by Kate Medina
49
The back of Jessie’s neck prickled as the first of Jodie’s two Instagram videos began to play. From the angle of the video, which took in the doorway, the end of Jodie’s bed and the whole of the second bed, it was clear that the little girl had propped the iPad on the windowsill. The film must have been recorded in the winter, because she was wearing jeans and a thick red jumper.
‘They were in a mess,’ she said, bouncing down on to the spare bed and wrapping her arms around the pile of soft toys in its middle. ‘So I’m rearranging them, tucking them under the covers so that they’ll be warm and safe.’ She mocked shivered. ‘Because it-is-freeeeezing in here.’ One of her upper incisors protruded at a forty-five-degree angle. She’d need braces … would have needed braces, Jessie corrected herself. Watching the video, it was almost impossible to believe that the little girl who was hugging and kissing each cuddly toy before she slipped them under the covers, spinning an orange tabby cat around to face the camera, holding its paw and waving to the viewer, was now a chilled eviscerated mannequin in Dr Ghoshal’s morgue. Almost impossible and impossibly heartbreaking.
‘It’s important that the little ones get looked after,’ she said. ‘That’s why I put them in the middle.’ Jumping up from the bed, she pirouetted on one leg and grinned at the camera. ‘So that the big ones can look after them. Like Mum does for me.’ Another grin, this one lopsided, lacking the conviction of the first. ‘’Cept it’s kind of the other way around. Well, both ways around, I suppose. She looks after me and I look after her, because it’s just the two of us.’
She pirouetted across the tiny room, looming large as she reached to switch off the video.
The second video was shot in the summer: Jodie and Debs Trigg walking on the beach, probably filmed with an iPhone that Jodie was holding on a selfie stick. Her other hand was clasping one of her mother’s and she was walking slightly in front of Debs, leading her, instructing her to be careful not to stand on the worm casts – because you’ll squish the worms underneath – guiding her around the collected puddles of seawater. After a minute or so, Debs reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.
‘Not here, Mum, not on the beach. You can’t smoke when the air is so clean and lovely.’
Jodie took the cigarettes from her mum’s hand, pushed them back into her pocket and started walking again, dragging Debs behind her, holding the selfie stick jerkily out in front, chatting, making jokes, her voice too high now, forced jollity, a tone that Jessie recognized from her own childhood, trying to break the tension in her parents’ marriage by clowning. She felt an intense twinge of sadness for the little girl. Debs looked puffy-eyed and tired, her dark hair limp and greasy, her skin wan and pasty. Jessie knew that if Marilyn resorted to putting her on an appeal, she wouldn’t make good TV. Unlike her daughter, she wasn’t photogenic. Jodie must have got her good looks from the father she had never known.
The video continued to play, but Jessie’s mind had moved to wonder who Jodie had been walking on the beach with two days ago. No selfie stick video of that walk to save them all the pressure and pain of an investigation. From the crime scene photographs, the only bruises on her body had been the strangulation marks around her neck. If she had been dragged along the beach against her will, she would have had bruising to her arms or torso. The rain had washed the footsteps around the little girl’s body to formless indents, but still Tony Burrows had found a trail that he thought could be the footprints of an adult and child walking side by side towards the site of her murder.
So Jodie had most probably walked voluntarily with her killer along the beach to meet her death. Perhaps, as they had strayed further from civilization, she had become concerned. Perhaps she had stopped and asked where they were going, why they needed to walk so far. Or perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she had been entirely comfortable in her killer’s company, at ease and unworried. Or perhaps, Jessie thought, her gaze fixing on the frozen image of Jodie on the beach with her mother, the video finished now, her killer had been someone she’d felt she needed to look after. Perhaps she had walked, as she walked with her mother, holding her killer’s hand, playing the child carer.
Jessie liked Jodie Trigg. She wished that she hadn’t looked at the crime scene photos, that she could just hold an image of the living girl from the videos in her mind instead. Impossible now: the images of death would forever eclipse the images of life. It had been the same with her little brother, Jamie. That final static image she had of him hanging by his neck from the curtain rail in his bedroom dominating the seven years of moving images she had from his life.
