Kate was stunned. ‘Why would I?’
Jenny grinned. ‘I’ll rephrase that. You’re not bothered at being around me? You’d be amazed the number of women who are.’
‘Well, that’s their problem. Move in whenever you like.’
‘When it gets around the station we’ll be the butt of a lot of jokes!’
‘Good, I could do with a laugh myself.’
Jenny heard the sadness in her voice and gripped Kate’s wrist. ‘All relationships are crap really. Straight, gay, any of them. People are hag, Kate. Believe me, I know.’
They finished eating before Kate brought up the subject of the investigation again.
‘I think someone is involved with all these kids, Jenny. There’s something we’re just not seeing here. Maybe if we go through everything again we can find a common denominator. Jackie says she’s never heard of Mary Parkes, but she must have seen Kerry because they live only a few streets from each other. One thing I have learned from the estates is that everyone knows of or about everyone else. It’s their way of life.’
Jenny nodded her agreement.
‘We’ll find the thread that links them, don’t worry. We already know that two of the mothers were in the sex industry. We know that Jackie worked in the Black Rose and what her movements were daily. Someone else could easily have known about them too. In fact, I’d lay money that someone else
did
know. Annoyingly, we can’t get any details about the working life of Caroline - she just won’t let on about anything. I get the impression she’s frightened. Maybe she works rough trade, I don’t know. If so, we can’t rule out the possibility that her kids may have been involved in what she was doing. After Kerry, we both know that’s not impossible - right?’
Kate agreed, depressed to think of all the people who saw their kids as commodities, as opposed to little people they had created and should by every law of nature cherish.
‘I think the time has come for some real digging. Did Social Services drop off the files at all?’
‘Not yet. I went over there as requested, but they refused me access until Robert Bateman was on the premises. But I’ll go in later on, pick everything up then. We need Jackie’s files now as well. All the children we’ve seen are either registered as at risk or under supervision. That’s all they have in common, right? And that’s what is bothering me. You don’t think we have someone out there with a grudge against problem families, do you?’
Jenny pointed a fork in Kate’s direction. ‘That’s assuming the mothers aren’t involved, when I’m convinced that Kerry took her own child away. She’s a proven abuser. As far as Caroline is concerned, we can’t put her anywhere. Which makes me think she has to be lying in some way. I mean, her child is missing and she won’t give herself an alibi? Please! And as for the first one, Regina, who can say what she was capable of? She was as mad as a hatter.
‘I think you’re looking for goodness in these women, Kate, when there isn’t any. I’m not a mother like you so I don’t have the same emotional reaction to what has happened. That’s why I’m good at this job. I have a natural distrust of people and it seems to give me the edge in these kind of cases.’
She leaned forward. ‘I’ll tell you something else, love - all this maternal instinct crap and the other garbage women are dealt out is rubbish a lot of the time. I know, I see the opposite side of it on a daily basis. Some women have no maternal instincts whatsoever. I have dealt with women who have killed their babies and then are so terrified by their own action they actually get away with it. An ambulance arrives, they are hysterical and are then treated as the grieving mother. It isn’t until the autopsy that we find there were suspicious circumstances and by then they have a story off pat.
‘Don’t take any of these women at face value, Kate,’ she urged. ‘Listen to my advice. Observe everything and anything. You’ll be surprised at what was staring you in the face all along but your innate niceness wouldn’t let you see it. These aren’t women like you: good mothers, caring individuals. These are people struggling to survive and finer feelings sometimes go out the window.
‘A child a week dies in this country through sheer neglect. That is on top of the ones who die from physical abuse. We still have kids with malnutrition in this country and we’re nearly into the new millennium! Believe me, love, you cannot let liberal preconceptions affect your judgement in these cases. Suspect everyone until you know they’re clean.’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Kate told her gratefully, ‘but I am working on a hunch, nothing more. Most prostitutes’ children are very well cared for materially, you and I both know that. None of these kids, except Regina’s, were under supervision because they were neglected as such. Most were there because of the mother’s lifestyle - which is a completely different thing.
‘Kerry’s children were neglected but if she had not been known to Social Services beforehand, chances are she would have been left to get on with it. Where she lived, the neighbours aren’t likely to ring up about child neglect because their idea of neglect is completely different from ours. Dirty ragged children are accepted as part of their environment. Children playing out alone till all hours is normal behaviour. Babies of two with mouths like sewers are common, as are five year olds with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of sex. Ask up the local school if you don’t believe me.
‘But then, I’m telling you what you already know. What I’m saying here is, we must not let this knowledge
taint
our thinking, that’s all. There are many ways to look at this and we have to explore them all. Not every mother we see is bad. Some just don’t know any different.’
Jenny listened carefully but Kate knew she didn’t really agree. Jenny saw womanhood at its lowest ebb. It was natural that her thinking should be affected by it. But Kate could not bring herself to believe that
all
these women were predatory abusers. She believed once you accepted something like that as the norm then you yourself were tainted. Almost as if you were condoning it somehow.
She had seen plenty over the years but had made a conscious effort not to label people or assume anything about them because of their home, lifestyle or attitude. It was this that had kept her sane during George Markham’s reign of terror.
She liked Jenny and knew how easy it was to become jaded in the type of job they both did. It was human nature. But there was still a part of Kate that saw the goodness in people. If it had not been there she would never have accepted Patrick Kelly as her lover.
Though, she reminded herself, he had turned out to be rather different from the way she’d imagined. He had let her down badly but she would still rather try and give humanity as a whole the benefit of the doubt until it was no longer possible.
She had learned a useful lesson from her daughter: never judge a book by its cover. Lizzy had taken an overdose when her mother had found out all about her and her activities. Kate had thought her daughter was still a virgin, waiting for Mr Right, when instead she was into all sorts of things, from drug taking to gang banging. But for all that she was still Lizzy, Kate’s daughter, her own flesh and blood.
