‘We are.’ More laughter. ‘No, I’m serious.’
Sheldon rolled his eyes and stepped past them, going through the front door, Ted behind him. As they crossed the threshold, the same teenager shouted, ‘Marian?’
A large woman appeared from a room at the end of the hall. The kitchen, Sheldon guessed. She had hair cropped short, dyed purple, and a stud in her nose, although it didn’t match the lines round her mouth that put her somewhere near to fifty.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, stepping towards them.
Sheldon pulled his identification from his pocket. ‘From Oulton police.’
‘You don’t look like the police,’ she said, looking at his clothes. And then she pointed at Ted Kenyon. ‘I know you.’
‘It’s a long story,’ Sheldon said, interrupting. ‘I want to ask you about Lucy Crane.’
She looked confused for a moment, and then her eyes widened. ‘I haven’t heard that name for a long time. You need to update your records if you think she’s here though. She left, oh, three years or more.’
‘Tell me about her.’
She looked suspicious. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘It could be important,’ Sheldon said. ‘I don’t want to see her records. I just want to know about her.’
Marian thought about that, and then she nodded them through to the kitchen. It was wide and spacious, with plates piled high on the side, waiting for their turn in the dishwasher.
‘So I’ll ask again; why do you want to know?’ Marian said, as she hauled herself onto a high stool next to a breakfast bar.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘So I can’t tell you about Lucy,’ she said, and shrugged, her hands held out.
Sheldon had expected that, but he thought it was worth trying for information without giving anything away.
‘It’s about the Billy Privett murder,’ Sheldon said. ‘She might have some useful information.’
Marian pointed at Ted. ‘Now I know you. You’re Alice Kenyon’s father.’
Ted smiled, trying to win her over. ‘This could be important. Please help us.’
Marian looked at Sheldon, and then back at Ted. Then she softened. ‘She was trouble.’
‘Aren’t they all?’ Sheldon said.
‘Most are
troubled
, yes, but trouble? Not always. The kids that come here are like any group of people. They form hierarchies, where some follow, others lead. Whether the kids get in trouble depends on who is doing the leading. Sometimes you get kids who just like some fun, and will even work at school. The home is a good place to be then, and all the kids have a chance.’
‘But?’
Marian smiled. She knew the
but
was there. ‘But sometimes you get leaders who are just too much trouble, and they drink too much, get into drugs, and they take at least a couple with them.’
‘And Lucy?’
‘Lucy, well,’ and Marian laughed. ‘She was all about sex. I tried not to judge her, because I knew the background she brought into the home, from her family background, and I am sure as hell not going to tell you, but she was good looking, and she knew it gave her a weapon. She developed early, and she used what she had to get what she wanted. I think she realised that her looks would take her further than her academic skills, and so she would flaunt it. There was even a care worker who lost his job over her, who forgot where the line was when she came at him fresh from the shower. She just wanted him to let her go out drinking, but she had to persuade him. Someone walked in on him groping her, but she was on her back, letting him touch her.’ Marian shook her head. ‘He said she came on to him, and I believe that, but he was supposed to say no, he was the adult, except that Lucy didn’t know the word
no
when she heard it.’
‘What happened to her?’ Sheldon said.
‘She was always going missing, although she was never really going missing, if you know what I mean. She was just hanging out with adults. They would get what they wanted, and they would keep her in booze and fags. It was just the local men at first, the deadbeats who hang around the parks with beer cans, but then other people started calling round for her. They thought of themselves as artists, anarchists, squatters, people like that, but they were just people who had opted out. She would go missing for days at a time, and we called the police, but then one day she never returned.’
‘Don’t you worry about them, the ones who end up like that?’
Marian thought about that, and then said, ‘Some I do. It’s the ones who are weak that I worry about, because they will give in to whatever pressure is put on them. Drugs, crime, prostitution, and so just about any bad thing that can happen to a person will happen to them. They are the ones who end up hanging themselves in jail when they get to thirty and realise that their sorry little life was going to stay sorry. The strong ones I don’t worry about. They’ll manage somehow. Lucy was one of the strong ones, in her own way.’
