Guilty One (34 page)

‘Aye,
I suppose so. A slap-up lunch, anything you fancy.’

Minnie threw back her head and laughed. He liked her laugh. It bubbled up from her stomach. She put a hand on the desk to steady herself.

‘You’re a card, so you are, but I’ll hold you to it.’

Again she wiped the hair back from his face and planted a wet kiss on his forehead. He smiled and pulled away from her again.

‘Your bath’ll be ready in ten minutes. You be sure and get finished by then, or it’ll get cold.’

Daniel listened as she made her way downstairs, the floorboards and banister protesting under her weight. Blitz barked once as she neared the foot of the stairs, irked that she should think to leave him for so long. He heard the living-room door creak shut and the muffled sound of the television making its way up through the floorboards. Outside it was still light and early summer birds were springing from tree to tree. A part of him still felt out of place: wanted the city with all its distrust and unassuming freedom. But at the same time, he felt at home with her.

It had been over three years since she had adopted him, and yes, he did feel different. He felt looked-after. It was this which was perhaps most strange to him. When he stopped fighting her, she had lavished him with care and attention. Even when she embarrassed him, kissing him in front of Carol-Ann or praising him to the other stallholders at the market, he felt warmed by her. She told him that she loved him, and he believed her.

In the bath, he let himself sink down so that his shoulders were under water. He was now five feet ten and a half, over half a foot taller than Minnie. He could no longer stretch out in the bath. He
was too thin, though. He made a fist and pulled his forearm towards his face, so that he could inspect his bicep. In addition to his football training, he had started to do weights. The television became louder when the living-room door opened. He heard Minnie pad back and forth to the kitchen. The bathroom was steamy, although he had the window open three inches – enough for him to see out into the yard. The rowan was like a tendonous, skeletal hand stretching out of the earth against the night sky.

On the shelf in the bathroom was the butterfly, placed just to the side the way Minnie liked it. He wiped sweat off his face and watched the butterfly, imagining the small child placing it on the shelf. Daniel swallowed and then looked away.

He dried himself and dressed in tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. He towelled his hair dry and pushed it off his face. It was getting long at the front. He wiped a hand across his jaw, inspecting it for signs of a beard. It was smooth and clean and hairless.

In the kitchen he made himself toast and poured a glass of milk, then went into the living room to sit with her.

‘Do you want some toast? I’ll make you some.’

‘No, love, I’m grand. Are you hungry again? You have a bottomless pit for a stomach, so you do. I wish I could eat like you.’

She tried to put her elbow on the edge of the armchair but missed and spilled some of her drink on to the floor.

‘There I go again,’ she said, dabbing the spill with the heel of her sock.

Daniel gave Blitz the last of his toast, then finished his milk as he listened to Minnie rant at the news. The Prime Minister, John Major, was talking about the potential for economic recovery.

‘Yer arse in parsley,’ Minnie railed at the screen. ‘They’ll not be satisfied ’till
they have this country on its knees … God, I hated that woman, but he’s not much better.’

She wasn’t expecting an answer from Daniel and so he said nothing. He put a piece of coal on the fire.

‘How was your bath, love?’ she asked him, her cheeks wet as if with fresh tears. She leaned over the arm of her chair, a smile on her face and her eyes merry. ‘Did you get your work finished?’

‘Aye.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her, seeing her wipe her face again.

‘I’m grand, love. I’m just incensed by the sight of that bloody man. Turn that news over. Turn it off. I can’t even stomach the sight of him.’

Daniel got up and changed the channel. It was sport and he glanced at her to see if she would allow it. Usually she would ask him to watch it on the black and white in the kitchen, or she would say yes but then lose patience. Tonight her eyes wavered before the screen, then closed for a long blink.

As Daniel sat down to watch the game, her eyes closed and her head twice bobbed down sharply, waking her. When her eyes began to close again, he got up and gently took the glass from her hand and carried it through to the kitchen. The dog wanted out and so he opened the back door. He washed up the dishes from dinner and wiped the portion of the kitchen table from which they had eaten.

