Thank God.
“Not, at any rate, at this particular moment,” she adds.
Oh, damn.
And I can actually swear that I hear a softening in her usually clipped tones, a gentleness that, coming from anyone else, I would identify as sympathy.
Sympathy from my grandmother? I brace myself against the straight back of my chair. Oh my God. This is not going to be good at all.
“I have been observing Jason Barnes as he has grown up, and I have nothing but respect for him,” she observes. “He is a good, hardworking boy who seems to be making the best of a difficult family situation. Unfortunately, I could not have said the same for his father, who was a very troubled man.”
She sighs.
“Like you, I am extremely reluctant to feel that Jason had any degree of involvement in the tragic death of his father,” she says. “But the guilty verdict at the inquest does not bode well, does it? Scarlett, I would advise you to prepare yourself for the worst. If it does turn out that we are both wrong, I’m sure there will be a considerable number of extenuating circumstances. And a good solicitor will know how to use those to best advantage.”
My eyes widen in horror. She’s saying that it’s actually possible that Jase might be guilty. But it’s as if a steel wall just slid down, separating me from her words. I realize, with a cold, slicing clarity, that the only thing that would make me believe he is guilty is if Jase told me so himself. I refuse to accept it from anyone else.
“However, Scarlett, extenuating circumstances or not,” my grandmother continues, “there is one thing I absolutely must make clear. Should he be convicted, there is simply no possibility of your continuing any kind of relationship with Jason Barnes. You are a Wakefield of Wakefield Hall. I will not tolerate my granddaughter’s being involved in any way with a felon.”
“But what if Jase didn’t do it,” I blurt out, “but it looks as if he did? What if he gets convicted even though he’s innocent? That happens sometimes. I know it does!”
Lady Wakefield purses her lips.
“Miscarriages of justice do happen, even in England,” she concedes, “though I am happy to say that they are extremely rare. But I am afraid that my edict would not alter in any way. If Jason Barnes were to be convicted of his father’s murder, I would forbid you to have any further contact with him.”
“But—”
“Scarlett,” she says very quietly, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “It would be utterly and completely out of the question. Please believe me when I say I would do everything in my considerable power to keep you and Jason Barnes apart, for your own good. I cannot imagine you would want to put me to the test.”
This makes my aunt Gwen’s threats to enforce some kind of house arrest for me pale by comparison. Aunt Gwen could scream and shout all day, and it wouldn’t be as terrifying as a few softly spoken sentences from Lady Wakefield. I know she means every word. If she has to ship me off to some reform school up a mountain peak in Switzerland run by psychotic nuns, she’ll do it. No question.
My mouth’s gone dry. I manage a nod of submission.
“I’m glad I have made myself clear,” she says, and again, the note of sympathy in her voice is the biggest warning of all.
Because it’s the tone you take when you’re breaking the worst news possible. When you tell a person that someone they love has just died.
I told Lady Wakefield that I would go straight back to class. And I lied through my teeth. As soon as I’m clear of her suite of rooms, I’m bounding along the corridors, the length of the building, down the far stairs and outside, around the art block to the Barneses’ cottage. My bicycle is parked in the bike sheds, but a bicycle won’t get me where I’m going nearly fast enough.
How hard can it be to ride a motorbike, anyway?
The keys and the helmet are still on the seat of Jase’s bike. There’s a spare pair of gloves for me under the seat, and I grabbed my jacket from the cloakroom on my mad dash through school. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
I just can’t think too much about what I’m doing, or I might lose my nerve completely.
If I weren’t used to riding on the bike with Jase, I think I’d probably fly straight off the back as the bike lunges into a tree when I fire it up. It’s that powerful. Like you see in the films where people shoot a big gun for the first time, and the recoil knocks them off their feet. I’m bracing myself with every muscle in my body, thighs clamped round it, biceps tensing with anticipation of the thrust.
