Kathy wanted to argue, but she was too scared. She stuffed the money into the pocket of her jeans.
As she walked to the door Suzy called out, ‘Would you sell her for three grand?’
Kathy turned, her face white. ‘Who to?’
‘I know a couple who want to adopt.’
Kathy shook her head. ‘No. No way. Sorry, Suze.’
Suzy shrugged. ‘Fair enough. Bye-bye.’
Kathy was dismissed and she knew it.
When the front door closed Suzy allowed herself to relax. Where the fuck was the kid and how long before Kathy realised she had lost her? More to the point, what would Kathy do when she found out?
Chapter Fifteen
Jenny and Kate sat in her office eating toast and drinking tea.
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Kate?’ Jenny asked.
‘No. But I know I have to do it, if that makes any sense. I have to make sure Patrick is safe. If he comes out of this alive I can’t leave him in a position where he’ll just have to wait for it to happen again. I spoke to the consultant and she says that even if Pat does come round he could be left partially sighted or even brain-damaged. They’re monitoring a blood clot at the moment and as soon as they think he’s able for it, they want to operate. But the op itself could do more damage. It’s a typical Catch-22 situation.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I remember when they operated on his daughter. They had to cut a window into her skull so the brain could swell unimpeded - not against the bone, you know. He willed that girl back to life, but it wasn’t enough. For the first time ever he couldn’t make something happen. I think it broke him inside.’
Jenny poured her more tea from a Thermos flask.
‘We’re all broken by something, Kate. I sometimes think that’s all life is. A series of events: dramas, traumas, with a sprinkling of happiness thrown in to keep us on the straight and narrow. Look at that woman yesterday. She’s having a baby, she’s with a good bloke in a dream home, and then something like that happens to her. Punched in the belly by another woman. One who was dragging a small child along by the neck of her T-shirt. A woman, incidentally, about whom we have heard nothing since. Nor a word about a missing child. So it seems it’s an everyday case of assault and child abuse. There’s something really strange happening in Grantley, Kate. Something very, very strange.’
‘So it would seem. One thing’s really bugging me, though. Who is the child on the dump? How can a little boy be missing all this time and no one seem to know who he is? There’s so much I want to know. Like how does Kerry Alston sleep at night? How does Jeremy Blankley walk the earth as a normal-looking person? How was all this filth going on in a block of council flats and no one any the wiser? How Mary Parkes and her cronies developed at such a young age into abusers?’
Jenny sipped at her tea.
‘I was watching Mary when we were interviewing her. She was enjoying every second of what was happening. It’s attention with her. No more and no less. I’ve seen it time and time again. Children who demand a lot of attention are like a beacon to paedophiles. Middle children from large families are often targeted by them. The attention paedophile. Some older children even enjoy it. A paedophile can wait three years before they pounce. In that time they gain the trust of parents, children, everyone. I often think for them it is part of the turn-on. The set-up is almost as exciting as the abuse.’
‘It’s a sick world we’re living in.’
Jenny smiled to take the edge off the conversation. ‘It’s always been a sick world, we just talk about it more these days and that can only be a good thing, can’t it, Kate? I mean, years ago an abused child wouldn’t have received any help. Its parents would be terrified of people finding out what had happened. The abuser would either leave the area quietly, or the father would give them a slap. The police were not even informed so it was kept secret. That still happens, you know. People keeping it quiet. And what they don’t realise is that they are giving that paedophile a licence to do it again with someone else’s children.’
Kate nodded her agreement. ‘I think we need to frighten Jeremy Blankley. I mean, really frighten him this time. Force him into talking. He’s already terrified of going on remand.’
‘Leave it to me, Kate. You go off and see what you can find out about our Russian friend and I’ll keep everything going this end.’
‘You’re a good mate, Jen.’
She grinned. ‘I know. I may ask you to return the favour one day.’
Kate gripped her hand tightly. ‘You only have to ask.’
‘I know that, love. I know.’
