by Alison Bruce
Gully lowered herself on to one knee and spoke quietly, just to Libby. ‘Where what was?’
‘I couldn’t find it.’
Gully tilted her head, trying to coax Libby into looking at her. ‘Libby, what couldn’t you find?’
‘In the end I opened the window, and then forgot all about it. There was a smell . . .’ Libby turned her head slowly, her limpid blue eyes seeming to beg for this moment to end. ‘I just assumed something in the fridge had turned bad; there’s always something past its sell-by date in there.’ She drew a couple of quick breaths and hurried to get out the rest before the words jammed in her throat. ‘I smelled it as I came through the front door. It was faint, disgusting, but it went once I got a breeze circulating. That’s why I didn’t think . . .’
‘Think what?’
‘That it was in the hall not the kitchen.’
‘And can you describe this smell?’
Libby’s nostrils flared slightly as though a fresh wave of the stench was hitting her. She closed her eyes, as her fingers dug into the fabric of her skirt. ‘Rotting meat.’
ELEVEN
Hi, Zoe
I need to explain how weird it was.
I hadn’t planned to say anything. One minute I was sitting there, sandwiched between the others. Inconspicuous, I thought. PC Gully hardly seemed to notice me, because several times her eyes skimmed over me like I was just the comma separating the other members of the group.
Jamie, Oslo, Matt on one side.
Meg, Phil on the other.
Her gaze barely touched me until I spoke. I had no plans to say anything. In fact, I doubted there was much point in me being there at all. All I intended to do was stay in my room, available if I was needed but separate enough to protect myself.
I should have learned by now that refusing to accept that something’s happening doesn’t actually make it go away. My dad has always said how the piper needs to be paid. That’s crap. What has our family ever done that requires so much reparation? But I agree with him enough to know that staying in my room would have been just a temporary fix; because I could have avoided facing the police now only to be forced into a one-to-one meeting later.
That was why I joined them, sat in the middle and kept quiet, because I really did have nothing to add. Or so I thought. Until I heard them talking about the key to Shanie’s room, and everyone agreeing that no one had one. Keeping quiet would have been like telling myself I’d just imagined it. That goes against the grain for me.
I’m studying accountancy, so maybe that’s why I have to keep my own ledger balanced. I like the idea of details being correct, with meticulous accuracy, checking and cross-checking. I’m careful but not a perfectionist, nor do I have any intention of becoming one, but consciously letting something drop is very different from missing it entirely, and I wasn’t about to collude with whoever I’d heard rattling my bedroom door by pretending I could ignore it.
That’s how I’m summing it up now, but at the time it was an instinctual response. ‘Someone has a key,’ I’d blurted out. Everyone stared at me, and then I had to explain that I’d never been to London. My description of crowded trains, tube-train delays, congested shops and everything, right down to the non-existent Danish pastry in Starbucks, had all been a total lie. It had made sense at the time but I couldn’t explain my logic in the face of so many suspicious stares.
I’d hurt Matt.
He tried not to show it but his expression showed it enough for Jamie to comment on it, and briefly everyone’s attention switched towards him. I scratched around for the right thing to say, but empty space filled the gap where I usually kept my ability to think straight.
Then I remembered this morning: the noise of something falling over. Silence as I stood in the hallway. And then that faint but terrible smell. I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth, then gingerly moved it away by an inch or so, and sniffed again.
Something gone off in the fridge maybe? Or a dead mouse rotting under the floorboards?
I checked the fridge. Nothing.
I never mentioned the mouse idea to PC Gully. For, if it had been a decaying animal, surely the smell wouldn’t have faded away like that?
Even now that thought keeps doing circuits around my brain.
I had walked back to the spot where I’d first smelled it.
I still could, but it was noticeably fainter. I opened the window and forgot about it until the moment when I needed to distract attention from Matt, then it snapped back into my head.
It felt a convenient diversion, and I couldn’t shake the sensation that the others thought I was making it up. PC Gully didn’t though, and her manner changed abruptly.
She phoned into the police station, conversing in terse bursts amid the returning bursts of dialogue and crackle that came from the other end.
She then asked Jamie to make drinks, and told everyone but me to stay where they were. I was allowed as far as the doorway of the main room, just to point a few feet down the hall and confirm to her which room was Shanie’s.
‘Why’s her bedroom on the ground floor?’ Gully queried.
Halfway between the front door and the lounge and kitchen; it would have been the room I think one of the boys would have taken if they’d had the choice. ‘It was supposed to be a study room, but when Shanie arrived it was the only place to put her.’
‘Okay.’ I couldn’t tell if PC Gully was listening; she moved close to the door without actually touching it.
‘You think Jamie’s right to be worried, don’t you?’ I asked.
‘Shanie’s behaviour does seem out of character, so I think Jamie was right to call us.’
A stock answer, no doubt.
I wonder if police cadets are handed a book of useful phrases: cleverly worded sentences that manage to prepare people for the worst without extinguishing all hope.
We remain positive . . .
Concerned for her safety . . .
Our investigation is ongoing . . .
