Sarah Dee Was Here

by Steve Galloway

  She was ugly.

  And only now could he see just how ugly she was.

  Maggie was crouched over the girl’s horribly still body, shouting insults and dousing lighter fuel onto her bundled-up clothes. He looked into the girl’s eyes. They looked pathetic and beaten. God, he felt so sorry for her. Somehow he would make it up to her.

  But not now.

  He couldn’t now, because he was too scared of upsetting Maggie. She scared him with her primal rage and contorted expression of hate. She asked for his lighter, and he had passed it to her, too weak to refuse.

  This was awful. He was awful for participating. Maggie was sick. Sick.

  It was almost as if something rotten was growing inside her, and he didn’t want it to infect him too. He had to stop it somehow.

  He looked at the girl, whose clothes Maggie was now lighting with his favourite Zippo lighter. God, she was beautiful.

  He couldn’t do anything now, but he would make it up to her some day.

  Ten

  The Tarnsey Star

  Girls death was murder, say Police

  Police investigating the death of a Tarnsey girl found dead at the foot of Tardown Head now believe she was murdered. Caroline Cox, known as Callie, was discovered on Thursday morning by a dog walker. Police initially believed the 18-year-old had committed suicide, but the results of a post-mortem carried out yesterday revealed wounds to the girl’s head consistent with an assault with a blunt instrument.

  Police are playing down possible links with the murder of Callie’s schoolfriend Margaret Dickens, who was beaten to death in her bedroom two years ago. The prime suspect in the Dickens murder – schoolgirl Sarah Jane Dee – is still missing. DS Nick Crane of Selchester and Tarnsey Police said: “at this stage we are not linking the two murders and are looking into Caroline Cox’s more recent private life for answers in this case. Miss Dee is still officially missing and we have no reason to suspect she has returned to Tarnsey.”

  Sarah Dee’s grandmother Elizabeth, who still lives in the flat she shared with her missing granddaughter, refused to speak to reporters from the Tarnsey Star yesterday.

  Police investigating the murder are keen to recover Miss Cox’s shoes, both of which were missing from her body when it was discovered, as they believe these could hold vital forensic clues. She was believed to have been wearing red Converse-style trainers.

  Anyone with any information which may assist police with their enquiries should contact....

  Millie Blunden folded the paper shut and put it back on the breakfast table, feeling light headed. She tried to eat some toast but it tasted like cardboard in her mouth and she couldn’t swallow it. What the hell was going on?

  After Maggie’s murder Millie had asked herself some pretty serious questions. Why had she done those nasty things to Sarah? She wasn’t a bad person; in actual fact she was a good person.

  But she had been a scared person.

  Millie had been scared of her friend Maggie, and what she might have done to her had she not obeyed her every word. Callie was different - Millie thought - Callie had wanted to be just like Maggie; always striving hard to match the brutality of her bullying. Millie had done it under duress.

  At least that’s what she’d told herself for the last two years.

  After Maggie’s death and Sarah’s disappearance; when life had suddenly become serious, Millie had changed her ways. She stopped seeing Callie and any of her old, toxic friends; she stopped bunking classes and smoking; and stopped arguing with her parents about any trivial thing. She had clawed back some reasonable GCSEs and gone to the local college to study hair and beauty, and now she had a good job in a top local salon, and a new convertible Mini in which to drive there.

  She looked better now as well. Whereas in the past she’d always been in Maggie’s shade; never quite as blonde or as beautiful, now she had year-round bronzed skin, golden blonde hair currently worn in a fashionably big 80s-style perm and two pretty floral tattoos, one on her back and one on her wrist.

  She had all the things she’d been too lazy to get at school.

  And she had Ricky.

  Maggie’s ex-boyfriend.

  In those dark days two years ago Millie and Ricky James had leaned on each other for support. Millie had lost an overbearing, bullying friend, and so – it turned out – had Ricky. They had talked about how Maggie used fear to control them and how, despite the tragedy of her death, they both now felt a little bit more free. They had used this freedom to their advantage: becoming boyfriend and girlfriend and helping each other to blossom into the people they wanted to be.

