For the first time in their acquaintance, Jude turned a look of reproof on her neighbour. They were going too fast. Maggie Kent didn’t look like a woman who’d crumple in the face of bullying. They needed to play her very carefully if they were going to get anything out of her.
Maggie was silent for a moment. The women on the sofa watched her, each afraid that Carole had blown it.
Eventually she spoke. Her voice was quiet and measured. It was costing her a lot to achieve, but she was in control. “Are you suggesting that my son had anything to do with Aaron Spalding’s death?”
“No,” Jude hastened to assure her. “Certainly not. Whatever happened to Aaron happened on the Tuesday night. We’re concerned about events on the Monday.”
“Why? Why are you concerned about them?”
Carole took this on. “Because I have reason to believe that a crime was committed that night.”
Anger blazed in Maggie Kent’s eyes. “And you think Nick did it?”
“No. I’m not quite sure what the crime was and I certainly have no idea at this point who did it. We’re just trying to piece together the events of Monday night.” There was a silence, before Carole went on, “I’ve spoken to the police about this, but they seem unwilling to take me seriously.”
“Oh? So your aim is not to turn all your information over to the police?”
“No. Not until we know precisely what happened and have a completely watertight case. I’m not going to be treated like a hysterical woman a second time.”
“Hm…” Maggie Kent nodded, taking in what she’d been told. Something Carole had said had relaxed her. The tension across her shoulders had lessened. She moved restlessly over towards the window and looked out into the November coldness. Then, seeming to reach a decision, she turned back and lowered herself into an armchair.
“All right.” There was a new complicity in her voice. “I want to know what happened on Monday night at least as much as you do. But tell me first how you know Nick was involved. Were there witnesses?”
Jude shook her head. “Not so far as we know. It was guesswork and a bit of luck, really. I’d had coffee with Barbara Turnbull and she’d been complaining about how her cleaning lady couldn’t come in because of some problem with her son. I just made the connection.”
Maggie Kent’s lip curled. “And I bet the lovely Barbara was really sympathetic about the situation?”
“From your tone, I don’t get the feeling I need to answer that.”
“No. I hope she’s not a great friend of yours…In fact, I don’t much care if she is a great friend of yours. So far as I’m concerned, Barbara Turnbull is 100 per cent British cow.”
Carole had expected Jude to agree with this and was surprised to hear only a demure, “I don’t really know her that well.”
“Right. Fine. Well, I’ve been working for her for seven or eight months and I do know her – quite well enough. I wouldn’t put up with her patronizing poison if I had any alternative.”
“Aren’t there many jobs round here?” asked Jude innocently.
“Not many that don’t involve travelling. I don’t have transport these days. And I don’t want to take on anything full-time yet. I still feel I should be around for Nick…you know, when he comes home from school.” She bit her lip. “Not that it seems my being around for him is doing that much good.”
“Adolescence has always been pretty much purgatory.”
Not for the first time, Carole was struck by Jude’s instinctive ability to get on someone’s wavelength and say exactly the right thing. Maggie Kent nodded, coaxed into confidences. “Yes, and he lost his father at a very difficult time.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that – ”
“Oh, I didn’t mean ‘lost’ in that sense. Nick’s father’s still alive – at least, I assume he is, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary – but for all the use he is to his son – or to me, come to that – he might as well be dead.” She sighed, before launching into a potted history she’d delivered many times before. “Sam – that’s my husband – lost his job about three years ago. He worked in the printing industry – managerial job, good salary, all the accessories that go with a nice middle–class lifestyle. House in a desirable part of Fethering, two cars, son at private school, little wife needn’t go out to work – all sorted. Then suddenly there’s a takeover. Big German conglomerate buys up Sam’s company and there’s major reorganization, restructuring, redeployment, and all those other words beginning with ‘re” – which mean basically that people lose jobs. And Sam’s out with a year’s money.