I don’t hold that against PC Gully; it’s her job, after all. How was she to know that she was talking to a seventeen year old who had already heard the top hundred phrases from that same bloody book.
‘You don’t believe she’s in there, do you?’ I asked.
‘I will need to see inside her room,’ she replied, as if that were enough of an answer to shut me up.
I persisted: ‘I don’t see how it would be possible.’
‘I’m sure we’ll be able to locate the other holder of the key shortly.’
‘No, I meant how could she be in there?’
Her cheeks reddened but, apart from that, any other sign of warmth disappeared and her face became expressionless. ‘Please rejoin your friends.’
Someone rapped hard on the front door just then and Gully waved me back towards the main room as she turned to answer it. I didn’t budge; in fact, I had no plans to move and realized I was gripping the doorframe so hard that my fingers ached.
She put her eye to the spyhole, then pulled away in an instant, reaching for the catch. I was only seeing the back of her head, but I could tell she was both surprised and relieved.
However, by the time they were face to face, she just sounded irritated. ‘Why are you here?’
He spoke quietly but I was close enough to hear his reply. ‘I was talking with Norris when you called in.’ The man who had entered the house looked about Gully’s age, a little older maybe. Short hair, cleanshaven, casual clothes. Reminded me of a medical student or a bartender. Okay, that’s a bit diverse; the point is, he didn’t remind me of a policeman or any kind of detective. He neither shook my hand nor told me I should do anything that might include releasing my hold on the doorframe. He introduced himself as DC Gary Goodhew, then turned back to Gully.
‘That wasn’t an answer,’ she insisted.
‘You requested assistance with the lock?’ he replied.
‘Yes, but I didn’t expect you.’ She released a ponderous sigh. ‘Wha
tever . . . let’s get on with it. What do you know so far?’
‘Shanie Faulkner’s gone missing and the quicker we get access to her room the better.’
‘But we can’t just force the door without damaging the lock. And if you break in through the window you’ll add glass, external debris and God knows what to the scene. We can’t risk disrupting forensics.’
He glanced back at me and I retreated into the doorway by a few inches but I could still hear them whispering.
‘Sue, stop stating the bloody obvious and just slow down. Look, this lock is really old – and it wasn’t designed for a bank vault.’ A pause, then, ‘Do you know what this thing is?’
‘No.’
‘Watch.’ He must have meant ‘watch’ as in observe, not as in Rolex, because a moment later I heard a metal-on-metal shuffling followed by the unmistakable sound of the lock bolt sliding aside.
I glanced behind me into the main room and found that everyone else seemed to be staring over at me. I must have looked like someone who’d been posted there as a makeshift door guard.
‘What’s going on?’ Jamie mouthed.
I shrugged and Phil looked like he was about to stand up. I shook my head quickly and raised my finger in the ‘wait’ gesture.
‘Who came to the door?’ Oslo asked before I’d had a chance to turn away.
‘Another policeman.’
Then Meg: ‘What’s he doing now?’
Something told me that it would be unwise to make any comment that might bring them all spilling out into the hallway.
‘Hang on,’ I whispered.
As I stepped out from the lounge doorway, everything hit me at once: Shanie’s open door, the artificial light from Goodhew’s phone, bouncing off the bedroom walls, the way Gully moved towards me – and the smell.
Most of all, the smell.
Gully grabbed me and turned me round in a single manoeuvre. She was only an inch taller than me but I felt weightless, as though she’d lifted me right off the floor and just handed me over to Jamie.
Jamie dragged me to a chair in the kitchen area. ‘Sit down.’
I knew her routine by now. I’d be given tea and wisdom. I’d be asked if I was feeling okay, and treated as if I’d suddenly developed a disorder making me liable to sudden disintegration.
I just did as I was told, while all around me hell was unleashed. Jamie was trying hard not to cry, while Oslo started talking about natural processes and how long she’d obviously been dead already. Phil remained silent; so did Matt. And Meg sobbed loudly, as if she really had been Shanie’s bestest bezzie, or however she might have described it.
The police presence swelled like increments in the Fibonacci series. First Gully, then Goodhew, then two more uniforms . . . and a few minutes after that, another three, including the boss. He was older than the rest, thin in a steel-rod kind of way. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Marks, and I got the impression that he thought that would put me at ease, but by then, I was unable to know how I felt.
After that there were others, too, but all we were thinking about by then was how soon we could get on with whatever was going to come next.
PC Gully stayed in the room with us, fielding questions. ‘We will need a statement from each of you,’ she repeated.
‘Separately or together?’ Meg asked.
‘Separately.’
‘Can I have someone with me, though?’
‘Yes, but as I just explained, it can’t be Phil.’
‘So we’re suspects, then?’
‘Significant witnesses.’
‘No, we’re suspects. If you thought we were innocent, you wouldn’t now be trying to stop us talking to each other, would you?’
‘We need to have statements that are made independently.’
‘So Phil speaks to you first, then sits in along with me and he doesn’t speak at all, what’s wrong with that?’
‘We may need to revisit the various statements.’
