The Burning (30 page)

‘She’ll not be fit to give evidence for a few days,’ Alison said as they closed the back door of the house after them.

‘I think I’ll give her until next week. She and her husband can both give evidence. They might even know more about Nicky than they realize.’

‘You mean my theory about Ed?’ Alison said darkly.

‘She was a complicated girl, I know that much. Who wouldn’t be, growing up with her parents?’

They lapsed into silence as they started down the steep slope towards the track, their concentration taken up with remaining upright. They were a little over halfway down when there was a sudden
and alarming scuffling noise to their right. Alison spun around as a startled fox leapt out from the foot of the hedge, and bolted down the hill.

Alison held the torch beam on the hedge. ‘What’s that? There’s something in there, look.’ She moved closer, shining the light into a gap between the hawthorns from which
the fox had emerged. ‘It’s a dog. A dead dog.’

‘Black and tan,’ Jenny said. ‘It’s the one that lived here.’ She took the torch from Alison’s hand and crouched down. The dog was curled on the ground in the
heart of the hedge, having crawled in through what looked like a badger run. One of its rear legs was broken and sticking out at an unnatural angle, the fur wet with saliva where the fox had been
pulling at it.

‘It must have crawled in there to die,’ Alison said. ‘They do that. It’s an instinct. Maybe it got hit on the road and gave up the ghost before it reached
home?’

‘Maybe.’ Jenny stepped back. ‘I’ll call Sandra in the morning.’

‘It doesn’t feel right, does it?’ Alison said. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence.’ Alison glanced anxiously left and right. ‘There’s something wrong
with this place.’ She snatched the torch from Jenny’s hand and shone it down the track. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

‘No one,’ Jenny said, as confused as she was disconcerted by Alison’s panic.

‘How do you know? They could be just down there, just out of sight, waiting for us with a loaded shotgun.’

‘Stop it.’

‘One man, four girls and a dog – I’m not imagining that.’

‘So what are you going to do, stand here all night?’

Alison drew in a shuddering breath. ‘There’s something here. Something evil. I felt it the moment we stepped out of the car.’

Jenny looped her arm through Alison’s and pressed it hard against her body. ‘Let’s go.’ She set off down the slope, dragging her along with her.

‘You can’t ignore what’s staring you in the face, Mrs Cooper. I’m telling you now, there’ll be more—’

Jenny snapped, ‘Alison, will you please shut up!’

‘Nicky won’t be the last.’

‘Shut up!’

‘It’s all the ones who
know
. And the closer we get, the more
we
know.’

Jenny stopped walking. They were at the foot of the slope now. The darkness around them was complete. ‘Alison, what’s this about? Are you deliberately trying to frighten
me?’

Alison was quiet for several seconds. So quiet and so still she almost seemed to have disappeared. Then, abruptly, she said, ‘Why the burning? Why would Ed do that? It’s not like he
was trying to cover his tracks.’

‘I thought you always suspected him.’

‘He was a hunter. He wouldn’t have missed Nicky if he’d fired at her. He’d have shot her down and dragged her into the house, along with the others. No, there’s
someone else. A man who likes little girls and can’t handle a gun. He’s here. I can smell him.’

‘Let’s talk about this tomorrow, shall we?’

‘But if your number’s up, it’s up, I suppose.’ Alison unhooked her arm from Jenny’s and strode on along the track towards the lane. ‘Chilly, isn’t
it?’ she said conversationally. ‘Can you believe they’re forecasting more snow for the morning?’

T
HE STRANGENESS OF HER LATEST
visit to Blackstone Ley had left Jenny craving a dose of normality. She found it in the brightly lit aisles of the
supermarket in Chepstow where she stopped off on her way home. She wandered aimlessly filling a trolley and listening to snatches of her fellow shoppers’ reassuringly banal conversations.
Alison’s erratic behaviour had disturbed her. It wasn’t so much her oddness she found it hard to cope with as her sudden shifts in mood. Alison had seemed so competent and in control of
herself whilst they were dealing with Sandra Brooks, but almost in an instant she had seemed to lose all rational sense. Thinking back over the evening, Jenny pinpointed the moment at which she had
shown the first signs: it had been when Jenny had asked her if she would like to come with her to look at Nicky’s bedroom. She had come halfway up the stairs, then recoiled, inventing an
excuse to hurry back to the kitchen. Her reaction had been like that of a child frightened of seeing a ghost. It was ironic: the Alison she remembered from before her accident was utterly
contemptuous of superstition and flights of imagination. Jenny had always been the one beset by irrational fears.

