Home for Truths: The stand-out domestic suspense thriller for 2020

by Alan Agnew

  I am still holding the newspaper article in my hand. I think back to the teachers at the time, back to my own time at Baysworth Secondary. I can picture faces and recall names, but my memory is too vague and distorted to point any fingers. I will need more information before confronting Donald properly, prove to him I know enough not to be dismissed. And what did he mean by looking closer to home? Can he be so upset at some overgrown weeds and flaking paint?

  I need more information and try another internet search for some answers on the Police investigation, but find nothing. I will need an old school approach to this. My first destination tomorrow will be the library to go through the archives of the local papers and find out how this ended. I am hungry for the first time in a long time and order a pizza, knowing I will be over the limit if I were to get in my car. I vow never to do that again, not here in Baysworth, and I have too much to do, too many people depending on me.

  Chapter Eleven – 6 days after

  The newspaper headline consumes my every waking thought, running through the many permutations. As I prepare for my day it dominates the room, luring me in, taunting me. My body tenses each time I catch sight of it, I need answers.

  As I sit in my car, I realise this is the first time I have been out of the house since the funeral, nearly a week ago. Nobody has called at the house, nobody has telephoned. I have not spoken to anybody in almost a week.

  I am at the door of the library as they open. Entering in single file through the heavy swing door, I am in unfamiliar territory, a lost soul as others take up their position, knowing their place. An elderly man dressed in a blazer clutching his sandwich wrapped in cling film sits down at a table full of newspapers, two ladies of a similar vintage clutching a flask amble towards the fiction. A couple of students plug in laptops, and a teacher herds a chain of young school kids to a children’s corner.

  An assistant asks me what publications I want to reference and advises my best bet would be the archive machine rather than searching the shelves. I take a seat at an old monitor, as deep as it was wide, and a dirty sun stained off-white colour. I squint trying to read the poorly scanned copies on the archaic machine boasting the same pixels of an old Nokia phone. I wrestle with the curser as it is ultra-sensitive, accelerating me months rather than next day publications. I eventually land on 19th July 1989 and recognise the paper image from the one I had in my hand only yesterday. I read through the article again as if doubting my state of mind from yesterday. Carefully, I pull the curser down half an inch to reveal the following day’s paper which I also recognise from the pile in the box, and it is dated 21st July 1989 accepting they did not publish on a Sunday.

  My appetite growing as the story continues from Saturday to Monday thus far. I pull down, hungry for the next instalment. I stare hard at the headline about a new bypass proposed for the area, dated 23rd July 1989, flicking to the following day and more on the bypass plans, next day is the same and same after that. Where is my story? I bang my fist on the table. I flick through further but jump far too many dates, punished for my heavy touch. I stand up and take a couple of steps back, taking in my surroundings for the first time. Much busier now, heads bowed and lost in different world’s. A muffled stillness with each figure distancing from the next, possessions spread out marking territory. Each rustle of a plastic bag piercing the hushed silence.

  I wipe my hands across my shirt and settle in my plastic chair, the quietness and peace of the room infectious. My eyes squint once again to the monitor and the reference to my story dated 6th August 1989. Wedged against an article about the adverse weather condition in the County, are two paragraphs in a small font with the title ‘School investigation closed’. It concludes with a quote from the investigating officer DI Peter Mayne stating, ‘after a thorough investigation I am pleased to say that we have concluded that there is no evidence to back up the allegations made against the school and its employees of any misconduct towards pupils. We thank Baysworth school for their cooperation with our investigation and apologise for any distress or inconvenience caused.’

  My heart sinks, the air sucked out of me. I read it over and over again. This cannot be right, a couple of weeks is not enough time to do a thorough investigation, it was summer holidays and they would not have had time to speak to all the staff and all the pupils. I continue searching, looking for news of the investigation being opened again but find nothing. I feel cheated.

