Blink

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘I’m not going after her,’ Martin says.

  ‘It’s a Wednesday night,’ Marie says. ‘She’ll have gone to the Back Gate. It’s half price tonight.’

  Martin is clearly not interested in Beth. ‘Melissa met that Lucy one on the night she died, and now she’s dead. I know this because I looked my wife up on Facebook and saw her cyberstalking our daughter about some exchange between Lucy and Melissa organizing to meet. As far as I’m concerned, if Melissa was bullied by Lucy right before she died, that’s tantamount to murdering my little girl.’

  ‘Can you show me the Facebook page?’ Sexton asks Marie.

  ‘We deleted Melissa’s account,’ Marie says. ‘The comments people were leaving were too upsetting.’

  Sexton doesn’t recall seeing anything on Lucy’s Facebook page about meeting up with Melissa. Perhaps the messages between them were sent privately.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to Lucy’s father? He knows about it,’ Martin says quickly. ‘That Nigel Starling. You should talk to him. He rang a couple of days ago.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Sexton asks.

  ‘He didn’t get a chance. I gave him a piece of my mind.’

  ‘Well, how do you know he knew the girls were together?’

  ‘I know,’ Martin says. ‘I didn’t give him the time of day. Lucy Starling might as well have strung up Melissa’s noose herself.’

  47

  The atmosphere in the Back Gate nightclub is charged. A quarter of an hour after Sexton arrives and begins to quiz the kids at the cloakroom counter, word has got around who he is and why he is there. He hoped to find Beth, but there’s no sign of her, so after persuading the bouncers that they don’t have the option to send him packing, he sets about touching base with every teen handing in their coat, although most have begun bypassing the queue and heading straight for the dance floor with their coats still on.

  The dwindling few left in the queue stare back blankly when he explains what he’s trying to find out. Some grunt; others rise to a shrug. They all shake their heads. He knows he is being stonewalled.

  ‘Pervert,’ a girl says, appearing at the counter.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he asks. She smears lip balm on with a fingernail chewed down to the stub. She could be nineteen with all the make-up, but the disco is for over-sixteens, and she still has train tracks on her teeth.

  A jock behind her in a rugby shirt backs her up. ‘Yeah, bud, if you want to question us, you like should definitely have paperwork.’

  ‘And if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle—’ Sexton begins.

  ‘Inappropriate!’ The girl cuts him off. ‘You’re dealing with minors here, mister, which means we’ve got a right to a parent or some kind of guidance.’

  The elastics in her mouth restrict her jaw, so there is a satellite delay as Sexton interprets what she’s saying.

  ‘Didn’t your parents ever tell you children should be seen and not heard?’ he asks, taking her coat and passing over a ticket, noting the number … He’s been checking out all the pockets of the kids’ coats in the hope of finding an illegal substance, preferably prescription, that might indicate contact with Lucy. But the pockets are all suspiciously empty. There isn’t even loose change.

  He goes back to the counter, where a girl with a love bite on her neck and a pierced nostril, septum, lip and chin is waiting in the queue. She hasn’t taken her military jacket off. Underneath she’s wearing a Victorian boned corset and a ruffled tutu with a petticoat, and long Dr Marten boots.

  It’s Beth.

  So far, he’s divided the teens into distinct tribes: girls, like the last one with braces, who are grown-up versions of the Toddler & Tiara tots. Their clothes are the brightest pinks and limes on the spectrum and they look as if they belong in a chorus line.

  They’re the polar opposite of the rock kids in skinny jeans and T-shirts who headbang with the heavy metal set if the music’s right.

  The skater kids come somewhere in between. Their clothes are grunge, they have long hair and open shirts and sneakers and want to look like pot heads.

  There are the nerdy kids, über-self-conscious because of their virginity and dressed in clothes still bought by their folks. They’re the next generation of lawyers, politicians and app-inventing millionaires.

  But Beth has changed since he saw her at the Brockles’. Her look is biker chick meets Steampunk – a cross between Edward Scissorhands and Vivienne Westwood. Her short black hair is long on one side and shaved on the other, and small silver rings run all along the outside of one ear.

