‘Well, I’ll be buggered.’ PC Sam Kenting, who came from Bristol, had been amusing the men during the night with tales of a job he’d once had in a sewage works. ‘If that ain’t the spot where she’m laying, then I’ll go back to shovelling shite tomorrow.’
When reinforcements arrived soon after six o’clock, amongst them Headly, who’d found it impossible to stay in bed, they found the six men digging furiously, three at each spot. They were already down some four feet, caked with mud from head to foot.
It was just on seven when Sam Kenting struck on a bone. He was alone in the hole, as it had become too cramped for more than one man to dig. He had been told to go off duty, but he’d ignored the order and as his yell rang out, all spades were dropped, cigarettes hastily stubbed out and everyone rushed to see what he had found.
‘Don’t say it ain’t human,’ he said, bending over and scraping away the heavy clay with his hands. ‘If that ain’t a bleedin’ femur, then my name’s Dr Crippen.’
The men circled the hole, watching as Kenting carefully edged the soil away further with a trowel. Slowly they could all see a human thigh bone taking shape.
‘Come on out, now,’ said Headly, the first to come to his senses, holding out a hand to Sam Kenting to help him. Judging by the small size it was a woman’s thigh bone, and that was enough for him now. ‘I’ll have to get hold of the DI and he’ll want to get hold of the top brass at Taunton and the forensic boys. But well done, Sam, and all of you. I’ll stand you all a pint later.’
Sister Dowd guessed the girl was crying as she made her way round the ward just after eleven-thirty in the evening of the same day. There was no sound, but her sixth sense told her what the slight quivering of the bedcovers meant. Everyone except the old lady in the bed at the far end of the ward was asleep, and her first thought was that she should allow the girl the dignity of crying alone.
But Sister Dowd was Irish, with six brothers and sisters – a warm, poor family where they shared each other’s sorrows and joys. Since the news had broken at six this evening that two women’s bodies had been found buried out at Catcott, a whisper had gone round the entire hospital that the young girl who’d been brought in here so badly beaten was also the daughter of the murderer. Sister Dowd was horrified that people should make such quick assumptions without any real proof to back it up. She was even more disgusted when one uncharitable soul suggested the girl should be taken somewhere else. In Sister Dowd’s opinion, young Rosie was entitled to sympathy and understanding. She’d have enough to face when her father was tried.
‘There now, Rosie,’ she murmured, lifting back the bedclothes from the girl’s face. ‘Would you like to tell me about it, rather than crying all on your own?’
‘I’m not crying,’ Rosie insisted, her hands coming up to cover her swollen eyes. The ward was dimly lit by just a green shaded lamp over Sister’s desk in the middle of the ward. ‘I just can’t sleep.’
‘You don’t fool me,’ Sister said. ‘I’ve got eyes in the back of my head and hidden antennae under my apron that tell me when someone’s in pain, whether it’s their injuries or their heart breaking.’
Rosie didn’t answer immediately. Being in hospital was a strange and entirely new experience for her. For the first time in her life she was the centre of attention, waited on and fussed over. She had been in terrible pain for the first twenty-four hours, but even so all that caring eased it.
On Monday, she had begun to feel a little better, even hopeful for the future. A policewoman who had come in to see her said that when she was well enough to leave hospital, a social worker would help her to find somewhere else to live and, in time, a job. She said too that Alan was settling down well in his new home and that his foster parents might be able to bring him up to see her.
Sergeant Headly had been in to see her too. He brought her a pretty nightdress and a big bar of chocolate, and they talked about his children and Alan. He said that her father and Norman had been arrested on Saturday night, but Seth had disappeared. He asked Rosie to suggest places or people she thought he might have gone to. Yet he didn’t once hint that he suspected Cole or her brothers of anything worse than cruelty.
Then earlier today he had returned to say that they had found two women’s bodies under the junk at the side of the house which they believed to be Ruby’s and Heather’s, and they were charging her father with murder.
She couldn’t believe it was true. She said it must be a mistake. Then she began to cry and she was so cold the policeman had to get her another blanket.
