Kiss in the Dark (18 page)

Also, she’s showing absolutely no reaction to my having handled that bit of pipe. As she meets my eyes, all I see in them is shame, and concern for Jase.

My instinct is telling me that Dawn wasn’t involved in her husband’s death.

“Did this use to be yours?” I hear myself demanding urgently, wrenching the necklace Jase gave me out from under the neckline of my sweater.

“Where did you get that?” she says, her eyes widening, the cigarette trembling in her hand.

“Jase gave it to me,” I say, looking at her closely. “He said he found it in your room but you didn’t take it with you when you left. So he thought you didn’t want it.”

“His father gave it to me, but there was something fishy about the whole thing. He told me not to show it round, to just wear it in private. And he never gave me presents at the best of times. I thought he’d nicked it, to be honest. Stolen goods. I didn’t want anything to do with it.”

I start to ask her another question, but tears are welling up in her eyes.

“I know I haven’t been much of a mother to Jase, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care. He’s everything to me. I gave birth to him, and though I’m sure you won’t believe me, I’d give my life for him, I swear!” she wails, wrapping her arms around herself protectively, the half-smoked cigarette falling to the concrete.

I must have been mad to think she could have killed anyone. This pathetic creature couldn’t harm a fly. I look at the white paint of the van, then down at my necklace, struggling desperately to put all the pieces together.

And then I take in what she’s just said, how much she loves Jase. I hear her sobs, and I believe her completely. There’s no deception about Dawn, no cunning plan to take me in. She simply wouldn’t be capable of it.

So if I believe her—which I do—she couldn’t have killed her husband. Because if Dawn saw Jase arrested for something she’d done, she wouldn’t be out here crying hysterically. She’d be marching into the police station to confess and clear his name.

My brain’s spinning so fast I actually clamp my hands to my skull, holding it still. I can’t cope with a single further thought or speculation right now.

All I know is that Dawn had nothing to do with her husband’s death. And I simply can’t believe she killed my parents, either.

Then who did?

God, no. No more. I turn away from Dawn and practically sprint toward the motorbike. If I don’t clear my head, I honestly think it will explode.

“LITTLE MISS NOSY”

The bike skids sideways across the parking lot and slides to a halt by the side of the Barnes cottage in a maneuver that would be incredibly impressive if I’d planned it. Actually, I misjudged how much room I’d need to brake, and twisted the handlebars in last-minute panic to avoid crashing into the cottage wall. I still can’t get the kickstand down the way Jase does it, with one thrust of his booted foot before he swings himself off the bike, but that must be because I’m not tall enough. When I try it I almost lose my balance and fall off the bike.

I clamber down and take off the helmet, propping it on the seat. I have to dash back to school briefly, which is really annoying, but it can’t be helped; there’s something I absolutely have to do. It barely takes ten minutes before I’m back at the cottage, walking up the steps, knocking on the front door with a steady rhythm that rattles the glass in the panes and doesn’t let up until I see Jase’s grandmother hobbling across the hallway. She does a double-take when she spots me, rearing back like a cobra, both hands planted on the top of her cane.

“I told you to stay away from us,” she snaps, loud enough for me to hear her through the door.

“Let me in,” I say firmly. It’s not a request but an order.

Right now I feel strong enough to kick the door down if she doesn’t open it. And she can hear it in my voice, which is why she reaches out and flicks the lock open. She turns around as I enter, and in her haste to walk away from me, she moves a lot faster than before, no hobbling at all. She’s an old faker, Jase’s grandma.

“What do you want?” she growls over her shoulder.

“I’ve just come from the police station,” I say. “Jase has been arrested for his father’s death. Because the jury found him guilty. You know that, right? You were there at the inquest. You must have heard everything. Including the part where they found fibers of his dad’s clothes in the wheelbarrow that was used to take his body to the lake.”

She lowers herself into an armchair with the help of her cane.

“My grandmother hired a solicitor for Jase,” I continue. “The police just advised me that Jase should tell them everything that happened the night his father died. No one believed the story he told at the inquest, that he and you went to bed and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

Her mouth tightens up like a drawstring purse.

“But I just don’t believe Jase had anything to do with his dad’s death.” I shove my hands into my pockets, fiddling with their contents. “Mainly because he wouldn’t have tried to cover it up if he had. Jase isn’t talking because he’s protecting someone. That seems really obvious to me.”

I have to admire her self-control; she still doesn’t say a word.

“I wondered whether it was his mother,” I say, and watch a small smile creep over her lips. “But then I realized it couldn’t be her. She loves Jase. There’s no way she’d stand by and see him arrested for something she did. She’s at the police station right now. Waiting to see him. Unlike you.”

