A loner at school, marked out by learning difficulties, bullied; from the age of sixteen, Pitcher had drifted through a succession of low-paying jobs — cleaning, stacking supermarket shelves, hospital portering, washing cars — and several short-term relationships with women who enjoyed even less self-esteem than he.
When he was twenty-five, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for molesting half a dozen boys between the ages of four and seven. While in prison, in addition to numerous incidents of self-harming, he had made one attempt at suicide.
Released, he had spent the first six months in a hostel and had reported to both his probation officer and a community psychiatric nurse each week. After which time, supervision had necessarily slackened off.
“Ben?” Whitemore said, turning toward the psychiatric nurse at the end of the table. “He was one of yours.”
Ben Leonard pushed a hand up through his cropped blond hair. “A family, ready-made, might be what he needs.”
“The girl,” Christine Finch said, “she’s not strong. It’s a wonder she’s hung on to those kids as long as she has.”
“There’s a father somewhere?”
“Several.”
“Contact?”
“Not really.”
For a moment, Tom Whitemore closed his eyes. “The boys, they’re how old?”
“Five and three. There’s a little girl, eighteen months.”
“And do we think, should Pitcher move in, they could be at risk?”
“I think we have to,” Christine Finch said.
“Ben?”
Leonard took his time. “We’ve made real progress with Darren, I think. He’s aware that his previous behavior was wrong. Regrets what he’s done. The last thing he wants to do is offend again. But, yes, for the sake of the kids, I’d have to say there is a risk. A small one, but a risk.”
“Okay,” Whitemore said. “I’ll go and see him. Report back. Christine, you’ll stay in touch with the girl?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Let’s not lose sight of this in the midst of everything else.”
THEY SAT ON the Portland Leisure Centre steps, a wan sun showing weakly through the wreaths of cloud. Whitemore had bought two cups of pale tea from the machines inside, and they sat there on the cold, worn stone, scarcely talking as yet. Darren Pitcher was smoking a cigarette, a roll-up he had made with less than steady hands. What was it, Whitemore thought, his gran had always said? Don’t sit on owt cold or you’ll get piles, sure as eggs is eggs.
“Got yourself a new girlfriend, I hear,” Whitemore said.
Pitcher flinched, then glanced at him from under lowered lids. He had a lean face, a few reddish spots around the mouth and chin, strangely long eyelashes that curled luxuriantly over his weak gray eyes.
“Emma? That her name?”
“She’s all right.”
“Of course.”
Two young black men in shiny sportswear bounced past them, all muscle, on their way to the gym.
“It serious?” Whitemore asked.
“Dunno.”
“What I heard, it’s pretty serious. The pair of you. Heard you were thinking of moving in.”
Pitcher mumbled something and drew on his cigarette.
“Sorry?” Whitemore said. “I didn’t quite hear . . .”
“I said it’s none of your business . . .”
“Isn’t it?”
“My life, yeah? Not yours.”
Whitemore swallowed a mouthful more of the lukewarm tea and turned the plastic cup upside down, shaking the last drops onto the stone. “This Emma,” he said, “she’s got kids. Young kids.”
“So?”
“Young boys.”
“That don’t . . . You can’t . . . That was a long time ago.”
“I know, Darren. I know. But it happened, nonetheless. And it makes this our concern.” For a moment, his hand rested on Pitcher’s arm. “You understand?”
Pitcher’s hand went to his mouth, and he bit down on his knuckle hard.
GREGORY BOULEVARD RAN along one side of the Forest Recreation Ground, the nearest houses, once substantial family homes, now mostly subdivided into flats, and falling, many of them, into disrepair. Beyond these, the streets grew narrower and coiled back upon themselves, the houses smaller, with front doors that opened directly out onto the street. Corner shops with bars across the windows, shutters on the doors.
Emma Laurie sat on a lopsided settee in the front room; small-featured, a straggle of hair falling down across her face, her voice rarely rising above a whisper as she spoke. A wraith of a thing, Whitemore thought. Outside, a good wind would blow her away.
The three children huddled in the corner, watching cartoons, the sound turned low. Jason, Rory, and Jade. The youngest had a runny nose, the older of the boys coughed intermittently, open-mouthed, but they were all, as yet, bright-eyed.
“He’s good with them,” Emma was saying, “Darren. Plays with them all the time. Takes them, you know, down to the forest. They love him, they really do. Can’t wait for him to move in wi’ us. Go on about it all the time. Jason especially.”
“And you?” Christine Finch said. “How do you feel? About Darren moving in?”
“Be easier, won’t it? Rent and that. What I get, family credit an’ the rest, s’a struggle, right? But if Darren’s here, I can get a job up the supermarket, afternoons. Get out a bit, ’stead of bein’ all cooped up. Darren’ll look after the kids. He don’t mind.”
THEY WALKED DOWN through the maze of streets to where Finch had left her car, the Park & Ride on the edge of the forest.
“What do you think?” Whitemore said.
“Ben could be right. Darren, could be the making of him.”
“But if it puts those lads at risk?”
“I know, I know. But what can we do? He’s been out a good while now, no sign of him reoffending.”
