Slipknot (10 page)

She tried to will her thoughts on. It is never a good idea to become too involved in a case. A coroner must, inevitably, move from death to death, like a spectre in a graveyard, dealing with one only to move straightaway to another tragedy, another loss. She knew this. It was part of the job. And yet this one small, tragic case was holding her fast. It was easy to speculate why. Her own son, the same age as Callum Hughes, had also recently left home. Two mothers. And – surely – there were more. War, boarding school, broken homes where the offspring stayed with the father. There were plenty of incidences where mothers and sons were separated.

There was a soft knock at the door. Sukey entered, gingerly carrying a mug. ‘Agnetha boiled up the kettle,’ she said. ‘I thought you might like a coffee.’

Martha felt a rush of pride and affection for her daughter, leggy, Nordic blonde. ‘Thanks,’ she said and felt an
overwhelming
instinct to pat the bed and invite her to share confidences. ‘I thought we’d go and see Sam on Sunday,’ she said.

Sukey wrinkled her nose up. ‘Not sit through a game?’

‘No. He’s playing on Saturday.’

‘Great.’ Sukey continued to look unexcited. ‘So he’ll either be really full of himself or down in the dumps because he’s fluffed a goal.’

‘Come on, Sukes,’ Martha cajoled. ‘It’s his life. It’s important to him.’

Sukey’s eyes sparkled. ‘All right then,’ she said, ‘if we must. I think Agnetha wants to go to London anyway. Her boyfriend’s over for a holiday.’

‘Then he must come here for a few days.’

‘He might not want to.’

‘Well – we can at least ask him.’

‘OK.’ Sukey climbed off the bed. ‘I’ll suggest it to her.’

‘It would be better coming from me.’

Behind the White House were some woods: largely pine and Spruce trees which dropped their needles onto a soft path. Once Sukey had departed for school with Agnetha driving her Martha walked the familiar trail, Bobby bounding ahead of her, returning every few minutes to lick her hand and reassure himself that he was still the number one dog in her life. An early autumnal mist gave the ground an insubstantial appearance, looking as though the trees were planted not in the ground but in a soft swathe of cotton wool. The dampness of autumn had already crept in, giving a chill to the morning. She was glad to return to the warmth of the house and a shower.

She glanced along her wardrobe. As soon as the autumn fashions reached the shops she always planned her outfits for the next few months. Her practice was to lay all her garments on the bed, choose the ones she still enjoyed wearing, throw away the mistakes and clothes which she no longer wore and then plan a few extra outfits for the autumn and winter. One of her newest purchases had been a plum-coloured suit with an A-line skirt in a soft wool. She had loved the feel of it and bought it for just such a day as today. Cold, bright and with no inquests. Underneath the jacket she wore an ivory T-shirt.
She stood back and felt pleased with the result. Next she swiped her face with make-up and brushed her hair. As usual it was ready for a cut. She wrinkled her nose into the mirror. She was sure that her hair grew faster than other people’s. Today, she vowed, she would make an appointment and run the gauntlet of her hairdresser Vernon Grubb’s wrath. Too thick. Too unruly. Too wild. She did her best, sprayed on a product guaranteed to ‘tame the wildest hair’ as well as giving it an ‘enviable gloss’. She sighed. How she wished she could believe the claims made by the manufacturers of expensive beauty products.
Ten years younger, clear, youthful skin, a glow to shed years
…What woman over thirty wouldn’t be tempted? The shampoo hadn’t lived up to its promise.

She was even more glad she had worn her new suit when, a little after eleven, Jericho rang her desk phone.

‘Detective Inspector Randall wants to know if you’ve got a minute,’ he said flatly. Jericho did not approve of anybody interrupting her work except him.

‘Put him through, Jerry,’ she said.

‘Martha.’ Alex’s voice sounded friendly. Strong, vital – very alive. ‘I don’t know whether you’d be interested but we’ve got the footage of the CCTV video at the prison. I suppose it shows something of the last hours of Callum’s life. I thought you might see something there that explained his suicide.’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose you’d be interested?’

He knew her too well. He had only rung her because he’d known she would be intrigued.

She accepted.

‘Look – why don’t I get some sandwiches in and we can watch it together in the station?’

She agreed and ran the gauntlet of Jericho’s further disapproval by telling him she was out for lunch.

She drove to Monkmoor station and found Alex in his office. Office sounds grand but in reality it was a busy area shared with a few of his colleagues. She sat at his scratched old desk in an uncomfortable chair. But the bottles of water and Greek salad sandwiches looked appetising.

He flicked the blinds down and they sat down to watch.

