The Comforts of Home

by Susan Hill

  Marion poured herself another cup of tea and drank half of it before continuing. The reporter just smiled and waited, not asking endless questions, not being impatient. It was reassuring. It helped.

  ‘But nothing’s happened of course. I’ve tried to phone him twice since that day and this morning they kept me on hold for twenty minutes and I still didn’t get to speak to him. I know, the police are all busy but it isn’t any good just fobbing me off. I know he’s in prison but he isn’t in prison for Kimberley’s murder, is he, and that’s what matters to me. Can you see that, Miss Brewer?’

  ‘Dorcas. Of course I can.’ She leaned forward, hands on her knees, and looked Marion not only in the face but in the eyes. And her own eyes, deep brown eyes, were warm with sympathy. ‘They have things they call “cold cases” – perhaps you know about them. They’re often part of TV crime dramas – all it means is that a crime was committed some years ago and was never solved but they have run out of leads and –’

  ‘Ideas.’

  Dorcas smiled. ‘In a word. They stop working on those cases but they don’t close the book … they can’t until they have someone to arrest and charge and that person is found guilty. Even if the person is dead, they can still be found guilty, and the case can be closed.’

  ‘I wish he were dead. That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘Is it? It seems highly likely that he murdered your daughter, Marion. I’d probably say the same. I can only struggle to imagine how it’s been for you all this time. Of course the police have got a lot of work and they have new cases every day – but they don’t actually have many murders. They have a duty to solve this one. How long is it – four years?’

  ‘Nearly five.’

  ‘Time for them to open it up and look at it again. A lot’s happened since then.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Dorcas looked vague but still said, ‘New techniques for examining evidence,’ which impressed Marion Still.

  ‘But what can we do … what can you do?’

  ‘I think calling the police to account, reminding them about Kimberley, bringing everything to the full attention of the public all over again – all of that will actually do a great deal. They don’t like to be wrong-footed, you know. They certainly don’t like any sort of bad publicity and who can blame them? So here’s a chance for them to show us they are going to pay more than lip service to what the Chief Constable said to you … let’s shine some fresh daylight onto this.’

  ‘I’LL NEVER REST UNTIL I GET JUSTICE FOR MY KIMBERLEY’

  Mrs Marion Still tries to put on a brave face and she gives me tea and a slice of delicious ginger cake in her bright, immaculate semi-detached house in a pleasant part of Lafferton. There is a clock with a smiling sun face on the mantelpiece and cushions with ‘The Cat Sleeps Here’ and ‘Beware Flying Pigs’ on the comfy sofa. Mrs Still wears a blue cardigan and her hair has been freshly set. But when I look into her eyes, I see sadness, and next to the clock there is a photograph of a pretty girl whose own face is full of life and laughter.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother says, taking it down and handing it to me. ‘That is my beautiful Kimberley. Who could have taken her life? Who could have done such a thing?’

  Yet even as she asks the questions, she is certain that she knows the answer.

  ‘She was murdered by Lee Russon,’ she says firmly. ‘He is in prison for the murder of two other girls and the police know he killed my Kimberley as well, everybody knows. But they say there wasn’t enough evidence.’ Her expression is angry, even though her eyes are brimming with tears.

  When I ask her if she thinks the police did enough after Kimberley’s murder, she says reluctantly, ‘They worked very hard, I’m sure of that. They all did and of course they got Russon for the other killings, didn’t they? Maybe they think that’s enough – I mean, he’s in prison for life so …’ She pours us both another cup of tea and I look again at the photograph of her daughter.

  ‘But what I’m asking is, why can’t they start again? Why can’t they look back, go over the whole thing? I know it’s done, I’ve read about murders being pinned on the guilty person twenty or thirty years later, when something new has come to light. And that’s been when they haven’t even had anyone in mind as a clear suspect. Well, they’ve got one now, haven’t they?’