“I still don’t like it,” Whitemore said.
Finch smiled wryly. “Other people’s lives. We’ll keep our fingers crossed. Keep as close an eye as we can.”
Sometimes, Whitemore thought, it’s as if we are trying to hold the world together with good intentions and a ball of twine.
“Give you a lift back into town?” Finch said when they reached her car. It was not yet late afternoon, and the light was already beginning to fade.
Whitemore shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ll catch the tram.”
Back at the office, he checked his e-mails, made several calls, wrote up a brief report of the visit with Emma Laurie. He wondered if he should go and see Darren Pitcher again but decided there was little to be gained. When he finally got back home, a little after six, Marianne was buckling the twins into their seats in the back of the car.
“What’s going on?”
She was flushed, a scarf at her neck. “My parents. I thought we’d go over and see them. Just for a couple of days. They haven’t seen the boys in ages.”
“They were over just the other weekend.”
“That was a month ago. More. It is ages to them.”
One of the boys was marching his dinosaur along the top of the seat in front; the other was fiddling with his straps.
“You were just going to go?” Whitemore said. “You weren’t even going to wait till I got back?”
“You’re not usually this early.”
“So wait.”
“It’s a two-hour drive.”
“I know how far it is.”
“Tom, don’t. Please.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make this more difficult than it is.”
He read it in her eyes. Walking to the back of the car, he snapped open the boot. It was crammed with luggage, coats, shoes, toys.
“You’re not just going for a couple of days, are you? This is not a couple of fucking days.”
“Tom, please . . .” She raised a hand toward him, but he knocked it away.
“You’re leaving, that’s what you’re doin
g . . .”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not?”
“It’s just for a little while . . . A break. I need a break. So I can think.”
“You need to fucking think, all right.”
Whitemore snatched open the rear door and leaned inside, seeking to unsnap the nearest boy’s belt and failing in his haste. The boys themselves looked frightened and close to tears.
“Tom, don’t do that! Leave it. Leave them alone.”
She pulled at his shoulder and he thrust her away, so that she almost lost her footing and stumbled back. Roused by the shouting, one of the neighbors was standing halfway along his front garden path, openly staring.
“Tom, please,” Marianne said. “Be reasonable.”
He turned so fast, she thought he was going to strike her and she cowered back.
“Reasonable? Like this? You call this fucking reasonable?”
The neighbor had come as far as the pavement edge. “Excuse me, but is everything all right?”
“All right?” Whitemore shouted. “Yeah. Marvelous. Fucking wonderful. Now fuck off indoors and mind your own fucking business.”
Both the twins were crying now: not crying, screaming.
The car door slammed as Marianne slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
“Marianne!” Whitemore shouted her name and brought down his fist hard on the roof of the car as it pulled away, red taillights blurring in the half-dark.
Whitemore stood there for several moments more, staring off into the middle distance, seeing nothing. Back in the house, he went from room to room, assessing how much she had taken, how long she might be considering staying away. Her parents lived on the coast, between Chapel St. Leonards and Sutton-on-Sea, a bungalow but with room enough for Marianne and the twins. Next year they would be at school, next year would be different, but now . . .
He looked in the fridge, but there was nothing there he fancied. A couple of cold sausages wrapped in foil. Maybe he’d make himself a sandwich later on. He snapped open a can of lager, but the taste was stale in his mouth and he poured the remainder down the sink. There was a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard, only recently opened, but he knew better than to start down that route too soon.
In the living room, he switched on the TV, flicked through the channels, switched it off again; he made a cup of tea and glanced at that day’s paper, one of Marianne’s magazines. Every fifteen minutes, he looked at his watch. When he thought he’d given them time enough, he phoned.
Marianne’s father came on the line. Soft-spoken, understanding, calm. “I’m sorry, Tom. She doesn’t want to speak to you right now. Perhaps tomorrow, tomorrow evening. She’ll call you. . . . The twins? They’re sleeping, fast off. Put them to bed as soon as they arrived. . . . I’ll be sure to give them your love. . . . Yes, of course. Of course. . . . Good night, Tom. Good night.”
Around nine, Whitemore called a taxi and went across the city to the Five Ways pub in Sherwood. In the back room, Jake McMahon and a bunch of the usual reprobates were charging through Cannonball Adderley’s “Jeannine.” A Duke Pearson tune, but because Whitemore had first heard it on Adderley’s Them Dirty Blues — Cannonball on alto alongside his trumpeter brother, Nat — it was forever associated with the saxophonist in his mind.
Whitemore’s father had given him the recording as a sixteenth-birthday present, when Tom’s mind had been more full of T’Pau and the Pet Shop Boys, Whitney Houston and Madonna. But eventually he had given it a listen, late in his room, and something had stuck.
One of the best nights he remembered having with his father before the older man took himself off to a retirement chalet in Devon had been spent here, drinking John Smith’s Bitter and listening to the band play another Adderley special, “Sack o’ Woe.”
Jake McMahon came over to him at the break and shook his hand. “Not seen you in a while.”
Whitemore forced a smile. “You know how it is, this and that.”
McMahon nodded. “Your dad, he okay?”
“Keeping pretty well.”
