Blackstoke

by Rob Parker

  ‘What can we do for you Mr Adams?’ asked Peter, while he pulled crockery and cutlery from the kitchen cabinets.

  ‘Fletcher, please. I’m so sorry. This is clearly an unfortunate and sensitive time. I’m very happy to come back later… but it’s these forms for you to sign.’

  ‘What forms?’ Peter said, but his memory caught up before the last syllable left his throat. ‘The Neighbourhood Watch?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve filled everything in, I just need your John Hancock then we are all set.’

  ‘Okay, if you really think it’s necessary…’ Peter was teetering again, Fletcher could see it. He was on the edge, and like any good politician, Fletcher knew just where to give him a nudge.

  ‘Peter, perhaps we could discuss this in private?’ said Fletcher, gesturing to the hall behind him. Peter nodded and they both huddled by the front door for a moment.

  ‘This pet of yours, the guinea pig,’ Fletcher whispered. ‘Bit of a weird one, isn’t it? The animal somehow finds its way into the washing machine and… dies. You think it somehow found its own way in there? Because I don’t buy that for a minute.’

  ‘Come on, he got out of the cage somehow, and when she was putting a load on my wife just scooped him up and shoved the lot in, clothes and all.’

  ‘You really think so?’ Fletcher looked at him pointedly.

  ‘She’d been on the piss all day with your wife, so yeah I think so.’

  ‘Joyce? Don’t be absurd!’ Fletcher was not going to be swayed from his objective with the focus being pushed anywhere unhelpful. He knew full well that Joyce imbibed while he was out and about—it was no surprise to him whatsoever—and he was well acquainted with hearty denial. ‘The point I’m making is that anyone could have done this. Quiet neighbourhood like this? We need to look after each other, and show that we are capable of looking after ourselves. Remember statistics show that areas with an active neighbourhood watch—’

  ‘Have statistically much lower crime rates. I remember.’

  ‘Then your question of necessity has been answered, particularly in light of the day’s events.’

  Peter sighed and signed the papers on the hall side-table. Inside, Fletcher’s smugness took a healthy swelling. This would look excellent for his campaigns, himself the leader of a thriving Neighbourhood Watch group in an area with zero crime. And that little bonus would come in very handy. Two grand, straight in his pocket—to manage crime in an area that saw none. It was ingenious, even if he did think so himself. And enlarging that map’s borders, just enough so that the bottom corner of the area selected nudged into a nearby postcode that did have a high crime rate… masterful.

  After he’d finished signing, Peter turned to him and lowered his voice even further. ‘I say this with the greatest of respect as neighbours, but…’ he stalled, the words jammed like a car engine that simply wouldn’t start up again.

  ‘Yes, Peter, anything,’ Fletcher encouraged, again playing the doting local figurehead.

  ‘Your boys. They took a liking to LeBron. Would they have… you know?’

  Fletcher flushed purple in an instant, unable to believe the affront. Yes, his boys were a pair of socially-remedial fuckwits—but this kind of accusation could not stand. Then he said, in a tone that was not very parliamentary: ‘I would be very careful with what you say next, Peter West. Boyd and Burnett, my boys, are good boys.’

  Peter looked shocked and apologised profusely. Fletcher piped up a sing-song farewell into the kitchen, and even added on a whim that he’d pray for the family that evening. It sounded like the kind of thing he should say, and he liked it. He’d use it again. He always felt smart with his ad libs.

  As he left, he looked at the street, and laughed to himself. The street was empty, and stone silent. As if this place needs a Neighbourhood Watch, he thought with glee. It was just another brick in the wall.

  21

  Christian snapped awake, and put an arm out. He felt nothing but space. Remembering that since the move, he and David had swapped sides in bed, he rolled back over and checked the other way. David was there, his body slack and pliable with sleep.

  The room was jet black save for the faint square of orange where the streetlamp beyond the window bled into the room around the edges of the blackout curtains. Everything appeared as it should, but something must have jarred Christian awake. He lay there, listening, feeling the comedown after that strange tug of something had dragged him into consciousness.

