‘Vera was not included in her plans?’
His mouth thinned. ‘No.’
‘It was a Romeo and Juliet romance?’
A glancing, painful smile. ‘Yes, perhaps that’s what it was. A youthful fantasy. We must have seemed an odd-looking couple, the naive boy from the big house and the big, bold girl from the chippy.’
‘How was Vera treated by your friends?’
‘Fine. She had a mouth on her, was always ready with a quick retort, or a laugh. She cared about people. She was warm and loving. She was my girl. Or so I thought.’
‘Nobody set out to make her feel unwanted? Nobody special had it in for her?’
A hesitation. ‘Certainly not.’
‘Meaning …?’
A rueful smile. ‘Well, some of my friends didn’t think it would last, and they were right, weren’t they?’
Maybe. Maybe not. ‘Whose idea was it to have such a big party?’
‘Mother’s, of course. She invited my cousins to stay. Sam was older, in his mid-twenties. He was supposed to see to it that the party didn’t get out of hand. Daphne was mother’s little favourite, seventeen years old. Mother got someone to lay on a buffet, and I organized a disco.’
‘Daphne was your mother’s choice for you?’
‘Mother got her own way, as she always did. Unfortunately, Daphne didn’t like being married to a mere schoolteacher.’
‘You are divorced?’
‘There was a baby. I’m fond of the child, but … Tell the truth, I’m not at all sure she’s mine. Daphne was playing around by the time the child was born and left me a year later. She remarried, a Frenchman with a title. Much more suitable.’ He pulled a sour face. Then laughed at himself. ‘As if it matters.’
‘Your mother is still alive?’
‘Living in luxury in a flat near Harrods. Her lifelong dream come true.’
‘How many people did you invite to the party?’
‘Those in my set at school studying sciences, those I used to play around with in a jazz group we formed that year, plus their girlfriends. Three of us had been accepted to study medicine. There was supposed to be about twenty people, but some brought friends. Maybe thirty of us in all? A disco. Some sandwiches and beer. It was all pretty innocent.’
‘No drugs?’
‘I had heard that drugs were being sold at the school gates, but our lot was clean. Definitely.’
Was he a little too emphatic about that? Possibly. ‘Why did your parents go out? Wasn’t it considered best to have an adult on hand at such parties?’
‘There was a clash of dates. Father was being made president of the golf club that night. Mother had a new dress for the occasion. My birthday had actually been the previous week, but this was the only date the DJ could manage. My mother and father left before the party got going. She said I must be sure to look after Daphne and not let her be “swamped by all my great big rugby-playing friends”. We didn’t play rugby at our school, but that was the way she talked.’
‘And then …’
‘And then.’ He sighed. His eyes were unfocused. He was way back into the past. ‘It was about eleven, half past. The disco was up and running, the beer was flowing, the sound was right. We were all hyped up, with excitement and with drink. We were dancing in the hall, and yes, it did get a bit crowded. We’d turned the overhead lights right down. Every now and then a couple would break away to go off upstairs or outside into the garden at the back. For a drink, for a snog. It was a hot night, so why not? I was thinking of taking Vera out there myself, but Daphne kept interrupting, wanting me to look after her.
‘The doorbell rang, and someone opened it. Bad mistake. About fifteen louts in various stages of inebriation surged in, blocking the door, shouting for the doctor, demanding drink and drugs. We knew them. They were from a rough, neighbouring school. There’d already been scuffles at bus stops and in the town centre between us and them. It was so sudden. So frightening. In the dark, it was difficult to see, and the music was so loud that … Half of us didn’t know what was happening … We were being pushed around, jostled. Then someone turned the lights up and we saw, all right.
‘Ryan was at the front. A massive lad, only seventeen but he must have weighed eighteen stone. I shouted at him to leave. He grinned. He said they’d been invited to join the party – can you believe it? He linked arms with a couple of his gang, and they rammed into us, forcing us back to the wall. The girls screamed. Jack picked up the phone to ring the police. Ryan picked him up and tossed him aside. Just like that! Then he tore the phone out of the socket.’
