by A J McDine
‘’Course,’ she said, as if I was mad to suggest otherwise.
‘Promise you’ll ring if you need anything?’
She sighed and reached for her phone. ‘I promise.’
‘OK, well, I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, shuffling out of the room.
At the top of the stairs, I paused, wondering if I should give the gun to Eloise while I was out. But I didn’t think Roy Matthews would show his face here again. For all he knew we’d called the police, they’d dusted the place for prints, found a match and were about to turn up on his doorstep to arrest him for breaking and entering. Eloise had promised she’d call me if anything happened and if she did, I would tell her where the gun was.
It was one of those bright but still late autumn days that felt like a caress before winter’s penetrating grip. The trees had retreated as the sun had risen, maintaining a polite distance between them and the house once more. In the weak sunshine, my fears that Roy Matthews had been hiding in the woods the previous night seemed irrational, but I still locked the back door behind me.
I’d only slept in snatches despite my exhaustion, and the twitch above my right eye was more pronounced than ever as I steered the Land Rover through the back lanes towards Teynham. As I’d tossed and turned in bed, I’d reached a decision. If I was to stand up to Roy Matthews, I had to know my enemy. I needed to find out if there was a chink in his armour I could use against him, and there was one person who might help me there - his victim and former neighbour, Kerry Davis.
I knew from the court report that Kerry lived in London Road, Teynham. Although the road stretched the length of the village, I felt confident someone would remember the day a man wielding a baseball bat turned up on a pregnant woman’s doorstep and started smashing windows, even if it had happened five years previously.
I parked on a side road, picked up the string shopping bag on the passenger seat, and headed for the Co-op, which seemed as good a place as any to start. I meandered up and down the aisles, picking up tins and packets and inspecting their labels before replacing them. I knew I was procrastinating, but I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of my mission. Kerry Davis probably didn’t live in Teynham any more. And even if she did, I doubted she’d talk to me. Why would anyone want to be reminded of such a terrifying ordeal?
‘Are you lookin’ for somefing in particular?’ said a voice. ‘Only you’ve been picking up and putting back stuff for the last ten minutes.’
I looked up to see a girl in her twenties giving me an appraising look. She was wearing a Co-op uniform and was clutching one of those handheld scanners supermarket staff used for stock control.
‘So sorry,’ I said. I glanced at the shelf. ‘I was just looking for… tinned artichokes in brine. And would you believe my luck? Here they are!’
‘Right,’ the girl said doubtfully. ‘Till’s that way.’ She pointed a thumb towards the door.
I picked up the tin and was about to sidle off and pay when I realised the girl must be about Kerry’s age.
‘Um, I don’t suppose you know Kerry Davis, do you?’
Her brow knitted. ‘Why?’
‘I’m researching my family tree,’ I improvised. It was the kind of thing a woman my age would do. ‘I think she might be related to my great aunt twice removed.’
The girl’s face cleared. ‘Kezza might be part of your family?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I went to school wiv her.’
‘She still lives in Teynham?’
‘In the house opposite the crossing. Number forty-six. Tell her Sammy says hi.’
‘I will.’ I made to leave, but quick as a flash, Sammy grabbed my forearm.
‘Don’t forget to pay for that though, will you?’
‘Silly me.’ I smiled and checked the label, wincing inwardly when I saw the artichokes were almost three pounds. And I loathed artichokes. But Sammy was watching me keenly, so I tramped up the aisle to the till, handed her colleague a crisp ten-pound note, dropped the tin in my string bag and headed out of the shop.
On the journey over, I’d painted a picture of a careworn council house with grubby windows, overflowing wheelie bins and an old banger on bricks in the front garden, snobbery being an unattractive trait I’d learned through osmosis from my mother.
