The Valley of Longing 19

Jack brought his Land Rover to a stop at the side of the road. He watched in the rear - view mirror as the figure ran down the road towards him. He was not normally in the habit of stopping for people who waved him down at the bus stop, but on this occasion he recognised the person doing the waving. Even then he wouldn’t normally have stopped, but she looked so desperate and in need of help that he couldn’t simply drive on, without at least finding out what was up. ‘Thank God you stopped, Ker…’ Amy cut herself off when she realised that it wasn’t her brother in the Land Rover she had just flagged down. ‘Oh, sorry, Mr Wild, I thought you were Kerwin; I can’t imagine why, up close, the two of you are nothing alike.’ ‘That’s okay, Amy, I’ve got no problem with being mistaken for someone half my age,’ Jack said with a smile. ‘And given how difficult it can be to see through a windscreen on a moving car, it’s not really a surprise that you thought I was your brother - there are superficial similarities between us: height, build, hair colour. So, why were you flagging your brother down?’ ‘I was after a lift home,’ Amy said. ‘I missed the bus, and there’s ages till the next one. I thought my luck was in when I thought I saw Kerwin. IF I have to wait till the next bus. I’ll be late getting home, and late getting dinner ready, and dad’ll kill me.’ ‘You could still be lucky,’ Jack told her, noting the concern in the teen’s voice. ‘If you ask nicely.’ He grinned at the girl who had been helping him to tame the jungles that had once been gardens at the front and back of his house. Amy grinned back, ‘Please, can you give me a lift back to the farm, Mr Wild, I’d be really grateful,’ She said with what she hoped was a suitably coy look. ‘I’m sure you will be grateful, so yes, I will take you home, and it’s Jack. Remember,’ he said. ‘I’m not keen on being called Mr Wild, it makes me feel old.’ ‘Thanks.’ Amy threw her bag onto the floor in front of the passenger seat and then climbed up. ‘And for the record, you’re not old.’ Jack made no comment on that, instead he concentrated on pulling away from the kerb and re-joining the traffic. Despite it being a Sunday, that was no easy feat, for there seemed to be far more traffic on the road than was usual for an apparent day of rest. Fortunately, once he merged with the traffic heading past the bus stop he made good time, and was on his way out of town. The journey passed without conversation until they were on the road from town to Doring Draad. A wince from Jack as he pressed down on the clutch while shifting gears prompted Amy to break the silence. ‘Did Ollie do something to your foot when he attacked you last night?’ she asked, glancing down at the foot in question. ‘You know I was attacked?’ Jack asked in surprised. Amy nodded. ‘The whole village knew by about eight this morning. Everyone knew why he attacked you as well.’ ‘And why’s that?’ ‘Because Sergeant Mitchell thinks you killed Lynne and Lily.’ Amy told him. ‘Raped and killed them even. Ollie attacked Kerwin when he thought it was him who killed Lynne and Lily, but now he thinks it’s you because sergeant Mitchell arrested you yesterday, so he went after you. I know Ollie’s in hospital, that went round the village as well, but no-one’s said if you were hurt by Ollie and his moron friends.’ Jack was not pleased to hear that he was the subject of the Dorpie gossip. He suspected he had been previously, but then it would only have been idle gossip about who he was, what he had done or did for a living, and why he had moved there; now it concerned whether he was a murderer of teenage girls. While a part of him refused to care what a group of gossiping villagers thought of him, a more significant part was distressed by the thought that the community he had chosen to join was willing to believe him guilty of such nasty crimes. There was something else about the situation that bothered him. ‘If you know that I was arrested on suspicion of rape and murder, two counts no less, why on Earth did you get in the car with me?’ ‘Because Mitchell’s an idiot,’ Amy said, as though that was all the reason she could possibly need. ‘I know you didn’t kill Lynne or Lily, you didn’t rape them either.’ ‘What makes you think that?’ Jack asked. It wasn’t that he was not glad that Amy thought him innocent, it was just that he could not help wondering how she could be so certain, she knew him better than anyone else in the Dorpie because of the time she had spent working with him in his gardens, but that didn’t mean she knew him all that well. ‘Because you’re not that kind of person. You wouldn’t rape anyone.’ Amy showed absolutely no concern for the fact that she was in a vehicle with someone who had been accused of such an horrific crime, if anything she seemed amused, perhaps even thrilled by the situation. ‘Because, if you were going to rape anyone, it’d be me.’ Jack was so shocked by that, that he lost control momentarily; the steering wheel twitched in his hand and he had to straighten up quickly before the Land Rover left the road and ploughed straight into one of the many trees that lined the route to the Dorpie. Once he recovered, and was no longer in danger of crashing his car, he turned to look at the teen in the passenger seat. ‘Why’d you say that?’ he asked, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. ‘Because you fancy me. I know you do,’ Amy said when Jack opened his mouth to deny it. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at me when we’re working in the garden, especially when you think I’m not looking. You like to check out my butt when I’m in shorts or tight trousers. Don’t worry about it.’ She laid a reassuring hand on his arm, a mischievous smiled on her lips. ‘Why d’you think I wear shorts and tight jeans whenever I come round to work on you garden? I like when you check me out, it makes me feel good.’ Her hand stroked along his arm briefly before returning to her lap. ‘If I didn’t, I’d’ve told my dad, and he’d’ve come and sorted you out.’ Jack didn’t know how to respond to that; he could not deny that he had checked Amy out - as the teen had described it - not when she had made it so clear that she knew what he had been doing. She had said that she was not bothered by his checking her out, but that did not make him feel any better about the situation. To cover his discomfort, he turned on the radio, letting music fill the silence and drive away the urge to make idle conversation. The journey from town to Doring Draad took a little under an hour, and a few minutes longer to get from there to the Wright farm. Jack drove into the yard that fronted the farmhouse - there was no gate for him to get out and open, thanks to Ollie - swung the Land Rover around, and pulled up near to the front door. ‘Well, here you are,’ he said, glad to have the awkward journey over with. It was not that he had not enjoyed Amy’s company, but he was still uncomfortable after their conversation, which had made him painfully aware of every instance in which his eyes strayed to the teen at his side - why his gaze kept going so, he couldn’t explain, and no matter how hard he tried to stop it doing so, he couldn’t, it made no sense to him, she was attractive enough, for someone who was only sixteen, but hardly a stunning beauty. ‘Great, there’s still time for me to get dinner ready,’ Amy said, the relief she felt at that evident in her voice, ‘Thanks, you saved my life, dad would’ve gone nuts if dinner wasn’t ready on time; he only let me go to town because I said I’d be back in time to cook. I owe you big time.’ Jack turned his head to respond to that, and got as far as saying. ‘You don’t owe…’ before he was interrupted, not by Amy speaking, but by her lips on his. Before he had a chance to realise what he was doing. Jack found himself kissing Amy back. It was a quarter of a minute before he came to his senses and pushed her away with a feeling of regret and shame. ‘No, no, we shouldn’t be doing this, it’s wrong,’ he said. ‘No it’s not, why should it be wrong?’ Amy wanted to know. ‘You like me, and I like you, why shouldn’t we kiss each other if we want to?’ ‘Because it’s wrong,’ Jack said in a tone that was part apologetic and part regretful. ‘Even if sergeant Mitchell, and probably at least half the Dorpie, didn’t think me a rapist and a murderer, it wouldn’t be right - you’re only sixteen.’ ‘It’s the age of consent,’ Amy protested. ‘We’re not breaking the law by kissing. We wouldn’t be breaking the law no matter what we did.’ ‘That may be true.’ Jack could hardly deny it since he knew very well that it was true, even if it was something he didn’t want reminding of, since it was a fact that only served to confuse his thinking even more. ‘But it doesn’t really matter. Age of consent or not, you’re only sixteen, and I’m more than twice that. Can you imagine your father, or anyone else you know, being alright with you being involved, in any sense, with someone twice your age?’ ‘Who cares what anyone else thinks,’ Amy said, too caught up in the moment to worry about anything. ‘I do,’ Jack said. ‘Nothing bad’s likely to happen to you if something were to happen between us, but it almost certainly would to me. I’ve only met your father a couple of times, but I’m sure he’d be furious if he thought I was trying to take advantage of you, and having been attacked once already, I don’t want it to happen again. Not only that, but if I let something happen between us and my ex-wife found out, she’d be so happy she’d probably dance in the street with joy.’ ‘Why would she do that? What difference does it make to her what you do?’ Jack shrugged. ‘Not a lot really, at least it shouldn’t. Cathy’s interest in what I do or don’t do, extends only to how it affects her ability to keep me from seeing my daughter, and to get money from me, if she can do both at the same time, all the better as far as she’s concerned. Cathy would see something happening as a great way to stop me seeing my daughter, or at least to extort more money from me in exchange for not keeping me from seeing my daughter. ‘You’re a great person; attractive, funny, smart, and very handy around the garden, but I have to think about my daughter first, do you understand?’ He hoped she did; he didn’t like to think what might happen if she didn’t understand, or became resentful of what he had said. Amy regarded Jack for a short time before finally saying, ‘Your daughter’s lucky to have you,’ and getting out of the car so she could head for the front door. She was about half way there when she suddenly darted back across the yard to the Land Rover. Before Jack knew what was going on, Amy had jumped up and pulled herself through the open window of the driver’s door so she could kiss him. ‘Maybe next time I come round to help in your garden, I’ll dress like Lily, that’ll give you something to look at.’ Jack was so surprised by Amy’s actions that she was in the house, with the door closed, before he could recover, let alone react. Still dazed, he started the engine, shifted into gear, and left the yard so he could head back down the road to home. He spent every second, and more, of the sixty - second drive berating himself for what he had just allowed to happen. He could not believe he had been so stupid. Amy was over the age of consent, he knew that, but kissing her was still one of the stupidest things he had ever done - being a suspect in two rapes and murders, both of which involved young girls, only made his actions more stupid. Sergeant Mitchell was looking for any excuse to arrest him again, and he had just given the sergeant exactly what he needed - if Mitchell were to find out what had just occurred between him and Amy, he would be in handcuffs before he could utter a word in defence of his actions. His only consolation was that there had been no - one around to witness what had happened. He was so distracted by what had happened, and thinking about the possible consequences, that he didn’t realise there was a car parked in his drive until it was almost too late. Amy was on her bed, reading a book, one eye on the clock on her bedside cabinet so she wouldn’t be late putting the potatoes and carrots on, when she heard the vehicle pull into the yard outside. Pushing herself up, she craned her head around to look out the window to see who it was; it was too early for it to be her dad or her brother, they were unlikely to get home until just before dinner was ready to be served. The moment she saw the Land Rover in the yard, she leaped to her feet, pleased that Jack Wild had returned. As pleased as she was, she was also a little nervous. She knew she had caught Jack by surprise earlier, she had caught herself by surprise as well, to such an extent that she had forgotten to grab her bag when she got out of his car, and now she had had enough time to think about what she had done and realise what a fool she had made of herself. On her way out of the bedroom and down the stairs, Amy imagined the possible reasons for his return; he could be there simply to return her bag, or he could be there to make sure she was not going to tell anyone what had happened between them, he might even be there because he had changed his mind about what he had said earlier. She hesitated with her hand on the front door catch, a little reluctant to open the door and discover how her next encounter with Jack Wild was going to go. After almost half a minute had passed, she took a deep breath, summoned her courage, and opened the door so she could step out into the yard. Jack was nowhere to be seen. Amy had thought to find him outside the front door, about to ring the bell, but he wasn’t there. She looked around the yard but couldn’t see him, which made no sense to her; she couldn’t think where he might have gone. She walked to each corner of the house to see if he was there, for some reason, but there was no sign of him. Bewildered, she walked to where the Land Rover had been parked in the middle of the yard. She wasn’t normally the sort of person to go rummaging around in someone’s car without permission, it wasn’t polite, but on this occasion, she thought it okay since she was after her bag. He bag wasn’t where she had left it, though. It should have been in the foot - well in front of the passenger seat, but the foot well was empty; she leaned further into the vehicle so she could search under the passenger seat and found a number of items, none of which were her bag. The desire to find out more about the man who lived down the road, and with whom she had made such a fool of herself, made her take out each item in turn so she could examine it. She discovered little, other than that Jack Wild was messier than she had previously thought, at least initially, the first few items she pulled out were a road map of the country, an empty chips packet, ‘Fruit Chutney flavour;, a couple of chocolate wrappers, and a hammer - she had no idea why he had a hammer under the passenger seat, it seemed a strange thing for him to have there, but it wasn’t as strange as the next thing she pulled out, a pinkish - bluish mobile phone. For several long moment, Amy simply stared at the phone in her hand; the phone was familiar to her, she was sure she had seen it before, but she knew it wasn’t Jack’s. She couldn’t work out where it was she knew the phone from, and that annoyed her, because she was sure it was important; whose phone it was, and where she had seen it before, came back to her in a flash when the voice sounded from behind her. ‘What are you doing?’ The voice that uttered the question was curious, but evidenced no concern, until she turned around and its owner saw the phone in her hand. ‘Where did you get that? Give it to me,’ he demanded, holding out a hand insistently. In an instant Amy knew who had killed Lynne and Lily, and it was the last person she would have thought capable of murder. So great was her shock, she was left frozen to the spot, unable to react to her discovery expect by staring at him, unmoving. Only when he lunged at her, demanding. ‘Give me that phone, you nosey bitch,’ did she recover the ability to move. At the last second, right before his grasping hand closed around her wrist, Amy twisted away. She felt a small amount of satisfaction when his momentum carried him into the side of the Land Rover, which he collided with heavily, but didn’t allow that to stop her racing across the yard to the still open front door. Once she was through the door, she slammed it closed and, with fumbling fingers, dropped the catch; she didn’t suppose that was going to keep him outside for long, but any delay was good. When the front door, against which she was leaning, shook under the impact of something heavy, Amy left it and hurried up the stairs. Her fingers continued to show little willingness to properly obey the commands they were being given by her brain as she sought to unlock Lynne’s phone - she had seen it previously in the hands of her brother’s girlfriend, which was why she had found it familiar the moment she picked it up - and call her father. She was beginning to think the phone was dead, after all it was more than a week since it must have been lost, when the screen lit up; unfortunately, that was as far as she got for Lynne had her phone secured with a password. She was struck by inspiration as she closed the door to her bedroom with a bang and twisted the key in the old - fashioned lock. The relief she felt when Lynne’s birthday unlocked the phone was amazing, she had never felt anything so powerfully before. That relief quickly disappeared, however, when she got no answer from her father’s number. Again, and again she tried to get hold of her father, while she listened with one ear to the front door being smashed open, followed by the thunder of footsteps on their way up the stairs. ‘Come on, dad,’ Amy pleaded, the phone pressed to her ear so hard it was liable to stay there even after she let go of it. ‘Pickup, pickup, pickup. Where are you when I need you?’ When the thunderous footsteps reached the top of the stairs and stopped, only to be followed by a crash as something heavy slammed into the door of the bedroom, Amy abandoned her efforts to contact her father, and instead dialed the number for Doring Draad’s police station. She hoped, while dialing, that the solid, and old, oak door that she had always hated would prove to be strong enough to keep out Lynne and Lily’s killer, so far it had stood up to the job - it shook and shuddered within its frame, but remained secure. More than she feared being murdered, if it was possible for her to fear something more than that, she feared what he might do to her before he killed her. As she had told Jack on the drive back to the village, she knew what Sergeant Mitchell believed had been done to Lynne and Lily before they were killed. Until a few minutes ago, she would not have believed that someone she knew so well could be capable of either rape or murder, and she certainly would not have believed him capable of committing either act on her; having seen his face when he tried to get the phone from her, though, she found herself scared that he was prepared to do anything, to anyone, including her. Sturdy the door might be, sturdy enough it wasn’t. Once, twice, three times, he threw his body against the door, and on the fourth time it burst open in a shower of splinters that made Amy duck for fear of being struck. When she straightened up, she saw the menacing figure of the man she had cared about approaching her through the ruins of her door. His face was a twisted, barely recognisable, mask of rage that made her tremble so badly she could barely keep hold of the phone. ‘Gimme the phone,’ he demanded in a voice that was so harsh and full of hatred it combined with the look on his face to give him an air of insanity. Amy could only wonder how it was that she had not seen before how crazy he was. It Didn’t seem possible that he could have concealed what kind of person he was from her for so long; not only from her, but from everyone who knew him. Someone should have seen through the act he was putting on, she thought during the millisecond or so where she was able to think with some semblance of clarity. ‘I said gimme the fucking phone.’ Amy twisted away as he lunged for her and the phone she was holding. She tried to slip past him and out of the room, thinking that if she could get out of the house without getting caught, she stood a chance of making it to the village - once there she would be safe. The idea was good, but it failed at the first hurdle; she was caught before she could even get out of the room. She was almost at the door when she was brought up short by a sharp jerk on her top, the back of which had been grabbed by the killer she was trying to elude. ‘’Where the hell d’you think you’re going?’