The Game Changer (13 page)

‘He’s dead now, like Michael.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

Ethel put the tray on a low table, staring at it as if she was trying to work out what was missing.

Kate stood up. ‘I’ll get some cups.’

‘Oh, yes, thank you …’ And there it was again, the look on her face as if she was trying to remember Kate’s name.

‘Kate. Kate Pearson. We spoke on the phone.’

‘What a lovely name.’

It didn’t take Kate long to find the cups in the kitchen, but once there, she saw even more clues. Cupboards filled with tins and jars of the same things, unopened mail, out-of-date bread and more cartons of eggs.

When she returned to the sitting room, Ethel had taken off her coat. It now rested on the back of her chair. Kate handed the picture frame to her, asking, ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened to him?’

‘It was a long time ago. I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it used to be.’

‘That’s okay. Take your time.’

Kate hadn’t expected tears but the image obviously affected Ethel. ‘It broke both our hearts. I was older than Michael, you see. We tried to have children, but we couldn’t. I left it too late to get married, too late to have a child, too late to do a lot of things …’

‘What about the boy in the frame?’

‘We fostered him. No one knew who his father was, not even his mother.’ Disgust coming into her face. ‘She was a strange one, neglected the boy, and the authorities got wind of it.’ She sounded as if she was telling Kate an enormous secret. ‘They started calling around, checking on them, until they finally took him away. That’s when we got him.’ She smiled.

‘He obviously meant a great deal to you.’

‘Oh, yes. He was tough, though, and bitter too.’ A reluctant laugh. ‘He certainly didn’t want to live with us.’

‘What happened to him?’ Kate asked, even though she already knew the answer.

Another blank stare, then Ethel asked, ‘My handbag … where did I leave my handbag?’

‘You left it in the hall. Hold on, I’ll get it for you.’

When Kate returned with it, Ethel turned the handbag upside-down, emptying most of the contents onto her lap, then pulling out a torn and battered envelope with an address on the front, handing it to Kate. ‘It was when we lived here.’

Kate stared at the address. The house was only minutes away from where she used to live. It made sense now. She had known from the start that the sketch was of Kevin. She hadn’t remembered Ethel or Michael O’Neill, but then again, they had only lived near her for a brief time.

‘That house was too big for two people. Michael wouldn’t hear about us fostering again, not after what happened.’

Kate knew exactly what had happened, and the similarities between his death and that of the late Michael O’Neill weren’t lost on her. Had it crossed Ethel’s mind that they had both died in the same way? Could Michael have lived with the guilt all these years, and decided to take his own life, leaving the world in the same manner as their foster son?

‘Did you mention Kevin to the police, Ethel?’

‘Yes. No. I’m not sure. I think I did.’

‘Did you mention that he died the same way as Michael?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

‘It could be important.’

‘I said I don’t want to talk about it. Michael is gone, and that’s the end of it.’

Kate knew better than to push it, and even if Ethel hadn’t mentioned Kevin to the police, she knew, through their background checks, that they would have discovered it by now. Adam should
have mentioned it to her, especially as he must have connected it with that old story.

‘Ethel, do you understand about the missing money?’

‘Our life savings lost.’ Her tone angry.

‘Have you any idea who Michael could have given the money to?’

She didn’t answer.

Kate tried again: ‘Was Michael under any kind of financial pressure?’

‘The police think he was being blackmailed, you know.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I don’t think he would have …’

‘Would have what?’

‘Do that thing they’re saying he did.’

‘Being blackmailed, you mean?’

She nodded. ‘He wouldn’t have got involved with anything like that.’

‘And the meetings he used to go to, Ethel, do you know anything about those?’

‘No. I don’t know anything about any meetings. Michael wouldn’t have allowed himself to be blackmailed,’ she said, with indignation. ‘I just know it.’

‘So, you moved after Kevin’s death?’

‘That house was bad luck. Some developer bought it, and the one next door.’

‘I used to live nearby.’

‘Did you, my dear? Maybe I know your family.’

‘Off Merton Avenue, number thirty-seven Springfield Road.’

‘Oh, you’re that Pearson girl.’

Kate had no memory of ever being referred to as ‘that Pearson girl’, but the manner in which the words were delivered wasn’t positive.

‘Yes,’ she was suddenly nervous, ‘that’s me.’

Ethel remembered the tea tray, and began pouring hot water into both cups.

‘Oh dear, I must have forgotten the …’

‘I’ll get the tea bags.’ Kate flew into the kitchen, frantically searching for a caddy. She went back to the sitting room and put the teabags into the pot. ‘Ethel, you were talking about the Pearson girl – me.’

‘You went missing.’

‘You remember that?’

‘Of course I do!’ As if insulted by Kate’s last question. ‘The whole neighbourhood was out looking for you.’

‘How long was I gone?’

‘I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.’

‘I only remember bits of it.’ Kate realised she was confiding in a near stranger, but continued all the same. ‘I think the shock of what happened might have blocked out parts of my memory.’

Ethel didn’t respond, and Kate feared another blank session.

‘Ethel, can you tell me what you know?’

‘About?’

‘About me going missing.’

‘You went missing? I didn’t realise.’

‘I’m the Pearson girl, Ethel.’ Kate told herself to remain calm. ‘Sorry, you were telling me about the Pearson girl going missing.’

‘Oh, yes. Did you know her?’

‘Yes, I knew her.’

‘The Pearson girl,’ Ethel repeated the words, as if to remind herself of what she was trying to remember. ‘There were some people they thought had done it. There were awful rumours.’

