A Nice Place to Die by Jane Mcloughlin Page A

that . . .’
    â€˜For God’s sake, Peter, there’s no point.’ Jean was pleading with him. ‘If you tell the police what you saw, the Millers will just say you’re lying, and they’ll back each other up. Who do you think will support your story? Alice Bates? She’s too scared. Everyone’s far too scared.’
    â€˜Alice must have seen what happened. She’s always spying on everyone from that front window of hers. I could talk to her. We could back each other up. That would make the police case against that lout.’
    â€˜Believe me,’ Jean said, ‘there’s no point in doing the right thing if you’re dead.’
    â€˜You sound as though you don’t care if Kevin Miller gets away with murder,’ Peter said. He sounded resigned.
    â€˜I don’t,’ Jean said, ‘not if it means he won’t murder us.’
    â€˜It wouldn’t come to that,’ Peter Henson said, ‘surely it couldn’t be that bad? This is England.’
    Jean said nothing. She knew that her husband instinctively still wanted to act with the confidence of a man whose life as a high-powered doctor was spent dealing with terrified people who looked on him as some sort of god. He was humiliated that now he did not dare. She also knew that the Millers’ retaliation would be more than she could bear.
    She was sorry for Peter. It was hard for him to come to terms with being reduced to an ordinary, rather pompous old man whom nobody listened to. We shouldn’t have come here to live when the NHS said he was too old to work, she thought. We should have left England and gone to live in Spain or Australia to be nearer Pat and the grandchildren.
    â€˜It’s nearly time for the lunchtime news,’ she said.
    She went into the front room and started to draw the curtains to shut out the street.
    It had begun to rain; a hopeless, helpless quiet outpouring of fine drizzle which fell silently on the carpet of dead leaves in the road. Jean watched the DCI and the Sergeant leave the scene of the crime across the road and walk to their car.
    â€˜They’re wasting their time,’ she said aloud.
    She moved away from the window.
    â€˜Time for television, Peter,’ she said.
    She turned on the set, but as the newsreader’s face appeared, she switched channels to a documentary about the Second World War.
    Even the War’s better than what’s happening out there, she thought.
    Out there Rachel Moody and Jack Reid stared at each other across the wet roof of the car.
    â€˜Don’t you dare tell me you told me so,’ Rachel said.
    â€˜It’s just as well you don’t put your money where your mouth is,’ Jack said, ‘you’d owe me a fortune.’
    They got into the car out of the rain.
    â€˜What’s the matter with the people in this street?’ Rachel said. ‘They’re so damned defensive. They’re behaving as though someone’s holding them hostages. What are they all afraid of?’
    â€˜They’ve had a shock,’ Reid said. ‘A man being murdered in their street is a shock.’ He paused for a moment and then added, ‘But it’s interesting that no one seems surprised by what’s happened. It’s as though they were expecting it.’

SEVEN
    J ess Miller, too, watched the police leave the Henson house.
    What do they want with old farts like the Hensons, she asked herself. What would they know?
    There was no point that she could see to old people, they just got in the way and reminded anyone around that that was how everyone, even Jess herself if she wasn’t careful, would end up. A waste of space.
    She thought, it’s such a con, what they tell you in school, that there’s a world of opportunity out there and if you work hard you get the rewards. Old people have done that, haven’t they, and look at them. Some reward that is, old age. Jess didn’t