“You’ll give him my best.”
“Of course.”
Whitemore stayed for the second set, then called a cab from the phone alongside the bar.
DARREN PITCHER MOVED in with Emma Laurie and her three children. October became November, became December. Most Sundays, Whitemore drove out to his in-laws’ bungalow on the coast, where the twins threw themselves at him with delight and he played rough-and-tumble with them on the beach if the cold allowed and, if not, tussled with them on the living room settee. Marianne’s parents stepped around him warily, keeping their thoughts to themselves. If he tried to get Marianne off on her own, she resisted, made excuses. Conversation between them was difficult.
“When will we see you again?” she asked one evening as he was leaving.
“When are you coming home?” he asked. Christmas was less than three weeks away.
“Tom, I don’t know.”
“But you are coming? Coming back?”
She turned her face aside. “Don’t rush me, all right?”
It was just two days later when Christine Finch phoned Whitemore in his office, the first call of the day. Emma Laurie was waiting for them, agitated, at her front door. She had come back from work to find Pitcher with Jason, the eldest of her two sons, on his lap; Jason had been sitting on a towel, naked, and Pitcher had been rubbing Vaseline between his legs.
Whitemore and Finch exchanged glances.
“Did he have a reason?” Finch asked.
“He said Jason was sore, said he’d been complaining about being sore . . .”
“And you don’t believe him?”
“If he was sore, it was ’cause of what Darren was doing. You know that as well as me.”
“Where is Darren now?” Whitemore said.
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I told him to clear out and not come back.”
Whitemore found Pitcher later that morning, sitting cross-legged on the damp pavement, his back against the hoardings surrounding the Old Market Square. Rain was falling in fine slanted lines, but Pitcher either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.
“Darren,” Whitemore said, “come on, let’s get out of this rain.”
Pitcher glanced up at him and shook his head.
Coat collar up, Whitemore hunkered down beside him. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Emma says . . .”
“I don’t give a fuck what Emma says.”
“I do,” Whitemore said. “I have to. But I want to know what you say too.”
Pitcher was silent for several minutes, passersby stepping over his legs or grudgingly going round.
“He’d been whinging away,” Pitcher said. “Jason. How the pants he was wearing were too tight. Scratching. His hand down his trousers, scratching, and I kept telling him to stop. He’d hurt himself. Make it worse. Then, when he went to the toilet, right, I told him to show me, you know, show me where it was hurting, point to it, like. And there was a bit of red there, I could see, so I said would he like me to put something on it, to make it better, and he said yes, and so . . .”
He stopped abruptly, tears in his eyes and shoulders shaking.
Whitemore waited.
“I didn’t do anything,” Pitcher said finally. “Honest. I never touched him. Not like . . . you know, like before.”
“But you could have?” Whitemore said.
Head down, Pitcher nodded.
“Darren?”
“Yes, yeah. I suppose . . . Yeah.”
Still neither of them moved, and the rain continued to fall.
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING Whitemore rose early, scraped the ice from the windows of the secondhand Saab he’d bought not so many weeks before, loaded up the backseat with presents, and set out for the coast. When he arrived the light was only just beginning to spread, in bands of pink and yellow, across the sky. Wanting his arrival to be a surprise, he
parked some houses away.
The curtains were partly drawn and he could see the lights of the Christmas tree clearly, red, blue, and green, and, as he moved across the frosted grass, he could see the twins, up already, still wearing their pajamas, tearing into the contents of their stockings, shouting excitedly as they pulled at the shiny paper and cast it aside.
When he thought they might see him, he stepped quickly away and returned to the car, loading the presents into his arms. Back at the bungalow, he placed them on the front step, up against the door, and walked away.
If he had waited, knocked on the window, rung the bell, gone inside and stayed, seen their happiness at close hand, he knew it would have been almost impossible to leave.
EMMA LAURIE APPEARED at the police station in early January, the youngest child in a buggy, the others half-hidden behind her legs. After days of endless pestering, she had allowed Pitcher back into the house, just for an hour, and then he had refused to leave. When she’d finally persuaded him to go, he had threatened to kill himself if she didn’t have him back; said that he would snatch the children and take them with him; kill them all.
“It was wrong o’ me, weren’t it? Letting him back in. I never should’ve done it. I know that, I know.”
“It’s okay,” Whitemore said. “And I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what Darren said. He was angry. Upset. Times like that, people say a lot of things they don’t necessarily mean.”
“But if you’d seen his face . . . He meant it, he really did.”
Whitemore gave her his card. “Look, my mobile number’s there. If he comes round again, threatening you, anything like that, you call me, right? Straightaway. Meantime, I’ll go and have a word with him. Okay?”
Emma smiled uncertainly, nodded thanks, and ushered the children away.
AFTER SPENDING TIME in various hostels and a spell sleeping rough, Pitcher, with the help of the local housing association, had found a place to rent in Sneinton. A one-room flat with a sink and small cooker in one corner and a shared bathroom and toilet on the floor below. Whitemore sat on the single chair, and Pitcher sat on the sagging bed.
“I know why you’re here,” Pitcher said. “It’s about Emma. What I said.”