Darkness, Darkness (10 page)

‘Still around, wasn’t he? Swore blind he never knew anything about where she’d gone or why and I believed him.’

‘Foul play, Keith,’ Resnick said. ‘Before you decided she’d gone off of her own free will, you must have considered that?’

‘Course. No note of any kind, nothing even for the kids, you’d have to. But then, what evidence was there? No body, no signs of violence, blood, clothing. Nothing.’

‘And when you were thinking of that as a possibility, did you have anyone in mind?

Haines shook his head. ‘Not really. Which was another problem. The husband, that was the obvious place to look, but again no evidence, and, arguments over the strike aside, little enough cause.’

‘Those arguments,’ Catherine said, ‘they mightn’t have got out of hand?’

‘It’s possible. But, like I say, bar a bit of shouting, there was little sign. Maybe raised his fist to her once or twice, but nothing more than that.’

‘Nothing more? A woman’s gone missing, no indication of where she might be, her husband’s showed some signs of violence towards her and that didn’t give you serious pause for thought . . .’ Catherine could hear herself becoming strident and stopped. Reached for her tea instead.

‘Start thinking murder on account of that,’ Haines said, ‘some scuttlebutt someone’d heard, bloke shows his wife a fist, maybe even gives her a slap, you’d have been arresting half the blokes in the village.’

‘Except their wives hadn’t suddenly disappeared.’

Haines leaned towards her. ‘Look. I know what you’re thinking. Domestic violence. Men lashing out in anger. Hear a lot ’bout that these days. But no. I don’t think that’s what happened. Didn’t then and don’t now. Even though the circumstances have changed.’

He sat back. From somewhere in the middle distance came the sound of a tractor, turning soil.

‘Look, I was wrong. We know that now. Dead wrong, as it happens. Which is why that report of mine, if you could ever find it, isn’t worth paper it’s printed on.’

He looked from Catherine to Resnick and back again.

‘Sticks in the craw, but there it is.’

Behind him, behind where he was sitting, his wife came out of the greenhouse, and with a quick glance back towards the house, walked away towards the garden end.

‘I’m just going outside for a cigarette,’ Catherine said, quick to her feet. ‘I’ll not be long. Then we can leave you in peace.’

‘There’s no need . . .’ Haines began, halfway from his seat.

But Resnick was leaning towards him, catching his attention. ‘One thing I’ve been meaning to ask, Keith, that poor bugger as lost an eye. Shotter, was it . . .?’

JILL HAINES WAS
standing by the far fence, head bent low, shoulders hunched. Catherine thought she could be crying, but when the older woman turned towards her, her cheeks were dry. There were tears there waiting, Catherine could see, stalled, banked up behind the eyes.

She took her cigarettes from her bag and offered one to Jill, who shook her head. Several fields away, a small flock of lapwings rose in wavering flight, turned through a slow, spiralling circle and tumbled back to earth.

Catherine held the first mouthful of smoke down in her lungs, then released it slowly into the air.

Jill leaned a little towards it, as if drawing it in.

‘How long ago did you give up?’ Catherine asked.

A smile. ‘Five years ago now. Six.’

‘Better for you.’

‘Keith, he had a bit of a scare. All that stuff on the cigarette packets, the doctor told him, means what it says. Showed him an X-ray. Stopped there and then, not touched one since.’

‘Expected you to do the same.’

‘Only fair.’ She reached for the cigarette in Catherine’s hand. ‘One puff, just the one.’

She took a long drag, handed it back. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘After all this time? What good will it do now?’

‘You want to know what happened to your sister, surely? Who was responsible?’

‘I’m not sure I do.’

Catherine showed her surprise.

‘Try to understand,’ Jill said. ‘As far as I was concerned, Jenny was living another life. With somebody else, on her own, I didn’t know. After a while . . . I didn’t really care. That sounds cruel, I know, unfeeling, but . . .’

She took another drag at Catherine’s cigarette.

‘All that was going on with the strike, for Jenny – getting up at meetings, making speeches, not just local, all over – it changed her. Made her dissatisfied. Someone I didn’t really know.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Knew even less. You could see it, see it in her face. What she had there, at the Vale, with Barry and the kids, it wasn’t enough. Maybe it never was.’

‘And you thought that’s why she left? Because she was dissatisfied with the marriage?’

