Charley

by Tim O'Rourke

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘By that cop,’ he said, inching closer still. ‘Don’t you see, Charley? He will just bleed you for information about what happened to that girl you say was killed last night. That’s what the police do – it’s their job.’

  ‘Tom seems nice,’ I told him. ‘He could have arrested me. He could’ve taken me into custody and interrogated me.’

  ‘And he still might, Charley,’ my father warned. ‘All I want for you is to have some fun.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ I said.

  ‘You should be out with friends, not creeping around in the dark looking for places where young girls have died. I think this has more to do with the death of Natalie than you might want to admit.’

  Then something struck me as hard as my father’s unkind comment. What if Natalie had been killed by the same person as Kerry? They had both died on the railway tracks, at night, and both had been near some kind of outhouse. Was there a connection? The phone call I’d received at the funeral. Had it really been Natalie trying to make contact with me?

  NATALIE CALLING!

  NATALIE CALLING!

  NATALIE CALLING!

  My flesh turned cold and felt as taut as a bowstring. My heart sped up and I looked at my father.

  ‘What?’ he asked, looking back into my eyes. ‘What’s wrong now?’

  I couldn’t tell him. He would just get angry again and tell me I was making connections that weren’t really there. I swallowed hard. ‘The flashes aren’t connected to Natalie’s death. I’ve been having them since I was six. Since Mum died.’

  He looked at me. He was so close I could smell the car cleaning fluid he hadn’t yet wiped from his hands.

  ‘Dad, how did Mum die?’

  ‘Don’t go there,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re going to say, Charley, but you’re wrong.’

  ‘What’s to say that Mum’s death didn’t trigger something inside of me?’ I said. ‘I was so young I barely remember her. Any memories I do have of her are just like those flashes – broken.’

  ‘And that’s why your mum’s death hasn’t got anything to do with this’, he said, and I saw him tense up again. He’d always been reluctant to talk about her as I’d been growing up. But maybe her death did have something to do with my flashes?

  I took his hand. Mine trembled and I knew he felt it. ‘Why did Mum kill herself ?’

  ‘Because she was unhappy,’ he said.

  ‘But what did she have to be unhappy about?’ I asked. ‘She had you, and she had me.’

  ‘It wasn’t enough,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did she leave a note?’ I asked.

  ‘A note?’

  ‘Saying why she wanted to kill herself.’

  He shook his head.

  I drew a deep breath. ‘How did Mum die? You’ve never told me and I’ve always been too scared to ask.’

  ‘So why ask now?’

  ‘Because as I keep trying to tell you, Dad, I’m not a little girl any more,’ I whispered.

  ‘But …’ he started.

  ‘How did she die?’

  Dad squeezed my hand and said, ‘She died just like Natalie and Kerry did.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I breathed.

  ‘Beneath a train.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Tom – Monday: 21:54 Hrs.

  I reached the police station with just minutes to spare before my nightshift started. The station wasn’t big, just two floors of offices and a custody block containing six cells. The town of Marsh Bay was small, set on the southwest coast of Cornwall. It wasn’t busy like Truro and didn’t attract the number of holidaymakers St Ives or Penzance did.

  I’d heard that Marsh Bay was pretty quiet all year round and practically dead in the winter. It could be so quiet that Force Headquarters had mooted the idea of closing Marsh Lane Police Station altogether and centralising us all. But as yet that hadn’t happened.

  I liked the idea of being moved to a busier town after my attachment came to an end at Marsh Bay. It would be a good way of gaining experience, especially for someone young in the service like me. But transfers weren’t always easy to come by. Nowadays most forces wanted to shed officers not recruit them. So for the time being I was stuck in Marsh Bay, but I intended to make the most of it.

  The CID office was on the ground floor, at the rear of the building. The whole department consisted of four officers, and that included DI Harker. Taylor was the skipper and Jackson the detective constable. There was another, DC Kent, but he was long-term sick, and that’s how I had got my attachment; I had been brought in to cover his post until he returned to work.

