Humber Boy B (2 page)

“Good to see you, Steve. How’s life?”

“Weird and wonderful, just how we like it.”

It was a standing joke between them since they’d first worked together on the case of Rose Wilks.

Cate’s attention was seized by the man to his right, whom she could immediately tell wasn’t a police officer; his face was too refined, his clothes well cut. He was neatly handsome in a way that you would associate with public relations or shaving foam adverts, not catching criminals. When she offered her hand in greeting, his was soft and moisturised.

“Cate Austin. Probation.”

“Olivier Massard.” His voice was accented, his watch sparkled at the wrist.

Steve paused for a moment, until Cate had retrieved her hand, then explained, “Detective Massard is on secondment to Suffolk constabulary for six months. European exchange, part of the EU’s desire to have us all working like robots,” Steve looked down at his paperwork to hide his expression but she could tell from his voice that he was pissed off by the idea. “Isn’t that right, Ollie?”

Cate saw the detective wince at the nickname.

“Not at all,” he replied, in perfect English. “Because of the sterling police work with your Suffolk Strangler, we have become aware of this county. It is being held as a model of excellence, and I am here to observe and learn. Nothing more.”

“Seconded from France?” Cate asked.

“From Luxembourg, actually. Though I’m three-quarters French, so good guess.” He didn’t say what the other quarter was.

Mystified, Cate turned her attention to the third man, who to her relief she could more easily classify by his worn jacket and pale pudgy face as a civil servant.

“I’m Ged, we spoke on the phone. From Ipswich borough housing.”

“Oh, great, good to put a face to the voice. So, do you have an address for Ben?”

“I do.” Ged picked up his pen and started to toy with it. “Though I’d prefer it was out of my area.”

Cate wouldn’t care where it was, so long as it was an address. She’d been envisioning last minute calls to local B&Bs, which would be scandalous given the nature of Ben’s crime. If the papers ever got wind of something like that… well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

“He has to live somewhere, Ged.”

Ged sniffed. “Since there’s no death penalty in this country.”

Cate supressed a sigh. “He was ten when he was convicted. He hasn’t had a breath of free air in eight years.”

She became aware of the French detective listening closely and felt her colour rising. When she met his eye she saw a look of amusement on his fine features, apparently he was enjoying this minor clash of values.

Ged delivered the coup de grâce: “Unlike his victim, who’ll never breathe again.”

Steve tapped the desk, “Alright, folks, so now we’re all on friendly terms shall we get to work? Sit down, Cate, you’re blocking the sun.”

The police conference room was on the top floor of the squat building so its windows showed the tops of trees and a blue Suffolk skyline. It was the view that Cate tried to paint when she had time. In another life she would have liked to have been an artist, spending her days with images rather than words, with beauty rather than the ugliness of human behaviour. But she had never made it to art school and there were bills to pay. Canvas stacked against canvas in the laundry room, all the same blues with shots of white and grey, all not quite right somehow but the activity filled weekends when Amelia was with Tim and Sally. Looking out on the blue there wasn’t a cloud in sight, the sky was bleached clean.

“Okay, so, this is us,” Steve said, rotating his pen in a circle around the table. “Buck stops here. Penny and I will be managing the police end,” he said, “making sure Ben’s registered on the Schedule 1 list and checking that only those who need to know are in the loop, and everyone who doesn’t stays in the dark. And thanks to Ged his housing is sorted.”

Cate picked up a pen to make a note, “So since the gallows weren’t an option, Ged, what’s the address?”

“We’ve allocated him a flat in the new affordable housing section of the block overlooking the docks. The new waterfront, Ipswich’s pride and joy.”

Steve whistled, “Whatever would the neighbours say?”

Ged looked panicked, but Penny swiftly answered for him, giving her police superior a warning glare.

“Nothing. Because they won’t know.” Penny made a bridge with her hands and rested her chin. “He’s got a whole new identity, he hasn’t used his given name in eight years. And even though there are photos out there, he was just a kid when he got sent down, so there’s no way people will recognise him.”

“What photos?” Cate asked.