‘Yes.’

‘There was nothing more definite? More specific?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Barry, he wouldn’t have given her cause?’

‘Cause?’

‘He wasn’t ever violent, for instance?’

‘Towards Jenny?’ Jill shook her head. ‘If he was, I never heard of it. Jenny never said.’

‘And she would have done, d’you think?’

‘It’d not’ve come easy, but if it were serious, yes, I think she might.’

‘And if she’d been seeing somebody else? Would she have told you about that?’

‘Confided in me, d’you mean?’ Jill shook her head. ‘Always had me down as a bit of a prude, Jenny did, right from when we were kids. So, no, if anything like that had been going on, I think she’d’ve kept it to herself.’

She looked off into the distance. A strand of hair had come loose and, reaching up, she pushed it back into place.

‘You’re still angry with her, aren’t you?’ Catherine said.

‘Am I?’

‘It must have been hard.’

‘Hard for her kids. Barry tried looking after them himself at first, but he couldn’t really cope. How could he, working like he was? I did what I could, tried to lend a hand, but I was working, too. As for them, little Brian especially, they just didn’t understand. Luckily, Mum and Dad were fixed up out at Ingoldmells by then.’ She smiled. ‘Grandkids, you know what some people are like. Glad to have them. Better off there, too. Sand. Sea air. Not be thinking each time someone’s at the door it’s their mum, come back home.’

‘You weren’t tempted to take the children yourself? You and Keith?’

A smile flickered across Jill’s face. ‘Children, his own or anyone else’s, not big in Keith’s plans. Never were.’

‘And you didn’t mind?’

Jill glanced back towards the house. ‘Once Keith’s mind’s made up . . .’ She let it rest, unsaid.

Keith Haines was already heading down the path, Resnick in his wake. ‘Not leading my better half astray, I trust?’

Catherine stubbed out the cigarette with her shoe, scooped the butt up in her hand.

‘There’s a bin,’ Haines said, ‘by the gate on your way out.’

‘Should we be needing to talk to you again . . .’ Catherine began.

‘Not a problem. Always here. Aren’t we, duck?’

Jill smiled. They all shook hands.

‘Good to see you again, Charlie,’ Haines said.

‘You, too.’

He walked them to their car. ‘What really happened . . . I hope you can find out, put it all to rest.’

When Catherine looked back, Jill Haines was standing where they had left her, by the garden’s edge, hands clasped behind her back.

They drove without speaking, field following field, barn after barn, the massed bulk of Ely Cathedral looming mistily to the west. After a mile or so, Catherine pulled over into a field entry, parked.

‘I could have handled that better, Charlie.’

‘You think so?’

‘What did he tell us? Nothing we couldn’t have guessed at, nothing that couldn’t have been written on the back of a postcard.’

‘Perhaps there wasn’t much else to tell.’

‘She was murdered, Charlie. Stuffed beneath tiles and concrete in someone’s back yard.’

‘And no one knew.’

‘Someone knew. Someone killed her, for God’s sake.’ Sighing, she reached down to the floor for her bag, began to feel for her cigarettes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m letting it get to me and I shouldn’t. Not even sure why. And I do need a cigarette.’

They stood against the gate. Whatever was growing in the field, neither of them could have named for certain.

The sun had slipped lower in the sky.

‘What little I can remember,’ Resnick said, ‘the missing persons report – a copy would have come past me at the time – it was pretty much as he described. Interviews, of course, names of witnesses, people who’d been questioned. But nothing definite. Certainly nothing that would have pointed him towards what had really happened.’

‘And that was it? Gone and goodbye.’

‘Missing persons photographs were distributed, London, major cities. Agencies informed. There were sightings, as I recall, a few. None of them leading anywhere. And you’ve got to remember, the whole country was in an uproar, at least that’s how it seemed.’

‘One woman more or less gone missing – in the bigger scheme of things who cares?’ Catherine stubbed out her cigarette, half-smoked.

Resnick was already looking at his watch.

‘In danger of missing something, Charlie?’

‘Jazz at the library, West Bridgford. Nottingham Youth Jazz Orchestra.’

‘Thought it was books, more usually, libraries.’

‘New strategy.’

‘Downloads, Charlie, that’s the new strategy. E-books. Read them on your Kindle, mobile phone.’

