The Quiet Girls: An absolutely addictive mystery thriller

by J. M. Hewitt

  ‘What now?’ Melanie’s voice echoed like a gunshot around the room that was empty of furniture.

  Kelly leapt across to her, clapped a hand over Melanie’s mouth. ‘Shut up,’ she hissed as she pulled Melanie’s hair.

  Melanie struggled free. ‘Nobody’s here,’ she snapped back before she could stop herself, instantly contrite; nobody spoke with an attitude to Kelly.

  But even before she had finished the words a sound came from above their heads.

  As if pushed apart by an invisible force the girls flew backwards to stand in three corners of the room. They looked up, the ceiling giving away nothing as to what might be up there.

  A scraping, something – someone? – dragging along the floorboards. Another noise now from the room they were in; Tanisha, squeaking, gasping, pressing further and further back against the wall behind her. Melanie glanced through the open doorway; the square of daylight in the broken door that they had crawled through beckoned to her. She considered how long it would take to dash to it, pictured her body hurtling through it and then running, running faster and harder than she ever had before.

  ‘Hey!’ Kelly’s voice, a stage whisper, resonated. Melanie looked over to her.

  Kelly smiled. It sent shivers down Melanie’s spine. And then Kelly moved.

  Towards the hallway.

  Towards the noise upstairs.

  Alone now. It seemed like hours since Kelly had disappeared. The house was even darker and silent, the walls pushing in against Melanie as she forced her feet to move down the hall. This part of the house was barren: decades’ worth of layers of peeling wallpaper, cracked walls and chipped, filthy skirting boards.

  Don’t be a hero.

  Her daddy’s voice, in her head, as it so often was. But he had also taught her to help people. Tanisha was in no state to help anyone and Kelly had vanished.

  Melanie had pulled and pushed Tanisha out of her corner and positioned her in a crouch by the back door through which they’d entered the house.

  ‘If you hear anything, anything that frightens you, just run.’ Melanie had pointed towards the broken panel. ‘Run and get help, okay?’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Tanisha’s voice wobbled and shook.

  Melanie glanced at the ceiling. ‘To get Kelly,’ she replied grimly.

  They could have both run, thought Melanie as she tiptoed through the bleak rooms. They could have got an adult and brought them back to the house to get Kelly out. But what if it had been too late? What if whatever or whoever was upstairs had hurt Kelly while they were wasting time getting help?

  Or, a new thought struck Melanie, what if there was nothing and nobody upstairs after all? Melanie would have brought an adult back to a house they’d broken into. The police would be called, they would get into trouble.

  She crept down the hallway in the direction that Kelly had gone, moving as silently as possible, wondering what was wrong with Kelly that she had walked willingly into a potential danger and pushed her friends in with her. And this house…Here, in the bowels of the place, Melanie could see barely anything, even her hand in front of her eyes.

  Up the stairs, the wooden floorboards creaking horribly under her feet. Melanie cringed with each step, with each noise that announced her presence. She stopped halfway, one hand on the banister. It was rough to the touch and she peered at it to distract her from the fear that was welling up inside her. The handrail was splintered, sticky, dirty. Melanie removed her hand and rubbed it on her jeans. It left a brown stain on the denim.

  Melanie glanced up. The landing seemed impossibly close, too close. Frozen halfway up the stairs she cocked her head, listened. A wheezing breath, a shadow up there.

  Someone is up there! Her brain screamed at her, clipped words that spoke inside her mind faster than she could ever say them.

  Kelly?

  And then there she was, her ice-blonde hair swinging in her face as she appeared at the top of the stairs on her hands and knees, crawling.

  Why is she crawling?

  Kelly threw her head back, her hair streamed behind her, tight and taut as something, someone grabbed her and held on.

  Kelly screamed.

  Melanie screamed.

  Downstairs, hearing but not seeing, not knowing what was happening, Tanisha screamed.

  Their voices faded, leaving a few seconds of eerie silence. Kelly remained motionless. Melanie watched, darkly fascinated as Kelly’s nostrils flared. Her eyes glowed iridescent in the gloom. Melanie gripped the banister again.

