Alice cried out in pain.
Kevin released her arm. He was disgusted at the feel of the dry loose skin covering the bones.
But Alice tried to take it as a sign of hope that he was not beyond human feeling.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid even shaking hands can hurt when you’re as old as me.’
The apparent confidence of her appeal to his sympathy enraged him.
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘You need to be taught a lesson. That’s what I’ve come for.’
Her voice quivering because her teeth were chattering, Alice said, ‘Did I leave the back door open? I keep doing that.’
‘Shut up,’ he said again, this time with more venom. ‘I broke the lock.’
Alice was shaking with fright. She knew she must try to hide her fear, but she couldn’t. She found she couldn’t speak without stuttering.
‘What do you want, Kevin? What are you looking for?’
He pushed her towards the kitchen. ‘Stop asking me stupid fucking questions,’ he hissed at her. ‘You keep your mouth shut and we’ll get on fine as long as you do what I tell you.’
‘But why?’ she said, ‘why are you here?’
He snarled at her. ‘As if you didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know the cops are watching my house. So I’m going to be staying with you for a bit. It’s only fair. You set them on me, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ she wailed, ‘no, I didn’t. I haven’t said a word to anyone.’
‘Don’t tell me that,’ he said. ‘They said they had a tip-off. Who else would it have been?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘Please, Kevin, it wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t.’
‘D’you think I’m stupid?’ he shouted at her. ‘You were watching, weren’t you? When that vicar bought it? That’s all you’re good for, isn’t it? Spying on people.’
‘No, no,’ Alice said, pleading. ‘I never told anybody, I wouldn’t dare.’
Kevin looked triumphant. ‘So you did see?’ He took off his helmet and smoothed his hair. That’s the smell, Alice told herself, it’s the gel he puts on his hair.
‘You’re going to be sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ll make you sorry.’
He bared his teeth. He smiled like a dog, Alice thought, you couldn’t be sure he wasn’t going to bite.
She said in her quivering voice, ‘I’d never tell, you know I wouldn’t. What are you going to do to me?’
He did not hide his disgust at her withered face and her knobbly body and her dry flaking lips.
‘Shut up,’ he said once more, ‘shut up and get me something to eat. Don’t you know how to treat a guest?’
Alice walked unsteadily to the fridge, but when she opened the door the shelves were empty. She’d been going to do her shopping tomorrow.
‘There’s cake,’ she said. ‘There’s a cake in that tin in the cupboard. I made it in case Jean Henson wanted to come over and have a chat at teatime.’
Kevin reached up and pulled the cake tin from the cupboard shelf. He ripped open the lid and broke off a fistful of the sponge cake inside.
He spat it out. ‘Yuck,’ he said, ‘it’s like eating sawdust.’
‘There’s nothing else,’ she said. ‘I was going to do some shopping tomorrow.’
Kevin began to pull out the kitchen drawers, tossing cutlery and plates on to the floor.
At last he pulled out a new washing line Alice kept as a spare in case vandals cut the one in her garden. That happened several times over the year.
‘This’ll do,’ he said. ‘This’ll keep you quiet until we get to understand each other better.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ Alice said. ‘You won’t be safe. The police might come . . .’
She stopped, realizing what she had said, but it was too late.
‘You see, I knew it was you. The coppers’ nark.’
He sounded triumphant.
‘No,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t me. I’d never do that. I didn’t see anything. I’d nothing to tell them.’
Kevin could hear how scared she sounded. He grinned at her. ‘You’re not my idea of a hot date for Christmas either,’ he said. ‘But you’ve only yourself to blame. You put the police on to me, and I can’t stay at home till they lay off. This is the last place the cops will look for me, thanks to you.’
He suddenly started to laugh. ‘As you sow, so shall you reap,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what that vicar would’ve said?’
Kevin shoved her back out into the hall, pushing her against the banister.
‘Lift your arms up,’ he said, ‘stretch them out.’
