by Louise Voss
He pushed the door open gently and stepped inside. His eyes widened.
Four male faces stared at him from every surface: three white, one Asian. Every inch of wall was covered with posters and pages carefully torn from magazines or printed off the Internet. The screensaver on the computer showed the four boys with their arms around each other’s shoulders. A T-shirt bearing their logo lay on the unmade bed and a life-size cardboard cut-out of Shawn, the most popular member, stood at the foot of the bed.
Patrick was in his mid-thirties. He liked indie and rock music. He didn’t watch much TV apart from CBeebies with Bonnie. He didn’t read a tabloid paper or any glossy magazines. But even he knew who this lot were. Rose was an OnTarget fanatic. Now, he thought, the media were going to have one hell of an angle.
Chapter 4
Day 2 – Patrick
The MIT9 incident room at Sutton station smelled of machine coffee and bacon sandwiches, making Patrick’s stomach growl and clench simultaneously as he took his place at the front of the room beneath the blown-up photo of Rose Sharp. In the picture, she was smiling, revealing a gap between her front teeth, though there was a far-off look in her eyes. He wondered if she’d been happy and, if not, how far she had been from finding joy in her life. Growing up had been the best thing that ever happened to him, Patrick thought. Getting away. Reinventing himself.
He mentally glossed over the fact that he was back living with his parents now.
Half a dozen officers, including Carmella and Gareth, perched on tables or stood, and Patrick found himself appraising them as his eyes passed over them. DC Preet Gupta was leaning against the wall at the back – competent and affable, she was a straight-down-the-line, trustworthy young woman Patrick was always pleased to see on his team. DC Martin Hale, a tall man with thinning hair who reminded Patrick of Kevin Spacey, was older and seemingly happy to stay at his rank forever. He had teenage daughters, and Patrick noticed how Hale’s jaw clenched as he surveyed the picture of Rose. He was sitting at the front of the room, so close to Rose’s photo that he could count the few freckles on her nose – and indeed probably was. That summed him up – keen, with an admirable attention to detail.
The next member of the team, Wendy Franklin, another detective constable, was a newcomer, having transferred in from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, and an unknown quantity. Patrick’s initial impression was that – as his mum would say – she looked like a stiff breeze would blow her away. She was skinny and appeared to be about Rose Sharp’s age, though he knew she was actually twenty-five. She was one of the desk-perchers, fidgeting and shuffling about with nervous energy, twiddling a biro between her fingers, looking like she was dying to get stuck in.
There was one notable and very welcome absence: DI Adrian Winkler, a man to whom Patrick had barely spoken since they came to blows, literally, on the Child Catcher case. He knew that Winkler was working on another murder at the moment, had seen him parading around the station self-importantly, flicking back his shoulder-length hair and puffing out his chest like a mating pigeon. Hearing that he wouldn’t have to work with Winkler on this one was the one good thing that had happened in the last forty-eight hours.
‘OK,’ Patrick began, all eyes focusing on him. ‘Welcome to the first briefing for Operation Urchin.’ This was the name the computer had generated. ‘Here’s what we know so far. Rose Sharp, fifteen years old, resident of Teddington. Rose’s parents are divorced and she lives with her mother. The father isn’t a suspect, before you wonder. He was away on business in Germany and is on his way back now.’
He went on to describe the scene where they’d found Rose, consulting his notepad, writing down several points on the whiteboard as he spoke.
‘The main points to consider about the crime scene are: One – the room was supposedly vacant, no key cards had been given out, so how did Rose and her murderer get in? Two – how did they get into the hotel room without being seen? We are checking lists of guests and staff, but so far there have been no hits. There was no CCTV in the hotel corridor, so we can’t tell if she went into the room willingly or not. Three – did she know her killer? If not, what persuaded her to go to a hotel room with him? Four – Rose’s clothes were missing from the scene. Where are they, and why did the killer take them? Rose’s mum has been through her daughter’s clothes and given us a description of what she thinks Rose was wearing. This information is on your printouts.’
