The Secrets Read online

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. So I see.’

  It would have been hard not to see. The tall house leant out slightly from the main group, its boarded windows giving it a derelict, abandoned look, quite at odds with the generally neat appearance of the rest of the Close.

  Mike parked a few houses away. There were kids playing football and others riding bikes. Some stopped their game to look at him as he got out. A couple recognized the sergeant and shouted to each other. Curtains twitched. At other windows people stared out openly, their faces interested, slightly guarded.

  Mike turned around, slowly taking in the entire prospect of Portland Close. The kids, the parents, the neat, ordinary, corporation-planned houses. Scraps of frontage separated most from the footpath, other doors, like the Pearsons’, opened straight onto the street.

  It was all deceptively normal. Deceptively calm.

  ‘Ready, sir?’ Sergeant Price was looking at him, eager to begin.

  Mike nodded and the two men crossed the empty bit of roadway over to the Pearson house.

  * * *

  Slowly, Mike paced the length of the room. It was a long room, running front to back for the length of the house and, somewhat unusually perhaps for a main living room, was on the first floor.

  There was little furniture. A rather battered-looking drop-leaf table stood beneath the back window, flanked on either side by two mismatched chairs.

  At the other end, again under the window, stood a low bookcase, crammed with books and papers. There were other shelves standing on either side of the window. Cheap, flatpack units, loaded down until they bowed under the weight of other books, piles of magazines and stacks of loose-leaf paper.

  The carpet looked surprisingly new. Corded fibres, already tending to attract and trap the dirt, carried in by so many pairs of feet. The track from the uncarpeted stairs to the space in the centre of the room, occupied by two green sofas and three, chrome-framed chairs, was clearly visible.

  The room had an unsettled look to it, as though the Pearsons were refugees on a short stopover rather than a large family trying to find some place to stay.

  Eric Pearson had escorted the two men upstairs, though he had been very reluctant at first even to let them through the door. Mike figured it had been his rank that had convinced him.

  Pearson stood, now, close to the entrance from the stairs, Johanna Pearson beside him. Mike was acutely aware that every aspect of his scrutiny of their living room was being just as avidly dissected by the Pearsons themselves.

  The Pearson children — or four of them, anyway — sat, also watching him, in a tight row on one of the green sofas. Mike tried to ignore them all and continued his silent examination of the room.

  It was the photographs, probably hundreds of them, plastered all over the two long walls that really got to him.

  Hardly family snapshots, these. Pictures of children, of passers-by, talking to each other and clearly ignorant that they were being consigned to film. People getting out of cars, carrying their weekly shopping into the house. Neighbours, just going about their daily business. There seemed to be no aspect of life in Portland Close that Eric Pearson hadn’t tracked. Much of it in close-sequence shots, as though taken on a motor drive.

  There was an eerie, unsettling quality to the images, particularly to those shots that Mike guessed had been taken from the back window of the Pearsons’ neighbours’ gardens.

  It was, if nothing else, a nasty, rather sordid, invasion of privacy.

  The dim light from the two, low-wattage bulbs, suspended unshaded from the ceiling, somehow added to the strangeness of the tableau. That, and the stillness of everyone in the room. Even Price seemed to have caught the mood. He had stationed himself against the opposite wall, standing very still, only the odd, side-to-side movement of his head betraying that he too was studying the photo images plastered chaotically over the living room wall.

  Unreal, Mike repeated to himself. The whole scene, even with himself as participant, seemed somehow staged. Part of a performance. Or like one of those odd modern art events. Installations, or whatever they were called, that Maria was so fond of dragging him off to.

  She would sure as hell appreciate this one.

  Abruptly, Mike turned away from the pictures, uncomfortably aware that at least a modicum of his distaste showed clearly on his face.

  ‘Aspirations towards photo-journalism, have you, Mr Pearson?’

  Eric Pearson frowned at him. ‘It’s my way of keeping an eye on the situation,’ he said, his voice sullen and suspicious.

  Mike nodded thoughtfully.

