Innocent Blood (38 page)

‘I ran away… I was really scared.’

‘Other people must have seen the burning. I don’t understand why it wasn’t reported.’

‘The track we went down wasn’t there in those days. It was in the woods.’

‘But the smoke would have been seen, surely?’

‘Lot of stubble-burning. Used to be anyway, can’t do it no more.’

‘Did you go back afterwards?’

‘A long time after. When I got home I…I can’t remember what happened but I know I was sent away to a sort of special hospital. When I came back the car was gone, just black trees where it’d been.’

Oliver wiped his face with his sleeve again and finished his mug of cold coffee.

‘Was Bryan one of the men watching the car burn?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘You’re sure?’

Oliver nodded his head.

‘I think I’d’ve recognised him from the back. I don’t think he was there but I can’t swear it.’

‘What the hell’s going on here!’

Nightingale and Oliver had been too engrossed in their conversation to hear Mrs Anchor’s arrival.

‘We’re having the conversation that you should have had with the police twenty-five years ago, Mrs Anchor. Why didn’t you come to us when the doctor told you what he suspected had happened to your son? At the very least you should have reported the burning car!’ Nightingale didn’t bother to disguise the disgust she felt. ‘All these years you’ve left the Hills to suffer and who knows how many boys to be abused by Taylor and his pals.’

Mrs Anchor bit her lip but countered indignantly. ‘Oliver was incoherent, in a terrible state when he came in. My only concern was for my boy. And anyway at the time, sorry dear,’ she said looking quickly at Oliver, ‘nothing he said made sense. He was hyperactive, screaming, we could barely restrain him. When the doctor arrived he gave him a sedative and then next day we agreed he should go to hospital.’

‘But later, when you heard the news about Paul, you must have realised that Oliver might have witnessed something. Your husband reported seeing Taylor’s car, for heaven’s sake!’

Mrs Anchor sat down heavily in the chair at the head of the table. Her flush had gone and she looked exhausted.

‘Oliver, go and find your father. He needs to come back early today, tell him.’

Nightingale watched as Oliver lumbered out of the kitchen obediently, his frame dwarfing his mother as she sat in her chair. To her surprise the farmer’s wife took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

‘I didn’t realise the significance of what Oliver saw, not for several days.’ She started brushing up the biscuit crumbs from the table automatically.

‘Rubbish. What aren’t you telling me? With something this serious don’t imagine I won’t find out. I’ll get a warrant for his medical records if I need to.’

Mrs Anchor took a long pull and held the smoke in her lungs before exhaling.

‘It’s true. When Oliver went to hospital we were at our wits’ end. I knew something wasn’t right with the lad but I put it down to his earlier…trouble and the fact that he’d always been quiet. When he had his breakdown it really shook us – we had no idea he’d got so bad.

‘The doctors gave Oliver a full medical examination when he was admitted. They discovered the signs of previous abuse. I told them that there’d been a difficulty in the past but it was over with. Problem was I’d never reported it and Arthur didn’t know. Our GP was an old friend, married to my sister-in-law, so when he’d told me that Oliver had been abused I begged him to keep it quiet, not even to tell Oliver’s dad. He knew us and that we’d never hurt Ollie so he said nothing for my sake and never reported it to the social or police like he should have.’

‘If you’d only had the courage to tell your husband and the authorities about that abuse Paul Hill and Malcolm Eagleton might be alive today!’ Nightingale’s mind was filled with the image of the two boys grinning at the camera. ‘This wasn’t just about your family.’

‘I know that now, don’t you think I don’t? But at the time all I wanted to do was protect
my
family; that’s all that mattered. If the social had got involved then who knows what would have happened. They might have accused Arthur and taken Ollie and my other boys away. They almost did later when he went into hospital after Paul vanished.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.

‘Go on.’

‘When they found that he’d been abused Arthur argued with the doctors, told them it was impossible. That turned out to be a big mistake. He ended up under investigation by social services, then the police.’ Her voice faltered but she was made of stronger stuff than her son and remained dry-eyed.

‘It was awful. Oliver was still on medication so he couldn’t say anything to help us. It was a terrible few months. Then Oliver got a bit better and started seeing a psychiatrist. The story about Taylor came out. We were no longer suspects and when my son was well enough he was allowed home into our care.

‘I’m sorry to say that I never gave Paul a thought in all that time. We were living through our own nightmare and I had no energy to spare for someone else’s. After Oliver came home we never talked about what had happened. We hoped he would forget all about Taylor.’