When Blitz came back inside, Daniel locked up, closing the windows and bolting the back door. The dog settled into his basket, as the house warmed to Minnie’s snores.

In the living room her head was thrown back in the chair, the fingers of her right hand still reaching out to grasp the glass that Daniel had removed.

Daniel
stood with his hands on his hips for a moment and sighed. He turned off the television and put the guard across the fire. He turned out the light beside her chair then took her hand and helped her forward until he could get an arm underneath her shoulder.

‘No, leave me, love, leave me,’ she protested.

But he lifted her up, put her arm over his shoulder and walked her, a hand by her waist, out of the living-room door and upstairs. Twice he had to stop and steady himself, one foot behind him on the lower step, when she leaned back into him, but he got her upstairs and then lowered her on to her bed, where she lay with her lips parted and her torso twisted so that her feet were on the floor.

Daniel knelt and unlaced her boots, slipped them off and then her big wool socks. He was always amazed by the smallness of her feet. He loosened her blouse and peeled the cardigan from her, then took the clasp from her hair, allowing her long grey curls to spill over the pillow.

He took her feet and slipped them under the covers, lifted her shoulders a little and centred her on the pillow, before pulling the quilt over her.

‘You’re a good lad,’ she whispered to him, when he was still leaning over her. Always she would do this: surprise him with her consciousness. ‘I love you, so I do.’

He tucked her in, and turned off the light.

‘G’night, Mam,’ he whispered, in the near dark.

25

It
was the second week of Sebastian’s trial. Daniel was deliberately not reading the newspapers, but he was distracted by a story that he glimpsed over someone’s shoulder on the Tube. When he reached St Paul’s he ran into a newsagent’s where he picked up a copy of the
Mail
and flicked through it. On page six there was his photograph. He was frowning; it was a shot taken at the entrance to the Old Bailey. The headline read:
THE MAN WHO WANTS TO FREE THE ANGEL KILLER
. The report also mentioned Irene.

Daniel put the paper back on the rack. When he arrived at court, it was just before nine. The crowds outside the Old Bailey had not lessened since the trial began. A policeman shielded Daniel as he tried to enter the court, a cup of coffee in one hand and his briefcase in the other.

‘Mr Hunter, what’s the defence going to be?’ a journalist shouted, and Daniel turned in case he recognised the man, but it was not the journalist who had called at his flat. ‘Would you say the Crown’s winning?’

The crowd jostled around the reporter.

*

Inside
the Old Bailey, Daniel straightened his shoulders and walked towards Court Thirteen, looking up at the ornate, painted walls of the court. He saw Irene minutes before the judge came in. She tapped his shoulder as she passed, and bent down to whisper, ‘Bastards,’ so close that her voice tickled his ear. He knew she had seen the article.

‘They don’t know how they pervert justice,’ she said. ‘How dare they be judge and jury?’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Daniel whispered back. ‘Good luck.’

‘The Crown calls John Cairns.’

John Cairns was a man uncomfortable in a suit. Daniel could see from the way the suit pulled at the shoulders that Cairns felt constricted. The man stepped into the witness box and took a sip of water before looking at the jury, at the judge and then at Gordon Jones with his sharp upturned jaw, who was addressing him.

‘Mr Cairns, you work at the Barnard Park Adventure Playground, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please can you state your role, and how long you have been employed there?’

‘I am one of the play managers, and I’ve worked there for the last three years.’ His voice was thick, as if he were nervous or recovering from a cold.

The court was freshly convened and rapt.

‘Mr Cairns, can you tell us about the morning of Monday 9 August this year?’

Mr Cairns sniffed, and leaned on the witness box for support. ‘I was first in. I’m always first. I opened up as usual and then made a
cup of coffee. I always check the yard on Monday, in case any of the ropes are loose or … usually I need to tidy up some litter, so I did that next. It was while I was doing that that I found … the child’s body.’

‘The body was later identified as that of the victim, Benjamin Stokes. Can you confirm for us the exact location of the body when you found it?’

‘It was partially hidden under the small wooden playhouse that we have in the playground, in the far corner near Barnsbury Road and Copenhagen Street.’

