Girl Seven (34 page)

She shrugged and leant against the doorway.

I tried to forget she was there as I started working my way methodically around the room. First I checked the usual places; on the top shelves of the wardrobe and under the mattress. Burglars used the same logic; anything of value was either high or low.

In her dressing table I found a diary and address book.

‘That’s private,’ Clare said.

I raised my eyebrows at her as I sat down on the stool, picking my way past the lock with one of her hairpins. I scanned the most recent entries, saw a few names and put both the diary and address book in my pocket.

‘Do you know if Emma had a new boyfriend?’ I asked, looking at the photos stuck around the edges of the mirror.

‘No.’ She hesitated, as if she felt guilty for asking. ‘Have you seen…? Did she?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Oh.’

Emma looked like the sort of girl who knew too many people, I thought. One of the popular kids, with so many acquaintances that she wouldn’t be able to tell which ones were friends.

‘I thought she would have told us,’ Clare said. ‘She tells us everything.’

‘With all due respect, that’s a myth.’

It was too quiet and the room was too bright.

I reached forwards and ran my hands down either side of the mirror. My fingers brushed against something Sellotaped to the back and I stood up to peel it off. It was a bag of white powder.

‘No, she wouldn’t…’ She stepped into the room.

I put it in my pocket along with the diary and address book. ‘Don’t worry, it might not even have any relevance.’

‘It’s relevant to me.’

I looked back at Emma’s bedside table and saw on the digital clock that it was almost three in morning.

‘I’m going to go home,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve got enough information to get started. I’ll call round tomorrow… or later today, I mean. Hopefully Pat will be back by then and if the police find anything in the meantime I’ll know before anyone else.’

‘Are you just going to take those?’ She indicated her head at my pocket. ‘She might come back and if she sees we’ve…’

I didn’t say anything.

‘I get it,’ she said. ‘You don’t think she’s coming back, do you?’

‘No, I’m just doing my job.’

She looked me up and down but she seemed too tired to argue further.

‘Fine,’ she said.

‘Cool. I’ll check in later.’

I brushed against her shoulder as I walked towards the stairs, but her arms were folded and the scars on her wrists weren’t visible.

My mobile started vibrating in my pocket. It was Brinks, and I already knew what he was going to say. He wouldn’t call me at this time of night unless it was from a crime scene.

‘Yep?’

Brinks sounded as if he was walking, heavy breaths sending white noise down the line. ‘We’ve got the guys from Family Liaison heading over to the parents now. Poor bastards are going to have to identify a body.’

‘You found her?’

‘Her… it, whatever. If it wasn’t for some of the clothes you described I wouldn’t even fucking know.’

‘Is it bad?’

‘Bad? More like unrecognizable. Seriously, Nic, shot and beaten to fuck.’

My thoughts went to the girl’s face in the picture frame; red, purple and smashed. I avoided looking back up the stairs at Clare, but I could feel her expression searing straight through me.

‘Who found her?’

‘Taxi driver. I’ll give you the names and statements as and when.’

‘You sound spooked?’

‘Yeah, well, you’re not here. We’ll catch up later; I’ll give you some photos and stuff. Just thought you should know.’

‘Thanks, I suppose.’

‘Laters.’

In a moment of sheer dread I considered carrying on down the stairs, leaving without meeting her eyes and pretending the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened. I put my phone in my pocket, with the diary and coke, and looked up at her.

She took a breath and a few of the waiting tears worked their way out. ‘Who was that?’

‘Listen, don’t panic,’ I said, marvelling at how ridiculous it sounded. ‘Listen to me. In a couple of minutes some officers are going to arrive and ask you to go down to the hospital to identify someone. Can you get ahold of Pat?’

‘I’ve tried, he’s not answering…’ She came down a few steps. ‘What do you mean
identify
someone? You mean they’ve found something, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

Why had I come back? Why hadn’t I just stayed in my car? Why hadn’t I just stayed at home and avoided this mess?

She came closer but still stayed above me. ‘Don’t
fucking
lie.’