‘Of course he wouldn’t! He’s just bottled it up because you made it a taboo subject. Even now he’s not really well, is he? He needs proper counselling.’ Nightingale’s tone was harsh.

Mrs Anchor looked at her defiantly.

‘He’s all right. He can cope with the world and we’re here to look after him. He doesn’t want for anything.’

‘Except for friends his own age and perhaps even a relationship with a girl,’ she said cruelly.

‘You have no right to barge in here and form snap judgements, miss. You’ve got what you came for; don’t lecture me in my own home and pretend that you care one jot for my son’s welfare. He’s our problem, not yours and we’ll deal with it our way.’

‘But he needs help, Mrs Anchor, particularly now he’s managed to acknowledge what’s happened to him. It was a very brave thing to do.’

‘You’re police not medical. Leave us alone.’

‘He’ll need to make a full statement at the station; will you bring him in or shall I take him with me now?’

Mrs Anchor stared at her defiantly but knew when she was beaten.

‘I’ll bring him in myself.’

‘And if you try to change his mind I’ll arrest you for obstruction. What’s more I’ll press for a custodial sentence; who’d look after your boy then, Mrs Anchor?’

Nightingale rose to leave, struggling to control her temper and to conjure up some compassion for the woman but Mrs Anchor had the last word.

‘You should ask yourself why your colleagues didn’t do more to find Taylor at the time. They had plenty of information, my Arthur made sure of that, but they never caught him. If anyone failed my son and Paul Hill it was you lot!’

Nightingale climbed into her car and drove away.

From the end of Nathan’s second visit Sam had plotted how he could escape. At the age of eleven he’d considered himself mature enough to run away from what he considered a loveless and overcrowded home and now, his twelfth birthday unremarked and uncelebrated, he was confident that he was more than capable of surviving on his own.

He looked back on his timidity of only the month before with contempt. He had been stupid to consider this place a refuge, to believe William had any concern for his safety. All he was good for was earning him money, for as long as his looks and his body lasted. As soon as they vanished he’d be on the scrapheap, like Jack.

Thinking of Jack made him scared all over again. He hadn’t realised that Jack had been Nathan’s boy before him but looking back it made perfect sense. Jack hadn’t been worked hard; he’d been given a room of his own, complete with a small bathroom like this, and for a while William had treated him as special. It was one of the reasons that Sam and the other boys had been indifferent to his suffering. They’d missed what was really going on.

Jack had never been one to muck about; a silent boy happy in his own company, they hadn’t noticed as he withdrew entirely. It was only when he started to look ill that they’d wondered what was going on and had put it down to drugs. Previously, Jack had boasted about keeping himself clean, so there was quiet contempt when it became obvious he was in a bad way. Looking back on it all Sam realised that Jack probably hadn’t been hooked, just badly hurt by Nathan. The reason for his long absences became obvious. And then he disappeared.

Sam rubbed his neck and looked in the mirror at the fading bruises. They were almost gone; he’d massaged in the herbal-smelling stuff William had given him every eight hours as he’d been told and it seemed to help. The other bruises, the ones that didn’t show but hurt more, were still there and he knew that if Nathan did to him again what he’d done before he’d end up badly injured, maybe even dead. The thought made him cry at night but that wasn’t what gave him nightmares. It was the choking. When he woke in the dark unable to breathe, with the memory of Nathan’s hands around his neck, he was convinced that next time he was going to die. He’d been out of control during his last visit and it was only William’s banging on the door that had stopped him.

Sam needed to escape. He’d tried opening the window but it was locked fast. Even if he broke it, one look outside told him he was too high up to jump. There was no fire escape, no drainpipe down which he could climb and his sheet and duvet tied together would leave him dangling high above the broken paving of the yard below.

He forced himself to recall every bit of knowledge that he had about the outside of the house from the day he’d arrived and including his two feeble attempts to escape. The sign above the door had said Madeira Hotel but the one in the window always read ‘No Vacancies’. The hotel was a front. There were no guests: just the boys, a meagre staff and their masters. Before he’d been moved he had shared one of the larger bedrooms with three other boys on a lower floor. The windows were barred and the fire exits, left over from the days when it had been a hotel, were locked.

