Perfect Girls: An absolutely gripping page-turning crime thriller

by Alison James

  ‘Hey, I know this place!’ he says, looking up at the facade of the theatre. ‘This is where they held the Miss Carolina Teen USA pageant.’

  It’s a disused, boxy suburban theatre standing alone at the centre of a massive parking lot. The billboard at the front announces a residency by a third-rate country and western singer, but nailed on top of that is a makeshift sign. ‘Closed for Remodelling’.

  ‘You went to see it?’ I ask, as he lifts the box out of the truck. I hope the air pillows are preventing the contents from shifting around too much. ‘Well, yeah.’ He has the grace to look embarrassed. ‘My girlfriend, you know… she competed.’

  I point to side of the building at the very back. It’s in the shadow thrown by the overhang of the roof and away from the amber glow of the lot lighting. He puts the crate down and stands there staring at it.

  ‘Pizza!’ I grab his thick wrist and swing on it, my tongue caressing my top teeth, so he knows there’s more than stuffed mozzarella crust on offer.

  ‘All righty then.’ He walks back to the truck without a backward glance.

  Back at the apartment, he’s eager, greedy. He wants sex and pizza, but definitely sex first. He grabs me, kissing me with too much tongue, which I find gross. I push him backwards onto the couch and straddle him, riding his erection like a metronome, back and forth, back and forth. I position him there because I know that while he’s fucking me, he’ll be able to see the photos of himself and his late beloved on the bookshelf, over my left shoulder.

  The pizza is done at the same time that he is. I take it out of the oven and serve him three slices, placing one for myself on a plate but not eating it. He doesn’t notice; shovelling the gooey cheesy bread down his throat as fast as he can, licking his fingers.

  ‘Hold on a second, I just want to check something…’

  I grab my iPad and look at an imaginary website while he chomps and slurps. ‘Oh God, I totally got the address wrong. We left the box in the wrong place. It’s not 208 East Broadway, it’s 3208.’

  ‘I thought it was kind of a weird place to leave stuff; by the theatre.’ He grabs a kitchen towel and wipes his hands. ‘But it’s no big deal. We can go back and move it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Do you have ice cream?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘We can grab ice cream on the way back and eat it in bed.’

  I grin. ‘Great idea.’

  I pick up my bag and my cap, he picks up another slice of pizza and we head back downstairs to where his truck is parked. My heart is thumping hard as we approach the theatre. What if the box isn’t still there? But it is. Of course it is. Nobody’s going to notice it in the darkness.

  He jumps out of the truck before me, in a hurry for ice cream and more sex. There are latex gloves in my bag and I put them on, pick up the jack that I spotted on the truck bed when we loaded the crate and follow him. He’s squatting to lift the crate when I bring down the jack in exactly the right spot at the back of his skull. Quick and clean. He slumps over the crate. I planned on sitting his body up against the side of it, like a broken action figure against a toy box, but this is kind of perfect. His body drapes over his girlfriend’s in death, as it no doubt did in life. And he will be heavy to move, which will waste precious time. I need to leave.

  I toss the jack back into the truck, pull down my cap, put on shades even though it’s pretty much dark and drive his truck to some wasteground near railroad tracks. There are no security cameras. I leave it there with the keys in the ignition and walk quickly back to the apartment, tossing the vinyl gloves into the dumpster outside a fast food restaurant, where they will soon be obscured by half-eaten burgers and milkshake cups.

  By the time I get back to the apartment, I’m starving. I sit at the table and eat the one slice of pizza that Clayton has left.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The rolling hills and fields of Warwickshire gave way to dense suburban sprawl with a distinctly industrial top note.

  Rachel’s phone was propped on the dashboard with Google Maps open. As they turned off the motorway she had asked Brickall to navigate, but instead he was staring out of the passenger window, seemingly oblivious to Rachel’s rising stress levels as she negotiated the intersection of the M40 and M42. It was the first time in a while that she had seen him out of a suit. He wore expensive branded jeans, a checked shirt, and twenty-four hours’ worth of stubble.

  ‘As soon as I leave the M25, my driving skills go to hell,’ Rachel told him. ‘The provinces put me into a panic.’

