Sarah Dee Was Here

by Steve Galloway

  The way they were written about was violent and disturbing, and more than enough reason for Crane to pull Ricky in for some serious questioning.

  Some very serious questioning.

  He looked directly at the youngster through the cloud of his cigarette smoke:

  “Richard James, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Caroline Cox. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.”

  Ricky flicked the cigarette into the gutter and trod on it. He looked back at the two policemen, still calm; still not surprised.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” he asked.

  “See me laughing?” said Harry Wollers, producing a pair of handcuffs. Two more uniformed police officers got out of the car parked behind Crane’s. But Ricky didn’t struggle.

  Crane watched as Wollers snapped the handcuffs shut around Ricky’s wrists. He didn’t feel much like laughing either. The stuff he’d read in Ricky’s handbook wasn’t exactly laugh-a-minute material. Particularly the piece of paper he had torn out and put in his suit pocket, ready to confront Ricky with at the station. On it was a simple poem written in scruffy biro:

  Three Little Piggies

  Once there were three little piggies

  And they made Sarah cry

  There is one little piggy

  Who tries to tell me why.

  But there’s no reason for evil

  So she needn’t even try

  Yes there were three little piggies

  But one by one they’ll die…

  Fifteen

  Millie could feel her new, shiny life cracking around her like a shattered vase. She had gone into work as usual but couldn’t concentrate; all she could think of was the shoe – the bright red Converse trainer – and that message that had been scrawled on the bottom:

  Sarah Dee Was Here.

  The shoe was now in a plastic carrier bag in the back of her Mini. She didn’t know what else to do with it: not until after she’d spoken to Ricky. Ricky would know what to do. She didn’t want to tell her parents; didn’t want to worry them.

  Millie ran into the toilets as soon as she’d finished washing the hair of her first customer. She called Ricky again. His face appeared on her iPhone screen; smiling as usual, but he didn’t answer.

  Fuck!

  Where was he?

  What if the shoe had been Callie’s? Should she tell the police? The paper had said they were looking for it...

  Millie ran some cold water and splashed it on her face.

  What if Sarah Dee’s still alive and coming after all of us? Who else would have killed Callie? Who else would have known to send the shoe to me?

  Millie was suddenly gripped with the knowledge that you can never escape from your past: she’d tried, but the way she had treated Sarah had come back to haunt her. And now she could barely bring herself to walk back into the salon; the place she loved working in.

  She splashed some more water onto her face and looked into the mirror: all she could see was tension and frown-lines pulling at her eyes.

  “I’m sorry Sarah” she mouthed.

  Millie walked slowly back into the salon, trying to look as calm as possible; but she was filled with an uneasy sensation that everybody was watching her.

  Try to look normal.

  What is normal?

  She didn’t really know anymore.

  At that point she saw the girl out of the corner of her eye: the girl sitting in a chair in the waiting area reading The Tarnsey Star. Her face was pointed down towards the paper, and her bright red hair hung loosely over it. She had pale skin which looked like ivory against the black of her sweater.

  Millie’s world began to shake.

  The room rocked. The girl looked slowly up from her paper: Millie caught her eyes; empty, distant eyes. Sarah Dee’s eyes.

  She was back. She was here.

  For the second time that morning Millie let out a hysterical, involuntary scream. This time every person in the salon really was looking at her. Then, as if someone had altered the focus on a camera, the girl’s face changed: she became younger; her nose and cheeks rounder, her eyes bluer; her expression one of fear. It wasn’t Sarah Dee – it was a confused girl of around thirteen – probably on her school holidays and wondering why this hairdresser was screaming at her.

  Millie ran back into the toilets and threw up violently into a sink. She was still retching tearfully when Amanda came in and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I think you need to go home to bed Millie.”

  *

  Millie could barely remember the drive home. Her eyes had been clogged with tears and her hands felt weak on the steering wheel. She could barely open her front door for the shaking of her hands. Once inside she hurled her handbag into a corner and dialled Ricky again. This time, thank God, he picked up.

  “Hi babes”

  Millie let out a huge sigh of relief at the sound of his voice. He must have been on his lunch break, finally.

  “Hi” Millie said, tearfully.

  “What’s wrong princess?” he asked.

  Millie relayed the events of the morning to him in a shaking, garbled manner: the newspaper article, the shoe, the girl at work. When she had finished Ricky paused, then spoke: she listened to his advice intently.

  Don’t tell the police; it will only bring suspicion onto you. How do they know you didn’t post the shoe yourself? It might also wind up the person who really did send it. What you need to do is hide it: don’t tell anyone, lock the house up and wait for me to come over after work. I’ll look after you. You can rely on me babes – we’ve got each other. The police will catch the person who did this soon.

  I love you.

  When Ricky spoke Millie truly believed that everything would be OK. She did what he said: stuffed the bag containing the shoe deep into the back of the cupboard under the stairs and put the chain on the front door. Then she curled up on the sofa under a blanket, switched on the TV and waited for her boyfriend to come round and see her.

  He never did come to see her.

