A Nice Place to Die

by Jane Mcloughlin

  He laughed. ‘Are you trying to make me think she’s pretending she did see me murder him? Well, she didn’t because she can’t have seen me do something I didn’t do, can she?’

  Rachel said, ‘This isn’t about the vicar’s death, Kevin. We’re looking into the fire at Terri Kent’s house. You say Alice Bates sees everything that goes on. Perhaps she saw you start the fire? What do you say to that?’

  Rachel thought she detected a flicker of fear in Kevin’s eyes.

  He shouted ‘No. She’s lying.’

  ‘Why should she lie, Kevin?’ Rachel said.

  ‘She’s getting back at me because I killed her cat. I had nothing to do with that fire.’ Kevin banged the table with his closed fist.

  Jack Reid started to get to his feet again, but Kevin leaned back in his chair. Between gritted teeth he said, ‘I swear, if she’s fixed me up with this, I’ll kill her.’

  ‘Like you killed the vicar, Kevin?’ Rachel Moody said.

  ‘I want my brief,’ Kevin Miller said.

  Some time later, outside in the corridor, DCI Moody and Sergeant Reid watched Kevin Miller walk away with his solicitor.

  ‘Well,’ Reid said. ‘At least we’ve got a confession to animal cruelty. He admits he killed Alice Bates’s cat. I suppose it’s a start. And he certainly threatened to kill the old woman. That was a definite death threat.’

  ‘He’s a nasty piece of work, with a limited vocabulary,’ Rachel Moody said. ‘That’s just something he says. Even Kevin Miller isn’t stupid enough to make a serious death threat against Alice Bates in front of us if he were serious about carrying it out. Anyway, if we did make out a case for threatening behaviour, he’d get off with a caution. You know that as well as I do.’

  Rachel was thinking of what the Superintendent was going to say.

  Then she said, ‘You don’t think he’d really harm Alice Bates, do you?’

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was early evening and Mark Pearson was hosing the yard after milking.

  He heard a car drive up to the house and walked to the gate to see who it was. He wasn’t expecting anyone.

  The security light fixed to the front porch flooded the driveway. He recognized his mother’s car. Joyce was opening the door to get out.

  Bugger, Mark thought, I thought she’d gone out, what’s she doing back so early? It’s her bingo night.

  He leaned on his broom, unwilling to break off his work. He didn’t want Jess, when she came, to have to pick her way through the mess. Since the day he’d first met her, with the cattle chasing her down the lane, she didn’t like the idea that he depended on animals for a living. She didn’t like animals, any animals. And she’d be wearing those crazy shoes she always wore and they’d be ruined simply getting to the back door and that wouldn’t be a good start to this first evening she’d ever spent at his house.

  He thought, she’d expect me to carry her across. She’d like that.

  But, rugby player though he was, he wasn’t sure he was up to it.

  He’d made sure Dad had gone up to bed. He’d seen the light in his bedroom go off half an hour before. His mother’s bingo night was a regular fixture; she and her friends never missed it. And now here she was; she was going to spoil everything.

  An hour ago he’d seen her off and waved goodbye. Mark hoped she had come home to pick up something she’d forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  He waved at her and turned back to his work.

  Joyce Pearson waited in the car for a moment for him to come over to her, but when he didn’t, she got out to go to him.

  The sight of her came as a shock to him. It was the first time in a very long while that he had seen her not as his mother on the farm, but as the woman other people saw outside the home. Tonight she was dressed to go out, wearing a skirt and blouse instead of jeans and a T-shirt. He was startled that for a moment she was like a stranger and he saw her in an unfamiliar light. The woman he knew, with her unkempt hair and bags under her eyes, grumbling at the coldness of the kitchen floor through her slippers first thing in the morning, wasn’t the same person as the smart and, yes, sexy figure who was making her way towards him across the gravel, wearing shoes almost as unsuitable as Jess’s.

  He began to walk to meet her.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t expect you back. Did the bingo get cancelled or something?’

