Witness

by Mandasue Heller

  ‘OK, sir, let’s calm down and get some details,’ the second officer said.

  Rob narrowed his eyes. He recognized the man as having been part of the crew who had arrested him for beating Suzie up, and he knew exactly how this would pan out if he didn’t simmer down. These jokers would slap the cuffs on him and chuck him in a cell – revenge for him only getting a suspended sentence after landing a tasty punch on their mate’s nose and booting the fuck out of the van when Suzie had falsely reported him for having a gun in the house.

  ‘It’s all cool, lads,’ he said, holding up his hands and backing out onto the pavement. ‘I only wanted to see my mum, but I’ll ring her instead. Sorry for inconveniencing you,’ he added, flashing an insincere smile as he pulled the gate shut.

  Turning without waiting to hear what the coppers might have to say, he hitched his rucksack over his shoulder and walked briskly down the road, cursing Reg under his breath as he went.

  Before he knew it, he was standing outside the block of flats where Angie lived, and he sighed as he gazed up at her living room window on the fourth floor. He hadn’t wanted to come here, and the thought of Angie slobbering over him in a desperate attempt to win back his heart – which had never been, and never would be, hers – sickened him. Suzie was the only woman he wanted, but she hadn’t tried to call him so she clearly hadn’t come to her senses yet. She would in time, he was sure. But, until that happened, he needed somewhere to kip. And as annoying as Angie was, she kept a good stock of decent booze in, so he figured there were worse places to wait it out. Plus, he could do with some dosh, and the careless bitch always left money lying around.

  32

  The screaming had stopped and the girl squeezed her eyes shut when she heard the rhythmic thud of the headboard banging against the wall in the next room. She knew exactly what that sound signified, because she had been woken by it many times since her stepdad had moved in. And, once, when she had crept out to use the toilet in the middle of the night, she had seen him and her mum doing naughties.

  After what felt like an eternity the noise stopped, and the girl shuddered when she heard a low, deep chuckle. Her bedroom door suddenly creaked open and she bit down on her hand to keep from crying out when light spilled in from the landing and she saw a huge pair of feet clad in green trainers with black writing on the side enter the room. They turned in a circle before approaching the bed, and she felt hot piss trickle out from between her thighs and soak into her nightie when the duvet that was hanging over the side was lifted and a pair of dark eyes peered straight at her . . .

  ‘Holly . . .? Holly, wake up, hon.’

  Holly’s eyes snapped open and she sucked in a sharp breath when she saw a hazy figure hovering over her.

  ‘It’s only me.’ Suzie placed a gentle hand on her shoulder when she lurched up in the bed. ‘You were crying out in your sleep. Bad dream?’

  ‘Mmm hmm.’ Holly shivered when she gazed around the dark room and saw the silhouettes of unfamiliar furniture. ‘Wh-where am I?’

  ‘My spare room,’ Suzie reminded her.

  ‘What time is it?’ Holly sank a little lower beneath the quilt to try and get warm.

  ‘Nearly twelve.’

  ‘At night?’ Holly was shocked. ‘Have I been sleeping all day?’

  ‘No, you had a couple of hours when I went over to see your mum, but then you came down and watched telly with me. I sent you back up at eight when you started falling asleep again. Don’t you remember?’

  Holly frowned and then nodded when it started to come back to her. ‘Yeah, I think so. Have you seen my mum yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Suzie stroked her hair. ‘But she knew you were staying the night, so I reckon she’s probably gone to visit a friend and clear her head.’

  That was what Suzie had told herself after going over to the flat that morning, but she didn’t believe it – and Holly clearly didn’t either, because she said, ‘She hasn’t got any friends; only people she works with.’

  ‘Well, maybe she decided to go back to work to take her mind off things,’ Suzie suggested, even though she already knew that hadn’t happened, because she’d rung the agency while Holly was sleeping and they hadn’t seen Josie. ‘Wherever she is, I’m sure she’ll be home tomorrow, so try not to worry about her.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ Holly whimpered. ‘I feel like something awful’s going to happen.’

