There was a note of self-recrimination in her voice.
‘So it was the electric shocks that did the damage to Booth?’ The skin around my own burns seemed to twitch as I asked the question.
Ward nodded. ‘God knows how many the poor sod must have had by the time we took him away. The doctors don’t know how he survived all this time, so I suppose Lola’s nursing experience came in useful for something. She wanted him alive so she could keep on punishing him. Easier than blaming herself, I suppose.’
Don’t take him as well! He’s all I’ve got left! Not the plea of an overly protective mother, as we’d thought, but an embittered torturer deprived of her victim. The cabinet of photographs facing the bed hadn’t just looked like a shrine. It had been one.
‘Is Booth able to communicate at all?’ I asked.
‘He can respond to yes/no questions with nods and hand movements. The therapists are working on getting him to use a keypad, although that’s going to take time. But Lola’s told us most of it herself.’
‘She’s confessed?’
‘I wouldn’t call it a confession, exactly, I just don’t think she cares any more. She knows there’s no point denying anything now, and in between the verbal abuse I think she enjoys rubbing our faces in it.’
They’d told me that the fingerprints from the wall and the paint tins at St Jude’s had matched ones on Gary Lennox’s personal belongings. The real Gary Lennox, that was, not Wayne Booth. It was clear now why the fingerprints of the bedridden man hadn’t matched those found at the crime scene. At the time that had been taken as proof that Lola’s son was innocent. It never occurred to anyone that the man in the bed might be someone else.
‘Has she said anything about how her son died?’ I asked. From what Lola had told me, it had sounded like the shock of seeing Christine Gorski walking in on them had brought on a cardiac arrest.
Ward gave a grim smile. ‘She was less talkative about that, but it came out in the end. She killed him.’
‘She what?’
‘Not intentionally. She lost her temper when he tried to protect Christine Gorski. She’d already stunned her once, and when Gary tried to stop her doing it again she used the picana on him. We know he had a weak heart, so maybe that’s what happened to his father as well.’
A heart condition, inherited or otherwise, wouldn’t have been helped by carrying building supplies all the way up to the top floor of St Jude’s. And as a reluctant partner to his mother’s crimes, her son would have been under enormous physical and emotional stress already.
‘You were right about Christine’s waters breaking,’ Ward added, her tone studiedly neutral. ‘She came round and tried to get away while Lola was trying to revive Gary, but only made it as far as the loft. Lola followed the splashes on the floor, and when she realized where the girl had gone she just bolted the door and left her in there.’
I didn’t know which was worse, the fact that Lola had killed her own son or the callous way she’d delivered an electric shock to a pregnant young woman. And then left her to die in the loft of a derelict building.
‘Some nurse,’ Whelan said, in disgust. ‘She couldn’t carry his body, so she used an old wheelchair she’d found lying about to get him as far as the stairs. Then she tipped and dragged him the rest of the way to the basement.’
Ward took up the story again. ‘We think that’s why the ribs we found in the boiler were broken, and probably the denture as well. The plan was to take him out through the morgue, but she couldn’t get the chair up the steps at the other end. So then she hit on the idea of cremating him in the boiler.’
Christ. I thought about Lola pushing her son’s body through the darkened hospital, hearing bones and teeth snap as his dead weight thumped down every stair. I couldn’t just leave him there, could I, my lovely lad? Not in that place, not with them!
‘The only thing she won’t tell us is what she did with the remains afterwards,’ Ward continued. ‘We know she made several trips back to the boiler room for them, although I’m not convinced that wasn’t more to get rid of the evidence than sentiment. She admits she couldn’t get everything out before the morgue was demolished, but she clams up when we ask what she’s done with the bones she took away. Says we’ve taken enough from her already. We haven’t found anything at the house, so I’m going to have the cadaver dog search it.’
‘When?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘Forget it. You’ll have to sit this one out. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if we find anything.’
I was in no position to argue. But there was one subject that still hadn’t been mentioned. Although I could understand Ward’s reluctance, it had to be aired sooner or later.
‘What about Jessop?’ I asked.
Whelan pursed his lips and looked down at the floor. Ward folded her hands on her lap, as though to centre herself.
‘We got that wrong,’ she admitted. ‘Jessop was hiding something, but it wasn’t what we thought. One of his employees came forward after he blew up St Jude’s. Neil Wesley. Only nineteen, but he claims he found Christine Gorski’s body four months ago, when he went in the loft to do a routine check. Jessop didn’t want any more delays, so he made Wesley help him move it. They wrapped her body up in the tarpaulin and then carried it further into the loft where it would be harder to find.’
‘Didn’t do him much good,’ Whelan said harshly. ‘If he’d reported it straight away none of this would’ve happened. We’d have thought she was the only victim, and chances are St Jude’s would have been torn down months ago. We’d never have known about the others.’
I put my head back on the pillow, feeling drained. Jessop had paid a high cost for his mistake. So had a lot of other people. ‘Why didn’t this Wesley say something sooner?’
‘He was too scared,’ Ward said. ‘He thought Jessop would report it when he told him, but he threw a fit instead. Said it was only some down-and-out who nobody’d miss, and that if Wesley told anyone he’d sack him and make sure he got the blame. It’s been playing on the poor kid’s conscience ever since. You saw him yourself, hanging round the main gates, trying to pluck up courage to come forward.’
It took me a moment to realize what she meant. The young man who’d stepped out in front of my car, distracted by what was going on at St Jude’s, and who I’d later seen at the bus stop outside the entrance. ‘That was Neil Wesley?’
Ward gave a token smile, although her heart wasn’t in it. ‘PC Hendricks told us about it. She’s quite a fan of yours after you offered to swap yourself as a hostage.’
It was an attempt to move the conversation on to a lighter track. But there was still too much about this I didn’t understand.
‘Did Jessop say anything when you were with him in St Jude’s?’ I asked. ‘Any sort of explanation?’
‘He was a self-pitying drunk who’d made a mess of his life and only got himself to blame!’ Whelan snapped with sudden heat. ‘If he’d had any decency, he’d have topped himself quietly rather than making a big show of it!’
‘All right, Jack,’ Ward told him quietly. She sighed. ‘He didn’t say very much, no. But if he’d been the sadistic killer we thought, he wouldn’t have just let me go. And I’m not even certain he meant to blow up St Jude’s anyway. The state he was in at the end, I don’t think he knew what he was doing. It could have been accidental.’