A Nice Place to Die (23 page)

She wrote, ‘It wasn't Kevin who killed Alice Bates, it was me. I can't keep it to myself any more. Kevin forced her to have him live in her house to hide from the police, and I helped him guard her because I love him. I really love him and I wanted to show him how much. You may not understand this because you have probably never read a book called
Crime and Punishment
which is the greatest book ever written. I love Kevin because he is the hero of the book, Raskolnikov, even if he doesn't know it yet. He is a special person who has the right to commit murder and Alice Bates was a parasite like the pawnbroker in the book.

‘But Kevin didn't kill Alice. He wanted to, but he didn't, so I did it for him. It was late at night and he was in bed. He told me to watch Alice didn't try to escape. Alice didn't understand what was happening by then. She told me to get out of there while I had the chance. She said Kevin was wicked.

‘I hit her over the head with a lamp on the landing and pushed her so she fell down the stairs. I wanted to show Kevin that I'm not a silly little schoolgirl but worthy of him.

‘The noise she made falling woke Kev up, and he came to see and he said she was dead. I was scared and I told him she'd fallen by accident.

‘I'm sorry, Terri, but you and Mum will be better off without me. I know this will disappoint you because you wanted the best for me and I've let you down. Please ask Jess to say I'm sorry to Kevin, I never meant for him to get the blame. Please try to make Mum understand and not hate me.'

The note was signed Nicky Anne Kent.

Terri sat on the edge of the narrow bed staring at Nicky's childish rounded handwriting for some time. Then she put the note back in the envelope and put it in her pocket.

How am I going to tell Helen? Terri asked herself.

Helen looked at Terri's face and screamed at her.

‘My God,' she said, ‘what's the little idiot done now?'

‘Poor, poor child,' Terri said. She started to cry.

‘Stop it,' Helen shouted at her, ‘for God's sake stop that noise. She's my daughter, why are
you
crying?'

Terri's tears were awful, as though heavy metal started spontaneously to melt.

Then Terri clenched her fists and ground them into the sockets of her eyes to stop herself weeping.

‘Where would she go?' she said to Helen, ‘where would your daughter go to kill herself?'

Helen gave her a terrified look and curled up on the sofa in what looked like the foetal position. She sucked her thumb and whimpered like a child.

Terri glanced at her, then turned away and ran out of the house. She scrambled over the dividing wall between her house and Jean Henson's.

Jean opened her front door to the frantic knocking. Terri tried to explain that Nicky was missing.

Jean pulled her into the hall. ‘Tell me?' she said. ‘What's happened?'

Terri scarcely knew what she was doing. She thrust Nicky's note into Jean's hands. Then, as Jean read it, she spilled out the whole story as though the words were lava erupting from her. She was helpless to stop the flow in spite of her fear of the consequences for Helen and for Nicky of what she had to tell.

Jean was very calm. She asked, ‘Are the police looking for her?'

Terri nodded.

Jean said, ‘If she took her bike, she can't have gone far. She couldn't ride it very well.'

‘But she's been gone all day.'

‘Yes.'

They looked at each other and then Terri said, ‘What are we going to do about the other thing? About Kevin Miller? And Alice? Do you think anyone would believe it? Do you think it's
true
? Was she trying to protect Kevin?'

Jean took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Is, Terri. Is, not was. We don't know she's dead.'

‘Poor little thing,' Terri said, ‘she doesn't think she's got anything to live for. That note's so sad.'

‘Burn the note,' Jean said. She handed it back to Terri. She sounded as though she had no doubts that they must do this.

‘But the police must see it,' Terri said. ‘They've charged Kevin Miller.'

‘Has Helen seen the note?'

Terri shook her head. ‘No,' she said, ‘Nicky wrote it to me. That means she didn't want her mother to see it. She trusted me.'

‘Helen mustn't see it,' Jean said. ‘The police mustn't see it, either. If they do, they'll put her in care, and the psychiatrists will get hold of her. You've got to destroy it.'

Terri hesitated.

‘Come on,' Jean said, taking Terri's arm and marching her out of the house and back next door.

Helen was still curled on the sofa, her eyes closed. She was still sucking her thumb like an infant.

‘She's out of it,' Jean said. ‘That's something to be thankful for.'

There was a loud knocking at the front door. Helen started to whimper, retreating further into the sofa cushions.

‘Quick,' Jean said. She snatched the note. ‘You answer the door.'

She was tearing the note into shreds as she ran upstairs to the bathroom.

She could hear Terri talking to the police in the hall. From the top of the stairs Jean recognized the voice of the female Detective Chief Inspector who had come to question her after Alice's death.

Damn, Jean thought, how did they get here so quickly?

She flushed the pieces down the lavatory.

Terri, white-faced and her forehead beaded with sweat, stood in the hallway like a fat bull terrier barking at the postman.

‘We'd like to speak to Mrs Byrne,' the Chief Inspector said. ‘We need to talk to her. We've found her daughter.'

TWENTY-NINE

T
he light was already fading as Mark Pearson set off to check the electric fence in the fields by the river where the cows were grazing with the stud bull. While he was at it, too, he could make sure the water troughs were in working order.

Bloody public rights of way, Mark was thinking. If the government didn't force him to protect intruders on his own land, he could let the animals get down to the river bank to drink.

‘Bloody vandals,' he muttered, ‘letting their dogs off the lead with the in-calf heifers, and their children running all over the crops. Ignorant yobs, the lot of them. And I get prosecuted if that old bull so much as looks at them.'

Mark had been grumpy like this for days. The endless cold grey days, the gloom everywhere, the boredom of being unable to get on with work that needed to be done because of the weather, all got him down. He knew he was being absurd and unreasonable. But thinking of yobs invading his land had reminded him of meeting Jess. Mark missed her. He felt very lonely without her.

