Mercy Killing (21 page)

He despised himself for failing to act all those years ago and save himself, Leon and the others he knew were being harmed; and he despised himself for not being strong enough to face this
alone.

If Leon felt that he should go to the police and tell them what they had done, he would go with him. Needless to say, they still needed a plan.

‘Do you really mean it?’ said Leon. ‘We’ll go together?’

‘I really mean it. The only thing is, what we tell them. We have to decide and then stick to it. They’ve already been to see me, so I don’t think it’ll be long before
they pay you a visit.’

‘Bloody hell. What have you told them about me?’

‘Don’t panic, Dilly. They asked me where I was on Friday night. I was with you. We already worked that bit out a long time ago.’

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. It’s the nerves setting in. So what do we do?’

Leon released his grip on the steering wheel and ran his hands across his head before dropping them down to his sides.

‘You know that I need your help,’ said Leon. ‘You’ve always been the brains of this outfit.’ He waved away the beginning of a protest from the person he trusted
most in the world before he continued with what he wanted to say. ‘I’ve not been completely honest with you. Remember that day you came back to our room at the children’s home?
Woodville had walked out as you were coming up the stairs?’

He looked across and saw his friend nod.

‘Christ. I’ve practised telling you this for what seems like a thousand years. I knew I’d struggle. I didn’t realize how much until now.’

Leon took a deep breath and let out the secret he had kept for as long as Toby had felt the need to take to his skin with a wire brush to scour away the imagined dirt.

‘The thing is that Woodville didn’t touch me. Not in the way he touched you anyway.’

The silence was louder than the noise of the air rushing towards them through the vents.

‘I wanted to tell you, Toby, really I did. You watched out for me in the home and I idolized you. You’d got it wrong about him sexually abusing me but he still made my life a misery.
He made me eat food from the floor, stand naked in the freezing corridor if I didn’t clean the floor properly afterwards, he kidney-punched me more times than I can remember. You know why he
didn’t interfere with me, do the stuff to me that he did to the rest of you?’

A miserable shake of the head from Toby.

‘Because he told me that I was too fat. He didn’t fancy fat kids. It was such a relief to know that he wasn’t going to mess about with me, but do you know the fucking
ridiculous thing? It made me feel left out. What the sodding hell is wrong with me?’

‘We were children,’ said Toby quietly. ‘We were only kids. I think that we’d better go to work now, and let me think about what we do next.’

‘I didn’t want to tell you this. I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry for what? Sorry that you weren’t sexually abused? Let me think. We’ll talk about it later.’

‘I can’t leave things like this all day between us,’ said Leon. He rubbed at his eyes, possibly so that he didn’t have to look at Toby as he spoke. Toby couldn’t
tell. In fact, he felt that he couldn’t tell the truth of any situation any more.

Toby had got everything so wrong: he felt as though he had perhaps failed to grasp any aspect of his life properly. He had misinterpreted an expression so many years ago, and now it was shaping
his whole life. He needed time to think. Time away from Leon.

‘I need to tell you, Tobe, of the total humiliation that man put me through. It wasn’t only what he said to me about being fat, it was worse than that.’

At this point Leon stopped rubbing his eyes and turned in the driver’s seat to look at Toby face to face.

He saw now why Leon had spent the last several seconds with his fingers over his eyes. It was an attempt to stop the tears, and it hadn’t worked.

‘Woodville came up to the bedroom after he sent you to the shops. He obviously knew you’d be a while and I was on my own. He kicked the door shut and I remember as clear as if it was
yesterday, I thought to myself: This is it. Today it’s my turn. The most stupid thing was I didn’t want to let him see me cry. Reducing me to a sobbing eight-year-old seemed like the
most terrible thing that could happen.

‘He, he . . . pushed me up against the wall, grabbed my privates. I was a fucking kid, for God’s sake. What could a grown man get from touching an eight-year-old’s dick? I told
him to leave me alone, that I’d tell. I was petrified but like with all bullies, I thought if I stood up to him, he’d back down.’

