I let the tears slide down the sides of my face into my hair. After a while, I get distracted by the tears themselves. I’m trying to get them to fall equally on both sides. For some reason, my right eye is much more teary than the other one. I forget why I’m crying for a second, and then it all comes back. It’s stupid, anyway. I don’t even care.
Two seconds later I prove I’ve been lying to myself, as a car stops outside the house and I leap off the bed to look out the window. But it isn’t Dad’s crappy Rover. It’s a police car. And
I
stand by the window, unable to move, watching the policemen get out and put on their caps, then come slowly up the drive. They aren’t hurrying, and that worries me.
As the policemen disappear under the porch, I pad out to sit at the top of the stairs, out of sight but within earshot.
Mum answers the door and the first thing she says is, ‘Charlie!’
Stupid. They aren’t here about Charlie. Even I know that.
Mumble mumble mumble. Mrs Barnes. Mumble mumble. Mr Barnes was driving on the motorway. Very dark. Mumble mumble. Lorry driver couldn’t avoid him …
‘He didn’t have time to get himself out of trouble,’ I hear suddenly, clearly, from one of the officers.
I can’t help putting it all together. I don’t want to know what they’re saying. I can’t avoid it though. This isn’t what I want. This isn’t how I want it to be. My feet are bare and they have got very cold from being out of bed on a February night, especially when the front door is wide open. I hold on to my feet as tightly as I can and I clench my toes and I wish the police officers out of the house, back down the drive, into their car, as if I can rewind them and the rest of the day. I rewind and rewind to the last time Dad was here, to the time before that, to the
time
before he left. None of it has happened. None of it is real.
There’s still time to change everything so it all works out. There’s still time for everything to be OK after all.
THIS TIME, THE
television was on in the hospital room, and Paul was sitting up in bed, propped against the pillows, flicking through the channels at high speed. He didn’t look away from the screen as Blake followed me in. I stopped by the foot of the bed and looked a question at Vickers, who was slumped in one of the chairs with the general demeanour of someone who had reached the end of his reserves of patience.
‘We’ve had some food,’ he announced, with a nod to indicate he was talking about Paul. ‘We haven’t felt much like talking, though.’
Paul’s eyelids flickered, but he kept gazing at the TV. There were only five channels on the hospital service, and absolutely nothing to watch on any of them, but that didn’t seem to be putting him off. One of the channels was showing a news bulletin, and I flinched as the high street appeared behind yet another reporter updating the nation on the latest developments in the hunt for Jenny’s murderer. Paul didn’t seem to react, just carried on. I guessed that the TV was a delaying tactic, that he wasn’t really seeing it. The Paul I had met on Friday – had it really been just a day ago? – was very far from mindless. The inane channel-hopping was a smokescreen.
His eyes were red, with blue puffy shadows under them,
and
now that he was sitting up I could see the mark on his neck – a raw, livid line that tracked across under his jaw and up to his ear. No cry for help; that had been the real deal. If he’d used a different kind of rope … if the police had been a little bit slower … it didn’t bear thinking about.
I felt a nudge in the small of my back: Blake, who frowned at me meaningfully.
‘OK, OK,’ I mouthed, glaring back. I walked slowly around the bed so I was standing between Paul and the TV.
‘Hi. It’s good to see you again, Paul. How are you feeling?’
He looked at me for a moment, then dropped his gaze.
‘There really aren’t enough chairs to go around, so do you mind if I sit on the bed? And can I turn the TV off so we can talk?’
He shrugged and I sat down, then took the remote control out of his hands and hit standby. The room was very quiet once the TV was off. I sat for a moment, listening to the air whistling in and out of Paul’s lungs. His throat had to be very sore if the bruising on his neck was anything to go by.
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘Yes please,’ he croaked, and I poured him a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand by the bed. He took a sip, then fumbled the glass back down.
‘Paul, the police have asked me to talk to you because they think you’ll answer me if I ask you some questions.’
He looked up, then returned to staring at his hands without speaking.
‘I know you think you’re in trouble, but everything is going to be OK,’ I said, sounding confident, fairly sure that I was lying to him. ‘We just need to know what happened. Please, Paul, just tell me the truth if you can. If there’s anything you don’t want to answer, just say and I’ll move on, OK?’
