Almost Love (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Alex and Tom were sitting together on the sofa in front of the open fire in their living room, each nursing a substantial whisky. Alex’s head was beginning to pound from the vodka and rum that she had drunk earlier, but she sipped at the whisky anyway. She had curled her legs up on to the seat of the sofa and Tom was absently-mindedly stroking them. It should have been comforting, but she wanted him to stop; she knew that she had already compromised their intimacy.

Tom moved his hand to stroke her cheek and she flinched slightly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t mind staying up to talk to me, do you? If you’re too tired, we’ll go to bed now. It’s just that my head’s buzzing with what’s happened. I know I won’t sleep if I don’t talk about it.”

“No, I’m fine,” Alex said, trying to conceal her weariness. “You’ve made me curious now. Do carry on.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about the Padgett family?”

Alex nodded. Tom’s casebook was seldom without an open file on one or other of the Padgett children. They belonged to a large West Indian family that lived in a sprawling but dilapidated rented house in Little London. The council paid for it, because they did not have a council house big enough to accommodate all of the Padgetts. Mrs Padgett occasionally took on some seasonal work at the neighbouring farms, but apart from that the family had no acknowledged income except what they received from the DHSS. There were ten or eleven Padgett children, all of them of school age, and most, it was reputed, with different fathers, all of whom were distinguished by their absence. Certainly there had been no man present in the household since Tom had first been introduced to it half a decade ago and sporadic attempts made by the Child Support Agency to strong-arm maintenance for some of the children never got off the ground. All of the children were too young to work, though the teenaged ones rarely attended either school or college. Mrs Padgett – who was an engaging lady, handsome in a big-boned way, with an infectious laugh – had been prosecuted for their non-attendance several times and had even been threatened with prison, but, as she said, who would look after a family like hers if she were ‘put away’? She actually cared for the children very well: they did not go hungry and were always clean and well-dressed. She blamed LeRoy Padgett, her oldest son, for getting in with the wrong crowd and acting as a bad influence on his siblings. LeRoy himself was quite a prepossessing character. He was always sunny and cheerful when he was found out. He had a series of convictions for minor crimes: shoplifting, taking a bicycle without the owner’s consent, under-age drinking.

“Is it LeRoy Padgett again?” Alex asked.

“No, surprisingly, this time it isn’t: it’s his brother Thobias. Though of course LeRoy is almost certainly mixed up in it, too. There isn’t much that goes on in that family that can’t be traced back to LeRoy in some way.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard you mention Thobias before.”

“I probably haven’t. I’ve met him several times, of course, when I’ve visited the Padgetts, but he’s only just reached the age of criminal responsibility. In fact, that was the root cause of the problem this time. There has been a series of breaking and entering cases, most of them at the houses along the road to Spalding Common, which of course is close to where the Padgetts live. The police suspected LeRoy – I think they suspect LeRoy whenever a petty crime takes place in the area now – but LeRoy swore that he had nothing to do with the break-ins. Then Thobias was caught in the coffee bar in Bridge Street, paying for a milk shake by peeling £20 from a roll of banknotes. The proprietor called the police while he was still on the premises.”

“And it was stolen money?”

“Not as such, no, as it turns out. But they thought it was at the time. They took Thobias to the police station and asked me to meet them there. Thobias was there with Mrs Padgett – her name is Marlene – and they were both terrified. Shaking scared.”

“Not surprising, really.”

“Well, yes, most parents who have children that age – and the children themselves – would be frightened if they found themselves on the wrong side of the law. But not the Padgetts. Marlene’s been at the police station – and in court – in similar circumstances many times with LeRoy, and it has barely ruffled her. Her reaction today was totally out of character.”

“Did you find out why?”

