Two Little Girls

by Kate Medina

‘My name is Dr Jessie Flynn and I’m a psychologist working with the police. I’ve been counselling your wife.’

  ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper.’

  ‘I’ve worked with the police on a few other cases. It’s another aspect of my job and one that ideally doesn’t overlap with my freelance clinical psychology work. I give my assurance that nothing your wife told me in our sessions will be shared with the police. I take patient confidentiality very seriously.’

  Reynolds’ lip curled. ‘Back when our daughter died, we trusted. Everyone we knew let us down. Forgive me if I don’t believe a word you’re saying, Dr Flynn.’

  Jessie continued to look him straight in the eye, though it was an effort. Fury and mistrust pulsed from him.

  ‘I understand why you wouldn’t believe me, but my word is good.’

  She sensed Marilyn shift beside her.

  ‘Can we come in, Mr Reynolds?’ he asked.

  ‘Why do you want to come in, DI Simmons?’

  ‘To continue our chat in comfort and privacy.’

  ‘We’re done chatting.’

  Reynolds moved to shut the door. It bounced off the toe of Marilyn’s boot.

  ‘I can arrest you,’ Marilyn said, extending his arm to hold the door open.

  ‘What the hell for?’ Reynolds hissed.

  ‘Living under a false name, non-payment of taxes. I’m sure I can think of something that will stick.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, you really are scum.’

  ‘I’m just trying to do my job, and I could do with your cooperation.’

  ‘And you think this is the way to achieve it, by coming here and throwing out accusations? After all you’ve done, all the harm you caused before?’

  ‘I’m concerned that your wife may have gone. Run, for want of a better word.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without me.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Positive.’ Reynolds said it with the tone of a man who had been brought up to believe in himself.

  ‘I’d like to look around,’ Marilyn said. ‘I don’t have a search warrant, but if you give me your permission, I don’t need one.’

  Reynolds nodded. His mouth twisted. ‘I give you permission to go fuck yourself, DI Simmons.’

  Slapping Marilyn’s arm away, he shoved the door closed, bouncing it hard against Marilyn’s toe until he withdrew his foot. The force of the slam rattled the door in its frame.

  39

  Anxiety was knotted in Carolynn’s muscles, had hitched her shoulders up around her ears, though the tension was beginning to drain with the miles she put between herself and East Wittering. Between herself and Detective Inspector Simmons. Herself and Roger.

  It had taken her an age to escape from the house early this morning, sliding the suitcase silently from under the bed as Roger slept, holding her breath as she inched her cupboard doors open, as if her own silence would mute the creak of their hinges, snatching just the basics, a couple of bras and a handful of knickers – they wouldn’t match but she didn’t care about that now, she could buy new when she was settled – a few T-shirts, a jumper and a pair of jeans, reaching up from where she was squatting on the floor, below Roger’s eyeline if he happened, half-asleep, to open his eyes, to pull a couple of practical day-dresses from their hangers. As she had reached the bedroom door, the suitcase in one hand, the tent wedged uncomfortably under her arm, he had muttered and stirred. She’d frozen, every one of her muscles screaming with the agony of maintaining such stillness, her chest caving in from denied breath. If he opened his eyes now, he would see her framed in the doorway, a glowing statue lit by the moonlight cutting in through the landing window. But his eyes had remained closed and after a few more mumbles, he’d settled, still and silent again. Downstairs, she had grabbed her handbag from the hall table and unhooked her car keys from the key rack. She didn’t need her house keys any more, had no intention of ever coming back to this ghastly little prison.

  Outside, the front garden and drive had been pitch-black, the walls of the house seeming to suck every lumen of light from the moon. A strong breeze had been cutting in from the sea, raising goosebumps on her bare arms and legs. She moved silently down the garden to the drive, to her car, but as she was lifting the tailgate to stow the suitcase and tent, a sudden movement had caught her eye. She had stopped, her hand hovering, her breath caught in her throat.

  Roger? No – it couldn’t be. He was asleep upstairs; she would have heard the front door opening.

  That detective inspector, hiding out, waiting for her? No, she was being silly, fanciful, her nerves playing tricks.