Robert Bateman looked at the little girl on his lap and smiled at her gently. She was small for her age with dark hair and expressive eyes. At eighteen months she was just about able to walk though with no real speech or coordination skills.
Her mother, Natasha Linten, known as Tash, brought in two cups of weak tea. Placing Robert’s by his foot on the floor, she picked the child up roughly and plonked her back in her playpen. Then she put the small baby she had recently given birth to in beside her daughter and sat herself down to have a cup of tea and a cigarette.
The room was filthy. Like the rest of the place. It had a stale smell of neglect that a lot of the homes Robert visited seemed to harbour. The carpet was covered in stains: urine, faeces and vomit mingled with takeaways and biscuits trampled in by the older children.
The furniture was scuffed and smelly. One chair was soaked with urine and at this moment a little boy was sitting on it watching
Fireman Sam
with delight. Like the other children he even laughed quietly, his mouth opening but no sound coming out.
It depressed Robert just coming here.
‘Look, Tash, you have to sort yourself out, love.’
She grinned, her brown neglected teeth horribly apparent.
‘Fuck off, Batey. I just had a bleeding baby. I can’t be expected to look after this lot
and
do the fucking housework.’
‘But that’s just it, dear, you don’t look after the kids, do you? I mean, look around you. The kids are neglected; the house is too. There are maggots in the nappy bucket in the bathroom because you can’t be bothered to empty it. Really, Tash, this isn’t good enough, you know.’
She laughed. ‘Drink your tea and stop moaning, for fuck’s sake. Me mum will be here at the weekend, she’ll have a clear-up as usual and I’ll get a proper rest.’
‘I really have to write a report on all this, Tash. You have had chance after chance. We arranged for this new house for you so the other one could be fumigated and you promised me faithfully you were going to start sorting yourself out. But all you do is drink tea, smoke fags and gossip with your cronies. The children will be removed from you before long, dear, and I won’t be able to do a thing about it. It will be out of my hands.’
The babies were crying, the noise loud and irritating.
Tash picked up her youngest and laid him on the settee. She took off his nappy and the acrid smell of ammonia hit their eyes, making them water. His bottom was red raw, and he was screaming now, his arms flailing and fists clenched in temper and pain. Tash looked at him dispassionately.
‘Hark at him, noisy little fucker.’ She poked him in the buttock with the nappy pin, stabbing motions that made his roaring worse.
‘Stop it! Stop it, Tash. That’s cruel.’
‘He likes it, all my kids do. Makes them hard for when they’re older, see? Me mum used to do it to us and it never did us no harm.’
‘That, my love, is a matter of opinion. If you’re using terries, what are you doing with the disposables we’re providing? Selling them, I suppose. Which means he’s not getting his nappy changed often enough. It’s a bloody vicious circle, isn’t it?’
Robert’s voice was deeper than usual, his eyes filled with pain as he tried to let this girl know that she was going to lose her children this time. That he had given her all the chances he could.
‘We need to talk, Tash, and I mean grown-up talk. This is really serious. Malachi was reported by the playschool as having burns on his legs. He said they were caused by Eric holding him against the fire. He is three years old and he is bullied by your current partner. You go into one abusive relationship after another and your poor kids bear the brunt of it all. This is crunch time, Tash. I’m recommending fostering and maybe adoption, we’ll see. But either way they can’t stay here with you any more.’
She looked at him in stark incredulity. Pushing her stringy hair back from her face she said with utmost conviction, ‘No one is taking my fucking kids.’
‘I have no choice,’ Robert said sadly. ‘The police will be informed, and you and Eric will be charged with cruelty. I mean, look around you, Tash. You are twenty-three years old and you have five children all born twelve months apart, like steps. They have different fathers, men who never seem to stay the course. This little one’s father has five other children by five other women, none of whom he has ever stayed with or supported in any way. You are filthy, your children are filthy and neglected . . . it can’t go on, my love. I like you, Tash. Always have, you know that. But I have a job to do and I’m afraid I’m going to recommend a care order, and put you from at risk and supervision on to my bad girl list. In short, you will lose control over your kids. I have no other option.’
