Carl shrugged. ‘I was stupid. Soon as I calmed down, I knew that. I called her, wanted to tell her how sorry I was, but she wouldn’t answer my calls.’
‘You went over there?’ Raj said.
‘Yeah, just to see if she was okay, you know. Didn’t like to think of her in there alone being all scared.’
This time he did look at Abby. Saw she felt it too. The sudden buzz when you knew you were on to something. The boss’s words in his head again. We go where the evidence takes us. Well right now the evidence was taking them straight to Carl Jenkins.
‘Is that what happened?’ Raj said. ‘You got there, all ready to give it a second chance and she started on at you again. Comparing you to her ex and making all sorts of crazy accusations. I’m right, aren’t I?’
When Carl shook his head, Raj wanted to slap him. Why drag it out? They all knew where this was leading. Raj rubbed his hands along the tops of his legs, taking slow, deep breaths.
‘Must have been a shock,’ Raj said. ‘You turn up, all good intentioned, hoping for a happy reunion, a bit of thanks even. I mean, here you were, giving up your Sunday night for her. Driving across to Hither Green when you’d much rather be down the pub with your mates. And when you get there, all that good intention, she just throws it right back in your face. I wouldn’t blame you for losing it, mate, seriously. Putting up with that shit? Give me a break.’
And then something he hadn’t expected. Carl was on his feet and running at him, screaming at Raj to shut up. Shut his fucking face because he didn’t know what he was talking about. Other stuff too that got lost as Raj lunged, Chloe’s breathy little laugh, her out-of-tune voice and her poor, swollen face all whirling around inside his head as he shoved his fist into Carl Jenkins’s stomach and drove him to the ground. Lashing out a second time, ignoring Abby’s voice shouting at him to stop. The crunch of bone, warm blood splashing onto his hand and arm, little drops of it landing on his face as his fist connected with Carl Jenkins’s nose, breaking it a second time.
Forty
‘It must have been during the night,’ Ellen’s father said. ‘Or I suppose it could have been done yesterday afternoon when we were out. It was dark by the time we got home and I never went outside. Why, Ellen? Who would do such a thing?’
All sorts of people, unfortunately, Ellen thought. She’d already got a constable across to take a statement. For all the good it would do. The chances of catching the little bastards were slim to zero.
‘I’m so sorry, Dad.’
He patted her arm.
‘Would you stop saying that, Ellen. It’s not your fault.’
She knew that and that’s not why she was apologising. She was saying sorry for being part of a police force so understaffed and overstretched that crimes like this barely got a look-in. The constable who’d taken her parents’ statement would feed it into the system, her parents would be assigned a crime number and after that, not much else would happen. It made her depressed and angry.
The garden was her father’s pride and joy. He spent so much time out here, planting and weeding and cleaning and doing whatever people did with their gardens. Ellen’s mother joked that her father cared more about his garden than he did about her. Now some low-life had destroyed it. For what?
Ellen was in the kitchen with her father, standing at the window looking out at the devastation. Every single flower had been pulled from the bed and ripped apart. The work of a psycho. A psycho who was clever enough not to do the same out front in case anyone saw them. Who had waited until her parents were out of the house or in bed asleep before going out there and wreaking havoc.
It didn’t make sense, but neither did so much of what she saw in her job. Something about this felt personal, though. In a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Not yet.
‘It’s only a garden,’ her father said. ‘I know that. So why do I feel so upset? They were my autumn blooms, Ellen. Crocuses, sternbergias and nerines. What a waste of time, hey?’
He was leaning on the worktop, back bent slightly, the way it had got in recent years. Sometimes, it was like she didn’t see him properly, she thought. Like when she looked at him, all she saw was a younger, more vibrant version of the man he’d become. She saw him as she remembered him. Or as she wished him to be.
Not today. Now she saw the curve in his back, the shake in his hands, the sagging in the skin at his jaws. When had he become so old?
‘It’s natural to be upset,’ Ellen said. ‘Any mindless act like that, it upsets us because we don’t understand it. It’s worse because they’ve destroyed something you really care about. But you can replant it, can’t you? Get it back to the way it was?’
He shook his head, still looking out the window.
‘We’ll all help,’ she said. ‘Me and the kids. Sean and Terry, too. We’ll come over and have a planting party. Set aside a Saturday and get stuck in. What do you think?’
Her father didn’t answer. She was about to say something else, but he put his hand on her arm.
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Not now, Ellen. I need a moment alone. Do you mind, love?’
She didn’t mind, but in her entire life she didn’t ever recall a time where he’d shut her out.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Go and find your mother. She’s upstairs putting clothes away. Give her a hand with that. I’d be better off on my own.’
She left quietly, closing the door behind her. She knew it was natural for him to be upset and natural he might want to deal with that alone. But knowing didn’t make it any easier. As she went upstairs to find her mother, she couldn’t help thinking it felt like the end of something.
* * *
Nathan was sweating. Streams of it running down his back, pooling in the seat of his boxer shorts, tickling his buttocks and the bit between them. The woman in front of him was firing questions at him, trying to catch him off-guard, get him to say something he shouldn’t. He was too clever for that, though.
