Damaged Goods Read online

  ‘This is Jez, your barrister,’ said Lilly. ‘He’s going to ask the judge to give you another chance.’

  Kelsey shrugged with an indifference that irked Lilly. This was not the frightened little girl in The Bushes.

  ‘I need you to tell me why you ran away, Kelsey,’ said Jez, and held paper and pen in his outstretched hand.

  ‘She won’t be needing that,’ said Lilly. ‘She’s rediscovered the power of speech.’

  Jez looked stunned. ‘She can speak?’

  Lilly gave a rueful smile.

  ‘So why isn’t she saying anything?’ he asked.

  Kelsey sighed. ‘Because I ain’t got nothing to say.’

  The voice, like last night, was clear and composed – not, thought Lilly, the painful whisper of one recently recovered. Suspicions were crowding Lilly’s mind and she recalled her conversation with Sheba on exactly this point. Kelsey was either still in shock, or …

  ‘Cut the crap, sister,’ said Lilly. Her tone startled both Jez and Kelsey, who snapped to attention in unison. ‘Since I took this case I’ve been shouted at by coppers, ridiculed on the telly and pushed into a road by the biggest man I ever saw in my life. I’ve been followed and attacked with a knife by your mother’s lunatic pimp. Jesus, even my sex life has nosedived, so don’t sit there like a sulky toddler.’

  Lilly knew her behaviour was entirely inappropriate but she couldn’t keep her anger in check. ‘Answer the man’s question. Why did you run away from Leyland House?’

  Lilly saw indecision register in the girl’s features and she didn’t wait for Kelsey to process her thoughts but pressed harder.

  ‘If you want to play silly beggars that’s fine, but you’ll do it with someone else. I’m not wasting another second in this hellhole unless you’ve got something to tell us.’

  It was bully-boy tactics but Lilly had had enough of playing games. She’d had enough of games, period. It was time for everyone to lay their cards on the table.

  Kelsey must have realised that this was no bluff. ‘I told you I wanted to be with my mum. I wanted to say goodbye.’

  Jez lowered his eyes as if genuinely sorry for this poor girl.

  Lilly, however, had her bullshit detector turned all the way up. ‘Why yesterday? You could have gone to the flat anytime you were in The Bushes and you wouldn’t have needed to jump out of a window.’

  ‘It didn’t hit me till yesterday,’ said Kelsey.

  Lilly stood up. ‘Come on, Jez, I’m sure you’ve got innocent people to get out of jail.’

  Kelsey jumped up too and shouted, ‘I am innocent.’

  Lilly shouted right back at her. ‘So why are you lying?’

  Kelsey’s eyes darted from side to side and the muscle at the corner of her mouth twitched. She’s wavering, thought Lilly. Time to change tack.

  ‘You don’t have to keep quiet any more. Your mum’s dead, nothing you say can hurt her or get her into trouble,’ said Lilly, lowering her voice.

  Kelsey nodded. Obviously this thought was one she’d toyed with before. ‘I know, but I don’t want them to say bad things about her.’

  ‘Words can’t hurt Grace now, but rotting in Parkgate will certainly hurt you,’ said Lilly. ‘Let us help you, please.’ This last plea was said as she looked directly into Kelsey’s eyes.

  Kelsey slid her back down the wall to the floor. Lilly sat down next to her.

  ‘I thought he’d stop when Mum was killed. I thought he’d see how sick it all was,’ said Kelsey.

  ‘Max,’ said Lilly.

  Kelsey nodded. ‘I should have known he was in too deep.’

  ‘He was making films, porno films,’ Lilly prompted.

  ‘Yeah, but not like the ones Mum used to make, with a story and that. These were just one man. Doing it with a girl,’ said Kelsey.

  ‘How old were the girls?’ asked Lilly, who suspected she already knew the answer.

  ‘I’m not sure. Twelve, thirteen maybe.’

  Lilly hid her horror and pushed on. ‘What did it have to do with your mum?’

  Kelsey screwed up her face and shut her eyes tight. She clearly wanted to say it had nothing to do with Grace.

  Lilly put her hand on Kelsey’s shoulder. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones …’

  Kelsey spoke without opening her eyes. ‘He made them in our flat.’

