A Nice Place to Die

by Jane Mcloughlin

  ‘Jess’ll be fine,’ Alan said. ‘She’s got her head screwed on, that one. Selfish cow.’

  He leaned across to give Donna a friendly cuff. ‘What’s brought this on?’

  Donna sighed. ‘I can’t help worrying what’s going to happen to them – the kids?’ She couldn’t explain. Alan wasn’t even their father.

  ‘You did everything you possibly could for them,’ Alan said. ‘We both did. They never wanted for anything. They’ll be all right.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Rachel Moody thought that the bleak room in the remand centre where she and Jack Reid had come to charge Kevin Miller with the additional murder of the Reverend Tim Baker was the most soulless place she’d ever seen.

  Rachel would not have admitted to anyone else, even to Jack Reid, that she felt an unprofessional degree of personal satisfaction when Terri Kent and Jean Henson provided the new witness evidence which made the additional charge possible. She had always recognized the potential weakness in the police case against Kevin as the murderer of Alice Bates. Now, as the Super would say, they’d got him bang to rights.

  She had never stopped hoping to nail Miller for Tim Baker’s murder. It seemed to her much more important to do that than put him away for killing an old and – dare she think it? – insignificant victim like poor Alice Bates. That could have been an accident, a burglary gone wrong; it was an isolated small tragedy compared with the killing of the young vicar.

  That murder, Rachel thought, was a deliberate blow against the whole concept of social order. It affected numerous lives and groups, making a mockery of the law and the very purpose of the police. If the murderer of Tim Baker could get away with what he did, society itself was undermined. Rachel was relieved that at long last Terri Kent and Dr Henson’s widow had realized where their civic duty lay.

  Jack Reid, sitting beside Rachel at the formica-topped table, shifted in the uncomfortable chair.

  ‘It’s just another case,’ he said out of the blue.

  Rachel thought, how does he know what I’m thinking?

  ‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘But this is one I began to think we wouldn’t be able to solve.’

  ‘What do you think you have to do to get a cup of coffee round here?’ Jack Reid said. He fidgeted on the hard chair, which was nowhere near broad enough for a man of his bulk.

  The door opened then and Kevin Miller was brought in to sit opposite them at the table. His solicitor, an eager young woman in a black suit, sat down beside him.

  Rachel Moody watched Kevin. He looked thinner than when she had last seen him, and whiter. Without the motorcycle gear and the swagger, he was reduced to a nondescript young man with greasy hair, acne, and an air of rat-like defiance.

  How could that Byrne child have a crush on someone so ordinary, Rachel asked herself. And, she thought, how could a weasel like that ever seem to embody evil incarnate? That’s what Alice Bates thought.

  She couldn’t believe that she was trying to stop herself from seeing Kevin as pathetic.

  Kevin Miller showed no interest in what anyone said until Jack Reid told him the police now had a witness to prove his guilt.

  Kevin shook his head. He gave Rachel Moody a pitying smile. ‘I didn’t do it,’ Kevin said. ‘I didn’t kill that Alice Bates. That four-eyed kid Nicky from next door did it. You found my prints in the house, sure, but hers were there too if you’d bothered to look.’

  ‘It’s not going to look good for you in court if you accuse a young girl of something like that to save your own skin,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Kevin said, ‘but that’s what happened. You can’t prove it didn’t.’

  ‘It’s not Alice Bates’s murder we’ve come to ask you about,’ Jack Reid said.

  Rachel leaned forward across the table towards Kevin. ‘We’ve got a witness who’s prepared to give evidence in court that she saw you murder the vicar of Old Catcombe outside Number Two, Forester Terrace on the seventeenth of December last.’

  Kevin jumped to his feet and tried to leap across the table to grab Rachel.

  A burly warder held him back, then dropped him on to the chair.

  ‘You’d listen to that dirty bull-dyke and her lies?’ Kevin screamed. ‘Don’t you see, she knows that moron kid killed the old witch and she’s doing this to cover for her. She’s lying, don’t you see that?’

  ‘She’s not our only witness to the vicar’s murder, Kevin,’ Jack Reid said. ‘Someone else saw you do it.’

