Acid Row (20 page)

“Why did the boys shop him?”

"They didn't. He was caught in flagmnte with the most recent, and confessed to the other two under questioning. It was the parents who insisted on the prosecution they wanted someone to blame for their sons' homosexuality and the judge made an example of him. It's a common story. We live in a puritanical society that refuses to acknowledge children have sexual feelings. No court today would dare accept that a kid could be a seducer, despite the statistical evidence that shows the UK has the highest number of teenage pregnancies in Europe.“ He sounded irritated. ”It's sexual curiosity, for God's sake .. . Been going on for centuries, and arbitrary laws putting ages on when it's legal to indulge don't make a blind bit of difference. You have to persuade .. . not coerce."

Harry, who had to deal with the consequences of teenage pregnancies for girls and their distraught parents, agreed with him, but now wasn't the time to discuss it. "What about exceptional circumstances? Would he rape her in the situation they're in at the moment?"

"Difficult to say. If I understood Bob right, they're trapped with Zelowski's father inside a house with a riot going on outside."

“Yes.”

“And the police think Milosz is the target?”

“Yes.”

"It's a potent cocktail. They'll all be very frightened for different reasons and fear is a powerful emotion. How will Sophie react, do you think?"

"I don't know. She's a level-headed girl but she's got quite a temper when she's roused. I can't see her giving in easily."

“That's what Bob said.”

“Is that good or bad?”

"It depends how the two Zelowskis react to it. I certainly agree that the father is the more dangerous to her, but Milosz may be aroused to see her fight back, particularly if his emotions are already in turmoil because he's afraid of the crowd. He has very little experience of women. His mother left when he was five and, as far as I could discover, he was a complete loner at school and music college. At the moment I'm struggling to understand the logic of why his father's with him when one of the recommendations in my report was that Milosz should sever all links with him as his primary abuser. I assume he was too frightened to live on his own a lot of them are which is why the recommendation was ignored, but it was damn stupid of his probation officer. What's worrying me is that Milosz won't do anything to prevent a rape .. . and may even feel emboldened to take part if he's excited enough. It depends what combination of stimuli are needed to release his emotions."

Dear God! “What do you know about his father?”

"Only what he told me himself. It's all in the notes. I asked him why he hadn't quoted his father's abuse in his defence or mitigation plea but he said it wouldn't have been fair because his father didn't know that what he was doing was wrong. It's probably true, too. He claimed his father's family was of Polish gypsy origin and he was brought up in a culture where the dominant male sets the rules of behaviour within the family. From what Zelowski told me, it seems pretty clear the man has a strong sadistic streak. He says he remembers his mother being flogged one day because her cooking wasn't good enough .. . so I imagine the sex was pretty brutal, too. Certainly Milosz was subjected to considerable violence as a child until he learnt to use masturbation as a method of deflecting his father's anger."

Harry felt queasy. “At the age of five?”

"Yes. It's sickening, isn't it? But we're looking at a very low grade of intelligence. There was no attraction to children per se, the son was simply expected to fill the sexual void after the wife left. A frightened child is always an easy mark, and it's a lot simpler than going out and making new relationships. According to what Milosz told me so I've no independent evidence of this his father took to kerb-crawling and picking up prostitutes. That's when his abuse of Milosz stopped. He was questioned several times after women ended up in hospital with battered faces, and Milosz was always expected to provide an alibi. He did it, of course, because it was the only way out of his own abuse, but he said he felt badly because it reminded him of what used to happen to his mother. The police may have records of the questioning. Could be worth a shot?"

Harry made a note. “Was the father employed?”

“On and off as a labourer.” A sarcastic note entered Chandler's voice.

"More off than on, I gather. According to Milosz, he suffers from asthma so he was usually too sick to work, but it didn't sound very convincing to me. I'd say he was working the system."

“Mm.” Harry wondered how genuine the panic attack was that the son had given as the reason for needing a doctor. “Was the mother Polish?”