  Who or what had hold of Kelly?

  A movement up there. A leg in view now, a confusion on Melanie’s senses, that the leg was uncovered, naked, all the way up to a T-shirt, black or grey or brown that fell to mid-thigh length. Melanie raised her eyes as the rest of the person revealed themselves. An arm, a hand, a face.

  Melanie choked on a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Not a face; a monster, or someone terribly deformed.

  The colours of this monster, dark red, edged with black. Colour combinations she’d never seen on a person before.

  She didn’t know she was going to move then, couldn’t believe her legs as they pushed up the stairs. She reached out, someone screamed again – it might have been her – and she pummelled blindly against the bare leg while reaching out for Kelly with her left hand. Her fingers closed around material and skin. Kelly’s cheap perfume filled her senses as she pulled at the girl. Something gave way, as through half-closed eyes Melanie watched with something near to joy as Kelly’s hair slid like silk through the fingers that had trapped her.

  Kelly fell forward, grazing her knees on the wooden stairs as she tumbled towards Melanie. Melanie stopped throwing out flurries of slaps towards the beast. She wrapped her arms around Kelly, hustling her past her and pushing her in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Run,’ she hissed as she shoved Kelly in the small of her back.

  They plummeted together, a tangle of arms and legs and hair to land in a heap in the hallway.

  Melanie pushed herself to her feet, one hand on Kelly, dragging her along the hall, not daring to look back, sure that the man, the monster, the thing was right behind them, would reach out and touch them, any second now…

  Melanie shrieked as they burst into the kitchen, her left arm outstretched, ready to collect Tanisha and push her out of––

  Her arm fell to hang loosely at her side. The kitchen was empty.

  ‘Tanisha!’ cried Melanie. ‘TANISHA!’

  From outside came an answering yell that rose into a scream. ‘I’m out here, come on, come on!’

  Melanie pushed Kelly outside first before barrelling straight after her. She saw Tanisha, at the bottom of the front garden, already scurrying away from the house.

  Melanie and Kelly ran to catch her, and together they moved at speed, not stopping, not speaking until they reached the end of the road.

  Slightly behind them, Melanie glanced at the back of Tanisha’s and Kelly’s heads. Neither spoke, neither looked at each other. Melanie stopped walking.

  Neither of them turned or looked at her.

  2

  ‘You did nothing, you let it carry on. I gave you his name, where to find him, but you did nothing.’

  Carrie kept her eyes on her partner as they listened. Detective Constable Paul Harper hit the pause button.

  ‘Do you recognise her voice?’ he asked, his brown-eyed gaze on Carrie.

  She shook her head, lowered her eyes before looking up hopefully. ‘Do you?’ She frowned, her brows knitting together before meeting Paul’s gaze again. ‘Is it even a female?’

  It was his turn to frown. ‘I—I thought so,’ he answered cautiously. ‘Did you not?’

  She shrugged, swept her hands over her eyes, felt her shoulders slouching. ‘I don’t know. Do you have any clue, remember any case?’

  He didn’t answer right away. Carrie could almost see the cogs turning inside his head as he trawled his memory, raking over all the c
ases they had worked together. It wasn’t in Carrie’s time, she was sure she’d remember instantly. Especially this, being so… close to home. But if it wasn’t in her time then Paul wouldn’t know; he’d joined the force three years after her.

  ‘Take me through it again, who took this call?’ he asked.

  ‘Eddie in the control room.’

  Paul twirled a finger, drawing a circle in the air. ‘Play it again.’

  ‘You did nothing, you let it carry on. I gave you his name, where to find him, but you did nothing.’

  ‘Can you tell me your name?’ Eddie’s flat, hard voice made Carrie cringe. It was her belief that anyone taking calls should be approachable, unflappable, calm but most of all warm. Eddie, a young sergeant on secondment, was none of these things.

  ‘No, I gave you my name before but you did nothing.’

  A hint of panic as the voice pitched higher. Female, thought Carrie, definitely female.

  ‘When did this happen?’

