Broken (38 page)

Blankley was lying in a holding cell, battered and bruised. She knew he would be pissing blood for days and that no one was going to get him a doctor. His face was unrecognisable and he would have difficulty talking. One arm was hanging limply at his side and for one awful second she thought it was broken. But he used it to wipe away the tears that were falling silently from his eyes.

‘You’ve just had a small taste of what’s in store for you daily if you go inside without our protection. So think hard about what you want to say to me, OK?’

He didn’t answer her and Golding pushed past. Looking down at the broken man he said quietly, ‘There’s fifty more like that just waiting to get a crack at you. Remember that, Blankley. Keep that in mind.’

He followed Kate from the cell. ‘He’ll come through, ma’am,’ he muttered. ‘Let him get over the tears and the self-pity, because that’s all it is. Then he’ll want to save his sad arse and we’ll have him.’

Kate didn’t have the heart to answer and they were both silent as they walked back to her office. Jenny was waiting there. Kate saw from her expression that what they had done didn’t bother her nearly as much as it bothered Kate herself. She felt more every day that she was stepping out of her usual self and taking on the personality of someone else.

Someone who was ruthless, utterly ruthless, and without a single shred of decency.

When she saw Leila laughing with Dave Golding outside her office window she wondered if what had happened was a good thing really. It seemed everybody else thought so. Kate just saw it as a means to an end. Or tried to convince herself of that.

She was changing inside, she knew she was. She sometimes wondered if Patrick was reaching out from his sickbed and putting all his own thoughts into her head, because he would have seen nothing wrong with what had occurred in this police station. In fact, he would have applauded it.

Everyone else seemed to see things in black and white. Maybe they were right. Christ, Kate wasn’t sure about anything any more.

Jenny smiled at her sympathetically. ‘Good news at last.’

Kate raised an eyebrow in half-hearted interest. ‘What’s that then?’

‘They are going to operate on Patrick tomorrow - your mother rang earlier.’

For the first time in what seemed like aeons Kate felt herself give a bona fide smile.

‘Thank God! At last something seems to be happening.’

‘They are going to remove the blood clot and see what other damage they can repair. He ain’t out of the wood yet, Kate.’

She put her hand up to her mouth in a gesture Patrick would have known meant she was about to cry though she was doing everything in her power to stop it happening.

‘The other bit of good news is, your mother has made us another roast dinner. Beef this time, with Yorkshire puddings that are apparently like diddy-men.’

Kate began to laugh then, a high-pitched sound that bordered on hysteria. She laughed long and hard for what seemed like hours though it was in fact only minutes. But she felt the tension drain out of her with every painful breath she drew.

 

David Reilly watched as his father put on his coat to go down the pub.

‘Are you all right, son?’ Billy’s voice was troubled.

David smiled. He was a good-looking man with thick blond hair and jutting cheekbones like his mother’s.

‘Why don’t you come and have a beer?’ his father persisted.

He shook his head. ‘Nah, I’m knackered, Dad. Gonna have a few indoors and an early night.’

‘Fair enough. I won’t wake you when I come in then.’

Billy left the house a few minutes later and David watched him walk down the pathway. He looked around the room. It was smart and well-kept, with beige walls and leather furniture. The two men had bought everything between them, as they had lived together ever since David was a teenager and his mother Molly had died of cancer. Breast cancer. It had been a lingering death and he had shrunk from her pain even as she tried to hide it from him. Since then there had been just the two of them and it had been enough. His father seemed to have no interest in other women and at first that had pleased David, who was still mourning his mum. But as the years went on and he realised that Billy was still a relatively young man it had begun to bother him.

Then a few weeks ago at work - they both worked in an industrial park outside Grantley in a builder’s yard - something weird had happened. One of the other blokes had complained that some photos of his kids he had put up in the canteen had gone walkabout.

They were nice photos, David had seen them. Three little kids on a beach in Greece without their kecks on. The usual sort of photos people took of their kids on holiday: sandy bums and large hats.