Sally Sharp hadn’t seen Rose leave the house, but by checking her daughter’s wardrobe and the washing baskets she believed Rose had been wearing her new Top Shop jeans and a long-sleeved pink and white cotton top. ‘She always wears earrings too,’ Sally had said, her voice catching. ‘And a necklace that her dad gave her. It’s a locket. She keeps a photo of him inside it.’ She pointed to a poster on the wall. ‘Shawn.’
Then Sally Sharp had paused.
‘She was wearing her new underwear too.’ Avoiding Patrick’s eye, she went on. ‘She came home yesterday with a bag from Primark and I had a peek inside when she was in the loo.’ Sally had described the knickers: pink with the word ‘LUCKY’ printed across the front. ‘They’re not in her room.’
Patrick handed out jobs to the gathered officers. Wendy was instructed to help Gareth continue interviewing the guests and hotel staff. Martin was given the responsibility of checking Rose’s communications: social media, email and phone. Had she left any clues there?
‘Her phone was missing too,’ he pointed out. ‘She had a contract with O2, paid for by her mum. Martin, I need you to chase up getting the records. Preet, I want you to start talking to Rose’s friends. Had she said she was going to meet someone? Any boyfriends her mum didn’t know about?’
‘What secrets did she have?’ Wendy asked in her Black Country accent, as if she were thinking aloud. Seeing the look Patrick gave her, she said, ‘All teenage girls have secrets. If my mum and dad had known half the things me and my mates got up to . . .’
‘Yes, very true. But, according to her mum, Rose was a bit of an introvert. Spent most of her life in her bedroom.’
Wendy nodded. ‘Probably an online predator, then. Some guy pretending to be a fifteen-year-old arranges to meet her at a hotel; she freaks out when she sees he’s fat, bald and fifty; he knocks her over the head.’ She shrugged. ‘Simple.’
Patrick suppressed a laugh, seeing the daggers Carmella was shooting towards Wendy.
‘Yes, well, let’s not jump to any conclusions, eh?’
Wendy shrugged again. ‘All right. But I bet’cha that’s what it was.’
As Patrick was about to start talking again, the door opened and Detective Chief Inspector Suzanne Laughland, Patrick’s boss, slipped through.
‘Pretend I’m not here,’ she mouthed.
What with Wendy’s interruption and now Suzanne’s appearance, Patrick had lost the thread of what he wanted to say. He turned back to the whiteboard. He could feel Suzanne’s eyes on his back and all of a sudden felt hot, sweat breaking out beneath his white shirt.
He turned back around, trying not to be distracted by the sight of Suzanne tucking a strand of long blonde hair behind her ear.
‘The other thing to note about Rose Sharp is that she was a massive fan of OnTarget.’
‘Ooh, I love them,’ said Wendy.
‘Manufactured shit,’ muttered Martin.
‘All right,’ Patrick said. ‘This isn’t the time for a Culture Show debate about the merits of boy bands. I don’t think you’re the target audience, anyway, Martin.’
‘The OnTarget audience!’ Wendy almost shouted, laughing at her own joke and looking around in the hope that the others would join in.
Give me strength, thought Patrick.
‘The point is,’ he said, embarrassed at this display in front of Suzanne, ‘Rose was a fan. According to her mum, she was obsessed. She spent all her money on them, most of her time chatting
about them online . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Talked about little else, apparently. OnTarget were her life. This fact is going to give the media an angle, make them more interested than they might have been otherwise. We need to be aware of that.’
‘They’re playing tonight,’ Wendy piped up.
‘OnTarget?’
‘Yeah. At Twickenham Stadium. I was thinking about going but couldn’t find anyone to come with me.’
‘What a surprise,’ Carmella said, eliciting laughter from everyone else. Wendy, though, looked hurt and Patrick felt sorry for her. It was unusual for Carmella to be bitchy, so he wondered what about Wendy had antagonised her.
‘Maybe I should go,’ Patrick said, enjoying the shocked expressions on the faces of his colleagues.
‘I thought you were more of a Cure fan?’ Carmella said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Patrick could see that Suzanne’s lip was twitching.
‘I am. But if Rose was a prominent member of the OnTarget community, this could be a good chance to meet some of them.’ He pointed at Carmella.
