Robert paused significantly before continuing.
‘But Ratchette, now, he’s the one you need. He knows all about it. Mr Ratchette’s a funny man. The cover-up basically made him what he is today and we
all
know what that
is
, don’t we?’
He saw Kate’s eyes widen, and laughed.
‘Don’t quote me on it, but gossip often has an element of truth. Remember that.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me if you were right.’
Robert looked gratified.
‘Thank you, Robert. I really appreciate all this. Especially the coffee.’
He pushed his hand through his hair. ‘I’m considering going blond, what do you think?’
Kate suppressed a smile. ‘You have the skin colouring, maybe you could get away with it.’
‘We’ll see. How’s that man of yours?’
She was happier to be on more familiar ground. ‘I thought he had made a breakthrough last night but the nurse says it might not mean much. He opened his eyes and squeezed my hand.’
Robert gripped her arm gently. ‘I think after what happened to him, that can only be a good sign, don’t you, dear?’
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears at his kindness.
‘He’ll be OK, Kate. I have that feeling.’
She gulped at her coffee again to hide her distress.
‘I’d better start breakfast. My father will be awake soon and then all hell will be let loose. That’s why I like to get up early, have a bit of time to myself even if I haven’t had much sleep in the night. It’s what keeps me sane.’
‘Is he very bad?’
Robert nodded vigorously, his hair flying in all directions with the force of it.
‘Imagine a really spoiled toddler and a really foul adolescent and times it by twenty and you’ll get an idea of what I have to deal with on a daily basis. But I can’t home him, I just can’t. He is my father when all is said and done.’
He squirmed in his seat and the action made him look very young and insecure.
‘The strange thing is, Kate, if I was dealing with a client in this situation, I would advise them to put him away for their own sanity. He’s as daft as a brush, God love him, and yet physically he’s as healthy as me or you. And the strength of him! My God, the strength of him.’
He got up and rinsed his mug under the tap at the sink and Kate took it as a sign that she should go. So making her goodbyes, she left him to look after his ailing father who didn’t even know who he was, and nurse his deluded belief that he could make headway with girls and women like Suzy and Natasha.
In a strange way, as over the top as he could be and as effeminate as he came over, Kate found herself admiring him. She wished she could be so whole-hearted about her job and personal philosophy as he was. It took guts and a certain quiet strength to make a stand against the prevailing opinion. It put her own problems into context and she felt lighter at heart than she had for a long time as she drove to meet Golding at the station.
There she concentrated solely on the dead women, the missing children, and on dreaming up a way to get to Suzy without anyone in authority knowing. The first thing she wanted were the relevant files on Barker and on the dead schoolgirl, Lesley Carmichael.
She also wanted Jenny and Golding to track Barker down and see what else they could find out about him. Some up-to-date gossip on his track record in Vice would be good, too. She was going to pull in a few favours herself, to get that.
She was going to crack this case whatever Ratchette and his cronies thought. They believed that because of her association with Patrick who was under suspicion of murder she’d fall in with anything they said to safeguard her career.
She smiled grimly. They were wrong about that but she wouldn’t make her stand yet. Not until she had enough hard evidence to convict the pornographers. If they were guilty they were going down. She didn’t care if she had to appeal to the DPP direct, she was going to ensure that the culprits were slaughtered, in prison and out of it.
Kate realised she felt much better than she had in weeks. Thanks to Robert Bateman she had new information and an ally. Now all she needed was to sort out Patrick’s problems and she could finally relax.
Ratchette looked at Kate and sighed.
‘I cannot give you access to the files on Lesley Carmichael. I am sorry, Kate. And I am sorry that Harry Barker’s file has gone missing. But these things happen in a busy station.’
Kate looked at him for long seconds without saying a word. When he dropped his eyes she finally spoke.
‘I know you are bent, Mr Ratchette, I know that for a fact. I also know that you are hiding the files from me. If Patrick was up and about you wouldn’t dare because he would move heaven and earth to get me what I wanted in order to close this case. Now you listen to me, sir, and you listen good. I am taking this higher - I mean it.’
