When the Music's Over (27 page)

“Just clear those papers off that chair,” O'Byrne said. “You can dump them on the floor.”

Gerry picked up the papers and set them gently beside the chair, then sat down.

O'Byrne leaned back in his chair, tapped a pencil tip against his lower lip and said, “What can I do for you? Alicia said it was something to do with the Moffats.”

“That's right. Mimosa Moffat, in particular.”

“She's not a bad kid, really, isn't Mimsy. Better than some. I must say I haven't seen her for a while, though. I hope she isn't in any trouble.”

Gerry felt gobsmacked. “Er . . . no . . . I mean, that is . . . you haven't heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Mimosa was killed last week. I'm from the county Homicide and Major Crimes. We're investigating the case. The local police said we should talk to you.”

O'Byrne dropped his pencil and sat up straight. “What? She what? Bloody hell.”

“Mimosa was murdered. Raped and murdered on a country lane just outside Eastvale about a week ago. Her picture has been on the news and in the papers all week. An artist's likeness, at any rate. We only found out who she was yesterday through an anonymous phone call.”

O'Byrne rubbed his cheeks and eyes. “Oh my god. I'm so sorry to hear that. And I must apologize for my ignorance. This job's depressing enough as it is. Any chance I get, you'll find me fishing in Upper Teesdale or walking the Dales, not watching the news or reading the papers.”

“I thought someone might have told you.”

“I'm sure someone would have, eventually. Just not yet. My god. Mimsy Moffat. What happened to her?”

Gerry gave him an edited version of the details, skipping the points the team had decided to keep to themselves.

“What is it you want from me?” he asked. “I have to say, first off, that I wasn't especially close to Mimsy.”

“Why not? Weren't you her case officer?”

“Case officer? No. Whatever gave you that impression? I work mostly with Sinead, and sometimes Johnny, not Mimsy. She didn't have a specific case officer.”

“Why's that?”

“Didn't need one. Sinead has a drug problem, as you probably know already. Has had on and off for years. It's caused her a number of other problems, bad judgment and child neglect not being the least of them. Her common-law husband and her brother haven't always been able to step into the gap, so to speak. We—I—have kept an eye on Sinead. Try to help, make sure the kids aren't suffering, the little ones especially, Tammi and Mike.”

“And they weren't?”

“Not as I'm aware. Mimsy had a few problems at school, poor attendance, disruptive behavior, talking back, and the like. She was excluded more than once, but that wasn't much of a cause for concern. None of us really liked school, did we?”

Gerry actually
had
liked school, but she wasn't going to tell O'Byrne that. She'd liked the learning and the sports, and had particularly excelled at hockey and field events, not to mention all the academic subjects except geography. “She was only fifteen,” she said. “She should have been attending whether she liked it or not.”

“Short of dragging her there . . . Look, Mimsy was a bit of a tearaway, and she didn't respond well to authority. She liked to think she was different, not part of the ordinary crowd. Typical rebellious teen in some ways but she was also naive.”

“Did she have learning difficulties?”

“Not as such. Short attention span, mild dyslexia. That's about all. It was more of an
attitude
problem.”

“Did you notice any recent changes in her behavior?”

“Not really. But I haven't actually spoken with her for a while.” “You mentioned Leonard Thornton earlier. What about her uncle Johnny?”

“Johnny's disabled.”

“You take care of him, too?”

“Lord, no. He has his own NHS carers. All I do is coordinate to some extent, make sure the left hand knows what the right hand's doing.” He leaned forward and rested his hands on the desk. “I'm sorry, but I don't know what it is you want from me. To the best of my knowledge, and the department's knowledge, none of the children were being abused or mistreated. There were some negligence issues, and we worked with the family on them. But there has never been any doubt that Sinead and Leonard Thornton have been fit parents, despite the occasional lapse. No matter what some people think, we try to avoid intervention unless we feel it absolutely necessary.”

