A Nice Place to Die (14 page)

Rachel was trying to think of a way of bringing up the subject tactfully when she heard Jack say, ‘Careful you don't get red paint on your clothes from that door. It looks as if it's still wet.'

Jean moved back, startled, and Jack moved forward into the door frame, as though he thought she had invited him in.

Reid said, ‘Mrs Henson, what can you tell us about the word paedo splashed all over the outside of your front wall? What's that all about?'

Rachel was horrified at what she saw as the Sergeant's brutality. She, too, moved towards Jean Henson, but to try to comfort her.

‘How long has it been there?' she asked.

‘You'd better come in,' Jean Henson said. She sounded reluctant, and turned away to walk into the kitchen, leaving them to shut the front door.

Jack followed her to a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen and helped her up on to the seat. Then he pulled up another stool and perched close to her.

‘We met your husband, you remember?' he said. ‘He seemed to us then to be a happy man. No money worries, a good marriage, success in his career. What was happening in his life that made him do this?'

Jean Henson looked up at him, open-mouthed. She shook her head helplessly.

Rachel said, ‘What about that stupid graffiti? Had someone got hold of the wrong end of the stick? Was someone threatening him? Or trying to blackmail him?'

‘That was an idiotic mistake,' Jean Henson said. ‘Jess Miller's baby fell out of her pram and Peter went and picked her up to see if she was all right.'

That was clearly as much as she wanted to say, but Jack would not leave it at that.

‘Well, of course he did. What decent person wouldn't?'

He and Rachel both waited for Jean to say more. The silence grew oppressive.

At last Jean Henson said, ‘Someone saw him touch the child and told Donna Miller he'd been abusing her.'

‘So the Millers wrote that word all over your wall and the door?'

Jean's voice faltered. ‘I don't know.'

‘Do you know who told Donna Miller that your husband abused the kid?' Rachel said.

‘He didn't abuse the child,' Jean Henson said, ‘he picked her up and comforted her.'

‘Of course he did,' Jack Reid said. ‘But someone made a big mistake. Someone pretty stupid. Was it a mistake, or was it a malicious lie? Did your husband have any enemies that you know of?'

Jean hesitated. As his wife, she knew that a lot of people didn't like Peter. Even his own daughter had gone to Australia to get away from him. So she prevaricated. ‘I don't know who'd make up a thing like that,' she said. She started to cry. ‘But someone in this street must've seen him with the child and got the wrong end of the stick.'

‘Who do you think that was?' Rachel said.

‘Alice Bates,' Jean burst out, ‘she's the one who watches what goes on here.'

Suddenly she turned on Rachel Moody. ‘I can't help you,' she said. ‘Go away and leave me alone, I've nothing to say. I know what you want me to say, you want me to tell you that Kevin Miller persecuted us and drove my husband to kill himself. But I don't know, I tell you, I don't know.'

She got off the stool and faced them.

Rachel noticed that in spite of everything she was going through, Jean Henson had put on her make-up and done her hair as though she were on her way out to a social occasion. It's the only way she knows to face the end of the world, Rachel thought, keeping up appearances whatever happens.

Jean started to recite at them. ‘My husband has suffered from depression ever since he was forced to retire from the NHS. He didn't want to stop working, he'd lots more years work in him. He was bitter about that, and he felt there was no future to look forward to. That's why he did it.'

Suddenly, losing control, she shouted at them: ‘And I feel just the same. I can't forgive him for not taking me with him. So get out of my house and leave me alone.'

Back in the car, Rachel and Jack avoided looking at each other.

At last Jack said, ‘Sorry Boss. I messed that up.'

Rachel shook her head. ‘No,' she said, ‘we both did. Poor woman, what's going to happen to her now?'

‘We've got to get that bastard Kevin Miller for something,' Jack Reid said. ‘His fingerprints are all over this, but we're absolutely hog-tied.'

They drove off and Forester Close itself seemed to take refuge in uneasy silence. The street lamps came on as the light began to fade in the late afternoon, but the Close was deserted.