  Detective Chief Inspector Parker and Detective Superintendent Cooper were based at Force Headquarters in Exeter and should we ever stumble across a serious crime like a murder, then they would put in an appearance and extra resources would be drafted in from there. But until that day, we were pretty much left to our own devices, and DI Harker had built his own little kingdom within the CID department at Marsh Lane Police Station.

  I entered the CID office. DC Jackson was sitting at his desk, feet up, thumbing through a file. He glanced at me then went back to the paperwork. DS Taylor was standing by the coffee machine in the corner.

  ‘Want one?’ she asked me, filling a large mug.

  ‘No thanks, Sarge,’ I said, shaking the rain from my jacket and hanging it off the back of my chair.

  ‘Lois,’ she said, coming over and standing next to me as I sat at my desk.

  ‘Sorry?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s my name,’ she smiled. ‘I prefer it to Sarge, Skip or Boss. We’re a small team. Like I said last night, you’re amongst friends here, Tom.’

  I glanced over at Jackson and wondered. ‘Thanks, Lois,’ I said, feeling uncomfortable calling my sergeant by her first name. At training school and when I worked in uniform, I had always called my supervisors by their title, and I had grown used to it. Maybe it was different in CID, but I could never imagine Harker letting me call him by his first name, whatever that may be.

  ‘Get much sleep?’ she asked.

  ‘Some,’ I said. I thought of Charley and what she had told me. My heart raced and I found it difficult to look at Lois.

  ‘You look beat,’ she said, then took a sip of coffee.

  I looked away. She seemed rather too interested in what I had been doing today. Did she know that I’d taken Charley for breakfast? I started to panic. Had someone seen us? Did she know? Did they all know?

  ‘Just tired from last night, I suppose,’ I said, switching on my computer. ‘I couldn’t get it out of my head. What with having to go and tell the Underwoods that their daughter was dead.’

  ‘Not up to the job?’ Jackson asked from behind his file.

  ‘I’m up to the job,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Jackson said, closing the file and placing it on his desk.

  I almost wanted to laugh. His marine-style haircut glistened with gel, and he wore the tightest T-shirt I’d even seen – it could have been sprayed on. He obviously wore it to show off his muscles. He could’ve been mistaken for a life guard – all that was missing were the skimpy shorts and flip-flops.

  ‘What’s that s’posed to mean?’ I asked, wishing now that Lois had made me a cup of coffee so I could hide my grin behind it.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I smiled.

  He gave me a distrustful look and said, ‘You know what? I don’t think you’re too tightly wrapped, kid.’

  ‘Cut it out,’ Lois said. ‘Give the guy a break. Tom just needs time to settle in.’

  ‘Well, he’d better settle in real quick,’ Jackson said. ‘Kerry Underwood’s ex-boyfriend is in the interview room.’

  ‘Her boyfriend?’ I asked. ‘What’s her boyfriend got to do with this?’

  ‘While you were stressing yourself out over the Underwoods, me and the Skip were out k
nocking on doors,’ Jackson said smugly.

  ‘We went and spoke to the landlord of the Pear Tree Inn where Kerry had been drinking last night with some friends,’ Lois explained. ‘It seems that she was having quite a good time until her ex-boyfriend, Jason Lane, put in an appearance. The landlord said it got quite nasty between them. He was just about to throw Lane out when Kerry stormed off.’

  ‘Has Lane got any previous?’ I asked, wondering if he was who Charley had claimed to see in her flashes. I was desperate to know more about him. What did he look like? How old was he? What colour car did he drive? But I had to be careful; I didn’t want Lois or Jackson to become suspicious. They couldn’t know that I had any information from a source that would be considered unnatural – supernatural!

  ‘Just a bit of drugs and an assault,’ Jackson said, tossing the file he had been reading onto my desk.

  I opened it and scanned Lane’s old custody record. He was last brought into the station eighteen months ago for possession of cannabis. I read the arresting officer’s notes and my heart leapt into my throat: Lane had last been arrested out at that old disused house by the railway lines.

