The driver offered the information that, not only was he married, he had five children.
‘Five?’ Langton said, shaking his head in astonishment.
‘You got any?’ the driver asked.
‘Yes, one daughter. She lives with her mother. Lovely girl, very bright. I have her some weekends, when I’m free.’
As Langton chatted, Anna was amazed to hear so much about his personal life. By the time they reached their destination, Langton in turn knew virtually the driver’s entire life history.
The nursing home looked pleasant, set in the middle of a well laid-out garden. The reception area seemed light and friendly. There were flowers on the desk and cards pinned up on the bulletin boards. Mrs Steadly, the cheerful administrator, was a woman in a pink suit.
‘You can see Mrs Morgan in her room, unless you prefer to have coffee and biscuits in the sun lounge. You won’t be disturbed there. It’s not that warm today and with all the glass it can get a bit chilly. We really need to put central heating in, but we have to raise the money first!’ she said as they crossed the reception area with her.
‘I think we’d prefer to see Mrs Morgan in her room,’ Langton responded, smiling.
The room was fairly large, with numerous pot plants on the windowsill. Mrs Steadly introduced a frail, tiny woman with a halo of snow-white hair. Crippled by painful arthritis, Ellen Morgan moved with the aid of a walking frame.
Mrs Steadly backed out of the room and closed the door. Laid out on the bed were two large photo albums. Anna took a seat by the window, Langton sat on the bed and Mrs Morgan leaned on her frame.
‘I knew you wanted a photograph. So I got everything out and went through them. It brought back memories, I can tell you.’
Langton smiled. ‘You had a very full life. How many children have you cared for?’
‘Too many. But I keep in touch with most of them and they come and see me,’ she said, moving across to the bed.
Langton gently helped her to sit beside him and placed the album she was pointing to in her lap.
‘Tell me about Anthony Duffy,’ he prompted.
‘Anthony was four when I first met him. He was only supposed to come for a few weeks, but he stayed with me eight months. He was very shy, exceptionally nervous. He looked like a skeleton when he arrived,’ she chuckled.
Langton watched the bulbous, distorted fingers turning the pages. Then she pointed. ‘Here’s one from that time. It was taken at one of the boy’s birthday parties. There’s Anthony, at the corner of the photograph.’
Langton gazed at the face, then removed the photo, which he passed to Anna. Anna was struck by the image of this tiny boy, with his paper hat, wearing a striped, knitted pullover. His pixie-like face was unsmiling; he had large, extraordinary, beautiful blue eyes.
‘He was very much a loner. Not that he was trouble; well, he was young, but he didn’t mix with the other children. His mother was in police custody and went to prison for six months. When she came to collect him, he clung to the banister rail, screaming. It was very sad. There was nothing I could do in those days. She was his mother.’
Mrs Morgan removed another photograph from the album. ‘He came back to me four years later. This is him. He’d grown quite tall for his age. He wasn’t as shy, but he still wouldn’t mix with the other children. He was very bright, but he had become more difficult to control. When he didn’t get what he wanted, he would throw the most terrible tantrums; you’ve never seen the like.’
Langton passed the snapshot to Anna. Anthony, at eight, was tall and skinny. He wore shorts, a shirt and tie and his hair stuck up in odd tufts, looking as if it had been cut with garden clippers.
Mrs Morgan stared at the empty space in the album. ‘I said I would have him for the eleven months his mother had left to serve in prison, but I couldn’t handle him. The house was cramped with two girls of my own and the four other children living with me. But that wasn’t the real reason. I just didn’t want him disrupting everyone the way he did. He’d get angry’ Mrs Morgan stopped for a while, as if remembering something.
‘He had the most extraordinary eyes, “Elizabeth Taylor eyes”, I used to call them. He could be very foul-mouthed. That I could deal with. But we had a big, fluffy old cat, Milly. She gave him asthma. I explained that he should not stroke her or go near her, really, because if his asthma got worse, he wouldn’t be able to stay. Then his asthma cleared up. I will never forget finding Milly. He’d wrapped her body in a tea towel. I confronted him and he didn’t lie, didn’t try to make an excuse. He had taken the cat down to the garden shed and strangled her. He said he loved me and didn’t want to be taken away again.’
The tears started to flow. She dabbed at her eyes with a folded tissue.
‘There was a couple, they had fostered before. They were very nice, elderly, quite well off. They agreed to take him. I packed up his few things and they came round in a very expensive car. He was so excited about the car that he never even looked at me when they took him away. Anthony was fostered by a couple called Jack and Mary Ellis in 1975. They are both dead now.’
‘Did you ever see him again?’ Langton asked.
‘I saw him once; it would have been about six or seven years later. I was drawing the living-room curtains and I saw this boy standing outside the gate. Just looking at the house, staring really. He was in a school uniform: blazer, a yellow and black school scarf, long grey trousers. I knew it was Anthony because of those eyes. But by the time I got to the front door, he’d gone. He never came back. I never saw him again.’
Back in the car, Langton’s mood was subdued. The driver started up the engine, asking if they wanted to go to lunch or should he drive them to Edge Hill to see ex-Detective Richard Green.
‘Straight to him, please,’ Langton said without hesitation. ‘What did you make of that, Travis?’
‘Very sad,’ she said. Her stomach was growling.
‘Yeah, shoved from pillar to post. If we don’t get any joy from this chap Green, when we go back we might try to do a composite picture ourselves and age it up.’
‘How did you track me down, then?’ Green said when they met at his house.
‘It wasn’t that easy,’ Langton said, smiling. ‘You certainly move around.’
‘Yeah, well, with the pension I get, money is tight, so we buy houses, do ‘em up and sell ‘em on. The wife made all the curtains and covered the sofas. She’s also a dab hand with the paintbrush, decorating. I do a spot of carpentry.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you want,’ he continued. ‘It was a long time ago. Must be twenty years. I was with Vice.’
Langton nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘Hated it. That’s why I moved over to the Robbery Squad and what happens? I’m only there two years and this bloody little junkie fires off a round in my leg.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘I’d call it more than that; thirteen years old, the little shit! If I’d got my hands on him, I’d have been put away for murder.’
‘Anthony Duffy,’ Langton reminded him quietly.
‘Oh, right. We had him in for questioning. You know Barry Southwood?’ Green laughed. ‘He had to get out of Manchester. He was a devil with the hookers. He was warned over and over again. Sex mad, he was.’
Langton repeated, ‘Anthony Duffy.’
‘Right. I’ve been racking my brains, to get the events as clear as possible.’
‘And?’ Langton prodded.
‘We had him in for questioning, that’d be 1983. His mother, Lilian, had been brought in, beaten up badly.
She was screaming the place down. Anyways, once she was calmed and cleaned up, said she wanted to make a charge of rape and assault.’
‘Did you take any swabs?’
‘We weren’t all that up to speed on the DNA, like we are now.’
‘She pressed charges?’