A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [96]
Alfie and Molly had been charged jointly with the murder and were remanded in Brixton and Holloway prisons respectively. Mike was also in Brixton, charged with being an accessory. No one knew for certain where Dora was, but it was generally thought she had been placed in a mental institution. Dan really hoped that Alfie and Molly would be hanged, but he would always be ashamed of himself for not having done more to protect Angela.
The more Fifi told him about what had happened to her, the angrier he felt with himself. He knew the right thing was to let Fifi talk and talk about it until she’d got it out of her system, but he couldn’t bear to hear it.
‘You two ain’t havin’ much luck lately,’ Chas remarked, breaking Dan’s reverie.
‘You can say that again,’ Dan said with a weary sigh.
Just a few weeks ago in the first spell of hot weather, he could remember sitting up on some scaffolding, just like he and Chas were doing now, smoking a fag and basking in the sunshine. Down below was all the usual chaos of a building site, the churning of cement-mixers, clonking of scaffolding poles, buzz of saws, shouted banter between the men and the occasional wolf whistle when a pretty girl walked past the site. He thought that day that he was the man who had everything. A beautiful wife, a baby on the way, a job he loved, good mates, and he hoped he’d soon have enough money for a deposit on a house of their own.
Then he was attacked, and Fifi lost their baby. Then Angela’s death.
Now it looked as though their marriage was falling apart.
‘If I was you, mate, I’d slap ’er and pack ’er off to her mum’s for a while,’ Chas said with a chuckle. ‘You could come down the pub with us of an evening, pull a few birds, ’ave a laugh.’
Dan bristled. Chas often talked about slapping women and by his own admission he’d abandoned his wife and two children. He was older than Dan, in his mid-thirties, but with his Beatle-style haircut and seemingly innocent-looking blue eyes he looked far younger, and young girls made a beeline for him. ‘I’ve done all the bird-pulling I want to do,’ Dan said sharply. ‘And I’ve never slapped a woman in my life. I despise blokes that do.’
He got up then and went back to the bricklaying, leaving Chas staring at him open-mouthed.
As Dan carried on laying his bricks and mentally calculating how many Saturday afternoons he’d have to work to get the money they needed, Fifi was crying.
She had spent a lot of time crying in the past two weeks. Anything could start it. The frustration of not being able to use her right hand, brooding on something Dan had said or not said. That there was still no letter from her mother, and because she wanted to tell her family about what she was going through, but couldn’t. Sometimes she was afraid she was going mad.
Ray Charles’s ‘Take These Chains from My Heart’ was playing on the radio, and that’s just how she felt, as if she was chained. She might be able to get up and walk about, she could go out if she wanted to, but her mind was chained to this hideous business.
She could actually feel the suspicion, hate and fear in Dale Street. People who had always been gregarious were now scuttling by without so much as a hello or a smile. Those who had always lingered outside their doors gossiping hurried indoors now. Children had stopped playing in the street, and when the pub turned out at night there was no jovial laughter or loud goodbyes.
Malevolence wafted out from number 11, even though it lay empty. Police were still coming and going there, often carrying out boxes or bags which could possibly be evidence. Reporters came to the street frequently, searching for people who would talk to them. Then there were the sightseers, some even taking photographs of the house.
After two weeks there should have been signs that people were recovering from the shock, but the continuing unease and gloom left an impression that the neighbourhood had been permanently shattered.