Like the other officers Martha found the grainy shots disappointing as the two officers stalked the cells, throwing open doors. And then…

Martha sat up. There he was. Much as she had imagined him. In the flesh and alive but with only a few short hours to go. Thin-shouldered, short dark hair, the boy she had only seen in death. She watched him burst out of his cell and the officer catching him. The camera had captured him walking towards it, the two prison officers either side while the boy between them staggered. Martha peered closer. It looked as though Callum was gasping for air. She remembered his mother telling her the boy was asthmatic. There was nothing more guaranteed to provoke an asthma attack than a night in the cells with Tyrone Smith. But at least they were allowing him to take a walk. The boy’s gait was jerky. His shoulders heaved. It was impossible to tell – the picture was so bad. But it looked now as though he was crying. Sobbing. Martha could almost hear him. She stopped eating her sandwich. Callum Hughes looked wretched. She offered up a silent prayer.

Please – don’t let Sam be so unhappy.

She pushed her attention back to the video. They were
walking him back to the cell. And he didn’t want to go. They were supporting him. One either side. They practically had to throw him back in.

Martha felt unbearably moved by it.

‘Poor boy,’ she said.

Randall pressed the stop switch. ‘The rest of the tape only shows the two officers entering the cell and leaving it and then the mayhem after the alarm was raised.

Martha stood up and thanked Randall. He looked curiously at her. ‘So does it explain his death?’

She turned her gaze to him. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I think it does. Is there anything else?’

‘Not that it throws any real light on things,’ he said. ‘Only that Gavin Morrison – Tyrone Smith’s ex-cell mate said that, interestingly, Smith set out certain rules when they first shared a cell together. No snoring, lights out when he said, he had to be first to the bog in the morning. Things like that. As long as he kept to the rules he was OK. But once he must have let out a snort and he woke up to feel Smith’s fingers clamped around his throat.’

‘Nice.’

‘He also confirmed that Smith was an insomniac and would kill for sleeping tablets.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ she said.

She drove back to her office and Jericho handed her a pile of papers. She groaned when she saw what their subject was. So she spent the afternoon going through recent deaths from MRSA both in the community and in the local hospital. Three death certificates sat on her desk with the infamous superbug
cited as a contributory cause. One from the community and the other two in the hospital. She knew that the media would attempt to make a story out of it and felt defeated. It was pointless to say that these were already-sick people who had lost the ability to mobilise their immune systems. She stared out over the town. Sometimes she felt like its shepherd. But like a good shepherd sometimes you have to lead your flock to the place of the skull. It might be an unpalatable fact but we are not immortal. No health service, no doctor, no Florence Nightingale of a nurse can make us so.

She did not want to start pointing fingers at her inquests. And yet it was incumbent on her to do so. It was expected of her. She read through the medical facts, checking her mobile phone every few minutes. But from Sam there was nothing.

And that, in a way, was harder.

Martha studied the man in front of her. Slim,
round-shouldered
, small rimless glasses, a scruffy sports jacket over baggy trousers and well-worn trainers. ‘I wanted to come,’ he said earnestly. ‘I felt I ought to.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘Though what good it’ll do now.’ He left the sentence hanging before bursting out, ‘Oh, what’s the point?’

‘Callum deserves representation,’ Martha said quietly. ‘And I think his mother would appreciate it.’

Adam Farthing managed a smile. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘The lovely Shelley.’ He looked down at his shoes.

Martha waited. Adam Farthing had come here of his own volition. Probably Shelley Hughes had persuaded him. No mother could bear to see her son go to his grave without some sort of tribute being made.

Adam Farthing peered up at her. His head was habitually bowed so the movement seemed set at an uncomfortable angle, a swivelling, sideways turn. ‘No one seems to want me to speak up for the lad,’ he said hoarsely. ‘My colleagues at the school have more or less warned me off.’

‘Really?’ Friends of Martha would have been alerted by the treacly tone in her voice. But Adam Farthing was a stranger. He continued – unaware.

‘But he was good. He was a decent boy. If he hadn’t been picked on.’ His face screwed up. ‘I can’t help feeling responsible.’

‘Responsible?’

She felt a quick, hot anger towards this weak, apologetic man. Had he never heard the rhyme ‘For want of a nail’? Did he not see how these tragic events should have been nipped in the bud. And then there would have been no death.

‘I suppose your colleagues are anxious to have no slur on the school,’ she probed quietly.

‘That plus a feeling of guilt that we stood by and did nothing.’ For the first time she met Farthing’s eyes and her dislike of him began to melt. He couldn’t help being the sort of person he was. Like Callum Hughes he too was inherently decent.

‘When did it start?’

‘A year. No. Two years ago. I get the feeling Roger Gough… DreadNought…’ A whisper of a smile broadened his mouth. ‘Callum and I thought up the name between us. He was very ‘in’ to the First World War. Loved reading about the battles – the Somme, Ypres, Passchendaele, Ploegsteert, Loos, Serre.’

