Needing (11 page)

“So, if the neighbours are to be believed, Glenn—still can’t get over that—had run away before. Returned after a day or two. Maybe her parents assumed this time was the same.”

“Maybe they didn’t care,” Oliver said.

Shields ignored him. “So, that’s her background. No other family except those in that house. No friends. And no one knows where she went when she did go missing. Social Services were aware of her, but you know their policy—best to keep the child with her mother for as long as they can, even if that mother’s off her face half the time.”

“Heard about that myself,” Oliver said. “The wrench of separation is apparently far worse for the kid than placing her in a nice home where someone gives a shit. Makes no sense to me. Children can adapt. She’d have got over it, had a better life. Now?” He couldn’t finish what he’d wanted to say. The thought of where Glenn would end up should she be caught didn’t bear thinking about. A damaged soul forever, most likely, always thinking she was in the wrong, that no one cared.

Shields stared at him like he’d spoken out of turn, and also like Oliver was a piece of shit he was tolerating only because of their threat to expose his harassment of them. He turned away, looked at Langham. “So, when you go inside, you’ll understand the mess you’ll see.”

They followed Shields up the path. Ordinarily, Oliver would have entertained shoving the man forward so he tripped, and he laughed to himself about the imagery, but he was fucked if he could do that now. Emotions gripped him—those of whoever had been killed inside—and they weren’t pretty.

“Fucking little bitch. Knew I shouldn’t have had her. Was going to get an abortion, wasn’t I? But my old man reckoned it’d be a laugh to have a kid. Social Security payments would go up. So I had her, and look where it got us.”

Oliver stopped walking, held his hand up to alert Langham that the dead had spoken. “Where is she?”

“Don’t know, don’t fucking care.”

Langham stopped too, waving at Shields to do the same. The smarmy detective gave an eye roll and huffed out an impatient breath. But he halted.

“You don’t have any idea where she might have gone?” Oliver asked.

“No. Well, maybe. Made a pal for herself with some old biddy down the road. Reckon that’s where she fucked off to when she disappeared for days on end. Pissed me off, that did. Had no one here to make my cuppas.”

Oliver bit down on his tongue. He wanted to rip this woman a new arsehole. Her cackling laugh, rich with phlegm, churned his stomach.

“Down this road?”

“Yeah. Number ninety-seven. Mrs Roosay. Some poncy name like that.”

Oliver couldn’t hold his anger back any longer. “And it didn’t
bother
you? You just let your child go there without checking the woman out
first?
”

“Course I fucking didn’t. Why would I? Got her out from under my feet, didn’t it?”

He couldn’t resist his retort. “But your cuppas…”

“Yeah, there was that, but I wasn’t too fussed. Not really. Wouldn’t be long before someone else would be there to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nosey bastard, aren’t you?”

She cackled again, the sound fading, and Oliver knew he’d lost her.

“Shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, a headache threatening to lay him out. “She’s gone. Didn’t offer much except the fact Glenn visited with an old lady at number ninety-seven. A Mrs Roosay.”

Shields lifted onto his tiptoes, peering down the street. “That’s down there. Come inside here first, Langham, then you can take your lapdog down there and interview the neighbour.” He shook his head. “I knocked on that door too. Thought she was out.”

Oliver was too weary to snipe back about the lapdog comment. His energy had been sapped by Glenn’s mother, leaving behind the taint of evil and utter disregard for anyone but herself. He sighed as they stepped into the house, mentally preparing himself for what he was about to see. He hoped to God that woman wouldn’t contact him again once he stood by her body.

“In here,” Shields said, leading them through a doorway in the hall and into a lounge. He stood in the centre, looking to his left, and out came the handkerchief again.

Langham joined him, and by the look on his face, Oliver wasn’t sure he wanted to follow. Langham had paled, his lips were drawn back in a grimace and the frown that appeared gouged deep crevices in his brow.

Oliver went into the room.

Glenn’s mother was an unrecognisable heap of innards, legs and arms protruding from it. Intestines, heart, lungs, kidneys and her liver mounded high inside a ripped-open torso that had bled profusely. The air had dried them out a little, darkened them, but the carnage wasn’t something you could imagine. It had to be seen to be believed.