Back then he hadn’t paid much attention to his surroundings and had no idea of the floor layout. Since moving up here he’d been stuck in his room. He knew he was on the fifth floor and that the other rooms were used by staff – cooks, barman and security – and by William who was rumoured to have his own rooms in the corner wing of the hotel. It was the worst floor from which to try and escape as there were always people asleep in their rooms between shifts. William liked to keep the staff together; it stopped them getting wandering feet, he said. Most of them were foreigners and Sam thought they were probably illegal immigrants.

As he lay in bed, he plotted. He was too smart to try and escape without a plan like before. He needed to create a reason to leave the room.

On the morning of the twelfth day in what he thought of as his captivity, he woke before dawn and went to relieve himself. As he flushed an idea came to him. If the toilet broke they’d have to let him out to go outside. He lifted the cistern lid and peered inside. The tank looked brown and scummy. There was a ball floating on top of the water with a lever attached to the inside of the flush handle. He tried the mechanism a few times, watching it carefully. The next time he flushed he held the ball down as hard as he could and noticed that the water flowed in constantly until the ball bounced to the top and somehow cut it off.

The joint attaching it to the lever didn’t look that strong. Grasping the ball-thing he pulled hard, yanking it. It wouldn’t break. He tried again, leaning back with all his weight. He felt something give but only a little. Outside his room, there were noises of people walking along the corridor as the house stirred into life. He put his radio on loud enough to disguise the sound of his efforts and carried on pulling. At one point he cut himself on a bit of metal but he ignored the blood, all his energy focused on breaking the ball from its mount.

The rattle of a key in the lock had him running back to his bed just in time, as one of the security men brought in his breakfast tray. He was on full cooked rations, plus toast and milk. The man left without looking at him. Sam wolfed the tepid food down, barely tasting it, aware that he’d need all his strength for his escape. As soon as he was finished he went back to the cistern. After what seemed an age but according to the radio was only ten minutes, there was a snapping sound and the ball floated free. He flushed and watched as the water kept flowing, filling the cistern above its normal level. His spirits rose with it. He was going to flood the bathroom! But when the water had reached almost to the top of the tank it stopped. For some reason, even though he could hear it pouring into the loo, it wasn’t over-flowing.

Sam wanted to cry but bit down on his bottom lip instead. He forced himself to examine the tank again. There was a pipe leading from it, one he hadn’t bothered with before. He had no idea what it did but he put his palm over it and watched with satisfaction as the water started to rise again. So that was it; an overflow for the extra water. For his plan to work he had to block it somehow.

He rolled up his sleeve, took a long piece of toilet paper and stuffed it into the escape pipe as far as it would go. He repeated the process three times, prodding the paper so that it went right down inside. When the pipe was full he stopped and watched as the water reached the top. It seemed to hover there for an age before the surface tension broke and it slowly started to dribble over the side and splash onto the floor tiles. Sam yelped in excitement and did a little dance, then sobered up quickly.

This was only the first step. He had to think very carefully about what to do next. There would be only be one chance of escape and he needed to take full advantage of it. He dressed fully for the first time in days, put on his trainers, brushed his teeth and hair, and stuffed the remains of his toast in his pocket. He picked up his radio and held it tight. Then he counted to one thousand, to give the water time to cover the floor, before he started banging on the door. It took a while for someone to come and it turned out to be the barman, Jan, woken from his sleep after a late night shift.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

‘There’s a flood!’ he said dramatically and pointed to the bathroom.

Jan stepped over to the bathroom and looked inside. As he bent down to inspect the floor Sam smashed him over the head as hard as he could with the radio. Without waiting to see the results he ran to the door, slammed it shut and locked it, pocketing the key. He took a second to get his bearings. The rest of the floor was quiet, doors shut. Behind him there was silence from his bedroom.

There were signs for fire exits at both ends of the corridor and he ran to the one furthest from William’s rooms. It opened as he’d hoped. They might lock the boys in but he didn’t reckon William would risk being burnt to death if the house went up in flames.

He ran down the concrete stairs, his footsteps light and soundless, looking above constantly for signs of pursuit but he remained alone. Each floor had its own landing marked with a number. When he reached level two he thought he heard a door open at the top of the stairs. He kept on running as fast as he could, knowing it would be useless to try and escape into one of the corridors as the doors at this level would be locked. He reached the ground floor and pushed open an emergency exit. It led to an area at the back of the kitchen.

