'A year or so after we left. It all came out in court when Jock decided to contest the divorce settlement. Libby hired a hotshot solicitor who demanded an explanation for the L30 withdrawals from the joint bank account every Tuesday, along with an explanation for the numerous other bank accounts he'd set up without Libby's knowledge. He wasn't very good at hiding his peccadillos and the judge took him to the cleaners for it.' I pointed to a sign for Tout Quarry. 'I think this is where we need to turn off.'
He flicked his indicator. 'Where did they do it?'
'In her house. Sharon used to smuggle her clients down the alleyway at the back as a way of protecting her reputation ... such as it was.'
'What about her kid?'
'Michael? I'm not sure he was there very much. Wendy said he was always in trouble with the police so I imagine he was made to roam the streets.'
'Jesus!' said Sam in disgust, as he drove onto a rough unmade track that led down to the sculpture park. 'No wonder he went to the bad.' He drew the car to a halt and switched off the engine. 'How was he caught for the post-office job?'
'He confessed to his wife three months later and she promptly turned him in. She gave the police a black leather jacket which she said Michael was wearing on the day of the robbery. It still had blood spots round the cuffs which matched the customer's in the post office.' I thought back. 'Michael pleaded guilty but it didn't do him much good. The judge commended Bridget for the brave assistance she'd given the police, and said he was sending her husband down for eleven years as a result of her efforts.'
'And this is the Bridget who lived on Graham Road?'
'Mm. She was at number 27 ... opposite Annie's house. Her father, Geoffrey Spalding, shacked up with Michael's mother when Bridget was thirteen, leaving her and her older sister, Rosie, to fend for themselves. I don't know what happened to Rosie, but Bridget and Michael married sometime in 1992, just after Michael finished a long sentence for aggravated burglary and ten counts of breaking and entering. He stayed out of trouble for about six months then robbed the post office. All in all, he and Bridget have spent less than a year living together as a married couple.'
'And now they're divorced?'
'No. The last I heard she was working in Bournemouth and making a monthly trip to Portland to visit Michael. That's why he was moved down here ... because no one visits him except his wife. She said at the trial that she still loved him-said she can't rely on anyone the way she relies on Michael because they've known each other since they were children-and the only reason she turned him in was because she was afraid he was going to kill somebody. I thought how brave she was,' I said dryly. 'His mother's a coward by contrast-that's Sharon-won't go near him ... hasn't done for years because of the shame he's brought on her. She's been respectable ever since Bridget's dad moved in with her and she was able to give up the game.'
'She sounds a right bitch,' he said grimly.
'She's not much of a mother, that's for sure.'
Sam leaned his arms on the steering wheel and stared thoughtfully out of the window. 'Were all the kids as bad?' he asked. 'What about the Charles children next door?'
'The oldest was only five,' I said, 'and Julia never let them out of her sight. It was really only Michael and the Slaters who ran wild ... in both cases because their mothers had given up on them. Sharon didn't care ... and Maureen was so brutalized by Derek that she spent most of her time getting stoned in her bedroom.'
'Did you know all this in '78?'
'No. Most of it came from Libby after we moved. I knew Alan Slater was getting into fights because he had so many bruises, but I didn't realize it was his father who was hitting him. I talked it over with the head on one occasion, but he just said it would do Alan good to be thrashed by his own peer group because he was a bully himself. As for Michael'-I gave a small laugh-'I always thought how mature he was for his age. He wrote me a couple of love poems and left them on my desk, signed: The Prisoner of Zenda.'
'How did you know they were from him?'
'I recognized his handwriting. He was an incredibly bright child. If he'd come from a different background, he'd have an M.A. from Oxford by now instead of a ten-page criminal record. The trouble was he was a persistent truant so he only ever attended one class in three.' I sighed. 'If I'd been a little more experienced-or less intimidated by the bloody headmaster-I could have helped him. As it was, I let him down.' I paused. 'Alan, too,' I added as an afterthought.
'Did Jock know Michael was truanting?'
I reached for my door handle. 'I shouldn't think so,' I said bluntly. 'He was paying to have his dick sucked, not listen to stories about Sharon's only child.'
It was years before I understood that Michael's poems were more about loneliness than love. At the time I swung between suspicion that he had plagiarized them, possibly from song lyrics, and admiration that a fourteen-year-old could write so poignantly. Either way, I decided he had an unhealthy crush on me and made a point of keeping him at arm's length to prevent him becoming a nuisance.