  That evening he was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Caroline ‘Callie’ Cox.

  *

  In the trees opposite Millie’s house the figure in black stood silently; watching and waiting; in the darkness.

  The darkness that had always been there.

  Sixteen

  (Two years ago...)

  It was later that evening, just as the sun was turning fat and orange on the horizon, that CJ finally summed up the courage to knock on the door of Sarah Dee’s flat. It was a peeling, chipped front-door; as scruffy as most of the others on the landing and utterly unremarkable except for what CJ knew waited behind it. For him it was either the doorway to paradise or somewhere else. Somewhere that didn’t bear thinking about.

  Knock knock.

  Silence.

  CJ stood still. He knew Sarah was in there. He had watched her come home, around an hour after she had been attacked on the playing field; an hour since he had spoken to Sarah for the first time ever, and she had told him to go away.

  She didn’t mean it.

  She was just upset.

  He had stood guard in the quadrangle in between the flats for almost two hours. From there he had been able to see every exit from the staircases that led up to the flats. Sarah had not come down. He knew she was in there.

  He knocked again.

  After some time a figure appeared; misshapen in the frosted glass of the door’s window. It didn’t look like Sarah. It wasn’t. The door opened and a small, old woman in a stripy jumper with frizzy grey hair peered out at him. She didn’t have Sarah’s innocent and youthful radiance, but he could still tell she was Sarah’s grandmother. He knew that Sarah lived with her grandmother; and according to some of the boys he had spoken to, this was one of the reasons the other girls picked on her. They said her grandmother was strange and eccentric. The witch of t
he West Hails, they called her. CJ didn’t think she looked like a witch. He thought she looked friendly, but old, small and frail.

  “Hello” she said.

  “Hello” said CJ, and there was a pause.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” asked the grandmother.

  “I would like to speak to Sarah, please” CJ replied in a polite voice.

  “I’m afraid that Sarah isn’t feeling well at the moment. I don’t think she’s up to seeing anyone.”

  “Please... I really need to talk to her.” CJ could feel his polite voice starting to crack. His throat felt strange and his breathing started to speed up.

  “I’m sorry. Maybe come back tomorrow.”

  CJ wasn’t sure what to do. He hadn’t planned for this to happen. It had to be now. He had to tell Sarah he loved her now. He had to say it while she was still hurting from earlier, had to do something to make her better. He thought about pushing the grandmother out of the way and running into the flat. He could probably do it. She was very small and weak looking.

  No CJ. Don’t do that. She wouldn’t like that.

  CJ stared at the woman for a while, thinking.

  “Please” he said, his voice sounding strange in his head, “please can you ask her to meet me this evening. I’ll be waiting on the bench by the bus stop. I’ll wait till it’s dark.”

  “OK” said the grandmother, “but I don’t think she’s going to be up to it.”

  “Tell her anyway” said CJ.

  “OK” said the grandmother, “goodbye for now.”

  The grandmother went to close the door. CJ’s heart plummeted. The door to paradise was being shut in his face. He closed his eyes and shouted. The sound of his cry surprised him: it sounded pained, high-pitched and choked with emotion.

  “Sarah! I love you!”

  The door shut and he sank to his knees. He heard the key turn in the lock and slumped backwards, resting his head on the wall of the landing. He sat there for some time wishing he could cry, but he couldn’t summon tears; instead he felt numb: cold and numb.

  A strange, indefinable period of time passed before CJ was struck by a sudden jolt: the kind you get when you drift off to sleep too quickly. He got up and made his way slowly to the bench by the bus stop, and started to wait.

  *

  That orange sun had long since skulked behind the horizon and the brilliance of the full moon swaggered out to replace it. The night seemed blue rather than black, and the warm summer air of the day took on a chilly sharpness. CJ didn’t notice such things though. His eyes were trained on the entrance to the stairs which led up to Sarah’s flat, just as they had been for however long he had been sitting there.

  Buses had come and gone. Shops had shut, cars had pulled in and out of the car-park behind him and bag-carrying shoppers had briefly taken the place next to him on the bench. But CJ hadn’t noticed a thing. Like a river leading to the sea, all his energies were being channelled towards those grim brick walls behind which she breathed.

  Eventually a figure emerged from the blackness of the stairwell. CJ rose from the bench and stood still like a sentry.

  This was it.

  It didn’t take him long to realise that the figure wasn’t Sarah. It was too old and walked with too much frailty. As its face became clear in the blue gloom he saw that it was the grandmother. She walked up to the bench and gave CJ a look of friendly concern. He stared at her, and noticed she held an envelope in both hands. She pushed it towards him, like a peace offering. His heart began to race.

  “I think you need to go home now” she said.

  CJ took the envelope from her hands with an almost robotic movement. He nodded at the grandmother and she walked back towards the flat. CJ paced back to the bus stop until he was bathed in the glow of the streetlight and opened the envelope. As he took the piece of paper out from inside he was filled with the sensation that his flesh and bones could no longer contain the manic beating of his heart.

  Seventeen

  (Two years ago...)

  “17,18.”

