Clean Cut (31 page)

‘Have you been offered a cup of tea?’

‘I don’t want a bloody cup of tea, I want to know what the hell is going on. What you got me here for?’

‘To talk.’

‘I’m all talked out with you. I am not saying a fucking word until I got legal representation.’

‘I need some answers.’

‘To what? What the fuck are you up to?’

Langton clanged the flap back into place and shot back the bolt. He turned to Lewis. ‘Leave him here to stew,’ he said loudly. ‘I’ll come back in the morning.’

‘You can’t leave me in this Victorian shithole!’

Langton kept his voice raised so Vernon could hear. ‘See if we can get a lawyer in; this time of day, one probably won’t be available until tomorrow. Maybe we can contact the guy he used before.’

Vernon screeched, banging on the door, ‘You can’t do this to me! You listen to me! You can’t leave me in here! I know my rights!’

Langton looked at Mike and smiled; they both remained silent.

‘Eh, you still out there? You bastard!’

Vernon could be heard kicking and banging; there was a thump as his mattress hit the door. It then sounded as if he was trying to haul his bunk bed across, only to
discover that it was bolted to the floor. In a rage, he then threw himself at the door: there was a thud, thud, then another kick.

Then there was a pause, as if he was trying to hear what was going on outside the cell. ‘You still there?’ he called out.

Langton let a few minutes pass before he shot the bolt again and opened the flap. Vernon was calmer now, having exhausted himself.

He looked up at Langton. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ he said, near to tears.

‘I just want to talk to you, Vernon, and get some answers.’

‘To what, for Chrissakes? We’ve been through it all before, ain’t we?’

Bang
. The flap closed and the bolt went back across: Langton was starting to get impatient. He checked his watch and sighed.

Lewis wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. It was a game that could get them both into trouble. Obviously, Langton wanted to unnerve Vernon and get him to talk, but about what, Lewis didn’t know. Vernon had given a statement that Rashid Burry had been at the bungalow with Gail. He had also given details of being taken to Camorra’s property; sketchy they might have been, but Lewis didn’t understand what more they could get from him.

Langton obviously had a different opinion. The charade of opening and shutting the flap in the cell door continued, as did Vernon’s accusations. He veered from threatening legal action, to abusive screaming, to throwing himself against the cell door, kicking and punching at it. Eventually, he huddled on the mattress on the floor,
crying. Langton gestured that the cell door could be opened.

‘I can leave you in here for the night, or we can talk and you can be taken back to prison. Up to you, Vernon.’

‘Can I have a cup of tea?’ The man gave them a strange look, all fight gone, and then got slowly to his feet. His next words were hardly audible. ‘I knew it wasn’t over.’

Anna built a garage from wooden bricks and drove a few toy cars inside. Keith, Gail’s son, had not said one word for over an hour. He stood with his back pressed against the wall while Anna built a fire station and then a house with the toys available for the children. All the while, she was watched by Alison, the Child Protection Officer, whose patience was running out.

Anna knocked down the garage and built a square pen. She went over to the farmyard filled with plastic animals and brought back two pigs. She crawled on the floor, making snorting noises, and put the pigs inside the pen.

Keith moved away from the wall; he came and sat beside Anna. It was an electrifying moment. He had been so silent, so unapproachable. Without a word, he picked up the wooden bricks and began to assemble square pens of his own. He then pointed to the two plastic pigs. She handed them to him and he placed them inside the pens.

‘Oink oink,’ Anna said.

She would never forget the way he looked up at her, his tiny freckled hand holding a pig. His head had been shaved to a crew cut because of the head lice. It made him appear older and tougher than he really was. The expression in his clear eyes was so painful.

‘Mummy,’ he said.

‘Do you remember this place? Did you help feed the animals at the bungalow? There were hens too, and a henhouse.’

He nodded, and began building something else. He was very focused, looking around to find the right bricks, all the while remaining totally silent. Another carer, younger and more junior than Alison, came in and handed her some notes. They sat whispering together as Anna watched the boy select toy cars from all the various types littering the play area. He was very careful, discarding one after another, then choosing a red and white car to place at the side of the house he had built. It took a long time.