Ratchette interrupted her. ‘Are you really stupid, Kate - only I never had you down as cranially challenged. This isn’t anything to do with
me
. I am on orders now, as I was then. It is not a matter of what
I
want or what I don’t bloody want. Unlike you I only have a few years left. I want my pension and I want out. I got involved twelve years ago in what amounts to a cover-up. I had no option then and neither do you now. So stop all this Famous Five crap and get into the real world. One day Barker will push it and then CIB will have him. Until then he is more protected than Yasser Arafat on a day trip to the wailing wall. Stop seeing me as the obstacle in your way. I am only the fucking messenger boy - OK? Now shut the door on the way out.’
Kate was sorry for him because she knew what he was saying was the truth. But it was all wrong, so very, very wrong.
He relented. ‘I know how you feel, love, I feel like it myself. I have to live with what I did twelve years ago and believe me, if I had the opportunity over again I would have thrown the book at him and hang the consequences. But Barker was a collector of information. He knew too much about everyone, including me, and that is the edge he still has. This goes up so high, Kate, it would make you dizzy. Stick with what you’ve got, take a few good collars and leave him out of the equation. It is all you can do.’
He let his words sink in.
Then: ‘By the way, Gunner and Partridge are dead. How is Patrick?’
He saw her blanch and smiled gently. ‘Life has a funny way of panning out, don’t you think? We all have things we want to hide.’
Kate turned away and walked from the room.
He had her, and he knew it.
Julie Carmichael lived in a small terraced council house not far from the Bentwood Estate. It was clean and well-decorated, though the furniture was shabby with age. Julie herself had greying hair, cut short in a severe mannish style, and a wide open face with faded blue eyes and a strong jawline.
Kate liked her on sight. There was something about her that engendered trust.
Julie made a pot of tea and Kate sat at the kitchen table and watched the woman as she pottered about. It was obvious from her nervousness that she didn’t have many visitors.
‘So you’re here about my Lesley then?’ she asked.
Kate nodded. ‘I would like to ask you a few questions, yes.’
Julie smiled derisively. ‘Reopening the enquiry, are they?’
Kate bit her lip and saw Julie Carmichael shake her head despairingly.
‘I didn’t think so. No one gave a fuck before and they don’t now.’
She became aggressive then. It was in her stance, her every movement. She slammed the tea pot on to the stainless steel draining board and the sound rang through the kitchen.
‘I think about her every day, my Lesley. They found her up by the woods, she’d been raped and murdered. They’d buggered her, more than one man at work. I know that because the pathologist told my Jack. He worked in the hospital. Was a porter, man and boy, at Grantley General. He knew everyone, well liked Jack was. But then later, at the hearing, the coroner said it was the work of one man and that she had not suffered. All the face-saving crap you can imagine. No one was ever brought to book for it and shall I tell you why that was, love?’
Kate didn’t answer.
‘Because he was one of your lot. A bleeding policeman! Bastard Barker as he was called. I saw her with him on many occasions. I trusted him. Knew his wife.’ She shook her head at the inquity of the man.
‘He actually came into this house and commiserated with me over her death. Told me that he was going to find the culprit. And I believed him. I didn’t know then, no one did, about him being investigated. About the complaints made against him. That my Lesley had threatened to tell on him for interfering with her and some schoolfriends.’
Julie closed her eyes tightly. ‘She wasn’t a good girl, my Lesley, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. If it had happened to an animal everyone would have been up in arms. But when it happens to a person, it’s just news for a few days until something bigger comes along.’
‘Who else was involved in it all? I mean, which other girls?’
Julie sighed and poured out the tea. It was thick and brown and Kate knew it would taste stewed.
‘There were a few I knew of. You see, I found Lesley’s diary so I knew more than I let on. But when Barker was pulled in, I didn’t know she was writing about him. She had used the abbreviation “B”, you see.
