Two Little Girls

by Kate Medina

  Marilyn nodded. Her eyes were the same as he remembered from the first time they had met. Such a soft blue that they were almost violet. The colour of the purplest bluebells. Workman’s voice made their eyes unlock and their heads swivel in unison.

  ‘“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, You’d walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand, when I needed You the most, You would desert me.” “My precious child, I love you and I will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”’

  ‘Do you go to church then, Detective Sergeant Workman? You one of them?’ Ruby asked.

  Workman shook her head and smiled. ‘It’s pinned above the kitchen sink in the children’s centre I volunteer at every Saturday. I get to do a lot of washing up, so I’ve read it that many times I could recite it in my sleep.’

  Ruby held her gaze for a long moment, without returning the smile. She curled her lip.

  ‘There was only one set of prints when I needed him the most and they were mine,’ she hissed. ‘He was no-fucking-where to be seen during the saddest times of my life.’

  Hands locked into one fist, fingers white with tension, Workman nodded. This interview fell outside her range of experience. Marilyn would have liked to be alone with Ruby, knew that he would be able to get under her skin more if they were alone, but he’d already sent Workman out on a coffee-run once and protocol would throw up its hands in horror if he asked her to leave him to it now, with the undercurrent palpable. His gaze moved from Workman’s and found the cross hanging around Ruby’s neck.

  ‘No, before you ask,’ she said, noticing him looking. ‘I don’t fucking believe.’ She gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of prostitutes. That’s why I wear it. Got nothing to do with Him, or any other sodding man for that matter.’

  ‘You’re not a prostitute any more, Ruby.’

  She winked, the armour sliding back into place seamlessly, as if she had never lowered it. ‘I could be if you wanted me to be, DI Simmons. I’ve always quite fancied you.’

  Marilyn could feel himself blushing. Not because of what she had said – he saw it for the edgy banter that it was – but because she’d said it in front of Workman. He felt reduced to the gauche PC he had been the first time he’d met Ruby.

  ‘Ruby,’ he muttered, shaking his head.

  She lifted the cigarette to her mouth again, and his gaze found the pattern of needle marks on her arm.

  ‘Life’s tough, DI Simmons,’ she murmured. ‘Even for you with your fancy job.’ Her gaze moved to Workman. ‘Even for you, hey?’

  ‘If you were out there looking for treasure, why didn’t you take the necklace?’ he asked, dodging her comment.

  She lifted her shoulders and gave a wry half-smile. ‘I was going to nick it, wasn’t I? But not off a dead child. I’m not total scum.’

  ‘Did you touch it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Marilyn’s groan was audible.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ve got your prints on file. Where are you living now, Ruby?’

  ‘East Wittering. Council flat.’

  ‘What’s the address, please,’ Workman cut in, flicking to a new page in her notebook.

  ‘Wyatt Court, Stocks Lane.’

  ‘Number?’

  ‘Seven.’

  Workman made a note.

  Marilyn sat back. ‘Anything else that you think might be important?’

  Ruby shook her head.

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Ruby. Please don’t go anywhere without letting us know. We’ll probably need to speak to you again.’

  She nodded. ‘Got nowhere to go and no money to go there with, DI Simmons.’

  Marilyn walked Ruby down the stairs.

  ‘The last I heard, you had a child, Ruby,’ he said gently, as they walked.

  ‘Had, yeah.’

  ‘What happened to him or her?’

  A careless shrug. ‘I got him adopted.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Ten, eleven years ago now.’ She smiled sardonically. ‘I had no use for a kiddie.’

  Marilyn nodded. ‘I’ll let you out the back. The press are out front.’

  ‘You mean I don’t get to have my fifteen minutes of fame?’

  ‘Up to you.’

  ‘Nah.’ A wink. ‘The back door’s fine. I’m well used to taking it the back way, whether I want to or not.’ The carapace firmly back in place.

  As they walked side by side along the corridor in silence, Ruby dug in the pocket of her cargo jacket, produced a yellow packet and held it out to Marilyn. He shook his head.