‘Is this your house?’ Anna asked.

He stared at her and then went to pick up a red bus; he stood with it in his hands.

‘Oh, that’s a bus. Did you go on a bus?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know where this house is?’

He stared at the house he had built and then angrily kicked it apart, stamping on the bricks. He put the bus down and started to crawl around, running it up and down the worn carpet.

‘Did you go with Joseph? Leave the house with Joseph?’

It was so frustrating and, at the same time, so emotionally draining; the child was so tense, so far out of reach, and yet so close to answering. His lips moved as if he was saying something, then he went and sat in a corner, holding the bus and refusing to even look at Anna. She stood up and stared at the carers.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Then: ‘I think I should go.’

Alison joined her; she could tell that Anna was upset. ‘It takes a long time. If we do have any breakthrough with him, we’ll contact you. You did actually get him to interact with you, which is more than we have been able to do.’

‘It’s heartbreaking,’ Anna said, turning to look at the boy huddled in the corner with the bus.

‘Yes. We have tried to get his grandmother here; she has promised twice and not turned up, which is even worse. I don’t think she wants any involvement, to be honest. We obviously didn’t tell the children she was due to come. We’ve learned never to make promises.’

‘What will eventually happen to him and his sister?’

‘We are waiting on suitable foster carers, but they will have to be very special.’

‘Will they be able to stay together?’

‘I can’t say. It will be a big decision for whoever takes him on; his little sister is doing very well, but she is still mute.’

They walked to the door, speaking softly so that he wouldn’t hear. ‘But she was not sexually abused?’

‘She was not penetrated, but she was used for oral sex. We use dolls and play games; well, you must know how we work.’

‘Dear God…’ Anna closed her eyes, near to tears. Everything in her wanted to say, ‘Let me take them, let me care for them!’ In practical terms, it was ridiculous to even contemplate, but she felt so angry and emotional; she felt she needed to help these two defenceless children. She knew that numerous foster families felt the same way, but few were trained to deal with such traumatized children; even sadder was the fact that siblings sometimes had to be separated.

Anna was shaking Alison’s hand when the younger carer who had been in the nursery room with them hurried out.

‘Alison, can you come in quickly?’ she said.

‘What’s happened?’

‘He was using the crayons and began scrawling all over the wall. I told him to give me the crayon and then he started to urinate in the corner of the room. I went over to him, not to admonish him, but to take him into the toilets, and—’

Alison turned and hurried away. Anna hesitated, but then followed. The door was ajar. The little boy was screaming, kicking and fighting; then suddenly, as if all the fight had been sucked out of him, he ran into Alison’s arms, weeping. She sat rocking him back and forth.

‘It’s all right, no one is going to hurt you. You’re safe, shush now, there’s a good boy.’

Anna jumped; the young girl had come to stand behind her.

‘Thank God–at last.’ She shut the door.

‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’

‘He’s crying, letting Alison hold him; it means we’ve broken through.’

‘You mean you’ll be able to talk to him?’

‘Maybe.’

The door opened again. Alison asked for some orange juice and biscuits, and a clean pair of pants. She looked almost with irritation at Anna.

‘No, you
can’t
see him,’ she said. ‘Please don’t even ask.’

Vernon sat with his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the table. He looked in bad shape. Langton sat
opposite him, Lewis to his right. Vernon had been talking for over an hour, and he was shaking. Langton checked his watch. It was almost four. He picked up his clipboard and jotted down a note.

Lewis glanced down. Langton had scrawled:
He’s still holding back
.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’

Langton said they would get a duty solicitor in but, until they had pressed further charges, he would remain at the station.

‘But I done nothing.’

‘You withheld vital information, Vernon. If you had disclosed what you knew—’

‘But I had nothin’ to do with it, I swear before God. All I was doing was protecting myself. This isn’t right. I could have told you where the house was, but you know I’d be dead meat.’

‘You declined to have a solicitor present at the start of this interview: that is correct, isn’t it?’

Vernon looked at the tape recorder and then at Langton. ‘But we was gonna make a deal, you said to me.’

