by Tom Grieves
*
When it was over, she spun around in the sheets, wrapping her naked body in them like a shroud. She looked at him and giggled – young and flirtatious, and he was thrown by this intimacy. He got dressed as quickly as he could while she continued to writhe on the bed, enjoying his awkwardness.
‘You’ve got a great body for an old bloke.’
‘Thank you, I think.’
‘Yeah, you’re not saggy at all, are you?’
‘Come on, you need to get dressed.’
‘Oh but honey,’ she said in a bad Southern drawl, ‘I can’t leave you yet or my little old heart will break.’
‘Ashley. Sod off and get dressed, eh?’
Her coquettishness vanished and the familiar glower returned. But she didn’t move from the bed.
‘How come you were asking me those questions before?’ she asked.
‘I can’t. You know that.’
‘I know what everyone’s saying, but I don’t think she did it.’
‘If I ran my cases on what everyone thought, I’d never get it right.’
‘Yeah, but if you’d seen her down at the lake when she was looking for him. Running about. Her make-up was all smeared and her dress was falling off her shoulders. You’d be so on her side if you’d been there.’
‘I’m not on anyone’s side. This isn’t the playground.’
‘I’m just saying. If you’d seen her, you’d be more sympathetic.’
‘Hey, I’m as sympathetic as I need to be. Now, please put some clothes on.’
He stopped, and turned to look at her.
‘We could do it again, if you wanted,’ she said, her eyes wide and beckoning. ‘I’ve got time.’
‘Say what you said.’
‘We could do it again.’
‘No, not that, Jesus, about Sarah Downing.’
‘What? Which bit?’
‘You said she was wearing a dress?’
‘Uh-huh. And it was riding up her legs and the strap hung off her shoulder because she was running about like crazy. You could see her tits.’
Sam grabbed his bag and pulled it open, rifling through the pages of a file. The girl stared at him, curious. He found the pages he needed. A witness statement – and a description of the clothes that Sarah was wearing that day. No dress. Jeans and a dark-blue jumper. No dress.
‘You’re sure about this?’ he said.
‘Yeah.’
‘But you didn’t say this in your witness statement. None of you did.’
‘We said we saw her. We said she was in bits. What’s the problem?’
Sam no longer cared if Ashley had clothes on or not. He needed to see Zoe. He grabbed his bag and walked out, hurrying down the corridor. And then he stopped and thought about the naked girl in his bed. A girl with the key to the case. A girl who could compromise him. He walked back to the room slowly, each step feeling heavier.
She was still lying on the bed, just as she had been, when he came in. She looked up at him – what? He sat down next to her and she ran her finger along his arm.
‘You all saw Sarah, right?’ Sam said. ‘In her dress, running around?’
‘Well, I saw her first. And then maybe the others saw her later.’
‘You said you were all down there together.’
‘Did I?’
The frustration roared up inside and he tried to hide it.
‘You said that you all went down to the lake together.’
‘Oh, yeah, I did. Well, I was a bit before them.’
‘So why didn’t you say that?’
‘Well, it was only a bit.’
‘Right.’ He took a breath and continued. ‘So you saw Sarah Downing. And then the rest saw her a bit later.’
‘Yeah, probably.’
He scratched at the back of his neck, trying to keep calm.
‘And did you notice, when the other guys saw her, that she wasn’t in a dress any more?’
Ashley looked at him blankly, as though she didn’t have a clue what this old man was on about.
He pressed on as gently as he could bear to, pointing out that while the teenagers had happily admitted to seeing Sarah Downing, Ashley hadn’t mentioned that she’d seen Sarah earlier until that moment. He pressed her for a time.
‘I don’t know. She was just running around. Can you calm down, please?’
‘This is very important.’
‘I didn’t lie, if that’s what you’re saying.’
He felt her hackles rise and recognised the silly teenage petulance within her.
‘I’m not saying that, I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong.’
‘’Cos I’m not a liar, you got that?’
He put a hand out and took hers, and she squeezed his hand back. And as he did so, he knew that he was playing this wrong, but he didn’t know what else to do.
‘You saw her, she ran off and then when your friends came back, she was there again?’ he asked gently.
She nodded.
‘And you didn’t notice that she’d changed her clothes?’
She frowned, thinking about this, and then shrugged.
‘I like it, when we do it in your room,’ she said, and grinned at him.
‘Yeah, me too,’ he said. ‘Listen, we’re going to question you again, I’m going to get my colleague to come and talk to you. And you need to tell her what you told me. About the dress.’
‘Will you be there too?’
‘No.’
‘But you’ll have told her, so why do you need me?’
He felt a net tighten around him.
‘Are you not going to tell her?’ she asked.
‘If she knows about us then it makes things tricky.’
‘How?’
He wondered about the expression on her face; so thoughtful and so sweet. It felt put on.
‘If anyone thinks that I could have influenced what you say, then your evidence becomes invalid.’
‘What evidence?’
‘You could be the key to this investigation, Ashley.’
She sat up straighter at this, thrilled by the news, and the bed sheets fell away, revealing her nakedness. He looked at her and felt a rush of attraction and desperation in equal measure.
