Sweetie (29 page)

Gillian stood rooted to the spot. It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. TJ had to be all right. Someone would find him somewhere. They’d found their guilty man and dealt with him. He was tucked up in hospital and now their kids were safe again, weren’t they?

Gillian’s mind whirled and she hesitated on the doorstep before knocking, not knowing what she would find inside or even if she wanted to go in.

People continued to gather outside the house.

It took a while for anybody to come to the door but when Terry answered his face told Gillian every -

thing. In his blue eyes she saw the despair and disbelief of a broken man. She stepped inside the hall -

way and he crumpled against her shoulder, sobbing like a baby and asking, ‘Why us? Why us?’ over and over.

She cradled his head, softly stroking his hair, and held him as she would her own child for as long as he cried. She noticed how light and insubstantial he felt, as if a stiff breeze would blow him away. There were no words for what was happening to him and Sue, no clichés of consolation she could offer, nothing that came close. Gillian was struck by a sudden fear that 291

Terry would do himself in, that the strength required to carry on in these circumstances was simply beyond any normal human being. Certainly, she would have given up by now.

When they walked through to the kitchen Sue looked up at Gillian and said simply, ‘He’s killed my baby, Gill.’

Gillian held her hand out and Sue gripped it tight, beyond tears now, filled with mute incomprehension.

Woodhouse didn’t like to bring it up but someone had to identify the child’s body. He knew that the crowd outside wanted answers too, and he had to move quickly. Terry said he wanted to do it on his own and that Sue was to stay at home but she wouldn’t have it, insisting that she be the one to go with the police and that Terry should stay with the girls.

In their anguish they screamed at each other, and Woodhouse and Watson looked on helplessly while Gillian and the WPC attempted to bring some order to the situation. As if tipped off, the crowd could be heard outside, shouting and taunting the police. If Woodhouse wasn’t careful, he’d have a lynch mob on his hands.

In the end Gillian stayed with the girls and the WPC while Sue, Terry, Watson and Woodhouse made their exit from the house and on to the street.

The jeers from the crowd quietened to a hush as they 292

waited for news. Terry and Sue remained in a daze.

Woodhouse stayed tight-lipped. It was Watson who took the initiative. In a bold, strong voice, he urged the crowd to disperse and go home. They were doing no good to a grieving family.

At the force of his words, the onlookers mumbled to each other and started to leave. Watson climbed into the car and they made their silent journey to the morgue.

Sue remained quiet and composed as they descended the cold stone steps into a bright, white-tiled room where a small figure was laid out beneath a plastic sheet on the hard metal table. Terry walked into the room and straight out again, not willing to confront the moment of truth. Sue stayed and silently nodded at the mortician, signalling her readiness to see what lay beneath the sheet.

He looked so peaceful, her baby, with his milky skin, that she drew a strange sense of comfort from the sight. But then she looked more closely and saw that something was not right. TJ didn’t look the same. She studied his face hard before realising what it was then drew in her breath sharply: the long silky lashes that drew so much attention, so many com -

pliments, were gone, leaving just a short stubbly line.

It was then that something inside her hardened. It was as if a switch had been flicked that would change her for ever. For the first time in her life, Sue Williams felt pure hatred and it made her strong.

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*

DCI Woodhouse sat at his desk the next day, looking at the folder on top of his pile of paperwork. He needed a cup of coffee before he read the grisly notes on the cause of death of the Williamses’ baby.

Just like the others, TJ had been sexually assaulted before death. This time a thin plastic tube had been inserted into his bottom and a dark green liquid poured inside him, almost like an enema. The child’s bottom had been extensively slapped and bruised.

Handprints etched into the flesh and the extent of the bruising suggested the hands had belonged to some -

one quite big. Death had been fairly instantaneous after the child’s skull had been smashed against the ground. There had been some interference to the boy’s genital area, but it was his anus that had borne the brunt of the attack. The MO couldn’t determine how long the baby had suffered before he died.

Woodhouse closed the file. Sipping his coffee, he could taste his own tears mingle with it as they rolled down his face.

The next day was the hottest of the summer so far.

