Lifeless - 5 (6 page)

He stared at Robert Enright until the old man met his eye, then he spoke. 'I want to find the man who did this thing to you. To your daughter and to you. Charlie saw him. We're here to let him tel us anything he feels like tel ing us. That's al .'

They al stiffened then, at the footfal s on the stairs. Thorne thought he saw Carol Garner's father nod, a second before the door flew open and her son ran into the room.

The boy froze on seeing the strangers, and lowered his eyes. He began to inch across to the sofa from where Mary reached out a hand and pul ed him to her. He was perhaps a little smal for his age, with longish mousy hair and brown eyes. He was wearing denim dungarees over a red long-sleeved top and his hands were covered in what looked like blue felt-tip pen.

'Some friends of ours have come to see you,' Marry said, her voice not much above a whisper. 'This is... ?' She looked across at McEvoy and Thorne, the question in her eyes.

'Sarah,' McEvoy volunteered, leaning forward with a smile. She glanced at Thorne. 'And Tom.'

Charlie looked up, appraising them. He rubbed his grandmother's hand across his cheek for a second or two, before dropping it and racing across to where his toys lay on the floor. He picked up a yel ow plastic toolbox and emptied the contents on to the carpet.

McEvoy was flying by the seat of her pants. This was not the same as counsel ing a rape victim or trying to calm a battered wife. She'd noticed the hushed, almost reverential tone that Mary Enright had used when speaking to the boy and felt instinctively that this was wrong. At least, it was wrong if they wanted to get any information out of him. She knew that she had to gain his trust.

'Are you looking forward to Christmas, Charlie?' The boy picked up a thick, red plastic bolt and began pushing it through a hole in a tiny workbench. 'I'm sure Father Christmas wil bring you lots of nice things if you're a good boy.' He pushed the bolt further in, his face a picture of concentration. McEvoy moved from her chair and knelt down, a few feet away. 'It looks like you're a good boy to me.' She picked up the plastic screwdriver and examined it, as Charlie furtively examined her. She tried hard to keep any hint of seriousness out of her voice. 'What would be very good is if you could tel me and Tom a little bit about when your mummy got hurt...' She glanced up at the Enrights. Mary's eyes were already fil ing with tears. Her husband sat motionless, his eyes on the floor. Charlie Garner said nothing.

'What you could do, if you wanted, is tel your Nan about it. Do you

want to do that?'

He didn't...

McEvoy felt herself sweating and it was only partial y due to the temperature. She was beginning to feel out of her depth. She started to say something but stopped. She could only watch helplessly as the boy stood up suddenly, marched past her and plonked himself down at Thorne's feet.

Thorne gazed down at Charlie and shrugged. 'Hel o ...' Charlie produced a smal squeaky hammer and began vigorously banging on Thorne's shoe. It might have been nerves or it might have been

because the moment was, in spite of everything, genuinely comical,

but Thorne began to laugh. Then Charlie laughed too.

'I hammer your shoe...'

'Ow... ow... ouch!' Thorne winced in mock agony, and as the boy began to laugh even louder, he sensed that the moment might be right. 'Do you remember the man who was there when your mummy got hurt?'

The laughter didn't exactly stop dead, but the answer to Thorne's question was obvious. Charlie was stil hammering on the shoe but it was purely reflexive. The intermittent squeak of the toy hammer was now the only sound in the room. Mary and Robert Enright sat stock stil on the sofa, and Sarah McEvoy was al but holding her breath, afraid that the slightest movement could spoil everything.

Thorne spoke slowly and seriously. He was not fol owing a different tack to McEvoy for any particular reason. There was no sxategy involved. Instinct just told him to ask the child the question, simply and honestly. Can you tel me what the man who hurt your mummy looked like?'

A squeak, as the hammer hit the shoe. And another. Then the tiny shoulders gave a recognisable shrug. Thorne had seen the same gesture in a hundred stroppy teenagers. Scared, but fronting it out. Maybe I know something, but you get nothing easily.

'Was he older than me do you think?' Charlie glanced up, but only for a second before returning to his hammering. 'Was his hair the same colour as yours or was it darker? What do you think?' There was no discernible reaction. Thorne knew that he was losing the boy.

Hearing a sniff, Thorne looked up and could see that the old man on the sofa was quietly weeping, his big shoulders rising and fal ing as he pressed a handkerchief to his face. Thorne looked at the boy and winked conspiratorial y, 'Was he tal er than your Grandad? I bet you can remember that.'

