Neil White 3 Book Bundle

John laughed. ‘Hasn’t that always been the way?’

He turned to look back towards the house, and saw that it was hidden now. Two rabbits chased each other in the long grass on the other side of a low wall. The sun felt warm, the blush of early summer on his cheeks. It felt good, free and easy. John felt the same surge of happiness he had felt when he first arrived, the simple contentment of belonging.

The path followed the line of a wall and then reached the top of a small rise, where the view changed. He looked ahead and saw Oulton. The buildings in the centre were tight together, the grey stone rising higher than the others around, with tall windows and ornate facades, boasts of Victorian wealth long since gone. A disused railway line ran away from the town and down the hill, towards the towns in the valley, now part of the commuter spill over from Manchester, driving up the house prices and sending the locals further north.

The town fanned out like a flower, with the closed-in centre, and then the swirls and curves of the newer housing estates on the edges. The peace of the countryside was replaced by the sounds of lorries rumbling along the roads or straining up the steep hills.

‘There,’ Gemma said, and pointed. He looked and saw the corrugated metal roof and tarmac car park just below them, the first part of the town they reached. A supermarket.

‘We’re going shopping?’ John said, confused.

Gemma giggled. ‘Not exactly.’

They followed a path that was long and steep, curving down the side of the hill until it ended by a high wooden fence made up of strong horizontal laths with gaps in between, perfect for footholds.

Gemma turned to Dawn. ‘Have you got your bag ready?’

Dawn held up her rucksack.

‘Come on then,’ she said, and the two women scrambled over the fence, their long skirts riding high on their legs, Gemma’s bare, Dawn’s clad in torn black leggings.

John peered through the fence to the rear of the supermarket and saw large open doors, through which he could see high shelves of stock. A forklift truck lay dormant just inside.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Are you going to steal?’

Gemma turned around. ‘It’s not stealing,’ she said. ‘We are not taking things from inside the shop. They throw too much food away, even though there’s nothing wrong with it.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s crazy. I mean, we grow food to feed ourselves, but then throw it away because the fruit looks less fresh or the bread too hard. So we are taking it back, so that it does what it is meant to do. Bread, milk, cheese, butter, and jars and tins. Coffee, tea, cereal. It is all fine to be eaten, and so we should take it, because it is the right thing to do. It has been thrown away and so they don’t want it anymore. How can it be wrong?’

‘What does the shop say?’

‘This shop?’ Gemma said, and pointed. ‘Nothing. There is a bigger one a few miles down the road, and they spray the food blue so that we can’t take it. Where is the morality in that, that it is better to throw it away than allow people to eat?’ Then she grinned. ‘We come at night sometimes, because the security man lets us look without any problems. We know how to make him happy.’

John felt a bite of jealousy, and his eyes must have given him away, because Gemma said, ‘We get fed, he gets satisfied. What’s the problem? Except that he isn’t working this week, he’s away with his wife, so we have to do it this way.’

‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ John said, looking 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.’