by Jane Casey
She shook her head.
‘I’d like to know more about what she did, if you can talk about it.’
‘Oh – she tormented me. She read up on the Holocaust and tried to get me to debate it with her, as if I should have to defend the facts to her – as if I had to prove it.’ She smiled. ‘It always amazes me that people think we could have made up that big a lie on the spur of the moment. You wouldn’t make a claim that huge if it wasn’t true, would you? Like six million people – that’s too many. It’s too difficult to get your head around it. You’d go for something smaller and more manageable, wouldn’t you?’
‘That must have been very hard to deal with,’ Maeve said. ‘That wasn’t everything she did, was it?’
‘No. It wasn’t. She would go on and on about how I’d missed all the fun, and how I should be ashamed my family had survived. She said we must have lied and cheated to escape – I mean, we were British. My mother’s family had come from Austria in the nineteenth century but she had family there, up to the war, so we were affected by it.’ Rosa broke off. ‘I’m going off the point. Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s all helpful. What else did Minnie do?’
‘She printed out pictures from the death camps and left them where I would find them – tucked into books, in my bag, in my coat pocket. She bought about twenty pairs of old shoes from charity shops and put them in my locker, stacked up, so they would remind me of the displays at Auschwitz when I opened the door. She wanted to show me how easy it was to fake that kind of thing, and to upset me.’ Rosa took a moment, her eyes glazed with unshed tears. ‘And then there was the hair.’
‘Your hair?’ Maeve asked gently.
Rosa shook her head. ‘One of her friends told me it came from a local hairdresser. She told them she was going to do an art project with it, so they gave her a big bag full.’ She sketched the shape of it with her hands. ‘Disgusting. Hundreds of people’s hair. Old people’s hair. All mixed together.’
‘What did she do with it?’
‘She put it in my food. Clumps of it.’
Hardy made a small noise involuntarily – the first hint that he could be flustered by anything – and Rosa looked at him.
‘That’s what you were waiting for, isn’t it? That’s why I can’t eat anything. Every mouthful of soup, every sandwich – I keep expecting to feel the texture on my tongue. I can’t eat unless I know it’s safe.’
‘I can understand that,’ Maeve said.
‘It’s mad, you know. Totally irrational. This is a mental illness, not anything that’s really wrong with me.’ Rosa’s voice had risen. ‘I’m just indulging myself by not eating anything.’
‘That’s not true,’ Hardy said quietly, and Rosa – still gulping back tears – locked her eyes on him as if he was the only possible source of salvation in the room.
‘Can I change the subject?’ Maeve opened her notebook again and took out a photograph. ‘I found this on the school website. You were in a production of West Side Story with the boys from Castle Academy.’
‘Um … yeah. I was. It was fun.’ She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, recovering quickly.
‘You were Maria, weren’t you?’
‘Last July.’ She sighed. ‘It feels like forever ago.’
‘I didn’t know you could sing, Rosa,’ Hardy commented.
‘I don’t do it much at the moment. But I really did enjoy it. The boys were hilarious once we got to know them. So quick. The banter was just constant.’ She laughed. ‘It drove the teachers mad, but they pulled it together when they needed to.’
‘Do you remember meeting a boy called Ashton Mayfield?’
‘Ashton?’ Her face lit up. ‘Sure. He was in the chorus. All mouth, that guy.’
‘Did you stay in touch with him?’
‘Um, I don’t know. I think we’re friends on Facebook.’ She tucked some hair behind her ear, suddenly shy. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
‘Did Ashton know about you leaving Lovelace School?’
‘Yeah. Lovelace did a concert with his school and he messaged me to ask where I was. I – I told him.’ She looked from Maeve to Hardy to me. ‘Is that bad? Should I not have said?’
‘How much did you tell him about why you left the school?’
Her face had reddened now. ‘I don’t know. A bit.’
Oh, Ashton. I felt as if someone had punched me. I really hadn’t wanted it to be him.
‘Did you mention Minnie?’