  What he wanted to say was ‘You can’t stay here, my girlfriend’s coming and we’ll be able to do it in a bed for the first time and please, please, don’t spoil it for me,’ but of course he couldn’t. He knew he sounded surly because he wanted her to go but couldn’t tell her.

  He asked himself, is she trying to catch me out? Is that why she’s here?

  Joyce stopped smiling. She looked worried. He noticed how pale her face was.

  Mark dropped the broom. ‘What is it, Mum?’ he said. ‘Come into the kitchen. You look as if you need a drink.’

  ‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ she said, and suddenly she looked like the morning mum he was used to, with her old dressing gown wrapped round her.

  In the kitchen she kicked off her shoes and sat at the table holding the mug of tea he’d given her in both hands to warm them.

  ‘Dad’s gone up,’ he said.

  She suddenly looked him in the eyes and blurted out: ‘Mark, it’s about that girl of yours from the new housing estate.’

  At once he was on the defensive. She’d never mentioned before that she knew he had a girlfriend, let alone who the girl was.

  ‘What’s that to you?’ he said, ‘I’m not a kid any more.’

  ‘Yes, but she is. Isn’t she still at school?’ his mother said. ‘But it’s not just that. My friends were full of it tonight. They’re all worried about you. It’s what they’re saying about her family. I came to tell you as soon as I heard.’

  ‘Heard what?’ he said rudely. ‘And what do those women know, saying things?’

  ‘It’s about that murder on the estate. When poor Tim Baker was beaten to death.’

  ‘What about it?’ he asked. ‘What’s that got to do with her? You don’t think she did it, do you?’

  It’s just as Jess says, he thought, people like her get blamed for everything bad that happens.

  His mother hesitated. She seemed frightened as well as concerned. ‘A man in the post office told Rose Dacre it’s true,’ she said, as though trying to shift the blame for what she was about to tell him.

  ‘What’s true?’ he almost shouted at her.

  ‘The police have arrested the brother of that girl of yours for murder,’ Joyce said, the words coming out with a rush.

  Mark stared at her. It crossed his mind that she was making it up as part of some scheme to make him break off with Jess.

  ‘He’s only her half-brother,’ he said. Then he added, ‘That can’t be true.’

  He thought of Jess’s brother, the thug who’d made the bullocks stampede, leader of the gang who’d hunted him and Jess like animals the night the old woman on Forester Close let them take refuge in her house. The brother was a moron, and definitely violent, Mark thought, but that didn’t make him a cold-blooded murderer. The bullock business was brute ignorance, and the other thing probably started as a bit of drunken fun. Jess’s brother was a bully; he wouldn’t have the guts to do anything as bad as cold-blooded murder, not on his own.

  ‘No,’ Mark said, ‘that can’t be right.’

  ‘People don’t get arrested for nothing,’ Joyce said.

  ‘They’ve got to arrest somebody or people say they’re not doing their job,’ Mark said. ‘They arrest a lot of people and it turns out to be for nothing and they let them go.’

  Joyce looked at him and didn’t know what to do. His face was stony, hostile in a way she’d never seen him. He’s not my little boy any more, she told herself, he’s got hard. I don’t know who he is these days. And then she thought, is it my fault, what’s happened to him? Between us, Bert and I must have driv
en him into taking up with that awful girl.

  ‘It gets worse,’ she said.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Jess,’ he said. ‘Why do you keep blaming her?’

  ‘Rose says she’s got a kid. A little girl about a year old.’

  Mark laughed. ‘You shouldn’t listen to gossip,’ he said. ‘That’s her kid sister. I know about that.’

  ‘Ask her, Mark, please make her tell you the truth. If it’s not true, I’m sorry, but you’ve a right to know what people are saying. If it is true, she’s taking you for a ride. Rose says the murdering brother is the child’s father.’

  ‘Half-brother,’ he said again.

  Mark wanted to hit her. Or, rather, he wanted to hit the man in the post office who’d filled his mother’s silly friend’s head with this poison.