  Maggie Dickens sat in front of her full-length dress mirror and combed her long, golden hair. She knew that once she got to one hundred strokes of the brush she could climb into bed and sleep, safe in the knowledge that in the morning she’d be the girl with the softest, blondest hair in the school.

  And the girl who had Dylan.

  Dylan Hansen.

  The name rolled off her tongue beautifully. Dylan was everything she had ever looked for in a man, and last week she had finally met him; in a nightclub in Selchester. All it had taken was a few smiles and a flick of her long blonde hair and Dylan had been over to her in a flash; buying her drinks and chatting all night. She had left him with her phone number and a kiss, and the next day he had called.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful meal they had shared last night, and the passionate kiss that had ended the evening.

  “23,24.”

  He was so much better than Ricky. In every way:

  Ricky was in her year at school; Dylan was almost 21. Ricky still played football for the school; Dylan had just signed a contract with Selchester Athletic. Ricky was planning to become a carpenter after school; Dylan was a trainee estate agent. Ricky was good-looking, but not very tall. Dylan was tall, fit and had lovely blond hair, like a surfer’s.

  She had hit the jackpot.

  “40,41.”

  Maggie supposed she’d have to break the bad news to Ricky soon. Tell him it was over. She thought about meeting up with him face-to-face – the proper way - but tomorrow she was seeing Dylan again, and Friday was Callie’s birthday party. That meant Saturday, and that was just too long to wait. She reached for her mobile phone and started to look for Ricky’s number, but stopped. She suddenly felt very keen not to have to talk to him; not to hear the disappointment in his voice; not to hear the pleading and the crying that boys usually went through when she split up with them.

  She selected ‘messages’ from the menu. She’d send him a text explaining why she couldn’t see him again. That would do.

  She finished texting, and clicked ‘send.’

  “99, 100.”

  Eighteen

  (Anna)

  (Friday night)

  I looked into the full-length dress mirror in my bedroom for the first time in ages and studied my reflection. I looked better. I definitely looked better.

  I was still a little bit overweight - and sometimes I thought that I always would be - but I held myself with a bit more confidence and also with some indefinable thing that being away from Tarnsey for a year had given me.

  For a start I was dressed a lot better than this mirror used to find me in my schooldays. I’d long stopped the tactic of throwing on a baggy sweater to cover up my body, and learnt to choose nice clothes which complemented my slightly larger figure.

  The glasses had gone too – replaced by contacts – which made my whole face look different: less burdened with the weight of my studious, sensible nature. And lastly there was my hair; finally cut into a style that suited my ever-so-slightly round face.

  All in all I looked a little bit more like the Dr Anna Keating I hoped to become than plain Anna Keating, the schoolgirl who had last been in this room.

  However, for some infuriating reason, I still felt like a schoolgirl. Especially when I thought about Adam Jacks, and what I would say to him when we met up that evening.

  After I had returned home from the station, and after I’d gone through the dutiful daughterly updates with mum and dad, I had made for my bedroom and dug out the photographs from the Paris trip. Adam was there in several pictures, but at the same time he wasn’t there: not the confident, charming young man I had met at the station. In the Paris pictures he virtually melted into the background with his big rucksack, geeky glasses and badly cut hair.

  Perhaps he’d also been touched by that strange thing that came to me when the weight of high school had been lifted; maybe, for peopl
e like us, life could only begin when the school doors shut for good?

  *

  Later that evening I met Adam outside Flamingo’s; a jovial but fairly tacky restaurant/bar on the seafront. I was a couple of minutes early, thinking it might give me some slight advantage on meeting, but Adam was already there, sitting casually on the promenade wall. It was a warm and sunny evening, and Adam was casually dressed in Chinos and a buttoned-up light blue polo shirt. He took off his wayfarer sunglasses as he saw me approaching and hopped off the wall, smiling.

  “Hi Anna!” he said. He already seemed a little less serious than he had been yesterday. I smiled back and suddenly felt stupidly, annoyingly nervous. I may even have gone a little red.

  “Hi” I said back.

  By the time we had got a drink each and exchanged some pleasantries I felt a little bit more composed. We took a seat on a bench outside.

  “So, do you think she’s back?” asked Adam.

  “Who?” I asked, although I think I knew the answer.

  “Sarah Dee of course,” said Adam, “do you reckon she’s snuck back into the town by night and is hiding out there, hammering her enemies to death?”

  “I don’t know” I replied, smiling; “you’re the journalist, you tell me.”

  Adam smiled back, but again there was seriousness in his eyes.

  “Doesn’t seem like it. The police have made an arrest.”

  “God, really?”

  “Yup, Ricky James.”

  I mentally tried to match the name to a face, but I’d worked so hard recently to put high school behind me that a lot of the details had become blurred with my effort to forget them. Then it clicked.

  “Ricky? Maggie’s ex?”

  “Yep”

  “God, but didn’t they question him after Maggie’s murder? They let him go didn’t they?”

  “Yeah. He had a solid alibi: a whole football team prepared to swear he was at training and nowhere near the Dickens’ house.”