He put his arm protectively round Jess’s shoulders, but he couldn’t disguise how scared he was. Neither of them could.
‘But, Jess, you’re Kevin’s sister,’ Alice said, incredulous. ‘You’re one of them. Why were they after you?’ Even as she said it, she could hear how silly she sounded. Like King Canute trying to turn back the tide.
‘That makes it worse,’ Jess wailed. ‘They think they’ve got the right. I’m family, they think they’re looking after me, they know what’s right for me. Oh, Mark, what are we going to do? If they get their hands on you now, I honestly think they’ll kill you.’
He gave her shoulders a squeeze to comfort her. ‘It’s all right,’ he said softly, ‘trust me, it’ll be OK.’
Jess shook her head. She turned to Alice. ‘It’s all that crazy feud stuff between us and those villagers. Kev doesn’t even have to know Mark, he hates him because he comes from the old village,’ she said. ‘It’s like that old movie, The Godfather. They’re born enemies. They don’t know why, they just are. They’re off their heads, they don’t know what they’re doing.’
Alice told her, ‘You go in there, in the sitting-room. I’ll come with you. We’ll turn on the light. If they see us on our own together, without Mark, it may distract them. You,’ she said to Mark, pushing him towards the kitchen, ‘you go out the back and get out of here as fast as you can.’
They both obeyed automatically. Alice felt a sudden icy draught and heard the back door close as she and Jess went into the sitting-room and sat down as casually as they could in front of the television. Alice put her hand on the telephone.
‘Should I call the police? In case he doesn’t get away?’
Jess looked at her in horror. ‘No, of course not. Are you mad? Kev would never let me get away with that.’
‘Are you sure?’
Jess shook her head. Then she asked, slowly, ‘You wouldn’t really do anything like that, would you? You wouldn’t ever tell the cops about something you saw that didn’t have anything to do with you? You’re asking for trouble.’
Jess was thinking, the first thing the old woman thought of was to call the cops. She could have been watching when that vicar man was killed. Could she be the one who told the police about Kevin?
‘No,’ Alice said. ‘No, of course I wouldn’t. But, the way they are tonight, if they see the telephone, it makes me feel better to know I could get help if they give trouble.’
Jess thought, she has no idea. It wouldn’t stop them. Her life won’t be worth living if they think she’s shopping them to the police.
She said to Alice, ‘They won’t give trouble, not now. It’s all over, at least for now. They wanted Mark. When they see he isn’t here with us, they’ll break it up. It started out they were having a laugh, but they were high and it went beyond that this time.’ She shivered, then tried to smile at Alice. ‘Brothers,’ she said, ‘who needs ’em?’
Jess sat staring impassively at her dirty fingernails. Tears squeezed like gel from under her smudged eyelashes.
The baying in the street seemed to get louder. Jess started to shake. Alice clenched her bony fists, trying not to tremble. She smiled at Jess as though they were talking about the weather, or a television programme. ‘Just talk naturally,’ she said.
Jess laughed and the sound surprised them both. ‘What’s natural?’ she said. ‘If I talked naturally the way that lot know me, you’d say I was starting a riot.’
Alice felt a sudden surge of affection for the girl. It took something special to make a joke against herself in this situation.
The baying outside was quieter. They heard feet splattering the gravel on the drive, then nothing.
‘They’ve gone,’ Jess said.
‘Yes,’ Alice said.
She got to her feet slowly. Now that it was all over she felt shaky. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea. It’s as well to give them a little while to calm down, don’t you think? Before you go out, I mean?’
With the immediate danger passed, Alice and Jess looked at each other as though they were creatures of different species. Jess stared at Alice’s greyish skin, at her shapelessness under the screen of dingy clothing, and she shuddered at the bleakness of being such a creature. Alice saw Jess’s curves tightly cased in cheap shiny cloth. She noticed the girl’s white hands with their gruesome black-lacquered nails and the angry blackheads under the mask of make-up. She shuddered with distaste.
