A Nice Place to Die

by Jane Mcloughlin

  Alice was about to turn away and get ready for bed when she saw Dave come running round the side of Number Five. She could see him plainly as he crossed the front garden and vaulted over the wall into the street. He pulled open the door of his car, got in and at once drove off as though all the devils of hell were after him.

  Alice sighed. He and Helen must have had a row. Or perhaps Terri caught them together. Really, she thought, Helen’s hopeless. She might at least put him out of his misery one way or another.

  Alice was wide awake now. She went downstairs in her nightdress to check she had put the cat out. She kept forgetting things like that these days. Then she remembered that she no longer had a cat. Fancy forgetting that, she told herself.

  The thought of Phoebus made her want to cry. She must think of something else. She opened the back door to step into the garden to enjoy the beauty of the night for a moment before bed.

  The air was crisp with a hint of woodsmoke, an old-fashioned, nostalgic smell. She sniffed again. Someone must have had a bonfire earlier, the scent of aromatic smoke was definitely in the air.

  It was cold outside. Alice shivered and went back indoors. But that breath of fresh air had cleared her head of sad thoughts about poor Phoebus. And there was something consoling, too, about the smell of bonfire smoke, a nostalgic aspirin to ease the headache of tomorrow. Now she could go to bed and enjoy the simple pleasure of being warm and comfortable knowing it was cold outside, too cold for burglars. Or Kevin Miller.

  She thought, I’ll take a sleeping pill. Nothing will happen tonight.

  Alice dreamed of a dark place full of confusion. She half woke and said aloud ‘This isn’t fair, this isn’t part of this beautiful night,’ but then she went back to sleep.

  In the morning she felt as though she had spent a sleepless night. Even after she’d dressed and gone downstairs to put the kettle on, the dream still troubled her. She wasn’t sure what had happened in it, or who had been there; she just couldn’t shake off the atmosphere of ill-will that had permeated it and persisted now in spite of the blades of sunlight attacking her polished furniture through the window on this bright, clear morning.

  What’s the matter with me, she asked herself, looking down the street to make sure the Miller kids weren’t hanging about before she opened the front door to bring in the milk. It had become automatic, that daily check that the coast was clear.

  She couldn’t see them, but when she opened the door she shut it again quickly against the smell. There was a horrible chemical smell out there, a sour stench of wet ash and burnt plastic.

  From the window in her front room she had a better view. Something had happened to Number Five. There was a vast dark gash in the roof. The front of the house was stained black, and smoke crawled out of a broken window on the first floor. Part of the side wall of the building under the roof had collapsed and the remains of Nicky’s bedroom were exposed. The bed was still smouldering, and a teddy bear, mutilated by the flames, hung by the threads of a knitted jacket from the end of a charred joist.

  A police car drove up the street, did a screeching three-point turn outside Alice’s house, and parked on the verge behind one of several red vans from the fire department. The actual fire-fighting appliances must have been and gone; what remained were Incident and Investigation vehicles.

  Alice saw a curtain move in the front room of Number Two. Donna Miller must be watching, too. Has she seen me? Alice asked herself. Does she know I’m here? She wondered, does she think one of her teenagers was involved? And she thought, with satisfaction, whoever did it, they’ll get the blame.

  But of course Alice knew they hadn’t done it. She could scarcely believe it, but there could be no doubt, she’d seen the way Dave had run away from that house in the moonlight.

  Maybe Donna is looking at me, she thought, maybe all the Millers are in there together watching me and knowing that I know who did it. But I’m not going to tell. After what those Miller kids did to Phoebus, let them take the blame for this.

  TWENTY

  Because of their ongoing murder investigation in Forester Close, the Superintendent told DCI Moody and Sergeant Reid to treat the arson attack on Number Five as part of their inquiries.

  ‘Here we go again,’ Jack Reid said as he stopped the car.

  ‘Ugh,’ Rachel Moody said as she got out of the vehicle. ‘What an awful smell.’

  When they went into the house, the fire damage was not as bad as it had looked from outside in the street. Only the garage and the child’s bedroom above it had suffered much more than cosmetic harm.

  The fire investigators were on site.

