The Bad Things

by Mary-Jane Riley

  ‘It was a surprise. For you. For our baby.’ His voice came from the corner of the studio and a light snapped on.

  Chris looked at her, his face stony, eyes red-rimmed, skin pale. ‘Did you hear me? Kate? For our baby. The one I thought we’d have eventually. The one we’d have when you’d finally found the courage.’

  ‘Chris…I…’ She was crying.

  ‘The baby we’d have because we love one another and I thought that one day, that would be enough. That I would help you over whatever it was stopping you from completely committing. That’s what I thought.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  Kate’s heart was breaking. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘You didn’t mean me to find the pills did you? The ones for depression, well, I could understand that. I could even understand why you might not want to tell me about it. Especially as you obviously thought you didn’t need them anyway. But the contraceptive pills. Why, Kate? Why?’

  Kate gulped down a sob. ‘I told you it was difficult for me, that you had to give me time—’

  The sound of Chris’s fist on the desk beside him made her jump. ‘Time? I was willing to give you all the fucking time in the world. I’d’ve waited forever. I’d have done anything for you, Kate, anything. But this. You lied to me and lied and lied. Why couldn’t you just tell me the truth and tell me you didn’t want children?’

  ‘You’d have never married me then, would you Chris?’ She was shouting now, heedless of the tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘You made it perfectly clear that you wanted a family. I tried to tell you I wasn’t sure—’

  ‘Wasn’t sure? I knew you weren’t ready. That’s what you told me. I knew I’d have to wait. Plenty of couples don’t have children until they’re in their forties. I thought that was us, Kate, I thought that was us.’

  ‘My job—’

  ‘Oh, your bloody job. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Not me and you. Not our lives together, but your bloody job.’

  ‘You know it’s important to me, it’s part of who I am. I can’t just give it up to have babies.’

  ‘Don’t even try that one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Kate, it’s the twenty-first century. There’s such a thing as paid maternity leave now. Paternity leave too. We would have managed. We would have been a family.’

  Kate recognized that he was speaking in the past tense. ‘I’m sorry.’ She bowed her head.

  ‘Finally she says “sorry”. But I think the job is your baby. And your partner. I don’t think I can compete.’

  ‘Chris, that’s not true.’

  He looked at her sadly. ‘You deceived me. And what lies were you spinning the doctor for him to give you pills for your…depression?’

  ‘Her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The doctor was a her. And I wasn’t lying. Not completely. I—’

  He held up his hand as if to ward her off. ‘Enough Kate. I don’t think I can take any more. The table and chairs are finished and Mr Betts is sending round a van for them sometime this week. I’ll come back and let them in when I know what day they’re coming.’ He heaved himself out of his seat like an old man.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Kate.’

  She couldn’t bear the defeat in his face. ‘Are you leaving me?’ Her voice was a whisper.

  He stood in a silence that seemed to her to go on forever. ‘I trusted you and that’s gone. I thought we were a team, but it seems we’re not. I need some time to think.’

  ‘“Think”?’ He wasn’t going, wasn’t leaving. She couldn’t let him; she loved him; she’d do anything for him. Even have his babies? That quiet but insistent voice in her head. She pushed it away. ‘Chris, there’s a way back from this, I know there is. Let’s talk about it. Have a drink, something to eat.’

  ‘Talk about it? Oh Kate, I’ve been trying to talk to you about it for months. You haven’t wanted to listen. Why should it be any different now?’

  ‘Please, Chris. I will listen. Give me a chance. Please.’

  Chris closed his eyes for a long moment. ‘Kate. Give me a bit of time, please. Then we’ll talk. I promise.’

  Kate didn’t trust herself to speak so she nodded.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, before walking out of the door.

  Kate put down the splintered bits of wood she’d forgotten she was holding. One of the pieces of wood had dug into her palm, causing it to bleed. She stared at the red drops of blood.

  31

  The shadow through the door gave her one hell of a fright.

  Alex had spent a second night, tossing and turning until the duvet was a knotty tangle around her body and the pillow a lumpy mess under her head, thinking back to that bloody awful evening.

  They’d both stared at the phone as it kept on ringing, until ‘Gillian’ left a message. He’d tried to tell her again that Gillian was work, nothing to do with them and their relationship.

  ‘What do you mean, “work”,’ she’d spat at him. ‘Is she or isn’t she your wife?’

  Malone was inscrutable.

  She grabbed the phone off the floor and looked at the number, trying to commit it to memory. ‘Malone. Is Gillian your wife? It’s a simple question.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her anger drained away. The niggling suspicions she’d had, that she’d pushed to the very back of her mind, had proved to be true.

  He took a step towards her. ‘Alex. You must understand—’

  ‘I understand all right.’ The anger was back.

  ‘No. You don’t. I married Gillian as part of my work. She was a major player in a radical environmental organization and—’

  ‘And that makes it better does it?’

  ‘She knows who I am now. What I am.’

  ‘So why hasn’t she divorced you?’ His patient voice was irritating her.

  ‘It’s going through. That’s what she was ringing about.’

  ‘Really? Come on, Malone. Why should I believe you now? You’ve lied to me all through our relationship. I let you into my life and Gus’s life and you do this to me.’