  Usually it was David coming to bed. They were creatures of tried and tested habit. Christian preferred to get to bed earlier to read by lamplight, while staunch non-reader David would sit up watching television until his eyes couldn’t stay open any longer. David often made quite a bit of noise getting into bed, stumbling about in the dark if Christian had already turned the lights off and gone to sleep.

  But David was long asleep, his breathing even and deep. He had been in bed for some time.

  So what was it? What had woken Christian up?

  He wondered if it was a noise from outside, so he got up and carefully parted the curtains. The streetlamp outside was so bright that at night it flooded the room—a little inconvenient surprise they’d come across when moving in. Christian’s eyes had swept the street in a swift moment.

  Nothing.

  The baby monitor suddenly came to life, hissing static into the room. The penny dropped suddenly—it was the baby, rustling in the night, that had woken him up. They always kept the damn baby monitor on too loud, but somehow always forgot about it. Still getting used to the routines, he thought.

  Christian sighed, sitting back down on the edge of the bed. Olivia didn’t sound unsettled, and was probably just rolling over. He’d give it a minute to see if their daughter calmed.

  Daughter. A word for so long he hadn’t thought he’d ever get to use. A word that was taking some getting used to.

  As he sat there in the darkness, pride popped happily in Christian’s chest. Yes, it was taking some getting used to, but they had done it. They had adopted a baby girl. They had become parents. They had pushed and fought, jumped through every hoop that had been placed in front of them, and were actually doing it. They were exercising the rights that should come so naturally and freely, and it felt great.

  Olivia gave a high-pitched groan, bringing the baby monitor back to life. She’s up properly, thought Christian. The groan continued, then dramatically lowered in pitch and tone, to a level surely impossible for a child, before finishing with a scratchy, deep voiced, unmistakable word.

  ‘OOOOOOoooooo baba’.

  Christian jumped up, chilled to his core, and terrified to the farthest edge of his mind.

  Someone was in there. In with their baby.

  ‘David!’ he shouted, as he bolted from the bedroom into the darkness of the landing, sprinting along the long upstairs hall to the nursery. As he ran, he cursed their decision to put the nursery so far away. Within seconds, he could hear David behind him.

  ‘What?! Chris, what?! Is it Olivia?!’ he was shouting, his feet thudding.

  Christian got to the nursery and immediately put the light on.

  Olivia simply lay there, blinking her eyes at the sudden brightness. On seeing Christian, she gurgled and put her little arms out.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m here,’ cooed Christian, as he scooped up the child and checked her over. She was fine—sleepy and surely soon-to-be irritable—but fine. And there was nobody else in the nursery.

  ‘What happened? Is she alright?’ asked David as he ran in.

  ‘She’s fine, she’s fine,’ replied Christian, confused and confounded. He looked around again, but everything was as it should be. The changing unit was in the corner as usual, the bears at the foot of Olivia’s bed arranged just as they had been the night before, the roadmap rug sitting under the radiator waiting for Olivia to be old enough to play with cars. The curtains were shut, just as Christian himself had left them hours earlier.

  Then on
e of the curtains moved ever so softly—so softly that Christian, for a brief fleet of thought, assumed he’d imagined it. David pulled it back quickly, that damn streetlamp raining halogen right in their eyes—but unmistakably, uncontrovertibly, the window was a couple of inches open.

  22

  Quint Fenchurch was a man of very simple tastes and even simpler routines. He liked getting up in the morning before everybody else. It made him feel strong, ready, like he’d got one over on everybody else before the day had even started. He liked sitting in the quiet with a bowl of muesli. Alpen was his favourite, preferably sugar free. Doctor’s orders and all that.

  He sneaked downstairs to the front of the house and the kitchen, before pouring himself a bowl, adding just a splash of skimmed milk. He put the kettle on, popped a tea bag into his mug, and sat down. The spoon had just made it into his mouth when he glanced out of the window.