I felt rather than heard Blake react to that, but Vickers raised one hand reprovingly and nodded to me when I glanced at him. I would ask the questions, but I wouldn’t browbeat Paul. And I knew as well as Vickers did that the questions he
didn’t
answer would give the game away.
Paul hadn’t said anything and I leaned in closer. ‘Is that OK?’
He nodded.
‘Right.’ I didn’t need to consult the sheet of paper in my hand to recall the first question. ‘How did you and your brother get to know Jenny?’
‘I told you that already.’ Paul spoke distinctly, slowly, biting off the end of each word. Colour washed up into his face and I knew he was annoyed.
‘I know you did,’ I said soothingly. ‘
I
remember, but these policemen don’t know about it. Just tell me for their sake.’
‘School,’ Paul said finally, having glared at me for a moment.
‘Primary school,’ I clarified.
‘Yeah. She was my friend in school. I helped her with her maths and she – she was nice to me.’
‘And you stayed in touch when she went to a different school?’
He shrugged. ‘She knew where I lived – we’d talked about it, cos we were the only ones in our class who lived on the estate. One day there was a knock at the door and it was her. She’d been having trouble with geometry – she just didn’t get it – and she asked if I’d give her a hand.’
‘And you did,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ His voice was gruff and low. Even allowing for the hoarseness, he sounded upset.
‘So, Paul, you and Jenny were spending time together at your house. And her parents didn’t know about it.’
‘Her dad didn’t like me. He called me a fat freak.’ Paul’s eyes swam in tears for a second and he blinked them away, sniffing.
‘How did she get to spend time at your house, then?’
‘She told them she was with her friends. There was some girl who lived nearby, and she’d cycle off to see her, supposedly. She had a mobile – her dad made her have one so they could track her down – and she’d tell them she was places she wasn’t.’ Paul laughed a little, remembering. ‘She’d ask if they wanted to speak to her friends’ mums when they rang her up and I’d be sitting there, shitting myself. She was like that – always laughing, always playing games.’
I nodded, and looked down at my list of questions. It was hard to make myself say the words, but I couldn’t avoid it for ever.
‘Paul, you know that the police found … things at your house. Images. Video. Pictures of Jenny, doing things. Did you – I mean, were you – did you think of it in the first place?’
He looked wounded and shook his head, cheeks quivering. ‘No. It was all them – him and her.’
‘Him?’
‘Danny. I told him it wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have gone near her, no matter what she said. He’s too old for her.’ Paul was struggling to sit up, lashing out with his legs, distressed. I stood up quickly to avoid getting kicked.
‘It’s OK, Paul. Just calm down. Have some more water.’
The boy took a few deep, quivering breaths, then drank obediently. The water gurgled as he swallowed it; there wasn’t a sound from anyone else in the room. I could feel the policemen willing me to stop pussyfooting around.
‘At some stage, something must have happened,’ I said quietly, sitting down again, ‘because she got involved with your brother, didn’t she?’
‘Dunno,’ Paul said. His face was very red.
‘Was she frightened by him?’ I tried to keep my voice as gentle as possible. ‘Was that why she kept coming back? Did he threaten her?’
‘No way,’ Paul said. ‘It wasn’t like that. She – she liked him.’
‘So as far as she was concerned, they were boyfriend and girlfriend.’
‘I guess. Stupid, really, cos he’s loads older than her.’ Paul sighed. ‘Danny wasn’t interested in her. Not really. She just – she loved spending time with him. She’d do anything for him.’
That ‘anything’ meant a world of degradation. My mouth had gone dry and I swallowed, trying to concentrate on the job I had to do. Blake had thought I wouldn’t be able
to
handle this. I didn’t want him to be right. I took a few seconds to breathe, letting the images fade away, then started again.
‘Was it your idea to use the internet to sell the videos and pictures of her?’
Paul shook his head again, then shrugged. ‘Sort of. Danny thought of it, but it was me who had to work out how to do it – hide our IP, find sites to host the images, build the websites.’ In spite of everything, he sounded proud of what he had achieved. ‘We were making real money. People from all over the world were buying our stuff.’
I couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘But Jenny suffered so that you could make those images.’
‘Whatever,’ Paul said, and his nose wrinkled.
‘No, not “whatever”. You’re talking about this like it was a legitimate business, but Jenny was being abused, Paul. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about it.’
He wriggled. ‘I didn’t really know about a lot of the stuff that was going on. Danny made me stay in my room whenever they were – you know.’
I could guess.
‘Did you meet the other men who came to the house?’
‘No. I had to stay upstairs.’
‘Do you know what they were doing at your house?’
‘Having a party, sounded like.’ He was definitely looking uncomfortable. I wondered what he had heard. I wondered how hard it had been for Danny to persuade his ‘girlfriend’ to put herself at the disposal of those men. I wondered if she had screamed, now and then.
‘So you didn’t see anything when the pictures and videos
were
being made. Did you look at the pictures or watch the videos afterwards?’
‘No.’ That was an outright lie; his ears were flaming scarlet but his eyes never left mine. ‘Danny told me he’d stop the whole thing if he caught me looking. He told me he’d batter the living daylights out of me. I was just supposed to set everything up and let him upload it.’
‘Does he ever hit you?’ Grotesquely, I was hoping he would say yes. An abused Paul had a reason for going along with the plan.
‘Nah. All talk, that’s all he is. I’ll skin you alive, I’ll smash his skull in, I’ll rip her head off, fucking this and fucking that …’ Paul laughed. ‘He’s always having a rant about something. I just ignore him, mostly.’
‘You said he told you he’d stop if you looked at the images – didn’t you want him to stop?’
‘No way. It was really good, you know. Jenny was always round at ours. She was really happy, most of the time – blubbed now and then, but girls do, don’t they? And Danny was happy that we weren’t skint any more. And I was able to help. That was good – bringing in some cash. I wanted to do it, for Danny.’
I cleared my throat. ‘And was Jenny paid for her part in it?’
He looked vague. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think she wanted anything. She would have had to hide it from her parents and it was all a bit too much hassle, I think. She just wanted to be with Danny.’
Poor, stupid Jenny, infatuated with a man who was prepared to use her to subsidise his lifestyle. Bad luck that
she
encountered someone like that at such a young age. Worse luck that Danny was a pretty boy, with the kind of doe eyes and fine features that appealed to teenage girls. And worst of all was the fact that he’d been prepared to kill her once he was finished with her.
‘So tell me about how she died.’ My voice was neutral, as if the question wasn’t really that important, but my palms were sweating. I wiped them surreptitiously on the bedclothes, aware that Vickers and Blake were leaning in, hardly breathing, waiting for Paul to speak.
He frowned. ‘I don’t know anything about it. Really. I told you that already, when you were at the house.’
I nodded; he had said that. As far as I could tell, he had meant it, too. So Danny had managed to kill Jenny and get rid of the body behind Paul’s back. I supposed there were things that even Danny felt Paul shouldn’t know about.
‘When did you last see her?’
He thought for a second. ‘Middle of last week, after school. She shut herself in the living room with Danny, but not for very long. She ran off – never even said goodbye to me. She was all upset about something, but Danny didn’t know what it was.’
I was absolutely sure that Danny Keane knew exactly what it was. I could just imagine it. Jenny, confused and scared, going to the man she loved to tell him she was pregnant, and Danny panicking. He couldn’t let her tell her parents about him. Maybe she’d refused to have an abortion. Maybe he hadn’t even suggested it. The easiest thing of all was to end two lives in one go, and get rid of
the
whole problem once and for all. But he hadn’t made the problem go away. He’d brought it right to his door, and mine.
‘And how has Danny been behaving since then – since the middle of last week?’
‘Up and down. He was well shocked when he heard about Jenny being – you know. He came in, swearing and that, stuck the TV on
Sky News
and watched it for hours. He couldn’t believe she was gone.’
Or he felt guilty about what he’d done. Or he was reliving the excitement of killing her through the exhaustive reports on the rolling news programmes. Or he was watching to see if there was any hint that the police were on to him.