  Price butted in. ‘And what situation might that be, Mr Pearson?’ He didn’t wait for Pearson to answer, instead turned back to the nearest photographs, tapped one with his finger. ‘Here, for instance. Come over here, Mr Pearson, and tell me the story behind this one. Neighbours coming home with the shopping, it looks like to me.’ He paused and bent to peer more closely at the images. ‘My goodness, Mr Pearson, it seems they’re in the act of restocking their freezer!’

  Mike stifled the urge to smile. Pearson was clearly in no mood for Price’s brand of humour.

  Calmly, Mike repeated Price’s initial question. ‘And what situation might that be, Mr Pearson?’

  Pearson glared at him, his shoulders rigid with hostility.

  Mike took a step forward and said more gently. ‘Just what happened here last night? Broken windows, half the street turning out to watch, from what I’ve heard.’ He glanced over at the expectant faces of the children seated on the sofa. ‘Bet you were frightened, eh? Not a very nice thing to have happened, is it?’

  One of the older ones shook his head. Then, unexpectedly, his eyes lit with an odd excitement. He looked first at his father and then at the brother sitting next to him.

  ‘Oh, we’re used to it,’ he said, his voice betraying almost a kind of pride. ‘Paul and I, we took the garden hose upstairs and squirted them all out of the window.’ He laughed as though telling Mike about some huge joke. ‘You should have seen them running about, trying not to get wet.’

  His younger brother started to laugh with him. ‘We got them all wet. All soggy soaking wet,’ he said, his voice rapt with pleasure. ‘Running about like little ants.’ He began to run his fingers about all over his older brother. ‘Just like little ants.’

  Mike glanced across at their parents. Johanna Pearson’s face was totally impassive, unreadable in the dim, yellowish, light. Eric Pearson was smiling fondly at the two boys.

  ‘As you see,’ he said, ‘my children have learnt to deal with a great many things.’

  Mike looked at him more closely, not really understanding the almost gleeful satisfaction Pearson was displaying. The pleasure he seemed to be taking in the conflict.

  ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Why have they had to become used to these things, Mr Pearson? Mrs Pearson? Surely you would rather this wasn’t happening? Surely you can’t think that this is a good way for young children to have to live?’

  Mike waited, knowing that his comments had been deliberately provocative.

  Johanna Pearson looked directly at him for the first time. He held her gaze and took another step across the room. ‘Maybe, Mrs Pearson, if you could tell me what went wrong — what’s happening here — then we can find some way of sorting things out?’

  She continued to gaze at him, her eyes cold and very tired. ‘People often persecute those that they do not or cannot understand, Inspector. It is the way of things.’

  Mike shook his head. ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ The woman moved towards him, her gaze fixed and intent, mouth set in a firm, determined line. Dimly, Mike was aware of Price moving restlessly, unused to spending so much time in silence. Mike willed him not to speak.

  ‘Doesn’t it, Inspector?’ Johanna Pearson said again. ‘Then tell me how it’s meant to be. Tell me why everywhere we’ve tried to live for the last four years has been like this. Persecuted, trapped like animals in
a cage and with no help from anyone.’

  ‘I’m here to help now.’

  ‘Are you? Are you really, Detective Inspector Croft? Then you must be a very strange species of policeman. One of a kind, perhaps.’

  Mike shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Pearson, but I don’t know what you mean. I’m interested in getting to the —’

  ‘You’re interested in getting us off your hands, Inspector. Interested in discrediting my husband because of one alleged mistake he’s supposed to have made. Interested in passing the troublesome Pearson clan over to someone else. Make us someone else’s problem.’ She paused as though for breath and Mike felt Price move again. This time he willed him to speak, to break the spell this woman was weaving about them both, simply by the force of her pent-up anger.

  ‘I don’t think like that,’ he said, gently. ‘But this can’t go on, you must see that. These same problems, time and time again. It isn’t good for anyone; not you, not for those you’re living near, not your children.’ Especially not the children.

  Johanna Pearson turned on him then with a verbal fury that felt almost physical.

