“Thera, it’s against the law to do what you did. Vigilante justice is—”
“Isn’t killing little girls against the law? Doesn’t the fact that they did that cancel out me killing them?”
“Thera,” Anita says, more loudly because I’m shouting, “think about this logically. If you don’t play ball, you’ll be here a lot longer. You have to talk to me before anything is decided, so perhaps you can talk to me and clear this all up and you won’t be charged with anything. But you won’t be going anywhere until I do my report on you. So what are you going to do?”
I put my hands on my hips and think about this. Then I throw my hands up in the air. “Why not? Fine.”
“Good, let’s begin from the beginning, shall we?” Despite me being tired and thinking all of this is pointless, Anita and I actually have a reasonable chat. She asks me if I know the difference between good and evil, and I scoff and explain the definitions, and she says I’m very smart. I say thanks. She asks if I’ve been feeling well, and how my mental state has been after Billie’s death. There are loads of questions, about forty. She even asks if I’ve been hearing any voices, and specifically if I’ve been hearing Billie’s voice, but I keep quiet. I put on my good-girl act and answer sweetly, but without expression: “No. I wish.” She tells me I’ll probably be taken somewhere secure until they decide what to do with me. She seems to want me to say killing Nick and Eve was bad, but I’m not going to do that. I shrug when she asks me if I feel bad about what I’ve done, and I get a bit moody with her. “Whatever,” I say when she tells me about a children’s home in Lincoln. She tells me she has to go away to make a medico-legal report and a risk assessment, but I’m too tired to even ask what they are.
She leaves me alone for ten minutes and I feel jittery, but there are a number of old tape recorders for recording interviews in the room, so I flick them on and off and figure out how they work. I play with the one Macintyre used to tape our interview earlier. I am just walking past the door to go and play with the oldest-looking machine, when Georgie, Mum, and Dad come around the corner. I see them through the glass bit in the door. As soon as she sees me, Mum bursts into tears.
“Thera!” she cries—I can’t hear her, but I recognize the shape of my name in her mouth—and she breaks into a run.
“Mum!” I shout happily. “Finally!” Georgie unlocks the door and Mum grabs me and hugs me really tight. Her tears make my neck wet. “Ma, you’re squashing me! I can’t breathe!” I say, and she lets go, and Dad hugs me.
Georgie walks into the room, looking pale, followed by Chief Inspector Macintyre. She presses “Record” again on the tape machine, starts to whisper, then clears her throat. “Thera Leigh Wilde, it is my duty to tell you that you are under arrest for the double murder of Nick and Eve Adamson.”
“Urgh!” I exclaim in disgust. “This is crazy!”
“Thera, shush,” says Dad, putting his arm around me. Mum puts her arm around me on my other side, and we stand in a line of three, listening to Georgie.
“You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
“I’m not being questioned again, jeez!” I cry. “This is all a huge mistake. Think about it, Georgie, I caught the killers!”
Georgie continues, not really looking at me. She seems really shocked, and her voice is quiet and shaky. “You have the right to free legal advice, to tell someone where you are, and if you feel ill at any time while in police custody, to see a doctor. You may have regular breaks for food and for the toilet, but someone will be with you at all times.
“Because you are almost twelve, the court has decided to charge you as a twelve-year-old, which means you are kept in police custody if it is felt you pose a threat to the public. Because of the seriousness of your crime, the court will not be offering bail. You will be put on remand, which means you will be held at a secure facility for young people until your trial, which will be at the Crown Court.”
“It won’t be at a young people’s court?” Mum asks. She looks as white as a ghost.
“No, all homicide offences must be tried at Crown Court,” Georgie answers.
“We’ll find a lawyer,” Mum whispers in my ear. I frown at her. “And we’ll always be close by, Thera, ask anyone for us. I’ll be right outside the station. I’ll go wherever they move you, my baby, and I’ll love you always.”