  Sergeant Reid knew their Chief. ‘We might as well move in and save petrol,’ Jack said. ‘What’s the story this time?’

  ‘Hello again, Jack,’ the Fire Chief said, ‘how’s the wife?’

  ‘Not so bad,’ Jack said. ‘What’s it this time, kids?’

  ‘Could be. Deliberate, but it doesn’t look as though it was much more than a prank. It could’ve been so much worse if it hadn’t started in the garage.’

  ‘Some kind of warning, d’you think?’

  The Fire Chief shrugged. ‘That’s your problem. It was deliberate, but beyond that . . . The garage and the bedroom will have to be rebuilt, but there’s no structural damage to the rest of the house. The insurance will be asking a few tough questions, I’d say. They won’t be happy, that’s all I can say at this stage, really.’

  Rachel Moody was in the kitchen talking to Terri, Helen and Nicky. They sat round the table in the open plan dining area drinking coffee Terri had made.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Rachel asked her.

  Terri seemed very calm, very efficient. She had already been talking to her insurance company, and to a firm of builders who were coming to secure the house and give her an estimate for repairing the damage.

  Nicky was excited. Even, Rachel thought, thrilled.

  ‘The spare room’s my room now,’ she told Rachel. ‘Terri says I can do it as I want when the insurance money comes. I’ll be able to get all new things.’

  Helen alone looked devastated. Her hair, for some reason Rachel couldn’t fathom, was dripping wet. She kept touching her face with her fingers, and there were black soot marks round her mouth and eyes.

  ‘It was Dave,’ she said. Her voice was shrill with hysteria. ‘He always said he’d get me for leaving him, and this is what he’s done. How could he do something like this to his own daughter?’

  Rachel said, ‘But surely . . .’ She hesitated, then, sounding unconvinced, added, ‘However bitter he was he wouldn’t put his own daughter at risk. That’s perverted.’

  But Helen was certain. ‘He knew Nicky wasn’t in her room. He could see us all in the living room. I suppose he was desperate, he was afraid of losing me.’

  Terri put her arm on Helen’s shoulder. ‘The man is mad,’ she said. ‘He’s dangerous. Isn’t that what I’ve said all along?’

  ‘He’s not really mad,’ Helen said, ‘he’s desperate.’

  She sounded as if this was something she could be proud of.

  DCI Moody asked, ‘Do you have any evidence that your ex-husband was involved?’

  Helen quailed as though Rachel Moody had threatened her. ‘Who else would it be?’ she whispered. ‘I’ve done everything I could to give him access to Nicky, but when he did see her, he was drunk and abusive and he terrified her with the scary things he said to me. She didn’t want to see him ever again. She said so.’

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Terri said.

  Helen started to cry. She looked abject, like someone made up to play the part of a waif.

  ‘Then it all got messed up and suddenly he was saying I refused to give him access and it just got bitter.’

  ‘But why should he say that if you didn’t refuse?’ Rachel said.

  ‘The lawyer said it would be best if I refused to let him see her,’ Helen said. ‘And then after my lawyer said that, his lawyer went for full custody.’


  ‘Why did his lawyer think he’d get that?’

  ‘She – it was a she – said I wasn’t a fit mother because I was living with Terri. Terri and I just wanted to settle down and make a home for Nicky, but then they started to say Terri was a corrupting influence and things like that. They said I was a man-hater and I would make it difficult for Nicky to form normal relationships with boys and other kids her own age.’

  Helen broke off to blow her nose noisily. Then she went on, ‘The lawyer also said Forester Close wasn’t the right place to bring up a sensitive child. Dave would’ve done what he did to prove her right.’

  Rachel found herself thinking that Dave had a point. The place gave her the willies. But of course ancient curses and silly superstition had no part to play in a police investigation.

  She asked, ‘But why would setting fire to your house help your ex-husband’s case?’

  ‘Well, of course no one would know it was him, would they?’ Helen said. ‘He’d bank on that. He’d be able to say Nicky was in danger because Terri and I are being targeted because of our relationship. So this isn’t a fit place for a child.’

