A Nice Place to Die (27 page)

She was still thinking of Kevin as she got out of the car. She thought she'd seen that woman DCI who'd put Kevin away drive out on to the main road as she turned into Forester Close, and that, too, had helped to bring it all back.

I hope you get what's coming to you, you sour old bitch, Donna thought. Suing you for false imprisonment's just the start of what I've got in store for you.

Donna told herself she was probably whistling in the dark, but maybe not. Kevin's solicitor had said the case against him might be dismissed because all the police evidence proved was that he'd been in the house. Kevin could plead guilty to attempted burglary to explain the DNA all over the place; the police hadn't anything else to make the murder charge stick. Kevin's DNA on the corpse only showed he'd touched the body when he found her dead at the bottom of the stairs. It could easily have been an accidental death and Kev had checked to see if she was still breathing. That's what anyone would do naturally, without thinking.

The house seemed unnaturally quiet as Donna went through to the kitchen.

She shouted, ‘Jess?'

There was no reply.

The bloody girl's gone out and left Kylie in her play pen, Donna thought. She told herself, something's got to be done about Jess and Kylie. Perhaps it would be best if they did move out, away from here. Jess would soon be running home, but even a short time on her own would give the girl a reality check to find out what being a mother really involved.

But why was Kylie so quiet? She wasn't making any noise at all.

Donna started up the stairs, calling to the baby, ‘I'm coming, love, I'm coming to get you.'

On the landing Donna was suddenly afraid. It was too quiet. My God, she thought, the baby's dead. Something's happened to her. Oh, no, Jess . . .

She was really afraid that Jess had somehow caused the baby's death. Filled with dread, she opened Kylie's bedroom door and looked in. The playpen was empty. There were toys left scattered on the floor. The bed was unmade, but Kylie was not there.

Donna turned and ran to Jess's room. She burst in without knocking. There was no sign of Jess.

She heard someone come in through the front door and, thinking it was Jess, raced down the stairs.

‘Hi, babe,' Alan said. ‘Is the kettle on? I've got the paper.'

‘Where are they?' Donna screeched at him.

‘Where's who?' Alan said.

‘Jess and Kylie, of course. They've gone,' she said.

‘What d'you mean, gone?' Alan said.

She followed him through to the kitchen.

‘Didn't you hear anything?' she asked. ‘She's taken Kylie.'

‘Don't tell me you want me to go out looking for her? She'll be back. She can't get far, she's no money, for one thing.'

Donna sat down at the table and took a cigarette from Alan's pack.

‘She said she was going to move out,' she said, taking Alan's half-smoked cigarette from his mouth to light hers. ‘I thought it was just talk. Social services gave her a flat in Birmingham, she said. She said she'd be glad to get away from here.'

Donna's face crumbled. ‘I thought she was having me on,' she said. ‘She must've lied about her age.'

‘Probably forged your signature,' Alan said. ‘D'you want to get the police?'

Donna thought about Rachel Moody with her perfect hair and make-up and her way of staring at you as though she saw you as something different from what you were.

‘Not yet,' she told Alan. ‘She wouldn't thank us. She'll let us know when she gets there. I'll ring her.'

She rang Jess's mobile. From upstairs, they heard the ring-tone.

‘She's left her phone,' Donna said. She started to cry. ‘She doesn't want us to find her.'

‘Fine by me,' Alan said. ‘I'll save a packet not having to provide for her and that kid of hers. Ungrateful cow.'

Donna was too tired to argue.

‘I'm going to bed,' she said. ‘Call me later. We'll get a takeaway.'

But, tired as she was, she couldn't sleep. She didn't know what she was going to do without Jess. The boys were all right but they'd always been off doing their own thing. And Kevin . . . Jess was different; she needed her mother. They might fight all the time but they understood each other. Jess hadn't even said goodbye, not properly. She hadn't been able to say goodbye to Kylie. It was a total rejection, and Donna felt bereft. And there was the child; Kylie needed her. Jess would never cope.

