Moth Girls (23 page)

Princess Street was full of people and police cars. Mandy and her mother walked among them. They were looking for Alison Pointer. They edged through the crowd standing around and saw her in the middle of a throng. She was by a police officer and another was trying to move people away from her. There were three police cars and several officers. Two of them stood guard outside number fifty-five Princess Street. Next door the building site was at a standstill, and men in yellow hats stood around smoking cigarettes and looking serious. A truck with giant bags of sand on it was parked half up on the pavement and the driver was in a heated discussion with a WPC.

‘Alison,’ Mandy’s mum called out.

Alison turned round and saw them. She gave a slight nod to acknowledge them but her face was frozen. Her mum edged through the people and grabbed Alison’s arm. Then Alison seemed to crumple, leaning sideways on her mum’s shoulder. The policeman raised his voice and people around appeared to slink away, moving back along the street. There was crime scene tape across the road and Mandy noticed a van with a satellite dish on the top beyond it.

The newsagent was outside on the pavement, his face grim, appearing to be unhappy about his street making the news again.

Mandy walked over to Alison. Her mum was holding her up now.

‘He took her,’ she said, looking at Mandy, her eyes glittering with tears. ‘That bastard took her. My Tina’s been there for the last five years.’

Mandy knew that Tina wasn’t in there alive. This wasn’t going to be like the girls in Cleveland, Ohio. She wasn’t going to be rescued. Tina was dead, her mum had told her while walking round there. Tina’s body was probably buried in the cellar of the house and the police intended to find it. Alison knew these things but she had talked about Tina as if she were alive for the last five years and it was hard for her to say it any other way.

Mandy looked at the house that she’d seen the neighbour come out of days before. It was an old end-of-terrace building and the front garden had been paved. There were no flowers there in contrast to other gardens along the way. Its curtains were drawn top and bottom. The police officers standing at the gate had no expressions on their faces. The front door opened unexpectedly, silencing the small crowd. Two men in white paper suits came out. They were carrying items inside thick plastic bags. One of them looked bulky. It was a computer screen, cumbersome and heavy; it looked as if it had been bought many years before.

‘Mrs Pointer?’ a woman said.

Alison turned around. A woman in a dark quilted jacket stood there.

‘Detective Constable Bernice Morgan. I think it would be a good idea if we retired to your home. That way I can keep you up to date with the search. Maybe your friends could come and make you something to eat.’

‘I don’t want to eat.’

Alison was staring at the house, her forehead lined, her teeth gritted.

‘That would be a good idea,’ her mum said, pulling her gently away. ‘Let’s go. It’s just a couple of streets. We can walk.’

‘Best to go in my car,’ DC Morgan said. ‘The press will be everywhere.’

‘I can deal with the press,’ Alison said.

‘We know you can but now isn’t the time,’ her mum said.

Alison nodded. She let go of Mandy’s mum’s arm and began to walk. The DC took her elbow and led her through the onlookers. They knew who she was. They stood back respectfully. Mandy looked back at the house.

‘Is he in custody?’ she said.

Her mum frowned.

‘The man who lives there. Have the police got him?’

Her mum linked Mandy’s arm and drew her away.

‘Oh, Mandy, he killed himself. They think he did it Friday night. He posted a letter to the police confessing what happened and an officer went there this morning. They found him dead.’

‘Oh.’

She’d seen the angry neighbour twice on Friday. She’d passed him as he got out of a cab on Friday evening.

They were heading for the DC’s car. Alison was already in the passenger seat.

‘How did he do it?’ Mandy said.

‘He took sleeping tablets. He had bottles of them apparently. Maybe he’d been planning it for years and the demolition of the house was a trigger.’

It was the first time that Mandy had been inside Alison’s home since she’d been friends with Tina. It had changed a lot. Then it had been wooden floors and lots of pictures and decorative ornaments. There’d been rugs here and there and scatter cushions on every available seat. There had always been things to look at, little mementoes that the family had brought back from somewhere. In those days it hadn’t always been a happy place because Tina’s mum was upset about her husband who was no longer living there. Now it was clean and neat with oatmeal carpets on the floors and a beige sofa with black throws over the arms and back. There were no small things on view. It was an emotionless place, like a waiting room.