“Is there anything you can tell me about Mimosa's life? Her problems. Her friends. What she got up to. We still have a lot of blanks to fill in. Let's start with her friends. Some names would help.”

“I wish I could, but I'm afraid I don't know.”

“OK. Her problems?”

“Well, her biggest problem is a drug-addicted mother. I know that Sinead's on a methadone program at the moment, but we're not a hundred percent certain it will do the trick. She seems determined, but it hasn't worked before, and frankly, this terrible news about Mimsy . . . well, I'm not sure what it will do to her. Though I got the impression they fought a lot, I also think it may have been because they were like two peas in a pod. Not the heroin, of course, but in some respects of character. But Sinead's problems mean the kids—Mimsy and Albert in particular—weren't subject to the usual parental discipline and control. As I said, they're not bad kids, really, but Mimsy has run a little wild, which is only to be expected under the circumstances, and Albert got probation for vandalism a while back. He's lucky he didn't get done for hate crime as well, as it was a halal butcher's window he chucked the brick through. Also lucky for him he was drunk at the time. It's a turbulent neighborhood.”

“Did you ever have any direct contact with Mimsy?”

“Briefly. When she self-harmed about eighteen months ago.” “Was there any particular reason for what she did?”

“As usual in cases like that, there were a number of factors at work. I think mostly she was lonely and felt unloved, and she wanted to make her mother notice her. Sinead was going through a particularly difficult time then.”

“A cry for help? Did it work?”

“Sinead understood. She'd been there herself. She'd done exactly the same thing in her own teenage years. She rallied herself for Mimsy's sake. That was the first time she signed up for the methadone program. At least she started trying. And Mimsy went for counseling.” He picked up his pencil again and started twisting it in his short stubby fingers. “Didn't last long, mind you. I'm afraid the counselor . . .”

“The counselor abused her. Yes, Sinead mentioned something like that.”

“He wasn't one of ours, of course. He was private. Well, assigned through the NHS, but you know what I mean.”

Like most people employed to serve the public in some way,
O'Byrne reacted first by trying to cover his own arse and that of his department.
Not our fault. Not part of our mandate
. How often had she had heard those words prefacing an excuse for not doing anything, or for doing the wrong thing? “She was what, all of thirteen at the time?”

O'Byrne looked sheepish. “Yes.”

“Then you know as well as I do that he raped her, no matter how consensual their arrangement was.”

“I've told you Mimsy was a bit of a tearaway, uncontrollable, something of a wild child. She was probably trying to assert her freedom, show she was a grown-up. And she could be manipulative when she wanted.”

“It sounds as if she could be manipulated, too,” said Gerry. “Are you trying to exonerate this counselor? Are you saying she led him on?”

“No. No. Not at all. But so many girls her age think they're so sophisticated, when deep down they're actually not. I'm just saying I don't think he threw her over the desk and had his way with her.”

Gerry couldn't think of an appropriate response to that. She moved on. “I'll need his name.”

“John Lewton. He was disciplined, naturally. Terminated. Struck off. He can't practice anymore. I believe there were even steps towards criminal prosecution but bargains were made. As I understand it, he left the country not long after.”

“For where?”

“Spain. Apparently he owns some property there.”

Gerry would check the story out, of course, and make sure this John Lewton hadn't suddenly reappeared in Mimsy's life.

“I know you can't talk about these things,” said O'Byrne, “but have you any idea who did this or why?”

“We don't. Not at the moment. You said you didn't know who Mimosa's friends were in the neighborhood, but we'd like to talk to someone her own age she might have confided in. Is there no one you can think of?”

“No. I'm sorry. But I'm sure she wasn't in a gang. We monitor gang activity closely.”

“What about the young girls hanging out on the Strip with older Pakistani men?”

O'Byrne's eyes turned toward the grille and he sighed. “That thing never works,” he said. “Aren't you too hot in here? I am.”

“Very.”

“Come on. Let's go for a walk.”

They left by the back door, beside which was a narrow footpath leading to the canal. From there, you could follow the towpath for some distance.

