Two Little Girls

by Kate Medina

  As he raised the beer bottle to his lips, he caught movement, a shadow, from the corner of his eye: Ahmose, Jessie’s elderly next-door neighbour, looking over the adjoining fence. Jessie had told him that she’d bought this cottage, down a single-track lane in the Surrey Hills, surrounded by fields, precisely to avoid unwanted human contact, and that her heart had plummeted when Ahmose had arrived on her doorstep the morning she moved in, proffering a miniature rose, full of advice on how to keep it flowering. But in their three years as neighbours, Jessie had grown to love and rely on this old Egyptian man more than her own parents – certainly more than her father, who she blamed for her brother Jamie’s suicide.

  Callan and Ahmose had settled into a comfortable relationship of nods, smiles and exchanged pleasantries, since he had as good as moved in with Jessie, the occasional evening spent, the three of them, chatting over dinner and a bottle of wine. But mostly he had left Jessie and Ahmose to it, recognized the depth of their relationship and his spare part in it.

  ‘Do you want some company?’ the old man asked.

  Callan didn’t. He was happy alone, wallowing in morose thoughts.

  ‘That’d be, great. I’ll let you in the front.’

  He poured Ahmose a glass of red wine, and they returned to the garden together, Callan pulling out a chair, running his sleeve over the seat to brush off the moss before Ahmose sat down.

  Ahmose indicated his gardening trousers. ‘Wonderful service, but unnecessary.’

  ‘Only the best for Jessie’s surrogate family.’

  They sat down and drank for a moment in silence. They had never been alone in each other’s company and Callan wasn’t in the mood for small talk. His dulled brain fished around for a benign, chatty opener.

  ‘How’s the garden?’

  ‘Dry,’ Ahmose said. ‘It’s looking forward to the onset of autumn even if my bones aren’t.’

  Callan nodded. He had already run out of conversational steam.

  ‘Where’s Jessie?’ Ahmose asked.

  ‘The beach.’

  ‘It was a lovely day for it. You didn’t fancy going?’

  Callan cast him a sideways glance. ‘I wasn’t invited.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘She went down to talk to one of her patients, a woman called Carolynn Reynolds.’

  Ahmose was silent for a moment. ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’

  ‘She was on the news last night.’

  ‘The child murder?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s the mother of the first girl who was murdered two years ago.’

  ‘Of course, yes. I saw it on the news back then. It was a terrible tragedy. She was tried for her daughter’s murder, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Tried and acquitted due to lack of evidence. Then she disappeared, went to ground.’

  Callan clocked Ahmose casting him a narrowed glance across the table. He’d clearly noted his cynical tone, but when Ahmose spoke his voice was neutral.

  ‘I didn’t realize that Jessie knew her.’

  Callan rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t think Jessie does know her. Jessie was treating her and swallowed a pack of lies.’

  ‘So why is Jessie meeting with her?’

  ‘To convince her to contact DI Simmons, who is the SIO for both cases, tell him where she is. He wants to speak with her about Jodie Trigg’s murder.’

  ‘And was she successful?’

  ‘No.’

  Setting his wine glass carefully on the table, Ahmose sat forward, steepling his fingers. ‘And you’re debating whether you should let DI Simmons know where this Carolynn woman is living? Go behind Jessie’s back?’

  Callan met the old man’s searching dark gaze. The more time he spent with Ahmose, the more he understood why Jessie so valued his advice. He was clever, perceptive, astute.

  ‘Yes. Should I betray her trust, to put it bluntly?’

  Reaching for his glass and taking a long, slow sip, Ahmose nodded contemplatively. Callan kept a lid on his impatience as he waited for the old man to answer.

  ‘I think, generally, that Jessie is a good judge of character,’ he said. ‘She is good at her job and that job requires an understanding of how people think, an intuition about what makes them tick, that most of us lack. And she likes me.’ He paused, winked. ‘And you, despite my early reservations.’

  Callan nodded, unsmiling. He wasn’t in the mood for cheery banter. ‘So you’re saying that I should respect Jessie’s decision, do nothing?’

