Ghosts in the Morning (18 page)

‘Chelsea tractor, that’s what they nickname them,’ PC Andrews said.

Blud glared at him.
‘I don’t recall anyone asking for nicknames,
Police Constable
Andrews.’ Blud spat the title out.
             

‘
Well, Mr. Blud, there are
hundreds of
four-wheel drive cars
around, why would you-’

A mobile phone rang. A Rhianna song. Blud shrugged and
looked a little sheepish. I saw a sly grin flit across the face of Andrews.

‘
Bloody music -
sorry, my daughter put that ringtone on, and I don’t know how to change it. Excuse me a moment.’
Blud
stood and walked to the hall, with the phone at his ear.

I
saw an opportunity to try and get some information from Andrews, he seemed a little wet-behind-the-ears.
I put on my best ‘
look how sad and scared I am’
face
. ‘Please, PC Andrews, please can you tell me why you’re here, I mean,
why Graham’s car?’

‘Um, I
can’t say really, Mrs. Halston
.’ Andrews shook his head slowly, then looked right at me, saw the tears welling in the corners of my eyes. ‘Look, we
ll, between me and you,
Blud
-
I me
an DS Blud
-
didn’t tell me much
. He
thinks us uniforms are stupid.
To be honest, Mrs. Halston, I really w
ouldn’t worry if I were you,
I think maybe
one of the nearby
CCTV
cameras may have
picked up a couple of
digits of a number
plate. I
think
we’ve got
quite
a few calls to mak
e,
clutching at straws, it all seems like a
bit of a wild goose chase if you ask me, but, hey, nobody ever does. Ask me, that is.’

Blud came back into the lounge
, looking agitated
. ‘
Come on, Andrews, we’ve got to go. Mrs. Halston, would you please ask your husband to give me a call as soon as possible. My number’s on this card. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Halston.’

The
door slammed behind them and I dashed back into the kitchen for another slug of wine. I looked down at my hands, they were shaking.
A couple of digits of a
number plate
. Shit, shit, shit.

The doorbell rang again and I jumped.
It must be the police, they had come back,
they must have forgotten to ask if they could see the car,
thank God I had had it fixed,
or
maybe they had another witness, maybe maybe maybe... I opened the door.

‘Hi Mum.’

I stared at the stranger in front of me with his golden-hued skin and his long, blond hair, and his big smile with the crooked tooth that he’d banged against a tree when he was six years old. He was wearing a strange hat.

‘Ian, is that you, you look so different, you - ’

‘Of course it’s me, Mum, you wally. I’m back!’ Ian stepped across the porch and we hugged
tightly. I didn’t want to let go.
‘Now come on,
Mum,
put the kettle on, I’ve
not had a proper cup of tea for ages
.’

             
I gave Ian another big hug, and went to the kitchen. I hurriedly emptied my wineglass into the sink and put the glass into the dishwasher, I didn’t want Ian thinking I was some sort of alcoholic.

‘
Is there no-one
else here, Mum?’

‘No, Graham’s – your Dad’s at work, and Daniel...well, I think Daniel’s at work as well. He does the odd bit for that plumber,
Frank
.’

‘Hey, Mum, who were those guys I just saw walking away from the house
?
They l
ooked a bit official.’

‘Oh, they were just, um, Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ I said and turned the kettle on.

***

‘Shall we have another cheeky one?’ Anita said, pointing to my glass.

‘Er, okay, but just a small one, I’ve still got shopping to do.’

Anita signalled the waiter and I stared at the
people
thronging the walkway
, clutching Christmas-themed bags and boxes of toys.
The caf
é
sat at the edge of a large department store, and was a welcome respite from the manic
hordes. Like predators, they circled the shelves, stripping them in an avaricious frenzy, it seemed people could never get enough stuff. Necessary or not, it didn’t matter, it was just a greed for stuff, for things, as if happiness was achievable through these inanimate objects of stuff.  Anita and I were no better. Two hours in and we were already laden with bags, victims ourselves of the marketers, the manipulators
,
and the purveyors of clothes and products that would be cooed over, cherished for a brief moment, then discarded in some cupboard.
God, I was growing more cynical by the day...

I sipped my wine, reluctant to venture back out there. I didn’t like crowds.
I didn’t like to be bumped, to feel closed in, it made me choke, it made me think of my arms held fast above my head, an arm at my throat and an oily rag in my mouth, choking me, suffocating me...

‘Are you okay
, Andy?’ Anita looked concerned. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I’m okay, I’m fine, just a bit warm in here that’s all.’
It was warm, the cloying heat created by too many bodies in a small space.
I smiled at Anita. Our argument at the club was forgotten, there were no grudges between Anita and I.

‘Yes, I know what you mean. I
will
never understand why they put the temperature up so
bloody
high in these places
, it must be murder working in here.’