  ‘My aunt and uncle have no right to be so hard on Lucy,’ she says.

  Sexton cups a hand to his ear to indicate he can hardly hear her. The music, if you can call it that, is belting, the lights flashing strobes of blinding colour.

  ‘Did you know her?’ Sexton shouts.

  ‘You could say that.’ She glances over her shoulder. ‘Me and Lucy, we were … are … in love.’

  In the passenger seat of the squad car in the car park outside Beth stares at her hands as Sexton flicks the light on and guns the engine so the battery won’t run down. He puts the heat on full blast.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ she says, voice breaking. ‘All Lucy ever wanted was to help people. That’s why she’s ended up worse than dead. Her favourite book was, like, Wuthering Heights. She was deep as the ocean. She just got the intensity of things, you know …?’

  Sexton is surprised she’s talking about Lucy, and not Amy Reddan. Also, he’s aware Lucy had condoms in her bag. Whatever her orientation, she was underage.

  ‘Was she seeing a guy too? She had contraceptives in her personal belongings.’

  ‘That was just to freak out her Dad,’ Beth responds. ‘She knew he was going through her stuff and she wanted him to think she had a boyfriend, so Nigel might back off.’

  ‘How long were you two’ – Sexton coughs – ‘an item?’ He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He’s no problem with homosexuality, just Lucy’s age.

  ‘A couple of months.’

  ‘Did Lucy confide in you?’

  ‘We told each other everything.’ Beth turns and stares intently. ‘We were soulmates. Still are. Even if she dies and stuff, I’ll never let her go.’ She pushes up the sleeve of her jacket. Sexton realizes she’s got the word ‘love’ carved in the same part of her arm as Lucy.

  ‘Are you in Benedict’s?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I go to the local comp.’

  ‘So how did you meet Lucy?’

  ‘My social worker brought me to see Lucy’s mum, because I was having panic attacks. Lucy rang me afterwards. She’d scanned her mother’s notes and wasn’t happy with her treatment plan.’

  ‘Rang you?’ Sexton probed.

  ‘She said she could help me. She said she’d seen what her mother had prescribed for me and it wouldn’t work. I’m fifteen and three quarters. If I’d gone to see a doctor at sixteen, I’d have been prescribed Serozepam. Lucy said it had helped get her through the bad times. She was sick.’

  She glances at Sexton and clarifies, ‘“Sick” as in a good way.’

  ‘But why would Lucy take it on herself?’ Sexton asks. ‘And how would she know, anyway? She’s only fourteen.’

  ‘She used to live in a town where kids were topping themselves for no reason. Kids she knew. Her dad had treated some of them with herbs …’ Beth scoffed, and zipped open a pocket and took out a cigarette tin, ‘But when Lucy complained of feeling down, her mum put her on Serozepam straight away. Lucy said it was like a wonder drug. She was only twelve years old at that time. The only reason kids were being refused it was because the pharmaceutical companies are, like, terrified of lawsuits. Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’ Sexton closes the window.

  Beth fills a cigarette paper with coils of tobacco, licks the glued edge and offers it to Sexton. He shakes his head and takes his electric cigarette out, then changes his mind and sticks it in the ashtray. Beth pu
lls the lighter from the dash and sucks her roll-up against it until the tip sparks. Little embers of the sparking paper float away and burn out.

  ‘Lucy was like a lifeline for a lot of kids around her. They’d started coming to her directly, bypassing GPs, drug dealers, whatever their previous buzz was.’

  ‘Did you have to pay her?’ Sexton asks.

  ‘I didn’t have to, but I did,’ she answers fiercely.

  A loud bang makes Sexton’s shoulders jump. A teen acting the maggot has slapped a hand on the bonnet and turned his back to them. He is running his crossed arms up and down his own back to indicate they should make out. Sexton honks the horn and he clears off.

  ‘What about other prescription drugs?’ he asks.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Rohypnol, Viagra – drugs that can get a good price on the black market. Maybe Lucy wanted to start a business, and make some real money.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, just Lucy’s enemies spreading rumours.’

  ‘She had enemies?’

  ‘A lot of people felt she was doing them out of business.’

