The Girl in the Gallery

by Alice Castle

  He looked down at her little pale hand, the nails neat but free of the frippery of varnish, and thought how it summed her up – strong, capable, but also in need of protection. His other hand came down to settle over it, but too late, she’d taken hers away and was now fussing with her coffee spoon, eyes lowered, clearly feeling she’d said, or done, too much.

  ‘A second girl has already been drugged, after all. This isn’t an isolated thing. So, we have to go on.’

  York tried to suppress a smile at the effectiveness of his tactic. Luckily, his phone buzzed as a message came in, and he could legitimately bend over it and press a few buttons. Then he was sitting up straighter, too, and drinking down his coffee as fast as possible.

  ‘Speaking of Lulu Cox, that was the hospital. She’s just coming round. Come on, drink up.’

  Beth didn’t need a second urging. She was on her feet, and swigging the last of her cappuccino. If they were off to the hospital, who knew when she’d next get a decent cup?

  ***

  In some ways, it was a replay of Beth’s earlier scene with Simone Osborne. The room was as functional and cheerless, the view of the car park as uninspiring. The figure in the bed was pale and lying under a cheerless NHS standard-issue, blue blanket, which could have been the twin of Simone’s. It might even have been the very same coverlet, boiled to aseptic cleanliness in between usages.

  There was one important difference, though. The girl in this bed was propped up on pillows and, though her long rusty-red hair was lank and sweaty and her face pinched, there was colour in her cheeks. A stern-looking nurse bustled over and checked her pulse, then said, ‘Not too long with her now. Five minutes at most.’

  York and Beth approached the bed as the nurse pottered out of the room, setting the folder of medical notes on the window sill and then shutting the door emphatically. The mild kerfuffle seemed to disturb the girl, who moved her legs restlessly. Then her eyelids fluttered, and green eyes squinted at them, confused. The girl struggled to sit up and shade her eyes against the sun from the window, then winced at the stab of the cannula in the back of her hand, feeding into a drip which tethered her to her bed.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said, her voice croaky with disuse.

  Beth went over to the bedside table and poured some water from the plastic jug, handing it to the girl, who gulped it gratefully. Some ran down her chin, and Beth wiped it away with a corner of the coverlet, having cast around in vain for some tissues.

  ‘Lulu, I’m a police officer,’ said York, scooting a chair up to the bedside and leaning earnestly toward the girl. ‘Can you remember what happened to you? Anything you tell us will help us to find out who did this. And who gave the drugs to Simone, too.’

  ‘Simone?’ said Lulu. ‘How is she?’

  There was a pause. Beth looked at York, who shook his head silently, but Lulu was watching them carefully. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Where is she? What’s happened to Simone?’

  ‘Shh, shh, don’t distress yourself,’ said Beth quietly, stroking the arm which was free of tubing, while York glanced quickly over at the door. He didn’t need that officious nurse to walk back in and terminate the interview before they’d got anywhere.

  ‘Don’t worry about all that now,’ said York. ‘What matters is that you should tell us exactly what you remember, before you started feeling ill. Where were you? And what were you doing?’ He didn’t want to make it sound accusatory, but they needed some facts. And soon, if they were going to get anywhere. The trail was cooling with every hour that passed and, while he was philosophical about the prospect of never finding a culprit, he knew Beth would never forgive herself if they couldn’t wrap all this up neatly.

  ‘Anything you can tell us would be really helpful,’ Beth cooed gently at the girl, smiling reassuringly. She was fitting effortlessly into the good cop role – anything to get some information.

  Lulu Cox wrinkled her forehead with the effort of memory, her fingers pleating the covers. ‘It’s all a bit vague. I had my meeting at… well, my usual meeting… then I don’t know.’

  ‘Sorry, Lulu, but what was that meeting? Can you tell us?’ Beth leaned towards the girl earnestly.

  Lulu averted her eyes and, if York wasn’t mistaken, the colour in her cheeks mounted. Whatever it was, either shame or embarrassment – maybe both – was keeping her quiet.

