Tell Tale (46 page)

‘But you died, Mum,’ she whispers back. She looks drugged. ‘You weren’t here for me.’ A frown creeps across her brow. ‘He kidnapped me. My own dad kidnapped me and tied me up.’ Josie’s voice is as far removed from normality as I have ever heard it. I can hardly stand to look at her, for fear I’ll see what he did to her, yet I can’t take my eyes off her in case she gets taken from me again.

‘I came back,’ I reply, hating myself for how hopeless that sounds. Acknowledging what she just told me is unbearable, but if I am to help her, I need to be here, to never leave her again. We will face this together. We are both alive. ‘I’m back for good, Josie. You can tell me everything. I’m not going anywhere again.’

I have to remind myself where I am.

At Laura’s house. Laura my friend. She sits across the table.

Josie is curled up on the sofa, while Nat strokes her head. I list them all over and over, as if mentally checking them off will keep them in my life.

Adam sits beside me, trying to get things straight; trying to piece together an old puzzle.

‘I’m going back to finish things in the morning.’ I’d spent the last twelve hours making statements at the police station. Mark McCormack stayed beside me throughout. Jane Shelley ferried food, drinks, messages. She held my hand.

‘I sensed he was trouble,’ she whispered in the interview room, tapping her nose.

‘You never even met him,’ I said.

‘Didn’t need to. Your behaviour was enough to tell me something was wrong.’

‘All these years, and I didn’t know. Not a clue.’ I pull the last tissue from the box. I didn’t think there were any more tears, but there are. ‘He never once hurt me. He was so kind. He was
Mick
.’

‘Your daughter,’ Jane Shelley said. ‘She’s talking to police psychologists. They’re trained in this kind of thing. While, you know, while things have come to the surface. She’s more likely to talk now, to make a statement, than if things bubble under again.’

I bruise the inside of my head by shaking it vigorously from left to right.

‘Why didn’t I see it?’ I ask Laura.

If I’m honest with myself, perhaps I did. I just didn’t want to notice. I scan through Josie’s entire childhood in a flash – how she hated it when people said she was pretty or paid her compliments; how she aggressively avoided physical contact as she grew older; how she defended her privacy fiercely; how self-conscious she was about her developing body; how she’d told me that her father loved her in a special way. And the acting – was it a release for her? A chance to become someone else? Someone normal. Added together, the total makes me feel sick. Individually, spread over an entire life, I can see how these things slipped past unnoticed.

‘You can’t blame yourself, Nina.’ Laura wraps her arms around me, knowing it’s futile. ‘It’s a question I’ve often asked myself,’ she mutters. Her life is filled with bitterness and resentment too, but in the light of me coming back from the dead, she feels somewhat lucky.

‘But we
loved
each other. He was meant to protect Josie. We were a family.’ I spill the coffee Laura has made for me. My hands won’t stop shaking. I married a murderer. I married a paedophile. ‘I had a
child
with him.’ Internally, I
test my love for Josie. It sits tight, firm, an immovable packet in my chest. My heart kicks up when I stare through the door and see her hair spilling over the edge of the sofa. ‘I’ve got her back.’

‘And I’ve got you back.’ Laura hugs me tightly. She sobs into my neck. ‘We had a bloody memorial service and everything.’ She shoves me roughly then pulls me close again. ‘I kept saying to Mick I’d sort out your stuff, but he never returned my calls. I wanted to help but he shut me out.’ Her cheeks are streaked with mascara.

‘Thank you, Laura. Thank you for being my dear friend.’ I blank off the tide of feelings that swell through me every few minutes.

I couldn’t sleep. The champagne and the painting hanging on my bedroom wall had knotted crazy dreams around me as tight as the sheet. I needed to speak to Adam. After our session earlier viewing the paintings – his kind attempt at an evening out – I desperately needed to use his computer. I was still in denial; only seeing a fraction of the colossal truth.

I put on my robe and started off down the corridor. I stopped.
There were more in the attic,
he’d said. I had to see them.

Slipping quietly away from my bedroom, I went back to the room where we’d been earlier. Thankfully, Adam had left it unlocked. The table was still littered with the empty plates from the food; the paintings were still propped against the wall, stacked on the sill, lying on their backs and
hanging on the walls. I shut the door behind me and flicked on the light. I looked up, relieved that the ceiling was low. I dragged a chair beneath the attic hatch and stood on it, reaching up to shift the board from the hole.