‘Tea,’ Alice said.
She went to the kitchen and filled the kettle. Jess followed her.
‘You won’t call the cops, will you?’ Jess said. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’
Alice shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘What would be the use?’
‘What can I do?’ Jess asked suddenly. ‘All I’ve got over Kev and them is getting angry and frightening the shit out of them. At least I can still do that. You can’t talk to them.’
Alice shook her head again. She didn’t know what to say. She was offended by Jess’s language. Of course she heard worse on television but it was different hearing it from a real person in her own home. From a child, at that.
The kettle boiled. Alice took two mugs down from the shelf and put a teabag in each. ‘Tea,’ she said again. ‘It’ll help.’
‘Oh,’ Jess said with a sort of derisive snort. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but you’re way off. You’ve no right to judge me. You’re too old, you don’t understand. You’ve got to get in first or you’re dead.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said, ‘I’m not judging you, I understand.’
Jess looked startled at that, then scornful. ‘You think I’m wrong, right?’
Alice didn’t dare answer. Jess stood there like a furious Rottweiler. She decided that Alice thought she had glimpsed vulnerability behind her show of aggression and Jess wanted to bully that moment out of the old woman’s consciousness.
Of course, Alice had seen no such thing. To her, Jess was fearsome. Fear being part of Alice’s life, she was afraid particularly of all young people, and most of all young people like Jess who defied everything about the world that might comfort someone like herself.
‘That was Mark’s pickup,’ Jess said suddenly.
Alice had heard nothing, but then she made out the sound of a revved engine.
‘I’d know it anywhere,’ Jess said. She smiled.
‘That’s a relief,’ Alice said. ‘At least it still worked.’
‘Yes,’ Jess said.
Now that the crisis was over, they were both embarrassed.
‘How’s the baby?’ Alice asked, thinking to placate the girl with a maternal reminder.
‘What about it? Why does everyone think that my life begins and ends with that kid? What are you trying to say?’ Jess sounded aggressive.
Alice didn’t know what she was trying to say. Perhaps she’d hoped to soften Jess by mentioning the child; perhaps she was trying to sympathize with anyone bringing up her daughter in Jess’s circumstances.
Jess suddenly turned on the old woman. ‘It’ll have a better life than you have,’ she said. ‘It won’t be a weirdo. It’s going to know how to get on in the real world. It won’t hide away and suck the life out of people like you do.’
Alice smiled because she didn’t understand what Jess was saying.
‘You keep away from me,’ Jess said. She banged the mug of tea down. Then she ran out of the house, slamming the back door behind her.
Alice walked slowly back into the sitting-room and closed the curtains. The pack of teenagers was still hanging around on the driveway of Number Two. Jess appeared and walked slowly towards them. Alice watched as one of them, she thought it was Kevin, broke away from the rest and approached Jess. It was a conciliatory move, it couldn’t be anything else. Jess hit him, hard, on the ear, knocking him sideways so that he almost fell. Then they were both absorbed by the group, and they all moved away together down the street to the main road. They disappeared.
Gulls, Alice thought, they look like a group
of dark and hungry seagulls moving off towards a new scavenging ground.
Alice turned on the television. She needed company.
He seems such a nice boy, Jess’s friend, she thought. What on earth does he see in her? It’s bound to end in tears.
SIXTEEN
The phone was ringing on Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Moody’s desk when she came into her office first thing in the morning.
She took the call with her mind preoccupied by other things as she sorted the mail and wondered when someone would bring her a cup of coffee.
‘Oh, my God, not again,’ she said. ‘Not that bloody Forester place again. Not another one.’
She found Sergeant Reid in the canteen. He had just sat down to a late breakfast, his plate heaped with fried sausages, eggs, and bacon, when the DCI caught up with him.
She saw the look on his face when she sat down opposite him at his table, and laughed. ‘Don’t look like that,’ she said, ‘I’ll wait while you finish your cholesterol fix. It may be some time before you next eat.’
‘What’s the hurry?’ he said.
