Roadkill (LiveWire) (16 page)

His big face peaks round the door, “Your mum says you need some help Caroline?” He is so delighted it actually makes me smile, instead of want to slap him. His likeness to a clumsy shaggy dog is actually, okay maybe not appealing, but….safe. You know this bloke wouldn’t run out on you. Maybe I’m finally growing up?

“Yeah. If you don’t mind. It’s um this friend of mine wants to do a journalism course and she’s doing a research article on Livewire. It’s this website for doing dares and stuff.”

I stare hard at him, holding my breath but he looks surprised. “Livewire? I’ve heard of it. Alexander Havers I believe?” Gary sits down with a thump, reaching for the computer.

Impatiently, I pull up my chair next to him, “Yeah, so she wants to find out about the guy who runs it, this Alexander Havers.”

There is a definite flicker, quickly masked, “Well
I can tell her he isn’t the easiest
person to find out about. Any special reason she wants to know about him in particular?”

“It’s Melissa, and no, I don’t know why.”

Both of us dancing round, not trusting the other.

Mum is calling us for dinner, and Garry smiles at me, “He was mentioned in a research paper I’m doing on British technology entrepreneurs. Quite interesting really.”

Yeah sounds it. “So did you meet him? Is he in the UK?” How do the Vultures manage, this interrogation stuff is hard work.

“Yes, he did a talk for some academics and I was allowed to ask one question.” He snorts, “the ego of these people! I do have a page you can print out for Melissa if you like. Not very informative, but better than nothing. Like most of these ‘boy geniuses he’s quite elusive.”

My heart is racing like I’ve done a dare, I’m almost in tears at Leo’s betrayal. I scrub them away crossly and scan the pages again, searching for evidence that this is a twin brother, anything but believe what is lying on the table in front of me.

Leo is not Leo, but a twenty three year old called Alexander Havers. The photograph is smudged from the printer and black and white from some newspaper.

“He looks a bit like your Leo doesn’t he?” Garry laughs. “Not half as nice though. At that conference he was a...” he looks quickly at me, “Well he was very patronising.” He colours with embarrassment.

“What happened?”

“Well I asked him about the future prospects of social networking sites….and he said I was probably a bit old for all that. I mean I am older than him of course but he just said it to get a cheap laugh, you know…” he trails off and for the first time, despite my conflicting emotions I feel a twinge of something. Liking? Or maybe I just see what Rose saw all along, a harmless, clumsy man, trying hard to make my Mum happy.

Quickly, not even sure why, I sweep the picture away and force a laugh, “Yeah, well he sounds horrible Garry, but I shouldn’t have thought Melissa will be interviewing him anytime soon! Thanks. I’ll..um…give this to her later.”

Pleased, Garry disappears into the kitchen to talk to mum and I sit, transfixed by the piece of paper.

Alexander was indeed a geeky kid, but a geeky rich kid, until his dad left. He and his mum were left on their own, and the geeky rich kid discovered he was actually pretty smart. Smart enough to amaze the IT world with knowledge beyond his years. Job offers flooded in and it looked like a happy ending. The family were from Scotland, and Alexander, although not cool at school, did not suffer from any debilitating illnesses, and certainly had no eastern European connections. I stared at the fuzzy print out photo. It’s definitely Leo, pretty boy looks deliberately ruffled, a rich, boy bandish edge as he smirks at the camera. Minus the glasses of course, and it’s really amazing what a haircut can do for people. Then the mum died, in 2009, over four years ago! Who the hell did I met in his flat? Why did she pretend to be his mum?

After his mum’s death Alexander/Leo disappeared from public view, ditching his boy genius job, and starting an underground site for extreme teens doing extreme dares. As with everything he did, he got lucky and the site took off. Alexander did a few interviews, reaped the financial benefit of his new project. Then he disappeared again.

And for some reason Alexander became Leo, and popped up at a fairground near here….oh my god.

