Dead To Me

by Staincliffe, Cath

  They regarded her warily as she took a seat in the chapel, wondering maybe if she’d bust them. Not appropriate, in the circumstances.

  The coffin, plain and unadorned, was at the front of the chapel. There was a small bunch of dark red roses in cellophane on top. The sort that have no scent. Rachel imagined the three lads clubbing together, or maybe nicking a tenner from one of their mums’ purses to get the bouquet. The generous wreath she clutched felt ostentatious now, as if she’d set out to outdo them, which was the last thing on her mind.

  The minister was saying something about Rosie having a brief life but now being at peace. He didn’t make reference to her troubles or the manner of her death. Another person arrived, so Rachel wasn’t the last. Marlene. She sat with Rachel, which was a bit full on. Christ, there were enough empty seats.

  Rachel kept her jaw clamped tight as the man asked them to remain silent for a moment and think about Rosie. What a sodding waste, was all Rachel thought. Steeling herself against those images that wouldn’t go away, highly coloured almost Day-Glo in her mind. The scale of scars etched on Rosie’s forearm, her eyes darting to the corners of the room, the still, silent figure on the ground, her gauzy dress fluttering, and the first sight she’d ever had of Rosie, curled and motionless in the bedroom, slippery with blood.

  Then it was done. The minister explained that Rosie’s ashes would be put in the garden of remembrance and he thanked them for coming.

  The boys got up and ambled out, self-conscious and awkward.

  ‘Is there any news?’ Marlene said to Rachel.

  Rachel shook her head. Only bad. The fuckwit who raped her is Teflon-coated, nothing sticks. And we’re getting nowhere fast with Lisa Finn.

  Rachel and Marlene placed their flowers on the coffin.

  Outside the day was bleak, wintry, the trees bare of leaves, stirred in the wind, the sky grubby.

  ‘You were there when she died?’ Marlene said.

  Rachel hunched up her shoulders, trying to get warm. ‘Yes,’ she said. Not that it’s any of your business.

  ‘Your boss told me. I’m sorry, that must have been awful.’

  Rachel nodded briskly. There was something in her eye, a speck of dust or something. Thickness in her throat. She blinked and sniffed. The three lads had reached the gates, matchstick men.

  ‘She tried before,’ Marlene said, ‘when she was with us.’

  Rachel looked at her, then away to the graves among the grass. ‘You’re saying it’s not my fault?’ She sounded bolshie, hadn’t meant to.

  ‘How can it be your fault?’ Marlene said. ‘Of course it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Right,’ Rachel sighed. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Take care,’ Marlene said.

  ‘Yeah. Bye.’ Rachel walked swiftly to her car.

  Whose fault was it then? Rosie’s mother, who’d destroyed her childhood and set the seal on her future? The doctors and social workers, who didn’t care for her enough? Raleigh, who had broken her body and with that her mind as well? But none of them were there that night, were they? Only Rachel. And if Rachel hadn’t gone first to the canal, then again to the flat, if she hadn’t pressed Rosie to talk about the rape, hadn’t pushed her for a name, if Rachel had let her be … then would she still be alive? Either off her face on drugs or slicing at her skin, building fires under the bridge, sleeping on the sofa in her charmed circle?

  Rachel left, ignoring the speed limit, passing a cortège on its way in. The coffin surrounded by huge floral arrangements spelling out Mum and Nana. Some old woman then. A stream of vehicles following. Rachel didn’t look at the occupants, she’d had enough misery for one morning. She’d be a whole lot better once she was back at work and busy.

  First thing Wednesday, Gill passed on the information about James Raleigh sleeping with his clients and other young and vulnerable women to the Director of Social Services for the city. She explained the police were not preferring charges, there was not enough evidence to do so, but Raleigh would remain a person of interest.

  ‘That’s his CRB status in shreds,’ she told the team. ‘He should be hearing later this morning that he is suspended, pending a disciplinary hearing, and he’ll have trouble getting a job washing cars when they are finished with him.’

  Rachel still exuded resentment; Gill needed to talk to her about that. Not good for the work atmosphere, or the girl’s occupational health.

  Gill had done a storyboard combining their timetable and the evidence to date. Stick figures with initials for the protagonists. She passed copies around to the team. A larger version was clipped to the flipchart.

  ‘Anyone ever tell you you had an artistic side?’ Janet said as she picked hers up.

