A Death Divided

by Clare Francis

  The father snatched the money. ‘Soddin’ disgraceful, people like you.’

  Taking a firm grip on Chetwood’s arm, Joe hauled him away. At the doors the teenage Santa was about to thrust a leaflet in front of them when he read Chetwood’s expression and thought better of it.

  Outside, Joe called on Chetwood to slow down, but he didn’t slow down, not until he was into the car park and halfway across the first lane, when he halted restlessly, muttering to himself. Joe caught ‘aggression … as (/1 wanted to…’

  Finally he stopped his aimless circling and glanced sideways at Joe with a dark laugh. ‘Never did like bloody Maltesers.’

  Headlights pierced the gloom and a car manoeuvred past them. The sleet had gone, but the wind was racketing over the tarmac, pulling at their clothes and snatching at their breath.

  Sensing that Chetwood was about to leave, Joe moved round to face him. ‘It’s not enough,’ he said sternly. ‘What you’ve given me. It’s not enough for Alan and Helena.’

  ‘What, to persuade them I’m not a danger?’

  ‘They need a reason for all this, Chetwood. They need something they can understand.’

  He started to shake his head. ‘Sorry—’

  ‘No, Chetwood!’ Joe checked his anger, but not a lot.

  ‘Sorry’s not good enough. Not any more. Alan’s not well. I can’t go and give him this quiet life rubbish - it’ll kill him.

  What - his daughter’s fine but she just doesn’t want to see him again? He deserves better than that. For Christ’s sake, Chetwood -

  Jenna can’t want him dead of a broken heart.’

  Beside them, a car started up, its rear lights sprang into life.

  Joe touched Chetwood’s sleeve to draw him away, but he didn’t move. Instead he went on staring at Joe in an intense, reproachful way. The driver began to reverse, then stopped, waiting for them to take the hint and get out of the way.

  Joe tried again, jerking his head towards safety, but Chetwood stayed rooted to the spot. ‘You’re right,’ he said at last.

  The driver resorted to his horn, a quick beep, but Chetwood wasn’t listening or didn’t care.

  ‘You’re right,’ he announced again. Then, in a voice so tight and low it was almost lost to the wind, Chetwood said, ‘All right, Joe, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, and hope to God we’re doing the right thing.’

  The horn sounded again, for longer this time, and as Chetwood began to speak Joe took him bodily by the arm and pulled him away.

  ‘She had a breakdown,’ he was saying. ‘She had a breakdown, Joe, and she’s not over it yet. I’m not sure she’ll ever get over it.’

  Keeping hold of Chetwood’s upper arm, Joe kept him walking. They were heading into the full blast of the wind and Joe had to bend close to Chetwood to hear.

  ‘Something bad happened. A friend of ours died and Jenna blames herself. It was an accident, but she feels responsible.

  She’s never got over it.’

  They reached a landscaped area with spiky black ground cover and low shrubs and dwarf trees which thrashed and shivered in the storm. Beyond it, the embankment dropped down to the motorway and the droning traffic. Stopping, Chetwood hunched his shoulders against the cold.

  ‘She’s just about okay when we’re on our own. We’ve got animals. A dog, a pony … She loves all that. But she can’t deal with people, Joe. She needs to talk about it sometimes and, well’ - he gave a dry laugh - ‘people don’t understand.’

  ‘Has she had professional help?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘No good?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘A therapist?’

  ‘She was the worst. A nasty devious mind. Did more harm than good. No, Jenna’s fine on her own, Joe. I mean, as fine as she’ll ever be.’

  ‘This friend… who was it?’

  Chetwood’s eyes hunted across the horizon. ‘Sam Raynor.

  Just a kid. Twenty.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  Chetwood’s mouth turned down, he stared at the ground.

  ‘He drowned. Crazy, crazy boy.’

  After a time, Joe prompted, ‘How?’

  Chetwood studied the sky before casting Joe a sideways look. ‘Craziest thing of all, Joe. A river in full flood. Got swept away.’

