by Jane Casey
He spoke of good and evil with all the force and severity of an Old Testament prophet, and I saw that he believed in evil, good old-fashioned evil, not the psychologist’s excuses of upbringing and circumstance.
‘It’s almost creative,’ he said, mostly to himself. ‘It’s their art, you could say. Think of all the effort this takes, all the organisation.’
Revolted, I turned back to Blake.
‘We’ve had a quick look at the images upstairs – stills and a couple of bits of the DVDs. It’ll take us a while to go through everything, but at this stage it looks like they had a bit of a theme for their work.’
‘What do you mean?’ I whispered.
‘One victim, a few different abusers.’
‘Not Paul?’ I said, my heart breaking for him as I began to understand what had made him the way he was. No wonder he couldn’t live with his secret being found out.
Vickers shook his head. ‘No. Not Paul. Jenny Shepherd.’
I looked at the two men with complete incomprehension. ‘Jenny? But how? What was she doing in this house?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ Blake said, and I felt like Alice falling down and down the rabbit hole, the ground giving way beneath me. Nothing made sense any more, except that I could finally understand how the childish, underdeveloped girl who’d sat in my English classes could have been four months pregnant.
‘What about Paul?’ I said eventually. ‘You can’t think he was involved.’
Vickers looked troubled. ‘I know he’s a child, Sarah, and he’s not well, but the sad thing is that we do believe he played an active part.’
‘You said it yourself, he has the computer knowledge,’ Blake pointed out. ‘From the looks of it, he’s the one who runs the technological side. The computers were all in his bedroom.’
Vickers sighed. ‘If you possess any information that would either exonerate or implicate the boy, I’ll be glad to hear it, now or at the station.’
I stared into the middle distance, saying nothing. I couldn’t think what to say. I had a feeling that Paul wouldn’t have volunteered to be part of anything sordid and evil, but the evidence was stacking up against him.
‘I don’t know,’ I said eventually. ‘All I can tell you is that he seemed like a nice person.’
Blake stirred. ‘Lots of people seem nice. Lots of people seem innocent. Sometimes it’s hard for us to pick out the ones who are guilty at first, but we usually get there in the end.’ He gestured at the pile of things I had identified as mine. ‘Don’t you think you have some explaining to do?’
‘Me? Are you crazy? I didn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t know anything about it.’ Even to my ears, I sounded as if I was lying. I looked from one to the other. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘You knew the girl,’ Vickers said. ‘You live in the same street. Your things are here. You are the link. As ever, Sarah, you are the link.’
‘You can’t seriously think I’m involved.’ There was nothing in their faces to suggest they believed me, though: Vickers’ eyes were cold, arctic blue and Blake’s expression was grim. A jolt of pure panic ran through me and I fought it down. They were playing some kind of game – I just didn’t know the rules.
‘It would be better if you told us what happened, Sarah, before this goes any further.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. I can’t help you. And it’s been a long day already, and I’m tired.’ I sounded petulant; I didn’t care. ‘I’m going home. Why don’t you go and find out what really happened here, and when you do, let me know. Because I wasn’t involved, so I’m as much in the dark as you.’
It was all right, as exit lines go, and I turned to leave without waiting for a reply. I hadn’t got more than two steps towards the door when I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me back to where I had been standing.
‘Let go of me!’ I glared at Blake.
‘No chance.’
Vickers looked at me tiredly. ‘If you won’t talk to us, Sarah, we only have one option remaining to us.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘I mean that we have to compel you to come and talk to us.’
Vickers slipped out of the room then, pushing past me, leaving me to think about what he’d said. I heard him talking in an undertone in the hall to someone I couldn’t see.
‘You can’t really think I’m involved.’ I was trying to read Blake’s face, waiting for him to admit that it was all a big joke, that they didn’t mean it really.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said, and his voice sounded strange, harsh. I looked up at him and didn’t know him.
Before I could respond, Vickers came back with another man. He was balding and overweight, in his forties. Even if he hadn’t been standing beside Vickers, I think I would have known he was a cop immediately. There was something about his eyes, a deep-seated disillusionment and distrust that suggested he had heard too many lies. He began to speak in a flat, droning voice without inflection, running the words together as he ran through a recitation he had performed countless times before.
‘Sarah Finch, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Jenny Shepherd. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you say can be used in evidence. Do you understand?’
My mouth popped open involuntarily: the classic reaction to shock. I looked at Vickers, to see his reaction, but he had the thousand-yard stare firmly in place. Blake looked down at his feet, refusing to meet my eye.
‘You can’t do this,’ I said, not really believing that it was happening. ‘You can’t think this is right.’
Vickers said, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘DC Smith, can I leave it to yourself and DC Freeman to take Miss Finch to the station? No need for cuffs, I’d have said. We’ll see you there.’
Smith nodded and beckoned to me. ‘Better get a move on.’
‘Aren’t you taking me in yourselves?’ I asked Blake and Vickers, and I didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of my voice.
