The Wolf, I say, for Wolves too sure there are
Of every sort, and every character.
Some of them mild and gentle-humour’d be,
Of noise and gall and rancour wholly free;
Who tame, familiar, full of complaisance
Ogle and leer, languish, cajole and glance;
With luring tongues, and language wond’rous sweet,
Follow young ladies as they walk the street,
Ev’n to their very houses, nay, bedside,
And, artful, tho’ their true designs they hide,
Yet ah! These simpering Wolves! Who does not see
Most dangerous of Wolves indeed they be?
She stared at the page, not sure why she had thought of it. Then she leaned back in her chair and glanced out at the apple tree, as if by turning her thoughts to the blue bird she could conjure it from the air. And maybe she had: maybe she’d imagined the whole thing, its improbable brightness, its heartfelt song.
There are no rules when it comes to the blue bird.
Of course she hadn’t imagined it. Birdwatchers were trawling the region for the creature, Bernard Levitt among them with his half-focused eyes, his vague smile; impossible to forget his name when he’d spelled it for her so carefully. Then there was the feather, so carefully placed in her pocket each time she changed her clothes, as if it were some kind of talisman. She didn’t need to touch it to know it was there; she had run her fingers across its edge so many times she didn’t like to look at it too closely; by now it was probably a sorry, bedraggled thing.
Alice smiled ruefully, opened the book and started to read. The words flowed like comfort from the page.
*
The story of the blue bird began, as many fairy tales do, in grief, with a king mourning for his dead queen. As many kings were, he was easily comforted in the form of a new wife. This one also brought with her a stepdaughter, Turritella, who was far less lovely than Fiordelisa, the king’s own child, reflecting her less-than-lovely personality.
Despite the queen’s manoeuvring, Prince Charming fell madly in love with Fiordelisa – the more beautiful and deserving of the two. He would not accept the rich gifts sent in the name of the uglier daughter, and when he heard that Fiordelisa was to be locked away in a tower, out of sight, he begged to be allowed a few precious moments with her.
But Prince Charming was tricked. They met only in darkness, so he could not know that Turritella had been sent to him instead. Under the delusion of speaking to his love, he proposed marriage. When the day of the wedding came, though, he refused to honour the promise of his hand.
Unusually, in this story, it was the wicked sister who had a fairy godmother; in revenge for the prince’s refusal, she cursed him. He was transformed into a blue bird, in which form he would have to live for seven years.
The bird hid away in a fir tree to escape the hungry eagles, but by night he emerged and searched the castle for Fiordelisa. At last, following the sound of her laments, he found her, and the prince sang so sweetly to his love that all who heard him thought the woodland inhabited by a spirit.
Unfortunately the queen discovered the princess and her avian suitor. She set a trap for him, surrounding his fir tree with sharp blades, so that when he emerged he was cut to ribbons. His life was saved only by an enchanter who persuaded the fairy godmother to change him back into a man; but unless he agreed to the unpleasant marriage, he would once again become a bird.
What happened next changed everything: the king died, and the people of the country demanded that Fiordelisa become queen. When the stepmother resisted, they killed her. Despite all Turritella’s efforts the new queen found Prince Charming and they were at last united, though not before one final footnote: the ugly sister, Turritella, tried to interfere yet again, and to stop her once and for all, the happy couple had the enchanter transform her into a big brown owl, who flew away, hooting dismally.
*
Alice sat back and smiled over the twists and turns the story had taken, the description of Prince Charming under the fairy godmother’s spell: He had a slender body like a bird, covered with shining blue feathers, his beak was like ivory, his eyes were bright as stars, and a crown of white feathers adorned his head.