‘We’re off to Forester Close,’ she said, ‘and if I never hear the name of that street again it’ll be too soon.’
Jack Reid looked startled. ‘What is it this time,’ he said. ‘Surely not another murder?’
Rachel Moody shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said. ‘Not technically, I suppose, but it could be another Kevin Miller victim.’
Jack Reid pushed his plate away. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.
Rachel told him what she knew.
‘At ten thirty a.m. yesterday, Dr Peter Henson said goodbye to his wife on the doorstep of Number Four, Forester Close. He backed his blue Saab out of the garage, and drove off.’
The DCI spoke in a flat tone, as though she had learned the words off by heart.
Jack Reid nodded. ‘And?’ he asked.
Rachel Moody went on, ‘At six thirty this morning a woman walking her dog in the woods a mile or so outside Old Catcombe saw the Saab parked in the gateway to a field. The dog got excited, jumping up at the driver’s door and barking.’
‘And then?’ Reid prompted her.
‘The woman approached the car. She saw the rubber pipe attached to the exhaust. She found Dr Henson dead behind the wheel.’
‘How long had he been dead?’ Jack asked.
‘The car had run out of petrol. The ignition was still turned on. But the body and the engine were cold.’
‘What’s the wife got to say?’
‘That’s what we’re on our way to find out,’ Rachel said. ‘I know it’s not strictly our case, but the connection with Forester Close is more than a coincidence, so we’re taking it on. This could well have something to do with Kevin Miller. Apparently he got the idea Dr Henson was a paedo and the family persecuted him.’
‘I’d put money on it,’ Jack Reid said.
He stood up. ‘What are we waiting for?’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see if we can’t nail the bugger this time.’
Rachel Moody drove, while Jack gathered as much information about Dr Henson as he could on his mobile phone.
At last he snapped it shut and turned to look out of the car window at the depressing jungle of leafless winter undergrowth at the side of the road.
‘Waste of time,’ he said.
‘Nothing to go on?’ Rachel asked, prompting him.
‘Model citizen, by all accounts,’ Jack said. He sounded gloomy. ‘Respectable doctor, specialist paediatrician. Wife a primary school teacher. Both retired. Not even a parking ticket between them, my friend said.’
Rachel turned into Forester Close and drove slowly up the street to park outside Number Four.
The house seemed deserted; indeed, the entire street appeared deserted. It was as though all human life had been evacuated because of an alarm about some sinister life-threatening danger lurking in the street. Rachel glanced over to Alice Bates’s house, looking for the slightest twitch of a curtain, which might show that at least one person was part of the scene. But if Alice was watching, she was keeping well out of sight.
‘I feel sorry for Dr Henson’s widow,’ Rachel Moody said to Jack Reid. ‘This hateful place, she must think there’s no one in the world who gives a damn for what she’s going through. What price community here?’
‘Selfish thing for the doctor to do, really,’ Jack said. He sounded thoughtful. ‘What made him leave her all alone to face whatever the Millers were dishing out?’
‘Maybe they weren’t,’ Rachel said. ‘We’ve no proof this has anything to do with the Millers.’
‘What’s that, then?’ Jack said.
He pointed to slashes of red paint like knife wounds on the white garden wall outside the Henson house, and more on the front door. ‘What’s that say?’ he said. The word paedo was painted on the wall. ‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘and tell me that’s got nothing to do with one of those Millers.’
‘But why? What makes them think he’s a paedophile? There’s something we’re missing here.’
‘God knows,’ Jack Reid said.
He got out of the car and Rachel followed him across the drive of Number Four to the front door.
Jean finally answered their knocking.
‘I know what you’ve come to say,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to tell me, Peter’s dead. Two uniformed officers were here earlier. Thank you for coming, but I’d really rather be alone.’
She spoke in a bleak monotone, as though she had rehearsed the speech.
Rachel stepped forward. ‘I’m so sorry about what’s happened,’ she said, ‘but there are a few things we have to check.’
