Kirsty, still in her working uniform of white dress and black apron, inserts the key and follows them inside. The first man sniffs, ‘Ugh! Smells like something’s dead in here.’
Kirsty shivers. ‘I think that’s the damp.’
‘And you say two students were in here?’
‘They left a couple of weeks ago. I was supposed to move in, but as you can see…’ She has no need to explain any further.
The students had not felt it necessary to clean up before they left. Empty tins he scattered about. A bulging black bag, disgorging half its disgusting contents, straddles the floor like a vomiting drunk, and the fireplace is full of cigarette butts and old boxes of matches.
Upstairs is no better. The filthy mattresses have been stripped and every stain and mark is evident, the foam pillows are curled and yellowed. Fags have been stubbed out on the small mantelpieces, and coffee-cup rings vie with each other for space.
‘Animals,’ says the second copper, searching behind curtains streaked with rust. ‘There’s nothing here, or nowhere for a golf club—’
‘Ugh! Cat shit!’ groans the first one, picking up his heel. ‘God, the local strays have found their way in.’ And he picks up a piece of newspaper and wipes the offending mess off his boot.
‘And they had the nerve to offer you this?’
‘I don’t think anyone knew the sort of state it was in,’ says Kirsty, forcing herself to concentrate on something that seems so irrelevant if the figure she saw on that seat was real.
Downstairs and back in the kitchen she remembers to say, ‘Keep away from that bit of floor, there, next to the fridge where the lino is cracked. One of the guys who lived here told me that bit was sinking.’
‘There’s bits of this place that are probably alive and heaving,’ says the larger policeman, making eagerly for the door. ‘God knows what’s in the walls, multiplying. My God, the stench.’
‘Thanks, anyway, Mrs Hoskins, we’ll let you get back to your work.’
‘What do you want me to do with the key? Will you want to come in here again?’
‘No, best lock it up. There’s nothing in there to interest us. Lock it up so kids don’t get in, I doubt very much if it’s safe. I mean, even the roof looks dodgy to me.’
But Kirsty, in shock, cannot go back to work. Indifferent to her surroundings, hardly thinking, only staring, she needs some time on her own to cope with this new intolerable horror. Could it be Trev? No, not possible. Is she really so close to losing her mind? Best if she stays here where no-one can see her or Mrs Stokes will start nagging on. Now, quite beyond tears, the muscles of her face taut, as if clamped by a hot rubber mask, her head aches so thuddingly it could be made of solid wood.
She has no idea how much time goes by until she dares to lift her face and sees him thick and huge in the doorway. She tries to cry out loud but fails, she can only moan as if in a nightmare.
‘Hello, Kirsty.’
She continues to stare at him for a while, as if he is her own manifestation. ‘You were watching. You saw me come in here.’
‘Yep, I saw you helping the nice policemen.’ He is shaking his head, slightly smiling, with pure malice in his eyes.
And she watches him, terrified. As much at his mercy as ever.
‘I was curious to see where you were—naturally, as your husband. So what’s this? I see you have the keys to this place.’ Trev puts his car keys on the cooker to show that he intends to stay for as long as this is going to take. ‘Was this the home you planned to move into with my children?’
‘It’s no good,’ replies Kirsty quietly, ‘as you can see.’
‘I would have thought it would suit you perfectly, slut as you are,’ and he takes two steps towards her and raises his right hand.
How can she get out of here? Cold sweat breaks out on her forehead and over her face and neck. Her eyes close and she sways forward. Trev catches her expertly only to shove her upright again. ‘Stand up, you fucking bitch! This time there’ll be no performances from you. This time you’re coming out of here with me and we’re going to find a nice doctor and tell him how sick you really are, how cracked in the head. Too ill to be in charge of my two kids.’
‘But there’s nothing wrong with me, Trev.’ Kirsty’s voice is pitiful and pleading.
‘There’s either something wrong with you or I am a cruel, battering husband.’ He raises his eyebrows and lets his voice scrape along her bones. ‘That’s what you told the bastards, isn’t it? That’s what you went blabbing on about, and now, by God, you’re going to convince them that you don’t know what the hell you are saying, that you’re so far gone in the fucking head that everything you told them’s a lie!’
