‘Let’s start again,’ he suggested, ‘only this time, let’s cut out all the small talk and go right to the heart of the matter. A few months ago, you bought a set of dodgy licence plates from my old mate Frank Brough, and you put them on a 250cc Honda that you’d stolen from God knows where. Now here’s my question for you, Jed. Who did you sell that bike to?’
‘Barry Hodges,’ Slater said – and tiny bubbles of blood formed around his mouth as he spoke.
‘I really do hope you have an address for this Barry Hodges of yours?’ Higgins said.
‘No!’
‘That’s the wrong answer, son. I may just have to knock you about a bit more.’
‘But I do know where he works,’ Slater said hastily.
‘And where might that be?’
‘At the Big-Buy supermarket on Preston New Road. He’s got a job in their warehouse.’
Higgins reached down, grabbed Slater by the lapels of his jacket, and hauled him to his feet.
‘Think you can stand without support?’ he asked, and when Slater nodded, he released his hold on one of the lapels, and used the hand thus freed to brush down the other man’s front.
‘You’re a real mess, Jed,’ he said as he worked. ‘If I was you, I’d go to the toilet and freshen up a bit before I went back into the pub.’ He continued brushing. ‘I’m going to let you get away with nicking that motorbike, even if you did confess. Say thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ Slater mumbled.
‘But if I hear even a whisper that you’ve been saying I employed undue force, I’ll be coming for you. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ Slater said.
Higgins let go of the other man completely, reached into his pocket, and came out with a five-pound note.
‘There you are,’ he said, sliding it into Slater’s top pocket. ‘Why don’t you have a drink on me?’
As the bus was pulling up at the stop which was directly opposite the crematorium, Louisa noticed that there were perhaps a dozen men, most of them holding cameras, standing at the entrance to the building.
She pointed them out to John Green.
‘The second we get off the bus, they’ll descend on us like a pack of hounds,’ she said.
‘What if we ask them to go away?’ John Green asked.
‘They won’t.’
‘Not even if I appeal to their sense of decency?’
‘They’re not paid to have a sense of decency – they’re paid to bring home the story.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘There’s only one thing you can do – and that’s ignore them. Look straight ahead, as if they weren’t even there, and – most importantly – keep moving whatever they say to you.’
‘Crematorium!’ the bus driver called out. ‘This is the crematorium.’
‘You’re so much wiser than I am – so much better at dealing with the world,’ John said, as he stood up.
‘That’s only because I’m used to seeing my mum do this sort of thing,’ Louisa said, taking his hand and giving it a comforting squeeze.
She’d not thought of her mum for at least half an hour, but now she did, it was hard not to start crying.
As Louisa had predicted, the reporters ran towards them, firing questions as they did so.
‘How do you feel, John?’
‘Do you think the police are doing enough, John?’
‘Is there anything you’d like to say to the great British public?’
Louisa took John’s hand.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
The reporters knew better than to try and block their way, and instead they formed an unwelcome escort, some of them flanking Louisa, the rest flanking John.
And, all the time, the questions kept raining down.
‘Are you his girlfriend?’
‘What’s your name, love?’
‘Did you know Mary?’
And then they were safe inside the crematorium, and the reporters were still outside, acting very much like the baying pack of hounds that Louisa had compared them to earlier.
A middle-aged porter in a grey suit was waiting for them as they entered the building.
‘Are you family or friends of the late Mary Green?’ he asked, in a sympathetic voice.
‘Yes,’ Louisa said, since John seemed incapable of words.
‘Then follow me, please.’
The porter led them into a room which could have been called a chapel if you wanted to call it a chapel, but might have just passed as a very formal waiting room if you had no religious inclinations. There was seating for perhaps a hundred people, but none of the seats were taken.
‘Time wise, it’s getting rather close to the ceremony. Will there be anyone else coming?’ the porter asked.
John shook his head.
‘What, no one at all?’ the porter asked, amazed.
‘You heard him,’ Louisa snapped angrily. ‘There won’t be anyone else coming.’
But she was soon proved wrong. A tall square man – looking very uncomfortable in a formal black suit – entered almost as soon as she’d spoken, and nodded to them.
‘Do you know who he is?’ John asked Louisa, and though there were no notices on the wall which said you had to speak in a whisper, speak in a whisper was what he did. ‘The way he glanced across here, just now, it certainly seems as if he knows you.’
‘He’s my Uncle Colin,’ Louisa admitted.
‘And what’s he doing here?’
‘He’s a detective inspector.’
‘I still don’t see why he should be here.’
‘The police always attend the funerals of murder victims. There will be more plain clothes officers outside.’
‘But why?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Louisa said.
‘Yes, I do,’ John Green insisted.
‘The murderer will often turn up at the funeral,’ Louisa said, speaking quickly, as if she couldn’t wait to be free of the words.
‘No!’ John gasped. ‘That simply can’t be true!’
‘It is.’
‘But that’s disgusting – that’s … obscene.’
‘Murder’s never a pleasant business,’ Louisa said.