I stare at her as hard as I can. “There’s only one other person who could have killed Mr. Barnes who Jase would protect. One other person who couldn’t move the body on their own and could pressure Jase to help them. You.”

Even now that I’m directly accusing her, she stays resolutely silent. Jase’s grandmother really is as tough as old boots.

“The marks on Mr. Barnes’s face, and his legs.” I point to her cane. “That’s what caused them, isn’t it? You hit him and he fell down and cracked his head.”

“How could I have done that?” she snaps, her eyes glittering in triumph. “My back’s locked up. I can’t even bend over to tie my own shoelaces! How could I have swiped Kevin on the legs? And even if I did, he’d just have got up and belted me. Maybe it was Jase! Did you think of that, Miss Clever Clogs? Maybe my grandson took my cane and hit his own father!”

She’s right. No way could she have hit stocky Kevin Barnes hard enough to be sure that he would fall and knock himself out, rather than getting up again full of rage. It would have been much too risky. I turn my head away, frustration surging within me. I was so sure I was right. There was no one else Jase could have been protecting.

And then my gaze falls on the rickety wooden staircase in the center of the cottage, and I have a blinding flash of inspiration.

“You did it when he was coming downstairs,” I say. “You stood in the hallway after he’d gone up to bed, and called him to come down. And when he did, you whacked him on the legs with your cane, and knocked him head over heels. He tried to fend you off, but you kept on hitting him. It was late and he’d had a lot to drink. He wouldn’t have been able to keep his balance. What did you do, hit him till he fell downstairs and broke his neck?”

She stares at me with such malevolence that I’m very glad she’s not fifty years younger. I think if she were, I’d be fighting for my life right now.

“You’ve got more than one cane, I imagine,” I say. “Jase fed the one you used through the wood chipper, didn’t he? Because it had his father’s blood on it.”

“You Wakefields,” she says bitterly. “Kings and queens of the castle, coming in here and turning everyone else’s lives upside down. You think you know it all, don’t you? Well, you don’t!”

“I’m right, though, aren’t I?” I challenge her.

“All right,” she hisses. “I did it! I knocked my own son downstairs. And when Jase came home, I got him to carry Kevin outside and make it look like an accident.” She snorts. “He made a right mess of that, didn’t he? Make you happy, does it, Little Miss Nosy, now you’ve worked it all out? Kevin was a nasty, nasty drunk, and he was getting worse. He’d say all kinds of things when he was on the whisky, talk about things better left dead and buried. And he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him to keep his mouth shut.” Her hands, on the top of her cane, clench tight as claws. “It was all very well for him, but this is the only home I’ve got. He wasn’t going to bring me down with him and get us kicked out of here. No one’s going to put me in an old people’s home. I came here as a young bride and I’ll leave here in a coffin.”

I furrow my brow, desperately trying to work out the deeper meaning of this confession. It’s like she’s talking in code, and it’s the most important thing in the world for me to be able to crack it.

“My grandmother,” I say slowly. “She’s the only person who could make you leave.”

“Pulling all the strings,” she says sourly. “Snapping her fingers and making everyone dance to her tune.”

Just what she’d like to do, I realize. She’d love to have the power my grandmother has, and she’s eaten up with jealousy because she doesn’t.

“But why would she kick you out of here, after all these years?” I ask, baffled. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m not saying another word,” she says defiantly. “Not another word.”

“But you have to!” I stride across the room and bend over her, close enough to be aware of her old-lady smell: mothballs and lavender-scented talcum powder. “You have to tell the police that it was you! That Jase is covering up for you!”

She shrugs defiantly. And the eyes that gleam up at me through her wire-rimmed glasses are triumphant.

“I don’t have to tell those coppers anything,” she says, almost conversationally. “Jason will just have to take care of himself.”

She thinks she’s won. She thinks she’s got away with murder, and let her own grandson take the blame for it.

“No good comes of mixing the races,” she mutters. “He looks more like that mother of his than any child of mine.”

She’s a horrible, awful old woman. I don’t want to be cooped up in here with her for another second. I don’t know how Jase has borne it all these years.

“And besides, this is all your fault, Scarlett Wakefield,” she adds nastily. “It was when Jason started running after you that he and his dad really started going at each other hammer and tongs. Kevin was jealous because his son was getting what he couldn’t.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” I’m even more baffled.