She watches him. With every word he speaks Kirsty finds it harder to breathe. So that is what he’s planning to do, he has threatened this in the past if he caught her reading one more book, if he caught her spending one more penny, if he saw one crumb on the draining board, if she forgot to spread his fucking mustard—he would get her locked up for the rest of her life so she’d never come out again.
And in his own psychotic way, Kirsty knows that Trev believes it. He really does consider her insane—so great and outrageous is his own self-denial.
And now, slowly, steadily and implacably, Trev is advancing towards her. She will take such a beating she’ll be willing to say anything, do anything, by the time he has broken her body and crippled her esteem. This time he will grind her down, he will annihilate her completely with his insane, brutal rage, while her two small helpless children… and she screams in frantic fear and despair.
No standards.
No values.
No morality.
Just a tyrannous lust.
She backs her way round the kitchen, moving from sink to cooker to fridge, and all the while Trev holds her eyes like a tormenting cat with a terrified bird. Her fear turns into a heedless stampede and she’s out of control running.
She sees him stagger, grip the fridge and call out some curse that rings in her ears. She hears a deep, cracking sound as the fridge tilts, as though there’s an earthquake, and leaves a hole where it once was, a hole filled with Trev’s frantic activity until, with his black eyes blazing with mockery, he disappears like a ghoul in a dream with a great crashing sound and a rushing landscape of dust and rubble.
Kirsty stands there gagging in air that is thick with chaos, afraid to trust to the new sound of silence. Mesmerized by what seems to have happened, she is incapable of movement. The waiting is the worst part. The waiting for Trev’s head to reappear above the floor, leering, as he sometimes used to, over what he called his little jokes. The worst was the nail through the bandaged finger. She wants to drop to her knees, but daren’t, although there are no bones left in her legs.
Then comes the horror of horrors, while she stands there rigid, transfixed, her face takes on a helpless, childlike stare. Trev’s disembodied voice comes from deep down in the ground. Her mind gives a jerk—a well—had somebody told her of a well in the corner of this terrible kitchen, of a deep hole that led to nowhere, so damp that the whole house reeked?
A well? Her common sense comes to bear, but grindingly slowly, through the haze of her disembodied state. Not a well, surely, but a mine shaft. The coast line is littered with old mining works from the days when the tinners worked this land, mine workings centuries old, which extend way beneath the seabed itself. They went fathoms deep in their desperation, those wild Cornishmen they had told her about, and she’d only half listened while she worked.
There is a restless, rushing excitement as feeling comes back into Kirsty’s limbs. Here comes that sound again—a hollow, echoing sound from somewhere deep in that broken corner. A strong man, and fit for his age, is Trev gathering all his strength to climb out while she stands here waiting? And is she prepared to let this happen?
How far has her husband fallen?
She has to know this, she has to know.
With a primal ruthlessne
ss that comes naturally now, Kirsty creeps, inch by awful inch, very aware that the floor where she’s standing might be unstable, might give way at any moment and pitch her into some black hell. She reaches the part where the lino first cracked and kneels down slowly and listens, tears streaming down her cheeks and little sobs breaking from her spasmodically.
After a while, when the mourning is over, Kirsty Hopkins rocks back on her heels and starts to laugh uproariously.
Because the hilarious, the insane, the extraordinarily funny thing is that Trevor is still alive.
Twenty
‘STONE WALLS DO NOT a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;’
But they make a bloody good job of trying.
After a brief, inglorious court appearance when Graham Timothy Stott, dulled, defeated and blunted, was put on oath to give his name and plead not guilty, he was remanded in custody for the murder of one Annie Brenner, aged seventy-nine—why must they keep repeating her age, surely killing someone who’s old is kinder than killing a kid?—and the questioning sessions continued by detectives working on the Ed Board case.
There were hisses and boos when he came out of court and he’d ducked his head to hide his face when he climbed into the van. It had all been so indifferent and formal he’d almost welcomed this sign of humanity, the first in the sterile proceedings. And then, ah yes, there it was again as the gates closed behind them, the familiar smell of disinfectant and piss, and a draughtiness blew at him from the ruthlessly clean walls and the shining metal of the landing rails.