  ‘You’re bound to feel like that after a nightmare,’ Suzie reasoned. ‘I’ve had them in the past, and it takes ages to shake the feeling off. Might help if you talk about it?’

  ‘It – it was really scary,’ Holly said, licking her dry lips. ‘I was sleeping and some men broke in and woke me up. I hid under the bed and heard them going past my room, then I heard a load of shouting and my mum screamed. Only it wasn’t my mum.’ She paused and looked up at Suzie with wide eyes. ‘Not this mum, anyway.’

  ‘It’ll be all that stuff about the woman in the paper playing on your mind,’ Suzie said. ‘I wouldn’t read too much into it.’

  ‘But I’ve had it before, when I was little,’ Holly said, her chin quivering as tears pricked her eyes. ‘My mum started giving me tablets to help me sleep, and I didn’t have any bad dreams for ages. But I had it again the other night, and this was the same one. I remember it.’

  ‘Dreams are made up of all the stuff we see, do and think about during the day,’ Suzie said. ‘It’s the mind’s way of putting things into perspective, that’s all.’

  Holly desperately wanted to believe that, but she knew she’d had the same dream before, and the realness of it terrified her. It was like she had actually been under that bed, and she could almost taste the dust in the back of her throat and feel the piss-wet material of her nightie between her legs.

  ‘How about I make some hot chocolate to help you get back to sleep?’ Suzie offered.

  Suzie was wearing nightclothes and, guessing that she must be tired and eager to get back to her own bed, Holly murmured, ‘Yes, please.’

  When Suzie had left the room, Holly sat up and switched the bedside lamp on before reaching for her phone. Bex had sent a couple of messages, but she must have been asleep when they came in because she hadn’t heard them. The first one was a long one, and Holly smiled when she read it.

  Babes, I’m worried about you, please call me. I missed you at school today, and I wanted to let you know it’s all cool with Leanne now. Gary Mottram’s girlfriend got suspended for attacking her, then Gary finished it and asked Leanne to go steady with him, so she’s not mad at us any more. She actually thanked me for telling you – can you believe that??!! She reckons he wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t let the secret out, so now we’re like her new besties. Cool, eh? Anyway, call me when you get this and let me know you’re all right xxx

  The second message was shorter, the tone more clipped.

  OK, so I’m guessing you don’t want to talk to me. That’s fine, but I think it’s a bit rude to ignore me when I was only trying to make sure you were all right. I know it was your mum who got attacked ’cos Ju’s mum’s friend who’s married to the copper told her it was. I hope she gets better soon. Take care x

  Feeling bad that she’d forgotten to ring Bex as she’d intended to after receiving her previous messages, Holly typed out a quick reply, even though she knew Bex would be sleeping and wouldn’t see it until morning.

  Sorry couldn’t get back to you earlier, it’s been a weird couple of days, she wrote. That’s great about Leanne, bet you’re buzzing! My mum’s home from hozzy, but we had a massive bust-up this morn and now she’s

  She paused and bit her lip, then deleted the last part, and wrote:

  My mum’s OK, thanks for asking. See you when I come back to school xxx

  PS miss you.

  Pressing Send before she could change her mind, she checked to see if she’d had any missed calls from her mum. She hadn’t, and that upset her. She probably wouldn’t have answered if her mum had called, but the
fact that she hadn’t bothered spoke volumes, and Holly swallowed the lump that was forming in her throat. All that stuff her mum had said about loving her and wanting to protect her – from God only knew what or who – was crap. She didn’t give a shit about anybody but herself, and Holly had never felt more alone in her entire life.

  Downstairs, waiting for the kettle to boil, Suzie sat at the table and scrolled through the article she’d been reading on her laptop when she had heard Holly crying out in her sleep.

  After coming home from Josie’s flat that morning to find Holly asleep, she had intended to spend some time in the basement, working on the website. But she’d been too preoccupied by everything that had happened with Josie and Rob to concentrate, and had found herself staring blankly at the screen, seeing not the photos that were actually on it, but a montage of images from earlier. The fury on Josie’s bruised face when she’d tried to force her way in . . . The anguish in Holly’s eyes as she had struggled to stand up for herself against the woman who had, until then, controlled every aspect of her life . . . The disappointment in Rob’s eyes when she had taken Holly’s side over his . . . Rob walking out . . . Josie’s empty underwear drawer . . .

