Stone Cold Red Hot

Chapter twenty one

The pain was the first thing I was aware of when I woke up. It was chewing up the bone in my leg. I took two tablets and lay back, trying to place the snapshots in my mind in some sort of sequence. I went over the events of the previous night twice, from getting in Johnny’s taxi to crying in the kitchen. Then I did my best to blank it out.

I must have been in shock or after-shock. Certainly some altered state which re-ordered all my priorities and which explains, if anything can, what I did that day. Everything was dream-like. Everything was in the distance. I couldn’t concentrate on the unessentials but I was completely focussed on the task I set myself.

After breakfast I tried to get my bike out but the burn soon protested. I wouldn’t be able to pedal the thing even if I could get up onto the saddle. I rang a cab and asked them to pick me up from the Dobson’s address in half-an-hour.

I walked round there’ slowly. I was cold even though the weather was mild. I collected my small tape-recorder from the filing cabinet and checked the tape and batteries. Fine. I was glad I didn’t have to struggle changing batteries one-handed. I put the recorder in my jacket pocket.

The little mosaic vase stood on the cabinet. I picked it up and ran my thumb over the smooth, glass tiles. I thought of Jennifer in her dry, dusty grave, of Carl’s mother, answering her door to a policeman, knowing the news before he spoke, of Mrs Ahmed aching for the feel of her son’s hand in hers, for the light in his eyes. I placed the ornament down carefully and locked up.

I sat back in the cab and let my mind roam. When the taxi drew up to the kerb I felt my stomach tense. I paid the fare and watched him drive away.

I rang the bell, a long push, heard it shrilling inside the house and then the sound of movements, the voice at the door.

“Who is it?” Cautious. Most people open the door without asking.

“Children of Christ.”

“Just a minute,” the chain rattled than she let me in.

“Come in, in here,” she led me into her room.

I switched the tape-recorder on.

She settled in her chair. I sat on the edge of the bed. She looked at me expectantly. I stared back. Her smile faltered and behind the glasses her eyes hardened as she became alert to the possibility of subterfuge.

“You’re not from the church.”

“No. I came the other day, about Jennifer.”

“Get out of my house,” she began to stand up.

“No.” I didn’t raise my voice but I made it clear I wasn’t budging. “I want to know the truth. It’s important to me.”

“You’ve no right.”

“Oh, I think I have. I know what happened to Jennifer, you see. Most of it.”

Expressions flashed across her face; apprehension, outrage, uncertainty.

“Get out,” she repeated, “if you don’t leave now…”

“What will you do? Call the police? They might be interested in the truth as well.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she blustered, “I won’t talk to you.”

“Alright, you listen then. I’ll tell you all about it, about Jennifer. She was a bright girl, got a place at university. Worked hard but she still knew how to enjoy herself, she had some good friends, they speak very warmly of her. She worked too, waitressing, earning money of her own.

“She finished school in 1976. She was due to go to Keele that autumn, she’d got a place studying English, as long as she got her grades. Everyone knew she would. It was a long, hot summer. They declared a drought. Jennifer spent it working at the Bounty, but she got away too, she and Lisa went off to Knebworth, a pop festival. They had a brilliant time. She told you she was going camping.”

Mrs Pickering sat with her head turned away from me, facing the window. From what I could see her face was impassive. Her hands were tightly clasped in her lap.

“But Jennifer never arrived at Keele. She never left home, did she? She couldn’t.”

In the pause there was the faint wheeze of her breath and from outside the shrieks and laughter of a school playtime.

“She went to Keele.”

“No, she didn’t. You know that’s a lie.”

“She went to Keele.”

“She didn’t,” I raised my voice. “She never went there. I’ve spoken to the university, she was never admitted. She never left here.”

“She ran away,” she retorted. “We thought she’d gone there. Maybe it was somewhere else. She ran away.”

“And later that year you invented the story that Jennifer had dropped out of university?”

She hesitated, caught in the web she’d spun, desperately trying to work out whether agreement or denial would best fit her new version of events where Jennifer was a runaway. That moment’s pause removed any last shreds of doubt I had about my suspicions.

“She didn’t run away,” I said plainly. “She’d have been better off if she had. There was a big row I can’t be sure exactly who said what and in what order, but it probably went something like this. Jennifer was pregnant, she told you and your husband. He was appalled, wasn’t he? You both were but with his position in the church to consider, his failure to maintain high moral standards in his own home – well, he’d be beside himself.”

Mrs Pickering was shaking her head as if to ward off a troublesome wasp. She refused to look at me.

“What did he do? Demand to know who the father was? Did she tell? That won’t have helped matters; he was a black boy she’d been seeing. Your husband would have found that hard to stomach, with his racist beliefs. The relationship had finished so marriage would have been out of the question for Jennifer. Did he threaten to disinherit her, denounce her? Or maybe he told her a secret of his own. That she was no daughter of his, that she’d been illegitimate. Bad blood will out. Something like that?”

Her head jerked back at this but still she kept her counsel. I kept right on. “He was shouting, her lack of decency, her shameless behaviour. Probably used a few choice words from the scriptures. There’s plenty in there isn’t there? Whores of Babylon and the like. But Jennifer had discovered something about Frank, a secret of her own. Maybe she flung that back at him. Knocked him off the moral high ground. Or was that what started the row? Did she tell you about his sins before she got onto hers? You know what I’m talking about?”