  Rachel nodded. Then she said gently, ‘But surely he’d know that if he was caught, he’d lose all chance of getting custody.’

  Helen started to weep again. She ignored Terri and Nicky, in fact she gave no sign of knowing they were listening to her.

  ‘Dave was the one who wanted me to have a kid,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t ready to be pregnant; he made me have a baby. And once I’d had her, she was weird, you must see that? I don’t feel Nicky and I belong together at all, I never did. She always seemed like someone else’s child. She still does. In fact, Terri’s closer to her than I am.’

  ‘She’s very like you,’ Terri said. She meant physically; the child’s likeness to Terri’s idea of how Helen must have been at that age was one of the reasons she wanted to protect Nicky.

  ‘She’s nothing like me.’ Helen was angry. ‘I was never like that. I was always a normal kid. She’s not. She’s on about something she reads called Crime and Punishment all the time, she’s obsessed with it. I think it must be some sort of report on prison statistics. It’s not natural for a girl her age to study government reports about such things.’

  ‘It’s a book,’ Terri said.

  ‘Well, there you are, I told you so, she has unhealthy interests.’

  It wasn’t often that Rachel Moody was embarrassed by someone she was questioning, but now she was appalled by what Helen was saying in front of her own child.

  ‘I think we’ll leave it at that for now . . .’ she said.

  But Helen would not stop. ‘I keep telling her she’s got to get more normal,’ she said. ‘Like the other kids. What does she think’s going to happen to her? She’s got no interest in boys or the way she looks or anything normal. I’ve told her, she should watch out or she’ll end up a lonely old freak like that Alice Bates up the road, but she takes no notice.’

  Nicky suddenly shouted at her mother. ‘I have got a boyfriend, I have,’ she yelled. ‘He loves me and I love him, but it’s a secret.’

  Terri said in a soft voice, ‘Be quiet, Nicky.’

  Nicky looked at her. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I have,’ she whispered.

  Terri smiled at her. ‘Of course you have,’ she said, ‘but that’s your secret.’

  Rachel got up to go. ‘Where can I find Dave?’ she asked. ‘Whether or not he’s involved in this attack, he should know it’s happened. He is Nicky’s father.’

  Terri had already written Dave’s telephone number on a scrap of paper. She handed it to Rachel.

  ‘If it wasn’t him, it could have been the kids,’ she said. Then she remembered who she was talking about and quickly back-pedalled. ‘Those Miller kids could’ve done it for a prank,’ she said, and laughed as though trying to see the joke.

  Nicky suddenly jumped to her feet. ‘No,’ she screamed at Rachel, ‘no, it couldn’t be them. You’re a liar. Kevin wouldn’t let them do this to me.’

  Rachel looked at her with interest. Nicky was red-faced with passion or indignation, possibly both. Rachel was curious. She’s not afraid of Kevin Miller, she thought, she’s the only person I’ve met in this street who isn’t. I wonder . . .

  Jack was waiting by the car.

  ‘Anything useful?’ she asked. ‘What does the Fire Chief think?’

  ‘Deliberate, all right. Could be kids.’

  ‘Or Helen’s ex, according to the Odd Couple,’ Rachel said. ‘There’s a custody battle over the child, apparently.’

  ‘Even so, what kind of father would risk harming his own kid?’ Jack said. He sounded doubtful.

  ‘This is a kid who appears to be a friend of Kevin Miller’s,’ Rachel said. ‘She seems to think he’s protecting her.’

  ‘What kind of friend?’ Jack asked. ‘Not the kind he picked up in a bar in Weston-super-Mare but he can’t remember her name?’

  Rachel laughed. ‘Not yet, anyway,’ she said. ‘She reads Crime and Punishment. But let’s see what Kevin has to say. He’s at least nineteen, and she’s about thirteen. You never know, we could get lucky.’

  ‘Crime and Punishment?’ Jack said. ‘That’s some kind of Russian story isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Rachel said, ‘I’m relieved to know someone in Somerset has heard of it at least. Most of the people in this street could be characters in it, as far as I’m concerned.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Kevin was working on his motorbike on the concrete standing outside the Miller garage. He was concentrating on the intricacies of welding a split pipe on the exhaust system when Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Moody and Sergeant Reid parked across the driveway to Number Two.

