Kill Me Twice: Rosie Gilmour 7 (32 page)

‘What happened?’

‘One of the people, a butler or something, came in and took me to another room. There was a man in there. I thought I’d seen him before, maybe on the telly or something, but I’m still not sure. He was dead rich-looking, well-dressed in a suit and tie. He smiled at me and said what a lovely boy I was, then asked me some things about myself. I told him I liked football and was in the school team and he said maybe one day I would be a famous star and play for Arsenal. I told him I wanted to play for Real Madrid, and he laughed and kind of ruffled my hair. He asked me to sit down beside him. It seemed a bit strange, but he was a nice man. Then he touched my hair and face. Kind of stroked me like this.’ James demonstrated, his fingers tracing his face. ‘I just sat there not knowing what to do. Then he touched my thighs and in between my legs, over my trousers. I felt my face going a bit red, and looked at him, but he said it was all right, that he was just being friendly and that he was going to be my special friend. He would do anything he could do to help me become a footballer. He said he would get me a Real Madrid shirt. I can still remember that moment, picturing myself in a Real Madrid shirt. It was the only thing on my mind. Sounds fucking strange when I say that, but as a wee boy obsessed
with football, a Real Madrid shirt was like gold to me. I had all their football cards and knew every player and could pronounce their names. And this guy was going to buy me a shirt.’ He shook his head, almost with disbelief. ‘Then he leaned across me, opened my trousers and put his hand on my pants. It was a very strange feeling. That’s what upsets me about it to this day. He touched me and I could feel myself getting hard. Then he put his hand inside and began to masturbate me. I suddenly ejaculated and I felt embarrassed and ashamed. It was just horrible. Like something in my life had changed and I would never be the same person ever again.’ His eyes were filling with tears.

‘That’s awful,’ Rosie said. ‘But you mustn’t blame yourself. It’s common for victims of abuse to react the way you did.’

‘He gave me a five-pound note and said next week he’d have the shirt for me. I pulled my trousers up and he said I could go. I just walked out of the room and didn’t know what to think. I was ashamed of myself.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

James nodded. ‘There was no choice. You just got told on the Friday afternoon that you were going up to the party. A few of the boys were quite looking forward to it because they came back with money and stuff and we spent it all on sweets. But it was like madness. So when I went up the second time, it wasn’t a week later, it was two or three weeks. Same thing. Taken into the room and this time he
was there again. But he had the shirt for me. He handed it to me and told me to open it, and when I did it was the most exciting thing to have those colours actually in my hand and to imagine pulling it on and going out to play football on a pitch, just like my heroes. Then he touched me again and asked me to touch him. He opened my trousers and this time he put me in his mouth. It was disgusting. Afterwards, we went home, and the next Thursday I ran away for the first time. It was so that I wouldn’t be there on the Friday. But they brought me back and I had to go again and again. It was always the same man. One time he raped me. But I know I wasn’t the only one that stuff happened to. There were other boys, and they went with a few men.’

‘Can you remember any names or any of the faces?’

‘No. But somebody said one of them was a politician. Like an MP or something. Labour, I think, but I don’t know that for sure.’

‘Did you ever tell anyone? Did the boys or girls ever talk to each other about it?’

‘No, never. It was never mentioned, but we all knew when we came home on the bus what we’d been doing. Nobody ever spoke on the way home. We just sat there, dead quiet.’

‘What did you tell people about the Real Madrid shirt?’ Rosie hoped it wasn’t too intrusive a question, but she needed to know.

‘I
never wore it. Not once. Didn’t even try it on. Didn’t show it to anyone. Just took it back to the home with me and put it under my mattress.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve still got it. I mean, how fucked up is that?’

‘Seriously? You still have it?’

‘You want to see it?’

‘Yes.’

Matt, she knew, would be visualizing a picture.

James returned a couple of minutes later with a carrier-bag and pulled out the shirt. It was at least twenty years old. The style and year could be checked. Of course, it proved nothing, but it was good to have it.

‘Can I ask why you kept it, James? It must have been a painful reminder.’