“He wasn’t good at being out of work. Sam was always one of those men who felt defined by his job. That was his status, his sense of identity. Take it away and – as I discovered – there wasn’t a lot else there. At first Sam just pretended it hadn’t happened, made no changes to the way we lived our lives, kept Nick on at the private school, all that. He seemed to think something was going to happen, some
“Well – surprise, surprise – that didn’t happen. Sam realized rather belatedly that, unless he did something about it, nothing would happen. So he applied for a few jobs, but he wasn’t good at selling himself. His confidence was so shot to pieces by then, he was going into interviews virtually telling them that he wasn’t what they were looking for. Which – all too readily – they believed.
“From then on, it just got worse. The money ran out, Sam started drinking and, to make things even worse, he got into drugs. Cannabis at first – “to dull the pain’, he kept saying – but pretty soon he was on to the hard stuff. Heroin. Under those circumstances, the marriage didn’t stand a chance. Rows over money, rows about…about anything. Soon we stopped bothering with subjects to have rows about, we just cut straight to the row.
“And then my dear husband walked out. In about eighteen months Sam’d gone from executive to dosser. I don’t know where he is now. Living rough somewhere, I imagine. I wouldn’t dare look too closely in shop doorways along the Strand or on street corners in Brighton, in case I recognized my husband…assuming of course that I ever went to London or Brighton, and didn’t spend all my time incarcerated in bloody Fethering!”
Gently, Jude eased the conversation on. “And you say all this had a bad effect on Nick?”
“Of course it did. Devastating. For a start, he’d always worshipped his father, and suddenly there’s this pathetic wreck around the house all the time. And Mum and Dad, who’d always seemed to get on so well, stop getting on well at all. And all Nick’s friends are going off on expensive holidays and we can’t afford to. And then one day there’s not even a pathetic wreck round the house. His father’s upped and gone.”
“And he hasn’t been back since?”
“Not while Nick’s been around, no. Sam did come back here a few times the first few weeks, but it was only to try and get money off me. Steal money from me if I wasn’t here. He took virtually everything in the house that had any value and sold it off to feed his heroin habit. Even took his passport one time – no doubt he managed to get a few quid for that from illegal-immigrant racketeers. He’s just gone.” Maggie Kent let out a defeated sigh. “When he started going downhill, I felt dreadful, kept thinking I could save him from himself, that I should save him from himself. Now, I haven’t got the energy even to think about him. So far as I’m concerned, Sam no longer exists.”
“But Nick must’ve been in an awful state when his father left,” Jude persisted gently.
“Oh yes, it was terrible for him. And Sam’s departure coincided with running out of money for the school fees, so suddenly Nick’s changing schools. I’m not saying anything against state education…well, yes, I am, actually. You grow up middle class and your mind rides along certain tracks for so long that it’s almost impossible to derail it. Nick was much better taught at his private school than he is now, and he mixed with a much less damaging bunch of kids than he does now. There, I’ve said it! Deeply politically incorrect and I don’t give a damn!”
The outburst had exhausted her further. Maggie Kent sagged in her chair, the anger drained out of her.
“I don’t know. I suppose I should move out of here – I’ll have to move out of here soon, anyway, the building society will see to that – and buy a little flat somewhere cheaper, and get Nick back into a decent school for his A- levels and…” She sighed. “But I seem to lack the will. I keep thinking something’ll happen, to sort out this whole bloody mess. Maybe I’m not so different from Sam, after all.” She slumped back, defeated.
“So, going back to Monday night,” Jude prompted tentatively, “what time did Nick get home?”
“I don’t know exactly. Not that late – one, two, I suppose. I was aware of him coming in, but I didn’t see him. Quite honestly, I get so sick of all the rows about the time he comes in that if I can duck one I do.
“But he went out again early the next morning and it was what happened then that really affected him. The phone rang when I was hardly awake. Someone wanted to speak to Nick. Young voice, one of his mates I assumed,