Vickers shook his head. ‘You won’t be dealing with us directly from now on. We know you, you see. It could cause us disclosure problems if this gets to trial.’ Blake turned away sharply, and I wondered if Vickers had picked up on something between us, or if it was really just routine. The chief inspector ignored his sergeant and finished, ‘Best to let other members of the team take it from here.’
‘Best for whom?’ I asked, but there was no response.
DC Smith put a meaty hand on my arm and pulled me into the hall, where we had to wait for a stream of policemen to pass by, carrying boxes and bags of evidence to the cars that were waiting outside. Computer hard drives, CDs, DVD cases and a webcam were visible through the heavy-duty clear plastic bags. One of the officers carried something long and heavy, wrapped in brown paper – a golf club? A poker? I couldn’t tell. He gave Vickers a meaningful look as he passed, and the chief inspector nodded soberly without speaking. Then there were more bags, personal stuff – clothes, toys that had to belong to Paul, photographs in frames, documents of various sorts. The whole house was being torn apart; there would be nothing left by the time they were finished.
And they were probably planning to do the same to me. I slid a look sideways at Vickers, noting the hard lines of his face and the resolute set of his mouth. There was no gentleness there. I couldn’t blame him. What had happened in that house didn’t bear thinking about. I literally couldn’t think about it.
I stood there like a zombie as the police worked around me, barely listening to their hurried conversations. To give them their due, no one seemed excited by the discoveries they were making. Troubled, if anything. It was hard, knowing that a child had suffered terribly in that very house, and no one had helped her.
For myself, I felt numb. I had abdicated responsibility. There didn’t seem to be any point in arguing any more. I couldn’t make sense of what had just
happened. Even leaving aside the fact that I was apparently in serious trouble with the police, there was the question of why my possessions were in the house. OK, so Danny had been the one who attacked me and took my bag. That explained who had mugged me, but not why. And the other things – things I knew I hadn’t had in my bag, things I had missed over the previous weeks and months. How had they come to be there?
Blake had gone outside, and when he came back, he nodded to Vickers. ‘No press yet. I wouldn’t hang around, though – it won’t take them long to work out what they’re missing.’
What they were missing. A bitter taste flooded my mouth. What they were missing was an arrest. A real live suspect being taken in for questioning. And I was just starting to appreciate that I was almost certainly standing in the house where Jenny died.
Smith turned to me. ‘Come on. Let’s get a move on.’
I walked out of the dim, dank hall into the midday sunshine without looking back to see if Blake and Vickers were following, and the light dazzled me for a second. There was a beat, and then a strange susurration began, like wind in the trees. The sound built in volume, becoming characteristically human. Around the end of the road stood most of the neighbours – little kids with their mothers holding on to their shoulders protectively, elderly retirees who made thrice-daily trips to the local shops for some human contact, middle-aged women with sour, speculative expressions on their faces. I refused to make eye contact with any of them, even though I could feel them staring at me with bovine interest. The irritation prickled up and down my spine. They had missed out on the first sensational incident of the day because poor Geoff had been discovered at such an antisocial hour. They weren’t going to miss anything now. And neither was anyone else. In the absence of the media, the burden of capturing what was taking place had fallen on my neighbours, who were taking their responsibilities seriously. At first glance, I hadn’t understood why three or four of them held their arms in the air, but I soon realised that they were filming, using their mobile phones to capture the moment as I walked out of the house, Smith in front of me, another officer behind me, heading for the car. Without really thinking about it, I straightened my back. I wasn’t wearing handcuffs. I was not going to shuffle to the car trying to hide my face, like a guilty person. I would walk with my head held high, and no one would know I was under arrest. I had no reason to hide. But the colour beat in my face as I went down that path.
Smith opened the back door of the unmarked car that had drawn up on the road. He stood beside it, waiting for me to get in, a parody of a chauffeur. I didn’t look at him as I sat into it. The door slammed, and for the first time I felt like a prisoner. The driver was young, with red hair and a narrow fox’s face. DC Freeman, I assumed, and didn’t speak to him, even though he was openly assessing me. Waiting for Smith to get into the passenger seat, I stared past the young officer, towards my house. There were no signs of life over there, no hint from the outside of how my mother and I lived. I thought about asking them to let me tell her where I was being taken, but looking across at the house brooding in the sunshine, my heart sank. It was more than likely she had no idea what was going on. Then again, I couldn’t exactly criticise her for that. Neither of us seemed to have noticed much. How had I missed the abuse that had been visited on a vulnerable child yards from my front door?
I had an urge to jump out of the car, run up to the front door and bang on it until Mum answered, then hold on to her and not let go. She could defend me from the police and stand up for me, like a good mother should. God knows what would actually have happened if I’d tried, assuming she even bothered to open the door. I blinked away tears angrily. I was homesick for a place that didn’t exist, lonely for a mother I didn’t know at all. I was on my own.
As Smith shut his door with enough force to rock the car on its axles, Freeman turned to him.
‘She’s not what I was expecting.’
‘She doesn’t look the part,’ Smith agreed. ‘Doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.’
My face burned. ‘As it happens, I didn’t. This is a mistake.’
‘That’s what they all say.’ Smith clapped his colleague on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get a move on.’