Leon paused to wipe the tears from his cheeks. His enormous hands merely pushed the wetness down to his chin.

‘Little chance of him backing down,’ continued Leon. ‘He put one hand around my throat and squeezed it. With the other hand, he undid my trousers and pulled them down. I
thought he was going to touch me again. Instead, he let go, stood back, looked me up and down and said, ‘What would I ever see in a fat little bastard like you? You’re
disgusting.’ It was probably the most mentally cruel thing he could have done to me.’

Both men sat still. Neither spoke. Eventually Leon was aware that Toby was trying to say something. He put his hand out and turned the heater off to stop the noise of the blower from carrying
away his friend’s words.

Leon leaned forward until his ear was almost level with Toby’s mouth.

‘You might have put off telling me for years, Leon. It’s important that you understand that, even if he didn’t rape you, touching you is still sexual abuse.’

For the first time in their lives, the two men sat and cried together.

‘Hi, everyone,’ said Harry to a crowded incident room. There was an immediate drop in the noise level, although one or two people were making phone calls so the
detective inspector raised his voice to be heard over the sound of a murder team’s buzz. ‘I’ve got an update from Hazel and Pierre although I’d rather keep it for the
briefing. Let’s make it at midday. I realize that’s a lot later than normal but I want to speak to them again and catch up on a couple of things. In the meantime, can someone work out
if any of the former witnesses in the 1990s investigation are currently living in Sussex so Hazel and Pierre can double up their enquiries, and then can someone tell me where Gabrielle
is?’

Several heads made as though they were scanning the room, most were going through the motions. The detective inspector was asking the question so his staff seemed to make the effort to care but
they all had their own tasks to get on with. Looking for a wayward member of staff wasn’t a murder-investigation line of enquiry, so it didn’t feature on most of their radars. Besides,
he had little doubt that judging by the general apathy towards Gabrielle, most of them didn’t have much time for her.

He hadn’t failed to notice that things in his briefing room were a little strained. He paid attention and was a man who cared about both the investigation and his staff. One wasn’t
possible without the other, and the pressure was on, especially as it wasn’t long ago he was a detective sergeant and was keener than ever to show his capability as a DI.

As he was about to return to his office, the main door opened and Gabrielle walked towards him, takeaway coffee in hand.

‘Just the person,’ he said to her. If he wasn’t very much mistaken, her cheeks instantly dotted pink. To Harry’s mind, she was giving the appearance of having been caught
doing something she shouldn’t.

‘Have you got a minute?’ he said. ‘Bring your drink, although it won’t take long.’

He stood by his office door, Gabrielle seconds behind him, and waited for her to go inside.

With the door shut, he sat behind his desk and watched her place her cardboard cup on the table and take a seat.

‘After our chat, I wanted to make sure that now you’ve had time to think about things you’re still OK on this murder investigation,’ he said. ‘It is a difficult
one, I’ll be the first to admit. No one likes paedophiles, but most people aren’t overly fond of murderers either. I want to make sure that you’re comfortable dealing with this
because it hasn’t escaped my notice that you may not be. I’d be a pretty crap boss if I didn’t pay attention to my team.’

Harry saw her eyes widen as he spoke, her lips parted as if she was going to say something, and then she looked down at her hands in her lap. From the corner of his eye, he saw her clasp them
together.

‘Has someone said that I’m not pulling my weight?’ she said, eyes still down.

‘No, no. It’s nothing like that. I know that you’ll get on with anything you’re given but with your background in child investigations, it’s natural that
you’ll have more of an insight into these things. I’m the same; I don’t sympathize with people who get their sexual gratification from hurting and abusing children although I
don’t want to see them murdered either. Especially in our county.’

