by Tony McHale
For Charlie it was like listening to a different man. He’d never heard his father speak like this before.
“You don’t know what’s right or wrong. You think you do, because everyone around you tells you what’s right and wrong. Then you slowly realise they’re living in the same world you’re living in and they have no idea either.”
“What about the police? Not every copper in North Yorkshire turned their back, did they?”
“No. They used to investigate this and that, but they never really solved much … They made the odd arrest. There was guy who got drunk here … in The Black Dog, got in his car and hit about five other cars, just out there … on the High Street. He wasn’t a local and the owners of the cars needed his insurance. So the police were called and found him asleep in his car. Hardly the arrest of the century. Other times there were burglars … thieves … odd bits of violence, I don’t remember them getting one conviction … I don’t remember them making any arrests even.”
“So people took it into their own hands.”
“Slowly to begin with … but eventually everyone came on board. It only worked if the whole village was behind it. And they were. It was safe for them to walk down the street, safe for them to go to bed at night with their doors unlocked and their windows open, safe for them to let their kids play out. And the more power Sam Naylor got, the easier it became for us to police ourselves. And we all thought it was working … we thought it was working.”
“So when did it go wrong?”
“It was never right.”
“You just said …”
“I said we thought it was working. But it never was. That’s what we didn’t get. You can’t just create your own laws. It just doesn’t work. You either live with the flaws of the ones we have or you go to another country where vigilantism and revenge is common place.”
“This is not what you said when we talked about it before.”
“That’s because before I was trying to convince myself I wasn’t responsible …”
“For …? Charlie left the question hanging in the air.
“Caroline’s death. But now I think I was … I am responsible. She died because of my actions.”
“But you didn’t kill her?”
“No,” snapped Jed without hesitation. “I loved her. I could never have hurt her.”
“But … you didn’t love Aaron. Sons were difficult to love, were they?” Charlie couldn’t resist the dig and his father wasn’t slow to pick up on it.
“Yeah … they were.”
“Why?”
“You know Charlie … you know why.”
“No I don’t. Tell me.”
Jed poured himself another drink and held the bottle up asking Charlie if he wanted one. Charlie shook his head. Jed took a sip of the Scotch.
“I couldn’t cope with you.”
“Come on … I wasn’t that bad …”
“I couldn’t cope with the competition.”
“What competition?”
“For your mother’s attention.”
“I don’t understand,” said a truly perplexed Charlie.
“I was jealous of the attention she gave you. Suddenly I wasn’t the most important person in her life – you were. And I couldn’t handle it.”
“But I was a child.”
“Made no odds.” Jed looked at him as he took another sip of Scotch, then with a frustration he declared, “Look you asked … so I’m telling you. It’s not something I’m proud of, it’s just the way I was.”
“And you were like that with Aaron?”
“Yes.”
“But not Belinda.”
“No – not Belinda.”
“Because she was a girl.”
“Yes,’ admitted Jed, “because she was a girl.”
“And you killed Aaron out of jealousy?”
“No. Course not.”
“But you’re still saying you killed him.”
“We killed him – me, Amos, Tyler and Lucas … we all killed him.”
“Why?”
“Because of what he’d done.”
“Go on ...” Charlie still wasn’t sure whether his father was telling him the truth or not.
“I’d always known … from when he was really young … Aaron wasn’t right.”
“In what way?”
“In his head.”
“You’re saying he had a mental problem?”
“Yeah … if that’s what you want to call it.”
“Did you take him to a doctor’s?”
“Come on Charlie, what would I have said. My illegitimate son is round the twist.”
“Farrah didn’t think there was anything wrong with him then?”
“No. It was her son. He was the apple of her eye. He could do no wrong. And me … at first I thought it was just like I’d been with you … jealous. But then I realised that wasn’t it. Aaron really had a problem.”
“How did you realise?”
“It was small things to begin with. I caught him trying to set fire to a dog once. He had it tied up and he was trying to set its fur light. When I caught him, he just denied it. He’d found some matches and said he didn’t know what they were and he played with them and it all happened accidentally. Bullshit – he knew exactly what he was doing. Then there was a cat. I found it with pins in its eyes and a cut throat. I never knew which came first, but I can guess. Aaron was the last kid seen playing with the cat.”
“How old was he?”
“Six. I tried to talk to Farrah about it, but she wasn’t interested. As far as she was concerned there was nothing wrong with Aaron. He was a perfect child. At school he never really had any friends. He was a loner. But with Belinda he was different. He’d sit and talk with her for hours. And he was her big brother, so she’d listen. Farrah put him on a pedestal and Belinda just followed suit.”
“You say you were jealous of me. You also said mum wanted more children. So I’m guessing it was you who made sure you didn’t have more children with her.”
Charlie took his father’s silence as acquiescence.
“Yet you had two children with Farrah,” continued Charlie. “I don’t get it.”
“She lied to me.”