Close to the river, where the bank curved and left a small muddy inlet in the field, he found the wire fence had come loose from one of the plastic posts. It was trailing on the grass. He could hear the crackling sound where it was shorting out.

He moved the electric fencing post to a point where it could hold the wire off the ground. He got a shock as he raised the wire and broke the point of contact with the earth. It was too much. He almost succumbed to a childish urge to stamp his foot and swear. At least there was no one to see him, and it might make him feel better.

The crackling ceased. In the sudden silence, he heard a sound.

At first he thought it was a wounded wild animal too damaged to flee. A small animal, not one of his heifers, anyway. It might even be a frightened bird with an injured wing,

He walked slowly towards the sound, as quietly as he could. He did not want to scare whatever it was making the noise. It was coming from beyond one of the old pollarded willow trees which stood like the ruins of ancient forts guarding the river bank.

Mark approached the tree. He stopped, listening to see if the noise had changed or stopped.

It came again, but more faintly now.

Long ago, a bough had split from the old tree and now lay like part of the skeleton of a prehistoric beast in a hollow where the river bank sloped down to a quiet pool. It was a favourite place where families often came on picnics in the summer because it was safe for the children to paddle in the water.

Mark saw the child's red bicycle leaning against this broken bough. The chain-guard and the wheels were clogged with mud, but the handlebars and the mudguards looked too bright and shiny to have been left there since the summer visitors. He told himself, anyway, I'd have seen it when I came down to check the fence if it was here yesterday.

He felt his heart pounding and sweat prickled under his collar in spite of the cold. He didn't know what he was afraid of, but he was afraid.

The whimpering seemed to be coming from somewhere beyond the bike, behind the rotting bough of the old tree; a sound of moaning mixed with some kind of feeble threshing movement. Mark thought some animal was trapped. Some stupid child playing games, he thought. Cruel little beast.

‘Who's there?' he called softly.

There was a sudden silence, then a renewed moan as though whoever was making the noise had tried to keep quiet and couldn't hold back the sound.

Mark ran the last few strides to the rotting bough and looked over.

A child was writhing feebly on the muddy grass. A thin, gawky girl with strands of almost colourless damp hair stuck to her pale skin. She was clutching her stomach and moaning in pain. Her face was contorted and the skin around her mouth looked to him to be bluish.

He jumped down beside her.

‘What is it?' he asked, ‘what's happened?'

But she did not seem to know that he was there. She couldn't speak.

He lifted her to wipe her hair away from her damp face. She felt cold as stone. He took off his anorak and wrapped it round her. She was staring at him through half-closed eyes. He didn't think she saw him; she seemed to him half-dead.

He had to root in the pocket of his anorak, now wrapped round the child, for his mobile phone. He was shocked at how quickly the garment that a moment before had been warm with his body heat had become chilled by the coldness of her body.

He dialled 999.

Mark knew the ambulance could not make its way across the water meadows from the road, so he told the paramedics where to meet him in the lane. ‘I'll carry her up there,' he said.

‘Do you know who the child is?' the switchboard operator asked him.

He looked down at the girl. She had stopped the writhing now, and her eyes were closed. He thought she had lost consciousness.

He did not know her. At the back of his mind, he thought he might have seen her before, somewhere he had been because of Jess. But beyond that, he couldn't place her.

‘No,' he said, ‘but she may come from the Catcombe Mead housing estate.'

He was frightened to see how pale the child was. Not white like ivory, more the colour of Lalique glass.

‘Hurry,' he said, ‘please, hurry, or you'll be too late.'

‘Is there anything around to show what she might have taken?' the calm, matter-of-fact voice on the telephone asked him.

At first he could see nothing. Then, close to the bicycle, he noticed a plastic freezer bag.

‘Wait,' he said, putting the child down and fetching the bag. ‘There seem to be a few berries in it,' he said. ‘It looks as though they came off Christmas decorations. There's holly and mistletoe, anyway, I recognize those. There's something here looks like laurel, too. She could have taken them accidentally.'

Why did I say that, he thought. It makes it sound as though I really think she did this deliberately.

‘Take them with you,' the voice said, ‘it may be vital to know what she's ingested.'

He nodded, as though the calm speaker were there beside him.

‘The ambulance is on its way,' she said. ‘It should be with you in about five minutes.'

Mark lifted the unconscious child and started back the way he had come, towards the lane.

He heard the siren well before the ambulance reached him.

‘Hold on,' he urged the unconscious child, ‘it won't be long now.'

When he reached the lane, he saw the flashing blue light on top of the ambulance above the hedge, racing towards him. And then the paramedics were there and he felt an overwhelming relief that the child was in safe hands.

A police car arrived and Mark went to open a gate into the field so that it could reverse into it out of the way of the ambulance. The driver, a cheery young woman with cropped blonde hair, went to check what was happening in the ambulance. The girl in the passenger seat got out and put on her helmet before approaching Mark.

‘Are you all right?' she asked.

Mark found that he was shaking. He felt very cold. ‘I found her,' he said.

‘You look pretty shaken,' she said. ‘Don't you have a coat?'

‘I wrapped it round her,' he said, ‘she was freezing cold.'

‘Come and sit in the car for a bit,' she said. ‘You can tell me what happened. Jo will go in the ambulance, I expect, so I'll drive you home when they take her to hospital. I'm at the end of my shift anyway.'

She opened the passenger door for him and then went round to the driver's seat. The car smelled faintly of spearmint.

‘Here,' she said, ‘have some chewing gum.'

Mark shook his head. ‘Do you know, for the first time in my life I'd give anything for a cigarette,' he said.

She smiled; a nice smile with perfect teeth, he thought.

‘Can't help you there,' she said. ‘My name's Penny, by the way. Penny Harrison.'