A Nice Place to Die (18 page)

The wind was strong enough to rock the Father Christmas figure and his decorated sleigh so that they actually seemed to be moving, setting the sleigh bells jangling. The red, green and blue lights on the house were reflected on the wet pavement, turning the street into a spangled 'fifties dance floor where dead leaves flickered like jiving feet.

It was like watching an old movie, Alice thought, one of those American films with music and singing and dancing and lots of chiffon dresses with sequins. Any minute now, Fred Astaire might whirl across the road from backstage in the ruins of Number Five to start his big number.

The ten o'clock news came on the television with its relentless catalogue of man's inhumanities to man. Alice turned it off.

In the sudden silence, she heard a muffled sound from the kitchen.

Alice felt the familiar prickling of sweat on her palms. Her hands and feet were suddenly very cold. The tightening fear in her chest left her breathless, painfully aware of the thumping of her heart.

She listened, holding her breath, but heard nothing.

Perhaps I imagined it, she thought. It was hard not to imagine things in this big echoing dark house all on her own. Perhaps, with Phoebus gone, a mouse had got into the kitchen. Then she tried to tell herself that the wind was catching the tarpaulin the builders had used to cover the open wall of the room above the garage at Number Five after the fire.

But Alice knew the noise she had heard did not come from outside. Something was wrong. It was in the room with her. A chill seemed to have crept through the house, filling it with menace.

Stop it, she told herself, you're imagining things. There's nothing there.

She got up slowly and tiptoed into the hall to go upstairs.

I'll go to bed, she thought, I'll check the kitchen tomorrow. I expect it was the wind.

There was a faint, unfamiliar smell in the hall, sweet and stale. Alice sniffed the air. What was it? Not scent, exactly, more like the way a crowded bus smells when the passengers have been out in the rain, attractive and repellent at the same time.

‘Hallo, Miss Bates, come to join me?'

The voice stabbed Alice like the blade of a sharp knife.

She knew who it was, knew that cloying smell. She played for time.

‘Who is it? Who's there?' she whispered.

Someone came towards her from the kitchen. She tried to retreat, but she could not move away from the wall, she was paralyzed with fear.

‘It's me, of course. Surely you've been expecting me?'

The light was suddenly switched on.

Kevin Miller, wearing his motorcycling leathers and a helmet with the visor raised so that she could see his cold, pale blue eyes, came through the kitchen door and down the hall towards her.

‘No,' Alice stammered. ‘I was looking at the pretty lights on your house. I thought there must be a party.'

‘You weren't invited,' Kevin said. ‘You've been poking your nose in where you're not invited, haven't you?'

He lunged forward suddenly and gripped her thin arm, bending it back behind her.

Alice cried out in pain.

Kevin released her arm. He was disgusted at the feel of the dry loose skin covering the bones.

But Alice tried to take it as a sign of hope that he was not beyond human feeling.

‘Thank you,' she said, ‘I'm afraid even shaking hands can hurt when you're as old as me.'

The apparent confidence of her appeal to his sympathy enraged him.

‘Shut up,' he said. ‘You need to be taught a lesson. That's what I've come for.'

Her voice quivering because her teeth were chattering, Alice said, ‘Did I leave the back door open? I keep doing that.'

‘Shut up,' he said again, this time with more venom. ‘I broke the lock.'

Alice was shaking with fright. She knew she must try to hide her fear, but she couldn't. She found she couldn't speak without stuttering.

‘What do you want, Kevin? What are you looking for?'

He pushed her towards the kitchen. ‘Stop asking me stupid fucking questions,' he hissed at her. ‘You keep your mouth shut and we'll get on fine as long as you do what I tell you.'

‘But why?' she said, ‘why are you here?'

He snarled at her. ‘As if you didn't know,' he said. ‘Don't pretend you don't know the cops are watching my house. So I'm going to be staying with you for a bit. It's only fair. You set them on me, didn't you?'

‘No,' she wailed, ‘no, I didn't. I haven't said a word to anyone.'

