Flesh And Blood (33 page)

‘We need to know,’ Elder said, ‘who sent the card.’

‘When we’ve agreed…’

‘No promises, that’s not how it’s going to work.’

‘Then it’s not going to work at all.’

With a lazy scrape back of his chair, McKeirnan got to his feet. He was almost across the room, the prison officer primed to unlock the door, when Maureen called him back.

Ignoring the smug look on his face, she waited until he had sat back down.

‘This is what we can do,’ she said. ‘Put in a report to the governor saying that you’ve been particularly helpful with inquiries we’re carrying out as part of an ongoing investigation. We’ll stress that you were the one who came forward, volunteering information without first being asked. Our recommendation will be that, in view of this responsible behaviour, you should be reassessed and, all other things being equal, recategorised as a Category C prisoner.’

‘That’s it?’ McKeirnan said.

‘That’s it.’

McKeirnan rocked his chair back on to its rear legs and smoothed the fingers of his left hand across the fist of his right.

‘You’ve got five minutes to decide,’ Maureen said. ‘One’s almost up.’

McKeirnan eased the chair back down. ‘All you want’s the name?’

‘It’s a start,’ Elder said.

‘Two minutes,’ Maureen said, without looking at her watch.

‘Okay.’

She took a pad from her pocket and swivelled it towards him; uncapped a ballpoint and set it down close by his hand. ‘Write it down.’

Looking at her, McKeirnan ran his tongue along his lower lip, then picked up the pen. ‘How do I know the minute you walk out of here, you won’t go back on everything you’ve said?’

‘You don’t.’

McKeirnan slowly grinned, then carefully printed two words at the centre of the first blank page and pushed it back. When he released the pen it rolled to the edge of the table and bounced to the floor where it lay unclaimed.

Adam Keach
.

‘Tell us about him,’ Elder said.

‘Look him up, his case notes, file, whatever. You can do that.’

‘Something else. Tell us something else.’

McKeirnan smiled. ‘He’d follow me round, beg me to talk about it. What we did. Found ways of paying me. Saying thank you.’ He laughed his abrasive laugh. ‘When I get out, he said. I’ll show you what I can do.’

Maureen replaced the pad of paper in her bag.

‘One other question,’ Elder said. ‘Susan Blacklock.’

‘Who?’

‘Susan Blacklock, she went missing the same summer Lucy Padmore’s body was found.’

‘You asked me about her before.’ McKeirnan shook his head. ‘I dunno no more now’n I did then.’

‘The North Yorks. coast, McKeirnan, Whitby. You and Donald were there.’

‘We went to a lot of places, me and Shane.’

‘What happened to her, McKeirnan?’

‘I said. I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If you still haven’t found her, whoever buried her buried her deep.’

‘All right,’ Maureen said to the prison officer. ‘We’re through here. Lock him back up.’

♦

Adam Keach was born in Kirkby in Ashfield in 1978, the middle of three boys. When he was eighteen months old his mother was convicted of fraudulent deception in regard to benefit payments; his father already had a long list of petty offences and was known to the local police and probation service. Social services were alerted when Adam’s younger brother, Dean, was treated at Mansfield Community Hospital for severe bruising and abrasions to the arms and legs; a social worker visited the house on two occasions and satisfied herself that the children were not in danger. No further action was taken. At the age of fifteen, Adam was suspended from school for stabbing a fellow pupil in the back of the hand with the sharpened shaft of a Bic pen; at seventeen, he and his elder brother, Mark, were twice questioned regarding the theft of a computer and a Game Boy from a neighbour’s house without any charges being brought. Finally, not so long after his nineteenth birthday, he was sentenced to three years for aggravated burglary; after attacking a fellow prisoner with a length of pipe and almost taking out his eye, the sentence was doubled and Keach was moved to Gartree prison where he met Alan McKeirnan.

Adam Keach was finally released back into the community in late May, two weeks, approximately, from when Emma Harrison disappeared.

