by Neil White
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ John said, looking towards the large open doors.
‘We’ll be fine. If we get caught, we’ll just smile and flirt, and no one really cares.’
John watched through the gaps in the fence as the two women scurried through the yard and clambered into a large blue skip. They were in there for just a couple of minutes, and then they scrambled back out again and ran across the yard. They threw their bags over the fence and clambered over to join him.
Gemma showed John the contents of her rucksack, and seemed pleased when he nodded his approval.
‘We will eat well today,’ he said.
Gemma set off walking back, Dawn more slowly again, quiet and still, and so John followed. The sun was on his face and his head was filled with bird whistles and the swish of the grass and Gemma’s giggles. And he felt it again. Happiness. It was the simplicity of it all. It was joyous, with no troubles, no worries, with just the scents of the fields and the pleasure of his companions to fill the day.
Gemma turned round to him and blew him a kiss. When he returned it, he was smiling, couldn’t stop himself, his heart skipping like a teenager.
He felt it at that moment. A certainty, a resolve that he had left his old life behind, and it felt good.
Chapter Twelve
Charlie walked quickly down the stairs from his office, popping a couple of mints into his mouth. He knew who he had seen outside and wanted to catch him up. The sight of the television people had reminded him of how big the Alice Kenyon story had become.
Billy Privett had been everyone’s favourite hate figure even before Alice Kenyon died. He’d got his money too easily and flaunted it too much. Billy knew that it got his face in the paper and so he played up to it. Once Alice died, face down in Billy’s pool, a horrible end to just another party, the publicity became less fun. It became about the questions he wouldn’t answer. Who had given her the drugs? Who had brutalised her sexually? Who else was there?
The good times for Billy waned after Alice died. No one knew if Billy had killed her, but everyone guessed that he had stopped the killer from being caught. The press highlighted every new thing he bought, every party he still held, as if he was mocking Alice’s death. Time passed though, and Alice would have been forgotten, except that her father, Ted, wouldn’t let that happen. He learned the lesson pretty quickly that the media can help if you harness it correctly. He became the victim’s champion, and campaigned about the right to silence, about drug laws being too relaxed, about an individual’s responsibility to help.
Except that by putting himself in the public glare, he became a target for the media. When Ted was caught in a car with a girl who looked younger than Alice had been, a blurred photograph showing them in an embrace, the public view turned from sympathy to dislike.
Ted was outside Charlie’s office, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, staring up at the office window.
The camera crew wasn’t ready yet. The reporter was adjusting his tie and checking his hair in the van mirror, and the cameraman was looking at the floor, waiting. Ted Kenyon had once been a good source for a quote, but it didn’t look like he had been spotted. Or more importantly, Ted seemed keen on keeping away from the lenses.
Charlie walked slowly towards him, looking for a sign that all wasn’t well. Ted knew that over the years Charlie had been Billy’s lawyer from time to time, and that Amelia had dealt with the fallout from his daughter’s death, but what was he doing outside his office? As Charlie got closer, Ted looked at him, a flicker to his eyelids showing that he had recognised him, and then he nodded a greeting.
Charlie popped another mint into his mouth before saying, ‘How are you, Mr Kenyon?’
Ted stared at Charlie for a few moments. Ted wasn’t tall, but the broadness of his shoulders and the faded cuts and nicks on his hands showed off his years in the building trade. He had built up a successful business, and the money it had brought in had given his daughter the confidence to think that she could leave Oulton and make something of herself. Until one night back in her hometown had brought it all to an end, and Ted Kenyon realised that although sheer determination could bring him the good things in life, it didn’t do much to keep away the horrors.
‘I’m not sure,’ Ted said, his voice quiet. He was smartly dressed, although Charlie had never seen him any other way, in trousers with a sharp crease and a V-neck jumper, a shirt and tie just visible. He was not even fifty, but everyone who knew him said that Alice’s death had aged him. Whatever energy he’d had left, he had channelled into Billy Privett. What would he do now?
‘So you know that Billy Privett has been killed?’ Charlie said.
He nodded. His jaw was clenched, and he was looking past Charlie, towards the office.
‘Is that why you’re down here, to give a quote?’ and Charlie pointed towards the television van.
Ted paused for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, not today.’
‘I don’t want any trouble, Mr Kenyon. I’m sorry for your daughter, I always have been, but I was just doing my job whenever I helped him. So was Amelia.’
His look darkened for a moment. ‘She did more than that.’
Charlie was confused for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’
‘People like you turn doing my job into an excuse, as if it makes everything all right,’ Ted said, his mouth set into a snarl. ‘It doesn’t though, does it?’
Charlie didn’t try and respond. He’d tried to justify his job to enough people in the past, but not many had agreed with him, that everyone deserves someone to speak up for them.
Ted looked up towards the office window. Charlie followed his gaze, and saw Amelia there, speaking into a telephone.
‘So what do you think about Billy dying?’ Charlie said.