In reality, number forty-six London Road, Teynham, was a narrow red-bricked Victorian terraced house with gleaming white uPVC windows and a sage-green uPVC front door. Two bay trees shaped like pyramids sat in terracotta pots on either side of the door. I loitered on the other side of the road by the pedestrian crossing and gazed at the two houses on either side. Number forty-eight was also red-bricked and well-cared for, although its door was a smart navy blue. But number forty-four, the house to the left of Kerry’s, was another story. Pebble-dashed and rundown, it had a neglected air. A length of guttering had come free of its fixing and was hanging precariously from the fascia board, and the windows were opaque with grime. That, I decided, must be where Roy Matthews had lived.
I rehearsed what I was going to say one last time before pressing the button on the pedestrian crossing. When the green man appeared, I hurried across, my eyes firmly fixed on Kerry’s sage-green front door. Before I could change my mind, I rapped the silver door knocker and waited for her to answer.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I didn’t have to wait long. The door opened an inch and a girl with an elfin face and unfeasibly long eyelashes stared at me around the door jamb, chin defiantly high and her eyes narrowed.
‘Kerry Davis?’ I asked.
She gave the tiniest of nods. ‘Who are you?’
I’d been planning to regurgitate the family tree story just to get a foot in the door, but something about the determined jut of the girl’s jaw made me stop. She deserved the truth.
‘It’s about Roy Matthews,’ I said.
‘Roy Matthews?’ she repeated a little breathlessly. Her eyes darted behind me. ‘I’m sorry but I don’t know anyone of that name.’
‘Come on, Kerry. Everyone knows what he did to you. How brave you were, giving evidence against him in court.’
‘Are you a reporter?’ she asked.
I shook my head.
‘Then who are you?’
I looked her square in the eye. ‘Someone Roy Matthews has a grudge against.’
‘Why, what did you do to him?’
‘If you let me in, I’ll tell you.’
The door started closing, and I thought she was about to shut it in my face when I heard the clink of a safety chain. The door swung open, and she ushered me in, replaced the chain and turned the key in the mortice lock. Sensing me watching her, she shrugged and said, ‘Old habits.’
I followed her through the front room into an immaculate kitchen at the back of the house overlooking a small rectangular lawn. A baby was sitting in a high chair, a rattle in one chubby fist and a rich tea biscuit in the other. The baby broke into an uncomplicated smile as I walked into the room, and banged the rattle on the high chair’s plastic tray in excitement.
‘This is Eva,’ Kerry said, bending down to tickle the child’s cheek. Eva broke into a gale of giggles.
‘You had another baby,’ I said. ‘After the attack.’
Kerry nodded. She pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and motioned me to do the same. ‘Luke’s five now. His dad takes him swimming on a Saturday morning.’ She was watching me like a hawk. I had the impression she didn’t miss much. ‘So now you know who we are. But we have no idea who you are, do we, Eva?’
The baby gurgled, and I smiled before I could stop myself. Kerry’s face softened.
‘I’m Rose,’ I said. ‘Rose Barton.’
‘So, tell me, Rose, how did you have the misfortune to find yourself on the wrong side of Roy Matthews?’
I answered her question with one of my own. ‘Did you ever meet his daughter, India?’
She nodded. ‘Nice girl. Very quiet. She used to stay with her dad a couple of nights a week.’
‘She killed herself in July. Matthews blames me for her death.’
Kerry was silent as I recounted how India had been on the phone to Sisterline shortly before she died, and that her father had wrongly assumed I’d taken the call. How he’d slashed my tyre and vandalised the office. How he’d worked out where I lived and had trashed my house and poisoned my cat.
‘And you’re worried he’s going to turn up on your doorstep with a baseball bat?’ she said bluntly.
It was my turn to nod.
‘Are you hoping I’m going to tell you his bark’s worse than his bite? Because if you are, you’re going to be disappointed. The man’s a complete psycho.’
I licked my lips. ‘According to the report I read online, he never actually hit you. Perhaps he was just trying to intimidate you?’
Kerry stood, scooped Eva out of her chair, and hugged her tightly. ‘Only because he didn’t have the chance. He knew the police were on their way. Otherwise I don’t know what would have happened.’