All the afternoon after he’d gone she just lay there on her tummy wishing she was dead too. It was like one of those nightmares that comes back again even after you’ve woken up, turned over and told yourself it isn’t real. She could see the junk yard so clearly in her mind’s eye, playing hide and seek with Alan there, climbing on the piles of tyres, sitting on the tractor, making camps with bits of timber and old blankets.
And all the while she had believed her mother and Heather to be living in London, they’d been there. Worms crawling over them, maggots eating their flesh. She and Alan had been playing on their mothers’ graves.
Sister Dowd sat on the edge of Rosie’s bed, even though she was always admonishing the nurses for doing so. ‘What your father has done is his sin, not yours,’ she said. ‘You must keep that firmly in your mind at all times.’
‘But I sat on his lap, I hugged and kissed him,’ Rosie whispered. ‘I loved him. How could I love a murderer?’
Sister Dowd didn’t know how to answer that one and she guessed that it would be a question that would trouble the child for the rest of her life. Hate was a far easier emotion to deal with sometimes. It burned fiercely and eventually died. Love stayed.
Chapter Four
As Miss Violet Pemberton drove towards Bristol she glanced sideways at Rosie sitting in the passenger seat, concerned by her silence. The girl hadn’t said a word since they left Bridgwater Infirmary almost an hour ago.
Violet was the social worker who had found a home for Alan, and now two weeks after placing him in Taunton she was taking Rosie to one too. The physical wounds she’d suffered from the beating were healed now, but Violet was afraid that the invisible, mental scars might be too deep to ever heal.
‘Have you been to Bristol before, Rosie?’ she asked.
Rosie wanted to reply; she knew she must appear very rude, perhaps even stupid too, just sitting here staring out the window. She didn’t know why she couldn’t speak; she had enough questions milling around in her head to keep her talking for days, yet she couldn’t seem to articulate them. She took a deep breath. ‘Once, Miss, but it was a long time ago,’ she managed to get out. ‘Heather took me there once on the bus, to see Father Christmas.’
Violet almost wished she hadn’t asked. But then in the three previous meetings with this poor child almost every question she’d posed seemed to involve one of those people Rosie had loved and now lost.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll recognize it then,’ she said. ‘Central Bristol took such a hammering during the Blitz, and now they’re beginning to rebuild it. But it’s a very beautiful city with some fine, big shops. I always find it an exciting place.’
Violet didn’t suppose a fifteen-year-old girl who had spent her entire life tucked away in the country would share her excitement at seeing a war-damaged city resurrected, or understand that the Fifties might very well prove to be the era when momentous changes took place. Violet could feel it starting already, despite continuing rationing and austerity. The new National Health Service, the concept of a society which cared for one from the cradle to the grave, and the influences from across the Atlantic – big cars and modern labour-saving homes – were going to change traditional British working-class ethics. Before long, she felt, any man would be able to rise above that which he’d been born to. There was work for all, vast new housing estates cropping up overnight like mushrooms, and the government was delivering messages that family life was all-important, encouraging those same women who’d worked so hard in factories during the war to stay at home now and focus their undivided attention on their children and husbands. It was becoming the idealists’ era.
Violet was something of an idealist herself. A short, stout woman of forty-five, she didn’t do herself any favours by having her straight brown hair cut in a severe Eton crop, or choosing to wear tweed suits which advertised her stoutness, as they both created an image of an unapproachable, rather masculine woman. Yet in point of fact Violet was kind-hearted, sensitive, with a lively mind and a handsome face. Her skin was as clear and unlined as a girl’s, with pretty hazel eyes and clearly defined cheekbones. But Violet Pemberton had little interest in her own appearance. She put all her energies into helping others.
Finding a home for Rosie had been extremely difficult. Setting aside most people’s objections to taking in the daughter of a possible murderer, she was too old at fifteen for a regular foster home, and yet too young to fend for herself.
When a social worker colleague in Bristol suggested the Bentleys, who she knew through her church, Violet was relieved. She would have preferred to place Rosie with someone known to her personally, but time had run out, the hospital wanted her bed, and it was important to get her right away from the Somerset Levels as feelings were running high there about the Parkers. Until something more suitable turned up, Rosie was to help Mr and Mrs Bentley around their house in Kingsdown, Bristol, in return for her board and lodging.
