Suffer the Children (19 page)

‘I wouldn’t try, Debra. And that’s the truth.’ He clicks, can’t wait to collect his winnings from Pennington.

Josie skips down the Leadengate steps, looking excited as she slides into the Peugeot’s passenger seat. She smells cool, clean, but there’s a smudge of the night to her.

‘You look pleased with yourself,’ he says, firing up the car, driving them away.

‘Pulford told me you’ve got an E-Type. Why can’t we go in that?’

‘It’s older than me for Christ’s sake.’

‘You’re not looking for sympathy, are you, sir?’

‘What do you know about these attacks on the Limekiln?’

‘You know there’s seven people living there on the sex offenders’ register. Seven!’

‘How did you get on with the CPS?’

Josie twists to face him, hooks her foot so it’s under her
bottom
. ‘The Watkins case was a couple of months after Kashell and according to the CPS, Sally Watkins was all set to go through full disclosure. She had positive psychiatric reports and all the forensics stacked up against Montefiore. Then she withdrew. Montefiore was charged but released on bail. A trial date was set and all the documentation was ready to go, but the CPS had to let it go because Sally’s mother said she wasn’t up to it, said the disclosure was acquired against their will. There was an interview directly with Sally. Some caseworker had gone round and not waited for her mum to get home from work.’

‘It’s procedure getting in the way of justice.’

‘The point is, it was the Watkins family that didn’t put Montefiore in the dock, not the CPS. And it was the same with Nicoletta Kashell. It was only a few weeks earlier that Greta Kashell stopped the CPS from interviewing Nicoletta. It was Nico Kashell that reported the assault by Lotte Stensson, not the mother. Don’t you find that funny?’

‘There’s such a thing as being in denial. And I suppose it fits. The father takes her in, gets the case prosecuted. The mother steps in, protects her daughter the only way she knows how, by stopping the assault from being raked over and over by the likes of Stan Buchanan. And the father can’t cope. He needs his vengeance, so he goes out and gets it.’

‘But he gets caught and he’s banged up. That means he can’t be connected to Montefiore or Colquhoun,’ says Josie.

‘Greta Kashell joins VABBA and hooks up with Tyrone Watkins and Debra Bowker, maybe even Leanne Colquhoun.’

‘Who would feel strongly enough to string these people together?’ says Josie.

‘Maybe it’s not a case of which one of them is behind it. Maybe it’s all of them. I bet Debra Bowker pulled the
disclosure
on what Karl Colquhoun was doing to his kids. She had no faith in us. Then she met someone who could show her a way. Let’s go and see Greta Kashell. She was the first.’ 

Errol Regis wipes his mouth and looks into the toilet. He pulls the chain and his vomit spirals away. This time last week he was conducting his ablutions in the presence of another man, on Belmarsh’s vulnerable wing, ‘Fraggle Rock’ to the rest of the prison population. Errol had no choice but to ‘go
vulnerable
’, put himself in with the kiddie fiddlers and the rapists. He was doing a six-year for raping Martha Spears, but he was also claiming he was innocent. Cons can’t stand that, pretending you’re better than them, so Errol had to do his time as an innocent man amongst the lowest of the jail’s lowest scum.

Now, the week he gets out, the radio prickles with vengeance. There have been more vigilante attacks this morning, some of them up on the Limekiln, and as he takes his copy of the
News
into his damp Victorian parlour from where he can look up at the Limekiln tower, he practically hears the hot breath of the righteous on his neck. He is on the Register. Anyone who cares could find him. And he can’t just move away, start again. If he misses his probation meetings, his licence will breach and he’ll be back inside for the other half of his six-year tariff. It might be the safest place, but innocent men don’t walk back into jail.

Theresa Regis comes downstairs in her dressing gown and sits on the edge of the threadbare sofa. She looks up at her
husband
and Errol can see she doesn’t believe he didn’t do it. She says she does, but he knows her too well.

Most men, when they get out of jail, are like dogs with two dicks. Errol hasn’t laid a hand on Theresa yet. The first night, when she rolled over and hooked her leg over his, she rubbed herself up on him. She put her hand on him. There wasn’t so much as a twitch.

Poor Theresa started to cry, and so did Errol. He asked if she wanted some cocoa and she said, ‘Is it ’cos I’m too old, Ell?’