  Ahmose cut him off with a raised hand. ‘But … I’ve never seen her like this before. She is strung very highly, very brittle. Being invalided out of the army hit her hard.’ He reached over and patted Callan’s arm. Callan resisted the urge to pull away, unused to paternal-type contact. ‘You need to make good decisions for both of you. That is one of the most important parts of being in a relationship, making good decisions when the other cannot, guiding them when they lose their way.’ Ahmose withdrew his hand and lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. ‘How do you say … feel free to tell me to mind my own business.’

  Callan nodded. He had spent most of his life avoiding committed relationships. The army and relationships didn’t mix well and he’d been happy to use his job as an excuse to play the field, screw around, for want of a better expression. Until Jessie.

  ‘She doesn’t want my help,’ he muttered.

  ‘She doesn’t know what she wants,’ Ahmose countered. ‘She is not in a good place right now. She wasn’t before this woman. Now, she is even less so, by the sound of it.’

  ‘What would you do if you were me?’

  Reaching across the table, Ahmose tapped his finger on Callan’s mobile. ‘I’d make a call,’ he said.

  ‘She’ll hate me for it.’

  ‘She will, without doubt, for a while.’

  Callan’s gaze found the horizon, the sun sinking now, its bottom edge dipping below the line of hills in the distance. The sky was a rainbow of fire colours, red, washing to orange, to magenta and pink high in the sky. Raising the beer bottle to his lips, he drained it.

  ‘Give me a minute, Ahmose,’ he said, pushing himself to his feet.

  Palming his mobile, he walked to the end of the garden, scrolling through the numbers in his contacts until he found the one he was looking for.

  25

  ‘Did you go to her funeral?’ Cara asked, as they walked, in the fading light, along the tarmac path that looped around the edge of Lambeth Cemetery.

  Workman gave him a brief, tense smile. ‘We weren’t invited, if that’s what you mean. But we kept an eye.’ She pointed. ‘From there, under those trees, hiding in the shade, as if we were in some Z-list thriller.’

  They found the small grave easily, threading through scores of others, littered with cuddly animals, damp from yesterday evening’s rain, plastic toys, china figurines and photographs, each the grave of a dead baby or child. Workman couldn’t understand why cemeteries grouped the graves of children together, as if the death of one child wasn’t horror enough for visitors.

  Zoe’s headstone was of black marble, the gold inscription simple: Zoe Reynolds. Taken too soon. Forever loved. No teddies or Wade whimsies on her grave. Just a plain black marble vase at the base of the headstone.

  The last time that Workman had visited, just over nine months ago, a few days before the end of the trial, when she could see the way it was going, see that they hadn’t been able to provide the jury with enough hard evidence to convict Carolynn, she had caught an Uber from outside the Old Bailey, telling Marilyn she was visiting a family friend, unwilling even to open up to him about where she was going. She had felt self-indulgent. What right did she have to feel the child’s death more than anyone else on the investigating team?

  The vase had been empty then, a thin layer of frost frilling the black headstone, as if it had been decorated with paper doilies. Today it was filled with a spray of pure white roses, almost luminous in the semi-darkness. Workman knelt and fingered one spongy bud.


  ‘They’re fresh,’ she said.

  ‘What are you thinking, ma’am?’

  ‘I’m thinking that there are only three people in this world who’d put flowers on the grave of this little girl, on the second anniversary of her murder.’

  ‘The Reynolds,’ Cara said, more of a statement than a question. ‘Carolynn and Roger.’

  Workman nodded.

  ‘And the third?’

  Her knees clicked as she stood. She wasn’t getting any younger and despite regularly admonishing Marilyn for burning the candle at both ends and simultaneously incinerating the middle, she could do with looking after herself a bit more too.

  ‘Roger has an eighty-year-old mother. She was devastated by Zoe’s death. Genuinely.’ As opposed to … she didn’t say it. ‘But I doubt it’s her because she was admitted to a home a few months after Zoe died. She may be dead herself. We should check, actually.’ She added another line to her mental ‘to-do’ list.

  ‘So one or both of them have been here,’ Cara said, as they weaved their way back through the graves to the tarmac path.

  ‘Yesterday, I’d say. Yesterday would make sense, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘The anniversary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what does it mean?’ Cara asked.

