CHAPTER 74
Life seemed settled at last, especially for Charlie and Tiff. They were still rationing their trips outside, but at least Charlie had started wearing something other than night clothes, and when we made our Summer expedition, they came with us, as did Gemma and Kim.

This time, Lim was driven up by Phil, and there were happy grins and congratulations from Cathy and my original Nell. As for Alicia, she rode up with her father, and when Owen the barman commented on how nice it was to have his guitarist back, and Alun made a comment about looking after his daughter, Alicia beamed for days. The weather blessed us for several days, and there was one shining moment that lifted my heart even more than Alicia’s wide smile at her father.

We were sitting on the Cantilever most of the way through the round of the Glyderau by way of the Kitchen path, Charlie and Toff to either side of me as Pat did complicated things with her camera, and Tiff hugged me.

“Thank you, Nana. Been dreaming of this for ages”

I twisted to look down at her, but caught Charlie’s nod from the corner of my eye.

“Didn’t realise you were into this sort of thing, love”

Tiff shook her head.

“Wasn’t, really. Nor Charlie. Just, been locked up so long, indoors, and there were all the photos, and your books. Charlie and me, well, it was like that Moses thing they taught us in school. Standing on the hill, looking over the river. That right, Charlie?”

A signature sniff erupted from the other girl.

“Yeah, Tiff’s right. All those pics, all the jokes about the Perving Slab. Daydreams, that was all we had, then Diane”

Tiff added “And Nana, girl!”

“Yeah. Can’t have a dream without somewhere safe to dream it”

Tiff laughed then, and as Pat snapped another picture, the older woman called up “What’s tickled you, love?”

Tiff held up a hand.

“Nothing much. Just heard so much about the Perving Slab, and there’s three girls don’t need it no more!”

Charlie’s tone was archly over the top.

“Well, this girl is more than happy to take up the slack… but I prefer looking at the firm!”

The happiest of times, for all of us, and after we had said our fondest of farewells to Pat, Cathy and Nell, we prepared to do the same for Maisie and Nicky, who had found places at Bristol University. Life was good, finally.

Diane popped round regularly, Paul and Paula were dancing around each other in the nicest of ways, and I had just collected a new referral from Heidi, complete with some detailed warnings, as the new student departures left some spare beds, when Di rang. Tiff seemed to be bonding with the newcomer, so I asked Diane to meet me at Ruth’s, Kim popping back to look after the place as I went over to the café, where Di had obviously just finished a meal.

“Sorry to be late, Di. Got a new girl in, and she’s a bit nervous. Self-harmer as well, so I don’t really want her alone too much”

Di looked a little nervous, which stirred my own defences.

“Oh, sorry, mate. I can leave you to it if you’d like”

“Na, no need. Got Kim back for a little while, and Tiff’s doing good work with her”

“Tiff? Really?”

“You’d be surprised, Di. She’s really opened up since the trials, really relaxed. Not looking over her shoulder all the time, isn’t it? Anyway, what do you have for me?”

Once more, I could feel her nervousness. She spoke her next words far more softly.

“Ah, yes. Part of the investigation, aye? Not the girls, but that home you were at”

Oh hell. I found myself freezing, and my hand started to cramp on the mug I was holding.

“And?”

“John and Marie Parsons”

Fucking hell. Why now, after all these years?

“Killed themselves, didn’t they? They’re in the big place off Ivy Street. I’ve been there. I watered their graves”

She took a long, deep breath.

“I know, Deb. Don Hamilton and Charlie Cooper”

I had known it was coming, but it still struck me like a train. I couldn’t stop my shakes, nor the tears that followed their onset.

“They’re dead, though!”

She was clasping my hand by then.

“Hamilton is. Cooper’s still alive”

“Where is the fucker now?”

“Locked away where he can’t hurt anyone. Apparently, Don fell into a local river. By accident. Didn’t get back out again”

She had one of her little moments just then, zoning out for a second or two, and I realised it was some sort of mind-control ritual, some way of keeping her cool.

“Short form, Deb. Both moved on from Mersey View to another place, which, from all the accounts I have read, was even worse. He is doing life, and I believe the two who actually ran the place are in a secure mental home, if they are still with us. I haven’t checked that one yet”

I knew exactly where the bastard had gone, of course.

“When can I see Charlie?”

“No. Not going to happen like that, Deb. I will let you have your call on this, but with limits. I am working up a list of former residents, as you know, and I will be taking their wishes into account. As far as I can see, nobody ever actually investigated Mersey View properly, so this may spark one. What I don’t want to do is cause any more pain to the people who have already been hurt by the Parsons and the rest. Sorry, but it’s not just yourself. I am telling you this because I see you as a friend”

I suddenly realised that I was not the only fearful one. I brought my other hand across, as Nell had done to her outside the Crown Court, and squeezed a message of reassurance, as best I could.

“You never let go, do you?”

“What do you mean, Deb?”

“You never let go of being a proper police officer, one who cares. You could have ploughed on with all this, got an inquiry rolling, all the rest, and yet here you are, checking to see what bloody collateral damage it might cause. Thank you, Di. Promise me you will never change, aye?”

Her own nerves were perceptibly settling, and her answering smile was far less brittle than her earlier ones.

“Do my best, woman!”

Give her some room, Debbie Petrie Wells. I gave her a last squeeze before rising. I needed my own time to think.

“Sorry, but got to get back and let Kimberley get away. Once we have this new one calmer, I’ll introduce you. Mersey View? Well, all I need to say about Charlie is that he is another rapist. We have just put a few of those away, so one more can’t hurt. When we get time, though, I will sit down with you and give a statement. Do with it whatever is right for the other victims, OK?”

