by Jessica Moor
* * *
• • •
‘So.’ Whitworth laced his fingers in front of him on the table, looking across at Jenny in a way he liked to think was part Bond and part bank manager. ‘What did you make of Katie?’
Jenny shrugged.
‘Articulate,’ Whitworth mumbled, making a squiggle in his notebook.
This woman wasn’t like all the others in this place. She knew how to play the game, and he needed to make sure he won.
‘Jenny . . .’ He folded his arms on top of his paunch, in the manner he knew would instantly mark him as a middle-ager, non-threatening. He presumed that Jenny knew something of the body language of men.
‘We need a bit of help in this case. You could be really important to helping us solve it.’
That’s one of the ways you could sometimes get people like Jenny on side.
Make them feel like they matter.
Still she didn’t speak.
‘Seen anything funny going on around here? Anything at all?’
Jenny shrugged. In a way, Whitworth wondered if there was any point in pushing it. A woman like Jenny was an uncalibrated instrument – she’d probably never learned that there was a difference between safety and danger. Whitworth wanted to shock her awake. He wanted to see her leap, like throwing a bucket of water over a cat. Maybe he needed to go nuclear, ask point-blank.
‘Jenny, did you see anything on the night Katie died?’
She said nothing. She turned those statue eyes on to him, but it was an automatic movement, no yielding in it.
He went for the jugular. No need to worry too much about the truth. ‘We know you did, Jenny. And if you lie to us, you’ll make things worse for yourself.’
Jenny remained statue-like, the threat seeming to glance off her.
Worse than what?
‘You’re a smart girl, Jenny, I can tell,’ Whitworth said. ‘Smart as a whip.’
Her lip curled very slightly.
Whitworth knew women like Jenny. They had a kind of cunning that they wrapped around them like a heavy winter coat, but when that layer was taken away they were as gullible as children.
‘You’re smart enough to see that we’re having some difficulty with this case. And you know just as well as I do that you can help us.’
Silence.
‘I can protect you, Jenny. I promise.’
She didn’t believe him. Neither did he.
So he said it again. He screwed up his eyes so that the frame of the woman in front of him blurred and forced himself to pretend he was talking to someone he loved.
‘I can protect you, love.’
Then Jenny did something extraordinarily ugly. Her blank face seemed to divide itself as she furrowed her brow and screwed shut her eyes. It was as if she was thinking, and the sensation was painful to her.
‘I . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Say . . .’ Her hand trailed through the air. Maybe to lead to somewhere. ‘Say something was off. Say you saw a guy, and you got a feeling like you were being kicked, right?’
‘Right.’
‘I know that feeling. Really good at recognizing it. Used to get it all the time.’ The crooked slash of a smile. ‘Girls protect each other from those kind of blokes. Used to do it all the time. They did a big tough act, but they’re nothing, really. They’re just blokes. Got scared pretty quick when a few of us girls stuck together.’
‘Okay, Jenny.’
‘Like, once . . .’ She got a far-off look on her face. Her eyes became even more unfocused. ‘Once I was on the street with my friend and I saw this car slow down and I just got the feeling, you know? And I wasn’t going anywhere near it, but my friend went up to him. She had a habit, you see. Bad habit.’
She sucked in her cheeks, shaking her head. Apparently, the irony didn’t occur to her.
‘She didn’t care. And I said, no babe, no, don’t go with him, you won’t be coming back. And she didn’t listen to me, and she didn’t come back. You get what I’m saying?’
‘I think I do, Jenny.’ Whitworth leaned forward. Enough to show that he was interested but not so much that he risked scaring her off.
‘He did it. Dunno if he killed her or she killed herself after he was finished with her. She turned up dead. Doesn’t matter what happened.’
‘It matters to the law, Jenny,’ Whitworth said.
She shrugged. ‘Like I said, doesn’t matter.’
