A Nice Place to Die

by Jane Mcloughlin

  ‘They’re cops,’ Donna said. She stood aside as Kevin came to the doorway, then pushed the door shut behind him.

  ‘Hey,’ Kevin said, ‘it’s cold out here.’

  He turned to Jack, ignoring Moody. ‘What you want?’ he said.

  ‘Nice bike,’ DCI Moody said.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Kevin, still blanking her, addressed Jack.

  Moody said, ‘We want to ask you a few questions about an incident here recently. A man was beaten to death in the street.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, the vicar from the village, wasn’t it? I heard about that.’

  ‘It would be easier doing this inside,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yeah, I know, but Dad’s out and she can be funny about the cops. She won’t let us in.’

  ‘You remember the incident, then?’ Moody said.

  ‘Sure, Mum found the body. It’s her you should be talking to. I wasn’t even here.’

  ‘Where were you?’ Jack took out his notebook and pen and prepared to write down the details.

  ‘I stayed over with a chick I picked up in a bar in Weston. Didn’t get back till after it was all over,’ Kevin said, and grinned at them.

  ‘Name?’ Jack asked. ‘What was the girl’s name?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Kevin said. ‘Didn’t ask. We didn’t do much talking.’

  ‘Where did you pick her up?’ Jack sounded resigned.

  ‘Some bar, mate. Weston’s full of bars. I don’t remember which one.’

  ‘Why Weston? There’s places nearer than that you could pick up a girl.’

  Moody was floundering and Kevin knew it.

  ‘Her? I didn’t go to Weston for that. The chick just happened.’

  Moody and Jack both knew that Weston was somewhere it was easy to get drugs.

  ‘Can your mother confirm all this?’ Moody asked. She was trying to retain some dignity.

  ‘Sure she can,’ Kevin said, giving the policewoman what he thought passed for a charming smile. He turned and shouted through the letter box, ‘Mum, you’re wanted.’

  Donna opened the door. She had obviously been listening. She avoided their eyes, keeping her gaze fixed on the ground.

  ‘They want to know—’ Kevin started, but Moody interrupted him.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Kevin, I’ll ask the questions.’

  Moody began to go through the motions. Donna confirmed that Kevin hadn’t come home till late in the evening of the day the vicar was killed. More like the next morning. She didn’t know he’d been in Weston with a girl, but he hadn’t been here, she was sure of that.

  ‘Too bloody sure,’ Moody said to Jack as they got into the car and drove away.

  ‘Let’s face it, Boss,’ Jack said, ‘we haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of pinning this one on that poisonous bastard and he knows it. They’ll be having a good laugh about making fools of us back there.’

  But in the kitchen of Number Two Forester Close Kevin Miller was not laughing.

  ‘Why did they come here?’ he shouted at Donna. ‘Someone must’ve tipped them off.’

  Donna was scared. He thinks it was me, she thought. Who else would he think it was?

  ‘They’ve gone away, they’ve nothing on you,’ Donna said. She spoke to him in a soothing, caressing tone because she was trying to persuade Kylie to eat. ‘It must’ve been chance. No one knows you were there.’

  Donna deliberately said ‘You were there.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘You did it.’

  ‘That old bitch Alice Bates next door does,’ Kevin said. ‘Jess says she spies on us all the time. It must be her.’

  Donna said, ‘Alice Bates? She wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ Donna couldn’t hide that she felt relieved because Kevin wasn’t blaming her. ‘She wouldn’t dare,’ she said.

  Kevin sat hunched at the breakfast bar glowering at Kylie, who began to cry.

  At last he said, ‘It must’ve been her. That old bitch. I’ll make her sorry she didn’t keep her mouth shut. I’ll kill her for this.’

  TWELVE

  Parked in a lay-by on the main road between Old Catcombe and Catcombe Mead, Jess Miller sat rigid beside Mark Pearson in the front of his pickup.

  She was wearing a new top which had given up trying to contain her breasts. Mark’s face, occasionally lighted by the headlamps of a passing car, was smeared with her lipstick.