‘Jack who?’ Ellie made a mental note of the name.
His train of thought interrupted, Dan took a moment to come back to her. ‘Jack the Lad. Nickname. He was up for any lark in those days, so we called him Jack the Lad. Mad about guitars. Has a music shop, with a guitar repair service. Runs workshops for them in schools.’
He shuddered. ‘We didn’t stand a chance. Didn’t know how to cope. Vera knew. I can see her now. She put her hands on her hips and yelled at Ryan to get lost. He backhanded her, and she went down, too. The gang thought that hilarious. They clapped and cheered. I tried to reach her, but Daphne hung on to my arm …’
Ellie heard him grind his teeth. ‘They’d blocked the front door, so I yelled at Raff to get our lot out through the back—’
‘Raff?’
‘Sam – my cousin, remember? – helped. Someone turned up the sound on the disco, instead of turning it down. It was bedlam. You couldn’t hear yourself think. Some people froze, some fled upstairs. Daphne clung on to my arm, screaming. She could scream for England. I heard Vera shout, “No!” Ryan had picked her up and …’ He shuddered. ‘I tried to reach her, tried to get him off her. He was built like a tree trunk. He threw me off as if I was a child. I landed up on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. But Ryan had had to let go of Vera to deal with me …’
He was breathing hard, reliving the moment. ‘The last I saw of her, Gail was towing Vera out of the door to the kitchen. She looked back at me. She shouted something … That was the last time I saw her.’ He closed his eyes.
‘Gail? Gail who?’
His eyelids fluttered. Some thought had passed through his mind … about Gail? If so, he wasn’t about to share it with her. ‘Gail went on to become a doctor. Where was I? Oh yes. Vera. I thought she loved me.’
‘Yes, she did.’
He opened the back door to let the air in, and stood there, looking on to the garden. The grass at the back had been newly cut, and the scent drifted into the kitchen.
Ellie prompted him. ‘What happened after Vera went?’
‘There was just me, Sam, Daphne, and the DJ left. Some of our lot had fled upstairs and barricaded themselves into the bedrooms. I could hear the gang banging on doors, yelling for them to come out. Others had got out of the house through the kitchen. Some of those found the door through the outhouses into the garage and escaped that way. Others were chased down the garden, but the newcomers didn’t know their way around, so they soon came back. Others foraged for drinks. They found wine in the kitchen, and then they came across the hard stuff in Dad’s drinks cabinet. They passed the bottles around, egging one another on, saying they’d fought the toffs and come off best. Hurrah for them.
‘Ryan was the muscle, but the leader of the gang was a weaselly little fellow called Lenny. As soon as he saw I was struggling to get up, Lenny turned the music down and started on me. He knew I was the doctor’s son. He told me to produce the drugs for them. I refused. Lenny told Ryan to smash up the disco equipment to make me see sense. Ryan enjoyed smashing things. The DJ tried to object, so Ryan knocked him out, too. But at least the drumbeat stopped. It would have saved me a beating if I could have given him what they wanted. That’s what they tell you nowadays, isn’t it? If you’re mugged, let them have whatever it is they want. I knew where the safe was, but I didn’t know the combination because Dad changed it often and didn’t tell anyone wha
t it was. We had to get a specialist in to open it, after …’
He sighed, looking back in time. ‘I used to have nightmares about that night. I haven’t had one for ages, but I suppose I’ll have one tonight, now you’ve brought it all back. Ryan held me up with one hand and punched me with the other. Sam tried to intervene, so Ryan knocked him out. Daphne went on screaming, till Ryan backhanded her. She fell backwards and hit her head.
‘I’ve never felt so helpless, so angry, so scared in all my life. In the end I said I’d show them where my father’s study was, so that they could see for themselves that there were no drugs on the premises. Hoping against hope that they wouldn’t find the safe. Which they didn’t.
‘Lenny’s failure to find the drugs made him furious. He rounded up his followers and told them to stop drinking and to strip the house of valuables. Jewellery, television, anything they could sell for drugs. He ripped Daphne’s earrings off and pocketed them. He took the watch that I’d just been given for my birthday. He told Ryan to put me out of my misery. Ryan hit me again, and that time I blacked out. End of story.’
