Dead Time (26 page)

‘Oh,' Rose said, backing away, afraid that Sherry would look out of the window of her house and see her there. ‘You should retake your GCSEs.'

‘Can't, I'm suspended.'

‘Thought you wanted to see Sherry?' the other girl said.

‘Just remembered she told me to pick up some drinks and crisps at the shop.'

‘See you then …'

They both called out and waved to her until she turned into the alley again. She waited, hoping they would walk on. She counted to twenty and then crept out along the pavement, pausing at the corner. When she peeked round she could see their backs right along the street. In seconds they turned a corner and were gone.

She stood looking at the fourth house along. She wasn't sure what to do. Should she go up to the front door? Show Sherry Emma's phone? See what she had to say?

Her confidence crumbled. Was she right about this?

There were other people on the street. Two mums wheeling buggies side by side, a group of young boys with
a football, a man cycling past. She didn't know what to do. She heard a beep from her own mobile. She pulled it out and saw that she had a text from Henry Thompson. She opened it.

I'm here at the school. Meet me outside in five minutes.

Henry was waiting for her. She'd forgotten all about the arrangement she had made with him.

She thought hard for a moment. The thing she really wanted to do was to ring Joshua. To tell him what had happened. Ask him to come here, to the Chalk Farm Estate, then and there. That way they could talk it through and plan what to do together. She didn't feel she could, though. She didn't feel easy texting him out of the blue.

Why had she spoilt things between them?

The front door of number twenty-two opened. Startled, Rose moved back along the street. Sherry emerged from the doorway. Rose backed round the corner. The boys playing football were there and the ball hit her on the leg.

‘Do you mind?' she hissed.

They all parroted her.
Do you mind! Do you mind! Do you mind!

She ignored them and peeked round the corner. Sherry was carrying a black plastic rubbish bag in one hand. She was striding away from her house.

Rose followed Sherry, keeping back, pausing at corners, sticking to the hedgerows. Schoolchildren passed but didn't seem to notice her stopping and starting, so intent
were they on their own conversations. Shrieks of laughter rang out but she ignored them. Sherry did not stop or look round. She was walking in a stiff but purposeful way, holding the bag in one hand. She went quickly, making it difficult for Rose to keep up without getting too close. Eventually, moving out of the estate and into streets of older houses, she turned into a small recycling bay. It had giant green and brown bells sitting on the tarmac for bottles. At the side was a blue square metal bin for clothes and shoes. Rose stayed where she was, peeping out from behind a high hedge. Sherry glanced round the street. Her face was pale and she seemed unhappy. She then lifted her black plastic bag and tried to force it into the rectangular opening of the blue clothes bin. She couldn't, though, because it was full up and Rose could see that there were several plastic bags around the base that had been dumped there by people previously. She watched as Sherry stood uncertainly for a second. Then she bent over and seemed to move the bags. When she stood up again her hands were free and she moved to the edge of the recycling bay and pulled a packet of cigarettes from a pocket and lit one. She inhaled deeply and looked round again.

Rose stepped back along a front drive and crouched by a van.

Sherry walked off back in the direction of her house.

Rose let her go before she stood up. She waited a few
minutes and then went across to the recycling bay and looked at the plastic bags sitting around the clothes bank. There were about eight. All but one of them was covered in droplets of rain. She picked up the dry black bag, stepped outside the bay and sat on a garden wall, then undid the knot at the top and looked inside. She could see clothes but there was something heavy there as well. She pulled out some black jogging trousers and draped them over the wall. The next thing was a hooded sweatshirt, black. She laid it on top of the trousers. Then she reached in and felt shoes or boots. There was something else as well. Wires, or rings or something light and yet metallic. She grabbed a handful.

Silver and gold bangles.

She paused, thinking hard.

Then she upended the bag and they fell out over the tarmac. The boots came out at the same time; ankle-length, silver.

Sherry had thrown it all away.