Perhaps she'll find that out and bring her back in a day or two, Donna told herself.

That thought cheered her. She slept for a while, then got up and went downstairs where Alan was in the lounge watching television.

‘It's the news,' he said. ‘D'you want me to turn over?'

‘No, leave it on,' Donna said. She thought, if something has happened to Jess . . .

On the television screen, a very young policewoman was holding a baby wrapped in a hospital blanket.

The baby on the television had been found abandoned in a station waiting-room somewhere in the commuter belt north of London, some town Donna had never heard of beginning with H on the main line to the North. The child had apparently been well looked after. Police were appealing to the mother to come forward. They wanted to help her. Nurses at the hospital which had examined the baby were calling the kid Kylie after Kylie Minogue, because she was a little waif with a powerful set of lungs.

‘That looks like our Kylie's coat,' Donna said. ‘I bought one just like it for her at Asda.'

‘You and a million others, I expect,' Alan said. He lit a cigarette and switched channels on the television.

Donna sat in silence for a while, then she said suddenly, ‘You know, I can't help thinking about Jess and Kylie. That kid on the television – the one they found abandoned at the train station, the one they called Kylie . . .'

Alan grunted. ‘What of it?' he said. It was the nearest he could get to showing sympathy towards Donna.

‘Oh, I was just thinking . . . if that kid's mother was anything like Jess, the poor little thing's bloody lucky her mother abandoned her.'

‘How do you make that out?' Alan said.

‘Well, the mother can't have been any good,' Donna said. ‘Now the kid will be adopted by some nice family who'll love her and give her the chance of a good life.'

Alan pressed the remote to turn off the television. He stared at Donna, not sure that she was serious.

‘Are you trying to say you wish your Jess had left her Kylie like that other mother did?'

Donna's voice trembled. She said, ‘Rather than take her away to some dump in Birmingham to live on benefits and grow up like Jess to get pregnant by men who don't even know her name?' She sounded close to tears. ‘Yes, that's what I'm saying; I suppose it is.'

‘Jess'll be fine,' Alan said. ‘She's got her head screwed on, that one. Selfish cow.'

He leaned across to give Donna a friendly cuff. ‘What's brought this on?'

Donna sighed. ‘I can't help worrying what's going to happen to them – the kids?' She couldn't explain. Alan wasn't even their father.

‘You did everything you possibly could for them,' Alan said. ‘We both did. They never wanted for anything. They'll be all right.'

THIRTY-FOUR

R
achel Moody thought that the bleak room in the remand centre where she and Jack Reid had come to charge Kevin Miller with the additional murder of the Reverend Tim Baker was the most soulless place she'd ever seen.

Rachel would not have admitted to anyone else, even to Jack Reid, that she felt an unprofessional degree of personal satisfaction when Terri Kent and Jean Henson provided the new witness evidence which made the additional charge possible. She had always recognized the potential weakness in the police case against Kevin as the murderer of Alice Bates. Now, as the Super would say, they'd got him bang to rights.

She had never stopped hoping to nail Miller for Tim Baker's murder. It seemed to her much more important to do that than put him away for killing an old and – dare she think it? – insignificant victim like poor Alice Bates. That could have been an accident, a burglary gone wrong; it was an isolated small tragedy compared with the killing of the young vicar.

That murder, Rachel thought, was a deliberate blow against the whole concept of social order. It affected numerous lives and groups, making a mockery of the law and the very purpose of the police. If the murderer of Tim Baker could get away with what he did, society itself was undermined. Rachel was relieved that at long last Terri Kent and Dr Henson's widow had realized where their civic duty lay.

Jack Reid, sitting beside Rachel at the formica-topped table, shifted in the uncomfortable chair.

‘It's just another case,' he said out of the blue.

Rachel thought, how does he know what I'm thinking?

‘Of course it is,' she said. ‘But this is one I began to think we wouldn't be able to solve.'

‘What do you think you have to do to get a cup of coffee round here?' Jack Reid said. He fidgeted on the hard chair, which was nowhere near broad enough for a man of his bulk.

