‘Were you scared of your dad?’
‘At that age? Terrified,’ he admitted, ‘He never said a word when he came out, just jerked his head in the direction of his car. After we’d pulled out through the school gates he asked me, “Was this kid bigger than you?” and I said, “Yes, Dad,” and there was a pause then he asked, “And did he hit you first?” and I’m nodding vigorously and saying, “Yeah, he did Dad,” then he finally asks me, “And instead of just punching him back, you picked up a big, heavy tray and lamped him in the face with it in front of your entire class and your teacher?” and I had to admit my stupidity and I said, “Yes Dad.” He didn’t say anything for a while and just when I thought he was going to erupt he just said, “Good.” ’
‘Good?’ asked Helen.
‘Good,’ Tom confirmed, ‘and when I asked him why, he said, “Because nobody will ever fuck with you again.” ’
‘Wow,’ she said, ‘that’s pretty intense for a nine-year-old.’
‘I know. I don’t think I’d ever heard him use the F-word before, much less say it to me. I told him how cross Mrs Collier was but he just said, “Teachers don’t live in the real world”, like her opinion was of no consequence. I think he was pleased I’d not let the bigger lad kick me around. It’s the one time I can actually recall him being proud of me.’
He hadn’t said it with any kind of edge but the way Tom said ‘the one time’ made Helen feel incredibly sad.
He was forced to drop Lindsay back at her mother’s early and she was in tears. He stood on the doormat while his wife blocked the front door of their old home, like she was single-handedly manning Checkpoint Charlie. It was all right, he didn’t want to come in, had no wish to see the evidence of her new man; a different newspaper folded on his old armchair, someone else’s shoes by the fire.
‘Don’t do this,’ she told him, ‘for once can’t we just be …’
‘Civilised?’ he snorted.
‘Yes.’
‘I wasn’t the one with my jeans round my knees and another man’s hand …’
‘Stop it! Just stop it! Do you want your daughter to hear you?!’
‘I don’t know, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Perhaps she wouldn’t be so hard on her old dad if she knew that!’
‘I think you should go right now,’ she hissed, ‘and if you start poisoning her against me with that kind of talk, I’ll go back to court and they’ll bar you from coming anywhere near her.’
He snorted. ‘On what grounds, because I told her the truth? Your mam and me split up because she couldn’t keep her knickers on till I got home.’
She turned mean then, nasty and spiteful, like she always did when they had a fight and he was actually winning for once. She stepped off the doorstep towards him and fixed her gaze on his. ‘What grounds? I don’t need any grounds. I’ll make something up. I’m her mother and she doesn’t hate me but you, you’re a basket case. You can’t even take a twelve-year-old to McDonalds without causing a row.’
‘You weren’t there,’ he countered, ‘you didn’t see her chucking herself at those two older boys.’
‘She wasn’t chucking herself at them. They are both in her class at school. She’s just told me. They are all going to a birthday party next week and she’s excited for God’s sake. That’s normal at her age; to be excited about something. Now she’s crying in her bedroom.’
‘A birthday party? Whose birthday party? Will the parents be there? Are you just going to let her go?’
‘Jesus Christ! What’s wrong with you? She’s a normal girl, with nice friends. Leave her alone,’ she demanded, before adding, ‘or God help me, I’ll keep you away from her for good!’
He couldn’t believe she was mentioning God now; the nerve of the woman.
‘How are you going to do that? You’re not keeping me away from my own daughter.’
‘You’re losing the plot and you’ve got a history of outbursts. What did you call that magistrate; a twisted bitch? Do you think they didn’t write that down and put it in a file somewhere? You had a breakdown, for God’s sake! You say one word to Lindsay about me and I’ll tell them you hit me or tried to touch her where a father shouldn’t ever touch his daughter.’
‘You wouldn’t do that,’ he spluttered but he knew from the look on her face that she would. ‘You’re a monster.’
‘I’m her mother. I’d say and do anything to protect her from you. Who do you think they’ll believe? They’ll keep you away from her for so long she won’t even recognise you in the street.’
