We’d thought Christine Gorski had probably gone to buy drugs; now it was confirmed. No wonder her brother had looked so strained. ‘How have his parents taken it?’
‘About as you’d expect.’ She ground the heels of her palms into her eyes. ‘You don’t have a biscuit or any chocolate, do you? Never mind. Stupid question.’
‘I can make you a sandwich.’ I realized as I offered that I might struggle to manage even that. I should have bought some groceries for myself when I’d gone shopping for Lola.
‘No, I’m fine.’ Ward stopped rubbing her eyes and straightened in the chair, a weary attempt to get back to business. ‘So, are you OK to examine the bones from the boiler tomorrow?’
‘What about the cadaver dog search?’ I asked, pouring boiling water on to the teabag.
‘Finding out whatever we can about this new victim has to take precedence. If you’re needed at St Jude’s we’ll let you know.’
I couldn’t resist a last dig. ‘I thought you were going to use Mears?’
Ward grimaced. ‘OK, I deserve that, but I was just venting. Apart from anything else, Mears has his own problems.’
Does he now? ‘Like what?’
But she shook her head. ‘Let’s change the subject.’
Her irritation was edging back, but at least this time it wasn’t directed at me. I took the mint tea over, then fetched my bourbon from the living room and joined her at the table.
‘That’s really rubbing it in,’ Ward said, looking from my glass to her mug.
‘I wouldn’t have poured it if I’d known you were coming.’ I took a drink and set the glass down. ‘How’s Gary Lennox?’
‘They’re still trying to stabilize him. His heart’s arrhythmic, he’s got liver and kidney damage, fluid on both lungs and he’s suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. The doctors think he’s had at least one massive neurological “event”, as they’re calling it, and probably more, but they’re not sure exactly what. They’re going to be doing more scans tomorrow, but there’s some confusion over his medical history.’
‘What sort of confusion?’ Whelan had said Oduya was trying to stop the police from seeing Lennox’s health records, but his doctors would still have access to them.
‘Apparently there are gaps. We know Lennox was diagnosed with a heart defect when he was nineteen, but his doctors say they can’t find any record of anything like a stroke. No hospital admission, no treatment, nothing. As far as anyone can tell us, he hasn’t even seen a GP in the past three years.’
‘That can’t be right.’
‘Not in the state he’s in, no. They’re still checking, but we’re starting to think he might not have even been hospitalized. Whatever happened to him, it looks like his mother didn’t tell anyone about it. Just decided to nurse him herself.’ Ward shook her head, perhaps unconsciously resting her hand on her stomach. ‘Takes “mother-love” to a new level, doesn’t it?’
God, I thought, shocked. If that was true, then Lennox had been in an even worse purgatory than I’d realized. I’d seen earlier how desperate his mother had been not to have him taken away, but I’d never imagined she’d go that far. And it meant there was no way to verify the alibi she’d given her son: we’d still only her word that he’d been incapacitated when Darren Crossly had gone missing.
‘Has she said anything?’ I asked.
‘Nothing printable. She’s still refusing to cooperate or give us consent to take their fingerprints. His or hers. It’s possible she’s just being awkward, but I’m beginning to think there’s more to it than that. She obviously couldn’t have physically built a wall herself, but maybe she knows more than we thought. If she’s kept her son from getting critical medical treatment, then I wouldn’t like to say what else she’s capable of.’
Neither would I. Yet I found it hard to believe Lola would be selfish enough to risk her son’s life like that. ‘You still sound convinced Lennox is guilty.’
Ward shrugged. ‘The more we find out, the likelier he looks. We’ve been checking into Darren Crossly’s acquaintances, and think we might have a lead on the woman he was walled up with. He had an on-off girlfriend by the name of Maria de Souza who seems to have disappeared as well. She hasn’t been reported missing, but she was out of work and tended to flit from place to place, so it could be another case of no one noticing. We know she sometimes stayed with Crossly, and the last confirmed sighting has them both together. So it’s possible that they disappeared at the same time. She doesn’t have a criminal record, which would explain why we haven’t had any luck matching the fingerprints from the woman’s body.’
‘If she was only Crossly’s on-off girlfriend, would Lennox have known her?’
Ward gave a tired smile. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mention that, did I? De Souza used to be a cleaner at St Jude’s. She worked there for five years, until it closed. If we can confirm she’s the woman we found with Crossly, then that means Lennox would have known both victims. Add to that his sacking because of missing pharmacy drugs and Darren Crossly’s conviction for possession of cannabis, and there’s a definite picture starting to form.’
St Jude’s again. Somehow everything seemed to come back to that place. ‘You think the three of them were dealing and had a falling-out?’
‘I think “falling-out” puts it mildly, but yes. And maybe Christine Gorski went along looking to buy a fix and got in the middle of it. Except…’
‘Except?’ I prompted.
She shook her head, troubled. ‘I don’t know. Lennox just doesn’t fit the profile. I mean, how many drug dealers in their thirties live at home with their mother?’
‘With nothing worse than comics and birdwatching magazines, you mean?’
‘Jack told you about that, did he?’ Ward smiled, but it soon faded. ‘OK, it’s possible Lennox had another place or a lock-up we don’t know about. I could even accept that he somehow managed to stay off our radar all this time. But it doesn’t quite gel. Apart from his sacking, nothing we’ve found paints him as a drug dealer, let alone a violent sadist. Social services already had a file on him from when he was a kid. The social workers described him as physically big but lacking in confidence and with borderline learning difficulties. He was bullied at school, and he was almost taken into care because they thought his father was physically abusing him.’
‘Lola said pretty much the same thing. Not about the care, about her husband,’ I told her. Lola’s phrasing had been more colourful, though. Rotten bastard. He was a sod to my Gary sober, and when he’d had a drink he was even worse.
‘She wasn’t lying about that, anyway,’ Ward said. ‘Patrick Lennox was a nasty piece of work, by all accounts. He worked on container ships doing the South America routes, so he wasn’t at home all that much. But when he was he was a heavy drinker and handy with his fists. Especially against his son. It didn’t stop until he left when Gary was sixteen.’
That fitted what Lola had told me as well. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Abroad, we think. We haven’t been able to trace him, but I can’t see that he’s got anything to do with any of this. Except possibly in a formative sense.’
‘As in, victims of abuse becoming abusers themselves?’
Ward shrugged. ‘We know it happens. People change, and just because Lennox used to be bullied twenty years ago doesn’t mean he couldn’t dish out the same treatment himself. Maybe it gave him a chip on his shoulder.’
‘Now who’s putting it mildly?’ I said.
‘You know what I mean. Anyway, time I went home.’ She drained her mug and pushed herself heavily to her feet. ‘Thanks for the tea. For future reference, you might want to check what bags are actually in the box.’