Charlie stopped hammering. Without looking up he shook his head slowly and emphatical y. Thorne flicked his eyes to McEvoy. She raised her eyebrows back at him. They were thinking the same thing. If that 'no' was as definite as it looked, it certainly didn't tal y with

Margie Knight's description. Thorne wondered who was the more credible witness. The nosy working girl or the three-year-old?

Eye witnesses had screwed him up before. So, probably neither... Whatever, as far as Charlie was concerned, it looked as though the shake of the head was al they were going to get.

The hammering was growing increasingly enthusiastic.

'You're good at hammering, Charlie,' Thorne said.

Mary Enright spoke up from the sofa, she too sensing that the questions were over. 'It's Bob The Builder. He's mad on it. It's what he cal s you sometimes, isn't it, Bob?' She turned to her husband, smiling. Robert Enright said nothing.

McEvoy stood up, rubbing away the stiffness in the back of her legs from where she'd been kneeling. 'Yeah, my nephew's always going on about it. He's driving his mum and dad bonkers, singing the theme tune.'

Mary stood up and began tidying things away, while Charlie carried on, the hammer now replaced by a bright orange screwdriver. 'I don't mind that,' Mary said. 'It's just on so early. Half past six in the morning, on one of those cable channels.'

McEvoy breathed in sharply and nodded sympathetical y. Thorne looked down and brushed his fingers against the boy's shoulder. 'Hey, think about your poor old nan wil you Charlie?

Half past six? You should stil be fast asleep...'

And Charlie Garner looked up at him then, his eyes wide and keen,

the bright orange screwdriver clutched tightly in his smal fist.

'My mummy's asleep.'

In spite of al the horrors to come, the bodies both fresh and long dead, this would be the image, simple and stark, that would be there long after this case was finished, whenever Thorne closed his eyes.

The face of a child.

It's been over a week now, Karen, and it's stil on the television. I've stopped watching now, in case something comes on and catches me unawares when I'm unprepared for it. I knew that it would be on the news, you know, when they found her, but I thought it would die down... I thought it would stop, after a day or two. There always seems to be people dying in one way or another, so I didn't think that it would be news for very long.

They've got some sort of witness they said. Whoever it was must have seen me because they know how tal I am. I know I should be worried, Karen, but I'm not. Part of me wishes they'd seen me up close. Seen my face.

A police officer on the television said it was brutal. 'This brutal kil ing: He said I was brutal and I real y tried so hard not to be. You believe that don't you, Karen? I didn't hit her or anything.

I tried to make it quick and painless. I don't real y expect them to say anything else though. Why should they? They don't know me...

The other one, the one in south Iondon, I can barely bring myself to think about that. It was horrible. Yes, that was brutal.

The scratches are fading, but a couple of people at work noticed and it gave them something else to use against me. Not as if they needed any more ammunition. It was al nudges and giggles and, 'I bet she was a right goer' or, 'did she make a lot of noise?' You know, variations on that theme. I just smiled and blushed, same as I always do.

Oh my God, Karen, if they only knew.

Sometimes I think that perhaps I should just tel them everything. That way it would al be over, because someone would go to the police and I could just sit and wait for them to come and get me. Plus, it might at least make some of them think about me a bit differently. Find someone else to belittle. It would wipe a few smiles off a few faces wouldn't it? It would make them stop. Yes, I'd like them to step back and start to sweat a little.

I'd like them to be scared of me.

But I'm the one that's scared, Karen, you know that. It's the way it's always been hasn't it? That's why I can't ever tel them. Why I can't ever share this with anyone except you.

Why I'm praying, praying, praying that Ruth wil be the last one.

1984

They caught Bardsley just outside the school gates. He had a few mates with him but they took one look at Nicklin, at his face, and melted away into the background. Some of them were fifth-formers at least a year older than he was, and it excited him to watch them scuttle away like the spineless wankers he knew they were.

The two of them were on Bardsley in a second. Palmer stood in front of him, solid, red-faced and shaking. Nicklin grabbed the strap of his sports bag and together they dragged him towards the bushes.

The park ran right alongside the main entrance to the school. A lot of the boys cut across it on the way to school and back, and the sixth formers would hang around with their opposite numbers from the neighbouring girls' school. It wasn't a nice park; a tatty bowling green, an attempt at an aviary and a floating population of surly kids - smoking, groping or eating chips.