  ‘No.’ His voice was quiet.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I love you, Alex.’

  ‘I don’t think you even know what that means.’

  She told him to leave.

  Now her clock told her it was half past five and she was thankful to be able to get out of bed and drag herself to the shower. It was supposed to revive her – and to that end she used litres of her favourite shower gel and stood under the boiling hot water for as long as she dared. But it wasn’t working. That heavy, nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach refused to go away. It was going to be difficult to get Malone out of her system, she knew that. He’d infiltrated himself into her head and into her family and now she felt let down. Betrayed. The trust she’d had in him smashed into a million little pieces. There was a pricking at the back of her eyes and her throat was rough and sore. She stepped out of the shower, dried herself and got dressed. She was making herself a black coffee while forcing down a piece of toast when the doorbell went.

  She hurried towards the door and froze. Through the glazed window she could see the outline of a man. Her heart swooped and sank. Something to do with Gus. She hadn’t checked whether he was home. Perhaps he’d been out all night. Been to a rave. Dropped some E or whatever it was these days. Ketamine perhaps. Legal highs. Or maybe he’d been run over and was lying dead in a country lane. That bloody Carly had left him on his own. Jack probably couldn’t be relied on either. Or maybe he was in hospital having his stomach pumped. Oh God. Something had happened to him. Had to be a police officer at this time of the morning. She found herself walking slowly, trying to delay the inevitable, tasting fear in her mouth.

  ‘Jez,’ she said as she opened the door, hanging onto it to keep upright. Why had they sent Jez round? And why was he wearing jeans, heavy boots, and a thick coat?
A scarf obscured his chin, mouth and nose, but his eyes stared at her. Why wasn’t he in uniform? ‘What are you doing here? Is it Gus?’

  ‘Gus? No. Why should it be?’

  ‘Because—’

  He held up his hand to cut her off. ‘Look, Alex, I haven’t got much time.’ He jerked his head. ‘Come for a walk with me. Please.’

  ‘A walk? But it’s not even gone six yet and it’s still dark.’

  ‘I know. I need to talk to you, though.’

  ‘But Jez I—’

  ‘Now, Alex. Please.’

  There was an urgency in his attitude that made Alex realize this was important.

  She grabbed her coat.

  They walked down the street and turned into the nearby churchyard of St Mary the Virgin. Fog swirled around them, damp settling on her hair and shoulders. Alex very rarely entered churches these days, but just occasionally she would slip into this one and breathe in the scent of candle wax and incense, and it would soothe her soul.

  They sat side by side with careful distance between them on a bench overlooking a row of well-tended graves. She could feel its wooden ridges and the cold and wet seeping through her coat. It was a long, long time since she had spent any meaningful time alone with Jez, much preferring to deal with him on the phone, usually to ask him to be with Sasha when she was in one of her downward spirals. To be this close to him, alone, made her nervous.

  ‘What the fuck were you doing?’ Jez looked straight ahead and his voice was quiet, muffled by the scarf. He took his tobacco tin out of his pocket and busied his hands making a roll-up. Alex waited until he had finished and, pulling the scarf down off his face, lit it, cupping his hands around the flame of his lighter. There were heavy nicotine stains on his fore and middle fingers.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jackie Wood, that’s what I mean.’

  ‘I was trying…’ She looked up into the sky. It would soon be dawn. ‘I am trying to make amends.’

  Jez blew out smoke. ‘That doesn’t mean you had to go and chat to Jackie Wood though, does it? Christ, you’ve just about crucified Sasha, bringing it all up again.’

  Now she turned to look at him. ‘Bringing it all up again? It’s always there, Jez, you know that. Even if you don’t live with her you know how she suffers every day.’

  She watched him bite down hard on his lip. ‘We all suffer. I miss those kids, you know? No, you can’t know. You don’t really know anything.’ He looked into the distance. ‘I miss Sasha. I really loved her, Alex, really loved her. I still do.’

  ‘Oh, let’s not go through this again, Jez. I know life was difficult afterwards, there’s no doubt about that. It wouldn’t have been anything else. I just wish—’

  ‘What do you wish?’

  ‘That you two could have stayed together. That’s all. I think she loves you, Jez and always has.’

  His laugh was bitter. ‘Oh she loved me all right. Too much. That was the problem.’

  Alex looked at him for the first time, seeing the deep grooves either side of his mouth, the greying stubble and the frown lines on his forehead. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He pinched the end of the roll-up, picked a shred of tobacco off his tongue, and tried to light it again.

  ‘Come on, Jez.’

  ‘You don’t want to know. Look, we’ve got to keep Sasha away from stories about Wood, about Jessop. It makes her worse.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘The press are bound to dredge it all up again. Well, they’ve started, haven’t they? Poring all over it. I hate them, Alex. Hate them. That bloody Ed Killingback keeps on my fucking back.’ He laughed tonelessly. ‘Killingback on my back. Yeah, right. Says he’s searching for the truth. He doesn’t want to know the truth. Nobody does.’

  ‘We know the truth,’ said Alex.

