Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time (41 page)

“What d’you want from me . . . money?”

Her clipped colonial true-blue accent used for guests and callers had been lost and replaced by a more familiar Jamaican twang.

“No . . . I want what I’ve been looking fo’ this past few weeks: just simple bit o’ truth.”

“The trute . . . oh you want the trute, do you, Mr Ellington? Well, the trute can be twisted in all kinda ways. You wanna hear my side o’ tings or the man who’s been payin’ you your wages?” She sneered at me, her eyes burning with anger and contempt.

“I wanna know how you could sell a pretty young woman’s freedom to an insane pervert like Terrence Blanchard and think you could git away with it, fo’ a start.”

“You call Stella pretty? She a lot tings, brother, but she ain’t pretty . . . She a stupid dirty girl! Ever since she was a little pitney, she was trouble. Always messin’ her drawers, needing attention and to be bathed every couple o’ hours, constantly crying and causing trouble. Couldn’t do a damn ting fo’ herself; she put me t’ru hell!”

She jabbed her skinny finger at me like she was about to sentence me to the gallows.

“What you talkin’ ’bout? Why would she put you through hell? Yeah, the little ting was deaf and dumb . . . but that wouldn’t make her a monster. Stella hardly came into the world blessed, did she?”

“Stella shouldn’t o’ come into this world at all, damn retard! Victoria, her mama, she couldn’t cope with her when she was a child, had some silly kinda breakdown. Doctors t’rew her into the nuthouse at Stoke Park; she was locked up with the rest of the mental defectives inside o’ there fo’ nearly ten years. My husband said he wanted to help, and like a fool he told the authorities that we would bring her up here with us, in my home. In the end it came down to me to wipe her filthy arse, comb the lice outta her hair, make sure she wasn’t stinkin’ while her worthless mama rocked away in that loony bin and I took care of her brat . . . Woman only took the child back when all the hard work was done!”

I was confused; none of what was being said to me made any sense.

“Why’d your husband agree with Stella’s mother to look after her? She wasn’t your kin . . . I don’t understand, Mrs Linney.”

“Why would you?”

She walked over to the far side of the room, took a photo frame from the back of a teak sideboard and returned with it outstretched in her hand and shoved it at my chest.

“Here . . . here’s ya damn trute!”

I took the recognisable photograph from her. It was the same as the one I’d found in Stella’s bedroom. I looked up at Alice Linney, who stared back at me bitterly.

“So Stella . . . is Earl’s daughter?”

“Don’t be a bloody fool, man . . . That’s not my husband in that damn picture . . . It’s his brother, Patrick!”

I stood motionless, staring down at the snapshot, while Alice continued to rant on at me.

“Patrick was in the Royal Air Force same as my man, Earl. The two of ’em was the only family either of ’em had, an’ they was inseparable. After the war they both went back home to Jamaica. Earl an’ I married, an’ his brother met a lovely woman from Spanish Town, they got hitched and Patrick became a Baptist minister. We all came to Britain in 1948. Within months, Patrick had met Stella’s mama, Victoria, starting seeing her on the quiet. Stupid fool, he got her pregnant and she refused to git rid of it. Patrick panicked, packed up everyting he owned and took him and that poor ignorant wife o’ his and sailed back to Jamaica. Earl, being so close to his brother, made him a promise: he told him that he’d keep an eye out fo’ the child. We ended up doing more than that . . . Earl treated that ting like it was his own, and my feelings were never considered, not fo’ a moment. He stupidly thought that I’d be agreeable to his madness and took it fo’ granted that I’d go along with it all, just like he does with so many other tings.

“Patrick came back to Britain in 1955 to see her, the year that photograph was taken. Only time he ever saw Stella. He gave her that damn silly cloth rabbit she carries round with her. It’s never left her side since the day he gave it to her. We told everybody Stella was our ward, that we were fostering her. It was easier to lie than admit the trute ’bout how we’d ended up stuck with the child. It also allowed my husband an excuse to not have to face the trute ’bout me. You see, I’m what you call a barren woman, Mr Ellington. Earl and I could never have a child of our own. So he took to caring fo’ another woman’s bastard offspring!”

I could feel her stare burning into me. I kept looking at the picture in my hands and I stumbled for the words when I spoke.