  ‘Not good for my children! Do you have any children, Inspector Croft? Do you pretend to know what’s good for mine? I’ll tell you what I want for my children. I want to see their father vindicated. See this systematic persecution stop and his reputation wiped clean. Let me tell you something, Inspector Croft. Very soon, very soon now the Fletcher appeal will take place and we’ll be there when it does. And when we come to court with all the evidence people like you — those like you who are supposed to care, care about truth and justice and standing up for what is right — have tried to stop us presenting. Have tried to frighten us into denying we have. We’ll be there, Inspector Croft, and if, in the meantime, my children have to suffer for what is right and just, then let it be so.’

  ‘That’s not the way I see it, Mrs Pearson,’ Mike told her, allowing a harder edge to creep into his voice. ‘If the CPS believes you’ve got something new to present in court then you’ll get your chance, the same as anyone else, to have your say. What I’m concerned with is the here and now. In what you have done to your neighbours and what your neighbours have done to you. And, yes, I’m concerned for your children and for all the other kids here on Portland Close who may get themselves caught up in the stone throwing and the name calling and the mindless, stupid violence that’s going on here.’

  Mike glanced sideways, as much to break visual contact with Johanna Pearson as to see what Price was doing. The sergeant was leaning against the photo-covered wall, arms folded across his chest, watching the exchange with interest. Mike half expected him to break into a paroxysm of ironic applause, just to put the cap on things. Seeing it that way brought an ironic twist of a smile to the corner of Mike’s mouth. This situation was getting dafter by the minute. He was a policeman, here to make enquiries. Not someone with all the time in the world to hop on to some ill-defined moral soapbox and exchange insults with a one-woman heckling committee.

  It seemed Johanna Pearson had no such qualms. No problem either with seeing her own concerns as part of a much bigger picture.

  ‘Stupid violence, is it? Is it stupid violence to defend one’s home? One’s family? Is it so unreasonable to prepare one’s children for what they may always have to face? They will always be outsiders, Inspector Croft, as we have always been. And it’s the likes of you that will make certain it remains so. You and the corrupt police state you are a part of.’

  She paused for the merest instant. Mike tried to cut in, but there was no space; she had taken her breath and moved on to her next tirade.

  ‘Yes, those like you, who protect the corrupt and truly evil. Do you think we don’t know who paid those vandals out there to do what they did? Do you think we don’t know exactly who it is makes trouble for us wherever we go and will always do so until they’re locked away where they belong?’

  ‘These are serious allegations . . .’ Mike managed, but his words didn’t even seem to penetrate.

  She was silent now, her face pale under the yellow light, features pinched with tension. She ran a hand through her short brown hair, ruffling it into spiky disarray and then, almost absently, reached out for her husband’s hand.

  ‘I think you’d better go now,’ Eric Pearson said. ‘I just want you to take these with you. It’s evidence.’

  Mike looked slightly puzzled. ‘Evidence of what, Mr Pearson?’ he asked.

  Eric Pearson’s expression was one of sheer exasperation. ‘I took photographs, Inspector Croft. Pictures of those who attacked our house.’ Impatiently, he tapped the covers of the two folders he was holding. ‘There’s all you need in there,’ he said. ‘You’ll give me a receipt, of course.’

  Mike looked at the two red folders, at Eric Pearson, at the children, silent now and still lined up on the old green sofa. The revulsion he felt was, he knew, completely irrational; completely unprofessional.

  ‘Give them to my sergeant,’ he said. Then he turned and walked swiftly down the stairs.

  Sergeant Price joined him in the car a few minutes later, settling back in the seat with a deep, heartfelt sigh.

  Mike had shifted gear and started off up the road before he spoke, still running the events through in his mind.

  ‘Well,’ he said, finally. ‘And what did we learn from that little lot?’

  Price was silent for a moment, then he grinned and looked at Mike.

  ‘Not to argue with a lady, sir?’ he suggested.

  Chapter Nine

  Tuesday afternoon

  The drive out to Embury’s place was always a pleasant one. Winding roads led out into the back of beyond and meeting a car coming the opposite way had real novelty value.

