*
Before she left, Jackson sought out Trevor Monaghan again to ask if Ben had been routinely tested for STDs. He nodded. ‘It’s pretty much standard when we don’t know anything about a patient. We couldn’t find any needle marks on him but you can never be too careful with HIV and hepatitis.’ ‘And?’ ‘Clean as a whistle. Is he worried he’s got an infection?’ Jackson gave a neutral shrug. ‘Did you do a rectal examination?’ He studied her curiously. ‘What’s he been telling you?’
‘Answer my question first,’ she urged. ‘I thought that in view of his age, and the fact he’s a runaway, you might have checked. He doesn’t appear to know about it if you did.’
‘He wouldn’t. I asked Anna Pelotski to take a look while he was still comatose. She didn’t find anything to suggest penetration . . . no old scarring . . . no fissures.’ Monaghan paused. ‘Has he told you differently?’
‘Yes.’
Monaghan shrugged. ‘He accused his stepfather to one of the nurses, said Mr Sykes buggered him whenever he was in the mood, which is why he doesn’t want to go back if the man remains in the house. I can’t say categorically that it never happened – we’d be talking about something that happened a year ago, and he may not have suffered any physical damage from it – but I suspect it’s a ruse to get his mother to himself again.’
‘He told me he was gang-raped by five men last month.’
‘Then he’s having you on. In his condition, Anna would have found open sores, and he’d still be hurting.’
‘What about longer ago . . . say, three or four months?’
Monaghan was doubtful. ‘Five men . . . one after the other . . . all hyped up . . . and no obvious scarring? Can’t see it, Jacks.’
She nodded. ‘So why invent a story like that? What does he hope to achieve by it?’
‘Confusion,’ said Monaghan with a touch of irony. ‘He’s adept at manipulation, that kid.’
Seventeen
FOR NO REASON THAT he felt it necessary to explain, Acland had taken to accompanying Jackson whenever she went out. Released by Jones (this time on police bail) under condition that he reside at the Bell and keep himself available for questioning, he seemed to have an inbuilt radar that told him precisely what the doctor’s movements were. While she was in the pub, front or back, he kept to his room, but every time she went to her car, day or night, she found him standing beside it. If the sortie involved a house call to a patient, he remained on the pavement outside; if it was appropriate to walk with her, he did.
Daisy, who had begun to find his attentions to her partner difficult to cope with, said he was acting as if he’d made Jackson responsible for his bail conditions. ‘It’s not your job to ensure he behaves himself,’ she said crossly. ‘Tell him to get a life and leave you alone.’
‘I quite enjoy having him along,’ said Jackson unwarily. ‘He’s no bother.’
But Daisy liked that even less. ‘I might as well not exist for all the attention either of you shows me,’ she said bitterly.
*
Acland, who was well aware of the tensions he was creating, pushed himself away from the side of the BMW as Jackson rounded the corner. She was doing her usual trick of fiddling with her mobile as she walked along, but he was beginning to understand that she only did it to avoid eye contact with the people she passed.
The cynical side of him said that she had choices about the way she looked. Yes, she was tall, but there was no law that obliged her to model herself on Arnold Schwarzenegger or the Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme.
On one of the few occasions when he’d found himself alone with Daisy – something he tried to avoid – he’d asked her if Jackson ever competed on the female bodybuilding circuit.
Daisy’s response had been withering. ‘Don’t be an idiot! Have you ever looked at their photographs on the web? She’d have to prance around in a bikini and a fake tan, and stuff her breasts with silicone to give herself some boobs. Can you see Jackson doing any of that?’
He couldn’t. Jackson was too individual to conform to a crowd-pleasing image.
As she approached him now, he tried to picture her in a bikini with melon-sized breasts and an orange glow, but it wasn’t an image that leapt easily to the imagination. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.
‘Not really. He half admitted he’s told the police a pack of lies, but only because I pointed out some flaws in his story. I could have done with another half-hour. His mother came back just as I was getting somewhere.’
‘What flaws?’
‘Timings. If he was as ill as he says he was when he acquired the mobile, it must have happened recently, but he’s told the police he stole it from a dark-haired man between two to four weeks ago.’ She smiled slightly. ‘Or a tallish woman. He’s using his diabetes as an excuse for confusion.’
‘Did he mention me?’
‘No.’ Jackson was surprised to see his shoulders relax slightly. ‘Were you expecting him to?’
‘He might have remembered me from the alleyway.’
‘He’s not in the business of remembering,’ she said cynically. ‘The worse his memory the fewer questions he has to answer.’
‘What are you going to tell the superintendent?’
‘I don’t know. I’m in a bit of a catch twenty-two. I made a promise that I don’t particularly want to break . . . even though I think he was lying through his teeth.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘I was trying to persuade him to come clean of his own volition, but I can’t see him doing that . . . not while his mother’s around anyway.’
‘Couldn’t you tell Jones that it might be worth interviewing him again? That’s not a breach of confidentiality, is it?’
‘No,’ Jackson agreed, tucking her phone back into her pocket, ‘but it’ll be a waste of time if Mrs Sykes sits in on the interview. Ben will just stick to his original story or make up a new one. He’s pretty fast on his feet.’
‘Did he say if he had a duffel bag with him?’
‘No... denied all knowledge of one . . . along with the Londis carrier. The only thing he’s laying claim to is the rucksack.’ She shook her head. ‘I’d say it’s odds-on there was a duffel bag, and that Chalky took it because he knew what was in it. I’m sure he’s known Ben a lot longer than he admitted to us.’
Acland looked past her towards the river. ‘I wonder what was in it.’
Jackson studied the stiff set of his jaw. ‘Who knows?’ She paused. ‘Ben won’t have told the police if that’s what’s worrying you . . . he can’t, not if he’s telling them he knows nothing about it.’
He met her gaze briefly. ‘Why would I worry about that? The bag’s nothing to do with me.’
She shrugged as she opened the driver’s door. ‘Good. Then how do you feel about looking for Chalky? He seems to be avoiding the cops, but he might talk to us, and we’ve a couple of hours to kill. There’s a homeless drop-in centre in Docklands. The people there might be able to tell us where these dyke friends of his hang out.’
‘Sure,’ Acland said easily, opening the passenger door. ‘I don’t have a problem with that.’
So why don’t I believe you? Jackson wondered, watching his fists pump furiously as he settled into the seat beside her.
*
One of the drop-in centre volunteers not only knew where the women were located but also knew Chalky. She shook her head when Jackson asked if she’d seen him recently. ‘We’ve had the police in here asking the same question,’ she said, ‘but he hasn’t been in for weeks. He only ever shows up occasionally.’
‘Do you know anything about him? His real name? Where he hangs out?’
The woman shook her head again. ‘Sorry. He was in the Falklands War, that’s all I know about him. I’m told he has a bad temper when he’s drunk – some of our other clients are extremely wary of him – but we operate a strict no-alcohol policy so I’ve never seen him in that state.’