“I often come out here when I just want a little break or to cool down,” he said as they walked. “It's not especially pretty, but at least it's outside.”

It certainly wasn't pretty, Gerry thought, with a factory belching smoke beyond the towpath, white suds floating on the filthy brown water and the all-pervading smell of rotting garbage. There were also small piles of black bin bags spilling rubbish here and there, along with broken prams and wheel-less bicycles. Gerry thought she saw a rat scuttle from one bag to another. She didn't even think it was much cooler by the canal, but it was certainly nice to be out of that oven of an office.

“I mentioned the young girls hanging out with the Pakistanis on the Strip. The local police don't seem to know much about it, or think much of it. Does it go on? Have you noticed anything like that?”

“I'm afraid not. I don't have any reason to go there. I don't live around here. Soon as it's time to go home, I'm gone.”

“Very sensible,” said Gerry. “But it's a divided area, I hear. There's a large Muslim community, mostly people of Pakistani descent.”

“True,” said O'Byrne. “But we don't have a lot to do with them.”

“Why's that?”

“They don't want us putting our noses in their business. They take care of their own families in their own way, according to their own customs, traditions and laws. I mean, some of our staff are from the community, and they have special ties, of course. They've occasionally been involved in certain domestic issues, but as a rule, by far most of our work comes from the largely white estates.”

“I see,” said Gerry. “And you find it easiest not to help?”

“Not to
interfere
. Yes. Best for everyone, all round.”

“So you leave them to their own vigilante brand of justice?”

“I'd say justice is your job, not mine. Wouldn't you agree?”

“No matter what they do?”

O'Byrne managed a weak laugh. “Do? They don't do anything that anyone else doesn't do. Besides, we're not the police. I'll bet your police up here have far less trouble with them than with the local white population. Binge-drinking, vandalism, shoplifting, drugs, graffiti and the like. Some of those kids are just out of control, and their parents aren't much better.” He paused. “Believe me, we try to be sensitive to issues of race and cultural differences, and we try to be color-blind. It's an awkward balance, and I'd be the first to admit that it doesn't really work and we don't always get it right. We're only human, after all.”

“Have you talked to members of the community, people from the mosque, the imams?”

“No. But I know what their answer would be.”

“What?”

“If they do these things, they can't be true Muslims, therefore, they're not our problem.”

“That's a bit shortsighted, isn't it?”

“Tell that to the imam.”

“It's just that we have reason to believe that Mimosa might have been connected with some Pakistanis, and there seem to be a lot of them in the neighborhood. Running the shops and businesses along the Strip, for example. A takeaway, minicab firm, Balti restaurant and so on. We know she ate kebab and pizza shortly before she died. Coincidence?” Gerry realized she was pushing it a bit with this. All they really knew was what Dr. Glendenning had found in her stomach and what Jazz Singh had got from the DNA: that her last meal consisted of pizza and kebab and that she had had rough sex with three men of Pakistani descent. There was nothing to indicate that the men came from this area, or that she had eaten her last meal on the Strip. Still, Gerry believed that Ciaran O'Byrne needed a bit of a kick up the arse,
and as often as not in her business the roots of a crime began on the victim's own doorstep, so it wasn't an unreasonable assumption.

“Well, there are lots of places you can get kebab and pizza, and there are Asian communities all over the country.”

“Yes, but Mimosa lived
here
.” Gerry paused. “I must say, you seem remarkably unconcerned. Don't you get it? We're talking about a fifteen-year-old girl in your care who was raped and murdered.”

“I've told you, Mimsy wasn't in my care.”

“But you have a close connection with the family, with her mother particularly.”

“But not because of Mimsy. Yes, well, I try to do my job. Things were difficult, but they were coping. Mimsy didn't need to be taken away and handed over to foster parents or put in a home. She could take care of herself. At her best Sinead was there, and Leonard Thornton is a decent bloke, despite all appearances to the contrary.”