“He saw you and Jason and he couldn’t bear it. All those years, thinking about what might have happened if things had gone the way he wanted. And then his son mooning after the heir to Wakefield, the two of you all hearts and flowers. Made him sick to his stomach.”

“You mean my mother?” I say, my hand rising to touch the necklace that was once hers. “Did he give this to my mother—this necklace?”

Jase’s grandmother doesn’t answer me. She just smiles evilly, looking at the necklace, clearly recognizing it but refusing to comment. It’s all too obvious that she’s deliberately made those references to my mother and Jase’s father, thrown the cat among the pigeons to upset me as much as she can.

Focus on what’s most important right now, I tell myself firmly. Saving Jase from the police. She’s trying to distract you from what you came here to do. Don’t let her get away with it.

I take a deep breath.

“You’re going to ring the police right now and confess,” I tell her. “And I’m going to watch you do it.”

She laughs in my face.

“Oh, I am, am I?” she says sarcastically. “And who’s going to make me? You and whose army?”

I still can’t believe she’s going to let Jase go to prison for something she did. As I stare at her incredulously, she adds:

“What if I made you promise you’d never see him again? Would you agree to that, Miss Scarlett Wakefield?” Her eyes narrow at me. “Would you give him up if I told you it was the only way to get me to confess?”

I shake my head. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then you don’t really love him, do you! Banging on to me about that silly mare Dawn and how much she loves him and all the rest of it!” She’s enjoying this so much she thumps her cane on the floor in emphatic amusement. “If you loved him, you’d jump at the chance to clear his name, wouldn’t you? Whatever you had to do!”

“But I don’t have to,” I say. “I’ve got your confession already.”

And out of my jacket pocket I pull the mobile phone that I retrieved from my locker. When I was fiddling in my pockets, I was turning the video mode on. It’s been recording ever since.

Jase’s grandmother stares at it blankly, and I realize that she knows practically nothing about modern technology. So I stop the recording, save it, and click the Play button. There’s no video on the screen, of course, it’s just black: nothing to see inside my jacket pocket. But the sound quality is really good. We listen to the conversation, hypnotized by the sound of our own voices, the gravity of what we’re saying. We both hear her admit:

“All right. I did it! I knocked my own son downstairs. And when Jase came home, I got him to carry Kevin outside and make it look like an accident!”

“It would look a lot better if you ring the police and tell them yourself,” I say quietly, clicking the Stop button.

“You’ll regret this if you make me do it,” she says ominously. “I’m warning you, Miss Scarlett Wakefield. You’ll regret it. You think you’re doing your boyfriend a favor, don’t you? Believe me, you’re not. You’re causing him more trouble than you can even imagine.”

I know I should ignore her. I know I should. But I can’t.

“What do you mean?” I say, hating myself for asking the question.

Her laugh is the closest thing to a cackle that I’ve ever heard.

“You’ll find out. And you won’t like it, believe me. If you make me tell the coppers what I did, it’ll all come down on your own head in the end. You’ll regret ever starting this with me. Oh yes, you will!”

She raises a hand and points at me malevolently.

“You just leave well alone. Jase won’t be in that much trouble, not when I tell the court how his dad used to go after him with a belt. Everyone in Wakefield knows what Kevin was like. He’ll just get a slap on the wrist, that’s all.”

“No!” I say furiously. I have to think about Jase rather than myself. I have to pretend her threats are meaningless to me. “He’ll be convicted. He’ll go to prison. He’ll have a record for the rest of his life. I don’t care what you say, I won’t let that happen to him! You ring the police right now and tell them what really happened, or I’ll go to the station and play them this.”

I brandish the phone at her furiously. She meets my eyes, and I can see she knows I won’t be swayed by anything she might say. With a long sigh, she heaves herself to her feet and hobbles theatrically across the room to the phone. I watch her as she picks up the handset, dials 999, and asks for the police when the operator responds.

“Put me through to the Wakefield police station,” she says heavily. “I’ve got something I need to get off my chest.”

I haven’t even heard a car pull up outside; I’ve been so absorbed with the tension of this conversation with Jase’s grandmother. It’s a complete shock when the door swings open and I see Jase walk in, his solicitor just behind him.

He looks from me to his grandmother, his jaw dropping. I hold up a hand to tell him to keep quiet as his grandmother says:

“It’s Dorothy Barnes here. Kevin Barnes’s mum. I want to confess to killing my son, though I was just protecting myself. He came for me that night and I hit him off to keep him away from me, and he fell downstairs and broke his sorry drunken neck. I got Jase to put him outside, but that’s all he did, and that’s the truth.”

Jase’s eyes are wide as saucers.