And even then, even with all the strength I have from years of gymnastics plus daily workouts with Taylor, I can barely control it. The motorbike is built on a huge scale, which is a gigantic problem for me, as I’m much smaller than Jase. It’s a real stretch for me to reach the handlebars and stay on the seat. Still, I keep my legs down, feet pressing into the footpegs.
For a moment, I panic, thinking, I can’t do it! I can’t hold it!
And then, as I freak that the bike will get away from me, I find another inch of length in my back, enough to lean forward even farther, right over the handlebars. I push my legs down as hard as I can, lengthening out my back even more, and pretend my old gymnastics coach, Ricky, is pressing on the small of my back with everything he’s got. And suddenly, as I fly down the drive, the wind whipping at the front of my body, it all comes together.
It’s like riding a tiger. The bike surges beneath me, carrying me along, and I have to be brave enough to master it, because if I lose my nerve, I’ll be in the worst trouble I’ve ever known. I know how Jase turns the bike, because I’ve learned to lean with him. He says it’s called countersteering; you turn away from where you’re going, not toward it.
I’m at the bottom of the drive. I need to go left, for Wakefield village, and there’s no traffic at all. Even with my torso stretched almost flat over the bike, which makes it much harder to turn my head, the visibility is really good for this turn. It’s winter, and the trees are leafless. If there were a car or a bike on the road, I’d see it immediately.
I’m slowing down but I don’t need to stop. Nothing to watch out for, and no ice on the road. I can make the turn, I can go for it—
Turn it to the right, I tell myself. Do what your head says, not your instincts. As I turn the handlebar to the right, the oddest thing is that it actually feels like I’m pushing the left grip rather than pulling on the right one.
Emboldened, I turn it more confidently, more and more, and the harder I push it, the more the bike turns to the left. My head is spinning with excitement and my whole body is throbbing with the revs of the bike as I turn onto the main road.
I forget to lean. Or I don’t lean enough. I don’t know what I do wrong, but the bike wobbles and tilts. It’s only by the grace of God that I manage to get it straight again. I scream in fear and the scream reverberates inside the helmet, freaking me out still more, the sound of my own voice shrieking because I thought I was going to crash to the ground with hundreds of pounds of motorbike on top of me.
Staycalmstaycalmstaycalm! I babble to myself. Stayalivestayalivestayalive!
I ease off on the throttle, having scared myself half to death. No point getting there in a body bag.
By the time I reach the village, my heartbeat has slowed down to something that’s certainly not normal, but at least allows me to breathe without thinking I’m going to choke every time I inhale. Right now my rib cage is contracting in panicky spasms. I manage to get it under some sort of control, even as my hands slip in my gloves, sweaty with fear. You’re doing fine, I tell myself firmly, tightening my grip. Not much farther now.
I’ve got to get to Jase. I’ve got to tell him I’ll stand by him.
I can’t believe I might have to choose between him and my grandmother.
I can’t believe Jase might go to prison.
I can’t believe what my life has turned into—just when I thought it was actually coming together….
Thank God Wakefield village
can’t help but have a calming effect. Like Plum and her London set, it’s very concerned about appearances. The fact that it won Best Hanging Baskets in the Small Village category of the Best of Britain’s Gardens competition is announced on blue commemorative plaques everywhere you look, even though on this wet damp day in February the hanging baskets are just boasting some mildewed-looking pansies. Since my grandmother (who owns most of the village) is very keen on tradition and keeping up standards, every building over a hundred years old has been carefully restored. The High Street’s often used for filming scenes from period dramas. We’ve all got pretty used to having its cobbles strewn in hay so carriages can roll down them, carrying girls in bonnets.
What used to be the police station, a nineteenth-century brick building covered in ivy, is now a quaint hotel called (with great originality) the Old Police Station. Tourists love it. The new police station is tucked away behind a roundabout, beyond the petrol station and the supermarket. It’s a nasty single-story 1970s building with low ceilings and no architectural merit at all, but that doesn’t matter because the tourists never see it. There’s hardly any crime in Wakefield village, anyway.
Till now.