Martha felt a jolt. She had seen Callum Hughes mentally as an unfortunate and a criminal,
physically
as a frightened youth being marched down a corridor by two prison officers. She had seen him too as a corpse, a suicide victim. But this was the first time she had pictured him as someone real, someone with intelligence and identity, sympathy and interest in past events. She eyed the teacher.

He was still smiling at the memory. ‘We thought the name, DreadNought, fitted him rather well. Huge great warship, you know. And Gough’s a very overweight young man.’ He gave a wry chuckle. ‘Although I suspect the dread nought bit is a compliment. Like lots of bullies Gough is actually a bit of a coward. Take his cheerleaders away from him and he would soon have crumpled. But Gough was smart. He was careful he never was alone.’ The brown eyes, tired with guilt, met hers and she knew that Callum’s teacher would never quite forget his pupil. ‘Gough was a thoroughly nasty piece of work, Mrs Gunn, a pull-the-legs-off-flies sort of boy. You know what I mean?’

‘I do.’

‘On the other hand young Callum – well – with his asthma and everything he was skinny. Bound to be the butt of jokes. They called him a Mother’s Boy, teased him relentlessly. And Callum was a sensitive lad. He took it badly. And yet he was far from being the only one in the class to come from a
single-parent
home. Practically
de rigueur
in our school. But even the fact that his mum was alone seemed to mark him.’ He broke off. ‘You’ve met Shelley Hughes I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well – she’s not the ordinary—’ She caught a flash of the shy smile again. ‘She’s not your average single mum. There’s a bit of something about her.’

Privately Martha agreed. But they were getting nowhere. It was time to rein him in. ‘Why was nothing done to stop the bullying?’

‘We tried. We did try but Shelley wouldn’t make a formal complaint and Callum would just shrug and mutter. For him
he became quite uncommunicative. He retreated. He wouldn’t even confide in me. It was as though his fear of what was happening paralysed him. He couldn’t seem to do anything about it – even enlist my help. It was impossible for us to take any action without evidence. The Goughs would have made mincemeat out of us. Taken us to court and accused us of defaming their son’s character. Mr and Mrs Gough were convinced that their son was blameless and that if he attacked Callum then Callum must have provoked him. And, of course, subsequent events only reinforced their stance. No, Mrs Gunn. You might think right triumphs but in my experience it is the strongest and the one who shouts the loudest who wins, particularly when they have nothing to lose.’

‘So you mentioned the bullying to Mr and Mrs Gough?’

Farthing looked almost embarrassed. ‘In a very roundabout way. At a parents’ evening I simply said that there was some bullying in the school, did they know anything about it?’

‘Their response?’

‘They just looked blank, said their son had nothing to do with any bullying, neither did he know anything about it, that just because he was big didn’t make him a bully and why weren’t his history marks higher, what did I have against him, why did I always mark him down? You get the picture?’

She nodded. ‘And you never spoke to Gough yourself?’

‘I didn’t dare. Not without proper evidence. I let him know that I knew what was going on. I made hints and allusions, said things like I kept an eye on the playground during lunchtime. It was all I could do to protect young Callum. Anything more would have made him more of a teacher’s pet.’

‘You let him know that you were aware what he was doing but would do nothing about it?’

No answer.

‘In my book that’s a sort of tacit acquiescence, isn’t it?’

Adam Farthing dropped his head again to stare at his trainers. They were old, worn and grubby.

‘Don’t make me feel worse,’ he said. ‘I didn’t come here for criticism.’

‘I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him,’ she muttered, ‘except you’re doing the opposite.’

He smiled at her and for that brief second they shared something which seemed to give the teacher the confidence to say what had been on his mind.

‘I need you to tell me what’s appropriate to say at the inquest.’

Martha drew in a deep sigh and threw back her shoulders. She wanted to inspire him. ‘Paint a picture of him, Mr Farthing. Speak up and say what his interests were, what his hobbies were, his sense of humour, what he did with his leisure time. Think of nice things, good things that his class mates have said about him.’

She knew instantly she’d said the wrong thing when Farthing’s face changed and she filled in…

Psycho. Madman. Mad-Axe-Hughes. Killer. Murderer. Blood-letter.

How cruel it all was.

‘We should have done something to stop it,’ he said. ‘We knew Roger Gough was a thug. I watched him through the windows. Taunting youngsters. Smacking them. Pushing them. One day I saw him shove Callum right into the road. A
bus was coming. Gough’s friends were all cheering. I thought then a tragedy would come from it. I rapped the window.’ He paused as though he knew how inadequate this seemed. ‘But even then I didn’t foresee this.’

‘What would you have done if you had?’

