Grace Smith Investigates

by Liz Evans

  ‘So what now?’ I panted.

  I’d asked Amelia, but it was Bone who answered. ‘We’ve a plan.’

  ‘Bully for you. If it doesn’t involve getting these chains off and showing me the front door, I don’t want to hear about it.’

  I looked her over. The Lycra outfit had been replaced by the jeans and checked shirt I’d seen before. The make-up-less face looked young - and determined.

  ‘You have to hear about it. See, we’ve decided it has to be a car crash. You’ll have an accident when you’re drunk. You drink a lot anyway, so no one will think it’s off the wall or anything.’

  I had a horrid feeling she could be right about that, but I pointed out that forensic science had got pretty sophisticated. ‘The police can spot a phoney crash these days. Soon as they see these chain-shaped bruises they’re going to smell a whole colony of rats.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that. The car will catch fire. There’s a petrol can in your boot that’s already rotten. We’ve made it a bit worse ... so the fuel dribbles all over the boot. We thought if you went over the cliffs at North Bay, where the road’s really winding, it would look best. Someone hits the crash barriers on that stretch at least once a week. If we loosen one a bit and you go right through you’ll roll the last bit to the edge.’

  Her voice was calm, as if she was discussing the arrangements for my first bungee jump. This was her big chance. Her mother needed her. And if she could pull this off, Amelia would be forever in her debt. The way she saw it, all the love and approval she craved from her mother would be there for the asking from now on. Had I really expected anything else? She was fourteen and selfish as hell.

  ‘I scored these down the arcade.’ Bone unscrewed a twist of paper. Two pale-green tablets lay in the creases. ‘It’s E.’

  ‘Well, that’s really thoughtful of you, Bone. The idea is that I still get murdered, but I get to feel good about it, is that it?’

  ‘Sort of. I thought ... it might make it a bit easier on you.’

  ‘No. You thought it might make it a bit easier on you, kid. Well, I’ve bad news. I’m allergic to the stuff. Took it once; ended up in intensive care. It’s on my medical records. There’s no way I’d be daft enough to pop Ecstasy. You might as well write “fix” all over my forehead.’

  It was a lie, but I was gambling on her swallowing it. I needed to stay as much in control as possible.

  Bone retwisted the paper and returned it to her pocket. ‘I suppose we’ll have to just do it then. It’s dark enough now. Go get the things, Mummy.’

  Amelia trotted out obediently. As Bone had bloomed, she’d diminished. For the first time she looked her age.

  I had one last try with Bone. Did she realise, I asked, that she was about to commit cold-blooded murder?

  ‘Natch. I’m not a total thicko. But ... see ... she’s my mother.’ Her round face with its slight dusting of summer freckles just beginning to show pleaded for my understanding. ‘You’d do it for your mum, I’ll bet.’

  Would I? I don’t know. Perhaps she was right. Different moralities suddenly apply when it’s someone of your own, don’t they? I assumed Amelia must have confessed to killing Julie-Frances and told Bone she’d be jailed for life if they didn’t shut me up for good. It was no different, I guess, than a mother protecting a son she knows in her heart of hearts is a serial rapist.

  Amelia came back with several large black plastic rubbish sacks, pushed them inside each other and concertinaed them up until she was grasping the wide neck.

  I fended her off with both arms.

  ‘If you don’t let us,’ Bone said, ‘I’ll knock you out with something really heavy.’

  They’d have managed it eventually. It seemed sensible to co-operate. At least that way I stayed conscious and I’d get out of this cellar.

  I dropped my arms. They flipped the sacks over my head, pulling them down to hip level. The first breath I took sucked warm plastic into my nose and mouth. I was suffocating. I started to panic. Had that been the idea all along? Perhaps the car-crash scenario had been a ruse to get me to go along with my own asphyxiation.

  The tape was lashed round, binding my arms to my sides. I thrashed about, twisting my head from side to side. It made things worse. The moist plastic set like a second skin over my face.

  A hand groped over my nose. I bucked, expecting it to push down. Instead it started tearing at the suffocating bandage until my nose and mouth were free.

