by Danuta Reah
Farnham stood beside her, watching her as she looked at the panel. Then he drew her across the room to one of the free-standing displays. ‘And this?’ he said. He had stopped in front of the photo-montages, images from the 1939–45 war: Hitler’s army in retreat, hanging a young girl, a suspected partisan, and a detail from the Brueghel that recurred throughout the exhibition, a figure, tortured and garrotted, hanging from a dead tree, the arms tied and pulled up. The head was forced back, the face almost skeletal, the skull naked, the eye sockets empty, a raw wound where the ear had been. She’d lived with this image for weeks.
Suddenly she understood why Daniel had said, ‘It’s obvious.’ How could she not have realized? She was back in the lobby of Cara’s flat, looking up as the moon came out, at the head wrenched back by the noose, the bloodstains black in the pale light, the shadows of the empty sockets. And the raven of the valley shall pluck them out… She couldn’t swallow. She pressed her hand over her mouth as she thought of Cara in the water under Cadman Street Bridge, under the arch.
Her eyes met Roy Farnham’s. He was watching her, observing her reaction. He’d wanted to know if she’d seen the connection before. He was checking her out. ‘Christ!’ she said. ‘Jesus Christ.’ She could smell coffee and croissant. She was going to be sick. She stepped backwards, breathing deeply through her mouth, trying to get herself under control.
He took her arm, but she shook him off.
‘Don’t,’ she managed to say. ‘Don’t.’ Her breathing was slower. He watched her. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’m…It was…I saw it last night, but it didn’t connect, not till now. It was a shock. I’m all right.’ She took some more deep breaths. The sickness receded.
He was frowning slightly as he watched her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘That figure,’ she said. Her voice sounded a bit shaky, a bit out of control. She tried again. ‘What did you want to know?’
He was still watching her carefully as though he was afraid she was going to fall over. ‘Anything. What do you know about it? Why did Flynn pick it out?’
Daniel. Daniel had known. How had he known? ‘It’s something Brueghel would have seen,’ she said. ‘Mutilated cadavers on display – to remind people of the price of sin, I suppose, or just to keep them afraid. Daniel picked it out because of the other hangings, the Nazi ones – it’s the same thing.’
She was cold. She could feel herself shivering. ‘Maybe you need to go back to the hotel,’ he said.
Eliza shook her head. She didn’t want to go back to that luxurious, impersonal room. She could phone Laura, go and stay there overnight. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I can go to a friend’s.’ But Laura wouldn’t be back until this evening. She couldn’t face the gallery, not now. It would be closed all day anyway. Maybe longer. She didn’t know. She still had the key to Maggie’s. She could go there, make the day useful, finish off the sorting out she had started. ‘I’ve got somewhere I can go,’ she said.
‘OK,’ he said after a minute. ‘If you need to get in touch, if you think of anything, or if anything happens…’ She looked at him. ‘Anything that worries you,’ he said, ‘anything at all, you can get me on this number –’ He gave her a card. She looked at it and pushed it into her bag.
‘You’ll never find that,’ he said. ‘Put it in your phone.’ He stood up. ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘Anything.’
Kerry looked at the clock. Still half an hour of English to go. She was supposed to be writing an essay about Romeo and Juliet. She leant her head against her arm and let her pen doodle on the page of her notebook. WHO R U? That odd message that had turned up on her phone. But it had been a mistake. Another message had come. WHR R U? That was what Lyn had meant – Where are you? Kerry had tried calling, but Lyn wasn’t answering, so she messaged back: at home. I was l8. I need 2cu. I was late. I need to see you. Nothing had come back, and now she was in class and the phone was switched off.
She was impatient to see Stacy. They didn’t have English together. Stacy was in the top set. Kerry used to be in the top set, in her old school, before Dad…Before she and Mum moved. Stacy was bound to be back by now. She’d be OK. She’d be all right. And Kerry had to talk to Stacy before she got the summons to go to the office. If she got the summons. Maybe no one had noticed she’d bunked off. She sighed and nudged Marie who was sitting next to her. ‘What did we have in French? On Friday?’
‘It was a test,’ Marie said. ‘She took it in at the end. It was for the assessment.’ She looked smug.