“Pictures of them messing around under a sprinkler in the garden, playing football in the street. Regular family snaps, taken by Jessica Watts – that’s Noah’s mum. She’s started up a Facebook page and since the victim and Ben were friends, she’s got a lot of pictures of our guy from just before the murder. All in the public domain.”

Ged sniffed. “A kid who murdered a kid. And we’re giving him a prime flat in the marina.” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk, “Here’s the address.”

Cate made a note and handed it to Penny who continued to update them. “Jessica is posting on Facebook, ‘please help me find Humber Boy B’ et cetera, but she’s just fishing, she has no idea where he is. If we can just keep this from the press and vigilantes we’ll be fine. Things will die down after a few weeks. He needs to live like a hermit, one on a vow of silence.”

“I’d like to think we can do more than that, and give him a chance at a normal life.” Cate said, quietly but with feeling. “He was only ten when it happened. Barely formed.”

“Still ten in here,” said Steve, tapping his temple. “Don’t go thinking you can make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, Cate. Keep his identity secret and he can rot in his flat for all I care. At least he’s got a view.”

Beyond the conference room window the blueness of the sky now seemed oppressive in its constancy.

“Have you met him yet, Cate?” asked Penny.

“Our first meeting is today.”

“He’s strange. Of course, he’s been locked up since he was a child. But he’s not our usual sort.”

“What’s our usual sort?” Cate was genuinely interested, having lost the notion years ago that such a person existed. Working in the prison with Rose Wilks, then supervising the Suffolk Cannibal, Alice Mariani, Cate didn’t make assumptions anymore.

“You know how it usually is, young man, just out of prison. How they blag, how pale they are and cocky, fluent in Hackney patois and bullshit. Ben’s different. Looks like a choir boy. But evil.”

An evil choir boy sounded like something from a tacky horror film.

“What he did was evil.” Cate said, thinking of Roger Palmer’s witness statement, the boy in the single red trainer hitting the water with the weight of death. “But he was just a child. There’s got to be some reason, some sort of explanation.”

“There is. He’s evil. End of story,” said Ged, now standing. “Are we done here?”

4

Ben

Something’s wrong.

At first I think it’s the sun, it’s too bright and making me blink. There was a storm yesterday, grumbling thunder then cracks of lightning, but today the sky is as blue as… as…

I haven’t seen blue in very many different ways since I was ten, so all I can think of is blue as a prison shirt that’s just come out of its plastic. I only had that happen once, a prison shirt that hadn’t been worn by fifteen other sweaty bodies. As blue as the water after that shirt’s first washed, when the dye seeps into the milky bucket. I saw that a lot when I was working in the laundry, last prison but one. It was a good job, a privileged one for cons close to release, but my fingers wrinkled and cracked and then got itchy. Turns out I have eczema. So when I was moved to Suffolk, my final prison stay in open conditions, I asked for a different job. My personal officer said I should be working in the community anyway, get some experience of the outside world after being locked away for so long, so I got placed down the road with the Suffolk Punch horses. I’d never touched a horse before, not even a normal-sized one, and a Punch is a giant. When I was told I’d be grooming Axel, the stud, I was scared. I had to learn how to move around the horse, not behind its back, and slowly, so it could see what I was doing.

That horse was just like me. It just wanted to see what was going on and not be taken by surprise, no-one could be blamed for that. An animal only kicks out because it’s scared, but the kick will be vicious and a bone is easily broken.

And then I realise it isn’t the sun that’s the problem, it’s that I can’t see all that’s going on and there are people behind me, moving and talking. I want to kick out because I’m afraid.

For the first time in my life I’m on my own. I haven’t been alone in eight years. Our home was a narrow terrace, upstairs was only Mum’s bedroom and a smaller room that I shared with my brother, Adam. Half-brother, technically, and his dad Stuart lived with us too, when he wasn’t on an Icelandic trawler out in the Arctic somewhere. Sometimes, Mum would get tired of waiting for him to show up with the brass so other men would come and go, and we’d eat for a few days. Stuart would always return eventually, with a pocket of cash and enough fish so we’d be sick of it after a fortnight, telling us about waves as high as buildings and fish as tall as a man. Cuffing me round the head every chance he got, giving Adam treats, then disappearing again for weeks on end, sending Mum into a spiral of sadness that meant she slept lots and there would be no food again, not even fish, and we knew it wouldn’t be long before we’d hear strange noises coming from her bedroom. It was Adam who got me up for school, who made me wash, who stole milk from the neighbours early each morning. Whoever came or went, whatever was going on with Stuart and Mum, Adam stayed the same. And, always, it was Adam and me against the world. Until the bridge.