‘I know what I said, Vernon, and the deal is you will continue this interview and make a formal statement.’

‘I don’t want a fucking lawyer.’

‘That’s your decision.’ Langton stood up. ‘If there is anything else you want to talk to me about, now is the time, because if you think you have a hope in hell of staying in a cushy open prison, you’ve got another big think coming.’

‘You can’t do this to me.’

Langton smiled, and said softly, ‘You want to bet?’ Then he turned to Mike Lewis. ‘Arrange for him to be taken down to the holding cell.’

‘Ah, don’t put me back down there,’ Vernon bleated.

‘It’ll be a lot cushier than where you’ll end up.’

‘In a box, you bastard! That’s what’ll happen to me!’

Lewis hesitated, then got up. He was confused as to whether Langton meant what he had said, and watched for a signal, but Langton had his back to him, looking down at his clipboard. Lewis walked out.

Langton looked at the tape. ‘For the benefit of the tape, DI Mike Lewis has just left the interview room; time is four-fifteen p.m.’

He switched it off and suddenly picked up the clipboard; he swiped it fast across Vernon’s face. Vernon gasped and sat back. Langton placed it back down in front of him as if nothing had happened.

‘You have two minutes, Vernon.’

As Vernon gawped at him, Langton brought up the toe of his shoe and kicked him in the groin so hard that the man reeled back in his chair, clutching at his balls in agony.

‘One minute,’ Langton said, never taking his eyes off the sweating, frightened man. ‘Talk, Vernon, fucking start talking to me. Tell me about Clinton Camorra.’

Vernon squeezed his eyes closed. ‘It was all that prick Murphy’s fault; he tried to blackmail him.’

Langton walked into the incident room, taut with anger. Anna had just returned to the station and was at her desk.

‘We leave for the house in Peckham in five minutes,’ he snapped, and slammed his office door.

Lewis came in; she asked what was happening.

‘Vernon’s down in the holding cell; bastard has been lying from the get go. It’s taken bloody hours, but—’

Before he could finish, Langton bellowed for him to join him in his office.

Lewis had never seen him quite so angry.

‘It’s been staring at us in the face, but we concentrated so hard on the bloody illegal immigrants. Camorra used the poor bastards to bring in drugs as well as themselves! The women and kids too, all of them were mules; they not only paid the son of a bitch to get them into the country, they also swallowed condoms full of heroin. He’s been concentrating on the poor–thousands of homeless in North Uganda, Somalia and Jamaica–making promises to care for their families. Joseph Sickert was one of the mules, brought in five years ago. He worked for Camorra and was sent to Gail’s to look for Arthur Murphy because Murphy, on the run for Irene Phelps’s murder, had threatened to talk unless Camorra got him out of the country.’

In the patrol car, Langton continued to fit the jigsaw pieces together.

‘Camorra has a virtual army tied to him, afraid of him. He has used mules to open bank accounts in Christ knows how many names, but his bulk fortune is in cash. A control freak, he lost it when he murdered Carly Ann North; we know how he manipulated his henchmen, the Krasiniqe brothers and Rashid Burry. But now comes the twist: Sickert. Sent to track down Murphy via Gail, he starts to have a relationship with her, and when Murphy is arrested, he refuses to go back. Rashid Burry is sent to warn him and sees all her kids; he mentions that they would be useful to Camorra and that Sickert would get paid for bringing them to him.’

Langton rubbed his knee, grimacing with the pain. ‘White kids, worth a lot of money; but by now, Sickert
is involved with Gail and even cares for them. He’s also sick. Whether or not he killed Gail’s husband, we don’t know, but he makes the big mistake of asking for Rashid Burry to help him get medication.’

Langton shook his head. ‘This is now supposition, but maybe Sickert wanted out–who knows. But whatever went on at the piggery, I don’t think he was involved in the murders. What he did do was take off with the two kids.’ He turned to Anna. ‘You get anything from them?’

‘No. The little boy is still very traumatized, and the little girl hasn’t spoken yet. Both have been sexually abused.’

Langton sighed. ‘Maybe I’m wrong; maybe he did take them to Camorra. We know the white Range Rover was at the piggery.’