No Questions Asked (3 page)

‘I’ve got more dignity than to get into a fight with you’ said Debbie, ignoring Jeff’s plea.

‘You may have dignity but you still haven’t got a baby’ Lucy snarled.

‘Oh you really are low’ said Debbie who was so frustrated that she felt like crying. She didn’t want to give this common tart the satisfaction.

‘And it’s my business to sort any repairs out with my landlord’ said Lucy, emphatically. God, she hated this sanctimonious cow. ‘And you only contacted them to make me feel small and not as good as you and everyone else’.

‘Well you’re really showing off your common side now aren’t you’ said Debbie. She glanced round. They were playing to an audience. The garden was full of Jeff’s neighbours and they were now being treated to a show. ‘What do you know about fitting into an area of decent people like this?’

‘I know that your husband has got a scar just above his groin. Is that where you cut his balls off years ago?’

Debbie was about to lunge for Lucy with her fists when Rebecca grabbed her from behind and pulled her away.

‘I think you’d better go home and calm down, sweetheart’ said Rebecca.

‘Me? I’m being asked to leave? I’m not the street bike here!’

‘Debbie, come on we’re going home where we can talk’ said Gary who couldn’t believe what had just played out. Lucy had outed their affair and it was going to drive Debbie crazy.

Annabel then pulled Lucy back from going for Debbie and Gary took hold of Debbie’s arm and told her they were leaving. Debbie screamed for Gary to let go and take his hand off her. She said he disgusted her but it only made him grip her arm tighter. Jeff shook his head in mild amusement at what was happening but was wondering where Toby and the boys had got to. He decided that if they weren’t back soon he’d call Lewis on his mobile to see where they’d got to.  

‘Jeff?’ Debbie appealed. ‘Are you really taking her side over me?’

‘Go home and calm down, Debbie’ said Jeff who knew that Debbie had been in full provocation mode towards Lucy who’d fallen for it good and proper. ‘I’ll see you later’.

At that moment the front door burst open and Seamus, the partner of Jeff’s brother Lewis, almost fell into the house out of breath.

‘Seamus?’ said Jeff. ‘What’s wrong? Where’s Toby and the others?’

‘They’re following. Toby is pretty upset’.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘We took the long way back from the park’ Seamus began to explain once he’d got most of his breath back. ‘Through the woods and that’s where we found the body. It’s of a child, Jeff. Toby found it. That’s why he’s so upset’.

‘Oh my God’ said Annabel as everyone else gasped and sighed. ‘Poor little Toby’.

‘You’d better come with me, Jeff’.

‘I’ll come too’ said Rebecca.

Jeff asked Annabel to look after things at the house and told her he’d call when he knew anything whilst Rebecca called the incident in and asked control to send a team to the woods. Then the two of them went with Seamus and once they were a little way down the street, Seamus turned to Jeff and said ‘I didn’t like to say in there with all the folks listening and all, Jeff, especially Lucy’.

‘Why? What’s Lucy got to with this?’

‘The body we found … well its Bradley, Jeff. It’s Lucy’s son Bradley’.       

TWO

Martha Langton had been born into a family that was steeped in the tradition of the old Labour party. Her father had been part of the leadership of the TUC right through the combative years of the eighties when the party had imploded around the debate between traditionalists and modernizers and her mother had, like many of the traditional Labour women, stayed at home and brought up the family. Martha and her brother Andrew had not been able to escape the atmosphere at home where it wasn’t unusual to share the dinner table with the leading Labour figures of the day. Andrew had since been able to make a kind of escape although not entirely. He’d married his American girlfriend Beth and gone to live with her in Illinois where her father was a senator for the Democratic party and Beth was being lined up to take over from him when he retires next year. Andrew was a college professor who looked after the house and their two children whilst Beth built her political career. Martha was so proud of him. He’d always been the best and she missed him being all the way over there.

