She looked across at McEvoy and Thorne, the question in her eyes.
'Sarah,' McEvoy volunteered, leaning forward with a smile. She glanced at Thorne. 'And Tom.'
Charlie looked up, appraising them. He rubbed his grandmother's hand across his cheek for a second or two, before dropping it and racing across to where his toys lay on the floor. He picked up a yellow plastic toolbox and emptied the contents on to the carpet. McEvoy was flying by the seat of her pants. This was not the same as counseling a rape victim or trying to calm a battered wife. She'd noticed the hushed, almost reverential tone that Mary Enright had used when speaking to the boy and felt instinctively that this was wrong. At least, it was wrong if they wanted to get any information out of him. She knew that she had to gain his trust.
'Are you looking forward to Christmas, Charlie?' The boy picked up a thick, red plastic bolt and began pushing it through a hole in a tiny workbench.
'I'm sure Father Christmas will bring you lots of nice things if you're a good boy.' He pushed the bolt further in, his face a picture of concentration. McEvoy moved from her chair and knelt down, a few feet away. 'It looks like you're a good boy to me.' She picked up the plastic screwdriver and examined it, as Charlie furtively examined her. She tried hard to keep any hint of seriousness out of her voice. 'What would be very good is if you could tell me and Tom a little bit about when your mummy got hurt…' She glanced up at the Enrights. Mary's eyes were already filling with tears. Her husband sat motionless, his eyes on the floor. Charlie Garner said nothing.
'What you could do, if you wanted, is tell your Nan about it. Do you want to do that?'
He didn't…
McEvoy felt herself sweating and it was only partially due to the temperature. She was beginning to feel out of her depth. She started to say something but stopped. She could only watch helplessly as the boy stood up suddenly, marched past her and plonked himself down at Thorne's feet.
Thorne gazed down at Charlie and shrugged. 'Hello…' Charlie produced a small squeaky hammer and began vigorously banging on Thorne's shoe. It might have been nerves or it might have been because the moment was, in spite of everything, genuinely comical, but Thorne began to laugh. Then Charlie laughed too.
'I hammer your shoe…'
'Ow… ow… ouch!' Thorne winced in mock agony, and as the boy began to laugh even louder, he sensed that the moment might be right.
'Do you remember the man who was there when your mummy got hurt?'
The laughter didn't exactly stop dead, but the answer to Thorne's question was obvious. Charlie was still hammering on the shoe but it was purely reflexive. The intermittent squeak of the toy hammer was now the only sound in the room. Mary and Robert Enright sat stock still on the sofa, and Sarah McEvoy was all but holding her breath, afraid that the slightest movement could spoil everything. Thorne spoke slowly and seriously. He was not following a different tack to McEvoy for any particular reason. There was no strategy involved. Instinct just told him to ask the child the question, simply and honestly. Can you tell me what the man who hurt your mummy looked like?'
A squeak, as the hammer hit the shoe. And another. Then the tiny shoulders gave a recognisable shrug. Thorne had seen the same gesture in a hundred stroppy teenagers. Scared, but fronting it out. Maybe I know something, but you get nothing easily.
'Was he older than me do you think?' Charlie glanced up, but only for a second before returning to his hammering. 'Was his hair the same colour as yours or was it darker? What do you think?' There was no discernible reaction. Thorne knew that he was losing the boy. Hearing a sniff, Thorne looked up and could see that the old man on the sofa was quietly weeping, his big shoulders rising and falling as he pressed a handkerchief to his face. Thorne looked at the boy and winked conspiratorially, 'Was he taller than your Granddad? I bet you can remember that.'
Charlie stopped hammering. Without looking up he shook his head slowly and emphatically. Thorne flicked his eyes to McEvoy. She raised her eyebrows back at him. They were thinking the same thing. If that 'no' was as definite as it looked, it certainly didn't tally with Margie Knight's description. Thorne wondered who was the more credible witness. The nosy working girl or the three-year-old?
Eye witnesses had screwed him up before. So, probably neither… Whatever, as far as Charlie was concerned, it looked as though the shake of the head was all they were going to get. The hammering was growing increasingly enthusiastic.
'You're good at hammering, Charlie,' Thorne said. Mary Enright spoke up from the sofa, she too sensing that the questions were over. 'It's Bob the Builder. He's mad on it. It's what he calls you sometimes, isn't it, Bob?' She turned to her husband, smiling. Robert Enright said nothing.
McEvoy stood up, rubbing away the stiffness in the back of her legs from where she'd been kneeling. 'Yeah, my nephew's always going on about it. He's driving his mum and dad bonkers, singing the theme tune.'
Mary stood up and began tidying things away, while Charlie carried on, the hammer now replaced by a bright orange screwdriver. 'I don't mind that,' Mary said. 'It's just on so early. Half past six in the morning, on one of those cable channels.'
McEvoy breathed in sharply and nodded sympathetically. Thorne looked down and brushed his fingers against the boy's shoulder. 'Hey, think about your poor old Nan will you Charlie? Half past six? You should still be fast asleep…'
And Charlie Garner looked up at him then, his eyes wide and keen, the bright orange screwdriver clutched tightly in his small fist.
'My mummy's asleep.'
In spite of all the horrors to come, the bodies both fresh and long dead, this would be the image, simple and stark, that would be there long after this case was finished, whenever Thorne closed his eyes. The face of a child.
It's been over a week now, Karen, and it's still on the television. I've stopped watching now, in case something comes on and catches me unawares when I'm unprepared for it. I knew that it would be on the news, you know, when they found her, but I thought it would die down… I thought it would stop, after a day or two. There always seems to be people dying in one way or another, so I didn't think that it would be news for very long. They've got some sort of witness they said. Whoever it was must have seen me because they know how tall I am. I know I should be worried, Karen, but I'm not. Part of me wishes they'd seen me up close. Seen my face. A police officer on the television said it was brutal. 'This brutal killing: He said I was brutal and I really tried so hard not to be. You believe that don't you, Karen? I didn't hit her or anything. I tried to make it quick and painless. I don't really expect them to say anything else though. Why should they? They don't know me…
The other one, the one in south London, I can barely bring myself to think about that. It was horrible. Yes, that was brutal. The scratches are fading, but a couple of people at work noticed and it gave them something else to use against me. Not as if they needed any more ammunition. It was all nudges and giggles and, 'I bet she was a right goer' or, 'did she make a lot of noise?' You know, variations on that theme. I just smiled and blushed, same as I always do.
Oh my God, Karen, if they only knew.
Sometimes I think that perhaps I should just tell them everything. That way it would all be over, because someone would go to the police and I could just sit and wait for them to come and get me. Plus, it might at least make some of them think about me a bit differently. Find someone else to belittle. It would wipe a few smiles off a few faces wouldn't it? It would make them stop. Yes, I'd like them to step back and start to sweat a little. I'd like them to be scared of me.
But I'm the one that's scared, Karen, you know that. It's the way it's always been hasn't it? That's why I can't ever tell them. Why I can't ever share this with anyone except you.
Why I'm praying, praying, praying that Ruth will be the last one.
1984
They caught Bardsley just outside the school gates. He had a few mates with him but they took one look at Nicklin, at his face, and melted away into the background. Some of them were fifth-formers at least a year older than he was, and it excited him to watch them scuttle away like the spineless wankers he knew they were. The two of them were on Bardsley in a second. Palmer stood in front of him, solid, red-faced and shaking. Nicklin grabbed the strap of his sports bag and together they dragged him towards the bushes. The park ran right alongside the main entrance to the school. A lot of the boys cut across it on the way to school and back, and the
