The Secrets

by Jane Adams

  There was a street full of them now. All waiting, all watching. All hating him and hated in their turn.

  He picked up the receiver and dialled in on the nines. ‘I’d like to report a disturbance,’ he said. ‘On Portland Close. My name? Oh yes, of course I’ll give my name.’

  * * *

  Johanna had grown more and more restless. It was almost an hour after they had arrived that she saw a battered old army jeep turn off the main road and rock and clatter its way up towards the house.

  Sam got out and eyed her warily.

  ‘Aunt Johanna,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come inside?’

  Johanna had no time for niceties. She dove straight into the questions she needed answering.

  ‘Those negatives, Sam. Did you put them inside the owl? Is it you responsible for planting such filth?’

  Sam’s bewilderment was obvious even to Johanna. ‘Owl?’ he said. ‘What owl, Johanna? I just brought you the stuff my dad wanted you to have.’

  Johanna glared at him. ‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Sam Pearson. You must have packed the stuff and it was you brought it over.’

  Sam was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Aunt Jo. My dad packed it up a week or so before he passed on. Knew he didn’t have much longer, he did. Wanted to settle things, like. He couldn’t make it from his bed by then but he had us bring a load of boxes to him and Elder Thomas packed what he told him in each one. Then the whole lot was put in store till Mr Tynan went with me to pick the stuff up and bring it over.’

  He advanced on her, his hands wide. Genuine bewilderment spread across his face.

  Johanna stared at him, belief in Sam’s innocence fighting with her reluctance even now to see Eric in anything but a good light.

  She turned abruptly on her heel and strode towards the door, thrusting it open.

  ‘I want to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve important things to do, so if you could please hurry.’

  Then she began to walk back towards the car, body tense and straight, fists clenched tightly, ready to take on anyone or anything that stood in her way.

  * * *

  The patrol car pulled to a stop in the middle of Portland Close and the two officers got out and looked around. One lifted his radio close to his mouth and spoke into it.

  ‘Four eight to control, receiving.’

  ‘Go ahead, four eight.’

  ‘We’ve arrived on Portland. There’s quite a crowd gathered, but they’re just standing around talking at the moment.’

  The controller sighed. ‘Well, it came in on the nines, four eight, and we’ve got a priority one running on Portland. Just see if you can have a word, will you, Alec? Find out what’s going on down there?’

  The constable grinned into his radio. ‘All nuts down here if you ask me, pet. Four eight out.’

  It didn’t take very much asking to find the cause of the problem. The residents of Portland were only too happy to oblige.

  ‘Just take a look at this thing,’ Dora cried, thrusting Eric’s letter towards them. ‘And you lot are going to let him get away with it.’

  ‘There’s not a great deal we can do, love,’ the constable told her. ‘We could maybe do him for illegal fly posting, or you could get together and get a civil case going against him for defamation. But then you’ve got to prove it.’ He shrugged sympathetically. ‘Best advice I can give you all is let it lie. A few days an’ it’ll all have blown over.’

  ‘A few days . . .’ Dora stormed. ‘You think we’re going to stand by and let this . . . this . . .’

  Dora was clearly lost for words. The PC stepped in swiftly. ‘We’ll have a word, love. See if we can sort it out, eh?’

  He smiled encouragingly at the now furious Dora. Both officers crossed the street to Eric Pearson’s house.

  ‘They don’t give a damn how we feel!’ Dora exploded. Her first anger had abated a little, given way to frustration. She was close to tears.

  ‘There, there, Dora love,’ Lizzie told her, putting an arm around the older woman’s shoulders.

  ‘Can’t rely on them lot,’ someone else said. ‘ “Take out a civil action,” ’ he mimicked. ‘ “Do him for fly posting.” ’

  ‘You come back inside and have a cuppa with me,’ Lizzie said, shaking Dora gently. ‘That’s it, you come with me.’

  Dora nodded. ‘All right, Lizzie dear, I will, thank you. But he’s not going to get away with it. Not this time.’