The outfit she had worn to go to the cemetery on the night Emma was stabbed. The clothes she had had on when running back over the bridge. Skeggsie had enlarged the photographs and Rose had been sure it was Bee Bee Marshall.

And all the time it had been Sherry Baxter.

Rose gathered up the hooded top and jogging bottoms and pushed them back into the black plastic bag. The boots went in next and then she squatted down and picked up the bangles from the pavement. She counted twenty-seven metal circles. Some had fallen together, some were lying singly and were difficult to get hold of. She threaded them on to her arm for ease of carrying.

Her phone beeped.

Where are you?

It was from Henry Thompson. She should answer it but she was too stunned. Sherry Baxter, Emma's stepsister. She was the one who dressed up, who sent the text to Emma to tell her to get to the cemetery early. She
killed
her own stepsister. Rose felt the weight of it. She couldn't deal with this on her own. She needed help. She looked at the street name opposite and decided to reply to Henry's text.

At a recycling bay in Drummer Road. Come and get me. It's about Emma. I know who killed her.

She waited, sitting back on the wall, and began to think it through. On the day she was killed Emma had received a note from Lewis to meet him at the cemetery. He later said he hadn't sent it. He had received one, though, in Emma's handwriting, he said.

Sherry Baxter must have written those notes. She lived in the same house as her stepsister so she had access to Emma's things. She had most likely seen the notes Emma had received from Lewis in the summer and possibly even seen the ones that Emma was sending to him. Had she copied the handwriting? And drawn the signature smiley face and heart so that the notes looked authentic?

Why had Sherry tried to get Lewis and Emma together?

Sherry cared for Ricky Harris but he went back to Emma. Did Sherry kill Ricky because she was angry that he went back to Emma? Had this sent her off balance so that she ended up killing her own stepsister?

Or had Emma found out that Sherry had been seeing Ricky?

Rose dismissed this idea. When Emma came to see her that Saturday afternoon she seemed in harmony with her stepsister. She said Sherry was in Brentwood with her dad. She didn't know that Sherry was on the Chalk Farm Estate dressed up like Bee Bee, planning to ambush her in the cemetery.

A car came round the corner and pulled up in front of her.

Rose stood up. Henry got out and looked puzzled. His eyes dropped to the black plastic bag.

‘What's going on?' he said.

She walked towards the car.

‘We need to go to Emma Burke's house.'

‘I've got to open the club up. There are kids waiting there already.'

‘I've got evidence about Emma's killer. I'll tell you in the car.'

Henry's face darkened. He looked disapprovingly at her. He got into the car and so did she and they headed off. He was completely silent as she told him about Emma's mobile phone, making up the part where she'd found it that morning in the cemetery. She then explained about finding the last phone call that Emma had received. Without giving Henry a chance to speak, she described how she had sent texts to that mystery number and then made a final call, which Sherry had answered.

She expected some comment from him. A question or some response but he was mute. There was tension in the car and she filled it with nervous talk, sensing that he was not at all pleased with what she was saying. She pointed to the black plastic bag and the clothes and then, as they parked a few houses up from Emma's, she showed him the bangles on her arm and suggested that perhaps Sherry was throwing these out because she may have worn them to the cemetery in order to throw suspicion on Bee Bee. She did not mention the CCTV photograph.

‘Well?' she finally said. ‘What do you think?'

Henry blew through his teeth. He spoke quietly.

‘Rose, you cannot go round the streets trying to solve a crime yourself. As soon as you have any evidence you need to ring the police. You've had Emma's phone all day?'

She took it out of her pocket. It lay on the palm of her hand, pink and cute. The metal bangles were still on her arm and hung gaudily. Against them her black jacket, T-shirt and trousers looked funereal.

‘Rose,' Henry said, his voice hard with anger. ‘These things are
evidence
. There's a procedure for evidence. You pick it up with gloves. You put it in a plastic bag. It's marked, filed, documented. Then it's examined in minute detail by a forensic scientist. After that any person who comes into contact with it has to sign it in, sign it out, so that when it comes to a trial it's admissible. It proves something. It hasn't been contaminated with another person's fingerprints or fibres. Or someone else hasn't added to the data base and confused the whole order of events.'