  ‘Lulu, I shouldn’t have to remind you that this is an ongoing police investigation. There are very serious crimes that have been committed here, and you may be the only person who can help us at this stage. You have a duty to tell us everything that could help.’

  York didn’t want to sound too aggressive – the girl had only just woken up from a coma, for God’s sake – but on the other hand, if she didn’t get on with her story, then there could be another victim, and he didn’t want to be breaking bad news to any more families.

  Lulu swallowed, her throat clearly painful. Probably had her stomach pumped in an effort to stop the drugs mashing her organs, the way they’d eaten through Simone’s. He hated having to bully someone so vulnerable, and a girl who was of an age to need a responsible adult with her during questioning, at that – but needs must. Just when he thought he was going to have another go at her, and go in hard this time, she broke into speech.

  ‘It was at the Wellesley, OK? That’s where my meeting was. I go there every week for a session. They say I’m getting better and I think I’m fine without all this stuff, but my parents, well, they push me to keep going with it.’

  York saw Beth take a covert glance at the girl. Probably wondering what she was having all these meetings at the Wellesley for. Fair point. He was no judge of the heft of a normal teenager, but Lulu didn’t look anorexic to him. OK, she was slight, but surely within normal bounds; not the bags of bones he’d seen some girls reduced to on the pro-ana websites he’d checked out after talking to Maria Luyten. Then he saw Beth’s eye go to a swathe of bandages on the girl’s other wrist. He’d assumed they had something to do with the drip. But on the other hand…

  Lulu saw Beth and York’s glance and she hugged her arm in defensively, looking downwards. Looks like they’d found themselves a cutter. York sighed. If he’d been doubtful about the wisdom of talking to the girl on her own before, he was now doubly concerned. She was clearly mentally vulnerable as well as having been through the wringer physically. Just as he was about to call a halt, Beth spoke again, in the soft quiet voice that seemed to be doing so much to get the girl’s trust. Good for her, he thought, and relaxed back into his chair again.

  ‘Lulu, I’m a mum, and I know how worried your own parents must have been about you. They’re going to be so pleased that you’ve woken up. Believe me, it’s the best news they’ll have ever had.’ York noticed that her large grey eyes were bright with unshed tears. Must be imagining herself in their situation. Well, any parent would sympathise. It must be agony. ‘Can I just ask you, do you remember anything after the Wellesley?’

  ‘Well, not really. I sort of remember going to the café and thinking maybe I’d pop in on Simone while I was around here.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I suppose it is quite close…’ Beth said, then fell silent, an arrested expression on her face.

  ‘Well, duh,’ said Lulu, a ghost of her normal sarcastic teenage self flashing to the surface.

  ‘Really? They’re quite a way from each other, though, the Wellesley and this hospital, aren’t they?’ said York.

  ‘The Wellesley’s only across the car park from the main building, bit of a schlepp, but it’s all exercise,’ said Lulu defensively.

  Maybe, as well as the cutting, she was interested in burning off calories as well, York thought.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Beth, as though she was talking to herself. ‘We’ve parked in different car parks each time we’ve come, and they’re on different roads, but it’s all inter-connected. Granted, it’s about a ten or fifteen-minute walk.’

  She’d lived in Dulwich all her
life, and King’s was her nearest A & E, as well as the place where James had spent his mercifully brief illness, but she’d never actually been to the Wellesley before their interview with Maria Luyten. She’d just heard tell of it; the place kids got bundled off to. A germ of a thought was beginning to sprout. She remained silent, thinking, while York carried on.

  ‘So, did you visit Simone?’ He knew the answer would be in the negative. No-one had been allowed through the door, apart from her mother. But he wanted to keep Lulu talking.

  ‘Well, I was in the café, I got a drink, I was thinking about going over to see Simone, especially as one of the, erm, one of the doctors’ kids was hanging around, and I didn’t want to talk to him.’

  ‘He’s your age, is he?’ York said with a smile. They wouldn’t be the first youngsters to meet in inauspicious surroundings. But he was way off in his suspicions, if Lulu’s look of disgust was anything to go by.