  With all that going round in her head, along with the fear that she wouldn’t be able to hear the doorbell down there and might miss Josie or Rob, she had brought the laptop up to the kitchen, thinking that she might be able to work better there. Holly had come down shortly after, so she’d been forced to abandon her plans, and the day had been pretty much wasted watching films.

  Holly had started to fall asleep after dinner, so Suzie had told her to go back to bed. She had then come into the kitchen and turned her laptop back on, and she’d been sitting here ever since, chain-smoking and working her way through the wine Rob had left behind as she searched for Josie on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

  Frustratingly, none of the Josie Evanses that came up were the right one, and Suzie guessed that Holly’s mum must be one of those rare people who didn’t like social media. Suzie embraced it as a way of keeping up with the lives of friends from the past who she no longer saw in person, but she knew there were people out there who steered well clear of it, because Rob was one of them.

  ‘Why would anyone be stupid enough to put all their personal shit out there for the whole world to see?’ he’d asked her once when discussing what he classed as her ‘obsession’ with Facebook. ‘Don’t you think the government spies on us enough already without handing it to them on a fucking plate?’

  Suzie was a little more cautious than Rob gave her credit for and rarely posted anything, and she truly doubted the government would be interested in the photos of peoples’ dinners, babies and funny pet videos that clogged up her timeline. But, just as in real life, it seemed that men were far less interested in that stuff than women, and only a handful of her male friends and colleagues had online accounts, whereas all of her female friends did. That was why she had expected to find Josie on at least one of those sites, but the woman was a virtual ghost.

  Holly had said that her mum was secretive, but this level of secrecy seemed unusual to Suzie, and she wondered what the woman was hiding. Or was it, she mused, that Josie was trying to hide?

  The more Suzie thought about it, the more likely that latter theory seemed. Holly had told her that she and her mum were always moving around and never settled anywhere long enough for her to make any lasting friendships. To Suzie’s mind, that was the classic behaviour of someone who had escaped from a violent relationship and desperately didn’t want the ex to find them. And that made her wonder if Holly’s father had abandoned her mum before she was born, as she’d been told. Maybe he’d been violent and Josie had fled after Holly was born, and the nightmares Holly claimed to have suffered from a young age were actually memories of traumatic things that she’d seen or heard.

  That seemed like a pretty logical explanation to Suzie, but she wasn’t sure how it linked in with the murdered couple. And there clearly was a link, judging by Josie’s over-the-top reaction to Holly reading the article and questioning her about it. But what was it?

  A chill ran down Suzie’s spine when something occurred to her. Holly claimed she had never met her father and knew nothing about him, but what if he was the one who had shot that couple, and Josie had known about it and run away with Holly because she was terrified he would try to silence her?

  Most of the articles concentrated on the search for the missing child, but Suzie had delved a little deeper into the couple tonight and she had learned that the dead man, Devon Prince, had a criminal past involving drugs and gang-related activities. So maybe Holly’s father had been a rival dealer, and he had killed the pair because Devon Prince had ripped him off or threatened to bring him down. In which case he’d probably had an accomplice, which would explain why Josie had told Holly that ‘they’ were going to kill them.

  If Suzie was right, she understood why Josie had been so desperate to get Holly away from her. The woman had kept herself and Holly under the radar for years, moving from place to place and never allowing anyone to get close enough to discover their secret. And now Holly had brought Suzie into their lives, exposing them – in Josie’s mind – to danger.

  Holly’s instincts had told her there was a connection between herself and those people in the article, and she’d been right – but not in the way she’d thought. They weren’t related to her, the killer was!

  Sure that she had solved the mystery, Suzie wondered if she ought to tell Holly. She got why Josie wouldn’t have wanted her to know her father was a murderer, because no child needed to grow up with that knowledge. But now Holly was growing up and starting to rebel against Josie’s rules, it would surely be safer for them both if Holly knew why her mum had set those rules in place. Not only would it bring them closer, it might also put a stop to Holly’s nightmares if she understood what was causing them.

