A Nice Place to Die by Jane Mcloughlin Page B

voices.
    But the silence was unnatural.
    â€˜Who is it?’ she called, her voice faint and querulous with anxiety.
    â€˜It’s Jean Henson.’ Jean’s voice sounded more frightened than Alice’s. ‘Please, let me in.’
    Alice started to unlock the deadlock and undo the bolts. She had taken off the chain as soon as she recognized Jean’s voice. Of course, Phoebus must’ve gone to Number Four hoping the Hensons would feed him. Cats were so greedy. Jean must be bringing him home.
    When she opened the door, Jean was pressed so close against it that she almost fell into the hall. She was carrying something covered with a towel.
    She gave a quick look behind her as though to check she wasn’t followed.
    â€˜Please, quick, shut the door,’ she said.
    Jean’s face was white and pinched, she looked terrified and ill. She had obviously been crying and her eyes were red and swollen.
    â€˜What is it? What’s happened?’ Alice asked.
    â€˜Can we go in the kitchen?’ Jean said. ‘No one can see us there.’
    Alice was alarmed now. ‘Has something happened?’ she asked again. ‘Where’s your husband?’
    â€˜He can’t come out,’ Jean said, ‘he knows they’re waiting for him.’
    â€˜Waiting for him? Who?’
    â€˜Those terrible kids. They’ll kill him if they can. If they get him while it’s dark, they’ll kill him. They’ve done it before, haven’t they?’
    â€˜Done what?’ Alice asked. Please, don’t let her say it, she thought, she mustn’t say it, we must try to forget.
    Jean was frightened by what she had said already. ‘The trouble is, there’s no proof,’ she said, ‘we all know who did it but the police can’t prove anything.’
    Alice felt oppressed and guilty. She knew that she could have provided that proof but knowing that made her feel all the more terrorized by the feral youths who hung around in the street outside the Millers’ at night.
    She looked at Jean and saw that her visitor wasn’t simply afraid; she was petrified. She was shaking all over, even her lips shook so it was difficult for her to speak. It came as a shock to Alice that Jean and Dr Henson, who, unlike herself, had had real lives in the real world, felt the same terror of the youths as she did. She wished she didn’t know that, it made the threat seem much more immediate and real.
    Alice hustled Jean into the kitchen.
    â€˜Surely they wouldn’t go that far?’ she said, and her voice quavered like an old woman’s.
    â€˜Look,’ Jean said.
    She put whatever she was carrying under the towel on to the kitchen table. ‘Look what they’ve done.’
    Jean pulled back the towel the way police pathologists revealed corpses in murder dramas on television.
    Alice did not realize at once that what lay on her kitchen table was the carcass of her cat. Phoebus looked like something that had been pulled out of a slurry pit. His orange coat was slimy with drying blood. His beautiful striped tail was stripped of fur. His head had been almost cut off and hung from a thin iridescent sinew. His teeth were bared and the sockets of his eyes were a mass of congealed blood.
    Alice could not look. Gently, she folded the towel back over the cat’s body.
    â€˜No,’ she said, ‘they couldn’t. Surely not on purpose. How could anyone do that?’
    Jean said, ‘Peter found him. He used to come round to our kitchen windowsill sometimes. We put out milk for him. They must’ve caught him. They left him on the doorstep. Peter nearly stepped on him when he went out. They must’ve thought he was ours.’
    Alice knew that wasn’t true. The Millers knew Phoebus belonged to her. This was a threat meant for her.
    Alice thought she was going to be sick. She leaned on the sink and closed her eyes, rocking to and fro in a helpless, pointless,