Pressing the off switch on the iPad, Jessie stood. She smoothed her hand over the crumples in the duvet, erasing the imprint of her seated self, wanting to leave the little girl’s room exactly as she had found it. But as she cast a last look around Jodie’s bedroom, her gaze fell on the little kitten tucked in the middle of the bed – protected – and something stirred in her memory.
The kitten, a cat. The cat. That spoldgy black, tan and cream cat. Something niggled – what?
Switching Jodie’s iPad back on, she found Instagram again, that photograph of Jodie’s drawing. But it wasn’t the cat in the drawing that Jessie focused on. It was the tiles in the background. Black-and-white tiles that reminded her of a butcher’s shop. And instead of the cat, surrounded by that black-and-white checkerboard, an image of Marilyn’s suede Chelsea boot wedged firmly over a threshold rose in her mind.
I give you permission to go fuck yourself, DI Simmons.
50
Past
Paulsgrove, Portsmouth
Little girl, far away in a world of your own, in a world built of dreams that are yours and yours alone.
The girl stood very still and watched the seagull as it balanced on her bedroom windowsill and snatched at the torn segments of bread she had left out for it. She had spent countless hours over the years watching the seagulls swooping past her window, soaring out over the sea in the distance, silvery clouds billowing behind the fishing boats as they chugged back into the harbour with their catch.
She had promised herself many times that, one day, like those seagulls, she would escape. Live right by the sea in a proper house, have money. Money and a good life.
The seagull on her windowsill had webbed feet, like her feet. But the seagull was free to go where it wanted and she was trapped in this shitty flat with only her mother and the television, that smug blonde girl in the advert, for company, and the view from her bedroom window, a knife sliver of cobalt sea in the distance between the grey stone tower blocks.
When she was little, she had loved the blonde girl in the advert, had wanted to be her, wear that white broderie anglaise dress, run in that field of wild flowers. She had loved her mother too back then. But now that she was older and wiser, she hated them both. Hated the smug blonde bitch for having what she didn’t and despised the weakness in her mother that had stranded them both here, that made her put her next hit above her daughter’s welfare.
She had never known her father. Her mother told her that he had been a sailor and that the relationship hadn’t lasted, that he’d left before she was born. But she didn’t believe that. She was twelve now and she believed none of that shit any more. Her father was one of the men who her mother fucked for drug money. At night, she lay in bed and listened to her mother’s headboard slamming against the dividing wall, the grunts of the men, her mother sucking and wheezing while they fucked her, as if she was punctured.
The girl had known from a very early age that she was alone, that she could only ever rely on herself.
In the cramped, dirty kitchen, she peeled another slice from the white loaf and returned to her bedroom. The seagull was still perched on the windowsill, but as she approached, ever so slowly, the bread held out in front of her, he shied away, stretching out his wings and taking flight.
As she watched him circle on the wind and head out to sea, env
y twisted her bitter heart even more out of shape. She wanted to be as free as that seagull. She wanted to be that seagull. She wanted to steal his power and his liberty.
51
The doorbell’s ring, muted through the huge, carved oak front door, sounded like a bee buzzing under a towel. The house was modern; cubist, it would probably be called if it were a painting, blocks of whitewashed concrete embedded with huge rectangular plate-glass windows. Workman and Cara had given up hope of finding a ‘live one’ inside and were turning away, when the door was opened by a middle-aged man wearing baggy jeans rolled up to mid-calf, and a grey kite-surfing logo T-shirt. His clothes said ‘ageing beach bum’, but his salt-and-pepper buzz-cut, the enquiring focus in his grey eyes and the Lambo said banker or successful entrepreneur. Which was it, or a combination of all three? They would probably never find out. Workman extended her hand.
‘Detective Sergeant Sarah Workman and Detective Constable Darren Cara from Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes.’
