Almost Love (16 page)

“‘I expect you mean LeRoy Padgett,’ I said. ‘The boy in there is his younger brother and I don’t think that he’ll try to escape; as you saw when you were in there, he’s actually terrified that you’re going to let him go.’

“She nodded, and turned to make a call on her mobile.

“DC Carstairs returned almost immediately.

“‘Would you mind coming with me to another interview room, Mr Tarrant?’ he said. ‘It won’t take long.’

“‘I don’t like to leave Mrs Padgett on her own. I promised her I’d be back immediately.’

“‘It’s all right: DC Armstrong will go and sit with her again.’

“I wasn’t sure about this. The police don’t realise how intimidating they can be, even to a woman like Marlene, who’s had plenty of brushes with them in the past.

“‘I promised Mrs Padgett . . .’

“‘It’s all right,’ he repeated, quite sternly, I thought. I’m quite aware of how the police view people like me. We’re useful to them and annoy them in about equal measures. They always think that we should take a stronger line with the kids than we do. I saw that I had no alternative but to follow him.

“‘Take a seat,’ he said, gesturing at a chair. We were in a room identical to the one in which Marlene and Thobias were waiting. ‘Did you manage to get any particle of the truth out of them?’

“I resented his way of putting it, but I tried not to show it.

“‘Marlene has told me as much as she knows,’ I said. ‘It isn’t a great deal, but apparently Thobias’s older brother, LeRoy, who I know is well-known to the police, persuaded him to run some errands. His reward was ten pounds per errand, plus the use of LeRoy’s bike, which apparently he covets. There was one condition, which I’m sure will interest you: the assignments were two-way. Thobias was expected to pick up a return package, as well as deliver the one entrusted to him, and he was on strict instructions not to open any of the packages. From what Marlene says, I think that they chose Thobias for the task because he was under the age of criminal responsibility – at least, he was when all of this started. His twelfth birthday was last Sunday. I’m certain that she was telling me the truth, though she may still be holding something back.’

“‘You’ve done a brilliant job – thank you. Well done. She’s certainly been telling the truth. I can vouch for that.”

“‘As I said, I didn’t think she was lying: but what makes
you
so certain? You weren’t even listening to her – or were you?’

“‘No, I wasn’t,’ he said. ‘While you were talking to Mrs Padgett, I was taking a call from Forensics. They confirmed what I suspected when I took the bank-notes from Thobias: that there are traces of cocaine on them.’

“It didn’t take me long to understand the significance of what he was saying, because I was half-expecting it, or something like it. As far as I knew, the Padgetts had never been involved in serious crime, but Marlene’s and Thobias’s extreme fear had already told me that they were out of their depth this time.

“‘So the money was used to pay for drugs and Thobias was acting as a courier both for the drugs and payment for them?’

“‘Probably. I’d guess so. It may be that there was some kind of money-laundering activity going on, but I don’t think so. They wouldn’t involve a child in that – it would be the next stage in the process.’

“‘What happens now?’

“‘Thobias is going to have to be interviewed again, properly, with a solicitor and a child psychiatrist present. What we urgently need to know is who asked him to do this – aside from his brother, I mean. Don’t worry, we won’t alarm him any more than we need to. He will be treated with kid gloves from now on. The seriousness of this puts a whole new complexion on the matter – and especially on where he spends the night. He and his mother are right to be worried. If he’s got mixed up with a drugs ring, his life could very well be in danger; as could the brother’s. We need to find him, as well.’

“‘I think that Marlene is telling the truth when she says that she doesn’t know where LeRoy is. For one thing, if she doesn’t want Thobias to go home with her because she fears for the safety of the other children, presumably she isn’t hiding LeRoy.’

“‘I think you’re right. If I thought she had LeRoy, I’d have the premises searched. As it is, it’s probably best to let her go home on her own, in case the house is being watched.’

“‘She said that herself, when I said that you would send her home in a police car.’

“He gave me a wry look. I realised that the admiration I’d gained from my interviewing technique had just evaporated.

“‘Ladies like Marlene don’t accept lifts in police cars,’ he said.

“‘What about the boy?’

