When She Was Good, page 7
Mrs. Quinn had baked cupcakes with pink and blue icing and a jellybean on the top. I ate two and hid another one in my pocket, saving it for Terry, who liked cakes. He said he had a sweet tooth. When I asked him which one he laughed and said, “It means I like sweet things like you.”
I’m not sweet, I thought. I’m dirty and disgusting, but I didn’t say anything.
12 CYRUS
A night without dreams. Luxury. Awake now, showered and shaved, I leave the house early and navigate my way towards Manchester, through farmland and satellite towns, where mist has settled in the deeper valleys like sunken clouds.
I’m following a map that I printed out last night, but still get lost twice before asking a farmer for directions. The cottage backs onto open fields where two horses, draped in winter blankets, lean over a fence, regarding me with lazy disdain.
A woman answers the door. Middle-aged with a solid frame and crinkly eyes, she’s wearing a nurse’s uniform in blue tones and a lapel watch tilted at an angle that makes it readable by simply lowering her gaze.
“I hope you haven’t parked me in,” she says, looking past me at my car.
“No, ma’am.”
“Is that short for madam?” she asks, her eyes twinkling. “A madam runs a brothel. A madam is a bossy little girl. I hope you’re not suggesting.”
“Of course not,” I say, looking appropriately chastised. “Can I call you Mrs. Menken?”
“I’m not Mrs. Menken because we’re not married. My choice, not his. We’ve been together thirty years and raised three children. You don’t need a piece of paper to do that.”
“Any grandchildren?”
“Don’t be cheeky. I’m too young to be a grandmother.”
Her reaction startles a laugh from me.
“I’m Marcie. Who are you?”
“Cyrus Haven. Is your husband in? I mean, your partner, ah, DI Menken…”
She glances over her shoulder. “Does His Nibs know you’re coming?”
“No.”
“That’s very brave. He doesn’t like being bothered on his holidays.” She collects her car keys. “I’m not hanging around. He’s outside in his man cave making sawdust.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s trying to turn perfectly good firewood into furniture. Take some home, will you. We don’t have enough room in this place.”
She steps past me, hooking a bag over her shoulder and glancing at her lapel watch, muttering, “Late again.”
Once she’s gone, I follow the sounds of machinery coming from the back garden and knock on a shed door. Nobody answers. I push it open.
Bob Menken is wearing blue coveralls that look like police-issue, along with safety glasses that wrap around his head. Wood shavings arc across the room as he holds a chisel to a spinning block of wood. I glance at a half-assembled dining table in the corner, which is missing a fourth leg.
Noticing me, Menken lets the lathe idle and takes off his glasses, spitting bits of sawdust out of his mouth. “This had better be important.”
“It’s about Hamish Whitmore,” I say, handing him a business card. “I know he was a friend. I’m sorry.”
He looks at the card. “A psychologist! I don’t need a shrink.”
“I’m not here to counsel you. I wanted to ask you about what Hamish had been doing.”
Menken stares at me wordlessly and turns off the machine, which slows and stops.
“When did you hear the news?” I ask.
“Two detectives came around yesterday morning. They showed me an artist’s impression of some guy who has been masquerading as a detective. He told Eileen Whitmore that Hamish had committed suicide. What sort of sick fuck does that?”
He doesn’t expect an answer.
“Why did Hamish Whitmore have doubts about the Eugene Green conviction?”
“That’s a bullshit question.”
But not a surprising one.
Menken’s thick eyebrows drop lower, hooding his eyes. “The conviction was solid. Green got what he deserved.”
“He was beaten to death.”
“Prison-yard justice. Nothing to do with the police.”
“The fake detective stole Hamish’s files. What was he looking for?”
“What makes you think I know?”
“You were partners.”
“Hamish retired.”
“Only six months ago.”
Menken glares at me for a moment and exhales, before pulling up a drum and taking a seat. He points me to a recently finished chair, sanded but unvarnished. I settle. He speaks. “Hamish and I spent eight years looking for Eugene Green. Working long days. Weekends. We didn’t stop until we nailed that bastard. For Hamish it was a crusade, you know. An itch he couldn’t scratch. Do you remember how they caught him?”
“No.”
“Green was washing his van at a hand car wash near Preston in Lancashire. It was October 2018. He noticed a girl walking home from school, Cassie McGrath, aged eleven. Both her parents were at work. A latchkey kid, you know.”
I nod.
“Green followed her home and knocked on her door. He said he had some packages to deliver. He asked if she could help him carry them. Only when Cassie reached the van, Green bundled her inside and held a rag over her mouth soaked in chloroform. A woman who lived across the road saw everything and called the police. Within fifteen minutes we had roadblocks around the entire village. We boxed him in. Spiked the road. They found Cassie trussed up in the back. Barely breathing.”
“How did you link Green to the other murders?”
“Credit card receipts. CCTV footage. We could place him within five miles of every abduction.”
“What about DNA?”
“We found a strand of Samantha Doyle’s hair on the floor mats of the van and clothing fibers from her school uniform on a blanket he had in the back. Not that it mattered—he confessed.”