She was staring at him now, her eyes enormous.
‘I’ll lose me money, won’t I? I’ll lose me few quid. How the fuck am I supposed to survive?’ She practically threw the baby back into the playpen. ‘Me muvver will have them. Give them to her for a while until I get sorted.’
He held up his hand.
‘No way. Your mother doesn’t want them, love. She has had enough and quite frankly no court would give them to her. Not even access. She beat you all and she’s beaten the grandchildren in the past. It’s over, Tash. We have done all we can for you.’
She was crying now, tears of rage and anger.
‘You rotten bastard! You knew what you were going to say when you came in here, all nice as usual, you cunt. Well, you won’t take them because Eric will be in soon and he’ll sort you out, mate.’
‘Eric is at his mother’s. He knows, darling. He has already reported you twice. He’s willing to give over custody of his son to Social Services. He wants nothing to do with the child. It’s your own fault, Tash. What on earth possessed you to allow that bastard to hold a child against a fire? He must have been in agony.’
She kicked out at a teddy, covered in sweets and shit, sending it flying against the playpen. The impact shut the wailing children up.
‘He was answering back as usual - he’s a little fucker. It’s all his fault, the bastard. I told him not to get flash with Eric but would he listen? Would he fuck! Just like his father.’
‘He is three years old! What the hell do you expect from him? He’s a child, Tash, a little child who should be protected, washed and fed regularly. He has a right to be treated with respect, love and kindness. But you can’t provide any of that for your kids so they have to be taken to a place where they can at least receive basic care. That means food and clothes, a clean bed, toys, some decent treatment. I have explained this to you until I am blue in the face. You pushed it too far as usual and now your chances have run out.’
Tash sat on the settee and put her head in her hands.
‘What about me money, though. How will I live?’
Robert sighed heavily and raked his hand through his hair, making it stand up. He looked eccentric and he knew it and didn’t care a rap. He was heart sorry for this girl, but he knew she couldn’t cope because she didn’t want to. The course of her life was set and if the children stayed with her she would drag them down too. If he had his way he would force girls like her to be sterilised, though he never said that out loud of course.
But it drained him, dealing with the Tashes of the world. It was so depressing. And on top of that he had his sick father living with him who had just been diagnosed as suffering from dementia.
Robert wanted to help these girls so much but even he had to admit defeat at times and this was one of them.
He placed one hand gently on her bowed head, and sighed. ‘I am sorry, Tash, really.’
She looked up at him, her faded blue eyes filled with tears. ‘Fuck you.’
Which was what he’d expect her to say.
He took the cups out into the filthy kitchen and felt bile rise in his throat. A nappy, full of shit and urine, was lying in the sink on top of the baby’s feeding bottles. Flies were clustered all over it and the smell was overpowering.
He stared around the room at the squalor and neglect and felt an urge to cry for the beautiful children she had produced and brought back from hospital to live in this hellhole.
He was getting too old for all this.
It had been a long time since he’d been able to leave it all behind at work at the end of a tiring day. Now, the fate of such kids entered his dreams. Preyed on his mind. Depressed him utterly.
He went back into the lounge and finished changing the baby. The other social workers would be here soon. Robert had done his job, and done it well. He had tried to soften the blow for Natasha. Tried to explain it to her.
But that did not make him feel any better.
Boris stepped out of his BMW and stretched. He attracted glances from people walking by but he was used to that. It didn’t bother him any more.
His eyes scanned the pavement professionally before he walked slowly into the shabby mansion block in Maida Vale. His heavy footsteps echoed through the stairwell. It was dirty here and he made a point of not touching anything, not the walls or the banisters.
At the top of the stairs a girl was holding open the door to a flat, wearing nothing but a smile on her coarse-featured face. He walked past her, and once inside the flat he made for the good-sized lounge, decorated in pastel shades and looking much better than its counterparts in the building.