‘I’m important?’
‘You are.’
‘How?’
‘Will you just tell Zoe Barnes what you told me? And say it in the same way so it doesn’t sound rehearsed?’
‘Like how?’
‘Like with all of that bolshy shit you normally give me.’
She laughed at this, a delighted cackle.
‘Alright, no probs.’
She fell back onto her back and he let go of her hand. But she grabbed his and held it, placing it onto one of her breasts.
‘Tell her about the dress and the stains. Yes?’ he said.
She nodded but she was smiling and teasing. She wanted him again, now.
‘I can’t, Ashley. And we can’t. Not again. Not now. Not with this.’
But she didn’t let go of his hand.
‘But I don’t want us to end. If I tell her, then we’re over, aren’t we?’
His stomach turned over. A cold, icy spike ripped around inside him.
‘This is more important than us fucking.’
‘But I really like you. Can’t we just carry on in secret?’
She sat up and kissed him on his lips. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t pull away either.
‘You want more of me too. I know it.’
‘When she comes to talk to you, will you tell her about the dress?’
‘Maybe. Are you dumping me? Yes or no?’
He sighed and stood up, fed up with her childishness and angry at his own failings and the trap he’d jumped into. But she didn’t move, waiting for his answer. The case was dead without her.
‘No. Of course I’m not dumping you, Ashley.’
She jumped up and kissed him and then, with a sudden matter-of-factness, started to get
dressed. He turned his back on her as she did. A wasted, useless gesture of fallen morality. She was dressed in the blink of an eye. She walked to the door.
‘See ya,’ she said, and somehow, despite the tenderness, it felt like a threat.
TWENTY-FOUR
Zoe answered Sam’s call after one ring.
‘I hate teenagers,’ she said without waiting for him to speak. ‘Can’t we arrest some for crimes against fashion? Or haircuts. Or hygiene.’
‘No luck then?’ Sam replied. He was sitting on the shore, staring out at the lake, forced out of the hotel by nervous energy and unable to settle anywhere else. The forensics tent had been struck and the body taken to the local morgue. Without the horror show, the lakeside was quiet again.
‘No. Dipshits,’ Zoe said on the other end of the phone.
‘How many more to go?’
‘Two. Seriously, boss, it’s like talking to the living dead. Only half of what they say makes any sense.’
‘Stick at it.’ He heard her sigh at the other end. ‘You okay?’
‘Sarah Downing got Bud to hide some drugs she had at the house. That was his big secret.’
‘When?’
‘Later that evening, after they’d called the cops.’
‘What sort of drugs?’
‘He doesn’t have a clue, he’s too thick.’
‘Okay. Well done, that’s good to know.’
‘I thought it would be a lead. But it doesn’t get us any closer to Sarah Downing, does it?’
‘That doesn’t, no.’
The silence on the end of the line was palpable.
‘Alright,’ she finally said. ‘Well, I’d better go find the last two.’
She hung up. Sam placed the phone on a smooth, round rock next to him. He had to wait for Zoe to find Ashley and then they could get moving again. He wondered about Zoe’s discovery – if Sarah already had drugs then she wouldn’t have been down at the lake to score. The dress proved she was down at the lake earlier, probably around the time the children vanished. More than probably. So if she wasn’t there for a score, then why?
He thought about little Arthur and imagined the shock for the two lads when the corpse had floated to the surface. He’d seen the body close up, seen the way it had been scratched and beaten against the lake’s rocky bottom, the bites and nibbles from the fish. But he’d also noticed how alabaster-white Arthur’s skin was, preserved by the icy depths. It had made him into a chilling spectacle.
Why would Sarah Downing murder her own children? There was no motive. Aware of Zoe’s doubts, Sam’s mind was pulled back to the other cases where those women had drowned their little ones for no reason at all.
Blame the witches, that’s what everyone would be saying, he thought as he stared out at the dead-calm waters. The witches had been playing with Arthur, playing with him in the dark, teasing him and twisting him over and over before they began to feed. And finally, bored, they cast him away, spun him back up to the surface. But they remain below, dark shadows, cursed centuries ago by those on land and always hungry for their revenge.
He stared at the woods, at the treetops where they waited for their prey. You would know if they were there by the water that dripped down from the high branches. You’d hear the patter of water from up high. And if you did, you had to run. Run, run and never turn back.
He imagined a group of children, sprinting from the woods, screaming with laughter and fear, spooked by a sudden shower of rain. And he remembered himself, sprinting through a torrential downpour, his eyes stinging. Zoe was shouting at him from the car while the traffic cops tried to hold him back. They stood no chance though and he burst through the cordon, running to the accident, running to his wife. Too late.
She shouldn’t have been there, she should have been far away, miles and miles from this world of violence. He stopped in front of the mangled car, wanting to pull her from the wreckage even though he knew it would do no good. He wanted to howl down the heavens, but his lungs betrayed him and allowed him only a sob before his legs went, and he had to be helped back to the car.
She shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t her fault. The driver of the truck that hit her had been on the road for over twenty hours, having falsified his logbook in order to make up time and money. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel and his vehicle had veered across the road, ploughing into her car. She never stood a chance.
