A Nice Place to Die Read online

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my brother, my half-brother,’ she said. ‘They both are.’

  Mark looked at her more closely. She tried to smile at him. She had a nice smile. But with the smeared mascara on her cheeks, and her purple hair, she looked like a clown. In the silly high-heeled red boots she was wearing, the thought of her walking to Catcombe Mead struck him as funny. He couldn’t imagine how she had managed to run away from the bullocks at all. She must have been really scared.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

  ‘Jess,’ she said. ‘Jess Miller. Who are you?’

  ‘Mark,’ he said, ‘Mark Pearson. I live at the farm there.’ He pointed back up the lane.

  She was shivering again and he felt sorry for her. ‘Your brothers are morons,’ he said. ‘Tell them that from me. Stupid shits.’

  ‘It wasn’t Kevin’s fault,’ Jess said. ‘I made him let me ride behind him. I told him if he didn’t let me, I’d tell Mum he stole a bottle of brandy from the supermarket.’

  Mark didn’t like to tell her that when he called Kevin a shit, it wasn’t because he’d abandoned his sister to walk home.

  ‘Come back up to the farm with me and I’ll lend you a sweater,’ he said.

  She looked doubtful.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, thinking she was worried about anyone else seeing the state of her, ‘there’s no one there to see you except me.’

  He hoped his Dad was out in the fields somewhere staring gloomily into the distance.

  At the farm, Mark led the way into the kitchen. Thank God, he thought, Dad’s not here.

  The girl walked around the room touching things in disbelief. ‘It’s like a museum,’ she said, ‘where are the real things?’

  He was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, you know, the microwave and the washing up machine?’ She looked around. ‘You haven’t got a proper kettle or a toaster. How do you boil water for tea?’

  Mark pointed at the Rayburn in the inglenook.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said.

  There was a short silence, then he said, ‘I’ll get you that sweater.’

  In his bedroom he knelt down to root through his drawer for his best sweater. He felt suddenly ashamed of his everyday clothes, afraid she would say something about how old they were.

  She had followed him upstairs. ‘Anything will do,’ she said. ‘Anything warm.’

  She came into the room behind him and leaned across him to take the sweater. He turned to get up and felt her legs brush his cheek. He felt his face going hot, bright red.

  She bent over him, sniffing his hair. ‘You smell of sweat,’ she said, and her voice sounded husky. ‘The smell of men’s sweat always turns me on.’

  Her breasts pressing against his face as he tried to get to his feet were large but very firm, not pendulous at all. He kissed her hard hot nipples and she grabbed his head in both her hands and pressed him against her so that he was almost forced to open his mouth to her breast. He put his hand between her legs and felt how wet she was.

  ‘Quick,’ she muttered, ‘do it now.’ And then she was tearing at his clothes and he was lost.

  Afterwards, he seemed to climb back from a deep, soft place to find her head on his stomach. He could feel her warm breath against his skin.

  He stroked her hair, seeing through half-closed eyes the purple strands bright against his fingers.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured, ‘you’re so beautiful.’

  She lifted her head and smiled. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘Kevin may come looking for me. I don’t want any trouble.’

  They both knew what she meant. The hatred between Old Catcombe and Catcombe Mead was like a death threat between them.

  She sighed. ‘We must find a place,’ she said. ‘You do want to see me again?’

  He could only nod dumbly, not trusting himself to speak.

  FIVE

  Detective Chief Inspector Rachel Moody and Sergeant Jack Reid chose Number Three, the house at the top of the Close, to start their search for witnesses to the young vicar’s murder.

  This was the home of Alice Bates.

  ‘Anything known?’ Rachel Moody asked.

  ‘Name and address, that’s it,’ Jack Reid said.

  ‘Whoever she is she must have a panoramic view of everything that goes on in the street,’ Rachel Moody said. ‘Isn’t that a good place to start?’

  ‘Sure it is,’ Jack Reid said, ‘and apart from that, I’d put money on some old girl living there alone. Best source of information there is, that.’