‘I don’t know, really. I couldn’t bear to throw it away because I loved it so much, yet I couldn’t even try it on.’ Suddenly he was crying. ‘I know, in the bigger picture of everything I’ve said to you, how fucking stupid that sounds, but sometimes that single thought of the top makes me cry. I was just so innocent. Just a little boy with all these stupid dreams of playing football for Real Madrid. But after those encounters, my life completely changed. I changed. I became angry and troublesome. When I left the home, I took to drink. I trained as an apprentice joiner, but because of my alcoholism, I amounted to nothing. I lost my marriage to a great girl who, to this day, doesn’t know what was wrong with me.’

‘So
when did you go to the police?’

‘When I was about fifteen. One of the other guys was going, and we went together.’

‘Can you remember which police station?’

‘Romford. The home was near there. We talked to various officers and they came to see us at the home. It all got a bit difficult then, but the trips stopped. That was it. It never happened again. But nothing ever came of it.’

‘Do you ever see any of the boys now?’

‘No. When I left, I moved away, up to Derby, and married a Scottish girl. We stayed there for years and had two kids, but I drank so much I blew the lot. I don’t even see my kids now.’

James gazed at the football shirt, and she wondered how many more innocent young lives and dreams had been shattered because nobody thought they were important enough to matter.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Mervyn
Bates clicked his small suitcase shut, his hands trembling. ‘Calm down,’ he told himself. ‘You’ll be out of here in half an hour. Out and away, too far away for anyone to come looking for you. They wouldn’t know where to start.’ He had always had a contingency plan. He called it his nuclear survival plan, in the event of the walls ever closing in on him. He hadn’t expected to put the wheels in motion from a hotel in bloody Glasgow, but today he had to. After the visit from that head-case reporter and her disturbingly accurate accusations, he knew the game was finally up. He’d have to disappear, and quick. If he’d needed any more convincing, the visit from Larry Sutton had left him in no doubt. It wasn’t just his reputation that was about to be destroyed, he would be dead meat if he stayed another night in this city.

He’d decided not even to risk going to the airport, and had got his PA in London to book him on the overnight
sleeper to Euston. He’d told her just to shut up and book it, and not to ask bloody questions when she expressed surprise that he wanted a train, not the morning flight. Then he’d asked her to reserve the Eurostar to Paris, from where he would fly to Thailand in the evening. He knew the place well. He had friends there of a kindred spirit and he could quietly disappear. He was loaded with money and could live out the rest of his life with nobody to ask questions about his sexual desires or preferences for young kids. Mervyn Bates didn’t even ask himself the question that the bitch reporter had put to him: had he raped Bella Mason? That was in the past. He hadn’t felt bad about it then and he didn’t now. He was moving on with his life, and nobody was going to drag him down.

He finished the remains of a bottle of mineral water, looked at his watch and stepped out of the hotel bedroom. He walked along the corridor and went down in the lift to the foyer. He glanced furtively around the place, busy with some kind of function, then slipped through the throng and out of the automatic doors into the driving rain. There was no taxi at the door, and he was about to turn and go back in when he felt something in his back. Even though nobody had ever stuck a gun in his back, he knew exactly what it was.

‘Let’s go, Merv. Don’t make a fuss.’

Bates felt his whole body go limp as he recognized Ricky’s voice. The gun was pushed harder into his back and urged
him in the direction of a car a few yards along from the entrance. Ricky opened the back door, and he got in without protest. As they drove out of the car park, Bates opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Then he croaked, ‘Ricky. Listen, mate. This is crazy.’

‘It’s just business, Merv.’

‘Ricky,’ he could hear his voice shaking, ‘you’re a smart guy. You don’t have to do this. I can make you a rich young man. The two of you. You know that. Just please take me to the station and let me go. You tell Larry you missed me, and by tomorrow afternoon there’ll be a hundred grand in your bank account.’

He saw Ricky glance at the driver, a small smirk on his face, and wondered if he was getting through. This pair of Neanderthals could be bought, no doubt about it. All they knew was money. They could barely string a sentence together. But they didn’t answer.