He should not blame her, but the crash hurled splintering glass and metal into their home and the scar-tissue would not heal. It exposed his fragile grasp of parenthood, it ripped his girls’ confidence to pieces, it turned their home into a hollow, shadow-filled, memory-stalked cavern. It made him pace the streets at night, unable to sleep in the oh-so-big double bed, unable to talk to friends and family about his loss. It made him debase himself. It gave him excuses for his behaviour.
He imagined Andrea, right then and there, rising up from the water as Arthur had done. He pictured her bobbing, lifeless, just under the water’s edge, released by the witches after their playtime. He imagined her eyeless sockets and felt sick.
When he looked away from the water, he was startled to see that Sarah Downing was there. She was also staring out at the lake, her coat wrapped tight around her. She’d just appeared there and his mind, still ragged from the memories of his wife, momentarily imagined that she’d appeared from the water. Sarah showed no sign that she’d seen him, hugging herself tight for warmth. Her face looked peaceful and at that moment he felt a connection, their proximity and their losses binding them together. But then she looked at him and he saw her expression change, becoming closed and guarded. She should have seen him as an ally, as someone who would help her. But the way she turned from him and hurried away made him more and more certain that what he had seen was not grief, but guilt. Whatever Zoe thought, he knew he was right to have primed Ashley and set in motion the inevitable chain of events that would catch Sarah and prove her guilt.
And then his phone rang.
‘I might have something,’ Zoe said. Her voice sounded tight.
‘What?’
‘There’s a particularly annoying girl called Ashley Deveraux who all of a sudden seems to remember that Sarah Downing was wearing a dress when she saw her at the lake.’
‘A dress?’ Sam said. He wondered if Zoe would see through his fake surprise and was glad of the distance of the telephone.
‘Yeah. So either she’s dippy and unreliable or Sarah was down there twice.’
‘And why change?’
‘That’s what I was wondering.’
‘We should—’
‘I’ve got her with me. I’m going to take her down to the station at Penrith and get a formal statement.’
‘Pick me up on the way will you? I’ll be outside the pub.’
‘Still doesn’t mean Sarah Downing did it.’
He thought of the way Sarah had just looked at him and of the hatred in her eyes. He was about to say something when he realised that Zoe had hung up.
TWENTY-FIVE
Zoe drove to the pub, found Sam sitting on a small bench outside, and let him take the wheel. He barely acknowledged the girl in the back as they drove to the station in silence. They needed a proper station to do a formal witness statement like this, and Penrith, although twenty-five minutes away, was the closest. Zoe thought the silence was odd, but didn’t say anything until they reached the station. A uniformed officer took the girl to a ‘soft’ interview room (a formal space for victims and the public who were not suspects in a case) and they got a chance to grab a coffee and catch up. She explained what she’d found out.
‘It could be nothing,’ Zoe said. ‘Apparently the dress was virtually falling off her, so maybe she got fed up and changed into something more practical.’
‘How practical would you be when your kids are missing?’ Sam asked.
‘No idea,’ she conceded, adding that the girl was vague and unreliable. ‘She comes across as a bit of a bitch, to be honest.
’
She handed him a cup of coffee. He tried it and winced.
‘God, that’s disgusting.’
‘You’re in the country now, boss.’
He just nodded, and she wondered what went on behind those calm blue eyes of his. She wished she could shut up like he did.
‘You want to run it?’ she asked, to fill the silence.
‘No. You talk to her.’
‘Really? I think she’d respond better to your Alpha Male routine than me. She’s got quite the potty mouth.’
‘You do it,’ was all he said and started walking down the corridor.
She hurried after him and was about to make a joke about getting back to the city and enjoying a flat white, but he was already at the interview room, his face creased in thought. He opened the door and ushered her in before she could say any more.
*
Sam knew that it would be better for the case if Zoe asked the questions, but he also knew it would look odd to have a silent Senior Investigating Officer and, worst of all, he had no idea what Ashley might do. The nerves made him jumpy and he worried that Zoe would notice. He said little in the corridor as he tried to imagine various scenarios and how he would deal with them, but in the end he decided to brazen it out.
He’d avoided looking at Ashley and only paid attention to her now that she was in front of him. She’d changed since she’d been in his hotel room. Her white attire had been replaced with a baby-blue cashmere top, skinny jeans and cowboy boots. He introduced himself to her and she made him shake her hand. He could tell she was enjoying this game and it scared the hell out of him.
‘How long would you say you were down at the lake before your friends joined you?’ Zoe asked pleasantly. Ashley looked at her with a withering scowl and turned her attention to Sam.
‘Are you just colleagues, you two? Or do you fuck as well?’
‘Please, miss, just answer the question,’ Zoe said. ‘We’ll be through with this soon enough and then you can get back to your homies.’ Her tone was just about friendly.
‘Ten minutes,’ came the sulky reply.
‘Great. And could you describe the dress?’
‘Flowery. Green and red. Pretty. Summer dress. Like you’d wear to a party. But she always dressed a little slutty,’ Ashley replied, her eyes never leaving Sam.