Speak No Evil (7 page)

‘Grief does affect different people in different ways.'

She nodded. Her smile disappeared completely.

‘Well,' she said, ‘it's been a great meal. Thanks. I—'

‘Are you rushing off?'

She pointed towards the hotel next door. ‘Staying overnight. Got to head off in the morning. Early. Need some sleep.' The smile returned. ‘Thanks for a great time.' She signalled to the waiter for the bill.

‘Would you like to stay and have a drink?'

She looked genuinely torn. ‘Maybe next time.'

Donovan nodded. Tried not to feel too sad. ‘OK, then.'

She charged the meal to her room, stood up and looked at him. ‘Thanks. It's been great to meet you. Any problems or questions, give me a ring.'

And she was off.

Donovan had gone back to his flat, read the report, made notes. Readied himself to start work.

Put Wendy out of his head.

Donovan poured himself a coffee, sat down on the sofa, checked his watch. Too early to go to the Cluny. Even if he was going to eat there too. He picked up his notes from the session, thought of listening to the tapes. Decided against it. Not enough there worth transcribing. He would do it tomorrow when hopefully there would be something more to add.

He picked up the remote, flicked on the TV. Local news. A boy had been killed in Byker. The
Look North
anchor had on his serious face for relaying it. The scene switched from studio to live outside broadcast, where a reporter wearing a similarly serious face was standing outside the gates of a school in Byker. She told the camera what had happened. A thirteen-year-old boy had been stabbed in the early hours of the morning on the Hancock Estate.

‘Not surprised,' said Donovan under his breath.

The boy was named as Calvin Bell and his family were appealing for witnesses.

Good luck with that, thought Donovan, quickly castigating himself for being so cynical then reasoning to himself that it wasn't cynicism. Who else would be out at that time of night apart from the killer? And who would come forward from the Hancock Estate?

The scene jumped to a police press conference where a female detective was making an appeal for information.

‘Hi, Di,' said Donovan, waving to the screen when he saw DI Di Nattrass. She and him had history. Mostly good, or tolerable at least, but not always.

She finished and the story was filled with images of a more general nature. Knife-crime stats swirled and danced. A voiceover told of rising violence among the young in such apocalyptic terms that Donovan wouldn't have expected a single teenager to still be alive by the time
EastEnders
came on. They went for a quotation to a talking head – and Donovan was taken aback.

There was Sylvia Cunliffe. He remembered his conversation with Wendy once again.

She was a grandmother now, heavy and solid, her brow furrowed, her face permanently twisted. She looked like an angry Easter Island head. Donovan knew from experience how easy it was to allow just one, horrific event to define a life. She had parlayed her rage and grief into a media career, never forgiving, never forgetting.

He switched off the TV, picked up the mug, took another mouthful, drained the mug empty. He took it into the kitchen, placed it on the draining board. Albion House. He couldn't resist it. If ever there was a place and a business made for each other, this was it.

Situated on Stepney Bank in the heart of the Ouseburn area of Newcastle, the area's claim to fame was that it used to appear in the credits of
Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?
as a symbol of the region's run-down industrial past. It was now rapidly redeveloping as a base for newer, smaller, more dynamic businesses. Artists' studios. Theatre companies. Galleries. Printers. Publishers. The Seven Stories children's literature museum. And pubs like the Cluny, a reclaimed bonded whisky warehouse now turned into bars, restaurant, live music venue and art gallery. And Donovan's local. Almost his second office.

Albion House was a great location, he thought. And the mortgage was cheaper than on the old place. Business was starting to pick up and the place had been renovated and redecorated. Things were going well.

He thought of the screen downstairs in the office showing the unchanging blue door.

Most things were going well.

He checked his watch once more. Yes, he wouldn't look too desperate if he turned up at the Cluny now. He was just about to leave, moving towards the front door, when he noticed an envelope on the floor. A brown manila. He picked it up. No postmark, no address. Just his name printed on the front.

