Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  Newson did not find it easy to explain his thinking to Natasha the following morning when he asked her to go with him to the school.

  ‘I just feel there’s something there for us, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Things we need to know, and you have to come with me. The victim was a girl. I’m not wandering round some school on my own trying to talk to a bunch of adolescent girls.’

  ‘I hate schools,’ Natasha complained. ‘They remind me of school.’

  ‘Well, imagine what it’s like for me. I had six years of being ignored by juvenile females and now I’m going back for more.’

  Natasha took a little mirror from her bag and for the fifth time in as many minutes she checked her reflection. Her bruised eye was looking better, but she was inevitably still self-conscious about it.

  ‘How have things been with Lance?’ Newson asked. ‘Fine. Great. He’s been really, really nice. I thought he was going to be furious because I didn’t bring his flowers home with me, but he wasn’t. He said he understood. Since then he’s been lovely.’

  ‘Natasha,’ Newson said gently.

  ‘What!’ she snapped back. ‘What?’

  ‘He hits you and now you’re grateful because he’s not angry.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Anyway, let’s go.’

  They were not the only visitors to the Aneurin Bevan Comprehensive that morning. There were still clusters of media hanging about at the gates along with the endless stream of local residents arriving to lay flowers and teddy bears at the base of the perimeter wall.

  Inside the school things were nearly as crowded. Newson had expected the media presence and the flowers delivered outside. What he had not expected was the army of counsellors.

  ‘There are so many of them,’ Natasha said.

  ‘We have a statutory obligation to provide grief support,’ the school secretary explained. ‘If any of the pupils were to become traumatized as a result of this incident, we could be held responsible.’

  ‘Well, I think you’ve covered yourselves,’ Newson replied.

  They had. Every classroom had its own support group, grief counsellors and trauma counsellors.

  ‘Shit, if this much effort had been put in beforehand,’ Natasha said, ‘Tiffany Mellors probably wouldn’t be dead.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Newson replied. ‘There are always going to be bullies and there are always going to be victims. Being trained or prepared for it doesn’t necessarily protect you.’

  Newson had not meant this comment to reflect on Natasha’s relationship with Lance, but she clearly took it that way. Her lips set firm and she went silent. Newson desperately wanted to backtrack, but he knew that he would only make matters worse. Besides which, whether he’d meant it or not, it was true.

  The pupils, of course, were having a fabulous time. None of them had ever felt so important or found it so easy to skip lessons. Groups of girls hung about in the corridors hugging each other, red-eyed. Lads ran around the place looking tough and firm and clearly ready to deal with the invisible bully should he ever seek to try anything with them.

  Natasha and Newson were given the use of the nurse’s quiet room in order to conduct their interviews. One by one Tiffany’s classmates were brought before them.

  First came her close friends, the members of the gang that Newson had seen pictured in their bikinis on the front of the Manchester Evening News. Newson was irritated with himself to discover that, despite the fact that he was now a senior police officer, he was as intimidated by fourteen-year-old girls as he had been more than twenty years before.

  These were the pretty girls, the confident ones, their uniforms and faces all girlishly adorned to the limits of what the school would allow. Newson thought about his old classmate Sally Warren desperately trying to subdue a screaming toddler in a hotel foyer, no longer an object of desire. She’d been a golden girl once. All the boys had wanted to dance with her, but the last time he’d seen her she’d been dancing with her fatherless child. Newson wondered what kind of entries these fresh-faced girls would be making on Friends Reunited twenty and thirty and forty years on.

  ‘She was great. The best friend ever. I’ll miss her till I die,’ said a girl called Nikki, echoing the sentiments of the previous three girls who had sat before Newson and Natasha. ‘It’s like, you know, she always knew the best stuff to get, right? And, like, you know, the party was always at Tiff’s? And she’d say let’s do something and we’d all just do it?’