‘At this point I would direct you to page fifty-three in the jury bundle. You will see here a map of the playground with the areas identified by numbered and lettered squares. Please can you tell us the approximate location on this map?’

‘E3.’

‘Thank you. Was the body immediately obvious to you?’

‘No, not at all. I saw there was something there, but to be honest I just thought it was a plastic carrier bag or something, litter that had got caught by the trees near the fence …’

There was a gasp from the gallery. Daniel glanced up to see Mrs Stokes lean forward, a hand over her mouth. Her husband pulled her into him, but she was now inconsolable and had to be taken out. Sebastian sat up straight with his hands folded in his lap. He seemed interested in the evidence of the play manager and also strangely pleased by Mrs Stokes’s breakdown. Daniel put a hand on his back to ask him to turn round, when he turned to watch Mrs Stokes go.

Kenneth Croll was in court, and he leaned forward then, rising out of his seat to do so, and poked Sebastian in the back. The thick finger was enough to send Sebastian jolting forward in his
seat. Daniel glanced at Croll out of the corner of his eye. Sebastian began scrunching up his eyes again, and rocking slightly, back and forth.

The scribblers in the gallery had noticed. As had the jury.

‘Please continue, Mr Cairns,’ Jones prompted.

‘Well, as I drew nearer, I saw the boy’s trainers and again … my first thought was that they were discarded shoes and trousers that had possibly been thrown over the fence. You get that kind of thing … But as I drew near …’

‘We have photographs of the body as it was when you discovered it. If the jury could refer to page three in their bundle.’

Daniel watched as the jury viewed the photograph, hands over their mouths in distaste, although there was worse to come. Sebastian watched their faces. At the same time he was drawing in biro – a picture of trees.

‘Mr Cairns, I am sorry to press you on this, I know it must be disturbing for you to recall, but if you could continue telling us what you saw.’

‘Well, as I drew near, I saw that it wasn’t a pile of clothes, but rather a small boy, underneath the wooden house.’

‘Immediately you could see that it was a boy?’

‘No, I could see his legs sticking out. His face was well hidden, under the house, but I realised it was a child.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I crawled under the trees and then down on my belly to pull him out from under the wooden house, but as I drew near I realized …’

‘Yes, Mr Cairns?’

‘Well, I realised that he was dead and so I daren’t touch him. I went inside immediately and called the police.’

‘Were
you aware that a little boy had gone missing?’

‘Well, I don’t live in the area, but when I came to work in the morning I saw the pictures and I saw the incident van. I hadn’t watched the news. I didn’t know what it was all about …’

‘You just described to us how you accessed the body …’ Jones placed his glasses over his nose and held his notes at arm’s length to read, ‘“crawling … on your belly”.’ He removed his glasses and leaned forward on his lectern. ‘So would it be correct to say that the area where the body was found was difficult for an adult to access?’

‘Very much so, it’s totally overgrown. I think that’s why the body wasn’t spotted. I’m only glad it was me and not one of the kids that found him.’

‘Indeed. When the little boy was identified, did you recognise him?’

‘No. He wasn’t a regular at the playground.’

‘Thank you, Mr Cairns.’

There was the usual hush as Gordon Jones turned towards Irene Clarke. Daniel bit his lip as he waited for her question. He watched her consulting her notes, noticing the tendon defining her long neck.

Jones looked pleased with himself. By trying to show that the murder site was inaccessible to an adult, he had pre-empted the defence’s assertion that the injuries inflicted on Ben required strength difficult to attribute to a child.

Irene leaned on the lectern with both hands and smiled at Mr Cairns with closed lips. Daniel admired her poise.

‘Mr Cairns, you describe the structure under which the victim was found as a wooden house. Could you tell us a little more about it, please?’

‘Well,
it’s a small hut or house, raised off the ground on stilts … I suppose you might call it a tree house, but … it’s only a couple of feet off the ground. It’s still surrounded by trees so it gives the kids that kind of feeling. I suppose that’s the idea.’

‘Is this a popular part of the playground for children to play?’