Unhinged as she had been on the walk back to the common, Alison had, however, raised a question that had been worrying away in the back of Jenny’s mind for some time:
why the
burning?
Why indeed? She had always thought of it as Ed’s way of inflicting maximum damage on Kelly, or perhaps of erasing memories of whatever he might have done within those four walls.
It had made sense when she had thought of the killings as something which he had been planning, but what Sandra had told them about Nicky and Layla getting drunk and it sparking a row seemed to
suggest a more spontaneous eruption. But then there were the shotgun cartridges. The wrong size. That really troubled her. And the fact that Bob Bream had been the one who alerted her troubled her
even more: in the back of her mind she had held him as a suspect, but why then would he alert her to a detail that she would otherwise have missed?

A day that had started with relative certainty had ended with chaos. Nothing fitted any more. In all likelihood she would reconvene her inquest the following week, hear the evidence and reach no
conclusion at all. With that dispiriting thought, Jenny unloaded her groceries at the checkout and turned her thoughts to what she might cook for dinner. She had a craving for something –
eggs, that was it. She would have a Spanish omelette, a little Parmesan cheese on top, and a few glasses of Rioja. And then she remembered: she was pregnant, for God’s sake. She wasn’t
meant to drink.

That as well. Pregnant. Somehow she had gone almost twelve hours scarcely giving it a thought. A flood of emotions she had kept squashed down all day rushed up and consumed her. For a moment she
thought she might cry, humiliate herself in public and have to rush out, abandoning her shopping at the till. She reached out and took a chocolate bar from the shelf beside the till. And then she
took another.

Jenny slipped her feet into a pair of comfortable boots, pulled on a lambswool sweater and jeans and cocooned herself in the kitchen. Listening to familiar voices on the radio,
she sliced potatoes, cracked the eggs and heated oil in a pan. Now and then she would dip her fingers into a bowl of olives and sip from a glass of sparkling water she had dosed with an inch of
white wine. Cooking the omelette over a slow heat, getting it just so, she slipped into a hazy state of contentment, the kind that was only possible when she had no looming deadline and no one to
please but herself.

The peace was too good to last. She was eating her dinner in front of the TV when the phone rang. Telling herself to ignore it didn’t work. Wondering who it was would only make her fret;
nowadays no one called you on your landline unless it was urgent or they had something to sell. She set her tray aside and crossed the room to pick up the receiver. An instinct told her to brace
herself for bad news. For some reason she expected to hear a policeman’s voice.

She was wrong. It was Michael.

‘Jenny?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Sorry to disturb you. Is now a good time?’

‘For what?’ Jenny said sharply, refusing to be lulled by his conciliatory tone.

He took a moment to respond. ‘I tried to call you earlier – at the office.’

‘When?’

‘You were busy apparently – in a meeting. I spoke to Alison.’

‘And?’

‘I asked her how you were. She said you might be pregnant.’

Jenny was speechless.

‘Not very discreet of her, I know, but I think she told me out of concern. She’s very fond of you.’

‘She had no right.’

‘Is it true? Are you?’

‘Michael, this is none of your business. And it’s none of Alison’s, either.’

‘I was with that girl for two nights. Two nights, Jenny. I’m sorry. It was stupid. It was beyond stupid, it was the most hurtful, self-destructive thing I have ever done. She holds
no interest for me. I want nothing more to do with her. I will never see her again. I promise. I
promise
. Please don’t shut me out, Jenny. Not now. Please.’

‘Begging doesn’t make it any better, Michael.’

‘I’m trying to be truthful. I love you, Jenny, and I know now that I must have left my phone behind because I needed you to know. Honestly, I’m not trying to be anything other
than the man I am. I want a life with you. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted. Nothing else matters.’

