by Mia James
April frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, that your boyfriend, the man who saved your life only weeks before, would suddenly arrange an assignation with another woman. In public, after he has arrived with you. That’s rather odd, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not really. It was actually a misunderstanding. I thought he was messing me about but I got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Silvia. ‘What exactly are you accusing my daughter of?’
‘Nothing at this time,’ said Johnston, ‘I’m simply trying to establish what happened the night of the party.’
‘I thought that was obvious even to you: Gabriel Swift killed Marcus Brent – and good riddance too.’
Johnston nodded.
‘That would seem to be the story, yes.’
‘Well, what other story is there?’
‘We don’t dispute that Gabriel Swift killed Marcus: we pretty much caught him red-handed.’
‘Literally, actually,’ said Carling, drawing a weary look from Johnston.
April was desperate to defend Gabriel, point out that they had simply assumed he was the killer instead of looking for the real culprit, but she had a horrible feeling that would only get her into more trouble. She thought back to her last meeting with DI Reece. ‘Watch yourself,’ isn’t that what he’d said? ‘They need someone to pin this on, and they can’t blame everything on Gabriel.’ She knew they were under pressure to wrap up the Highgate murders as soon as possible, but surely they couldn’t blame her? April became aware that Johnston was staring at her as he spoke.
‘Unfortunately we only have April’s version of events for what happened that night. No one saw Marcus Brent attack her, we have no idea why he was there …’
‘Possibly because he was a psychopath?’ said Silvia impatiently. ‘Do I need to remind you that he almost tore my daughter’s arm off a few months ago?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Johnston. ‘As I said, it all seems rather strange and I don’t feel I’m being told the complete truth.’
Silvia pushed her chair back and stood up.
‘All right, April, seeing as we’re free to leave, I think that’s exactly what we’ll do.’ She glared down at DCI Johnston. ‘Rest assured your superiors will hear about this.’
‘Don’t threaten us, Mrs Dunne,’ said Johnston. ‘I really don’t think they will be interested in your complaints this time. It has become a priority at the highest level to stop the violence in Highgate. The plain facts are that your daughter has been present at four of these incidents, which leads me to believe she knows more than she’s telling us. We are therefore perfectly entitled to ask her as many questions as we see fit, and we will continue to do so until these murders stop.’
‘Well next time, you will be asking your questions with a solicitor present.’
‘I look forward to it. One last question, April. Where is Gabriel Swift?’
‘Don’t answer that, April,’ said Silvia, then turned back to Johnston. ‘You don’t want to make an enemy of me, Inspector,’ she said, her voice icy cold. ‘You really have no idea who you’re dealing with.’
Johnston sat back in his chair, unperturbed.
‘Quite a temper there, Mrs Dunne,’ he smiled. ‘I wonder if your daughter has inherited it?’
Silvia didn’t answer, instead she took April’s arm and steered her towards the door.
‘We’ll be in touch, April,’ said the policeman as they left. ‘Don’t go leaving town.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
April’s mother had been so furious, she hadn’t spoken a word all the way home. It wasn’t until they got inside the house that she turned to April, her lips white. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well what?’
‘What exactly aren’t you telling me?’
‘You’re saying you believe them?’
‘No, but I know you, April. You may not think so, but I do. And you know more than you were saying in that police station.’
‘I don’t! I can’t believe you think there’s anything to that rubbish. Do you really believe that I had anything to do with Marcus’s death?’
‘No! But it does worry me that you’ve been so close to these events. You were there when Isabelle Davis was killed, then your father …’
‘I wasn’t there then!’ she objected. ‘I wish I had been.’
‘But you were close. Then there’s Marcus’s attacks and that poor girl Layla – you were at that party.’
‘So were a lot of other people!’ said April, exasperated. ‘Come on Mum, you can’t believe I had anything to do with any of this!’
‘No, darling, I don’t. But I agree that perhaps you know something.’
‘I don’t know anything!’
‘I think you do. You’re a clever girl, April, and so are your friends. I can’t imagine you’ve just sat back and let all this wash over you.’ She paused, looking at April searchingly. ‘Why don’t you tell me, love? Maybe I can help.’