‘Nothing will bring Alice back,’ Ted said, after thinking about the question for a few seconds. ‘I thought of myself as a tough man. It’s the way I was brought up, that it’s a tough world, and so you’ve got to be tough with it. Alice being murdered made me realise that I wasn’t as strong as I thought, and so I went with my feelings more, instead of trying to hide them. Now?’ and he shook his head. ‘I don’t feel anything. No pity, no sympathy, no anger. I know that it sounds cruel, because Billy was also someone’s child, but that is how I feel.’
‘People will understand,’ Charlie said. ‘Your daughter died.’
‘No, they won’t,’ he snapped. ‘I know what people think of me now. It’s not about Alice anymore.’
Charlie didn’t answer that. Don’t get frisky with girls barely out of their teens, was his thought, but he didn’t voice it.
‘Why have you come here, Mr Kenyon?’ Charlie said, and when Ted looked confused for a moment, he added, ‘Amelia’s office. Of all the places to come, you’ve chosen here.’
Ted paused, and then he said, ‘I was passing, that’s all.’
As he said that, Charlie saw a flash of Ted’s ordinariness for a moment. That was why his message had once been so powerful, because he was an ordinary man with a heartbreaking message. He was hard working, had provided for his daughter, an outgoing bubbly teenager. No one had a bad word for her. She was popular, the boys liked her, good at sport, did well at school. She was everyone’s favourite daughter. Then she was found face down in Billy Privett’s pool, and Ted Kenyon was the voice for every victim who felt like they got lost in the system. But for all of the media skills he had been forced to learn, he looked lost, as if he didn’t know what to do now that the source of all his hatred had gone.
Charlie didn’t know why he did it, but he held out his hand. ‘I know you’ll think it’s hollow, but now that Billy has gone, I can say what I always wanted to say, that I’m sorry about your daughter, and I hope one day you get all the answers.’
Ted looked down at the outstretched hand, and then shook his head. ‘Not today,’ he said.
‘So what now?’ Charlie said, pulling his hand away, embarrassed. ‘We don’
t want any trouble here.’
Ted looked up at the office again, and said, ‘I’m going home to what’s left of my family,’ and then he walked away, his head down.
As Charlie watched him go, he saw the two men in suits who had been to see Amelia moments before. They were watching him and quietly talking to each other.
As Sheldon got closer to the police station, he saw that journalists were already gathering outside.
Billy’s housekeeper, Christina, leaned forward from her seat in the back to look at the reporters. She had agreed to provide a statement about what Billy had told her he was doing.
‘Billy’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said.
Tracey exchanged glances with Sheldon, who gave a small shrug.
‘Yes, we think he is,’ Tracey said, her voice soft. ‘I’m sorry.’
Christina stared out of the window for a few seconds, and then said, ‘They soon found out, the reporters. Are the police still selling secrets?’
Sheldon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought of it. He remembered the press outcry about Alice Kenyon. They had turned on Billy Privett at first, and hounded him for not telling anyone what had happened, but he had been a caricature before Alice, the lottery winner with no class. Once they got bored of Billy’s infamy, they turned on the police for not finding the answers.
‘We don’t sell secrets,’ Sheldon said, although he knew that he didn’t sound convincing. There had always been coppers ready to pass on information for the right price.
‘Or you just got better at hiding it,’ Christina said.
Sheldon’s car rumbled up the cobbled slope that led to the station, and some of the reporters turned towards his car and took an interest.
‘You need to get into the middle of the seat, put your head down, unless you want to be all over the press,’ Sheldon said to Christina.
Christina flicked at her hair and smiled out of the window instead.
He pulled into a space in the far corner of the car park, into what used to be an enclosed yard where prisoners were allowed to take cigarette breaks. It meant he could enter through the door at the other end of the corridor though, away from the public entrance. As they walked from the car, Christina in front, Sheldon detected a sway to her hips that was not there when they had been at Billy’s house. He glanced upwards, to the white-framed windows that ran the length of the station, and he realised that she was playing to whatever audience there might be. Tracey raised her eyebrows at him.
Sheldon took the lead as they went inside, through two sets of doors and into the long corridor that led to the front entrance, the Incident Room further along. Some male officers passed them as Sheldon walked to an interview room, Christina alongside him, and he noticed the second glances that went her way. As he looked at Christina, he saw that she was smiling still, enjoying her moment as the centre of attention. She knew the secrets of the man found dead in the town the night before, and the look on her face told Sheldon that she would relish telling the story.
Duncan Lowther came towards him along the corridor, bursting out of the Incident Room. He did the second glance at Christina, the look to her breasts that he presumed she wouldn’t spot, and then gave a tilt to his head that told Sheldon that he needed a quiet word.
Sheldon turned to Christina and smiled an excuse me, before going to the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. Lowther kept his eye on Christina for a while longer and then leaned in.
‘The buzz about it being Billy Privett has reached headquarters,’ Lowther said.
‘What do headquarters say?’
‘They want to send FMIT over today.’
Sheldon closed his eyes for a moment. The Force Major Incident Team had taken over the Alice Kenyon investigation. Some people had said that he’d become too involved in the case, but he shouldn’t have been punished for it. He could have caught her killer, if he had just been given more time. They hadn’t caught the killer either, but that didn’t seem to matter. It had been Sheldon who’d had the case taken away from him.