  Lilly swallowed. What in God’s name had this kid seen in her short life?

  ‘Max, the man and the girls, they all came to our place and’, Kelsey’s voice wavered, ‘did it in the front room.’

  ‘Your mum let that happen?’ said Jez.

  No, Jez, don’t badmouth Grace, that’s what she’s afraid of.

  ‘I’m sure she tried to stop Max,’ said Lilly, directing her words and a chastising glare at Jez.

  Kelsey seized upon this like the gift it was. ‘She did try to stop him. She told him again and again but he wouldn’t listen.’ She aimed her words at Jez, begging him to understand, not to judge. ‘She wasn’t very strong, cos of the gear. She couldn’t do without it, see, but she kept it under control as best she could. We weren’t living in a pigsty or nothing.’

  Lilly nodded and recalled how neat number 58 had been.

  ‘But Max kept bringing more and more drugs so she wouldn’t put up a fight,’ said Kelsey.

  Jez smiled his understanding and Kelsey’s face filled with gratitude. ‘One night, after they’d all gone, I found her crying in bed. She kept saying, “I’ve got to get you away from him, I’ve got to get you away.” I says, “Come on then, Mum, let’s go. Let’s pack up and take the babies away from here, and I meant it cos I could see where it was all heading. But she says no. Says we can’t just take off in the middle of the night, that we’ve got to do it properly.’

  ‘And she did try,’ said Lilly.

  ‘Yeah, she did. At first I thought she’d just forget about it, like everything else she ever said she was going to do, but this time was different. She stopped taking the drugs and sold ’em to Tracey in the next block.’

  ‘The girl who found your mum?’

  Kelsey nodded. ‘Then she started writing to the council for a transfer but she kept getting knocked back. Then Max found out somehow and beat the crap out of her. Next thing I know the social came for us and put us in care.’

  ‘I think she did it to get you out of there,’ said Lilly.

  ‘I think you’re right. I didn’t get it at first, and then when I did it was too late,’ said Kelsey.

  Someone thumped loudly on the cell door.

  ‘Five minutes and we’re in court,’ said Jez. ‘You have to tell us why you left Leyland House.’

  ‘I knew he was going to do it again and I couldn’t let it happen. Enough people have been hurt. I thought I could give him a shock, make him see sense.’

  ‘What made you think it was going to happen again?’ asked Lilly.

  Kelsey’s reply was emphatic. ‘Someone came to see me. I can’t tell you who cos I promised, but they said they’d met up with Max and I worked it out from there. I just wanted to warn him off.’

  Judge Blechard-Smith made no attempt to hide his fury at the case coming before him again. Having been strong-armed against his better judgement to release the girl, he looked apoplectic to discover she’d escaped. As she was led into the dock he could barely contain himself.

  ‘Stand up,’ he yelled at Kelsey, who could barely see over the top of the dock railing.

  ‘She is standing, My Lord,’ said Jez. ‘I’m afraid these courts were not designed with children in mind. Perhaps you would allow her to sit beside her solicitor.’

  ‘Indeed I shall not,’ snarled the judge. ‘Child or not, this is a court of law and she is the defendant.’

  There was a two-minute commotion while several books were dispatched to the dock and arranged in a pile for Kelsey to stand on.

  The judge turned to his clerk. ‘At the trial, please arrange for an orange box to be available.’

  The cl
erk nodded, but the height of his eyebrows told Lilly that he too was wondering whether such things still existed. The scene reminded Lilly of another case where her client had been deaf. In the absence of a signer the judge had conducted the hearing by shouting.

  ‘Mr Marshall, can you please tell me why we are here today,’ said the judge.

  Marshall got to his feet. ‘As your Lordship may recall, a secure accommodation order was made in respect of this defendant following an application by the defence …’

  ‘Good God, man, it was two days ago,’ roared the judge, ‘I think I can remember that far back. What I want to know is what has happened since to bring us all back here yet again.’

  Marshall bowed. ‘The defendant was taken to the institution in question, Leyland House, by Officer McNally, and some moments later she absconded.’

  ‘I thought the building was secure,’ said the judge.

