Eighteen Kisses (11 page)

‘Always the gentleman,’ muttered Amy and rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, it was Kayla’s idea,’ she continued. ‘We started talking about this time we’d gone camping and toasted marshmallows, and then Kayla said we should go buy some. The next thing I knew we were heading to the shop.’

‘We walked pretty fast,’ said Andrew, leading us up the path. ‘None of us had drunk that much.’

‘While you were walking to the shop, did you notice anything suspicious?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Andrew responded. ‘Like I said, everything seemed normal. Kayla was being kind of quiet, but Amy said that’s what she’s like anyway, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.’

I looked round at Amy; she hadn’t said anything at all on the walk. She stayed a short distance behind us.

‘Is this how you remember it too?’ I asked. She just nodded. It must have been a particularly messy break-up or else this journey was particularly difficult for her.

‘So, we crossed the road here,’ said Andrew. ‘Then went this way.’

We were on a busier road now and I could see the mini-supermarket up ahead, its
OPEN 24 HOURS
sign shining brightly.

Andrew crossed the path and walked ahead of us.

‘Did she talk at all?’ I said. ‘On the walk?’

‘Oh yeah, she talked about the party, and all the presents she’d got so far, that sort of stuff.’

‘Did she mention a fight with anyone?’

‘No, she didn’t talk about anything like that,’ said Andrew.

I felt like I wasn’t making much progress at all.

‘Did you notice anyone hanging around on the way up?’ I asked, desperate for some new information.

‘Nope. We passed a man walking a dog here, then we crossed at these traffic lights.’ Andrew hit the pedestrian button. It turned green almost immediately. ‘We crossed the road and arrived at another set of lights. We didn’t have to wait for these to change, just like now, because there was no traffic.’

It was so strange to walk like this, hearing Andrew recount every detail. It was like I could see it all unfolding in front of me. Kayla had walked this path, completely oblivious to what was about to happen. I wanted to go back in time and tell her to turn round.

Andrew walked into the shop and Amy and I followed. It was a small supermarket, with two cashiers. ‘Marshmallows were down the back somewhere,’ he said. ‘I waited here while the girls went and got them.’

The next part was the one I was most interested in, the part where they left Kayla alone.

We walked back the way we’d come. This time Amy took the lead, staring straight ahead and not looking at either of us as she talked.

‘We always stopped here,’ said Amy. ‘I always left her here.’ We were at the top of Kayla’s street.

I looked down the road. You could see Kayla’s house from where we were standing. It wasn’t very far away at all. This made me think that maybe someone was waiting for her, someone from the party who had been holding out until she was alone.

When I got home I looked at the video from the party again. I’d told Amy and Andrew that they could go after we’d walked back from the shop – there wasn’t much more I could ask from them at this stage. They’d left separately without even a word of goodbye to each other. Sitting on my bed and watching the video on my laptop, over and over, they seemed like a different couple, standing together, hands entwined, and I thought about how much could change over such a short time.

I scanned the rest of the people in the semicircle that had formed round Kayla’s chair. I could see Ellie, wearing a pretty purple strapless dress, her hair tied up in a loose ponytail. And Libby was there too, smiling broadly. She had her arm round a guy, presumably her boyfriend Rob, whose name had been scratched off the list. He was a really good-looking guy, exactly the kind I’d expect Libby to go for. Amy watched as Andrew went up to kiss Kayla on the cheek. Another guy, who was tall and skinny, went up after him. He kissed her on the lips and she smiled. I looked carefully at the crowd, searching for anything suspicious, but nothing jumped out at me. I heard somebody shout ‘Fifteen!’ and then Hazel gave Kayla a quick kiss on the lips. A guy wolf-whistled and then walked up to Kayla. He kissed her on the lips too. This time she didn’t smile though. He leaned in,
and I couldn’t hear it, but I was sure he whispered something in her ear. I rewound the video and it definitely seemed like he had whispered something to her. He didn’t get to say much though because another guy playfully pushed him away and gave Kayla her eighteenth and final kiss.