You wouldn’t even know it was a police station without the blue light hanging over its entrance, and a couple of police cars parked in front. Thank goodness, there are no officers hanging around beside them as I gingerly veer into the parking lot, remembering to lean properly to make the turn. I zoom past the cars, jam the brake on too heavily, and skid to a horrendously awkward halt that ends up with me and the bike mere inches from the back wall of the parking area.
My wrists are killing me. I was leaning forward so far that most of my body weight was on my hands, and of course I was gripping on like a madwoman for dear life. I sit there, the blood still roaring in my ears, and try to calm myself, flexing my hands and wincing at the pain as the blood rushes back into my fingers.
I can’t reach down and access the kickstand. I’m too short, or it’s too awkwardly placed for me. I have to clamber off, hold the bike in place, and wrench out the stand, amazed that my wobby legs are even holding me up. The shock of what I just did, the sheer craziness of it, is almost unbelievable. I had to get to Jase as soon as possible. I had to let him know that a lawyer is coming, that he isn’t alone.
I’m just really lucky I didn’t kill myself and wreck his bike in the process.
I’m boiling up. Unzipping my jacket, I pluck at my T-shirt and sweater as I enter the station, trying to cool off my overheated skin. I hope that my deodorant and body spray are still doing their job at two in the afternoon, hours and hours after I put them on. Inside it’s a lot less intimidating than I imagined it would be, probably because the police stations you see on TV are in crime-infested cities, not some quiet village where not much ever happens. It’s painted white, there are posters everywhere about community policing and Crime Stoppers, and the reception desk doesn’t even have glass in front of it. There’s less security than in a bank.
Down the corridor is a waiting area with plastic seats, and a couple of people slumped in them with saggy postures that tell me they’ve been sitting there for ages. Standing at the reception desk, talking to someone behind it, is DS Landon. The woman who arrested Jase.
For a crime I refuse to believe he committed.
“Um, excuse me?” I say, bravely approaching her.
DS Landon swivels round, her eyebrows rising when she sees who I am.
“Scarlett Wakefield,” she comments flatly. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“I came to tell Jase my grandmother’s getting a lawyer for him,” I say, dodging the question.
“Not a good idea,” she interrupts.
“You’re joking,” I say angrily. “He’s been arrested. He needs a lawyer.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Landon shakes her head. “Your being here is not a good idea.”
“What?”
She looks at me seriously. “Come with me, Scarlett.”
She leads me down the corridor and pushes open an orange-painted door, nodding to me to follow her inside. It’s a small interview room with a table and four chairs, two on each side. Landon pulls up a chair and sits down, gesturing to me to take the seat opposite her.
“I can’t talk to you officially without your guardian being present,” Landon says, pushing back her hair with both hands. It’s straight and blond, cut too short to be a bob, but just long enough for it to be hooked behind her ears. She isn’t wearing any makeup, and there are faint dark circles under her eyes. She looks pretty stressed.
“And,” she continues, “I probably shouldn’t be saying this to you at all. But you’re Scarlett Wakefield, and your grandmother is who she is, and you’re the motive here, okay? That wasn’t mentioned at the inquest. But why do you think they found Jase guilty?”
I stare at her blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“Scarlett, you’re Jase’s motive. That’s why he was fighting with his dad. We talked to some girls at your school the afternoon you found Mr. Barnes’s body. Someone called Plum in particular. She said you two were a couple, you and Jase. And the more we asked around, the more we found out his dad was really unhappy about it.”
“But that doesn’t prove anything,” I protest. There’s no point my denying that Jase and I are together; that would look really suspicious in itself. “I mean, so his dad wasn’t that keen on our seeing each other. So what? Parents get cross about who their kids are seeing all the time. Jase wouldn’t kill him over that!”