  Kevin curled his thin lip in contempt. ‘That bloodless lesbian partner of hers . . .’ he said, and laughed.

  ‘No,’ Jack Reid said, ‘this evidence has no connection with that family. She’s an independent witness.’

  There was a silence. They all, including the solicitor, knew then for certain that Kevin Miller had killed the vicar. It was written all over his face that he had done the murder, that he knew he could have been seen doing it, that he had made the mistake of being too sure that no one would dare admit to witnessing what he did.

  ‘She’s lying too,’ he said. ‘Mum’ll tell you I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she?’ Rachel said. She nodded to the Sergeant.

  Jack Reid stood up. ‘Kevin Miller, I am charging you that on the seventeenth of December 2009 you murdered Reverend Timothy Baker at Number Two, Forester Close, Catcombe Mead . . .’

  Kevin sat hunched over the table. His face was expressionless.

  Suddenly he looked up and interrupted the Sergeant as he began to read him his rights.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. He said to his solicitor, ‘Give me five minutes alone with them.’

  The solicitor protested. ‘Don’t say anything now,’ she said. ‘Shut up, that’s my advice.’

  Kevin said, ‘Get out. You and the screw.’

  ‘This is irregular,’ the solicitor said.

  ‘It’s what I want,’ Kevin said.

  His solicitor was unhappy about leaving, but Kevin insisted. He was left alone facing Rachel and Jack Reid.

  ‘I want to talk straight,’ Kevin said. He looked surly but his voice betrayed something else.

  He’s scared, Rachel thought. But it wasn’t just that, she told herself, there’s something else, it’s like he’s afraid . . .

  ‘I want to make a deal,’ Kevin said. ‘I’ll plead guilty to the vicar if you drop the murder rap for Alice Bates. That was an accident, right? And you know you won’t make it stick.’

  ‘But you told us Nicky Byrne killed Alice,’ Jack said. ‘You’re the one called it murder. You might be able to help your case by giving evidence against her.’

  Kevin ignored him and said to Rachel, ‘It was an accident. I found the old girl lying dead at the bottom of the stairs. That’s the truth.’

  ‘What were you doing in the house?’ Rachel asked.

  Kevin shrugged. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘It was Christmas, I was short of cash.’

  ‘Weren’t you staying there to hide out from the police?’ Rachel said sweetly. ‘I must say we would never’ve thought of looking for you there, not after the things you said about Alice.’

  ‘OK,’ Kevin said, ‘I moved in on her. She didn’t get the choice. I didn’t even have to rough her up. The kid ran errands for me.’

  ‘So let’s get this straight,’ Rachel said, ‘you want to plead guilty to killing the vicar if we record Alice Bates as an accidental death and do you instead for attempted burglary? Is that right?’

  ‘Yup,’ Kevin said.

  ‘And we forget about incidentals like demanding money with menaces and false imprisonment and kidnap and—’

  ‘Yup,’ Kevin said.

  ‘But why?’ Rachel asked. ‘Why would you give up without a fight? If you plead not guilty there’s a chance you’ll get off. The jury might not believe the evidence against you in Alice’s murder. Your brief could cast doubt on our witnesses, you know. The jury might not be convinced. They might think your neighbours in Forester Close he
ld a grudge against you.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ Kevin said. ‘I’ve told you what I want to do. Can’t we get this over with?’

  Rachel nodded; Jack got up and went to bring the solicitor back into the interview room.

  Rachel sat facing Kevin across the table.

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  Kevin met her eyes. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘I’m going down one way or another. That kid had a thing for me; she thinks I’m something special. She’s the only person who’s ever thought that.’

  He smiled, but not at Rachel; it was the thought of Nicky Byrne did that.

  ‘Those witnesses of yours,’ he said, ‘they’ve come forward because they think they’re protecting her, isn’t that right? They think I’ll blame the kid to get off killing the old woman, right?’

  ‘Well you just did that,’ Rachel said.