It was something she had heard her mother say many times, and she was merely (if unconsciously) imitating her, but the moment she’d spoken, she realized that these were not the words you should ever say to the brother of a victim, and she looked down at the floor, wishing it would open up and swallow her.
ELEVEN
Mrs Brown was no longer on the intensive care ward, though she was still attached to a number of tubes and drips. She looked exhausted, Meadows thought, but then anyone who’d been hauled back from the very threshold of death was bound to be showing the effects.
‘I know you,’ the old woman said. ‘You’re that policewoman who came to see me in Sebastopol Street.’
‘That’s right, I am,’ Meadows agreed.
‘I won’t answer any questions,’ Mrs Brown said, ‘so if that’s what you’re here for, you can leave right now.’
‘I won’t ask you any questions,’ Meadows said, pulling up a chair. ‘I just thought you might appreciate the company.’
‘I’m not sorry I’m alive, you know,’ the old woman told her. ‘I know I should be, but I’m not.’
‘You very nearly weren’t,’ Meadows said.
‘I waited too long before taking the poison,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘It wasn’t that I was frightened of the act of dying – I just thought that God would never forgive me for taking my own life.’
‘But eventually, you managed to persuade yourself that He would,’ Meadows said softly.
‘No, I realized that whatever God felt about it, my first duty was to the others,’ Mrs Brown told her. She looked out of the window, and then back at Meadows. ‘You want me to tell you who the others are, don’t you?’ she added, in an accusatory tone. ‘That’s why you’re here.’
‘I’m here to keep you company
,’ Meadows said. ‘I’m here to listen to whatever you want to tell me, and no more.’
Mrs Brown fell silent, and Meadows wondered if she’d blown it, then the old woman said, ‘Are you married?’
‘No,’ Meadows said.
Not any more, she thought to herself.
‘Have you ever been married?’ Mrs Brown asked.
‘No,’ Meadows said – because when you were conducting conversations which were really interrogations, it was best not to complicate matters with an inconvenient truth.
‘Have you ever been in love, then?’ Mrs Brown asked.
‘No,’ Meadows replied – and on this question, at least, she was being entirely truthful.
‘I was in love once,’ Mrs Brown said wistfully. ‘None of us were supposed to be – we were supposed to put duty first, second and third, but I simply couldn’t help myself.’
‘What happened to him?’ Meadows asked.
‘The whole thing was doomed from the start. He was an outsider, you see, and we can never marry outsiders.’
‘So you married Mr Brown instead?’
‘Yes. Arthur was a good husband to me – I couldn’t fault him in any way – but there was never any spark between us, and on the day that he died, all I could feel was relief that I wouldn’t have to put up with him any longer.’
‘Well, at least you’d experienced real love, if only for a short time,’ Meadows said.
‘Yes, but in some ways, that only made it worse, you see,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘None of the others had ever been in love, so they didn’t know what they were missing. But I did.’ She sighed. ‘We’re brought up to love God and to serve Him dutifully, but there have been times, over the last few years, when I’ve found myself wondering if He really loves us in return.’
‘What makes you wonder that?’ Meadows asked.
‘Well, if He truly cared for us, wouldn’t He want us to have at least a little joy in our lives? And I began to wonder if we’ve always been right about everything, as we’re always told we’ve been by the Trus …’
‘By the Trus …?’ Meadows repeated.
‘Of course, if we have been right, then what we’ve done has been a truly glorious thing and worth all the sacrifices,’ Mrs Brown said, avoiding the implied question. ‘But what if we’ve not been right about it? What if we’ve got the whole thing horribly wrong? Then everything has been such a waste … such a terrible, terrible waste.’
‘Mary often left you alone on Sunday afternoons, didn’t she?’ Meadows asked.
‘Yes, she went off with her boyfriend. He picked her up on his motorcycle – and when she came back from seeing him, she was so happy.’
‘But he’s an outsider?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you think would happen in the end?’
‘I thought she might leave. I thought she might be brave enough to do something that I was too frightened to do.’
It was time for the big one, Meadows thought.
‘Who do you think killed her?’ she asked.
‘It could have been the boyfriend,’ Mrs Brown said.
‘Why would he have done it?’
Mrs Brown’s eyes became both dreamy and tearful.
‘When I told my one true love that I couldn’t see him anymore, he started to cry,’ Mrs Brown said, ‘but there was a moment, before the tears came, when I’m sure he wanted to kill me. And perhaps that’s what happened with Mary.’
‘But you think there might be another possibility, don’t you?’ Meadows sensed.
‘It is not our place to question the way that things are,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘It is not our place to do anything. We are sources of the light, and that should be enough for us.’
‘What do you mean – sources of the light?’ Meadows asked.
‘I can’t tell you that. And even if I could, you either wouldn’t believe or wouldn’t understand.’
‘I’m sorry, I interrupted you,’ Meadows said.
‘It is because we each only play our own little part that we know nothing of the grand design,’ the old woman said. ‘But there are those who know – those who have been given the power to protect us when we come under attack.’
‘You think your own people may have killed her,’ Meadows said, though she had no idea who Mrs Brown’s ‘people’ might be.