‘Oh no, please . . .’
‘And you can come too.’
Chapter 5
Day 2 – Jess and Chloe
Oh my God, that was just so amazing, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that incredible? Did you see the way Shawn winked at me? I’m on such a high right now. He winked right at me, it was definitely me, wasn’t it, do you think he recognised me from my profile picture?’
‘Oh shut up, how thick are you, Jess? He’s got fucking fifteen million Twitter followers; do you really think he’d recognise you from the stage forty feet away? . . . So where do we go, then, for this vigil thing?’
The two girls exited the stadium, borne along on a wave of identical over-excited girls in OnTarget merchandise, with identical long ironed hair limp with sweat, most with mascara running down their hot red faces. Chloe consulted her phone, where she had saved a screenshot of the directions that had been posted on Twitter. Jess couldn’t stand still. She was jumping from foot to foot, bursting with adrenalin from the gig.
‘What happens at a vigil anyway? We don’t have to, like, say prayers or anything, do we? Or sing? I’m not singing.’
‘It’s not church, Jess, so I doubt it. But I don’t know either. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?’
‘Wonder who’ll be there?’
Chloe pointed in the direction of the hot dog concession. ‘Dunno. Loads of people from the forum, I think. I reckon it’s that way. Exit P, by Gate 12. There.’
They managed with difficulty to fight their way sideways across the tide of girls streaming straight ahead to the gates, to a small static enclave of sheepish-looking fans standing awkwardly around. Jess and Chloe joined the group and stood at the back, staring curiously at the huge blown-up photograph of one of their own – a dumpy, freckled girl in her school uniform, staring into the camera with a fake smile on her face.
‘So that’s what she looked like,’ breathed Jess.
The canvas was propped on a folding trestle table covered with an Indian throw and a cardboard sign saying ‘RIP – ROSE EMILY SHARP. VIGIL 10 p.m.’. An older woman was passing through the group, picking small candles on circles of tinfoil-covered cardboard out of a large crate carried by a sad-looking man behind her and handing them out to the assembled girls.
Jess still couldn’t stop fidgeting. She hitched up her errant bra strap and adjusted her OnTarget crop top so that it covered half an inch more midriff. ‘My ears are ringing. Are your ears ringing? That was the best one yet, don’t you think? Eight concerts and that was definitely the best. You never know, he might’ve been winking at me. I tweet him so much. He might’ve recognised me!’
Chloe rolled her eyes. If it weren’t for their mutual adoration of OnTarget, they would never have been mates, she thought. Jess had only contacted her on the forum last year after she, Chloe, had posted the photo of Shawn Barrett visiting her in hospital, when she’d had leukaemia, right before the bone marrow transplant that saved her life. They’d met up and Chloe could tell straight away that Jess was ‘one sandwich short of a picnic’, or ‘away with the fairies’, as her mum would say – but she could be a right laugh too. It was always Jess who made them get up at 4 a.m. to queue for the in-store performances or to be the first in line for when the ticket office opened. Jess was the one who organised them to get to whichever hotel the band were rumoured to be staying in, and who spent the longest on the forums trying to get the band members’ attention. Any of them would do, but they both loved Shawn the most. He was the hottest by a long shot with his olive eyes and tan muscled chest; more man than boy.
‘You and all the other fifteen million . . . anyway, shhh, settle down – we’re here for MissTargetHeart.’
‘She’s so lucky. All these people here for her.’
‘Jess, MissTargetHeart isn’t lucky, for fuck’s sake, she’s dead.’
‘Yeah, sorry . . . I don’t see why we have to stand around with candles. These candles are shit, like the ones we had at infants’ school in the carol concerts. It’s embarrassing. It’s not like we knew her anyway.’
‘We kind of knew her,’ Chloe said quietly.
Both girls fell silent for a moment.
‘Do you know anyone who ever actually met her?’ Chloe asked.
‘Jade and Kai did, I think.’
‘Jade? Don’t mention that girl’s name to me.’