"No, English. Milosz remembers very little about her except that she was blonde. His father won't have her name mentioned. All he ever told the boy was that he spent the war in Spain to escape the Nazi persecution of the gypsies .. . made his way to England in the early 1950s .. . and married Zelowski's mother in order to obtain residency rights. He said she was a prostitute when he met her, and went back on the game when he kicked her out after finding her in bed with another man."

“Why didn't she take the son with her?”

“Who knows? Wasn't allowed to? Couldn't afford him?”

“What does he feel about that?”

"According to him, nothing .. . and in a sense he's right.

He's been so successful at repressing his emotions that his mother's rejection seems no worse than anyone else's. He's learnt to cut people out of his head .. . puts music in their place. As a matter of fact he registered higher emotional disturbance at the memory of being sacked from his music department than he ever did talking about his mother."

“In what sense is he wrong?”

Another pause for thought. "He tried to cut off his penis when he was first convicted .. . sawed away at it with a plastic knife. It didn't work, of course, but he told me afterwards that it was a serious bid to castrate himself. He wouldn't explain why, except to say he was ashamed, but it does suggest he has some fairly powerful emotions that he's not admitting to."

“What about his father? How does Milosz feel about him?”

"Neutral. Neither loves him nor hates him though I imagine it's the most comfortable relationship he's ever had. He's been controlling his father since he was five years old, so the old man holds no surprises for him. It's why I felt it was important to break the dependency .. .

not because the abuse continues it stopped when Milosz went to secondary school -but because he needs to externalize his feelings instead of masking them inside his head with jazz tunes."

Harry rubbed his hair anxiously into a bird's nest. This was well beyond anything he understood about the human psyche. "So how do I handle them? What do I do if Bob isn't here and Sophie passes her phone to one of them and leaves the negotiating to me?"

There was a long pause. "In different ways, they're both dangerously egocentric the one extrovert and probably sadistic, seeking his pleasure outside .. . the other introvert and repressed, seeking his pleasure inside which suggests neither of them will be seeing Sophie as a person. Merely as a means to an end."

“What end?”

"Whatever they've decided .. . together ... or separately.

To one she may be an object of desire. To the other she may simply be the hostage that keeps them safe. Perhaps one sees her in both guises.

Perhaps both do. There are several permutations, Harry. You'll have to listen to what they say and try to work it out."

14 Allenby Road, Portisfield Little had changed in the Logan house, except that Kimberley had ceased her crying. Barry and Gregory still sat morosely watching television in the front room, and Laura remained closeted in the kitchen. There was no question of any of them going outside. Photographers, their long lenses focused on the front door, were camped behind barriers at the end of the street, hanging like leeches on the family's misery.

Laura had moved to a chair at the table, her strained, white face showing her exhaustion. Tyler shook his head gently as he opened the door and saw hope leap into her eyes. “No news of her,” he said pulling out another chair, 'but that's a good sign, Laura. We really are optimistic that she's alive."

“Yes.” She placed a hand on her heart. "I think I'd know if she was dead."

He smiled encouragement, leaving her with her illusions. He'd heard the same sentiment expressed a hundred times, but the link between people who loved each other was in the mind, not in the body, and real pain only began when death was certain.

“I need to ask you some more questions about Eddy Towns-end,” he explained.

She dropped her head abruptly to shield her eyes and he cursed himself for letting her off the hook earlier. He should have realized that her obsession with hiding was too pathological to be confined to Rogerson alone. But he wondered what secrets could be so bad or criminal'? that she would gamble on her daughter's life by not revealing them. What lever would prise them out of her now?

“We suspect Amy might be with him,” he told her bluntly. "He returned early from Majorca, and a car similar to his was seen in Portisfield yesterday with a child answering Amy's description in the passenger seat."

She stared at him with such a bleak expression in her dark eyes that he knew she had been afraid of something like this from the beginning.

“I need to know what happened, Laura.”