‘What are you trying to tell me, Jenny?’ Whitworth stopped the impatience from creeping into his voice. Finally, he was getting somewhere.
‘There was a man.’
‘Well, Jenny, there are a lot of men about.’
‘I mean . . . there was something wrong. I know there was something wrong. With how he was acting.’
‘Did you see him?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then, what exactly are you trying to . . .’
But it went no further. Brookes walked in, holding out his mobile phone as if it were a piece of vermin.
Jenny went very still at the interruption.
‘There’s a reporter from the Echo on the line.’ Brookes held out the phone to Whitworth. ‘She wants to talk to the person in charge of the investigation on Katie Straw.’
Whitworth winced.
The Widringham Echo was everything he loathed about small-scale local press. Staffed by a mix of bored old part-timers and young reporters bloodthirsty for a journalistic career; they were a mercenary bunch. Their job was to alchemize excitement and intrigue from Widringham’s base metal.
Half out of irritation at the interruption and half in dread at the thought of returning the call, Whitworth made a swatting motion with his hand.
‘Tell her I’ll call her back.’
Brookes shrugged as if to say, Suit yourself, and retreated back through the doorway of the tiny room.
‘Sorry about that, Jenny,’ Whitworth said automatically.
Jenny mirrored the shrug Brookes had modelled moments before, but something about her face had changed, or at least deepened. That stony quality, that refusal to yield.
It could be withdrawal, Whitworth supposed. But a feeling deep in the pit of his stomach, a feeling he didn’t yet dare give his full mind to, was glowing with victory.
Got her.
‘So, Jenny . . .’ he continued. ‘You were saying . . .’
He did his best not to appear too much like a hound on the scent of blood, but something in Jenny’s features shifted – almost imperceptibly, but he saw it. He could tell Jenny had the whore’s eye to detect his secret desire.
‘I want to talk to Val,’ she said, in a quiet rush.
Fuck.
Clearly, the momentary distraction had given her the chance to gather her wits together.
Using all his willpower to remain nonchalant, Whitworth tried again. ‘Oh, come on, Jenny, there’s no need to . . .’
‘I want Val in here with me,’ Jenny said, louder this time. ‘Look, I’ve had time to think. I’ve thought it all out. I’m a victim. I’m not a criminal. Val said so. I want to talk to Val.’
‘Jenny,’ he tried one more time, ‘there’s nothing to . . .’
‘Let me talk to Val!’
Jenny was standing up now, and in the accentuated length of her painfully thin body Whitworth could see clearly the walking shadow from Amir’s CCTV footage.
Tall. Slender. Sexless. Drained of colour. A witness who’d almost succeeded in making herself invisible.
Got you.
Though Jenny’s face was still blank and collapsed, her voice was rising into a curdled panic. ‘I’m not talking to you any more!’
Cursing inwardly, Whitworth stood up and placed a hand on Jenny’s arm.
‘Look, love,’ he said softly, forcing h
imself to see his own Jennifer in this Jenny’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I can see I’ve frightened you.’
She didn’t look at him. Her ossified face was lowered to the ground.
She said once again, this time controlled, ‘Let me talk to Val.’
Whitworth sighed. He released Jenny’s arm and let his hand drop to his side.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Jenny didn’t sit back down as he left the room, but stood waiting, tension calligraphed into the lines of her body.
* * *
• • •
Whitworth closed the key-work room door behind him, leaned back on it and sighed. He’d fucked up there, he knew.
‘Give her a minute to cool down. But don’t let her go anywhere,’ he muttered to Brookes, who was sitting at the desk which, he knew, had once been Katie’s. Crossing the room, he held out his hand. ‘Let’s see about this reporter, then.’
Brookes handed him the phone, and Whitworth took a few breaths to steady himself. He loathed dealing with the Echo. He’d once had a few friends on staff, but they’d been picked off by the impact of reduced circulation numbers.