  Rachel stared at him. ‘What makes you think that?’ she asked. ‘It looks like all the other houses to me.’

  ‘Oh, no, the signs are all there. There’s something defensive about that house, the way it looks. Net curtains at every window and absolutely nothing in the garden because whoever lives there expects anything she leaves out will be stolen. Sure sign of old age. And no car, a dead giveaway she’s on her last legs.’

  DCI Moody laughed. ‘You’re crazy,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you can laugh,’ Jack Reid said, and grinned. ‘But I’m right, you’ll see. I’d put money on it.’

  ‘Well, if your little old lady in Number Three really saw someone being killed, surely she’s just the type to be only too pleased to talk to us,’ Rachel said.

  Jack Reid shrugged. ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. ‘More likely she’ll pretend she doesn’t know anything about it. This killer’s local; she’ll be much more scared of the neighbours than she is of us. Want to bet?’

  ‘No fear. You’ve made a fortune off me already,’ Rachel said. ‘Here goes.’

  She rang the doorbell.

  They waited.

  When Alice Bates finally answered the door, Rachel was startled at the sight of her. The DCI had to admit that Alice Bates was exactly what Jack Reid had told her to expect.

  Miss Bates stood in the doorway shivering in a faded blue candlewick dressing-gown. She was thin, with colourless hair pulled back into a wispy knot. She had prominent pale eyes which she did not raise to look at her visitors. The skin of her face and on the backs of her hands was dry and neglected. She certainly looked like an old woman.

  So, like everyone else, Rachel Moody initially identified Alice Bates as a kind of formless structure supporting shapeless clothes of nondescript colour, a woman without any noticeable appearance at all. When Alice reluctantly let them into the house, and turned to shuffle ahead of them down the hall, she moved, even in her own home, like someone who did not want to be noticed.

  Sergeant Reid, following the DCI, whispered, ‘You owe me a tenner.’

  But it seemed to Rachel that Alice was not really old, or at least not ancient as Jack Reid thought her to be. Watching her, Rachel decided that age was a part Alice had got used to playing, a deliberate impersonation of an invisible woman.

  She doesn’t know she’s doing it, Rachel told herself. When did she start acting out this old persona to avoid living a real life?

  She was curious to find out more about this nondescript woman.

  Alice led them into the kitchen at the back of the house. Through the window they could see a small bare patch of garden and a broken wooden fence which the locals seemed to use as a short cut from Forester Close to God knew where through the backs of the adjoining gardens.

  DCI Moody noticed a vast ginger cat sitting on top of the fence, staring at her through the window.

  ‘Nice cat,’ Rachel Moody said to Alice, hoping to break the ice. ‘Is he yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘Do you like cats? He’s beautiful, isn’t he? Now, we can be a bit more private here. How can I help you?’

  ‘We’re inquiring into an incident that took place in this street yesterday afternoon,’ Sergeant Reid said. ‘Did you see or hear anything?’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m afraid not,’ Alice said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Alice could not meet the policeman’s eyes
.

  Why’s she so scared, Jack Reid asked himself.

  Alice Bates thought, I should have asked what happened, and what sort of incident. I should have made it look as though I don’t know what happened.

  But Rachel Moody seemed not to have noticed that.

  ‘Perhaps you can fill us in on a bit of background for some of your neighbours,’ she said. ‘It strikes me that you probably know most things that go on in this street.’

  Alice began to look more frightened.

  ‘Just background, you understand,’ Jack Reid said quickly. ‘A chat off the record, you know, just for our information, nothing else. It could save us hours of research.’

  ‘We’ll be talking like this to all the residents,’ Rachel said. ‘We just want to get a picture of what life’s normally like here.’

  Alice relaxed. As long as this policewoman didn’t actually ask her direct questions about the young vicar’s murder, she was not too alarmed.

  ‘Well, people round here don’t mix much,’ she said. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves, you know. There’s a nice couple next door at Number Four, they’re very quiet.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Rachel said. ‘What can you tell us about them?’