‘You wouldn’t do that … no one could say that about the father of their child …’
‘Wouldn’t I? If you ever want to see Lindsay again, let alone on alternate weekends, then you are going to keep your mouth shut, or I’ll drop you so far down in the shit, you’ll think you are in hell.’
He looked at her for a long time and, from the hatred he saw there, knew she meant it. He closed his eyes for a moment, the way the doctor had taught him when he needed to combat the rages, but it was no good this time. Instead he reached out and grabbed her by the hair and pulled hard, forcing her down onto her knees even as she shrieked in protest. He got down there with her and closed his eyes tightly as he began to dash her skull hard against the driveway. He could hear her screams right enough but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. Instead he carried on and with the action came a glorious feeling of release as he smashed her evil, twisted head against the cement over and over again until finally the screams stopped and there was nothing left of her sick brain but mush, smeared all over the concrete, the blood running in pools. Then he felt dizzy and he blinked and opened his eyes.
He was surprised to see her still standing there unharmed, regarding him closely, with a look that was a combination of pity and suspicion.
‘What is wrong with you?’ she asked him.
When he didn’t immediately answer her, the look became one of disgust. For a moment the image had been so vivid, so real, he actually believed he had done it. His heart was racing and he was grinding his teeth together so hard they hurt. He had to take a deep breath, then another, and start the counting, slow and silent in his head … one … two … three … just like his therapist had told him ‘to manage his anger’ … four … five … six … preventing it from bursting out of him like a wild animal released from a cage … seven … eight … nine … she was looking at him like he was nothing, like shit on her shoe, the bitch, the dirty, little … ten … eleven … twelve … the expression on her face changed as she slowly became wary of him. He closed his eyes again for a moment … thirteen … fourteen … fifteen … he was tired now … he so badly wanted to lie down. He felt like he always did when he had just saved one.
‘I think you should go now.’ He realised she was scared. Well, she should be. Perhaps he would use a knife when it came down to it. Cut her up a bit. Mess up that face so that no man would ever want her again, show her what she looked like in the mirror before ending her. Or perhaps he would just do it quick, finish the whole damn thing and burn the house down with all of them in it. ‘Please,’ she said it firmly, ‘I want you to go.’
A knife, or maybe a hammer, smash her teeth in with it, knock them all out. If he took her somewhere quiet, secluded, where no one could hear them, he could keep her alive for hours, days even, then she would regret everything she’d done to him, he’d make her sorry, get her to beg him for forgiveness but he would not forgive, he would never forgive.
‘I said I want you to go.’ Was she about to disappear into the house and phone someone? Perhaps she would cry out for help, tell more lies about him. Who knew what she was capable of. So not now – but one day. One glorious day, he would take back everything she had stolen from him, one blow at a time.
‘I’m already in hell,’ he said it softly.
‘What?’ She’d already forgotten her promise. ‘You’ll think you’re in hell.’
He took a step forward and she flinched, he leaned in clo
se so that his face was almost pressed against hers and she looked frightened then. He breathed in the sweet smell of her and relished her fear.
‘I’m … already … in hell.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Mary Collier had to be helped from the private hire cab that pulled up outside her home, the driver holding his arm rigid so she could lean on it. She waved away his offer of further assistance and went to her front door unaided. Mary was just turning the key in the lock when she became aware of the presence of someone and she turned to see Helen and Tom standing at the end of her path.
If Mary was surprised to see them both together she hid it well. ‘Back so soon?’ she said. ‘What’s Betty Turner been saying about me now?’
‘Sorry to bother you again,’ said Helen, ignoring the question, ‘but we have some more information.’ She hoped this would be vague enough to engage the old lady’s curiosity.
‘You’ll have to wait till I get in.’ Her tone was scolding, as if they were impatient children but she opened the door and they followed her inside, with Mary keeping up a commentary as she walked slowly and unsteadily across the carpet. ‘I used to go for long walks across the fields. Now it takes me half a day to get out of my chair,’ she said, ‘ruddy arthritis, in my hands and hip. It’s why I don’t leave the house much. Mrs Harris does for me; gets my groceries, pays my bills and what not. I get a taxi to the doctors; my one little indulgence but I’d give a month’s pension to run across a field in my bare feet, just one more time,’ and she winced as she turned to face them again.
