A Death in the Woods

by M B Vincent

  ‘If you’re decent. If you follow Roma law. I’m vuzo.’

  Heavy footsteps crisscrossed the floor above them.

  Abonda made a pugnacious face. ‘My boy’s vuzo. You don’t think so, little gorger, but you don’t know how hard he’s had it. His father gave him nothing.’ When she banged the table, the tarot cards jumped. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Does he identify as Roma?’

  ‘Identify? Stevie is Roma.’

  Abonda, who would go nose to nose with a bull, couldn’t look her son’s racism in the eye. Jess mapped it easily; Norris’s self-hatred is projected onto others. Ashamed of his heritage, he ‘othered’ anybody even slightly different. ‘He doesn’t use the Roma language, like you do.’

  ‘So what? Look, my Stevie’s rough and he’s blunt and he rubs people up the wrong way, but he’s a man. Men’re supposed to be that way.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Jess thought of Rupert. Of her brother. Of Mitch. Men didn’t have to be rough or blunt or any of the figleaf euphemisms for aggression. Sad that Norris identifies with the parent who abandoned him, and not the one who’s devoted her life to him. Absence breeds need; David, a coarse-grained half-image, called to Jess much more than any of the portraits Josh had shown her. ‘Men can be gentle.’

  ‘I’m talking real men,’ scoffed Abonda.

  ‘Do real men rape women?’

  ‘You sit here in my kitchen and accuse my child of that?’ Abonda backed away from the word.

  ‘Louise Mannix accused him, and a jury found him guilty,’ Jess pushed. Because alarm bells were ringing and warning lights were flashing and, as ever, Jess found their music encouraging. ‘Stevie’s terrorising me and my father, Abonda. He’s tightening a noose around our house.’

  ‘Prove it,’ spat Abonda. ‘All these false accusations flying around. His poor heart can’t cope with stress.’

  My poor heart is pretty bad at it, too.

  ‘All he needs,’ said Abonda, not so passionate now, ‘is a chance. Then he can settle down, find his Sif, give me a grandbabby, and be a good man, the man he’s meant to be.’

  It was touching, Abonda’s faith. It was also misplaced. Sif, the golden-haired goddess of the harvest, would give the likes of Norris a wide berth. ‘If you keep providing him with alibis, you’ll go down with him.’

  ‘You saying Abonda’s lying?’

  ‘I’m saying you love your son.’ Jess held Abonda’s challenging gaze. The woman’s eyelids were heavy and creased. ‘I’m saying you would never lie to another Roma, but you don’t see any harm in misleading the police.’

  Abonda’s upper arms jiggled. Her flesh was abundant, untrammelled. ‘You’re very confident that I’m innocent. Don’t you think old Abonda’s capable of murder?’

  ‘I do. I mean I don’t.’ Jess closed her eyes. Pulled her thoughts together. ‘I mean, I know you didn’t kill Denis Heap or Timothy Wong, but I can’t say the same about your Stevie, and it’d be madness to go to jail for misplaced loyalty.’

  That didn’t go down well. Abonda’s face set like cement. ‘You’re leaving something out. Abonda’s boy didn’t do nothing. Just like he didn’t hurt that Louise Mannix. So,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘you watch yourself, yeah?’

  ‘Ma!’ A shout from upstairs. ‘Ma!’

  ‘I’m with a client, ducky.’

  ‘Client? Yeah, Ma, whatever, you carry on with your weird gyppo stuff.’ Norris’s cackle sounded like thunder.

  Abonda noticed Jess’s compassion and she didn’t like it. ‘What?’ Not one little bit.

  ‘Nothing. Sorry. Let me help you clear up,’ said Jess, half rising.

  ‘Sit.’ Abonda was masterful again. Looming over Jess, she had the bulk of a standing stone. ‘You’re being called, Jess. You need to answer. Put your hands on your lap.’

  ‘But—’ Jess complied. Abonda was a steamroller, Jess a cartoon cat who would be inevitably flattened.

  ‘Back firm against the chair. Concentrate on a spot opposite. Anywhere. Don’t matter.’

  The curling list on the fridge was in Jess’s eyeline. The itinerary for Abonda’s last journey.

  Ham. Cheddar. Bakewell.

  ‘Focus, love. Keep your eyes on that spot.’

  Later, when Jess gathered the courage to think back to this moment, she would remember that nothing changed about Abonda’s voice. No eerie intonation. She could hear the old clock ticking on the wall.