As always, the thought of Jade sent a deep and uncomfortable frisson through Chloe, a shiver of guilt and shame. Fear, too. She had seen how vicious Jade could be; worse, the other girl was proud of it. ‘I’m a proper Scorpio,’ Jade had said once. ‘Cross me and I’ll sting you.’
Jess’s eyes widened as Chloe said this. ‘Shit, speak of the devil – she’s, like, right over there.’
Chloe, panicking, looked in the direction of Jess’s pointing finger until she saw the couple snogging disrespectfully to their right. It was hard to miss Jade, with her badly dyed long blonde hair. It seemed to swamp her boyfriend, Kai, as if she was swallowing him alive. Chloe had known, of course, that Jade would likely be at the gig, but she’d hoped that the massive crowd would mean their paths wouldn’t cross. No such luck, it seemed.
Chloe and Jess slipped into the crowd before Jade saw them, just as the woman who had handed round the candles picked up a microphone, switched it on and tapped it. The main stadium audience had mostly dispersed now, and the small crowd assembled for the vigil turned its attention to the woman.
‘Er . . . hi . . . and thank you so much for coming. As you know, we’re here to pay our respects for a fellow OnTarget fan – my beautiful niece Rose who was tragically murdered two days ago in Kingston . . .’
The woman’s voice faltered and she blinked hard behind large red-framed glasses. A middle-aged couple next to her was clinging together, openly sobbing.
Jess nudged Chloe and pointed at the crying woman. ‘That’s MissTargetHeart’s mum and dad. I saw their photo on the news.’
Rose’s aunt gulped and contained herself. ‘Sorry, girls and’ – she looked around and identified one or two males present – ‘boys. I promised I wouldn’t get all emotional, but it’s hard. Anyway, so, what we’d thought we’d do shortly is all light our candles and stand still for two minutes thinking of our Rose and praying that she’s in a better place now. But first, we have a policeman who wants a quick word with you all. This is Detective Inspector Lennon.’
Everyone present, including Chloe and Jess, perked up at the sight of the rangy man who stepped forwards. He was quite fit for an old bloke, thought Chloe, although she didn’t usually find men in their thirties attractive. He was wearing proper jeans, not the shapeless dad-jeans her father favoured, and a well-cool battered leather jacket. She imagined him rugby-tackling a burglar to the floor and found it gave her a little thrill of excitement.
&nbs
p; The detective took hold of the microphone and spoke, his expression grave as he scanned their faces. A woman stood beside him, quite old but fit-looking, her hair in long auburn corkscrew curls. His sidekick, Chloe guessed. She wondered if the curls were natural.
‘I won’t keep you for long. I’m hoping that you might be able to help us in our search for Rose’s killer. I gather that you all heard about this vigil from either Twitter or the OnTarget forum on their website, and, under the name MissTargetHeart, Rose was an extremely active participant on both sites.’
‘Extremely annoying participant more like,’ whispered Jess to Chloe, who cringed again, wishing Jess would shut up. ‘Smug cow. Acted like she was gonna, like, marry Shawn when she totally didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Shh, Jess. Stop it. I can’t hear him.’
‘I’m bored,’ Jess said. ‘And I need the loo.’ She stalked away, pushing through the crowd towards the Ladies, leaving Chloe to listen to the hot detective without any more distractions. He talked for a few more minutes, telling them to report anything at all that seemed unusual or in any way worrying, and Chloe briefly pondered this. Many of the things said on the forums could be described as unusual and/or worrying, she thought.
When Jess came back she seemed totally spaced-out, a look of stunned joy on her face.
‘What’s up with you?’ Chloe hissed. ‘Did you meet Jesus in the toilet or something?’
Jess smiled mysteriously. ‘It’s nothing. What did I miss?’
‘It’s clearly not nothing!’
‘Shhh,’ Jess said primly, as though she had been the attentive one from the start. Several Bic lighters were going around the crowd and they were all lighting their candles. OnTarget’s song ‘Forever Together’ came on and the girls all immediately joined in, their thin reedy voices swelling together as the tiny candles flickered and steadied. Rose’s parents and her aunt now too all cried, as did many of the girls, even though hardly any of them could have known her.