CHAPTER 52
“I was never a real boy, and that didn’t go down at all well in Connah’s Quay. Not the done thing there; men are men and sheep bloody run away to England. I am babbling, aren’t I?”

“No, Deb. You tell it your way”

We had left the café, and the airlock room was cleared for us by the girls. I had sent Blake off to look at some more properties, just to get him out of the way while the older woman gave me her potted biography.

“I was nine when they kicked me out, Di. Every time I wasn’t butch enough for Dad, he’d give me a session with his belt, so I’d run off, into Chester, mostly. I’d ride the train, fare-dodge? Then window-shop till I was picked up by your lot, and back home, more of the belt, so eventually I found somewhere to hide. Gone overnight. Dad went mad, and then they refused to take me back”

“That actually legal?”

“Christ knows, but that’s what happened, and I ended up in care, in bloody England. Got a number of sets of fosterers, but they were just like Dad. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish, no Nancy boys. Never lasted long anywhere at all. By the time I was ten, they’d given up. I was never a boy, not really, and while I was only a tiny kid, I have always been a stubborn cow. Looking back, I must have seemed like a nightmare to the poor carers.

“That is why I ended up in that place. Pardon me if I don’t go into details just now, because it is going to take time to build up to it. All I will say is that there was abuse, and it was from the staff, and… and if you were lying in bed… You could hear the floorboards creak as the bastards walked down the corridor between the dorms, and you’d hold your breath and pray they would keep walking, because that meant it wouldn’t be you that night but some other poor kid, and then you’d feel guilty all the next day as somebody else cried into their breakfast, but you’d still thank god it hadn’t been your turn”

I could feel my fingers cramping as they tried to crush the barrel of my pen.

“How many times, Deb?”

“Fuck knows, girl. I lost count after the first three years of it. I ran off, of course, but they kept bringing me back. I got so that police officers weren’t exactly on my Christmas list. It did end, though”

“Somebody listened?”

She looked at me from the corner of her eyes, clearly amused in some dark way.

“What? Listen to a kid? In a home? In that place? No fucking way, girl! We were rubbish that needed sweeping off the streets, and as long as we were out of sight, job done. No. Nobody listened, not till my third escape attempt. I’d got as far as Shrewsbury that time, sneaking onto trains and riding the odd bus until the conductor got curious, if there was one, then legging it.

“I’d got out of the station, and the platform staff had given up chasing me. I wanted to get away from the town proper, just a bit, as it was just getting into blackberry season, and that gave me something I could eat. I was always bloody hungry, even in the home. Not much for portions size, the bastards. Anyway.

“I found a footpath, down some steps, along by the river. Seemed reasonably out of the way, not by a road, so I started checking the bushes and hedges down there, and of course it goes right down by the agricultural showground. Lots of people, and I thought I’d made a bad choice, but it turned out OK. Loads of fast food stands about because of the show, so I had a sneaky look in the bins. Half a burger, some cold chips, stuff like that”

“You were scavenging from dustbins? Shit!”

“Girl’s got to eat, Di. What else could I do?”

I was praying, just then, that I would never discover, first-hand, what a girl might have to do.

“What happened after you’d fed, Deb?”

“Ah, it was the start of a long weekend, bank holiday, so they were going to be there for days, and there were trailers around, and horse boxes. The showground has its own loose boxes, so I found an empty trailer and made a sort of bed in it. I knew I’d have to move after a couple of days, before I ended up being spotted, but just for a couple of nights it was fine. Some old rugs and a ripped horse blanket did for my bed, and I had good pickings from the bins, what with all the drunks. Name of the horse was written on the box, so I took an old bucket, covered it with a rag, and if they stopped me at the gate I’d just say I was off to groom the beast, or something. Didn’t last all weekend, though. Somebody saw me”

She was staring off into the distance now, and there were the tears I had been expecting.

“I was just settling down on the third night, expecting to have to move on the next day, just getting comfy, and there’s someone at the trailer, and she just calls out, ‘Kid? Got some hot food here, if you want. Better than from a bin’, and I could smell the stuff, and my body starts betraying me. You ever been hungry, girl? Really hungry?”

“Not like that, Deb”

“Aye. Hope you never will be that hungry, girl. Anyway, there she is, bag of chips and a meat pie, and I swear I don’t remember eating it. It was there, and it was gone. And she had a can of pop as well”

None of this had any real bearing on the case, but I had her talking and, to be honest, I wanted to hear the story. Focus on the ‘hell-hole’ later.

“What did she do, Deb? Hand you in?”

She looked straight at me, smiling gently.

