Mary-Jane Riley - The Bad Things - A gripping crime thriller full of twists and turns

Jackie Wood blinked at her. ‘Come in. I’ve been expecting you for ages. Let’s not talk on the doorstep.’ She opened the door a little wider while keeping herself inside the caravan.

For a moment, Alex was outside of her body. One part of her looking at what she was doing and wondering how the hell she could do it, the other part of her relishing the idea of talking to the woman. She wanted to sniff the air, see if she could smell evil.

Not evil, but fustiness. The smell of a tin box that rarely had its windows or doors opened. Stale cigarette smoke, too. Grease, fat; the lingering smell of fast food. The lightness in her head dissolved.

‘Take a seat.’ Jackie Wood waved to a cloth-covered bench to one side of the caravan. The table in front of it was crowded with papers, a plate with a piece of half-chewed toast on it, and an overflowing ashtray. Some sort of convector heater was pumping out warm air. She sat on the bench, sliding round behind the table.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ said Jackie Wood, whipping away the plate and putting it into the tiny sink. ‘I should have cleared up before you came.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Alex, noticing that she had quite an array of daily newspapers, from The Times to the Daily Star . Again, Jackie Wood saw her looking and began gathering them up into a pile.

‘Something to do, isn’t it?’ she said, nodding towards the papers. ‘I like to see whether there are any stories in them about me. Since I came out. Sometimes, you know, they get the facts about me wrong. One of the papers kept saying I was forty-four years old. I’m not. I’m forty-three. It’s horrible reading really personal things about yourself in newspapers. And it’s even worse when they’re lies. Do you think I should write to the editor?’ She stood still, looking at Alex, blinking slowly. Then she turned away and dumped the papers onto the floor with a thump. ‘Are you warm enough? I’ve taken to wearing these thick fleece things, keeps the wind out.’ She plucked at the material. ‘It’s so bloody cold in this part of the world.’

‘Wind off the Urals,’ Alex said, for the sake of saying something after the sudden change of subject.

‘That’s what they say.’ Jackie Wood was nervous. Probably as nervous as she was, Alex realized. ‘I’ll make the coffee.’ Pom-poms flapping, she made the short journey over to the sink, filled the kettle and set it on the top of the cooker.

Alex shrugged off her coat and put it down beside her, looking around the caravan. Not much to see, really. A small kitchenette, cupboards above the sink and cooker; a corridor that she guessed led to the bedrooms – two?– , and bathroom. A couple of paintings on the walls. One was a view of beach huts. The other of a few lonely sheep in the middle of a snowy field. Both had the corpses of insects preserved behind the glass.

There was silence while they both waited for the kettle to boil.

‘Here we are.’

Jackie Wood set a tray down on the table. On the tray was a cafetière of coffee and two plain, white mugs. There was a plate with chocolate digestives. A jug of milk. A bowl of sugar. She hovered.

‘Shall I pour?’ Alex asked.

Jackie Wood nodded. ‘Please.’

She pressed the plunger of the cafetière, hearing that pleasing sucking sound, then poured out two mugs of coffee. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

Jackie Wood nodded again. ‘Lots of milk. Three sugars. Please.’

Alex did the honours, wondering when the Mad Hatter was going to turn up. ‘Here you go.’

‘Thanks.’ Jackie Wood lowered herself onto a plastic chair.

Alex took a sip of coffee and then reached into her bag, taking out her digital recorder. ‘I hope it’s okay to record our interview, Jackie.’ She tried not to stumble over her name. She had never thought of her as ‘Jackie’, only ‘that woman’ or ‘the murderer’s accomplice’, or ‘Jackie Wood’, both names together. To call her Jackie was implying an intimacy that she didn’t feel. But then that’s what she did all the time; that was her job. She had to think of this as another job. Money. Cash. Gus’s skiing trip. Millie’s grave. No, not that, not yet.

‘I know who you are, you know.’ The words were spoken quietly.

Alex switched on the recorder then looked up at her. ‘Really?’

‘I’ve known ever since Jonny Danby told me you were coming.’ She smiled. ‘You think I’d forget you? Sasha’s sister?’

Alex held up her hand. ‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Just…don’t. Her name.’

‘What? Sasha? What should I call her?’

‘Not her name. After what you and Jessop did. It does not give you the right to call her by her first name.’

She looked startled. ‘What Martin did. Not me. Not me. Anyway, I looked you up. Googled you. Found out about your work. I’d never read any.’

It didn’t surprise Alex that Danby had lied. ‘ She likes your work. ’ Please.

Jackie Wood smiled. ‘We didn’t get too many upmarket newspapers in High Top. And when we did, someone had always nicked the supplements.’ She shifted herself and reached into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out a squashed packet of cigarettes. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked, pulling one out and putting it between her cracked lips. ‘Only it’s a hard habit to break. Something to do when you’re banged up.’

Alex shook her head, wanting one herself.

‘Here.’ Jackie Wood thrust the packet at Alex. ‘You can have one if you want.’

How did she know? ‘No thanks, I’ve given up.’ Alex found herself smiling apologetically.

Jackie Wood shrugged, put the cigarette between her lips, took a lighter off the table and lit it. She inhaled deeply, then coughed – a great hacking cough that shook her whole body. Alex hoped the smoke was furring up her lungs, causing changes in the cells of her body. She hoped it was killing Jackie Wood.

‘I missed my books,’ she said, quietly.

‘Pardon?’

‘Books. Being around them all the time. Discovering new authors. Flicking through a book, deciding if I wanted to borrow it from the library. I missed that.’

‘Right.’ Alex was suddenly wrong-footed by a sudden feeling of compassion. ‘But you had a library in the prison?’ What did she know?

‘Oh yes.’ Jackie Wood waved her hand, a dismissive movement. ‘Statutory requirement and all that. But it wasn’t the same. I mean, I could look at books at all times of the day in my job. Savour them. There was a time limit in prison.’

‘I see.’

‘I miss the children.’

Alex’s back stiffened.

Jackie Wood waved her arms. ‘No, no, what I meant was the children in the library. I miss seeing them, reading to them, story time. You know.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Anyway, I expect you’ve got better things to do than spend all day with me. What did you want to know?’

A loaded question, but Alex restrained herself. She smoothed back her hair. ‘You agreed to see me because you wanted to do the interview?’

‘’Course I did.’ Jackie Wood blinked at her. ‘Why else? It’s a good chance to put my side of the story, to tell the world what really happened.’ She leaned forward on her chair, put her elbows on her knees, and it was all Alex could do not to recoil. ‘It’ll be a good scoop for you as well. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.’

Alex ignored the jibe. ‘Your side of the story?’

She blinked again. ‘That’s what you told Jonny. That it’d be an opportunity for me to tell everyone what really happened. How I was only trying to help.’

‘Trying to help?’ Why was she echoing everything?

Jackie Wood put her mug down, leaned back again. ‘Look, I hardly knew him, before, before the…you know.’ There were tears in her eyes.