  Relieved, I relaxed. The chains were removed and replaced by another thick band of tape around my ankles.

  They’d left the plastic over my eyes, so I had no warning of what was coming next until a finger and thumb pinched my nose closed. Instinctively I opened my mouth. A glass bottle was thrust in and vodka poured down my throat. I choked a lot back but enough went down to explode into a burning ball in my stomach.

  I was still coughing and gasping for breath when hands grabbed in my armpits. Another set of arms wrapped around my legs.

  ‘OK? One ... two ... three ... lift.’

  I rose a few inches off the floor. Amelia was at my head. She was having difficulty retaining her grip because of the plastic. My bottom kept bouncing and scuffing along the cellar. Each step of the staircase was negotiated in a series of bum-numbing heaves and thumps, with Bone pushing from the feet end.

  I guessed that we turned towards the back after that. I knew I was right when we descended the patio steps and I was dumped on the grass, and Bone’s voice asked where the keys were.

  ‘I left them in the dash, darling - why?’

  ‘We need them to unlock the boot.’

  I sensed them both moving. Their voices came from several yards away. For some reason they seemed to imagine the plastic shroud had cut off my hearing as well as my sight.

  ‘Mummy - it will be OK, won’t it? I mean, you’re sure you can stop the car in time?’

  ‘Of course I can, darling.’ Amelia’s tone became softer and gentler. I could almost see her slipping a comforting - and uncharacteristic - arm around Bone’s shoulders. ‘I’ve told you, we’ll just frighten the hot little bitch and teach her to keep her hands off your father in future. You don’t want Daddy to leave us, do you?’

  ‘Well, no ... but ...’

  ‘Trust me, Bone. We’ll set the car rolling towards the edge and I’ll drag the handbrake on at the last minute. And if she tries to report us to the police, we’ll both swear we were home all night.’

  It was a rotten plan. The scrub grass grew lush up there at this time of the year. Once the car started moving the wheels would slide on the slippery surface and applying the handbrake would just lock them whilst the vehicle’s own weight kept it moving until we skidded over the edge. Not that I believed Amelia had any intention of braking before I launched into space. But at least it explained why Bone was going along with my murder. She wasn’t trying to protect her mum from the consequences of Julie-Frances’ death - she probably didn’t even know about it. Instead Amelia had conned her into believing this was all a nasty little charade to stop me luring Daddy - and Daddy’s cheque-book - from the family home.

  Once I’d gone over that cliff, no doubt Amelia would be tearfully claiming that flaky little her had messed up again and they’d both better keep their mouths shut in case they ended up on a murder charge.

  I felt the vibration of returning feet against the cheek that was resting on the grass. ‘Bone,’ I gabbled, ‘she’s lying. Your mum killed Kristen Keats and she’s going to kill me too. She’s not going to put the hand bra ...’

  Lousy guess. My listener thrust a scrap of material into my mouth. It tasted of Amelia’s scent. Bone returned a second later. By the time I’d spat the gag out I was bundled into the boot and the small amount of light that had been filtering in from the nose hole in my plastic shroud was cut off.

  The enclosed space already smelt strongly of petrol. I wriggled around, feeling lumps under myself. I kept all sorts of junk in here. But as far as I could tell, n
one of it had sharp edges. I squirmed in a circle, searching for bent metal along the boot lid. Several times I caught the petrol can. Each collision was marked by a sloshing sound and a stronger aroma of fuel. Eventually I located a fragment of jagged metal jutting from the locking mechanism.

  I snagged the plastic and tore more from my face. I couldn’t see anything much, but it made me feel better.

  With no vision to speak of and most of a bottle of vodka being absorbed into my blood stream, I was swimming in and out of reality. I think I must have passed out briefly, because the roar of the engine vibrating through my body took me by surprise. I jumped, rolled and lost the metal fragment.

  I tried to twist back to it. The movement was jolting me up and down; each obstruction in the road sending me slamming up into the boot lid. It felt like we were doing at least seventy along the back road.

  Nausea overwhelmed me. Orange and red lights were dancing before my eyes, swirling around like wreaths of smoke. The petrol fumes were choking me and adding to the hallucinatory effects of the alcohol.