I need to get into Leo’s flat and check out his bedroom I think. Instinct tells me he’s hiding something, apart from, jeez, a double identity….I try to remember when his ‘mum’ was there to let me in. Whoever she was I know she would again. Luckily Leo texts to say he’s off to some boring university interview tomorrow and I formulate my plan, which is basically get in and find out what the hell is going on with this Alexander Havers thing.

Leo doesn’t leave until late the next morning, texting me on the train to say he’s bored already but thinks this uni could be ‘the one’ as he heads up to Manchester. God knows what he’s really up to.

“Mum, I need to go out,” I inch towards the door, reminding myself I am eighteen not twelve, and do not need to give an explanation for everything.

“Oh I thought you were eating with us!” she is disappointed but I am on a mission.

“Sorry Mum. Be back in a couple of hours…!”

Half an hour later, and I’m hanging hopefully around the door but no joy. Of course I’ve hit the buzzer, even called Leo on the pretext of asking him about a party next week. Just to make sure he isn’t home with his ‘girlfriend’. Naturally his phone is switched off.

Suddenly a tall elderly man stoops to open the door, punching in the keys, and without thinking I slide in after him, the heavy communal door clunking shut against my toe.

The man turns, smiles paternally and says, “My granddaughter looks a little like you. I shall assume you are not a burglar my dear?”

I stutter under his intense gaze and mumble about having split up with my boyfriend who lives upstairs but wanting to get back with him, talk it through. I am such a crap liar, but he smiles, old eyes shrewd. Not fooled in the least, but busy with his own world.

“Thanks,” I tell him and head upstairs. I’ve got Leo’s spare key, which I took accidently when I borrowed his scooter and the key ring broke, and his apartment door opens smoothly, without a sound.

My mouth is dry, and my heart pounding. I almost expect Leo to be there, waiting. But of course he isn’t.

I search quickly and methodically, lifting papers with shaky hands, flicking through racks of clothes. Everything is neat, clean and far too well ordered. His bedroom is immaculate but I start to pull open drawers, boxes full of shoes under the bed. Suit jackets and shirts arranged according to colour in the mirrored wardrobe.

Nothing. Come on Caz, think. Frowning at the ceiling I watch a tiny brown spider shimmy up towards…a loft hatch. Of course.

The ladder is oiled
and slides silently down.
I check my watch and climb quickly up. Flicking a switch I gasp as light illuminates a mass of filing cabinets and storage boxes. The name LiveWire emblazoned everywhere. Above the small desk is a picture of a woman, elegant, cold and remote with sharp features. His mother when she was young maybe? Weird.

The only thing out of place is a box file lying next to the desk.

I leaf through and the horror I felt earlier comes flooding back. It’s a scrapbook. Each newspaper clipping is carefully sheathed in protective plastic, and each girl has a photo and what looks like a CV. There are, I quickly count, three in all. As well as the newspaper clippings there are clear plastic wallets taped neatly to bottom of the pages; in each a piece of jewellery.

In Catrine Summers, a couple of bead bracelets, Victoria Hennessy has a slim gold watch, Agatha Marnyard a plaited lock of hair entwined in a retro silver hair slide…. Yuck! I recoil in horror, because I don’t need to look at those news stories to realise these happy smiling pretty girls are dead. Dead like Rose.

Chapter Eighteen

A noise from downstairs and I leap in terror. My heart is slamming against my ribcage.

Breathlessly I gather the file, slipping in my haste, and start to clamber down the ladder. There are two other smallish box files marked ‘personal’ and I throw them down as well.

“See you later Bev!” A woman’s voice, cheerful and loud. Sounds of shopping being heaved, then the lift door clanks shut. Silence.

Shaking, alone in Leo’s bedroom, I assemble my evidence, and take a deep breath. The letters under the fruit bowl are gone but surely the police aren’t going to ignore this lot.