  ‘Breathe in, that’s it. And out.’

  It was more that Jess felt a shift of intention. As if the voice became a muscular suggestion.

  ‘I won’t be cheesy with you, my little gorger. I won’t say “you are getting sle-e-py” or nothing. It’s just natural to want to close your eyes, ‘cos staring at the same spot makes them tired.’

  It does, thought Jess, as her eyes closed.

  ‘It feels like you’ve got X-ray vision,’ said Abonda. ‘You can still see what you was looking at, can’t you?’

  In the infinite dark behind her eyes, Jess saw fuzzy outlines of ‘Ham’ and ‘Sandwich’ and ‘Cheddar’.

  ‘Breathe in. Breathe out.’

  Jess breathed in. And out.

  ‘Relax. We’re safe here.’ Abonda’s voice was the only thing Jess heard. No more clock. ‘Five,’ she said, then, ‘You’d be more comfy if you dropped your chin. Four. Send all that lovely relaxing oxygen down through your arms. Three. Right down to your diddy little toes. Two. One.’

  Jess was alone.

  Abonda didn’t exist.

  Beneath Jess’s bare feet was something soft. Damp. Alive. She was in Blackdown woods, and she shouldn’t be.

  It’s not safe.

  Which way to go? The moon had forsaken her. She was blinded by the dark. Layers of it. Black on black.

  She heard herself breathe. She heard the woods breathe. She heard footsteps which were not her own.

  Something was with her. The wolf? It was moving fast, homing in on her.

  Jess ran.

  Deeper into the woods. Every fork in the path took her deeper. The wolf followed, and it darted in front, and skipped to the side of her.

  She panted. Lungs bursting.

  It pushed at her. It knew her name. She felt its thoughts and she knew it was no wolf.

  It had a story to tell. It was pleading with her to listen. It was sad. So so sad.

  And yet she ran even faster. Kind, humane, nosy Jess couldn’t bear to hear its story. Because it was unalive. It should be still and in the ground.

  It was at her shoulder. It grazed her hand. It breathed on her hair.

  Her foot found a root and she fell. A body slam on the hardened earth.

  Abonda’s voice sounded deep inside Jess. ‘I want a nice deep inhalation. Notice it.’

  It was bleeding, the sad thing. It crouched over her.

  ‘I’ll count to three.’

  It put out a hand.

  ‘One. Two. You can feel the chair beneath you.’

  Jess wanted to jump out of her skin. She wanted to jump away from its touch.

  ‘Two. You can feel the chair beneath you.’

  A deafening crack. Gunshot.

  Jess screamed.

  The kitchen was too bright after Blackdown Woods.

  CHAPTER 10

  HE HAD A GUN

  Friday 6 November

  Jess should have been in bed, but November had stolen sleep.

  It was three a.m. The sleeping garden wasn’t as innocent as it looked. Out there in the dark, hundreds of little creatures went about their nocturnal business. Hundreds of eyes. Countless sharp little teeth.

  And among them, a bigger creature, with a bald head and a heart full of spite.

  And beyond them, in Blackdown Woods, the pathetic creature she had been afraid to face. Dead, still hurting; was that David? Or some trick of the mind?

  Worse than the memory the trance was the memory of Abonda’s face when Jess came to.

  She was scared.

  At the sound of feet o
n gravel, Jess jumped out of bed. The moon was cooperating; she had a good view of the figures standing out front.

  Mary was taking her leave of a man.

  Nothing new there, but this looked poignant and heartfelt. Jess was intrigued, and stared, like a curtain-twitching maiden aunt.

  He was tall – Mary liked them tall – and he was lean. He was speaking, and an answering giggle from Mary floated on the frozen air.

  As they spoke, the man pulled his longish hair up into a topknot. It bobbed as he chastely kissed Mary on her cheek and walked to a car parked out on the road.

  Mary stood watching him and waved as he drove off.

  For all the world, thought Jess, like a normal person.

  ‘Jesus!’ barked Jess, when a strange noise from the newly terrifying ‘out there’ made her jump. A honk, unearthly, almost mechanical but with a pleading edge.

  She tucked herself back into her childhood bed.

  ***

  Ice rinks require more upkeep than you might think.

  Nobody had more reason to know this than the overworked, underpaid and eternally cranky maintenance supervisor at Richleigh Ice Arena. He was conscientious, opening up his fiefdom at seven in the morning, even though no blade would touch his precious ice for two hours.