  ‘Indeed, that is what we were told, but it seems the defendant was able to smash open a second-floor window and jump to her freedom,’ said Marshall.

  The judge threw his hands in the air. ‘But Doctor Lorenson said it was as safe as a prison, she said she’d been there herself.’

  The unfairness of the comment was clearly too much for Jez, who jumped to his feet. ‘With all due respect, it is not Doctor Lorenson’s job to check every window.’

  ‘But it is her job to recommend a suitable unit,’ said Marshall, clearly in no mood to forgive the trouncing he had received at Sheba’s hands. ‘And the unit in question was certainly not that.’

  ‘So what is the prosecution’s position today?’ continued the judge.

  ‘We oppose any further applications for bail on the grounds that this defendant is likely to abscond,’ said Marshall.

  Lilly sneaked a look in Jack’s direction. He shrugged helplessly, both palms open. The decision to oppose bail would have come directly from Bradbury, not from him. She understood his position and nodded.

  ‘And what do the defence say, Mr Stafford?’ asked the judge. ‘Frankly, I’m intrigued.’

  Jez shuffled his papers unnecessarily. He was great at his job but the unassailable fact was that Kelsey had escaped.

  ‘My Lord, Kelsey has known that the police suspected her involvement in her mother’s death for quite some time, and until last night made no attempt to evade due process. She could easily have run away during her time at The Bushes, but did not.’

  ‘She hadn’t been charged at that point,’ said Marshall.

  Jez sighed. It was a fair point. Since Kelsey had been charged she’d been in custody, and had taken her chance at the very first opportunity that presented itself.

  ‘My Lord, I think we have to ask ourselves how serious this attempt to flee really was,’ he said.

  ‘She jumped from a second-floor window. I’d say that was pretty serious,’ said Marshall, evidently enjoying himself.

  Jez ignored the interruption from his left and continued. ‘She went straight back home, the very first place the police would look.’

  ‘And had she not been discovered?’ asked the judge.

  ‘I have no doubt she would have handed herself in,’ said Jez.

  Marshall shook his head and gave a stagey laugh. ‘In the famous words of Mandy Rice Davies, “he would say that, wouldn’t he”. None of us can say what she would or wouldn’t have done if Sergeant McNally hadn’t found her.’

  ‘If Mr Marshall had bothered to read the policeman’s notebook, as I did, he would know that the officer in question not only lost Kelsey, he was not the one to find her either. That task was left to my instructing solicitor.’

  Jez let his stinging indictment of Jack settle in everyone’s minds before continuing. ‘The point is, Kelsey could easily have escaped again but chose instead to go to the station voluntarily to sort this matter out.’

  It was a triumph, but a minor one, and Lilly could only watch as the judge revoked bail and sent Kelsey back to Parkgate.

  ‘There was nothing I could do, Lilly,’ said Jack.

  ‘To stop her jumping out of a window or getting sent to jail?’ asked Jez.

  Jack looked for a moment as though he might punch Jez, but instead he turned his back and looked directly at Lilly. ‘You look a better sight than in recent days.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, though I’m not sure that’s how it was meant,’ said Lilly.

  ‘Och, woman,’ he said, his accent thick in his laughter, ‘you’re so suspicious.’

  Jez laughed and threaded his arm through Lilly’s. ‘I thought you said your sex life was in ruins?’

  Jack looked from Lilly to Jez and back again. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  That night Lilly ran a bath and chose a CD. She turned the volume to its lowest setting so as not to wake Sam. She searched in the bathroom cabinet for some bubble bath but found only four empty cans of deodorant and an unopened tub of foot scrub. Right at the back was a bottle of tea tree oil to see off nits, zits and other unwanted guests in the Valentine household, but no bubble bath. She settled for a squirt of washing-up liquid, something her mother, who rarely had cash for cosmetics or bathroom luxuries, used most of the time. No doubt it contributed to the endless fungal infections that plagued her, but Lilly decided to risk it this once.