  While Millie had studied, Ricky had worked hard as an apprentice carpenter in the daytime and gained his qualifications quickly. But he’d worked even harder at his football, becoming a fixture in Tarnsey FC’s first team and attracting interest from some big league clubs. The carpentry was good to fall back on, and he’d always be useful for hammering together a garden shed, but Millie thought that he could really go somewhere in football. He could become a professional and they could live the ultimate life: big houses, fast cars, glittering parties and – eventually – beautiful healthy children.

  But the dream seemed a bit darker today: Callie was dead. How? Why? Was it connected to the events of two years ago? Was Sarah Dee responsible? The police said she wasn’t, but they didn’t even know where she was. What if she was back in Tarnsey?

  What if Millie was next?

  Millie started to feel short of breath and her heart pumped quickly.

  It’s OK, she told herself, Ricky will look after you.

  She phoned Ricky’s number on her iPhone and saw his handsome, boyish face appear as usual; grinning beneath his short dark hair and shiny green eyes. But he didn’t answer. He must have been on a job.

  Millie put her faded denim jacket on over her pretty floral dress and looked around for her car keys. She’d feel better at work: around people. Then the doorbell rang. She walked cautiously towards it and peered through the spy-hole. She saw a man clad in a beige suit holding a parcel in one hand and a clipboard in the other. She opened the door and the delivery man smiled at her.

  “Delivery for M. Blunden”

  “That’s me thanks”

  “Sign here love.”

  Millie signed there and took the parcel inside, eagerly unwrapping it, keen to see what it was before heading to work. It was probably something she’d ordered online and forgotten about. Her name was written shabbily on the side in capitals. She caught a glimpse of something red inside the paper as she tore it open.

  Then she screamed, loudly and involuntarily.

  He hands shook as she pulled the shoe out of the mess of packing paper. It was a red Converse trainer. She turned it over. There was a message scrawled on the sole in black marker pen:

  Sarah Dee was here.

  *

  Millie’s family home was large and detached and faced a small stream which was separated from the road by a cluster of thick trees. A figure stood in the dark midst of these trees; a figure clad in a black hoodie and equally dark combat trousers. In the figure’s backpack – also black – was a sturdy lump hammer and a pair of rubber gloves. There was also some rope, a marker pen, a scrap of packing paper, a roll of gaffer tape and a cheese-and-ham roll.

  The figure had watched in silence as Millie Blunden opened the door and accepted the parcel from the delivery man. The scream had followed only seconds later. It was pleasingly hysterical. Clearly the silly, greedy bitch had barely been able to keep her hands off her new present.

  The figure reached a hand back into its bag.

  Time for lunch.

  Eleven

  (Two years ago...)

  Something about the freshness of the early summer sunshine seemed to galvanise CJ into action: today was going to be different – today he would do it. He would make the one small but terrifying move that would change his life forever.

  He would talk to Sarah Dee.

  C
J wasn’t sure how to do it. He really wanted to get down on one knee and confess his unquenchable devotion to her. He wanted to rip open his shirt; show her his tattoo and vow to protect her as long as she breathed the same air as him. But he’d looked into it; and it seemed as though these kinds of things put girls off, so he would probably just keep it cool.

  Most of people he’d asked on the internet - when they hadn’t been insulting and rude - had advised him to just talk to her normally. As if such a thing was possible.

  ‘Nice hoodie’ he could say, if she was wearing that black hoodie he’d seen her in a few times. But today was quite hot, so she probably wouldn’t be wearing her hoodie.

  Maybe he could say “nice skirt”, but then all the girls wore the same skirt, because it was part of the school uniform, so she probably wouldn’t care if it was nice or not.

  Perhaps a simple “Hi Sarah” would do?

