Dead Time

by Anne Cassidy

  ‘Emma thought you might have killed Ricky.’

  ‘She might have thought that. That’s not my problem. I’m not here to talk about Ricky. I just want you to be clear that I never touched Emma. I wouldn’t. Someone else done it and here’s the thing …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Someone nicked my knife a week or so ago. I had it in my sports bag. I was training and when I got changed it had gone. I wouldn’t be surprised if my knife turns up in that cemetery with Emma’s blood on it. Someone’s trying to fit me up.’

  ‘And what about the night that Ricky was killed?’

  Lewis took a deep breath.

  ‘Listen, I don’t care what people think about that night. As it happened Bee Bee did give me an alibi and then she changed her mind, but I don’t care. Me and Bee Bee? It’s just a casual thing. When I got Emma’s note, well, I just had to go along.’

  She looked over at Bee Bee, who had given up talking to the people around her and was sitting looking at Rose and Lewis.

  ‘I told the police I was with Bee Bee that night. I lied but so what? I didn’t kill Emma. I would never have done anything to hurt Emma. You were at the cemetery? You saw what state I was in. Anyway, they ain’t arrested me yet.’

  ‘What about Bee Bee? Did they speak to her?’

  ‘Why should they?’

  ‘Because she took the note? Because she had a reason to go to the cemetery?’

  ‘Nah, Bee Bee didn’t go to the cemetery. She was babysitting her little brother. He’s only six months old.’

  Rose thought of the CCTV photos of Bee Bee running across the bridge. She looked around the cafeteria. Glumly she noted three or four other girls with silver boots on. Maybe if she looked closely they’d be wearing bangles as well.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Emma told me you were a nice person. You remember that day in here when I was ribbing Emma about Ricky getting stabbed?’

  Rose nodded.

  ‘I saw her afterwards. I made it up with her. She told me you were a witness at the station. Emma was a good person. One of the nicest people I knew. Ricky Harris was nothing, a waste of space.’

  ‘You had a reason to kill him.’

  He shook his head. ‘Loads of people had a reason to kill Ricky. In any case I heard it was self-defence. I heard it was Ricky who pulled the knife.’

  ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘Word gets round. I should go. I just wanted you to know about me and Emma. I would never have hurt her. Never.’

  He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.

  ‘You going to her memorial? It’s Wednesday.’

  Rose nodded and Lewis walked off. Bee Bee rose from her seat and walked towards him.

  ‘All right, babe,’ she called.

  She placed her hand on his chest and Rose’s eyes focused on the bangles glinting under the bright lights. She’d thought they were all silver but now she saw that there were a number of gold bangles in among them. Some also had small stones in them, red and green and yellow. They moved up and down her arm gently, separating out and coming back together like a single bracelet.

  Rose watched them walk away. Many kids turned their heads and watched. Then they looked back at her. Rose Smith, the girl who wanted to be anonymous and had somehow managed to become the centre of everyone’s interest.

  TWENTY

  Skeggsie had cooked a vegetarian pasta dish that was hot and tasty and she ate more than she thought she would. Joshua didn’t say a lot and it suited her mood. She kept looking at him from time to time and remembering Anna’s vile comments about Brendan. What would he say if he knew? Maybe he would hate her just because she was related to Anna and somehow tainted with Anna’s theory.

  ‘It’s like a morgue in here,’ Skeggsie said.

  ‘Sorry. Just had a bad day.’

  ‘Ditto,’ Joshua said.

  He ate a little and then went off to his room while Rose and Skeggsie finished the food.

  ‘I suppose you want me to wash up?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do it. You can help,’ Skeggsie said. ‘I know where everything goes.’

  The kitchen was carefully organised and as Rose dried each dish Skeggsie gave her instructions as to where it went.

  ‘What’s really up with Josh?’ she said, placing the knives and forks in the drawer.

  ‘He’s anxious. He’s waiting for this girl to get in touch. From the B and B in Twickenham.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘You’re not enthusiastic about this search of his, are you?’

  ‘I’ve got other stuff on my mind,’ she said.

  ‘The stuff at the cemetery?’

  She nodded. It was true in a way. The killing was at the back of her thoughts no matter how hard she tried to push it away.

  ‘I’m still trying to puzzle it out. I mean, I know it’s not really anything to do with me. It’s up to the police to do that but …’

  ‘The police aren’t the answer to everything. They don’t always follow each case up with the same gusto.’

  ‘Gusto,’ she said, smiling, ‘Where d’you get a word like that?’

  ‘I am a third-year arts undergraduate. I am well read. I have a good vocabulary.’

  ‘Sorry …’ She smiled again.

  ‘It’s like Joshua said about your mum and his dad’s case – the police had all sorts of trails to follow up but they didn’t. It’s extraordinary that two people can just vanish.’

  Rose frowned. Anna had said that very thing that morning.

  ‘This boy who was stabbed …’ she said, wanting to change the subject. ‘It happened almost two weeks ago and no one’s been charged. Now I didn’t care much for him but the girl, Emma, she was stabbed over a week ago and there’s no news about that either!’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Working-class teenagers stabbed. It’s not an unusual headline. The police go through the motions but if there were no witnesses and no clues, chances are they’ll never find out who did it.’

