Inseparable Bond (26 page)

They
discovered what appeared to be blood on the underside of the white
suitcase. Removing the Persian carpet, it revealed congealed blood
stains covering almost half of the rug. They contacted the police
immediately.

Forensics was
called in, soon revealing the same blood type as the victims. The
vicar’s death now looked suspicious as they conducted a full
forensic examination of the house.

Further
evidence was found to suggest a struggle had taken place prior to
his fall down the stairs. An autopsy revealed that his facial
injuries were not a result of him falling down the stairs,
bloodstains had been found on the landing. The cause of death was
immediately changed from accidental to that of murder.

House-to-house
enquiries were made in the immediate surrounding areas, which
proved fruitless. Jennifer’s house was not considered close enough
to be in a position of witnessing any recent untoward activity at
the vicarage but she had been a good friend of the vicar and one of
the last to see him alive. She could possibly be helpful with their
inquiries.

The police
were also keen to speak to John Bell. They were aware of his
criminal past and had been issued with a report on his discharge
from the hostel.

They arrived
as Jennifer and John had just sat down for breakfast. Jennifer
showed them into the sitting room and offered them tea, they
refused. One detective sat on the sofa, the other walked around the
room as they asked her a few questions, satisfied that she could
not help them with their investigation.

They asked to
speak to John Bell, allowing Jennifer to be present throughout
their questioning.

‘Can you tell
us where you were between 3 o’clock and 6 o’clock last Saturday,
John?’ the detective asked him.

‘I was here at
home all afternoon,’ he replied. His hands were moist and shaking,
he felt perspiration under his armpits and seeping across his
brow.

‘Can anyone
verify that, John?’ he asked, his eyes looking up at his sweating
brow.

‘Yes, my
sister Jennifer was here all the time,’ he replied, looking over at
Jennifer sitting in the upholstered wing chair.

‘Yes, he was
in his room all afternoon,’ she replied.

The detective
continued. ‘Did you actually see him in his room, Mrs Bellamy?’ he
asked.

‘Oh yes, I
took him a cup of tea and he also had a bath,’ she replied, wiping
her eyes with a tissue.

Nervousness
constricted John’s throat, he swallowed quickly, several times.

The other
detective came over, he bent down and put his face close to John’s.
‘And did you leave the house at any time during those hours?’ he
asked him, his heavy breath making his eyes blink.

‘No, I was
here all afternoon, I’ve just told you that,’ he replied.

Jennifer
pointed to the door saying, ‘If he had left the house I would have
seen him on the stairs, I was sitting in that chair all afternoon
with the door open,’ she said.

‘O.K. Mrs
Bellamy, we’ll leave it there for now but we may need to speak to
John again.’

‘Don’t go too
far, will you?’ the detective said, as he stood up.

John remained
in his chair as Jennifer took the detectives to the front door;
they spoke privately to her before leaving.

She didn’t
return to the sitting room. She went to the kitchen and closed the
door.

John remained
in his chair for a few minutes. He wiped his forehead with a used
tissue Jennifer had left on the table.

Jennifer was
sobbing at the kitchen table as he opened the door.

‘Please leave
me alone, dear,’ she said, holding her head in her hands as she
gazed out of the window.

He slowly
closed the door and went back to his bedroom. His heart raced as he
lay on his bed. He heard the front door close and went to the
widow. He watched Jennifer walked down the drive onto the avenue;
she turned right towards the sea, walking briskly with her head
down.

He pounded his
bedroom. He felt uncomfortable with Jennifer’s current attitude and
the police questioning. He thought of the happy times he and
Jennifer had enjoyed, the relaxed family atmosphere and the bonding
they shared before the vicar entered her life. ‘That fucking bible
basher has ruined everything,’ he shouted to himself.

Jennifer
returned about an hour later. John heard her moving around the
kitchen. A good smell came along the corridor, giving him an
appetite.

He went
downstairs and sat at the kitchen table, she was peeling potatoes
in the sink, and a frying pan on the cooker was producing a strong
odour of fried onions.

Jennifer
turned to face John. ‘I’m sorry, dear, its been a terrible week,
first it was Norman’s accident, then they say it was murder and now
the police visiting the house, when will it all end?’ she said,
turning back towards the sink.

John didn’t
answer, he couldn’t answer.

The liver,
onions and mashed potato was good. Jennifer remained silent
throughout supper, staring at the food while she circled her fork
in the mash, eating very little.

She picked up
her plate, scraping the uneaten food in the bin. She walked into
the sitting room and closed the door behind her.

John finished
his meal, washed the dishes and went upstairs to the bathroom. The
bath water was hot. He leaned his head against the plastic pillow
and inhaled the steam in deep breaths. Lemon and camomile from an
expensive glass bottle on the side of the bath, Jennifer’s
favourite. She had good taste but little money.

He was reading
a photographic magazine he had taken from his impressive collection
which he kept hidden in his bedroom. He flicked through the pages
containing pictures of young naked boys. While holding the magazine
in one hand, he fondled himself with the other.

The magazine
fell in the water. He quickly pulled it out again. Some of the
pages had stuck together. He angrily threw it in the corner of the
room.

The water was
tepid now. He dried himself off on a fluffy white bath towel from
the pile in the floor standing rack.

He heard
Jennifer lock and bolt the front door. The hall light went out as
she climbed the stairs and went into her bedroom. John lay on his
bed gazing at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

He went
downstairs for his breakfast, Jennifer had already gone. The house
was silent. He quickly ate a bowl of cereal and walked to the tram
stop opposite the vicarage.

A uniformed
policeman stood by the garden gate and he could see silhouettes of
people in one of the front rooms. People in the queue were chatting
about the murder as they watched the house across the road.