  ‘They were all jealous of her,’ Natasha said after Nikki had left the room. ‘I remember feeling like that. Some girls just have the lot. The boys want to have her and the girls want to be her. Tiffany Mellors was one of those girls. We had one in our class. I remember that I sort of loved her and I also secretly hated her because I knew that I was brighter than her and better than her but that if she called me and said come round I’d have dropped everything to be with her.’

  ‘Did she ever call?’

  ‘No, not for me. I was kind of halfway between the nerds and the cool gang. They sort of tolerated me and I got invited to parties to make up the numbers. But I wasn’t at the centre, not like these girls. Not like young Nikki. I’ll bet she’s a right bitch, that one.’

  ‘Ah, yes. We’ve met the class’s golden girls. And Tiffany Mellors was the boss, wasn’t she?’

  ‘No doubt about that.’

  ‘In which case it seems to me that everything that’s being said about why she died contradicts who she actually was. I think a very major point is being missed here.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m going to find out. And God knows, Natasha, I hope I’m wrong, because if I’m not what’s happened here is truly terrible and what’s more is going to happen again.’

  The school secretary knocked and entered. ‘Shall I bring up another group, Inspector?’

  ‘No,’ said Newson, ‘I’d like you to bring back the ones we’ve just seen. I’d like to see Tiffany’s closest friends again, please. Bring them in together.’

  The four girls returned. One of them was destined soon to take Tiffany’s place as coolest girl in class.

  ‘Now then, ladies,’ said Newson. ‘I want to talk to you some more about bullying.’

  The expressions on the girls’ faces indicated that they had hoped for something more exciting. They did not think that there was anything left to say on the subject of bullying.

  ‘We’ve told you,’ Nikki volunteered wearily, ‘we don’t know who was getting at Tiff. If we did she’d be dead, right? ‘Cos we’d get her.’

  The other girls nodded In agreement.

  ‘I don’t want to know who you think might have been bullying Tiffany Mellors. I want to know who Tiffany Mellors was bullying.’

  Newson let this hang in the air for a moment before adding, ‘Who you were bullying, Nikki.’

  The girls were dumbfounded.

  ‘Come on,’ Newson persisted. ‘You look like a pretty cool bunch to me. You don’t look like girls I’d want to mess with, that’s for sure, and Tiffany was the boss, right? All the boys wanted to go out with Tiff, didn’t they? All the girls wanted to be her, right? So what I want to know is, who paid the price for all that power? Who was on the receiving end? Whose life have you been making a misery?’

  The girls did not reply. Nikki glared defiantly at Newson and the other three fiddled with their rings and stared at the floor. Clearly it was Nikki who was destined to inherit Tiffany’s crown.

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ said the girl who would be queen. ‘None of us are saying anything,’ she added, just in case any of her friends had had other ideas.

  ‘Right, that’s all I need to know,’ Newson said. ‘Thank you, girls. That’ll be all.’

  The four girls left and the secretary returned.

  ‘Right,’ said Newson, ‘I’d like to see the rest of the class, one at a time.’

  ‘Send up the girls first,’ Natasha added, and then, turni
ng to Newson, said, ‘Save you a bit of time, Ed. You’re looking for a girl, believe me.’

  §

  Both Newson and Natasha picked her out the moment she walked into the room. Tanya Waddingham was obviously a victim, or at least she’d been turned into one through being in the wrong year with the wrong girls. Her hair, parted in the middle, hung limply in front of her face, a face that was staring resolutely at the floor as she entered the room and which she scarcely raised at all as she sat down. She wore a long skirt and a big jumper that made it impossible to imagine what shape her body was, and her skin was pale and spotty. They stared at the greasy crown of Tanya’s head as she sat before them, her chin stuck firmly to her chest.

  ‘Tanya,’ Natasha said, ‘we want to ask you something and we’ll treat the answer in complete confidence. Were you being bullied by Tiffany Mellors?’

  The girl did not answer.

  ‘Please, Tanya. It’s very important. We need to know.’

  After a few moments Tanya mumbled something.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Tanya? I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘I’m glad, she’s dead,’ Tanya repeated, still mumbling, but this time there was no doubt what she had said.