As best she could, she did as she was told. He wrenched her hands upwards and outwards beyond their natural reach. She didn’t know how she was going to be able to bear the pain. She moaned, but he took no notice. He used the new washing line to lash her wrists to the closest spindles, wrapping the cord round the handrail to prevent her sliding her arms lower.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘you asked for this. You’re going to pay.
He wound some of the line round her neck and the closest spindle.
‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s not too tight, is it? As long as you don’t move there’ll be no bruises to show.’
Then he stood back to survey his handiwork.
He laughed again, imitating her terrified expression and raising his arms in the shape of a vulture standing over its prey.
‘There,’ he said, ‘you look like an old witch ready to be burned at the stake.’
Alice tried to speak but she could only make little whimpering sounds at the back of her throat.
‘I’m going down the takeaway,’ he said, ‘I’ll be back. Then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to be here for a while. No one is going to know where I am, got it? And you won’t be telling anyone, will you, you ugly old bat? You won’t be telling your police friends anything for a long time to come. Got it?’
He turned off the light. There was a faint click as he went out the back door, then silence. Alice, straining her ears for any sound, heard only the frantic thumping of her own blood in her ears.
In the alley that ran behind the back gardens of the houses on Forester Close, Kevin whistled and then whispered, ‘Are you there, kid? You can come out now.’
There was a muffled yelp, then someone stepped out from behind a load of trash that had been dumped beside the fence.
Nicky Byrne’s voice was muffled. ‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked.
‘D’you think I don’t know you’ve been following me around?’ Kevin said.
‘I can’t help it,’ Nicky said, ‘I’ve got to tell you. I love you, Kevin, I really love you.’ She was ready to cry. ‘Please, don’t send me away.’
‘Piss off, you stupid kid. Does your mum know you’re out?’ he said.
Nicky came up close to him and pressed herself against him. She shook her head. ‘No chance,’ she said, ‘she and Terri went to bed hours ago.’
Kevin grimaced at the thought of those two women in bed together.
Nicky’s hot breath was in his ear. ‘Let me stay with you, please, oh please, Kevin, don’t make me go away. I’ll do anything you want.’
‘You’ll have to make yourself useful,’ he said.
‘Anything you say, Kevin,’ she said.
‘OK, OK, get off me,’ he said. ‘You can run down the chippy for me. Get whatever you want too and bring it back here.’
‘You mean me and you will be together?’
He pulled a twenty pound note out of the breast pocket of his leather jacket.
He said, ‘This isn’t kids’ stuff. Don’t let anyone see you come back here, right?’
‘Oh, I won’t, I promise I won’t.’
‘I’ll be in Alice’s place,’ he said. ‘She’s asked me to stay there with her for a bit.’
‘Oh, that’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘I can come over every night and look after you, it’ll be like we’re really married.’
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Kevin pushed her away from him. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ he said.
‘Why do you want to stay with her? She’s gross.’
‘I expect she’s lonely,’ Kevin said. ‘It’s Christmas, she’ll be glad of the company.’ He grinned at her.
Nicky said, ‘Does Alice know? She won’t like it.’
‘Don’t you worry about Alice,’ he said. ‘She won’t mind. She doesn’t have any say in it.’
‘Oh,’ Nicky said, trying to hug him, ‘this is going to be the best Christmas ever.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Winter tightened its grip on Forester Close over Christmas. The temperature scarcely rose above freezing, even during the middle of the day, with a ruthless east wind and the dismal grey blight it carries with it across the landscape. The birds stopped singing in the leafless shrubs in the gardens, and daffodils which had ventured above the wet black soil to test the air retracted their green shoots to wait for more convincing signs of spring. Even at noon, it was as though daylight could not quite make up its mind to announce its arrival and started to tiptoe away before anyone noticed. People left the curtains in their upstairs windows closed all day, but there was no one looking up in the street to wonder if they were ill. Or even dead.
