The Damselfly

by SJI Holliday

  He’s about to say more as they round the bend into Elm Road, but he stops mid-flow. They both gasp.

  The street is filled with people. All the houses on the street are in darkness, except there’s a yellow glow coming from a house halfway up. Crisp’s house. The one that was decorated with eggs this afternoon, and now something much worse. The door is standing open and there are people littering the front gardens all the way up. Others are hanging back on the other side of the road.

  ‘What the . . .’

  Davie stops the car. Flicks on the siren. Just a single ‘whoop’. Enough to make them all take notice. They start running before Davie can get out of the car. ‘Lou . . .’ he says. There is a slight waver in his voice. He jumps out of the car.

  ‘Already on it.’ Louise tries to sound more confident than she feels. A heavy feeling of dread settles in her stomach. She wants to call after him, tell him to be careful, but he’s already out of ear shot. Straight in there. No thought for himself. She swallows. Presses the radio on the console: ‘All units, this is Twenty-Three Echo-Two-Delta. DC Jennings and DS Gray. We are at Elm Road in Banktoun, signs of a . . .’ She pauses. What is it? ‘There’s a rowdy mob. Fifty-plus. Possible vigilante attack.’

  ‘How many victims, DC Jennings?’

  ‘Just one. I think. I don’t know yet. It’s a local teacher – Lucas Crisp. We were en route to re-question him as a witness in the Katie Taylor case. Possible new information. DS Gray is approaching the premises. I’m going in now.’

  She gets out of the car and follows Davie. Most of the bodies that’d been loitering near the teacher’s house have run off already. A few are still hovering around on the opposite side of the street. Davie has disappeared inside the house.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Louise addresses a cluster of young women standing outside the house opposite, smoking. She has her baton in her hand.

  ‘Dirty bastard killed that Katie, didn’t he? Surprised you didn’t lock him up earlier . . .’

  ‘Too late now, eh?’ another one says.

  Louise scans the small crowd. At the far end, she thinks she spots Neil Price. He’s standing back from the others, not involved but watching. So many of them are watching. Jesus Christ.

  By the time she gets to the house, the area is clear. There was no point in trying to catch any of them, stop them from running. There’s only her and Davie. Besides, no one’s going to tell them anything. Mob rule. Mob decisions. Fuck.

  She walks up the path, noticing that the grass on either side has been churned up into mud. Even half-frozen, the amount of people who’ve been on it has made an impact. What have they done? she thinks. She’s scared as she walks inside the house. Scared of what she’s going to see. Scared of the realisation of what people are capable of. She’s quite sure that not all of the people in this mob are bad . . . but there are some who will push things further than others. Some who will make amoral decisions. And many who will follow behind, like sheep. Sheep might look a bit stupid, but a herd of them moving together can cause a lot of damage.

  ‘Davie?’ she calls. She feels stupid to be scared, but the house is silent, and the people left on the street have fallen silent too. She strains her ears, hoping that she might hear the sound of a siren in the distance. Not yet.

  ‘In here,’ he says.

  She follows the sound of his voice. Smells smoke. He’s in the kitchen. He drops a saucepan on the floor, black plumes of smoke curl up towards the ceiling from where he has put out a fire. Drawers have been yanked out. The place has been wrecked.

  At first, it looks like they’ve interrupted someone doing DIY. There are pieces of broken wood on the floor, spatters of what looks like paint across the walls. But it’s not paint. And the crumpled heap on the floor isn’t a pile of dirty overalls. It’s a man. Lucas Crisp, presumably. Although she’d be hard pushed to identify him by looking at the mess of his face.

  Louise hears a whooshing in her ears, feels her heart pumping hard in her chest. She hears Davie’s breathing, coming out fast. She watches, entranced, as he kneels down next to the broken man and whispers softly into his ear. ‘We’re here now, son. You’re safe.’

  Please be alive, Louise begs inside her head. Please don’t die. A horrible feeling of foreboding floods her veins. An eerie silence falls upon them, until all she can hear is the desperate sounds of their breathing. Hers. Davie’s . . . In the distance, the merciful sound of sirens.

