by Graham West
Jenny shrugged. “None of this makes any sense at all. No one in this family has any enemies—not that I’m aware of. I just don’t know who would want to do this.”
Jake frowned. “We went down to Tabwell and sat waiting all night. We wanted to see if the person who was pouring blood on the grave would come back.”
Officer Dillon grinned. “Yep, one of our colleagues mentioned it. It’s how we knew that your car didn’t have tinted windows.”
Jenny smiled awkwardly. “It was a waste of time. No one showed.”
Ashford scribbled down a few notes before he and his colleague stood. “That’s all, for now, I think. If there’s anything else you feel might help, please let us know. This isn’t just about the graves anymore. This is a murder investigation.”
***
“We all make mistakes, Dennis,” Penny said, sipping from a glass of wine. “But that girl has certainly paid for hers!” She dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “I know all this must be a terrible shock—and yes, it hurts—all this hurts like hell, and I hate what you’ve done.” Her tears welled up again. “But I don’t hate you, Dennis. I can’t hate you, and believe me, I’ve tried.”
His head was still spinning. Every time the image came to mind of the blood and brain matter, he felt as if he was going to bring back what little food he’d managed to eat. “I can’t ask you to give me another chance. Not after this.”
Penny seemed to ignore his comment. “Is it okay if I go and freshen up?”
Blakely nodded. “Yep, I’ll follow you up. We can talk in private.”
Penny smiled and stood. “See you soon. When you’ve finished your drink.”
There was a sombre mood throughout the hotel. News spread fast, and some of the staff were struggling to keep up their customary smiles. Blakely felt uncomfortable and made for the room, leaving the glass half full. He flashed the key card across the pad and opened the door. Penny was sitting on the bed watching the TV. Blakely could tell she’d been crying. “We need to talk, Dennis. We need to find a way through this because I can’t get her out of my head. She might be dead—” she tapped her temple “—but in here, she couldn’t be any more alive.”
***
Sometimes it felt good just to hold Josie in his arms. Rob kissed her forehead. “I don’t deserve you,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
“I’m impressed. I offer you sex and you settle for a cuddle—that’s kind of sweet, in a strange kind of way.”
Rob smiled. Josie was keeping him away from the bottle, and he loved her for it. He trusted her too, and that was important. Elizabeth’s affair with Benjamin Pascoe had played on his mind. She had never been that kind of woman, but he had driven her into the arms of another man—another man who had given her a child. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. Jo was loyal and had been through enough. Finding out that her husband was gay must have hit her hard, yet they had remained friends. She didn’t talk about it much, but Rob wondered if there hadn’t been occasions when she was tempted to part the lovely Lou with his balls.
But the whole thing with Darren was still pissing him off. Every time he thought about that kid he relived the death of his wife and baby girl. Josie was doing her best to keep a lid on his anger, and Rob could imagine the damage he might have caused if she hadn’t been around. Jenny was stubborn. Shouting and screaming at her never worked, and they probably wouldn’t be talking by now. Without Jo, the whole Darren thing would have escalated out of control.
He kissed Jo’s forehead again, running his fingers down the nape of her neck. “I love you, Josie Duxbury,” he said softly.
She patted his knee, nestling her head against his chest. “I love you too,” she replied, “And so does Jenny.”
Rob smiled. “Yep, okay. I get the message. I won’t say anything.”
“Not a word? Promise?”
“I promise. I’m sure Darren will make a wonderful stepson!”
“Now you’re just being sarcastic.”
“Me? Never!”
Josie slapped his hand playfully. Rob wanted to laugh but the thought of that kid walking into their lives made his skin crawl. Maybe he was just going to have to bite his tongue, because if Jenny decided to forgive the murdering bastard then he’d have to do the same.
***
Dennis Blakely ran his fingers across his wife’s lips. He had escaped the pain and the horror of the past twenty-four hours in her arms. “Is this really you?” he said softly.
Penny frowned. “Is what really me?”
Blakely kissed her cheek. “It feels kind of weird. Just holding you like this.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Well, it’s good, but like I said, it’s weird. Holding you, after all the things I’ve done.” She had managed to make him forget about Kim for more than a few seconds, and under the circumstances, that was pretty amazing.
Penny gazed up at the ceiling. “My mother was a prude,” she said, “and I mean prude with a capital P. Sex was something you just had to do if you wanted kids—it was something men enjoyed and women suffered with a smile. To be honest, I don’t think my dad ever saw her naked. That kind of thing rubs off on you. You can’t shake off the feeling that sex is kind of dirty.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Blakely said. “You were just a bit…”
“Reserved?”
Blakely nodded.
“Kids like Kim, they don’t have those reservations. I couldn’t even talk about my genitalia until I was in my twenties. I always referred to my vagina as lady bits!”
Blakely laughed, but it sounded more like a schoolboy’s snigger. He leaned over, kissing her lips. It wasn’t sex. His wife had not removed a single item of clothing. But he felt safe and it had been good while it lasted. She had helped him forget, just for a moment, that Kim was still lying in a mortuary with a hole in her head. But that was just flesh and bone. Maybe her spirit was floating above them, watching and waiting.