  ‘Rescue Remedy?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Another sardonic smile. ‘Take a lot more than this gum to rescue me, DI Simmons, but I gotta start somewhere.’

  Warm air billowed into the corridor and sunlight flooded the worn wooden floorboards as he pulled the door open for her.

  ‘Take care, Ruby. You know where I am if you need anything.’

  ‘Thanks, DI Simmons.’ Standing on tiptoes, she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. ‘See ya then.’

  Popping the chewing gum into her mouth, she turned away and he watched her clack in her silver stilettos down the concrete steps and across the car park, feeling as if something heavy had dropped hard into his stomach. A dead weight.

  20

  Taking her ballet pumps off at the top of the bank, Jessie tucked them neatly, side by side behind the Fisherman’s Hut and picked her way down the steep, pebbly section of the beach. The sand was damp, a cool salve to her bare soles after the sharp heat of the pebbles. She walked towards the water – two hundred metres away, the tide fully out, the sea’s edge a bubbling line of white foam – stopping occasionally to inspect a shell, dig her toe into the sand-spaghetti string of a lugworm cast.

  ‘I’ll call,’ Carolynn had said. ‘I’ll call, but only because you’ve asked me to.’

  Jessie shivered, remembering those words and the feel of Carolynn’s fingers. Her touch had been chill, as if she’d been resting her hand on a block of ice. Used to their roles being clearly demarcated by the professional environment, Jessie had expected that subtle red line to remain intact. But Carolynn had taken their lunch as an opportunity to step over a boundary that Jessie had no intention of letting her cross.

  She paused to trace the tip of her toe around the sand-spaghetti trail of another lugworm cast.

  I’ll call him, but only because you’ve asked me to.

  She hadn’t believed Carolynn. She had fallen for many of her lies, but now she was wiser and that statement had been accompanied by direct eye contact for the first time ever, an unblinking stare that had unnerved her with its intensity. When most people lied, they broke eye contact, if only fleetingly, but for Carolynn, a woman who had never met Jessie’s gaze directly before, the opposite was true. She had forced herself to hold Jessie’s gaze unwaveringly, in the mistaken belief that eye contact signalled truth.

  What should she do now? She knew what Callan would want her to do, but he was a policeman. It was in his nature, his DNA, to doubt. Carolynn had terminated their professional relationship, so she no longer needed to worry about patient confidentiality, but could she really just hang her out to dry? Squashing the lugworm cast flat with the base of her foot, an unnecessarily destructive action which she regretted the second she’d done it, she walked on until she reached the water’s edge and turned right, heading towards West Wittering, a kilometre away, slopping along in the shallows, her feet engulfed in white foam with each new breaking wave.

  She had experienced social isolation herself when she’d returned to school after being incarcerated at Hartmoor Mental Hospital for a year, and it had hurt, badly. She’d been a teenager then, unable to escape, had made up for her lack of control by tidying
and ordering the fragments of her life contained within her four bedroom walls. How much worse would Carolynn’s experience have been – a woman accused of murdering her own daughter? She would have had perfect strangers intimidating her in the street: stalking her, calling her names, spitting on her, shoving and hitting her. Threatening calls at all hours of the day and night, bricks hurled through her windows, her car scratched and dented, its tyres slashed, the walls of her house graffitied.

  Unlike Jessie, Carolynn had been able to run and hide, and she’d done just that. Who could blame her? Certainly not a girl who’d been persecuted herself. Persecuted for having done no wrong, for having been a victim. She would have hidden, run, when she was fifteen, if she’d had the chance, but she’d had to stick it out, add the mental scars of bullying and social isolation to the scars of her brother’s suicide, her mother’s abandonment, her father’s betrayal, layer upon layer of psychological damage, like rock strata laid down in her psyche. The outward sign, her OCD and the electric suit that she could feel now skittering across her skin, a tightness around her throat that was labouring her breathing as she walked.