“Really?” said a disbelieving Charlie.
“Aaron she said it was a mistake … she’d been sick and her pill didn’t work. But when Belinda came along I knew she’d been lying.”
“Were you angry?”
“No. I was bloody furious. I’d been fooled. I already knew Aaron wasn’t the full ticket. I was worried the problem was me and the next child also wouldn’t be right.”
“But she was fine.”
“Belinda was great.” There was a warmth in Jed’s voice Charlie had rarely heard. “She was everything Aaron wasn’t.”
“And me.”
“You were never a problem Charlie, I just couldn’t handle you. You wanted something I couldn’t give you … something Beck le Street couldn’t give you. You just made me feel useless.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Course you didn’t, you were a kid.”
“But Belinda was different …”
“She was a beautiful child and although me and Farrah weren’t seeing each other any more, I wanted to be part of Belinda’s life.”
“Difficult.”
“Not really, I just set up monthly payments. I wanted to make sure they had a good life … Well I wanted to make sure Belinda had a good life … and if I gave her something, I also had to give it to Aaron.”
“You saw them regularly.”
“Yeah. Farrah was still working for me. She wanted to quit, but she couldn’t. She needed a job and she knew if she had any child care pr
oblems I wouldn’t be breathing down her neck wanting my pound of flesh. The kids were at The Dog all the time. Your mum loved having them round.”
“And she never had a clue until the funeral?”
“I don’t think so. What I did was stupid. I was just in a really bad place. My daughter had died and I couldn’t mourn her … well not like I wanted to.”
“So how did that all lead up to four men going out and shooting a teenage boy.”
“I wasn’t the only one to notice Aaron was a little peculiar. A number of people had picked up he wasn’t right. When he was fifteen a girl at his school claimed he was stalking her. Nothing was proved. A few people thought it was wishful thinking on her part, ‘cos Aaron were a good-looking lad. Then one night someone broke into her bedroom and raped her at knifepoint. The rapist was wearing some sort of mask, so she couldn’t identify him, but she did say at one point he spoke … and she swore it was Aaron’s voice. But Aaron had an alibi given to him by Farrah, there was no DNA, he’d made sure of that, and so the police said they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. Farrah was over the moon and was convinced it was a false accusation.”
“You think it was him.”
“Yeah - it was him. He eventually admitted it. But Farrah never changed her story about the alibi, she couldn’t allow herself to.”
“When did he admit it?” asked Charlie still trying to take all this in.
“It was a long time after and there were lots of other little things that happened. But once he got away with raping the girl he switched his full attention to Belinda. Belinda became the focus of everything he did. I witnessed it more than most, because I was around them more than most. He’d want to hold her hand, kiss her on the lips when he saw her, cuddle up to her when he was tired.”
“And you really saw all this?”
“Yeah. They’d come to the pub after school, do their homework here, then sometimes I’d drive them home. I saw how Aaron was with her, but what could I say.”
“Someone else must have noticed.”
“They did. But Aaron was part of Beck le Street and there was no proof he’d done anything wrong.”
“So why did you kill him?” There was still skepticism in Charlie’s question.
“The night Belinda disappeared, her and Aaron had been in here. They sat in that corner over there. Since leaving school Aaron hadn’t really had a job, he’d done bit and pieces, but it always seemed to not work out.”
“How do you mean?”
“They always had to let him go for some reason. For a time he worked for Barbara Bergin … as a farm hand and next thing you know she’s saying she’s over staffed … last in, first out. She told me one night, having had a few, that she let him go, because someone had being using a knife to crave symbols into the side of cows.”
“What?” Charlie couldn’t believe anyone could be that sadistic.
“Like graffiti, but with a knife.”
“That’s sick.”
“Aaron was sick.”
“How did she know it was Aaron?”
“She had no proof, but after she got rid of him the knife graffiti stopped. And then when she was treating these cuts, she looked closely at what the symbols were and she realised they weren’t symbols at all, they were letters … letters that spelt the name …Belinda.”
Charlie wasn’t sure what to say. If his father was telling the truth, then Aaron was clearly a very unbalanced individual.
“That night Belinda had been doing her homework and Aaron had been teasing her it was a waste of time. I overheard her say something like … ‘Maybe if you’d have taken it more seriously you wouldn’t have to sponge off everybody else.’ Aaron got upset and Belinda ended up apologising to him. I think she realised that Aaron wasn’t right and she’d sort of taken it on herself to look after him. After all their mum was here working most of the time and as far as she was concerned there was nothing wrong with Aaron. Aaron was really upset about what she’d said and they ended up going outside to try and sort it out. Amos was making his way here and saw what happened. Belinda was holding Aaron, trying to comfort him and they started to kiss … like a proper kiss. Belinda was trying to break away from him, but Aaron was stronger, forcing her to kiss him. Eventually she struggled so much he let her go. She was angry and very upset. Amos heard her say she didn’t want him near her again. Apparently Aaron’s major concern was she didn’t tell their mum. Belinda came back in here and collected her things and went off home. I offered to give her a lift, but she said she didn’t want one, she needed the air.”