“That’s what I’m coming to. The police kept on asking Thobias where he got the money from. His story varied each time, and it was transparently obvious that he was lying. They were the usual unimaginative lies that we always get on these occasions: that he had found the money, that it had been given to him by an older boy to look after, that he’d earned it doing odd jobs – even though he had almost £2,000 in his possession and clearly could not have come by it in any credibly honest way. Etcetera, etcetera. The policeman who was questioning him was getting quite rattled and I thought was beginning to be too rough with a child of Thobias’s age. I suggested that he put a temporary halt to the interview while he and I had a quick word and when we were outside the interview room, I warned him that if he intimidated the boy I would have to take the matter further. I also said that I thought that he should be allocated a solicitor before any more questions were asked.

“The policeman – his name is DC Carstairs, and I think I’ve met him before somewhere – not only agreed with me, but said that as it was now so late in the evening he would let the child go home with his mother, on condition that both they and I returned the next day, when there would have been time to appoint a solicitor. I thought that this was the only sensible solution, but when it was suggested to Marlene and Thobias they were both terrified. She said that if we sent Thobias home with her, she was sure he would be killed and the whole family put at risk. We tried to calm her down – DC Carstairs had some more tea sent in and I told her that she must be overwrought by the day’s events and hinted that perhaps her imagination was working overtime. I tried to put my arm round her, but she pushed me away and became completely hysterical. Thobias shrank away into the corner. At first he lay slumped on the floor with his eyes closed, but after a while he started rocking backwards and forwards and banging his head against the wall. It really upsets me when children do that,” he added. “I’ve seen it on a few occasions. It means that they’ve reached the end of their tether; that they can’t cope any longer and can’t see any way out.”

Tom sounded so anguished that Alex was moved to respond genuinely for the first time since she had reached home. She put down the whisky glass, felt for his hand and caressed it. She could see that her sudden act of compassion had brought Tom close to tears.

“You take it all so much to heart,” she murmured. “I know it’s hard, but you should try to distance yourself a little. You can’t let your job blight your life.”

Tom pulled his hand away.

“It’s not my life that’s being blighted,” he said gruffly. “You of all people should understand. Most of the kids that I see don’t stand a chance. Every so often one of them manages to break out of the vicious spiral of slovenliness, apathy and petty crime that they were born into. But mostly I can only help them so far. It’s not even as if they are evil – it’s so naïve of people to think that they were born different from us. Sure, they’ve got a warped set of values, but so would we have, probably, if we’d grown up in the same surroundings.”

Alex had heard this before and it irritated her. Tom verged on the sanctimonious when he talked like this, even though she knew that the pain he felt was genuine, and she hated it even more when he dragged her own upbringing into his musings. Her parents had been thoughtless, self-centred and unkind, but her father had held down a job and neither of them had ever broken the law.

“Carry on with your story, Tom,” she said crisply.

“OK.” He swallowed. “DC Carstairs was getting angry again. He said that unless Thobias told us why he was so upset, there would be no reason not to send him home, subject to the conditions that he had mentioned. He also wanted to know what else Marlene and Thobias could expect. Did they want to spend the night in the cells? He doubted if they would enjoy that and, in any case, the police station was not a hotel.

“Marlene pulled herself together a bit then. She said that she had to get home to her other children; that she had left her daughter Coleen in charge, but that the girl wouldn’t be able to cope without her all night. She repeated that it was Thobias alone who was in danger and that he would jeopardise the safety of the rest of the family if he spent the night with them. DC Carstairs wasn’t having any of this; he clearly thought that Marlene was trying to offload the boy for some reason. I’d begun to believe her by this time, though. I’m sure that Marlene transgresses all sorts of accepted moral norms – she may even be a petty criminal herself – but over the years that I’ve known her I’ve become convinced of one thing. According to her own lights, she loves her family and looks after them as best she can. I was therefore prepared to believe that she was genuinely afraid for Thobias. I asked DC Carstairs if we could have another quiet word outside the interview room. He asked a woman PC to come in and stay with the Padgetts and I said to him what I’ve just said to you. Reluctantly, he agreed that the police had a duty to protect Thobias if he were really in danger and not just trying to create a melodrama because he had some kind of half-baked idea that this would get him out of trouble.

“‘But I need a reason for protecting him if we are going to go to the expense of doing it,’ he said. ‘If I let you go back in there and talk to him on your own, do you think you might be able to get some sense out of him?’