I was grateful that
Electric
gave us an hour lunch break: it meant that I could gather my thoughts together and review what I’d learned about Kayla over the last couple of days. I bought some mint ice cream from the ice-cream shop on the square. I loved the ice-cream place. All its tables were outside on Temple Bar Square, so it was a great place to people-watch. They served their ice cream in blue tubs with colourful plastic spoons. I always got sprinkles. They made my mint ice cream look like a tiny rainbow had exploded into millions of pieces on top of it. When Hannah and I were younger, my dad would often bring us here on Saturdays. If we got cones, he’d always manage to talk the lady who was working there into giving him two flakes. Everybody loved my dad. Being back here, I was beginning to understand why Mum had wanted to move. There were reminders of Dad everywhere in this city, from the places we used to go, to the things he liked. Mostly I found it comforting, but I could see why Mum needed to start a new life.

I sat down outside and took out my notebook, forcing myself to stop thinking about the past and instead focus on
everything I’d learned about Kayla and the people who knew her. I wrote down all the important things so far, like the last time each of the people had seen Kayla, what they thought had happened and what their relationships were to each other. I’d only talked to five of the eight possible suspects, and already I had tons to consider.

‘Ice cream for lunch! I like your style, Jacki King.’

I looked up, surprised to see Dillon standing there. He had rushed off as soon as lunch break came. I’d been shelving stuff in the archive and saw him practically run out of the office. I thought he was going to meet Maggie. There were still unconfirmed rumours that they were going out, but Hannah didn’t have very high hopes for them. Apparently Mark had told her that Dillon hardly ever stayed with the same girl for more than two weeks, that he hardly ever went out with anyone in fact. He didn’t seem to be a girlfriend type of guy.

He sat down across from me, putting a yellow bag he’d been holding on the ground beside him and picked up the ice-cream menu.

‘I was in Tower Records,’ he said. ‘The new Mighty Stef single is out today. There were signed copies for the first one hundred people.’

‘You ran to Tower Records to get the new Mighty Stef single?’

‘Is that crazy?’ he said.

‘Impressive,’ I said with a smile.

‘You like the Mighty Stef?’ he asked.

‘Love him.’

‘I thought you would,’ he said. ‘When you were in Ellie’s
office the other day I heard one of the guys say he might be the special guest at the Unsigned gig, although it’s not confirmed. What did she want you for anyway?’ he added, pulling the record out of the bag.

‘Oh, she just wanted me to address invitations,’ I said. ‘Nothing important.’

Sometimes I surprised myself at how quickly I was able to lie now, how fast the lies came to me.

He held the record out to me and I examined it.

‘It looks deadly,’ I said. ‘I really like the artwork.’

I handed it back to him.

‘That one’s yours,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I got you one too.’

‘Why?’

Dillon blushed.

‘I mean … thanks!’ I said. ‘This is really cool.’

‘No problem,’ he said.

I told myself he’d just bought it for me as a friend. I mean, I got Colin stuff all the time. But I also knew this wasn’t something I would share with Nick – he probably wouldn’t understand and things weren’t great between us at the moment. I’d talked to him last night on the phone; I’d asked him was he excited about the gig and he’d gone kind of quiet. I’d decided that once I got back to Avarna, I was going to tell him everything – why I was really in Dublin and exactly what had happened last summer. My secrets were definitely coming between us. I really hoped he’d understand.

Sensing that Dillon felt the tension of the moment as much as I did, I hastily moved the conversation on. ‘So,
what’s your favourite Stef song?’ I asked. ‘Mine’s “Prayer for the Broken Hearted”.’

We chatted for ages again, sticking to safe subjects like music, and before we knew it, it was five to two. It didn’t help that Dillon had hilariously deliberated for ages about which ice-cream flavour to get.

We rushed back to St Stephen’s Green, weaving through all the people as fast as we could. The traffic lights were taking ages to change and Dillon shuffled nervously. ‘Come on,’ he said, then grabbed my hand and pulled me across the road.

I felt my heart beating a little bit faster than it should.

The next person on my list was Calum. I met him straight after work. I’d watched the video of the party again on my laptop, more carefully this time, and was now positive that I’d seen him whisper something in Kayla’s ear. I was determined to find out what it was.

