The Case of the Campus Cat by Judith Woolf

Author:Judith Woolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cranthorpe Millner Publishers
Published: 2024-05-14T11:11:47+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mary Blossom had had a long day. Catching the train to Glasgow had meant early rising, a snatched breakfast and a lengthy wait in Birmingham station. By the time she reported back at the end of the afternoon she felt weary and crumpled and in need of refreshment, but that was not what struck Inspector Burdock when she walked into his office.

‘You look like the cat that got the canary, Sergeant. I take it you’ve found something?’

‘Well it could be just another false lead, sir, but yes, I think we might be in business.’

Melanie Wilson’s social worker had turned out to be friendly and forthcoming, a brisk, sensible woman about Mary Blossom’s age and very much her sort of person. Melanie had been one of her first clients and she still felt concerned about her. She had needed little prompting to tell what she knew. Melanie’s mother had remarried when her daughter was less than a year old, a smooth-talking, superficially charming chancer called Eddie McBride who had proved to be both a petty criminal and a drunk. It was only when Melanie had fainted in the school gym, aged thirteen, and had been found to be four months pregnant that anyone outside the family circle realised that he was also a child abuser. He had started interfering with Melanie when she was three and had been raping her nightly since she was ten, almost certainly with her mother’s tacit consent.

‘McBride was a sadist on the quiet, used to beat his wife up but not so it showed. I think she let him have Melanie for the sake of peace and quiet. There was a wee brother, too, who may also have been molested, but he was much too young to testify. He wasn’t McBride’s child – the mother used to walk out from time to time and find a fancy man, but McBride always sweet-talked her back. It was after they got back together again the first time that he started abusing Melanie. The mother was so downtrodden by the time the case came to court that she would have walked off a cliff if McBride had told her to. He got seven years in the end, which is mild compared to what I’d have given him.’

After the abortion, Melanie had been fostered by Lawrence Craik’s mother who had found herself unable to cope with the girl’s anorexia and worsening depression. A lengthy period as an in-patient had been followed by several further foster homes.

‘But she was always bright, good at her books. Too good if anything, if you get my meaning. She’d spend hours doing her homework, wanting to have everything perfect. It was like the eating problem, really, a need to be in control. And she was determined to win a place at college and get out of Glasgow. I think she was always afraid that McBride might come back.’

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