  ‘It’s all a filthy lie,’ he said. ‘Tell that man in the post office who told your friend this rubbish that if he ever tells lies like that about Jess again, I’m coming to get him.’

  His voice was very cold, and his eyes, meeting Joyce’s, were hard as flint.

  ‘Mark, be careful. Rose only passed the gossip on because that’s what people are saying and she thought I should warn you. Are you so sure it isn’t true?’

  ‘Yes,’ he shouted at her, ‘yes, I am.’

  ‘That’s OK then,’ she said. ‘I thought I ought to tell you, that’s all.’

  Mark was thinking, Jess would have told me something like that. About the baby, not the brother. That can’t be true. She wouldn’t do it with Kevin. He probably raped her.

  He realized that he was talking himself into believing his mother.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not true.’

  Joyce watched his face as he struggled not to doubt Jess.

  He’s beginning to think it could be true, she told herself, he doesn’t trust her.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ she asked him. It struck her that she was treating him like someone bereaved, a bereaved acquaintance.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You get back to your friends. Tell that Rose Dacre she shouldn’t listen to gossip.’

  ‘Pompous prat,’ Joyce said, and laughed at him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said, and at last she detected a glimmer of affection in his voice, ‘Jess isn’t what you think she is. Once you get to know her . . .’

  Was the affection for me or for her? Joyce asked herself.

  But Mark, when his mother had gone, had no heart to go out and finish sweeping the yard.

  Jess didn’t come. He tried her mobile and it was switched off. He checked the telephone in the house to see if anyone had called. There was no new text from her on his mobile. He walked around the house in a daze, staying close to the telephone until he knew that it was too late, she wouldn’t be coming.

  At last he went out and started to walk up the lane. There was going to be a frost, he could feel how the cold air pinched his nose and fingers and toes. The night sky was very clear, the stars and the crescent moon shining bright and hard in the blue-black sky. Mark could smell the earthy scent of damp dead leaves and as he passed the field where he’d turned out the milking herd he could hear the cows breathing softly behind the hedge.

  In spite of Jess and Kevin and his mother and all the mess of his life, Mark felt comforted by the enormity of the universe surrounding him. The stars went on forever. Nothing seemed to matter much in the face of that.

  As he walked into the house, the telephone was ringing.

  ‘Jess,’ he said, ‘where are you? Has something happened? I’ve been worried.’

  ‘You’re always worried,’ Jess said. ‘It’s my fucking mum. She’s gone out and left me to babysit my little sister. She said she wouldn’t be long and she’s been gone for hours. I’ll come when she gets back, OK?’

  ‘Jess, hang on, there’s something . . .’ Mark hesitated, unable to ask the question. He said instead, ‘It’s something they’re saying about your brother; something about him being arrested for the murder of Tim Baker . . .’

  There was a short silence, and then the quiet way she reacted surprised him.

  ‘Well, he hasn’t,’ she said, ‘he hasn’t been arrested. They asked him questions about something else but they let him go. Even the cops don’t think he’s guilty of every bloody crime that happens. It’s only those horrible old has-beens in your stupid village think like that and you should tell them to mind their own fucking business and not tell lies about innocent people or they’ll end up in bloody court, OK?’

  Mark tried to make light of it. He laughed. ‘OK, OK,’ he said, ‘I just thought you ought to know what people are saying, that’s all. Don’t worry about it. When do you think you might get away?’

  He was thinking, I ought to feel relieved, but I don’t. It’s not that I don’t believe her when she says it’s a lie, it’s that I believe it could so easily be true.

  Jess said, ‘Not tonight. Not now, it’s too late. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’ She sounded as non-committal as someone answering the phone in a call centre. There was something in her voice that made him feel relieved that she would not be coming after all.

  It’s this bloody feud between her lot and mine, he thought, it’s even getting us involved. She didn’t like me saying that about Kevin, she thinks I’m against him. And then he told himself, I am against him and she’s on his side, she doesn’t even think twice, she’s defending him. Against me.

  ‘Jess,’ he said, taking a deep breath. He had to find out. ‘There’s something else,’ he said.