Then a car driven at high speed turned off the main road with a squeal of brakes. It swerved, and came to a stop outside the Henson house.

Dave Byrne, Helen's deserted husband and a frequent and unwelcome visitor at Terri and Helen's, got out of the car and opened the boot. He made no effort to hide what he was doing; in fact, he looked about him as though defying an unseen audience of spies.

He took a bucket out of the boot, then scrubbing brushes and cans of spray paint. Carrying them, he went round the back of Terri and Helen's house, though there was no sign of either of them being there.

In a few minutes, he came out of the front door of Number Five with the bucket full of steaming hot water.

Alice Bates, watching from her front room, could see the steam rising. She thought, Helen must've given him a key. Terri won't like the idea of Dave coming and going as he pleases.

Alice felt a small thrill of excitement, anticipating ructions later between Terri and Helen.

Dave Byrne, having climbed over the wall dividing Number Five from the Henson house, started to clean off the daubed messages from the wall of Number Four. He scrubbed the front door, too. He seemed to be using a wire brush; the door paint was coming away. He got rid of the ugly words, but the bare unpainted patches were almost as unsightly. Dave had thought of that. He used the spray paint he'd brought with him to cover where the graffiti had been.

The paint didn't quite match the original colour, but almost.

Alice thought, Perhaps it will when it dries. Then Dave threw the water away into the side of the road, packed his gear back into the car boot, and drove off.

Alice watched the foam from the dirty water flowing away down the hill. If only the harm that those words had done could be washed away so easily, she thought.

SEVENTEEN

B
ert Pearson was waiting for Mark when he came in from the milking. Bert had been waiting for some time, since he came back from his lonely wanderings in the fields at lunchtime, and he was impatient to get over with the confrontation he must have with his son.

Mark, taking off his boots at the back door before he came into the kitchen, was surprised to see his father there. ‘What you doing still here, Dad?' he said.

‘I wouldn't be here if there weren't something that's got to be said between us,' Bert said.

Two hours ago he hadn't expected to find what he had to say difficult. But now, faced with his son's plainly contemptuous hostility, and unsure about how he could explain what he had to say, Bert wished he could put it off until another day.

But he had to do something to break up Mark's relationship with that tart from the housing estate. His efforts to point the police towards Kevin Miller to show Mark the sort of family Jess came from, seemed to have come to nothing. There was only one thing for it, Bert told himself; he had to have it out with his son face to face.

Mark went to the sink and washed his hands.

‘Well?' he said. ‘If you've got something to say, you'd better spit it out.'

‘You know what this farm means to me, don't you, son?' Bert said. He couldn't look at Mark, not talking like this about strong feelings.

‘Not enough to make you pull yourself together and pull your weight running it,' Mark muttered. He couldn't look at his father's face, either, he was too embarrassed. It was worse than Bert trying to discuss his mother's withdrawal from him, what he'd call a man-to-man talk. Mark was always afraid his father was about to do that.

Bert pretended he hadn't heard what Mark said. He tried again. ‘You know it's always been the best thing in my life that you came in with me? You know how much that means to me, don't you?'

Mark guessed what was coming. Bert was going to warn him off Jess. Someone who'd spoken to his father must have seen him with her and told the old man about it. Or maybe one of Mum's friends had seen them together and told her. He thought, whoever told Mum must've put the fear of God into her to make her speak to Dad about it.

Mark didn't want to talk to anyone about Jess. He wanted to tell his father that he had always felt the same way as he did about the farm and the land, but that he had his own way to make in the world and some day soon, if things didn't change, he was going to have to break away so that he could do that, Jess or no Jess. He knew that if his father said anything about Jess, he would have to defend his relationship with her. And once he did that, the thing would become something it wasn't. What he had with Jess was exactly the relationship he was looking for at the moment. The last thing he wanted was to be pushed into choosing between her and the farm, and that was what would happen if his father didn't back off. Mark knew only too well that if the thing was presented in those terms, he would have to choose Jess, not because his feelings for her necessarily justified his choice, but because he had to assert his right to make his own decisions.