“‘The boy is a bit of a problem. We can’t allow a child to stay in the cells overnight, so he’ll have to go somewhere else; and for his own safety he’ll have to be accompanied by a policeman. We can smuggle him out of here in a van easily enough, in case we’re being watched by whoever’s after him, but it’s a question of where to take him. Is there any suitable accommodation that you have at your disposal – say, when homeless children suddenly turn up?’

“‘That doesn’t often happen in this part of the world, I’m glad to say – it’s more common in London. But of course we do have to take children into care unexpectedly – quite frequently, actually, if their parents are found unfit to look after them or there is only one parent and he or she is unexpectedly given a custodial sentence. If it’s late in the day, we can’t always find temporary foster parents. Sometimes we take children who’ve been stranded in some way to spend the night in the sick bay at Herrick Old House, near Sleaford. The sick bay’s quite a pleasant, self-contained unit and it keeps them away from the other children there until they’ve calmed down and we’ve decided what to do with them.’

“‘What’s it like, this place? Would there be space to accommodate a policeman as well?’

“‘Yes, if the warden will have him. I’m surprised you haven’t been to it – the inmates aren’t exactly angelic, so I would have expected you to have encountered a few of them. It’s on the site of old manor house, but essentially a Victorian workhouse, now run by the council as a children’s home. It’s a bit of a monstrosity, actually; but as I say, the sick bay’s OK. It’s been modernised. It’s in one of the wings, in a sort of mock turret. There are several beds in the dormitory and a kind of day-room. The whole thing’s quite self-contained – it was designed in case any of the children needed to be quarantined – and access is via a single stone staircase, though there is a fire escape, too.’

“‘So the policeman would be able to hear if someone was approaching?’

“I nodded. It was this simple question, not the Padgetts’ histrionics, that brought home to me the real danger that they were in.

“‘It sounds as if it will do. How do we get them in? Can you telephone someone?’

“I looked at my watch.

“‘It’s after 9 p.m.,’ I said. “The warden’s not always there at this time. She has a room at the house for when she does nights, but she doesn’t live in. If it’s one of the nights that she isn’t working, there will be a housemaster in charge.’

“‘Can you call them and see?’ He gestured to the telephone that stood on a shelf on the wall.

“I nodded again. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the number programmed into my mobile.’

“‘Don’t give them all the details. Just say that we have a child who’s appearing before the juvenile court and we need to keep him in a safe place. Tell them that there’ll be a policeman with him, but don’t explain any further. We can pay for the accommodation, incidentally, if that helps.’

“‘OK.’

“I called the number and, after a couple of rings, one of the older children answered, but she fetched Eric Westerman quite quickly. He’s the senior housemaster there. I was quite pleased that it was him; he’s a matter-of-fact bloke and takes most things in his stride. He was fine about Thobias – less sure about the policeman – and asked me if I would come with them. We had the phone on speak, so that DC Carstairs could listen. He nodded vigorously, so I agreed to go as well, though I must say I was beginning to get really tired by then. I didn’t relish the prospect of a trip out to Sleaford. I was worried that you’d get home before me and be worried about me, too.”

“What did you tell the mother?”

“I just told her that the police would look after Thobias overnight and asked her to return to the police station tomorrow, at around 10.00 a.m., by which time I hoped the solicitor would have arrived. She’s given me her mobile number; I offered to call her tomorrow, to let her know when everything was ready, but she said that she wanted to come back as early as possible to check on Thobias.”

“Acting on behalf of Thobias sounds like a tough job! Are there special solicitors to represent children?”

“There are in London, but not here. Not enough cases. I’ve suggested that they ask Jack Lewis if he’s free. I’ve worked with him on quite a lot of probation cases; he’s gentle-mannered and prepared to listen to a child psychologist.”

“You will ask Marie, I suppose?”

“Yes, if she can come. I know you don’t like her, but she’s the best we’ve got in this area – and tough enough to stand up to the police if they start questioning too aggressively. She’ll probably get more information out of Thobias than they will, in any case.”