“Hamish Whitmore’s son-in-law, Jack Bowden, said there might have been loose ends.”
“Not as far as I was concerned.”
“There was a whiteboard in Hamish’s room. It mentioned two other children: Gina Messud and Patrick Comber.”
“They were possible victims, but we couldn’t prove it. Gina went missing from a supermarket car park in Brighton in 2014. Patrick Comber was last seen at Meadowhall, an indoor shopping center in Sheffield, on November twenty-ninth, 2012. The CCTV footage showed him talking to a man in a car park. We traced every vehicle that passed through the gates but couldn’t find Patrick.”
“Why would Green confess to three murders and not these two?”
Menken shrugs with a tired casualness. “We pushed hard. He kept denying it.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Gina Messud went missing in Brighton, which is a long way south of where Green normally operated.”
“What about Patrick Comber?”
“I wish I could tell you.” He gazes through the open door into the garden. “Eugene was an odd fish. Sometimes he almost reveled in the details, telling us exactly how he kidnapped his victims, what he said to them, how he tricked them into his van. But he wouldn’t speak about what he did to them, where he took them, and how they died.”
“Did that bother you?”
“It worried Hamish. He was obsessed by the missing weeks.”
“What missing weeks?”
Menken gets to his feet and crosses the workshop, where he reaches up to a shelf lined with paint tins. He shakes one of them and looks inside, retrieving a crumpled packet of cigarettes.
“Marcie doesn’t like me smoking,” he explains. “She works in the oncology department.”
Retaking his seat, he lights up, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth and letting it leak from his nose.
“Abbie Harper, the first victim, went missing on the fourth of August. Her body was found in the middle of October, dumped in a drainage ditch beside a sewerage plant, left for the insects and the animals. She’d been dead for a month when we found her. That left a window of five, maybe six weeks between when she was kidnapped and when she died.”
“Green must have kept her somewhere.”
“Exactly. But Eugene Green lived in a bedsit in Leeds and we found no evidence of Abbie being there. Meanwhile, Green was working—doing deliveries up and down the country and into Europe.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. We took him back to every scene—the drainage ditch, the lay-by near Preston, the culvert outside of Newcastle.… He gave us sod all. He didn’t point out the locations. He didn’t explain how he dumped them. It was like we were showing him what he’d done.”
“Hamish thought he had an accomplice.”
“It explains some things, but not others.”
“What did you think?”
“I told him to leave it alone.”
“But if Green had an accomplice…?”
“He’s either dead or in prison.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You’re the psychologist. You know that pedophiles don’t suddenly stop. Once a nonce, always a nonce. If Eugene Green had an accomplice, we’d have seen the evidence before now. More missing children. More bodies showing up.”
The detective stares at the cigarette as though disgusted with himself but drags on it anyway.
“When did you last see Hamish?”
“Three weeks ago. He wanted me to run some names through the PNC.” The Police National Computer.
“What names?”
“I can’t remember Marcie’s birthday—how am I expected to remember random names?”
“Did you run them?”
I see a glimmer in the corner of his eye. He clears his throat, as though about to reveal a secret, but then sighs.
“I told Hamish I wasn’t going to jeopardize my career by helping him chase rabbits down rabbit holes. He was questioning a successful conviction. Pissing people off at every level. Ex-colleagues. Old bosses. The Crown Prosecution Service. The judge. The jury. I told him to stop this nonsense and enjoy his retirement. Play golf. Prune the roses. Spend time with Eileen…”
The cigarette is crushed beneath the heel of his heavy-treaded boot. He picks up the butt and drops it in a different can.
“That’s all I got to say.”
Pulling on his gloves, he lowers his safety glasses and flicks a switch, setting the lathe into motion. I’m almost at the door of the shed, before turning.
“When you were investigating Green, did you ever consider whether Angel Face could have been linked to him?”
“The girl in the box?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Why?”
“An idea, that’s all.”
I’m looking at his face, trying to judge if he’s telling me the truth. I wish Evie were here. She’d recognize the signs.
Menken frowns. “I always wondered what happened to that girl. You ever meet her?”
“What makes you ask?”
“You brought her up, not me.”
His eyes linger on mine for a beat longer, before he takes a sharpened chisel and holds it across a metal guard. It touches the wood, creating an explosion of wood shavings that fill the air like confetti, turning a century of sunshine and photosynthesis into the leg of a dining table.
13 EVIE
“It’s not coming off,” I say, scrubbing at the brick wall with a heavy-duty brush and soapy water that sloshes out of a bucket, soaking my canvas shoes.
“That’s because you’re not trying,” says Davina, who is sitting on a deck chair, overseeing the operation.
Three of us have been allowed outside of Langford Hall because someone has daubed graffiti on the outer wall facing the street. Some of the locals don’t like having a secure children’s home in their neighborhood because it lowers their property prices. They’ve sent us a message in red paint, calling us scumbags, criminals, and delinkwents.
At least I can spell.
“Don’t you find it ironic,” I say, working the scrubbing brush back and forth. “We’re here for antisocial behavior and people go and do this.”
“What does ‘ironic’ mean?” asks Ruby, who is next to me.
