towards the large open doors.
‘We’ll be fine. If we get caught, we’ll just smile and flirt, and no one really cares.’
John watched through the gaps in the fence as the two women scurried through the yard and clambered into a large blue skip. They were in there for just a couple of minutes, and then they scrambled back out again and ran across the yard. They threw their bags over the fence and clambered over to join him.
Gemma showed John the contents of her rucksack, and seemed pleased when he nodded his approval.
‘We will eat well today,’ he said.
Gemma set off walking back, Dawn more slowly again, quiet and still, and so John followed. The sun was on his face and his head was filled with bird whistles and the swish of the grass and Gemma’s giggles. And he felt it again. Happiness. It was the simplicity of it all. It was joyous, with no troubles, no worries, with just the scents of the fields and the pleasure of his companions to fill the day.
Gemma turned round to him and blew him a kiss. When he returned it, he was smiling, couldn’t stop himself, his heart skipping like a teenager.
He felt it at that moment. A certainty, a resolve that he had left his old life behind, and it felt good.
Chapter Twelve
Charlie walked quickly down the stairs from his office, popping a couple of mints into his mouth. He knew who he had seen outside and wanted to catch him up. The sight of the television people had reminded him of how big the Alice Kenyon story had become.
Billy Privett had been everyone’s favourite hate figure even before Alice Kenyon died. He’d got his money too easily and flaunted it too much. Billy knew that it got his face in the paper and so he played up to it. Once Alice died, face down in Billy’s pool, a horrible end to just another party, the publicity became less fun. It became about the questions he wouldn’t answer. Who had given her the drugs? Who had brutalised her sexually? Who else was there?
The good times for Billy waned after Alice died. No one knew if Billy had killed her, but everyone guessed that he had stopped the killer from being caught. The press highlighted every new thing he bought, every party he still held, as if he was mocking Alice’s death. Time passed though, and Alice would have been forgotten, except that her father, Ted, wouldn’t let that happen. He learned the lesson pretty quickly that the media can help if you harness it correctly. He became the victim’s champion, and campaigned about the right to silence, about drug laws being too relaxed, about an individual’s responsibility to help.
Except that by putting himself in the public glare, he became a target for the media. When Ted was caught in a car with a girl who looked younger than Alice had been, a blurred photograph showing them in an embrace, the public view turned from sympathy to dislike.
Ted was outside Charlie’s office, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, staring up at the office window.
The camera crew wasn’t ready yet. The reporter was adjusting his tie and checking his hair in the van mirror, and the cameraman was looking at the floor, waiting. Ted Kenyon had once been a good source for a quote, but it didn’t look like he had been spotted. Or more importantly, Ted seemed keen on keeping away from the lenses.
Charlie walked slowly towards him, looking for a sign that all wasn’t well. Ted knew that over the years Charlie had been Billy’s lawyer from time to time, and that Amelia had dealt with the fallout from his daughter’s death, but what was he doing outside his office? As Charlie got closer, Ted looked at him, a flicker to his eyelids showing that he had recognised him, and then he nodded a greeting.
Charlie popped another mint into his mouth before saying, ‘How are you, Mr Kenyon?’
Ted stared at Charlie for a few moments. Ted wasn’t tall, but the broadness of his shoulders and the faded cuts and nicks on his hands showed off his years in the building trade. He had built up a successful business, and the money it had brought in had given his daughter the confidence to think that she could leave Oulton and make something of herself. Until one night back in her hometown had brought it all to an end, and Ted Kenyon realised that although sheer determination could bring him the good things in life, it didn’t do much to keep away the horrors.
‘I’m not sure,’ Ted said, his voice quiet. He was smartly dressed, although Charlie had never seen him any other way, in trousers with a sharp crease and a V-neck jumper, a shirt and tie just visible. He was not even fifty, but everyone who knew him said that Alice’s death had aged him. Whatever energy he’d had left, he had channelled into Billy Privett. What would he do now?
‘So you know that Billy Privett has been killed?’ Charlie said.
He nodded. His jaw was clenched, and he was looking past Charlie, towards the office.
‘Is that why you’re down here, to give a quote?’ and Charlie pointed towards the television van.
Ted paused for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, not today.’
‘I don’t want any trouble, Mr Kenyon. I’m sorry for your daughter, I always have been, but I was just doing my job whenever I helped him. So was Amelia.’
His look darkened for a moment. ‘She did more than that.’
Charlie was confused for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’
‘People like you turn doing my job into an excuse, as if it makes everything all right,’ Ted said, his mouth set into a snarl. ‘It doesn’t though, does it?’
Charlie didn’t try and respond. He’d tried to justify his job to enough people in the past, but not many had agreed with him, that everyone deserves someone to speak up for them.
Ted looked up towards the office window. Charlie followed his gaze, and saw Amelia there, speaking into a telephone.
‘So what do you think about Billy dying?’ Charlie said.
‘Nothing will bring Alice back,’ Ted said, after thinking about the question for a few seconds. ‘I thought of myself as a tough man. It’s the way I was brought up, that it’s a tough world, and so you’ve got to be tough with it. Alice being murdered made me realise that I wasn’t as strong as I thought, and so I went with my feelings more, instead of trying to hide them. Now?’ and he shook his head. ‘I don’t feel anything. No pity, no sympathy, no anger. I know that it sounds cruel, because Billy was also someone’s child, but that is how I feel.’
‘People will understand,’ Charlie said. ‘Your daughter died.’
‘No, they won’t,’ he snapped. ‘I know what people think of me now. It’s not about Alice anymore.’
Charlie didn’t answer that. Don’t get frisky with girls barely out of their teens, was his thought, but he didn’t voice it.
‘Why have you come here, Mr Kenyon?’ Charlie said, and when Ted looked confused for a moment, he added, ‘Amelia’s office. Of all the places to come, you’ve chosen here.’
Ted paused, and then he said, ‘I was passing, that’s all.’
As he said that, Charlie saw a flash of Ted’s ordinariness for a moment. That was why his message