  ‘No, just a boy. About the same age as my brother. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to kids… can’t remember what happened next… I sort of remember the lobby, or the car park, it was warm and I was tired.’

  There was a frown on the girl’s face and she was looking pale again. Even if the nurse hadn’t hurried in and officiously shoved him from the bedside, so that she could take Lulu’s temperature again and exclaim how exhausted she looked, York would have been wrapping up the interview anyway. There was only so much the child could take.

  Beth was unusually quiet as she gathered up her bag and gave the girl in the bed an absent pat on the arm and a smile. As they walked down the corridor, York’s shoes squeaking on the lino as usual, he turned to her. ‘What did you think of all that, then? We didn’t get much out of her, did we?’

  He was braced for her disappointment. What he wasn’t expecting was the maddeningly impish smile that peeped up at him from under Beth’s unruly fringe. ‘On the contrary. I think we may be close to a breakthrough.’

  York came to a halt. ‘This isn’t going to be the moment when you hare off on your own to do something stupid and incredibly dangerous, is it?’

  Beth looked up with every appearance of injured innocence. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I just need to go away and think about it all for a time. But I do think we’ve had such great long lists of suspects, all the waiters at the party, all the invitees as well, that we haven’t been able to see the wood for the trees. The thing about Dulwich is that it’s a small place, and small things matter. We should be thinking small.’

  York, staring down at the diminutive figure, muttered something indistinct but decidedly aggrieved under his breath, and stalked down the corridor as fast as he could. Knowing that Beth was having to break into a canter to keep up was a small consolation for the sudden worry that, once again, she was going to come up with a solution before he did.

  They were almost at his car, with Beth seriously pink in the face and even York a little out of breath, when his mobile shrilled.

  ‘What? Another one?’ he barked into the phone.

  Suddenly, resentment was flung aside and it was all business, rushing back to Dulwich with the siren screaming. Second time around in a speeding police car with the blues and twos going, Beth couldn’t help a thrill at the way other cars had to scurry to avoid them like courtiers making way for a monarch on the warpath. Best of all, she felt a lot less like throwing up. As soon as the first white picket fence came into view, though, York screeched over to the side of the road, reached over her to fling the passenger door open and said, ‘I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.’

  She’d been summarily dismissed. No sooner had she scrambled out than the car was off again at break-neck pace, threading through the traffic and into the distance. Damn. She couldn’t make out where he was going, but it was somewhere in the village. And it certainly looked serious. She’d never seen him quite so silent with concentration before. She checked her watch. Still quarter of an hour til pick-up time. She shrugged her shoulders, and started to walk. No point, as usual, in going back to Wyatt’s. She might as well go early to the Village Primary, get some brownie points with Ben for not keeping him waiting for a change.

  Beth wasn’t quite the first at the gates. There was already a fair sprinkling of mums waiting for kids from the first years of Primary, where dependency levels ran higher – amongst the mothers. She recognised one whom she’d chatted with before, and went over to say hello. The woman – a pretty, assisted blonde in her mid-thirties – was wearing the bright mismatched florals that gave away the fact that she had daughters, and did all her own clothes shopping, as well as theirs, in bulk online from the same scrummy store. Possibly after one too many glasses of Chardonnay.

  ‘Haven’t seen you for ages. How’ve you been?’ Beth asked politely.

  ‘Well, Jocasta’s just got a distinction in her Grade One violin, and Veronique only got a merit in ballet, but she started less than two months ago. So, we’re all good! And how’s… erm?’

  Beth was past marvelling at the thought that this woman had once had a job and a life of her own, and went straight to racking her brain to think of something Ben had done recently that she could ante up.

  ‘Um, I’m pretty sure he’s just moved to a new level in Angry Birds?’ she said tentatively, and caught sight of Belinda MacKenzie standing a couple of metres away, with her usual friends in tow. Belinda was beckoning her over and, for once, Beth was relieved to do her bidding. ‘’Scuse me,’ she said, gesturing in Belinda’s direction.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said the other mother, all but dropping a curtsey to the Queen Bee.