  Carrie hit the pause button with such force the recorder skidded towards the back of the table, wobbling precariously on the edge. Paul shot out a hand to steady it.

  ‘He sounds bored, Paul.’ Carrie glared at him as if Eddie’s shortcomings were his fault.

  Paul gritted his teeth. ‘Carry on,’ he said, ‘We’ll speak to him later.’

  With a lingering look that she hoped conveyed to Paul that she would speak to Eddie if he didn’t, she pressed play.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Goosebumps bloomed on Carrie’s skin as the voice of the caller turned suddenly flat. ‘It doesn’t matter, you just need to know that his blood will be on your hands.’ A pause, a dip in the volume before the voice came back again, quiet now. ‘Just like my blood was on your hands too.’

  Click.

  A dead line.

  The tape crackled before ending. In the silence, Carrie regarded Paul. He looked off into the middle distance, giving her the chance to study him unobserved. Having worked with him for a few years now she often found she could tell what he was thinking; to her, he was an open book. Occasionally though the shutters came down, like now, and he was unreadable.

  Carrie dropped her eyes. Please don’t let him dismiss this call. She didn’t know what resonated with this young, unidentified caller so strongly, but there was something in the voice, buried in the pitch and tone of distress. A plea for help. And she needed Paul’s backing if she were to delve into it deeper.

  This was why Carrie had joined the police. To make up for the one time she hadn’t heard the cry. She planned to spend the rest of her career atoning for that one, fatal slip. A cry for help would never go unheard again. Not on her watch.

  He looked back at her again, and now she knew exactly what he was thinking. He wasn’t pondering the call, but Carrie’s reaction to it. Where did he think it stemmed from, her past? Did he notice that it was the young ones, the hidden youth of Manchester that pricked at her?

  ‘Rewind that, just to the last bit,’ he said, suddenly.

  She did as he asked, bending over the machine and resetting the audio.

  As it played, she listened again, not, this time, to the young woman’s voice, but to the background. There was minimal noise, all the way through the short conversation, but at the end, the line was muffled, a faint sound, a bird calling?

  ‘There, rewind, play it again.’ He had heard it too.

  He held up one finger as the high-pitched noise sounded once more. ‘Did you hear it?’

  She blinked at him. ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Just before she says the very last words, the volume falls, like she’s covered the receiver. But very faintly, there is a sound in the background. Listen again, tell me what it is.’

  Eyes slightly wider now, Carrie flicked it back on. She put her hands on her knees, leaned towards the tiny speaker.

  ‘A train!’

  ‘What sort?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or is it a tram? Piccadilly? Victoria?’

  For a second, she was almost defeated. Her shoulders slumped only momentarily before it dawned on her. She snapped her fingers, flashed him a grin.

  ‘That wasn’t a modern train or a tram, it’s a steam train!’

  He nodded slowly. ‘What do you think this is about, Carrie? What do you want to get from this, if you look into that phone call?’

  She scrubbed her hands over her face and smoothed her hair back. ‘I know it seems insignificant, but that same girl keeps calling. She’s been hurt, somehow,and we didn’t help her. We didn’t stop whatever happened to her. She’s going to take matters into her own hands soon, so it means whatever it was is still happening to her. We need to stop it.’

  Paul stroked his chin with his hand, pushed himself off the desk and walked over to the window.

  ‘She’s the one threatening harm against someone, Carrie,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s not going to be the victim here.’

  ‘You’re right, she’s already the victim,’ she burst out.

  ‘All right, okay,’ Paul held up a palm, a motion to placate her. ‘So going by what you know, what you just listened to, how do you propose we track her down?’

  Her anger gone as quickly as it came, she smiled at him, relieved.

  ‘You think I don’t know about trains, about the history of this city?’ She tilted her head to one side, looking younger for a moment. ‘My mum taught me all about it.’ A shadow crossed her face, a look of confusion which passed as quick as it came. ‘It’s the East Lancashire Railway, the steam train that runs between Rawtenstall to Heywood.’