‘Perhaps it’s all part of the great plan,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘My life was to be sacrificed for the greater good, wasn’t it – that’s why he brought me the poison. And maybe he decided that Mary had to be sacrificed, too.’
Another official, looking grave and dignified, approached Louisa and John Green in a sedate – almost stately – manner.
‘Are you ready to start?’ he asked, and when neither of them answered, the professional veneer of solemnity cracked a little, and he added, in a much crisper, more businesslike tone, ‘We can give you another five minutes, if you really need it, but this is a busy day for us, and any longer than that …’
‘We’re ready to start,’ Louisa said.
Two more solemn-looking men entered, guiding a trolley with the coffin on it. With practiced ease, they slid the coffin onto what looked like an altar, but was in fact a conveyor belt.
The men with the trolley withdrew, and the grave and dignified official said, ‘I understand there is to be no formal ceremony, but would either of you like to say a few words?’
Louisa experienced a wave of panic.
If John asked her to say a few words, what on earth could she say? she wondered.
Yes, they had been fellow members of the Upper Sixth, and had probably seen each other every day, but unlike her brother, Mary had never come into the sixth form common room during her free periods. She had been Mary the Quiet – Mary the Mouse – a grey presence which drifted through life without seeming to touch or affect anyone else.
But how could she say that, when the dead girl was lying only feet away from her? How could she send Mary off on the journey from which no one returned with such bland nothingness?
‘My sister was a quiet girl who most people never really got to understand,’ John said, speaking as though he was addressing a full chapel rather than just a policeman and a girl from school who was, in truth, little more than an acquaintance. ‘She was never going to change the world,’ he continued, ‘but I loved her. I don’t think she ever knew how much I loved her – in fact, I know she didn’t – and now she never will.’
It was obvious that he had finished – was incapable of saying any more. The official made a slight gesture which some hidden observer saw, and the conveyor belt began to roll.
‘I need … I need to sit down for a minute,’ John said.
‘Of course you do,’ Louisa agreed, ushering him to one of the pews.
She looked across the room at Beresford, and made a sweeping gesture with her hands. He nodded, to show that he had understood, and left the room.
‘I’m ready to leave now,’ John said, standing up.
‘All right,’ Louisa agreed. ‘But I think we should wait in the foyer for a few minutes more before we go.’
It was good to be at work, Barry Hodges thought. Carrying out operations he’d carried out hundreds of times before – and joking with the lads between times – it was almost possible to believe that life had settled back into its normal pattern. Of course, he’d seen his bike – and himself – on the lunchtime news, yet somehow that seemed to have no relevance at all to him as he was now.
Even if he was arrested, he told himself, as he steered his forklift truck along the narrow canyon which ran between the mountains of stacked boxes containing baked beans and tinned peas, it wasn’t the end of the world. He’d been arrested often enough in the past to appreciate that there was a big difference between what the police knew, and what the police could prove – and the trick was to ignore their assurances that they had enough to put him away, and just keep denying everything.
As he turned out of the canyon, he saw his supervisor signallin
g him to stop the truck.
‘The big boss wants to see you in his office,’ the supervisor said.
‘Any idea what it’s about?’ Hodges asked.
‘Yes, apparently one of the other workers has made a complaint about you,’ the supervisor said.
‘Who was it?’
‘I don’t know, and if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you.’
It would be Roy Meres, Hodges thought – it was bound to be. Ever since he’d stuck the lad’s head down the toilet and flushed, the little arsehole had had it in for him. That was the trouble with fellers like Meres – they had absolutely no sense of humour.
‘When does the boss want to see me?’ Hodges asked.
‘I asked him that,’ the supervisor replied, ‘and he said, “How does immediately sound?”.’
Hodges climbed down from the truck, and walked in the direction of the office.
If it was Meres who’d complained, he decided, he’d invent something that the other lad had done to him to justify the head down the bog routine. Yes, that shouldn’t be too difficult.
He knocked on the warehouse manager’s door, and a voice from inside said, ‘Come in.’
The manager was standing with his back to the door, next to the filing cabinet. He was wearing the same long khaki work coat he always wore over his suit, but that day, there seemed to be something wrong with it.
It was as Hodges finally worked out that what was wrong was that the manager’s coat was too small for the man who was actually wearing it, that DS Higgins swung round to face him.
‘Well, hello Barry Hodges,’ he said, with a broad smile spread across his face. ‘You, my son, are nicked.’
Hodges turned around, only to discover that the doorway was blocked by two uniformed constables, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
When Louisa and John Green stepped out of the crematorium and into the bright sunlight, there was no sign of the reporters.
‘Where have they gone?’ John asked.
‘You sound as if you’re disappointed they’re not still here,’ Louisa said, with a little laugh. ‘Oh God,’ she moaned, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘The fact that we’ve just said goodbye to my sister doesn’t mean we can never laugh again,’ John said. ‘And it did sound as if I was complaining they weren’t here, which would have been quite funny, I suppose.’ He paused. ‘I really wasn’t complaining, you know.’
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