He found himself looking at the top of her head as she seemed to be folding into her own lap. She really was a strange young woman. Harry was on the verge of asking her if she was all right,
when she sat up straight and said, ‘I loathe them all. I know now that I probably stayed on child protection for too long. It got to me, got under my skin. I saw so many children whose lives
and futures were ruined by lowlifes not fit to walk the earth, let alone be amongst babies and kids, it made me sick. Properly, physically ill. I couldn’t stand it any longer, though I should
have seen the signs and moved on. You know what it’s like. You’ve been there. Trouble is, walking away seems like giving in and letting them win. I know that my attitude should always
have been that I had the best job in the world. I got to arrest and lock up people who rape children, but when you do it constantly, week after week, disgusting pervert after disgusting pervert,
you know that however hard you work, whatever you do, you’ll never stem the tide. It won’t stop, will it? More and more cases are coming to light, especially involving those who hold
positions of authority, and should support the children in their care. Kids who have no one else to turn to. Who are isolated and vulnerable. It’s the tip of an enormous iceberg, except
instead of ice, it’s made of the torment of children.

‘Some days, it was difficult to get out of bed and go in to work. I thought about resigning constantly and making it all someone else’s problem. Why should I go through so many
innocents’ horror with them, reliving it all, feeling the way they do and damage my own sanity? I could simply walk away. But then, I couldn’t, could I?’

She stopped talking, eyes glistening, her face immobilized by a mask of misery.

The room was still. Harry gave her a moment before he said, ‘I know, Gab, I’ve been there. You leave, who takes on your caseload? The problem is, it won’t ever disappear
completely, no matter how hard you work at it. You aren’t responsible for the entire planet’s ills. I think, for your sake as much as anything, you should be on another investigation.
You see this?’ He pointed towards the wall, adorned with a whiteboard with a list of twelve other operation names written on it.

She nodded.

‘Pick one of them, any one of them, and there’ll be plenty to do. I’ll speak to one of the detective sergeants, Sandra probably, and she can give you some work on something
else, something that’s not going to cause you sleepless nights and internal conflict. In the meantime, I think that a trip to welfare is probably in order.’

Gabrielle opened her mouth, then nodded at him again.

‘And you know,’ he said, ‘if you need some time off, I can give you a day or two at home, but only if you’d rather not be around people. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it
doesn’t. I’ll let Sandra know if you want to disappear off for the rest of the day.’

He was unsure whether he had overdone it as she looked like she was going to burst into tears. Harry definitely didn’t want it getting out that he was losing his touch and had gone soft,
but he could tell when someone was in distress. He felt guilty that it came as a relief to him that this went some way to explaining her odd behaviour. There was nothing more sinister involved.

Right now, he was probably looking at a woman on the edge and in need of help. He knew how difficult it was sometimes to ask for it, and Gabrielle was showing all the signs of heading for
depression, if she didn’t have it already.

‘Promise me one thing,’ said Harry as she stood up to go, dabbing the corner of her eyes with a tissue. ‘If you feel like this, talk to someone about it.’

He thought he heard her mumble ‘OK’. There was possibly the beginning of ‘Thank you’, and then as she turned to go back into the incident room, she said, ‘I need to
nip into town. OK if I go before the briefing?’

‘Course.’

She shut the door behind her and he watched her through the small glass panel reinforced with chicken wire as she made her way back across the bustling incident room.

Harry leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.

‘Never underestimate people’s emotions and what makes them tick,’ he said to the ceiling.

He was about to throw himself back into work, tired already so early in the day, when a Tannoy announcement from the police station’s front counter assistant caught his attention.

‘Visitor for DI Powell at the front counter, visitor for DI Powell at the front counter.’

He sat for a moment as he decided whether to call and find out who it was or face the music. His hand hovered above the phone, then he sprang from the chair, took his suit jacket from the hook
on the wall and walked out through his incident room.

Once again, he ran an appreciative eye over his staff as they typed reports, made phone calls and rushed to each other’s assistance over queries, and listened to the good-natured banter
between them all.

He let himself out of the department’s security door and walked down the stairs towards his visitor.

Through the security glass, Harry saw the familiar figure of Martha Lipton poised on one of the plastic seats inside the public entrance.