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘Take your pick: weed, mind-altering substances, anything that gives a buzz.’

  ‘Do you mean Eric Canon, in the Damm shop across the road?’

  Beth shrugs. ‘Among others.’

  ‘How was Lucy competition to them if she was dealing prescription drugs?’

  ‘You really are old. The kids don’t care about the name of the drug giving them the high or whether it’s prescribed or not. It’s all about the buzz. Lucy was doing underworld dealers out of customers. End of.’

  ‘When did you last talk to Lucy?’

  ‘On the day of the crash,’ Beth says, pulling open the ashtray and flicking some ash inside. ‘We spoke every day, several times. Lucy was happy because this troll who’d been taunting some of the kids had agreed to meet her. Demand had gone way up since the troll came on the scene. Lucy couldn’t keep up. That’s the person you need to blame for Lucy’s crash.’

  ‘Troll?’

  Beth’s face became taut. ‘When I said you were old, I meant more, like, vintage, man. A troll is someone who harasses someone – bullies them, basically. They’re keyboard warriors who make people’s lives hell. We were convinced it would turn out to be Lucy’s dad, because he’d been acting really weird, but in the end it was Melissa. I couldn’t believe it of my own cousin. She was a pain, but I never thought her capable of that. She’d been taunting the kids who’d expressed suicidal thoughts on the chatroom, was even having a go on the Jacob’s Angels Facebook page.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Jacob’s Angels? It was set up by the mother of Jacob Larson, an American kid who was bullied so badly in middle school his teeth were knocked out. It’s somewhere kids with dark thoughts can go to get help. Lucy made all the kids she was treating agree to get help on it, to talk about their troubles, but Melissa was egging them on, telling them to do it, to take their own lives. It was horrible, vile abuse. She’d tell kids they were worthless, useless, and deserved to die.’

  Beth looks out of the window and Sexton can see the glint of tears has filled her eyes.

  ‘Lucy had guessed it was someone she knew because the troll was aware of things about the people being taunted that could only have been learned by mixing in certain circles. Lucy wasn’t scared, though, even of someone that evil. When she found out it was Melissa she organized to bring her to the wood to meet someone there who could show her what it felt like to be at the receiving end.’

  ‘How was she so certain it was Melissa?’ Sexton asks.

  ‘Melissa admitted it in a pizza parlour one time when she got pissed. That’s how Lucy knew.’

  Beth reaches for her phone and runs her finger over the screen. ‘This will give you a sense of how evil my own cousin was.’ She hands him the mobile.

  Sexton squints to read the miniature Facebook page. Beth leans across him and pulls open her finger and thumb on the screen. The comment reads: ‘You should do an Amy. Everyone knows you rode Darren Maguire in the Back Gate car park. You two deserve each other.’

  ‘Your aunt said that page had been taken down,’ Sexton said.

  ‘It was. I grabbed a screen shot of it.’

  ‘But why would Melissa kill herself, if she was the troll?’ he asks.

  ‘Guilt?’ Beth suggests. ‘She must have known everybody had found out. She was probably scared of more trouble. She was already completely isolated over bullying Amy. She must have been terrified of how bad things would get when things got out.’

  ‘Why would Lucy have left Melissa alone in the wood like that?’

  ‘Maybe she wanted Melissa to spend some time with the other kids’ ghosts, see how it felt to be made to feel like she had no friends, that nobody cared about her and her life was worthless. Maybe it was Lucy’s protector’s idea. I just don’t know.’

  ‘But if the someone Lucy had organized to teach Melissa a lesson was Eric Canon, how did she get him onside if she was competing with his business?’

  ‘It wasn’t the Damm guy. What makes you think that? Lucy had paid this really dangerous guy to help her bully the bully. Eric is small time in comparison to this guy.’

  ‘And who was he?’

  ‘I don’t know his real name. She said he’d killed someone and that everyone was scared of him.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’ Sexton draws a breath as he remembers that Rory told him about the old IRA guy Lucy had mentioned at the party. ‘Did he have a scorpion tattoo?’

  ‘I never met him, but Lucy did call him Red Scorpion, yeah.’

