Crying Out Loud (7 page)

Damien Beswick was suggestible. He had been at the scene, his memory of events was fragmented, he was eager to finish the questions and end the interview to get drugs. The fact that his memory of events was so poor was a major obstacle to establishing if he was lying now – or had been lying when he owned up.

The friend that Heather had enlisted to trail her cheating husband, the one Libby had told me about, was Valerie Mayhew, a retired teacher and a justice of the peace. Mayhew is not a common name in Manchester and it was easy enough to find her in the phone book. She answered my call on her way out to a meeting at the Civil Justice Centre. She would have put me off but I asked whether she could spare me ten minutes over a coffee if I came into town, telling her it related to the Charlie Carter case. She relented; I think her interest was piqued.

The Civil Justice Centre is a brave new building in the Spinningfields area of the city centre. It's an audacious design: a tall, thin central skyscraper with glassy boxes jutting out irregularly at either end; coloured battleship grey and primrose yellow, it looks a bit like a Jenga toy tower made of snazzy shipping containers, defying gravity with their overhangs. The feel as you enter is of a sweeping space, a hotel or conference centre, perhaps. The atrium soars twenty stories high and each floor has vistas to the Pennine hills that fringe the city to the north and the east. A bank of lifts whisk people heavenward to their fates: for adoption, bankruptcy, custody hearings. There's a café on the ground floor where Valerie had arranged to see me. I had described myself (grey wool pea-coat, turquoise scarf) and she waved me over. A woman in a navy trouser suit with silver-grey shoulder-length hair, expertly cut. Valerie had fantastic bone structure so, although her face was heavily lined with age, she was still very attractive. She'd paid attention to her teeth, too: they gleamed white and regular.

Valerie had finished a snack and I refused her offer of a drink and sat across the table from her.

‘You went to see Heather?' she asked. ‘How was she?'

‘Upset.'

‘It's still very raw,' she said. ‘You don't put any store by Damien Beswick's retraction?' There was a no-nonsense, teacherish tone in her voice which got my back up.

‘I'm keeping an open mind,' I said, ‘still building up a picture of events. That's why I wanted to talk to you.'

She weighed me up for a moment. ‘OK,' inviting me to proceed.

‘Just describe that day,' I said.

‘Heather rang me in a complete state, mid-afternoon. Charlie had told her he was off to some sales convention in Birmingham but she didn't believe him. He'd more than enough work on and he'd never touted for jobs outside the north-west before. She thought he was using it as an excuse to go see this other woman.'

‘Libby Hill?'

Valerie nodded.

‘Heather had already told you about her?' I asked.

‘Yes. He'd agreed to stop seeing this woman for a few months. They didn't want to mess up Alex's exams and I think Heather hoped he would come to his senses. But then she suspected he'd broken his promise and asked me to help her find out one way or the other. She thought if we used my car Charlie wouldn't notice.' Valerie shrugged and rearranged her plate on the tray in front of her. ‘It all seemed a bit  . . . seedy.' She looked up. ‘I suppose it's the sort of thing you do all the time, in your line,' she said dryly.

‘Oh, yes,' I agreed.

‘So, I tried to dissuade her but she was set on catching him out and I owed Heather a lot. She'd been brilliant when my own marriage was breaking up.' She shrugged. ‘I couldn't say no.'

‘How did you know each other?'

‘Through church.' Valerie caught sight of someone across the foyer and waved hello. She turned back to me. ‘I went round there, called for Heather and we parked a few hundred yards down the main road. When Charlie came out and turned right at the junction, we would go after him. We didn't have long to wait. He set off about four.' She frowned. ‘It really was the most horrible, awful irony.' She gave her head a little shake. ‘As you probably heard from Heather, we followed him until the turning for Thornsby and off he sailed. The opposite route from Birmingham. Heather knew he must be going up to the cottage. She was furious – hurt, too. We went back to hers and I didn't feel I could leave her like that so I stayed with her. Alex was there but he didn't know about any of it.'

‘Didn't he realize something was going on?'

