Broken (2 page)

The child shook her head.

Regina went out of the flat and down the four flights of stairs to the street. An old lady on the second floor ignored her as she stamped past, a thunderous look of annoyance on her face.

‘You seen my Jamie?’ she asked the old bitch in a rasping voice. After fifteen minutes even Regina was getting worried. Her little boy was missing. With everything else she had on her plate, that was the last thing she needed: the police looking too closely into the chaos of her everyday life.

‘Fuck him, the little bugger! Like his father, always causing aggravation.’

She went back into the flat to begin clearing it of anything dodgy before she felt comfortable enough to phone the Old Bill.

But before that she phoned her social worker. Regina knew she was going to need all the help she could get.

 

PC Black and WPC Hart arrived within fifteen minutes of the call. As they entered the flat they both grimaced as the smell of urine and stale sweat hit the back of their throats.

Regina smiled sourly at them, ready for a fight.

They looked around the shabby abode and decided to stand rather than take a seat.

‘Hello, love, I’m WPC Joanna Hart and this is my colleague, Richard Black. Now, we understand your little boy is missing?’ the female constable began.

‘I
rang
you, didn’t I?’ Regina’s voice held contempt but also an underlying fear that Hart was quick to pick up on.

‘Look, love, we’re not the enemy, OK? If your boy’s missing then the sooner we get the preliminaries over with the better, eh?’

Regina relaxed visibly. ‘He’s a wanderer. As young as he is, he’s streetwise. Let’s face it, he’d need to be with me as his mother, wouldn’t he? I’ve been everywhere he might be and I can’t locate him. He is definitely gone.’

WPC Hart felt a surge of compassion for the woman before her, one she had dealt with on several other occasions, seeing her drunk, drugged and aggressive.

‘I might not be mother of the year but they’re my kids, right? I care about them,’ Regina continued.

PC Richard Black snorted and shook his head sadly. ‘Yeah, it looks like it.’

Regina was across the room in a split second and WPC Hart put herself smartly between the two antagonists.

‘Look, Richard, you have a nose round the neighbours. I’ll deal with Miss Carlton, OK?’ Her firm tone of voice was a command and, turning slowly, her colleague left the room.

‘Fucking wanker! Judge me, will he? Who the fuck does he think he is?’ Regina took quick puffs on her cigarette, barely inhaling. The WPC smiled.

‘You want to try working with him.’ Her voice was low, conspiratorial. Desperate to establish some kind of rapport.

‘Oh, fuck off, lady. You ain’t playing your mind games with me. I know you and your sort. I know what you think and how you think. So cut the fucking crap and find my boy.’ Regina was scared, and it showed.

Hart was saved from having to answer by a loud voice coming into the room from the cluttered hallway.

‘Hello, love. It’s me - Bobby.’

The voice was high-pitched and effeminate. A tall man walked into the room. He had dyed brown hair, worn rather long and with two-inch roots showing, and blue eyes in a friendly open face. He held his arms wide and Regina walked straight into them and broke down. WPC Hart watched them for a while, glad to see someone who could maybe help the situation.

‘Are you a relative?’

Regina faced her and sniffed. ‘He’s better than a relative, love. He’s me social worker.’

The man held out a limp hand. ‘Robert Bateman, darlin’. Social worker to the stars.’

WPC Hart sighed heavily. This was all she needed.

PC Black came back into the flat and said loudly, ‘A little boy, answering to the name Jamie, has been found on a building site on the other side of town. Blond, blue-eyed, fit and well.’

Regina visibly relaxed. ‘That sounds like him. That sounds like my boy.’ Her voice held relief though her face betrayed nothing.

‘How did he get there?’ WPC Hart’s voice was suspicious.

Black shrugged. ‘How should I know? They’re taking him to the hospital for a once-over.’

‘Oh, Bobby, run me over there, will you?’ Regina asked.

The social worker smiled widely. ‘Of course I will, dear. What about the other two?’

Michaela was standing in the doorway with a changed and sweeter-smelling Hannah in her arms.

‘They’ll be all right. Me bloke’s asleep in the bedroom, he’ll watch them.’

Robert rolled his expressive blue eyes at the ceiling. ‘Do the kids actually know him, dear, or is he a transient?’

Regina closed her own eyes a moment. ‘They know him well enough. Now can we go, please?’ Her tone of voice brooked no argument.

Five minutes later they were gone.

Michaela was spooning Weetabix into Hannah’s mouth when the man walked out of the bedroom, naked and with a half-erection from the need to urinate.

He looked at the two children in the untidy kitchen and said acidly, ‘What the fuck you staring at?’

Michaela tossed back her thick golden hair and answered him in the same fashion. ‘I could ask you the same bloody thing, mate.’

 

PC Black walked into Grantley Hospital with an air of righteous authority. He made his way through the A&E department and up five flights of stairs to the children’s ward. WPC Hart was sitting outside an office there, drinking coffee. She smiled as he approached.

‘What’s happening then?’

‘I have two witnesses who put Miss Regina Carlton and her son at the site at six-thirty this morning. One is a woman, a cleaner for Kortone Separates. She parks there and gets a lift to work with a friend. Another is a man who walks that route every morning for his paper. It seems she dumped the kid there.’

Joanna Hart frowned. ‘Why would she bother getting in touch, then?’

Black shrugged. ‘Perhaps she thought he’d be dead by then. They were about to demolish the building where he was found.’

‘Oh my God! We’d better get in touch with plainclothes. ’

‘Already done it. They’ll be here shortly. Let’s see the slag get out of this one.’

He sounded pleased and Joanna was reminded of why she didn’t always like him very much. He saw the look and shrugged.