And then, as soon as New Year was over, the wind changed and great bluff grey clouds scudded across the bone-coloured sky. Suddenly Forester Close was jerked out of its deep sleep.
In Number Five, still shrouded in builders’ tarpaulins waiting for the workmen to return from their holiday break, Nicky came into Helen’s room early in the morning. She pulled the curtains open, shouting, ‘Mummy, Mummy, something’s happening.’
Helen and Terri both sat up in bed. The room was full of queer orange and bluish lights.
‘What is it?’ Helen said, yawning. ‘Has something set off a burglar alarm?’
‘If that bastard Dave’s set fire to another house now, I’ll kill him,’ Terri said, but she did not sound convinced by her own bravado.
At Number Four, Jean Henson, an early riser since Peter’s death, was downstairs looking out of the sitting-room window. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked herself, speaking aloud as though Peter were still there, ‘the street’s full of police cars.’
Since the morning when the police had come to tell her of Peter’s suicide, Jean was very disturbed by the sight and sound of any of the emergency services. And now here they were back in the road in front of her house.
For a moment she wondered if she were dreaming. Since Peter’s death her dreams had been so real and so painful that she dreaded going to sleep. Perhaps this was one of them and in a moment she would wake up and find the scene in the street was just part of a nightmare.
Oh, Peter, she said to herself, if only you were here. How could you go and leave me alone like this?
Real or unreal, it didn’t matter now. The sirens were screaming, and ghostly giants in weird masks and vast protective suits milled on the street outside her house.
Jean could not bear this alone. She pulled on her coat and slipped out of the house. If anyone knew what was happening, it would be Alice; she’d go and ask her.
But she could not reach Alice’s house without running the gauntlet of a posse of police and fire officers. Taking care not to be seen, she fled past the demolished side wall of Number Five to hammer on the back door, calling Terri’s name.
Terri, in striped pyjamas, opened the door and pulled her inside.
‘What’s Kevin Miller done now?’ Jean said. ‘What’s happening, do you know?’
‘No idea,’ Terri said, ‘but I don’t think it’s the Millers. Nicky says they’re all over Alice’s place.’
‘It can’t be. What on earth would Alice have been getting up to?’ Jean said. She felt weak and dizzy.
Terri took Jean’s hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘it’s probably a false alarm. Or perhaps Alice thought she heard an intruder and dialled nine nine nine.’
But Jean could not be placated. ‘Perhaps she did hear an intruder,’ she said, and her voice sounded doomed.
‘Those aren’t ordinary cops,’ Nicky said. ‘It’s terrorists at least; or a chemical leak. They’ve got breathing apparatus.’
She was excited, rushing round the house seeking the best view of what the emergency services were doing in the street.
All day people in white overalls, wearing masks and huge rubber gloves, moved in and out of Alice’s house. Uniformed cops sealed off her driveway, and there was a police check point at the end of the Close where it met the main road.
And all day the other residents stayed hidden, watching behind closed curtains, conscious that they were silent witnesses to something stupendous, though they did not know what it was.
The drama was not diminished when they knew what had happened.
The milkman, barred from entering Forester Close, drove his float down the alley behind the houses to make his deliveries.
‘All this is because of me,’ he told Terri, Helen, Nicky and Jean, who were gathered in the kitchen of Number Five. ‘I’m the one discovered it.’
‘Discovered what?’ Terri asked.
The milkman, called Fred, looked shocked at the enormity of what he had started.
‘Here,’ Helen said, ‘sit down and have a cup of tea. You don’t look well.’
‘Tell us what happened,’ Nicky said. ‘Why are all those men wearing all that special gear?’
‘It was all the milk bottles she never took in,’ Fred said. ‘I thought she must’ve gone away for Christmas and forgotten to leave me a note.’
‘Alice never went away anywhere,’ Jean said. She sounded full of foreboding.