Marian was lost in her memories for a while, before she said, ‘So what did she have to do with Billy Privett? I saw on the news that he had been killed.’
‘There was a young woman who was at his house the morning after his body was discovered, and we think it might have been Lucy, which if it was, I’m suspicious, because it means that she lied about who she was. Do you have any photographs of her?’
‘We don’t keep mug shots,’ Marian said, scorn in her voice, and then she paused, looking unsure, as if something had occurred to her. ‘Wait there.’
She bustled out of the room. Ted raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you think?’
‘It sounds like the same kind of person, but it’s all based upon one officer’s memory jolted from a police station CCTV still.’
‘She has probably been in trouble,’ Ted said. ‘Won’t you have mug shots?’
‘I’m on sick leave, remember.’
‘That isn’t the same as suspended though, is it?’ Ted said. ‘You could still go in and look at the computers.’
Before Sheldon could answer, Marian brought in a photograph album.
‘This is from four years ago,’ she said. ‘We went on a weekend in the Lakes. Rafting, adventures in the woods, that kind of thing.’
Marian put the album on the breakfast bar and started to flick through the pages. Cellophane-covered photographs went past in a blur, children in red lifejackets by water and boats. Marian stopped occasionally, and then she stepped back. ‘There,’ she said, and tapped a photograph at the top of a page.
Sheldon got closer to have a look, and then he started to nod to himself.
The picture was of a teenage girl, laughing, her blonde hair in a ponytail, but it was wet, with strands across her face, the top of a bright red lifejacket visible. It was Christina. The cheeks were less defined, but the smile was the same, and that confidence he remembered in her eyes.
‘That’s her,’ Sheldon said. He moved to one side to let Ted Kenyon have a look, but when Ted got close, he put his hand over his mouth.
‘What is it?’ Sheldon said.
‘I know her,’ Ted said, and he headed for the door.
Charlie was in Donia’s bathroom when he heard something. It was a knock on the door to her flat, loud and urgent.
He had been washing his face, just watching the clock move on until it was dark so that he could go back to his office, the cold water waking him up. The police would have searched some of the office, but they were limited in how far they could go, because most of the things worth looking at were in confidential files. They would get a warrant eventually, but Charlie wanted to find out first whether the original video was in the safe. If he knew what was on it, he could go to the police confident that he wasn’t a suspect.
The water dripped from his face as he stayed quiet, praying that Donia wouldn’t answer it. Then he heard her footsteps, skipping along the hall.
There were muffled voices, and then heavy footsteps.
The bathroom went into Donia’s bedroom, and so his hand went to the door handle, ready to rush through. If it was the police, it was time to surrender. He knew he hadn’t done anything. He just needed to convince them.
He paused when he heard the shouting. That wasn’t the police. Too many expletives, the words hissed out.
He opened the door slowly, taking a deep breath, wanting to see who was there. The light from the bedroom illuminated his face, and as he stepped out, he was wary of creaks from the floorboards, the carpets too thin to muffle anything.
The voices got louder. He got to the bedroom door and saw that the hallway was dark. He tried to stop his breathing and listen above the tick of the clock on the wall. His shadow grew in the fan of light from the bedroom door. He stepped back and listened out. There was a male voice, and he was talking. Had Donia let the police in? Or perhaps the two men he had seen at Amelia’s house.
He peered around the doorway and towards the living room. He could see black clothes and movement. There was no sign of Donia though.
Charlie flattened himself against the wall. He was trying to keep himself free, but he didn’t know where Donia was, and he felt responsible for her. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he stepped out again, further this time. There was the rustle of paper, excited chatter. They’d found Billy Privett’s file on the table. It confirmed what he knew, that it was information about Billy Privett that was behind everything.