  This was so unexpected, so startling, that Joe could only stare dumbly at Chetwood as a series of images chased across his mind. He saw cascading water, rocks, a savage undertow that would not release its grip on the struggling man. He saw the body found miles downstream, bloodless and cold. Then, drawing back from this, he pictured the unknown Sam before his death, young - youth seemed to be his denning feature yes, a paradigm of youth: fresh-faced, smooth-skinned, golden-haired, sitting at the table in the garden where Joe himself had sat. And then the final thought - no image attached to this -

  Sam and Jenna. And the memory of Ines’s voice: She had someone new already.

  ‘But how did it happen?’ Joe asked.

  Chetwood gestured mystification.

  ‘Why did Jenna blame herself?’

  ‘She felt she could have stopped him.’

  ‘You mean … it was suicide?’

  ‘No, an accident. I told you.’ His voice had developed a nervy ring. ‘Look, the whole thing’s crazy, okay, Joe? There’s no reason. No reason for any of it. But it happened, and she can’t get it out of her head. And the only way she keeps going is to have her animals and her music and her quiet life. Okay?’

  Not okay, thought Joe. Not okay at all. Why vanish without trace? Why bother to go to such lengths? But he saw the old restlessness back in Chetwood’s face and the warning flash in his eyes, and knew this was as far as he was going to get, for the moment at least.

  They began to walk back. Ahead of them, the wind picked up a beer can and sent it clattering over the tarmac.

  ‘There wouldn’t be any harm in Jenna seeing the family though, would there?’ Joe asked. ‘They’d understand. They’d bend over backwards to help.’

  ‘Best not.’

  ‘Just a phone call.’

  ‘No,’ Chetwood snapped. ‘She’d end up in pieces. I’m telling you, Joe, it would set her right back.’

  Joe gave a weary sigh. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And what I’ve just told you - only Alan and Helena.

  Okay?’

  ‘Marc?’

  ‘Not Marc.’

  ‘It might be an idea to tell him, Chetwood.’

  Chetwood looked unconvinced.

  Joe hadn’t planned to hold back on the bad news, he told himself there simply hadn’t been an obvious opportunity; but now he braced himself rather guiltily to say, ‘He’s taking the search for Jenna very seriously. In fact… he’s called in the police.’

  Chetwood stopped, his face puckered in disbelief. ‘What?’

  ‘After the call from Jenna - the alleged call, rather - he decided to report it,’

  ‘Report whatY

  ‘I think … that she seemed to be frightened.’

  Chetwood looked shocked. It was a moment before he managed to speak. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before, Joe?’

  And now his voice was cold. ‘My God…’ He began walking away. ‘Thanks a million, Joe! Thanks for nothing!’

  Catching up with him, Joe said, ‘So the police find you.

  Does it matter that much?’

  ‘It matters! It matters like hell!’

  ‘Well, why don’t you call Marc and sort it out?’

  Halting again, Chetwood asked roughly, ‘Tell me something, would you say that Marc was stupid or clever? On balance, I mean.’

  ‘The strange thing is I’m not absolutely sure about that.’

  In a move that was so slow it was almost hypnotic, Chetwood reached for the rolled document sticking out of Joe’s pocket and held it up. ‘Well, tell him this, will you? Tell the little shit that if he wants an absolute guarantee that Jenna will never agree to sell this house, if he wants to be absolutely sur
e that there’s not a cat in hell’s chance of her signing this or anything else, then he’s going about it exactly the right way.’

  Chetwood came closer, and it seemed to Joe that he was trembling. ‘And you can tell him another thing. That this crazy search will only cause huge grief. To Jenna. To himself. To everyone.’ He turned away, only to turn straight back again.

  ‘And you can tell him that if the police are going to be involved I’ll come and kill him. In person. With my bare hands.’

  Slowly, Chetwood ripped the document in two, and again and again. ‘As for giving him power of anything, you have to be kidding. I wouldn’t trust him further than something nasty I’d picked up on my shoe.’

  He held the shreds up in one hand and opened his fingers.

  The wind snatched the fragments away and carried them fluttering across the tarmac.

  As Chetwood strode off, he spun round, walking backwards, and called, ‘He was lying about that call, Joe. The little shit was lying.’