Some people looked and acted good but were nevertheless bad. Others looked and acted bad and were basically good. Kate had found that out the hard way.
When she had read her daughter’s diary she had been devastated, as had her mother. Evelyn had been even more disgusted than Kate if that was possible. Lizzy had actually given local lads marks out of ten!
Reading it had made Kate feel sick, physically sick. But Lizzy was still her daughter. That was why she had found it in her heart to sympathise with Lenny Parkes. She knew the shock and horror of finding out a child was not only sexually active, but sexually active with everyone and anyone. It changed you, and it changed the way you perceived your child.
Patrick Kelly had learned that lesson too with Mandy. But why was she wasting her time thinking about him? He was a liar and a bloody cheat. Kate could have wept with the hopelessness of it all.
‘When you’re ready get your stuff and I’ll give you a key, OK?’ she told Jenny, who smiled her thanks.
Willy was given a glass of water and his parched throat eased slightly. As the cool liquid dribbled down it he felt almost high with relief. He was wasted and he knew it; his strength was all gone, and he realised that his captors knew this too. Untied at last, he was unable to move himself from the narrow Z-bed.
He listened to his jailer leave the room and lay in the darkness once more. At least they had given him something to drink and after nearly a week he was grateful for that. He was actually grateful to his captor for a small kindness and that troubled him. He should hate the ponce with a vengeance but he was too weak and too tired to get up the energy.
Willy wished Pat would get his arse in gear and get him out. He had a terrible pain in his kidneys and guessed this was something to do with being kept captive, lying down constantly and having nothing to eat or drink.
He tried, unsuccessfully, to raise himself. Nausea enveloped him like a shroud and he laid his head down carefully. He did not want to vomit and risk dehydration.
He’d not had the strength to talk to his captor, yet there were questions spinning around his head day and night. Was Patrick dead? That thought terrified him, but he was beginning to think it might be the case as he was nowhere nearer release than he had been and he knew it. His captor was too cocky, too sure of himself.
If Patrick was dead, then so was Willy.
Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it down. He could smell himself now. He’d had to evacuate where he lay and was sore, dreadfully sore, all over.
Closing his eyes, he felt the sting of tears and fought them back bravely. He must not break down now. Pat might be negotiating his release even as he lay here in despair.
Turning his head, he saw a large rat peering at him through the gloom. Shaking his head, Willy decided he’d better start counting again. Anything to take his mind off what was happening. Because it was getting to him now, really getting to him. And he wasn’t sure how long it would be before he started screaming or crying.
This frightened him more than anything. Being seen to be weak was something he had fought against all his natural life. Acting tough was in his nature, in his very bones. But William Gabney, hard kid and harder man, was finally near to breaking point.
Kate and Jenny were getting an update and both realised that ‘demoralised’ was too mild a word to describe how the team was feeling. Child murder was an emotive crime. Eventually it depressed even the most hardened officer.
Kate surveyed the glum expressions around her. Lenny Parkes’s murderous attack on Kevin Blankley had somehow given them all a boost yet they knew they had lost in Kevin a vital witness for their investigation. And Davey Carling was dead, too.
Kate sometimes wished she could bring the bleeding hearts in to see the knock-on effect of a child murder or rape and then ask them to justify the release of the guilty parties. All the man-hours put in for free by dedicated officers. All their disgust at hearing the sordid details and having to follow up on them. The crawling of the skin that accompanied just being close to the perpetrators of these crimes. She knew most of the people in front of her now would say they would willingly act as hangman to scum like that if the law permitted it.
She listened to Jenny raising morale, saw how she made them all feel they were vital to the enquiry and doing a good job. If only they could find something to make the cases stick, they would all be celebrating overnight.
‘If the women were ID’d how come we haven’t enough to go with?’ The young PC’s voice was low and tentative, but Kate watched as the others nodded to one another in agreement.
‘I mean, ma’am, all the mothers could be placed at the scene . . .’
She stood up to take the question.
‘The fact that they are the children’s mothers would naturally put them at the scene. Mums touch their kids all the time, so consequently they would share fibres and other physical evidence that we would normally use to place an unknown perp at the scene. And remember that one of them, Jackie Palmer, has a very good alibi. She could not have been at the scene as she is on CCTV at the Black Rose at the very time her child was taken from the nursery. So where does this leave us as regards her?’
Golding’s voice was raised in reply as Kate had known it would be.
‘But she’s the only one with any kind of alibi. We’ve been all over the CCTV from Lakeside and we can’t locate Kerry Alston who insists she wasn’t anywhere near her kids all afternoon. The other bird won’t even say where she was, and Regina Carlton is a piece of shit basically who had no qualms about leaving her kids on their own and pissing off overnight, or even for a couple of days, according to the neighbours. Yet we’re still fumbling about trying to put them at the scene, even though anything we find that’s forensic is basically a waste of time because, as you pointed out, they would all be in close contact with their kids anyway. But we have witnesses - that must mean something, surely!’
Kate could hear the underlying anger in his voice and privately sympathised. The others were murmuring and nodding their heads in agreement.
‘Well, Mr Golding, you will come across cases like this a lot in your chosen profession, I’m afraid, and you need to bear in mind the absolute necessity of back-up evidence. Any good brief would piss all over forensics in his opening argument. “Of course my client has hairs, fibres, blood even, on them. It’s only to be expected when they’re caring for a child.” No, you have to find more than the obvious, I’m afraid. Look back over other similar cases and you will find in those that relied on this sort of evidence, all too often the accused walked from the courts. I do not intend to let that happen here, OK?