Palmer and Nicklin pushed Bardsley towards the bushes that bordered the bird cages. He grabbed on to the wire of the nearest cage. It housed a moulting mynah bird which, in spite of the best efforts of every kid in school, resolutely refused to swear, producing nothing but an ear-splitting wolf-whistle every few minutes. Bardsley began to kick out wildly. Palmer clung on to the col ar of his blazer, which was already starting to tear, and shuffled his legs back, out of the range of the boy's flailing Doc Martens. Nicklin stepped in closer and, oblivious to the pain in his shin as he was repeatedly booted, punched Bardsley hard in the face. Bardsley's hands moved from the wire to his face as blood began to gush from his nose. Smiling, Nicklin pushed him on to his knees, rammed a knee into his neck and pressed him down into the dirt.

After a nod from Nicklin, Palmer dropped on to Bardsley's chest

and sat there for a few moments, breathing heavily, his face the colour of a Bramley apple.

Bardsley took his hand away from his face and glared up at the younger boy. There was blood on his teeth. 'You're fucking dead, Palmer.'

Palmer's face grew even redder as his big hands reached forward to grab greasy handfuls of Bardsley's dirty blond hair. 'What did you say about Karen?'

'Who the fuck's Karen?'

Nicklin was standing behind Bardsley's head, his back against a tree, his hands in his pockets, his foot pressed against the scalp of the boy on the ground. He pushed his tongue in behind his bottom teeth, opened his mouth and slowly let a thick, globular string of spit drop down on to the bloody face below. Bardsley flinched and squeezed his eyes tight shut. When he opened them again he was staring up at the pistol in Nicklin's hand.

Palmer and Bardsley moaned at almost the same time. Bardsley in terror at the sight of the pistol, and Palmer in disgust as the groin of the boy beneath him quickly began to grow damp.

'Shit... he's pissed himself? Palmer jumped up and pointed down at the dark, spreading stain on Bardsley's grey trousers.

Nicklin giggled. 'Wel turn him over then.' Palmer shook his head. Nicklin stopped giggling as the mynah bird let out a shril whistle from the cage behind him. 'Fucking turn him over...'

Palmer stepped forward nervously. Bardsley glowered at him as he tried with some difficulty to scramble to his feet, one hand wiping away blood and spit and dirt, the other cover!ng his groin. His voice was thick with rage and the effort of holding back tears, 'Dead ... fucking dead...' But the fight had gone out of him and Palmer was easily able to yank him over on to his bel y.

Nicklin moved round and knelt down next to Palmer at Bardsley's feet. 'Pul his pants down.'

Bardsley began trying to drag himself away until Nicklin leaned

forward and pressed the pistol into his neck. Bardsley froze and dropped back into the dirt.

'Right, grab that side...' Nicklin took hold of Bardsley's waistband and began to pul . He looked at Palmer, who, after a second or two, did the same, and moments later, Bardsley's trousers and pants were around his ankles.

'He's got fucking blue pants on...'

'Stu, that's enough, isn't it?'

'Pissed his pants like a girl. I can smel shit as wel ...' 'Stuart...'

Nicklin handed Palmer the pistol. 'Stick this up his arse.'

At these words Bardsley was predictably energised, and his buttocks pumped rapidly up and down in his frantic attempts to get away. Palmer took a step back, staring at the ground, but Nicklin leaned in close to Bardsley, laughing. 'Go on Bardsley, you bummer, shag it. Shag the ground you fucking perv ... only thing you'l ever get to shag, you spastic...'

Palmer turned the pistol over and over in his hand. Nicklin looked up at him, smiling, making certain that Palmer was reassured by the smile before letting it slowly dissolve. Looking serious. Concerned. Shaking his head.

'He said he was going to do stuff to Karen, Martin.'

Bardsley tried for the last time to tel them that he didn't have a fucking clue who Karen was, but the words were lost as he dissolved into sobs.

Nicklin lowered his voice and spoke slowly. Things he didn't want to tel his friend; things he had to tel him. 'Dirty stuff, Mart. He cal ed her names.' Palmer wrapped his fat fist around the butt of the pistol and dropped down slowly, his knees heavy on the back of Bardsley's calves. 'Said you'd done things to her ... touched her tits.' Palmer pushed the barrel into the soft, pale flesh of Bardsley's buttocks and held it there. Bardsley whimpered.