‘They haven’t got a thing on me,’ Graham swore to his brief.
Graham might be a Trevor-in-waiting but for his slighter build, his nasal voice and his vastly superior cunning. And Graham has no pride, unlike Trevor. Part of the jobless generation, he grew up pampered and overprotected while Trevor’s dad made free with his belt and drove his mother to a glinty-eyed Christ.
‘Well,’ said his brief, an experienced man with a jaunty, confident manner, who knew damn well Graham was guilty, ‘they do have a good deal of circumstantial evidence. Your cigarette ends for a start, they were found in an empty milk bottle on the basement steps adjacent to the crime, traces of material from your jacket lining were found caught in the rusty railings and, most telling of all, your fingerprints are all over Annie’s bag.’ The man sat back with his hands on his briefcase, case proven.
‘OK,’ wailed Graham, ‘so I was in that basement; I had to sleep somewhere, didn’t I? I’d been kicked out of home, no dosh, cold, hungry, and I’ve already told you I saw Annie being attacked; it was me who picked up her bag afterwards and went to give it back to her.’
‘And, like any innocent bystander caught up in a violent crime, you hot-footed it to Cornwall and swore you’d already been here a month, living with your sister and doing odd jobs for the hotel?’
‘I knew they’d try to pin it on me.’ Graham started blabbing. ‘What would you have done for Christ’s sake? Just hung around till they picked you up? A piece of scum they can do what they like with. Yeah,’ he gulped and his overlarge Adam’s apple did a leap from the base of his throat to his chin. ‘Self-preservation, that’s what it’s about. Look after number one. No-one ever looked after me.’
But his mother used to look after him.
Graham’s brief closed his weary eyes. ‘Graham, please listen to me. If you come clean and plead guilty to manslaughter—we know you didn’t mean to kill Mrs Brenner—then the murder charge will be dropped.’
‘I never touched her,’ moaned Graham, lighting a fag for comfort, and well he might—he wasn’t going to get it elsewhere. None of his family had been in the court, nobody was around to speak up for him. ‘Everyone has conspired against me. Even you, who’s meant to be on my side.’ And this time they would put him away for most of his youthful life. When he came out of gaol he would be an old man, thirty or forty most probably, and he thought of the things receding from him for ever—pubs, sex, clubs, cinemas, holidays abroad, marriage, kids—Jesus, Jesus. And here was this prick who was supposed to be defending him, who’d scarper off out of here in a minute, no doubt off to dinner or the theatre or to some sodding old boys’ reunion.
Bloody hell, it was all so unfair.
He never had the right start in life.
And now look what’s happening. He should be back in Liverpool by now, but the pigs are trying to pin this one on him, as if he’s ever heard of Ed Board, let alone bumped him off.
Kirsty was in trouble yesterday—an unusual situation for Mrs Stokes to be tearing a strip off Kirsty because Kirsty is normally so reliable.
‘I just needed to go off on my own,’ Kirsty told Avril, and it looked as if she had been crying; she seemed so pale, so shaky. ‘It’s the thought of the kids coming down and all the responsibility of that… but here’s me going on selfishly while you’re in such a state.’
Avril’s voice quivered. ‘And there’s been no sign of Fluffy.’
‘I really meant Graham and your mother.’
‘Oh yes, yes, I know. And the press have found their caravan.’
‘Oh no. Why don’t they go back home? What’s the point of stopping down here?’
‘Guilt. That’s what it is. They feel they ought to stay here until this thing with Graham is finished. Punishing themselves, that’s what it’s about. Mother keeps saying, “But I’m still his mother, Richard, no matter what he’s done.” But she hates him, Kirsty! She hasn’t got a good word for him. And, oh God, I wish they would go home. I wish I was still living in at the Burleston and not stuck here ten doors away from them. Kirsty, the hassle, I can’t bear it.’