‘I’ve already told the police everything I know,’ said Calum. He wore faded denims and a rugby shirt, so tight that it clung to the muscles on his arms. He was sitting across from me at one of the tables in Rage, eating the fries Hazel had given him. She’d gone back behind the bar so it was just him and me again, and I was finding him kind of painful to listen to. ‘I mean, you sleep with a girl and suddenly you’re a prime suspect.’

It was obvious he didn’t want to be here. He was one of the most annoying guys I’d ever met. He was being very defensive and I suspected he was hiding something.

‘I’m not here to make your life difficult, I just want to find Kayla,’ I said. ‘You want that too, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, let’s talk.’

‘OK, if you insist,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Basically, Kayla
and me, we broke up about a month before the party. We hadn’t been going out very long – about nine days, I’d say – but what annoyed me most was that she denied going out with me at all. I don’t know why, but she did. Of course I told people we’d been going out because the best thing about sleeping with Kayla Edwards is that you get to tell people about it …’

I felt my stomach twist in disgust, but let him carry on.

‘She still denied it. Everybody was calling
me
a liar. I don’t know why she was doing it; maybe she wanted to get back at me because I hadn’t, I dunno, treated her right or whatever. So yeah, I was pretty pissed off. I didn’t want to hurt the girl, I just wanted her to admit that she’d slept with me.’

‘Did you ever think maybe she wanted to keep it private?’

‘Listen, Jacki … that’s your name, right, Jacki? This wasn’t some sort of delicate love affair that she wanted to keep secret, locked between us forever. She came over to my house one night and basically said we should get together. I’d seen this before – somebody trying to get back at their boyfriend – and I was happy to oblige. If some guy messes up, that’s his problem, not mine. And this was Kayla Edwards. Arriving at my door, basically offering herself to me. It was like something out of a dream. Sure, she seems a bit messed up in the head, but she is also seriously hot. And it’s not like she asked me not to tell anybody. I assumed she wanted to get back at someone, but she didn’t tell me who it was, and she didn’t tell me not to tell. So I mentioned it to one of the lads, and gossip spreads here like you wouldn’t believe. But she denied it. Acted like it had never even happened. Like I’d made the whole thing up. And I’m known
to exaggerate so, needless to say, nobody believed me. So, yeah, I was pissed off at her. I was pissed off at her the night she went missing. But I didn’t
kill
her.’

I didn’t like Calum at all, but in a weird way, he actually seemed honest. Either that or he was a really good liar.

‘Why were you at her birthday party?’ I asked. ‘If you were so pissed off with her?’

‘She lives right across the road from me, so I thought why not? I’m really good mates with Libby, and plus – free booze and hot girls … I was hardly going to pass that up.’

‘What did you whisper to her?’ I asked. ‘In the video. What did you whisper in her ear?’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have to tell you any of this. Look, I didn’t kill her, I didn’t hurt her, I didn’t touch her. At least not anywhere she didn’t want me to. Listen, I gotta go … I need to get to practice,’ he said. And then he was gone.

Hazel came over to the table, bringing me a Coke, even though I hadn’t asked for one.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘This is on the house.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. ‘I know he’s not the most polite person on the planet, but he’s a good friend. I don’t want to interfere, but I just wanted to say, don’t let him upset you. He’s like that with everyone – I think he wants to keep a tough-guy image. He was really shaken by Kayla’s disappearance though; he was so upset about it.’

I wondered if he’d been upset because he was hiding something. But then again, my gut instinct was to think that he was telling the truth.

‘I don’t think he really wanted to be here,’ I said.

‘He’s just tired of it all,’ said Hazel. ‘Some people suspect him because he told everyone he slept with Kayla.’

‘Do you think he did?’ I asked.

‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ said Hazel. ‘She’s not his type at all, but then again, she didn’t really tell me who she was dating, so it’s quite possible.’

I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. There was a text from Nick. It said:

I really miss you. I booked a train ticket to Dublin. Meet me for dinner tomorrow?