  ‘Damn right he’s not,’ someone muttered behind the two women as they walked away. There was a general murmur of agreement.

  No one seemed quite sure what action should be taken, but one thing they were all decided on. This time, Eric Pearson was going to have to go.

  Across the Close the two policemen were attempting to talk to Eric. He wouldn’t let them in, but leaned out of the living room window and shouted down.

  ‘Well? And what are you going to do about that lot?’

  The two officers exchanged an exasperated glance.

  ‘Well, sir, there’s not a lot we can do. There’s nothing to say that residents can’t gather in their own street, now, is there?’

  Eric gritted his teeth. ‘There’ll be trouble, officer. I’m warning you now. There’ll be trouble.’

  He slammed the window closed.

  Sighing irritably, Alec lifted the radio close to his mouth once more. ‘Four eight to control, receiving.’

  ‘Go ahead, four eight.’

  ‘No joy here, control. There’s a lot of noise from Pearson but that’s about it. No offences disclosed and not a hell of a lot of sense out of anyone either.’ He paused and glanced about him for the last time. ‘Resume now, can we, pet?’

  ‘Four eight from control. Yes, go ahead. I’ve something else for you over on Bringsmere Drive. A possible ten twenty-three. Neighbours report the occupants are away.’

  ‘Four eight to control. On way.’

  That was more like it. Possible robbery in progress. Anything was better than dealing with the public relations mess on Portland.

  Eric Pearson watched as they headed towards their car.

  ‘They’ll be back,’ he said to himself. ‘Oh yes, they’ll soon be back.’

  On the way back from Embury’s, Johanna had begun to talk. For the first ten minutes or so she had maintained the same stolid silence that had marked the outward journey. Then she had begun to speak.

  ‘I believed him,’ she said softly. ‘Believed him. Always. Saw only what I wanted to see. I loved him, you know. I suppose I must still love him or it wouldn’t matter to me as much as it does. It wouldn’t hurt to know how much he’s lied to me. How long he’s lied to me and how long I’ve listened. Believing what I wanted to believe.’

  ‘Lied about what, Johanna?’ Maria asked gently, half afraid to speak in case it broke the spell that Johanna had woven around herself. Equally afraid of the silence that might come without her prompting.

  Johanna seemed barely to have heard her. She continued as though there had been no interruption.

  ‘We were happy there, you know. Sheltered from the outside and from all the corruption. Then Eric went away to study. Be a teacher. Teach our own without worries about the law. I told them all along that no one cared really. That there were plenty of people teaching their own children without a qualification to their name. But, no. They would have it right. The Elders, with all their worry about the law. About doing the right thing. And Eric went. Out into the world with all its doubts and its corruption, and he enjoyed it. Liked being out there and so instead of teaching our own young ones, he got a job in a school. He said he thought by teaching away from our House he could make a difference. And I believed in him. Believed everything he told me.’

  ‘You loved him,’ Maria said gently, only half understanding where Johanna was heading. Wanting to help. ‘You loved him, Johanna. We try our hardest to believe in those we love.’

  ‘Then we’re fools,’ Johanna stated, angrily. Her voice f
lat and harsh with pain.

  They had turned down the main road towards Portland Close.

  ‘Drop me here,’ Johanna demanded. ‘I don’t want you coming down.’

  Obediently, John stopped the car opposite the shops. Johanna got out hurriedly.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ John asked her. Johanna nodded impatiently. ‘Of course, of course. Best you don’t come, though. I’ve things to do now and you’d only be in the way.’

  They watched her as she strode off, heading towards a little gravel path that led out of sight down the hill.

  ‘You think we should go after her?’ Maria asked. ‘John, I really don’t think . . .’

  ‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘We’ll go down by the road. It’s a bit of a maze around here.’ He grimaced, remembering the problems he’d had when he’d come out here with Sam. ‘Just hope I can remember the way.’

  * * *

  Eric had been patient. He’d waited and watched as the crowd in the street ebbed and flowed, sometimes dispersing altogether, only to return a little later; grown in strength.