‘Anthony Moore. How can I help you?’
‘You may have heard that a young girl was found dead on the beach on Thursday afternoon, around the corner, on the peninsula,’ Workman said. ‘We believe that she was murdered sometime between four and five p.m. We’re looking for witnesses.’
Moore nodded. ‘Thursday? Yes, I heard about the little girl and yes, I was here. Come on in.’
The room they stepped into was spectacular, a double height open-plan space painted a soft, dove grey, a wall of glass overlooking the garden, the beach and Solent beyond. Titanic-sized white sofas were arranged around a driftwood coffee table this end of the room, a glass dining table seating twelve at the far end. It was a masterpiece of seaside minimalist chic. Moore noticed Cara looking at the telescope lined up in the middle of the picture window.
‘So my kids can watch me kite-surfing when they come to stay. It’s inspirational for them, seeing their old dad getting out there doing stuff.’
Cara nodded, thinking that he was sure Moore’s kids’ attention would be rapt by the sight of their father blasting up and down two hundred metres out to sea. Not.
‘I’m divorced. Kids live with their mum in Belgravia. Good for them to come down here and experience real life occasionally.’
Real life. Cara’s parents had divorced when he was six. Real life for him when he went to stay with his father had been a trip to William Hill. He turned from the window and the view, pushing a lid down on his envy. Though he didn’t earn much, he loved his job and he knew that his lot could be worse, much worse.
‘As my colleague mentioned, a nine-year-old girl, Jodie Trigg, was murdered on the beach on Thursday afternoon,’ Cara said to Moore. ‘We’re looking for witnesses, anyone who could have seen her before she was killed, walking on the beach perhaps, either alone or in company, or seen anyone else on the beach around that time.’
‘I was out kite-surfing that afternoon,’ Moore said. ‘It was windy, raining, no one else out on the water. I love it when it’s like that. I get too much of people in the office.’
‘Did you see anyone on the beach, sir?’
‘Two people. A woman and a child, a girl.’
‘Together?’
‘Yes, walking together.’
A ‘live one’ finally. Cara pulled a photograph of Jodie Trigg from his suit jacket pocket and held it up. ‘Was this the girl?’
‘Do you know what speed you can reach kite-surfing on a windy day?’
Cara shook his head, swallowing the facetious comment that was sitting right in his voice box. ‘No, sir.’
‘Fifty, sixty kilometres an hour. And you’re a hundred, two hundred metres out to sea. No way I could tell if it was her.’
‘So what did you see, sir?’
‘Blonde.’
‘The child?’
‘The woman. Blonde hair, shoulder-length or longer. Long enough to swish.’ He smiled. ‘Could be an advert right?’
As far as Cara could remember, it was already an advert. ‘Long enough to swish?’
‘To stream out.’ Moore flapped his hands around his head. ‘Behind her in the wind.’
Cara made a note. ‘And the child?’ he asked, looking back up.
‘Probably not blonde.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I didn’t notice her hair. I noticed the woman’s hair because it stood out against their clothes.’
‘What were they wearing?’
‘Dark. Grey, navy blue, black, those kinds of colours, both of them.’
Jodie Trigg’s school uniform was a navy-blue trouser suit.
‘Trousers? Skirts?’ Workman cut in.
Moore shrugged. ‘Too much detail.’ He paused. ‘Only the woman’s hair was flapping though, so maybe they were both wearing trousers.’
‘Who was closest to you?’ Workman asked.
‘The woman.’
‘What time did you see them?’
‘I went out just after three fifteen and I was out for an hour or so. I saw them about halfway through my session, give or take.’
‘So around three forty-five?’
‘I don’t wear a watch out there, so it’s a rough estimate.’
‘How did they seem?’ Workman asked.
Moore raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘What do you mean by “seem”?’
‘Did the girl seem as if she was being coerced? Forced?’