  ‘I don’t care how you do it,’ Rachel Moody told Reid as they got out of the car, ‘but get him to resist arrest. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to hold him long enough to put the fear of God into him.’

  Sergeant Reid nodded. He liked that about working with Rachel Moody, she wasn’t afraid to take chances sometimes. This surprised him because she had come to them from the police force in Eastbourne and that wasn’t a place he associated with the kind of crime and criminals you needed to take chances with.

  He shut the car door and walked slowly to where Kevin was hunched over the red-hot blowlamp. Kevin didn’t notice him coming, he was so intent on what he was doing.

  ‘Kevin Miller?’ Sergeant Reid said in the sort of tone an army sergeant might use to call the roll of raw recruits.

  Kevin almost fell backwards in shock. Instinctively he raised his arm to steady himself, and instead brandished the lighted blowlamp as though it was a weapon.

  ‘Back off, man,’ Kevin yelled in protest.

  Maybe it was a warning, but Reid needed no further excuse. ‘Put down your weapon and kneel on the ground,’ he said.

  ‘I said back off,’ Kevin said, waving the blowlamp to keep the policeman at bay. This time there was no room for doubt, it was a threat.

  Rachel Moody had got behind Kevin and she grabbed his free arm and twisted it behind his back. Kevin dropped the blowlamp and once his hand was off the trigger, the flame went out.

  Jack Reid handcuffed Kevin and dragged him to the car. Rachel got into the driving seat. ‘Resisting arrest, threatening behaviour, assault with a deadly weapon,’ she recited. ‘That’ll do for a start. We’re taking you down to the station to question you about an arson attack on Number Five Forester Close.’

  ‘What?’ Kevin yelled. ‘You can’t pin that on me. I’ve got an alibi for that. I didn’t have anything to do with it. You can’t do this.’

  ‘Yes I can,’ Rachel said coldly. ‘We’re taking you in for questioning.’

  ‘I was with a girl in Weston,’ Kevin said. ‘She’ll tell you. I was with her all night.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘Oh, yes, you picked her up in a bar and went home with her but you don’t know her name or where she lives. Don’t tell me, I’ve
heard it all before.’

  At the station, the DCI and Sergeant Reid left Kevin Miller in the interview room before they talked to him.

  ‘Give him time to cool his heels,’ Rachel Moody said.

  ‘What’s our line?’ Reid asked. ‘Do we actually have anything against him?’

  ‘We’ll think of something,’ Rachel Moody said.

  ‘But we don’t have anything concrete, do we?’ the Sergeant insisted. ‘We couldn’t make anything stick then and we can’t now on this arson charge.’

  ‘Wrong attitude,’ Rachel Moody said. ‘This is what the Super wants. A fishing expedition.’

  ‘It won’t work,’ Sergeant Reid said. ‘I’ll put money on it.’

  ‘No dice,’ Rachel said. ‘We’ve got to go through the motions.’

  The two of them went into the interview room and sat down opposite Kevin Miller.

  ‘If you’re going to fit me up I want a solicitor before I say anything,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Sure, when the time comes,’ Rachel Moody said, smiling at him. ‘This is just helping us with our enquiries.’

  Kevin gave her a look which made Sergeant Reid start to get up from his chair to defend his boss.

  ‘If that old witch at Number Three is the one who’s trying to fit me up with this,’ Kevin said, ‘she’s dead meat.’

  Rachel Moody smiled again, very calm. ‘Who do you mean, Kevin? Who do you think has told us about you?’

  ‘That weirdo, Alice Bates,’ Kevin shouted. ‘She’d do anything to get me in trouble.’

  ‘You mean because she sees what goes on in your street and you’re afraid she saw you murder the vicar?’ Rachel asked. She made it sound as if she were talking about the weather.

  ‘She spies on everyone all the time,’ Kevin said. ‘But she didn’t see me kill that vicar. She told you she didn’t, isn’t that right?’

  Kevin realized he had made a mistake. He knew enough about the police to see that they would interpret what he’d said as some kind of admission of involvement in the vicar’s death.