  ‘They seem nice,’ Alice said.

  ‘Well, what are their names? Do they go out to work? That sort of thing, you know.’

  Alice tried to think of something to say. She could see from the way this police Chief Inspector was looking at her that she was not going to give up easily. If Alice couldn’t say something to divert her she would start asking direct questions about what had happened yesterday.

  ‘He’s called Dr Henson and his wife is Jean, I think,’ she said. ‘He’s interested in young children, but he doesn’t work now. There was some talk about him being a paedophile, but I don’t know about that. It’s what people said.’

  ‘Who said?’ Rachel Moody asked. Alice had her attention now.

  Alice wished she hadn’t said anything. Mention of the paedophile rumour brought her straight back to the Millers. It was Donna Miller who had accused Dr Henson after that silly incident back in the autumn. Alice tried to remember. It had been a fine mild morning for the time of year and Jess Miller’s baby had been left out in her pram on the driveway of Number Two. The brake on the pram couldn’t have been properly applied and something – the child moving, or a sudden freshening of the wind – set it rolling slowly towards the main road. The pram knocked the garden wall and turned over, spilling the baby on to the gravel. The little girl started to wail for her mother, but although her volume increased, her family were apparently shouting at each other inside the house, and no one came out to see what was happening.

  It didn’t occur to Alice to go out to the baby, because she wouldn’t know what to do. But she thought it quite shocking that one of the Millers didn’t attend to her. The little girl was making a dreadful noise.

  Then Peter Henson emerged from his garage and ran across the road to help the child. He picked her up and comforted her, then smoothed her clothes and used his clean handkerchief to dab at a graze on her arm. She smiled at him and pulled at his neat white beard.

  Alice hadn’t thought much of it at the time. But the next day the terrifying Donna Miller had barged into her house waving a letter and screaming at her:

  ‘You saw him do it, why didn’t you stop him. Why didn’t you?’

  Alice managed to ask, ‘What is this letter?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. It had been put through the door when I came down this morning. It’s about little Kylie. It says that evil pervert came out and felt her up and you witnessed everything. How could you let him do it?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ Alice said. She was so frightened of Donna that she couldn’t breathe properly, and when she tried to speak she was so intimidated she had difficulty making sense of what she wanted to say.

  Alice tried to explain but everything she said seemed to inflame Donna.

  ‘No,’ said Alice, helpless to get Donna to listen, ‘he’s not a paedophile, of course he’s not, he’s a paediatrician, a registered doctor.’ She struggled to find words, her brain still stunned.

  Donna ignored her. ‘I can’t believe you’d do this,’ she yelled. ‘What kind of woman are you? You even know he’s on the register and you didn’t tell me, and now it’s too late. My baby’s been scarred for life.’

  ‘No,’ Alice said, desperate, ‘Dr Henson picked her up and comforted her, that’s all. He made her stop crying.’

  All Alice could think of to say was that none of this would have happened if Donna or Jess had been looking after the child, but she couldn’t speak. She was paralysed. She didn’t dare say anything. Donna wouldn’t hear her anyway, the way she was, she was beyond making sense.

  ‘You’re all going to pay for this,’ Donna shouted, and slammed the door behind her.

  Now, aware that the plainclothes policewoman was watching her curiously, Alice wondered who had written the letter that had so inflamed Donna. She hadn’t even thought about that at the time.

  She wished she hadn’t mentioned anything about Dr Henson to these officers. She certainly wasn’t going to allow herself to be drawn into mentioning Donna Miller.

  ‘I’m sure it was nothing,’ she said. ‘People get the wrong idea, don’t they?’

  Rachel Moody asked, ‘What about your neighbours on the other side, the family who live at Number Two. What can you tell us about them?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ Alice said.

  Watching her, Sergeant Reid thought, she looks exactly like a tortoise retracting its head into its shell. She’s not going to tell us anything useful. She’s scared stiff of something.