The funny thing was, though, the man said he had last seen them in Billy’s hands. Billy had taken them down to admire them, apparently. Then he had put them back, or so he’d said. Nothing fishy about it, really.

Except after that conversation with the kids’ dad, Billy had acted strangely. Nothing David could put his finger on exactly but he hadn’t seemed right. Then all that with Tash in the pub . . .

David hated Natasha Linten - he hated all the slags who frequented the Wheatsheaf. At some point the women got passed round everyone. Except him, of course. He wouldn’t touch them with someone else’s let alone his own. But his father had usually been very tolerant of them.

The other day, though, Tash had issued what sounded like a threat and his father had taken it as such.

David walked slowly up the stairs and went to his father’s bedroom. He felt disgusted with himself for what he was thinking. He couldn’t believe he was, really. But if his father was a beast then he wanted to know.

He had heard about Lenny Parkes hammering a nonce in the Fox Revived. Everyone had been talking about it for days. Now word was out that Kerry Alston, who was always chatting to Dad and having drinks bought for her by Billy, was also inside for noncing. She’d been noncing her own fucking kids!

He wiped a sweaty palm across his face and started his search. He went through all his father’s drawers and wardrobe.

Nothing.

David was feeling better. He had just put two things together that were no more than coincidences. But he pulled out Billy’s divan anyway, just because he always did everything properly and that included searching his own father’s bedroom.

Nothing - again.

He went downstairs and poured himself a beer, drinking it standing at the kitchen table looking out over the postage stamp of a garden his mother had loved so much. Then, after rinsing the glass, he went back up the stairs and into his father’s room again.

David looked around him. It was a nice room, with heavy wooden furniture, flowery wallpaper and curtains to match. Taking off his jumper, he flexed his considerable muscles and physically dragged the wardrobe away from the wall.

Behind it was a large brown envelope.

David licked his top lip and tasted the acrid saltiness of his own sweat. Picking up the envelope, he sat on the bed and weighed it in his hands. He didn’t want to open it, but he knew he had to.

He placed it on the bed, then put the wardrobe back in place. He smoothed down the counterpane and checked the room over to see if it looked disturbed. It didn’t.

Then he went downstairs and poured himself a large brandy before he opened the envelope. He tipped the contents out on to the kitchen table and then he bit on his lip until he tasted blood. Sickness rose in him and he threw up in the spotlessly clean white sink, tears already flowing from his eyes. As he sat back down he gulped at the brandy to steady himself. Then, hands shaking, he looked through all the photographs one at a time.

He was still staring ahead of him when the sun set and darkness gradually crept into the kitchen.

He was still crying silently in the unlit room as he heard his father’s key in the door.

Jenny had never felt such a fool in her life.

Kathy Collins had her daughter in her arms when they knocked on the door. The child was without a nappy and dressed only in a vest. She was half asleep. Kathy had looked at her askance, as if seeing the police on her doorstep was an unusual occurrence.

She smiled politely. ‘Can I help you?’

A man appeared behind her. He was tall, of heavy build and he looked well groomed, smartly casual. It was only his eyes that seemed really alive. They were dark brown, almost black, and the DI felt as if he was looking through her.

‘And you are?’ she asked steadily.

He smiled at the question in her voice. ‘Do you have a warrant?’ he answered.

Jenny looked over him. ‘Do I need one?’

He grinned, displaying white dentures. ‘If you want to come in here, you do.’

‘I was following up a report on a child. Rebecca Collins.’

‘This
is
Rebecca. She is trying to sleep.’ He grinned again. ‘She’s been staying with a friend, all right? Or is that against the law now?’

Jenny knew there was nothing she could say. The child was home, well and, as the man had pointed out, trying to get an afternoon nap.

‘It’s that ponce Bateman, ain’t it?’

Kathy’s voice was shrill and the child jumped in her arms with fright.

‘Fucking wanker he is, snooping round all the time . . .’

