The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(37)

“Ooh, do you think we could stop for an ice-cream?”

MacKenzie laughed as they walked along the larger of the two beaches, known as ‘Longsands’.

“Sam, you’ve just eaten the most enormous plate of scampi ‘n’ chips I’ve ever seen. How can you be thinking about food?”

“I must be having a growth spurt,” she replied. “Besides, I burned off most of the energy when we were playing ‘tag’, earlier.”

MacKenzie pursed her lips, then sighed.

“Go on, then,” she said, fishing out a couple of coins. “But that’s the last one, mind.”

She stayed with Samantha while they went to the van and selected something called a ‘Towering Inferno’, never more conscious that she was responsible for the child’s welfare. It was an odd sensation, MacKenzie thought, to have somebody so reliant upon the decisions you made. She had a brother back in Ireland, who had children she saw irregularly and to whom she was ‘cool’ Auntie Denise, but that was the extent of her knowledge when it came to child-rearing.

Already, she was feeling a renewed respect for those who managed it every day, because there had been several occasions during the past few hours when she’d wondered if it was right to let Samantha go into the ladies’ toilet alone; whether she ought to buy the girl her first soft bra, although it was clear there was no need for one, just yet; and, how to avoid telling her what a ‘booty call’ meant, after she’d overheard a conversation between two teenagers in the changing rooms.

In short, the whole thing was fraught.

And yet, it was also simple.

Despite all the clothes and ice-creams, Samantha had been overjoyed and enraptured by the sand and the sea, and MacKenzie suspected she needed little else than a bit of time, care and affection.

“Mac?”

Samantha had heard the shortened version of her name bandied around Police Headquarters and seemed to like using it, and Denise had no objection.

“Mm-hmm?”

“What’s Ryan’s first name?”

MacKenzie’s eyebrows shot up.

“Oh, ah, it’s Maxwell. Max, for short.”

“Why doesn’t he use it?”

The kid had a talent for asking all the difficult questions, she thought, taking a slurp of her own melting ice-cream.

“You’d have to ask him,” MacKenzie began to say, then realised she’d never really asked the question, herself. “I think he prefers ‘Ryan’ because it represents who he’s worked hard to become. When people used to call him ‘Max’ or ‘Maxwell’, he wasn’t as happy as he is now, so it holds a negative association.”

To her surprise, the girl understood perfectly.

“That’s like when people call me ‘Sammy’,” she said. “It makes me think of my mum, but not in a good way. It makes me remember she’s gone.”

Without a word, MacKenzie ran a gentle hand over the girl’s hair, in sympathy.

“I’ll be careful not to use it,” she promised. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about your dad?”

She tried to sound nonchalant, but Samantha saw straight through the subterfuge.

“He’s one of your prime suspects, isn’t he?”

When no answer was forthcoming, she continued.

“He’s—he can be scary, sometimes,” she said, and MacKenzie’s heart thudded as she anticipated some terrible disclosure was about to be made.

“He never touches me, ever,” she continued, unconsciously allaying MacKenzie’s worst fears whilst simultaneously sparking fresh sympathy. “He never even gives me a hug or reads any stories.”

“Maybe he’s just a bit busy, running the circus,” she felt obliged to say, having acquitted him of the worst.

“He’s always been like that,” Samantha continued, smearing rainbow-coloured syrup from her ice-lolly halfway across her cheek. “It’s not just me that’s scared of him, either. It’s the whole circus, I think. One time, somebody told him to f—Um, they said a naughty word,” she corrected herself quickly. “The next day, he had this gigantic bruise across his face, and everybody said my dad had taught him some manners, but I think he punched him.”

“I see,” MacKenzie said, swallowing the last of her wafer with difficulty.

“A couple of times he’s given me a smack, but that’s when I was bad,” Samantha continued.

“What was so bad?” MacKenzie asked, in a very low voice.

What could be so bad as to justify striking a child?

“Well, I went into his cupboard without asking and then, another time, I took some money out of his wallet. I needed it, to buy some stuff,” she muttered.

She’d needed a haircut, and a new toothbrush.

MacKenzie dropped the last of her ice-cream into a passing bin, having lost her remaining appetite. Behind them, the waves lapped gently against the shoreline and sunlight rippled against the swell, glittering like diamonds. She watched it for a couple of seconds, pretending it was that which was making her eyes water, then turned back to the little girl at her side.

She leaned down on her bad leg, but hardly felt it.

“Listen to me, Samantha,” she said quietly, and the girl nodded, enjoying the lyrical sound of the Irish accent and the soft feel of MacKenzie’s hand as it took her own. “No matter what you did, no matter what you took, violence is not the answer. I want you to know—” Her voice shook, and she tried again. “I want you to know, there’s another way. There are people who don’t smack. They don’t hit or lash out when they can’t find the words to say what they want to say. Not everybody is angry, although, sometimes, anger can be healthy. There are ways to deal with it that don’t involve hurting other people.”