Kerry felt cold. If there’d been a test, and an important one, then they’d have noticed she wasn’t there. ‘I was poorly,’ she said. ‘I was in the loo all through French. Did anyone say anything?’
‘You bunked off,’ Marie said.
‘I never,’ Kerry said. ‘I was poorly.’ Marie didn’t believe her. She was going to get caught, and she didn’t know if Stacy would still agree to the story. It didn’t seem like such a good story now. If she got excluded…
‘Yes you did.’ Marie said coolly.
‘Kerry! Marie! Perhaps you’d like to tell all of us what you think about Juliet’s speech. You are talking about Juliet’s speech, I assume?’ Mrs Hall, the English teacher, was watching them from the other side of the classroom. She had eyes in the back of her head.
‘Sorry, miss,’ Marie said. She was quiet for a minute, writing in her notebook. Kerry drew a picture. She wasn’t sure what it was going to be, but it was turning into a gravestone, like the one in the cemetery where…She stopped. Marie was whispering again. ‘It’s OK. We didn’t have a test. I was winding you up. We had a supply teacher and they put us all together. She never did a register, so no one noticed.’
Kerry began to breathe again. And that meant they hadn’t noticed Stacy either. Kerry and Stacy were in the same group for French. Stacy wasn’t much good at French, or at maths. Kerry used to be, before…‘Kerry!’ Mrs Hall was standing right behind her. Kerry jumped. Mrs Hall picked up Kerry’s notebook and looked at it. ‘So you think that the significance of Juliet’s speech is whr r u –’ She carefully pronounced the words as they were spelt. A giggle ran round the room, and Kerry felt her face going red. ‘– and a few scribbles.’ She looked closely. ‘A gravestone. Well, at least it’s appropriate. Now, I want you to get on with your work, Kerry, and I want to see you at the end of the lesson.’
After Mrs Hall had gone, Marie nudged her. ‘You can look at mine,’ she said.
Kerry rolled her eyes to show that she didn’t care about what the Hall had said, but she was grateful. Not so much for the offer of the work – Marie really wasn’t very good – but for the support. Kerry had felt the treacherous tears starting in her eyes, and now she could blink them back. ‘Thanks,’ she mouthed as Marie shifted her arm so that Kerry could read what she had written. The lesson dragged on.
When the bell went, Kerry headed for the door, hoping Mrs Hall would have forgotten that she wanted to talk to her, but no such luck. Kerry kept her face carefully blank as she listened to the usual…need to apply yourself…intelligent girl…better attitude…Didn’t she understand? It didn’t matter any more. But what did the Hall know about anything? What did any of them know?
She was late into the canteen, and there wasn’t anything much left by the time she got to the front of the queue. She looked round the canteen. There were kids crowded round the tables, talking and shouting, and there was the noise from the football game in the yard. She could see Marie at one table and she took her plate – she’d got chips and beans, it was all they had left; she’d go on her diet again tomorrow – and went over. There was an empty seat at the next table. She could pretend she was going to sit there.
Marie called to her as she was walking over. ‘Kerry! Kerry Fraser! Come on, then.’ She moved across on her chair to make room for Kerry to perch on the edge.
Kerry put her tray down on the table and fitted herself in next to Marie. ‘What’s that then, Kerry?’ One of the girls, Ruth, prodded at Kerry�
��s chips and beans.
‘You’ll want to pin the bed sheets down,’ Marie said, ‘after that lot. Give us a chip.’
‘Look at her!’ Ruth again. ‘Cottage cheese salad and now she’s eating all our chips.’
Kerry ate as the talk whirled round her. It was good to be in a group again. No one knew about her. No one knew about Dad. No one knew about Mum, except Stacy.
‘Hey,’ Marie said. ‘What’s happened with Stacy McDonald?’
Kerry was aware of the sudden silence round the table, the interest. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She remembered the police and felt herself going red.
‘She was on the telly.’ One of the other girls. ‘This morning. They’ve got the cops out looking for her.’
Kerry hadn’t watched. She didn’t watch the news anyway, nor did Mum, not since Dad…
‘She got a boyfriend?’ Ruth’s eyes were bright with interest.
‘She likes Martin Smith, doesn’t she?’ Marie said to Kerry.