  ‘So, have you heard?’ said Belinda, with no preamble at all, the moment Beth reached the group. ‘No, you must have done, you know all the insider police info, don’t you, Beth? That handsome inspector and you are virtually inseparable, I hear.’

  Beth, immediately regretting her hasty decision to come over, tried to keep Belinda on track. ‘What’s the news, Belinda?’ she said crisply.

  Instantly, Belinda’s face lit up. ‘Well, you’ll probably have all the details, but I’ve just heard there’s been another, you know, at the College School.’

  ‘Another what?’ said Beth, feeling as usual that whatever game Belinda was playing, she didn’t have time. Or the rules. Or the inclination to participate, even if she’d had the other two prerequisites.

  ‘Another girl… who’s killed herself. Or tried to. Isn’t it awful?’ There was no disguising the relish with which Belinda imparted her juicy chunk of gossip. Her tone might be low and serious, but her eyes were shining with excitement.

  Beth was aghast. ‘No! Are you sure? How do you know?’

  ‘My au pair was sneaking off to meet one of her friends in the park. I wouldn’t mind but she scrimped a full hour off the cleaning today, and the packed lunches she made for the kids, well, she didn’t even peel the carrots before chopping them into sticks,’ Belinda said, gazing round at her coterie, who looked suitably scandalised at this slipshod behaviour. No child of Belinda’s should ever have to tangle with carrot skin, although since the carrots were organic presumably no harm would befall them even if they did. But you never knew. And it certainly wasn’t down to any au pair to play fast and loose with the poor darlings’ immune systems.

  ‘So, how did she know?’ said Beth, trying to get things back on track and away from the carrot skin débacle

  ‘She heard all the sirens, of course. It was a few doors down from us. The Jones-Creedy girl. She was carried out on a stretcher. Oxygen mask, paramedics. It was the full Holby City, she said. She loves that show. I never watch it, of course,’ Belinda tacked on, and the heads around the circle of mothers nodded reflexively. You could admit to watching One Born Every Minute under torture, as that was about babies and, by extension, the glory of motherhood. But a medical soap was out. Officially, Belinda and her friends watched nothing but challenging Scandinavian dramas on BBC4, and absolutely adored them. What they were glued to in the quiet afternoons was their own bu
siness.

  ‘Wait a minute. What time was this?’ said Beth.

  ‘Um, I think it was around 2.30, 2.45 – not long ago,’ said Belinda. Then she finally asked a question of her own. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh… just testing a theory, that’s all,’ said Beth, her brows pulled low under her fringe. The news about Sophia Jones-Creedy was dreadful. A third overdose. And this girl, everyone agreed, had been a string-puller, not a victim. This was no doubt what York had rushed away so importantly to deal with. On the face of it, they must be connected, if it was drugs all over again. But it did throw out Beth’s new and cherished brainwave completely.

  ‘What do you think’s going on, Belinda, you must have an idea?’ Beth asked her point-blank.

  Belinda raised her eyebrows in surprise – as far as she was able. ‘Well, Beth, I thought you were the one who was good at these puzzles? To me, it seems obvious.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all part of that awful gothic teen stuff, you know, like that show on cable, Thirteen Reasons Why. Of course, we only have the cable for the au pair,’ she added quickly, and the circle nodded devoutly.

  ‘Thirteen Reasons?’

  ‘Yes, it’s some extended suicide note from a teenager, showing how everyone was horrid to her and then she tops herself. You know the kind of thing they love. Very gloomy but a massive hit. Haven’t you heard of it?’

  ‘Ben’s not at that age, thank goodness.’

  ‘Nor are mine, Beth, but forewarned is forearmed, you know,’ said Belinda severely. ‘It’s our duty to be informed, isn’t it?’ It was true, everyone knew she spent a huge amount of time scanning child safety websites while the au pair took the kids to the park.

  ‘Oh, but isn’t your Allegra a teenager now, Belinda?’ said Jen Patterson, one of the bolder mums in the circle.