  But Josie was the only one who knew the absolute truth, and she was Holly’s mother, so if anyone was going to tell Holly, it had to be her. And Suzie decided that she would tell her that when – if – she came back.

  ‘You better had, Josie,’ she muttered under her breath as she stirred milk into the hot chocolate she’d promised Holly. ‘You better bloody had . . .’

  33

  The sound of glass clinking against glass jerked Josie out of the light doze she had fallen into, and she groaned when she lifted her stiff neck off the bag of clothes she’d been using as a pillow. Her head was pounding, and every muscle in her bruised, battered body was screaming for pain relief. The packet of paracetamol she’d picked up on her way out of the flat had barely touched the sides, and they had run out hours ago – although the bitter taste of the last three she’d dry-swallowed was still coating her tongue.

  At the sound of a low male voice and a woman’s soft laugh, she dragged herself up onto her knees and crawled out of the stinking bin cupboard she’d been hiding in all day. The dull light coming from the shabby porch of the semi-detached house attached to the cupboard seared her eyes, and she shielded them with her hand and saw two shadowy figures wrapped around each other in the hallway beyond. The door was open, so she hauled herself up to her feet and staggered towards it.

  ‘Holy fucking shit!’ Fiona Morgan squawked, almost jumping out of her skin when she turned to shut the door at the exact moment Josie stepped inside the porch.

  ‘What’s up?’ the man she’d been kissing moments earlier asked, his hard-on bulging in his jeans as he pushed past Fiona and raised one of the two wine bottles he was holding into the air.

  Cowering, scared that he was about to smash it over her head, Josie looked at Fiona, and croaked, ‘I need help, Fi.’

  ‘Josie?’ Fiona frowned, only then recognizing her. ‘Oh, my God, what’s happened to you?’

  ‘I – I got attacked,’ Josie said. ‘A man . . . a man jumped me in the alley.’

  ‘Bloody hell, was that you?’ Fiona asked, grabbing Josie’s arm and pulling her
inside the house before switching the hall light on and examining her face. ‘Christ, he’s made a right mess of you. Me and the girls were talking about it at work earlier, but we had no idea it was you. Should have clicked when you didn’t come to work, but we thought you were skiving ’cos you were pissed off about the extra shifts Sharon dropped on you.’

  Behind them, still holding the bottles, the man cleared his throat.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Bri,’ Fiona said. ‘This is one of my workmates, Josie. She got attacked.’

  ‘I heard,’ he replied, giving her a pointed look before jerking his head towards the stairs to remind her they were supposed to be on their way up to the bedroom.

  ‘Sorry, love, you go on up,’ Fiona said. ‘I’ll be with you when I’ve finished here.’

  ‘Don’t be long.’ He gave her a lusty smile. Then, nodding at Josie, he said, ‘Hope you get better soon,’ before heading upstairs.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Josie asked, hugging herself to stop the violent shivering. ‘I didn’t know you had a fella. You’ve never mentioned him.’

  ‘I don’t tell my business to people I work with,’ Fiona said coolly as she slipped her jacket off and looped it over the newel post. ‘Anyway, what you doing here?’ she asked, folding her arms. ‘Shouldn’t you be in hospital, or home in bed, or something?’

  ‘I – I needed to see you,’ Josie said.

  ‘Why?’ Fiona frowned again. Then, drawing her head back, she gave Josie a knowing look, and said, ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve come all this way to get booze? Fucking hell, girl. That should be the last thing on your mind at a time like this.’

  ‘It’s for the pain,’ Josie replied, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘And – and I could do with some of those tramadol I got off you when I twisted my ankle that time, if you’ve got any?’

  Fiona pursed her lips and stared down at her. Squirming under the scrutiny, sure that Fiona thought she was an alcoholic and was about to tell her to sling her hook, Josie put her hands out in a prayer-like gesture, and said, ‘Please, Fi, I’m begging you. I only need enough to get me through the night till I can get to the doctor. Please?’