Dark Spaces

by Black, Helen

  ‘School’s closed,’ says Gem. ‘Too much snow.’

  Mums nods.

  It ain’t Mum’s fault she’s like this. She ain’t like a normal person. It’s like she’s only half there, like a bit of her brain’s missing or something.

  When Gem got taken into care the second time, some doctor wrote a report about Mum for the court hearing. She weren’t supposed to show it to Gem, but she did anyway, at the contact centre. It was pages and pages long, and Gem didn’t understand a lot of it, but basically the doctor said Mum had something called attachment disorder on account of what had happened to her when she were a kid. He said she can’t help being the way she is, but that she should never have had any kids.

  Mum hates people like that. Doctors, social workers and what have you.

  ‘Think they’re so clever with their qualifications,’ she says. ‘Let’s see how clever they’d be living here. Their bits of paper wouldn’t do ’em any good in this shithole, would they?’

  Mum talks a lot of rubbish, but she’s right about that. None of ’em would last five minutes on the Clayhill.

  When Gem gets over to the house, Feyza buzzes her in. She’s already on the phone to a punter.

  ‘We got lovely girl in today,’ she says. ‘Very pretty. Genuine sixteen years old.’ She gives a raspy laugh, like a witch cackling. ‘I don’t bullshit, sir. This girl just have her birthday.’

  On and on she goes, telling him whatever it is he wants to hear. Gem goes to the cupboard and pulls out a clean sheet and towel so she can do Misty’s room before she gets in. The less Gem sees of Misty’s miserable mug the better.

  She lets herself in and chucks the sheet at the end of the bed. The whole place stinks of stale fags and Gem sees the overflowing ashtray on the dressing table. Misty must smoke a hundred a day or something. She dumps the dog-ends into the bin and reaches over for a can of deodorant and sprays it into the air. It don’t make much difference so she searches through the other stuff for some perfume. There’s mousse, hairspray, dry shampoo and endless tins of spray-on tan, but no perfume. She opens the top drawer and rummages through it. There’s condoms, half-used tubes of lube and four or five dildos.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  Gem nearly jumps out of her skin and spins round on her toes. Misty is stood in the doorway, a proper scowl on her face.

  ‘Nothing.’ Gem pushes the drawer shut with her arse. ‘Just cleaning up and that.’

  Misty takes a step towards Gem. Her hair is pulled back off her face and she ain’t wearing any make-up. There are dark circles under her eyes and the scars around her mouth look ugly.

  ‘You going through my shit?’

  ‘No,’ Gem answers. A bit too quickly.

  ‘You’d better fucking not be.’

  ‘I ain’t.’

  Misty takes another step closer and, by the look on her face, Gem expects a punch on the nose. Thank fuck for Feyza, who calls for her from down the corridor.

  ‘What?’ Misty shouts over her shoulder.

  ‘Here,’ Feyza shouts back. ‘Now.’

  Misty looks disgusted, but slopes away to find her boss, leaving Gem with her heart banging in her chest. She don’t waste another minute and gets the sheet on the bed and the bin emptied in double-quick time, then she slings her hook before Misty can get back.

  When she starts making up the next room, Gem’s still shaking, and it ain’t just because Misty is a pure evil bitch. There’s also what she saw at the back of Misty’s drawer. Something anybody else might have missed. But Gem ain’t anybody else, is she? She’s lived her life on the Clayhill. And she knows a crack pipe when she sees one.

  Chloe looked up from the table in the interview room, her facial muscles relaxed, her forehead free of sweat. Lilly had never seen her look so composed.

  The WPC who had been at the Grove was sat opposite. She pushed a cup of tea across the table towards Chloe. ‘Drink up now,’ she said and stood to leave. ‘Can I get anyone else a drink?’

  ‘A jug of water and some glasses would be great,’ said Lilly.

  The WPC smiled. Her lips were very plump, as if she rubbed them frequently with balm. Lilly ran an embarrassed finger over her own chapped mouth.

  ‘Water it is,’ said the WPC and left.

  Harry, Lilly noticed, lingered just a little too long over the sight of her disappearing backside, firm and peachy against the material of her regulation trousers.