He opened the door, looked up and down the street. Saw no one, nothing except streetlight-cast shadows in the late November evening. It could have been delivered any time since Anne Marie left. He closed the door, entered the office, opened the letter. Read it.

You're working with that child murdering bitch. She's probably giving you the sob story. Well here are a few things you don't know about her. Check these. Guy Brewster. London. Adam Wainwright. Bristol. James Fielding. Colchester. Patrick Sutton. Hull. Now go to work.

Donovan no longer wanted to eat or drink at the Cluny. Or anywhere. He wanted to do what the letter said. Go to work. He sat down at his iMac.

Did just that.

‘So what were you found guilty of?' He knows the answer to the question but asks it anyway. For the recorder. For the record.

‘Manslaughter. On the grounds of diminished responsibility.'

‘And how did you feel about that when it was read out?'

She sighs. She reaches automatically for a cigarette but stops herself from taking one. Her bandaged hands stay on the table, fingers moving like small electric shocks are being administered.

‘I didn't know what he meant at first. I didn't know whether that meant I could just go home or not. I knew that if he said murder then that meant prison.'

‘How did you know that meant prison?'

‘I'd seen it on the telly. Murderers were caught and went to prison. Sometimes they were hanged. That's what really scared me. That they would hang me.'

‘They wouldn't have hanged a child, I would have thought. Not even then.'

‘They would have done if they could have got away with it. But they gave me manslaughter because of the psychiatric report.' Her fingers reach for the cigarette pack on the word ‘psychiatric'.

‘What did that say?'

‘That I had a psychopathic personality. That I didn't know right from wrong. That I had no concept of death.'

‘And did you?'

‘Which one?'

‘Any of them.'

She thinks for a moment before speaking. ‘Back then I probably didn't know right from wrong. No. Lookin' back I can say that now. But then I only had the things that had happened to me up till then to go on. But death … no. I thought Trevor would get up again. And play.'

‘Trevor was …'

‘The boy.' She nodded. ‘That I killed.' Her voice shrank away from the words as she spoke. ‘No, I didn't know what death was. Not really. I used to love police shows. Cops and robbers. Couldn't get enough of them when I was a kid. But like I said, when they caught the baddie they put him in prison or murdered him. And then next week he was back, in some other cops and robbers programme. So he wasn't really dead, was he? I mean, now I know they were only actors. That it wasn't real life. But not then.'

He starts to ask another question but she hasn't finished. ‘That's the only question they should ask, I think. Well, only two. To kids in murder trials. Do you know what death is? Real death? And do you know right from wrong? The only two.'

‘What about the other thing you said?'

She frowns.

‘A psychopathic personality? What do you think about them saying that?'

She looks at him, away from him, down at the cigarette packet. She takes one, lights up, exhales. Again. Looks at him once more, then looks away, head slowly shaking.

‘And you wonder why I fuckin' hate psychiatrists?'

6

‘Hey kid, what's your name?'

Jack Smeaton looked up. He had been in his own world, head down, trying not to walk home too quickly, fearful of what kind of mood his mother would be in. The woman before him was dressed casually: leather jacket, jeans, trainers. Dressed for a quick getaway. Hair dark and straight. London accent. Cocky, confident grin, the kind that was verging on arrogant. The kind Jack wished he had.

‘J – Jack.'

‘Yeah, Jack. Terrible this, don't you think? This kid getting stabbed. You knew him?'

Jack made her now. Journalist. On the hunt. He looked round, taking in the scene properly now. How had he missed it before? There were TV cameras pointed at the school gates, still cameras flashing all the time. He recognized a couple of the faces talking to cameras from the local news. Word of Calvin's death had spread.

Jack looked back. The journalist was still in front of him, waiting.

‘N – no, I didn't know him. Not very well, anyway.'

‘Sure?' She gave him a kind of come-on look, eyes locked on to him like heat-seeking missiles. He stepped back, frightened. ‘Could be a bit of money in it for you. Get yourself a new PlayStation. Nintendo Wii. Whatever. Good bit of money.'