The engine started and I sat back in my seat. I wasn’t actually surprised that the officers didn’t believe me. I couldn’t expect them to, when I had failed to convince Vickers and Blake, who knew me a whole lot better than they did.
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I said as we turned on to the main road, for the sake of having the last word. But in spite of my bravado, I couldn’t deny that I was frightened. All I had to defend myself now was my innocence, and I had an awful feeling it wasn’t going to be enough.
1996
Four years missing
‘All right, decision time. What kind of ice cream would you like?’
I pretend to think. ‘Hmm. I think perhaps … chocolate?’
‘Chocolate? How unusual,’ Dad says. ‘It’s unorthodox, but I think – yes, I’ll have the same. What a good idea.’
Both of us always have chocolate ice cream. It’s sort of the rule. Even if I wanted to have something else, I wouldn’t, because Dad would be so disappointed.
He gets the ice cream and we walk down to the seafront. It’s a bright, hot day in the middle of summer and the pier is packed with daytrippers like us. I spot a bench in the distance and run to sit on it before anyone else can nab it. Dad follows more slowly, licking his ice cream methodically, smoothing it into a point.
‘Hurry up,’ I call to him, nervous that someone will try to share the bench if I’m the only one sitting on it. If anything, it makes him slow down. He’s properly dawdling now and I look away, irritated. Sometimes it shocks me that Dad can be so childish at his age. Immature, that’s the word. It’s as if I’m the adult and he’s the kid.
‘Well done,’ Dad says, sitting down beside me at last. ‘This is perfect.’
It is. The sea is silver-blue, the pebbly beach white in the sunshine. Overhead, gulls wheel and shriek. People are all around us, but on our bench, with Dad’s arm around me, I feel as if we’re inside a bubble. No one can touch us. I lick my ice cream and feel happy again, nestling against Dad’s side. I love these trips that we take, just the two of us. I’d never say it to Dad, but I’m glad that Mum doesn’t come with us. She’d ruin it. She certainly wouldn’t sit on a bench eating ice cream and laughing at two fat, wet dogs playing in the surf.
We’ve been sitting there for a few minutes and I am eating the wafer part of my ice-cream cone when Dad shifts his arm from around my shoulders to the back of the bench and says, ‘Monkey … there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’
‘What?’ I’m expecting it to be a stupid joke or something.
Dad sighs and rubs his hand over his face before he goes on. ‘Your mother and I – well, we haven’t been getting on for a while. And we’ve decided that the best thing to do is to split up.’
I stare at him. ‘Split up?’
‘We’re getting a divorce, Sarah.’
‘A divorce?’ I have to stop saying the last two words of his sentences, I think irrelevantly. But I can’t think what else to say.
‘It will be all right – really, it will. I’ll see you lots and lots. We can still have days out like this – I’ll come every weekend if I can. And you can come and see me. I’ve got a new job, in Bristol. It’s a great city. We’ll have loads of fun.’
‘When are you leaving?’
‘In two weeks.’
Two weeks is too soon. ‘You’ve known about this for ages,’ I say accusingly.
‘We wanted to make sure we had worked everything out before we told you.’ Dad’s forehead is creased into about a hundred lines. He looks stressed out.
I’m processing all of this information as fast as I can, trying to understand. ‘So why can’t I come with you?’
Dad looks blank. ‘Well, there’s school for one thing.’
‘There are schools in Bristol.�
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‘Wouldn’t you miss all your friends?’
I shrug. The answer to that is no, but I don’t want to upset Dad. He’s always asking me about my friends. I give him the impression that I’m popular enough, never admitting that I spend most lunchtimes in the school library, reading quietly. I’m not exactly unpopular – just off the radar. Where I prefer to be.
‘I could start somewhere new in September. It would be a good time to change.’
‘I see that, Sarah, but – well, I think it would be better for you to stay with your mother.’
‘You know what she’s like. How would it be better to stay with her?’
‘Sarah—’
‘You’re leaving me behind with her, aren’t you? You get to leave, and I have to stay.’
‘She needs you, Sarah. You might not see it, but she loves you very much. If you left with me – I just don’t think she’d make it. I don’t want to abandon her like that. It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘So why are you going?’ I ask, and I’m starting to cry and my nose is running and I can hardly see my father through the tears. ‘If you’re so worried about her, why are you leaving?’
‘Because I have to,’ he says quietly, looking miserable. ‘Sarah, it’s not up to me. It’s not my idea to go.’
‘Stand up to her! Tell her if you don’t want to leave us. Don’t just go,’ I shout, and people are looking around, they’re nudging one another, but I don’t care. ‘Why do you do everything she says, Dad? Why do you let her walk all over you?’
He doesn’t have an answer, and I am crying too hard to ask the last question, the one I really want to ask.
Why don’t you care enough about me to say no?
Chapter 13
FREEMAN TOOK A roundabout route to the police station, heading down residential side streets and narrow lanes until we arrived at the back gate. Neither policeman said a word to me until the car sat idling at the barrier, waiting for the pole to go up. Smith cleared his throat.