Unsafe Convictions Read Free Page B

suffocate in her blazing house. Counting potatoes into the sink, she covered them with warm water, pulled on rubber gloves, and reached for the peeler. ‘You do realise I’ve known Barry Dugdale since he was in nappies, don’t you? And you must’ve been told I see a lot of Fred Jarvis. And Linda, of course.’ One peeled potato landed with a thud on the draining board. ‘Fred’s wife, Dorothy, was my best friend.’ She sighed. ‘She was a lovely young woman. Her dying the way she did was a tragedy. Linda was only eleven, and Trisha was just getting to that age when she should have been enjoying herself.’ Another clean potato joined the first.
    ‘ What was wrong with her?’
    ‘ Breast cancer.’ She scraped ferociously. ‘It’s a cruel way to go.’
    ‘ Between finding out you’ve got cancer and dying from it there’s too much time for hope,’ he said. ‘My father had a tumour cut from his stomach and less than a year later, they found another one in his liver. He was barely fifty when he died.’
    ‘ And how old were you?’ Rene asked, adding to the potato mound.
    ‘ Twenty.’
    She nodded. ‘Like Trisha, then.’
    He lit a cigarette and while smoke drifted under her nostrils, reminding her quite forcibly of the scent that had always hung about her husband’s clothes, she finished the potatoes, scooped the peel into the bin, rinsed the sink, then tipped in four large carrots, ready topped and tailed, and covered them with water.
    ‘ Have you seen Linda recently?’ McKenna asked.
    ‘ Yesterday afternoon. And she asked me to tell you she wants to talk to you.’ Holding each carrot in her left hand, she took off long, neat strips of orangey peel. ‘She doesn’t know what to do with herself since Smith came out of prison. She’s hurt, and bitter, and grieving, and she’s scared of him and, heaven knows, she’s got good cause.’ She picked up a chopping knife, and began expertly slicing the vegetables. ‘And she hasn’t a good word to say for young Father John, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? He was the one to give Smith his “get out of gaol” card.’ The carrots landed with a hollow sort of noise in a big steel colander, then danced under a jet of cold water, while she turned her attention to the potatoes. ‘Mind you, if you took too much notice of Linda at the moment, you’d believe every priest ever to set foot in Haughton is a cheat, or a liar, or a drunk, or a pervert, and she says Father Brett’s the worst of the lot.’ The carrots went into a pan, while the colander was filled with potato chunks, and doused under more cold water. ‘Then again, she’s not the only one who doesn’t like him. He’s smarmy, and he’s got a big opinion of himself, which isn’t helped by the way some folk fawn over him, especially the women.’
    ‘ Why does Linda want to see me?’
    ‘ Like I said, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.’ She put the potatoes into another pan, sprinkled salt, lit the gas, then sat down opposite McKenna, rubber gloves still on her hands, orange stains on the hatched palms and finger ends. ‘To tell you the truth, I think she’s hoping you’ll somehow be able to send Smith back where he belongs. I told her that’s not why you’re here, and I said you’re not here either to find whoever killed Trisha, more’s the pity.’ She fell silent, memory disturbing her features. ‘Most folk think you wouldn’t have far to look if you were, whatever that court decided. You’d go past the church, down the road as far as the Junction Inn, turn left, drive another mile, turn right, and there you’d be, right outside the gates of the house. Would you believe’, she added, shaking her head, ‘what that silly Beryl Kay’s done? That house was called The Parsonage from the day it was built, which must be at least a hundred years before her grandfather bought it, and now she’s changed the name to Piers Holme. My daughter noticed the other week when she