  Paul nodded, intrigued. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Her eyes flicked from side to side, thinking, plotting, planning. ‘Old files, cold cases against young females, pinpoint areas, compare them against the stations on the steam train route.’ She looked up, checking he was still listening. ‘She could have moved, could have travelled to make that call, but it’s as good a place to start as any.’

  Paul raised his eyebrows at her. ‘And you thought we might have a quiet year.’ He smirked, but it was friendly, a smile between comrades who were at their best when they were working side by side. ‘So what are we waiting for, then?’

  3

  Carrie and Hattie – 1998

  ‘Take a hat, put some cream on,’ yelled Carrie’s mother. As an afterthought she added, ‘and take your sister.’

  Carrie, one hand on the door handle, had a sudden urge to stamp her foot.

  ‘Ma!’ she cried.

  Mary Flynn swept into the room, her face almost hidden by the huge pile of washing she carried in her arms. Over the top of the pile of school uniforms she glared at her eldest daughter. Carrie, knowing that look, stared down at the threadbare carpet.

  ‘Do we have a problem?’ Mary asked, one eyebrow cocked.

  ‘No,’ Carrie whispered.

  Mary smiled, her eyes still on Carrie she called out for her youngest child. ‘Hattie!’

  Hattie barrelled into the room. Carrie groaned inwardly at the sight of her sister. Hattie was six, she wore a Muppets T-shirt, candy-striped pink and white shorts and red trainers. Carrie looked down at her fashionable cut-off jeans she’d begged her mother for and her red denim shirt with faux pearl buttons. Though Carrie was only two years older than Hattie, she felt like a grown-up. Hattie was such a baby!

  But arguing with her mother wasn’t an option. Mary Flynn had brought her two girls up single-handed, she worked three jobs, had never claimed any benefit, and was a force to be reckoned with. Both Hattie’s and Carrie’s fathers were gone, long ago. Hattie’s dad was black, a fact obvious from Hattie’s creamy, coffee-coloured skin. And possibly the reason why Mary Flynn cooed and clucked over Hattie so.

  After realising the difference between Hattie and herself, Carrie had stared in the mirror, hating the fact her skin was nothing like her sister’s. If it had been, she was sure her mother would love her more. And Hattie was dark, yet Mary still made Carrie put a high-factor sun cream on the little girl. Carrie was
confused; adults were so weird.

  ‘Sun cream!’ snapped Mary as she pushed the laundry down into the twin-tub machine.

  Carrie blinked. It was as though her mother could read her thoughts. Obediently she rubbed the cream into her bare arms as thinly as possible, moving on to do her sister’s before her mother asked her. As she smoothed the lotion into her sister’s skin she watched her mum heave the twin-tub over to the sink where she battled to connect the pipes to the tap. As always on wash day, she wondered why her mother still had the crusty old machine. All her friends’ mums had automatic washing machines, some of them integrated into the worktops of their posh, perfect kitchens.

  She never asked Mary, though. She knew the answer would be that she had to put clothes on Carrie and Hattie and there was no money left over for a luxury like an automatic washing machine.

  Sometimes Carrie wondered why Mary had children at all.

  ‘Sun hat.’ Mary spoke without even turning round.

  Carrie grabbed it off the side and pulled it down low over her eyes. Hattie regarded her sister warily as she sucked on her thumb.

  Carrie put out her hand and Hattie slipped her sticky fingers into it.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Bye, Mum.’

  Mary raised her head, her arms deep in the bowels of the twin tub. ‘Back before dark,’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘What we gonna do today?’ lisped Hattie as they walked down the road, Hattie’s little legs breaking into a trot to keep up with her sister.

  Carrie looked back at her. Feeling guilty, she slowed her step. Physically the two sisters couldn’t be more different. Carrie was tall, skinny, her arms and legs always seemed too long for her body. Hattie still had the features of a cute child. She was squat and chubby, her cheeks round, accentuated by her sweet, gap-toothed smile.

  Hattie took her thumb from her mouth. A string of saliva stretched from her lips. ‘What we gonna do?’ she asked again.

  Gently, Carrie wiped Hattie’s face with the bottom of her shirt. Hattie smiled toothily up at her. With a sudden pang of love, she grinned back at her little sister.