Grace heard on the radio that they expected the mercury to hit 96 degrees by midday. The Minister for Drought went on air to say in a public broadcast that unless water consumption was halved, it would be standpipes only until Christmas. He urged Britons to place bricks in their cisterns and said that dirty 294

cars were patriotic. The water in the paddling pool had turned lukewarm; dead flies lay marooned on its surface. Grace fished them out with a little net that John had bought Adam in Devon last year when they’d gone rock-pooling. It had been such a lovely innocent time. She was pregnant with Luke then, feeling as sick as a dog and able to do little more than paddle in the surf with Adam or lie propped up on pillows under a parasol. That was before all this had come into their lives and turned everything upside down.

She closed her eyes as if doing so could take her back there and she could change the course of events.

She used to do the same with Uncle Gary, close her eyes, and as he raped her brutally would lose all sense of reality, as if that meant she wasn’t really there and he wasn’t doing those things to her. Gently Grace traced the surface of the water with her net, scooping out bodies and laying them on the parched earth. She did so in a meditative trance, stupefied by the news of TJ’s abduction and murder. She’d had to get out of her kitchen where Nanny Parks, Gillian and Lizzie Foster were gathered, all smoking furiously and drinking endless cups of tea.

To Grace’s surprise, Michelle had arrived too and was joining the others for a cup of tea and a fag.

Michelle was clearly nervous and perhaps wished she’d stayed out of the whole thing, but she was committed now and part of their group. She was the 295

only one brave enough to mention the attack on George.

‘I don’t see how he can be responsible for TJ’s death when he was stretched out in a hospital bed.’

Lizzie shrugged her shoulders.

‘Who knows? But I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.

He’s a horrible bugger and deserved a hiding anyway!’

Grace felt as if she had spent her whole summer with the same people, talking about the same things, and now her head was ready to explode. Their triumphant mood had evaporated into one of stunned panic as they tried to come to terms with the thought that they had got the wrong man once again.

Nanny reported that police cars had been pulling up around the area all morning and dragging men off to the police station. ‘They’re pulling everyone in –

they’re bound to get him now.’

In the background the TV was playing the opening ceremony of the Montreal Olympics, though nobody cared. The children had lost interest and wandered off, even though Lizzie had told them, ‘Look, it’s the Queen.’ Every few minutes one of the women would sigh and say, ‘I don’t understand it,’ so sure had they been that George Rush was the attacker and that they had put an end to his reign of murder and mayhem once and for all.

In between expressions of disbelief, Gillian fed back snippets from the previous night: like the 296

difference in Sue before and after her trip to the morgue to identify TJ’s body.

‘I tell you, she was weird when she got back from that police station. When she left she looked proper upset, like you’d expect, but by the time she came home something about her had changed . . . she had, I dunno, a kind of hardness. I didn’t see Terry, he came in and went straight up to bed, but she came into the kitchen, put the kettle on, then asked me and the WPC to leave. She wasn’t rude or anything but she wanted us out of there. Not a tear in her eye. I tell ya, it was strange.’

‘Well, it’s shock, isn’t it?’ offered her mother.

‘I don’t know, Mum. I can’t explain it, but I got this really funny feeling off her.’ Gillian tasted her tea and stirred another sugar in. Lizzie Foster just shook her head, quite unable to comprehend the sequence of events.

‘It all happened so quick, that’s what gets me, Lizzie,’ said Nanny Parks. ‘I remember the ice cream van came along and stopped on the kerb outside the park and then all the kids mobbed us at once for money, rushing outside the gates to be first in the queue. Sue was looking for her purse and I was trying to hang on to Luke and keep an eye on Adam.

Anyway, we get all the ice lollies and cones and hand them out, and Sue’s taking the wrapper off TJ’s Fab and she turns round to give it to him . . . and he’s not there. Just like that. There was a big queue of people 297

at the ice cream van so we think he must still be standing with them somewhere, but he’s nowhere to be seen. So we look around the swings and slide, thinking he can’t have gone far, but he’s gone, just gone. It all happened in two minutes flat, didn’t it, Gill?’

‘Definitely. I remember him playing on the slide with Benny when we heard the van, then they all jumped off and started yelling for ice creams and he was definitely there in the middle of it all. It must have happened in a matter of seconds. Nobody saw or heard a bloody thing, that’s what’s so scary about it all.’