  He cast about for his glasses. Heads would roll for this! Flat-footed, he made his way to the middle of the rink, where something or other made a dark stain on the glassy blue-white.

  ***

  ‘Looked to me,’ said Jess, ‘as if you liked the guy.’ Bottom pressed up against the kitchen radiator, she was anticipating bacon, and lots of it. There had been no offering left outside for them, no bad omen. It was a good day so far, if you didn’t count the lack of sleep and the existential foreboding and the serial killer on the loose.

  ‘Ooh, is my Mary in love?’ Bogna turned rashers in a pan. ‘Why not? Any man’d be lucky to get such a girlie.’

  ‘You never compliment me like that,’ said Jess.

  ‘No,’ agreed Bogna, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘He’s French,’ said Mary, milking and sugaring a cup of tea strong enough to walk on. ‘Charming, you know, and long hair. Long hair’s so sexy on a man.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Jess. She was rolling up a cracked parchment map she had taken down from her bedroom wall. It had been there for years and left a ghostly rectangle to prove it. She popped it in her bag; she knew somebody who needed it.

  ‘How would I know his name?’ Mary curled her lip. ‘I’m not taking a feckin’ exam on him. We didn’t even do the deed.’

  ‘Liar,’ said Jess.

  ‘Seriously. He wanted to talk.’ Mary was puzzled by such wanton waste of valuable shagging time. Gentle-hearted, she had listened. And listened. ‘He talked about his wife. They’re separated, before you get on your pulpit, Jess. She was assaulted, sounds bad, and it more or less broke them up. He’s come to England to get justice for her. Or something.’ Mary’s mind had wandered, evidently. ‘Or maybe it was revenge. Dunno. Sad, though. He was crying at one point.’

  So much pain in the world. Jess knew that Mary’s shoulder was a stout one to cry on.

  ‘Then, all of a sudden, he jumps up and says he has to run, he has a meeting and he’s late. At three in the morning! As if.’

  ‘Maybe he did.’ Jess wanted to defend this sad Frenchman with the sexy hair.

  ‘Nah. He was up to no good. I saw the gun when I handed him his jacket.’

  ‘He had a gun?’ Jess’s voice went so high that Moose lifted his head from the mat.

  ‘Yeah.’ Mary shrugged and Bogna laughed.

  ‘My Mary, she don’t panic at nuffink, isn’t it.’

  ‘Perhaps your Mary should panic at—’ Jess’s sermon was interrupted by the yodel of her phone. ‘Gotta go.’ She left the bacon untouched.

  Eden wanted her.

  ***

  The long curve of Kidbury Road.

  Over the bridge.

  Past the medical centre.

  Past the vet’s.

  ***

  ‘Our third victim,’ Eden was saying as Jess sneaked into the incident room, ‘is Mister Jean Paul Barreau.’ He sat on the edge of a table, like a geography teacher who’s down with the kids. The bags under his eyes and the way his hair almost qualified as ruffled was testament to an early start in the grimmest of circumstances.

  ‘This J P Barreau met his end inside the Richleigh Ring Road Jolly Cook.’

  The Ring Road branch was a dingy place, even by Jolly Cook standards. A dual carriageway at the front, it backed onto dense, unmanaged woodland.

  ‘Same MO. Karen, where are the scene photos?’

  ‘Just coming!’ Knott was at the photocopier, copying as if her life depended on it.

  ‘Our man smuggled in his victim right under the noses of the officers sitting outside in a marked vehicle. Then killed him at leisure and cooked a fry-up while they radioed in that nothing was amiss.’

  ‘How’d he manage that?’ asked Karen, from the photocopier. ‘Feels almost supernatural, sir’.

  ‘There’s nothing supernatural about moving a giant wheelie bin so it hides the back door and gives you safe passage to the treeline.’ Eden’s hands went to his hips. ‘Moretti, I asked you to liaise.’

  Moretti sat up. ‘Correct, sir.’

  Glances were exchanged by his colleagues. Some sympathetic, some gleeful.

  ‘Did you even walk the scene and advise on vantage points?’

  ‘Yes, definitely sir.’ Moretti chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘No excuses, sir. Shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘That,’ said Eden, ‘is an understatement’. He held out his hand, impatient. ‘Karen, the photographs, please.’