  I was riding on a cushion of clouds now. The motion continued to throw me against the metal, but somehow it didn’t seem important.

  My ears were full of wailing, which rose in ever-increasing decibels. It ricocheted inside the warm fuggy prison. I was bouncing a lot more: bounce up; bounce down; bounce up. Someone was giggling about it. I think it was me.

  Then suddenly I was flying. Bang! I hit the lid with three times as much force as before. And then everything was still.

  Perhaps I’d died already. I hoped not. I didn’t want to spend eternity in a petrol-filled boot. If this was hell, it was a real rip-off.

  The flood of light and fresh air took me by surprise.

  ‘What the fu ...?’

  Fleshy fingers dug into my face and tore the plastic off my head. I peered blearily upwards and smiled.

  I knew what had happened. Amelia had been speeding in my car with its distinctive paint job and much-memorised registration number. It was a chance for an arrest that at least one cop wouldn’t have passed up for a lottery win.

  Levering myself to the edge of the boot, I beamed at the bemused face beneath the copper’s hat. ‘Hi, Terry!’

  With a satisfying whoosh, I threw up all over Rosco’s highly polished shoes.

  Epilogue

  Would you believe they couldn’t charge Amelia with murder?

  No body; no evidence of a crime; no motive. It was her word against mine that she’d confessed to killing Kristen (a.k.a.Julie-Frances).

  They got her for false imprisonment and assault on me, of course. And the hit-and-run on Figgy is under consideration by the Crown Prosecution Service. But since they were first offences she was given bail. (Bone was granted it automatically on account of her age.)

  So whilst I was lying in a hospital bed recovering from an overdose of alcohol and assorted serious bruising and pulled muscles, the Bridgeman family were back home enjoying the good life of swimming pool, sauna and sunbeds.

  It seems Amelia kept her head when they tried to question her and stuck to her story about flipping when she thought I was having an affair with Stephen. All she’d intended to do was teach me a lesson by scaring me a bit and then dumping me somewhere. And no - of course she hadn’t said anything about crashing my car and burning me to death. As for killing this Kristen Keats person - no way! The woman was simply a former employee of Wexton’s who’d given in her notice and left the company some weeks ago. She could be anywhere.

  She was actually in a flooded quarry in Wales. Her body surfaced about four weeks later, during a routine search for a lost kid who’d wandered away from home. There was no sign of her luggage down there, so presumably Tom Skerries had kept his word and dumped it at various locations along the route.

  He finally surfaced too, in a manner of speaking. In Turkey, working in his mate’s bar which he’d just bought into as an equal partner. When he was tackled about his sudden influx of ready cash, he denied ever having heard of, let alone met, this Kristen Keats bird.

  He admitted that yes, sure, Amelia Bridgeman had given him the money. Sold her motor to raise the readies, in fact. See the thing was, he and her had been having a bit of a ding- dong - well, you know what these bored housewives are like, always throwing themselves at him. And then she’d gone and panicked when she thought her husband might be on to them. Begged him to get lost for a bit, she had. Even given him the money to go see his mate Omar.

  He’d driven over far as Germany, hadn’t he, until the poxy van packed up on him, then he’d hitched a lift on a truck. Advantages of travelling light, see, just grabbed his stuff and hit the road. He knew he should have let the family know, but he wasn’t one for writing. And his Donna had forgiven him. Matter of fact, she and the kids were flying out next week to take a look at their new flat.

  She did too. First-class. It was no good my pointing out that Donna Skerries didn’t have that sort of money - unless someone had found Skerries before the police and paid out an extra little sweetener to make sure he came up with the above story.

  Forensic evidence was a non-starter as well. The German police had scrapped the van Tom had dumped in Munich - any remnants of Kristen/Julie-Frances still adhering to it were now crushed into a metal cube somewhere in a landfill site. And there wasn’t one single fingerprint from Julie-Frances in the whole of the Bridgeman house when they dusted it. Plainly the Bridgemans had finally managed to employ a cleaner with more commitment to the job than me.