‘Not quite,’ said Ellie. ‘What happened when you woke up?’
SIX
Dan sighed. ‘I’ve tried not to think about that night for so long … What good does it do to rake it all up now?’
‘You know as well as I do that once someone has started asking questions, there’s no knowing where it will stop. Maybe even with the arrest of your father’s murderer.’
‘The police tried hard enough.’
‘If a witness really is prepared to say your father was quarrelling with someone late that night – or rather, early next morning – the case will have to be reopened. Give me what you can. Lenny set his gang to ransacking the house. Daphne and Sam were out for the count. You woke up?’
‘I was lying on the floor. Every part of me hurt. There was a blue light flashing somewhere. I couldn’t make out why. Someone shouted, “Police!” The gang thundered down the stairs and in from the other rooms. They were shouting, didn’t know how to escape. They milled around, carrying stuff they’d collected … my mother’s jewellery, my father’s best watch, a bottle of whisky, my old teddy bear, for heavens’ sake! Stuffing them into pockets, panicking. Then they vanished. The hall was eerily silent. I only had one working eye. Couldn’t move. Someone was knocking on the front door. Ringing the bell.
‘The hall looked like the aftermath of a battle. Blood, broken glass, beer spilt, turntables wrecked, foodstuffs tipped on to the floor, plates smashed … Nightmare Abbey. Bodies here and there. Daphne began to stir. She was bleeding from a nasty cut at the back of her head. I tried to reach Sam, pulled myself over to him. Tried to wake him. Couldn’t. I realized it was up to me to get to the front door to let the police in. Tried to stand. Couldn’t. Crawled there.
‘They caught Ryan blundering around in the utility room. Lenny and some of the others had broken through a hedge into next door’s garden and from there got out into the next street. The police picked them up later. At the time I was more worried about Sam and Daphne. The police sent for the paramedics, who carted them both off to hospital … I was on my feet by that time. Unsteady, but on my feet. Daphne cried out for me as she was taken away. I promised I’d follow as soon as I could.
‘The police wanted statements, wanted me to go through the house, say what was missing or had been broken. I couldn’t think straight. I was desperate to see if Vera was all right. I insisted that the police search the house and garden for her, and they did. But there was no sign of any of the guests or of the gang. Just the odd beer can, a girl’s jacket. I was relieved, because it meant Vera had got away safely.’
Ellie sighed. She knew what had happened after Vera had fled to the garden. But Dan didn’t?
He said, ‘The mess was horrendous. The DJ came out from under the table. His equipment had been smashed to pieces. He wanted compensation on the spot. The phone in the hall was out of action. I used the one in the study to try to reach my father at the golf club, but they’d switched over to an answering machine. I wanted to go to the hospital to make sure Daphne and Sam were OK, but I couldn’t leave the house and the police kept asking questions. All I could think of was how devastated my mother was going to be when she got back and found out what had happened. They recovered most of her jewellery and my father’s watch, but I never got mine back, nor my teddy bear … as if it mattered.
‘The police finally left about two in the morning. I still couldn’t raise my father, so I rang an old family friend, Mr Scott. You know him, perhaps? He lives locally. Raff, his son, had been at the party. Raff had got home all right and was telling his father what had happened when I rang. I said I needed to go to the hospital to look after Sam and Daphne but I couldn’t leave the house open. I asked if one of them could come over and look after things, be there to break the news to my parents when they returned.’
‘Your friend’s name was “Raff”?’
‘Short for Raphael. Raff hadn’t yet got his driving licence. I hadn’t either, at that point in time. Took me two goes, later … Anyway, his father got the car out and they came round. Raff stayed in the house while Mr Scott ferried me to the hospital. He left me there just in time to see Sam and then Daphne taken off for brain scans. They thought at first I’d been knifed, because there was so much blood on me. But it was Daphne’s blood. Mostly. I had a lot of bruises but nothing broken. Daphne was hysterical. Eventually, they sedated her, but she took ages to drop off. Sam came to after a while and started cursing. His scan proved clear. So did hers. In the morning Daphne was stitched up and allowed to leave, though they kept Sam in for another twenty-four hours. I got a cab to take Daphne and me home … and that’s when the nightmare turned into a horror movie.’