Mrs Pickering was completely still, her hands gripping each other, here mouth pressed into a line.

“He’d been having an affair with Marjorie Shuttle.”

“No. No.” Her hoarse denial rang out.

“I’ve been to see Mrs Shuttle, she told me all about it. So, he tried to silence Jennifer, to stop her saying all those vile things. Perhaps he pushed her, punched her. He was a big man.”

“No,” she began to moan, a guttural sound from deep inside.

I thought uneasily of her frail health. Was I hounding her to total collapse? But I was so near; her silence and her reactions told me that my story was close enough to the events of that fateful summer. I wanted her to own the truth.

“He killed her,” I said baldly, “and then he buried her in the garden. He put a new shed over the grave.”

“No, no,” she kept repeating, rocking forward slightly in her chair.

“The ground was hard as iron, it’d been baking for months. All that effort; the digging, building, it made him ill. That and the guilt. It broke his heart, shredded his nerves. I’m right.”

“No,” she said violently, twisting my way but avoiding my eyes.

“Why are you protecting him?” I leant forward. “He’s dead too. Nothing can hurt him now. He’s dead. Jennifer is dead and he is dead and he killed her.”

She looked then. Her face naked with emotion, her eyes wounded and the scales fell from my own. I was astonished. A shudder of realisation ran up my spine.

“You did it.”

There was no denial.

“He was protecting you, not the other way round.”

She turned to the window. “It…” she faltered.

I stayed completely still. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck prickled. I waited. It was quieter outside, playtime over. Just the to and fro of traffic and a dog barking in the distance.

“Accident,” she whispered.

Another silence. I didn’t speak, didn’t break the spell. She might clam up. I was so close. But if the silence stretched too far the moment may be lost. I counted to five.

“An accident,” I prompted.

“The things she said. Hurtful, sinful lies. He was a good man. The filth…I was ironing. I didn’t mean to…it was in my hand. I told her to stop it. Stop it. Stop it. She wouldn’t. I hit her with it. On the head, in the face. I only meant her to be quiet.” She raised her palms and pressed her fingertips to her mouth, closed her eyes. I felt some compassion for her then. The burden of her secret held for years, the loss of her daughter and then her husband. How strong she must have been to carry on, to never weaken. Never allowing herself to grieve for Jennifer, twisting her memory into that of a feckless girl who had jettisoned her family. Had she loved her? Had she ever defended her bright, young daughter to her husband? Or had Jennifer always been the cuckoo child, a reminder of hidden sin, of bad blood? Her independent spirit seen as waywardness, her presence a cross to bear not a precious gift? Had either of them ever given her a hug in those awkward teenage years, ever pulled her close with affection? Oh, Jennifer.

She straightened up, returned her hands to her lap. her eyes were dry. “She did it to spite us, you know. Going with a coloured boy. It made me feel sick.”

She pursed her lips and I was reminded of the look on Caroline Cunningham’s face when she discussed Lisa MacNeice’s lesbianism.

“My daughter in bed with a nigger, carrying his child. Dirty. Loathsome. She had to spoil everything. After all Frank had done, taking us in, giving her his name. We moved here so people wouldn’t talk. She grew up and she was a snake in the grass. He had to put up with her bad manners and her cheap ideas. She had no respect. She was a slut. And then to tell such terrible lies about him, foul-mouthed lies.”

“It was an accident,” I said. “Why didn’t you get an ambulance?”

“We couldn’t tell anyone,” she shook her head. “All the fuss. With Frank at the Church and his firm. It would have ruined him.”

It did anyway.

“And there was Roger. He doesn’t have to know?” She pleaded.

What was she asking me to do? Keep her secret? Say nothing?

“He wanted to find his sister.”

“But not this.”

“No, not this.”

“You won’t tell him?” Her voice was soft.

I couldn’t speak.

“And the police?”

She wouldn’t stand trial. She’d be dead before any case could be heard. She was no danger to anyone now. But I’d come for the truth and I couldn’t give her the assurances she demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

Her face fell, fatigue pinching at it. “Please, could you get me a glass of water?” She cleared her throat.

I went along to the kitchen, fished in the cupboards for a glass and ran the water. Outside I could see the shed, Jennifer’s tomb. How could her mother have borne the memories of her death and what followed? Keeping the body hidden from Roger while they sorted out buying the shed, digging the pit, bringing her from the house, wrapped in a sheet or a rug. Burying her. Laying the floor of the shed on top. Did they pray for her? Or was she beyond redemption? Did the sin of murder mean they could no longer offer prayers? Would their God forgive or punish? How long before they’d cleared her room? Removing her posters, the troll in the window, her make-up, her diaries, her precious mementos.

Then each time a friend rang up or a neighbour inquired the gorge of fear that must have reared up. Lisa MacNeice trying to report her missing, Mrs Clerkenwell asking about her, Roger wanting to find her. Roger who was so disappointed that he never got to wave his big sister off at the train station. No chance to say goodbye. Like the Ibrahims; sudden death, no chance to say goodbye. Tiredness rolled over me, my leg was aching again. I should go. I carried the water into the hall.

Mrs Pickering stood at the end, framed in the light from the glass in the door. She was holding a gun, one with a long barrel. It was pointing straight at me. Her finger was on the trigger…