  My first thought is to march into the newspaper office, demanding some answers. I change my search to the Nationals but quickly realise there were far more pressing matters nationally at the time. My anger shifts from the newspaper to the police, and so I google ‘Detective Inspector Peter Mayne Baysworth.’ I read the first entry on the search results and curse out loud, thumping my fist down on the desk, much harder than before. Pain flows up my arm. Heads turn in my direction, eyes staring, heads shaking. I re-read the article. This changes everything.

  Chapter Twelve – 6 days after

  I cannot trust myself in the outside world. The very reasonable librarian filled me with murderous rage when she rightly asked me to keep the noise down. I pushed some poor guy out the way, his only crime pausing at the door. I shouted at a kid bouncing a ball on the way to school. My anger is spreading throughout my body like a rash as I drive home too fast.

  I sit in my car on the driveway of my dad’s house needing my deep breaths and look at Donald’s house. I open my car door wider than I need to, enough to bang his passenger side door, only able to reach because again he has parked in the middle of our shared driveway. Bastard.

  A couple more deep breaths give me some control back. I get out of my car and stare at his house; I want him to see me, I want him to wonder why I am staring at him, I want to unnerve him. I scan each window, no sign of movement, probably in his bloody shed. I walk back into my dad’s house. What now? My mind suddenly blank, I don’t know what to do. I go to the alcohol cabinet by default. I have as good as emptied it over the past week. Drinking an old bottle of peach schnapps would be real desperation. They should have this as a litmus test for defining alcoholics if nothing else in the house would you drink it? The joke is a little too close to home.

  I get back in my car and drive to the supermarket, integrating again with everyday life. As I walk around the aisles with my basket for one, I know I am being judged. Microwave meals, a pint of milk, crisps, a crate of London Pride beer, three bottles of wine, a bottle of gin, and four cans of tonic water. I give myself another chuckle thinking back to my favourite comedy sketch of a Harry Enfield character buying groceries. When he got to the checkout, he realises he does not have enough money so puts all the food back leaving him with just two bottles of whiskey at 10 am on a Sunday, the shopkeeper giving a resigned look as if a weekly occurrence. The irony of this sketch is not lost on me. Its 10.37 am.

  I purposely ping Donald’s car with my door, harder this time, and this time parking much closer to his. A statement made. I leave my shopping bags on the kitchen counter and sit at the dining table. I need a plan, and quick, otherwise I will open a beer, then another, then the wine, ending with me passing out in the afternoon and up all night.

  I open my laptop and google again ‘Detective Inspector Peter Mayne Baysworth.’ I click on the article I read only a couple of hours ago in the library, about how DI Peter Mayne is facing pressure to give up his controversial membership of the freemasons. Commentators claim it is unethical for an investigating officer to be a freemason on the chance a fellow freemason from the same Lodge could be a suspect or critical witness. The article quotes historical cases where such instances occurred.

  I read that DI Mayne had not disclosed his freemason membership until he was appointed a senior figure in the local Lodge. In an ongoing attempt to raise the transparency of the freemason membership, the association agreed to publish and list senior figures within their lodges; however, the members of the brotherhood would remain confidential. DI Peter Mayne is listed as one o
f those senior figures in 1990, although it is believed he had a membership for some time before this allowing time to move up the ranks. By my calculations, it is likely when investigating the Baysworth school allegations that he would have come up against Donald, a member from the same Lodge.

  I google ‘freemason’ to learn more about the world’s most well-known secret society. They have a peculiar system of morality with no-one able to define, purpose or reason for their membership. I read about camaraderie, friendship, a sense of belonging, about ‘just getting out of the house.’

