Ruth nodded. ‘We Googled Shannon-Rose as soon as Deirdre told us her name, while we were still going through the process of adopting Beckie. And we found out all about the Johnsons and their convictions.’
Saskia made a face. She had a plain face anyway, with rather prominent eyes, and that big nose stud like a huge blackhead. Her hair was streaked with pink. ‘The official stuff, the stuff in the press – that’s not the half of it.’ She took a gulp of hot coffee. ‘I’m sorry. I should have laid it all out for you from the get-go, but to be honest… When I met you, I just wanted so much for you to take Beckie, I knew you’d be perfect for her and – I was worried that if I told you everything I knew about the Johnsons you might back out.’
‘That wouldn’t have happened,’ said Alec.
‘I realise that. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
Ruth shook her head. ‘None of this is your fault, Saskia. You mustn’t think that. We really appreciate what you’ve done for Beckie. And all the other kids like her. You’re their lifeline – literally – and I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like, what a toll it must take, fighting their corner the way you do, all those poor little…’ She took a long breath. ‘You’re amazing. You’re completely amazing – and we can never thank you enough. But you need to tell us now. You need to tell us all about the Johnsons. We have to know what we’re dealing with.’
‘Thank you for saying that.’ Saskia reached out to touch Ruth’s arm. ‘I’ll help you in any way I can.’
‘I know you will.’
Ruth jumped as the door clicked open behind her. Turning in her chair, she saw one of Saskia’s boys standing holding on to the door handle.
‘Hello, sweetie,’ said Saskia, and the boy came round the table and into her arms. ‘What’s wrong, little one?’
Ruth smiled. This was the older of the two boys. How nice, she thought suddenly, to be called ‘little one’ by your mother when you were the big one to everyone else; the older sibling who was expected to be more stoical, more sensible, more grown up.
‘Nothing,’ he muttered into Saskia’s fluffy mohair jumper. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
Saskia pushed away the blue file that had been sitting on the old pine table next to her coffee cup, as if to put distance between its contents and her own child. As she took him out of the room with her, Ruth reached over and opened the file.
On top was a photograph. A mug shot of an elderly man with protruding ears, a gaunt, grey face, tattoos on his neck, and cold eyes; literally cold, an almost colourless icy blue.
‘That’s Jed Johnson,’ said Saskia from over her shoulder. ‘Fifty-nine but looks at least a decade older. He did sixteen years for murder a while back, a gangland killing, and he’s served shorter sentences for GBH, false imprisonment, armed robbery and drug-related crimes. That’s only what they’ve managed to do him for, of course.’ She came back round the table and sat down, pulling her coffee cup towards her and cradling it. ‘He was charged with a second murder but got off on a technicality after the procurator fiscal missed a statutory deadline. No mystery where Shannon-Rose gets her tendency for violence. This didn’t come out at the Court of Session hearing for the permanence order – I guess they felt there was enough ammunition against the Johnsons without applying for the release of confidential medical records – but in the course of his many incarcerations, Jed was assessed by two different prison service psychiatrists on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. On a scale of zero to forty, one of them scored him as thirty-seven and the other thirty-nine. That means he’s right at the top of the spectrum for psychopathy.’
She took a slug of coffee. ‘Jed gets off on other people’s suffering. I could tell you a dozen horror stories, but the best documented is an incident that happened in prison. It seems Jed’s sidekick, who was also his cellmate, made the mistake of standing up to Jed when he started victimising a young prisoner. When the warder opened the cell door in the morning he found Jed sleeping like a baby, the floor awash with blood, and the cellmate close to death. There were two hundred and thirty-six separate cuts found on the man’s body. Fifty-two of which were on his penis, which was almost severed. The weapon had been the edge of a laminated sheet of tumble drier instructions taken from the prison laundry, where Jed worked at the time. The man claimed to have inflicted the injuries himself, so no action could be taken against Jed… I’m sorry, but I think you have to know this.’
Ruth, a hand to her mouth, nodded.
Saskia passed across another photograph. ‘And this is the eldest son, Ryan Johnson.’
This was another hard face, but much younger and startlingly handsome, with long dark lashes and dark eyes, dark hair slicked back 1950s-style. It could have been an actor’s press shot.
‘Ryan was still relatively small fry five years ago, but these days he’s a bit of a kingpin on the Glasgow scene – drug-dealing and prostitution, mainly. He’s extremely violent. He’s served sentences for drug-dealing and GBH. He’s been implicated in at least three murders, but there wasn’t sufficient evidence for a prosecution; what witnesses there were wouldn’t talk or, in one case, couldn’t. Not after falling to their death from a tower block.’
Ruth couldn’t speak.
Another photograph came across the table at them. ‘This is a press photograph of Ryan, Lorraine and in the background that’s Travis, the second son – this was them going into court at the start of one of Jed’s trials.’
She stared at the photograph. Lorraine Johnson was a burly woman in a black suit with badly dyed blonde hair falling over a doughy face half turned from the camera. Travis was body-builder hefty, with a ned’s fringe plastered to his forehead. ‘I think Beckie needs to see these too. In case –’
Alec squeezed her hand.
She pulled the photo closer. So this was Beckie’s grandmother. ‘What’s Lorraine Johnson like?’
Saskia grimaced. ‘Foul-mouthed, aggressive, volatile, self-righteous and self-deluding. But there’s another side to her – she’s a victim too in a way, had a horrendous childhood – abused physically and sexually – and I think she’s probably in an abusive relationship with Jed. She holds that family together, such as it is. I think she really did love Beckie. But…’ She sighed. ‘I always come back to those fresh injuries… I’m not saying it was Lorraine, I very much doubt it would have been, but Lorraine must have been aware of them. She must have known someone in the family was still hurting her. Probably Jed.’
Ruth pushed the photograph away.
‘And when Beckie was removed, she was neglected. Her nappy hadn’t been changed all day, I suspect, and she needed a wash – who knows what was going on in that household? It’s possibly the case that Lorraine was incapacitated at the time and had been relying on other members of the family to take care of Beckie, but even so…’
Rage rushed through Ruth, adrenaline surging, so she had to close her eyes and breathe and try not to imagine Beckie, as they’d first seen her as a toddler, in that little smock dress and white tights, with Lorraine or Jed or Ryan Johnson… On the day Saskia had visited the house, dirty and scared and with the signs of their abuse on her little body –
When Beckie had first come to them, that first night, she had been so quiet, so stiff in Ruth’s arms as she had carried her up to bed. She had obediently grasped the white rabbit Alec had offered her, but mechanically, without even looking at it. She had let Ruth stroke her hair back from her forehead as if it were an ordeal to be endured.
It had been months before that had changed. She would always remember the first time Beckie had initiated contact. It had been a cold January afternoon and she and Beckie had been cosy in the sitting room with the wood-burning stove roaring, and Ruth had suggested a story. Beckie had nodded. So the two of them had gone to the bookcase to select a book from Beckie’s section, Beckie sitting on the carpet, Ruth kneeling next to her, reading out the titles of the choices from the spines. ‘Well, let’s see… There’s Meg on the Moon; I Want My Hat Back; The Tiger Who Came to Tea…’ And as the familiar litany had continued, very, very gradually, her eyes still on the books, Beckie had leant in to Ruth’s side.