“Huh? What? Move me?” Mum looks terrified. “Mummy, calm down, don’t talk like that, it’s just a ridiculous accident, they’ll see, when they look at all the evidence properly—wait, what’s happening?”
Mum and Dad are still holding my hands, but Georgie is trying to maneuver them out of the room.
“Let go, please,” Georgie says, and she breaks my mum’s hand away from mine. I am holding on, but I think Mum is holding onto me even harder.
Dad squeezes my wrist and looks at me helplessly. “We love you. Be a good girl, Thera. Don’t get into trouble. Just keep your head down wherever they send you,” he says as Macintyre practically pushes him out of the room.
“Daddy?” I say, screeching a bit. “Daddy?”
“It’s okay, Thera, it’s okay,” Dad calls back to me, but he’s holding his body stiff so Macintyre can’t make him budge. I don’t think it’s so much that Dad is really strong, but that he’s young and Macintyre is old. “Just take care of yourself,” Dad says to me, but it’s like he’s trying to communicate something else. Georgie blocks the door so I can’t get out.
“We love you!” Mum shouts.
“Out—out now. Sergeant Davies!” Macintyre calls. Outside the interview room I see one of the younger policemen, who brought me home when Billie’s dad saw me on the road that time, come and take hold of Dad. “That’s enough!” Macintyre shouts at Dad. “Out!”
“Daddy? Mummy?” I struggle against Georgie.
“Stop struggling!” shouts Mum. “Just don’t do anything. Just be safe and don’t talk to anyone.”
“We’re leaving, we’re leaving!” my dad shouts back at the young policeman. “Get your hands off me.” He shoves at him, and the guy grabs Dad’s arms. Dad looks back at me once before he ’rounds the corner. I can still see him a second after he’s gone, like his body has left an imprint in the air by the wall. His mouth is shaped like my name, and the sound left is a desperate “Thera,” as if he wasn’t talking to me or to anyone, just saying my name to hear it.
Mummy is gone a second after him. Her dark blue eyes look more like the sea than ever, because they are filled with water, and her big bottom lip pouts at me. The last sound I hear from her is a big breath in, like when you’re crying and gasping for air.
Georgie pushes me back inside and shuts the door, and the sound is cut off. After a second, she opens it to let Anita back in. “Until your social worker gets here, Anita will be the second adult present for the arrest of a minor,” she says, talking into the tape recorder.
“What social worker? Why can’t Daddy and Mummy stay?” I shout at her.
“Thera,” she says. Her whole body is shaking. “I understand Eve and Nick were criminals, but it’s my duty to make it clear to you that killing them was against the law, and that you have been denied bail, which means we can’t let you go home. Please provide us—”
“I want my mum and dad!” I scream.
“Please provide us”—she raises her voice over me—“with a written statement of what you told us earlier, and then sign it at the bottom of the last page.” She unlocks the filing cabinet and takes out paper and a pen, and puts both on the table in front of me. I bang my fist on it.
“Which part of what I told you? I’ve been talking to you guys forever and you still don’t get anything!”
“The part where you killed Eve and Nick, Thera,” she says.
&
nbsp; “Urgh!” I scream. “Fine!” I write it up really fast, filling four pages.
“Right,” says Georgie when I’m done. “Am I going to have to handcuff you or will you promise you won’t hit anyone?”
“Why the hell would I hit anyone?” I say this, but I literally feel like kicking and hitting everyone in the police station right now and then running home. The dead girls’ power isn’t in me anymore, but I feel like I might just be able to do it.
She grabs my elbow and hauls me off the chair and down the corridor to have my picture taken.
“Why am I denied bail?” I ask Georgie grumpily as the man gets me to stand square. He holds up the camera, and I smile and he takes a photo. Georgie tells me not to smile and makes him do it again, but she doesn’t answer my question.
“Four feet eleven inches,” she says to the photographer, then to me: “Come here. Put your fingers in the ink.”
