Free Suffer the Children by Adam Creed Page B

know about Rob Boxall?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘And what about Ross Denness, Mrs Bowker?’
    ‘Miss!’
    Staffe sits up, quickly. He scrawls a note – ‘debra colquhoun. check passports and airlines’. ‘I apologise. As a matter of interest , when did you stop being called Debra Colquhoun?’
    ‘The minute I slammed the door on him.’
    ‘But when did your divorce come through?’
    ‘Ten months. Are we done?’
    ‘If you remember anything, about Ross Denness, let me know.’ In the background, a child screams out and Staffe says, ‘We’re done. For now.’
    ‘How’s his mum taken it? Maureen?’ says Debra. There is another child’s scream in the background. ‘I have to go. Give her my love if you speak to her. And tell her Danielle and Kimberley say “hi”.’
    Staffe buzzes through to the incident room and tells Josie to get on to the airlines again and check the name Debra Colquhoun. Then he tells her to pay Karl’s mother a visit. ‘Don’t push her, just get her talking about Karl, and about the first wife too if you can. Softly, softly. And tell her that Danielle and Kimberley say “hi”. Tell her they send their love.’
    *******
     
    Josie knows that Maureen Colquhoun is sixty-one years old and has been widowed for three years. Her husband died of sclerosis of the liver, but they had been separated for some time. Karl Colquhoun was her only son.
    Maureen shows Josie into the front room. It’s a museum piece of how somebody on a budget might conjure a model of Edwardian comfort, with its fat, veneered furniture and a floral tapestry three-piece; a busy, patterned carpet of purples and greens, a whiff of Mr Sheen. She fusses over Josie, running off to make tea and coming back with biscuits on a doily’d plate, sitting on the edge of her chair, knees together and hands clasped.
    ‘It is about Karl, Mrs Colquhoun.’
    ‘Call me Maureen.’
    ‘I’m very sorry, about what happened to him.’ Mrs Colquhoun nods earnestly, hanging on to Josie’s every word. ‘We’re obviously trying our best to find out what happened. And one of the things is … well, I’d like to know what sort of a man he was, Maureen. What sort of a son he was.’ Josie takes out her digital recorder, says, ‘Do you mind if I tape us?’
    Maureen shakes her head, slowly. She looks nonplussed. ‘Does it matter what I say?’
    Josie leans forward, holds Maureen’s hands and says, ‘Go on, tell me anything you want. About Karl or Debra or Leanne. Anything, Maureen.’
    ‘They said he had been drinking. When the police came round they said that he had been killed and it was murder and when I asked who they thought it was, they didn’t want to say but they said my son was inebriated. Well, I know that couldn’t be. He’s never touched a drop, not a drop. He’s done wrong, I know he has, and there’s things I can’t turn a blind eye to no matter how I try, but I won’t believe he’d been drinking. I won’t.’
    Josie thinks it curious that a mother might become so agitated about a son who drinks when he is also a father who very probably abused his own children. ‘Do you miss the children, Maureen? Your grandchildren.’
    ‘How do you know I don’t see them?’
    ‘They’re in Tenerife.’ Maureen’s face goes tight and she purses her lips. A hard look comes easily to her eyes and she blinks something away. ‘He didn’t tell you, did he?’
    ‘She took them all the way over there? Mary, mother of God. All the way over there.’
    ‘They say “hello”, and send their love,’ says Josie, watching Staffe’s message exert its power on the smiling face of Maureen Colquhoun.
    ‘Poor Debra. God bless her. Oh, those children. Those beautiful children!’
    ‘You say Karl never drank.’
    ‘Never a drop and nor would you. Nor would you if you’d had his father.’ The smile has gone again now. ‘It got out of hand, so terribly out of hand.’ She lets go of Josie and puts her hands between her knees in a downturn