The door opened then and Kevin Miller was brought in to sit opposite them at the table. His solicitor, an eager young woman in a black suit, sat down beside him.

Rachel Moody watched Kevin. He looked thinner than when she had last seen him, and whiter. Without the motorcycle gear and the swagger, he was reduced to a nondescript young man with greasy hair, acne, and an air of rat-like defiance.

How could that Byrne child have a crush on someone so ordinary, Rachel asked herself. And, she thought, how could a weasel like that ever seem to embody evil incarnate? That's what Alice Bates thought.

She couldn't believe that she was trying to stop herself from seeing Kevin as pathetic.

Kevin Miller showed no interest in what anyone said until Jack Reid told him the police now had a witness to prove his guilt.

Kevin shook his head. He gave Rachel Moody a pitying smile. ‘I didn't do it,' Kevin said. ‘I didn't kill that Alice Bates. That four-eyed kid Nicky from next door did it. You found my prints in the house, sure, but hers were there too if you'd bothered to look.'

‘It's not going to look good for you in court if you accuse a young girl of something like that to save your own skin,' Rachel said.

‘Maybe not,' Kevin said, ‘but that's what happened. You can't prove it didn't.'

‘It's not Alice Bates's murder we've come to ask you about,' Jack Reid said.

Rachel leaned forward across the table towards Kevin. ‘We've got a witness who's prepared to give evidence in court that she saw you murder the vicar of Old Catcombe outside Number Two, Forester Terrace on the seventeenth of December last.'

Kevin jumped to his feet and tried to leap across the table to grab Rachel.

A burly warder held him back, then dropped him on to the chair.

‘You'd listen to that dirty bull-dyke and her lies?' Kevin screamed. ‘Don't you see, she knows that moron kid killed the old witch and she's doing this to cover for her. She's lying, don't you see that?'

‘She's not our only witness to the vicar's murder, Kevin,' Jack Reid said. ‘Someone else saw you do it.'

Kevin curled his thin lip in contempt. ‘That bloodless lesbian partner of hers . . .' he said, and laughed.

‘No,' Jack Reid said, ‘this evidence has no connection with that family. She's an independent witness.'

There was a silence. They all, including the solicitor, knew then for certain that Kevin Miller had killed the vicar. It was written all over his face that he had done the murder, that he knew he could have been seen doing it, that he had made the mistake of being too sure that no one would dare admit to witnessing what he did.

‘She's lying too,' he said. ‘Mum'll tell you I wasn't there.'

‘Well, she would, wouldn't she?' Rachel said. She nodded to the Sergeant.

Jack Reid stood up. ‘Kevin Miller, I am charging you that on the seventeenth of December 2009 you murdered Reverend Timothy Baker at Number Two, Forester Close, Catcombe Mead . . .'

Kevin sat hunched over the table. His face was expressionless.

Suddenly he looked up and interrupted the Sergeant as he began to read him his rights.

‘Wait,' he said. He said to his solicitor, ‘Give me five minutes alone with them.'

The solicitor protested. ‘Don't say anything now,' she said. ‘Shut up, that's my advice.'

Kevin said, ‘Get out. You and the screw.'

‘This is irregular,' the solicitor said.

‘It's what I want,' Kevin said.

His solicitor was unhappy about leaving, but Kevin insisted. He was left alone facing Rachel and Jack Reid.

‘I want to talk straight,' Kevin said. He looked surly but his voice betrayed something else.

He's scared, Rachel thought. But it wasn't just that, she told herself, there's something else, it's like he's afraid . . .

‘I want to make a deal,' Kevin said. ‘I'll plead guilty to the vicar if you drop the murder rap for Alice Bates. That was an accident, right? And you know you won't make it stick.'

‘But you told us Nicky Byrne killed Alice,' Jack said. ‘You're the one called it murder. You might be able to help your case by giving evidence against her.'

Kevin ignored him and said to Rachel, ‘It was an accident. I found the old girl lying dead at the bottom of the stairs. That's the truth.'