Chapter Forty
Darren Pascoe sat at the corner table of the coffee house, staring at his phone. He hadn’t slept, in his head running through the things he might say to Jenny. He’d given up after three hours and watched a couple of movies on his tablet. Now the tiredness was kicking in, and he needed a coffee. His uncle had told him to play it cool. That was fine. Playing it cool wasn’t a problem, but finding the right words was. Right at that moment, finding any words at all would be an achievement. What if she had been waiting for this moment? Waiting for the time she could sit opposite him, spit in his face and vent all that pent-up rage?
It might have been the tension that had been building slowly throughout the morning that made Darren uneasy, but he felt as if he were being watched. Several cars moved slowly past the café window. They would loop the one-way system and pass again. Surely they weren’t looking at him—that was verging on paranoia. They were just shoppers looking to park up, that was all.
He checked the time on his phone. Still no messages. No last minute cancellations. That had to be good. Maybe it would be a good time to order a coffee so he’d have something to do with his hands. Or maybe he should just cut and run. Breathe. Deep breaths. His heart raced again. Then he heard the shop door chime. Another customer. He looked up and felt his stomach ride up to his chest. He recognised that face, the hair, the eyes. It was Jenny.
***
Dennis Blakely showered, choking back the tears, the tears he had cried as he had lain beside her, wondering why they had allowed their love to grow so stale. She had re-ignited something within him and watched it explode into life. She was giving him a second chance, and he would have happily stayed at her side for the remainder of the day, but a call from Larry Thomas came out of the blue.
“Your father’s here,” he said curtly. “And he wants to know where you are.”
“Holy shit! How did he get back from Portugal that quick?” Blakely swung his legs out of the bed.
“You want me to come with you?” Penny a
sked, grabbing her coat. Blakely had told her it would be best if she stayed put. He had to face this on his own. His father could take him down without an audience.
It felt like no more than a few minutes before he rolled up at Mosswood. The cops were still there, and his father was standing with his legs apart, looking like a cross between John Wayne and the Village People in a hard hat and hi-viz jacket. “Where have you been?” he bellowed, “You’re supposed to be here, not in bed with your wife!”
Blakely shot Thomas a look. His foreman shrugged.
“Thanks, mate. It wasn’t like that but keep your mouth shut in future!”
Blakely wished he could stitch that guy’s mouth up sometimes. He’d simply told him that Penny was over and he’d be a bit late. Thomas had obviously decided they were having sex. It made juicier gossip but wouldn’t impress Blakely’s father.
“Don’t be screwing on my time, son, I’m telling you. We have a bloody crisis here, and you’re getting your end away while we have cops crawling all over the site.”
“Wait till he finds out about Kim,” Thomas muttered.
“Jesus! Will you just shut up!”
Blakely senior had fired his opening salvos by the time his son reached him. But he was far from finished. “Why didn’t you tell me about the grave?”
“I didn’t want to bother you. We were dealing with it.”
“Dealing with it? You haven’t even got security cameras! How the fuck did that happen?”
“We’re getting them put in. We have a night watchman.”
“They should have been up the moment you signed the contract! What the hell were you thinking?”
Blakely stared down at his polished shoes. He didn’t have an answer. The camera at the gates wasn’t enough.
“I knew that bloody grave was a bad idea. It’s morbid and I want it gone. This is an adventure park, not a cemetery!”
Blakely stared at his father. If he thought things couldn’t get any worse, he was wrong. “You can’t,” he said, his voice rising. “This was her home.”
“So what? Not everyone gets buried in their back garden. She can be moved to a proper graveyard. There has to be one somewhere around here.”
“No!” Blakely roared before he had time to consider the wisdom of picking a fight when he had screwed up so badly, “The grave stays!”
His father was not used to being challenged. His face set like stone. “No? You’re telling me what I can and can’t have on my park?”
“I can tell you the whole story, Dad, but you wouldn’t be interested, would you? No, because all you’re bothered about is money. That girl lived in that house, in that shitty little attic, locked away from the world—an embarrassment to the very people who were supposed to love her. That’s until the local minister decided that she was put on this Earth to give him a child. So he raped her repeatedly until she got pregnant and then tore that baby from her arms the moment it was born!”
Blakely choked on the words. “She took her own life in that lake, Dad—in the lake we have turned into some kind of fucking beauty spot. She deserves to be here—she belongs here—and if you take her, then I’m gone. I’ll go and work for someone with a heart—someone with a conscience!”
His father stared at him. “I do have a conscience,” he said defensively. “But whoever is vandalising that grave isn’t just some bored kid. It’s someone who doesn’t want this park to go ahead, and the police think he’s responsible for killing that girl. This is more than some student protest. This is heavy shit, Dennis, and I’m asking myself what she was doing here anyway. I mean, why was she nosing around?”
“Dunno,” Blakely replied, avoiding his father’s eyes. “I guess she just wanted to take a look.”
He could tell his father was suspicious. “She worked at the hotel, right?”
“Yeah, she was a waitress.”
“You knew her well?”
Dennis knew where this was going. “Quite well.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Dennis. Please tell me you weren’t!”