He sat by the
window of the tram, joined by an obese woman with an equally obese
child. She wore a pink tracksuit with the remnants of her breakfast
spilt down the front; the mother wore a white tight fitting
shell-suit. Her cheeks were red and her breath smelt sour as she
pointed out of the window, talking to the child across John.

She irritated
him and the smell of her stale under arm sweat was
overpowering.

On arrival In
Blackpool, he went into a charity shop on King Street. He rooted
around books and videotapes in a box by the door, occasionally
looking up at the pictures hanging on the walls. He came across a
box of used underwear. He pulled out a pair of girl’s white
knickers and took them over to the well-dressed old lady behind the
small counter. He couldn’t really buy a pair of girl’s knickers in
his local charity shop without attracting attention, he was known
in those shops and thought it was best to be on the safe side. He
had been on the safe side all along with his perverted fetish.

He noticed the
car had gone when he returned home. The weather was bright but
cloudy, Jennifer only drove in good weather, he assumed she had
gone to the supermarket; he had noticed the shelves were looking
bare.

He went to his
bedroom, quickly taking the knickers out of his pocket to place in
the drawer with the others. The drawer had been tidied; his
underpants were neatly folded alongside the five pairs of various
coloured knickers.

He turned to
look at the bookshelf containing his collection of pornographic
videos. It had been tidied; books that had been piled on top of
each other in a rush were now put back in their rightful place. The
massive heap of newspapers by the wardrobe had disappeared, so had
the wastebasket. He looked around the room, it smelt aired and
clean, an odour of polish hung in the air and the curtains had been
taken down.

He felt his
adrenalin levels rising, his pulse raising and his breath
quickening as he frantically searched through the other drawers.
His bottle of amyl-nitrate had disappeared from the bedside table.
He ran downstairs and searched through the kitchen waste bin for
the little discarded bottle. He retrieved it along with the soggy
pornographic magazine he had left in the bathroom the previous
night.

His shirt was
sticking to his body with perspiration, he tried to breathe
slowly.

He grabbed a
Danish pastry from the glass plate and wolfed it in three fast
mouthfuls.

All the net
curtains had been taken down and washed. He looked through the
kitchen window; they were dripping off the line.

He closed his
eyes to think. He had always been so careful in hiding his deranged
fetish.

A dark blue
Volvo pulled up outside the house. John was watching through the
sitting room window. He didn’t pull back or try to hide. He stood
there watching the car door open. A man got out. He seemed to be
stiff and uncomfortable. He rubbed his face vigorously and then
tried to straighten his back as if he’d been driving all day. He
looked up at the house and approached the front door. The stranger
noticed John at the window and raised his hand to wave.

John went into
the hall and opened the front door before the man had time to ring
the bell. He was heavily built and looked tired. He carried a thin
brown briefcase.

‘I need to
speak with John Bell,’ the man asked.

‘I’m John,
come in,’ he said, as he closed the door behind him.

They went
through to the sitting room; the man sat on the sofa and opened his
briefcase. He was John’s new probation officer, appointed on his
predecessor’s retirement. The local police had contacted him as
part of their investigations into the death of the vicar.

‘Why are you
here?’ John asked.

‘It’s to do
with the murder of the vicar, terrible case.’ The officer said,
nodding slowly. ‘The investigation is very complex and we have to
follow all the leads we get from the police, mainly interviewing
all discharged offenders who live in the area,’ he said, his eyes
locked on to John.

John Bell
repeated what he had told the detectives, the probation officer was
reading his copy of the statement, occasionally looking up with his
camera eyes locking onto John.

The officer
put the forced smile back on his face as he replaced the statement
back in his briefcase.

‘That
satisfies me, John, I’ll be off now, I have others to see,’ he
said, as he pulled his large body away from the back of the
sofa.

John saw him
out, half waving to him as he climbed back into his Volvo.

John’s mouth
was dry with fear. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth and the
inside of his teeth. He went to the kitchen sink and filled a cup
with cold water. He bent over and drank greedily; it was cold on
his front teeth. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and went into the
back garden for fresh air.

He felt safe
in the garden. It was his place. The high wall gave him a sense of
security, probably due to the fact he had spent nearly half of his
life surrounded by one. He sat on the fallen tree stump looking up
to the sky.

Through a
break in the clouds he could see the vapour trail from a plane
heading north.

Jennifer had
still not returned. He went back into the sitting room and stood
looking at himself in the old flecked mirror. He ran his hand
through his hair, it smelt of smoke. John took a step back from the
mirror. The way the light fell made him look different. He found it
difficult to recognise himself in the flecked mirror. He face
looked thinner. He wondered whether he should put a tie on,
Jennifer always said ties were respectable.

It was a warm
morning, bright sunny and dry. John was clearing the rubbish from
the front garden which had accumulated over the winter months. A
rusty yellow skip had been positioned outside the house for the
mountain of twigs and branches which were scattered around the
garden.

With his arms
full of branches and rubbish, he dodged the people on the pavement.
Some were in a hurry; others ambled their way down to the promenade
aimlessly.

Jennifer
walked out of the house holding a mug of coffee in one hand, a
plate of biscuits in the other.

‘That looks so
much better, dear,’ she said, turning her head looking around the
garden.

The swelling
from he eyes had disappeared and she had fresh colour in her
cheeks, she looked radiant in a bright yellow dress as she sat on
the low wall watching, chatting to John as he worked. She smiled
encouragingly.

They had
barely exchanged a word since she had been told of the vicar’s
death; she now seemed to be getting back to her old self.

Once the
debris was cleared, he was able to put the garden in some sort of
order.

The
anticipation of summer was tangible. A of group of young boys raced
past the wall towards the sea with small surfboards under their
arms.

The population
of the town would soon increase tenfold and remain constant with
the amount of tourists that would visit during the summer
season.