Kimberley Chambers - The Victim

Jed felt his hackles rise. ‘I explained all this last night. We were searching for ’em ourselves. Us travellers are a close-knit community. I had my own reinforcements, so there was no need to bother you. I knew they’d turn up alive and well anyway, kids always do.’

DS Fletcher looked at Jed in disbelief. Any nutter could have picked up those poor children yesterday. ‘Do you not realise the seriousness of not reporting the disappearance of children so young? They could have been abducted by a paedophile, run over – anything could have happened to them.’

Jed was beginning to lose his temper now. What was the bitch insinuating – that he was a bad parent? ‘All kids run away. I did it loads of times when I was their age. It’s all part of growing up, ain’t it? Anyway, I’ve had a good chat with them and both Georgie girl and Harry have promised me faithfully that they will never do anything like that again.’

Jed turned to his children. ‘Go on, you tell the policewoman that you won’t run off again, like you told me.’

‘We promise we won’t run off again,’ Georgie said.

‘I won’t, ’cause my legs hurt,’ Harry mumbled.

‘We idolise them kids and you can see that they’re clean, loved and well fed,’ Alice said proudly.

Jimmy put a comforting arm around Jed’s shoulder. If his son lost his temper, which he was quite capable of, the kids might be carted off there and then.

Carol Cullen turned to Jed. ‘Could I speak to you alone for a minute?’

Jed led her out to the kitchen. He’d seen his mum give him a warning look and he knew he had to learn how to control his temper more, especially when dealing with the authorities. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit snappy, but what with my brother being killed and then Luke, my son, it’s been a tough time lately,’ he explained.

Carol nodded understandingly. ‘The reason I’ve come here to see you today is about access for the children to visit their mother. I spoke to Georgie and Harry at length last night and it is clear that they miss their mother dreadfully and, in my opinion, it would be in their best interests if they were to have contact with her.’

Jed stood with his mouth wide open. He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. ‘Are you serious? Frankie is a loony, a proper nutter. She tried to kill me, for fuck’s sake. Would you want your kids seeing a potential murderer? I love my chavvies and I don’t want them anywhere near that monster of a mother of theirs.’

‘Calm down, Mr O’Hara. If you keep behaving like this, I will have to write a bad report on you and chances are you will lose your children for good.’

Telling Jed he might lose his children was like waving a red rag at a bull. ‘Get out of my house, you fucking shitcunt!’ he shouted as he tried to bundle Carol Cullen towards the front door.

Jimmy, Alice and the two police officers heard the fracas and ran out to the kitchen.

‘Whatever’s going on? Leave my boy alone,’ Alice screamed, as the two Old Bill grabbed hold of Jed.

‘Calm down, you dinlo,’ Jimmy yelled, as Jed tried desperately to free himself.

Georgie and Harry had followed everybody else and were now standing at the kitchen door, holding hands.

‘They wanna let my chavvies visit that slag in prison,’ Jed shrieked.

‘Over my dead body are they visiting that evil whore,’ Alice yelled.

Guessing that they were discussing her mum, by the words ‘visit’ and ‘prison’, Georgie put her two penn’orth in. ‘But me and Harry want to see Mummy. That’s why we ran away, ’cause we wanted to find Mummy.’

As Jed began to scream at Georgie, Jimmy shoved him and Alice out of the back door and locked it. ‘Jed don’t mean to get angry. He’s so stressed at the moment, what with his boy being murdered,’ he explained.

‘One more outburst from your son and he’s nicked,’ Fletcher replied meaningfully.

Carol felt dreadfully sorry for Georgie and Harry. Life with the O’Haras seemed even worse than she’d anticipated it to be.

‘Can we see Mummy now?’ Harry asked her innocently.

Carol led them into the lounge and sat down next to them on the sofa. ‘I’m going to take your case to something called a civil court and then hopefully you will be able to see your mummy again.’

Eddie Mitchell was not in the best of moods. Driving to Milton Keynes to extract money out of some prick who had underestimated him was one reason, and the other were the looks on Gary and Ricky’s faces when he’d just told them that Gina was pregnant.

‘Fucking hell! Anyone would think that I’d just told you someone you were close to had died. Ain’t you happy for us, or what?’

Gary glanced at his brother. Both were thinking about their future inheritance. ‘Yeah, course we are, but a newborn baby’s a lot to take on at your age, ain’t it?’

Eddie slammed his foot on the brake and mounted the kerb. ‘I’m fifty-three, not eighty,’ he yelled angrily.

‘Does Frankie know yet?’ Ricky asked. His half-sister was not going to be pleased; she hadn’t even come to terms with her dad being with Gina yet.

‘I’m visiting Frankie tomorrow, so I’ll tell her then. Joey, I’ll ring tonight. I saw him yesterday, but with all the chaos over Georgie and Harry, it was neither the time nor the place. Now check that map and see where we are. It’s Bradwell village we’re looking for.’

Ricky gave him directions. Five minutes later, they’d found where they were looking for. ‘This is it. Do a right here, then first left and it’s number sixty-six.’

Eddie pulled up a few doors away from the address. He glanced around to make sure nobody was about, then got out of his Range Rover. ‘Does he live here with anyone?’ he asked Gary.

‘Dunno. The geezer never said.’

Ed grabbed his baseball bat from under the back seat. It was a standing joke between him and the boys that they carried the full baseball kit around with them. They even had catcher’s mitts and a helmet complete with ear flaps. They’d got tugged a good few years back, just before Ed had got put away, and the filth had swallowed the lie that Gary was training to become a professional baseball player. They’d cracked up for days over that one.

‘You knock,’ Eddie ordered Ricky, as he stood to the side of the porch and placed the bat beside the wall.

‘Is Colin in?’ Ricky asked, as a plump, dark-haired bird with big knockers answered the door.

‘No, I think you’ve got the wrong house. My fella’s called John,’ she said.

‘This is definitely the right address,’ Ricky insisted.

The woman shook her head. ‘We’re not from round here, we’re from East London. We only moved here two weeks ago, so maybe you’re looking for the previous tenant.’

Eddie poked his head around the porch door and smiled. The mention of East London had given it away; Colin was obviously using a different Christian name and was now calling himself John. ‘Where is your bloke, out of interest? Can I have a word with him? You never know, he might have a forwarding address for Colin. We need to contact him because his mum has died and it’s her funeral on Friday.’

‘Are you three policemen?’ the woman asked.

‘Yes, love,’ Ed said politely.

‘You’ll find my John in a pub called the Victoria Inn. Spends half his life in there since we moved here, he does. His surname is Griffiths,’ the woman said laughing.

Eddie grinned at the woman, then walked away. ‘Thank you, you’ve been most helpful, and I’ll tell you something else, if I had a pretty woman like you indoors, I wouldn’t be spending all my time in a pub.’

The woman giggled, waved and closed the front door.

Eddie, Gary and Ricky walked back to the Range Rover. They all knew that John Griffiths was actually Colin. The dickhead was even using his own surname.