♦

At that evening’s press conference, Bernard Young went out of his way to stress that, although the investigation was still moving forward on several fronts, they were still most anxious to trace the whereabouts of Shane Donald, who was now believed to be in the company of one Angel Elizabeth Ryan. There was a number for members of the public to call with any information concerning either of those individuals and all such calls would, of course, be treated as confidential.

Two sets of Angel Ryan’s foster parents had been traced and were being questioned, while a third was still being sought. Sightings of the pair of them in places as diverse as Rotherham and Hull and Hest Bank near Morecambe Bay were being followed up.

The longer they could keep their search for Adam Keach from the media, the better they believed their chances of finding him before he found another victim.

It was the second night Shane and Angel had spent sleeping rough, this time in a doorway at the back of a parade of shops not far from the centre of Crewe, old newspapers spread beneath them for insulation, coats and each other’s bodies for warmth – the temperature merciful in that it didn’t fall into single figures. For breakfast they drank milk and ate bread that had been left early outside a café up the street. Angel had cut her hair short, almost as short as Shane’s.

Much of yesterday she had spent sitting cross-legged outside Crewe station, a cardboard box open on the pavement and a sign that read ‘
Starving and Homeless, Please Help
’. All that she had collected had been two pounds fifty-five in coins and a used train ticket, someone’s idea of a joke. Once, when she’d cadged a smoke, a man in a well-cut suit had handed her the almost full packet with a grin; a woman had given her half a cheese-and-salad sandwich, a youth of no more than sixteen or seventeen had fetched her a large coffee from the station buffet and presented it to her with a solemn bow. Station staff had scowled but not moved her on.

Towards the end of the day, Shane had gone off alone, returning a couple of hours later with almost fifty pounds in assorted notes.

‘Where d’you get this, Shane? All this money?’

‘What’s it matter?’

‘Tell me.’

‘You don’t want to know.’

When she had finally plucked up the courage to ask him about Emma Harrison he had said the same. The same until he was cuddled up against her in the doorway, his breath warm and sour against her neck, the side of her face. ‘That girl, I never touched her. Don’t know who she is. This stuff they’re sayin’, the papers an’ that, it’s lies.’ His hand slipping beneath her arm to touch her breast. ‘You believe me, right?’

‘Yes,’ Angel said. ‘Yes, of course I do.’ Desperately wanting to.

A few moments later, she felt his body relax behind her and realised he was asleep.

♦

The day before, Angel had been round to the house where her foster mother used to live – Eve Branscombe, the only one she’d really liked, the one she’d called Mum – and found she’d moved on. The woman who’d answered the door had been a bit shirty at first, as if Angel were about to pull some elaborate con about collecting for charity, but then she’d relaxed when Angel had explained – not the truth, of course, not all of it, but enough to gain the woman’s sympathy. She’d asked Angel in and given her a cup of tea and some biscuits, bourbon or rich tea; written an address down on a scrap of paper, uncertain of the number, but the road she thought was right. I hope you find her, love, good luck.

They were going to try today. Angel washed herself as thoroughly as she could in the public toilets, put on a fresh top, creased but clean, and combed her hair; Shane needed a shave and the sole was starting to come away from one of his shoes.

They caught a bus and then walked. The street they were looking for was a cul-de-sac in a small new estate, some of the houses still unfinished and surrounded by mounds of dirt and piles of bricks, as if the builders had run out of money part way.

No one had heard of a Mrs Branscombe at the first house they tried, but next door thought she might live at number twelve. There was a hanging basket by the front door, pink and purple fuschia and scarlet geraniums trailing down. The door itself was mostly pebbled glass; the bell played a four-note tune.

The woman who came to the door looked to be in her early sixties, short and plump, slippers on her feet, a floral apron tied over a plain blouse and skirt. She blinked at Angel and started to say something and then choked on her words.

‘Angel,’ she finally managed.

‘Mum.’

As Shane looked on, embarrassed, they fell into one another’s arms. When Angel finally introduced him, tears in her eyes, Mrs Branscombe shook Shane’s hand and said it was a pleasure to meet him and invited the pair of them in.

‘Eve,’ she said. ‘You can call me Eve.’