When he saw Martha Spears all beaten up and cowering in the dock as she testified against him, something inside Errol died. The man who did it to her is out there and doing it still. We all need someone to blame but Errol can’t blame young Martha.

‘Can I make you a cup of cocoa, love?’ he says.

Theresa picks up the paper. She reads about Leanne Colquhoun and Guy Montefiore and someone out there who can’t take any more rough justice and is taking matters into their own hands. She says, ‘Make yourself one, love.’ As she says it, tears run down her cheeks. They cut dark, crooked lines on her smooth, dry, black skin and as she looks up at Errol with sad, wide eyes he knows that she’s going to leave him. Who can blame her? 

From the caff opposite the petrol station at the end of Gibbets Lane, the man watches Theresa Regis close the gate behind her. Sirens warp in the Saturday traffic and Errol Regis waves his wife goodbye but her head is down, chin tucked into her chest. She pulls a garishly green, moulded plastic suitcase. The man feels sorry for her and he knows that she will be better off without Regis. The world will be a better place without him and if someone had done this three years ago, Martha Spears would be more than a basket case.

This might be the last of his obligations. He doesn’t know her Errol’s movements yet, hasn’t pieced together that
repeating
pattern of behaviour, but he will cut the fourth rope. Sooner than he’d like, but we don’t live in an ideal world.

Theresa Regis has barely got on the bus before a police car turns into Gibbets Lane. It stops outside Errol Regis’s house and a uniformed officer makes his way up the path. If only they protected the innocent with such vigilance. 

Greta Kashell asks to see Staffe’s ID, apologising that she hasn’t had the best experiences with the police. She reads the search warrant thoroughly before letting the DI and Josie into her Raynes Park home.

They work their way through the house and Staffe reminds himself to ask which room is which. In the box room, Staffe fires up the computer and Greta watches as he makes his way through the directories. He goes back and forth from the
desktop
, into Works and out of it. There is no address book, no
Contacts
icon. ‘We’ll have to take this away, I’m afraid. I’ll try and get it back to you by the end of the week.’

‘I need it for my work.’

‘Don’t you have a memory stick you can use?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ and as soon as she says it, Greta Kashell diverts her eyes from Staffe. He nods to Josie and she moves across to the door, to make sure Greta Kashell can’t get out, can’t follow Staffe as he goes to find the device. She calls out after him, ‘It’s in my handbag. Don’t go tipping the place upside down.’

When he returns and plugs it into the USB port, she looks for all the world as if she has nothing to fear.

Staffe goes into the
Contacts
file.

‘What’s VABBA, Greta?’ says Staffe.

‘I’ve forgotten.’

‘And DB? This is a Spanish number.’

‘Why disguise her name?’ says Josie.

‘I did it when I heard about Colquhoun.’

Staffe lets the cursor drift over the file icon and sees when it was last amended: the day Karl Colquhoun was murdered. Not the day after, nor the day it was reported in the press. Somehow, Greta Kashell knew Karl Colquhoun was dead within an hour of him taking his last, fear-sucking breath.

‘I can understand that, Greta. And when was the last time you spoke to Debra?’ He can practically hear the calculations whirring as Greta thinks about telephone records – and what will Debra Bowker’s version be?

‘Three years ago? Something like that?’

‘When you were grieving.’

‘The grief doesn’t go away, Inspector.’

Staffe waits for Greta to look away, gives Josie the nod to step in.

‘Where did VABBA used to meet, Greta?’ says Josie.

‘Somewhere out in Surrey, I don’t know.’

Staffe knows she’s lying. Now, he’s not so much interested in the information she provides as how tangled her lies become. He tries to forget that Greta Kashell is the mother of a raped daughter, the wife of an incarcerated husband.

‘And who else went to VABBA, Greta?’

‘I’ve been in and out of therapy having my head churned up twice a week and you expect me to …’

‘Don’t worry, Greta. Don’t worry.’ Josie explains that she will have to go with them to Leadengate.

And as Greta tries not to fall apart, Staffe calculates when he might spring the question as to whether she knows Tyrone Watkins. Information is everything and when they don’t know you know what they know – you wait.

Josie hooks her arm through Greta’s and leads her down the stairs, out of her own front door. Staffe tries to convince himself that he’s a good guy. 

At Leadengate, Greta refuses tea, says she can’t wait for the duty solicitor. ‘I have nothing to fear from the truth. I need to get back. Saturday night is our busiest night.’