  No, don’t be silly CJ. She doesn’t know that you know she’s called Sarah. She doesn’t know that you take photos of her, or know where she lives, or stare at the light behind her curtains from the street when it gets dark. She doesn’t know any of this. You have to pretend you’re strangers.

  God this was hard.

  This situation, like most in CJ’s life, had required some research. He always had to work out what the proper way to act was. Interacting with other people didn’t come easy to him, like it did to most people.

  “Say the first thing that comes into your head” was another bit of advice that he’d seen on the web. Maybe he’d do that. Just go up and see what happens.

  Whilst CJ was thinking of all this the bus pulled up opposite West Hails. He watched every person carefully as they left the bus. There was a smattering of schoolgirls – although fewer than usual for this time of day – but Sarah wasn’t amongst them. CJ stayed where he was and waited patiently for the next bus.

  *

  One hour and two more buses later CJ started to fret. Sarah hadn’t got off either bus, and by the time the third had arrived at West Hails it was largely full of office workers and old people and hardly any girls from the school at all.

  What was going on?

  Sarah was hardly ever this late coming back home. CJ stood up from the bench and began to retrace his steps back towards the school. Maybe Sarah was walking home for a change, and he would bump into her on the way? Maybe she’d stayed behind or something? Maybe she’d gone to meet him?!

  No, don’t be silly CJ.

  He carried on walking.

  Twelve

  Eliminate the boyfriend: that was what every detective worth their salt did when a teenage girl was murdered.

  DS Nick Crane knew from lengthy and bitter experience that most murder victims were killed by somebody they knew. Usually it was someone they trusted and loved too, which made it even grimmer, but no less common. And more often than not a domestic argument between two lovers was the motive: the catalyst that drove normal folk to commit horrific acts.

  Crane shuffled around some papers on his desk and tried to make some vague sense of them. He had taken them from the file on the murder of Margaret Dickens – a two-year-old crime that was still unsolved. He’d gone to the boyfriend first in this case: a young lad called Ricky James. Crane hadn’t liked or trusted the boy one bit. He seemed unsurprised; hardly even upset by the death of his girlfriend. He’d been cold and shifty, his eyes always darting to one side as Crane and his colleague; Inspector Harry Wollers, had questioned him.

  But Ricky hadn’t done it: he couldn’t have. He had a solid alibi.

  When Margaret Dickens had been having her head pounded in with a lump hammer, her boyfriend was at football practice. He had fifteen other boys all prepared to swear to it. And if that wasn’t good enough, the football coach was the local school’s deputy head, and he was hardly going to lie, was he?

  Suspicion soon turned to a schoolgirl called Sarah Dee, who had been reported missing the day after Maggie’s murder. Everyone Crane had spoken to had confirmed that Dee had a motive: Dickens had apparently bullied her relentlessly throughout her school years. Her disappearance certainly pointed towards guilt, but despite a huge missing-persons enquiry Sarah Dee had never been located.

  Crane put a leather boot up on the table and dragged the Dickens file onto his lap. Other things about the case bothered him too. For a start, there had been barely a speck of forensic evidence left at the scene, and the murder weapon was never found. The killer clearly knew what they had been doing; which hardly pointed to a meek, bullied schoolgirl.

  The whole thing was a bloody riddle, and Crane didn’t do riddles, he did answers.

  Now, to add some icing to the big tough cake, there had been another murder in the area with loud echoes of the last: Caroline Cox, eighteen years old, and dead from a sustained and powerful assault with a blunt instrument, possibly a lump hammer.

  The door to Crane’s office swung open and young Harry Wollers strolled through it, looking –as ever – more like some sort of male model than a police inspector.

  “You ready boss?” he asked.

  “Yup” said Crane, pulling on his suit jacket; “let’s go and give young Ricky James a little catch-up visit.”

  Thirteen

  (Two years ago...)