A shower of dust and grit rained on my face. I screwed up my eyes, spitting out the dirt. The board would only shift one way – there was something stopping it. When I reached up with my hand, I felt the cold metal rungs of a loft ladder. I found the rope and pulled it down.

Carefully, I climbed up the steps, wobbling and shaking the higher I got. The air turned cold and musty as I peeked up into the roof space. I could just make out the old light switch on the wall to my left. Clouds of dust motes swirled in the light of the single bulb.

When my eyes adjusted, I saw that the angular space was crammed with boxes and wooden crates. I eased myself up, crawling into the filthy attic.

‘More paintings,’ I said. I tilted forward a stack that leaned against the rough brick of the gable wall. When I flicked through them, my stomach curdled. ‘Oh Jesus,’ I said, letting them flop back.

Oil paintings. Watercolours. Sketches. Acrylic on board. Canvas. Stretched paper.

Children. Toddlers. Teens. Boys and girls, their faces turned shyly or grinning directly out of the pictures. Pained expressions lay on howling mouths; clawing fingers; faceless adult bodies. All naked.

They were the most abhorrent things I had ever seen in my life.

I recognised some of the expressionless faces.
Jimmy, Marcus, Heather, Kayleigh . . .

I was going to be sick.

But something about them made me look again.

Holding my breath, I opened another box. This time smaller pictures with a stack of old photographs on top, as if they had been used for reference. They were as shocking as the paintings.

‘There,’ I whispered. The similarity in style had already occurred to me when Adam told me to take the rural scene back to my room. I’d slept on the thought, dreamt about it, had nightmares about it. But there was no signature; nothing to confirm the truth that drilled out of my disbelieving mind. ‘The scarf,’ I said, feeling the nausea swell.

In nearly every picture, the subject – the
victim –
was either tied or bound by a swathe of pretty material – beauty and pain. ‘The same scarf that’s in the painting he did of me,’ I mouthed, remembering the nude that I’d been so flattered by. Purple and red chiffon billowed throughout every picture in the attic, binding the subjects, a sick attempt at softening the vile subject matter as youngsters of all ages had been portrayed with grotesque adult forms hurting them in unimaginable ways. The scarf was his trademark.

On several paintings, there were labels. ‘One hundred and fifty pounds.’ He’d sold them, made money from them. Worst of all, he’d been here, at Roecliffe Hall.

I’d spent most of my childhood at the home, in the
shadow of paedophiles, while my future husband was painting, profiting from, revolting pictures of kids I knew; kids I grew up with; kids that disappeared. There was no doubt in my mind that this was Mick’s work.

I fled the attic in blind disbelief. I ran to the bathroom and doused myself with water. I had to wash it all away. I had to stay calm, collect my thoughts, and get to Josie before something terrible happened to her. I prayed I wasn’t too late. I prayed I was wrong about everything.

I dashed to Adam’s room. I hammered on his door. He stood there, in the middle of the night, squinting at me, puzzling, wondering. I was sure he could see it written all over my face, even though I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what it all meant yet myself.

‘But how did Mick find me all those years ago? And how did Burnett find out my new identity?’ There’s too much to take in, too many questions. I’m not sure I want all of them answered. I remember my wedding. How much Mick said he loved me. How he put a single rose in my hair. ‘We met by accident.’

‘My best guess in both cases,’ Mark McCormack replies, ‘is a police informant. Sad to say, but it was probably someone in the force who tipped him off. These men are fiercely loyal to each other. Mick following you to Bristol was clever.’

I think back to when we met – the painting, my trousers, the wind. How natural it all seemed, how perfectly meshed with fate it was. But he’d planned it all. Watched me. Stalked
me. Figured out just how he was going to jigsaw into my life. The safest place for him.

‘But how come those paintings were never discovered?’ I thump my fists on the table. I’m angry. The water glasses jump. ‘If the police had done their jobs back then and searched the building properly, the paintings would have been found and maybe the artist apprehended.’ I dash through an alternative history.

In truth, I know that even if they had found the stash of paintings, locating the perpetrator would have been nearly impossible. It wasn’t as if he’d signed any of them. It’s just a hopeless wish that – oh God, it hurts to think it – that I’d never married Mick.