  His eyes widened, and the spoon just sat there.

  Rage boiled in him quicker than the water in the kettle, and he coughed oats and nuts down his flannel pyjama top.

  ‘Wendy!’ he bellowed up the stairs, as he ran to the front door and unlatched it hastily.

  Outside, the smell hit him immediately. It smelled just how it looked. Of shit.

  The two big front windows of the house, one on the left for the kitchen, the other for the living room, were streaked and blobbed with faeces.

  Quint struggled to keep his breathing regular, rasping in anger as he stepped barefoot onto his carefully manicured and spotless lawn. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He couldn’t believe the affront.

  He turned, and looked straight at the smaller house on the corner of Lance and Broadoak. Grace Milligan’s house.

  That spineless, stupid little bitch, he seethed inwardly. I’ll show you.

  23

  The police car arrived soon after seven in the morning, and when Fletcher saw it from his ensuite window, the razor at his cheek in the mirror, his mind jack-knifed, falling over itself trying to work out which of his loose ends had come finally undone. He abandoned his shave and threw a suit on, ready to face whatever music they were bringing with denials and spades of outrage. He couldn’t see any press yet, which was a good thing.

  He had just made it down to the front door and stepped into his Oxfords when he saw Joyce watching through the kitchen window out at the street. Dressed in a dressing gown and cradling a mug of something steaming, she was transfixed by whatever was happening. And their doorbell hadn’t rang. Confused, Fletcher joined her.

  ‘Any tea in the pot?’ he pretended while glancing out. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s coffee, and I haven't a clue,’ his wife replied. ‘Looks like they are going to the one down there.’

  Fletcher watched the two young police officers ringing on the doorbell of the house furthest up the street to the bend. ‘The one with those retired folks in it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is that what they are… I know the feeling,’ she said. Fletcher didn’t have time for her surgical sarcasm this morning, so he ignored it completely. His wife’s ship had sailed, and frankly, bon voyage.

  They watched in silence for a couple of moments, as the older male resident of the house (again, with a name that Fletcher just couldn’t bring himself to recall) animatedly showed the two young coppers the state of his windows, which Fletcher noted looked like someone had sprayed them with mud.

  ‘He’s really going for it, isn’t he?’ he said, through smiling lips. This was perfect. Exactly the kind of thing the Neighbourhood Watch needed. The timing of a police visit for some kind of disturbance was exemplary—nobody would question its creation at all. And as long as it wasn’t his house that had been vandalised… well, he couldn’t care less.

  ‘He probably flicked that all up his windows when he was mowing for the six hundredth time this week,’ Joyce said, then blew on her coffee.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Fletcher, his voice already returning to calm, collected, assertive politician mode. It was the voice he saved for his constituents.

  ‘What have you got on today?’

  ‘Public surgery over in Chorley to hear what bees are in whose bonnets. Then it’s over to Manchester for a few planning meetings. Some bigwigs want my approval for a regeneration project. Probably be a late one I’m afraid—where are they going now?’

  He was transfixed on the movements of the police, one woman, one man, both mid-to late-twenties, as they crossed the road to the little house opposite.

  ‘What the hell do they want with her?’

  24

  Grace was relieved she was already dressed ready for work. She’d have hated being questioned on her doorstep in front of the neighbours in her pyjamas. It was bad enough already, and even now she could see her denials were falling on deaf ears. It was taking some real restraint to maintain an air of professionalism.

  ‘I will, of course, answer any questions you might have. It’s quite easy when you’re glaringly innocent of any such accusations,’ she said, court voice back on and locked in tight.

  ‘Can we come in, Miss Milligan?’ asked the female bobby.

  ‘I’d prefer not, PC…?’ Always get their name, she thought. It put the fear of God into them. Kept them behaving to the letter of the law.

  ‘Gibson, Miss,’ the young woman replied, a hand resting on the cuffs secured to her belt in a subconscious assertion of just who she felt held all the cards.