  The personal gain of membership must be more than this, and own favours which may help evade the law, for example, would be enticing for most. The disquiet behind this was rife in the ’70s, and ‘80s. I read extracts from Stephen Knight’s book ‘Brotherhood’ on this very subject, published in 1984. Even in the mid-nineties, the Police Complaints Board could only legislate a voluntary scheme whereby police officers could declare their membership and, by inference, any conflict of interest in their role as a police officer. I cannot believe this, and I reflect on the investigation at the school and imagine the scenario of DI Mayne turning up at the gates, giving a secret handshake to Donald, then drinking together at the Lodge the following week, case closed. The injustice of it all. The injustice to Jimmy, and many more before him. I sit back and take in my surroundings. The light fades outside, and four empty beer cans sit next to me.

  I look across to the cabinet at the one picture of my dad in the house, an old one taken maybe about 25 years ago. He stands holding a rucksack, wearing a red waterproof top and big brown boots with heavy laces. He is with two boys aged no more than 14 on what looks like some moors. My dad is dressed for a hike, and the boys are wearing sports tops, tracksuit bottoms and trainers, street trainers, not sports trainers. I stare hard having not noticed the picture before.

  ‘How much did you know dad? How much did you fight this?’ I say out loud, and have a flashback to what Roger said in the pub after the funeral. I can picture Roger now in front of me holding a glass of wine in his hand but jabbing with his finger as he told me, ‘he lost his fight years ago, that’s the real cost of injustice, losing your spirit, your peace, and your ability to sleep at night. The death certificate may say cancer, but that was not the cause.’

  He knew everything, he must have done. I have known for five minutes, and it is killing me inside, my dad knew for years, he fought it and lost. An injustice such as this would have killed bigger men than my dad.

  I pace around the house, mumbling under my breath a full rant of me confronting him, all the things I want to say. I feel the anger building up, the toxic mix of being wronged fuelled by alcohol. I need to be smarter than this, stay in control. I will continue to be a good neighbour in his eyes so as not to raise suspicion. I know where this is going, I know where it could lead, but I cannot stop it. It’s the proverbial car crash in slow motion. My perpetrator is just 10 yards away from my living room. He is the other side of my wall right now, and he is a sitting duck. The advantage is all mine. I throw a cricket ball against our adjoining wall causing a massive bang, the starting gun for a race. It starts now.

  Chapter Thirteen – 7 days after

  I lie wide awake once again and tap my phone, lighting up like a beacon, illuminating the whole room and causing me to squint. The clock on my phone says 03.44 and I give a wry smile, precisely two hours since I last checked and I wonder if I will still be wide awake in another two hours. My mind is active, thoughts racing between devising a plan to get the truth and moving quickly to seeking retribution. I so desperately want to confront DI Peter Mayne, to look him in the eye. I imagine going to the Police station first thing in the morning, to speak to the Chief Superintendent, to demand answers. I play out the conversation in my head sitting in his oak-panelled office, drinking tea from a china cup with his assistant taking notes in the corner. Even in my imagination, where you are not always right, but never wrong, I do not know what to say. I think about the newspaper office. They would have the original story archived, the story they couldn’t publish. I could demand to see it, quoting freedom of information act or something like that. I go over these plans in my head, selecting what to wear, where to park and factoring in a coffee stop between them.

  I wake up again. The last time I looked at my phone, it was 05.07, and I remember lying awake a little after that, so just a couple of hours sleep. The cold light of day paves the way to a more sober, honest appraisal of my plan that was devised under the spell of a trance. The police are unlikely to give me the time of day and I do not want them to alert Donald or give the impression I have a possible grudge to bear. The newspaper is hardly going to grant Joe Public off the street permission to search through their notes for what turned out to be a non-story over 30 years ago.

  If I am going to get to the bottom of this, I am going to have to do it myself, and it starts with speaking to my dad’s friends. I begin a list. I write down Roger at the top, knowing he is still on holiday, and I have no mobile number for him. Chris Powell is next, but I have not seen or heard of him in years. He was not at the funeral; I am not sure he is even still alive. I sit at the table, twirling my pen.

  At times like this, I wish my mum was still alive, or more accurately, I wish we had a different relationship when she was alive. My mum’s recovery from Jimmy was slow, one step forward, two steps back. Signs of normality were promptly followed by days of isolation.