‘Ricky,’ Bates said, leaning forward so his head was between the two of them. ‘No way is Larry paying you more than a hundred grand. You’re just dog shit to him. He’ll be giving you a few quid to get rid of me, but ask yourself, what’s the point? Take my money and you can just fuck off abroad somewhere . . . I mean—’

By the time he saw the fist coming from the front seat, he was already dazed and slumping back, his nose cracking and opening up, blood gushing.

‘Fuck’s
sake, Ricky! Aw, Jesus, man! There’s blood everywhere.’

‘Shut up, Merv.’

He was barely conscious, wiping the blood away as vomit rose in the back of his throat. The car turned away from the city centre. He had no idea where they were going. This was his first time in Glasgow since the days he used to come up for charity work, when he’d first spotted Bella Mason. After he’d taken her away, he’d never come back.

The car pulled off the main road and into a layby next to the river. This was not good. The driver stopped. Ricky got out and opened the back door. He didn’t speak, just leaned in with his big arms and dragged Bates out. His legs buckled so Ricky and the driver pulled him to his feet. He was dizzy with panic. They were going to beat the shit out of him and probably leave him for dead. But, no. The driver had a rope. They turned him around roughly and pushed him face down onto the car bonnet, then pulled his head back and stuck gaffer tape over his mouth. He couldn’t breathe through his nose for the blood and he started gagging. He was beginning to pass out. He felt his hands being tied behind his back, and then the rope go around his ankles. Now he was being dragged along the cobblestones towards a ledge, and he could hear the flow of the river. They held him over the water and all he could see was the inky blackness.

A
mobile rang and they stopped, leaving him dangling over the edge. Ricky took it out of his pocket. ‘Yep. Sure, boss.’

Bates felt the mobile being pressed against his ear, and he could hear the voice of Larry Sutton.

‘This is what should happen to all the cunts like you, Merv. Every last one of them. But I can’t do them all, even though I’ve done a few. You’re a bastard, Merv, and you’ll rot in Hell. This is for Bella Mason. I hope you can see her face as you drown, you evil, twisted fucker.’

The words were ringing in his ear as Ricky pulled the phone away from him and they started to ease him, feet first, over the side. Bates found himself wondering if he would float, or maybe even be found. He felt piss run down his legs, puked and choked. Still they said nothing. He heard a big splash in the water and wondered what it was. Then there was a sudden, fierce tugging at the rope. He realized that something very heavy was attached to him as he hit the water and disappeared.

*

Colin Chambers sat in his study, behind his desk, the ice melting in his large malt whisky. He poured himself more. He had been on the phone to his assistant and had signed the necessary papers releasing Millie from the hospital, with the final say going to the Harley Street psychiatrist, whom he knew would go along with his wishes. He opened
his drawer and took out some photographs of Millie and himself when they were young and in Madrid, sitting in pavement cafes, laughing and drinking. Millie was carefree and eager then, and the sound of her laughter could make him forget everything else.

Where had it gone wrong? Was it his greed for power once he’d become an MP, determined to make it to the top? Or was it Millie and her failure to produce their child? It wasn’t her fault, but he needed someone to blame, and he had never forgiven her.

He was a bastard, but Millie had become a liability with her drunken episodes. He had stopped loving her. Now she was reduced to threatening him. That reporter was some piece of work coming in and shouting him down in his club. But she wouldn’t have done that unless she had something solid. He knew how these things worked. There had already been a call put to his secretary asking if he had a comment for the story in the
Post
about those bloody dossiers. He could never answer that. There was no answer.

It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and it hadn’t been his decision alone. He had spoken to the Prime Minister, but he could never admit that, even now. You couldn’t spread the blame. It had been his decision. He could have said no. What about all those children? They were so remote from him, troubled kids from housing estates and children’s homes. It was a different world. He couldn’t have people like them bringing down the
government with their accusations. Perhaps he should have been braver – but he just hadn’t cared enough.

He pushed his hand into the back of the drawer and fumbled until he felt the velvet cover and the hardness inside it. He pulled out the revolver and methodically unwrapped it, then opened the barrel and checked it was loaded, though he knew it would be. His father’s old army revolver. He picked up the photograph of Millie and himself in Madrid and looked at it one last time, then put the gun to his head.