‘Don't tell me that,' he said. ‘They said they had a tip-off. Who else would it have been?'

‘It wasn't me,' she said. ‘Please, Kevin, it wasn't me. I swear it wasn't.'

‘D'you think I'm stupid?' he shouted at her. ‘You were watching, weren't you? When that vicar bought it? That's all you're good for, isn't it? Spying on people.'

‘No, no,' Alice said, pleading. ‘I never told anybody, I wouldn't dare.'

Kevin looked triumphant. ‘So you did see?' He took off his helmet and smoothed his hair. That's the smell, Alice told herself, it's the gel he puts on his hair.

‘You're going to be sorry,' he said. ‘I'll make you sorry.'

He bared his teeth. He smiled like a dog, Alice thought, you couldn't be sure he wasn't going to bite.

She said in her quivering voice, ‘I'd never tell, you know I wouldn't. What are you going to do to me?'

He did not hide his disgust at her withered face and her knobbly body and her dry flaking lips.

‘Shut up,' he said once more, ‘shut up and get me something to eat. Don't you know how to treat a guest?'

Alice walked unsteadily to the fridge, but when she opened the door the shelves were empty. She'd been going to do her shopping tomorrow.

‘There's cake,' she said. ‘There's a cake in that tin in the cupboard. I made it in case Jean Henson wanted to come over and have a chat at teatime.'

Kevin reached up and pulled the cake tin from the cupboard shelf. He ripped open the lid and broke off a fistful of the sponge cake inside.

He spat it out. ‘Yuck,' he said, ‘it's like eating sawdust.'

‘There's nothing else,' she said. ‘I was going to do some shopping tomorrow.'

Kevin began to pull out the kitchen drawers, tossing cutlery and plates on to the floor.

At last he pulled out a new washing line Alice kept as a spare in case vandals cut the one in her garden. That happened several times over the year.

‘This'll do,' he said. ‘This'll keep you quiet until we get to understand each other better.'

‘You can't stay here,' Alice said. ‘You won't be safe. The police might come . . .'

She stopped, realizing what she had said, but it was too late.

‘You see, I knew it was you. The coppers' nark.'

He sounded triumphant.

‘No,' she said, ‘it wasn't me. I'd never do that. I didn't see anything. I'd nothing to tell them.'

Kevin could hear how scared she sounded. He grinned at her. ‘You're not my idea of a hot date for Christmas either,' he said. ‘But you've only yourself to blame. You put the police on to me, and I can't stay at home till they lay off. This is the last place the cops will look for me, thanks to you.'

He suddenly started to laugh. ‘As you sow, so shall you reap,' he said. ‘Isn't that what that vicar would've said?'

Kevin shoved her back out into the hall, pushing her against the banister.

‘Lift your arms up,' he said, ‘stretch them out.'

As best she could, she did as she was told. He wrenched her hands upwards and outwards beyond their natural reach. She didn't know how she was going to be able to bear the pain. She moaned, but he took no notice. He used the new washing line to lash her wrists to the closest spindles, wrapping the cord round the handrail to prevent her sliding her arms lower.

‘OK,' he said, ‘you asked for this. You're going to pay.

He wound some of the line round her neck and the closest spindle.

‘There,' he said, ‘that's not too tight, is it? As long as you don't move there'll be no bruises to show.'

Then he stood back to survey his handiwork.

He laughed again, imitating her terrified expression and raising his arms in the shape of a vulture standing over its prey.

‘There,' he said, ‘you look like an old witch ready to be burned at the stake.'

Alice tried to speak but she could only make little whimpering sounds at the back of her throat.

‘I'm going down the takeaway,' he said, ‘I'll be back. Then I'll tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to be here for a while. No one is going to know where I am, got it? And you won't be telling anyone, will you, you ugly old bat? You won't be telling your police friends anything for a long time to come. Got it?'

He turned off the light. There was a faint click as he went out the back door, then silence. Alice, straining her ears for any sound, heard only the frantic thumping of her own blood in her ears.