  ‘Surely the police have to find out …’

  Skeggsie shook his head. ‘If it had been the son of an MP or the daughter of a member of the royal family you can be sure that the police would have put masses of manpower on it and the forensic lab would have held up their backlog to process the case material. The Chief Constable would have visited the scene of crime, he’d have had his officers report to him daily. They would have found the murderer. Believe me.’

  ‘How come you know so much about the police?’

  ‘My dad was a policeman. He’s retired now.’

  This was something she hadn’t known. The information puzzled her.

  ‘How come you were bullied at school when your dad was a policeman?’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I was bullied.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I knew he would be angry. With me. For not sorting it out myself.’

  Skeggsie’s voice had become stiff.

  ‘It’s weird. The three of us. You, me and Josh. We’re all the children of police officers.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t see much of my dad, though. That’s my choice. Unlike you and Josh.’

  There was an awkward silence which she filled by telling him about her conversation with Lewis Proctor that morning. She also talked about Bee Bee and her silver boots.

  ‘Basically, I’m wondering if I was right about the person on the footbridge? I thought it was Bee Bee but …’

  ‘Want to look at those images from the cemetery again? Maybe a closer look will show us something we missed last time.’

  ‘OK.’

  They passed Joshua’s room and she heard some music playing softly. She didn’t go in or knock. It seemed like he wanted to be on his own. While Skeggsie was sorting out his files and opening his programs, she told him what Lewis Proctor had said about the theft of his knife. Skeggsie looked interested.

  ‘If that’s true then it means that someone ha
s been forward planning. Either Lewis told the story to friends so that he could claim to have had it stolen or someone really did steal it so that the blame could be put on Lewis. But you said that the knife hasn’t been found yet?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. It’s a while since I spoke to my policeman friend but whatever happens at the police station usually seems to find its way to the school.’

  Rose was thinking about the alibi that Lewis had for when Ricky was killed, which Bee Bee had now withdrawn. Everyone at school knew about that. If the knife that killed Emma had been found – whoever’s knife it was – word would have filtered through school, she was sure.

  The pictures were on the screen. Skeggsie had saved them to one folder. They were tiny, twelve in all, some from the bridge, but most from the cemetery itself taken by the mid-point camera. He opened his side drawer and pulled out some prints.

  ‘I printed these off last week. Have a close look at them. If you see anything then we can enlarge it on the screen.’

  She looked through the A4 prints. She’d seen them the previous week, pictures of mourners around a hearse. Most people dressed in dark colours which made their skin tones look creamy and white.

  ‘Look at them in real time order. See the time is at the bottom of each print.’

  The prints, six of them, were timed minutes apart. 17.59, 18.04, 18.08, 18.10, 18.13, 18.17. Rose looked at each of them in order. She focused on the figures and the faces. All looked to be mourners and only in the last two did she see facial expressions other than sadness. These were people who had watched her run out of the rose garden and straight into the hearse, shouting and crying and trying to get attention.

  ‘I don’t see anything new,’ she said.

  ‘I printed this one off as well.’

  He handed her an image from the footbridge camera. The time read 18.21.

  She looked at the figure, the silver boots, the bangles. In the image Bee Bee was pulling her hood across her face to avoid recognition. If it was Bee Bee. Now she wasn’t even sure of that.

  ‘Have a look on screen. We’ll zoom in on parts of the images. Maybe before I do that you should say what you think we’re looking for?’

  ‘Well, someone running away from the rose garden. Maybe this person,’ she said, pointing to the image of the person on the footbridge, ‘moving through the cemetery towards the back. Heading for the cut-through into Cuttings Lane, making an escape.’

  ‘OK. So maybe we shouldn’t look at the figures in the middle of the photographs but at the background of the photos. If she was going across the bridge at 18.20 then she could be in the background of any of these.’

  Rose nodded.

  ‘I’ve got this program? It enlarges images almost down to the pixels. It’s handy when analysing brushstrokes of painters.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ Rose said.

  The background in the first three pictures was clear, just the rows of headstones, statues and mausoleums. It was as if she had a telescope in her hand and was looking behind the mourners; the angels emerged from the blurred background, the ornate brickwork on the mausoleums, even small details of the leaves and trees became sharper.

  ‘How do you do this?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘What, complicated because I’m a girl?’ Rose said sharply.

  ‘No. Because you don’t know enough about computers. I spend a lot of time doing this stuff.’

  ‘You should go out more.’

  ‘Shall we look at the next one?’

  The fourth picture came on the screen. 18.10. Skeggsie zoomed in on the top of the photo and Rose saw something straight away.

  ‘Look at that.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Behind that headstone.’

  Skeggsie zoomed in again and it showed a shoulder sticking out from behind a large white marble headstone.

  ‘She’s hiding there.’

  The next picture showed 18.13. Three minutes later. When Skeggsie zoomed in there was no sign of her.

  ‘Zoom in further back towards the boundary of the graveyard.’

  Seconds later Skeggsie had an image. This time it showed a hooded figure kneeling by a grave. Rose felt instantly disappointed. It was just another mourner.

