A Reason to Kill (11 page)

‘S
o, what's up then, our kid?' Karen ruffled George's hair, knowing he hated it but also that he'd hate it if she didn't.

She'd been home for a couple of hours but this was the first chance they'd had to talk, their mother having dominated Karen's time up until now. Carol Parker had fussed as she always did, chattered and nagged about everything and nothing …
‘This boy you're seeing. You're sure he's all right and not … you know. They're all OK at first. It's after. You sure you're getting enough to eat? And that job of yours, what is it?

‘I've got two jobs, Mam, and I'm at night school three days a week. You remember?

‘Yes, of course I do, but what jobs? Karen, you'd tell me if anything was wrong. I'm always so tired these days and the doctor won't give me any more pills he says I should get more exercise, maybe do a yoga class or something, learn to meditate. Meditate! Yoga! What does he know?

‘Wouldn't do you any harm though, would it, get you out and meeting people.'

‘Why would I want to do that?'

It was significant, George thought, that not once had his mother mentioned the murder three doors down.

Finally, just to get away for long enough to talk, Karen had volunteered to do some shopping and said she'd take George along with her.

‘Here,' she said, handing him an insulated cup bearing the convoluted logo of the promenade café. She had treated them both to hot chocolate and blueberry muffins but they had elected to get them to take out, George being prepared to suffer the winds blowing along the promenade if it meant a little more privacy.

He had talked to Paul again and they had decided not to tell yet about Mrs Freer. To wait, see what happened. Paul was scared. George realized his friend just wanted for it all to go away and he was hoping against hope that if he didn't talk about it no one else would and so he'd be safe.

George sipped the sweet hot chocolate and poked at the soft denseness of the muffin.

‘So, what's on your mind, our kid?' Karen swung her legs up on to the bench, her back against the arm and her knees raised. Smiling at his sister, George did the same, their feet wedged against each other's, sitting like two bookends. It was an old habit from their hostel days when they had sat either end of the tiny sofas that seemed to come as standard with the accommodation. Facing one another, shutting out the world. On the bench it wasn't exactly a comfortable posture.

He licked the muffin crumbs from his lips and hugged the chocolate cup close and tight to his body, thinking suddenly that the problem with insulated cups was just that. They kept the heat inside and gave nothing back to hug against a cold chest. ‘I think I saw
him
,' George said.

Karen didn't need to ask him who. She leaned forward as far as her knees would allow. ‘No.' She shook her head. ‘You can't have. You know you can't have.'

George looked away, staring anxiously out across the bay. He licked his lips again, then wiped them with the back of his hand as the wind dried the moisture and contracted the skin. ‘I know I
can't
have done,' he said. ‘But I did.'

Karen shook her blonde head. ‘Where? How?'

‘I don't know how but he was standing outside the school. I seen him from the bus.'

‘How close was he?' Karen demanded. ‘George, I was seeing him everywhere for months after. I knew it couldn't be him but I kept us moving all the same just because I kept
thinking
that I saw him. But George, you know that isn't possible. You know that. Don't you?'

George nodded and then shook his head. ‘I'm not making a mistake, Kaz, I saw him. I saw him close to, from the bus window; he was stood there on the pavement. He was looking, but I ducked down when we went past. I saw him, Kaz.'

His sister frowned intently, chewing on her lips, her face pale. George could see she no longer doubted him.

‘What do we do?' George asked but he knew the answer and his heart sank. He'd finally just started to make friends and even the thought of getting away from Dwayne and his ilk was no compensation. There were Dwaynes everywhere. Dwaynes and Mark Dowlings and they grew up to be people like his dad. ‘We're going to have to move again, aren't we?' he said.

Karen nodded. ‘Looks that way,' she said.