She shrugged and shook her head, but she didn’t look sure of herself.
‘Did he ever meet Minnie?’
‘She wasn’t in the production last year. Um … she was hanging around in the music rooms a lot. So, maybe? But Minnie wouldn’t have spent any time with a boy like Ashton. She really didn’t like the co-productions with the Castle kids. She was glad to be left out – or she said she was.’ Rosa looked wary. ‘Do you think – do you think she really minded? And she was envious of me for getting the main part?’
‘I think Minnie was a very confused, very sad girl and no one ever taught her that being unkind wouldn’t make her feel better about herself. She was cruel to people around her but she was also desperately unhappy.’ Maeve leaned forward. ‘You know, you didn’t do anything wrong, Rosa. You couldn’t have made her be nice to you by changing your behaviour. That was all up to her.’
Hardy was nodding agreement, his head turned towards Maeve so the tendons stood out in lovely relief. I wanted to touch his neck. I wanted to lean my face against his and go to sleep for a hundred years.
You are here to work, Georgia.
‘That’s what Nana said.’ Rosa looked down at her hands. ‘I told her everything. More than I told my parents. I wanted someone to understand everything. She’s not a cosy kind of grandmother but she’s good when you need someone to talk to. She’s like you, Hardy – she never overreacts.’
He laughed. ‘You should see me when I’m parallel parking. Zero chill.’
I love you.
Madness. No one falls in love over the course of twenty minutes of general conversation. He hadn’t even spoken to me. I turned so I wasn’t staring at him and scanned the wall instead. Postcards that featured reproductions of Impressionist paintings, some familiar, some new to me. A collection of portraits, from Velasquez to Picasso, their eyes staring out steadily across the centuries. Photographs of scenery – sea, blue sky, white-coated mountains with black pine trees spiking up along their slopes. Family pictures. Rosa with her mother, both of them tanned and laughing, side by side on the edge of a terrace somewhere hot. Rosa with her father, her face rounded and childish, him in a suit. A much younger Rosa with her hair in pigtails, concentrating on stirring flour in a huge mixing bowl as an older woman watched.
Maeve closed her notebook again. ‘Thank you for talking to us, Rosa. You’ve been so helpful.’
Her words seemed to come from a long way off. I laid a finger on the picture of Rosa baking.
‘Rosa, is this your grandmother?’
‘Uh …’ she was obviously surprised that I’d asked, but she leaned to see. ‘Yes, that’s her. That’s Nana.’
Chapter 13
It was a different experience, being in the actual interview room rather than watching the live feed. The room was even smaller than it looked on screen, but it was cold thanks to the over-efficient air conditioning that huffed out of a vent over our heads. Maeve had warned me to wear a jacket and I was glad I’d listened. I sat beside her, opposite a solicitor who kept mopping at his nose with a crumpled handkerchief. Beside him, Helena Griffiths sat in apparent relaxation, eyes fixed on the wall behind us as if we weren’t there. I’d checked the recording equipment was working before going through the usual formalities to explain who was in the room. Then I sat back, out of the way, and let Maeve get on with pulling her story apart.
‘When we started looking into this case we assumed that our victim, Minnie Charleston, had been targeted at random. She was a schoolgirl, in
uniform, on her own, on public transport. She had headphones on, blocking out the world, and she was half-asleep. A sitting target, in other words, for anyone looking for an easy victim. But we didn’t discount the idea that she might have been killed by someone who knew exactly who she was. That meant we had to find out exactly who she was. We spoke to her family, her friends, her teachers – people who knew her far better than we ever could. And what we found at first was a typically mixed-up teenager. She was bright, she was popular, she was allowed a fair amount of freedom by her busy parents. She was musical. She was finding her place in the world and making the usual mistakes along the way. That’s what being a teenager is all about.’
Mrs Griffiths sat, outwardly unmoved though I was willing to bet every word was sinking in.