She glanced towards the window. The blue bird she had seen had no white crown, but it had been beautiful. Poor Bernard Levitt in his flimsy hide: he had wanted to see it so badly. As in fairy tales, sometimes blessings fell to those who had never sought them. Take the unassuming Fiordelisa. She was so much more deserving than the nasty Turritella, who for all her scheming was turned into that big brown owl. And owls had their own share of stories; they were often seen as a bad omen, or even thought to be spirits. Perhaps the story was really saying that the girl was killed. Worse things happened in many stories. And in fairy tales, birds were seldom what they seemed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sarah Brailsford sat at the kitchen table, her face contracted into a frown, wiping the condensation from a glass of juice with her fingers. Cate took a glass from her mother too and said thanks. ‘I appreciate you arranging for us to see you,’ she said, not to Sarah but to her mother. ‘We don’t want to interrupt Sarah’s schoolwork.’
The woman almost managed a smile; she was distracted. ‘I need to get her back soon,’ she said. ‘And I need to go into work myself.’
‘Of course. This won’t take long. As I told you on the phone, there were just a couple of things I’d been looking into around the dance, and I was hoping Sarah could help.’ She turned towards the girl. Sarah glanced across the table towards her, but she stopped short of actually looking at Cate.
‘Sarah, you mentioned to me before that you got in late, that your dad wasn’t happy about it. Can you tell me what time that was?’
Sarah’s mother shot her a hard look, which she ignored. ‘Sarah?’
The girl looked up, away again. She bit her lip.
‘How did you get home?’
‘Why is this relevant?’ asked Mrs Brailsford.
Cate turned on her best smile. ‘I’m trying to work out which of the girls must have been there last, so I can piece together a timeline – who was still there, what they may have seen, and so on. It’s quite routine.’
She turned back to Sarah, but it was her mother who spoke.
‘She got a taxi. We’ve got a friend works for the cab firm, so we trust them. She has their number, and we gave her the fare. She was to call home though, if there were any problems – weren’t you, Sarah?’
She gave her mother a slight nod.
‘And so Sarah’s father – your husband, Mrs Brailsford – he was waiting up, just in case he needed to bob out and fetch her?’
‘That’s right. Look, we always make sure she’s safe—’
‘Of course you do. That’s not in question. So, just to check – what time did you get back, Sarah?’
This time the girl spoke, muttering the words, rubbing her hand across her mouth.
‘What did you say?’ her mother asked.
‘About one,’ Sarah repeated. ‘Maybe a bit after. Dad went nuts. He’d have woke you if you hadn’t had one o’ them sleeping pills.’
‘My pills are none of your business, young lady—’
‘That’s what Dad said, about what time I got in. Said it were best you didn’t know.’ Sarah sneered.
Mrs Brailsford took a deep breath and Cate held up a hand, stopping her. ‘If you were that late, Sarah, you must have been one of the last there. So you must have seen Mr Cosgrove locking up – he had some trouble with the alarm, I believe.’
She didn’t answer.
‘We did speak to another girl who was there until around twelve, but – and this is the odd thing, Sarah – she didn’t see you. She said no one else was there at all besides her, her boyfriend and Mr Cosgrove.’
‘What is this?’ said Mrs Brailsford.
Cate kept her focus on the daughter. ‘So where were you, Sarah? If you were there,
why didn’t Hayley see you? What exactly were you doing?’
‘Now wait a—’
Sarah pushed her glass away, slopping juice across the table, scraping back her chair. ‘Shut up, Mum. Just shut up.’
‘Don’t you speak—’
But Sarah had turned to Cate, her face screwed up, in fury or misery, Cate wasn’t sure which. The girl’s voice came in dry gasps. ‘I wanted to see him, all right? I just wanted to see him after, to talk. After what— I mean, I knew he liked me, he had to like me. I knew he did. That stupid cow, she didn’t even care about him.’
Mrs Brailsford was listening open-mouthed. For a moment Cate couldn’t think of what to say either; her heart raced. Her palms were slippery. ‘Mr Cosgrove. You waited behind to see him?’
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’ Now Sarah looked sulky, but her cheeks flamed. There were tears in her eyes, though they didn’t fall.