‘No, he was in his room most of the time. Meant to be cramming in revision for his mocks but it sounded like he'd got some video game playing. We do advise them to revise to music but not that sort of racket.' She was being sardonic. ‘Heather had to tell him to turn it down. He came downstairs for tea but she let him take it up to eat, so I doubt he noticed the state she was in. Then, at seven, the police came.' She shook her head slowly. ‘Devastating,' she said simply.

A waitress began clearing the table. Valerie checked her watch.

‘And when you heard they'd charged Damien Beswick?'

‘Relief.'

‘You never had any doubts?'

‘Good grief, no. He owned up, the evidence fit. Kids like that: dysfunctional family, drugs, crime – sooner or later there's violence.' She pushed back her chair. ‘We see it all the time.'

The wind had brought rain with it – not heavy yet, just squalls that spat drops at me. As I walked back through the complex in the direction of the car I felt dwarfed by the buildings lowering over me and a little overwhelmed by the investigation. It wasn't the complexity of it; after all, it boiled down to one question: was Damien Beswick lying then, or now? But it was the frustration of not being able to tell whether he was guilty or wrongly convicted and the sense that there was no easy path I could follow to clearly establish that. Before his conviction the emphasis had been on proving Damien culpable beyond any reasonable doubt; now the reverse was true. In the balance of probability he had killed Charlie – it would need some stunning evidence to convince anyone otherwise.

Ray had left me a text:
clothes – no joy
. So I called into Children's World on my way home. It stocked every possible accessory and accoutrement. I found myself drooling over patterned towelling Babygros and funky baby sweaters, instead of just grabbing the two-for-a-tenner value packs in the dump bins. I could have spent a fortune and stayed all day but I got a grip, reminded myself that Jamie might be gone by teatime and settled on three cheapish cotton all-in-ones in powder blue, dusky rose and white with stars and moons.

The place didn't sell small sets of nappies; the ones they had would need a forklift truck to shift them. But there was a special offer on starter packs of three reusables. They'd a terry towelling inside and a plastic outer coating, fitted with velcro tabs. I'd used something similar for Maddie when I'd read how it took hundreds of years for disposables to degrade in landfill.

As I negotiated the traffic home, I mused on how the world seemed full of babies: Jamie, Chloe's little one, Libby's daughter. How old was Rowena? Due in June, Libby had said, so she'd be three months or so. The possibility stuck in my mind like a fishbone in the throat. I couldn't dislodge it. With it came a creeping unease, a quickening of my pulse. Why hadn't it occurred to me before? Because it seemed so unlikely – that a new client would dump her child on me? It was unlikely
whoever
had done it. It was ridiculous – still I had to ring her, had to know.

Parking in our drive, I pulled out my phone and found her number. I would get myself invited there to give her feedback – explain I understood it would be harder for her to come to me with a baby in tow. If she tried to wriggle out of it, then I'd know I was on to something. Maybe I'd have to ask her outright. My throat felt dry as I entered her number.

Libby answered the phone and I heard the deafening cries of a howling baby close by. Relief rippled through me like a drug. ‘Libby, Sal Kilkenny.'

‘Hi.'

‘Not a good time? I just wanted to fix up a meeting. Are you free tomorrow?'

‘I can do mid-morning, say, half ten.' The crying became even more frantic. ‘Sorry, I'll have to go,' she added.

‘See you tomorrow.'

It was quiet in my house. I peeked in the lounge and found Jamie, wrapped in a blanket, asleep on the sofa. Ray was in the kitchen, reading the paper after his lunch. I was five minutes later than I'd said. Would I get a lecture?

‘Hi,' I greeted him. ‘I got some clothes. Has she been OK?'

‘Not bad. Just gone off.'

‘You going into work?'

He paused. I looked at him. Was there something wrong? My stomach constricted. He shifted the chair, got to his feet. Then I saw it: the invitation stark in his eyes, the way his lips parted slightly, the rise of his chest.

I walked to meet him. Felt his hands in my hair, the brush of his moustache, then his lips on mine and his tongue, firm and smooth and warm. There was a sizzling sensation in my breasts and belly, the flush of heat between my thighs. I pulled away, hungry, breathless, savouring the intensity of his gaze. Those rich, brown eyes.