‘Mr Collier,’ she said. ‘How long had Chloe worked at Happy Homes?’
‘Six months,’ he said. ‘Thereabouts. Maybe closer to seven. I’m not sure.’
Six months, five days to be exact. Not that he was about to tell her that. She had spikey blonde hair that reminded him of Chloe’s. Except Chloe’s was longer and not as thick. Chloe had fine, silky hair. Like a princess in a fairytale.
The shock of it kept hitting him. He’d start to think he was getting used to it and then – wham! – it whacked him again and he was right back there in the flat, kneeling on the floor and holding her little body.
He’d prayed for her, begged God to treat her kindly. Take her soul and make her happy. Even though he wasn’t sure she deserved happiness. Not the way she’d behaved this past week. The pain of it had almost been too much to bear. Or so he’d thought. It was nothing compared to this.
‘Mr Collier? Nathan?’
The detective’s voice jerked him back. Asking more questions. How they’d met, why he’d offered Chloe a job, what their relationship was like. On and on. All questions she’d already asked and he’d already answered. Telling her everything and nothing.
‘We met when she was looking to rent a flat,’ Nathan said.
The detective checked something on the piece of paper in front of her, frowning. ‘I thought you looked after the sales side of the business and your colleague…’
‘Employee,’ Nathan said. ‘Carl works for me, not with me.’
And not for much longer. Judas wasn’t a patch on Carl Jenkins when it came to betrayal. He still found it hard to believe. The way she’d opened her arms and let him… Like some sort of cheap prostitute.
He hadn’t been able to think of anything else. Picturing them together. Like that. How could she? The thought of it – Chloe and Carl – it disgusted him. Literally made him want to get sick. He tried so hard not to think about it but it filled his mind, until he couldn’t think about else. Image after filthy image. Worse at nights, when he lay in bed tryi
ng to sleep. Closing his eyes and seeing it all play out. Chloe taking her clothes off, stripping naked for Carl, lying on the bed and opening her legs. Letting him do that. Making the pure impure. Ruining her.
‘Go on.’
Focus. He couldn’t mess this up.
‘Carl was out of the office,’ he said. They were still there, in his head, Carl on top of her, grunting as he shoved himself inside her.
‘I knew the place on Nightingale Grove had just come on the market, so I offered to drive her across.’
Standing in the doorway, framed in sunlight that turned her hair golden, like a halo. Mesmerising him. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life. He hadn’t done it to scare her. That had never been his intention.
He’d never meant to hurt her, either. The night he’d hit her, he hadn’t planned that. It was only to stop her seeing it was him. He’d only ever wanted to take care of her. Was that so hard to understand?
‘You let her have the house at a very reduced rent,’ the detective said.
His bottom was itchy. He shifted in the chair, clenching and unclenching his buttocks. It didn’t help.
‘I felt sorry for her,’ he said. ‘She told me a little about what she’d been through. Enough for me to know she needed help.’
The detective nodded. Hard face. He didn’t like her one bit. Women didn’t suit certain jobs. A detective’s job wasn’t easy. You had to be hard to do that and women weren’t naturally hard. Women were soft and pure and beautiful. It was men who ruined them. Men with their disgusting urges that they couldn’t control no matter how hard they tried.
It was difficult. He knew that as well as anyone. But just because something was difficult, it didn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Look at Father John. Forty-three years a priest. A life of prayer and celibacy and not giving in to those base instincts that made us no better than any other animal.
‘So,’ the detective said.
A sudden flash of what he’d like to do to her. Blocked out almost as quickly as he thought it. Focus. He couldn’t let that side of himself take over.
‘You gave Chloe a home and a job. It makes me wonder what you expected in return, Mr Collier?’
Bitch.
Stop it! No call for that.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I expected nothing in return. You don’t understand, do you? I just wanted to help. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
She wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t like other men. He’d never have asked for that. Wouldn’t have wanted it for her. All he wanted, everything he’d done, it was all for her.
Forty-One
The envelopes lay spread out on the bed. Monica arranged them until they were in date order, earliest on the left, moving across to the most recent – from a few months ago – on the right. The same handwriting on each envelope, the same person’s name on each one. Different addresses. Seven envelopes. Seven addresses. A small number of all letters she’d written over the years.
As a child, she’d written letters that never got sent. Those ones, she’d binned long ago. They were an unpleasant reminder of her own weakness. The letters on the bed were from the last ten years. They were the ones that had been sent back to her, RETURN TO SENDER scrawled on them. There were more, but she didn’t know what had happened to them.
Until Brighton, she’d let herself believe her mother had received the other letters. She used to picture her mother’s joy opening each one and knowing Monica hadn’t forgotten her. Proud, maybe, that her little girl was all grown up and had made such a success of her life.
Stupid.
She grabbed one at random, ripped it in two, ripped the two halves again. She carried on ripping until there were no letters or envelopes left. Just white flakes of paper, scattered across the white cotton sheets. Like the flowers in the old couple’s back garden.