  He could feel its anger. The slow change in mood as people discovered that the notice Dora had found taped to the lamp post was not the only one.

  It must seem to them, Eric thought, that the whole world knew by now how shabbily the residents of Portland Close had treated Eric Pearson and his family.

  Guilt would make them act. Guilt and anger would force them to turn on him again and he’d be ready this time. More than ready.

  He’d phoned the Chronicle after he’d rung the police, not expecting anyone to be there, but he’d left a message anyway on Andrews’ machine.

  Done the same on his home number.

  He had little faith in Andrews, but he was local and had, Eric knew, too many journalistic instincts to ignore a good story.

  A loud pounding on the door made Eric look down. A man he recognized vaguely as living at the other end of the Close was hammering on his door, a piece of paper clasped in his hand.

  ‘What do you want?’ Eric shouted down.

  ‘You. Down here. Now.’

  Eric glanced behind him and gave the signal to one of his boys to get the hose turned on. Moments later the man at the door was dancing back, enraged as water from the upstairs window poured down upon his head.

  Eric roared with laughter at the man, who was swearing and cursing and dodging back to escape the spray.

  He could see the mood in the street begin to change.

  The man, shaking water from his hair, picked up a stone from Ellie Masouk’s little garden and hurled it at the window.

  ‘Well done, boys!’ Eric shouted gleefully. ‘There’ll be more along in a minute. Just you wait.’

  He smiled in great satisfaction at the sound of his children’s laughter coming from the bathroom overhead.

  Eric turned from the window and reached for the telephone. Once again he called in on the nines, giving his name to the controller.

  ‘I should hurry this time,’ he told her, ‘before you have a riot on your hands.’

  As he put the telephone back on its rest he heard with satisfaction something hard and heavy thumping, picking up a steady rhythm, against his front door.

  Smiling now, Eric called up once again to his children to get to work with the hose. Then he dragged the crate of home-made firebombs out from behind the sofa, took one out, lit the cloth fuse and hurled the bottle out of the open window.

  It exploded on impact, right in front of the main body of the crowd. A sheet of flame spread out across the ground, quickly followed by screams of fear and rage.

  Eric Pearson was grinning broadly as he selected a second bottle from his little store, made sure the rag fuse was wedged in tight and lit the cotton wick.

  This time his aim was more precise, though it meant throwing sideways to get at those still pounding at his door; three men, swinging what looked like a broken fence post between them. Battering against the lock.

  The door gave way just as the bottle hit the ground.

  Eric heard someone scream. Saw a man jumping back, the leg of his trousers in flames.

  ‘Put him out, boys!’ Eric yelled, noting with satisfaction the accuracy with which the children aimed the hose at the burning man, and those who tried to beat out the flames with their bare hands, rolling him on the floor in an effort to stop the burning.

  Eric was enjoying himself now. Gone beyond thought. He had forgotten, almost, what this was all about. His mind pushed too far, he knew only that he had to win.

  Carefully taking another petrol bomb, he lit the fuse. He launched it from the window, just as the first of the police cars, sirens blaring, careered into the Close.

  * * *

  By the time Johanna entered the Close the crowd was silent and the police had restored some semblance of order. Johanna gave them barely a glance.

  Dimly, she recognized John Tynan’s car. And a second, pulling up just behind it. That journalist, of course, here after a story.

  Well, he would have one now. Johanna would make sure of that.

  There was a policeman standing by the front door.

  ‘I live here,’ Johanna told him, her voice icily calm. ‘And I want to go to my children.’

  He let her through. The children were crowded in the kitchen doorway, calling to her. Johanna gathered them to her, crooning softly to them, telling them that it would be all right, to just sit down and keep calm.

  She got them around the kitchen table. Told the eldest to make tea. Fished a couple of packs of biscuits out of the tin. Allowed them chocolate ones as a special treat. Easing them back into some state of normality.

  All the time, above them, she could hear Eric shouting.