As if responding to the words, her own mobile started to ring. Slipping it from her bag, back half-turned, she read the caller ID and declined the call.

‘Little thanks for us, here, Charlie,’ she said, moving towards the car. ‘This investigation. However it turns out. Too many people getting on with their lives. Haines, Barry Hardwick, even Jill. What good will it do now, dredging all this up? That’s what she thinks, what she said, more or less. Better, as far as they’re all concerned, for Jenny’s body to have stayed where it was buried, underground.’

Car in gear, she reversed back on to the road and away.

THEY GATHERED WHERE
the road forked, well shy of the first houses, the light just beginning to break. Men like Danny who were camping out in the fields, others who were billeted in the village; a dozen or more of them standing in twos and threes, heads down, stamping their feet against the cold; muffled conversation, bursts of occasional laughter, soft glow of cigarettes against the blackened hedgerow.

‘Where the fuck are they?’ says the man next to Danny. ‘Should be fuckin’ here by now.’

‘Don’t fret, they’ll be here right enough.’

‘Less’n they’ve been turned back already.’

‘Look on’t cheerful side of things, why don’t you?’

Others are beginning to wonder aloud where they’re going. Markham or Harworth? Bentinck, maybe. Ollerton.

‘Silverhill,’ says one with certainty. ‘It’s bloody Silverhill, I bet you.’

‘Where the fuck’s that then?’

‘Fuck knows.’

They can see headlights now, faint, orange, approaching through the morning mist. Three cars and a Ford Transit. Windows wound down, a shouted greeting. Danny recognises Steve, Stevie, he’s ridden with him before. And Woody, too. A laugh, Woody. Bit of a mad bastard, but all right.

Someone jumps from the lead car and hurries to the hedge to take a piss. It’s not bloody Silverhill at all, it’s Clipstone.

Danny and the bulk of the others clamber into the back of the van.

No seats, save at the front; someone’s spread a length of old carpet on the floor in back but every bump and pothole in the road jars right through you. And it stinks of too many bodies clamped close together, stale farts and cigarette smoke.

‘Who was that bird I saw you chattin’ up at the Welfare?’ someone asks Danny.

Danny grins and tells him to shut the fuck up.

They goad him a bit longer and he sits there laughing, lapping it up really, legs stretched out, back resting against the side of the van.

‘Time you got married, youth. That’ll take wind out your sails,’ one of the older men observes.

‘Not done that for you, has it?’ one of the others says. ‘Nobbin’ around still wi’ best of ’em.’

‘Bollock off!’

Danny’s thinking about the woman from the Welfare and not for the first time, either. Something about her, the way she looked back at him when he offered to buy her a drink. Defiant, yes, but something more. And when she left, later, doing her best not to look at him across the room, but looking just the same.

Where the Ollerton Road crosses with Netherfield Lane and the A616, the little convoy draws to a halt. Traffic cones warding them over to one side. Police in uniform. More than a few. Danny can see them over the driver’s shoulder. Step out of the vehicle. Driving licence. Destination.

‘Now turn this lot around and fuck off back where you come from.’

They’re not local, Danny can tell. Tell from their accent. The driver of the first car is arguing and they’re offering to arrest him.

‘What charge? I’ve not done owt.’

‘Whatever charge, sunshine, we bloody like.’

‘You fucking would an’ all, wouldn’t you?’

As if to prove him right, two of them seize hold of him and bundle him back of their line, bending him sharply forward, arms tight behind his back.

There’s more coppers now, coming close, either side of the van.

‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers!’ Danny shouts and, throwing open the rear doors, jumps out, evades a grasping hand and runs for the nearest gap in the hedge: vaults over a fence and away.

Glancing back over his shoulder as he runs, he sees several of the others have done likewise, spreading out in all directions, police chasing.

The two coppers who started after him have given up and are standing there cursing at the mud that’s splashed up on to their uniform trousers.

Not really looking where he’s going, Danny trips over a piece of uneven ground and goes sprawling, the upper half of his body landing in a cowpat of staggering proportions. Tears of laughter running down his face, he scrambles up and stumbles forward, desperate to find a brook or stream or maybe a farmhouse with an outside pump, somewhere he can wash the worst of it away before getting back to the road and, with any luck, hitch a lift back to where he started.