Tom couldn’t imagine his old teacher running barefoot across a field. ‘Go on through,’ she waved her hand impatiently at the next room but made no move to follow them. Neither of them moved and she snapped, ‘At least let me put the kettle on before you interrogate me. I’m gasping.’
‘We have a witness,’ Tom told Mary, once they were finally seated and clutching ancient bone china cups filled with tea, ‘several, in fact.’ Tom didn’t want to reveal that his only source was Betty. ‘They say that, when you were young, you were friendly with an Irishman called Sean Donnellan.’ Both Helen and Tom watched Mary Collier’s face closely to gauge her reaction but she gave none, ‘an artist from Ireland who visited Great Middleton back in 1936 so he could draw the river. We think Sean Donnellan is the body-in-the-field.’
Tom paused for a moment to let that sink in. Mary’s face was a mask, revealing nothing. She was regarding Tom as if she wanted to know just how much of his homework he had completed before committing herself to an answer.
‘Really,’ she said, as if he had merely commented on the weather, ‘witnesses,’ she scoffed, ‘you mean mad, old Betty Turner?’
‘But you did know the man?’ Tom insisted.
‘Yes,’ she said but that was all.
‘So do you think it’s Sean Donnellan who was buried in that field?’
‘I have no idea. Up until yesterday, like everybody else, I didn’t know there was a body buried anywhere in the village,’ she said, ‘except in the cemetery.’
‘So are you surprised it’s him or not?’
‘I’d be surprised whoever it turned out to be, since the word is that he was murdered.’
‘Betty thinks of Sean Donnellan as her first love,’ said Helen, trying a new tactic.
‘Ha!’ the old lady let out a loud, mocking exclamation, ‘does she now? Well I suspect it was a little one-sided.’
‘She also said you stole him from her.’ Helen added.
‘My, my, what fantasy world has she been living in lately?’
‘But you knew Sean Donnellan?’ said Tom. ‘You just admitted that.’
‘When you grow up in a village, everybody knows everyone else. He was an outsider. Visitors of any kind were an exotic species. You have to remember there were barely three cars in the whole of Great Middleton back then and one of those belonged to the doctor. We used to get a few folk passing through on the walking routes but they’d stay for a day. Sean Donnellan was here for a whole summer. He was an Irishman and an artist, in a pit village. Of course I remember him. Everybody did.’
‘And when he was no longer there?’ asked Tom, ‘what did everybody think?’
‘That he had gone,’ she offered obtusely, ‘back to Dublin, most probably. Certainly nobody thought he was dead.’
‘That he’d been murdered you mean,’ Tom reminded her, ‘Betty seems to think that was your fault by the way, which is why she was banging on your door in the middle of the night shouting “it was you”.’
‘Well you know my view on Betty,’ she replied, ‘and her missing marbles.’
‘So you didn’t have a relationship with this man, Sean Donnellan?’ asked Helen.
Mary Collier narrowed her eyes. ‘People didn’t flit from one man to the next in those days, not like now, courting was a serious business, which almost always ended in marriage and woe betide the girl if it didn’t. I was already engaged to Henry. We were married in 1937. Henry and I grew up together and always had an understanding that one day we would marry. I can’t even remember a time before that. Everybody will tell you it was so.’
‘Not everybody,’ he corrected her and when she turned her angry eyes towards him, he added, ‘since it was more than half a century ago, there won’t be many left who could tell us.’
‘So Betty Turner is lying?’ asked Helen.
‘Or her mind is puddled?’ offered Mary, ‘if we’re going to take the charitable view.’
‘Can you think of any reason why anyone would want to kill Sean Donnellan?’
Was there a slight hesitation from Mary, a tiny wavering in her voice? ‘I cannot think of a reason why anybody would want to kill anyone.’
‘Did he make any enemies?’ asked Helen.
‘Not that I can remember but it was such a long time ago.’