“I found a copy of this photograph at the back of an empty scrapbook in Stella’s bedroom a short while back. I thought that the man in the photo looked like your husband, but I was wrong.”

I kept staring at it and spoke to Mrs Linney without raising my head.

“Stella’s home, it was filled with bleach and other kinds a cleaning stuff, it was all over the place . . . Why’d that be?”

“Her useless mama died in that house . . . in that very same room riddled with cancer, she was. The stupid girl used to try and scrub the stench o’ death outta that place day and night. Even took to washing down her skin with it, but like I told you, she was always a dirty little ting, so a bit a bleach wasn’t gonna harm that thick witless hide o’ hers!”

I began to shake my head at her bitter words.

“So because you thought that Stella had been a thorn in your side fo’ so many years and a constant reminder of the child you couldn’t have, you decided to palm her off to some crazed old bastard to defile and abuse . . . What the hell were you thinkin’, woman, how did you really think you’d git away with such madness?”

“I didn’t have to think, man! You haven’t had to suffer the humiliations I have. I was tired of seeing the foolish child’s face about and my man still doting on her like he was her daddy all these years later. I encouraged Terrence Blanchard to renegotiate the land deal with my husband after he’d previously turned his offer down. Earl has had great plans to offer many people in the community a better chance of owning their own homes. I didn’t wanna see his dreams tumble just because some old racist didn’t wanna part with a few thousand feet o’ dirt to a black man. Stella was the key to realising those dreams fo’ my man. So I parlayed another deal with Blanchard using that worthless deaf simpleton as surety to git what I needed. He promised me that she’d be well looked after and I believed him when he said she’d be cared fo’.”

Alice Linney tried to justify her actions with an arrogant belligerence that I’d never seen in a woman before.

“Cared fo’ . . . You sick, evil old bitch, Blanchard couldn’t have cared fo’ any living soul, no more than a gator could keep his mout’ away from dead meat! You knew when you made that trumped-up land deal with him that you were selling that poor child into a living hell!”

I felt the fury tighten in every muscle in my body and my fists clenched. Something snapped inside my head and I shot towards Alice Linney. My arm outstretched, I grabbed hold of her clothing and pulled her towards me. She screamed out as I lifted up my bunched knuckles ready to rain down my rage upon her slight body – then I froze as I saw Earl Linney standing in the doorway of his sitting room, neither of us aware of how long he had been there. I held onto his wife tightly, my breathing heavy and laboured.

“Where’s Stella, Mr Ellington?” He spoke softly, the water welling up in his eyes.

“She’s sleeping over at my place. I gotta friend of mine watching over her.”

“Take me to her . . . please.”

Earl Linney looked at his wife; with a face past pity and hate . . . Loathing was what came to my mind. She threw out her chest at him defiantly. His head sank to his chest as the tears began to flow from his eyes, and I watched as he slowly walked back out of his home and into the street. The sound of his desolate sobbing would stay with me till the end of my days.

I offered to drive Earl Linney’s Austin Cambridge back to my place. He threw the keys over to me as we neared his motor and got in, and he stared straight out of the windscreen, his body trembling. During our ride I asked him how much of my conversation with his wife he had heard.

“I heard enough,” was all the man whispered to me.

The car journey seemed endless. A fresh dusting of snow began to fall out of the sky as the car wipers worked hard to knock it away. I knew what it felt like to have your life taken from you: one day we think we have it all, then when it is gone we wonder if it was all just a dream, a mirage.

It was just after midnight by the time we reached my bedsit. Earl was out of the car and standing impatiently by my front door before I had even got the key out of the ignition. I walked up the steps behind him, leant over his shoulder, put the key in the lock and let the two of us in. I climbed the stairs with a foreshadowing sense that something was not right, an ominous feeling that I put down to fatigue. The small blisters on my calves from the fire earlier stung with each step I took, and as I reached the top of the stairs I saw Mrs Pearce waiting for me.

“Is everything OK?”

My aging neighbour walked towards me, a look of concern on her face.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Mr Ellington. It’s the strangest thing. I did exactly as you said . . . I went and checked on the child fifteen minutes after you and your relation had left. She appeared to be fine . . . Sound asleep, just you like you said. Then I went to check on her about five minutes ago and I couldn’t get into the bedroom. The door appears to be locked.”