‘So, what, you made yourself scarce until everyone else had gone? Somewhere Hayley didn’t see you?’ Cate paused. ‘Mr Cosgrove – he was trying to set the alarm, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t because you were still inside.’
‘I hid,’ she said. ‘I was behind the stage. There’s a little room there, behind the curtains. I stopped in there. I wanted to see him, only that dimwit, Hayley – she was still there. I heard her go, though, saying bye like she didn’t have a care in the world, all the time she was stuffing me up. And he said bye too, and so I looked out.’
Cate felt prickling down her back, the touch of light fingers. She took a breath. ‘And what did you see?’
‘What do you think I saw? I saw him. He had the keys in his hand, only he wasn’t doing anything. He was just looking outside, staring for ages and ages, like he was watching something. Then he started fiddling with the alarm and it got kind of funny. I watched for a bit, thought it would make him laugh, you know, when he knew – but then—’
‘Then?’
‘He turned round and he saw me.’ Her face screwed up again, and this time the tears did fall. ‘He saw me and he just looked like – like he—’
‘Sarah.’ Her mother stepped forward and put a hand on the girl’s arm. ‘Sarah, don’t.’
‘He looked like he fucking hated me.’
Cate absorbed the words, waiting. She knew there was more.
‘He liked me before, I knew it,’ Sarah wailed. ‘I gave him a book, see. I gave it him and he took it, and it meant something, I knew it did. But this time it was like he didn’t even know me. I tried to make him – I wanted to talk, but he—’ Her words dissolved into a gulping sob. She rubbed at her face, and when she lowered her hands her cheeks were streaked, her eyelashes standing out from her skin in wet points.
‘Did he touch you?’ her mother said at last. ‘If he touched you, I – I’ll – Sarah, I’ll kill him.’
The girl sniffed, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. She shook her head. ‘He led me on. He took my present, didn’t he? I thought he liked me.’ She started to cry again, loud and gasping.
I thought he liked me. The same words she’d said before, right at the start of it all.
‘So what did he do, Sarah? Did he ask you to leave?’
Slowly, the girl nodded.
Cate sighed. But he had been there, the teacher had been there and he had lied, had said nothing about seeing this girl after the dance, this child.
But then, wouldn’t anybody have done the same?
‘You were there,’ she said under her breath, ‘the two of you. And you didn’t like Chrissie Farrell, did you, Sarah? Did you see anything of her? Did you—’
She didn’t see the mother move, only heard the air hissing between her teeth; then she was standing in front of Cate, her face contorted. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘It’s time you went, right now.’
‘All right, Mrs Brailsford. I apologise. But a girl is dead, and I have to—’
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ said Sarah. ‘You have to stop being so— I can do this. Look, he didn’t do anything. Is that what you want to know? And I went off on one. I said he shouldn’t have taken my book. I said he shouldn’t have led me on. And he kept saying he didn’t mean to and he didn’t know and he didn’t want this, and that I should go home. And then after a bit I called the cab. I had to wait, and he waited too until it came. He didn’t even speak to me, then – he just sat there staring into space. And then I went, and then, I suppose, so did he. That was it, all right? Is that it?’ She looked from Cate to her mother. ‘Can I go now?’
‘There is just one more question,’ said Cate, ‘if it’s all right with your mother. I just wanted to know – the gift you gave him. What was it about, Sarah? What was the name of the book?’
She sniffed, looked away.
‘Were you studying folklore with him, Sarah? Was it something about that?’
She frowned, shook her head. ‘Shakespeare,’ she said. ‘He was doing Shakespeare. I gave him a copy of Romeo and Juliet.’ She glared at Cate. ‘He shouldn’t have taken it. He knew what it meant. He knew it as well as anybody.’ She looked from Cate to her parent. ‘He shouldn’t have taken it if he didn’t mean it, should he?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Cate frowned. A word was circling in her head, but it wasn’t one she liked. Vanity, Len Stockdale had said. Vanity. And now they were on their way, the word wouldn’t leave her. Was that what this had been about, all the time? A man so charming that a schoolgirl hadn’t been able to keep her crush under control; one whom even Mrs Farrell, attending a dance for her child – her daughter’s night – had become so distracted by she’d even uttered the same words.