‘Do these people know about my dad, Miss?’ Rosie finally managed to blurt out.
‘Yes, dear.’ Violet always endeavoured to be truthful to children in her care. ‘But don’t let that worry you. They are good, kind Christian people and they offered to help you.’ She really hoped that the Bentleys would live up to the recommendation her colleague had given them, but her one and only meeting with them hadn’t been long enough to gauge if their motives for offering Rosie a home were pure altruism, or just image-enhancement.
Until five years ago, Violet had rarely needed to consider people’s motives. Nursing had been her life, and that profession wasn’t attractive to the vainglorious.
She’d begun in St Mary’s in Paddington where she’d risen to the position of theatre sister, and then on to the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Nursing Corps at the outbreak of the war. She had loved the Q A s and all the opportunities for travel that came with it. She’d been to India and Egypt and seen sights few of her present colleagues could even dream of.
In 1947, aware that time was running out for her, she’d left the Q A s. She wanted a husband and children, and although nursing in the Army brought her into close contact with men every working day, all the suitable ones were already married.
Going home to Somerset and becoming a social worker hadn’t turned out quite as she’d hoped. She bought a little cottage, learned to drive and adjusted to a civilian life, but an appropriate husband somehow eluded her. She was looking for a strong, dependable man, who had been in the Forces, preferably officer class, though she was prepared to consider an NCO. He had to have travelled as extensively as herself, and share her passion for classical music. She didn’t mind if he already had children from a previous marriage.
She had met several widowers in the course of her work, and had she dropped her standards a little, two or three of them might have almost fitted her requirements. But Violet wasn’t the kind to drop her standards under any circumstances. Now, five years later, she was a little disillusioned. Not at the lack of husband or child, that was just her fate, but because her work brought her face to face with some of the most unpleasant aspects of human nature.
She had been brought up in Somerset, yet she had no idea that incest was so prevalent in the country. In one appalling family she’d visited, the father had made all three daughters pregnant. Neither had she had any notion that there were so many slovenly and unfit mothers. At times she wanted to run back to the orderly world of hospitals, slip into a theatre gown and once again mix with intelligent, dedicated people who shared her high standards.
Yet when she was called into Bridgwater police station to see Alan Parker, she hadn’t an inkling that the few remaining strands of belief she held that truly barbarous acts only happened in cities were about to be pulled out by the roots.
Within twenty-four hours of taking Alan to a foster home in Taunton, she got the message that his sister was in hospital following a terrible beating and that the police were digging up the land surrounding May Cottage.
Even now, two weeks later, everyone was still agog about the discovery of two women’s bodies buried there. Rumours were flying around that there were still more out on the moors. The police had made an appeal for Ethel Parker to come forward, so they could rule out her being another possible victim, but as yet she hadn’t responded.
Cole was being held at Bristol prison, loudly protesting his innocence. Seth had finally been caught a week after the bodies were discovered. He had holed up out on the moors and the police eventually captured him because he made the mistake of building a fire at night. He was only charged with grievous bodily harm against Rosie, but Violet understood that the police were convinced he too was involved in the murders.
Norman, however, had been released. The police were satisfied that he neither knew about nor was party to the murders. Violet had heard he had gone to Cardiff to work. May Cottage had been emptied of its contents and boarded up as it had become something of a Mecca for morbid sightseers.
But the adult Parkers, their guilt or innocence, were not Violet Pemberton’s concern. Her role was to ensure the safety and well-being of the two children. Alan had been easy to deal with. Although he had asked for Rosie countless times in the first few days with his foster parents, he had quickly adjusted to his new life, and indeed responded well to Mrs Hughes, his new foster-mother.
Rosie, however, was an entirely different kettle of fish. Violet wished she’d met her before all this happened. She seemed so calm and controlled. Was that an act, a way of preventing anyone getting too close to her, or was she naturally so? While she was very relieved that Rosie was taking it all so well – she found disturbed adolescent girls difficult to deal with – she thought the girl’s quiet acceptance, her lack of tears or emotional outbursts, a little odd under the circumstances.