  A sudden noise, alien against the repetitive, soothing sound of the lapping waves. Pulling her mobile from her pocket, she glanced down at the name flashing on the screen. Callan. She was tempted not to answer it. She didn’t want to argue with him again, and thoughts of Carolynn, of her own past, had put her on edge. It would be easier to just not answer than to have a conversation where she loaded his innocent remarks with a negative essence that they didn’t have. As she dithered, her phone went silent. Decision made.

  Twenty seconds later, it rang again. Perhaps something was wrong?

  ‘Callan.’

  ‘Good afternoon, beautiful Jessie Flynn.’ He sounded happy, though she sensed that his mood was forced for her benefit, that he was making a conscious effort to start the conversation off on a good footing. ‘… mum just called.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘No – yours. She’s arranged a new time for the dress fitting. Monday at ten.’

  ‘Oh, OK. That’s fine. Tell her that’s fine.’

  ‘I already told her it’s fine. She said to tell you that you can’t miss it.’

  ‘I won’t miss it.’ She ducked, as a squawking seagull swooped low over her head. Did they like shiny, or was that just magpies?

  Silence on the other end of the telephone line.

  ‘Callan?’

  No response. Had she accidentally cut him off while ducking?

  ‘Callan? Are you there?’

  ‘Did you find her?’

  ‘Who? My mum?’

  ‘No, Jessie not your mum.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  An exasperated sigh. ‘Laura … Carolynn … whatever the hell the woman’s name is.’

  Oh shit. Was he just fishing? Could she bluff it out?

  ‘Have you gone mad, Callan?’ she said, dodging sideways as the seagull swooped again.

  ‘Wind, waves, seagull. I am a detective and it wasn’t the hardest case I’ve ever worked on.’

  She could picture his jaw set into an intractable square, the cynicism in his amber eyes.

  ‘OK, clever boy. Yes, I’m at the beach.’

  ‘Which beach?’

  ‘East Wittering.’

  ‘Is that where Laura’s hiding from her adoring public and the law?’

  ‘Carolynn. It’s Carolynn. And we’ve been through this, Callan. She was acquitted.’

  ‘Yeah, we have been through this. She was acquitted due to lack of evidence. As I said before, it’s not the same thing as being found innocent. Marilyn believes that she’s guilty.’

  ‘I don’t believe that Marilyn is or was objective.’

  ‘He’s a great detective.’

  ‘He is a great detective, but he’s not infallible—’

  ‘None of us are infallible, Jessie.’

  She ignored the inference, ploughed on: ‘—and the murder of a child is highly emotive. As time went on in the Zoe Reynolds case, he must have felt under huge pressure to nail someone for her murder – anyone.’

  She started walking again, just beyond the reach of the waves, her feet making perfect imprints in the wet sand, a barefoot chain where she had walked strung out behind her like a memory.

  ‘So she’s living in East Wittering?’

  ‘Bracklesham Bay. It’s the same patch of picturesque British seaside urban sprawl, but half a kilometre east along the beach.’

  ‘And you’ve met her, spoken with her?’

  ‘I had lunch with her. Or at least, I had lunch and she sat there watching me eat. She doesn’t seem to “do” eating.’

  ‘Is she going to contact Marilyn?’

  ‘I asked her to contact him and she said that she would.’

  ‘She’s already proved herself to be a pathological liar.’

  ‘She had reasons to lie. Good reasons.’

  ‘So you trust her? You trust her to get in touch with Marilyn?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Callan, I’m not a bloody mind reader. Get off my case.’

  The white triangle of a yacht’s sail, breaking the thin blue line of the horizon where sea met sky, caught Jessie’s eye, the cloudy slash of a plane’s contrail, heading out across the Atlantic Ocean, above it. People holidaying. Life continuing as normal.

  ‘I’m sure you told me once that you didn’t work with people who lied,’ Callan said, breaking the silence. She heard the smile in his voice, a forced smile, but even so, she recognized that he was making an effort to lighten the moment, pull back from the argument they were careering towards.

  ‘And you said that I work with people who lie all the time: patients. And she is my patient—’ Jessie broke off. ‘Was, actually. She said, at lunch, that she doesn’t feel she needs any more sessions.’

