As Dan made his way through the rest home where his father lived, fresh from the confrontation with the man wielding the knife, anger had replaced shock.
An old trade unionist, his father had been one of the town’s fierier campaigners, until years of formulating battle plans in pubs had ended with a stroke and he’d been forced to give up independent living for a small apartment in residential care. It had its own kitchen and living room, more than just a bedroom and a toilet, but the place had rules and regulations and all the care assistants had free access. It confined him, made him angry, not that it took much.
That’s how Dan remembered him as a child, angry, spewing his views as the factories and mills closed down, all the time shouting at the television whenever Margaret Thatcher came on. By the time Dan had finished school, the coal mines had gone, as had the mills. The valleys were no longer shrouded in smoke and no one lost limbs like they used to, but Highford lost some of its soul and became just one more empty northern shell.
Those firebrand days were gone. His father passed his time drinking cider and watching television. Drinking beer aggravated his gout, so he’d discovered that cider was better somehow. He didn’t slow down. He changed his tipple.
The rest home was too warm, as always, Dan’s footsteps silenced by carpets that were thick and spongy as he passed residents who shuffled along, the peace broken only by the steady click of metal canes or the slow creak of walking frames.
Sometimes, Dan stopped to say hello. He represented people in court who saw people like these as targets, the one part of the job he hated the most, how his clients didn’t care what people had done before they became vulnerable. The wars they’d fought in or the families they’d raised counted for nothing for his clients. They were just someone to con or rob. Spending time with them eased his conscience.
But he wasn’t in the mood for it today. He ignored the passing resident as he knocked on his father’s door and waited for the buzz to let him in.
He thought for a moment about turning to leave, wondering why he’d come here. His relationship with his father was cordial but distant.
The loud electronic buzz ended his doubts and he went inside.
His father was watching a football game, some rerun from the night before. There was a glass filled with orange liquid next to him. He turned and gestured at the screen. ‘Don’t tell me the score.’
That made Dan smile. No big welcome. He held up the bag containing cider bottles, the usual admission price. ‘Usual place?’
‘As long as they can’t see them, the staff don’t mind.’
‘Except when you’ve had too much and you get angry over something.’
He waved his good hand in dismissal. His other was curled up like a claw and rested in his lap. ‘I’m calming down as I get older. What brings you here?’
‘Just passing.’
‘You always say that. You can admit you like to spend a bit of time with your old man,’ and he cackled. ‘In these mellow years, I’ve become all, what’s the word?’
‘Avuncular?’
‘You didn’t inherit your fancy words from me, but that sounds like it. Avuncular.’ His eyes narrowed as his smile faded. ‘What’s on your mind, son?’
Dan shook his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘You’re lying to me. I can see fear in your eyes, and I know that look. I’ve seen it so often with people who think they’re about to lose everything and not sure if they’ve got enough fight in them. What is it? Your business going wrong? A case?’
Dan wondered whether his father was the man to confide in about the threat with the knife, but as he thought about what to say he realised that he hadn’t ended up here by accident.
Once he’d hidden the cider, he sat down and asked, ‘Back in the old days, when there were still industries to save, what did you say to those who didn’t see the point in fighting?’
‘I told them that it’s not about the size of the fight, or whether you’ll win, but about how you’ll feel if you just give in and let them win.’
‘Whatever the risk?’
‘Exactly that. The people I used to stand alongside often had nothing to lose. The factories were going to close anyway, or the pay rises were never going to happen. During the miners’ strike, do you think we ever really thought we would win? Not a chance. But it meant we could look our children and grandchildren in the eye, when they had no future, no community, and say that we did our best. It’s always better to fight and lose than just accept the loss.’
Dan smiled. ‘I never took you for the homespun-wisdom type.’
‘Oh yes you did, because it’s why you come here. You’re bloody-minded, won’t admit a weakness. You get that from me, I suppose, but at least it means you can learn from my mistakes.’
‘And what mistakes have you made?’
‘I regret the fights I didn’t have more than the ones I did.’
‘What if it feels dangerous?’
‘When you win, those are the fights that feel the best of all.’
Dan stood and patted his father on his shoulder. ‘Thank you.’
‘Not staying for the game?’ He pointed at the television.
‘I know the score.’
His father winked. ‘Thanks for the cider. All I’ve got is my memories, and you. The least I can do is share what I have.’
That closed Dan’s throat and made him swallow.
He went for the door, needing to get outside. Just as he got there, his father shouted out, ‘Just be careful.’
Dan shouted back, ‘As always,’ before returning to the corridor, the warmth even more cloying than before.
Mayfield Avenue was a long street of red-brick semi-detached houses with bay windows and brick walls that protected small front gardens, roses round many of the porches. There were no cars on the street, the driveways wide enough to accommodate them, all safely behind gates. One side backed on to a street of identical houses, whereas the other had the rugby fields behind it, green and open, the white posts visible behind.
