Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(63)
‘Kensa?’ Kensa turned to look at her friend but she didn’t answer. ‘It’s okay, you can go now,’ she said to Raymonds as she pulled Kensa’s blanket up around her and started tidying. ‘I’ll look after her.’
‘You better had, otherwise I’ll need to call in the doctor and see to Kensa. Get her sectioned again.’ Kensa looked up in a panic.
‘It’s all right; we’ll be fine. She can come to the farm with me.’
Raymonds considered his response for a moment and then he nodded, picked up his gloves and keys from the table.
‘I’ll leave you to it – just walk with me to my car, Mawgan.’
Mawgan agreed reluctantly; she tore open the bag with the sausage roll and placed it in front of Kensa.
‘Back in a min.’
As they walked down the hill Raymonds said, ‘You make sure that Kensa isn’t bothering anyone. When the police officers come and want to talk to her you say she isn’t well enough. I’ll do my best to keep them away. It’s all over town – the upset over that lad. She doesn’t help the situation with her dreams and her visions, she should keep those to herself. It’s given those detectives a foothold here. None of us wants that. Given them all the ammunition they need to come down here in their thousands and search every house and every field and turn our village upside down.’
He looked Mawgan’s way. She didn’t look back. He called after her, ‘If the boy were to be down here – I’d advise to dispose of him double-quick, no matter who had him – we cannot all suffer for a few. Well, you can hear me well enough, I know. You better listen when I tell you that you’re about to bring a ton of trouble down on your stupid head if you don’t watch it. You may think you’re clever but you’re not; you’ve never been. I’m going to find you a nice husband, Mawgan, and you better settle down.’
They paused at the gate where his car was. ‘Make Kensa understand she has to behave too, or she won’t be welcome here any more. We’re sick of her madness. She’s a disgrace. I heard she got off her head on booze the other night and was seen giving blow jobs to teenagers in the car park. I’ll arrest her next time she makes a spectacle of herself like that.’
‘You think Kensa’s bad?’ retorted Mawgan. ‘You should look at your own family before you start picking on her. All your bullshit meetings and procedures and you ignore the things going on right under your nose. We’ve all had enough.’
‘You’re talking rubbish.’ Raymonds was visibly taken aback by her tone. He’d never heard her say so much. He’d never seen her so angry.
‘Really? You want to start asking the right people the right questions. I see what they’ve been doing – they’re laughing at you – you’re a joke. The boys are going to turn this place inside out – leave you high and dry. I’ve heard them plotting in the evenings. They intend to stitch you up, and good luck to them.’
‘You be careful what you say, Mawgan, you watch who you accuse of things. There’s people in this village who are sick of you and your new-found reckless behaviour. You don’t watch it – you and Kensa will be out of here with nothing.’
‘This village owes me and Kensa.’
‘How do you work that out? I saw to it that she had clothes on her back, food in her mouth. We can’t go on spoon-feeding her if she doesn’t want to help herself.’
‘She should have had justice. We all should have. It wasn’t right what happened.’
‘Forget all about it. It’s better for everyone.’
‘I can’t. No one can. Don’t you realize, as much as you try and cover it up it eats at the heart of Penhal, something rotten, putrid, maggot-ridden, that’s what the truth is.’
‘That’s enough, Mawgan!’
She shook her head. ‘You really think it’s that simple. You can just flick a switch in your head and all the bad bits are gone? It is what I am now. All this stored-up shit inside me – it is me.’
‘Only if you let it be.’
She turned and walked back up the field towards Kensa’s van.
He called after her. ‘You listen to me, Mawgan Stokes, before it’s too late.’
Raymonds left her and drove further up the lane into the Stokes farm. He was angrier than he’d been for a long while at the thought that the town was laughing at him, that the young pretenders were aiming to push him out. It would be a fight to the death. He looked over the hedge and saw Stokes sowing in the field. He watched the seagulls screaming and they swarmed around Stokes. The black crows were already on the red earth. As fast as Stokes was sowing the seed the birds were eating it. They rose and fell in one chequerboard locust. He parked up and walked across the field.
‘Get a scarecrow, Martin, for fuck’s sake. Those birds are eating your profit. You’ll have nothing to sell in the shop.’ Stokes switched off his machinery and walked across.
‘Get Mawgan to make one for you,’ Raymonds shouted above the noisy commotion of the birds. ‘Keep her out of mischief, she has too much time on her hands. What’s come over her, Martin? You have to do something about her behaviour. Her and Kensa are stirring things up in the village.’
‘I can’t control her like I used to.’