  Now they had nothing to say to one another. Jess had been crying, and her smudged mascara made her look, in the light of her cigarette when she inhaled, like something out of a Dracula movie. Mark gripped the wheel with both hands and scowled at the traffic.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Jess said at last. She knew very well that Mark couldn’t answer her question. She got a certain satisfaction from fuelling the fire of their thwarted passion.

  Mark said nothing.

  Jess found a tissue and wiped away some of the condensation on the windows of the pickup. She opened the window a crack and tossed out the pulpy paper.

  ‘Where can we go?’ she said, staring round as though the bleak lay-by or the traffic on the main road could offer a solution. Jess looked at the empty beer cans and discarded cigarette packs scattered across the grass verge and thought, lots of other couples have stopped here like me and Mark with nowhere to go. She said, ‘We could get in the back and do it. The traffic’s going too fast for anyone to notice.’

  Mark sounded angry. ‘Someone might recognize the pickup,’ he said. ‘It’d be just our luck for my Dad to come by.’

  ‘We could go into one of your fields,’ Jess said. ‘Where there aren’t any cows. Please, Mark, just for a little while. I’ll keep you warm.’

  ‘Bullocks,’ Mark corrected her automatically, ‘not cows, bullocks. I’m not doing it in a field like an animal. And if my Dad . . .’

  ‘If your bloody Dad spends so much time out and about, he’s not in the house much and I don’t see why we can’t go to your bedroom,’ Jess said.

  ‘Oh, lay off, Jess. We can’t go anywhere near the farm.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Jess said in a sulky tone.

  ‘Oh, Jess,’ Mark said.

  She could tell that he was getting irritated with her. She knew she was being childish, but like a kid picking a scab, she couldn’t let well alone.

  ‘Why don’t we tell them?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing they can do to us, really, is there? The worst they can do is throw us out, and then we’re together which is what we want. Oh, Mark, why don’t we stop hiding and come out with it?’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ Mark said, and his knuckles were white on the wheel. ‘You know we can’t do that.’

  He was thinking, she always does this, she always starts trying to force the issue. Why doesn’t she see that I can’t just up and leave and start over somewhere else? What would happen to the farm?

  He said, ‘I don’t see why we can’t go to yours. We can tell if there’s anyone there . . .’

  ‘No,’ Jess said, ‘we can’t.’ She thought, Kevin and Nate might not be there, but Donna and Kylie would be. Mum might not turn us out, but she could easily say something about Kylie. She’s always telling people the kid’s mine. That’s the last thing I want.

  ‘I share a room with my little sister,’ Jess lied.

  ‘So?’ Mark said. ‘We’ll be careful not to wake her.’

  He knew as he said it that this was no good. Jess could never keep quiet in the act of love.

  ‘Can’t we drive somewhere outside the area where no one knows us?’

  ‘Dad would know from the mileage I’d gone outside the village. He checks the diesel.’

  ‘Well, fill the tank so he can’t tell,’ Jess said. She felt that Mark was trying to make difficulties.

  He shouted at her suddenly, ‘I haven’t got any money, all right? Don’t you understand anything? I can’t even afford to take you out for the day down to the coast or spend a night together at a bloody bed and breakfast.’ Then, more calmly, he said, ‘How do you thi
nk that makes me feel, Jess? It isn’t as if I don’t want to fuck you.’

  Jess was disarmed. ‘I love you too, babe,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She lunged towards him, her hand searching his crotch for the zip of his fly. The lights of an oncoming car picked them out.

  With an enormous effort, he pushed her back into the passenger seat. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not here.’

  A lorry drove into the lay-by ahead of them.

  ‘Quick, I know where we can go,’ Jess said, ‘we can go round the back of Alice’s house. She lives next door to us, but no one ever goes out there at night. There’s a sort of covered lean-to where she keeps deckchairs and things. We’ll be OK in there.’

  Mark hesitated. He didn’t want to go anywhere near Jess’s family, but she was hot for him and he was hot for her and she seemed to think it was all right so it was worth the risk.

  ‘Who’s Alice?’ he said. He wanted Jess so much now that his own voice sounded funny to him, hoarse and thick.