‘I took the bottles away when she didn’t take them in,’ Fred said. ‘It doesn’t do to leave milk bottles on the doorstep; it’s a signal to thieves. Then after ten days I tried looking through the letter box and saw the post she hadn’t collected. But that didn’t mean anything, not if she’d gone away, did it?’
‘No,’ Terri said, ‘not if she’d gone away.’
Fred began to look green and had to take a swig of tea before he could go on.
‘It was the smell,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the smell.’
‘What smell?’ Nicky said.
‘Perhaps she’d put a turkey out to defreeze and forgotten it before she went away?’ Terri prompted him.
‘But if she was going away, she wouldn’t have had a turkey, would she?’ Jean said.
‘No,’ Fred said, ‘that’s the conclusion I came to myself. I knocked at Mrs Miller’s and asked if she knew if her neighbour at Number Three was taking a holiday?’
‘What did she say?’ Helen asked.
‘She said she’s not the friendly type, I haven’t seen her since before Christmas,’ Fred said. ‘Some people, eh? No sense of community.’
‘Quite,’ Terri said.
There was a pause. Then Fred said, ‘I called the cops. I thought I’d better.’
‘But what’s happened?’ Terri almost shouted at him. ‘What did they find?’
‘They found her,’ Fred said. ‘She’d been dead all that time. She was lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.’
Terri gasped.
‘Alice is dead?’ Jean Henson whispered. ‘My God, Alice is dead.’
‘What are the police saying?’ Terri asked Fred. She looked as though she was about to shake the information out of him.
‘Her face was frozen in an expression of abject horror, one of the young cops told me,’ Fred said.
‘Do they think she was murdered?’ Nicky asked.
Her clear childish voice in that context shocked them all.
Fred got up to go. ‘I don’t know what’s happening now,’ he said. ‘That’s what they’re doing now, I suppose, finding out if someone killed her.’
‘It was probably an accident,’ Nicky said. ‘Old people fall down stairs.’
‘More likely Kevin Miller’s got his own back,’ Jean sai
d. Her hands were shaking and she was very white. ‘He said he would,’ she said. Then she started to cry.
In Alice’s house, DCI Moody and Sergeant Reid watched as the body was removed from the house.
Rachel Moody sighed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what do you make of it?’
Jack Reid closed his notebook. ‘Not suicide, anyway,’ he said.
Rachel gave him a quick look. ‘Are you saying that because you really believe it, or because this is Forester Close and you think the odds favour a violent death?’ she asked.
Jack said, ‘There’s just no reason to think she killed herself. No note, nothing. And she hadn’t made her bed. She was the sort of woman who wouldn’t want a stranger finding an unmade bed. It looks like an accident to me. A frail old woman caught short in the middle of the night trips on her way to the bathroom and falls down stairs. It’s easily done.’
‘What about that gash on the back of her head?’
‘She could easily have hit her head on the newel post on her way down. There was a lot of bruising and that would explain it.’
‘And the facial injuries?’
‘If she did a somersault after bashing the back of her head in she’d land face down on those tiles in the hall,’ Jack Reid said.
‘But the body wasn’t face down when we found it, was it?’ Rachel said. ‘She was staring up at us with that terrified look on her face.’
‘Are you saying you think she was murdered?’ Sergeant Reid asked. He looked doubtful. ‘What would anyone gain from killing someone like that?’
‘Quite,’ Rachel said. ‘But then you’d think no one would want to murder a poor harmless little vicar, but someone killed Tim Baker, didn’t they?’
‘Don’t tell me you think you can pin this on Kevin Miller?’ Jack Reid said. He was startled at her attitude. She seemed to be complicating a simple issue, which wasn’t like her. ‘What makes you think you could?’ he said.
She didn’t say anything. She knew that he was thinking she’d taken leave of her senses. Part of her agreed with him.
She shrugged. ‘Hope springs eternal,’ she said, ‘but you’re probably right. At the moment, accident looks the most likely cause of death. But we’ll keep an open mind, right?’
A Nice Place to Die Page 14