  Gill glanced at her.

  ‘They were lying,’ Janet said.

  ‘Who’s the Yankee?’ said Kevin.

  Gill peered over her glasses.

  ‘Here’, he pointed to a stick man, US on its triangular torso.

  Cretin! Give me strength.

  ‘Unknown suspect,’ Lee laughed.

  Gill clapped her hands to interrupt the mutterings about drawing and graffiti and Minnie the Minx. ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Monday, thirteenth of December, half ten in the morning and Lisa Finn gets the bus to town. Sean Broughton goes to the Jobcentre. In town, Lisa shoplifts clothing and accessories. At twelve thirty she gets a text from her personal advisor James Raleigh saying he’ll be visiting at two that afternoon,’ Gill pointed to the picture on the flipchart. ‘Lisa calls a cab. She’s picked up at five past one. She trades the stolen goods for heroin. In the taxi she receives two calls, one from Sean, one from Denise. She lies to Sean, saying she won’t be home until half past three that afternoon. He’s itching for a fix, but she puts him off. There may have been words exchanged – though he denies that. Lisa tells her mother she’s too busy to talk. At quarter past one Lisa arrives home. She may have taken heroin at this point.’ Gill indicated the next drawing: ‘Two o’clock and James Raleigh shows up, shags Lisa in the bedroom, depositing skin cells on both the duvet and the sheet, and leaving a pubic hair on the sheet. He uses and disposes of a condom. Traces of lubricant from that are recovered with a vaginal swab. His fingerprints are lifted from the bedroom door jamb and the basin in the bathroom, but not found in the living room or kitchen. Raleigh leaves at half two. Allegedly, Lisa is in bed at this point, wearing her dressing gown and the cross and chain. Now’ – Gill tapped the drawing of the unknown suspect – ‘between half two and half three when Sean Broughton returns our unknown suspect’ – Gill pointed to Kevin – ‘pitches up. There is no sign of forced entry but—’

  ‘Door latch is faulty,’ Pete chipped in, ‘anyone could just waltz in.’

  ‘Lisa is killed in the living room. There is little sign of a struggle. Suggesting …?’

  ‘She didn’t know she was in danger,’ said Rachel.

  ‘It wasn’t a prolonged attack,’ added Lee.

  ‘Yes. Forensics tell us Lisa was stabbed in the chest once and whoever held the knife moved back into the kitchen, leaving drops of blood on the floor. The cross and chain was torn from Lisa’s neck and found in the kitchen by Sean Broughton, who stole it. We are awaiting DNA results for Angela Hambley, who had possible motive, but until those results are in I want to be discreet. Dig around, see what we can find on Angela. Need a swab and prints from Denise, too. We know she handled the jewellery in the past. Contact the rest of Raleigh’s phone contacts – have we any other members of his harem to consider? Talk to Sean again. What was Lisa doing in the days before her death, who was she—’

  ‘Doing,’ Mitch interrupted.

  ‘Ha, ha! Seeing,’ Gill said, ‘in the weeks before her murder. Who visited the flat? Who knew the door was broken?’

  ‘She didn’t let them in,’ Rachel said suddenly. ‘She’d have got dressed, least put her kecks on.’

  A flash of insight again, the sort of contribution that made Gill’s pulse beat faster.

 
; ‘Unless it was a punter and she was on the game,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Nothing to support that,’ Andy said.

  ‘So we are likely looking for someone who’d been to the flat before. Talk to Benny Broughton too, see if he’s heard anything.’

  Once Gill had established that everyone was on track with their reports and their tasks for the day, she asked Rachel to stay behind.

  ‘You can’t make it personal,’ Gill said. ‘You need to come to terms with it, or it’ll eat you up.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Rachel said crossly.

  ‘No, you’re not, you’re steaming because that twat is going home any minute, because we can’t touch him for the rape.’

  ‘He did it,’ Rachel said. ‘I know he did it.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Hand on heart, I’d find him guilty – but we are not the jury. All we can do is find evidence and build a case. There isn’t a case to answer here; the victim’s dead, she never pressed charges or gave us a statement, the DNA wouldn’t stand scrutiny, he can claim he left it there on another occasion, his expert would argue the same. No witnesses, nada. You need to let it go.’

  Rachel blinked, set her jaw, resistant.