After Martha graduated from university it was inevitable that she’d go to work for the Labour party and after holding several posts at the party’s London head office, her effortless rises through the ranks were crowned when the hierarchy slipped her into the safe seat of Manchester City, covering the immediate areas around and including the city centre, at the 2001 general election. Now she was shadow Home secretary, a senior party figure and being tipped as a future party leader. The only trouble with that was that her husband Nick who was also in the shadow cabinet was also being tipped for the top job.   Martha’s father often locked horns with her and Nick over the current direction of the party which he thought was way too modern and too far away from the traditional heart and soul of the Labour movement. They didn’t have the same trouble with Nick’s parents. They liked the way Labour was these days. They were lifelong Conservatives.

‘We’ll need to be putting out another statement on the spread of the Ebola virus now that two cases have been confirmed in Germany and another one in Canada’ said Ashley Smith, Martha’s Westminster office manager and sitting in front of her desk. He was twenty-six, fresh faced, cute, sexy even, living it up with his Brazilian girlfriend in a flat they shared in Clapham. He was also bloody good at his job and Martha couldn’t manage without him. ‘I do find it … well more than a little bit distasteful that it’s only when Europeans and Americans started to be affected by this crisis that the international community got into gear about trying to do something about it. It’s like the whole Aids thing too. We only sat up and took notice when celebrities in the west started to suffer from it. It just goes to show that poor black Africans come at the very bottom of the world’s pecking order’.

‘I agree, Ashley’ said Martha. ‘It’s an absolute disgrace that makes my blood boil’.

‘Well I’ll put something together on Ebola and have it ready for when you get back from the state opening’ said Ashley, gathering his files and papers together. ‘I’ve had your suit dry cleaned and it’s hanging up in my office’.

‘Thank you, Ashley’ said Martha, smiling at him. ‘What would I do without you?’

An hour or so later Martha went to the home office to receive a security briefing from the home secretary Angela Carter after the national threat level had been upgraded. 

‘Good morning, Angela’ Martha greeted. ‘How’s the family?’

‘They’re fine, thanks’ Angela replied. She had a reputation as a difficult woman to approach and was trying to soften her image. ‘How are yours doing?’ she asked referring to Martha’s three young children.

‘They’re all doing well, thanks’ said Martha who would never admit in a million years her daily struggle with guilt over sometimes not being there for her kids before they went to school and when they came home. She often didn’t spend any quality time at all with them in the evening. ‘How’s your son settling in at Manchester University?’

‘Oh he’s having a whale of a time, thanks’ said Angela. ‘He’s in a flat with a couple of fellow students and he’s enjoying his course very much’.

‘He’s living in my constituency, you know? We’ll have to have him round for his tea’.

‘He’d eat you out of house and home if you did, believe me’ said Angela.

‘You must miss him?’

‘Oh I do but a parent has to let go sometime as you’ll find out in a few years with your three’.

‘I see you’re off to Brussels for the meeting of European Interior ministers tomorrow?’

‘That’s right’.

‘And you’ll still be opposing the European bill to combat paedophilia and close down child pornography sites?’

‘Yes’ said Angela. ‘That’s the official government line’.

‘Angela, this is about protecting some of the most vulnerable children right across Europe from some of the sickest individuals in our society’.

‘Yes I’m aware of that, Martha’.

‘Well just how can you oppose legislation to try and stop this heinous practice and protect all those children, Angela?’

‘It’s not about what you say it’s about, Martha, it’s about protecting the Tory vote from the onslaught of UKIP’.

‘And if you’re seen to oppose it then it will play well into the hands of those who might vote UKIP just because it’s got Europe written on it’ Martha emphasized. ‘And you’re using the victims and perpetrators of one of the sickest of crimes to do it. Christ, that leader of UKIP has got such a lot to answer for. How can you sleep at night, Angela?’

‘Very soundly as it happens’.

‘Is that after all the alcohol you consume in the pub across the road before you finally go home?’ Martha retorted angrily. ‘To support this legislation would be the right thing to do Angela and you know that’.

