Beck le Street Read online

  “What’s he saying?” Charlie could hear Devika in the background. Only Devika would have let her into the apartment, only Devika would have cracked open some wine because she knew Genesis was upset and only Devika would understand the decision Charlie made, whichever way it went.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  It wasn’t the reply Genesis wanted, but at the same time it was better than she’d expected.

  “Thanks … thanks.”

  Devika came back on the phone, he thought about telling her that his father had been arrested, then decided that it would be better to leave it for the time being. Somehow he didn’t think Devika was in the right frame of mind to take that type of information on board. So he told her he’d ring her in the morning.

  Charlie hung up the call and searched the room for a plug – his laptop needed recharging. There was one half hidden behind the small white dressing table, apart from the bed the only solid piece of furniture in the small room. There were a few trinkets and a dozen or so teenage magazines cluttering the surface, so Charlie placed them on the floor and set his laptop down in the centre of the dressing table. He plugged it in, tentatively, thinking this extra draw on the cottage’s power source might blow the whole circuit - but it was fine. Then he looked at the photos of Genesis Brown that he’d taken in the club. But he couldn’t concentrate. His mind was too much on his father. For the past sixteen years he’d rarely given him a fleeting thought and now he couldn’t get him out his mind. But it’s not everyday your father’s arrested for the murder of your mother.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jed Ashton had refused to say anything until his solicitor arrived. Jed had never met or even heard of Wilson Sabel of Kingman and Sabel, a small man, five three maximum and dressed in a dapper pin striped suit with extremely highly polished shoes. After a brief introduction and explanation about Banaszak, Jed didn’t care who he was, or where he’d come from, he was just keen to get this part of his life over.

  Jed related how he’d woken and was surprised to find Caroline was already up. Then he saw the message on the board, but he had no idea what it meant or that it had anything to do with Caroline. After all … it still might have nothing to do with her. He explained how he’d gone to bed first and had fallen asleep at about one that morning. At the time Caroline was still downstairs. But that wasn’t unusual. She often stayed up later than him.

  “Why?” asked Wood.

  “She was a late night person and I’m an early morning person. Simple as that,” Jed replied.

  “So for all you know she may never have come to bed?” was Wood’s follow up.

  Jed had to think. Could she have not come to bed? Could he have slept alone all night and not realised. There was no doubt it was a possibility.

  “When you went to bed, who else was in the pub?” Wood continued.

  Again Jed had to think. Nights behind the bar at The Black Dog all seemed to blur into one. Invariably there were stragglers, which evolved into lock-ins, but not every night. Who was there that night? He could remember a few of the people that were in earlier … regulars like Lucas Kenyon, Amos Mann and Tyler Samson he was pretty sure they were there, they hardly ever missed a night. Round about nine Cassie had come in with her son Georgie. She’d had a half of lager and Georgie had had a pint, which sixteen-year-old Georgie had been doing for the last couple of years. Jed always thought if they allowed their under age kid to drink that was down to them; it was no skin off his nose. And if the Government really wanted to do something about teenage drinking, then they should start handing out a few jail sentences - that would soon put a stop to it. But the truth of the matter was the Government no more wanted to stop kids drinking than they wanted to stop them smoking. The revenue stream was too important and also they didn’t want to piss off those big businesses. So Cassie and Georgie, the boy in the wheel chair were a fairly common sight in The Black Dog. But Jed conveniently left out what Georgie had been drinking. He could live without being dragged to court for licensing misdemeanours. Instead he mentioned how Cassie chalked up the scores for the dart players, asking Georgie to make the calculations as fast as he could. Over the years the boy had become real fast. You see … The Black Dog could almost be classed as an educational institution.

  “Apart from that crowd, anybody else …?” Wood persisted.

  “ A couple of tourists who were hoping we did B and B – we don’t. Barbara Bergin came in with her latest farm manager – don’t know his name. I asked him for his ID … make sure he was over eighteen. Barbara didn’t see the funny side of it.”

  “How old’s Barbara Bergin?”

  “Mid forties. Husband died of a heart attack … five or six years ago. He was older than her … probably knocking on sixty. Left her the farm, but she hasn’t got a bloody clue how to run it. So you get these farm managers … They don’t normally last long. She chews ‘em up and spits them out. Quite a girl our Barbara.”

  “Anybody else?

  “There was one other I can remember. Never seen her before. She must have been early thirties, short dark hair, smart … very smart, good looking woman …”

  “Can you remember what she was wearing?

  “A trouser suit – looked expensive. Actually was expensive … I went outside at one point …”

  “What for?” Wood was trying to leave no stone unturned.

  “Fresh air … that’s all.”

  “Go on.”

  “Parked in the car park was a convertible BMW … newish … must have been hers, none of our regulars can afford that type of motor.”

  “Did you find out who this woman was?”

  “When I went back in Caroline was chatting with her, but she’s the … she was the landlady, that’s what landladies do, chat to the punters. I never asked about her and she never told me about her. I assume she was someone just passing through.”