‘Your father’s death?’
‘Yes.’
A spatter of rain fell, sprinkling heavy drops on the garden.
He started. ‘She’ll kill me!’ He rushed out into the garden and began to take down the washing. Ellie dumped her handbag and helped him. Together they rescued the shirts and carried them inside. Dan closed the kitchen door and leaned against it, panting, to explain.
‘It’s her next door. Three children under the age of six, husband working nights, and she still finds time to clean this place and to scold me if I forget to bring the washing in.’
Like Vera … Ellie did not say. She imagined Vera sweeping into the house, laughing, loving, picking up things and putting them away, dumping a basket of laundry in the kitchen, shaking up cushions, giving Dan a hug and a kiss as she brought him up to date on what she’d been doing that day. Vera would make any house a home.
What a shame, what a crying shame they’d been parted! Ellie began to fold and stack the washing. Dan reached for his cup of cold coffee and drank it off. Then realized what he’d done. He managed a smile that looked painful. ‘I’ll be up half the night, now.’
Ellie prompted him. ‘Tell me what happened when you got back from hospital. You said the nightmare turned into a horror movie?’
He sighed. ‘Let’s go and sit down, make ourselves comfortable.’ He led the way back to the living room, waved her to a chair and took a seat himself. Not in the La-Z-Boy. He was not going to relax, was he?
‘Where were we? When I got back with Daphne, there were police everywhere. A different lot of police. Homicide, not Burglary. Lots of questions. Few answers. My parents had got home late, about half two. My mother had been tired, had gone straight into the house, leaving my father to put the car away. Mr Scott had met her in the hall and explained what had happened. She fell apart. She asked him to go up to her bedroom with her to see what the damage was. Fortunately, the gang hadn’t made too much mess in her room. She and my father had separate rooms, by the way.
‘After Mr Scott had seen my mother settled, he returned downstairs and, while waiting for my father to come in, he fell asleep. He woke at six, decided he must have missed my father’s return, but thought it odd that
he hadn’t been roused and that all the lights were still on. So he investigated. He found my father in the garage. Dead.’
‘The police thought one of the gang had come back, been challenged by your father, got into a fight, and that he’d got the worst of it?’
‘They had Ryan in custody already, so they knew it wasn’t him. They went after Lenny … and, later on, after his supplier. Couldn’t make anything stick. Eventually, they moved on to other cases, and we were left struggling to make sense of what had happened.’
He was quiet, looking out at the garden again. The sun had gone in, and the wind had picked up. Ellie wondered about putting the washing back out, but didn’t offer to do so.
‘Mother was distraught. Bereft. She didn’t know how to change a light bulb or read the gas meter. She had no idea how to get things replaced or repaired. My father’s accounts were in a tangle. His will left everything to me provided I looked after my mother, so I had to take over his role in her life.’
‘At the age of eighteen?’
‘A rude awakening to reality. I had a permanent headache. Stress. Mother couldn’t bear the idea of my leaving her alone for as much as a day. I was too weary … too confused … I dropped the idea of going to university that year. The police were in and out. There were court appearances. Insurance claims. Sam and I identified various members of the gang. We had to testify. Daphne made quite an impression in the witness box. It soothed my mother to have her stay over every weekend.
‘You’d think it might have turned me off humanity, but trying to understand the reasons why the gang had acted as they did, I began to realize what Vera had always been trying to tell me, about how the other half of the world lived. I learned about the gang’s background. Our school had been able to pick and choose who they took. These lads were not from privileged backgrounds and their expectations were low. They were mostly from dysfunctional families with a history of drink or drugs. They’d drifted into petty crime for lack of anything better to do. They had few role models. I’d never been exposed to no-hopers with that sort of background before. It changed the way I thought about life.
Murder in Time Page 7