No
real names there. I only put two and two together later from the things the other girls said. But then the diary was taken from me. I gave it to them in the belief that it would bring Barker to justice. Never saw it again. No record of its ever having been seen by anyone, apparently. But that nice man, that Mr Ratchette,
he
had definitely seen it because I gave it to him when he came here.’
Kate had read the file five times. All it said was that a girl had been murdered, that the usual enquiries had been made, but that no one had ever been caught. The murderer was believed to be a traveller or vagrant. A one-off. There was nothing in writing to say there had ever been an internal enquiry, that a policeman had been suspected of the crime. It was a blatant cover-up. But looking at Julie Carmichael, Kate knew this woman would not have had the strength to make waves. She was a victim of her own ignorance and fear. Fear of the police and the establishment.
‘Social Services must have been involved?’ Kate probed.
Julie nodded. ‘Oh, yeah.’ She lit a cigarette and sat at the table with her rough hands clasped together, nails bitten down to the quick.
‘Les was under Social Services because she was in trouble at school. Truanting. Being rude to teachers Nothing over the top. It was par for the course with her little crew. But it was when she started hanging round with that Kerry Alston that she really went off the rails. Kerry came here for her that day, the day she died. I still believe she was in on it all. Her and Barker set my baby up.’
Julie was visibly distressed now.
‘At Lesley’s funeral, Kerry was crying and I told her to piss off out of it. She was using it to get attention for herself, I could see that. She even came here asking if she could see Lesley in her coffin! I thought she was just being a kid, you know. Then I cleared Lesley’s room, and that’s when I found the diary. I took it to Mr Ratchette who was in charge of the case. He held on to it and told me he was going to investigate further. I’d realised by then, see, that she’d meant Barker because I had seen him with Kerry and that little mare Jackie Palmer. He used to pick them up on the corner of the Bentwood Estate, where the waste ground is. It was common bloody knowledge. But not my Lesley. Or at least that’s what I thought, until I read the diary. It was sickening, Miss Burrows. Can you imagine what it was like for me to read about her private doings with men?’
Kate looked down at the scuffed table. She could image that better than anyone. She had done it herself with Lizzy. She knew the trauma it caused to find out that your daughter, the child you’d reared, loved and adored, was being used by people as a plaything and was perfectly happy for it to happen. In fact, they seemed to think it made them special somehow.
Julie stared out of the window, smoking silently, her mind a world away from the cramped kitchen.
‘Not just with men either, that was the hardest part. Goings-on with the other girls. Little girls they were - twelve and thirteen years old. Some even younger than that. I was devastated. It killed my Jack. I tried to hide the worst from him, but losing her had taken its toll. I buried him eight months after we buried Lesley. He took an overdose while I was at work one day. Never knew the whole of it and for that much at least I’m grateful.’
Kate was puzzled. ‘You kept it from your husband?’
The other woman nodded. ‘I know it sounds strange but, you see, Lesley was his life. He could never have coped with what she had become. I only ever had her. I had a couple of miscarriages first and we thought we’d never get a baby. When I fell with her and everything seemed to go well, we were over the moon. My Jack adored her. Absolutely adored her. I couldn’t have told him what she’d become, it would have killed him.’
Julie laughed weakly. ‘Well, you know what I mean. He was distressed enough. How could I, in all honesty, make it even worse for him by telling him about her other life?’ She stabbed out her cigarette and immediately lit up another.
‘Did no one take you seriously?’
‘Oh, they pretended to. But you see, it was like Mr Ratchette said. Did I really want everyone to find out about my daughter and her activities? Especially as I couldn’t prove it was Barker behind it all. When I thought about it, I didn’t. Not just because of what people would say but because of Jack. And then when he killed himself, I couldn’t desecrate his memory so I left it. But believe me when I say it was hard, bloody hard, because I’d let that bastard walk away, and when I asked for the diary back, I was told there had never been one. That I was under too much strain and didn’t know what I was alleging. I had to see me GP, Gordon Browning, and shall I tell you something? He was in on it and all.