‘What things? My husband killed himself. That’s an end to it, there’s no more to be said.’
Jean sounded surprisingly determined.
‘Mrs Henson, was there any reason why your husband should be depressed? Was he under any unusual stress, for instance?’
‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ Jean said.
‘Perhaps we could come inside for a moment,’ Jack said. ‘It would be better than talking on the doorstep.’
Jean Henson looked hurriedly about. She seemed not to notice the ugly scrawled graffiti on the front door.
Perhaps she doesn’t know it’s there, Rachel thought. She probably hasn’t been out of the house since it appeared. But that was ridiculous, of course Jean Henson must know. She was just trying to ignore it because there was nothing she could say.
Rachel was trying to think of a way of bringing up the subject tactfully when she heard Jack say, ‘Careful you don’t get red paint on your clothes from that door. It looks as if it’s still wet.’
Jean moved back, startled, and Jack moved forward into the door frame, as though he thought she had invited him in.
Reid said, ‘Mrs Henson, what can you tell us about the word paedo splashed all over the outside of your front wall? What’s that all about?’
Rachel was horrified at what she saw as the Sergeant’s brutality. She, too, moved towards Jean Henson, but to try to comfort her.
‘How long has it been there?’ she asked.
‘You’d better come in,’ Jean Henson said. She sounded reluctant, and turned away to walk into the kitchen, leaving them to shut the front door.
Jack followed her to a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and helped her up on to the seat. Then he pulled up another stool and perched close to her.
‘We met your husband, you remember?’ he said. ‘He seemed to us then to be a happy man. No money worries, a good marriage, success in his career. What was happening in his life that made him do this?’
Jean Henson looked up at him, open-mouthed. She shook her head helplessly.
Rachel said, ‘What about that stupid graffiti? Had someone got hold of the wrong end of the stick? Was someone threatening him? Or trying to blackmail him?’
‘That was an idiotic mistake,’ Jean Henson said. ‘Jess Miller’s baby fell out of her pram and Peter went and pick
ed her up to see if she was all right.’
That was clearly as much as she wanted to say, but Jack would not leave it at that.
‘Well, of course he did. What decent person wouldn’t?’
He and Rachel both waited for Jean to say more. The silence grew oppressive.
At last Jean Henson said, ‘Someone saw him touch the child and told Donna Miller he’d been abusing her.’
‘So the Millers wrote that word all over your wall and the door?’
Jean’s voice faltered. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know who told Donna Miller that your husband abused the kid?’ Rachel said.
‘He didn’t abuse the child,’ Jean Henson said, ‘he picked her up and comforted her.’
‘Of course he did,’ Jack Reid said. ‘But someone made a big mistake. Someone pretty stupid. Was it a mistake, or was it a malicious lie? Did your husband have any enemies that you know of?’
Jean hesitated. As his wife, she knew that a lot of people didn’t like Peter. Even his own daughter had gone to Australia to get away from him. So she prevaricated. ‘I don’t know who’d make up a thing like that,’ she said. She started to cry. ‘But someone in this street must’ve seen him with the child and got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘Who do you think that was?’ Rachel said.
‘Alice Bates,’ Jean burst out, ‘she’s the one who watches what goes on here.’
Suddenly she turned on Rachel Moody. ‘I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘Go away and leave me alone, I’ve nothing to say. I know what you want me to say, you want me to tell you that Kevin Miller persecuted us and drove my husband to kill himself. But I don’t know, I tell you, I don’t know.’
She got off the stool and faced them.
Rachel noticed that in spite of everything she was going through, Jean Henson had put on her make-up and done her hair as though she were on her way out to a social occasion. It’s the only way she knows to face the end of the world, Rachel thought, keeping up appearances whatever happens.
Jean started to recite at them. ‘My husband has suffered from depression ever since he was forced to retire from the NHS. He didn’t want to stop working, he’d lots more years work in him. He was bitter about that, and he felt there was no future to look forward to. That’s why he did it.’
A Nice Place to Die Page 10