“No, girl. Lorraine never did. Don’t want to--- no. They’re both long gone, credit where credit’s due, credit for being a decent bloody human being, both of them, Ken and Lorraine Petrie. They ran a stall, aye? Sold all the usual tat, worked everything from agricultural shows to biker rallies, with an old Commer van and a fair-sized trailer for the frame and tarp; the stall, you know? They had a lock-up with a little flat over it, but that’s all to come. They sold different tat depending on the event, proper old-style travellers…

“So Lorraine gets me talking, and then she’ sees how I’m sitting, with the fistula, the tears and that, and she takes me to their van, and she’s so gentle when she treats what they’ve done to my backside. And she talks to her man, and tells him there’s no way I go back, and so I end up spending the next few years on the road. By the time I am sixteen, I’m driving the van, and…”

She stopped, abruptly, struggling with her tears before giving up and letting them flow.

“Thing is, they could see what I was, and they didn’t let it get in the way of looking after me, fucking well LOVING me, aye? Everything my biological parents could have been, damned well should have been, those two were. They kept me safe for years, they taught me how to live, how to bloody well love. And the people at the shows, especially the biker events, they didn’t give a shit about convention. I was just Ken and Lozza’s kid, didn’t matter what sex, nobody gave a shit. Once I hit eighteen, Ken says OK, you are safe now, and he goes with me to the Council down by Cannock, where they had their place, and he says to them, ‘found this lost kid, like to see they get their records sorted out’. Lied through his teeth, he did, but nobody gave a shit. Soon as he had that bit done, he got me legal for driving. That was my job, afterwards. HGV, full ticket. Those two paid for it, all the training, and all that time with the van and trailer made it a doddle.

“I said to him, one day, just before he went, why that? Why driving? And he just said, cause you like the travelling, and you get the chance to be on your own, be yourself, and if you intend doing the change-over thing, you’ll need money of your own. Can’t say he was wrong. By the time I was twenty-eight, I’d got there. Had to take time off work, to recover, didn’t I, and you know who was there for me. Those two gave me a life, Di. And they showed me what people should and could be”

“Did you ever go back, see your parents?”

She glowered at me. “Ken and Lorraine WERE my bloody parents! Sorry, mustn’t snap. Anyway, that’s me. I didn’t mean to gush, or snap, just, well, you are pushing some very old and painful buttons”

I took her hand. “And you know what I had in my life, Deb, so we’re even on part of it. I’ve also found someone to show me, isn’t it? Should, could?”

She laced her fingers in mine.

“Yes indeed, girl. That boy is a keeper. We’re not very good at getting it right first time, are we?”

I had to smile at that one. “I think, both of us, we’ve always had it right. It’s just that a lot of folk we both know have got it wrong. Not our fault, is it? Not Tiff’s, nor Gemma’s, nor Charlie’s, neither”

“I suppose so, girl. At least we can both recognise the good ones when they come along. Now, I want to wash my face, repair the war paint and that, and then, what I want to do is read through that staff list and see who I can remember”

That set the pattern of my life for the next few months, as I did as much research on the backgrounds of the care home staff, as well as a monumental amount of digging into what felt like half the children in Cheshire. The state of the girl Rob had brought in from the cold gave me some clues, and I made sure I ran criminal record checks on each one. The common ground Deb and I had identified was damage, people who had indeed been fucked up. Bit by bit, the names were coming together, and that was largely down to a lesson Sammy gave me.

He had walked past my desk one afternoon, eyeing the stack of files weighing it down, and tutted.

“Forgetting something, DC Owens?”

I grunted something non-committal, that probably made no sense at all, but what sense it did make would have been ‘what are you talking about?’

“We have a raft of new chums who need breaking in. For god’s sake, delegate some of this. I know what you are like, but save your energy for the analysis, not the data mining. Let them do the legwork; you do the clever bit I know you are good at. OK? I’ll send Jon over for starters, as you two seem to get on, and I’ll tee up a couple of the others when they get back in. That’s not an offer. It’s an instruction”

He pulled a chair up next to mine.

“What we got, so far?”

“Um, child abuse, multiple victims, in a private care home, historic stuff”

He shook his head in a tired way.

“What the hell was it back then, back there? All around the North East and the English North West. You can’t walk half a mile without finding another group of nonces. Anyway, you are going to have to delegate. We’re warned for court in six weeks. Ashley Evans first; the CPS want his other rapes established as fact before we go after the perverting the course charges, as he’s in the frame for those. Gives the motive”

He looked into my eyes, and there was real concern there.

“Your young girl going to be up for this? Is she strong enough?”

“I was, Sammy. She will be. I’ll be there to pick up the pieces, whether or not she copes”

“I would expect no less. Brief Jon, get him moving, and then go home and cuddle your man, whatever. Just come back tomorrow with a smile. This is finally, finally the real home stretch”

“You said that before”

“Yup, I did, but I had forgotten what a little ferret I have in you. I’ll send Jon over”

He was, as ever, right. I started Jon on the necessary searches, and packed up for the trip home. On the way, I stopped at the safe house, and began the process of teaching a little girl how not to be eaten alive in Crown Court.