Blakely looked away. He might as well have just confessed.
“Do you know something, it doesn’t matter what you give a man—he can have power, money, a beautiful wife, fantastic kids, but he’ll give it all up for a pretty girl.” Blakely senior sighed and shook his head. “Honestly, sometimes I wish I had a vagina. I could rule the world!”
***
Jenny needed to take her mind off the news. If she’d harboured a hope that the graves had been vandalised by a couple of kids, the police had killed that particular notion stone dead. Now, she found herself staring at the young man sitting in the corner and her heart had missed a few beats. It had to be Darren, although she barely recognised him as the kid who had stood in the courtroom. He was well dressed, a few pounds lighter, and—she hated the fact that she’d even noticed—quite good-looking.
He looked nervous. He’d seen her walk through the door, that was obvious. She approached the table wondering if he’d look up from his phone before she got there. He didn’t.
“Darren?” she said with a half-smile.
The young man looked and nodded. “Jenny?”
“Yeah, you guessed right,” she replied, trying to sound breezy but failing miserably.
“Err…you want a drink or something?” Darren’s voice was almost a vibrato.
Jenny nodded and sat down. “Just a flat white, please.”
Darren stood, pushing back his chair. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Jenny smiled. “No problem.”
She wondered if this was a good idea. Maybe it might have been better to use Snapchat or Facebook.
Darren arrived back a minute later with the coffees, his hands trembling. “I’m sorry,” he began, “I’m really nervous—I just don’t know what to say…”
Jenny watched as the boy who killed her mother and baby sister placed the cups on the table. She should have been angry. She should have been fighting the desire to throw the scalding liquid in his face. Why couldn’t she hate Darren Pascoe?
“You don’t need to say anything,” she heard herself telling him. “You said it all in the letter.”
Darren stared at her, disbelief in his eyes. “You’ve—you’ve forgiven me? But how?”
“You didn’t expect me to?”
Darren shook his head
“Then why write the letter?” Jenny asked.
Darren shrugged. “I just needed to do something. I just needed to tell you how sorry I was. I needed to put it down on paper. I thought you’d just rip it up.”
“I nearly did,” Jenny said. “I hated you. Or at least I thought I did.”
“And you don’t?”
Jenny shook her head. “I can’t feel anything. I don’t like you, because I don’t know you. But I don’t hate you, either. I can’t.”
Darren’s eyes filled. “I thought you might kick off on me. I wondered if you just wanted revenge.”
Jenny managed a smile. “You got a stab-proof vest on, then?”
They both laughed. The ice was broken.
“Maybe you should tell me about yourself,” Jenny continued. “I don’t even know where you live!”
Darren smiled and took a sip of coffee. “Well, I’m living with my uncle. I’d invite you over for something to eat, but you don’t look like a greasy-spoon kind of girl.”
Jenny found herself laughing again. It felt strange. She was passing the time with the boy who had torn her life apart, but there was something stirring in her heart. Part of her wanted to leave, but she couldn’t. Darren was looking at her, and there was something in those eyes. Fear maybe. Confusion, yes, but she saw another more powerful emotion. An affection that was almost tangible. Blood, they said, was thicker than water, and if Jenny needed the proof, it was there in his face.
She found herself wanting to cry. Maybe it would be best just to make small talk. The past was laden with grief and regrets but Darren looked as if he had been carrying the guilt for
too long.
“I still hate myself,” he whispered, almost as if everyone in the room was straining to hear what the young couple in the corner were talking about. “I wish I could go back in time—change everything—like Superman did in that film when he whizzes around the Earth and—”
“I know,” Jenny shot back, biting her lip.
Darren looked like a reprimanded schoolboy. “I’ve just messed up so many lives…”
“Including your own,” she quipped with a weak smile.
Darren nodded. “I’m not expecting to see you again. I just needed to speak to you, you know, face-to-face. It felt like the right thing to do.”
Darren wasn’t an adult—not yet—but he was growing into one. He had shown some guts. “It was the right thing to do,” she said, feeling a familiar sensation in her throat. It was like a golf ball had lodged just below her tonsils and when the tears welled up, Darren blushed.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to—”
Jenny grabbed a paper napkin. “It’s okay. It’s just difficult.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“No. I just need a minute.”
Darren looked awkwardly at his hands, and Jenny wondered how someone so young had managed to cope with losing both his parents. She took a deep breath. “I would love to hate you,” she said, “but the day you stole that car, you couldn’t possibly have known…” Her voice broke. “You couldn’t have known the misery you would cause—not just for my family but your own too.”
Darren Pascoe buried his head in his hands and began to sob. Jenny wanted to reach over and hold him.
“It’s hard for me to say this, but you’re not a killer. It was an accident. People do stupid things when they’re screwed up.”
Darren looked up, tears streaming down his face. “But four people are dead,” he blurted. “Because of me! They’re dead because of me! How can I live with that?”
“You stole a car. You didn’t drive down that road wanting to kill. You didn’t tie a rope around your mother’s neck. You didn’t force those pills down your father’s throat!” Jenny squirmed in her chair. She hadn’t meant to remind him how his parents had chosen to end their lives. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