“And what happened with Aaron?” Charlie was now certainly buying into the story his father was telling.
“He came back into the pub, I remember seeing him, but there was a darts match on … some league game, so the place was real busy. I remember Cassie was writing up the scores, like she did, while Georgie added them up. When we were trying to figure out what happened that night, after they found Belinda’s body, Farrah swore Aaron had been there all evening, although she seemed to be the only one that remembered him.”
There was almost a relief in Jed’s expression as he told Charlie about what had happened. This was a story he’d needed to tell for so long, now at last he was telling it.
“I was told she’d slipped and fallen into Dark Waters.”
“Aaron admitted he’d pushed her.”
“Admitted it…? To the police …?”
“No to me. To me. He admitted it.”
Charlie looked at him.
“Do you want to see where he’s buried?” This offer came out of the blue and Charlie wasn’t sure what it would accomplish. Jed wasn’t going to dig up the corpse, was he?
“You’re wondering what good will that do … me pointing to a mound of earth on the moors. And you’re right – it proves nothing, only if anything happens to me, then you can tell the police where the grave is. Farrah’s done some stupid stuff in her life, but she needs to know where her son’s body is.”
Charlie nodded, he couldn’t argue with that.
It was nearly two in the morning when they left The Black Dog. The mist had started rolling in from the moors and visibility was becoming difficult. Charlie asked if they could go via Moor Cottage, pick up a waterproof jacket and some boots … his cycling gear wasn’t really designed for trekking across the moors in the middle of the night. Jed simply said: “Is that where you’re staying …Moor Cottage?”
“I thought it would be easier,” Charlie had replied in way of explanation.
“Was it me or somebody else you were afraid of?” asked Jed with a greater degree of perception than Charlie would have given him credit for.
“Somebody else. Tyler Samson.”
They loaded Charlie’s bike into the back of Jed’s Land Rover and set off towards Moor Cottage.
“Tyler’s driven by Cassie. Everything he does he does because of her or for her. He believes he’s the luckiest man in Yorkshire. That’s why he was so worried when you came back lad. If you hadn’t left he knows he wouldn’t have had a look in.”
Charlie wondered why Jed was suddenly saying this now. He was about to find out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Tyler and Lucas both had their shotguns resting on their laps as they dozed in two arm chairs they’d positioned facing the front door of Moor Cottage. Like most things he’d done in his life Tyler didn’t really have a plan for what happened next. Cassie had convinced him that Charlie Ashton had to be dealt with and he knew he could do that. The minute he came through the door they’d blast him away, but then what? They’d have to get rid of the body. They’d got rid of a body before. Aaron Gregory’s body and nobody had ever found him. Charlie Ashton’s body could go next to Aaron’s. Might as well. He’d get Lucas to dig a nice deep grave. It had to be deep or the wildlife would dig him
up.
Lucas stirred and his shotgun slid off his lap and hit the floor with a resounding thud. Both men became alert immediately.
“Is he here?” asked Lucas.
“No … it’s you. Your gun”
“I don’t think he’s coming. Can we come back tomorrow?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid.”
Then they both heard the sound of a vehicle. It was some way off, but nevertheless it was a vehicle and it sounded to be heading for the cottage. Both men grabbed their shotguns and pointed them towards the door.
* * * * *
The nearer they approached the moors, the mistier it became. Charlie was squinting out of the front windscreen, while Jed seemed unperturbed by the lack of vision and far more preoccupied with his confession to his son.
“Amos told me about what he’d seen that night …”
“Aaron and Belinda arguing.”
“Yeah.”
The Land Rover hit a big pothole and both men felt the impact jar their spines. Jed kept on driving.
“Did he tell the police?”
“No … The police questioned lots of people, but this is Beck le Street … You’ve seen how it works.”
“So what happened?”
“Amos told Lucas and Tyler. Tyler told Cassie and the next thing she’s in the pub, wanting to know what’s happening. She knew Aaron wasn’t right. A couple of months before he’d tormented Georgie. Georgie was in his chair and Aaron started pushing him down the High Street towards The Beck. He told him he was gong to push him in the river and watch him drown. Cassie caught up with him and stopped him. Aaron said he was joking - of course. But as far as Cassie was concerned … there was nothing funny about it.”
“Did she know Aaron was your son?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she want you to do?”
“Take action. Someone breaks the law in Beck le Street, we take action. If it’s a personal affront you go to The Field, if it’s something else we take revenge. The problem was that we had no proof. If it had been an outsider, we’d have just assumed he was guilty and dealt with him, we wouldn’t have given a monkey’s about the consequences … but Aaron was Farrah’s son, he was my son, he was one of us.”