‘But then we looked a bit closer. What we found was that Minnie wasn’t a nice girl at all. She was horrible, according to her sister. She was an unsuitable friend, according to the parents of her fellow students. She made one of her teachers so uneasy he left the school rather than continue to deal with her. We try not to speak ill of the dead but the truth about Minnie kept leaking out from what people told us. Her behaviour was wild at times – she lied to her parents and took risks and spent a lot of time on the internet, unsupervised.’
The woman sat up straighter but otherwise didn’t respond.
‘We’ve just had the lab’s report on Minnie’s computer and phone. It confirmed what we already suspected about her.’ Maeve opened her folder and took out a piece of paper which she slid across the table. ‘This symbol was written on Minnie’s schoolbag and on her books. It was screen-printed on a T-shirt she wore for hockey. Do you know what it is?’
No answer.
‘We found out it’s a neo-Nazi symbol – a wolf trap. Does that ring any bells?’
Nothing.
‘She drew it everywhere. It was the first thing she saw every morning and the last thing she saw at night.’
Mrs Griffiths seemed to shrink with distaste, a feeling that I shared.
‘We have discovered through her computer history that Minnie was obsessed with Nazism and white supremacists and neo-Nazi movements around the world. We think she found them through links she followed from YouTube music videos. What started out as fairly innocent music appreciation turned into something much darker and more dangerous as she was introduced to ideas and concepts she’d never heard before. She found herself in direct communication with people who were pushing far-right ideologies. She even went to Belgium to an illegal music festival that attracted performers from all over Europe and the US, that was shut down because the authorities became aware it was a neo-Nazi gathering. She was fully committed to that set of beliefs – it became part of her identity. She was lost and it gave her a home.’
Maeve paused to take a sip of water and I waited to see if Mrs Griffiths would speak, or respond to what was presumably new information.
Nothing. I had to admire the restraint.
‘We think her obsession with it began after the departure of Zach Roth, the teacher who was her previous object of affection. He was Jewish, something that had intrigued her. We discovered from her search history she had spent a lot of time looking at information about Judaism – and particularly on how to convert to Judaism – last year. When she found he favoured other students who were better singers and performers than her – one Jewish student in particular – and he wasn’t interested in a relationship with her, she turned against him and found comfort in being anti-Semitic. It wasn’t his fault. She made her own choices, but it drew her towards the people who would radicalise her when she encountered them on the internet.’
Helena Griffiths covered her mouth and coughed, delicately. I waited, pen ready to make notes, but it wasn’t the prelude to speech. Maeve went on.
‘She spent many, many hours on Far-Right message boards. A lot of them are encrypted and we haven’t been able to see what she was saying, but it’s clear she was communicating with some of the worst people imaginable – the sort of people who should not be allowed any contact with children. She was unsupervised at home, and unhappy, and they provided her with a community. It’s something that happens with a lot of teenagers. Minnie was unlucky that her interests and her romantic disappointment led her towards influences that were dangerous and depraved – evil, in fact. And her classmates were unlucky that she brought those influences into school.’
The suspect swallowed convulsively.
‘Minnie was a bully,’ Maeve said calmly. ‘She was outwardly confident and dominant. She had a loud voice and she wasn’t afraid to shout other people down. When we asked her school and her parents, we were told she had lots of friends, but I’ve been speaking to some of the girls from the class and they confirmed what I suspected. They were scared of her. They were scared to become a target for her abuse. She was vindictive and vicious, as only a teenage girl can be.’ Maeve paused. ‘I went to a convent school myself, so I know all about teenage girls being unpleasant to one another. It can get out of hand.’
No response.
‘Let’s talk about what happened at school.’ Maeve waited for a moment and the white noise in the room pressed on my ears. ‘Let’s talk about Rosa.’
‘This has nothing to do with Rosa,’ Helena Griffiths said immediately in her low, husky voice. ‘Please don’t drag her into this.’
‘Why did Rosa leave Lovelace School? She was thriving there, by all accounts. Until this year.’
Helena shook her head.