“Where’s her head?” Oliver whispered.

“Over here,” Shields said, the words muffled by his hanky.

Oliver followed Shields’ pointed finger. The head sat in the corner of the room, wedged on top of a pile of scrunched-up newspaper and oily fish and chip wrappers. An upended fast-food-joint cup lay beside it, and there was a note beside that.

“What’s the note say?” Oliver asked.

“Kid’s writing, bit of an angry scrawl but legible,” Shields said. “It says, ‘
Here’s your fucking tea’
. I assume the cup had tea in it, judging by the darker stain on the carpet around the neck stump, but it’s difficult to tell, what with the amount of blood.”

Oliver allowed himself a small smile at the sense of victory Glenn must have felt then. He didn’t condone killing of any kind, but in this situation… No, he wasn’t going to go there.

“There’s something else too.” Shields pointed to the opposite corner. “Another note as well.”

Oliver dared himself to turn his head. What looked like a foetus lay curled in the corner, a filthy, ragged blanket over it, only the head poking out.

“And
that
note?” Langham asked.

Shields moved to the door behind Oliver. “Says, ‘
I saved you from doing it’
.”

Oliver pushed past Shields and went out into the hallway, his mind swimming with what Glenn must have put up with for her to have killed her mother knowing she was pregnant. Her logic in killing her unborn sibling wasn’t lost on him. She’d saved the child a life of hell like she’d had. Christ, she must have suffered so much, harboured so much rage, and the drugs had given her the impetus to erase it all. Except it would be in her mind, lingering. Always. He understood why it was such a rage killing. Drugged up and crazed Glenn might be, but somewhere inside was a little girl who just wanted to be loved and accepted.

It sickened Oliver. All of it.

“There’s another one.” Shields walked past Oliver, making a show of ensuring they didn’t touch in the small space, and began walking upstairs.

Langham followed, his expression grim. Oliver had wanted Langham to look at him, to allow him to offer an understanding smile or some other way to show that he was aware of what
his man
was going through. But he hadn’t been able to. Langham took the stairs one at a time, arms heavy by his sides, as though every ounce of energy had been sucked out of him. Oliver felt the same, and when he trailed the two detectives, his legs felt like they’d give way any minute and he’d tumble back down, landing in the filth of the hallway, stinky old shoes and a broken tennis racquet for a pillow.

On the landing, one strewn with dirty laundry, bursting refuse sacks—he was surprised this household even owned any or knew what they were—and an odd assortment of bric-a-brac, he breathed in through his mouth. The whole house was filled with the stench of death, cloying and thick, making him want to cough his guts up and run out into the fresh air. But he wanted to be with Langham every step of the way on this case, and if it meant viewing another corpse then so be it.

Inside the box bedroom, a man sat on a bare mattress stained by his blood and who only knew what else. Dark stains, light stains—piss and shit most likely—and patches of crusty dirt that may well have been mud or food. He wasn’t sure and didn’t much want to entertain it further. The body held his gaze then. Sitting up like that, he looked for all the world like a normal guy, just taking a nap in the nude. His eyes were closed, his hands clasped over his beach ball belly and his black hair flopped forward over one eye. Both legs stuck out in front of him, the backs of his knees touching the mattress edge, the heels of his feet on a matted rug.

But he no longer owned a penis. It sat beside him, holding down a note like an obscene paperweight. Blood had dripped from it, leaving a dribble that had meandered across the page, a now black-encrusted river.

She’d cut it off when he’d been alive, then.

But how had she killed him? Nothing else appeared out of place. Just a guy napping, sans dick.

Shields broke their shocked silence, his voice overly abrasive. Perhaps the thought of losing
his
cock like that had got to him. Oliver almost smiled.

“This note says, ‘
Hope you enjoyed your dinner
.’ Seems obvious the girl had cooked for them, been a skivvy. She must have fed him something. Won’t know what that was until the coroner’s had a good look at him and the tox screens come back.”

Langham cleared his throat. “That penis. Indicates she did more for him than cook dinner.”