  He and Rachel Moody exchanged glances. They were both convinced that Alice was hiding something.

  ‘What about the people on the other side of the Millers?’ Rachel asked. ‘Who lives there?’

  ‘Oh, that’s Terri and Helen,’ Alice said.

  The DCI and Jack Reid both noticed that she was relieved to change the subject.

  Suddenly and unexpectedly, Alice smiled. ‘I call them the Odd Couple. There’s a young girl who looks exactly like Helen, so I suppose they’re mother and daughter, and Terri looks after them. She’s a sort of father figure.’

  ‘Are you saying she’s gay?’ Rachel Moody said. She didn’t think she was getting anywhere and wanted to stop Alice’s pointless speculations. On the other hand, gossiping was giving Alice confidence. Something useful might come of that.

  ‘She’s a lesbian,’ Alice said bluntly. Then she added, ‘She and Helen are like a married couple.’

  She wanted to offer them something interesting which might take their minds off the young vicar’s death.

  ‘I’m afraid, though,’ she went on, ‘Helen is cheating on Terri behind her back. With a man.’

  Alice had played her trump card. She looked at the police officers with smug satisfaction as though they’d been testing her and she knew she’d managed to exceed their expectations.

  ‘Do you know who this man is?’ Sergeant Reid asked. He scented a possible suspect. He was convinced that the Reverend Baker had been killed by a male. It wasn’t a woman’s crime, he’d put money on that. When Alice mentioned Terri, he’d flirted with the possibility that she might be the sort of female he was no longer allowed to call a bull dyke, a militant who might take revenge on the male sex and the old-fashioned moral attitudes of the church by beating a vicar to death.

  He dismissed the idea as absurd. But now the introduction of a red-blooded man with a secret to hide made the Sergeant perk up.

  Alice said, primly, ‘No. But he’s not a gentleman.’

  The spinster speaks, Jack Reid thought, she’s a virgin, I’d put a stack of money on that.

  ‘What makes you say he’s not a gentleman?’ he asked Alice.

  ‘He often seems to be drunk,’ Alice said. ‘He leaves his car outside my house and you should see the way he parks. No cons
ideration.’

  Even to her, it sounded feeble. What she’d wanted to say was that when she saw the way he made love to Helen when Terri was out of the room, he behaved like a wild animal, really quite violent with her. Nothing at all like the gentlemen lovers on the television, men like Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, or Mr Bingley, even. Not that Helen seemed to object to Dave’s ungentlemanly treatment, Alice admitted to herself.

  But she wasn’t going to tell the police that she watched what her neighbours did in the privacy of their own homes. She said to herself, the less I say to anyone about what I see from behind the living room curtain the better.

  Alice took a deep breath and smiled at the police officers.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘I was watching television most of yesterday, there’s not much else to do this time of year. I didn’t see anything.’

  SIX

  Next on Detective Chief Inspector Moody’s list for interview were Peter Henson, the retired paediatrician, and his wife Jean, a former primary school teacher.

  ‘Pillars of society,’ Rachel Moody muttered under her breath as Sergeant Reid knocked on the front door. ‘They’ll help if they can.’

  ‘Want to bet?’ Reid said. ‘Once they would have done, but not now they’re retired. That changes everything. They had careers, they used to be somebodies, and suddenly that’s all gone. Now they’re nobodies. They won’t tell us anything. They’ll be afraid of their own shadows.’

  ‘Why would professional people like them end up living in a place like this?’ Rachel said.

  Sergeant Reid laughed. ‘Age is a great social leveller,’ he said. ‘You’re too young to realize. Old people sink to the bottom of the human heap whatever they used to be.’

  ‘You’re a cynic,’ Rachel said. ‘There must be more to it than that.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Reid said, ‘it’s a question of confidence. They’ll have lost it. You’ll see.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Rachel said, teasing him, ‘you’d put money on it.’

  She rang the doorbell to reinforce the Sergeant’s knock.

  Dr Henson was tall and stooped a little. He had white hair and a small neat white beard.