  ‘So.’ Lilly clapped her hands to break the spell. ‘Are you okay, Chloe?’

  Her client gave a heavy-lidded nod.

  ‘You gave us a bit of a scare back at the Grove,’ said Lilly. ‘I thought Jack was a goner.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have hurt him.’ Chloe’s tone was easy. ‘I wouldn’t hurt anyone.’ She smiled at Lilly. ‘I just wanted him to bring me to the station.’

  ‘Why?’ Lilly asked. ‘I was trying to get him to see it wasn’t in your best interests to leave the Grove, and I think I was getting somewhere.’

  ‘I know it’s all very confusing, Chloe,’ said Harry. ‘But you must believe that Lilly is trying to help you here.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Chloe put her hand on Lilly’s, but this time there was no insistence in it, just a gesture of apology.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Lilly. ‘I just wish I understood why you’re so desperate to be here.’

  Chloe looked up at Lilly and something in her eyes was so magnetic, so intense, that Lilly couldn’t avert her gaze. Chloe wanted to tell her something. Needed to tell her something.

  ‘Harry,’ she said, her eyes still glued to Chloe’s, ‘could you chase up the water?’

  ‘Water?’ he asked.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said Lilly. ‘I’m absolutely parched.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and she felt rather than saw him get up and leave the room.

  As the door closed behind him, Chloe let her head droop, and she melted forward until her face was pressed into the plastic of the table.

  ‘Why did you want to come here, Chloe?’ Lilly asked.

  The girl’s cheek spread like a melting snowball and she closed her eyes, so that her face seemed to become featureless.

  ‘I need you to explain,’ Lilly said.

  Chloe didn’t move or speak.

  ‘Please tell me you’re not intending to confess to Lydia’s murder,’ said Lilly. ‘Because I won’t let you do that.’

  Chloe’s eyelid fluttered, like ripples moving across surface water. ‘Why would I do that?’ she murmured.

  ‘I dunno.’ Lilly shrugged. ‘I’m wondering what other motive there could be.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Lydia,’ Chloe said. ‘So I wouldn’t say I did.’

  Lilly blew air through her mouth. If Chloe didn’t want to spill her guts to the police, what were they all doing here? Then again, maybe she was approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe Chloe didn’t want to be at the station.

  ‘Okay, I get it,’ she said. ‘You were just determined to get yourself out of the Grove, and here’s as good a place as any.’

  Chloe gave a long slow sigh of relief. Satisfied that, at last, someone understood.

  ‘Are you going to tell me why?’ Lilly asked.

  The moments fell away and Chloe didn’t flicker. Lilly thought she could hear a clock tick, but knew it was her imagination.

  ‘I can understand you’re bored in there,’ said Lilly.

  ‘I’m not bored,’ Chloe whispered into the table.

  ‘Then what?’ Lilly tried to disguise her impatience.

  At last Chloe raised her head. Haltingly, she drew her body upright, like a crane dragging a shipwreck from the depths. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Lilly replied.

  Chloe waited as if unconvinced.

  ‘Tell me why you wanted to get out of hospital,’ said Lilly.

  Chloe waited three beats, giving a small nod at each as if in time to her internal rhythm. ‘They come for us a
t night,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When everyone is supposed to be asleep, they come for us.’

  Lilly felt a prickle of apprehension. It started at her jawline and seeped down her throat towards her chest.

  ‘They wait until they know it’s safe, then they creep into our rooms.’ Chloe walked her fingers across the table as if on tiptoe. ‘Like burglars.’

  ‘Who?’ Lilly asked.

  Chloe shook her head. ‘Can’t say. The drugs they give us make it blurry.’

  ‘And what do these people do when they come into your room?’

  ‘They take us away, probably in a wheelchair because you can’t move your legs properly,’ said Chloe.

  The prickle spread throughout Lilly’s body and she knew that under her clothes, every hair was standing on end. ‘Where do they take you?’

  ‘A small room, or a corner of a room, it’s hard to know for sure but it’s a …’ Chloe tapped her forehead for the word. ‘It’s a dark space.’