  I closed the file, and looked at Jackson. ‘So you still think that Kerry Underwood took a short cut across the tracks?’

  Jackson ignored my question. ‘We viewed the CCTV from inside and outside the pub. You can see the row taking place. Lane looks to be quite agitated and at one point he even raises his hand at her.’

  ‘Does he hit her?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Lois said, putting down her mug of coffee and taking some statements from her desk. ‘You don’t see him hit her on tape at least. But according to these statements we took from Kerry’s friends, he did get nasty with her and called her all sorts of names.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘The usual stuff,’ Lois said, glancing down at the statements. ‘Filthy bitch looks like a favourite.’

  The word ‘bitch’ made the hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end. The man in Charley’s flashes had called Kerry a bitch too.

  ‘Kerry left the pub first,’ Jackson said. ‘You can see that on the CCTV. She turns left in the direction of home and the railway lines, but then we lose sight of her. Lane leaves a few minutes later, but goes to the car park at the back of the pub where he gets into his car and drives away. That’s the last we see of him.’

  I didn’t know how hearing all of this made me feel. Part of me felt excited that what Charley had told me was true, but another part of me felt sick because I knew what had happened once they had both left the pub. But if Lane didn’t admit to it, how would I ever prove it without saying what I had done and how I had implicated Charley? I looked at Jackson. ‘So you don’t believe Kerry took a short cut any more?’

  Jackson smiled at me and said, ‘I’m even more convinced of it.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘Can’t you see what happened last night?’ he sighed as if he were trying to teach a child their ABC. ‘Kerry goes out for the evening with her friends. Matey-boy Lane shows up. They get into a row and she storms out. He then follows her in his car. He tells her that he’s sorry and just wants to talk to her. It starts to rain, so not wanting to walk home, she gets into his car with him. They drive around, and the row flares up again. He then tells her to get out, dropping her near to the railway lines. It’s now pouring with rain and freezing cold, so Kerry decides to take the short cut, collapses or trips because of too much booze and wham! She gets hit by the train. End of story, case closed.’

  ‘Is that what you think happened?’ I asked Lois.

  ‘It looks that way,’ a voice says before she can answer. It was DI Harker, standing in the open doorway of his office.

  ‘But …’ I started.

  ‘But what?’ Harker asked.

  ‘If it’s such an open and shut case, why bring in Jason Lane for questioning?’ I quizzed.

  ‘To cover our arses,’ Jackson said.

  ‘To cross all the Ts and dot all the Is,’ Harker said.

  ‘Was she drunk? I asked Harker.

  ‘Still waiting for the toxicology reports. The PM was done earlier today.’

  Then, with my heart starting to thump and that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again, I said, ‘What about Kerry’s mobile phone?’

  ‘What about it?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘Has it been found?’

  ‘Nope.’

  My heart began to slow, but there were a couple of questions I needed to ask, to fully put my mind at rest. ‘Has anyone tried to triangulate it to find out its location? Has anyone been in contact with the phone company to try and get a print out of any texts or calls that might have been made?’

  ‘Faxed over the data protection forms earlier, but the phone company reckons it might take a few days for them to get back to me,’ Jackson said. ‘As for trying to trace the phone, it was probably smashed to pieces beneath that train and you know as well as I do, if the battery is dead or missing they won’t ever be able to track it.’

  Charley had said that the killer had thrown it away. But how could I tell them that I knew that?

  ‘Is there something on your mind?’ Lois asked, tearing me from my thoughts.

  ‘Huh?’ I said, desperate to hide the worry that she had obviously seen on my face.

  ‘It looks like something’s troubling you.’ She smiled, but I couldn’t be sure if it was genuine or not. It was one of those smiles that said, Come on Tom, you can tell me you took that pretty young girl to breakfast and she told you lots of stuff about what really happened to Kerry Underwood. The pretty girl knows what really happened up at the railway tracks because she saw it in her head like lightning bolts. Go on, you can tell me all about what she saw. I won’t be angry with you, because I’m your friend.