  ‘Why are you glad she’s dead?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘Because she was a bitch.’

  Newson spoke. ‘Tanya, would you roll up the sleeves of your jumper for me, please?’

  Tanya did not move. It was as if she was frozen.

  ‘I’d like you to show me your arms, please,’ Newson pressed.

  Still Tanya did not move. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist,’ Newson said.

  ‘Can’t make me.’

  Natasha held up her hand to Newson so that she could speak. ‘Tanya,’ she said gently, ‘we don’t want to have to make you. You don’t have to be scared with us, but whatever has been happening to you needs to be brought out. This is a police investigation, Tanya. Please do as the inspector has asked.’

  Slowly and still without lifting her head Tanya raised the sleeves of her jumper. The pale, thin arms revealed beneath were marked by a crisscrossing of scars.

  ‘Tanya,’ Newson asked. ‘Did you do this to yourself?’

  The girl did not reply. After a few moments Newson repeated his question.

  ‘No,’ Tanya whispered.

  ‘Did Tiffany Mellors do it to you?’

  But Tanya would say no more. As far as Newson was concerned, she did not need to.

  After the girl had gone Newson sent for the secretary and asked her to send up the next pupil. He explained that he would be needing to speak to all the other members of the class, including the boys.

  ‘Why?’ asked Natasha when they were briefly alone in the room. ‘You’ve found your victim.’

  ‘If we stop now,’ Newson explained, ‘Nikki and her little gang of hellcats will presume that Tanya told us what we wanted to know and Tanya’s life won’t be worth living. If we speak to all the kids, then our friend Nikki will have no reason to suspect Tanya. We can’t just barge in here, turn that girl into an even bigger target than she already was and then bugger off again.’

  ‘No, of course. You’re right,’ Natasha replied, then she gave Newson a hug. ‘You’re a good bloke, Eddie Newson. I hope you know that. A very good bloke.’

  Newson did not reply, intent as he was on absorbing every detail of her brief, sisterly embrace. The pressure of her arms around his shoulders, the slight contact between her chest and his, the nearness of her mouth to his ear, the smell of her hair and the tiniest tickle as it brushed briefly past his cheek. It was over in seconds, but by that time Newson had managed to keep a piece of it locked in his heart to treasure for ever.

  Newson passed no further comment on the interview with Tanya Waddingham until he and Natasha had left the school and were sitting together in his car, which was parked in a nearby street.

  He opened the glove compartment, took out the notebook in which he had made his list of victims and the victims’ victims, and added two new names to the bottom. Tiffany Mellors and Tanya Waddingham.

  ‘What are you doing, Ed?’ Natasha asked, and her voice shook with emotion. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that our killer has moved from the past to the present,’ Newson replied. ‘I don’t believe that Tiffany Mellors committed suicide. Tiffany Mellors was a bully and somebody killed her for it.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Mounds of flowers were stacked up on the pavement outside the Mellorses’ little terraced house. As Newson and Natasha walked from the car, a poorly dressed elderly lady in the process of leaving a little bunch of flowers stood up from the pavement and wiped away a tear.

  Tiffany Mellors’ mother opened the door and allowed them in. She had obviously been crying and was not overjoyed at the prospect of speaking to the police. ‘I really don’t see what there is to talk about,’ she said, showing Newson and Natasha into her leather-furnished lounge. ‘What the police should be doing is getting into that school and finding whoever it was that drove my girl to do this terrible thing. Not sitting here talking to me.’

  ‘We’ll try to make this as brief as possible, Mrs Mellors,’ Newson told her. ‘And please rest assured that we’re as determined as you are to get to the bottom of what it was that caused this terrible tragedy.’

  Mrs Mellors took a tissue from a flamboyantly embroidered box.

