious. McCarthy touched a finger to the end of her nose, and she smiled at him. Suzanne was struck again by the rapport that seemed to have sprung up between them. She watched, thinking of Joel, and thinking how much better it would be for Lucy to have had a father who would fight her corner – McCarthy’s criticism had made her angry, but it was motivated by a genuine concern, and a valid one. And how much better it would have been to have had a father who could have engaged her in that gentle humour, been interested in what she was doing. For a moment, she wanted to confide in him, tell him about her worries for Ashley, about her problems with the Alpha Centre. Then her father’s patrician features formed in her mind, and his voice, Can’t you do anything right? in those tones of weary exasperation. And she saw Ashley’s pale face (Listen to me!) under the water, in the dam, cold, silent, dead.