  ‘No one,’ Jess said. ‘Please hurry, Mark, or I’m going to come off all over this seat and your effing Dad’s going to see the stain. Drive faster, babe, I’m on fire.’

  Jesus, Mark thought, swerving across oncoming traffic into Forester Close, this girl’s really something.

  He tried to ignore the small voice in his head asking him, this isn’t right. It isn’t what she thinks, I’ve got to tell her. One day. Soon.

  THIRTEEN

  First thing in the morning Alice came downstairs to feed Phoebus.

  He wasn’t in the kitchen where he usually waited for her, marching up and down on top of the kitchen table with his tail erect and twitching like a water diviner’s rod.

  She checked the cat flap to be sure it wasn’t stuck, but it was working perfectly. She opened the back door and called him. Sometimes if she was earlier than usual he was still outside doing whatever he did when he went out at night.

  He probably caught a bird or a rabbit or something and he’s not hungry, she told herself. She wasn’t worried. Phoebus knew how to look after himself. He’d be back when he was ready.

  By evening, she began to wonder if he’d found himself a new home. She felt rebuffed. She thought that she had not made him happy. Even a stray cat didn’t want to live with her.

  Soon after dark, there was a knock on the front door.

  No one called on anyone after dark, no one innocent. Alice went into the hall and listened at the door for the sound of voices.

  But the silence was unnatural.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called, her voice faint and querulous with anxiety.

  ‘It’s Jean Henson.’ Jean’s voice sounded more frightened than Alice’s. ‘Please, let me in.’

  Alice started to unlock the deadlock and undo the bolts. She had taken off the chain as soon as she recognized Jean’s voice. Of course, Phoebus must’ve gone to Number Four hoping the Hensons would feed him. Cats were so greedy. Jean must be bringing him home.

  When she opened the door, Jean was pressed so close against it that she almost fell into the hall. She was carrying something covered with a towel.

  She gave a quick look behind her as though to check she wasn’t followed.

  ‘Please, quick, shut the door,’ she said.

  Jean’s face was white and pinched, she looked terrified and ill. She had obviously been crying and her eyes were red and swollen.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Can we go in the kitchen?’ Jean said. ‘No one can see us there.’

  Alice was alarmed now. ‘Has something happened?’ she asked again. ‘Where’s your husband?’

  ‘He can’t come out,’ Jean said, ‘he knows they’re waiting for him.’

  ‘Waiting for him? Who?’

  ‘Those terrible kids. They’ll kill him if they can. If they get him while it’s dark, they’ll kill him. They’ve done it before, haven’t they?’

  ‘Done what?’ Alice asked. Please, don’t let her say it, she thought, she mustn’t say it, we must try to forget.

  Jean was frightened by what she had said already. ‘The trouble is, there’s no proof,’ she said, ‘we all know who did it but the police can’t prove anything.’

  Alice felt oppressed and guilty. She knew that she could have provided that proof but knowing that made her feel all the more terrorized by the feral youths who hung around in the street outside the Millers’ at night.

  She looked at Jean and saw that her visitor wasn’t simply afraid; she was petrified. She was shaking all over, even her lips shook so it was difficult for her to speak. It came as a shock to Alice that Jean and Dr Henson, who, unlike herself, had had real lives in the real world, felt the same terror of the youths as she did. She wished she didn’t know that, it made the threat seem much more immediate and real.

  Alice hustled Jean into the kitchen.

  ‘Surely they wouldn’t go that far?’ she said, and her voice quavered like an old woman’s.

  ‘Look,’ Jean said.

  She put whatever she was carrying under the towel on to the kitchen table. ‘Look what they’ve done.’

  Jean pulled back the towel the way police pathologists revealed corpses in murder dramas on television.

  Alice did not realize at once that what lay on her kitchen table was the carcass of her cat. Phoebus looked like something that had been pulled out of a slurry pit. His orange coat was slimy with drying blood. His beautiful striped tail was stripped of fur. His head had been almost cut off and hung from a thin iridescent sinew. His teeth were bared and the sockets of his eyes were a mass of congealed blood.