  ‘Tiffany died some time after returning from school,’ prompted Newson. ‘You discovered her body when you got home at six thirty. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is.’ Mrs Mellors was having trouble controlling her emotions. ‘I came home and called for her to help with the tea and when she didn’t reply I went upstairs and…and…’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Mellors, no need to go over that again. Just tell me: was it usual for Tiffany to be in the house alone after school?’

  ‘Yes, me and her father both work, see. I get home at six thirty and he’s back soon after that. Tiff had a key and unless there was sport or whatever at school or she was seeing a mate, she’d come home and let herself in.’

  ‘So she was a responsible girl? You trusted her?’

  ‘She was the best, that’s all, Inspector. The best.’

  ‘She’d get home, when? About four thirty?’

  ‘Yes. She’d normally got her homework done by the time I got in. She’d get a Diet Coke and go to her room, and…’

  Mrs Mellors broke down. When she had recovered Newson asked if they could look at Tiffany’s bedroom. Reluctantly Mrs Mellors agreed.

  ‘He wants to move out,’ she said as they climbed the stairs, ‘but this was her home. I can’t just walk away from it.’

  She opened the door on which there still hung a sign that said ‘Tiff’s place. No parents without permission.’ Newson could see that Mrs Mellors was swallowing back tears. Inside was very much the bedroom one would have expected to belong to a teenage girl. There were boy-band posters on the wall, stuffed toys on the shelves and piles of celebrity magazines. The dressing table was covered in any amount of make-up and jewellery, and the mirror had notes and cards wedged into the frame. The only obvious thing that could be gleaned about Tiffany from a superficial glance at her room was that she was a very neat girl. Her magazines were nicely stacked and the make-up was all laid out in good order.

  ‘Tiffany was proud of this room, I think?’ Newson enquired.

  ‘Yes, she was. She did it all herself and cleaned and vacuumed. I used to say it was the tidiest room in the house. She hated mess.’

  ‘And yet she — ’ Newson stopped himself. He’d been thinking out loud. In front of the dressing table a little padded matching chair stood on dust covers, which had been laid over the carpet.

  ‘We haven’t decided what to do about the floor yet,’ Mrs Mellors said, and she was crying now. ‘I want to keep her room exactly as it was, but the carpet’s all soaked in…soaked in — ’

  ‘We under
stand, Mrs Mellors,’ Natasha said gently. ‘Don’t feel you have to speak.’

  ‘Tiffany was sitting on the dressing chair when she died?’ Newson enquired.

  ‘Yes. She’d been looking at herself, I suppose, as she…’

  Newson stepped forward on to the dust sheets and studied the little chair and table. ‘They’ve been cleaned, have they?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, my sister-in-law gave them a wipe down when she come over to be with us. Tiff loved her aunt, she did.’

  Newson got down on his knees and looked at the seat back and the legs of the chair. It was the kind of fanciful chair that a Disney princess might have sat upon, painted in a rich cream colour with a crimson cushioned seat.

  ‘She had that when she was eleven. I think she was beginning to think that she wanted something a bit different, a bit more grown-up.’

  ‘I’ll need to take this chair away with me if that’s all right, Mrs Mellors,’ Newson said.

  ‘What do you want with it?’ she said. ‘What good can looking at her stuff possibly do?’

  ‘I’m hoping that I may be able to shed some light on the causes of your daughter’s death, Mrs Mellors. I’m afraid I’ll have to insist that you let me borrow it for a day or two.’

  ‘Do what you have to do.’

  ‘There’s a coffee cup on the dressing table, Mrs Mellors. You mentioned that Tiffany drank Diet Coke.’

  ‘She had one every day when she got back from school. It was her treat.’—

  ‘Did she drink coffee?’

  ‘Not at home. Starbucks, yes, she loved all that, but not much at home. Occasionally…I suppose on that day everything was out of character, wasn’t it?’

  Newson had seen all he needed to see. He put on his plastic gloves and picked up the vanity chair and the coffee cup and carried them downstairs. He assured Mrs Mellors once more that he expected shortly to have some explanations for her, and then he and Natasha left.