“Seems that way.” Shields walked out of the room, calling from the landing, “Mrs Roosay. Number ninety-seven!” as though
he’d
been the one to get the tip and they’d known nothing about it until he’d just said.

Oliver stopped himself thinking like that, or being riled by Shields’ arrogant ways. He wanted to find Glenn so those drugs were taken from her system and she was given some understanding somewhere. How old was she? If she was twelve or above, she’d be tried as an adult and sent away. He didn’t think that was fair. She deserved help, a better life, a family who cared.

That she possibly wasn’t going to get it had Oliver belting out of the room and down the stairs, back out onto the broken concrete path Glenn had trudged up and down all her life, leaving and entering a home where no one cared if she existed—except for the fact that she made cups of tea, cooked meals and gave her father more than he had a right to take.

Chapter Ten

Mrs Roosay turned out to be Mrs Ros
é
, a French woman of indeterminate years. She stood on her doorstep, back hunched, shoulders rounded, and squinted at them through thick-lensed glasses. Her home-knitted cardigan, brown with hints of beige running through it, crossed over at the front, her arms clamping the garment to her.

“Glenn, you say?”

“Yes, madam.” Langham smiled. “Have you seen her today. Or recently?”

Oliver studied her. She didn’t display body language that spoke of her withholding information. Or holding a child in her home. She looked weary, tired deep in her bones, and bewildered that a detective stood on her front path asking about a little girl.

“I have not seen her for weeks. I have been worried, but there is nothing I can do. The authorities, they do not listen to me. Say it is ‘all in hand’. I do not believe them. How can it be all in hand if the child is still dirty and uncared for?”

Tears filled her eyes, and Oliver cursed the fact that here was a woman who had tried to help, yet her warm heart and good intentions had seemingly been brushed away.

“Did you allow Glenn into your home at any time, Mrs Ros
é?” Langham’s voice was soft, kind.

She nodded. “I would rather tell you inside. Please, come in.”

Mrs Ros
é led the way into her living room, the house the same layout as Glenn’s.
Except this home was clean and well cared for. Family photographs covered the walls and every available surface—end tables, the mantel, the television—and the air smelt of furniture polish and washing detergent. Glenn must have loved it here and wondered how her home could be so different.

Oliver and Langham sat at Mrs Ros
é’s gesture to do so, on an overstuffed sofa covered in pink chintz. She sat in a matching chair to their right and gazed out of the front window with rheumy eyes.

“She is a dear little thing. I waited for her. To come here and visit. But she did not come. The last time she was here was my birthday.” She looked at Langham, her smile sad and watery.

“When was that,
Mrs Ros
é?” he asked.

“Two months ago. August seventeenth. She said she had made me a card, that she would bring it…” Her lower lip quivered.

“And the time before that?” Langham prodded.

“Every week on a Saturday morning. I have missed her. I wondered if the authorities had finally listened to me and taken her away because I saw her getting into someone’s car. That car had been outside the house before, and the child had spoken to whoever was inside. Through the window.”

She’d grabbed Oliver’s attention with that.

Langham’s too. The detective sat up straighter, then leant forward to take the old woman’s hand in his. “Can you remember what day that was?”

She nodded. “A Friday. The Friday after she had been here on the Saturday.” She frowned, as though the date eluded her. “I cannot remember…”

“I can work the date out,
Mrs Ros
é, don’t worry about that.” Langham gave her a gentle smile. “The car. Can you remember it?”

She nodded. “Very expensive. Black. With one of those badges on the front. A Mercedes. The man who collected her did not enter her house or knock on the door. I had been pruning in the front garden and saw Glenn pass. She did not see me. Her head was down, as usual. But she looked up just before she got to the car. The man got out and folded his arms on the roof just above his open door. He smiled, talked to her, but I cannot tell you what it was about. I could not hear. Glenn nodded, and he reached inside the car. He handed her something. Perhaps a cake, I am not sure, but she ate it there on the path.”

Mrs Ros
é raised one hand to her heart and closed her eyes. “Then the man walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger side. Glenn nodded, smiled up at him, and it seemed that she knew him because she got inside. Then he drove away and I have not seen her since.” She stared at Langham. “I should have telephoned the police. But I thought… The car had been before…”