S
unday arrived with spiteful wind and driving rain. By ten o clock, Mac was back at Mrs Freer's house with Andy the probationer and two community support officers he had managed to borrow for a couple of hours. The press contingent had been driven away by the lack of shelter and decidedly inclement weather – and the more immediate and attractive proposition of a stabbing a few miles up the coast. Mrs Freer's house had now been properly secured with metal shutters and padlocks on the doors. Yellow tape, tugged free by the gale blowing down the length of Newell Street, waved and snapped plastic ribbons across the front door and Mac caught at them, tugged them down and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. He hated the look of abandonment suggested by the broken tape.

His three companions shivered despite being wrapped tight against the chill. ‘I need a couple of hours,' Mac told them, ‘and with a bit of luck you'll be inside for most of that.'

A giggle from one of the community support officers. ‘You don't know the locals, do you? Invite us in? They might look guilty.'

Her companion laughed.

‘Well, just do your best,' Mac told them. ‘Memories have had time to be jogged, so you never know. Andy and Jane, you take the houses across the street – and best have another chat at the OAP home too. Sally, you take that part of the row from the murder scene back to the crossroads. The people I'm most interested in are the next-door neighbours. They reckon they heard nothing on the night but … You know how it works. I'll make my way back down this side as far as the nursing home. Any problems, shout up.'

Mac's interest was in the two boys he had seen the day before but he was reluctant to draw attention to them. He started with the house directly next to Mrs Freer and, unsurprisingly, added nothing to his fund of information as he already knew from previous statements that they worked nights. The next house was inhabited by an elderly couple who invited him in and offered tea. He declined the tea but spent some time getting his ear bent about the young people in the area and how the local shop had been burgled twice in the past five years. ‘Drugs, that's what it'll be. Drugs.'

Mac made reassuring noises and went on his way.

The boy with red hair opened the next door down. He stared at Mac, clearly taken aback and not knowing what to say. A strawberry blonde woman who looked to Mac to be in her late teens or maybe very early twenties came out of a room at the end of the hall.

‘Can I help you? We don't buy on the doorstep.'

‘I don't sell,' Mac told her. He held out his identification for her to see. ‘Inspector McGregor,' he said.

‘Oh, you've come about the old lady? I heard. Bloody awful.'

‘Who is it?' An older woman emerged through the same door at the end of the hall. Mac decided it must be the kitchen, same as it was in Mrs Freer's house.

‘It's all right, Mam, just a policeman asking about that poor old lady.'

The woman, an older, thinner and altogether more fragile version of her daughter, flapped her slender hands nervously. ‘Oh, oh no. We don't know anything. Not anything.'

‘It's OK, Mum, why don't you make some tea and I'll have a chat with the Inspector. I'd like to know what's going on at any rate.'

She led the way through the first door off the hall and Mac followed, anticipating that
he
was about to be the one interrogated. The boy came in after him and perched nervously on the arm of an easy chair. The mother retired to the back room to make the tea. The house was the same layout as Mrs Freer's, Mac noted, though better decorated. Oddly empty, though, considering three people lived there. The living-room floor was uncarpeted, covered only by a couple of large, cheap-looking rugs, and the furnishings were similar to those he had in his own temporary flat. He wondered if they were renting the place furnished.

‘Sit down,' the strawberry blonde said. ‘I'm Karen Parker and this is George, my kid brother. I don't think we can tell you anything but I would like to know what the hell is going on.'

‘What do you know already?' Mac asked.

‘That someone beat the old lady to death with a baseball bat. At least, that's what the rumour mill is saying. And something about her having a gun.' She laughed harshly. ‘Pity she didn't. She could have shot the bastard, couldn't she?'

‘And then she would have been guilty of murder,' Mac pointed out.

Karen shook her head. ‘No, no she wouldn't. Possession of a firearm, maybe, manslaughter possibly. Most likely self-defence. No judge would send her down for murder and she'd still be alive, wouldn't she?'

‘You seem to know a lot about the law.'

Karen shrugged.

‘Karen's doing university,' George said. It was the first time he had uttered a word. He sounded proud, Mac thought. ‘She's doing law.'

