Ashes by Now (9 page)

25

‘OK,' I said. ‘Jackie it is.'

‘That's what my dad used to call me.'

I got up and opened another bottle of wine. ‘Want some?' I asked.

She nodded.

I filled her glass, took the dirty dishes over to the sink, removed the sorbet from the freezer and served it up.

‘You're a very good host,' said Jackie.

‘Like I told you, I don't get the chance too often these days.'

‘I bet.' I noted a hint of flirtatiousness in her tone, and smiled.

We ate the sweet, and I leaned over and turned up the light under the coffee pot. ‘No caffeine,' I said.

‘You remembered.'

‘The way you were so adamant about it, how could I forget?'

‘I'm sorry if I was rude. Your turning up was something of a surprise.'

‘I should have phoned first.'

‘Then I probably wouldn't have seen you at all.'

‘That's why I didn't.'

I removed the pudding dishes from the table and poured the coffee. It didn't taste bad but, knowing what it was, just a bit flat. Besides, I like caffeine.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?' I asked.

‘You're being very careful with me.'

‘Yes, I suppose I am.'

‘I'm not made of glass you know.'

‘You give the impression you might be.'

‘I don't mean to. Of course you can smoke. It's your flat.'

‘You're my guest.'

‘You're kind.'

‘Not really.'

‘You give the impression you might be.' She mimicked my tone, and we both laughed.

I got out the brandy bottle from the cupboard. ‘Do you want some of this?' I asked. ‘Being teetotal and all.'

‘A little drop.'

I poured the liquor into two brandy balloons, and went back to my seat at the table.

‘Do you have a girlfriend?' she asked.

I thought of Dawn and Tracey, and wondered what Jacqueline Harvey would make of them. ‘Not really,' I said.

‘What does that mean?'

‘You'd have to define girlfriend.'

‘That's a funny thing to say.'

‘Not really.'

‘You keep saying that.'

‘Not really,' we both said together, and we laughed again. Things were looking up.

‘Well, have you?' she pressed.

‘What?'

‘Got a girlfriend.'

‘No one serious. Just some friends who happen to be girls. Women. Have you got a boyfriend?

‘No.' It was definite. Emphatic.

I nodded.

‘Are you surprised?'

‘Nothing much surprises me these days.'

‘I bet I could tell you something that surprises you.'

‘What?'

‘I've never kissed anyone.'

I thought I'd heard her wrong.

‘What?' I said.

‘I've never kissed anyone in my life,' she said.

What can you say to that?

‘That surprises you doesn't it?' she asked.

I nodded.

‘I told you I could. I could tell you other things that would surprise you too.'

‘Like what?'

‘I can't tell you…' Then she paused. She shook her head and smiled mysteriously, and somewhat tipsily. ‘I've been kissed a few times,' she said. Going back to the previous subject. ‘It was horrible. All wet and slimey.'

‘If it's the right person it's OK,' I said.

She took off her glasses and put them on the table.

It was no ‘Why, Miss Smith, you're beautiful' number, believe me. She wasn't, and that was a fact. Her face was pinched and plain, and without her bins she screwed up her eyes to see me, and I was only a couple of feet away.

‘And of course I've never made love with anyone. Not after what happened to Carol. I just couldn't. What a pair, eh? No grandchildren for Daddy. And no great nieces or nephews for Uncle Alan. No fear of that. A 24-year-old virgin. What a joke. And poor Carol, who never even got to live to be twenty-four.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said.

‘You don't have to be.'

‘I still am. I feel somehow responsible. I should have done a better job.'

‘Caught the real murderer, you mean?'

This was a turn-up. ‘You don't think that the man who went to prison did it either?' I said.

She didn't answer.

‘Last night, when I told you that I was on the original investigation team, I thought you were going to hit me. Is that because you thought we'd got the wrong man too?'

She was silent.

‘Jackie?' I said.

‘Would it make any difference now, if the wrong man
had
gone to prison?'

Maybe it would to him, I thought. ‘I suppose not,' I said. ‘But you still haven't told me if you think that the wrong man
was
convicted.'

‘Do we have to talk about it any more? It upsets me,' she said.