  She sank into the froth and sang along with Jay Kay. The view from the window was stunning, the field beyond alight as the evening sun gave its last blast of energy to the rapeseed below. David had wanted to frost the bathroom window. Lilly’s frequent nakedness would, he insisted, ‘attract perverts’. Lilly refused, and since David’s departure rarely bothered to pull the blind. If a curious farmer or hiker caught a glimpse of her arse it was a small price to pay for the sense of wellbeing engendered by letting the world beyond into the tub.

  On the footpath that snaked between the garden and the fields, Lilly could see two walkers striding towards the village. They stopped to take in the view, the day-glo yellow now settling to buttercup, and for a second she was tempted to wave.

  She slid deeper and closed her eyes. The day had not been a great one. In fact, she was in precisely the same position she had been in three days ago. Kelsey was in custody with little prospect of release and her trial would not be listed for many months. The fact that she had tried to abscond only strengthened the prosecution’s case against her.

  Lilly yawned. For the first time since she had picked up this case she felt relaxed, succumbing to the pleasant idea that at this moment in time there was nothing she could do.

  At some stage she would need to start looking at the police files on Candy Grigson’s attack and ascertain if there was any clue to the identity of her assailant or a connection with Grace. Lilly would also check if Kelsey knew anything about Candy. In the meantime she would think of something else …

  And yet Miriam’s words still rang true. Find out why Grace put her kids in care and you’ll find out why she was killed.

  Lilly was sure Grace had given up Kelsey and her sisters in a desperate attempt to remove them from Max. The key was the pornography, but Candy had not mentioned films or anything close. True, Sheba had said he would probably be an obsessive watcher of skin flicks, but if his predilection was for children why keep visiting Candy? Why visit Grace? Lilly was no expert, but the paedophiles with whom she’d come into contact showed little interest in adults, prostitutes or otherwise. It was children that gave these people their buzz, and even the most fertile imagination couldn’t mistake Grace or Candy for much under thirty.

  Lilly smacked her forehead. She was being stupid. The murderer didn’t visit Grace for sex, at least not with her. Grace must have known him through Max. He was the man in the films. There was no sign of a struggle because she let him in, she had no reason to suspect he’d come to kill her.

  But that was the point, why did he kill her? Was it just for the kicks? Candy would say so but it didn’t ring true to Lilly. But what if he had found out that Grace was digging an escape tunnel, or that she’d th
reatened to reveal the secrets of number 58, wouldn’t that be enough to scare someone into violence?

  And yet, and yet … Ifhe killed Grace to silence her, why mutilate the body?

  There were two theories at play here, but they didn’t make sense together.

  Lilly sank deeper into the bubbles. Her brain was starting to ache.

  Nancy Donaldson was working late. She was miffed to be missing Celebrity Big Brother but she’d put the overtime towards the new Balenciaga handbag she’d seen in the sweaty paws of at least three footballers’ wives in the latest edition of Heat.

  The office had been busy since the Brand girl had been sent to the loony bin, with endless articles and programmes needing a comment from Hermione. The red-tops couldn’t get enough of the story and were happy to print a few anodyne quotes to offset another rehashing of the gruesome details of Grace’s death, but a number of the pieces in the broadsheets had not flattered Nancy’s boss, accusing her of jumping ship.

  ‘All publicity is good publicity,’ Hermione had said, but Nancy wasn’t so sure. The PM took the Guardian, everyone knew that, but his advisors paid more attention to the Daily Mail.

  The new MP who’d won the Chichester South by-election needed an assistant. Maybe he and Nancy should have a chat.

  The fax machine began to vibrate and a sheet of paper shuffled into the tray. Nancy reached across her desk and pulled it towards her. She ignored the heading marked ‘private and confidential’. A good parliamentary secretary didn’t heed such nonsense, at least Nancy did not. It was usually a sly ruse by a constituent attempting to land a begging letter directly into the MP’s lap, the idea being that she would be more likely to attend a sub-committee meeting on recycling, or a school fete, if she received the request in person. How little they knew Hermione Barrows, thought Nancy.

  She read the fax and gave a strangled squeal.

  Hermione was at a dinner for a trade delegation from Indonesia and was not to be disturbed. By the time Nancy had reread the fax three times her knickers were slightly damp, and she picked up the phone.

  ‘This had better be urgent,’ snapped Hermione.