  I ask her if she wants revenge – and who would blame her for that? She fidgets with a corner of the tray cloth, but she says that it isn’t a question of revenge.

  ‘It’s about justice … I want him to confess what he did, and if he won’t, I want them to show him they know – that there was enough evidence, they just didn’t find it.’

  Who does this determined but broken-hearted woman feel is to blame for the fact that after five years no one has reopened the case?

  ‘I don’t know whose responsibility it was then so I couldn’t say.’ She hesitates. Until this moment, Marion Still has spoken quietly but now her voice rings loud and clear. ‘I only know whose responsibility it is now. And that’s the present Chief Constable. Mr Kieron Bright.’

  She flushes, with anger and with pain, as she tells me that she has seen the Chief Constable in person and pleaded with him to reopen the case against Lee Russon.

  ‘He was very pleasant,’ she says without any irony. ‘We had a cup of coffee, he couldn’t have listened more carefully. But since then – nothing. He’s done nothing.’

  Has she tried to talk to Chief Constable Bright again? ‘Oh yes. I’ve tried. I just get fobbed off. He’s never there, they can’t put me through. I was on the line twenty minutes yesterday. I asked for him to ring me back but of course he never did.’

  She now despairs of anything happening. ‘He’s not interested,’ she says to me, ‘it was before his time. He doesn’t see what it’s like for me. I suppose I can’t blame him.’

  But I am well aware that she does. I can understand why. I would be asking the same questions.

  Why do the police not reinvestigate the murder of lovely, bright-faced Kimberley Still, aged 24, who had everything to look forward to? Why do they not look to see if there is any new evidence, of whatever kind, against the man they must surely know killed Kimberley? Mrs Still says quietly that it is probably all down to money. ‘They say they don’t have the resources. That’s terrible, don’t you think? That justice is all about hard cash?’

  She shows me out. In the hall, there is another photograph of Kimberley, this time as a laughing, pigtailed little girl of nine, dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, at the Lafferton Jug Fair.

  ‘She won first prize,’ Marion Still says. And touches her finger gently to the photo. ‘And let me tell you this. I won’t leave them alone. I will pester and pester the police and anyone else to do with it. I won’t rest until I get justice for my Kimberley.’

  She means it.

  Twenty-seven

  Full house. Saturday afternoons usually were when it wasn’t raining. A lot of the buggers couldn’t be bothered in bad weather.

  He’d got a table up against the wall, so that was a bonus. Only one next to you to listen in and this pair wouldn’t, they were too busy having their own set-to and the set-to had been clocked. Any minute, the nearest warder would be over and warning them. What was the point in visiting and then starting up a row the minute you sat down?

  He looked across his own table. He didn’t have a missus. One less to worry about. This afternoon, Dave was here. Russon had four brothers. Alan never came near and Jim was on a container ship halfway to South America, so it was always either Lewis or Dave.

  They said this and that for five minutes. ‘Have you seen Dad?’ ‘How’s the kid?’ ‘What are the Hammers messing about at?’ ‘I brought you some of your toffees.’

  Then Dave said, ‘I got something else,’ and started fishing about in his pocket. He’d been searched, they’d opened the sheet of newspaper and shaken it, but papers and magazines were OK, not much you could hide in them unless you taped a packet insid
e somewhere, but Lee didn’t do drugs and he didn’t believe in having them for barter. A few things he thought were wrong, and drugs came top of his list. No one had ever got round to asking why murder was all right and coke wasn’t. No one asked him much about anything.

  Now Dave took the folded page out and handed it over. Lee looked at him.

  ‘You can read it now if you want.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Stuff about … you and that … Kimberley girl. Kimberley Still.’

  Lee’s expression went absolutely blank. He pulled the folded sheet towards him, and folded it again, and then again. Flattened it and put it in his trouser pocket. The warder was looking over. Lee pulled the paper out again, spread it, waved it at him. Turned it over. Turned it back.

  The man switched his attention back to the pair next door.