‘It was a tight circle,’ McCormack says. The DI sits beside him, a female officer the other side. ‘We got a couple of names from Tulloch, but then he killed himself. Leaby died of cancer in prison five years ago. I’m trawling back through the case file, but it’ll take time. If you think the search of the building was badly handled, you should see the rest of it.’ He drags his fingers down his face. He looks as if he’s been up all night. Like I was, watching over Josie.

‘I’ve worked on one other case similar to this. Further south. About three years ago. The maddening thing was that many of the people involved with the institution knew what was going on at the time.’

I gulp water. Roecliffe wasn’t unique.

‘So why did they keep quiet?’

‘Various reasons. Mostly it’s because people don’t want to rock the boat or face up to the truth. They have their jobs,
their lives. The staff at Roecliffe would have lost their incomes if the home was shut down. Telling the police was more than their livelihoods were worth. The eighties weren’t known for high employment rates.’ He breathes out heavily. ‘Either that or they were part of it themselves.’

‘So many kids died. They suffered indescribable acts.’ I’m talking about it, thinking about it in a detached way, as if it wasn’t me who lived through it. They’ve promised me counselling, but I’m not so sure. My priority is for Josie to begin healing.
‘Will I have to see Burnett in court?’

‘That depends,’ Mark says. His manner is still kind, considerate, but now I see a hard edge around his character. A product of years working in the paedophile unit at Scotland Yard. ‘On whether you want to testify against him.’ He eyes me, gauging my reaction. He needs reliable witnesses.

I nod. ‘Whatever it takes.’ Already I’m thinking far into the future, to when he’s served his time, been released again. I’m running out of lives to live. ‘And just so you know, I’m Ava now. Ava Atwood. Josie will change her surname too. We’ll do it officially.’ I will not be anyone else ever again. Already there’s too much discovering to do; finding out who we really are – me and Josie – what we can become.

‘I understand,’ McCormack replies. ‘Your cooperation is appreciated.’

It dawns on me. ‘Are there any of them left at Roecliffe, do you think?’

He’s nodding before I’ve finished. ‘Let’s just say we were
close. Watching and waiting. Now this has happened, I sent in a team. There have been several arrests in the village and quite a few more throughout the north. Art, if you can call it that, and other images were seized. Websites shut down. There’s more to come, I expect.’

‘That’s how Mick and Burnett knew I was still alive,’ I whisper, hoping Mark can clarify. ‘Someone in Roecliffe must have recognised me and tipped them off. Then they worked out it was me talking to Josie on Afterlife.’

He claps his hands together. ‘Told you not to go back. Did you listen?’

‘Trust no one and don’t go back,’ I say. McCormack’s reading a file that his colleague has passed to him.

‘Brimley? Does that name mean anything to you?’

I shake my head.

‘He received pictures off Burnett. Sold them on.’ He skims down a list. ‘Also a Barnard. Frazer Barnard. He’s under police guard in hospital. Tried to overdose when he was brought in. Had pocketfuls of diazepam at the ready.’

‘Him,’ I say. ‘It would have been him that tipped off Burnett. He must have recognised me at the chapel.’ I’m shaking, knowing how close I’d come to one of
them.
How close I’d been most of my life. ‘One night, there was an intruder. Someone at the school . . .’ I trail off. McCormack is lost. I’ve not reached that part of my story in the statement. There are many days’ work left yet.

‘We’ll continue tomorrow,’ Mark says. ‘Go home.’ He rests a hand on my back when I ask where, exactly, that is.

Adam is waiting for me at Laura’s house. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘They need me at work.’

‘Leave?’ I repeat with a tinge of hysteria. He’s my friend. I trusted him and it felt right. Amazingly, resiliently, Josie is on the computer with Nat. Their heads are pressed close as they sit on the sofa. Laura insists on Nat using her computer downstairs now. I see the familiar pages of Afterlife glow pink and green in the dark room. ‘Of course,’ I say, sighing, resigned, empty. I don’t want him to go.

‘I called Mr Palmer. The police have already briefed him. He refuses to close school early for the end of term, even though part of it has been sealed off for forensics. He’s doing everything he can to help, while keeping the girls safe. He’s a good man.’