As she approached number fifteen, Jayne saw how it was different from the rest.
At the end of every driveway there was a garage. Some were in better condition than others, and some nothing more than dilapidated workshops. At the end of the driveway for number fifteen, however, there was open garden, the memory erased of whatever happened there more than twenty years earlier.
Jayne wasn’t convinced it had worked. Rather than scrubbing away the memory, it highlighted it, conspicuous by its absence.
There was no point knocking on the door of Rodney Walker’s old house. Jayne presumed that the owner had bought it after Rodney had been incarcerated, either unwittingly or at a knockdown price and prepared to overlook the past. It was the neighbours who would provide the answers.
She started at number seventeen.
A bright new porch had been built on the front. After a few seconds of pressing the bell, an old man with salt-and-pepper hair in a tight blue jumper appeared, his stomach protruding over his belt. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m here about next door,’ and she jabbed her finger towards Rodney’s old house.
‘Are they out? I can see their car.’
‘No. I mean the man who lived here twenty years ago.’
The man straightened and folded his arms. ‘What’s all the sudden interest?’
‘Do you mean the reporter, a few months ago?’
‘Aye. Some southern chap. Asking a lot of questions and upsetting people.’
‘Why upsetting them?’
‘Because he thought Rodney didn’t kill those kids.’
‘Really? That’s what he said?’
‘He tried to, but I told him straight, no more of that talk. One of those kids was killed in his damn garage. That reporter was just another fool looking for a headline.’
‘Did you know he was dead?’
‘Rodney? Good. Keeping him alive served nothing.’
‘No, the reporter. He was called Mark Roberts.’
The old man unfolded his arms and looked surprised. ‘Dead, how?’
‘Murdered.’
He shook his head, his anger melting, before stepping aside. ‘Come on in. Sorry for my rudeness.’
Jayne went past him and into a house that was too warm, ushered into a living room where the television was loud. A woman sat in a chair opposite, old and heavily built, a cardigan straining across her midriff. Her ankles were thick over her slippers and an empty mug rested against the chair arm.
‘Irene, this is,’ and he frowned, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘I’m Jayne.’ She sat down without waiting for the offer.
‘Are you a reporter too?’
‘No. I work for the law firm representing the man accused of Mark Roberts’s murder, so we’re trying to find out more about Mark. What he was doing here. What he’d found out.’
Irene looked away from the television. ‘Did you say murder?’
‘I’m Peter,’ the man said, and to Irene, ‘That reporter is dead. Murdered. You know, the one who came here a few months ago to ask about Rodney.’
As Irene gasped, Jayne asked, ‘How much did he tell you?’
It was Peter who spoke. ‘I didn’t give him chance. There was too much press back then, after those poor little kiddies were found, but at least people were reporting the right things.’
‘Which was?’
‘That Rodney was a murdering bastard.’ He held up his hand. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t swear in front of ladies, but it gets me angry. Now, there’s people like that reporter, God rest his soul, coming along and saying that Rodney didn’t do it, but it’s only to put their own name in lights. No one cares about the ones left behind. We see her, you know, the dead boy’s mother.’
‘Where?’
‘Just out and about. She hasn’t amounted to much, but how could she, with her little boy taken away like that?’
‘Do you know where she lives?’
‘On the South Meadow estate somewhere.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What about Rodney? What does he say? Is he campaigning for his release, because if he is, he’d better stay away from Brampton. This is a quiet town. A good town. Somewhere safe for people to bring up their children or come here to retire. They don’t need reminders, and they want to keep their children safe.’
‘I don’t know what Rodney is saying,’ Jayne said. ‘We’re just trying to find out why Mark Roberts was killed, because we don’t think our client had anything to do with it. And if he didn’t, someone else did.’
‘Come with me, young lady.’
Peter left the front room and walked down the hallway.
Irene rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t set him off. He’ll be up and down all night now. But you better follow him.’
Jayne went to the hallway. Peter was waiting in the kitchen, his hands on his hips. Jayne went towards him, dropping down a step into a long kitchen filled with white cupboards that had yellowed with age.
He pointed to a window that overlooked the driveway. ‘It’s gone now, the garage, but can you imagine what it was like to see it for all those years, knowing what Rodney did in there, before the new buyers had the sense to pull it down. I felt guilty too, that perhaps if I’d been more vigilant I could have stopped him.’ He stepped closer, his teeth bared. ‘How many more? That’s what the reporter should have looked for. Discover that number. That’s the real story.’
‘Are there more missing children from Brampton from around that time?’
‘Ask the police, but people like him don’t do it just twice.’
‘What sort of man was he?’
‘Does it matter? He seemed a quiet family man from the outside, but he killed two children. With men like that, I reckon you never truly know what drives them.’
As Jayne looked out of the window, at the solar lights twinkling where there had been once a structure, she wondered what the hell she was getting into.