“‘I can try,’ I said.

“So he accompanied me back to the interview room and called to the woman PC who was standing outside. I don’t know where they went – I had the feeling that they hadn’t gone far, which I suppose was fair enough. By this time, Thobias was sitting on Marlene’s lap like a small child, sucking his thumb, and she was cradling him. She herself was calm and sensible now. She looked at me imploringly. I felt sorry for her, even though I know she knows how to lay it on thick.

“‘Please, Mr Tarrant,’she said, ‘Please help us.’

“I took a chair and faced her from the other side of the table. I made her meet my eye. ‘Marlene,’ I said, ‘you have got to help Thobias and yourself by telling the police exactly what you know. Thobias has managed to get himself into some serious trouble, hasn’t he?’

“She nodded, and the tears spilled from her eyes. ‘He not a bad boy,’ she said. ‘He just run a few errands because LeRoy ask him – and to get a bit of spend for himself. He don’t have no idea what he getting into. Even LeRoy don’t know.’

“‘Where is LeRoy?’ I asked.

“She shrugged. ‘Gone to ground somewhere – what he do when there trouble, unless police get to him first. He got friends everywhere. I don’t know where he is half the time.’

“‘Tell me what you know, Marlene,’ I said. ‘We won’t bother Thobias again for the moment, because he’s clearly too upset. I understand that he probably hasn’t told you everything. But you must know something?’

“She nodded.

“‘Like I say, he think it just running errands. It
was
running errands, sort of. And LeRoy offer to lend him his new bike. He been trying to have a go on that bike and pestering the daylights out of me to get one for him, since the day LeRoy come home with it.’

“‘Did you give LeRoy the bike?’

“She looked at me, rolled her eyes, and laughed.

“‘Hell, no, where you think I get money for that? Must cost two hundred pounds, maybe more. LeRoy been working for one of the farmers out Pinchbeck way. Say he save some money from his earnings and the farmer pay the rest, so he can get to work on time.’

“I didn’t mention that LeRoy should have been in school. I didn’t want to sidetrack Marlene when she was about to tell me about Thobias.

“‘So LeRoy offered Thobias a share of his bike if he would run some errands? Did he say Thobias would get paid, as well?’

“She nodded. ‘Ten pounds for each package he deliver, but only if he never look at what inside and bring parcel he get back unopened.’

“‘Why didn’t LeRoy take the job on himself? He’s not usually slow to turn a fast pound, is he?’

“She grinned. She’s obviously proud of her jaunty eldest son, even though she knows what he does is often wrong; he causes her a lot of heartache.

“‘LeRoy say he too old. Say Thobias the right age – they want a little kid.’

“‘Too
old
? How could LeRoy be too old?’

“She shrugged.

“‘I tell you what he say. He say Thobias the best person, because he not twelve. He is now, though. His birthday on Sunday.’

“ I was beginning to understand now: LeRoy had chosen Thobias because he was below the age of criminal responsibility.

“‘Marlene,’ I said, ‘What else can you tell me? Do you know who the people were that Thobias was working for?’

“She became suddenly wary, and shrugged again.

“‘I tell you what I know . . . what Thobias tell me. You ask LeRoy if you want more.’

“I nodded. I could see that she was very afraid of these people, whoever they were. I also realised that the police would want to question Thobias again as soon as he was in a fit state to answer.

“‘Wait there, Marlene,’ I said. ‘I’m going to fetch the policewoman again. I’m going to suggest that we take Thobias somewhere safe for this evening and that they arrange for a police car to take you home.’

“She smiled, relieved, when I was talking about Thobias, but mention of the police car almost precipitated another fit of hysterics.

“‘No police car!” she said. ‘Not been seen in one!’

“‘It’s OK,’ I said quickly. ‘No-one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

“I went to the door. I was not surprised to see that the policewoman was waiting just a little way down the corridor.

“‘Could I have a further word with DC Carstairs?’

“‘I’ll call him. I don’t want to leave the interview room unwatched. We know the Padgetts – they’ve escaped before when we’ve been questioning them.’