‘So if it’s not George Rush, who the bloody hell is it, that’s what I’d like to know?’ Lizzie’s cigarette end made a hissing sound as she extinguished it in the bottom of her cup. For somebody so fussy about what she drank out of, she didn’t mind where she dogged out her fags.

‘It’s got to be somebody we know, it’s got to be,’

said Gill. ‘If there was some strange bloke hanging around, one of us would have noticed.’

Michelle nodded her head in agreement.

‘When’s George out of hospital anyway, any idea?’

asked Lizzie.

‘Can’t be long now, Liz, he’s been in there going on three weeks,’ said Nanny, draining her cup.

‘What a fucking disaster this all is, I can’t think straight. And what’s your Grace doing out in the 298

garden with that bloody fishing pole all this time?’

Lizzie stood up to get a better look out of the window and saw Grace staring dreamily into space, the fishing pole hanging limp in her hand while the children ran screaming around her. She was oblivious to the noise they made.

‘That Black Panther – Neilson I think he’s called –

got sent down, didn’t he? Five life sentences he got,’

said Nanny. ‘I saw it on the news.’

‘They can catch them sometimes then,’ said Gillian bitterly. ‘But what do they do then? Give ’em a warm cell, a TV and a university degree, that’s fucking what!’

‘You’re right there, my girl. Bring back the noose, that’s what I say!’ said Lizzie. ‘I don’t know whether to go round to Sue’s or just leave it for a while. You know, give them a bit of room to breathe. I don’t know what to do for the best.’

‘From what I could tell last night, she just wanted to be left alone, but it couldn’t hurt just to turn up and see if they need anything. I’ll come with you if you like, Lizzie, see if she wants me to take the girls off her hands for a bit,’ Gill offered.

‘I might come too,’ said Michelle. ‘It takes my mind off things and maybe I can help a bit more . . .

you know.’

‘Those poor kids have been pushed from pillar to post in the last few weeks, God knows what they’re going through, that’s both their brothers they’ve lost 299

now.’ Nanny pulled her cardigan closer around her as if to ward off a chill even though the air was thick with heat. Grace wandered back into the kitchen then, not looking at the others, just wishing they would leave.

‘All right, love?’ asked her mother.

‘No, Mum, not really,’ Grace replied. ‘I feel a bit sick actually.’

‘Well, you’re bound to be feeling out of sorts, we all are, it’s such a shock.’ Grace wished her mother would shut up and was relieved when the doorbell rang.

‘Not expecting anyone, are you?’ asked Lizzie.

No bloody business of yours if I am, thought Grace irritably, but she said nothing and went heavily to the door.

Potty was on the doorstep, jiggling from foot to foot as if she desperately needed the loo. ‘Quick, quick, let me in!’ She was visibly out of breath and looked up and down the street before pushing her way past Grace and hovering in the hall. ‘Are the others here?’

‘What’s up?’ asked Grace.

‘You won’t believe this! I tell you, you won’t believe it . . .’ Potty walked into the kitchen and said excitedly, ‘I can’t stop, I’ve got to be back at work in half an hour. I told them I was off to the doctor’s, I lied . . . I had to get here somehow.’ She acknowl -

edged the others. ‘All right, Mich, Gill, Nanny?’

300

‘You heard about TJ then?’ said Lizzie.

‘Course I’ve heard about TJ, that’s why I’m here.’

The other women looked at her, waiting for her announcement. She seemed manic.

‘So you know it couldn’t have been George,’ said Lizzie.

‘But that’s just it. It’s what I’ve got to tell ya – it could have been George!’

‘What do you mean?’ they all chorused.

‘Yesterday . . . he got up yesterday, said he was going for a walk in the grounds to get some air apparently. I only found out by chance when I got to work this morning and overheard the nurses talking.

One of them was saying that she didn’t think he was ready to go home, and the other said, “Well, he was OK enough to go out for two hours yesterday.” I asked them what time that was, and they both looked at me as if to say, what’s it to you? So I said, “Oh, just wondering, I thought I saw him when I came off duty, that’s all.” Trying to sound all casual and concerned for a patient like. And they said that he went out after lunch about two and didn’t get back till half-past four, and if he was that well he could free up the bed for somebody who needed it.’