  ‘We still have a case to investigate – Lisa Finn. I want you putting everything into that.’

  ‘And just forget about Rosie?’ Rachel said.

  ‘Forgetting’s not easy. But pack it up and stick it on a shelf somewhere, otherwise it’s a distraction. It will compromise your effectiveness in my syndicate. And it’ll make you bloody miserable. See a counsellor, if you have to …’

  Rachel snorted at that.

  ‘… take up yoga, sky diving – whatever floats your boat. But you stop lugging this around like some rock tied to your leg. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Now, go with Janet, get a swab and fingerprints from Denise – nicely!’

  46

  A SECOND MAN has been questioned and released by police investigating the murder of seventeen-year-old Lisa Finn. The twenty-eight-year-old— Rachel wished they’d change the radio station. They’d stopped off to grab lunch, Janet had gone to drop something at the dry cleaners, and Rachel was buying sandwiches when she heard someone say her name. ‘Rachel? Rachel Bailey?’ A woman in the queue behind her. ‘I knew it were you. Bloody hell. How long is it?’

  Not long enough. Shit. Beverley Buckshotter. Neighbour. They were the ones got the table-football set.

  ‘How’s your Dom doing? How long’s he got left?’

  Beverley. One of Dom’s conquests, for all of five minutes.

  ‘Good, yeah,’ Rachel blagged, ‘a while longer, yet.’ One eye on the window, purse at the ready, praying that Janet wouldn’t be back just yet.

  ‘You’re still in the police?’ Beverley prattled on. ‘You did all right for yourself. I see your Alison now and again. Lovely girl, isn’t she?’

  Rachel peered over the counter. What was the shop girl doing, for fuck’s sake, milling the flour and slaughtering the pig?

  ‘Lovely family,’ Beverley said. Rachel smiled weakly, trusting she meant Alison’s lot. Their own family would never have been dubbed lovely, not even by the most charitable of observers.

  Rachel stood on tiptoe; she was putting the bacon on now. Come on, come on, move it!

  ‘I’m still on Langley, got twins now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Lads. Drive me round the fucking bend,’ Beverley confided, patting Rachel’s arm. Rachel resisted the urge to pat her back, good and hard, send her flying.

  ‘It’s not worth working, you know,’ Beverley added.

  Always was a lazy cow. Janet was there now, crossing the road. Fuck!

  ‘Cost of childminding – it’s a joke. You got any?’

  ‘No,’ Rachel said. The girl was cutting the sandwiches, slowly, making a ceremony of it, like the Chinese people in the park with their slow-motion exercises. Sliding them into the bag now. Shift yer arse.

  ‘We had a right laugh, didn’t we, down the rec?’ Beverley hooted.

  Freezing cold, sharing cheap wine and cheaper fags. Miserable.

  Janet came in the door.

  ‘Drinks?’ the girl said.

  No, ta.’ Rachel thrust a tenner at her, took the sandwiches. Bit her tongue while the girl got change.

  ‘See you then,’ Beverley said. ‘Give Dom my love, yeah?’

  Rachel intercepted Janet: ‘Hi.’ Kept walking so Janet had to follow.

  ‘Friend?’ Janet must have caught Beverley’s last bit.

  ‘Lunatic,’ Rachel said out the side of her mouth. ‘Nutter thinks she knows me. Never seen her before in my life. Fruitloop.’ And she kept walking, not giving Janet a chance to see she’d not got any coffees.

  Denise did look ten years older, Rachel thought. She peered at them, the alcohol fumes coming off her strong enough to set light to. If she fires up a fag, she’ll go up like a bonfire.

  ‘Hello, Denise,’ Janet said, ‘may we come in?’

  Rachel had a flashback to the evening they delivered the death message, only nine days ago, how she had really not taken to Janet. Snotty cow. She’d had her wrong. First impressions perhaps not Rachel’s strongest suit.

  ‘Christopher rang, said you let the other bloke go, too,’ Denise said. She walked with exaggerated care down the hallway, hands raised slightly in case she needed to brace herself, a gait that Rachel recalled from her youth. Her dad, taking a beat too long to do anything, the stage immediately before he lost all control and turned into a witless human wrecking ball.

  ‘That’s right,’ Janet said, behind Rachel. Rachel turned and made a face to Janet, tongue jutting, eyeballs swivelling. She’s bladdered. Janet caught on, nodded.