  Such impatience, mild though it was, was unusual. Another clue that their sarge was taking his responsibility as shepherd seriously. He felt for each of his flock that was lost to the wolf.

  Jess thought of DI Phillips, feet up in his corner office over in Richleigh, demanding arrests. I bet Phillips sleeps like a baby at night. The sensitives, the diligent, the ones who put in the hours, ended up looking like Eden.

  As he pinned up the row of pictures of the corpse – red predominating – Jess picked at a fingernail and closed her eyes. She wasn’t free of last night’s events in Abonda’s kitchen. The need to escape the sense memory of the trance was strong, but even stronger was the need to examine it.

  The fear had been so vivid. She had been exhausted afterwards, as if she really had run full pelt through Blackdown Woods. In among the fuzzy half-thoughts, one was certain.

  I wasn’t running from Norris.

  She’d run from knowledge. A suffocating fact she already knew but couldn’t face.

  Eden said, ‘We have to ask ourselves what a French national who lived in Lille was doing in an out of season English market town, particularly a town in the grip of a killing spree.’ He checked off the dates of the murders on his fingers like a macabre shopping list. ‘Thirty-first. Third. Sixth. Three days between each of them. If our man sticks to this sequence, then his next outing will be Monday the ninth. Jess, do you have anything to add about the numbers?’

  ‘Nothing new,’ said Jess. She needed to earn her keep, to hold her prized seat in this room. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Keep thinking.’ Eden paced. ‘It’s clever, leaving only three days between each murder. Gives us no time to regroup. Is it compulsion, or strategy? You all realise, of course, that this murder weakens the case against our prime suspect.’ He banged Norris’s mug shot with a forefinger as he passed it.

  Sleeves-Rolled-Up was morose, as if he’d been looking forward to arresting everybody’s least favourite Kidburyite. ‘What could Norris possibly have against some random French dude?’

  Eden visibly shuddered at ‘dude’.

  Moretti raised a hand. ‘Sir, I’d like to get Gillian Cope in. Her alibis aren’t great. When Wong was killed she was throwing a dinner party, but, just my gut talking, sir, it felt a bit flim
sy and dubious. She kept underlining how she was indoors all night, didn’t set foot outside, without me even asking. When Heap was killed, she was home alone. I rang her just now and she reckoned that in the early hours of this morning she was on a series of Skype calls with Hong Kong, but she could make those from anywhere. She’s hiding something, I can sniff it.’

  Ginger Hair said, ‘I wouldn’t sniff Gillian Cope if I could help it.’

  Nobody laughed. It wasn’t that kind of morning.

  ‘Talk to Ms Cope if you wish,’ said Eden. Officious. Stiff. ‘I don’t like her for this but if you give her enough rope she might hang herself.’

  Jess forced herself to study the pictures. The features of the martyred man were covered in his own blood. His hair was sticky with it. Even the top knot.

  ‘I know him,’ she said, and all heads turned. ‘Well, I saw him.’

  They were interested now, every officer, even the ones who referred to her as Doctor WooWoo. She told them about Barreau’s liaison with Mary, about his sadness, his desire for vengance on behalf of his ex, the mysterious late-night meeting. ‘Oh, and he had a gun.’

  ‘No gun was found at the scene.’ Eden was energised. ‘Moretti, double check that.’ He paused. ‘Properly.’

  Moretti pursed his lips. His gelled hair drooped a little.

  ‘And we’ll need to talk to Ms Spillane.’

  ‘There! That’s the lot.’ Knott had finished setting up her gallery.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Jess. She made out an oval face framed by long beachy waves, and two smaller faces, all of them grinning into the sunlight of a forgotten day.

  ‘The ex Mrs Barreau and her poor little boys,’ said Knott.

  ‘That,’ said Eden, ‘is Louise Mannix.’ He wheeled around. ‘Get Norris in! Now!’

  Moretti sprinted out.

  The room was electrified.

  ‘What’s your thinking, Sarge?’ asked an officer Jess had never spoken to, a woman with one hell of a fringe and a smoker’s growl.

  ‘What if,’ said Eden, ‘Barreau’s appointment was with Norris? What if he was planning some rough justice to avenge his ex-partner’s rape? Barreau made contact with Norris and intended to shoot him. But the tables were turned.’

  Louise Mannix stared out at them all from a past where she had no inkling of the tragedies that would overwhelm her little family.