  Workman shrugged. ‘That one of them is thinking about Zoe at least, thinking and caring, and that they’re not too far away.’

  Her gaze found the dark space under the trees where she and Marilyn had stood watching the funeral. It was empty. Of course, it would be. What had she expected to see? The Reynolds? The ghost of a little girl waiting patiently for justice? The ghosts of two little girls?

  26

  A black mist descended over Marilyn as he walked into the dissecting room. Jodie Trigg, a little girl who’d once watched X-Factor and run on the beach with her friends was laid out before him, a waxy mannequin on a metal dissecting table in the centre of a chilly, white-tiled room, the embodiment of his failure. Her skin was pale and smooth, as if she had been washed clean in a soapy bath – she was whiter than white – and there was no smell, no scent of death, as if she was too young, too fresh for that.

  The beanpole figure of Dr Ghoshal, his angular features all business, waited for him, flanked by two morticians, the unacknowledged hard labourers of the autopsy, to the pathologist’s star turn. The three of them were ranged around Jodie’s body, Dr Ghoshal at the head, the morticians either side, a sombre, frozen tableau. The only time that Marilyn had ever seen the pathologist and seasoned morticians behave as they were now, standing in silence, paying their respects, was two years ago, at Zoe Reynolds’ autopsy. The sight, and the memory it dragged to the surface, twisted a knife deep in his chest. Christ, how the hell am I going to make it through the next couple of hours? He hadn’t been blessed with a strong stomach, struggled with the autopsies of grown men, scumbags, who’d met their end at the hands of fellow drug dealers in revenge for trampling on their patch. God shows no partiality – it was a quote from the Bible, wasn’t it? In the search for perpetrators, he showed no partiality either, believed that every victim deserved justice, however unsavoury they may have been in life, but it wasn’t the same in an autopsy, the body stripped down to its rawest. In here, the sight of the naked little girl on that table made him want to kill to avenge her, administer a slow and agonizing death.

  Dr Ghoshal gave a nod to acknowledge Marilyn’s presence, breaking the sombre reverie. The morticians moved off silently on their rubber-soled feet and set about collecting bowls, turning on hoses, laying out instrument trays.

  Dr Ghoshal cleared his throat. ‘DI Simmons.’ Not Marilyn. Never Marilyn, a nickname that Simmons had acquired on his first day in the force, after Manson, not Monroe, he would always hasten to add, due to their shared heterochromia. Dr Ghoshal wasn’t one for ludicrous nicknames or manufactured mateyness. ‘Nice to see you again.’

  Only someone with antenna quivering as much as Marilyn’s would have noticed the accent of tension in Ghoshal’s habitually colourless tone.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Ghoshal.’

  Goshal indicated Jodie Trigg’s corpse. ‘What is your theory, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘I’m trying to keep an open mind.’

  Ghoshal smiled cynically. ‘That goes without saying.’

  Marilyn sighed. ‘Similarities to the Zoe Reynolds case. Look for similarities, please. Anything that I can use to link the two cases.’

  ‘You think it’s the same killer?’

  ‘Yes, or a very knowledgeable copycat.’

  ‘You favour the former explanation?’

  No flies on Dr Ghoshal. Marilyn nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The age of the victim, the date of her murder, two years to the day of Zoe Reynolds, where her body was found, the heart of shells, the doll.’ He paused. ‘The method of killing also looks to be the same, though obviously that’s up to you to confirm.’

  Dr Ghoshal’s’ hawk-like gaze moved from Marilyn to survey the bruises around Jodie Trigg’s throat. ‘Strangulation.’

  Marilyn nodded. ‘The similarities are all very compelling, but circumstantial,’ he said. ‘I need to find a link between the two little girls’ murders that wasn’t in the papers, so that I can eliminate a copycat.’

  Another cynical smile. ‘Did any details fail to reach the papers?’