‘I don't want to talk about it, Dad,' he said. ‘Leave it. It's not what you think, just drop the whole subject. You don't have to worry. It's time you were in bed, you know?'

‘But I've got to make you understand . . .' Bert said. ‘We've got to stand up for our . . .' He paused, trying to remember the big word people used. ‘Our heritage,' he said at last and then paused again, embarrassed that in the heat of the moment he had used such a pretentious word. ‘People like that Miller family are out to destroy us,' he said.

‘You don't have to make me understand, Dad. I do understand. I know what I'm doing.'

Bert spread his hands in a helpless gesture, knowing that he had no way of communicating with Mark in this mood.

‘I'm off out, Dad,' Mark said. ‘Good night. Mum said she'd be back early tonight.'

Bert heard him laugh as he shut the back door behind him and went out into the yard.

Bert heaved a sigh of relief. At least he'd tried to talk to the boy.

A while later, in an old field shelter originally built for two pensioned-off cart horses to spend their declining years, Mark pulled away from Jess and started to drag on his clothes.

‘Hey,' she said, ‘what's the matter with you? I'm only just getting started.'

Playfully, she buffeted him with her impressive breasts, but he put his hands over them and pushed her gently away.

‘Not yet, Jess,' he said. ‘Let's talk.'

‘Talk?' she said, looking puzzled as though talk were a sexual deviation she hadn't heard of yet.

Mark laughed. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘about you and me.'

Jess sat up, suddenly serious. She thought, this is it; he wants us to escape together.

‘I've a bit of money saved,' she said.

She was thinking, Alice must have money stashed away in that house of hers. No one poor could live in a place like that. Alice certainly doesn't spend it, Jess told herself, she always wears the same clothes, she'll never miss it. Why should an old woman like that need a lot of money?

Mark didn't know what she was talking about, suddenly mentioning money as though that had something to do with what he had to say to her.

‘What do your parents think of us going out?' he asked.

Jess looked at him in amazement. Had he forgotten how Kevin and Nate and their gang had hunted the two of them that night they'd gone to make love in the shed among the bushes at the back of Alice's house? She was still finding shards of glass down the back of the pickup's seat.

As though Mark read her thoughts, he said, ‘I don't mean your moron brothers, I mean your mum and dad.'

‘Same as Kevin does, I suppose,' Jess said. ‘Best they don't know anything about it.'

‘But if I met them?' Mark said. ‘You know, if you took me to your house to meet them? Once we got talking to each other . . . ?'

‘They'd hate you. They don't want to know you. They hate you because they think your lot are all snobs or hicks, that's enough for them,' Jess said.

She was thinking, Over my dead body you meet them. There's a limit to the number of times Kylie calls me Mum and I can make a joke about her being mixed up and not being able to say Jess. As if, she says Jess all the time, it's one of her noises.

Mark didn't say anything. He seemed unconvinced. Jess decided that the best form of defence was attack.

‘Come to that, why don't you take me home to meet your mum and dad?' she said.

Not on your life, Mark thought, they'd turn her out of the house. He tried to tell himself, it's not that I'm ashamed of her, or of them, but I don't want to be part of the way they'd judge Jess if they met her. And then he thought, I am ashamed; I'm ashamed of what Jess would know about me, meeting them; and what they'd be able to tell about me if they met her.

‘It's no good, you're from the new houses,' he said, ‘they'd just hate you on principle.'

‘But
why
? We don't do them any harm.'

Mark couldn't begin to explain. It wasn't something that could be explained, really. He remembered the day he'd met her, those two louts scaring the bullocks and leaving the gate open and her clinging to him, terrified, in her ridiculous red high-heeled boots. He knew from the start he couldn't explain to her. If he tried to tell her how he felt about the farm and the animals, she'd never understand.