‘Tell me Martha, when your party leader sacked your good friend the shadow secretary of state for education recently and knowing that he’s been plotting with you and your husband to undermine your party leader and set one of you up for the top job, did you feel like your party leader was asserting his authority and making a shot across your bows?’

Martha could’ve slapped the sanctimonious cow. ‘Don’t try and change the subject, Angela’.

‘And would your husband really let you go for the leadership? Or am I right in thinking that sexism is alive and kicking just below the all women shortlist veneer of the modern Labour party?’     

‘I think we should get down to why I’m actually here, Angela’ said Martha, sternly. ‘We’re both busy women after all’.

‘Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for coming’ said Jeff as he opened the press conference. ‘First of all I’d like to introduce my colleagues. On my left is Chief Superintendent Geraldine Chambers, on my right is Detective Inspector Rebecca Stockton and on her left is WPC Gemma Fletcher who’s been appointed as family liaison officer to Lucy Thompson, mother of the murder victim. May I ask you to listen to my briefing and then I’ll take questions’.

The room was filled out with representatives of the local and national media covering print, television, and online news organizations. Jeff recognized some of the faces but many of the others were new to him. Whenever a police officer had to investigate a crime against someone he was familiar with it was always tough and it had been an emotional couple of days since Bradley Thompson’s body had been found in the woods near Jeff’s house. His son Toby was still in a distressed state after having found the body and Jeff was keeping him off school for as long as it took for him to settle again. At only six years old Jeff didn’t let Toby go out on his own anyway but everyone in the neighbourhood was being especially vigilant when it came to their children’s safety. At least Bradley had not been sexually assaulted according to the pathologist June Hawkins. That had been some comfort to his mother.

Jeff’s live-in Nanny and housekeeper Brendan was taking good care of Toby and Jeff’s sister Annabel was there for him too. Annabel was also spending a lot of time with Bradley’s mother Lucy whom she’d befriended at the barbecue before the devastating news had broken. The poor woman had been ostracized by the rest of the neighbours who hadn’t exactly been overflowing with wishes of condolence and promises of help. She never had been accepted into the ‘in’ circle before this happened but Jeff had thought that they might relent given the circumstances and try and reach out to her. Sadly that wasn’t to be and he’d been disappointed by the callousness shown by people who he thought would be bigger than that.

‘Bradley Thompson was eleven years old’ Jeff went on. ‘He was an average student at the local comprehensive school but he was a popular boy and had his whole future ahead of him. He could’ve done anything or gone anywhere but all those dreams have now been cruelly taken away from him. Our pathologist June Hawkins has confirmed that Bradley was strangled. It didn’t appear like anything such as a scarf was used in the strangulation. It’s more or less certain that the killer used their glove covered hands. His body was found only a short distance from the main road, just inside Mile End Woods which is used extensively by the local community as a short cut from Mile End Park through to the residential area where Bradley lived. Bradley’s body was found just after two o’clock on Sunday afternoon, by my six year-old son I might add who was a mate of Bradley’s, but we know that he left the home of his friend Luke Brown, just two miles away, to catch the bus home at midday. Luke’s father couldn’t give him the usual lift home because his car had broken down. Luke’s mother saw Bradley onto the bus and never thought he’d come to any harm’.

Rebecca stood up and stepped over to where a map of the local area had been pinned to a mobile notice board on the left hand side of the room. As Jeff spoke she followed the route he was describing with her hand. 

‘The CCTV camera on the bus shows him getting off at the stop at the end of Central Lane at 12.14’ Jeff went on. ‘It was a five minute walk through Mile End Woods from there to his home on Fairview Drive number sixteen. Now within that small area, that short distance, a killer or killers were able to bring Bradley’s short life to a horrible end. There must’ve been people around the area at that time, maybe enjoying a family walk or exercising their dog or using the short cut to somewhere else like so many in the community did. I appeal to anyone to please come forward and tell us whatever you know, however trivial or unimportant you think it might be, but please tell us because it may provide us with a lead to identifying and apprehending Bradley’s killer and bringing justice for this eleven year-old boy and his Mum who has been completely shattered by this event’.