‘What kind of rumours?’ Kate didn’t want to rush her, but she felt she was getting close to something. She couldn’t afford to let it slip. ‘Ethel, what do you remember?’

‘I don’t know. The girl was found. That was the main thing, thank goodness.’

‘You said there were rumours? What kind of rumours?’

‘Sorry, dear. I can’t remember them now. You could talk to one of the neighbours.’

Kate had avoided doing exactly that for some time. In part, it was because she wanted to get the memories back without outside
influence, and her parents had always made light of what had happened to her, or seemed to. The general consensus was that it was best not to talk about it. Unsavoury things were brushed under the carpet. Neither, if Ethel was correct, had Kate ever contemplated that she might have been missing for any more than a very brief period. Kate asked her next question without thinking, almost as if one part of her brain was working ahead of another.

‘Did you and Michael know a Malcolm Madden? He would have been in his mid-twenties back then.’

‘I don’t think so. I can’t be sure. The name sounds familiar, but …’ Kate’s disappointment must have been obvious, because Ethel tried to comfort her: ‘I can see this is troubling you, my dear.’

‘Yes, I guess it is. Not remembering something can be frustrating.’

‘I understand that.’ And then her face lit up. ‘You could try Michael’s notebooks. He used to write in them all the time.’

‘Do you have them?’

‘Not here. They’re in the lock-up.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Did you see my handbag, dear?’

‘It’s beside you. You have some of the contents on your lap.’

‘So I do.’ She started to root through the array of bits and bobs. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I can’t find it.’

‘What are you looking for, Ethel?’

‘There’s a card with the address on it. It must be somewhere.’ Kate lifted the empty handbag. ‘Do you mind if I check inside?’

‘Work away, my dear. Those pockets can hide things on you.’

Kate searched through each of the inner sections, finding a small white card with a key in one of the zipped pouches. ‘Is this it, Ethel, the address and key of the lock-up?’

‘I think so. Michael put lots of our old stuff in there.’

‘Ethel, did you mention the notebooks or the lock-up to the police?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Do you think you’d be able to find it? I can come with you, if you like.’ Her tone was more upbeat. ‘I need to get some milk and eggs.’

ADAM LOOKED OUT AT THE HUB OF ACTIVITY beyond the glass panels of his office. He wasn’t happy about keeping information from Kate. Although the techies hadn’t found anything on the newspaper clipping, it hadn’t stopped him digging further. The cryptic note had come too close to the opening of the investigation for his liking. With Malcolm Madden connected to O’Neill, he’d decided to carry out some house-to-house enquiries with Kate’s old neighbours. Tongues always got looser over time, and the information he was given came from two separate sources.

The term ‘closed circle’ or ‘private grouping’ came up, and with the images Lee Fisher had told him about on Mason’s computer, it certainly raised more questions than answers. According to both sources, Kate’s father, Tom Mason and Michael O’Neill had been part of this elusive grouping. All were dead, although Kate’s father had died from natural causes more than ten years earlier. The statements didn’t prove there was anything unsavoury going on. The men moved in the same social circles. They knew each other, and they would possibly have had a lot of other things in common. But if they knew each other, had Malcolm Madden known O’Neill for longer than he was saying, even though he was younger than the others?

Kate had spoken to Adam a great deal about her father. He knew the man could be cold, and in Kate’s early years he had been capable of bouts of aggression. Adam hadn’t pushed her on it, but he believed her determination to help others in vulnerable
situations stemmed from her father’s anger, and her mother’s inability to protect her. According to Kate, she and her father had made peace with each other well before he died, but there had still been a disconnection, and after his death, Kate’s concentration had been firmly on her mother, especially after she’d developed rapid dementia.

It was too early to be making any hard allegations about paedophilia, but the thought had crossed his mind. He had worked with such groupings before, and part of their success was the veil of secrecy and trust that often made the core difficult to penetrate. He wasn’t ready to go to the PIU, the Paedophile Investigation Unit. For that he’d need more than references to elusive groupings.

His rank as a senior investigation officer meant he had access to the higher levels of the police database, PULSE, but in the PIU, the names of previous victims and suspects, even those spanning back twenty or thirty years, were stringently protected.

KATE WASN’T SURE THAT BRINGING ETHEL O’NEILL with her had been such a good idea, but there was no denying, she wanted to know what was in those notebooks.

Driving to the lock-up, she kept thinking about the possibility of her being missing for longer than she had originally thought. Ethel had said the whole neighbourhood was out looking. She had mentioned rumours. If Kate had been missing for hours on end, what had happened in the intervening period? In her memory, she had been followed by someone, a man. He had grabbed her from behind at knife point, but she had gotten away almost immediately. If she had been missing for longer, what did that mean? Why had she obliterated it from her mind? It might have been shock, but surely her parents would have known there was more to it: they had always treated it as a minor incident, one best forgotten. Had she done that? Forgotten it because they said so? It was possible. Anything was possible. She had tried Adam on the phone several times, but on each occasion, it had gone to voicemail. She didn’t want to talk to anyone else, and she didn’t want to wait either. For all she knew, the police had already been to the lock-up. Still, as a precaution, she decided to use the protective gloves and footwear from the boot. Being stupid once was forgivable, but twice was sloppy.

Opening the back of her hatchback, she called to Ethel, ‘I won’t be long. Wait here, and then we can go and get the milk and eggs.’

‘Take your time, my dear. I’m very tired. I’m not sleeping well these days.’

‘Why don’t you take a nap?’ She moved around to the passenger door. ‘Here, I’ll lower the seat back for you.’