“Yes.” Jude’s voice smoothed down the flare-up. “But you can see why your use of the gun got us interested. What was so important to make you go to the house of someone you’d never met before and pull a gun on them – even if that gun was just a replica?”
Theresa was sullenly silent.
Carole picked up the baton of interrogation. “What interests me even more is the fact that you mentioned the body that I’d found on the beach that morning. How did you know about that?”
Again there was no response.
“Did Aaron tell you about the body?” suggested Jude gently. “Had he seen it down there?”
“Aaron didn’t have anything to do with that bloke dying! Aaron was a good boy…” Once again, as in her television interview, these words unleashed a flood of tears from Theresa Spalding.
Jude rose and, with an arm around her, led the woman to sit down. “Cry,” she murmured. “It’s good. You need to cry.”
Then, crouched beside the chair, she rocked the woman in her arms, crooning words whose sound was more important than their meaning. Carole watched the calming process with surprise and a degree of envy, knowing that she did not possess such skills.
Gradually, the shudderings of Theresa Spalding’s body became tremors, which twitched away to nothing. She reached into the pocket of her jeans for a crumpled tissue and rubbed it against her nose.
“Ready to talk?” asked Jude.
The woman nodded. To her surprise, Carole found Jude was looking at her, indicating that she was to take over for the next bit.
“Right.” Carole had taken her glasses off and was rubbing the lenses on the end of her scarf. It was a mannerism of which she was entirely unaware, but which had been noticed by all her Home Office colleagues, a little ritual she went through before any important interview. “We weren’t suggesting that Aaron had anything to do with the death of the man I found on the beach. We just want to know why you were so concerned about that body.”
Theresa Spalding said nothing. Jude had calmed her, she didn’t mind Jude, but she was still resistant to the Bad Cop.
“It was nothing to do with me. I didn’t even see the body. I had no connection with it.”
“Apart from the connection through Aaron?” said Jude.
For a moment the woman’s face contorted. If the suggestion had come from Carole, she would have shouted some defiant response. Because Jude had spoken, though, she accepted it.
“Yes. OK.”
Carole picked up again. “You were particularly concerned about something in the dead man’s pocket.”
Theresa nodded, still calm. “Yes. Aaron had told me about it. I was just afraid, if the police found it, they’d make the connection with him and come after my boy.”
“What was it? What was in the man’s pocket?”
She couldn’t face answering this question without another cigarette. Carole and Jude watched in silence while she fumbled with the packet and lit up again.
“I don’t know what it was, but it was something with Aaron’s name on it. They all had to put their names on something. It was part of the test.”
The Bad Cop and the Good Cop exchanged glances. The understanding passed that Jude should take over again. “Who’s ‘they’?” she asked softly.
“The other lads. The ones he was with when they found the body.”
“Did they find the body at the Yacht Club?”
Theresa nodded. “Aaron got in about four that morning. I started to bawl him out, but I could see what a bad way he was in. He’d been doing some stuff, I could tell. Weed, I suppose – maybe something stronger. Bit of smack perhaps. He was crying just like a kid. Wasn’t much more than a kid, really. Got in with the wrong company, that was all that was wrong with Aaron. What chance did he have, living with me, no man around…well, no man around for long? And me always on some medication for the depression and the panic attacks. I did try to look after him. He never got put into care. Times they wanted to, but I wouldn’t let them. I brought him up on my own, all on my own.”
Jude nodded, soothing, commending the achievement. “So what did Aaron tell you?”
“He said they’d been drinking. He didn’t say they’d been doing stuff too, but I knew they had. And then they decided to break into the Yacht Club…I don’t know what for…maybe a bit of thieving or just to smash the boats up. It wasn’t Aaron’s idea, it was the others. And they broke into one boat and they found this man’s body…He was dead. He was definitely dead before they found him. And they…I don’t know what they did to the body, or exactly what they put in his pockets, but it was some test…some kind of test…”
“A test to prove how hard they were?” Jude suggested. “How tough they were?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. Aaron’s been into a lot of this horror stuff, you know, books and films and stuff. A lot of that age are. Black magic stuff, you know. Maybe what they done to the body was something to do with that. You know what kids that age are like – terrified, but it doesn’t do to show they’re terrified, so they egg each other on to show how brave they are, and they do stupid things. Anyway, whatever they actually did, it ended up with them chucking the body over the sea wall into the Fether. That’s all Aaron told me, but he was in a bad way, a really bad way. He’d scared himself something terrible. He kept saying that the body would come back to life, that it was one of the Undead or some such crap, and that it’d come after him. And then he was afraid too the police was going to come and get him as soon as the body was found. I tried to calm him and put him to bed…Then I slept for a couple of hours, and Aaron was here when I woke up round eight…but later in the morning I went down the shops…and when I come back, he was gone…” A sob came into her voice. “And that was the last time I saw my boy.”
“I still thought he was coming back then, but I wanted to do a kind of damage-limitation thing – stop anyone who knew anything about the body talking to the police. That’s why I come round your place with the gun.
“But Aaron didn’t come back.” She swallowed down the sob welling up in her throat. “It was the drugs. He got into bad company and they started him doing drugs…and Aaron couldn’t cope…not with that and the other things they done. I think he just couldn’t take it any more. He was convinced this Undead body was going to come after him and get him…so he must’ve jumped into the Fether at high tide Tuesday night…and that was the end.”
She didn’t burst into tears this time, but stood, her body shaking with dry sobs.
“Did you tell all this to the police?” asked Carole.
“No, not the half of it. I don’t want them thinking my boy’d been messing around with dead bodies.”
“So why did you tell us?”
“Ib stop you telling the police about the gun.” There was a naked appeal in the bloodshot eyes she turned on Carole. “That was the only reason I turned it on you. I was trying to frighten you, so’s you wouldn’t tell the police what Aaron’d done. You won’t tell them, will you?”
“No. We won’t tell them.”
“What about his friends?” asked Jude. “The ones he was with?”
“Friends!” Theresa Spalding spat out the word. “You don’t call someone who gets a sixteen-year-old boy into drugs a ‘friend’, do you?”
“No, you don’t. But who were they?”
“I don’t know for definite. There’s a bunch that gets together. Could have been any of them. But there’s one who I’m sure was involved. Older boy. Aaron worshipped him, thought he was the business all right. Asked him round here once or twice, but I turfed him out. I can always spot a bad ‘un. I’m sure it was him who got Aaron into drugs.”
“What’s his name?”
“Dylan.”
“Surname?”
“Don’t know. Never heard it.”
“Any idea where he lives?”
Theresa Spalding shook her head. “Somewhere local. Went to the same school as Aaron. Few years older, though, like I said. He’s left the school. Think he’s got a job now.”