At the care home, after it happened, I stayed in my room for a
whole
week.
I didn’t go to school, told them I was ill, some sort of flu.
I
was scared, I couldn’t bear to face the boys who had raped me.
Soon a
fter that week, things changed. Kevin and Darren were arrested. They were caught trying to break into a till in a shop – the stupid muppets had
n’t even
bothered to read the sign that clearly stated that no money was left on the premises overnight. It wasn’t the first time they’d been in trouble, and the local juvenile court must have decided that enough was enough and they were sent to a borstal near Southampton.
After that, I came out of my room again.

Jonnie left soon after too - he ran away. Sandra said
that
she’d heard one of the boys in the care home saying that he’d got scared, someone had
beat
him with a pool cue apparently. An altercation with one of the other boys,
or
that’s what they thought, but no-one had seen anything.
I knew that o
ne of the pool cues did have a stain on it though,
and it
looked su
spiciously like blood.

My time too at the care home was coming to an end. My sixteenth birthday was approaching and I was due to leave school – I had no intention of doing any further education. I  had discovered an aptitude for maths and I had successfully interviewed for a back office job in a bank. Jobs were plentiful in Jersey then, and the money was good. Good quality accommodation wasn’t so easy to find, but I had managed to find a bedsit that I would be able to afford. I couldn’t wait to leave.

There was one final incident that happened before I left; by then, I was making my way to school independently
- I had a battered old bike that I used to cycle to and from school,
but in my last week of school there was one morning when rain came pelting down and turned to hail. Mick the caretaker had asked me if I wanted a lift
, and
although I usually didn’t mind a bit of rain, for some reason that morning, I couldn’t face
getting drenched.
So I had jumped into the front of the now-rusty minibus alongside Mick, cursing the weather.

But as I got to school and
turned to
climb out of the minibus, he had reached across and cupped his hand
firmly
under my bottom. A thick finger had jutted out and probed at the seams of my panties.
‘
Hear you like a bit of that, want me to pick you up later
?’
he had leered, and I had jumped from the minibus, felt my face burning,
had
scratched at the tears wet on my cheeks...

‘Penny for them?’ Anita said.

‘Eh?’

‘Your thoughts – penny for them?
And a penny is
about all I’ll have left after our shopping,’
Anita laughed.

‘Oh, er, I was just thinking of the, um, the old days.’

Anita stopped laughing.
‘
T
he
care
home, you mean
?
’

‘Yes,
the care home
.
Just thinking about something that happened...to Mick...d
o y
ou remember Mick the caretaker?’

‘
Of c
ourse I do, Andy, how could anyone forget
that
one-eyed perv
ert
, t
he filthy bastard was always loitering around the showers
, trying to catch a glimpse of underage flesh
.
Why, what happened to him, did he get caught perving? Dirty bugger deserved to be in gaol, I reckon.
’

‘
D
o you remember the old minibus he used to drive?’

‘What, the lovely bus with the
great
big badge down the side
advertising the
name of
our
care home. Thus
thoughtfully
ensuring that everybody in our
beautiful
island knew
exactly,
who we were
, where we lived
.
Hey, look everyone, here come the orphans and the naughty kids!
’

I smiled. Anita was right, the care home
had always carried a certain unflattering stigma within the tight-knit
local community.

Anita sighed wistfully.
‘
The b
astard shouldn’t have been driving anyway. Not with that glass eye. He used to clip the pavement whenever he turned left. Anyway,
spill the beans then,
what
d
id happen to him? So
, did he
finally get put in prison for being a pervert?’

‘No, he, um, well, he had an accident.
He was trying to fix something underneath that old minibus
– I heard someone say afterwards that he fancied himself as a bit of a mechanic – anyway, the minibus was
jacked up high
, and he was under it supposedly, and from what I heard the jack was even rustier than the old bus, and it
...well, it
collapsed.
I heard that p
oor Mick didn’t have much of a chance,
supposedly he would have died fairly quick
, his chest was crushed
badly
.
The thing is, i
t was me who found him
underneath that bus.
I had to run and get Phillips –
you never met Phillips,
he was the new head of the care home, Anita,
after you had left. He was no
t a nice man.’

‘Blimey, that’s terrible. I mean, I know
Mick
was a dirty old perv, but still...can’t have been much fun for you either, finding him like that.
I can’t believe you never told me about it.
’

‘No, it wasn’t
much fun finding him,
all you could see were his two skinny legs poking out from underneath the bus.
And, I don’t know...I’m not sure why I never told you before. I guess it’s one of those things you just don’t like to talk about, you know.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘There was a bit of an investigation, supposedly they had trouble working out exactly how it had happened, but I think it was eventually decided it was just a freak accident.
They offered me counselling, said it
would be a good idea after seeing him like that, said it
would help, but, you know – ’ I shrugged
again
.