  Lilly didn’t say anything more. Was this all just another one of Chloe’s delusions? A hideous nightmare that seemed as real as skin and bone and dirt?

  ‘I know you don’t believe me,’ said Chloe.

  Lilly didn’t know what to believe.

  ‘I’ve tried to tell people before but they just told me it was all in my head. I explained to them that the pain was real, that it hurt.’ Chloe slid a hand down her body so she was cupping her crotch. ‘I even showed them the blood in my pants but they said I’d done it to myself. I thought I must be going mad until I told Lydia.’

  ‘What happened when you told Lydia?’ Lilly asked. ‘She said she believed you?’

  Chloe nodded. ‘She knew it was true.’

  ‘How?’ Lilly felt her blood fizzing in her veins as she waited for the answer. ‘How did she know it was true?’

  ‘Because they were doing the same things to her too.’

  Lilly stepped out of the interview room and almost collided into Harry. Water sloshed out of the jug he was carrying, down Lilly’s shirt.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘My fault,’ she answered, patting herself down for a tissue. She found one almost disintegrating in her back trouser pocket. She rubbed it against the wet patch across her chest, covering the area in white confetti.

  ‘Let me.’ He held out the jug for Lilly. ‘I’ve got a clean hanky.’

  Lilly took the jug from him and Harry pulled out a pristine square of white cotton. He moved towards her with it as if to dab the stain but as his hand almost touched her breast, he coughed and dropped his hand. ‘Perhaps you’d better …’

  Lilly swapped the jug for the handkerchief and tried to mop up her shirt. ‘Remember when we went for lunch?’ she asked.

  ‘How could I forget?’

  Lilly flushed. ‘I asked you about Chloe, and you told me she lived in her own fantasy world, that she imagined people were doing terrible things to her.’

  ‘What has she been telling you?’ Harry asked.

  Lilly looked around the custody suite. The sergeant was busy with paperwork and the only other person around was the WPC who was checking her phone. She took a step nearer to Harry.

  ‘She says she’s being abused in the Grove.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Poisoned? She often says she’s being poisoned by one of the nurses. Or our pharmacist.’

  ‘Not poisoned.’ Lilly dropped to a whisper. ‘She says she’s being sexually abused.’

  A shadow crossed Harry’s face. He clearly hadn’t seen that one coming. ‘Chloe is very ill.’

  ‘She says it’s not just her. She says it was happening to Lydia too.’

  Harry paused. This was a huge accusation. Unlikely to be true. And yet …

  ‘If Chloe’s telling the truth, it would give someone other than her a very big motive to murder Lydia,’ Lilly said, as much for her own benefit as for Harry’s. ‘Did she ever say anything about it to you?’

  Harry looked shocked. ‘Of course not. She may be delusional, but I wouldn’t simply dismiss an allegation like that,’ he said. ‘Patients like Chloe are vulnerable. We have to be careful.’

  Lilly could have kicked herself. ‘I didn’t mean to be offensive. I’m just a bit rattled.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ He smiled. ‘Really it’s fine. This is difficult for everyone.’

  Lilly acknowledged his understanding with a grateful nod.

  ‘Has Chloe named any names?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Nope. The details are very sketchy. She says she was drugged at the time.’

  Harry exhaled through his nose. ‘And Lydia can’t exactly tell us much one way or the other.’

  ‘Now that’s where you’re wrong.’ Lilly took out her mobile and scrolled down her list of contacts until she got to Phil Cheney.

  ‘Lilly.’ Cheney answered on the first ring. ‘You just can’t get enough of the sound of my voice.’

  ‘Sexy as your telephone manner is, Phil, this is about business.’

  ‘I’m hurt and disappointed,’ he said, but Lilly knew that dead bodies excited Cheney far more than flirting.

  ‘Lydia Morton-Daley,’ said Lilly. ‘Was there any recent sexual activity?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Lilly heard the thwack of his gloves as he pulled them off, then the tap, tap, tap of a keyboard as he accessed the file. ‘Penetration front and back.’

  ‘Consensual?’ she asked.

  ‘Tricky one to answer definitively,’ he said. ‘There were fissures but, if you’ll pardon the pun, anal sex is a bugger for that even if you’re happy to take part.’