She meant so well, her heart so big, but sometimes, just sometimes… I needed to work this one through in my own mind.

We didn’t see her for quite a while after that day, and I assumed she was off doing some digging of her own. I found myself reading some of Steven Elliott’s book later that night, hoping that I could find my courage boosted by his clear and bitter hatred of Cooper, but it wasn’t something I could relate to, for while I also hated the bastard, and forever would, there was always another emotion riding on that hatred, and it was fear.

Yes, I knew he was locked away, and would never be let out, but the sounds he had made, those feet on the stairs, would never, ever leave me alone. I needed time, and it was passing so swiftly he would be dead before I was ready.

I almost forgot him, though, because of the other aspect of Di’s return. When she had reappeared after her own Summer break, she had a new ring on her finger, and a smile that outshone Alicia’s delight in her father’s words. The girls went mad over her engagement, of course, and I really felt for them; dreams of being bridesmaids fighting it out with the deeper ones of being brides. We were spared a lot of that, because in the end they flew out to the Caribbean for the actual event, but I felt some resentment still in the House.

It was a mixture, really. They resented being excluded from the ceremony due to geography, but too many of my girls seemed to lose heart about their future, seeing something simple, clean, pure and unattainable. Three of my girls living with their own partners, and the mood remained one of ‘Why not me?’.

They weren’t alone, of course. Cooper had cut that opportunity out of my own life, and just as I had thought him gone forever, Di had dragged him back.

I still went to her hen night, of course, and as it was in the City, I took the same four girls with me. It was almost a consolation prize, because it was a proper, full-on event, and the gay man, Chris, insisted on all of us wearing some seriously over-the-top T-shirts he had bought for everyone, so as the blonde Candice began making a series of steadily ruder and sillier jokes, we followed along in the middle of a mixed group of people we knew, others we knew of and some we didn’t know at all. I watched the drinking, all of my group staying sober apart from Kim, and she was nowhere near her ‘party’ worst.

Bar to bar, pub to pub, a meal in a chain restaurant to give us something to put in our stomachs before those drinking added more alcohol, and then the finale, as Philip turned up in his Dad’s car to collect Charlie and Tiff.

It HAD to be Marlene’s place, of course, and as we entered, I saw a sign over the room we were using: ‘Elaine Powell Bar’.

I couldn’t place the name, but my attention was caught by the much bigger notice behind the bar itself.

‘Welcome Blake and Diane. You and your friends leave your hands out of your pockets’

I spotted my friend as she was doing DJ duty, and she simply muted the music before making an announcement in her usual archly acidic way.

“About fucking time! How am I going to afford my next fucking holiday when you cows spend all your money in other pubs?”

One of Di’s friends I didn’t know was on form, a redheaded North Walian girl.

“What fucking difference does it make when you tell us we can’t pay?”

Marlene clearly knew her well, and there were hugs and worse jokes, as the music started up again, one of Marlene’s regulars taking over the DJ role. Just as I was deciding whether I could afford to let myself go with the flow and start on the harder stuff, there was a bellow from the entrance to the bar, from a solid-looking woman who not only shouted ‘copper’ to my senses, but ‘SERIOUS copper’.

“Who’s got the whip?”

Marlene was just as quick as ever.

“Well I’ve got the chains, darling, but I’m a bit tied up right now!”

It was the stag party, Blake looking slightly wobbly already, and as I watched, the stocky woman walked across to the redhead with the gob and kissed her on said mouth, and I started to put a few things together, some of them making more sense than others.

Di had spoken of her previous boss, especially when describing the arrest of the five men in the van, and there was that sign…

Elaine Powell. Inspector Elaine Powell. If she wasn’t related to that woman Marlene had told me about, that Sarah Powell, I was a BMW driver. The Inspector was clearly well-oiled, her voice louder than necessary, but I managed to find some time with her as the alcohol took even greater hold of people and the evening slowly calmed down. She looked hard at me, even though she was clearly gliding smoothly past ‘well-oiled’ with a destination of ‘pissed as a newt’ in sight.

“Don’t know you… do I?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t know if you do. Debbie Wells. I run a shelter”

“Shelter? Oh!”

I nodded.

“Some of my girls have met some of those I believe you nicked, Inspector. Or perhaps ‘beat the shit out of’ might be a better description”

“Only the minimum level of necessary and appropriate force…”

“Was employed. I know that bit. Thing is, two of my girls met Pritchard and Evans”

Her head jerked.

“Which Evans?”

“The copper”

“Not any fucking more, he isn’t!”

“I know that. And they both met Joe”

Her mouth twisted, and I saw her left hand clench where it lay on the table.

“Pissed himself, he did. Pissed all down his leg in Custody. Didn’t touch hm, me. Wanted to, though. What he did to Sar… What do you want, Debbie?”

“Two things, really. First is just to say thank you, for my girls, yeah?”

“And the other thing?”

“When can I stop hating? And being frightened?”

She stared hard at me for a few seconds, the alcohol retreating just a little from her mind.

“Debbie… I can see, aye? Don’t need to know details. Just… just the dragons, aye? Like bogeymen, they are. Under the bed. Get down there, shine a torch, and they’re gone. Joe Evans, he’s broken. I saw him broken. Dragon slain, bogeyman in the daylight, that’s how you stop being frightened. See them for what they are”

I caught what was clearly her partner looking over towards us, concern evident in every line of her face, as Elaine put her hand over mine.

“Hating, though, hating’s different. Don’t ever stop hating, Debbie”