  Relaxing on an out breath, she stowed the suitcase and tent, shut the tailgate and moved around to the driver’s door. But as she’d slid the key into the lock, something had brushed against her bare leg. Gasping, she spun around, her pulse rate rocketing.

  Oh God. The cat. Zoe’s fucking cat.

  She breathed out, furious at herself for how terrified she had been in that split second. Furious at herself. But more furious at him.

  God, how she hated that fucking cat.

  Opening the driver’s door, she stood back, giving him space, knowing that he wouldn’t come close if she was standing right there. But he was curious, always had been, and she knew that he couldn’t resist an open door. It was only a matter of waiting and she was patient. Patience had served her well in the past and it would serve her well now. A moment later, a splodgy streak had shot past her legs, into the car. The cat had started to miaow and paw at the window as she backed out of the drive, but she had swiped at him hard with the flat of her hand, knocking him into the footwell, where he’d crouched trembling, wide-eyed and frightened. Good. Because she hated him, even more than he hated her.

  But he had been Zoe’s pet, her best friend, and so she would take care of him. Just as she had taken care of the seagulls that had landed on her bedroom windowsill when she was a girl.

  40

  Jessie and Marilyn walked back to his car in silence.

  ‘Passengers get in the other side,’ he said, pulling the driver’s door open.

  ‘You handled that badly, Marilyn.’

  He turned to face her. ‘I don’t need your advice.’

  ‘You told me an hour ago, at breakfast, that you did need my advice.’

  ‘On the case. I need your advice on the case.’

  ‘I’m giving you my advice on the case. There was no need to go in all guns blazing like that. It was counterproductive.’

  Marilyn sighed heavily. ‘I had them both up to here.’ He laid his right hand on top of his head. ‘Actually, no … to here,’ he corrected, stretching his arm straight above his head, ‘when I was trying to find their daughter’s murderer.’

  ‘They were grieving.’

  Marilyn shook his head. ‘I found her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Their daughter’s murderer.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Marilyn.’

  Ignoring her admonishment, he reached into his glove compartment, pulled out a map and unfurled it on the soft-top roof.

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ Jessie asked, stepping forward, her arms still folded across her chest, sending Marilyn a body language message as negative as her feelings.

  ‘Here.’ He placed his finger on a stretch of road that ran parallel to the beach. ‘We’re here, right.’

  She traced her gaze from the centre of East Wittering, along Stocks Lane, right into Bracklesham Lane and right again into West Bracklesham Drive. She ignored the sound of Marilyn drumming his fingers impatiently on the roof next to the map.

  ‘Can’t you just take my word for it?’

  ‘No.’ A moment later. ‘Yes, we’re here … there … where you said.’

  ‘Right, so Roger and Carolynn are hiding out here, where we are now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He moved his finger, a centimetre to the right. ‘Jodie Trigg lives— lived here, five hundred metres away.’r />
  ‘Half a kilometre away, on a caravan park with how many hundreds of homes on it?’

  ‘She could walk past this house every day.’

  Jessie took a moment. ‘Her school is in East Wittering. She wouldn’t need to walk past Carolynn and Roger’s house to get to school. In fact, she’d go in the opposite direction, down the beach, most probably, as that’s the most direct route.’

  ‘She had hours alone every day after school to wander. I believe she would have passed this house regularly, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that she saw them, met them, knew them.’

  Jessie stepped back from the map. ‘You’re right, Marilyn: it is not beyond the realms of possibility that she knew them. She could have come out of the caravan park and wandered past this house many times. But you need evidence, Marilyn, not subjectivity and conjecture. Evidence. That’s what a good case is built on.’

  ‘Thanks for the 101, Dr Flynn.’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  Folding the map, he tossed it into the glove compartment. ‘Hop into the car and let’s chat on the way back to the office. Perhaps we can swing by the Co-op and get a bottle of gin to share. I could do with some alcoholic anaesthetization.’

  ‘I’m not coming with you.’

  He threw up his hands. ‘Oh, come on, Jessie, I wasn’t that bad with Reynolds.’