  Glancing out through the window she could see the crowd standing silently in the street. That woman John had with him, kneeling in the mud beside the hurt man as though she knew what she was doing.

  Johanna could see, through the kitchen door, that the policeman at the front was much more interested in looking at the beautiful black woman than he was in watching her.

  Taking a last look to make sure the children were settled, and slipping something into the pocket of her coat, Johanna seized the moment.

  She was up the stairs in seconds. The policeman in the doorway had not even noticed her as she’d passed

  Inside the room Eric was standing by the window. His hands were cuffed together and two police officers stood close beside him. One she recognized as the sergeant who’d come here before.

  They were clearly getting ready to leave. One officer bent, as Johanna watched, to pick up the milk crate packed with half-filled bottles. Eric’s baseball bat was tucked beneath the officer’s arm and that long knife Eric had been so insistent on keeping handy was balanced across the top of the crate.

  Drawers and cupboards hung wide open. Evidently they must have delayed leaving until Eric told them of any other weapons he had hidden. Well, Johanna thought, now is the only time I’m going to get.

  ‘Eric,’ she said, stepping forward, her face expressing deepest concern.

  Eric was smiling at her. ‘They’ll take notice now, Johanna. I’ll get my day in court now.’

  ‘You’ll get a bloody sight more than that,’ Price told him in an undertone. ‘If you’ll just stand aside, Mrs Pearson.’

  Obediently, Johanna stepped away from the head of the stairs. The officer carrying the crate went first, then Price, guiding Eric by the arm.

  Johanna chose her moment well. The hand holding the mille fleur paperweight crashed down on Eric Pearson’s head. The first blow brought him to his knees. The second Price almost intercepted. Almost but not quite. Desperation gave Johanna speed and strength she had not thought she could possess. Eric Pearson lay, face down, sprawling across the top steps, a gaping hole in the back of his skull.

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’ Price had Joanna’s arm pinned behind her back and was cuffing her hands together.

  ‘He lied
to me,’ Johanna said simply. ‘About those photographs, about those little boys.’ She twisted her head around to look at Price.

  ‘I couldn’t let him get away with it, you see.’

  Price stared at her. ‘Then why not let the courts decide?’

  Johanna Pearson shook her head. ‘Oh no,’ she said, her voice gentle with regret. ‘I couldn’t do that. They’d have locked him away, you see, and Eric would not have been able to cope with that.’ She looked down at the body of her dead husband. The stairs were crowded now. Other officers and paramedics were arriving on the scene. ‘It’s better this way,’ she told Price. ‘Better for everyone.’

  * * *

  Outside, John and Maria stood with Andrews. The journalist had arrived, not at Eric’s summons but at Dora’s, drawn by the evident distress of the woman and her equally evident sense of hopelessness that the problem could be solved.

  This wasn’t the story he had come to write.

  Johanna Pearson saw them as Price brought her from the house.

  The children stared out from the window, bewildered faces pressed against the plastic.

  ‘You there,’ Johanna called to John. Price paused and John came over to them.

  ‘You’ll call Sam,’ she said. ‘Get him to tell Elder Thomas. The children must go back to the House.’ She nodded as though to confirm what she had just said. ‘You’ll see to it.’ Price raised an eyebrow at John, then led Johanna away to the waiting car.

  ‘You think social services will let them?’ Maria asked.

  ‘I don’t know, my dear. You know how the system works better than I do. But I can’t think of anyone else willingly wanting six very disturbed children. Can you?’

  Maria sighed, her gaze held by six pairs of eyes, watching intently as their world fell apart around them.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sunday evening

  ‘Eric’s dead,’ Maria said quietly, seating herself on the edge of Mike’s bed. It was almost nine o’clock. Mike had spent a day of intense frustration imagining what might be happening and willing Maria, John, Price or anyone to come and put him out of his misery.

  He’d tried to reach Charles by phone, only to be told that he was conducting an interview. Now, as though such largesse was a reward, he had Maria and Price here at his bedside.