The Echo was now more or less a charity, propped up by a few of Widringham’s wealthier and more righteous inhabitants. The stories consisted of petty-scale grievances – a ‘spate’ of uncleaned-up dog shits; the ‘menace’ of hooliganism (the local youth getting hold of a few cans of lager and making nuisances of themselves in the park). The anaemic content was always accompanied by a photograph of a squarish, reddened plaintiff pouting and pointing at whatever sign, turd or planning notice was offending them.
It was what those kind of publications needed to do to survive, of course, give fodder to the net-curtain twitchers.
And, Whitworth had to admit, the story of Katie Straw was irresistible. An unresolved suicide was almost as good as a murder.
‘Right, then. So what was it that this reporter wanted to know?’
Brookes looked uncomfortable. ‘Details of the case. Kept asking why we hadn’t declared it a murder yet. She’s a shit-stirrer, anyone could see that.’
Whitworth pinched the bridge of his nose and sat down in the chair opposite him.
‘I’d better gird my loins, then,’ he said.
‘Makes me sick.’ Brookes scowled at the papers in front of him. ‘The way the press jumps on this kind of stuff to sell a few papers. Pretty young girl like that . . .’ He gestured at the photograph of Katie Straw that lay on the desk in front of them. ‘Bet they’d love it if she’d been murdered. Not just local press either. National press. Those bloody true-crime podcasts.’
‘Can’t blame them for trying to make a living,’ Whitworth said wryly.
‘Can’t you? I think it’s gross. You saw it all the time in London. National press finds out that some pretty young girl’s been murdered, and that’s a huge story. I know it sounds awful, saying that. But that’s the way it is. Before you know it, you’ve got hacks swarming all over you with no sense of right and wrong, just desperate for whatever they can find that will sell a paper. Just because people want to read a story. It’s exploitative.’
Whitworth stared at the waiting mobile screen. It turned his stomach, too, the way the world loved to sink its claws into the idea of a murdered girl.
And what would be the point in calling this journalist, after all? They still hadn’t cleared up the question of Katie’s real name. They still didn’t exactly know who she was . . . When there was a blank, some journalist would find a way to fill it in, and they wouldn’t be concerning themselves with the truth.
‘By the way, sir, once you’re done on the phone, DI Khan called. And Val wants to speak to you again, I think.’
‘God save me from these people,’ Whitworth half growled. Since when was he dancing to Val Redwood’s tune? ‘I suppose she wants us to look into . . . well . . . all men.’
‘Thing is,’ Brookes replied, ‘she’s not wrong. Women don’t kill.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Okay, so there’s the odd telly thing about a woman who bashes a guy’s head in, I know. But it’s true. Women don’t kill. Men kill.’
‘You think women are better than men, then? You’re one of Val Redwood’s lot? Feminist.’
‘Sure. Call me a feminist if you want.’ Brookes shrugged. ‘I don’t care. I’m just telling you the numbers, and numbers don’t lie. Women don’t kill.’
Whitworth was starting to feel he had had enough of this conversation. He changed the subject.
‘Anyway, I reckon we might have a lead with that one in there. I reckon it was her who followed Katie Straw to Amir’s.’
Brookes didn’t seem to mind the abrupt swerve in their conversation. Whitworth figured he’d successfully pulled rank. Brookes leaned forward sharply, but his tone was calm. ‘A lead, eh?’ he said. ‘That’s good.’
Trying to keep his cool, clearly. But the ambition was showing again.
‘’Tis good,’ Whitworth admitted, even though it didn’t feel much like good at the moment. ‘It’s very good. Problem is, she won’t talk to me.’
Brookes’s eyebrows raised a fraction. ‘She won’t talk?’
‘You know what these hookers are like,’ Whitworth said, standing up again. ‘Reckon I came on too strong. Freaked her out a bit. Now she won’t talk to me without Duchess Val.’
‘Oh.’ Brookes gave a little grimace. ‘Well, Her Ladyship’s somewhere around. Maybe outside.’