  ‘And I’m not that juvenile, Marilyn. I want to walk around the caravan park to get a sense of where Jodie lived. I’d also like to look in her room, at her things, if I may. I have a vague sense of Zoe from my sessions with Carolynn, though most of it was probably lies, but I have no sense whatsoever of Jodie.’

  Marilyn nodded. ‘I’ll radio the PC guarding the Triggs’ caravan and let him know that you’re coming. I’m sure he could do with some company to break the monotony. I have some other things I’d like you to look at too. I was going to give them to you when we got back to the office, but it would be useful for you to have them now.’ Opening the boot, he produced two brown paper files and an iPad and held them out to her. ‘One file is Zoe’s, the key information from the ten-metre-high stack we amassed. The other file and the iPad are Jodie’s. Take a look at her Instagram account. The password is Odie, like the dog in Garfield.’

  ‘Do you take these everywhere with you?’

  ‘Those and all my mental whips for self-flagellation. I was going to leave the files and iPad with you at the B & B if you refused to help.’

  ‘Guilt me into it?’

  ‘I was pretty sure the crime scene photos would succeed if my rhetoric failed.’

  With a roll of her eyes, Jessie took the files and iPad from him. ‘Is Jodie’s mother at the caravan?’

  ‘No, she’s gone to stay with her sister in Guildford. I’ll drop you.’

  ‘I’ll walk.’

  ‘To get a sense?’

  ‘We’ll make a psychologist of you yet, Dr Simmons.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t buy you a big enough pancake for that.’

  41

  The sign said ‘Breakfast Van’. Nothing solid had passed Carolynn’s lips since breakfast yesterday and she was famished. Easing her silver Fiesta from the slow lane of the A3 into the lay-by, she parked behind the van. Roger had chosen the Fiesta for her, as it was one of the most common cars on the road, in the most common colour. Though it had been purchased precisely to blend, she had felt far from invisible since leaving the slipway an hour ago, must have checked her rear-view mirror a hundred times expecting to be dazzled by flashing blue lights, seeing only singletons like her, couples and families staring blankly through their windscreens as they ploughed through the morning traffic towards London.

  An eighteen-wheeler lorry, curtains drawn around its cab, was parked beyond the breakfast van and a small silver hatchback had pulled into the lay-by behind Carolynn, a woman, she noticed, her heartbeat slowing with relief. She watched the blonde occupant flip down the sun visor and apply mascara to her lashes, blusher to her cheeks, getting ready for a coffee with friends or to see a boyfriend, perhaps? Carolynn felt a twinge of sadness. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d had cause to apply make-up. The trial, of course. Another twinge, sharper, which she quickly suppressed. She had worn make-up, nothing too showy, completing her look with a plain navy work suit, white blouse and sensible low-heeled navy court shoes, as her barrister had instructed.

  Juries hate glamorous female defendants. Handsome men typically receive lighter sentences than ugly men, but the opposite is true for attractive women. Juries like to make attractive women pay. We’re aiming for neat, reliable, dowdy.

  She had also applied make-up when she’d been to see Jessie Flynn, she remembered now. Not for the first session: she’d thought her psychologist would be a frump, but for the second. She hadn’t consciously acknowledged why she’d done it, but as she was leaving the house, she’d turned back, gone upstairs and pulled her make-up bag from the bottom shelf of the bathroom cupboard, dust motes flying as she unzipped it, smudged some concealer over the black rings under her eyes, coated her lashes with mascara and added a touch of pink sorbet lipstick. Nothing too glamorous – still playing the role. Neat, reliable, dowdy. But then she didn’t want to look too dowdy for Jessie. She wanted to look more like her old self, a bird of a feather. Dragging her eyes from her rear-view mirror, from the woman, from the unsettling glimpse of normality, Carolynn climbed out of her car, locking the door, leaving Zoe’s cat curled up on the passenger seat.

  The young man behind the breakfast van’s counter had oily black hair and custard-headed acne spots peppered his jaw. The thought of him preparing food made Carolynn want to spin on her heel, but she was here now and it would have been too rude, too obvious, to turn away.

  ‘A bacon sandwich, please,’ she said.