I thought he liked me.
Now Cate was going to see him at last, along with Dan: they had permission to do so from Heath himself. And all she could think about was this – would she know, after all? Would she look into his eyes and be charmed as the others had been, or would she see a killer there, looking out at her from behind a lovely mask?
‘Penny for them,’ Dan said, glancing at her.
‘I think he lied,’ said Cate. ‘I think maybe they both did. Chrissie was there, she had to be. I don’t think the girl was involved – I just can’t see it – but I think maybe Chrissie saw them fighting, was jealous herself. Maybe she went to talk to Cosgrove afterwards; maybe he snapped, lashed out. The posing of the body – all that could just have been a blind. He wanted to make it look like a stranger killing, like some headcase …’
Dan gave a low whistle. ‘I think you need to slow down.’
Cate subsided. She knew Stocky would have said the same thing.
‘There isn’t anything to show they even spoke that night. We need to work with the evidence, probe his relationship with Sarah, why he lied about seeing her. That’s all we have, Cate, and let’s face it: it’s understandable under the circumstances, if you think about how it would have looked.’
She fell silent. Of course he was right. And there was nothing to connect the teacher with Teresa King or Ellen Robertson. But Chrissie had been the starting point, hadn’t she? The beginning of it all.
Her eyes narrowed. Matt Cosgrove had been accused of having a relationship with Chrissie Farrell that went beyond school, and now there was this Sarah, with whom he might also have overstepped the boundaries by accepting her gift. Had he been doing other things too – out looking for casual sex, kerb-crawling even? If so he might have come across Teresa King. There had been nothing on his record to suggest he’d done such a thing, but that would only be the case if he’d been caught. Cate bit her lip. They should speak to his wife, see if she’d harboured any suspicions before any of this began.
But this latest victim – Ellen Robertson. She had moved to the area only a couple of months ago, hadn’t yet had any children to connect her with the school, and she lived several miles away. It wasn’t likely they would have met.
But had they?
She pinched the bridge of her nose. If it had been the teacher and he’d fought with Chrissie, he
would have panicked afterwards. The first scene had been posed, but aspects of it weren’t quite right, not in terms of the fairy story – the colour of her dress, even the choice of dump site. It hadn’t been quite organised enough. Maybe he’d set it up in haste. And after that, when he became a suspect, he needed to take the heat off. Teresa King might have been unlucky, that was all; he’d needed to make it look like there was a pattern, a serial killer, and had picked her at random to use as a prop. He might even have used an accomplice to do it, made sure the police had eyes on him at the time.
But – torture her? Her fingernails had been pulled out. That was a sign of cruelty, not randomness. And someone had bled her before her death, taking the blood to send back to her mother. It was odd too that Teresa King’s nearest relative had been a grandmother – almost as if someone had been watching her, making sure she fitted the story.
It was too late to wonder. Cate looked up to find Dan pulling in at the kerb on a long, ordinary street lined with boxy semi-detached properties. He let the car roll forward so that Cate could open her door without striking one of the trees planted along the pavement and pointed towards a plain house with blinds half drawn across every window.
‘This is it,’ he said.
*
Cate couldn’t take her eyes from Matt Cosgrove’s face. She knew she was staring from the way he kept glancing at her, shifting his feet as if he could evade her look.
‘So tell us again what happened when you were locking up,’ Dan said. ‘We know that Sarah was there as well as Hayley. We want to hear your version of events.’
Cosgrove shifted his gaze to Dan. His eyes looked empty. When he spoke, his voice was distant. ‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ he said. He sounded tired; beyond tired. ‘My solicitor would go mad.’
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