  John Tynan was still a little puzzled as to why his old friend had called him, asking for help.

  His relationship with the Reverend Embury went back a long way, to when Tynan was still on the force. It had diminished with time and with Embury’s move to another parish, into the kind of casual remembrance at Christmas that many such relationships become. Until almost a year ago, when the friendship had been renewed, largely because of something Mike had been working on.

  John turned off the road and on to the cart track that led to Embury’s cottage. The track was deeply rutted by the passage of heavy farm vehicles and the ruts had dried in the summer sun, becoming permanent obstructions to anything with normal-sized tyres and that didn’t happen to be four-wheel drive.

  Resignedly, John pulled on to the verge and got out of the car. Poor old thing. He nursed it carefully from one MOT to the next, but it really wasn’t up to the obstacles in Embury’s cart track.

  Embury had seen him coming and was waiting for him at the cottage door.

  ‘John! Come in, come in.’

  The front door opened straight onto the large kitchen. This had once been a foreman’s cottage, the kitchen large enough to accommodate the seasonal labourers who would have lodged there. A young man sat at the long, scrubbed-pine table, the remains of a meal still in front of him and a large mug of tea in his hand.

  ‘John, you’ve met Sam Pearson? No? Well, he’s one of the two who’re living here this year. Been farming out at Otbury, haven’t you, Sam? Started here about a month ago.’

  The young man smiled. He had a pleasant, open look to him, reddish hair and freckled skin and the kind of summer blue eyes that seem right with such colouring. He put the mug down and half rose, leaning across the table to shake John Tynan’s hand.

  ‘Glad to know you, Mr Tynan. The Rev’rend here’s been telling me about you.’

  John gave Embury an inquisitorial look. ‘Reverend’ was strictly a courtesy title these days. Embury had been retired for some years now, but old habits and local memories had a lot of staying power. John was willing to bet that his friend would go to his grave as Reverend Embury.

  ‘And what’s he been telling you?’ John asked. ‘Nothing too terrible, I hope?’

 
The young man smiled again and shook his head. He could do with a haircut, John thought, though it would be a shame to lose that mane of red curls.

  ‘Nothing but good things, Mr Tynan,’ he said. ‘Nothing but good.’ He reached out for the large brown pot and a stripy mug. ‘Sugar, is it, and milk as well? Best you put your own in, then. So you know it’s right.’

  John accepted the tea that Sam had poured for him and sat down opposite, guessing that whatever Embury had brought him out here for Sam was at the heart of it.

  The young man suddenly seemed ill at ease, unsure of what to ask, so John sipped at his mug of scalding tea and watched Sam’s large, rough-palmed hands as they pushed the dinner plate aside and shuffled the glass salt and pepper pots around in front of him, as he prepared to speak.

  When he did, it was a while before he came to the point.

  ‘The fact is, like, I wanted to ask a favour. No, I won’t take it bad if you say no, Mr Tynan, you don’t know me from Adam and don’t have reason to care less. But the Rev’rend, he says you might be able to help, and, well, you might not want to help. Not those that don’t deserve it. But they’re family, and if I didn’t least try and find them, well, I wouldn’t be doing my duty, now, would I?’

  He lifted his eyes from the cruet set at that point and looked Tynan straight in the eye, as though expecting instant help or refusal, and braced enough for both.

  John frowned thoughtfully and shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’

  The young man sighed and looked across at Embury for help. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘I never was too good at saying things. Doing things, yes. You give me something I can figure out with my hands and I can do it, but I never had much time to learn the right words.’

  Embury smiled at him. ‘You do all right, Sam’ he said. ‘We all have different ways of dealing with the world. Take John here, he was a fine policeman but I doubt he knows one end of a combine from the other.’ Sam looked uneasily at them, then nodded slowly. ‘The fact is, Mr Tynan, I want to find my family. Well, not my family exactly, but my dad’s family. They left where we all used to live about five year ago and we lost touch. Then my dad, well, he died about a year back and I didn’t know how to find his brother. Let him know.’ He hesitated, as though very reluctant to even talk about his lost uncle.