  Brickall grunted, but made no comment. He was in a dark mood. This had become obvious by the time they were on the M40, but by then it was too late for him to unjoin their road trip.

  ‘Which way now?’ Rachel asked him.

  ‘Why don’t you just switch on the satnav?’

  ‘Because it shafts the battery. And anyway, I’ve got a navigator – you.’

  He picked up her phone with a sigh, and looked at the directions on the map. ‘You need to continue up the A38 and then make a left down Middle Park Road. Which the satnav would tell you if you turned it on.’

  Rachel shot him a glance, but said nothing. She’d experienced a fair few of his moods over the years, and knew not to poke the bear. She also had a suspicion that this time it stemmed from her awkward rejection of his pass, when he had come round to her flat for curry and crime analysis. And that was not a subject she wanted to examine.

  They drove into a post-war estate of boxy townhouses. Brickall followed Rachel up the path of the scruffiest property: the front garden unkempt and the hung tiles slipping. ‘This is Lauren Mitchell; she’s a former classmate of Phoebe Stiles’s,’ Rachel told him.

  ‘Right,’ was all he said, reaching for his warrant card.

  The door was opened by a plain girl with bad skin and long, straggly black hair. She wore the hoop earrings she had favoured in her interview, and badly fitting leisurewear that cut into her flesh, making her look bigger than she was. The tattoo on her upper arm was of a shooting star, and there was one just visible on her neck, that might have been a bluebird or a penguin; it was hard to tell.

  ‘Awroight?’ The accent was thickest Brummie.

  ‘I’m DI Rachel Prince and this is DS Mark Brickall.’ Brickall held up his card silently. ‘Could we have a word?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘It’s about the article you did on Phoebe Stiles.’

  Lauren looked wary. ‘Am I in trouble?’

  ‘No, we just need a chat.’

  ‘But I won’t get paid for it or nothing?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘No,’ she said with as much patience as she could muster. ‘We’re from the police.’

  They went into a cramped living room, decorated in migraine-inducing fuchsia with a silver feature wall. There were some ornamental dried grasses in a pot in one corner, and a lot of silver and pink themed knick-knacks on every surface. The place had a sour smell blending stale biscuit crumbs and cheap perfume. Somewhere, a bin needed emptying.

  They perched themselves on the black leatherette three-piece suite, Rachel and Brickall on the sofa and Lauren on the armchair. She lit a cigarette and puffed the smoke up to the ceiling, cheap bracelets jangling every time she raised her hand to her lips.

  ‘We’re part of an investigation into Phoebe Stiles’s death,’ Rachel began. This was stretching the truth a little, but it would suffice. ‘So we’d just like to talk to you a little about the things you told the newspaper.’

  ‘Wanna cuppa tea?’

  Rachel glanced at the grimy kitchenette. ‘No, don’t worry, we’ve just had some. Perhaps you could just start with telling us what sort of girl Phoebe was.’

  Lauren curled her lip, smoke escaping in little tendrils. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t that surprised when I heard someone killed her. She was a nasty piece of work.’ She emphasised the short Brummie ‘a’.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘She picke
d on people. Enjoyed it, you know. People she thought weren’t as great as what she was.’

  ‘Great in what way?’

  ‘You know – pretty, nice clothes and stuff.’

  ‘Was that what Phoebe was like?’

  ‘She was spoilt rotten – anything she wanted, she got. Always had the latest clothes, jewellery, phone. Got her hair done in a posh salon, always had the most expensive make-up.’

  ‘And she was pretty?’

  ‘Suppose so. The lads all thought so, anyhow.’

  ‘So what kinds of things would she do?’

  ‘If she thought someone looked rubbish, she’d pick on them. Like there was this girl Nicky—’

  ‘Were you in the same class as Phoebe?’ Brickall interrupted.

  Lauren looked surprised. ‘Ooh, ’e speaks does ’e? Strong, silent type are ya?’ She gave a flirtatious cackle.

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Rachel.

  ‘This girl Nicky, she was really quiet, bit of a loner. Bless ’er.’ Lauren tapped the ash off her cigarette. ‘But she was really good at art. Phoebe deliberately knocked a pot of paint all over her art project. Ruined it.’