‘No!’ It jumped out of Kerry, taking her by surprise.
Marie looked at her. ‘Course she does. You were talking about him in the bogs.’ Marie’s eyes were sharp now, staring at Kerry.
‘We were not!’ Kerry pushed her plate away. ‘Those chips are crap,’ she said.
‘You were talking about Martin Smith in the bogs,’ Marie said again. ‘And you bunked off, didn’t you?’
‘No I didn’t,’ Kerry said, but Marie wasn’t listening.
‘Look,’ she said, nudging Kerry. There was a sound of something banging and a sharp voice calling for silence. Kerry was aware of the noise level in the room dropping, the scraping of chairs and the echoing voices fading away.
The head was standing at the front of the room with some of the teachers. There was something wrong. Kerry felt her stomach knot and she looked over to the windows where the fire door was. Maybe she could…
The head was saying something. ‘…all go to your base rooms, please. Don’t go to your class. Your year tutor will meet you in your base room. Year 9 girls, Mrs Sandison’s group, I want to talk to you.’
‘That’s us,’ Marie whispered in Kerry’s ear. She squeezed Kerry’s arm. ‘What’s up?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kerry said. ‘How should I know?’ She couldn’t get out by the fire escape with Marie hanging on to her arm. And now the head had seen her and was coming over. She was smiling, kind of. She didn’t like Kerry. Excluded for a period of six weeks…She’d said that in the letter.
‘Kerry,’ she said, ‘I need to see you in my office. Come along.’ Kerry was aware of Marie’s eyes, round with interest, fixed on her. She looked back at the fire-escape door, but there were two teachers coming behind her, almost as if they knew she was going to run away. They looked serious. She followed the head along the corridor to her office. There was a woman waiting for her and there was a man and he was wearing a uniform. And she was back at the day they’d come for her dad. Mum was screaming and crying. You bastard, you bastard! she shouted at Dad, while Kerry huddled in the kitchen, waiting for him to come in and explain, for her mum to come in and explain. They took him away, all in their uniforms, shouting. They hurt him. Dad was staggering, and they pulled him around as though they hated him.
But that wasn’t the worst. The woman was the cop who’d come to her house, who’d had a friendly smile and cold eyes and who’d come to talk to her about Stacy.
‘Kerry,’ the woman said, ‘do you remember me? Judith?’
Kerry gave a quick, assenting jerk of her head. She didn’t want to talk to the cops. ‘Listen, Kerry, we want to talk to you about Stacy. I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news about her, and we need your help. Someone hurt her very badly…’ Kerry felt a chill inside her. Blue skies and the river, and Dad coming into the bedroom. He used to come in when she was smaller, read her stories, play games. Dad saying, ‘Something bad may have happened to Ellie, love.’ Someone hurt her very badly…Her mind was racing. Stacy. She thought about Stacy’s angry face as she watched Kerry leave. Her stomach felt tight. It wasn’t her fault if Stacy hadn’t gone home. She looked at the woman called Judith, and at the head. The woman’s face was serious. ‘We asked your mum if she’d like to be here while we talked to you, but she wasn’t very well. We can go home and talk to you there, if you’d rather.’
Kerry didn’t want to talk to them, but the question jerked out of her almost against her will. ‘Is Stacy dead?’
It was Mrs Sandison, her year tutor, who answered. ‘Yes. I’m sorry, Kerry.’ Kerry liked Mrs Sandison, who was young, and fun. Like Maggie used to be.
‘Are you OK, Kerry?’ It was the woman copper. Kerry knew how this worked. They said things like, Are you OK? And the next thing, you were telling them things that were secrets and then suddenly there weren’t any secrets any more and everything came apart and when it came back together there was nothing left, nothing right any more, nothing the same. She kept her face turned away. Fuck off, Copper!
‘It’s all right, Kerry,’ the woman said. ‘You aren’t in trouble.’ Her voice was still friendly, but Kerry could hear something underneath. They pretended to be nice, but they wanted something. They pretended to like you, but they didn’t. She’d learned that. ‘Kerry, I don’t think you told me everything when I talked to you before. I understand that you didn’t want to get Stacy into trouble, but it’s different now. Isn’t it?’