“Why can’t I go home?” I repeat. She ignores me, not even looking at me. “Why can’t Mum and Dad stay? Why is everyone so angry at me? Georgie!” The guy is still taking photos, now of the side of my face. “Why are you ignoring me?”
“Oh, Thera!” Georgie says, then shakes her head. “Thera, the crime scene in the woods is horrendous. I told you the court thinks you pose a threat to the public, and having seen it…well, I don’t want to agree, but I find I have to. I understand why you think what you did was right, but it isn’t,” she says shortly.
“You’ve seen the bunker? When did you go?”
“I’ve been on all night. I’ve been to their house too. Macintyre thought it would be good for me, to see your work, so I wouldn’t feel so sorry for you.”
“Huh. So do you feel less sorry for me?”
She looks at me. “Put your fingers on the paper.” She holds my hand and we do my fingerprints, all ten of them. There is still blood on my hands.
“Wait. All night?” I say, just realizing. “What time is it now?”
She sighs and shakes her head. I think she is still thinking about the bunker.
“Look, I didn’t have time to clean up,” I say apologetically. “I had to get the tape to you. I came looking for you. You, specifically, Georgie. I knew you’d understand. You’re on my side, right?”
Georgie changes the subject and asks if I want a banana and some Coco Pops for breakfast.
Later that day, two police officers drive me to a kids’ home in Lincoln, where I live for a few months with some real brats, one of whom manages to stab my leg with a protractor when we are doing math homework. I kick the boy in the head, hard, twice, and he doesn’t mess with me anymore. I don’t even bother telling the adults about it. They won’t understand. They never understand. I don’t trust any of them, not the social workers, or the foster carers.
Five months after my night at the police station, we go to trial. Outside the court there is a crowd of people, and I wonder what they are here for until I get out of my social worker’s car and they all start taking pictures of me, and shouting questions at me. Most of them ask about Mrs. A, but one of them, a man with a big nose and a beard, sticks a microphone underneath my face and shouts, “How does it feel to be famous?”
I frown. “Famous?”
“Get a move on, Thera,” Ruth, my social worker, says. A policeman comes down the steps of the courthouse, claps his hand on my shoulder, and marches me inside. As we walk up the stone steps, I see a group of women holding banners above them. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice one of them has my name on. I lean back to read it as the policeman drags at me.
“Inside!” Ruth shouts.
“Weird,” I mutter.
The poster is painted on a white background in big, purple capital letters. It reads:
I STAND WITH THERA WILDE
“What’s that all about?” I ask Ruth, but she shushes me and nods ahead. “Mummy! Daddy!” I shriek. We run toward each other and they swoop me up into a hug. I haven’t seen them for three whole weeks. I was supposed to see them last week, but a social worker has to be available for me to be with them, in case they run off with me, because Dad got mad one time and threatened to. Last week there wasn’t a social worker available so we missed our visit. I’m still annoyed at Ruth about it. She said something about cuts but they can’t be out of money, because she went on holiday a month ago. Lame.
We all squeeze each other really tight. Nanny and Granddad come too. It’s so lovely to see them, I almost forget why we’re all there.
Mum, Dad, and my lawyer, Amber, remind me to plead not guilty and to say I regret everything. I do, as soon as I’m asked what I’m pleading, but I’m not sure the judge buys it. He is very frowny and is about as old as Granddad, and wears a red gown and a totally stupid wig that looks like it comes from the seventeenth century. My lawyer and the other lawyer are dressed in black gowns and equally dippy wigs. The jury are dressed normally, but they also seem not to like me.
The other lawyer, the one prosecuting, talks about how I planned to kill Nick and Eve, and how I’d do it again if it would prevent other girls from being killed and raped. I’m not allowed to take the stand, so I have to keep my mouth shut, but I don’t disagree with anything he says, in principle. Which is weird, because he’s supposed to be against me.