  Sexton bangs the heels of his hands off the steering wheel as the penny drops. One of the country’s notorious killers had set up the Red Scorpion Debt Collection Agency when he’d got out of prison after a twenty-year stretch. His slogan was ‘Don’t Get Mad, Get Even’. Bert McFarland aka Red Scorpion traded on his reputation as a hard man, hiring himself out as a heavy for businesses who wanted to collect bad debts. Sexton is willing to bet his life that that’s who Lucy Starling had turned to, to stop the troll. He should have realized who it was straight away.

  ‘Did Lucy ask Bert … the scorpion guy … to murder Melissa?’

  ‘Lucy kill? What are you talking about?’ Beth’s hand moved to the door handle as she shoots him a look like she’s just discovered he’s Jack the Ripper. ‘I just told you he was just to scare Melissa off. Lucy was trying to save people. Don’t you listen?’

  Sexton leans across and grabs her arm.

  ‘Rape!’ she screams.

  He releases, puts his palms in the air, and says, ‘I spoke to Lucy,’ just as Beth pushes the door open.

  She pulls it closed again. ‘Lucy can speak?’

  ‘No … well … sort of. Listen, she told me about going to the scorpion guy herself, but the way she said it made it sound like she’d hired him to kill.’

  ‘What exactly did she say?’

  ‘She said, “I hired a hitman.”’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So? So! Maybe he killed Melissa.’

  Beth stares at Sexton like he’s the stupidest guy in the world. ‘My old man hired a plumber once to cut the grass. When the plumber called, he had a lawnmower and not a set of monkey wrenches. Just because Lucy hired a hitman to settle old scores and get even does not mean she wanted him to kill anyone.’

  She gets out of the car and takes off.

  Sexton gets out too and calls across the roof of the car: ‘Beth, wait, please.’

  But Beth has disappeared into the pitch-black night.

  Thursday

  48

  Sexton rubs sleep from his eyes in the driving seat of the car as he watches the mourners leaving Anna Eccles’s funeral. He’s been here since 9 a.m., with McConigle in the passenger seat, to spot them arriving. She wants a list of names of the people they recognize and a set of photographs of the ones they don’t, to be ID’d later. Her latte
is stone cold, perched in the cup holder, but she’s still taking the odd sip. There’s no policing science to people-watching; it is what it is. McConigle wants to see who associates with who, and if anyone is isolated by the mourners. She wants to watch the adults intermingling as much as the teens, she explains to Sexton. They bully in a different way to kids, but they do it just the same. At least teenagers are upfront about it, obnoxious as it is. Adults snub behind people’s backs. Sexton had tried to argue that Oakley would be better suited to this job, but she wasn’t having his excuses and had been waiting outside his gaff at 8 a.m. this morning. He gets the feeling she doesn’t plan on letting him out of her sight.

  Now the service has ended they have a better view. The mourners had their backs to them as they arrived, heading straight into the church. Now everybody’s hanging around the church car park until the hearse leaves.

  ‘What’s Rory Mason doing here?’ Sexton asks, spotting the kid in his oversized black suit jacket in disbelief. ‘Jo’s here too. Bloody hell!’

  McConigle giggles and writes the names down in her pad, where she’d earlier written the words, ‘Suspect list’ across the top. ‘Any sign of the chief?’

  Sexton scans the crowd. ‘Blow me, there he is. Chief Superintendent Dan Mason.’

  McConigle mutters, ‘Any time,’ and writes Dan’s name down with a flourish.

  Sexton checks to see if she’s serious before his eyes dart to another couple he knows. They’re barely able to move forward because of all the handshaking and hugs. ‘Melissa’s folks: Marie and Martin Brockle,’ he says.

  ‘How did it go with them last night?’

  ‘Fine. They’d nothing to add,’ he says.

  ‘Nothing?’ McConigle starts. ‘I thought they were the most vocal. Tell me they named names?’

  ‘What did Canon say about the deer?’ Sexton asks quickly.

  ‘He exercised his constitutional right to silence,’ McConigle said. ‘But we can re-arrest him and hold him for a week, thanks to the drugs you found, and we will.’

  ‘Who’s quizzing him?’ Sexton asks.