Through the wall, she could hear the TV in Mrs Mallet’s bedroom. One of her daughters had popped round but the stupid cow had forgotten to turn down the volume on the TV. Monica pictured the old crone and her ugly daughter, sitting on matching armchairs in the sitting room, talking about things that didn’t matter and pretending their relationship meant something.
She needed to go to Whitstable again. She had things she wanted from the house. Valuable things. On her last visit, she’d taken a front door key from a rack of keys in the hall. She would use this the next time. Pick a moment when he’d be out of the house so she could sneak in and take what she needed. He had so much crap, like the ugly Aynsley ornaments he collected. They were worth money. She didn’t see why he should get to keep them all.
Downstairs, she picked up the photo that had caught Kelly’s attention. The original photo used to sit on the mantelpiece in the sitting room. This was a copy she’d badgered her father to get for her room. The only photo she had of her with her mother. Poor cow looked properly miserable in it. And who could blame her? Married to that useless heap of shit.
A pulse was throbbing at the front of her neck. She put her finger against it. The steady thu-dum, thu-dum was background to the white noise in her head. Her father. Hunched up in that fucking armchair, head in his hands, body shaking as he cried. Little Monica, trying to pull his hands away from his face, not understanding.
And all he could do was cry.
Thu-dum, thu-dum.
Monica was crying too, pulling at him and begging him to tell her where Mummy was and why was he crying. And then the stupid bastard pushed her away, walked out of the room and up the stairs. She ran after him, every bit as pathetic as he was.
He locked himself in the bathroom. She stood outside, banging on the door, screaming at him to let her in.
Thu-dum, thu-dum.
Useless heap of shit.
Her mother’s miserable face, looking up at her.
Stupid, lying bitch.
It was all his fault. Why couldn’t her mother have admitted that? Why’d she have to say all that other stuff? When she started that, Monica had shouted at her. Like she was shouting at her now. She’d lifted the bottle, lying on its side on the dirty table. Lifted it like she was lifting the photo now. Over her head and smashed it down. The photo hit the ground, glass shattering. Just like the bottle when she smashed it into that stupid, lying face.
Two months, a week and two days. Her mother.
Two months, a week and one day. Ellen Kelly.
Two different women. Two different days. Two different betrayals. First her mother, then – a day later – Ellen Kelly.
Thu-dum, thu-dum, thu-dum.
Two stupid, lying bitches.
Forty-Two
Ellen found Raj in the second pub she tried. Sitting in the small beer garden at the side of The Duke, wrapped in a black wool coat and chain-smoking his way through a packet of Marlboro Lights.
‘Didn’t think this was your sort of pub,’ Ellen said, sitting across from him. She’d left her coat in the car and regretted that now. She hoped this wouldn’t take too long.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I thought you’d go for somewhere a bit more classy,’ she said. Or with a rainbow flag hanging outside, she thought, but didn’t say. Raj’s sexuality was none of her business. Although she hoped he had someone to go home to later.
She tapped the packet of cigarettes. ‘Spare me one of these?’
‘If you’re here to counsel me,’ he said, as she took a cigarette and lit it, ‘you can go now. I’m not in the mood.’
‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ she said. ‘You messed up. Big deal. We all mess up from time to time. Besides, the way I heard it, he went for you first. You were only defending yourself.’
‘Fuck off, Ellen.’
She wanted to slap him. Or hug him. Carl Jenkins was in custody. Charged with assaulting an officer. Raj, meanwhile, had been suspended pending an investigation into exactly what had happened at the apartment in Blackheath. The story going around the station was that Jenkins got what he deserved. Je
nkins’ attack on Raj, combined with the fact that he had no alibi for Sunday night, also moved him to number one place on their list of suspects. A fact which added to the general – unspoken – consensus that Raj had done the right thing.
‘Just listen to yourself,’ Raj said. ‘Defending myself? I broke the poor fucker’s nose, for Christ’s sake. I thought the Met was trying to clean up its act. I mean, I know back in the day when people like you first started out that this sort of thing was par for the course. Copper whacks some poor sod and the force all get behind him and cover it up. I don’t want this covered up, Ellen. I lost control, couldn’t stop myself. My bad. No one else’s.’
Definitely a slap.
‘Don’t be so naive,’ she said. ‘Nothing we do is that black or white and you know it. You lost control. So what? The way you’re beating yourself up about it now tells me it won’t happen again. It’s not like you’re some thug who laid into someone just for the hell of it. You’re right, we did have coppers who did that sort of stuff. All the time. But things have changed, Raj. The Met’s a very different place today. Different, and better for it. That’s because we have people like you. Good, decent people who care about what they do and go about their jobs the way they’re meant to. No back-handers, no false convictions or jumped-up charges. Just honest to God coppers working their arses off to make the world a better place. You can’t let this one thing ruin everything. I won’t let you.’
‘Is that what you did?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
Billy Dunston.
Ellen pulled on the cigarette but it made no difference. It was all there, inside her head. Always there. The heat from the gun, the smell, his face – what was left of it. And that split-second decision when she lifted the gun and pulled the trigger a second time.
She threw the cigarette to the ground, stubbed the burning tip out with her foot and stood up.
The Waiting Game Page 17