  The room was warm and smelled of people’s bodies. There were kids, babies with dirty nappies and older ones with bags of cheese and onion crisps. Lee half closed his eyes. His brother leaned forward, elbows on the metal table.

  ‘Remember Ash Alamba?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah, you do.’

  ‘No.’

  Dave sighed. ‘Right. Don’t matter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you don’t know who he is –’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, you’ve got to talk about something, so talk about this Ash guy.’

  ‘Nicked a Jaguar and wrapped it round a tree and himself with it.’

  Lee shrugged. ‘It happens.’

  ‘You want anything before the bell goes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You might. When you’ve read that paper.’

  The couple next door suddenly kicked off so loudly that they stood up and the man turned the table over, shoving it towards the woman. Warders jerked to life, then the time bell went off.

  Dave got up. ‘Look after yourself.’

  Lee rolled his eyes.

  It was only after lock-up that he could sit down at his small table to spread out the newspaper page. He pulled open the bag of assorted toffees Dave had brought as well and which had twice given him painful visits to the prison dentist. He could only chew on his right side until he got the latest filling done but he put two rum and butters into his mouth at once and turned to the paper. It was still noisy out on the landings. Not that prison was ever quiet, just as it was never dark. Things like that got to you more than you’d expect and Lee Russon expected quite a lot. He was a lifer, which in his view was the punishment. There shouldn’t be rubbish conditions and having to put up with crap like being locked in your cell three-quarters of the day because there weren’t enough staff and being fed pigswill. And having lights boring in your face and metal doors clanging and boots going up and down metal staircases when you were trying to sleep. You had a right to sleep.

  One thing he didn’t mind was being on his own. For the first three years inside he’d shared with various other men, brain-dead, or druggies, or the sort that wanted to talk all day and half the night, the sort who wanted to get you involved in stupid schemes. He was happy with his own company – in the absence of the company of young women.

  He liked reading. History. Napoleonic Wars. Third Reich. 1914–18. Early aeroplanes. World War II aircraft and missions. All of it. He could order up titles in the prison library and they’d try and get them. Mostly they did. He was studying as well – psychology and business. He’d more or less picked them with a pin out of a list and he didn’t think he’d last much longer with psychology. It wasn’t just difficult. It was a load of crap. Business studies weren’t crap, they were useful. When he got outside again …

  He never ever let himself think that he might not. That life would mean LIFE. It wouldn’t. He was attending counselling sessions, he was able to prove that he no longer had fantasies about not only the company of young women but of raping and strangling them. The sessions were interesting. He began to get where the person who saw him was coming from and then he began to work out how he could give him what he wanted, and with understanding, and fathoming how it all worked, a plan was slowly forming. Slowly meant slowly. You couldn’t barge at these things without any thought. You thought and thought, slowly, carefully and in detail, and you made your plans accordingly.

  He spread out the newspaper page Dave had left him. Local lad getting gold in the Invictus Games. Kebab van owner selling horsemeat. He thought that’s what they all did. A couple of fires in derelict buildings – arson suspected. Road closures. Bicycle accident. School given star ratings by Ofsted. Fucking hell, what was all this rubbish? Only the arson sounded fun. Made him wonder if one of his old cellmates was up to no good again. The way he used to describe how the flames went up in a big whoosh.

  Then he turned over the page and saw it. Spread right across the middle.

  ‘I’LL NEVER REST UNTIL I GET JUSTICE FOR MY KIMBERLEY.’

  Her picture. Her daughter’s picture. His bleedin’ picture. The steep bank behind the canal. The overhanging scrubby bushes.

  He could feel his own rage move up inside his body, like bubbles being pumped faster and faster through a tube, pulsing harder, strengthening. The rage started in the pit of his stomach, went up through his chest and into his throat and neck and head, swelling out and heating. If he checked in the shaving mirror he would be red in the face. His eyes would be bloodshot. The doctor had told him he had to control his rage or it would control him.