The man pulled her away from the front door gently. ‘Come on, Kathy, come inside. It’s all over now, love.’ He looked back at Jenny. ‘If that’s all, officer, we’ll bid you good day.’

The DI nodded. Then she said courteously, ‘What did you say your name was?’

He looked into her eyes a moment before answering. ‘I didn’t.’ Then he pushed the door shut in her face.

Jenny was still smarting from the embarrassment. Bateman was going to get a bloody mouthful from her, a right bloody mouthful. Like they didn’t have enough to do. And to add insult to injury, that man had made them look even more foolish than they felt.

She fumed all the way back to the station.

She would love to know who the man was with Kathy Collins. There was something fishy going on and she had a feeling that it went far deeper than anyone could imagine.

 

‘So you are still not willing to tell us who is behind all this shit, Jeremy?’

The prisoner stared timidly at Kate and Golding said loudly, ‘Fucking Blank by name and Blank by nature, eh?’

Kate saw that Jeremy’s eyes never moved from her face. It was as if he was beseeching her to save him.

‘Go outside,’ she told the other detective.

Golding did as she told him without a word. Everyone seemed to do what she told them lately; she knew it was all down to the change in her. The change she couldn’t stop, and wasn’t sure she wanted to. If she hadn’t made that change, she would have gone mad by now, she was sure.

Alone, she sat down opposite Jeremy Blankley. He was shaking, really shaking, and in a distant part of herself she felt a moment’s compassion for him. What had made this man into the thing he was? When did he decide that children were preferable to grown women? He wasn’t even into young girls. His preference was for babies, children still in nappies.

Sitting before her was every parent’s worst nightmare; a nonce, a beast, a child molester.

Yet look at him, a wreck of a man. The power he’d wielded over others was gone. He looked as sad and pathetic as a beaten dog.

‘Jeremy, whoever is in on this with you will eventually be found whether you grass them or not. If you’re frightened about what will happen when you’re put away - which you really should be - you need to think long and hard about helping yourself now. Or else I can arrange for you to be remanded with the general prison population and, believe me, you’ll be there this afternoon if I don’t get some answers soon.’

Kate paused to let her words sink in.

He sniffed loudly. ‘You said you wouldn’t do a deal . . .’

‘I am not doing a deal, I am offering you the protection you are in desperate need of. I would offer that for a price to anyone in your position. What I
won’t
offer you is the promise of a reduced sentence. That, I am afraid, would be defeating the whole object. You will go away for as long as possible - that’s not in dispute. What is, is the level of comfort in which you’ll serve your time. My arm is long, Jeremy. I can have you put in the Scrubs, the Ville, anywhere I want. And I can make sure that everyone knows why you’re there. Funky Brixton should give you a sharp taste of what to expect once you’re sentenced.’

Sweat was glistening on his top lip and Kate knew that she had him. His face held the feral look of a trapped animal and despite herself she felt a small thrill of pleasure to realise that she had broken him. But he surprised her.

‘I want to tell you,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I do want to tell you. But it don’t matter a toss how long your arm is or what you can arrange for me. It’s nothing in comparison to what I’ll get if I open me trap. I’ll have to take me chances in nick. I don’t really have a choice. None of us does.’

There was a note of resignation in his voice that Kate picked up on. Whoever he was in league with had to be a very dangerous person because she had never met a nonce yet who didn’t want to deal.

She stood up and stretched.

He looked up at her and said in a strangled voice: ‘I want to help you. I don’t want to do what I do . . . but I can’t help it. I tell meself every day, it’s finished, over with, I am going to stop. But I can’t. Inside I know it’s wrong. I do know that - I don’t need anyone to tell me. But it’s a compulsion that I just can’t control.’

He was pleading for her understanding but Kate couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the prize.

‘Who is it, Jeremy? Who can frighten you even more than we can?’

His face was flushed, cheekbones jutting prominently. They’d given him the bare minimum to eat and drink. She could see him battling it out with himself, whether to tell her or not. But in the end his fear won.