  Jez turned to her. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Alex. You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘Then tell me, Jez. Please.’

  He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, smoking slowly, carefully. He shook his head, eyes closed.

  Alex took a breath, feeling as though she was about to jump into a pit. She had to ask.

  ‘Jez, do you know anything about a diary?’

  His eyes snapped open. ‘Diary?’

  She searched for the right words. ‘When I went to see Jackie Wood she told me Jessop had written a diary.’ She swallowed. ‘I’ve been looking for it in case it said anything about…about where Millie might be buried.’

  The clock chimed the quarter hour.

  ‘No it doesn’t.’ His voice was a monotone. ‘It says nothing about Millie. It was all about you and Jessop.’ He looked up at Alex. ‘What? Do you think I didn’t know? I’ve always known.’

  Her heart was thumping. ‘Why have you never said anything?’

  ‘Because I care about Sasha. She is all I care about. And I had to keep the truth about you and Martin from ever coming out.’ He stared into the distance. ‘God, if I’d known about the two of you while I was trying so fucking hard to get them banged up—’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He took a deep drag of his roll-up and threw it onto the ground. The tip glowed, then faded and he ground it underfoot. ‘They were being so slow. The police. I just helped them along a bit. Planted the clothes in the bin. Put some soil and sand and stuff in the communal area of the flats. Got into Jessop’s flat when they were out searching for my kids. It’s easy if you know what you’re doing.’

  She put a hand up. It was all too surreal. ‘Hang on. Are you telling me you planted the evidence?’

  ‘Why not? I needed them put away.’

  ‘Because they were guilty?’

  ‘I needed them put away.’

  It was too much to take in. Alex hugged her stomach. ‘Why did Martin never say anything about me? At the trial, I mean? It would have helped his case.’

  ‘He loved you, that’s why.’

  Alex sat back on the bench. ‘Oh.’

  ‘But then I heard through the grapevine he was going to bring up your relationship for his appeal, so I went to see him in jail.’

  The air around them grew still.

  ‘And?’ she prompted, knowing this was all leading to the diary.

  ‘And he showed me his diary.’

  Her whole body tensed. She stopped breathing.

  ‘It was all there, Alex. Every meeting you’d ever had, the feelings he’d had for you. He told me he’d kept quiet because bringing you into it wouldn’t have helped him. Not then. At first, I tried to persuade him it wasn’t going to help at that time either, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  She didn’t want to hear any more. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘So I told him he was right and that it was time the truth came out. I said I would take the diary and put it in a safe place. And then I asked someone to take care of him.’

  ‘Take care of him?’ She was confused ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you think I mean?’ His laugh was bitter. ‘For fuck’s sake, grow up Alex.’ There was despair on his face and anger behind his eyes and all at once she understood.

  ‘My God. He didn’t hang himself, did he?’ She looked up at Jez. ‘Did he?’ Her voice was loud.

  Jez ground the roll-up under his foot. ‘No.’

  ‘My God,’ she said again. Sadness and sorrow and anger for what they had all lost welled up inside her and she blinked hard. ‘And the diary?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘I had to use it as part-payment.’

  ‘Part-payment?’

  He turned to look at her, his mouth in a cruel smile. ‘How do you think I got DI Grainger to bury the fact that you were screwing the murder suspect? Do you think I just asked nicely? “Oh, excuse me sir, but my sister-in-law’s been shagging Martin Jessop and if my wife knew it would kill her so please could we keep that quiet?” Do you think that’s what I said? No, for fuck’s sake. He needed money
and he needed me to keep quiet about some dirty dealings so I paid him off, putting myself in debt up to my eyeballs, and I kept quiet. And he had the diary as insurance.’

  Alex stepped back, letting go of his arm. ‘Insurance?’ she whispered.

  ‘Grainger wanted to make sure I kept in line. Didn’t want me to tell his superiors about the bribes he took from me or anyone else. Said if he had the diary he could destroy you if he needed to.’

  ‘And has he still got it?’ She was amazed her voice sounded so normal, amazed that the sky wasn’t full of thunder and lightning.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Grainger’s dead. Killed himself. So I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Don’t know if he hid it, if he still had it, if the investigating cops have found it. I don’t know. I guess we hope that if anyone does find it no one will realize its significance and it gets bundled up with his stuff and goes to whoever is his next of kin.’

  Jez looked so defeated she almost wanted to put her arms around him.

  ‘And I’ve had DI Kate Todd on my back and some young copper called Maitland around quizzing me about Jackie Wood; where I was when she was killed.’

  ‘And where were you?’

  Jez looked at her. ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t kill her. It was tempting though.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Alex pulled her coat around her. The air seemed to be getting colder.

  He sat back down on the bench, took out his tin, and tried to make another roll-up, but his hands were shaking so badly he had to give up. ‘I went to see her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I found out where she lived – people get careless in the office – and went just to talk to her, find out how long she was going to stay in the area, make sure she wasn’t going to come anywhere near our family. Put the frighteners on her. Little did I know you were going to interview the bitch. Anyway, she knew where the diary was – apparently Jessop had left a letter with her solicitor, Danby, that told her Grainger had the diary.’