  ‘What if our girl was drugged?’ Lilly asked. ‘The muscles would be relaxed wouldn’t they? Less likely to tear?’

  ‘For sure,’ he said. ‘But the fissures were beginning to repair so they weren’t inflicted at the time of death. More likely a day or so beforehand and there was no trace in her bloods of anything except the stuff that killed her.’

  ‘But if she was raped a day or so before the murder, there are plenty of drugs that would have disappeared from her system,’ said Lilly. ‘Rohypnol for one.’

  ‘Are you after my job?’

  Lilly laughed. ‘I think you’re safe on that score, Phil. I find dead bodies a bit off-putting. You know, like any ordinary person.’

  ‘I will take it as a compliment that you find me extraordinary,’ he said. ‘But you’re right, Rohypnol and a few other suspects would have cleared from her system by the time of death and yes, they would have relaxed her enough for a rape to take place without too much physical trauma. So what are you saying? Someone drugs and rapes our girl, then comes back a day or so later and kills her?’

  ‘Are you after my job?’ asked Lilly.

  ‘To be honest I find rapists and murderers a bit off-putting.’

  ‘Touché.’

  Lilly was still laughing when she hung up.

  ‘Funny guy?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Lilly. ‘Funny ha ha and funny strange.’

  ‘You seem fond of one another.’

  Lilly waved him away. ‘We go way back, but, trust me, if I asked him out he’d run a mile.’

  ‘I find that very difficult to believe,’ said Harry.

  There it was again, the familiar heat of a blush. God, Lilly was like a bloody teenager.

  ‘So what did Romeo have to say for himself?’ asked Harry.

  Lilly nudged him with her elbow. ‘That Lydia could have been raped. She’d certainly been having sex a day or so before she was killed.’

  ‘Unfortunately, try as we might, we can’t always prevent that sort of thing happening amongst the patients,’ said Harry. ‘Lydia was quite promiscuous. She used her sexuality as both a weapon and a way of punishing herself.’

  Lilly recalled the conversation they’d had about the party on the night Lydia had been arrested and the casual reference to a sexual encounter that night. Harry’s point was valid and a perfectly viable explanation, yet something inside Lilly wa
sn’t persuaded. At least not totally.

  ‘Don’t forget Chloe came up with all this after Lydia was killed,’ said Harry.

  ‘She says she tried to tell people but they didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t say anything to me and I’ve worked very closely with her,’ he said. ‘She never gave any indication.’

  Lilly looked at the floor. Perhaps Chloe hadn’t asked for Harry’s assistance, but she had certainly asked for Lilly’s. Once again she thought of the letter. It had been a plea for help, but it was also a piece of evidence that gave her story a bizarre logic.

  * * *

  As I squeeze past Lilly and the shrink, they barely notice me. Too busy in their cosy little tête-à-tête.

  He’s actually quite revolting. A flirtatious remark here, a brush of the fingers there, but Lilly is lapping it up. At her age I suppose it must be pleasant to receive any attention, no matter its source.

  Back inside the interview room, I put a glass of water in front of the fat girl.

  ‘You must be thirsty?’ I say.

  Her face is so flat it seems almost deformed.

  ‘Take a drink,’ I say. ‘They might be a while yet.’

  There’s a hint of suspicion in those piggy eyes, but she grabs the glass and drinks it down, the folds of her neck undulating as she swallows.

  ‘I probably shouldn’t say anything, being a policewoman, but Miss Valentine really is a very good solicitor.’ I can still trace the girl’s distrust. ‘You should do everything she advises you to.’

  She blinks at me like a confused puppy.

  ‘The thing is, I wouldn’t want to see someone like you go to prison for something they haven’t done.’

  I snake my fingers into my pocket and slowly reveal a bar of chocolate I bought from the vending machine. Uncertainty vanishes and the girl’s eyes fill with want. Of course they do.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask and carefully place the chocolate on the table between us, keeping my index finger on it.

  The girl nods, every cell in her body focused on her desire to fill her stomach. If she wasn’t covered in layers of blubber, you’d be able to see each sinew stretched towards the small red bar.