  WEDNESDAY

  34

  Polly

  Sergeant Zucarro is waiting for Polly outside her office. Jon is there too, and the expressions on their faces aren’t good.

  ‘Morning,’ Polly says, tentatively. She misses out the ‘good’ because it clearly isn’t. ‘Am I guessing that there have been some developments? Have you caught Katie’s killer?’ She wants the answer to be yes, but if it is yes, she is terrified of what the policewoman might tell her. She had tried calling Lucas Crisp before she left the school yesterday, but he hadn’t answered. She hopes she wasn’t wrong to trust him.

  The policewoman and the headmaster follow her into the office.

  ‘I’m guessing you haven’t heard, then?’ Karen Zucarro says. ‘It’s all over social media . . .’

  ‘I’m not really on social media,’ Polly says. ‘I email, of course, and I use Skype sometimes, but not a lot else. Not Facebook or anything like that. Not that many people I want to keep in touch with on there. I prefer my friends to exist in real life, you know?’

  Karen’s eyebrows disappear into her fringe. Probably thinks she’s one of those freaks that doesn’t know how to use a computer. One of those ‘old’ people who don’t like the internet in case it steals all their information or something. It’s far from the truth. One, she’s not exactly old. And two, she just doesn’t see the point. Don’t people use it to find their old school friends? That’s the last thing Polly wants to do.

  ‘Lucas Crisp has been attacked,’ the officer says.

  Polly sits down hard in her chair. ‘What? What do you mean attacked? Is he OK?’

  ‘He’s in ICU. In a coma. He was taken there last night. We’re still waiting for an update from the hospital, although I’ve already called them three times this morning. His parents are flying in. They’ve been travelling around Australia in a campervan for the last three months . . .’ She lets the sentence trail off.

  ‘There was a secret Facebook group set up on Monday called “Lucas Crisp is a paedo”. We weren’t aware of it until it was too late. Seems that a mob attacked him at home, last night. Officers went to question him earlier in the day, and there had been a bit of a disturbance then, but he insisted he was OK. And we didn’t know about the group at that point—’

  ‘Who set it up? The Facebook group, I mean. You must be able to tell that?’

  ‘Someone used a made-up ID. Set up a fake account. Called themselves “Luke Crust”. Our IT team are on it. They think they know who it is.’

  Polly’s stomach lurches, her boiled egg threatening to make an unwelcome reappearance. ‘Who? Who would do something like this?’

  ‘We can’t disclose anything right now, Ms McAllister,’ Karen says, ‘but we just wanted to make sure you were aware. For when you talk to the children today. As before, one of us will be with you at all times. I think DS Jennings will be along later, but for now it’ll be me and Constable Evans again, like yesterday. Are you OK? I know this must be a shock.’

  Another shock, when she hadn’t had time to process the last one. All part of the same sorry mess. ‘I’ll be fine,’ Polly says. But when she looks down at her hands, she sees that they’re shaking. Poor Lucas, she thinks. If only we’d kept him here. Discussed it with the police earlier. Maybe he shouldn’t have been at home on his own. Not if there were people baying for his blood. What triggered it, though, she thinks? She remembers what Lucas said about Brooke, Katie’s sister. About how he thought she was jealous of the attention that Katie was getting from him. But this? Is she really tha
t bad? It seems so. She leans back in her seat and a thought hits her. Outside the office on Monday, when Lucas had been telling her things. Someone had been outside. Someone had overheard. Could it have been Brooke? No one had seen her for the rest of the day. Polly knew that she and Brett had turned up at home at lunchtime. Could she have come into the school afterwards? But why? Why wasn’t she at home, comforting her mother? Grieving for her sister.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Jon says. ‘Just let me know if you need anything.’

  ‘I’ll get us a tea,’ Karen says. ‘Or would you prefer coffee?’

  ‘I shouldn’t really drink coffee,’ Polly says. Her hand goes automatically to her belly, and she pulls it away again quickly, as if burned. She can’t let Jon know about this. Not now. ‘Goes for my stomach,’ she continues, although it doesn’t appear that the police officer is taking much notice, and Jon has already left the room. She’s paranoid, she knows that. But it’s not something she was expecting to have to deal with.