‘Attempted murder, ain’t it?’

‘Depends on whether she did it in her right mind. You can’t convict her without all the facts.’

PC Black shook his head pityingly.

‘You just don’t see it, do you? She is so chemically enhanced she’s in danger of being named as the first genetically modified human being in history. Yet you still try and defend her. All the times we’ve been to her drum for fighting, drinking and general arseholiness, and you can still find it in your bleeding heart to give her the benefit of the doubt?’ His incredulous laughter was loud in the confines of the corridor.

‘She has three kids, for Christ’s sake, and this morning one of them was nearly buried under rubble and killed. How can you defend that? She needs locking up, mate. If it was left to me I’d throw away the fucking key.’

‘I am sure you would, dear.’ Robert Bateman appeared in the corridor behind them, his voice surprisingly firm. ‘She also comes from a much worse background than her children’s, believe me, and is trying to get herself together. Whatever Regina may be, she loves her kids in her own way.’

PC Black shook his head once more.

‘Preach to the converted. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a piece of scum. Those kids would be better off out of it. She’s on the bash, she’s an habitual drug user and she leaves them in situations that are downright dangerous. Her flat stinks . . .’

‘You can’t lock people up just for having a dirty flat.’ Joanna’s voice was high-pitched with annoyance.

‘. . . her flat stinks and her kids walk around like rag bags. Every time we go there they’re either in bed or just got out of it. Their lives are a nightmare, poor little sods.’

Robert Bateman sighed heavily. ‘You’re on your soapbox early this morning. Get out the wrong side of the bed, did we?’

Heels clicked down the corridor and they all turned towards Detective Inspector Kate Burrows who smiled lazily at them.

‘So what’s the score?’

She closed her eyes tightly as the three of them all began to talk at once. Holding up her arms for them to pipe down, she insisted, ‘For Christ’s sake, one at a bloody time, eh?’

As they all stared at her in annoyance, Kate sighed. What had started out as a bad day was slowly but surely getting worse.

He healeth those that are broken in heart: and giveth medicine to heal their sickness.

- 147:1
Prayer Book
, 1662

Patrick Kelly looked around him and sighed again. He hated it when people did this to him, though Kelly being who he was, people did not often let him down without so much as a phone call. He saw all the other diners taking surreptitious looks at him as he sat alone, with only a mineral water and a resigned expression on his face.

He was such a good-looking man, although he didn’t realise it. His dark hair was well cut and conditioned, with just enough grey to make him look interesting, his deep-set blue eyes and excellent bone structure made both women and men take a second look. He had the build to match his looks; taller than average, he wore his clothes well. He was always immaculately turned out and he had the air of a man who knew what he wanted and would get it whatever it took.

Standing up abruptly, he walked from the busy room and made his way out to the foyer then through to the bar. He looked cross. Consequently no one approached him for a good while. Eventually he summoned a waiter and ordered a large Scotch, then taking out his mobile he punched in a number.

Two women sitting nearby watched the handsome man as he barked into an answering machine somewhere. ‘Patrick Kelly here. You, Micky, have fucking blown it.’

The waiter placed his Scotch before him together with a bucket of ice.

‘Bring me a ham sandwich and a newspaper,’ barked Patrick.

The boy nodded and backed away.

One of the women, a petite redhead with toning table and fake tan written all over her body, called huskily, ‘How can you get a ham sandwich in here? We couldn’t.’

Patrick Kelly didn’t even glance at her as he answered abruptly, ‘Easy, darlin’. I own the fucking drum.’

The woman raised her eyebrows at her friend in a shocked manner and they resumed their conversation, while both keeping a beady eye on Patrick Kelly.

Patrick, for his part, had forgotten they even existed. As he wolfed down his sandwich he wished his Kate was with him. She calmed him, and today he needed calming. Though he wondered if even she could relax him after the morning he’d had.

The redhead tried one last time to get his attention. ‘Do you eat here every day?’ Her voice was coquettish, friendly, with a hint of promise. He stared at her blankly for long moments before rolling his eyes at the ceiling and then abruptly leaving the restaurant.

The redhead shrugged at her friend’s shocked expression.

‘Well, it was worth a try.’

They both laughed together to cover her embarrassment.

Regina looked into Kate Burrows’s face and shook her head slowly.

‘I wouldn’t do that. I admit I might be a bit slapdash with them now and again, but I would never, ever hurt my kids. Least of all my Jamie.’

‘Two people put you there early this morning.’

‘They can say what they like, I was in bed at home with me bloke.’

Kate Burrows stared hard at the girl. ‘This is the same bloke you met two nights ago in a local pub?’ She held up a hand so she could continue uninterrupted. ‘His name’s Milo something or other - your words, not mine. And he was with you till this morning. You jacked up together late last night, and were out of it until then.’

Regina nodded. ‘That’s about the strength of it, yeah.’

Kate looked at the effeminate man sitting beside his client and raised her eyebrows slightly. ‘And
you
are the social worker?’

Robert Bateman smiled faintly. ‘I am. And I believe her, Miss Burrows.’

‘Let’s take a break and have a cup of tea, eh?’

Kate walked from the small interview room followed by Bateman. He accompanied her to the canteen and didn’t speak until they were seated.

‘I know how it looks, but she didn’t do anything to that child. She wouldn’t.’

He watched Kate’s reaction and grinned.

‘She gives them Valium sometimes to make them sleep so she can go out working. Now, to me and you that’s awful, shocking, but to her way of thinking she’s putting them safely to sleep so they don’t wake up and go wandering off somewhere or start a fire. As she sees it, she is still sort of taking care of them, see?’