She shrugged. ‘I'm a part-time student,' she said. ‘Working two jobs and still up to me ears in debt but I hope it'll be worth it in the end.'

‘I'm sure it will,' Mac said, but he was intrigued. What little he knew about law degrees, he didn't think they put an awful lot of emphasis on those particular areas of criminal law but … what did he know?

‘And what credence should we give to the rumour mill?' he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Mrs Freer's dead. It caused a ripple in the local press, made it on to the national news last night, but unless you lot find something in the next day or so, or whoever did it knocks off someone else, then a ripple is all there'll be. The rumour mill will churn out even more elaborate rumours and she'll still be dead.'

‘Maybe,' Mac said. ‘But we'll be doing our best to find her killer. I can assure you of that.'

‘Any suspects yet?'

Mac laughed. Frantham, he thought, seemed to produce a special brand of feisty woman. This one called to mind a very young version of Rina. ‘I can't tell you anything right now,' he said.

‘So that'll be a no, then. If you had it would be all over the news.'

‘We're following up several leads,' Mac told her and couldn't help but smile at the platitude.

Karen howled with laughter. ‘Do you get issued with a phrase book?' she asked. ‘Is there a house style for coppers?'

‘Oh, increasingly,' he said. ‘New words are banned every single year. We get an official list.'

Karen chuckled warmly and Mac could sense that George relaxed, just a fraction. He decided it was time to ask him. ‘Yesterday, I saw you standing across the road. I got the feeling you wanted to say something.'

Karen's laughter ceased. She narrowed her gaze and squinted at them both, Mac and her brother, as though trying to bring them into better focus. ‘George doesn't know anything,' she said. ‘What could he know?'

George shifted uncomfortably. ‘I didn't want to say nothing,' he mumbled. ‘I was just … I just wanted to know what was going on.'

‘Are you interested in the law too?' Mac asked innocently.

George shrugged.

‘So, there was nothing you wanted to say. Nothing you might have noticed that might help us.'

George shrugged again and Karen leaned forward in her seat.

‘It might be just a little thing,' Mac continued. ‘Something a bit odd, like. Something you know isn't quite right.'

‘George?' Karen said. ‘You got anything to tell the man?'

‘Nothing,' George said. ‘I'd have been home in bed, wouldn't I?'

Karen exchanged a look with Mac and it was clear that she too thought her little brother was withholding. He wondered if she would do anything about it. She had, he felt, a stronger than normal instinct to protect, not just her brother but her mother too, and she was obviously mature for her years. He found himself wondering what history had created such a strong desire.

‘It's a serious business, George,' Mac said. ‘An old lady was killed, brutally murdered in her own home. A place she was supposed to be able to feel safe.'

‘I told you, I'd have been at home in bed.'

‘And the night before that? The night before she died? Were you at home in your bed that night?'

Karen looked sharply at Mac. ‘What happened then?' she asked.

‘Oh, two boys, they broke in to Mrs Freer's about half past ten that night, used a screwdriver on the back door to lever it open. Not that there was much of a lock.'

‘Broke in? Did they steal anything?'

‘No,' Mac said. ‘They got scared and ran off. Two boys about your age, George. Do you know anything about that? You heard something, perhaps?'

Karen was observing them both so keenly that Mac could almost imagine the pin coming down to fix him to the card. ‘What makes you think he knows anything?' she asked, a sharp edge of anxiety creeping into her voice.

‘I'm just asking,' Mac said. ‘Of course, the two incidents might not be linked, but it is a major coincidence if not. The same elderly lady targeted on two consecutive nights.'

‘George?' Karen sounded cautious now and Mac could almost imagine that she was slipping into lawyer mode. For a moment the three of them sat, frozen in expectation of something, anything, that George might say. Mac could hear the boy breathing, tight and tense and scared. A clock ticked somewhere out of sight. Ticked with a slightly uneven rhythm that jarred on the nerves and then the moment was lost, the mood broken as the door banged and Mrs Parker came in, a tea tray shivering in her nervous hands.