She dropped her face into her hands and ground the heels viciously into her lids as if she were driving out her devils. When she spoke, it was like an emotional dam bursting. "He was so handsome ... so sweet .. .

completely different from Martin. He really cured .. . about me .. .

about Amy. It was all so different ... so attractive ... he called us his little princesses." Her voice broke on a half-sob, half-laugh.

"Can you imagine how that felt after being treated like Martin's hired help for ten years .. . making excuses for the fact we were in his precious house .. . walking on tiptoe so he wouldn't know we were there .. . never opening our mouths so he couldn't find something to criticize? I should have listened to my father ... he said Martin only wanted a trophy ... a bit of fluff on his arm that proved he could still get it up .. ." She petered into silence.

Tyler waited. He wanted the story in her words, not his.

“Martin went completely berserk when I told him I was pregnant,” she went on at last, 'accused me of doing it on purpose. I knew the deal ... no children .. . why hadn't I taken precautions? He tried to force me to have an abortion .. . said if I didn't he'd throw me out without a penny.“ A very hollow laugh. ”So I went to a rival lawyer to see if I could get the house if we divorced."

This time the silence was interminable, as if she were replaying the entire episode in her head.

“What happened?”

"They were in the same Lodge. I should have known they would be ... As far as I can see, the whole profession works on dodgy handshakes. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." She tugged her hair across her face. "Give my client a break ... if you want a blind eye turned, I know this judge ... I know these policemen. The law is corrupt."

He felt he had to defend his colleagues. "It really isn't like that Laura. Masons are bound by the rules just like everyone else."

“Are you one, too?”

“No.”

“Then don't apologize for them.”

He didn't want to lose her. “Fair enough. What did this lawyer do?”

"Told Martin why I'd consulted him .. . said I seemed to have a pretty good knowledge of how much he had and where he'd stashed it ... warned him he could lose a lot more than the house if he didn't mend fences."

Her voice rose. "He wasn't acting for me, he was acting for my husband. I could have been free .. . had a home .. . brought my baby up the way I wanted' a shudder ran through her body 'but it wasn't my lawyer who told me that, it was Martin .. . afterwards .. . when he said what a fool I'd been. He loved that, you know. It made him feel powerful .. . getting his own back on the pathetic little woman who almost got away."

“What did he do?”

“Martin?”

“Yes.”

She dropped her hands beneath the table. "Offered a reconciliation before the divorce papers could be filed .. . said he couldn't live without me .. . claimed it was shock that had made him react the way he did. God, I was stupid. I actually believed him. He said he wanted to do the right thing by his baby .. . and I was glad." She couldn't keep the hands hidden for long. She was too expressive. She smacked the knuckles together in recrimination. "I used to blame it on being pregnant .. . you know, hormones out of kilter making you so desperate for security that you'll do anything .. . now I know it's me. I'd rather delude myself than face the truth."

Tyler wondered suddenly if he'd been misjudging her. He had thought her an intelligent woman calculating even who had some control over the events in her life. Now he saw her as a piece of flotsam directionless, passive, waiting for events to change her. It would explain her tirade against Gregory and his children, he thought. She had been willing to bottle up her hatred and frustration indefinitely until Amy's disappearance allowed a confrontation.

"Why didn't you pursue the divorce when you realized the reconciliation wasn't genuine?"

She shook her head. "You keep trying .. . hoping things'll get better.

In any case, I felt guilty because I loved the baby more than I loved him .. . and he knew it. The same thing happened in his first marriage."

“Is that why he didn't want any more children?”

“Yes.”

“It's a different kind of attachment, though, isn't it?”

"Not to someone like Martin. He needs to be the centre of attention."

“What does he do when he isn't?”

“Makes life hell,” she said simply.

He watched her for a moment, recalling her words of last night. "By exercising power without love?" he suggested.

“Yes.” A sigh. "It's verbal abuse. A constant drip-drip-drip of insults. You're stupid .. . you're slow .. . you're an embarrassment.