I didn't want her doing another runner. ‘Not if you don't want to,' I said. Besides, I couldn't make her.

‘I don't. I'm sorry, I haven't helped you much, have I?'

‘I didn't expect you would. How could you? I just wanted… Christ, I don't know what I wanted.'

‘Have you spoken to my father?'

‘No.'

‘Nor have I. Not for years. Carol being killed really smashed our family up. Not that it was much of a family before. Not since Mum died.'

‘You really don't have to talk about it, you know,' I said.

‘But I'm obsessed with it. Oh hell, can I have another drink?'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I'm not stupid. I may be the oldest virgin in bloody London, but I do know if I want a drink or not.'

‘Brandy?' I asked.

She nodded.

She passed out on the sofa about eleven-thirty. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. I wasn't too clever myself by then I must admit, and that's the only excuse I can offer.

I didn't undress her or anything. Just took her shoes off, put her feet up, tossed a blanket over her, and put a cushion under her head.

Then I threw the four empty wine bottles and the empty brandy bottle into the trash, put out the light, undressed and got into my own bed.

26

Jacqueline woke me up when she joined me. The digital read-out on the bedside clock read 3.08. Its tiny green figures were the only light I could see. The streetlamp outside my window was on the blink, and the room was pitch black.

She was naked except for her underpants. I was naked except for my shorts. She'd let her hair down and I felt it lying across my chest. She held me tightly, and I could feel her trembling. Neither of us said a word. I just moved slightly, the better to accommodate the weight of her on me.

I didn't do anything but lie there quietly. I knew it wasn't sex she wanted. No more than I did. It was just someone to hold. To be close to. She began to cry, and soaked the pillow and the sheet and my shoulder. I stroked her back after a bit. It was thin and boney, and I ran my fingers down her spine, feeling every cartilage in it as I did so.

When the clock read 3.54, and she seemed to be cried out, she said, ‘I told you a lie.'

‘What?' I said, and my voice was thick in the silence of the room.

‘About being a virgin.'

‘What about it?'

‘I'm not.'

‘You don't have to be.' I couldn't think of anything else to say.

‘You don't understand.'

I didn't, to be honest.

‘I've never made love. I didn't lie about that…' She paused.

‘Tell me, Jackie,' I said. I knew that she would anyway. I just wanted to let her know that I wanted to hear.

She was silent again as the clock flickered to 3.55, then 3.56.

‘It was Uncle Alan.' Her voice sounded younger. Almost girlish.

I'd nearly dropped off again during her silence. ‘What?' I said. ‘What did you say?'

‘It was Uncle Alan,' she repeated.

I was suddenly wide awake. ‘What was?'

‘He did it.'

‘Did what?'

‘Fucked me.' Her voice wasn't girlish any more. It was as hard and cold as steel left out in a winter frost.

‘Byrne. Your uncle?'

‘That's what I said.' She was trembling harder by then. I wanted to turn on the light so that I could see her, but I didn't. I didn't want to break the mood she was in.

‘Are you serious?' I asked.

I felt her breath on my face as she said, ‘It's not something I'd joke about.'

I lay back and looked up in the direction of the ceiling, invisible in the darkness. Byrne. Of course. It fitted perfectly. Like a glove.

‘Tell me,' I said.

So she did.

It was a sordid little story of constant child abuse. The constant abuse of Carol and Jacqueline Harvey. Ten and eight years old respectively when it had started. Just after their mother died.

It was the kind of story I'd heard lots of times before. The story of a trusted male relative left with young children. Tickling, touching, intimacy. Followed by isolation, violence, and finally violation. Then more tickling and touching when he needed the release again.

And finally threats and guilt. Not guilt by the violator, but by the violated.

It had gone on for years – four to be precise – and had culminated in the rape and murder of Carol Harvey one warm afternoon in Brixton.

‘She threatened to tell Daddy,' Jacqueline whispered. ‘Uncle Alan made her come and meet him that day. You know the rest.'

I knew all right. I remembered that day as clearly as any other in my life.

‘But why did she go to see him alone? And on his ground? It was insane.'