It would be an insult to deny it. She knew more than that. It was admirable that she found the control to keep talking, even with the tears rolling down her cheeks from red eyes that the grief hadn’t yet caught up with.

‘I think it’s her,’ I said, softly, as if that would make it easier. ‘Is there any other way of calling Pat?’

She looked away. ‘He’s not answering. Neither are his friends.’

The tears were still coming but it was just formality, an imitation of a natural reaction to cover the shock.

‘How are you sure?’ she asked.

‘The clothes, he said.’

‘Right…’

For a second, I was worried she might faint.

I heard a car pull up outside and she put a hand to her eyes. ‘Oh God, where the fuck is Pat…?’

There was a knock, a pause, and then the sound of the doorbell. I moved aside so she could pass me, rubbing her eyes as she opened the door.

The officers were in uniform, young and grave.

‘Mrs Dyer?’

She nodded but said nothing. She didn’t invite them in so they carried on talking.

‘We’re very sorry, but we need either you or your husband to come with us to identify a body that was recently found.’ The officer glanced at me over her shoulder, hovering three steps up, trying to stay out of sight. ‘If both of you—’

‘I’m not Pat Dyer,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m… a friend.’

I could feel the fear emanating from her in cold waves.

‘Do you have any way of getting in contact with Mr Dyer?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he’s not answering his phone.’

‘I can drive you,’ I offered. Why, I didn’t know. It came out like an attack of Tourette’s.

She wasn’t looking at me but she nodded.

It was quarter past three.

Welcome to hell, indeed.

We were taken to the viewing room. Hospitals all had the same smell as prisons. I looked over my shoulder out of habit, into all the rooms, sizing up the inmates as I had in juvie.

Clare hadn’t spoken in the car and she didn’t speak now.

The outline that we could see through the pane of glass, under the white sheet, looked smaller than I had expected. I felt sick all of a sudden. She might have looked older in the photograph but she was only a child, really. They always looked their age when they were dead.

They pulled the sheet back and Clare recoiled.

I stepped forwards. The first thing I noticed, which drew me towards the glass in fascination, was that her face was gone. This wasn’t the usual purple bruising and fractures; it was total obliteration. I tried to focus on the point where her jaw ended and her neck began but, even with the blood cleaned away as best they could, I failed to find it.

Clare had only needed to look once.

She started crying with her back to the glass and I stayed silent, hanging back. I had tried my best to warn her of what she was going to see in the car but she probably hadn’t heard me.

The officers moved away to give us space that I didn’t want.

‘No no no no no no…’

I saw her knees buckle and managed to get to her in time to slow her descent to the floor. I was on my knees, holding her and unable to stop. I felt her tears stain through my shirt. It should have been Pat here instead of me and I hated him for it. Hate, fear and some alien feeling caught in my throat, making it hard to breathe. I went on to autopilot, doing what I thought other people would do with another man’s wife shuddering with grief in their arms; stroking her hair, soft as I had thought it would be; saying, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right…’ even though it wasn’t. It was never going to be all right.

I didn’t know how long I went on telling her that before I saw the officers returning and knew it was time for us to go.

‘Come on, let’s go home.’

No response.

I glanced at the officers, nodded as if to say ‘Give us a second’ and took a breath.

‘Hey,’ I said, looking down at her. ‘Hey, um… Clare.’

She looked at me but there was only a flicker of acknowledgement in her face.

My breath stopped in my chest and I swallowed. ‘Come on, we need to get you home. Can you stand for me?’

Slowly, she nodded.

I helped her up and half walked, half carried her out.

In the car there were no words from either of us. She rested her forehead against the window, watching yellow lights go by.

The clock on the dashboard said 05:48.

As we approached the house I saw that the Mercedes was back. I opened the car door for her and walked her to the front door. Pat answered on the second ring of the bell, stood up too straight in his suit, looking as though he was trying his hardest not to lean on anything.

Clare left my side and slapped him.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t even meet her eyes.

She looked him up and down, her lip shaking, and walked inside.

I could still smell her perfume on my clothes.

Pat took a long breath through his nose and said, ‘You Nic?’

I nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’

His face contorted. ‘You can… you can go… I’ll call you.’

As I walked back down their path I inhaled deeply, trying to clear my head. An unforgiving wind started howling and when I got into my car the temperature read –4. No one was going to find comfort tonight.

When I woke up I could feel sunlight on my face and my eyelids were encrusted with sleep. My shoulders were aching, propped up with cushions, and when I managed to prise my eyes open I realized I had fallen asleep on the sofa.

I sat up and Emma’s diary slid off my stomach on to the floor.

‘Ah, fuck.’

I looked at my watch.

‘
Wo
.’

It was almost midday and the shock propelled me to my feet. I wavered, blinking, until the room came into enough focus for me to locate my mobile on the coffee table. There were no messages from Russia. My flatmate, Mark Chester, had been away for over a month now and I only had five texts to show for it.

I turned in the direction of the kitchen for coffee, decided that I didn’t have time, and went into the bathroom instead. It wasn’t good. I had a meeting with Edie Franco about a new job in forty-five minutes, and turning up looking like the casualty of a cheap stag weekend wasn’t how I wanted to project my professional image.

‘Jesus…’

I dashed some water on my face, took off my shirt and noticed I’d written something on the back of my hand.

‘Who is K?’

A recent section of Emma’s diary came back to me.

‘Went for another p/u with K. Imagining Dad’s face, LOL
.
’

I looked at the reminder again before washing it off, and sprayed some deodorant over the lingering smell of sweat and perfume.

Edie Franco owned one of Mark’s favourite nightclubs: the Underground. Direct, impossibly blonde and built like a Valkyrie, she came across as the sort of woman with whom you would be lucky to survive a sexual encounter. She was winking at forty, but you couldn’t tell.

I was half an hour late but, as I should have expected, she was later. I managed to drink two cups of coffee at the bar before she arrived with a gust of sleet and freezing wind. She was wearing a red coat that covered everything down to her knees and her handshake was more of a firm stroke.

‘I missed those swimming-pool-blue eyes!’

‘Edie.’ I pulled away briskly after she kissed me on the cheek. ‘You want anything to drink?’

There was no apology for the time. ‘Coffee, black.’

I nodded at the barman. ‘I’ll have the same.’

‘Move to the sofas?’ She indicated her head and started walking.

I followed her to a spot away from the doors and sat down opposite her. It felt better to have a table between us.

‘Haven’t heard from you in a while?’ I said.

‘Life’s been sweet, what can I say? You get married, you have a kid, you open a club, you think about another kid…’ She crossed her legs, slipped off her coat. ‘Get divorced, call up a beautiful man… don’t worry, that’s not where you come in…’

The barman came over and put down two coffees.

I looked at mine, smiling, but didn’t touch it. ‘I’m, er… sorry to hear that.’

‘Sorry about the divorce or the beautiful man?’ She raised her eyebrows and her expression became coy, wide eyes blackened with theatrical make-up. ‘Well, sometimes people just grow away from each other, or too close to other people, or several, whatever.’

I smiled.

‘You ever wanted to have kids, Dominic? Pass on that hot side-profile?’ She turned her head so I could admire hers, the same nose and full lips.

‘Looks better on you,’ I said, picking up my coffee.

Another festive song was playing. I looked up at the fake holly pinned to the spirit shelf. There was still a month to go but Christmas was everywhere.

‘Sad, isn’t it? Working over Christmas.’ There was a pause as she followed my eyeline up to the lights. ‘Sometimes the evenings look so beautiful from my office I can barely stand to walk home alone… I rarely do, that’s probably why we’re here, huh?’

‘Sidney.’ It had dawned on me what the job was.
Who
it was. ‘It’s Sidney, isn’t it? Something to do with the divorce?’

Silence.

I shook my head. ‘Damn, Edie, you know I don’t like to—’

‘You don’t like to know why. Isn’t that how you work?’

I put the coffee down, too high on caffeine already and unable to look at her directly. ‘Domestic disputes, come on, I thought you were above this sort of thing?’

‘He wants my son. What am I above? Love?’