  The questioning continued in the same vein for two hours. Sabel occasionally interjected advising Jed on what he should or should not say. Then suddenly Wood terminated the interview announcing they would continue in the morning. Sabel tried to object about the need to keep his client in a cell over night, but Wood was adamant.

  Jed was placed in a holding cell in the police station. This was the first time he’d spent so much as a moment in any cell. He sat on the edge of the solid bed and stared at the graffiti on the wall in front of him. Scratched into the plaster he could make out the words: For a good time hire a hooker, for a long time hire my lawyer.

  Jed continued to stare at the words and started to laugh. A laugh that slowly turned into sobs. Jed sat there unable to hold back the tears.

  * * * * *

  Farrah called Charlie down from the bedroom because she’d made a stew. She apologised because it was a ‘scrabbled together meal.’ They ate in the kitchen diner, which was almost minimalistic in its design. There was very few personal items around and it was obvious to Charlie she spent very little time here. Her life was at The Black Dog. It was almost as if she didn’t have a past, or didn’t want one.

  To start with they talked about the village, how it had changed, or not changed, as Charlie was keen to point out. The Black Dog was the same, nothing new there, there were no new houses, stepping into Jenny Pearson’s shop was like stepping into a time warp, which inevitably brought them on to Kyle. What had happened to Kyle and why was he living in the cellar in The Black Dog? Farrah had an answer.

  “You know what he was like about your mum,” she stated.

  “I knew he was … attached to her.”

  “And you know why,” another statement from Farrah.

  “The business about him falling through the ice, you mean?”

  “Yeah … that.”

  Beck le Street was in a small valley and at the end of Strait Lane the river or Beck, which is what the locals called it, swep
t past the remains of an old corn mill, with its water wheel that was now well and truly defunct. During the summer days, kids would jump off the bridge and swim in the river and in the winter, on the occasions the river had iced over, the same kids dared each other to cross the treacherous temporary surface. Charlie had heard only one version of the story that involved Caroline and Kyle and he’d never decided whether he considered it to be true or not.

  “Were you there?” Charlie asked Farrah.

  “No. But Tyler was … he was there … So was Lucas and Amos …”

  “I bet they were.”

  “You need to give them a break Charlie. They’re not like you … they never had anything going for them, this is all they’ve ever known.”

  “That makes it okay for them to do what they did to Kyle.”

  “They didn’t do anything. They were playing a game.”

  “I heard they made him walk across the ice.”

  “Somebody dared him to …” corrected Farrah.

  “I heard Tyler Samson threatened him - if he didn’t walk the ice then he’d get a beating.”

  “That’s not true. They were playing dare.”

  “What … at eighteen?”

  “You know what lads are like. And they’d all done it … they’d all crossed the ice …”

  “Is that what they told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So we only have their word for it.”

  Farrah got up and put the kettle on. She liked Charlie, always had. But this was her home, this where she lived and Beck le Street was a close community where you defended your own. She knew the faults of Lucas and Amos, but they were locals and she watched their backs.

  “Those boys may be a lot of things, but they’re not liars. Tyler told Kyle he didn’t have to do it … but he did.”

  “They were older than Kyle … ten years older, they should have stopped him.”

  “They didn’t know the ice was going to crack. It hadn’t cracked for them. If they hadn’t been there he’d have drowned.”

  “I heard it was my mother.”

  “They were trying to fish him out when she arrived.”

  “But she was the one that went in … and actually rescued him … isn’t that right?”

  Farrah had to admit, as far as she knew, that was right. Everybody’s version of Caroline smashing through the ice at the edge of the river and wading in to actually physically pull out the eight-year-old boy were the same.

  “And it was her that gave him mouth to mouth …” continued Charlie.

  Farrah again nodded. The youths had not a clue between them about CPR, but Caroline, an ex-Girl Guide remembered the fundamentals of her life saving badge and came to Kyle’s rescue.

  “He’d have been dead if it hadn’t been for your mum … they all say that.”

  “Instead he’s just a bit slow.”

  “He’d been under the water too long … there was nothing anybody could do about the brain damage. Who told you what happened? You weren’t here … it was the winter after you left.”

  For a moment Charlie wondered if he should tell her, he didn’t know why he was reticent, he just was. Then he could think of no good reason why he shouldn’t.

  “I got a call from Cassie …Cassie … I think she just wanted to wish me a happy Christmas … She told me.”

  “Nobody blamed anybody … it was just one of those things. But Kyle was always told that Caroline saved his life. She became like some goddess to him, someone who was better than anyone. And I’ve got to say Caroline was good with him … I suppose because you hadn’t been gone long … Kyle became a substitute for you.”

  For some reason Charlie didn’t like the idea of his mother having a substitute and yet he knew he couldn’t really object. It was he that left, he that always kept his mother at arms length and his father even further away. His mother missed him … she missed him, but she never really ever said it. The times they spoke on the phone … she never said she missed him. Mind you he never said he missed her.