  Polly is about to ask Karen if she can tell her any more about the case when there’s a knock on the door. It opens, slowly, before Polly can tell whoever it is to come in.

  ‘Hello, Ms McAllister.’ She is pale-faced and the red of her hair seems brighter against the leached colour. Her voice is small and thin, and she seems to have shrunk in on herself since Polly last saw her.

  ‘Diane. Come in.’ Polly gestures to the empty chair in front of her desk. She hears the policewoman shuffle behind her. ‘I’ve got Sergeant Zucarro with me. Karen. I hope that’s OK with you, Diane.’

  Diane shrugs. ‘I don’t mind. I don’t really have anything to tell you.’ She looks down at her lap, starts picking at the skin on her thumb.

  Polly glances over her shoulder at Karen and widens her eyes in a gesture that she hopes conveys disbelief.

  ‘You and Katie were close, were you not?’ Karen pulls her chair closer to the side of Polly’s desk. ‘Can you tell us when you last saw her?’ Karen lays her notepad on the desk and clicks her pen. Polly can see her from the corner of her eye. She’s smiling at the girl, trying to engage.

  Diane looks up. ‘Yeah. Well . . .’ She lets the sentence trail off.

  ‘Well . . .?’ Polly leans forwards, trying to shrink the space between them.

  Diane looks up at the ceiling, then back to her lap. She’s blinking, but she can’t stop the tears from escaping. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘We were good friends. I just . . . I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe she’s gone. It’s . . . it doesn’t make sense. I saw her on Saturday. She’d just bought a new board for her insects, you know? They’re in the biology lab in a box. Mr Crisp helped her to preserve them. Oh God. Mr Crisp! Is he OK? I heard—’

  ‘Mr Crisp is in hospital, but we’re all keeping our fingers crossed for a good outcome,’ Polly says. ‘So she was keeping the insects in the biology lab?’

  ‘Yes. She was keeping her new insects there until she got a new board and frame. Like a box frame thing. The last one she had was cheap and the glass fell out, so she was making this one with a new sort of frame, and—’ She stops talking, as if a sudden realisation has hit her. ‘She won’t be able to finish it now, will she?’

  Polly leans across the table and places a hand on top of the girl’s. ‘Diane, did she say anything to you recently about anyone? Someone she had an argument with, anything like that?’

  Diane shakes her head. ‘No. Nothing. Really.’ She blinks again. Looks up at the ceiling. ‘Do you mind if we talk about this later? I just . . . I feel a bit sick.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Karen says. ‘You get back to class for now, Diane. Thanks for coming in.’

  Diane nods. She doesn’t say any more. Just shuffles out of the room as quietly as she came in.

  Polly says to Karen, ‘Give me a minute.’ There’s something not right about this. Diane is upset, obviously. But she seems scared too. Looking away. Cutting their conversation short. Could she know something? Polly waits a moment for the corridor to be clear, then she steps out of the office and walks quickly in the direction of the classrooms. Diane is nowhere in sight. Polly continues along the corridor, glancing through the glass panes on the doors as she passes each room. There is little noise coming from anywhere. The classes are subdued. She wants to check that Diane has gone back to her class, wants to make sure she’s OK. She rounds the corner at the far end of the building and sees the familiar red hair disappearing into one of the rooms. Not a classroom, though. It’s one of the IT labs. Polly walks faster, keeping light on her feet, trying not to draw any attention to herself. She holds back when she gets to the door, tilts her head just enough to peer through the glass at an angle where she can see in but whoever is inside won’t be able to see out, unless they were to come right up to the door. There are only two people in there. Diane and Lois Reibach. They’re standing at one of the benches, an open laptop in front of them. Diane is frantically tapping at the keyboard, and Lois is saying something – leaning in close – not quite a whisper but clearly something that she doesn’t want to be overheard. They’re handling it in different ways: Diane trying to hold back tears, angrily bashing at the computer; Lois is calmer, but her eyes are giving her away.