  He wanted to be cruel, to hurt her.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  He could tell by a sudden eagerness in her voice that she was expecting him to tell her that he wanted her, that he loved her.

  ‘It’s about Kylie,’ he said. ‘Mum’s friend told her she’s your kid. He says she’s not your sister. It isn’t true, is it?’

  He heard her gasp. Then she put the phone down.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Alice turned off the television. She was disappointed. Year after year the preparations on screen for the Christmas festivities – the cooking programmes, the jolly advertisements, and the decorations – made her feel part of something warm, friendly and fun.

  But not this year. Now there was no help at all to get her into the Christmas spirit. She’d hoped to be transported in her imagination to somewhere thrilling, with ice and snow and a sky of sparkling stars outside, but it hadn’t worked. It was hard to feel goodwill towards all men in a sodden, windswept, lonely, Forester Close.

  In the street, only the Millers had made an effort. Donna and Alan had spent the afternoon outlining their home in bright coloured lights. A hugely obese inflatable figure of Father Christmas sat astride the roof of the porch over the front door, waiting for galloping reindeer etched in neon to pull a painted sleigh across the front wall of the house. From somewhere inside his vast belly came the tinny notes of a taped carol which could have been Good King Wenceslas or The Holly and the Ivy, Alice couldn’t tell which.

  The wind was strong enough to rock the Father Christmas figure and his decorated sleigh so that they actually seemed to be moving, setting the sleigh bells jangling. The red, green and blue lights on the house were reflected on the wet pavement, turning the street into a spangled ’fifties dance floor where dead leaves flickered like jiving feet.

  It was like watching an old movie, Alice thought, one of those American films with music and singing and dancing and lots of chiffon dresses with sequins. Any minute now, Fred Astaire might whirl across the road from backstage in the ruins of Number Five to start his big number.

  The ten o’clock news came on the television with its relentless catalogue of man’s inhumanities to man. Alice turned it off.

  In the sudden silence, she heard a muffled sound from the kitchen.

  Alice felt the familiar prickling of sweat on her palms. Her hands and feet were suddenly very cold. The tightening fear in her chest left her breathless, painfully aware
of the thumping of her heart.

  She listened, holding her breath, but heard nothing.

  Perhaps I imagined it, she thought. It was hard not to imagine things in this big echoing dark house all on her own. Perhaps, with Phoebus gone, a mouse had got into the kitchen. Then she tried to tell herself that the wind was catching the tarpaulin the builders had used to cover the open wall of the room above the garage at Number Five after the fire.

  But Alice knew the noise she had heard did not come from outside. Something was wrong. It was in the room with her. A chill seemed to have crept through the house, filling it with menace.

  Stop it, she told herself, you’re imagining things. There’s nothing there.

  She got up slowly and tiptoed into the hall to go upstairs.

  I’ll go to bed, she thought, I’ll check the kitchen tomorrow. I expect it was the wind.

  There was a faint, unfamiliar smell in the hall, sweet and stale. Alice sniffed the air. What was it? Not scent, exactly, more like the way a crowded bus smells when the passengers have been out in the rain, attractive and repellent at the same time.

  ‘Hallo, Miss Bates, come to join me?’

  The voice stabbed Alice like the blade of a sharp knife.

  She knew who it was, knew that cloying smell. She played for time.

  ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ she whispered.

  Someone came towards her from the kitchen. She tried to retreat, but she could not move away from the wall, she was paralyzed with fear.

  ‘It’s me, of course. Surely you’ve been expecting me?’

  The light was suddenly switched on.

  Kevin Miller, wearing his motorcycling leathers and a helmet with the visor raised so that she could see his cold, pale blue eyes, came through the kitchen door and down the hall towards her.

  ‘No,’ Alice stammered. ‘I was looking at the pretty lights on your house. I thought there must be a party.’

  ‘You weren’t invited,’ Kevin said. ‘You’ve been poking your nose in where you’re not invited, haven’t you?’

  He lunged forward suddenly and gripped her thin arm, bending it back behind her.