Good Girls Don't Die

by Isabelle Grey

  ‘So she deserved this?’ Grace pointed to the crime scene images. ‘She ought to be ashamed for being so drunk. For not being nice to you when you were trying to look after her. For not being Polly.’

  ‘I’d never hurt Polly like that!’

  ‘No. Not like this. You wrapped her up in an eiderdown. Put a frilly pillowcase under her head. Its pair was retrieved from your airing cupboard an hour ago.’

  Danny stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language.

  ‘But afterwards, after you’d done this to her, you took Rachel’s red jacket and folded it up, didn’t you?’

  This time Danny nodded. ‘The bricks were filthy, sharp. The dirt was getting in her hair. I didn’t know what else to do.’ He raised his head with a look of pride. ‘I’m good at looking after people.’

  Now Grace was coming to the part that was hardest for her. She swallowed back the grief and squared her shoulders. ‘And Roxanne Carson?’ she asked, hoping her voice wouldn’t tremble. ‘You didn’t take such good care of her.’

  ‘She was going to write stuff about Polly.’

  ‘And about you.’

  ‘I didn’t care about that. But she was going to put things in the paper that weren’t true. All she wanted to talk about was Polly being drunk and having sex with Dr Beeston. She wouldn’t stop asking questions.’

  ‘And you wanted to stop her from printing that kind of stuff?’

  ‘She didn’t understand!’ cried Danny. ‘None of that stuff was Polly’s fault. I loved her!’

  ‘But Polly’s dead, Danny. How did that happen, if you loved her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I think that you hoped Polly would love you back. Especially after she came to the shop to apologise to you. That proved she liked you.’

  Danny nodded.

  ‘Maybe you even imagined that meeting up with her in Colchester, taking her home, was like a date. That maybe she felt the same way you did.’

  He stared at her with anxious, poignant hope, as if somehow the past could be rewritten.

  ‘But once she’d had a drink, she changed,’ said Grace. ‘She didn’t like you so much after all.’

  ‘No, we’re friends.’

  ‘It’s the hope that’s so cruel, isn’t it? When you hope for something, hope for love, and it doesn’t happen, you feel let down, stupid, ashamed, like it’s your fault for wanting it.’ Deep in her mind Grace heard the click of a kettle switching off: she knew in her very bones the shame of that moment when you realise that you are not loved as you stupidly believed yourself to be. That moment of shame could change a person forever. ‘Polly turned you down, didn’t she?’ she asked. ‘Destroyed your hope.’ Grace had spent only one night alone in a budget hotel bed that never got warm. Danny’s childhood had been unimaginably worse and gone on for far longer than that. ‘Made you feel like you weren’t worth bothering with.’

  ‘She wasn’t like that!’

  ‘That must have been unbearable.’

  ‘No. It didn’t happen.’

  ‘Which is why you wanted to show that you were looking after her, to leave her pure and safe in your special place, the place where you enjoyed lovely picnics with your mum.’

  Danny stared at her.

  ‘We’ll be able to match the perforations of the bin bags you wrapped her up in to the remainder of the roll under your sink. We’ll be able to work out exactly what happened that night. Danny?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have I understood? For the tape, please.’

  But Danny smiled and shook his head, and then stretched out a finger and gently stroked the image of his smiling mother. ‘Polly went away,’ he said, still smiling. ‘She wanted to go somewhere safe, where bad things wouldn’t happen, and I helped her.’

  FIFTY-SIX

  As Grace turned into Alma Street, she could see Pawel Zawodny already waiting outside the house. He smiled as she drew near, his coat collar pulled up against the early autumn chill from the river.

  ‘Thanks for coming yourself to meet me,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure. I think I owe you something for my being free to come here and not in a cell.’

  ‘Hardly!’

  He had the key ready in his hand. ‘You want to see inside?’

  ‘Please.’

  He opened the front door. The single downstairs space seemed much bigger now that it was unfurnished, with only the built-in shelves and slatted blinds remaining from when Caitlin and Amber had lived here with Rachel Moston. The wood-effect floor and all the surfaces were spotless, and the low September sunlight streamed in through the glass of the conservatory extension. She was happy that it was all so different to the Edwardian terrace she had shared with Trev. Her old home in Maidstone was now sold, her divorce would soon be final and she could at last abandon her featureless rented flat. This house would be a new beginning.

  ‘It’s just as lovely as I remember,’ she told him.