‘So tell us about this Sean Donnellan,’ said Tom, ‘when did you meet him and what was he like?’
‘Why should I?’ Mary snapped suddenly.
‘No reason,’ admitted Tom, ‘I just thought you’d prefer to tell us rather than the police.’
‘The police?’ She looked rattled then.
‘This isn’t just a story,’ Helen reminded her, ‘it’s a murder enquiry. We have to pass on any information we hear to the police.’
‘And right now we are hearing that you and the dead man were more than just friends. If you’re saying that isn’t so then we’ll hear you out.’
‘I don’t want the police on my doorstep for a second time,’ Mary said. ‘Every curtain in the street will be twitching.’
‘Can you remember Sean Donnellan coming to the village?’ asked Helen, ‘I realise it was a very long time ago.’
‘Miss Norton,’ said Mary Collier, ‘everyone old enough to recall that time will remember Sean Donnellan coming to the village, particularly the girls.’ It was the first time Helen had seen the faintest trace of a smile crease onto the old face but there was warmth there, buried deeply.
‘Handsome chap, was he?’ asked Helen.
‘You might say that,’ conceded the old woman.
‘You recall that much,’ Helen said it in a teasing tone. They were a couple of teenagers now, discussing the best-looking boy in class and Tom decided to let them talk.
‘Since not very much of importance happens to me these days, memory is all I have left.’
‘What else can you remember about him?’
She cocked her head to one side and seemed to be staring into a space somewhere above Helen’s shoulder. ‘Where to begin?’ she asked herself. ‘With poor old Betty, I suppose.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
1936
There was childish excitement in Betty’s voice. ‘Wait till you see him,’ she told her young friend, ‘he’s tall, good looking and his voice,’ she giggled and shook her head in wonderment, ‘it’s like he’s singing to you. I could listen to him for hours!’
‘I’m not sure I want to go down to the rive
r just now,’ replied Mary, ‘it looks like rain,’ and Betty’s face fell. ‘I thought I might stay in and finish my book.’
‘But you said you’d come,’ Betty reminded her, ‘please say you will,’ she implored. ‘I can’t go down there on my own. What would people say?’
‘Hurtful things, I should imagine.’
‘Exactly,’ said Betty, ‘it wouldn’t be proper. But if I went with you …’ and she gave Mary a hopeful smile.
Mary closed her book and stood up. ‘All right, I’ll risk catching a cold in a downpour, so you can make cow-eyes at Mr Blarney Stone.’
‘Thank you, Mary, you’re a true friend.’ Then she added, ‘And don’t be like that. He’s a lovely man.’
‘How can you tell? You’ve only just met him.’
‘Sometimes you just know,’ Betty replied dreamily.
‘Love at first sight?’
‘Perhaps. Don’t you believe in it? Wasn’t it love at first sight when you met Henry?’
‘We were children, so I hardly think so.’
Betty was as excitable as a child, wittering on about Mr Sean Donnellan every step of the way, only finally falling silent about him when they rounded a bend in No Name Lane and saw him up ahead, sitting on the river bank, intent on his work.
‘A good day to you,’ he said as they reached him. He must have heard them but still he didn’t look up, which Mary considered the height of rudeness.
‘Good morning, Mr Donnellan,’ Betty addressed him with a formality she might have reserved for one of her old school teachers.
His pencil darted one last time over the drawing he was working on then he looked up at them. A handsome face squinted against the sun, which was behind them.
‘Becky, is it?’ he asked the younger girl.
‘Betty,’ she reminded him a little desperately.
‘Betty! Of course you are,’ and he gave her a huge smile to make up for forgetting her. He climbed quickly to his feet and took one of her hands in his. ‘Please forgive me. I’ve been engrossed in my work. I can forget my own name when that happens.’ The smile grew broader and there was a gleam in his eye, which set Betty to laughing and blushing at the same time. Mary could see through the charm and knew very well she would not be falling for it – unlike her silly friend who knew nothing whatever of the world or men like Sean Donnellan. Mary turned her attention to his drawing, which she had to admit was a fine representation of the river bank, with not a detail excluded.
No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Page 16