  ‘Kids do stuff like that though,’ Rachel offered. ‘I’m sure I saw stuff at least as bad when I was at school.’

  Lauren sucked her cigarette. ‘That’s not all though. When Nicky got a cold sore, she spread a rumour it was herpes, from giving the janitor a blowie. She’d be horrible to the younger girls too, the new Year Sevens. She’d tell them they weren’t allowed to go into the toilets, and she’d get lads to stand there blocking their way until eventually one of them wet themselves. She’d take their phones off them and use them to sext the sixth formers.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘She’d send them mucky pics and pretend they’d come from the Year Seven whose phone it was.’

  Brickall raised his eyebrows at Rachel. ‘Thank God they didn’t have camera phones when we were at school, eh?’

  ‘And she was vile to anyone who was fat. There was this one time she nicked some sticky tape from the DT lab, wrote “Wide Load” on it and stuck it on Carly Taylor’s back. Carly had a bit of a weight problem,’ she added unnecessarily. ‘Everyone was laughing and high-fiving Phoebe and she loved it. She loved being centre of attention.’

  ‘Was she popular? Did she have friends?’

  ‘The lads all fancied her. She had a great figure, to be fair.’

  ‘And the girls?’

  ‘She had her so-called mates around her, and they always did what she told them to. But I reckon most of them didn’t really like her, they were just scared of her. If you didn’t back her up, she’d turn nasty.’

  ‘And how about you, Lauren? Were you friends with her?’

  Lauren stuck her chin in the air. ‘Not really, but I could look after meself, so she kept her distance from me.’

  ‘And when did you last see her?’

  Lauren thought. ‘Must have been two or three years after we left school. Bumped into her with her mum down the shops. But then she got the job on that soap and she was always getting herself in the papers… don’t think she bothered much coming back here after that. Too busy showing off.’

  That was one way of summing up Phoebe’s career, Rachel thought, and not necessarily inaccurate.

  ‘Is there anyone else we could talk to, who might be able to corroborate this.’

  ‘Corr… what?’

  ‘Confirm what you’ve said. Someone from the school perhaps?’

  ‘It’s Saturday,’ Lauren pointed out. ‘You’re not going to get much joy down the school.’

  ‘Anyone at all you can think of who was there at the same time?’

  Lauren chewed a cerise acrylic fingernail. ‘Well, there’s Miss Perry. She’s retired now, but I know she still lives local; in a bungalow down Shenley Fields Drive. She was dead nice, so I expect she’d talk to you.’

  ‘We’ll see if we can catch her.’

  ‘She’d be dead old now, so she’s bound to be in. What else is she going to be doing?’ Another cackle.

  Brickall stood up, and Rachel followed his cue. ‘Thanks Lauren, you’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘You sure I don’t get paid?’

  * * *

  June Perry’s bungalow could not have been more of a contrast to Lauren’s house. Pretty, well-kept garden, patterned carpets and heavy curtains, the smell of furniture polish and baking.

  ‘We’ll get a decent cup of tea here,’ Rachel whispered, as they were shown into the lounge.

  ‘Dead old’ turned out to be a wiry and fit-looking seventy-something. ‘Excuse the gardening clothes,’ she told Rachel and Brickall. ‘I’ve been putting in the early annuals.’ She fussed around them and, as Rachel had predicted, offered tea, which arrived on a tray lined with a linen cloth. Bone china cups and saucers and home-made shortbread.

  ‘I made it this morning,’ she beamed. ‘I like to have something in the tin for when people come round.’ Brickall took two pieces and slurped his tea noisily.

  ‘It’s just the most dreadful business, young Phoebe being taken from us like that,’ Miss Perry said when they were seated on the mock brocade furniture in an open-plan lounge that had sliding doors onto the garden. A tortoiseshell cat wound its way round Rachel’s legs, then jumped onto the arm of her chair and nudged her hand with its head, making her slop her tea.

  ‘Can you tell us your memories of Phoebe?’ Rachel asked, once the cat had been removed and shut out of the room. ‘What kind of a girl was she?’