I felt her shrug in the darkness. ‘He had a power over us. Isn't that obvious? You don't recover from years of what he did to us overnight. And besides, he could be nice.' She paused. ‘Isn't that sickening. Probably the most sickening part of all. In everything but the abuse he was a wonderful uncle. I can't believe I'm saying this, but he was. Sometimes we thought we were imagining it. Or that all adults did what he did to the children they looked after. Can you realise how that made us feel? But we just never dared ask. And besides, who knows what goes on in the minds of children? Because that's what we were. Even if we had to grow up fast.' There was a terrible desolation in her voice as she said those last words.

‘I can't remember what we thought. I can't even remember what it's like to be a child. He stole that from us.'

I lay there for another minute and clasped her hand. Trying to give her some comfort, although there was precious little comfort to be had in the barren world she inhabited.

‘Why didn't you tell anyone?' I asked finally. ‘Afterwards, I mean.'

‘I did.'

‘What?'

‘I did tell someone.'

‘Who?'

‘That man Collier. The detective sergeant.'

‘When?'

‘The day after it happened.'

‘What did he do?'

‘He took me in to see Uncle Alan.'

I felt sweat break out of every pore on my body in anger at what she was telling me. ‘And what did
he
do?'

‘He got rid of Collier. Told him it was my imagination. Then when we were alone, he told me he'd kill me if I ever breathed a word to another soul. That I'd end up like Carol.'

Simple as that, see. It doesn't take a lot to terrify a twelve-year-old girl whose sister had been raped the day before, and would die later that day. Especially when the person she went to for help just delivered her back to the perpetrator of the horror again.

‘What happened then?'

‘He called Collier back, and I told him what Uncle Alan had said was true. That I'd imagined it. That I was upset by what had happened.'

But I'd bet that Collier
had
believed her story. He had believed that Byrne had done exactly what she said he'd done. I'd stake my life on it. In that stinking flat on the Lion, I almost had.

‘Did you ever tell your father?' I asked.

‘No. It wouldn't have been any good. Uncle Alan would've just twisted it round again. No one would ever have believed me.'

‘But you should have told him. Made him believe you.'

‘I was frightened, Nick. Terrified. How could I tell my father that his brother-in-law was fucking both his daughters in the backside with that horrible thing of his.'

‘He did that?' I said.

‘Sometimes. He wasn't fussy. He had plenty of warm, wet holes to choose from between the two of us.'

I felt physically sick at what she was saying, and the way she said it. And I thought of my own daughter, and how I'd feel in similar circumstances.

‘Before she was killed we decided to tell. That was what she was going to tell him we were going to do. Someone might have believed both of us together. But look what happened to her. That afternoon in the police station, I plucked up the courage to tell someone on my own, and look what happened to me.'

‘I remember it,' I said. ‘I was there. I saw you.'

‘
You
were the one talking to Daddy. You went into an office together.'

‘That's right.'

‘That's when I told Collier. When you two were talking.'

‘I remember the look on your face as you left. You looked…' I stopped. ‘You looked as if your world had ended,' I said.

‘It had.'

‘Christ, Jackie,' I said. ‘I wish you'd spoken to me.'

‘I would have done. You looked kind. Not like the others. But you went off with Daddy. Anyway, even if I had, would you have believed I was telling the truth?'

‘I would have tried to find out.'

She hugged me tighter. ‘Would you? Against all those senior officers? And you the new DC? I'd like to believe you, Nick, but I'm not sure that I do. But thanks for saying it anyway.'

‘Collier believed you,' I said.

‘No.'

‘Yes. Straight after you told him about your uncle, he and his mate Lenny Millar, with the collusion of a DI named Grisham, half killed Sailor Grant to get a confession. I was there some of the time. I couldn't handle it. That's why Grant went to jail. To protect your uncle. He was a flyer. Everyone in the job knew that. Look where he ended up. Just one stop from the biggest job of all in London. And that means the whole country. They could literally get away with murder with your uncle's collusion. Jesus! They almost did with me.'

‘What?'

‘Nothing. Forget it.'

‘The bastards.'

‘Jackie,' I said. ‘You're going to have to tell now.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘Will you help me? I trust you.'

And those few simple words from someone who must have had all trust stolen from her years before were what started me crying too.