‘Honestly, Mum, don’t you think if I knew who was behind it, I would tell the police? Nobody wants to catch Dad’s murderer more than me. I want to see them pay.’
‘I know that, April. But it’s not just about finding out who took your dad away from us, is it? I have no confidence in these policemen at all. But if they don’t get to the bottom of it, people are in danger. More importantly, you’re in danger. You’ve been attacked twice in a matter of weeks – and tonight you were involved in a siege! Those policemen had guns. I don’t know what’s happening, but you seem to be a magnet for trouble at the moment and it’s too dangerous out there.’
‘So, what, are you grounding me again?’
‘Darling, I just want to keep you close while this all dies down.’
‘That could take ages! Am I supposed to stay indoors for the rest of my life?’
‘We’ll sort something out. But I want you to come straight home after school, do your homework, and no roaming around the village.’
Her heart turned over as whatever slim chance she had of seeing Gabriel again began to fade.
‘But that’s so unfair! It’s not my fault some loony tried to kill me!’
‘Straight home, April,’ said Silvia. ‘I mean it.’
‘God!’ she cried. ‘You might as well have let the police lock me up!’
And she stormed upstairs.
If April had thought she might get sympathy from her friends, she was quickly corrected: even Fiona was against her.
‘I can’t believe you’re siding with my mum,’ said April sulkily.
‘I’m not, honey. But look at it from my point of view. Here I am stuck five hundred miles away from my best friend, who is being attacked by vampires and witches and armed policemen. From where I’m sitting, your mum’s idea of locking you in a tower seems a great notion, actually. Better that than see you dead.’
‘But if I don’t get out there and find out who’s behind all this mayhem, I doubt keeping me locked in a tower’s going to do much good. And other people are going to get killed. Marcus threatened to come up there and kill you too, remember?’
‘Hey, don’t go trying to scare me,’ said Fiona. ‘I’m scared enough as it is.’
‘I’m sorry, I just feel so frustrated. How am I supposed to figure this out if I’m not allowed out of the bloody house?’
‘Well you’re not completely locked up, are you?’
‘What do you mean? I can’t sneak out past my mother again. She’d go mental.’
‘But you can do a bit of Marple-ing without leaving the house, can’t you?’
‘How?’
Fiona tutted impatiently.
‘You drive me mad sometimes, April Dunne. Your dad was a journalist, right?’
‘Yes. Obviously.’
‘Well, journalists make notes, they have big stacks of papers in piles next to their desks, they’re always rattling away on their keyboards.’
‘Duh. And?’
‘Well, s
urely there will be clues in there. Like when you found his notebook.’
April sighed.
‘No, the police went through all of that looking for clues when he was killed.’
‘And since when have the Highgate police impressed you with their efficiency and world-class detection skills? I bet they had some lowly PC have a half-hearted flick through and anything not in big capitals with the words “Murderer” written next to it was ignored. Where are his notes now?’
‘In the cellar along with all his other stuff. But I’m not going down there again, it gives me the creeps.’
‘That’s compared to sneaking around graveyards and spooky woods in the middle of the night, is it?’
April laughed.
‘I suppose not.’
‘Well, what are you waiting for? You’ve been running about with vampires breathing down your neck, now you can do a bit of snooping in the comfort of your own home. Come on, chop-chop. I’ve got homework to do.’
‘Slave-driver.’
April hung up and dragged herself up from the bed. It wasn’t the spiders and the musty smell that were putting her off. It was the idea of digging around in her dad’s stuff. She felt as if she was intruding somehow, like she was looking at stuff she shouldn’t, secret stuff he was hiding. But how else are you going to find things out? she thought to herself.
Still, as she walked down the stairs, April had a sense of foreboding. Since her dad had died, she had managed to compartmentalise him, put him in a little box. She could go to the cemetery – when she wasn’t grounded – and talk to him through the door, but doing that felt like he wasn’t dead. Opening up his boxes, though, it meant that he was gone, like she was sorting through his effects, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. And she wasn’t sure she was ready for that.