Anita gets up and tells the court I’m not insane and I understand morals and that killing people is wrong, which you would think would work in my favour, but it turns out she’s on the prosecution’s side. Traitor.
We all get shown the crime scene photos on a big TV, and most of the people sat to the left of the dock, in the audience seats, look away and gasp. In contrast, the jury are all concentrating very hard on the pictures and scribbling notes, but one or two of them look like they’re about to throw up. “This is crazy,” I mutter. “Why don’t they show the photos of Billie?” Ruth, who gets to sit near me, tells me to shush.
That’s basically the first week of the trial. Every day, as I walk out, the women are still there, and they start up a chant, saying the same thing the poster said. At the end of the first day, Mum, holding my hand, tells me, “Don’t listen to them, Thera.”
We walk quickly to Ruth’s car, and she and Dad kiss me, then Ruth bundles me in the front seat. She gets in and shuts her door, and the noise outside muffles. I peer at the ladies with the posters. “Why did Mum say to ignore them? They seem to be on my side.”
“They’re pro-vigilante justice, Thera. They’re hippy hooligans. Mad as bats.”
“Huh?”
“They think what you did was a good thing.”
“How was it a bad thing?”
Ruth’s head snaps towards me. She frowns. “Because you should have called the police and let the courts put Eve and Nick away. Imagine if everyone did what you did when they thought someone deserved to be offed. People would be murdered left, right, and center. No one would be able to sleep at night because maybe some nut at work or at school thinks they have it coming.”
She starts the engine. I’m thinking.
“Hello, Thera,” Ruth says. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I answer, nodding. “Yeah, they’re crackpots.” She nods, but she doesn’t look totally convinced.
“Okay,” she says. “Well. Good.”
The next day when we come in, I watch the women out the corner of my eye. There are other posters too, apart from the first one I saw. They have my face on them. In some of them I’m made out to be a hero, and in some of them I have horns above my head like I’m the devil. I ask Ruth who the men with the devil posters are and she says they are from the church.
The second week is more prosecution evidence—a forensic pathologist, and lots of working through a folder of pictures and names and evidence from the case. It’s like we’re making a TV show for the jury, and I’m the main character, but it’s not my chance to do my scenes yet.
The third week is all my defense. Firstly, I am cross-examined on my interview with the police. I basically confirm everything I said. The prosecution lawyer isn’t allowed to ask me any complex questions because in the morning before the jury came in, Amber told the judge it would be too confusing for me at my young age. I disagreed with Amber about this when we discussed it, but it sort of works out, because I get to explain for ages about what I did and why, so the jury will understand. I don’t talk about the dead girls, of course. After my turn on the stand, there are a lot more witnesses. Mr. Kent and all the other teachers I’ve had since I was a baby, Mrs. W, Mrs. J, and Mrs. K, come to the stand, and even Hattie sits in the courtroom and says how nice I am, even though she looks very nervous. She’s dressed very nice, in a pink dress, with her hair clipped back. Not at all how she usually dresses. I haven’t seen her in five months, and I’m surprised to realize she looks younger than the kids I live with, even though we are all the same age. Then, at about three o’clock, the judge says we can go home and have speeches the next day. As I stand up I smile at the jury and a couple of them smile back at me, but cautiously, as if they don’t really want to like me. I wave anyway, because the whole point is that they do get to like me, and then I walk out with Ruth.
The next day, the other lawyer gives a speech to the court about how Nick and Eve didn’t pursue me, and instead I went purposefully to their house to kill them. He says I am capable of acknowledging that killing is wrong, and that I knew that it was wrong to kill Nick and Eve, but that I believed that wrong cancelled out the other wrong. This is all true, but I find it hard to understand why it is important. He also uses really complicated language, and despite knowing all the words Granddad has taught me, and being very smart, I still don’t understand everything he is saying.
I sit back after his speech, totally confused. Then my lawyer gives one more boring speech and the jury go away to think about everything.
Dead Girls Page 31