Killing Rachel (23 page)

‘I was an idiot. I just tried to please you and you don’t even love me.’

‘Grow up, T. I’m not going to tell you I love you every time we meet. I’m just not going to do it.’

There was quiet. Rose felt her mouth twist up to the side, waiting for the next exchange. Maybe they had finished arguing. Possibly Tim Baker was trying to get round Tania, trying to placate her. She didn’t even want to imagine the scene.

‘Tim! Don’t go.’

‘I’m freezing my backside off here. I’ll ring you. You better get back into school. And lock the door before you go.’

Tim Baker strode out. Rose froze. He only had to look round to see her but he didn’t turn back – he just cut through the trees in the direction of the drive then disappeared. From inside the boathouse Rose could hear crying. Then the faint light from the window went out and it was completely dark. Rose ducked back round the corner. She heard a shuffling sound as though Tania was moving around and then, through the dark, Tania’s shape appeared at the door. She shut it and Rose heard the sound of a key being turned. With a final sob Tania took off and ran away from the boathouse. Rose made her out for a few seconds before she merged into the trees and darkness.

She was heading back to Brontë House. No doubt there was some door unlocked allowing her to go back into the building undetected. Rose walked after her, pausing to pick up something from the ground that Tania had dropped in her hurry to get away. The black wig.

Rose stood holding it for a moment.

What was it Tim Baker had said?
She drove my sister to her death.
Rose’s shoulders dropped and she began to walk towards the main building. She wondered what Tim meant but really she didn’t need to ask. Rachel had probably treated Juliet in the same way she’d treated Rose. The circumstances would have been different; the taunts, the hurts, the cruelties. Rachel hadn’t seemed to see friendship as something to cherish. As soon as she got it she set about dismantling it, destroying it. Rose had walked away; maybe Juliet Baker hadn’t been able to.

So Tim Baker and Tania decided to try and frighten Rachel.

Had it caused her death?

Had they been out here at the lake on Monday night pretending to haunt Rachel? Had she come out here looking for a ghost and found her ex-friend dressed up? On top of that Tania was with her ex-boyfriend? Was this the last straw? To find that Tim had taken up with someone else and that together they were going out of their way to try and
frighten
her?

Ten minutes later Rose was back in her room. She flung the wig on to the desk. She pulled her laptop out of her bag and opened it up. While it was loading she sat on the bed and wound the duvet around her middle, feeling the warmth come back into her hands. Then she fiddled with the pillows so that she could lean back and get comfortable.

She typed an email.

Dear Lauren Clarke, I think you should talk to Tania Miller and Tim Baker and ask them why they tried to frighten Rachel Bliss in the days/weeks before she died. Tania wore a black wig (which I have) so that at a distance she looked like Juliet Baker. I think Tania and Tim were there on the night Rachel died. That’s why Rachel went out to the lake. The reason I know all this is because I overheard them talking. I’m going back to London in the morning but you can always contact me by email. Rose Smith
.

She read it over a couple of times and sent it.

She placed the laptop on the floor beside the bed and rearranged the duvet so that it covered her up. She was still dressed, still wearing her boots and coat but she didn’t care. She lay her head on the pillow and drifted in and out of sleep.

TWENTY-THREE

When Rose woke up properly it was 08.46 Monday morning. The girls were getting ready to start classes for the week. She must have sunk into a deep sleep because she’d slept through the wake-up call and the scramble for the showers and breakfast. She threw the duvet off. Her coat had twisted around her. She swung her feet off the bed and on to the floor and unbuttoned her coat. She got up and looked at her phone. There was no message from Joshua. Could it be that he was still asleep? Her laptop was by the side of the bed. She had one new message.

Thanks, Rose. I’m coming to the school at midday. If you could delay your departure I would like to talk to you. Lauren Clarke.

Rose huffed. Now she would have to wait around and see the police officer.
Rose, Rose, why didn’t you just keep quiet about it!

She rummaged about in her bag. She pulled out her toiletries. She had no fresh clothes to wear but at least she could have a shower before going for breakfast. Maybe by that time Joshua would be up.

After washing she got herself some tea and toast and sat in the tiny kitchen. Joshua came in. She looked up from her tea, glad to see him. His hair was wet as though he’d not long got out of the shower. His face looked clean but there was still redness across his mouth where the tape had been.

‘Morning,’ he said wearily.

‘You all right?’ she said, reaching out her hand and touching his arm.

He nodded. ‘Starving.’

‘There’re cereals and milk and eggs and bread here. Can you make something?’

‘Sure.’

‘We’ve got a slight problem about leaving,’ she said.

He was at the cupboards getting the food out and looking for bowls. She showed him where things were and at the same time explained what had happened in the middle of the night. He looked at her with concern.

‘You went out in the night after everything we’d been through at Stiffkey? Why didn’t you just call one of the staff? Your old housemistress?’

She shrugged but then wondered why she hadn’t. Because at heart she was still a student? And students didn’t call on the staff to help in case they got another student into trouble?

Joshua was beating eggs in a bowl.

‘It’s a good thing that we’re not rushing back to London,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘I’d like to go back to the cottage. To look at it in daylight.’

‘Back?’ Rose was nonplussed.

‘We were in a state last night. I want to see if there’s any other evidence that we might have missed.’

Rose had no wish to go back to that cottage now or ever.

‘Rosie,’ Joshua said, seeing her expression. ‘The door’s open. We can go inside, look around. Maybe there’s something there that might help us. I want to take some shots of it. I need to send some stuff to Skeggsie so that he can get going. Start looking for links. This is the right time to do it. We can spend twenty minutes there and then get on our way.’