  ‘You don’t feel it’s unlucky? Or haunted?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  Pawel pulled a face. ‘Unlucky for me, maybe. But not so much as for those poor girls.’

  ‘But you’re still selling up?’

  He nodded. ‘Two are already sold.’

  ‘But you know that I spoke to the university accommodation people,’ she told him. ‘They said they’d reinstate your houses on their lists.’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes, they told me. And thank you. But there will always be doubt about me here. Maybe only behind my back, but it will follow me around. Better I go home, make my mother happy.’

  Although he smiled, his eyes – the same blue as the bare walls, she noticed – had a hurt, guarded look.

  ‘So you’ll accept my offer?’ she asked.

  He held out his hand and she took it, liking his dry, warm grasp. They shook on the deal, and then he followed her upstairs.

  ‘If you want me to do any work before you move in, just let me know. I charge you a fair rate.’

  ‘Thank you, yes, I may want some extra shelves and things.’

  ‘He’s in prison, the man you caught?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Danny Tooley. Yes. Awaiting trial. He’s pleading guilty to two of the murders, but he still won’t actually admit to killing Polly Sinclair. We have clear-cut evidence, and he doesn’t even really deny it, but I don’t think he can bear to bring himself to say it aloud, not even to himself. Not yet, anyway. And maybe he never will.’

  ‘But he wasn’t the one in bed with Polly that morning?’

  Grace could hear a strain of anxiety in Pawel’s voice. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t the man who killed her.’

  ‘I can’t forgive myself. I should have made sure she was all right.’

  ‘If she was hurt that morning, then Matt Beeston is responsible, not you.’

  He didn’t look convinced. ‘How are their families?’

  ‘Not great. Maybe once the trial’s over, it’ll be a tiny bit easier and they’ll find some kind of peace. I doubt it, though. I don’t think the families ever truly recover.’

  He nodded sympathetically, then moved to stand by the bedroom window, making out that he was checking the catch on the casement. ‘I was very angry with you for a long time,’ he said without turning around.

  ‘I can imagine.’ She didn’t know what else to say. It didn’t feel right to apologise, however unfair the consequences that had followed on from his arrest. The fall-out and detritus of a violent crime – like the occasional tattered yellow ribbon that still fluttered from trees or lamp posts around the campus – was perhaps never entirely effaced.

  ‘You had to say those things to me,’ he said, turning to face her. ‘It was your job, but you didn’t really believe any of it, did you?’

  Grace thought of all the people – including Colin Pitman – who had congratulated her once Danny had been charged with all three murders, who had insisted they’d always trusted her judgement; Keith had been the only one she’d beli
eved, and Lance the only one who truly meant it when he’d grinned and said he didn’t mind admitting that he’d been wrong but that he didn’t intend to make a habit of it. He’d also been the first to buy her a drink after she’d been made back up to DI. After everything she’d been through in Kent, the vindication had felt absolutely wonderful.

  ‘Not for a moment,’ she told Pawel with a smile. It was a good lie, a decent and respectful one, and as she uttered it, she realised that, deep down, despite his masculine pride and arrogance, she probably never really had thought of him as other than he was – a kind, honest, old-fashioned and hard-working guy.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled joyously, most of the tension vanishing instantly from his face. Seeing the effect of her words, Grace smiled and held out her hand. Pawel ignored it. Instead he placed both hands lightly on her shoulders and kissed her formally on both cheeks.

  At the front door, Grace turned back to look around once more at the light, open space that Pawel had created and that would soon be her new home. She would be happy here, she promised herself.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My original idea for this novel was hugely enriched by the ideas and experience of Jackie Malton, former DCI, story consultant, addiction counsellor and writer. I can’t thank her enough for her generosity, wisdom and friendship – and for a great day out in Wivenhoe.

  Several other people, from my brother to total strangers whom I accosted via Twitter, have also very generously given me the benefit of their expertise, and I would like to thank Allen Anscombe, Anthony Bateman, John Twomey, James Calnan, Josh Warwick, Geoff Ward, Mary Carter, Merle Nygate, Claire Baker and Camilla Grey. For writerly support there are none better than Elizabeth Buchan, N.J. Cooper and Laline Paull. All my characters are figments of my imagination and all errors entirely my own.

  As ever, I would like to thank my wonderful and inspiring agent Sheila Crowley and her assistant Rebecca Ritchie at Curtis Brown, and Jane Wood, the most patient, kind and astute of editors, Katie Gordon, Margot Weale and all the rest of the great team at Quercus.