  ‘Finish you off,’ he had said. ‘You will explode. Simple as that.’

  He’d been given a sheet of breathing exercises, a list of twenty calming phrases. If he felt the rage so much as stir slightly in his toes he ought to reach for them.

  He did the breathing stuff now and it made a bit of difference. He didn’t want to explode. He’d always had a way out before, of course. He had been able to lance the rage like a boil, by doing what he did.

  No chance here.

  He took the sheet of paper and tore it, across and across and across, tore it into bits the size of confetti. His stubby fingers were sore, he put so much force into the tearing.

  He threw the bits into the bin.

  He cursed Kimberley Still’s mother and the reporter and the paper, in the foulest words he knew, muttering them aloud so that they might be more effective. He would have yelled them at the top of his voice but that would have brought someone running.

  But then, he reasoned, nobody would take any notice of her, not now, any more than they ever had. She could do what she liked, bleat, complain, write letters, get reporters round, even go on the bloody television. It would make no odds. They weren’t going to reopen the case. Why would they bother? They had him anyway.

  He had told them he hadn’t done it plenty of times. Others. The two he was in for. Yes. But he’d said until he was blue in the face he was not confessing to Kimberley Still. No way. What difference would it make to him? He was banged up in here, he wasn’t going anywhere, life meant life and they couldn’t add to that, they’d no more idea than anyone else how long ‘life’ would be. He could ‘explode’ tomorrow, couldn’t he?

  He calmed down. Calm and peace. He could feel the last of the rage blowing away out to sea.

  And then the idea came to him. He knew what he could do.

  Twenty-eight

  Richard Serrailler had never been a cook, or indeed any sort of a housekeeper, but he liked things to be orderly, and he enjoyed good food. He longed for a home-cooked dinner, and company for eating it. He missed Delphine, though he despised her for what she had done, continuing the relationship with her old boyfriend while staying in the cottage with him, and finally robbing him.

  He felt morose. He could not focus on anything for long. He went for solitary, dismal walks and drank too much wine in the evenings.

  It was on the day he caught himself pouring a third glass of Sauvignon at lunch that he knew he ought not to stay alone any longer.

  The drive through France to the ferry port co
uld be done in a day but he took the slower roads rather than speed down the toll motorways, stayed a night in a small hotel in the Dordogne and another in Normandy. He walked about the villages, sat at cafe tables in the evening sun, ate well, and felt a relief that he had made the decision to return. His only concern was where he could stay – Hallam House was let and the tenants had another couple of months there. But he felt lighter of heart than he had for a long time. He liked France but he did not belong there, any more than the rest of the expats he watched gathering in their groups in this or that cafe every day. The difference was that he knew it. He had never planned to see out his days there but Delphine had put a brake on future plans.

  He sat on until the lamps shone out from the bars and cafes around the little square, enjoying a small, carafe of red, thinking that Cat would be pleasantly surprised when he turned up at the farmhouse front door. He wondered if he would see Simon, from whom he had not heard for some months. His son disappointed him. Even the third triplet, Ivo, was now married to an Australian nurse. They never saw him but he sent regular emails and photographs. He seemed in many ways to be a closer member of the family than Simon.

  The waitress came to clear the tables. He offered her a drink but she was finishing in five minutes, she said, and ready for home. She smiled. And ‘peut-être mon mari n’aime pas que j’accepte. Mais merci, monsieur, vous êtes très gentil.’

  The music was turned off inside the cafe. He got up, a little stiffly after the long drive, and went to walk round the village before going to his hotel.

  It was clean, quiet and comfortable, but he slept badly, waking several times and having strange, flickering dreams, and when he woke he realised that he had been shivering and sweating. He showered and walked out to find a pharmacy, where he bought paracetamol and throat lozenges.

  By the time he was on the road again, after three strong coffees and a croissant, he felt better and decided if he was getting a cold, he would be able to stave it off until he arrived back in Lafferton.