But Fiona was right, there could well be clues there. She walked down the stairs and into the hall, pausing at the cellar door. She had the strangest feeling that there was something in those boxes she didn’t want to find.
Mostly, April found newspapers. Old cuttings of her father’s features, presumably filed to paste into a scrapbook at some point in the future, were mixed in with endless pages torn from broadsheets and magazines: yellowing pages of ideas for books that would never be written. It all made April feel incredibly sad. So many things he’d planned to do, and none of them would come to be. So many books he’d bought to read, to research things or just for pleasure. Now they were all just crammed into a box along with press releases and subscription offers and all sorts of random stuff like a postcard from Ibiza (‘Having it large, love Iggy’ – who was Iggy? – April would probably never know). But slowly April began to enjoy what she was doing, sorting all the detritus into ordered piles: books in one, bank statements in another, personal stuff in a third. Because in amongst all the never-was ideas and brochures for holidays he would never take, were hundreds if not thousands of pieces of proof that William Dunne had been there. Not just the words he’d written and picture by-lines, the little postage-stamp-sized photo they’d put next to his articles, but in everything else: the bills paid and unpaid, receipts for meals, an invoice for getting the car serviced just before their drive south from Scotland. Each one, she realised, was a reminder that her father had been here and had made a mark. She found a framed certificate: ‘Young Journalist of the Year, 1994’ and a strange chunk of Perspex in the shape of an upturned icicle etched with the words ‘British Press Awards, 2000. Best Feature, Reportage’.
She had no idea her dad had won these. He’d never mentioned it to her. Why would he? In 2000, she’d have been six.
The thought of it made tears spring into her eyes. ‘Oh, Daddy, I’m so proud of you,’ she whispered. ‘I wish you were here.’
She wished that more than anything. Not only because she wanted him safe and happy and alive again, but also because she felt sure William Dunne would have known what to do next. He wouldn’t have given up on everything just because it was all getting a bit much.
‘Right, let’s get serious,’ she said, rubbing the dust from her jeans and pulling a black bin bag from a roll with a flourish.
Over the next hour, April filled five rubbish sacks, ruthlessly dumping anything not directly relating to Ravenwood, anything that looked like it might offer a glimpse into what he had been investigating and who he had spoken to in those last weeks of his life. When she had emptied the last box, she threw all the ‘important’ material into a suitcase she’d found shoved under the stairs. The bulging bin bags she bumped up the stairs and left in a line in the hallway, ready to take into the yard.
‘What’s all this in the hall?’ shouted Silvia down the stairs.
‘I’m having a clear out. Making myself useful, seeing as I’m not allowed out.’
‘What is it?’ asked her mother suspiciously
‘Dad’s stuff. All that stuff the police went through. I’ve kept all the important things, but most of this is old magazines and papers.’
Silvia looked at it like it might scuttle up the stairs and bite her.
‘Did you want to look through it? There might be something you want to keep.’
Silvia shivered. ‘God no, I’m glad you’re getting rid of it. I hated having all that stuff down there. His study was always full of junk.’
She turned to go.
‘But don’t just leave it there, April. I don’t want to come down in the night and cripple myself tripping over a pile of What Car magazines.’
‘You could have offered to help me carry it out,’ whispered April to herself as she hoisted the bags into their wheelie bin out the back. ‘What if I get attacked on the doorstep?’
