‘You missed Josh,’ Maggie said. ‘Oh, and I’ve made a decision, Jack. I have decided to call our son Charles after your dad; he will be Charles Horatio Warr.’
Penny was instantly in tears. Jack leaned down, kissed her, and then looked at Maggie.
‘Sounds good to me. I’ll go up and give Charlie a kiss right now. Then I’ll have a quick shower and clear up the dining room. And if Hannah wants to help me, we can bounce on the mattress to deflate it.’
The next hour was taken up by two of Marius’s men arriving in a van to clear away the boxes of junk, empty paint cans and stacks of old wallpaper stripped from the top floor. Maggie went up to the now finished loft extension, making a list of what they’d need to buy to furnish it.
Going downstairs to the next landing, Maggie went into the nursery. Penny was folding the washed and ironed babygros, ready to put away. Charlie was fast asleep.
‘I’ve given him his bottle,’ she said with a smile.
‘Where’s Hannah?’
‘Jack took her to the park. To the playground, I expect; I’m not brave enough to let her climb to the top of that rope climbing frame, I’m afraid. Scares me to death!’
A short while later Penny heard the front door slam. Looking out the window, she saw Maggie walking to her car carrying empty shopping bags. Left alone, she felt she should remain in the nursery rather than go to her room in case Charlie woke, so she went and sat in the antique rocking chair. Rocking gently back and forth, she let out a deep sigh. It was obvious that Jack and Maggie were going through a terrible time. But she also knew that Maggie, a caring and exceptional doctor, was looking after Jack better than many wives would be equipped to.
Penny recalled Maggie asking if Jack had trouble sleeping when he was a child. He could not have inherited anything from them as he was adopted, but now, alone with her thoughts, she did remember a time when he’d had sleeping problems.
When Jack was first brought to them, he’d flung his arms around Charlie and they’d bonded immediately. However, for the first six months, he had some very disturbed nights, waking and screaming in terror. The only way they’d managed to calm him was for Charlie to sleep by his side, so he could comfort him if he had a night terror. It had worried them both, but after a few months, the nightmares had stopped. They had tried to find out from the children’s home if anything untoward had happened to Jack when they first took him in to care, but all they were told was that Jack was an emotional child, difficult to handle and a restless sleeper. The few short months of sleepless nights had been followed by so many years of joy that Penny had honestly forgotten all about them. Still, she ought to tell Maggie about them now.
Chapter 5
Portobello Road, as always, was alive with a remarkably diverse range of people going about their lives amid the multicoloured buildings and stalls. But if Jack had been in this part of London at this very moment, he would have been stunned to see who was coming out of a framer’s shop carrying a stack of old guilt and wood frames, bold as brass.
It was Adam Border.
He had made no effort to disguise his appearance, with a baseball hat pulled quite low but not really hiding his face, his blond hair tied in a ponytail, and wearing a worn denim jacket. He walked casually down the road, turning towards a parked Mercedes jeep. He bleeped it open to stash the frames and drove off towards Westbourne Grove, pulling off his baseball cap and putting on a pair of sunglasses.
While Laura prepared a Chinese dinner, Josh sat at her small kitchen table with a bottle of beer.
‘So, tell me, how is Jack really?’ she asked.
Josh gave her an edited version of what Jack had told him. Laura put the sliced chicken breast in the pan and added sweet and sour sauce.
‘Yeah, that was the Middleton investigation. One of the most horrific cases I have ever been involved in.’ Laura removed the fried chicken breast and began to make the various side dishes. Josh watched as she chopped chillies, garlic, onions and peppers. She intermittently stopped and took deep breaths as tough memories caught up with her.
‘It was horrific, Josh. He had murdered so many young girls. Honestly, it was a horror show. He dismembered them, wrapped them up and stashed them in rubbish bins. As CSI opened the drains underneath the shower and bath, they found more and more evidence. Trying to identify the poor souls that had been murdered took months.’
Laura initially blamed her tears on the onions, but once she had started to cry, that was it. Josh got up and took her in his arms. She clung to him, first saying she was sorry and then, between sobs, telling him that she kept on reliving the horror over and over. When she was calmer, Laura explained she had been seeing a counsellor the police medical officer had recommended, because she couldn’t sleep.
‘The defence lawyer made Jack relive the whole thing, over and over. Sometimes it seemed like he was the one on trial. And to watch Middleton loving the attention, smiling and laughing, was hideous. Added to that, we were being inundated with families trying to find out if their missing daughters were Middleton’s victims.’
Laura toyed with the idea of not mentioning what was on her mind but eventually couldn’t help herself. ‘There was an incident, I’ve never told it to anyone, but... somehow Jack got permission, or not, I don’t know, but just before Middleton was being taken from the court, Jack went down to his cell. I think he was trying to ask him about the other victims. Again, I don’t know exactly what Jack was thinking, but...’
‘Go on.’
‘Jack went into the cell, with an officer outside. Then Middleton started screaming, claiming Jack had tried to kill him. Middleton was ignored, but I asked the officer what had happened and he just said not to ever mention it.’
Josh returned to the table as she carried on cooking. ‘Where is Middleton being held?’
‘He was originally sent to Frankland prison in Durham, but he demanded that he be sent to a prison nearer to his family.’ Laura laughed. ‘As it turned out, he made a big mistake, because he was transferred to Bellview, one of England’s toughest prisons. I know all about it because one of the nurses working there used to be at Holloway, which is now closed. I heard her talk at a conference about offender rehabilitation.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Janet Williamson... anyway, I asked her about Middleton. She told me that he had to be banged up alongside sex offenders and paedophiles for his own safety. Weird, isn’t it — the real scumbags want to kill him, but when he was on trial all these teenage girls hung around outside the court, like he was a rock star.’
Josh nodded. He recalled watching the trial of the Los Angeles serial killer and rapist Richard Ramirez on television, who had girls fighting to get seats in the courtroom, writing love letters and even trying to get him to marry them. He remembered Ramirez turning towards his fans, smiling and blowing kisses.
‘Some killers are just pure evil, the devil incarnate, I guess. If you spend any time dealing with them and their crimes, you can’t stay immune.’
‘What do you mean?’ Laura asked.
‘What I’m trying to say is that facing up to such inhumanity at close quarters is bound to affect you mentally and physically.’
‘Are you referring to yourself or what you think is happening to Jack?’
‘Both of us, I suppose. I can still see Ramirez’s face, but I knew after that trial I didn’t want to work as a homicide detective anymore, so I joined the drug squad. Now after what I have seen in Los Angeles and San Francisco with these zombie drugs being sold on the streets... I genuinely don’t know what’s worse.’
Laura served the sweet and sour chicken with fried rice, but it took two glasses of wine each before their mood lifted. First, she apologised for breaking down in tears, and he said he was sorry for bringing up the sadistic killer Ramirez. Changing the subject to something lighter, Josh asked if Laura was seeing anyone. Her cheeks flushed and she made Josh laugh as she described how many dating apps she had been on, with farcical results.