I stand there, as I always do, gazing down onto the bare earth, and thinking about Andrew Conroy. He was a pleasing enough youth – red-haired, happy-faced. I didn’t know him so well. I don’t think he ever once came to our house. As I recall, he was a little bit backward in some respects; what they called a ‘remedial’ in those days, but now probably referred to as ‘special needs’. I’ll never forget watching him collected from school while I was waiting there for Geoff. Either his mother or his older sister would come, and they’d be all smiles as they walked side-by-side with him out of the yard, nodding and listening as he told them excitedly about his day.
That memory alone is enough to bring a tear to my eye. As a murder detective, you only need to fail one victim and you’ve failed them all. From a distance, particularly when it is portrayed in the slick, overly dramatised way that it is on television, it must seem like a glamorous, heroic world, the Criminal Investigation Department. In reality, it isn’t like that at all. It is dark, brooding, intense and it can be utterly soul-destroying; it is also exhausting, physically, emotionally and spiritually – and the higher up the ladder you progress, the more serious the crimes you’re landed with and the more onerous the weight of responsibility, until finally you reach that ultimate zenith (and nadir): the Murder Squad.
Back in those days, we rarely used specialised homicide units. We tended to deal with unlawful killings as and when they occurred, forming separate investigation teams for each one, drawing our staff from the surrounding divisions’ most dedicated and experienced detectives. Of course, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are; the pressure of just one murder enquiry can be crushing, paralysing. Even when you’d done as many as I had … but no. This story isn’t about me. It’s about a little boy called Andrew Conroy, and how he spent the last moments of his life stranded on the edge of this wretched, desolate wood, probably knowing all the fear that every child everywhere has ever suffered, not to mention all the pain and humiliation. With nobody there to help. Nobody even to call out to. It’s also about the person responsible for that. And how he’s still walking around somewhere. And all because I failed in my police officer’s duty.
I stand there, dabbing at my eyes with my handkerchief. “Pathetic … hopeless, a futile gesture,” I hear you say. And you’re right.
I don’t need to glance down at the floor of the shrunken clearing and see the tiny, curved twig-like object. Or rather, not see it. As I have and haven’t on every occasion I’ve been here since 1975, including that very first day when the darkening woods were filled with radio static and the yipping of dogs and the hushed mumble of voices. I don’t need to look because it will still be there. And it won’t. As it always is. And isn’t. A tiny, curved fragment of twig. Easy to overlook in the heat and emotion of the moment and the general mass of forest rubble that litters our English woodlands.
As I amble back out of the trees, I feel the burden of guilt lift a little. Not because I’ve achieved anything by coming here – aside from my serving another day of penance – more because the proximity of events is that little bit further away. Because one more year has elapsed. Because the faces and the facts are twelve months more distant.
On the way out I pass more sad evidence of our modern, sophisticated age. As the wood thins out at the foot of the slope, I see the remnants of yet another den – this one at ground-level; in fact below it. Apparently someone’s dog once burrowed between the roots of an old sycamore tree in pursuit of a rabbit, and the rest of the gang quickly seized on the idea, going racing home for spades and trowels. All that remains of it now is a rank, caved-in recess, its innards cluttered with wads of dead leaves, its entrance deep in stinging nettles. When it was first finished they were able to conceal two or three of them in there at a time, I was told. They took in their own props and roof-supports, another roll of that ubiquitous carpet, not to mention candles, matches, boxes of apples and crisps and – yes, more well-thumbed girlie mags. I give a wry smile as I make my torturous way back up the hill. Girlie mags again … easy to see it now, but the kids back then weren’t quite as innocent as we like to think.
At the top of the slope, Geoff is still leaning on his car, reading. He glances up as I reappear. “Back in retirement then, are we?”
I nod, too breathless and my back too sore to think of a suitably witty rejoinder.
“You won’t do yourself any good with this, you know,” he says, shoving his newspaper into his pocket. “Better just to let the past go.”
I nod, as I always do, but say nothing as I climb into the car alongside him. I am in the usual conundrum; thinking about my possibly having overlooked a vital clue. But even if I were to suddenly throw caution to the wind, pick up the phone and tell someone about it – and even if they were to react positively, which is highly unlikely given that I’ve now been out of the job for eleven years, it would be very much a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. That might be a forced rationalisation on my part, and an excuse, but it’s also true. And that, in the absence of anything else, makes me feel a little better.
Geoff was right in what he said earlier. I don’t have anything to prove. This was the only murder case I failed to solve. There were at least twenty others when I got the right result. When I retired from the job, I did so after thirty-five years of exemplary service, after making detective superintendent, which was probably the highest rank someone of my working-class background had any conceivable hope of achieving.
But then, my mind goes back to that little boy, who, through personal circumstances, I knew so well. And my heart bleeds for him. Then I think, isn’t it true that we’re really only as successful as our least successful moment? Aren’t we only ever as good as our worst failure? And couldn’t it also be said that if your failure owes to more than simple negligence, then that doubles, trebles, maybe quadruples your culpability? As Geoff drives me away again, I can’t help brooding on that tiny, curved twig, which I saw so clearly in the flesh on that first occasion and have seen again in my mind’s eye ever afterwards, but have always denied and rejected and disbelieved as meaningless and insignificant. That innocent-looking twist of organic matter, which instead of being a twig, might actually have been an apple-stalk – and if that was the case, which might indicate that whoever dropped it there alongside the body had the very odd and unusual habit of eating the whole apple rather than leaving the core.
Believe it or not, I feel relief as I depart this place.
Children don’t play here anymore.
And as my son still lives in the area, I find that a very great relief.
Tok
Paul Finch
Contents
After they’d hacked and slashed the two bodies for several minutes, they danced on them. The firelight of a dozen torches glittered on their wild, rolling eyes, on their upraised blades, on the blood spattered liberally across the carpet of smoothly mown grass. Their shouts of delight filled the seething night. But when the little girl came out and stood on the veranda, there was a silence like a thunderclap. For a moment she seemed too pure to be in the midst of such mayhem, too angelic – a white-as-snow cherub, who, for all her tears and soiled nightclothes,