  Marilyn rolled his eyes in response. He didn’t mention that the colour of the doll’s eyes had matched the colour of each child’s eyes – brown for Zoe, green for Jodie. It wasn’t relevant to the autopsy and he wanted Dr Ghoshal to believe that he was Marilyn’s only hope of unequivocally linking the two girls’ killer, a motivational nod to Dr Ghoshal’s professional arrogance if nothing else. Also, he didn’t know how leaky Dr Ghoshal’s ship was, whether either mortician had a loose tongue. He didn’t want his only trump card leaked to the press.

  ‘Let’s begin,’ Dr Ghoshal said.

  Positioning himself over the little girl’s body, he raised his scalpel. The sight of the child’s soft skin puckering under the scalpel’s blade before it bit, the sound of flesh and the muscle layer beneath being sliced, the smell of the freshly opened body hit Marilyn in successive waves, making his insides constrict. He didn’t flatter himself that he had the right to feel the horror of this little girl’s murder any more than anyone else in the room, but he suddenly knew, for his own self-preservation, for his sanity, that he just couldn’t stick this one out.

  ‘Give me a minute, Dr Ghoshal.’

  For the first time in twenty years he walked out of an autopsy with no intention of returning.

  27

  On Marine Drive, one street back from the foreshore, Jessie found a weathered, white-painted bed and breakfast sign, the word ‘Vacant’ swinging below it. Though she couldn’t see the sea, she could still smell it, the scent of salt carried on the wind, so hyper clean that it even made the country air around her Surrey Hills cottage seem clogged. The white-painted house, with its sea-green woodwork, looked as if it belonged on a Cornish clifftop.

  The woman who opened the front door was late sixties, coiffed hair dyed a strawberry blonde, a thick layer of tan foundation that had caked into the crow’s feet around her eyes, a dusting of blue eyeshadow and pearl pink lipstick. She was of the generation and type who wouldn’t be seen outside their own bedroom without having ‘done’ their hair and ‘put on their face’.

  She smiled. ‘Good evening, dear.’

  ‘Do you have a room available?’

  ‘For one night?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jessie lifted her shoulders as the woman’s gaze moved to her handbag. ‘I travel light.’

  ‘I’ve got a lovely room overlooking the beach, a double, if that’s OK.’

  ‘That’s great, thank you.’

  ‘I’m Una Subramaniam,’ the woman said, opening the door to reveal a cool, white-painted hallway, wood-framed seascape photographs pulling Jessie’s gaze along it to a sitting room with a stu
nning view, through a wall of glass, to the beach and sea beyond. She led Jessie upstairs, past more framed seascapes, a sign made of driftwood that read, The sand may brush off, but the memories will last forever, an old tin notice proclaiming Ladies on the beach must wear bloomers. She walked sideways like a crab, stopping every few stairs to fill Jessie in on the story behind one or other of the photographs.

  ‘My husband used to volunteer for the lifeboats,’ she whispered conspiratorially, stopping beside the photograph of a group of men standing by the open doors of a lifeboat shed, the red bow of the boat inside extending from the shadows. She jabbed her index finger at the floor. ‘Now he sits and expects to be waited on.’

  Dazzling orange light cut into Jessie’s eyes as Una Subramaniam opened the door to a white and breezy double bedroom, its far wall a huge window overlooking the beach and the evening sun reflecting off the sea. She dropped her handbag on the bed and went to the window. She could see the spot where she had found Carolynn earlier, fancied she could almost see her own footprints strung out along the beach, the indents in the sand made by her perfect heart of shells that were now stowed in her handbag.

  ‘It’s wonderful, thank you.’

  ‘You’re very lucky, lovey. Last weekend you wouldn’t have got space anywhere down here last minute, but holiday season’s over now for most kids. It’s a shame. I like to look out of the window and see kiddies playing on the sand. That’s what the beach is for, isn’t it? For kids to enjoy.’

  Jessie nodded, unwilling to engage in conversation beyond exchanging mild pleasantries. She wondered if Una Subramaniam had heard about Jodie Trigg. She would have done, surely? She probably hadn’t mentioned the murder, because she hoped her guest hadn’t.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Subniam?’

  ‘Subramaniam. The husband.’ She jabbed her index finger at the floor again. ‘Greek, years back, of course. I don’t think he’s ever been there. Will someone be joining you later, lovey, or are you down here on your own?’