  ‘That’s before you mentioned the vicar,’ Kevin said. ‘OK, if I’ve got to go down for that, I don’t want to take the kid with me on the other thing – the old lady. That kid thinks a lot of me, you know? She told me once I may do bad things but only for good reasons. What the fuck does that mean?’

  Rachel said nothing.

  Kevin Miller ran his hands through his dark hair and went on, ‘I’m a father myself. OK, my kid’s not going to have much of a chance, not with the mother she’s got, but that Byrne kid might be all right. I don’t want her forced to be in court to listen to that lesbian freak who’s the best hope she’s got giving evidence against me. I don’t want a trial.’

  Rachel said, ‘Why?’

  Kevin grinned at her. ‘Like she said some old fart said, I want to do one good thing before I die, OK?’ he said. ‘It’s that kid, she thinks I’m some sort of hero and I don’t want to disappoint her.’

  Suddenly Rachel understood why Nicky Byrne and all those nameless girls in Weston-super-Mare might find something to attract them in Kevin Miller.

  ‘What old fart said that?’ she said.

  ‘Who cares, I’m saying it, me, Kevin Alan Miller, murderer in the first degree. OK?’

  He hesitated, then asked her, ‘Did you ever read a book called Crime and Punishment?’

  Rachel was startled. ‘Dostoevsky? Where did you hear about that?’ she said.

  ‘The kid read it. It meant a lot to her.’

  Rachel remembered one day in Forester Close when Helen Byrne, almost in tears, was wailing on about Nicky not being a normal kid. One of the reasons she gave, as far as Rachel could recall, was because the child read Crime and Punishment.

  ‘It’s a great classic, but I’d have thought Nicky’s much too young to understand it,’ she said.

  ‘She got it into her head I was like the hero in it,’ he said. ‘She said I was the future, whatever that means. Maybe I’ll get it out of the library,’ he said. ‘It sounds like my kind of book.’

  Rachel was going to laugh, but then she didn’t.

  Jack came back into the room.

  ‘Your brief will be back in a minute,’ he said. ‘She went to get a coffee.’

  He produced a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one. He inhaled slowly and deeply. Then he handed it to Kevin.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘and take the pack. I’ve given up. I don’t want to start again.’

  ‘We’re charging Kevin with Tim Baker’s murder,’ Rachel said. ‘He’ll plead guilty. I’m satisfied now that Alice Bates’s death was accidental.’

  ‘I’d have put money on it,’ Jack said. ‘But what changed your mind?’

  ‘Cheers,’ Kevin said, picking up the pack of cigarettes and putting them in his pocket.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Moody was in her office sorting through a bundle of house particulars from estate agents when Jack Reid brought her a second cup of coffee.

  Sergeant Reid did not usually take on the responsibility for keeping the DCI topped up with the caffeine which as a rule helped to put her in a good mood first thing in the morning.

  But today he wanted to ask her a favour.

  His wife, Sandy, had been particularly grumpy as he’d got ready to go to work that morning. She didn’t say goodbye, but stomped off upstairs and turned on the vacuum cleaner. When he’d asked his teenage daughter, Kate, what he’d done to offend her mother, Kate told him that today was his wedding anniversary and he’d forgotten it and that was why.

  From upstairs, Sandy had shouted to Kate, ‘Tell your father to leave a cheque for the oil bill before he goes out.’

  ‘Oh, my God, how am I going to get out of this?’ he asked his daughter.

  Kate laughed. ‘I’ll tell her you haven’t forgotten but you’re picking up something to bring home as a special surprise tonight,’ she said. ‘But it’s going to have to be something special if you’re going to get away with it.’

  ‘But what can I get her that I wouldn’t have got yesterday?’ Reid said. ‘She’ll know I didn’t remember.’

  ‘Take next week off and get tickets to Paris or somewhere romantic,’ Kate said. ‘That would be special.’

  ‘I can’t afford to go gallivanting off to Paris for a week at a moment’s notice,’ Reid protested.

  ‘Dad, you can’t afford not to,’ Kate told him.

  But Sergeant Reid wasn’t a detective for nothing. He suspected conspiracy.