‘No. As I said, I was two hundred metres offshore and going like the clappers, but nothing stood out to me. If she’d been being dragged or been screaming, I would have noticed that and I would have contacted you guys after I heard about the dead girl. I remember thinking that they were mother and daughter, out for a walk.’
Workman nodded. ‘Which direction were they walking in?’
‘Towards the mouth of the harbour, the peninsula.’
‘And where did you first see them?’
‘Walking along the beach outside my house. That’s why I noticed them. I was looking at my house from the water and I saw them walking past it. Then I saw them a few more times, while I was steaming back and forth, before they disappeared around the corner.’
‘On to the peninsula?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see anyone else?’
‘No, just them. It was a shitty afternoon. It was just me and them out there. No one else, not that I saw, anyway.’
52
Trying to suppress the look of smug satisfaction that had taken possession of his face the moment Workman had called to tell him that a credible witness had seen a girl walking along West Wittering beach on Thursday afternoon with a blonde woman, the smugness intensifying when Jessie called about the splodgy cat and the black-and-white tiles, Marilyn held up the hastily obtained search warrant. He felt as if he had been shown a chink of light in an otherwise pitch-black tunnel – not before time. And he was going to sprint for it like a lunatic, even if sport wasn’t his strong point.
Taking the search warrant from Marilyn, Roger Reynolds scanned it briefly. Screwing it up, he dropped it at Marilyn’s feet and drew back, pulling the front door wide open. Bending at the waist, he swept his arm in a broad arc, a mockingly regal gesture.
‘Welcome to my humble abode, Detective Inspector Simmons. We had nothing to hide two years ago and we have nothing to hide now.’
‘We?’ Marilyn hitched an eyebrow. He couldn’t help himself. ‘Where is your wife, Mr Reynolds? Still running?’
Without answering, Reynolds turned his back and disappeared into the kitchen. Marilyn heard the vacuum suck of a fridge door opening and then an equally familiar sound as Reynolds pulled the ring on a can of beer. A Carling Black Label in his hand, Reynolds crossed the hallway to the sitting room without glancing at Marilyn, Jessie, Tony Burrows and his CSI team who were trooping up the front path, all clad in forensic overalls and overshoes. Slumping down on to the sofa, he turned on the television.
‘Please stay where you are and don’t touch anything, Mr Re
ynolds,’ Marilyn said, raising his voice to be heard over the football commentary.
Marilyn’s Z3, a marked police car and the van of the forensic investigation team, parked nose to tail along the sea wall outside, had already drawn gawkers. Seeing the swelling crowd, Jessie felt intensely sad for the Reynolds. Those rubberneckers were the first tear that would make ripped shreds of their new life. Ushering the last of Burrows’ team into the house, she closed the front door, shutting out their inquisitive gazes. The action felt akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Reynolds was sitting on a beige corduroy sofa facing the television and the window beyond. He didn’t seem to have noticed the people lining the sea wall, but Jessie knew that he must have done, was feigning indifference, just as he was now feigning indifference to the sound of feet creaking on boards above his head, of drawers being pulled out and rummaged through, cupboards being opened and searched, the creak of what Jessie assumed was the loft ladder being lowered, Burrows’ team locust-like in their speed and thoroughness.
‘Can I join you?’ Jessie asked.
Reynolds glanced over. ‘My permission is irrelevant, given the circumstances, isn’t it?’ His gaze flicked back to the football match.
Jessie sat down on to the sofa perpendicular to his, taking the end closest to him and crossing her legs, right over left, mirroring his sitting position. Settling back against the cushions, she tried to adopt a posture as relaxed as his. Playacting – both of them. The only thing she didn’t try to mirror was the disdainful curve of his lip.
‘Do you know why we’re here, Mr Reynolds?’
Without shifting his gaze from the match, he rolled his eyes and muttered, ‘Because you have a search warrant?’
‘Did you read it?’
‘I read the Nazi diktat at the top outlining the fact that I no longer have the right to say who I let into my home.’
‘The police are looking for evidence that Jodie Trigg was here.’