  Is that what she was really thinking behind her smile? ‘No, there’s nothing wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good,’ Harker said, ‘because I want you to go and speak with Jason Lane. See if you can’t get him to tell us what happened last night after he left the pub. Jackson will go with you.’

  Jackson was already heading for the office door. ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see what this muppet has to say for himself.’

  Jason Lane wasn’t anything like I had expected. Kerry seemed to have come from a good home with respectable parents. I doubted if they would have approved of Lane if they had ever met him. He sat on the opposite side of the interview room table from Jackson and me. His acne-scarred face was tilted downwards, so he didn’t have to look at us. His long greasy hair hung in his eyes and his nose piercing glimmered in the light from the overhead fluorescents. He had an untidy goatee with flecks of ginger in it and his leather jacket was so worn and faded it was no longer black but a washed-out grey. The guy looked a mess, and I saw that he wasn’t in control. He slumped forward in his chair, and in the confines of the poky interview room, I could smell the distinctive scent of weed.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Jackson asked him.

  ‘Ready for what?’ Lane mumbled, without lifting his head.

  ‘To talk about what happened last night,’ Jackson shot back, and I could sense he was going to enjoy interviewing Lane. He was also going to take great pleasure in showing off his interview skills to me. Jackson laced his fingers behind his head, and leant back in his seat. ‘Wakey-wakey, sunshine.’

  Lane said nothing.

  ‘Have it your way numb nuts, but you don’t get to leave here until you’ve told us what happened to Kerry last night,’ Jackson said, as if he had all the time in the world.

  ‘But …’ I said, ‘you’re not actually under arrest. You’re free to go at any time, though we would like you to stay and help us figure out how Kerry came to be on those railway tracks last night.’

  Jackson scowled at me and opened his mouth as if to say something, when Jason spoke.

  ‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ he whispered. His voice sounded broken, as
if he had been crying.

  ‘What do you expect if you dump your ex-girlfriend in the middle of nowhere in the dark and the—’ Jackson started.

  ‘I didn’t dump her anywhere,’ Lane croaked, and this time he did look up. I could see his eyes were red and sore.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, keeping my voice quiet.

  ‘We had a row in the pub,’ he sniffed, wiping his nose on his jacket sleeve. ‘She left and I went after her.’

  ‘Tell us something we don’t already know,’ Jackson sighed impatiently.

  ‘I went after her because I felt bad for upsetting her …’ Lane started.

  ‘I’d feel bad if I called my ex-girlfriend an effing bitch and waved my fist in her face,’ Jackson sneered.

  I shot a glance at Jackson. He continued to lean back in his chair and I could see he was enjoying seeing Lane distressed. I turned back to look at Lane. ‘Go on, Jason,’

  ‘We broke up a few months back,’ he explained, looking up at me through his straggly fringe. ‘Kerry didn’t like some of the people I hung about with. She said I was different when I was with them – you know – I used to act like a knob. So I finished with her, I put me mates first. I soon realised that she was right, of course, and I tried to get back with her, but she’d moved on and wasn’t interested. I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, not until last night. I didn’t know she was going to be in that pub. When I saw her, I couldn’t help myself, I had to go and speak with her. But her friends started to butt in – you know, take the piss and stuff. They never liked me. Kerry started to join in and I lost my temper, that was all.’

  ‘So what happened after you left the pub?’ I asked, not giving Jackson the chance to cut in.

  ‘I drove around for a bit,’ Lane said and sniffed again. ‘But I couldn’t find her. I took the route that she would have taken home, but she’d gone. It was like she had vanished.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Jackson sat forward. ‘Why are you lying to us?’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Lane said, still refusing to look at Jackson.

  ‘Yeah you are, and that causes me a problem.’

  ‘What problem?’ Lane asked, his voice dropping to a whisper again.