  “Doesn’t really explain why he was in the cellar.” Charlie’s voice was calm, there wasn’t a sign that he was having an emotional thought about his mother.

  “Could be all sorts of reasons. Caroline might not even have known he was there.”

  “Do you think this stabbing … that Tyler reported, do you think that’s anything to do with my mother’s death?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is your father had nothing to do with it.”

  “They were getting on alright?” It was almost a rhetorical question from Charlie, but Farrah’s hesitation made Charlie ask the question again, in different way.

  “I mean … had there been any problems … arguments?”

  “Things had been better,” admitted Farrah.

  “They were fighting then …”

  “Not fighting … arguing. No not even really arguing. There was tension.”

  “What about? What had happened?”

  “Not sure.”

  There was something about the way Farrah said this that made Charlie suspect she wasn’t being entirely truthful. And before Charlie had chance to delve further into his parents’ marital problems he was interrupted by the sound of a car horn being blown.

  Outside the cottage someone was blowing a car horn repeatedly. Charlie might have been used to the constant tooting of car horns in Central London, but here he knew this wasn’t normal. Here it clearly meant something was amiss. He followed Farrah out of the cottage.

  The night was pitch black, a Dylan Thomas type of night. Out in the street was a black pick-up truck with the words Le Street Mobile Motors on the side, but Tyler wasn’t driving it. It was his wife – Cassie, someone Charlie recognised immediately. Someone for some reason, he hadn’t expected to see, even though he’d mentioned her name just a few minutes previously. She didn’t see him - well not at first. She was concerned with the situation she had found herself in. She had blood on her clothes and was looking in the back of the pick-up. Farrah had realised straight away whatever was causing Cassie to summon her out of her home, was in the back of the truck. She looked over the side of the vehicle.

  “Jesus,” was all Farrah said.

  Charlie moved to Farrah’s side and immediately saw the reason for her reaction. There was the body of Kyle Pearson. His face was ashen white as if all his blood had been drained from him. His AC/DC tee shirt, grubby and torn, had large bloodstains all over it, but even so it was unclear whether he was dead or alive. Cassie was babbling.

  “I found him on the moors road … He was just lying there … I didn’t have my phone with me … Stupid I always have my phone … But I didn’t … and he wasn’t moving … So … I dragged him … managed to get him in the truck …” Charlie could see that Kyle was dead. He’d seen lots of dead bodies in mortuaries when he decided to do a project, which not unsurprisingly was about death. Great photographs that only real sickos wanted to buy and despite the popular assumption there weren’t that many sickos in the UK.

  “I think he’s dead,” Charlie said in almost a reverent tone.

  Cassie who was on the other side of the truck to him looked over to see who was speaking. She saw Charlie and for a moment her life stood still. She was staring at what might have been.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After ninety-six hours of questioning, the maximum time under the PACE Act that the police are allowed to question a suspect without charging them, Jed was set free.

  He was angry, angry that they even dared to accuse him, angry that they treated him like he was guilty and angry that his wife was dead and angry that nobody had allowed him to mourn.

  At the same time as Jed was being released on police bail, The Black Dog was being given the all clear – it was upgraded from a crime scene back to an ordinary pub – or downgraded, d
epending how you looked at it.

  Jed moved back in along with Charlie, who for some reason was finding it harder and harder to pull away from Beck le Street. Despite the deep-rooted feelings he had against his father, he was also angry on his behalf, something he hadn’t manage to express to Devika when he’d rung and told her about his father’s detention. Whatever feelings he projected to Devika, he couldn’t help feeling that Jed had just suffered the loss of his wife and DI Wood was treating him like public enemy number one. The police were out of order and Charlie felt helpless. He also felt as long as they were directing their energies in the direction of his father, then the possibility of catching the actual killer was growing more and more remote. And surprising himself he felt a twinge of what he had spent his life trying to avoid … he felt a sense of attachment. It wasn’t an attachment to a person; it was an attachment to a bedroom. A bedroom that wasn’t important. It had been spruced up since he’d last seen it. It was where he’d spent hours reading, playing and dreaming … but it wasn’t important – yet somehow it was.

  Downstairs Farrah took up her place behind the bar and the regulars returned, the first one being Old Atkinson. He ordered a pint of bitter and a whisky chaser, which he downed in record time. Old Atkinson had a personal rule – no drinking at home and as The Black Dog was the only pub in the village, it didn’t give him much flexibility. Ninety-six hours was probably the longest Old Atkinson had ever gone without a drink since he was eighteen. And then it was a self inflicted abstention when after a fight of honour in ‘The Field’ he felt he should keep a low profile until feelings subsided.

  Charlie had taken a walk through the village. He needed air and the pleasure of his own company. He was at the far end of the village, by the old school house, which had long been turned into a private dwelling, when he rang Devika and gave her the news.

  “They’ve let my dad go …”

  “That’s good.” Devika didn’t sound and wasn’t the least bit surprised. It was only what she had expected.