‘She started missing school. She went home without permission on a number of occasions. The marks she was getting, even in her favourite subjects, were disappointing.’ Maeve opened her folder and studied the contents. ‘I spoke to her teacher. She said Rosa was encouraged to leave.’
‘It was very unfair.’ Helena snapped her mouth shut with an obvious effort; she didn’t want to talk to us about this or anything else.
‘It was unfair,’ Maeve agreed. ‘She was unhappy because she was being bullied. She was singled out for abuse by Minnie Charleston. Minnie was physically abusive – she punched her, kicked her, pinched her. She interfered with her food. She read books with white supremacist messages – she had one in her bag when she was killed, incidentally, with a main character whose name was an anagram of “Aryan”, in case you thought it was a passing phase. She gave Rosa material denying the Holocaust had happened, and printouts of concentration-camp photographs that she alleged were staged. She ostracised her socially and threatened anyone who spoke to Rosa or sat with her. She filled Rosa’s locker with old shoes in a reference to the museum displays at Auschwitz.’ Maeve’s voice softened. ‘Rosa must have been very lonely and very unhappy.’
‘How do you know all of this?’
‘A few different sources. I spoke to the class teacher, Pauline Kennedy. She knew some of what was going on, but Rosa had refused to make a formal complaint. Pauline admitted the school had failed to deal with the situation. When Rosa left, that solved the problem, from the school’s point of view.’
‘It’s a terrible school,’ Helena blurted out, unable to stop herself. ‘All they want is money. They only care about the school’s image, not the girls.’
‘The other person I spoke to was Rosa herself, at her rehab facility.’
Helena’s eyes widened. ‘How is she? How did she look?’
‘Better. She’s much better.’ Maeve smiled. ‘Are you close to her?’
‘Of course. But I’m not allowed to see her at the moment. None of us can go and see her.’
‘She said she confided in you while all of this was going on.’
‘We often talked about it. I was born during the war, in Britain, but I grew up with the shadow of it hanging over me. My parents were terribly traumatised by what happened. If something like that could happen in Europe, it could happen in Britain too. My mother kept all of our documents with her, in a big handbag, with her jewellery sewn into the lining. She was afraid, always. She didn’t
trust anyone and she warned me not to think that people didn’t notice we were Jewish. There was always anti-Semitism bubbling under the surface – comments people would make, opportunities that I didn’t get. The first boy who wanted to go out with me was a Christian and our families were both horrified. It was unthinkable.’ Helena Griffiths stared at Maeve with that steady antagonism she’d shown us before. ‘Things have changed. These people are empowered now. They dare to be open about their feelings. Palestine is nothing to do with British Jews and yet we are being targeted because of Israeli policies. It’s just an excuse to abuse us. They don’t really care about the Palestinians.’
‘Rosa really suffered, didn’t she?’
‘It was hard. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to give in. But it was better for her in the end.’
‘I think my client has been very helpful here. I don’t see any reason for her to be interviewed as a suspect.’ The solicitor sniffed. ‘A member of her family interacting with the victim is neither here nor there. Unless you have anything else—’
‘We do.’ Maeve’s voice was heavy with sympathy and something that might have been regret. ‘Mrs Griffiths, you told me you were a doctor.’
She nodded.
‘I found out that you were a surgeon.’
‘A long time ago. Before I had children.’
‘What was your speciality?’
‘I was a cardiovascular specialist.’
‘It must have been unusual at the time for a woman to be a surgeon, let alone a heart surgeon.’
‘I was very good. Nowadays I wouldn’t have needed to give up, but there was no question of me going back to work after the children were born. Anyway, I felt I had lost my edge.’
‘But you retained your knowledge. Your skills.’
‘There isn’t much call for a heart surgeon in everyday life. I’ve forgotten most of it.’ She was watching Maeve with wariness and something that was almost amusement. She still thought we didn’t know what she’d done. Excitement and tension made my mouth dry and I reached for water, attracting a flick of a glance from our suspect. She was fierce, I thought. She was absolutely capable of murder, if she needed to be.