‘Nice speech. About two months too late. Goodbye.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Try me.’

‘Then why are you keeping it?’

‘What?’

‘If you want me out of your life, why are you keeping my child?’

Jenny felt a surge of fury. ‘You don’t know what I’m doing!’

‘You haven’t told me otherwise. How many times do I have to say it to make you believe me, Jenny? I love you. I love you. I’m sorry . . . I want to see you.’

‘Michael, I’ve asked you to leave me alone.’

‘Please—’

There was nothing more to be said. Jenny cut him off, then pulled the phone lead from the socket.

She went back to her dinner and ate it with a determined calm that came of knowing that there was no doubt left in her mind. His pleading words hadn’t touched her. The most she could say
she felt for him right now was pity. And as for the child she was carrying, he had no claim. No, his presence in her life was over, and she was fine with that. And as for Alison, they would have to
talk in the morning.

Determined not to let Michael spoil her evening, Jenny went to make herself some coffee and tidy up the kitchen. Then she would treat herself to one of her favourite films; one that didn’t
feature guns or expanses of female flesh. She thought of
Annie Hall
, but decided the humour was a little too neurotic. She wanted to be lulled and reassured. She wanted hope. She settled on
A Room With a View
. Watching alone, she could weep all she liked. She loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the counter, escaping into a fantasy of an innocence she had never experienced for
herself. She pictured herself as the character Lucy, turning her face to the warm sun and gazing on the world through pure, unsullied eyes.

Leaving her pot of decaf to brew on top of the range, she went to fetch the second of the two bars of chocolate from the fridge, when she spotted something at the foot of the back door. Some
sort of liquid had seeped under the sill and formed a reddish brown pool on the quarry tiles. More curious than alarmed, Jenny flicked on the outside light and opened the door. The halogen lamp lit
up the snow-covered garden like a floodlight. Travelling in a straight line the full length of the lawn to the stream at its end was a bright crimson trail. Jenny looked down at her feet and saw a
heap of liver and kidneys dumped on the step.

Her reaction was immediate and instinctive. She slammed the door, closed the bolts, then rushed through to the living room and reconnected the phone. She dialled the switchboard at Gloucester
police station and demanded to be patched through to DI Ryan.

‘You can put that down now, Jenny.’ Ryan looked at her nervously as he stepped through the door. ‘I drew a firearm.’ He pulled open his waist-length
coat, revealing a shoulder holster. ‘Special dispensation – just for you.’

Jenny looked at the barbeque knife in her fist and realized that she had been gripping it so tightly that she had lost nearly all sensation above her wrist. She had been standing in the hallway
for the full hour it had taken Ryan to arrive. It was the only place in the house with several lines of sight and from which, if the worst were to happen, she stood any chance of escape. She prised
her fingers away from the handle and set it down on the windowsill.

‘Any signs of break-in?’

‘Not that I can see.’

Ryan pushed open the door to her study, then glanced into the sitting room.

‘Have you checked everywhere?’

‘There’s a spare room upstairs. I haven’t dared,’ Jenny admitted.

Ryan took off up the stairs, drawing his gun as he did so.

Jenny massaged the blood back into her numb hand as he went gun-first into the spare bedroom.

‘All clear,’ he called out.

He repeated the same drill with the bathroom and Jenny’s bedroom. There was no sign of an intruder.

He came down, slotting the gun back into the holster. ‘Stay here while I check out the back. Have you got a torch?’

Jenny pulled open the small boot cupboard under the stairs and found the million-candle flashlight that Michael had bought for her after an October storm had left her without power for five
days. She hadn’t used it since.

‘Won’t be a moment.’ Ryan smiled. He seemed almost amused, as if it were all a great game. ‘You look like you could do with a drink.’

Jenny stayed behind the hall door as he went through the living room to the kitchen. She heard him slowly open the back door – a long moment of silence – then close it after him. It
felt like an age until she heard him come back inside again. She waited to hear him bolt the door before going through to join him.

‘Was there anything there?’

‘As a matter of fact there was,’ he said casually. ‘A pig’s head. I dragged it out of the stream and left it out the back here. Hope you don’t mind. I took a
picture on my phone if you want to see it.’