  June Perry considered this. ‘She was always a bright spark, even though she didn’t excel academically. And such a pretty little thing. Her poor parents doted on her. I wasn’t surprised when I heard she’d gone into acting: she certainly had a flair for the dramatic.’

  Rachel thought of the endless tabloid break-ups and make-ups.

  ‘How was she with the other pupils?’

  ‘She seemed to be always in the thick of things,’ Perry ventured carefully. ‘The centre of attention. I suppose she was popular.’

  Brickall gave Rachel a sharp look, which she knew only too well after years of doing joint investigations meant Get to the point. Before she could frame her next question he said, ‘There have been allegations that she was involved in bullying.’

  June Perry put down her cup and saucer. ‘I think bullying is a word that’s overused these days. Darlington Road Comprehensive was a fairly rough and ready place then; there was behaviour throughout the school that fell short of desirable at times. Yes, Phoebe had a side to her, and she could be sharp, mean-spirited even. I would say that much.’

  ‘Do you remember who her friends were?’

  ‘She had a little gang, but I don’t remember there being any one girl in particular.’

  ‘Was there anyone who would carry a grudge?’

  ‘I remember she was particularly… mischievous with Nicola Whittier, but she’s a trainee accountant now and I hear she married recently. It seems unlikely.’

  ‘How about Lauren Mitchell?’

  June Perry shook her head. ‘No. They weren’t friends, but Phoebe knew better than to pick on Lauren. She was a tough nut. Difficult background, but I always had a bit of a soft spot for her. I see her sometimes; she works on the checkout in the local supermarket. Excuse me a minute, I’ll show you something.’

  She went over to her bureau and rooted through her drawers until she found a formal school photograph. ‘I was their Year Eleven form tutor.’ She handed the photo to Rachel and stood at her shoulder pointing people out. Phoebe needed no identifying: that perfect heart-shaped face, winning smile and mass of artfully backcombed blonde hair. Her uniform shirt was unbuttoned to expose her cleavage. Lauren Mitchell sported a Mohican and glowered into the camera. Nicky Whittier was a painfully plain child, who wore glasses but had by now lost the despised bunches.

  ‘Obviously there’s nobody in the school office at the moment, but I’m sure the current head would be happy to speak to
you. Phoebe was before his time though.’

  Brickall stood up and put his cup and plate back on the tray. ‘That won’t be necessary, but thanks.’

  * * *

  An hour later they were sitting in a motorway service café. Rachel toyed with a Diet Coke, watching Brickall tuck into burger and fries washed down with a can of lager.

  Her phone buzzed with a text from Joe.

  Can we get together soon? There’s someone I want you to meet. Xx

  She looked up again. ‘You’ve been as much use as a vibrator in a nunnery today, Detective Sergeant. Care to enlighten me about the bad attitude?’

  ‘We’re off duty, remember?’ He stabbed a chip into his ketchup.

  She raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  ‘Okay, if you want to know, I’m cheesed off because it’s been a waste of my precious day off.’

  ‘I disagree. We know a lot more about Phoebe Stiles than when we started. And we had some nice shortbread.’

  ‘Don’t be a smartarse. Okay, so we know this bird was a nasty little madam, but so what? It doesn’t take you anywhere. And even if it did, what were you proposing to do with the information? Case closed, remember?’

  ‘Not entirely. There are leads Rob’s still following up.’

  Saying his name out loud sent colour surging to her cheeks. Annoyed, she bit her lip and started pulling apart a paper sachet of sugar.

  ‘Oh “Rob” now is, is he?’ It was Brickall’s turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘I take it this is your Interpol bloke?’

  Rachel nodded, poking at the loose sugar with the tines of her fork.

  ‘Bit of a hunk, was he? Touch of the Jason Bourne going on?’

  She shook her head, but his sceptical expression didn’t change. ‘There’s just something about this case; I can’t explain what it is. It’s just under my skin, in my head.’

  Brickall leaned back and looked at her. ‘Prince, this bullying stuff – it’s binary. Every schoolkid is either bully or bullied. So Phoebe was in the bullying camp along with fifty per cent of the population: so what? It doesn’t narrow our focus in a meaningful way.’