“I agree,” she says, surprising me. “But, Scarlett, the medical evidence is clear. His dad didn’t fall over and hit his head and die by that lake, like Jase wanted us to think. He was carried there after he died. The lividity of the corpse proves it. In fact, it appears that Mr. Barnes was transported there in a wheelbarrow. We found fibers of the jacket and trousers he was wearing inside a wheelbarrow on school property. There’s no way they would have got caught on the bottom of the wheelbarrow if he hadn’t been physically inside it. Besides, Mr. Barnes had defensive wounds on his arms, which means he was fending someone off. This was no accident.”
Oh God. The wheelbarrow tracks on the grass by the lake. I thought they were old, but they must have been made when Mr. Barnes was taken there. And all that mud on the wheels of the barrow inside the woodshed. Not just from the lawn, as I thought. That came from wheeling a heavy load right through the grounds and into the soggy grass of the lake borders.
I can’t say a word.
“Scarlett, there’s a jury verdict now,” Landon points out. “That changes everything. Apparently every single person in Wakefield village is convinced that Jase finally gave his dad what was coming to him. And we’re sure that Jase lied to us about not knowing how his father’s body got to the lake. Besides, he’s refusing to say a word to us now. Not a single word. Why won’t he talk, unless he’s got something big to hide?”
She gives me a narrow-eyed look.
“The best thing you can do for him now is to tell your boyfriend to come clean and admit what really happened, okay? This wasn’t self-defense. The marks on the body prove that, I’m afraid. But if Jase’d come clean and plead manslaughter, we’d accept that.”
It was my last hope, that Jase could claim it had been self-defense. I stare at her numbly.
“Scarlett, listen to me,” DS Landon says. “Your boyfriend’s got a nice clean motive, something a jury will understand right away: young love. Everyone remembers what that felt like. Your aunt wasn’t keen on your seeing him either, was she? We’ve got a witness from a coffee shop in Havisham who told us your aunt dragged you out of there a while ago because you were sitting with Jase Barnes. Everyone was against you, weren’t they?”
The sweat has dried on me now. I’m cold as the grave.
“Best thing he can do is fess up,” DS Landon says. “Because if this goes to trial, your name’ll be dragged into it. No way that can be avoided. Don
’t tell me Lady Wakefield’s going to fork out for expensive lawyers just so her granddaughter’s name will be splashed all over the papers. She might even cut the funds off, and then where’d he be? Stuck with a legal-aid lawyer who doesn’t know his arse from his underpants.”
Oh God. She’s right. My grandmother might even do that.
“We won’t be hard on him,” Landon adds. “You’re right. His dad was a drunk, and a nasty one. Knocked his mum about till she left him. Everyone in Wakefield knows Kevin Barnes had a temper. Jase has never been in trouble before, his record is clean. That’ll go a long way for him. But he’s got to tell us the truth, okay?”
Oh no—Jase and his secrets. They’re all going to come out now.
Landon keeps on pushing me. “Who else but Jase would have dumped his dad’s body by the lake? Who else would know where to go, and where to find the key to the gate? It was stupid of him to try to pretend it was an accident, but he’s only a kid. It’s not too late for him to make it all right.”
The trouble is, everything she is saying makes sense. I’ve asked myself those identical questions, and Jase’s has been the only name I could come up with.
“You tell him to come clean, Scarlett.” Landon stares at me hard. “And then you should walk away. Your gran won’t want you mixed up with someone in prison. A girl with your advantages—you can do a lot better for yourself than a boy who’s doing time.”
God, it’s like a broken record! I grit my teeth in anger at all these adults trying to run my life for me.
“Sarge?” A young constable pushes the door open and pokes his head in. “A lawyer’s turned up for Jason Barnes. Shall I take her in?”
“I’m on it,” Landon says, rising to her feet. “Perfect timing. We’re done here.”
By the desk is a woman in a dark trouser suit, a briefcase in her hand. She turns as Landon walks toward her, and says:
“Jas Ramu. I’m here to represent Jason Barnes. I understand you have him in custody?”
“That’s right. I’m DS Landon, the arresting officer,” Landon says, nodding at her. “I’ll take you in to see your client.”
Scarlet Wakefield 03 - Kiss In The Dark Page 16