In the alley that ran behind the back gardens of the houses on Forester Close, Kevin whistled and then whispered, ‘Are you there, kid? You can come out now.'

There was a muffled yelp, then someone stepped out from behind a load of trash that had been dumped beside the fence.

Nicky Byrne's voice was muffled. ‘How did you know I was here?' she asked.

‘D'you think I don't know you've been following me around?' Kevin said.

‘I can't help it,' Nicky said, ‘I've got to tell you. I love you, Kevin, I really love you.' She was ready to cry. ‘Please, don't send me away.'

‘Piss off, you stupid kid. Does your mum know you're out?' he said.

Nicky came up close to him and pressed herself against him. She shook her head. ‘No chance,' she said, ‘she and Terri went to bed hours ago.'

Kevin grimaced at the thought of those two women in bed together.

Nicky's hot breath was in his ear. ‘Let me stay with you, please, oh please, Kevin, don't make me go away. I'll do anything you want.'

‘You'll have to make yourself useful,' he said.

‘Anything you say, Kevin,' she said.

‘OK, OK, get off me,' he said. ‘You can run down the chippy for me. Get whatever you want too and bring it back here.'

‘You mean me and you will be together?'

He pulled a twenty pound note out of the breast pocket of his leather jacket.

He said, ‘This isn't kids' stuff. Don't let anyone see you come back here, right?'

‘Oh, I won't, I promise I won't.'

‘I'll be in Alice's place,' he said. ‘She's asked me to stay there with her for a bit.'

‘Oh, that's fantastic,' she said. ‘I can come over every night and look after you, it'll be like we're really married.'

Kevin pushed her away from him. ‘Don't be so fucking stupid,' he said.

‘Why do you want to stay with her? She's gross.'

‘I expect she's lonely,' Kevin said. ‘It's Christmas, she'll be glad of the company.' He grinned at her.

Nicky said, ‘Does Alice know? She won't like it.'

‘Don't you worry about Alice,' he said. ‘She won't mind. She doesn't have any say in it.'

‘Oh,' Nicky said, trying to hug him, ‘this is going to be the best Christmas ever.'

TWENTY-FOUR

W
inter tightened its grip on Forester Close over Christmas. The temperature scarcely rose above freezing, even during the middle of the day, with a ruthless east wind and the dismal grey blight it carries with it across the landscape. The birds stopped singing in the leafless shrubs in the gardens, and daffodils which had ventured above the wet black soil to test the air retracted their green shoots to wait for more convincing signs of spring. Even at noon, it was as though daylight could not quite make up its mind to announce its arrival and started to tiptoe away before anyone noticed. People left the curtains in their upstairs windows closed all day, but there was no one looking up in the street to wonder if they were ill. Or even dead.

And then, as soon as New Year was over, the wind changed and great bluff grey clouds scudded across the bone-coloured sky. Suddenly Forester Close was jerked out of its deep sleep.

In Number Five, still shrouded in builders' tarpaulins waiting for the workmen to return from their holiday break, Nicky came into Helen's room early in the morning. She pulled the curtains open, shouting, ‘Mummy, Mummy, something's happening.'

Helen and Terri both sat up in bed. The room was full of queer orange and bluish lights.

‘What is it?' Helen said, yawning. ‘Has something set off a burglar alarm?'

‘If that bastard Dave's set fire to another house now, I'll kill him,' Terri said, but she did not sound convinced by her own bravado.

At Number Four, Jean Henson, an early riser since Peter's death, was downstairs looking out of the sitting-room window. ‘What's happened?' she asked herself, speaking aloud as though Peter were still there, ‘the street's full of police cars.'

Since the morning when the police had come to tell her of Peter's suicide, Jean was very disturbed by the sight and sound of any of the emergency services. And now here they were back in the road in front of her house.

For a moment she wondered if she were dreaming. Since Peter's death her dreams had been so real and so painful that she dreaded going to sleep. Perhaps this was one of them and in a moment she would wake up and find the scene in the street was just part of a nightmare.