  ‘So you no longer have an issue with patient confidentiality.’

  ‘I’m not dobbing her in, Callan. Patient confidentiality aside, that would be a horrendous breach of her trust.’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Jessie.’

  ‘I’m not treating it as a game.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, you could be sheltering a child murderer. Actually, let me correct that statement: a double child murderer.’

  ‘She’s innocent.’

  ‘Jesus, listen to yourself. You’re sounding as subjective as you’re accusing Marilyn of being.’ She heard the choppy, tense sound of his breathing. ‘And you’re worrying me, Jessie.’

  ‘Worrying you? You’re supposed to be my boyfriend, not my babysitter.’

  ‘If you don’t want a babysitter, don’t behave like a baby,’ he snapped.

  Her thumb found the phone symbol, cutting him off. She stared at the blank phone in her hand for a few moments, half-willing it to ring again, not knowing how she’d react if it did. It didn’t ring. Bastard. Turning away from the water, she retraced her steps to where the steep pebbly section of the beach met the sand and slumped down, her bottom on the warm, dry stones, bare feet on the cool, damp sand.

  When had their relationship become so antagonistic? Her fault, she knew, ever since the injury to her hand had forced her to leave the Defence Psychology Service. Hers for constantly being on edge. Should she just call him back, apologize? Probably. But she knew that she wouldn’t, knew that the nugget of her personality that was stubborn and self-righteous had dug its heels in, despite knowing that she was shooting herself in the foot. That she was risking the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  21

  Though Carolynn couldn’t bear to be alone in this dark, claustrophobic little house, images of Zoe and Jodie careering around inside her skull, she couldn’t go outside for fear of being recognized. Even with the curtains closed, she felt as if she was inhabiting a goldfish bowl, as if every passer-by knew that Carolynn Reynolds, the woman who had slithered out of a guilty verdict for strangling her own daughter, the woman who was running alone on the beach when Jodie Trigg was murde
red, was hiding out behind those dirty white walls. As if she’d peer out through a crack in the curtains and see a crowd in the street, brandishing pitchforks and baying for her blood.

  Her pulse pounded in her ears as she paced restlessly from the kitchen to the hallway, to the sitting room with its coiled vine walls, the tension inside her escalating with each step until she felt as if she would combust from its intensity. The house had a smell of its own that she had grown to hate, the tickly scent of dirt and dust that, however hard she cleaned, she could never eradicate, the years of rental neglect ingrained in its every atom. It was a smell she had come to associate with confinement, with claustrophobia, with a miserable, lonely existence.

  The sudden blare of the telephone made her jump. Ducking into the hallway, she snatched at the receiver.

  ‘Roger.’

  ‘Carolynn.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at work. I was phoning to check how you are.’

  ‘The newspapers.’ The words rushed out of her. ‘Have you seen them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My face is in all of them. They’ll arrest me again, accuse me of killing that second little girl.’

  That second little girl.

  Jodie Trigg.

  The little girl who lived on the static caravan park, who I befriended six months ago when I saw her hanging around on the beach outside the house alone, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The little girl I never told you about, because I knew that you would stop me from having contact with her.

  ‘It’s a coincidence. Her death has nothing to do with Zoe.’

  ‘You can’t believe that, Roger. She was found in the same place, in a heart of shells, with an identical doll by her side. It must be the same killer.’

  She slapped a hand over her mouth, pushing back the bile that rose up her throat, as a horrifying thought occurred to her. If the police found out she was living here and invented a reason to search the house, they would doubtless find some of Jodie’s fingerprints. Oh God. Where had Jodie been? What had she touched? All the surfaces in the kitchen for sure: she’d drunk orange juice and eaten chocolate biscuits at the table many times, stayed for an early dinner often too. The downstairs toilet. Where else? The sitting room … had she been in there? And what about upstairs? Yes, she’d been upstairs a couple of times too. She’d have to clean everything, every handle, every door, every surface.