A new PlayStation sounded great. In fact, any PlayStation sounded great. It was something they had never been able to afford. In the other schools he had been to he had been so jealous of the kids who did have them. Which seemed to be all of them. It had just been one more thing that had stopped him fitting in.

But he hadn't known the dead boy. So it didn't matter.

Jack couldn't answer. He shook his head and walked away. The journalist didn't waste time calling after him, just went up to the next child leaving school.

Jack was disappointed. A journalist was one of the things he quite fancied being when he left school. He liked the idea of standing at the sidelines, reporting on what was happening. Knowing what was going on, but not getting directly involved. Trouble was, every journalist he met put him off the idea. They all seemed to be like the one at the school gates. Male or female. They saw people just as excuses for stories, not real living, breathing people, just things to use up and drop once the stories were wrung out of them. And he didn't want to be like that. No way.

As he rounded the corner at the far end of the school fence, he looked back again. The two boys who had spoken to him earlier were coming up to the journalist. The smaller one, Pez, seemed happy to talk, nodding and gesturing.

Jack walked away, left them to it.

Wondered, with fear and trepidation, what home would be like when he got in.

‘Hey, kid, what's your name?'

‘Pez.'

‘That your real name?'

The kid shrugged. ‘S'what everyone calls us, like.'

Jesus, she thought, they were thick up here. She kept smiling at him. ‘Right, Pez. How'd you like to make a bit of money?'

The boy's eyes lit up. ‘Aye. Great.'

‘Good man. The kid who died, Calvin. Was he a friend of yours?'

‘Aye, 'e was. Me best mate, like.'

‘Your best mate.' Where had she heard that one before?

‘Aye. He was. An' I was with ‘im the night 'e died.'

Bullseye. Tess Preston was still in her twenties, probably still had a lot to learn, and the best way to do that, she always said, was on the job. And that was what she lived, ate and breathed. The job.

Theresa Preston-Hatt was her full name. She was the youngest of two daughters – her father, a colonel in the army, wanted sons. He never came to terms with the fact that he had ended up with two girls instead. Her sister was a qualified doctor and, to please her father, Tess enrolled at Sandhurst to train as an officer. Unfortunately she left during the first month. Her father never forgave her. Especially after she became a journalist. So she dropped the parts of her name she didn't need any more, except when she ran out money or needed bailing out of something unpleasant, and became Tess Preston, ace reporter for the People's Paper, the
Daily Globe.

She was fiercely ambitious. For the job itself, she told herself, the rewards. Not to show her father, her family how good she could be at something. That wasn't the reason at all. No way. She was on the way up. Tess Preston was going all the way to the top.

That's what Calvin Bell represented to her. The next rung on the ladder. The only thing she knew about the victim was that he had been stabbed and the only thing she knew about the area was that Cheryl from Girls Aloud came from somewhere near. Looking round she could well believe it.

But all she was interested in was her work. A big exposé of the crime-riddled inner cities and what it was doing to the kids. Correction:
our
kids. Because she had the readers at heart. And, if she was telling the truth, this mouth-breathing midget in front of her could be her way in to the story.

‘You were there? Great. So, Pez …' Tess Preston allowed herself a smile. She never forgot a name. Prided herself on the fact. And she knew how dazzling that smile could be to the opposite sex. Even kids, she didn't care. She practised it in front of the mirror. Shame to waste it. ‘Why don't you tell me all about it?'

Pez frowned. ‘What about the money?'

Sharper than he looked, thought Tess. But then he'd have to be. He couldn't look any less sharp. ‘We'll get that sorted, don't you worry.' She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket, thumbed her recorder on to record. She noticed Pez's eyes being drawn to her chest. She stuck her breasts out a bit more to keep him beside her. ‘Just tell me what happened that night.'

Pez, transfixed by her breasts, opened his mouth to speak.