  The man tossed the red-top newspaper he’d been reading on to the counter next to the grill. Carolynn’s eyes widened.

  The photograph on the front page was her. Not the beach or Jodie Trigg any more, but her, from that bloody ‘godparents and close friends only’ christening. She reached out, an involuntary movement, to spin the paper around so that she could read the headline above the photograph, her hand freezing in mid-air as her brain engaged. The man’s hooded gaze flicked from her face to her photograph and back.

  Carolynn licked her lips, which were suddenly bone-dry. Look him in the eye. Hold his stare.

  42

  Buena Vista was a cream-coloured static caravan, jammed amongst acres of others that varied in shade from white to over-stewed tea brown. Each caravan was anchored on one side by a tarmac parking area, on the other by a narrow garden, which some owners had demarcated with flower borders, low bamboo screening, or ankle-high picket fences. A group of children were skateboarding in the road, tackling jumps made from bricks and wooden planks, a row of smaller kids cheerleading from the grass verge. Jessie could hear the voices of other children, carrying from different areas of the caravan park and from the beach, which must be about fifty metres away to the south. It was hard to remain orientated, given the densely packed sameness surrounding her. Though she’d never met Debs Trigg, Jessie was relieved that she was staying with her sister in Guildford. There were too many children here, too much joy.

  The uniformed police constable guarding the caravan looked hot and bored. Stepping over the low white plastic picket fence, she joined him in the front garden and held out her hand.

  ‘I’m Dr Jessie Flynn. DI Simmons radioed to say I’d be coming.’

  The PC – Miller, Jessie read from his nametag – obviously new to the job and just a kid, nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll let you in.’

  Unlocking the front door, he held it open and followed her into the cramped kitchen.

  ‘I’d like to be alone, please,’ she said, easing the message with a smile.

  Miller hesitated, clearly unwilling to risk screwing up his first major assignment.

  ‘Radio Maril— Detective Inspector Simmons, if you’re unsure. F
orensics have already been through the place, and I’ll be careful not to disturb anything.’

  ‘Fine, OK, ma’am.’ He backed down the steps and, with a last nervous smile, pulled the door closed.

  Quiet. The children’s voices and the grind of their skateboard wheels on tarmac muted now, as if she was listening through ear defenders. Moving into the middle of the kitchen, she turned a slow three-sixty, taking in dark wooden kitchen cupboards set with a small oven, a double hob and sink ahead of her. To her right, a corridor led to what looked like the master bedroom, a crumpled white duvet sagging half-off the bed, a pile of clothes and wedge-heeled gold sandals discarded on the floor visible through the open door, two other doors opening off the corridor, a bathroom and Jodie’s bedroom, she supposed. A built-in beige sofa wrapped around the far end of the caravan to her left, net curtains covering a window above it, smothering the sunlight in their dusty grey folds.

  The air in the caravan was hot and stuffy and Jessie could smell the lingering scent of cigarettes. So Debs Trigg was a smoker: not unusual and irrelevant to the case. To have a vice was part of being human and, at their extreme, human vices were what kept her in a job. Her own vice was alcohol, Sauvignon Blanc, to be precise. Sauvignon and her dirty secret – OCD.

  She opened one of the kitchen cupboards to reveal a jumble of cereal boxes, their tops roughly torn open, jars of jam and spreads leaking their sticky contents, tins of fruit and vegetables, an open bag of spilling fusilli. Though the electric suit fizzed as she surveyed the cupboard, she resisted the urge to clean, restack, order. She had to keep a lid on her OCD while she was here, irrespective of the triggers, and focus her mind on what was really important. Stepping back, she shut the doors – out of sight, out of mind – a policy that failed more often than it worked, but this time, with so much else of importance on her mind, the heat from the suit subsided.

  She checked the other kitchen cupboards, equally as crammed as the first; the sitting room, more stuff; Debs Trigg’s bedroom, the same. The whole caravan evidenced the disorder of a woman with too many other pulls on her time. Finding nothing of particular relevance to Jodie or her murder, Jessie was stepping back out of Debs’ bedroom when she heard the telephone ring. A click and the hum of an answering machine from somewhere at the far end of the caravan.