  Chapter Six

  The village straddled a busy trunk road. The pavements were so narrow, the cottages so bent that, when juggernauts thundered past, whole rows of dwellings seemed to teeter on the brink of demolition. Hand-painted notices on the approaches read: Where’s Our Bypass? and Children Killed By YOUR Speed, but nobody slowed down.

  Driving into the village, Joe found himself sandwiched between two lorries and swerved off at the first available opportunity onto the forecourt of a pub called the Belvoir Arms. The barmaid told him he was on Nottingham Road all right, but hadn’t a clue where number two was. The lone occupant of the public bar, an old boy with rasping breath, jerked his head towards the far end of the village and muttered the word ‘newsagent’. Taking his life in his hands, Joe went on foot, pulling in against the grime-encrusted walls whenever anything large roared fire at him. He found the newsagent all right and, three doors beyond, number two. It was a cottage, a century younger than the ones in the heart of the village, and set a yard or so further back from the road, though not far enough to avoid the caking of dirt which covered the walls, doors and windows to a height of six feet or more, as though sprayed on with a paint gun.

  The door had no bell and no knocker, so he rapped with his knuckle. During a lull in the traffic, he thought he heard music. He rapped again, harder. After a time, a window opened above and Marc’s head appeared, a mobile phone to his ear, a look of annoyance on his face. He made a circular gesture, which took Joe around the side of the newsagent’s and into a small back lane to a gate marked 2.

  Pushing it open, he entered a narrow garden with a slimy stone path flanked by layers of mouldering vegetation. The back door had frosted glass and a bell. After a while, Joe pressed the bell, but it was either silent or broken because no buzzer sounded. Finally, he heard leisurely footsteps approaching and Marc opened the door, talking ostentatiously into the phone. With barely a glance at Joe, he turned and wandered back into the house. Following, Joe passed through a long kitchen extension which smelt of frying and vinegar and gas, into a living room with speckled terracotta wallpaper, a Romanesque dado frieze, a low sofa with a cream fake-fur throw that had seen cleaner days, and a hi-fi playing easy listening.

  A large frizzy-haired girl with pencilled eyebrows and hard eyes sat slumped on the sofa, picking at a bag of crisps. She met Joe’s ‘Hi’ with a long expressionless gaze before returning to the magazine on her lap.

  Joe glanced out of the window and saw a murky area formed by a wall and the back of the kitchen extension.

  Removing the Guardian appointments section from a wooden chair, he sat down and felt the traffic vibration resonate in the chair frame.

  Continuing his phone conversation, Marc strutted backwards and forwards across the room, clad in a sweater which showed the breadth of his shoulders and the solidity of his stomach, an effect somewhat spoilt by the thigh-switching plumpness of his legs, which gave him a slight waddle.

  It was impossible not to overhear what he was saying, nor to realise this was the intention.

  ‘Denial of due process, Steve - that’s grounds for constructive dismissal. Their refusal to address the issues - that definitely amounts to harassment. You have the right to go straight to tribunal, you know. And if they try to block you then they’re in breach …’

  When he finally rang off, he snapped the phone shut with a smooth flick of the wrist, like a trick he’d seen in the movies and been. practising ever since.

  Joe got to his feet. ‘Thanks for this.’

  Marc tightened his lips to show he thought he was being pretty generous too, and shifted his stance into something more comfortable for the trying time ahead.

  ‘Okay to talk now?’ By which Joe meant in the hearing of the frizzy-haired girl and to the accompaniment of the soundtrack from Gladiator.

  Marc let his eyelids droop for a moment, and in the absence of other information Joe took this as a yes.

  ‘Your father said you’d spoken to Jenna.’

  Marc liked that. It allowed him to say, ‘That’s not something I’m prepared to discuss with anyone outside the family.’

  Apart from the police, Joe thought. ‘Can you tell me when she called?’

  Marc did the eyelid droop again, though this time it seemed to signal a no rather than a yes.

  ‘Was it on Monday night?’

  A grim little smile gathered at the corners of Marc’s mouth.

  This was proving to be far more fun than he’d dared hope.