  For a couple of months it looked as if Amelia, with the help of an overpaid barrister, might get away with a suspended sentence and a few hundred hours’ community service. And then the Skerries clan returned to the UK to pack up for good.

  Zeb’s boss - DCI Jackson - got a search warrant, ostensibly to look for the building materials Larry Payne claimed Skerries had been helping himself to. And you’ll never believe it - Tom still had a traveller’s cheque made out in the name of Kristen Keats in his possession.

  That proved a bit tricky to explain, when he’d sworn he’d never heard of her. In the end he admitted everything. With that corroboration, they searched the Bridgeman house with microscopic thoroughness this time and came up with a minute patch of blood that had seeped between the sunken bath surround and the fitted carpet. It was a DNA match to Julie-Frances.

  They charged Amelia with murder but eventually dropped the case against Bone when I insisted on making a statement saying she’d been coerced by her mum into helping with my disposal.

  She came to see me at the office; all sulk and attitude.

  ‘We wouldn’t really have done it. Aced you, I mean. I told you Mummy was a few tracks short of the full CD when it came to Daddy. You should have kept your paws off.’

  ‘Believe me, Bone, I kept my paws and indeed every other part of my anatomy well away from your dad. But then you know that, don’t you? Face facts, kid, your mum is more than a few tracks short. She killed Kristen, remember?’

  Bone shrugged, thrust back her chair, crossed her boots on my desk and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘They haven’t proved it yet, have they? Got a light?’

  ‘No. How’s Patrick?’

  ‘OK. He’s going to day school next term. Gran’s fixed it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Yeah. It’ll stop the pest whining, I guess.’

  We stared at each other across the desk. ‘So how about you?’ I asked. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Me? Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?’ She returned the unsmoked cigarette to her bag and stood up. ‘Anyhow, just thought I’d call and say so long.’

  ‘And thanks for getting me off the hook with the police, Grace?’

  ‘No. Why should I? You got to hang on to all my money even though you never found Tom for me, didn’t you? I figure that makes us even. So long then.’ She sashayed out without a backward glance.

  I figured that was that. Going downstairs later, I found out she’d left a plastic carrier with Jan for me
. It contained a bottle of her dad’s obscenely priced ancient plonk.

  But all the above was in the future. Whilst I was lying in my hospital ward, contemplating life, the universe and what to tick on the daily menus, I had a satisfactory flood of visitors.

  Zeb headed the deluge. ‘I feel really rotten about this,’ he announced, fixing those large puppy-dog eyes on me.

  ‘That makes two of us.’ I eased myself up on the pillows. ‘But don’t get bent out of shape about it. I’ll live.’

  ‘Yes. I know. I talked to your doc; he says you’ll be out in a couple of days. I didn’t mean that. The thing is ... I’m off to Derby on a course tomorrow, so I was wondering ... since you’re in no state to work ...’ He handed me a bundle of notes. ‘Could you nip out and buy that frying pan before Annie gets back?’

  Marina and Mickey turned up with wedding plans, flowers and a large box of Belgian chocolates. I had to turn down the kind offer to be a bridesmaid.

  ‘Just imagine how I’d look in the wedding pictures, Mickey,’ I advised, peeling down the blanket to give her the bruises in fuller technicolour glory.

  ‘Oh, but it’s not for weeks yet. And anyway they’re my pictures - and you’ve been dead brilliant about everything. I wouldn’t mind what you looked like.’

  ‘Then you’re a nicer person than me, Mickey. But I’ll still pass, thanks for the offer. How’s Figgy?’

  ‘On the mend,’ Marina said. ‘He and his father are already arguing twenty-five hours a day, so situation nearly normal.’ ‘Speaking of nearly normal ...?’

  Marina caught my drift: ‘I’ve seen her. She swears she didn’t know it was Fergal.’

  ‘I believe her.’

  ‘So do I, as it happens. But that’s not the point. I’ve told her we’re through as friends. Mind you, I’ve been saying that since we were eleven, so who knows ... Amelia has always had a way of getting what she wants in the end. One way or the other. And what she’s always wanted - chiefly - is Stephen Bridgeman. I wonder if he’ll stick by her.’