  What are they doing on that computer? She thinks back to what Karen told her about the secret Facebook group. No. Not these girls. Surely not?

  There’s something going on here, and Polly has no idea what it is. But both of the girls in that room look utterly terrified. She pulls back from the glass, hoping that they haven’t seen her. What now? Should she go in? Find out what they’re up to? She takes a deep breath. No. Leave them to it. For now, anyway. She makes a mental note to mention this to the police. The stuff on social media is probably nothing to do with the girls, but she should report it. Just in case . . . She’ll have to talk to Diane again soon. And Lois.

  But she has someone else to speak to first.

  35

  Neil

  Neil shifts in the chair. He doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t want this woman probing him, making him tell her things he doesn’t want to tell. What’s the point now? Katie is dead. She’s dead, she’s gone and she’s never coming back. Lucas Crisp is in hospital. Whether he killed Katie or not is irrelevant right now, at least until the police have another suspect. And seriously, who else could it have been? He hadn’t been sure at the time, but now it made some sort of sense. It had to be him. The policewoman has tried to engage him in conversation, but he doesn’t feel like replying. He slumps down in his chair.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. I got held up,’ Polly McAllister says, hurrying into the room and shutting the door behind her just a bit too hard. ‘I’m not going to ask you how you’re feeling, Neil, because I imagine your answer is going to be “shit”, am I right?’ Polly sits down, blows a bit of hair away from her face. She’s a bit pink-cheeked, as if she’s just run along the corridor. She smiles at him and he thinks she’s probably not a bad sort, he just can’t really be arsed. Half of him wants to tell her everything he knows. The other half wants to say nothing.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is that it? Pretty short session, then. Do you want to send the next person in after you, please?’ She turns away and bends down to take something from a low drawer in her filing cabinet.

  Neil is confused. ‘Um . . . don’t you want to ask me anything else?’

  She sits up again. Her face has gone bright red now, from the blood rushing to her head as she was bent half upside-down. ‘Well, I’m not going to drag it out of you. I expect the police will want to talk to you formally, ask if you knew about the plans to attack Mr Crisp last night. Ask if you had any reason to want to kill your girlfriend . . .’

  ‘Hang on, what do you mean? Of course I didn’t kill her. I loved her! She was fucking amazing, and I wanted to move to London with her – away from this dump.’ He feels tears prick at the corner of his eyes and he blinks them away.

  ‘You seem angry, Neil. That’s normal, of course.
Forgive me – I didn’t know Katie at all. Why don’t you tell me a bit about her?’

  ‘What’s the point? It’s not going to bring her back.’

  ‘Well, of course not, but it might help you to process what’s going on right now. In your head, I mean.’

  Process it? How the hell is he supposed to do that? He needs to tell them about the thing that’s really bothering him right now. He’s disgusted with himself, but maybe telling someone about it will help him to push it out of his mind. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

  ‘You know why I’m so fucking angry, Miss? I’m sorry for swearing, but . . . Jesus. I’m such a dick. I really am. I was horrible to her the night before she died, and I never got time to tell her I was sorry. And . . . and not only that—’ He has to stop talking, feels like his breath is drying up in his throat. ‘Not only that, but I cheated on her. I fucking cheated on her.’ He stands up and the chair tips back, clattering onto the floor behind him.

  ‘Neil, please. Calm down . . . this is not helping.’

  He’s crying now, unable to keep the tears at bay any longer. ‘If I hadn’t been such a dick on Sunday, she wouldn’t have kicked me out. I’d have stayed the night there. I’d have been there until just before her mum came back. I could’ve protected her. Whoever it was who came round and . . . and . . . fucking snuffed her out. I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve saved her—’

  Polly has come round from the other side of the desk. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He wants to shrug it off, but really he wants her to touch him. He wants her to hold him. He wants Katie to hold him, but that’s never going to happen again, and it’s all his own stupid fault. He lets Polly put an arm around his shoulders, lets her guide him back into the chair. He pulls away from her, drops his head into his hands on the desk.