‘You heard what happened to Debra Bowker’s ex-husband?’

‘Don’t ask me to mourn him.’

‘Do you read the
News
?’

‘Why would I waste my time?’

‘When was the last time you saw Tyrone Watkins?’

Greta Kashell looks in her lap and plays with the clasp of her handbag. ‘He was already broken when I met him. He wouldn’t do it.’

‘Do what, Mrs Kashell?’

She looks up, her eyes narrow to fierce slits. Ice cold. ‘Do what’s right, Inspector. If only he could have.’ She opens her handbag, takes out a small red diary and asks Josie for a pen and a piece of paper. ‘Tell me the times, Inspector, and I’ll tell you where I was.’

Times
, thinks Staffe. ‘Where were you when Lotte Stensson was killed, Mrs Kashell?’

‘I was on the psychiatric ward of St Thomas’s Hospital.’ She gives him a priest’s look. ‘Some might say I’m mad, still.’ Then she checks the dates that Josie gives her and accounts for where she was when Karl Colquhoun was killed and Guy Montefiore tortured. 

Jessop welcomes Staffe and Josie in. Staffe wishes he could be anywhere else, but he has to dig deeper into Jessop’s
involvement
with Greta Kashell and VABBA, and possibly Guy Montefiore. Jessop looks wasted, as if he’s been drinking steadily, forever. Bizarrely enough, he is clean-shaven and doesn’t smell like a tramp.

‘Sorry about the smoke. Sorry it’s a shithole, I suppose,’ says Jessop to Josie as he chucks a couple of old
Racing Posts
off the only armchair in the room and ushers her to sit. Once she is settled, Jessop sits on a large, intricately carved wooden box that looks as if it hails from North Africa – doubtlessly one of Delores’s purchases. It saddens Staffe to think that it must have some kind of sentimental value – for Jessop to have negotiated its retention. Jessop lights up. ‘I’d offer you tea but I don’t do hot drinks.’ He looks at Staffe. ‘Not a whisper for three years and now twice in two days. You’re spoiling me.’

‘It’s the Kashell case,’ says Staffe.

‘You don’t say.’

‘Nico Kashell took Nicoletta in to press charges. He started the disclosure.’

Jessop nods, furrows his brow. ‘The mother didn’t want the child to be traumatised, if I recall correctly.’ He sucks hard on his cigarette and coughs out a thin spray of smoke. He punches his chest and smiles at Josie. ‘His life ended the day Lotte Stensson did what she did. If you can accept that, everything makes sense.’

‘What were the two of them like, together, Nico and Greta Kashell?’ asks Josie.

‘I can’t say I remember seeing the two of them together.’

‘Did he blame her, for withdrawing Nicoletta from pursuing the case?’

‘I’m pretty sure he thought our idea of punishment wouldn’t have helped him or his wife, let alone the daughter. A couple of years in jail for Stensson, then a lifetime on the social.’

Staffe says, ‘People who do what Lotte Stensson did – allegedly did – are damaged. They need help, regardless of what harm they inflict. Most sex offenders have …’

‘I know, I know. The cycle of abuse. Try telling that to Nico Kashell.’ With his heckles up, life comes back into Jessop’s eyes. ‘The Kashells did what they did out of love. Not hate.’ Jessop runs his fingers along the tight curves of the box’s carved filigree pattern. He has a faraway look again and his words reprise what Montefiore said to Staffe just yesterday.

Jessop raises his eyes, makes a thin-lipped smile and Staffe wonders what Jessop thinks of him – the person he has become. He tries to conceive what might be left of the young man Jessop took in all those years ago.

‘Whoever is doing this has called me, at home. They’ve been at my car, too. There’s been messages.’

‘Looks like you’re all sucked in, Will. And giving them what they want?’

Staffe stands up, knowing he isn’t going to get what he came for. Josie follows suit, waits by the door and watches Staffe and Jessop shake hands, awkwardly. She says to Jessop, ‘You know, Greta Kashell said a strange thing to me. She said that for her it was like being buried alive. She said for victims it was always the same, they are always being buried alive.’

Jessop scratches his jaw and life glimmers in his watery eyes. ‘There was a group, if I remember it right. She might have been a member of it. Victims Buried Alive. Something like that.’