‘I thought they were too busy?’ Sheldon said, after a few seconds. Sweat popped onto his lip.
‘They are, but it looks like they have spotted the press exposure on this one and want the limelight.’
Sheldon raised an eyebrow. He knew how it went, that FMIT would take over all the murder investigations in Lancashire if it was possible, but they had limited resources, like every department. So they picked the bigger cases, the ones that were the most complex, or attracted the most attention. When the Alice Kenyon case had first started, it was just a student found drowned in a pool, and at the wrong end of the county. Oulton was left to fend for itself in most things, and the local chiefs liked it that way, but sometimes things got a little too big, and in Alice’s case, the press clamour made them ask for more help. The big city boys had been glad to help out.
‘I can do this,’ Sheldon said, although he surprised himself that he had voiced his thoughts.
Lowther nodded, uncertain. ‘It’s not always up to us, sir.’
A door opened further along, and Chief Inspector Dixon appeared in the corridor. She was once the rising star of the force, but she was pushed out to Oulton and her career stalled as she got used to the quieter life. Perhaps that had been the intention of the top brass.
She was going outside for a cigarette, the lighter and the gold of the packet visible in her hand, but then she faltered when she saw Christina.
Sheldon glanced across to Christina, whose smile had turned into a smirk. The Chief stopped in the corridor for a few seconds, her eyes towards the floor, and then she turned away and went back into her office, the door clicking closed behind her.
‘And I got a message from the reporter, Jim Kelly,’ Lowther said. ‘He’s gone back to work, but he said that he’s going to write his story about,’ and then he paused as he noticed Christina listening. He leaned forward and whispered, ‘About what was delivered to his office this morning.’
Sheldon closed his eyes. It was the same old problem, that there wasn’t much they can do to stop press reporting until they had a suspect charged and before the court. They got agreements sometimes to hold things back, but Sheldon guessed that Jim Kelly wanted to squeeze every bit of publicity out of the case. Sheldon’s fingers trembled and so he clenched his fist to stop it.
‘Sir?’ It was Lowther.
Sheldon opened his eyes. A bead of sweat trickled down his nose. ‘I’ll speak to Kelly,’ he said, and then took Christina into a side room.
Chapter Thirteen
As they crossed the field in front of the cottage, their bags bulging with food, Arni was waiting nonchalantly in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb. John knew it was an act. Arni’s jaw was clenched and the veins in his arms showed his tension.
Arni stepped forward as they got closer and held out his arms. Gemma and Dawn passed over their rucksacks, and Arni’s lips were pursed as he looked through them. Dawn was trembling next to John, and so he turned to nod and smile, but she didn’t respond.
Arni pointed at John and then towards the van. ‘It needs cleaning out,’ he said. ‘And there is some mesh near the barn. Cover the cottage windows with it. We need to be ready.’
‘What for?’ John said.
Arni glowered. ‘You’ll find out soon enough. Until then, you don’t need to know.’ And then he went back into the house.
Once Arni was out of earshot, Gemma said, ‘I’ll help you with the van.’
John smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He knew the rhythm of the group now. Arni was the enforcer, Henry the inspiration. ‘I’ll sort out the mesh.’
He went to the side of the house to find what he needed as Gemma went to get a bucket. He approached one of the farm outbuildings where he had seen the wire mesh rolled up earlier, leaning against a wall. John picked up the roll but then stopped to peer into the shadows of the outbuilding. There was a large sliding door that ran on rusty rollers, and it had been left ajar. As he looke
d, he saw a metal barrel, just like the one Arni had unloaded earlier.
John looked around to check that no one was watching, and then stepped inside.
It was cold and dark and smelled of oil and old machinery. His shoes scraped on grit, and so he walked slowly, anxious not to betray his presence.
John looked at the barrel. There was nothing written on the outside, but as he got closer he saw that it wasn’t welded shut but had a lid.
He looked around to check that he was still alone, and then he lifted it slowly and peered inside. It contained white crystals, the barrel half full.
He heard voices, and so he dropped the lid and went back outside. It was the Elams collecting eggs. Jennifer looked up and waved. He waved back, and then went to pick up the mesh. Gemma appeared behind him, dragging a hosepipe to the van. He smiled at her as she filled the bucket with water and then clambered into the back.
Dawn was sitting down outside, watching them, absent-mindedly throwing stones like a bored child.
John thought about the barrel as he watched Gemma spray at the floor of the van, her boots loud in the confined space as they scraped on the dirt and the grit. Water started to stream out, like dark rust, staining the courtyard.
Gemma had been there on the first night, when he’d been brought blindfolded to the farmhouse. Someone had sat him in a chair and then tied his hands to the back. John remembered his nerves, his breaths fast, his tongue flicking over his lips to remove the sweat, the creaks of his chair audible above the sounds of people around him.
He had seen the light come on, bright even through the blindfold, so that he had moved his head around, more nervous as he tried to work out what was going on. There had been hands on him. Soft hands, feminine hands, running up his chest, his legs, his groin, touching him. People were laughing, young women giggling. It was a tease, a joke, but the powerlessness turned him on.
Then fingers had tugged at the small knots at the back of his head and the blindfold was loosened.