  Alice could not look. Gently, she folded the towel back over the cat’s body.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘they couldn’t. Surely not on purpose. How could anyone do that?’

  Jean said, ‘Peter found him. He used to come round to our kitchen windowsill sometimes. We put out milk for him. They must’ve caught him. They left him on the doorstep. Peter nearly stepped on him when he went out. They must’ve thought he was ours.’

  Alice knew that wasn’t true. The Millers knew Phoebus belonged to her. This was a threat meant for her.

  Alice thought she was going to be sick. She leaned on the sink and closed her eyes, rocking to and fro in a helpless, pointless, way. Why did Jean have to bring him here, why didn’t she just tell me? That would be enough. Or would it? Alice could scarcely believe the cruelty inflicted on Phoebus. Nothing that Jean could have said would have described that.

  ‘They know he’s mine,’ she said. ‘Donna brought him here once when she saw him on the main road. And anyway, why should they hate you or your husband?’

  Even as she said this, she remembered the incident involving little Kylie, how Donna had taken Dr Henson to be a pervert who’d targeted Jess’s child.

  ‘Do they still think a paediatrician is the same as a paedophile?’ Alice whispered. She could not bring herself to speak the word in a normal voice. ‘They can’t think that.’

  ‘Don’t you think so?’ Jean said in a queer, faltering voice. ‘I do. They think Peter’s a pervert. That butch lesbian and the faded creature she lives with probably wind them up. They hate men, women like that. They’re always looking for excuses to blame them for everything. And didn’t they once work for Social Services? There you are, then.’

  Alice didn’t know what Jean was talking about. She had no idea how to calm her. All she could think about was the horrible thing that had happened to Phoebus and why anyone should do it to a harmless cat.

  It was unspeakable, that act of pointless violence. But she told herself that Jean must also be afraid of what those mindless thugs could do to her husband to punish him for his imagined crime.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked Jean at last.

  ‘What can we do?’ Jean said. ‘You’ve seen the cat.’ Her voice was bleak.

  ‘Not the police? No, of course not.’

  ‘What could they do? We can’t prove who did
this to Phoebus. He could’ve been run over. And as for the threats against Peter, they’d say he’s a confused old man who’s imagining things. The police couldn’t do anything. And then those apes would know we’d reported them. It would only make things worse.’

  ‘Apes wouldn’t do a thing like this,’ Alice said. She didn’t know if they would or not, it was something to say, the best she could think of to convey her helpless contempt for the worst of humanity. But she and Jean both understood that it wasn’t contempt she felt; it was extreme terror.

  Alice took Jean’s arm. ‘You’d better get back,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they saw you come in.’

  ‘No,’ Jean said, ‘they’ll be watching Peter. They’ll expect him to bury . . .’ she couldn’t say the cat’s name, she simply pointed at the heap on the table.

  ‘I’ll look after Phoebus,’ Alice said. ‘He was my cat.’

  But when she had seen Jean out through the front door, she went back into the kitchen. What can I do with him, she asked herself.

  She fetched a sheet from the airing cupboard and wrapped it around the remains. Then she put the bundle in a plastic bag from the supermarket and tied the handles tightly. She put the whole thing into the rubbish bin outside the back door. She couldn’t bring herself to bury the body in the garden, in case someone saw her do it. She felt bad about putting Phoebus into the bin, but consoled herself that he was dead, there was nothing of that glorious creature left in those hideous remains.

  They’re not going to sneer at me while I bury him, she thought, I’m not going to give them the satisfaction. This is Kevin Miller’s way of threatening me, but why should he? Even if he thinks I saw what he did to the vicar, he must know by now I’m not going to say anything.

  The best thing to do, she thought, is to ignore what’s happened, pretend that I’m still hoping to find Phoebus.

  Alice spent the rest of the evening making a notice. She wrote in big letters with a black marker pen on an old piece of cardboard – Missing: Beautiful big ginger cat, last seen in Catcombe Mead area. Reward. Apply Three Forester Close.

  I’ll put that up outside the supermarket, Alice thought. I’m not going to give Kevin Miller the satisfaction of knowing how he’s upset me.