That done, she took the suitcase of stuff she had designated worth reading back up to her bedroom and opened it on the bed. First, she went through the packets of photographs she had found. They were nearly all of her. April on her scooter, April in a swimming pool wearing duck-shaped armbands, April sitting under the Christmas tree looking delirious with excitement as she tore the wrapping paper off a Barbie doll. There were hardly any of the rest of the family, but she had found one of her with her dad, sitting on a rock by Loch Ness, one of the last happy holidays she could remember. The photo was old and a bit foggy, the way old photos get sometimes. But it was April and her dad next to a board advertising ‘Nessie Funland’. She couldn’t really see the background, but it looked like they were by the lake. Her heart soared as she looked at it. It was the only photo of him she had, beyond those inky by-lines, and it was certainly the only one of them together. They didn’t take photos, they weren’t that sort of ‘all in a line, now say cheese’ family. But obviously he’d had his arm twisted by some photographer. She could just see the scene now, her mum, one hand on her hip, saying ‘Go on, Will, give him the money,’ like he never did anything fun for us. But her dad had been fun. She remembered their long walks along the cliffs by the Loch, Silvia crying off claiming hay fever or something. It had been a happy time, before her parents had started arguing. She and her dad had walked for miles, occasionally stopping to search the waves with his binoculars. They never did see Nessie, but William Dunne had remained open-minded. ‘You never know what’s out there,’ he’d said to her. ‘Most of the time we only see what our minds will let us.’ You got that right, Daddy, thought April sadly.
She went back to the suitcase. Inside a brown envelope was a collection of sticky notes she recognised as the ones which had been tacked to the wall next to her dad’s desk. None of them made much sense. She looked at one she remembered. It read ‘Call FG, ask to find Ott. Text’ – Could that be Mr Gill? Yes, it must be, hadn’t he called himself Frances the other day? It wasn’t exactly a breakthrough, as April already knew that her dad had been planning to visit Griffin’s bookshop just before he was killed, but it was encouraging that she was on the right track. Then there was that one she had puzzled over the night she had sneaked down to his study. ‘23.11.88 – 14.02.93 – signif?’ She had noticed it because
the second date on the note was her birthday. But what was the first date? Five years before – the day of something that had happened to him? Was it the date he’d met her mother? No, that was silly, why would he write that down? She shook her head. She didn’t know. But then she had a thought. She went over to her wardrobe and dug around in the back, pulling out a shoebox. Inside was her dad’s notebook and the diary she had found hidden on the cellar stairs. She flicked to the fourteenth of February, but all it said was ‘April’s Birthday!!!’, then a number with the word ‘Pelargonium’. She went over to her computer and quickly typed it into Google.
‘Come on, come on,’ she muttered, trying to contain her excitement.
Her heart sank. The phone number matched a branch of Interflora and Pelargonium was the name of a type of flower. Of course – it wasn’t just her birthday, it was also bloody Valentine’s Day, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t she have been born on an ordinary day, so her birthday would be special? She always went off to school wanting everyone to make a fuss, but instead she would find all her friends breathlessly discussing how many cards they had got and speculating who had sent what to whom.
April tapped in the other date – 23rd of the 11th – but nothing came up. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, she thought dejectedly. She went back to the sticky notes, but nothing else seemed to make sense. ‘Find at Ux dig’, ‘Remember 2nd rule’, ‘Golders Green?’. Without knowing their context, it was all just gibberish. Maybe none of it was of any importance; maybe there was nothing here that could help her.
She picked up the diary again and turned to the twenty-third of November. ‘Publishing meeting 10 a.m.’ was all it said. But then he’d never got that far. He’d been killed before the twenty-third of November, hadn’t he? She was overcome by another wave of grief and anger. It was all so unfair and so unreal. Murder was something that happened to other people – and vampires didn’t happen to anyone. Because they didn’t exist, right?
But they did – they’d happened to her. Gabriel had happened to her. Where was he now? Hiding in some damp wood somewhere? No, hadn’t he always talked about how vampires were excellent at staying under the radar? If he could drink blood and avoid detection, she was sure he could check into a hotel without being found. She picked up her phone and started tapping out a text … but then she stopped and deleted it. For one thing, his phone was probably with the police after they arrested him. And even if he had it, he wouldn’t reply – she was sure she had seen something on Crimewatch about how they could track mobile phones even if it was only switched on. Plus she had to protect herself from the likes of DCI Johnston. She threw down the phone in frustration. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with a normal boy, one who was obsessed with football? They could go to the pictures and eat popcorn or something. Maybe get Chinese. Instead, her undead boyfriend was on the run, wanted by the police who were clearly prepared to shoot him if he didn’t give himself up. They don’t talk about that sort of thing in the advice columns, do they?