Eva grabbed a fistful of her mother’s hair with a gleeful cry. Kerry smiled, but when she spoke again, her tone was serious. ‘I used to hear him lose his temper with India sometimes.’
‘India?’
‘When he’d been drinking.’
‘And was that often?’
‘Often enough.’
‘D’you think he was ever violent towards her?’
Kerry untangled her hair from Eva’s grip and planted a kiss on the baby’s palm. ‘Probably.’ She glanced at me. ‘India had a bruise on her cheek one time. When I asked her about it, she claimed she’d walked into a door. I remember thinking, yeah, right.’
‘You didn’t think to call the police, alert social services?’
‘Of course I thought about it! But I had no evidence, just a hunch. It would have been my word against his. And India would have denied it.’
‘Yet you reported him to the council for playing his music too loudly.’
‘Yeah, well, I knew I could build a case against him for that. It was my best chance of getting him kicked out of the house.’
‘And it worked,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to worry about him any more.’
‘Maybe. But it doesn’t stop me from constantly looking over my shoulder. As I said, he’s not right in the head. I’m not surprised poor India topped herself. I’d do the same if he was my dad.’
If I thought a chat with Kerry might allay some of my fears about Roy Matthews, I was wrong. If anything, her revelations ramped up my paranoia, and my heart was thudding wildly as I drove along the A2 towards Faversham. Kerry had called Matthews a psycho. Obviously, she wasn’t a trained psychiatrist, and it wasn’t a clinical diagnosis. However, her meaning was clear. The man was both unhinged and dangerous.
But I’d learned something useful. Roy Matthews might have been physically abusing his daughter. My lips curled as I remembered the sickly comment he’d posted on her Facebook page. You broke my heart the day you left us. You were, you are, my everything. Sleep tight, baby girl.
Duplicitous bastard.
I wondered what to do with my newfound knowledge. The inquest into India’s death was just over a week away. What if the phone call with her father was the tipping point, and his words had pushed her over the edge, not Rhona’s? Putting my own antipathy towards Rhona to one side, I had to admit it was more likely. Rhona was tactless and insensitive, but I couldn’t think of a single scenario in which she might encourage someone to take their own life. Whereas if India had just had a massive falling out with her dad…
I had pulled up in a long line of traffic at some temporary traffic lights when my phone rang. It was Eloise.
‘Are you all right?’ I demanded, another spike of adrenalin making my heart pound even faster.
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Because some nutter broke into the house yesterday and trashed the place,’ I said. And took my father’s air rifle from the shed and hid it under my bed. But I didn’t say this, because in the cold light of day I wasn’t even sure if they had, or if I’d put it there myself and just forgotten because I was so damn tired.
‘Rose, did you hear me?’ Eloise’s voice crackled out of the phone.
‘Sorry, no, I lost you there for a moment. What did you say?’
‘I’ll make meatballs for tea if you can pick up some mince and a tin of chopped tomatoes.’
‘Of course.’
‘Have you remembered to feed Mary’s fish?’ she asked.
Shit. I’d been so preoccupied with Roy Matthews that I’d clean forgotten about Theo. ‘I’ll pop by on my way home,’ I said. The traffic lights turned green and the cars in front of me began inching forwards. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
Theo started on me the minute I pushed the door of the pillbox open.
‘I have evidence if you don’t believe me.’
‘Evidence of what?’ I said, dropping a Sainsbury’s carrier bag on the ground.
‘That Eloise is batshit crazy.’ He shuffled over to the bag on his bottom, peered into it and pulled out a quiche. While he busied himself ripping open the packaging and breaking off a handful, I picked up the bucket and took it outside to empty it, careful to slide the bolts across the door while I was gone.
‘My phone, do you have it?’ he asked on my return.
‘No.’
‘Merde. Does Eloise have it?’
‘I guess so. Why?’