Earl Linney pushed past the two of us and ran down the hallway, and I followed close behind him. Linney became agitated.

“Where the hell is she, Ellington?”

I managed to catch hold of him by the elbow just as he reached my bedroom door.

“She’s in here.”

I took hold of the door handle to my bedroom, turned it and pushed. It was locked, just as Mrs Pearce had told me.

Linney, panicking, grabbed me by the shoulder and yelled, “Kick the damn thing in, man!”

I put my back against the wall opposite, then booted at the lock and handle. What confronted us as the door flew open was more disturbing than anything we could ever have expected. Hanging from the iron curtain rail by the cord belt of my dressing gown was the lifeless body of Stella Hopkins, her eyes open, looking directly at us.

I stood staring for a moment, horrified at what I saw, before Earl Linney edged past me and slowly walked across the room. He dropped to his knees, sobbing, then reached up to Stella’s bare feet and gently held onto her toes with the tips of his fingers, then rested his forehead against her bare feet. I heard footsteps coming down the hall and turned to see Mrs Pearce rushing towards the bedroom. I closed the door to and held my hand up to stop her in her tracks.

“Stay where you are, Mrs Pearce, just stay where you are.”

She did as I asked and remained motionless a few feet from the front door. I turned back to Linney, who had not moved. I walked towards him, and he looked up at me; the pain and sadness in his eyes made it almost unbearable to look back into them. When he spoke, his voice was desolate and hollow.

“Leave me with her, Ellington. Go get me a knife so I can cut her down, son . . .” I nodded my head slowly, went next door and brought back the only sharp kitchen knife I possessed. I held it by the blade and handed it down to him. He reached up and took it out of my hand, then got to his feet.

“I want to be alone with her for a moment. Give me a few minutes, then you best go call for the police and an ambulance, Mr Ellington.”

He turned back to Stella, and I watched as he touched the hem of her skirt with the back of his hand, then began to weep again. I turned my back just as he hooked his arm around her waist and began to cut into the cord above her head.

I walked out to the phone box, did as Linney said, and waited a few minutes before calling for both the police and an ambulance. As I got back to my digs, Mrs Pearce stood in the street and took my hand, squeezing it in her own. The unspoken sentiment in her simple gesture bolstered me as I returned upstairs.

When I got back to my bedroom, the door had been closed again and I felt the foreboding sensation that had struck me earlier. I gently pushed at the door and let it swing open slowly. Inside, I found Earl Linney hanging by his belt from almost the exact same spot that Stella’s lifeless body had been suspended from a short time earlier. He had cut her down, closed her eyes, then carefully laid her on the floor. Her hands were placed across her chest, and in one of them she held the cloth toy rabbit that she’d cherished so dearly. Earl had taken off his coat and shoes and then placed them neatly at her feet. It was a simple gesture that told me that the alderman had made a terrible sacrifice and chosen to depart this world and join Stella on her journey to a better place. There she would finally hear for the first time the rustle of a summer breeze through the trees, the carefree laughter of children at play and the whispering words from a gentle guardian telling her that he would love her forever.

It didn’t take long before Detective Inspector Fletcher was breathing down my neck for answers. This time I gave him what he needed to know, and all of it the truth. There was little point in digging a bigger hole for myself by keeping him in the dark, so I told him exactly how I’d gotten myself involved in the search for Stella and that I believed that her disappearance was tied in to the murders of Clarence Mayfield, Jocelyn Charles, Virginia Landry and Carnell. After I had finished spilling my guts, I spent another two days in the slammer while Fletcher checked out my story.

My only consolation at being incarcerated again was the knowledge that Mickey Warren was in a cell two doors down from me. After being grilled for the better part of seventy-two hours, Warren cracked and confessed to his involvement in everything from murder and extortion to the procuring of woman for sex, admitting to playing his part with Papa Anansi in the slaying of all four of the victims.

The Blanchard estate had burnt to the ground, and the charred remains of both Terrence Blanchard and Papa were found among the ashes and rubble. Their charcoaled bodies were so badly incinerated that it was practically impossible to tell how exactly they had died, and that suited me fine.