Preparing the caravan for Kirsty’s children doesn’t provide one hundredth of the kind of diversion Avril needs to relieve this hell. The mobile home is a spartan place, it would need re-designing to make it a home, but with colourful rugs and mats and lamps bought from a local car-boot sale the atmosphere can be slightly softened. But every moment Avril spends cleaning the place, stocking the larder and filling in the window gaps, is a selfish moment away from her mother, who needs her at a time like this.
‘So you’ve decided not to visit him?’ Avril’s voice is accusing.
Mrs Stott pales visibly. ‘In that place, Avril? You must be mad.’
‘But he must be out of his mind right now.’
‘He might well be out of his mind. But how about me? What do you think all this is doing to me, Avril? Your father took me to the local surgery this morning, but I didn’t think much of the doctor, not a patch on dear Dr Hunt who knows me, but even so, he gave me some stronger tablets, seeing the situation I’m in.’
‘But there’s not much point in you staying down here if you’re not going to visit Graham, is there?’
Mrs Stott views her daughter searchingly. ‘What is the point of you staying down here, that is the question I would like to have answered? Never mind me. You’ve given up a perfectly good job without the usual notice, so that means references are out of the question. You’ve moved into that terrible caravan and intend to live there with that woman and her children. On what, Avril? I ask you, how do you intend to live?’ Mother lets her eyelids flutter to signify instability. ‘The dole, I suppose, if that charwoman is anything to go by.’
‘You’re wrong, actually. Kirsty is still working.’
‘You will live a hand-to-mouth existence in the wilds of Cornwall on the dole while putting your faith in a silly venture that everyone knows is a five-day wonder.’
‘Mother, why don’t you listen to me? This is not a five-day wonder! They say the UK publisher has offered a record advance and in the States they have just agreed to a sum that’s more than they pay Stephen King. Mother, they are signing these contracts at the moment.’
‘Who is signing? Avril, talk sense. This is the kind of nonsense you read about, but you know none of it is true, it’s merely a lot of trumped-up nonsense. What has come over you to be taken in by all this, when I brought you up so down-to
-earth?’
‘There is really no point in discussing this any further.’
‘Avril.’ Mother swirls the teapot over her little caravan sink and pours the dregs into a piece of newspaper. No newfangled teabags for Mother. ‘If you are coming into this sort of fortune, what are you doing slumming it down here with hardly a penny to your name and hardly able to buy your groceries? Now, madam, answer me that.’
‘I need to be here at the moment, Mother, so that Kirsty and I can liaise when the time comes for us to play our parts in this venture. I have told you before, this is a three-way thing.’
‘Liaise? Oh yes? So you let that little minx Bernadette scamper off to London with her playboy boyfriend.’
This is outrageous. ‘You don’t know her! You’ve never even seen her!’
‘I have seen her picture,’ says Mother firmly, scouring the bases of the taps with a toothbrush. ‘And I don’t need to know her to realize what game that one is playing,’ she says archly. ‘The only thing that infuriates me is that you refuse to come home. And at a time like this, when families should be sticking together.’
Mother, of course, is very aware of the stigma attached to her and her caravan now that her son is in the news for such a grotesque offence. Passers-by pretend not to look, but they cast their eyes across just the same, and Mother huffs and puffs and wishes she could beckon them over and assure them that she is every bit as disgusted, and just as uninvolved as they are.
But Mrs Stott is not given this chance. Nobody wants to know her. All they do is gossip about her. Even when she goes to the shop the limp girl at the counter drops her eyes, and Mother has been forced to stop complaining on account of her new inferior status.
Avril knows very well why Mother has chosen to stay in Cornwall. Terrible though this notoriety is, it would be much worse back at 2 Maple Terrace, Huyton, the patch where the dire deed was committed. The shame, oh the shame. Mother is in hiding. She has gone to ground. They could well get offensive material shoved through their letterbox, bricks through their windows and obscene phone calls, so vigorous will be the fury of the local population who have taken seventy-nine-year-old Annie Brenner to their infamously warm Merseyside hearts. At least here at the Happy Stay nobody knows Mother; her fellow campers are ships in the night and, after one haughty look from her, they drop their excited eyes and sail on.
Veil of Darkness Page 20