The living-room was at the rear, small and squarish with a door that opened out into the garden. A two-seater settee and an armchair, matching; china dogs along the tiled mantelshelf above the flame-effect gas fire.

‘You two sit right there while I put the kettle on. Angel and me, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

After several cups of tea, a ham sandwich and some slices of Battenberg – shop, of course, but almost as nice as home-made; I’ll say this for it, it’s a lovely marzipan – Eve Branscombe listened with interest to Angel’s bowdlerised tales of working here and there with a small travelling fair. And if Shane said little, well, he was shy in company, a lot of young men are.

‘And now you’re just travelling, is that right? A little time to yourselves. A holiday.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Angel said, ‘that’s right.’

‘Where you heading next then?’

‘We’re not sure. We thought we might stay around here for a few days. I’d like Shane to get to know where I grew up. The town, you know.’

‘You were happy here.’

‘I was.’

Shane was afraid there might be more tears.

‘You don’t do fostering now, then?’ Angel asked.

‘No, love, not any more. Getting too old for it. It’s just me on my own now.’ And then, aware of the way Angel was looking at her, she said, ‘There’s a spare room upstairs. If you wanted to stay for a bit. It’s not big, of course. Only a single bed. But I daresay you won’t mind cuddling up.’

‘Thanks, Mum. That’d be great. Wouldn’t it, Shane, eh?’

‘Yeah, great.’

‘That’s settled then.’ Eve kneaded her hands into her thighs as if working dough. A few minutes later, when the last pieces of cake had been passed round, she said, ‘It’s tiring work, travelling, isn’t it? Sticky, too. If either of you wanted a bath, there’s plenty of hot water.’

♦

Every time they moved in the bed, it creaked. The mattress was a notch above wafer thin.

‘This used to be mine, you know,’ Angel said.

‘More comfortable, sleeping on the fuckin’ street.’

‘Shane, that’s not true.’

‘True enough.’

‘And besides, she’s doin’ us a favour, right?’

‘Right,’ Shane said grudgingly.

They were talking in whispers, not wishing to be overheard. At a few minutes short of ten, Eve Branscombe had switched off the television and announced she was off to bed. ‘I can’t stomach watching the news nowadays. Always something terrible, earthquakes and murders. You’re welcome to stay up yourselves, of course, long as you like. There’s plenty of milk if you want a bedtime drink.’ She smiled a soft round smile. ‘Just make yourselves at home.’

About the last thing Shane and Angel had wanted was to tune in to the news. They had sat there for perhaps another fifteen minutes, listening to the sounds from the bathroom upstairs, then gone up to bed themselves.

‘How long did you live with her anyway?’ Shane asked.

‘Three years, a bit more,’ Angel said. ‘From when I was nine to when I was twelve. Getting on thirteen. She gave me a bike for my twelfth birthday, I remember that. Second-hand, it was, but I didn’t care. I had to leave it behind when I moved.’

‘Why did you? Move, I mean? You were getting on so well, how come you didn’t stay?’

Angel fidgeted with the uneven ends of her hair. ‘She had this boy as well then, Ian. Older than me, just a couple of years. He started… you know, he started tryin’ to mess around with me. I tried to tell Mum but it was difficult. She really didn’t listen. Everything else she was fine about, everything else but… but that. In the end I had this piece of glass and I cut him. They took me away. Mum, she didn’t want them to, she wanted them to give me another chance, but no, they weren’t having any. That was when I went into a home, a children’s home. I started cutting myself there.’

She moved closer to Shane and he kissed her, just friendly at first and then something else. For the second time, Shane slid a hand down towards the crack of Angel’s backside and for the second time she told him, ‘Don’t.’

‘What’s the matter? You getting your period or something?’

‘No, it just… it just doesn’t seem right.’

‘Why not, all of a sudden?’

‘Here, in this bed.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Mum’d hear us.’

‘She’s not your fuckin’ mum.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘And she thinks you’re some virgin, does she?’

‘Now you’re being stupid.’

‘You’re the one being fuckin’ stupid.’

‘Oh, Shane…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Let’s not row, eh?’

Shane breathed out slowly. ‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. It’s just…’