  Our move to Chichester felt like a surrender rather than a fresh start. My mum was from a generation whereby she expected to be taken care of by her husband. My dad was the sole breadwinner, sorted the bills, owned the family agenda and always the driving—the old fashioned man of the house. In the films, my mum’s character would have thrived. All those housewives freed from the shackles, brides from times of austerity who counted the pennies and made the pounds go far. A new lease of life they called it—a chance to re-invent yourself. My mum took time to adjust, a long time, never really learning, just enough to be transactional. She had built her life around the man she married straight out of school and subsequently given up on both, her prime of life forever escaping her.

  She hid behind the fact we did not know anybody in a new town, making no effort to socialise. She had a propensity to change the subject if I ever asked about the past. Adopting a ‘do not ask, do not tell’ stance, which only fired my curiosity and suspicions at the time. But those suspicions faded as time passed and my mum showed a similar disregard for all things in her life. We never talked about Jimmy’s death, we never spoke about the mood swings that followed, and we never spoke about the real reason why we moved to Chichester or why dad just gave up on the both of us. Mum never talked about her job, her day, or her health problems that followed.

  I genuinely do not know of anyone else to ask, so I think about those who attended the funeral and scribble down a few names, but that is all they are to me, names. I need to validate them from my hazy, intoxicated memory and then I have to find them. I feel the returning regret for knowing so little about my dad’s life, not knowing his friends and knowing so few of those I spoke to at the funeral. Even after his death, rather than learn in retrospect, all I wanted was to be at the bar and lose myself in my world. If he didn’t have many friends, I should have known before today.

  I open my front door and see him at his bin. I raise a smile and wave. Donald does neither but bellows out, ‘Hello Philip, how are you?’

  Why is he always so formal?

  ‘I am good thank you, Donald, I am just off to the church to tie a few things up from last week.’ It is not a lie, I am going to the church to re-connect with some of the mourners, but I was also keen to reference the funeral, to see if it sparked a response.

  ‘I am sure you made him proud,’

  I want to ask the obvious question of why he did not attend, but I know it would lead to another which would lead to another ending with me firing accusations at him. I need to be calm. I have no cards to
show yet.

  I pull up to the church car park and walk the wavy old stone path amongst the long grass and gravestones. It is eerily quiet compared to last week. I have arranged to meet the vicar on the proviso of thanking him personally for the service.

  ‘Hello Phil,’ he greets me with enthusiasm and an outstretched hand. He is young for a vicar, more youthful than those you see on TV dramas. His dark hair is scruffy on top, sporting trendy square glasses, dressed in a black shirt and dark jeans. The demanded modern image of the oldest of establishments.

  ‘Good morning vicar,’ I reply, my fixed on the pulpit over his shoulder.

  ‘I know you do not feel particularly at home here, so I thought better to have a cup of tea in my office at the back.’ He must have noticed my confused look at the mention of office. ‘Yes, I have an office, we have more administration, more paperwork, more finances and more marketing material than most companies in Baysworth, and besides where else would we store our props, come, follow me.’

  I like the vicar; he comes across as very humble without being false. I thank him for the service, and we have some small talk about the weather and the organ which was off timing for the second hymn.

  ‘I was hoping you could help me vicar. I am looking to engage with some of the folk from the funeral to help me understand more about my dad in his final years. Living so far away our communication was restricted to calls and even then few and far between.’

  He offers a sympathetic, understanding smile. Maybe rehearsed? ‘To be frank with you, Phil, I did not know your father very well. We met only once when he knew his time was almost up.’

  ‘But the service?’ My confused look speaking louder than my words.

  ‘I know it sounds strange after the service and everything, but please believe I spoke with genuine love and respect for him as I would do any man from the parish. I think most who attended last week were coming from the same place, recognising his tenure here in the community. From what I gather, he was a very private person.’