  ‘PC Gibson, this might sound trite, but I do have a sick dog inside. I’d much rather we had our conversation outside. I’m not afraid of anyone seeing us, as I have nothing to hide.’ Grace was all business, her tone even, measured and forthright, but inside she was quivering like a reed in a stiff breeze. The other officer spoke with a slick delivery.

  ‘PC McIlroy. This would be the dog that relieved itself on your neighbour’s lawn yesterday?’ He looked at her with a smug flicker of satisfaction.

  ‘No, it would be the dog that did no such thing. I’m afraid if you’ll excuse the pun, you are barking up the wrong tree here.’ Grace eyed McIlroy carefully. He clearly fancied himself a fair bit, carrying himself with a nightclub five minutes to closing time swagger. She was already thinking of all the ways she could trip him up and bring him back down to size.

  ‘Jokes aside, Miss Milligan, it’s a complaint about your dog that has brought us here today… and the subsequent behaviour of said dog’s owner.’

  Grace iced over in an instant. ‘Exactly what is being implied here?’

  ‘Madam,’ leered McIlroy, pointing back across to the Fenchurch house, ‘the substance on those windows certainly didn’t hurl itself. And considering your neighbour complained to you about your dog’s antics only yesterday, it’s not the daftest assumption that you might have taken the hump and chucked your dog’s next product at his house in revenge. You might even have saved quite a bit of it up, by the looks of things.’

  The anger that flooded Grace felt beautiful to her. It was like a drug. Answering allegations on the spot like this, when she knew she was in the right, was nothing but fuel.

  ‘PC’s McIlroy and Gibson, can I get this right… I stand accused of throwing canine excrement at my neighbour’s windows. Is that correct?’

  Their looks confirmed that, but hearing it put in such a way seemed to deflate them a little bit.

  ‘Please let Mr Fenchurch know, even after his crude outburst yesterday, I had no intention of taking things any further in the name of neighbourly spirit. It seems my hope that this would blow over has been unfounded. I will be making a complaint about the antisocial behaviour of Quint Fenchurch, and a separate complaint about the unprofessional behaviour of two police constables, both of which I’ll be taking to your superiors this morning. Now if that’s quite enough, I’ve got to get to work.’

  McIlroy and Gibson were stunned into silence. Grace went for one final push.

  ‘You have no evidence, aside from hearsay. I have asserted my innocence, and in such case yo
u have no cause to be here any longer. Goodbye.’

  She shut the door, having gone from hoping nobody saw the police at her door to wishing everyone had seen the way she dealt with them. Her buzz soon dissipated. Dewey genuinely was ill, or at least a bit offside. And this problem with the Fenchurches was shaping to be exactly the kind of window-twitching numbskullery that she had been hoping to avoid.

  With sudden sadness, and the hopelessness that immediately followed it, the thought she’d been suppressing finally reared its ugly head.

  I wish I’d never moved here, she thought.

  25

  David wanted to go out and see what was the matter, but his innate Britishness, his built-in sense of make-no-scene, seemed to step in and stop him. He watched the police return to their car through the half-closed slats of the kitchen blinds. The kitchen was dimly lit, with the early sunlight flaring into the room through the slats in a jarring grid of harshness.

  He was knackered, plain and simple, but more than anything he was confused. So, it was good to be alone while he worked his thoughts out. He sat on what had become Christian’s chair at the countertop, and watched the street covertly. From what he’d seen, everyone spent great portions of their day like this, one eye out there at all times. It was nothing more than curtain twitching, and he resented himself for following suit, but plain fact dictated that everyone’s kitchens seemed to face the street, and, well, it was suddenly so damned interesting around here.

  Olivia and Christian were still asleep upstairs, and the house was quiet. After the disturbances in the night, they had found themselves, all three, huddled in the king size bed in the master bedroom, Olivia swaddled between the two men. Neither adult could sleep, and Olivia was delighted at being with them, cooing excitedly instead of dozing off, so it had taken a until at least five in the morning before any of them had got back to sleep again.