‘I just …'

‘You just mucked it up, Rose. You've ruined these things as evidence.'

‘But I found out …'

‘Any solicitor in his right mind will have them dismissed out of court.'

‘But Sherry killed …'

‘If what you say is true then she won't be charged because you've contaminated the very things that will make it possible to convict her!'

Rose closed her eyes to shut him out. She felt her throat tighten up. She had done what she thought was right.

‘You have to leave these things to the police.'

Henry's voice sounded like that of a teacher and it made her angry.

‘But the police haven't found out who killed Ricky or Emma. Ricky's been dead for two weeks, Emma for twelve days. What's happened? Who's been questioned? Arrested? What's going on with the investigation? You don't know
anything
.'

‘We found the knife. We've interviewed suspects, we've looked after the families …'

‘But you haven't found out who did it and I
have
. Doesn't that count for something? All you can talk about is procedure, filling in forms, contamination. I'll tell you what contamination is. It's Sherry Baxter. She killed her stepsister and all you're doing is sitting talking about plastic bags and how I shouldn't have bothered. But if I hadn't bothered no one would know. So …'

‘So what, Rose? The evidence is ruined. What are you going to do now?'

‘I'm going to go in there before she gets rid of her mobile phone and I'm going to get her to confess.'

‘No, no …' Henry shook his head.

‘This is the
moment
. She's upset. She's already thrown this lot out,' she said, holding up the corner of the black plastic bag. ‘You and I can go in, together. You can tell her that I said I saw her at the cemetery and you've come round to ask her face to face. While you're doing that I'll send a text from Emma's phone and see if that sends her over the edge.'

‘Rose, don't you get it? It's inadmissible.'

‘Henry, don't you get it? She's upset. This is the
moment
. Take her to the police station and she'll have calmed down. I'm going in. You can come or you can stay here.'

‘She'll withdraw the confession.'

‘She won't be able to because I'll have heard it. You'll have heard it. We can be witnesses.'

He shook his head.

‘You can't go in with that phone.'

‘Yes, I can and I'm going to.'

Rose threw the door open and got out. She still had the bangles on so she pulled her T-shirt sleeve down and covered them. She headed for Sherry's house and then strode up to the door. There was no movement from the car but she went ahead. She rang the bell.

Sherry answered almost immediately. Her face was pink as if she'd been crying.

‘What?' she said, staring at Rose.

‘I have something to say to you.'

‘Like what?'

Just then a car door shut and Rose heard Henry walking up behind her.

‘Hello, Sherry,' came Henry's calm voice. ‘I hope you don't mind. There's just a small thing I want to ask you. Something that Rose Smith, here, brought to my attention. It's a difficult time with the memorial I know …'

‘Come in,' Sherry said, turning her back and walking into the house.

They followed her into the living room. The place smelled of cigarettes and air freshener, and the television was blaring out. Next to an armchair was a coffee table. An overflowing ashtray sat beside a packet of cigarettes and a mobile phone.

‘Sit down.'

Sherry gestured to a sofa and picked up the TV remote and muted the sound. The picture stayed there – people looking at houses in the country.

Henry sat down but Rose stayed standing. In her pocket she had the pink phone. She had her finger ready on the text button.

‘What?' Sherry said.

‘Rose here said she thought she might have seen you in the cemetery the evening that Emma was killed. Do you have anything to say to that?'

Sherry's face screwed up.

‘How come you're not in uniform?' she said.

‘Were you there, Sherry? When Emma was killed?' he said.

‘No!'

Rose pressed the
Send
button. A few seconds later there was a beep from Sherry's phone. She glanced down at it and then looked straight ahead. Her lips seemed to tremble and her hand went up to her head, fiddling with the comb that was holding one side of her hair back.