‘So now we can’t talk to each other at all?’ Meg’s mood was fast escalating towards a full-blown screaming match, but the only thing missing was an adversary. Gully remained resolutely patient, and none of us tried asking Meg to calm down; because we knew better. Without warning, Meg changed tack. ‘So how did she do it?’
‘Meg, I’m sure you realize why I can’t comment on—’
‘Was she hanging, or what?’
‘Meg, please lower your voice.’
‘Has she been dead since Friday?’
One look at Gully’s face would have told Meg that she stood no chance of an answer, so she turned to me. I was still sitting on the same chair, but with my knees raised to my chest and my arms clutched round them.
‘Libby, what did you see?’ Meg shouted suddenly.
I pressed my forehead flat against my knees and stared at the fabric encasing my thighs. I pictured a mouse, and I pretended that it had been the cause of it all. A dead grey mouse, with its form and features fading. A mouse left with more dignity than that glimpse of Shanie I had caught reflected in her bedroom mirror.
TWELVE
Both Matt and Libby were picked up from Parkside by Matt’s sister Charlotte, and the contact address now given for both also belonged to Charlotte. Brimley Close was a cul-de-sac of post-war semi-detached homes, once carbon copy three-bedroom, two-reception houses, but now embellished with a variety of extensions and improvements. Number 14 looked tidy but tired, maintained but not polished; everything about it said ‘domestic’ and Goodhew wasn’t surprised to learn that it was the house inhabited by the Stone family throughout Matt and Charlotte’s childhood.
Charlotte was about five foot four; she was dressed in battered jeans and a pink scoop-necked top. Her hair was light brown and blessed with exactly the kind of curls that straight-haired people spent a fortune trying to replicate, and which she had probably spent hours trying to tame.
She shook his hand, then led him along the short hallway and into the lounge. The room was dominated by an oversized flat-screen television and a chunky three-piece suite. The TV was new enough for the instruction manual to still be in use, as it lay on top of several issues of the free weekly paper and a pile of letters resting on their empty envelopes. By comparison, the sofa and armchairs seemed twenty years out of date. They had been uniformly upholstered in a leaf-patterned chenille, using a colour palette that might have been entitled shades of goat and cow. When Goodhew first sat down, and each time he moved, a fresh plume of dust took to the air.
‘Are your parents home?’
‘There’s only Dad now. He’s at work.’
‘And where is that?’
‘He works for a landscape gardener, so they’ll be employed somewhere local. I’d rather wait until he gets home.’
‘No one’s told him yet?’
‘No, not yet,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I wanted to get Matt and Libby settled in first.’
‘Libby’s staying here?’
Charlotte jerked her head in the direction of the front window and the cul-de-sac beyond. ‘Libby’s parents live at number 57, but she doesn’t want to go home.’
Her eyes flickered as she seemed to read his expression – accurately as it turned out. ‘Matt and Libby aren’t in a relationship, if that’s what you’re thinking. They have separate issues to deal with, and both decided they’d take the opportunity to try living away from home.’
‘What kind of issues?’
‘Personal. Ask them if you like, but I just didn’t want you misconstruing anything from the outset.’
It was then that Goodhew decided that he would speak to Libby first.
THIRTEEN
Libby Brett reminded Goodhew of one of the characters in the game Who Is It?, with features that were neat and symmetrical. Her hair was cut into a jaw-length bob.
Does your character have blue eyes?
Yes.
Fair hair?
Yes.
Dangly earrings?
Yes.<
br />
Then it must be Libby!
Her full name was Elizabeth Dinah Brett and she’d be eighteen on her next birthday, though she could have passed for about fourteen if she’d wanted to. The earrings were little silver flowers, and were the only frivolous things about her appearance. She wore a blue cotton shirt that made her look as though she’d just removed her school tie.
The note about her said she was studying accountancy ‘A’ level along with English, business studies and critical thinking. Her expression gave away very little so perhaps that was one of the entry requirements for identifying the future tax advisors amongst them.
‘She killed herself, didn’t she?’ Libby said.
‘It’s too early to say.’
She gave a little snort, half disgust, half disrespect. ‘I thought you’d have made up your mind by now.’
‘No, it’s the pathologist who—’
‘Not you the individual, I mean you the police.’
‘What makes you think we decide on the outcome before we have the facts?’
Her expression closed a little more. ‘I never said that.’
He changed direction. ‘Do you think Shanie was depressed? Had something upset her?’
‘If I had to guess, I’d say that Shanie spent her whole school life as the nerdy kid in class. Probably wishing she got looks instead of brains.’
Goodhew realized then that he had only seen one low-res photo of Shanie and apart from that, only had the time spent with the body to go on. As far as attractiveness went, neither had given him much of a clue.
‘A kid like that often ends up feeling embarrassed about their academic ability – like a tall person who stoops over time. And that’s why I don’t think she did it.’
‘Did what?’
Libby’s eyebrows gave a little twitch, a hint that she thought he was missing the obvious. ‘That’s why,’ she explained patiently, ‘I don’t think she killed herself.’
Goodhew ran back over her previous sentences. He’d obviously missed the point somewhere. ‘You’ll have to explain.’