‘I recorded the last fight we had, in case I ever went to the police. It shows her smashing a glass on the worktop and threatening me with it, all because I had not answered my phone when she called me.’
‘Which is all very convenient, as I don’t have your phone to prove it,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘She will have it. You just need to find it.’
‘Even if I believed a word of the crap that comes out of your mouth, it would be pointless, because she’d have deleted the footage.’
‘You are wrong. She would not have been able to find it. I hid it.’
‘Hid it?’ I said, not bothering to hide my own disbelief.
‘I moved it to a hidden album so it wouldn’t appear in my library, and I turned off the hidden album, so it was completely invisible.’
‘How very shrewd of you.’
He broke off another piece of quiche. ‘Living with someone like Eloise makes you paranoid. So, you’ll look for it?’
Suddenly, my vision blurred, and I staggered backwards. Faces pressed in on me, a hiss of accusations and entreaties. Theo, Roy Matthews, Rhona, Eddie, Eloise. Their wants and desires, threats and recriminations. Between them, they were sucking me dry. Theo’s assumption that I’d do his bidding was the final straw. I cradled my head in my hands as I tried to silence their voices, a parody of the agonised face in Munch’s The Scream.
‘What is it? What is wrong?’ Theo’s voice broke through my fugue and I turned on him.
‘You!’ I said, stabbing the air with my index finger. ‘Why has it taken me this long to realise?’ I shook my head, staggered at my stupidity. ‘You’re behind it all, aren’t you?’
He stared uncomprehendingly at me.
‘Don’t play the innocent with me. I wasn’t born yesterday,’ I spat. ‘You’re the catalyst, the common denominator. It all went to hell the night you turned up on my doorstep. It’s all your fault.’
‘I do not know what you are talking about.’
‘Shut up!’
Theo shrank back against the wall. Inexplicably, the sight enraged me further. ‘Just shut the fuck up!’ I yelled.
I’d spent days vacillating, but now my path was clear.
Theo had started it. Now I was going to finish it.
Chapter Thirty-Six
JUNE 1999
* * *
I didn’t tell Juliet I’d seen Danny’s inhaler. I kept the knowledge to myself, hugging it tightly to my chest until I worked out what to do with it. Because I h
ad to do something. He’d broken her heart twice before and he would do it again if I didn’t intervene. I was certain of it.
The fact that Juliet oozed happiness the entire weekend merely strengthened my resolve. The happier she was, the greater the fall when Danny inevitably strayed. Men like him never changed.
But what could I do? Juliet had never listened to my warnings in the past, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t about to start now. Would Danny listen to me? I pictured him, tanned walnut-brown by the Melbourne sun, cold blue eyes hidden by aviator glasses, nodding and agreeing that, yes, of course he would piss off back to Australia because Juliet was better off without him.
Even though I suspected he’d rather cut off his own dick than listen to me, I figured it had to be worth a shot. And if it didn’t work? Well, I’d have to think of something else.
I rang John the next day. If anyone knew which rock Danny was lurking under, he would.
‘Rose,’ he said. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘Does there have to be a reason? Can’t two old friends just enjoy a chat?’
He laughed. ‘Put those hackles back down. I’m only kidding. How’s it going?’
‘Oh, you know, same old same old.’
John had recently spent his obscenely large annual bonus on a two-bedroom flat in a converted warehouse in Docklands with enormous windows overlooking the Thames and a swimming pool and gym in the basement. I’d tried to hide my envy when he’d shown me around. I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that the computer nerd I’d met at uni was now a City whizz kid whilst I, the high achieving med school student, was living at home with my father, spending my days sorting through other people’s grubby cast-offs in a charity shop. What the hell had gone wrong?
I dragged my attention back to the matter in hand. John was still of the view that Juliet’s love life was none of my business, so I needed to be subtle.
‘I’ve put my name down for a charity fun run.’
‘You? Running?’ A bark of laughter. ‘I’ve heard it all now.’