‘Your bed or mine,' I whispered.

He grabbed my waist, pulled me close, then raised his hand to the top button on my shirt. ‘Who said anything about bed?'

With huge consideration Jamie slept for two and a half hours and was still asleep when it was time to fetch Maddie and Tom. So was Ray. We'd decamped to my room for a post-coital rest and now he was lying on his back, snoring lightly, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, the curls at the edge of his temples damp with perspiration.

I showered quickly and dressed, scooped up the baby and put her in the buggy, lowered the rain hood and set off.

The rain battered down, drumming on the plastic cover of the buggy, bouncing off the flagstones. The air was fresh, strong with the dark, watery smell of wet stone. I barrelled along, almost enjoying the weather. Still high from love-making, still smitten by the man who I had never imagined I'd fall in love with. And relieved that I had been able to forget, for a couple of delicious hours, that I was no closer to solving the mystery of who had left a foundling on my doorstep.

SEVEN

J
amie shared my bath that evening. I could have washed her in the sink or top and tailed her; after all I'd already showered so I didn't need a soak, but there's nothing quite so pleasant and calming as bathing with a baby.

It had been my escape route when I had Maddie. As a single parent, there was no one close by to help me look after her. We had some hard times: days when she'd run me ragged and I'd be in tears at the sheer scale of it all. The lack of sleep, the fact that it took so long to change her, to feed her, that there was never any respite.

When I reached fever pitch, or she did, there was the fail-safe option of the bath. My gas bills soared but it was worth every penny. Afternoons would often find us submerged together. When she was particularly fractious we might end up having two baths in one day. I'd run the water, walking to and fro with her as she cried. Her protests accelerated when I undressed her: her face contorted, red with fury, limbs rigid, her cries so sharp they made my breasts leak milk. Then I would pull off my own clothes, lift her up, climb into the water and lower her in, brace her on my knees so she could see me. As the water lapped at her feet, then her bottom and up to her chest, her cries would falter, shrivel to gusty breaths then fade. The magic of water: a return to the womb.

I was ready for bed by nine thirty and didn't resist. Jamie had me up at midnight, three a.m. and five thirty. Consequently by the time Libby Hill arrived for our meeting the next morning I felt like death warmed up.

I'd rung Abi Dobson the previous evening and lined her up to look after Jamie while I saw my client. I spun her the same story about Jamie being a friend's child I was looking after while she had an operation. Abi was delighted. ‘More practise,' she said. ‘I'm doing loads of childcare at the moment.'

‘You ought to make the most of the time you've got left,' I warned her.

‘Everyone says that.'

‘Yeah, because we all wish we had. You won't have time to wipe your nose once the baby comes.'

Abi looked amazing when she opened the door to us. She was tanned and her hair streaked from travelling in Thailand and India, and she wore some stretchy knit combination that hugged her huge belly.

‘How are you feeling?' I asked her. ‘You look great.'

‘I'm good.' She lifted Jamie out of the buggy. ‘Apart from the piles.'

I groaned in sympathy.

When Libby arrived, I outlined for her what I'd done so far and was honest with her about my uncertainty.

‘So, you're saying you can't tell one way or the other?' she asked me, her grey eyes piercing.

‘If you pushed me, I'd say he's more likely to be guilty than not. But if you take away the confession, I've no idea how strong the other evidence is. Partly because I don't know exactly what they've got. We all know he was at the cottage, that he stole Charlie's wallet and that there was blood on his footwear – but how secure is the forensic evidence that he used the knife? I'd have to be in the police to get that sort of information. They never found the weapon, did they? So it will be impossible to prove Damien used it, I think.'

Libby sighed, irritated by the unsatisfactory nature of my report. ‘So that's it. Well, what else could you do?'

‘Try and see Damien's lawyer, perhaps. They would know what evidence the CPS had. Though Chloe Beswick says they told her loud and clear that there are no grounds for an appeal. She's asked me to talk to Damien again. It's up to you,' I told her. ‘You don't need to decide now. He's not going anywhere. Do you want to think about it?'