  ‘Who was he?’ Denise said, the words slurred.

  ‘We can’t tell you that. Would you like a coffee?’ Janet offered.

  ‘Trying to sober me up?’ Denise said. ‘Go on then.’ She sat down heavily in her usual place on the sofa. Rachel thought she could smell vomit underlying the cigarette fug and the stink of booze.

  Janet went into the kitchen. Rachel had the bag with her, the fingerprint and DNA kit. She set it on the floor by her feet. Looked again at the photographs of Lisa and Nathan. They hadn’t bothered with school photos in the Bailey family. Always a struggle to get payment and the slip signed in time. ‘Who needs a photo?’ he’d say. ‘Got your ugly mugs to look at whenever I feel like it.’

  One year the kids had got a photo done for his birthday. That must have been Alison’s idea. Gone to the studios in town after school. Alison would have been thirteen or so, Rachel and Dom still in primary. The photographer had sat them sideways in a row, in height order. Alison had gone in the following week to collect it and bought a frame off the market to fit. He’d been pleased as punch, stuck it on the wall above the fireplace. A few months later the glass got cracked when Dom was mucking about with a bouncy ball. No one ever fixed it.

  ‘She was a right handful,’ Denise said out of the blue.

  ‘Really?’ Rachel wasn’t sure what else to say. Let her ramble on until Janet came back with the coffee. What excuses did her own mother make for running off? Couldn’t manage the three of them – they were better off with their dad. Yeah, right.

  ‘Wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t ever listen.’ Denise shook her head and the skin on her neck trembled like an old woman’s. ‘You shouldn’t have let him go,’ she said to Rachel.

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yes, Sean. Who else? Whether he held the knife or not, she’d still be alive if it wasn’t for him.’

  Rachel didn’t follow the logic. If he hadn’t held the knife, then how was it his fault? Didn’t stack up. Unless Denise thought he’d hired a hitman. But it didn’t matter; the woman was talking to herself. Rachel just happened to be in the room. Denise lifted her glass, took a drink. Brownish liquid. Sherry? Rum? There were bottles of both on the side table.

  ‘But she wouldn’t have it. Shacked up with a druggie.
He were using her, that’s all it was. When I think of her,’ Denise began to gasp, ‘dying like that, when I think of her—’ Denise waved her glass, her eyes watery, her face flooded with colour.

  Don’t then. ‘Maybe it’s best if you—’

  ‘Like a little tart, half-naked, like some prossie.’

  Rachel felt something grab her spine. Her blood beat in her ears. How did she know? She swallowed. The crime-scene photos, the one where the duvet had been removed. Lisa with her Chinese dressing gown rucked up beneath her, baring all. Like a little tart. No one had told Denise any of the graphic details. How could she know? Unless … Rachel felt it all slot together like a pool player clearing the table, dropping one ball after another: the DNA on the cross and chain was Denise’s – not from months ago but last week when she tore it off her daughter; the phone call in the taxi when Kasim overheard Lisa telling someone to get off her back, stop telling her what to do: it had been her mother she was yelling at.

  ‘The things she’d say,’ Denise cried.

  Rachel got carefully to her feet, anxious not to break the spell. She needed her to keep talking while she was still addled with drink and uninhibited. She crouched down closer to Denise. ‘She pushed you too far,’ Rachel said, her heart in her throat.

  Denise took another drink, some of it dribbled down the side of her mouth. Then Rachel’s words seemed to reach her. Rachel saw Denise begin to recoil, retreat.

  ‘We tested the cross and chain,’ Rachel said quietly. ‘That’s why we’re here, to take your fingerprints. We know, Denise.’ Rachel felt too warm, dizzy, the swirl of excitement making her nauseous.

  She heard movement from over her shoulder, Janet returning. Rachel held her arm out behind her back, palm showing: Stop. Didn’t risk looking away from Denise. The movement sent a sharp pain from the wound on her hand. A picture in her head of the cut on Lisa’s arm; the cut Denise had inflicted.

  ‘What did she say?’ Rachel held her breath.

  ‘Terrible things,’ Denise said, staring ahead, seeing nothing but perhaps her child, the slut, the junkie, her impossible daughter. ‘Evil things, evil things about Nathan, about me,’ she gulped. ‘She wouldn’t stop.’