Sam looked around wildly. There was no way out! Opposite the door were large rubbish bins taller than he was but there was no point hiding in there; that would be the first place they’d look. He was panting with fright and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. Think, he told himself. If there are rubbish bins there must be a way for them to be collected.

He looked around the yard again slowly. There was a wooden gate immediately to his right. A sturdy padlock held an iron bar in place but the gate wasn’t that tall, seven foot at most. Sam put his right foot against the wood and reached up so that his fingers touched one of the crosspieces that held the wooden planks of the gate together. He heaved himself up and almost made it but his foot slipped and he banged his knee hard. The little yelp he let out was more fear than pain. He was unaware of the tears on his cheeks.

He tried again: right foot high; right hand up on the beam; left hand beside it; he pulled and lifted his left leg quickly onto the locking crosspiece. The toe of his trainer found a grip and he leant his whole weight against the gate, then scrabbled up with his right hand so that he could grab the top and really pull himself up.

His breath was coming hard, his heart hammering inside his T-shirt, but he managed to lift his left hand next to his right and take his full weight. He was hanging onto the top now, his head high enough to see over the gate to freedom but the lower half of his body seemed to dangle, impossibly heavy. With a grunt of effort he heaved himself up so that his stomach reached the top of the gate and his face and arms hung over the other side. He was balancing on his stomach, the wood cutting into his skin where it took his full weight. For an awful moment he felt his body arch backwards, pulled by gravity down into the yard but he hunched his shoulders forward and regained his balance.

He hung there suspended, teetering without stability. Even though the gate wasn’t high the ground beneath him seemed a long way off and there was no way he could swivel his body over so that he could jump feet first. If he fell he’d smash his skull on the pavement. For a long second he was pinned there by his own fear then the emergency exit door crashed open and one of the security men ran into the yard followed by Jan. The door swung back in a full arc banging into Sam’s hand where he clung to the gate and obscuring him briefly from view. The man started over to the bins, giving Sam seconds in which to make up his mind. He grabbed the emergency exit door, pulled his upper body partway onto it and then brought his other hand up under his body.

With the angle of the door to help him he managed to lever his body full length along the top of the gate and then let his feet slide down the other side. He’d just managed to force all his body over when the security guard turned around and saw him.

‘Oi, you! Stay where you are, you little punk. I’m going to kill you!’

With that sort of encouragement Sam let go, landing heavily but squarely on the pavement in the service alley at the back of the hotel as the security man slammed into the gate. He heard him rattle the lock and then the thump of his foot as he started to climb over but Sam was off. He turned left away from the front of the hotel and ran down an empty side road. The street at the end was full of run-down houses from the turn of the century but Sam didn’t notice. He’d spotted a busy road in the far distance with people and buses and he sprinted towards it.

Behind him he felt rather than heard the security guard land outside the yard but he didn’t waste time looking back. The man grunted as he fell and there was no sound of following footsteps so he must have hurt himself. It was the bit of luck Sam needed and his spirits soared adding speed to his heels. He was going so fast that he didn’t notice the dark blue Alfa Romeo pull up ahead of him and a man jump out. So when William’s arm snaked out and caught him around the shoulders his feet left the ground as he swung helplessly in his grip.

Sam opened his mouth to scream but William’s palm was already over it as he was thrust into the car as easily as a bag of shopping. The central locking clicked into place as he pushed himself up and scrabbled for the handle.

‘Sit still.’

It was all William said; he wouldn’t even look at him as he drove the short distance back to the wooden gates and hooted to be let in.

‘Help me!’

‘Shut it.’

‘Help me!’ Sam screamed again and again until a blow across the back of his head stunned him into silence.

William unlocked the car and the heavy hands of the security guard and a bleeding Jan grabbed Sam to pull him out. He pushed his whole body into the struggle against them but it was as effective as using a feather as a battering ram. As they re-entered the house one of the staff ran up to William.

‘Nathan’s on the phone,’ he said urgently.

‘I’ll take it. And shut that up while I’m on the phone; he needs to learn the art of silence.’

A filthy handkerchief was thrust into Sam’s mouth and a bag put over his head. He was carried up the stairs, his feet dragging on the threadbare carpet.

‘Wait.’ William’s voice carried to them. ‘There’s been a change of plan. Put him in the lock-up; I’ll be taking him out later.’

Sam was thrown into a small, bare room without windows and the door was locked behind him. He spent a long time screaming and beating the door but it had no effect and eventually, exhausted, he drifted into a fitful sleep.