  ‘Did your mother put you up to this?’ he asked.

  Kate laughed again. ‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘she only said that if you forgot your anniversary this year, that’s what it would take for her to ever speak to you again.’

  So Jack, who well knew the value of a wife who for years had been prepared to put up, without protest, with the demands of the job he loved, wanted to put his boss in a particularly good mood before suddenly asking to take a week off with almost no notice at all.

  When he brought Rachel the second coffee, she gave him a funny look and said, ‘What are you after, Sergeant Reid?’

  ‘I was wondering if we’ve got much on today, that’s all,’ he said.

  She was making him nervous, and as he put the coffee down on her desk, he accidentally tipped the cup and spilled the steaming liquid across some of the house particulars.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, trying to mop up the coffee with his handkerchief.

  Rachel produced a box of tissues from a drawer of the desk and cleared up the mess in a moment.

  ‘No harm done,’ she said.

  Reid did not know what to do with his now soaked and stained handkerchief. Surreptitiously he dropped it into her wastepaper basket, which was already half full of more rejected house particulars.

  ‘Are you thinking of moving?’ he said, trying to make conversation. It didn’t seem quite the right moment to ask for a week off, but he didn’t want to turn tail and have to come back to try again later.

  Rachel Moody shuffled the estate agents’ lists so that they made a fan shape on the desktop.

  ‘It’s my particular way of dealing with a mid-life crisis,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided it’s high time I began to plan for a singleton future, and get myself some sort of private life outside work. Buying my own home in a nice friendly suburb where I can put down roots seems a good place to start.’

  Reid was disconcerted by this. The DCI had never talked to him in such personal terms before and he was flattered as well as embarrassed.

  ‘Trouble is,’ Rachel Moody said, ‘I can’t find anything I like the sound of. They keep sending me details of cottages with roses round the porch, but that’s not what I want. I’m not retiring, for God’s sake, I’m investing for my future, that’s all.’

  Reid picked up a typed page at random. ‘What about this?’ he asked, and read aloud: ‘“Three-bedroomed modern property in quiet tree-lined cul-de-sac on architect-designed housing estate on outskirts of picturesque traditional country village. Close to all amenities, ideal for commuting”.’

  He handed Rachel Moody the first page of the particulars. At
the top of the page was a coloured photograph of a modern executive home with a small front garden where magnolia was in full bloom and clematis montana rampaged over the front wall.

  DCI Moody glanced at the picture, then looked more closely. ‘It looks familiar,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it’s stock housing estate design, I suppose,’ Reid said. ‘That doesn’t mean those houses aren’t a good investment.’ He turned over the page and checked the price at the end of the particulars.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘if this is right, it’s bloody good value for the money.’

  He tipped the paper so that Rachel could see the figure printed at the bottom of the page.

  ‘There must be something wrong with it,’ she said. ‘The local authority must be going to build a waste disposal site over the road, or put a dual carriageway in the next street. It can’t be right.’

  Reid put the particulars back on his boss’s desk. ‘I can check that on the Internet if you’re interested,’ he said.

  ‘Where is it, anyway?’ Rachel Moody said.

  Reid picked up the paper again.

  ‘Well?’ Rachel prompted him when he said nothing.

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to like this,’ he said. ‘You do know it. We both do. It’s in Catcombe Mead.’

  Rachel Moody stared at him. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘It’s Three Forester Close, isn’t it? The house where Alice Bates died?’

  Reid put the paper back on the desk. ‘They call it Mon Repos now,’ he said. ‘But yes, it is. It’s Three Homicide Close.’

  Rachel picked up the cup of coffee and drank it in silence. Then she said, ‘Well, thank you, Sergeant, but I don’t think I’ll be asking for a viewing. There’s not much an estate agent could tell me about that house that I don’t know already. I wonder if the younger Miller boy – wasn’t his name Nate? – has turned into another Kevin?’

  ‘Of course, I knew there was something I meant to tell you, Boss. Kevin’s up on a charge of GBH for stabbing his cell-mate in prison. Nearly killed him, apparently. Life’s going to mean life now, I’d say.’