“It means fucked-up.”
“What’s antisocial behavior?”
“Criminal shit.”
“I didn’t commit a crime.”
“You set fire to your school.”
“No, I set fire to my hair, which caused a fire in the toilet cubicle, which sort of spread.”
“Stop dawdling,” says Davina, looking up from her phone.
“Why can’t we just paint it over?” I suggest. “Or we could do a proper mural, like Banksy would do?”
“Who?” asks Carl, who is helping us.
“Banksy. The street artist. One of his paintings sold at Sotheby’s for a million quid and he shredded it in the auction room.”
“Why?” asks Ruby.
“He said that destruction was part of the creative urge.”
“He’s a tosser,” says Carl, who is lying on the grass, doing fuck all. “I’d have taken the million quid.”
“And do what?” asks Ruby.
“Buy shit and blow it up,” he says, grinning. Carl got sent to Langford Hall for building a homemade bomb that blew up a pie cart outside Manchester City’s football ground.
“You’re supposed to be helping,” says Davina.
He holds up a finger. “I got a splinter.”
“Get off your arse.”
“Why is it our job? We didn’t do it.”
“We’re going to show these people that we are better than they are.”
“But we’re not,” says Ruby. “They think we’re scum.”
“You’re not scum,” says Davina.
“I’m proud of being a scum,” says Carl. “I’m a deplorable.”
I nudge the bucket with my foot, spilling water over his crotch. He leaps up, wanting to hit me, but he changes his mind because I scare him.
“Miss, I got a wet patch. I got to change my jeans.”
“He pissed himself,” says Ruby.
“Fuck off!”
I’m distracted by laughter from the far side of the street. Two young guys are leaning on dirt bikes with muddy wheels. They’re watching us working, finding it hilarious. I drop my brush into the bucket and head towards them. Davina doesn’t notice until I’m halfway across the street. She calls my name but I ignore her. She’s not the quickest mover in the world, not since she got pregnant and ate her own body weight in Nutella.
The boys see me coming and strike poses.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We’re enjoying the view,” replies the skinny one, who has a lisp.
He’s leering at Ruby, who has taken off her denim jacket. Her cotton shirt is wet and clinging to her chest.
“Who’s your friend?” asks the taller one. “You should bring her over. We’ll take you both for a ride.”
“Any idea who might have painted the wall?” I ask.
“Nah,” says the lispy one.
“Was it you?”
He stabs at his heart with an invisible knife, pretending I’ve mortally wounded him.
“What sort of moron vandalizes a wall and comes back to gloat?” I say.
“We’re not the idiots cleaning it up,” says his mate.
“How do you spell ‘delinquent’?”
Both of them frown.
“I’ll get you started: d… e… l… i… n…”
They stare at me blankly.
Davina has caught up with me. Puffing. “Leave the boys alone, Evie.”
“They vandalized our wall,” I say, pointing to their boots.
Davina’s eyes pick up on the spatters of red paint, but she doesn’t want a scene.
“We’re sorry to bother you,” she says, grabbing my arm.
I pull away aggressively.
“Oooh,” says the skinny one, “isn’t she feisty.”
I feel my vision narrowing and the air darkening, as though someone has hit a dimmer switch.
“Are you a virgin?” I ask.
His eyes widen. “What? No!”
“Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you fancy your mate. He’s not very pretty but he might let you suck his dick.”
They both tell me to fuck off.
“Ooh, feisty,” I say, mimicking him. “Sounds to me like you’re both gayer than laughing gas. If you fancy your mate you should tell him. Don’t bottle up your feelings. He might feel the same way. There’s nothing wrong with liking boys.”
The skinny one swings his punch. I see it coming. I always see it coming. I see it so early that I could duck, but that’s not the point. I feel it connect and the flash of pain. I taste the blood on my lips.
“I’m calling the police,” says Davina as she hustles me away.
I smile through pink teeth and yell over my shoulder. “Now you’re one of us. Another fucking delinquent.”
14 CYRUS
Visiting hours at Rampton Secure Hospital are between two and four on weekdays. Professionals can visit during business hours, but I have never claimed to be anything other than family when it comes to my brother.
Rampton is a high-security psychiatric hospital—one of only three in Britain, housing the most dangerous patients: killers, rapists, arsonists, kidnappers. Some were caught before their fantasies became a reality, but many have committed crimes so terrible they are etched into public consciousness.
Entering the reception area, I pass a sign that reads: “Welcome to Rampton Secure Hospital. We hope you enjoy your visit.” Below is a photograph of Princess Diana on a royal visit.
I am on an approved list but must provide proof of my identity and sign a stack of forms. My belongings are scanned by an X-ray machine. Large bags and holdalls are not allowed. No phones, radio scanners, USB sticks, compact discs, lighters, matches, foods, chewing gum, sweets, safety pins, drugs, tobacco, or sharp things.
Twenty minutes later my escort arrives. His name is Nigel and we’ve met before. I follow him along a covered walkway between the various wards. There are twenty-nine in all, most of them dark redbrick blocks, but some are detached “villas” dotted around the sixty-eight hectares.