‘Risked it,’ Farthing said quietly. ‘Got Gough suspended. I saw the incident. I knew it was dangerous. I knew the violence was escalating but I didn’t do anything. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life, Mrs Gunn.’

There is nothing I can do, Martha thought. You’re right. You should have spoken out. You should have defended him. He was weak. Gough was strong. And now Callum is dead and Gough injured.

Farthing recovered and continued.

‘Callum was an unusual boy – from the first. He absolutely loved history. In fact he had an insight into past events that was quite mature. He might have been a historian. His particular interest was the First World War. He read every book on the subject he could get his hands on. He even studied the poets, seemed to know how the soldiers had felt – all the futility, all the pointlessness. Everything.’

How ironic then that he should share an equally premature, untimely and violent death but how much more ignominious.

‘He would have been a great person.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m glad that you’ve come. Make a brief speech, by all means, but no benefit can come now from talking about the bullying. You could perhaps say that Callum’s life was not easy – or that many young people of today have a difficult time with friends and school. Talk about
his interest in the First World War. You might even find a quotation from one of the poets which seems fitting.’ She stood up.

‘I’ll see you next Tuesday then.’

She shook his hand.

Agnetha left for London on the Saturday morning, looking very attractive in a long white gypsy skirt, slung low over her narrow hips, a huge leather buckled belt emphasising her slimness. ‘I’ll be back Sunday night, Mrs Gunn,’ she said gaily and accelerated the small Peugeot down the drive, her long arm jingling with huge bracelets waving out of the window until she was out of sight.

Martha enjoyed the Saturday night, for once alone with her daughter, poring over a Jamie Oliver recipe book for their teatime treat before settling down to a DVD of
Notting Hill
– Sukey’s choice.

On Sunday she and Sukey were in the car by eleven, ready for their trip to see Sam. Martha had the mother’s compulsion to take a tuck box full of goodies but she was unsure of what to put in it. Like many youngsters obsessed with sport, Sam was very fussy about what calories he ate. In the end she took a home-made parkin out of the freezer and trusted he would find it acceptable.

Liverpool colours were everywhere, she thought, as she drove into the academy. Lads carrying footballs were scurrying here and there, all with some purpose. She found Sam sitting in the reception and was glad when he couldn’t hide his pleasure at seeing her. He was wearing Bermuda shorts, socks slipping down. Bruises on his right shin. He
stood up and hugged her tightly. ‘Hi Mum.’

She held him at arm’s length and studied him. He was – reassuringly – the same Sam. Spiky hair, crooked teeth, tentative grin.

‘Good gracious,’ she said, maternal instinct to the fore. ‘Don’t you wear shin pads?’

‘Mine slipped,’ he said quickly.

She dropped the subject.

‘So how’s it going?’

‘OK,’ he said cautiously. ‘Shall we go for a walk around?’

She nodded and again felt pleasure at the sight of the twins’ heads together, Sukey’s blonde hair looking even paler beside Sam’s darker head with its suspicious tinge of red. ‘I’ve told my roommates about my sister, the Abba fan,’ she heard him say.

‘Oh, I’m getting more sophisticated these days,’ she replied, tossing her hair. ‘I think my Abba phase is coming to an end.’

‘I wouldn’t have left home if I’d have known,’ Sam said gruffly. ‘I might have stuck it, Dancing Queen.’

Sukey pushed him sideways. ‘Don’t be such a freak,’ she said kindly.

Martha let them wander ahead while she took in their surroundings. The pitches were immaculately kept, the grass looking like an advert for Green Things or something that sorted your lawns, killed the weeds, fed the grass. Everywhere she could hear encouragement from the Coaches, the odd scolding, a few shouts from the boys. ‘Donnelly. Pass. Here. Over here, Bugall.’ And on all the youngsters’ faces was the same gritty determination she’d so often seen in Sam.

She caught up with them. ‘So what was with the mistletoe code?’

Sam flushed. ‘Nothing really, Mum. A bit of ragging from the others. And I suppose I was, well – it’s a big thing moving out when you’re just a teenager.’

‘And?’ she coaxed gently.

‘I made a bit of an idiot of myself in the game,’ he said dejectedly. ‘And then I thought that’s all I’m here for – the game. It’s all any one cares about here. All they talk about. It seems strange. That’s all. And if I don’t play well no one forgets.’ He was frowning. ‘By coming here I’ve shut some pretty big doors, haven’t I? Career-wise.’

She smiled. ‘Not at thirteen, Sam.’

‘I keep thinking if I don’t perform well I’ll be dropped. And then what?’

‘Then you’ll just have to get on with your life.’

Her son gave her a withering look.

So already he was in the frame. Something in Martha exulted while at the same time another part of her died.

It was a happy day, in general. She watched her son pick his food, choosing carefully, munching on pasta and salad. They left at eight and Martha felt reassured.