  Up past the cricket field and the lazy, yawning shadows on the green; along the length of Palm Avenue, lined with its proud Georgian town houses – now all flats, of course – and through the middle of the wearily beaten council estate that surrounded Tarnsey’s two high schools; the girls’ and the boys’.

  The distant shouts of excited voices carried on the wind like the calls of seagulls swooping over the morning sea; hungrily seeking their prey. And as CJ neared the school the cries got louder and louder.

  The field was the source of the noise; the large playing field which separated the girls’ and boys’ schools like no-man’s-land between enemy trenches. CJ peered through one of the fence’s many cracks and saw a swarm of school children in the centre, their distant black uniforms giving them the appearance of tiny ants.

  Scary, evil ants.

  The shouting now seemed different; no less excitable, but infused with a malevolent edge. CJ started to run towards the children; rational thought escaped him and horror spurred him on. He stood on tiptoes to observe the scene. He saw girls mainly, but boys too. He saw phones held up and fists shaken, but also hands held over mouths. He saw shock, surprise and bloodthirsty malice spread across their faces.

  And in the midst of it he saw Sarah, just as he feared he would.

  She was lying there in the centre, her legs bare, her underwear visible and her fragile beauty being violently defiled by these... these animals.

  “Stop!” cried CJ. Nobody heard. He tried to force his way through the throng. Nobody was budging, and CJ felt his glasses start to slip from his head.

  “Baggot!” someone yelled, and heads started to turn. Confirmation of the head-teacher’s imminent arrival caused the crowd to disperse and make quickly for the gates. CJ remained where he was, and saw the slim blonde-haired girl who was kneeling next to Sarah pick up her shoes. The girl glanced towards the approaching teachers, but seemed to be sheltered from their view by the fleeing crowd. She turned back towards Sarah and hurled the shoes towards her. Sarah barely flinched as they slapped into her bare legs.

  “Bitch!” she screamed.

  CJ looked into the girl’s eyes as she ran away, and felt something more than mere hatred burning for her. He felt like some dark and dormant urge had just been stirred inside him, and there was only one way to quench it.

  CJ walked over to Sarah and looked down into her eyes; they were as distant as galaxies.

  How could he help? How could he mend this broken soul?

  “Are you OK?” he asked, the words sounding weak and useless. Sarah looked back and met CJ’s gaze. Even in this rotten situation, he still felt love fill his heart.

  Slowly, she spoke:

  “Please leave me alo
ne” she said.

  “But...”

  “Please. Just go” Sarah insisted, her voice fragile and cracked.

  CJ turned away and obeyed.

  Fourteen

  DS Crane watched intently from his unmarked Ford Mondeo as Ricky James strolled up the road. He had just observed the young lad getting off the bus, a tool-bag slung across his back and scruffy clothes on. Back from work, Crane guessed. Ricky took a cigarette out of a green packet and placed it between his lips, lighting it with a silver Zippo lighter and drawing deeply on the tobacco.

  As he neared the front door of his house Crane and Wollers exited the Mondeo at the same time. Ricky looked at Harry Wollers quizzically. The young inspector was wearing a distinctly un-policeman-like Italian suit and a leather jacket. DS Crane was dressed in black boots and a more conservative dark-blue suit, and when Ricky saw him his expression turned from curiosity to recognition. But not, Crane noted, surprise.

  “What do you want?” asked Ricky.

  Crane smiled. Ricky didn’t know that earlier that day the two policemen had entered his house and searched it thoroughly. They had found several things of interest. Of most interest was a dark blue A4 writing book; the kind you’d get in any stationers. It wasn’t a diary as such – not filled with dates and day-to-day appointments – but it was full of other things: names, phone numbers, addresses and lists. There were also pieces of writing, journals, rants and poems. These pieces of writing were often hate-filled and choked with anger. Sometimes names were mentioned, and not in a pleasant way.

  Not at all.

  Some names came up more frequently than others: Maggie Dickens, Callie Cox, Millie Blunden.