Kerry looked down at her hands. She didn’t know what to think. They were saying that Stacy was dead, but it wasn’t Stacy who was dead, it was Ellie. And soon they were going to start asking her all the questions and she’d say things that came out meaning something else, and then the more she tried to explain, the more they’d look at her as if they understood, only they didn’t understand at all.
‘Isn’t it?’ the woman said again.
Kerry nodded again, just once. If they found out she’d bunked off, gone down the canal – suppose they found out about Lyn, about getting Dad out of prison. They’d stop her. Someone else must have seen Stacy in the market. Someone must. Let them tell the police. She had to think about Dad.
‘Listen, Kerry,’ the woman said, ‘we want to find the person who did this to Stacy. We want to stop whoever it was from doing it to someone else. Now, we know that Stacy was planning to do something on the day she disappeared – did she tell you about it?’
Kerry shook her head.
‘But you fixed her new top for her, didn’t you?’ The woman smiled. ‘You’re very good at doing things up, aren’t you? Did you do your own top?’ She was looking at Kerry’s Samantha Mumba T-shirt.
Kerry waited.
‘Stacy’s mum says it was your idea,’ the woman said.
‘It wasn’t,’ Kerry flashed back. Stacy’s mum always blamed her. She remembered Maggie’s face as she said, Get away from me. And now Stacy’s mum would hate her too. Only Stacy’s mum had never liked her, really, she just liked feeling sorry for her. Kerry used to think that Maggie liked her, that Maggie wanted her and Ellie to be sisters, but Maggie hadn’t liked her either. Get away from me, you…
‘Stacy asked you to do it?’
Kerry jumped as the woman spoke. She hadn’t meant to say. They did that, they made you say things. She looked at the woman warily, then nodded her head.
‘She must have wanted the top for a special reason,’ the woman said. Kerry shrugged. ‘Come on, Kerry,’ the woman said. She didn’t sound angry, but she sounded firm. She wasn’t going to go away, leave Kerry alone until Kerry told.
Kerry’s mind was working fast now. She had to tell them something that would make them go away. She could say she didn’t know, but they wouldn’t believe her. She’d tried that, and they knew she was lying. She had to think of something else. She gave the woman a quick assessing glance. The woman smiled encouragingly. Kerry bit her lip. She thought about Mum and how she’d be this evening, how she’d cry and say she was sorry, then she’d start saying things about Dad and Kerry would have to think of a
reason not to be there so that she didn’t have to listen. She thought about Stacy’s voice: You can’t go! She thought about the day they came and took Dad away. I’m sorry, Kizzy! She tried never to think about that, the way he’d looked as if they were hurting him and he didn’t know what was happening…And she felt the tears coming into her eyes and looked at the woman again. ‘Stacy…’ The woman nodded encouragingly. ‘She bunked off that day, in the afternoon. She wanted me to go with her, but I’ll be excluded if I bunk off again, so I said I wouldn’t.’ She couldn’t stop the pictures now. Her eyes were hurting and everything looked blurred and distorted. ‘We had a fight,’ she said. ‘Stacy was fed up with me for not going.’
She was aware of the adults around her exchanging glances.
‘Why did Stacy “bunk off”?’ the woman said.
‘She was going to meet someone in town, only she wouldn’t tell me,’ Kerry said. ‘Because she was mad at me.’ And the man had put his hand on Dad’s head and pushed him down into the car and Mum had been screaming…
‘A boyfriend?’
Kerry blinked and felt tears run down her cheeks.
‘It’s all right, Kerry. Tell me in your own time.’ The woman’s voice sounded soothing and kind. Kerry had to remember who she was. ‘Why didn’t anyone notice that Stacy wasn’t at school?’
‘We had a supply teacher,’ Kerry said. Her voice was wobbling out of control, and now she’d started thinking about that day she couldn’t stop. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. She tried to remember what Marie had said, but her mind wouldn’t think. ‘They put all the groups together and she…’ Kerry stopped. She didn’t know if the supply teacher had been a man or a woman. She swallowed and her voice felt firmer. ‘I mean, the teacher didn’t notice. That Stacy wasn’t there.’
‘Didn’t she take a register, Kerry?’ That was Mrs Sandison. Kerry shook her head.