  The silence that followed was all about who was going to give in and speak first.

  ‘Okay,’ Joe said in his most reasonable tone. ‘Can you confirm that the police have got involved?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘On what basis exactly?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’

  ‘Well, what are they doing exactly?’

  ‘They have the facts. I couldn’t say what conclusions they might choose to draw, or indeed what actions they might choose to take, if any.’

  It wasn’t often that Joe was driven to thoughts of violence but for a tantalising moment he imagined what it would be like to punch Marc in the centre of his dough-like face, to deliver a neat little jab straight to the fleshy nose.

  ‘You don’t worry what might happen once the police turn up on Jenna’s doorstep?’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘You don’t think she’ll look on it as an unjustified invasion of her privacy?’

  Marc folded his arms and went through a pantomime of restraining himself with the greatest difficulty, puckering his mouth and flaring his pudgy nostrils and taking long noisy breaths through his nose. ‘Really,’ he declared in a voice that sang with righteous indignation. ‘You’ve got a nerve!’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to interfere - believe me - but supposing I had it on good authority that she doesn’t want to be found?’

  A series of expressions flitted across Marc’s face, but the one that lingered longest was a sort of triumphant disgust. ‘I get the picture. I get it. You’re in contact.’ He made it sound like a contagious disease. ‘Yes, yes …’ He nodded furiously, as if this explained everything that was wrong with the entire planet. ‘You’re in contact with them. Or’ - he gave an unpleasant little snort - ‘should I say him Now why do I think I don’t need to ask that question? Why do I think I know the answer?’

  ‘They don’t want the police involved. Marc.’

  ‘Says him, right?’

  ‘I think he speaks for both of them.’

  ‘Says him.’

  ‘Whichever, there’s no way they’re going to agree to sell the house. Marc, no way they’re even going to discuss it, while the police are involved.’

  The Gladiator music had moved on to the arena theme, the bit where the tiger tries to eat Russell Crowe, and the room was filled with the bass crescendo of cinematic tension.

  ‘How was that again?’ said Marc. It might have been Joe’s imagination, but he looked shaken.

&nbs
p; ‘Can we kill the music first?’

  Maybe the girl was waiting for the chance to hear better, maybe she had the remote control in her hand, but the music stopped almost immediately, and the silence gave way to the rumble of the traffic two walls away.

  ‘What I said was they’re not prepared to sign anything while the police are clumping about.’

  Marc had heard all right the first time, but he’d wanted a bit longer to prepare his speech. ‘Well, I’ve got news for you,’

  he declared in a virtuous tone. ‘Your friend can make all the threats he likes. It won’t make the slightest difference. This isn’t about the house, this isn’t about the money, and he’s making a big mistake if he thinks it is.’

  ‘What is it about then?’

  ‘It’s about my sister’s welfare! And her right to self-determination!’

  Joe thought he had kept all expression out of his face but Marc quickly added, ‘You seem to be having trouble with that idea, Joe. You seem to think I’m the one who doesn’t care about Jenna. That I’m the one who started all this trouble.

  Well, you didn’t see the way he treated her up at the farmhouse, did you? You didn’t see her on the point of an overdose.’

  Watching Joe’s reaction, he said with quiet relish, ‘Didn’t know about that, did you? No, well, I tell you, you never knew half the things that went on up there.’

  The jetlag seemed to hit Joe with all the force of a sleeping drug. He felt a sudden and overwhelming tiredness. He went back to the chair and sat down again. ‘Any chance of a strong coffee?’

  Marc hesitated suspiciously, hackles still at full alert, before turning to the girl and jerking his head towards the kitchen.

  She threw him a don’t-expect-me-to-wait-on-you face and, his mouth drawn into a tight pucker. Marc stalked off to make the coffee himself. When he came back balancing a full mug in both hands, his hostility seemed to have given way, if not to open co-operation, then to guarded neutrality.

  Joe said, ‘I didn’t realise you’d been to the farmhouse.’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘I’d no idea it was like that,’ Joe said, with a show of being suitably impressed. ‘None at all.’

  ‘Oh yeah, it was bad all right.’