After that, we got separated.

First, I was with a police officer who looked at me like I was rotten, then a social worker who looked at me like I was ill. Later it was secure unit staff, psychiatrists, prison officers, teachers and other inmates. But I was never alone and now what’s behind me is the closed prison gate and what’s ahead is a place I don’t know – how can you know anywhere if you’re in a locked room all your adult life? – and a new home and maybe work and even a new name. The name I used to have, the one Mum gave me is gone now, thrown into the Humber with everything else that died.

I keep walking, down the gravel path that leads to the train station, checking again that the train warrant is in my pocket. It’s all I have: a train warrant to take me to Ipswich, the address of the probation office and a duffel bag with my drawings and some letters, along with the handful of birthday and Christmas cards that Mum remembered to send. On some she’d signed Stuart’s name though we all knew what he really thought about me, he’d told a whole courtroom.

Letters and cards, not worth much, and I shouldn’t keep them. Not with my new life, new name and everything. But if I destroy them, then what have I got to show for the ten years I lived before that one moment on the Humber Bridge?

Melton train station is small, a village outpost that happens to be just a few miles from the prison. It must be obvious where I’ve come from; the prison stench hangs on me, even in my new T-shirt and jeans. My shoes came from a catalogue. I saw a picture of some I really liked, red canvas they were, but Kevin, my personal officer, just laughed at that and instead he picked out a cheap white pair. He said they wouldn’t last but they were all my allowance would stretch to. My jeans came from a proper shop, I picked them myself while Kevin waited a few steps away, trying not to look obvious about the fact that he was watching me. My T-shirt I hesitated over. I kept thinking,
But would Ben like it?
I’m still new at being Ben and maybe he likes different things to the old me. So I chose a blue T-shirt with a cartoon of Superman on it because I thought it was tacky and babyish and so surely something my old self would hate. Also, because Superman takes off his glasses and he’s a better person, a hero, and I’d like to transform like that. Only I wouldn’t go from ordinary to hero but from villain to ordinary.

The station is a platform and a track. That’s it. I need to wait for a train to take me to Ipswich and I can see the timetable on the wall. I couldn’t have read that eight years ago, but now I can see the times and work out that the train will be here soon.

I used to be into trains, Adam and me both were, back when we watched
Thomas the Tank Engine
while Mum slept off the booze or blues and Stuart was gone to sea again, with no notice of when he might return. Adam would take me to the toilet and fetch me water from the tap when I complained of hunger. The cartoon made me forget any of the bad things and we both liked that the programme was repeated, again and again, over weeks and months when he should have been at school and I should have been at nursery, but at least we could both say the lines of the Fat Controller, so we were learning something. We learned not to answer the door, too, after the social worker found us eating out-of-date Smash from the box, the only food we could find, and surrounded by empty milk bottles. She asked us how long it was that Mum had been in bed, and when Adam had last gone to school, and we told her the truth. When Stuart came back from sea he had to go to a meeting and he hated those. His muscly frame squeezed into a shirt, his bald head that looked tough on the dockside but thuggish in an office. When he came home he was in a foul temper and I got the worst of it. He said that if we ever, ever, told the truth to anyone again then we’d both be taken away and put into care. And even though I didn’t think I’d miss Mum too badly, and I’d be glad to get away from Stuart, I couldn’t let them separate me from Adam so I kept my mouth shut. I thought if I always kept my mouth shut then Adam and me would always be together. But it didn’t work out that way.

Watching Thomas on TV wasn’t preparation for this. I haven’t been on a train, not ever, and I feel the warrant in my pocket again.