  ‘Were we wrong?’

  ‘Let’s look at the last one. Here it is. 18.17. Four minutes later.’

  This time Skeggsie zoomed right in on the hedge area. The picture wasn’t as clear, being so far away from the main focus of the image. It was clear enough, though, to see the figure standing in front of the hedge area. The place where Rose thought the cut-through was.

  ‘There’s your girl. She’s going out the back of the cemetery at the same moment that you’re running out of the rose garden calling out for help.’

  Rose looked at it with satisfaction. Moments later this person, possibly Bee Bee, was running across the railway footbridge towards the Chalk Farm Estate.

  ‘Wait. Why was she on her knees in front of a grave?’

  Skeggsie looked as though he was concentrating. He clicked back on to the previous photo and they both looked at the blurred kneeling figure.

  ‘She looks like she’s praying,’ Rose said.

  ‘Or maybe she was getting rid of the knife?’ Skeggsie said.

  ‘But the police searched the cemetery for the knife. If she had chucked it there they would have found it. Wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Yeah, if she’d chucked it there. But maybe she didn’t chuck it. Maybe she buried it. She must have been there for a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Buried it?’ Rose said in wonder.

  ‘It is a cemetery, after all. A place of burial.’

  ‘You are right. You are right!’

  Rose stood up, away from the computer. She was excited. In her head she remembered the newly dug grave that was near to the hedge cut-through. She’d stood and looked at it, the earth still in a mound, soft and easy to penetrate.

  ‘She buried the knife. That’s why the police haven’t found it.’

  ‘It’s not like they can start digging up every grave. Even if they wanted to. And let’s face it, a couple of teenagers from a rough estate in London getting stabbed and killed, why should they trouble themselves? It’s not such an unusual thing. My dad used to say that these crimes are often solved by people boasting to others about what they’ve done. So maybe the police are waiting for a few weeks until the killer gets too confident. Why should they dig up a whole graveyard when they can find the same stuff out if they just wait?’

  ‘You are so right!’

  Rose was buzzing. She had to walk up and down. There was a noise from the other room and after a moment Joshua appeared at the door.

  ‘Skeggsie has found the knife!’ she said.

  ‘It’s just a theory.’

  ‘No, it’s right. I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘What knife?’

  Joshua looked sleepy and his hair was sticking up oddly.

  ‘I’m going to St Michael’s. Now.’

  ‘What knife?’

  ‘The knife that killed Emma.’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up, it might be nothing …’ Skeggsie said.

  But Rose had already walked out into the hall and grabbed her coat off the hook. Joshua followed her out, looking perplexed.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to the cemetery now? No. I’m not going back to that place.’

  ‘I’ll go on my own.’

  ‘Just ring the police if you think you’ve found something.’

  ‘I want to find this myself.’

  ‘Rosie, you can’t just go off … The police deal with these things!’

  ‘What? Like my mum and Brendan disappearing? Like the way they dealt with that? You’re not happy to leave that. Then I’m not happy to leave this.’

  ‘There’s a difference!’ Joshua said, raising his voice. ‘Five years have passed …’

  ‘No difference. I’m going now.’ />
  She picked up her rucksack and headed down the hall.

  ‘Wait! Hang on. Wait!’

  She looked round to see Skeggsie standing there. He was holding some rubber gloves and a plastic bag.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  She looked at Joshua, who shrugged his shoulders and turned off into his room. Skeggsie unhooked his coat and walked towards her.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It was raining when Skeggsie parked his car along from Parkway East station. There was a yellow line but it was after 7.30 so it didn’t matter. Rose left her rucksack in the car and just took the bag and gloves that Skeggsie had brought. Skeggsie took a torch from the boot of the car and put it in his inside coat pocket. Passing the station she glanced at the train arrivals board and saw that it was 19.48. She pulled her hood up and so did Skeggsie. They turned down Cuttings Lane and walked along to the place where the hedge was thin and brown.

  Skeggsie had hardly said a word the whole drive and she’d been wrapped up in her thoughts. Finding the knife herself was important for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. If Skeggsie was right and the police weren’t treating this case as a priority, then she didn’t want to waste her time telling them. In any case any tip she gave them would be viewed as suspect because of the way in which she and Skeggsie had got their information. Skeggsie had hacked into CCTV footage. It was a criminal thing to do and although they had been doing it for good reasons the police wouldn’t see it like that. They had their own CCTV footage, of the bridge and the cemetery. It was up to them to search it thoroughly.

  She’d also been thinking of Joshua. They seemed to have had a row almost every time they’d met and this upset her. The first few times Joshua had made a joke of it, made light of Rose’s outbursts. Tonight he had just walked away into his room. Was it possible that she and Joshua might fall out completely? It was unthinkable.

  Now, standing at the tatty, frayed hedge in Cuttings Lane, she paused. The rain had stopped and a stiff breeze was blowing. She held on to the edge of her hood.

  ‘I really appreciate you coming,’ she said.

  ‘’S OK.’

  ‘I mean, I know you don’t go out a lot.’

  ‘I do go out!’ he said, looking affronted.