Whitworth waited for him to offer to go and fetch her then rolled his eyes. ‘All right, lad. I suppose I’d better fetch her. Keep an eye on her.’ He jabbed his eyes towards the key-work room. ‘Will you?’
Brookes retreated behind a file. ‘Yup.’
Whitworth went to open the door of the main office, and as he began to step out Brookes called, ‘Oh, sir?’
‘Yes?’
‘What about this reporter?’
Whitworth paused for a moment then said, ‘Leave it for now.’
She’ll just have to hang on, he thought as he headed down the cramped corridor. We’ll have an answer soon, one way or the other. Then she won’t have to guess what kind of story she’s writing.
26.
Then
They’re walking down the street. She doesn’t remember exactly where it is they’re going, but she’s sure Jamie must have told her. She simply forgot.
She looks down at her forearm, where he has laid his hand. He gives her a little pinch between his thumb and forefinger, pressing against the point where her pulse thuds. She’s sure that it quickens under his touch.
‘Be careful about getting too skinny,’ he says. ‘I don’t want you looking like that.’
He jerks his head at a tall woman walking across the road. She doesn’t look unhealthy, just like a member of a different species. Half woman, half birch tree.
‘That’s disgusting,’ he says.
‘I’m never going to look like that,’ Katie says. She doesn’t have the architecture of the creature across the road. Bones like javelins.
‘You’re getting too thin,’ he says.
He holds her arm up. ‘Look.’
Perhaps it’s true. Her mother told her a few days ago that if someone had to guess, they’d probably think it was Katie who was the cancer patient. Then she’d let out a barking laugh.
‘I was fat before, though,’ Katie says.
He doesn’t disagree. He just shrugs.
‘I’m just giving you my opinion,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to take it.’
* * *
• • •
They’re out for dinner.
They still do that sometimes, although not as often as they used to. Jamie has a steak, Katie a salad. The waiter puts their plates down without asking who’s having what.
‘Eat,’ Jamie says.
‘I’ve eaten loads.’
Katie gestures at the expanse of empty plate. Before, it had held frills of lettuce. A little lemon juice squeezed over for flavour. Enough for the mechanics of eating.
She loves feeling so light, so insubstantial.
Jamie looks at her very closely. He breaks the eye contact to flag down a waitress and orders a side of chips.
When they arrive he pushes them towards her.
‘All for you. Eat up.’
She knows that the chips are the end of everything. The end of controlling the shores of her self.
He grips her arm. It will bruise tomorrow, she can tell.
‘Eat.’
In silence, one chip at a time, the food disappears into the black hole inside her. They’re over-salted. The flavour is neither good nor bad, just too much.
Jamie is smiling. He orders her another portion.
‘More. Go on. Eat.’
The lightness is gone. Katie feels her stomach spilling over the edge of her jeans like so much yeasted dough, vast and white and stretched like strands of gluten.
‘I don’t want any more,’ Katie says. ‘I’m full.’
Jamie picks up a chip between his thumb and forefinger. Tiny particles of salt and paprika seem magnified against his fingertips. With the other hand he takes her jaw, very gently, and presses on the place where it hinges with his thumb and forefinger, as if he’s giving a cat a worming pill.
Her mouth opens. Perhaps by mechanics, perhaps surprise. He places the chip on her tongue then softly closes her mouth again.
‘Are you going to eat the rest, or am I going to have to feed it to you myself?’
His voice is cool and flat.
Katie chews. Swallows.
‘I’ll eat,’ she says.
She eats one more chip, then another.
And then another and another and another.
At some point she stops glancing at Jamie to see if his eyes are pushing her to eat more. She takes over the task.
Surely this was what she had wanted all along, really.
It’s three portions of chips, in the end. She eats them in perfect silence.
He watches her, stacking the ramekins as she empties them. Then he grins at the waitress.