It takes twenty minutes to get out of Leo’s flat and head home. Oddly I can’t go straight to the police station, but set up camp in Rose’s room, spreading the files and newspaper clippings around me.

I dump my phone on the bedside table, and it immediately beeps with a message:

‘hey caz, really sorry about before. U want 2 go out 2mro?
x’

I suddenly want more than anything to ring Matt, to make him come to the police station with me…but I don’t. This is something I need to do on my own.

Catrine Summers, the newspaper reports, was a shy, quiet girl, who suddenly stopped going to her local church, and started to do LiveWire dares. For some reason this non- competitive, overweight American chose all the hardest dares, inching up her regional leader board. She died jumping from a headland in well known beauty spot. Supposedly she should have landed in the sea. It was ruled as accidental death, but police would like to question her on/off boyfriend art student Kevin Masters.
All three girls are the same; some of the deaths being ruled as suicide, some accidental death. The first was back in 2009; Victoria Hennessy, 17, who died jumping down a mine shaft in West Virginia.

Victoria, the article informs me, had bruising indicative of a struggle, but she set off alone from her house, had no boyfriend…Her only friends were online. She was a frequent visitor to the LiveWire forum……Not a shred of evidence to link the three of them as murders, and two in different states in the US, one in Brisbane, Australia. They are connected only by LiveWire, and in the background an ominous ‘boyfriend’ or male friend lurks. Police would like to question…

I flick through the paperwork with shaky hands. There’s no picture of Rose, but there is an  empty plastic sheath in the scrapbook file. For me….or for my sister?  My fingers clench the file so hard I leave sweaty imprints.

The two smaller files contain paperwork, ID’s in various names, passports, British, American...

I grab my phone and dredge up the card the black browed police woman gave me.

When I end the call I am shaking again. His name is Alexander Havers, not Leo Betts. There is every possibility he has killed three girls. Make that four. My goofy, geeky best friend.

I go over and over all the lies he told me, his hard childhood, his mum working all hours, when the poor woman is actually dead, the fact that he is most definitely not gay. Plus if his mum is dead who the hell was that woman in his flat? No wonder she looked guilty when I met her at the communal doors; she might have slipped up.

*

After all my trouble the police told me I shouldn’t have gone to Leo’s flat and nicked the stuff. I should have gone to them as soon as I suspected….because that worked so well last time. Also there wasn’t, until they interviewed him, enough evidence to charge Leo with Rose’s murder, or even reopen her case. I suddenly feel totally defeated. They glossed over the fact that, without doubt it was just a matter of time before my picture appeared in his sick file of victims. Which is great…. Not.

The house is quiet, and I prowl restlessly, flicking on a random DVD, hoping to distract myself. My phone rings and I jump, gripping the TV remote control with clenched white fingers.

“Is that Caz?”

“Yeah.” It’s the police.

“Alexander Havers left the country this morning, flying to Mexico City. We’ll have him questioned when he lands.”

“Can’t you just arrest him and bring him back?”

A pause, “Unfortunately it isn’t quite that simple. The legal process will take some time.”

“So you can’t do anything. Leo….Alexander is a murderer and he killed Rose and he’s just going to get away with it!” I am so choked with frustration I can hardly speak.

“He won’t. We’re doing all we can Caz. I’ll let you know as soon as we know more. If you think of anything else please call me.”

“Yeah.” Dispirited I slump on the bed.

My stupid  phone bleeps again:

‘If you go down to the woods tonight….Hey teddy bear are you daring tonight?’

After a moment’s thought I answer no, that I am too tired, some family stuff has come up. Then I stare hard at my reflection in the dining room mirror, as though seeing myself for the first time. I don’t like my hair dark, or this short, and I prefer jeans and sweaters to sparkly t- shirts and ditsy skirts.

‘But you must…I didn’t want to tell you before but I’m in the UK!’

‘???? Since when..’
I’m jolted, with a weird feeling of unease.