Alex nodded. Marie Krakowska was a big-boned Polish woman who called a spade a bloody shovel and had uncouth table manners. On the few occasions on which they had met – mainly at semi-social functions organised by Tom’s team – Alex had not hit it off with her. However, she knew that Tom respected Marie’s professionalism and she was prepared to accept his judgment. It was just that she could not imagine Marie winning the confidence of damaged children.

“What about Thobias?”

“I’m quite worried about him. DC Carstairs called in the policeman who’s looking after him tonight – PC Cooper. He was very good with the boy; either he’s got children himself, or he does a lot of youth work. But Thobias had completely turned in on himself. He wouldn’t speak to anyone and he kept hiding his head, either by covering his face with his hands and arms or by sitting facing the wall. He was still rocking himself, too; if he was sitting against the wall he hit the back of his head on it, or his forehead if he was facing it.”

“Poor kid! Did he go to Herrick Old House, then?”

“Yes. Marlene helped us get him to his feet and PC Cooper took him to a back entrance with a blanket over his head. We put him straight into a police van. The police vehicle compound is surrounded by a high fence – I’m sure that no-one could have seen him getting into it, even without the blanket. There was a driver as well as PC Cooper – it hadn’t occurred to me, but he wouldn’t have wanted to take a police vehicle with him to keep overnight at the children’s home. He sat in the rear of the van with Thobias.”

“It all seems so surreal! Did you go with them?”

“No, I didn’t, in the end. DC Carstairs said that if I were to follow the van in the car, I’d only be drawing attention to myself. I rang Eric again and he was fine about it – I think it had just taken a while for him to adjust to the idea of having them there. I said that I would go and see him soon – even if the police won’t let me tell him much, he deserves some kind of explanation, not to mention thanks.”

“So that was the last that you saw of them?”

“Yes; but I’ve heard from both Eric and PC Cooper. They got there safely and are installed in the sick bay. Thobias went straight to bed, apparently. Eric persuaded him to drink some warm milk that contained a mild sedative, so I hope that he’ll get some rest.”

“What happens next?”

“I’m not entirely sure. DC Carstairs will call me tomorrow. He’s going to contact Jack Lewis and I’ll get in touch with Marie first thing. My guess is that we’ll then all meet again at the police station. They’ll probably have already collected Thobias from the home by then – I hope so, because that’s what I told Marlene. She’ll be there as well, of course.”

“I’m so sorry that you have to get involved in all of this . . . and I’m desperately worried that you might be in danger as well.”

“It’s my job; and I doubt if I’m in danger from the people who are after Thobias. In my admittedly limited experience of criminal gangs, they won’t waste time on peripherals such as me; not unless I try to obstruct them in some way. I’m finding it all much more difficult than I would have expected, though. It’s probably because the kids I deal with have not often been involved in organised crime. It makes me feel sick to think of it – and grubby, somehow. Corrupting a little kid like Thobias and then terrifying him out of his wits. The whole thing stinks.”

Alex looked at Tom intently. The day’s events had been momentous for both of them, though she knew that she couldn’t tell Tom that. She sensed that they had reached a watershed in their lives. If she acted quickly, perhaps she could set them on a different course together.

Tom met her eye.

“Why are you looking like that?”

“Tom,” said Alex, “have you ever thought about doing something else? You’ve given enough years of your life to other people. As you say, situations like today’s really bring it home to you how squalid it all is. Isn’t it really time to let someone else take the reins now? Would you like perhaps to consider setting up a business together instead?”

“What sort of business?” said Tom warily.

“It’s something I’ve mentioned before – I’ve been thinking about it again lately.”

“If you mean that archaeological curating notion, you can forget it. I don’t see how it could conceivably give us an income long-term, unless we were prepared to move around the countryside living in the vicinity of museums that needed help. And, quite frankly, I don’t relish that sort of life – or that sort of work. I’ve tried to explain to you before: things don’t interest me, even very ancient and hallowed things. It’s people that I care about.”

“You don’t have to sound so shirty!”

“I suppose I don’t; but you could have chosen a better moment. When I say that the job makes me feel sullied, it’s on behalf of children like Thobias who have never stood a chance. Thobias and kids like him need my help. If anything, what’s happened today makes me more determined than ever to keep on being there for them.”