His foot made a creak on the floor as he felt his way across the carpet. He looked down. His silhouette spread across the hallway and against the wall on the other side. His skin shot up in goose pimples.
Charlie took one more step out, and this time he could see who was there. It was the kids who had been hanging around outside the office, dressed all in black. They had followed Donia.
His eyes looked back into the bedroom for another escape route or somewhere to hide, but there was nothing. The bed was a box frame that went all the way to the floor and any hanging space for clothes was just an open rail. There was a window held by a clasp, not much by way of security, but he was three floors up. It didn’t need to be locked tight. The next thing on the way down was the concrete yard.
Where was Donia?
Charlie moved further out, keeping watch on the main door, knowing that if he had to run for it, he had an exit. His heart was beating hard, and he was trying to calm his breathing, certain that they would hear. Then he remembered Amelia’s body. He knew he couldn’t leave Donia, but he wouldn’t be able to handle them on his own. He would have to get help for her. It was no good if they both died.
He started to back away down the hallway, leaving them to read the file, hoping they would be distracted, but as his footsteps moved backwards, his spine went cold when he bumped into something. Or rather, someone.
Ted was silent until they were back in the car, ignoring the shouts of the kids on the steps, Marian watching them go.
As Ted looked at his lap, his jaw set, Sheldon asked, ‘Who is she?’ his key poised in the ignition, not willing to go until he had an answer.
Ted turned to him, and there was still confusion in his eyes. ‘She was the girl in the car, the one who leaped on me when the camera was there. That was her, Lucy Crane.’
Sheldon was surprised. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am,’ Ted said, exasperated. ‘I was talking with her in the car for five minutes, before she jumped on me. And now I found out that she is connected to Billy Privett, and so maybe she did know something.’
‘She was always connected to Billy Privett, because she told you she had information,’ Sheldon said. ‘Perhaps she did at first, but then decided that she could just sell you out instead. Or maybe she got scared. She must have had the photographer waiting, and was hoping she could trap you in a blackmail plot, or just sell you out to the papers. But you weren’t interested, and so she had to jump on you and hope the pictures told a different story.’
‘I wouldn’t have been interested,’ Ted said. ‘I just wanted to know about Alice, and I still love my wife. We are more distant now, I know that, but I wouldn’t do that to her. She has suffered enough.’
‘Lucy is still a link to the case though, but how? She was Billy’s housekeeper. Why didn’t you see her when you went up there?’
‘She would keep out of my way, wouldn’t she, if she knew I was on the way,’ Ted said. ‘Do you think she was really his housekeeper? She might have been Billy’s girlfriend, trying to protect him?’
Sheldon shook his head. ‘No, she was more than that. She’d have no reason to lie to us if she was his girlfriend, and she wouldn’t have disappeared.’
‘You’ve still got your identification,’ Ted said. ‘There is a police station just up the road. Can’t you find out something about her?’
Sheldon thought about that, and then remembered his moment on the church tower earlier that day, and the promise he had made to himself that he would find out the truth.
He started the engine and drove the short distance to the police station, a one-storey L-shaped block on the verge of being closed down as it waited for a buyer. There was no public reception and so no frosty civilian officer to get past.
‘Wait in the car,’ Sheldon said, and then swiped his pass card along the reader. It worked for all the Lancashire stations, and so he found himself at the meeting point of two corridors, the floors tiled, the walls painted in cold light blue. Fire doors intersected the corridors at intervals. It was Sheldon’s first time in the Penwortham station, and so all he could was walk and look for a computer terminal.
He turned left and when he got to the room at the end, there were three rows of desks filled with computer screens. There were no cells at Penwortham, and so Sheldon realised that it was a hideaway, somewhere for the officers to get their files together without getting landed with an urgent custody investigation, the only risk being a call-out to chase some kids on the Kingsfold estate, the main source of aggravation for the Penwortham force.
There was only one other person in the room, a young female officer in uniform. She looked up once, curious at first, but didn’t investigate further, satisfied by the identification swinging from Sheldon’s neck.