Rose folded her arms across her chest. She did not want to return to the cottage. But Joshua was at the hotplates, making an omelette and she was staring at his back.

‘I’ll go on my own if you like.’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You’re not going there on your own. I’ll come. But it’ll be twenty minutes tops. Then I can get back in good time to see the policewoman.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Got the bracelet?’

She pulled it out of her pocket.

‘Skeggsie wants a picture.’

She gave it to him and he turned back to his food.

‘I’ll just eat this, get packed and see you, what? Down at the car in thirty minutes?’

She mumbled something and walked off.

Back in her room she heard people moving about. It was the end of the first period and she looked out of the window and saw some students heading out of the building for different parts of the school. As the groups cleared she saw two solitary figures left. One was Molly Wallace sitting on a bench in the quad. She had her coat and hat on. She looked unhappy. Tania Miller was the other figure. She was walking across the grass and heading for Brontë House. Tania’s cropped hair made her head look tiny. She wasn’t wearing a coat, just a long cardigan over her uniform. She had her hands in her pockets and was looking at the ground. Rose wondered where she was going.

Rose turned away from the window and packed her stuff and for the second day running she chucked the bedclothes in the corner. She most definitely was not coming back here to sleep again. Before she left she looked at the wig sprawled on the desk where she’d thrown it the night before. She put on her coat and shoved the wig in her pocket.

Maybe Tania was ill or too upset for her classes.

Rose took her stuff downstairs and, leaving her bag in reception, she went out into the cold. Molly Wallace had gone and Rose headed for Brontë House. Once inside she paused. She didn’t know Tania’s room but it wasn’t going to be hard to find it. The block was square with a small courtyard garden in the middle. The bedrooms were off a corridor on the ground floor. Rose walked along and looked at the name tag on each. Tania Miller’s was halfway down. She knocked. There was no answer so she knocked more loudly. A grumbling sound came from inside and the door opened roughly. Tania stood there with a scowl on her face.

‘What do you want?’

‘You dropped something last night.’

‘What?’

Rose pulled the wig out of her pocket. Tania looked at it and seemed to deflate. She turned away and slumped on to her bed. Rose walked in and closed the door behind her. She tossed the wig at Tania.

‘Don’t you want it? It’s yours.’

‘Where was it?’ Tania asked cagily.

‘Outside the boathouse. I picked it up after you left. Well, after you and your boyfriend left.’

Tania ran her fingers through her hair and they seemed to continue as though they had a memory of longer hair, the heavy, shiny mass that Rose had envied.

It made Rose realise something suddenly.

‘He made you get your hair cut! Didn’t he? So that you could get the wig on and off more easily.’

Tania picked up the wig and threw it into the corner of the room.

‘You were listening to us, last night? Did you hear the way he treats me? When we first got together he was so loving, so nice and now he’s different. If I’m honest, I think the only reason he paid any attention to me was so that I would go along with his little plan to upset Rachel.’

‘You were her friend once.’

Tania went to speak but stopped. Then she seemed to draw a long breath.

‘It was a joke at first. You know what Rachel was like. You know what how mean she was. Tim said she treated his sister badly. He’s convinced that she was the cause of his sister’s suicide. So he wanted to take revenge. That was all. It was meant to be a kind of joke. I waited till late at night and then I stood under the trees and shone a torch up at my face. A few times. Anybody with half a brain would have known that it was someone playing a game.’

‘Molly said she believed it. Rachel wrote to me and she absolutely believed it. She also told me she saw Juliet Baker in her room once.’

‘Just once. I went up there with the wig on just once. Come on, Rose, you know what she was like. She was a horrible cow.’

‘That doesn’t excuse what you’ve been doing. My God, Tania, she’s dead!’

‘That was nothing to do with us. Nothing. The last time we did it was Friday night. Three nights before she died. That was it. We stopped.’

‘So you weren’t dressed up like a ghost on Monday when she died.’

‘No, but . . .’

‘What?’

‘We were in the boathouse and she caught us there. We weren’t
doing
anything. We were drinking vodka and Tim was smoking dope. She just barged in. She went mad at Tim. She kept saying,
How could you bring her here?
So I guess Tim and she must have spent time there as well. He just laughed at her. It was like this was what he’d waited for. He just told her to get lost and then she picked up the bottle of vodka and said she was taking it to Mrs Abbott and we would both be in a lot of trouble. Then she stormed off. Tim was furious. He went back to his car and he told me to race back to my room before Rachel told anyone. Then it was her word against ours. So I locked up and ran back to Brontë. I didn’t see her. The next thing I heard on Tuesday morning was that she was in the lake . . .’

Tania’s voice was cracking.

‘That was nothing to do with us. As far as we were concerned Rachel went off to the main building to wake up Mrs Abbott. She took our vodka with her. I expected Mrs Abbott to come to my room for the rest of the night and when she didn’t I just thought Rachel had got cold feet. She was no angel and she only knew about the boathouse because she’d been there with him weeks before.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police about this?’

‘Oh, Miss Rose Goody Two-Shoes. I’m really going to go and own up to seeing a guy in the boathouse in the middle of the night. Can you imagine my mum’s face?’

Rose looked at Tania with distaste. Rachel was dead and all she could think of was being in trouble with her mum.

‘Well,’ Rose said, picking up the wig from the floor of Tania’s room, ‘I expect your mum won’t look too pleased when she hears that you were dressing up as a dead girl and standing in the grounds late at night in order to frighten someone out of their wits.’