Mandy’s mum dashed off to the kitchen, calling, ‘I’ll see what’s in the fridge.’ Mandy hoped she wasn’t planning to bake anything. Alison sat in the middle of the sofa with her hands sandwiched between her legs. She stared straight ahead. DC Morgan was beside her. Mandy perched on the armchair opposite. Her mum came out of the kitchen.

‘Shall I make some toast? There’s not much else. I could pop out to the shops? There’s some tins of soup …’

She was talking quickly with an air of panic in her voice.

‘Perhaps we could just have some tea for Alison,’ DC Morgan said. ‘That would be a start. I would like a cup of tea and I’m sure Mandy would too.’

Her mum went off. Mandy was disconcerted that the detective knew her name, but of course she would. Mandy was no bit player in this. She was at the heart of it. No one said anything while the tea was being made. Her mum brought it in and handed the mugs around. Alison put hers straight on the carpet by her foot. DC Morgan spoke quietly and without any sense of drama.

‘The things I’m going to explain will be in the public domain any minute now: television, radio, social media. So you need to know what is going on. On Saturday a letter was delivered to Holloway Road Police Station. It wasn’t addressed to any particular person so it was channelled through admin. The letter was not opened until this morning. It was a confession: two pages of closely written text. As soon as it had been read, officers went to the address. They had to break down the door of the house and Alan Monk was found dead on his bed. Beside him were a couple of hairslides. We believe these may have belonged to Tina.’

Alison made an audible gasp.

DC Morgan stopped. Her face took on a look of shame as if it were her fault in some way. The neighbour’s name was Alan Monk. Mandy realised then that she’d only ever thought of him as the
angry neighbour
.

‘I thought you checked all the houses. And the Sex Offender Register,’ her mum said.

‘We did check the register. There were a couple of men who lived in the area at the time and their homes were searched and they were questioned. But Alan Monk had no record. He’d never been known to the police.’

DC Morgan turned to Alison and grabbed her hand.

‘Alison,’ she said, ‘the confession does not suggest that there was a sexual motive although we can’t know that for sure until we find Tina. And of course we are checking Alan Monk’s computer, his associates, his life.’

The detective spoke about finding
Tina
, not finding a body.

‘Is she definitely dead?’ Mandy blurted out.

‘I’m afraid so. The confession states this and has told us where to find the body.’

‘It could be made up,’ Alison said, sitting up straight, an energy coming from her. ‘This man could be a fantasist. He’s lived next door to it all these years and he could have persuaded himself …’

‘He has her clothes, Alison. There are signs that the floor in the cellar has been disturbed. We are excavating now. We will know soon.’

Alison shook her head. ‘I don’t believe it. Not after all these years. There was no body. I’ve always known that she was alive. I’ve felt it here.’

She had her hand over her chest; her fingers were thin and fragile like an old lady’s.

‘And anyway,’ Alison went on, ‘what does the letter say about Petra? Petra isn’t mentioned. And they were together. I always knew they’d be together, they’d look after each other. I always knew that Petra would look after my Tina.’

This wasn’t true. There were many times that Alison had come round to their house and talked about sightings of Tina
on her own
. She had not mentioned Petra then.

A mobile ringtone sounded. It made them all look round sharply. DC Morgan answered her phone. Mandy’s mum got up and sat next to Alison. She put her arm round her. Mandy could hear the DC saying, ‘Yes … Yes, I’ll do that … I’ll tell her … Yes …’ The call ended. DC Morgan paused before she spoke.

‘Alison, I’m sorry to tell you but our officers have found a body under the cellar of Alan Monk’s house. It’s the body of a female approximately twelve years old. We’ll know more later, after the autopsy.’

Alison seemed to steel herself. Mandy wondered if she was going to cry. She didn’t though. She disengaged herself from Mandy’s mum and stood up.

‘I need to get changed,’ she said. ‘I need to get myself ready.’

Mandy avoided making eye contact with her and looked away, around the room. Over by the door she saw Alison’s handbag, solid and square, sitting on the carpet. She wondered if it was full of the things Alison needed, ready to go to any possible sightings of Tina. Would she take it with her now? For what? To identify her daughter’s clothes?

‘Could Petra be there as well?’ Mandy’s mum said. ‘In that cellar?’

‘No. At the present moment we don’t believe that Petra is part of this and we have no idea what happened to her.’

They all looked at Mandy. They had sympathy in their eyes because Mandy had been Petra’s friend and was closer to her than any of them. They didn’t know that Mandy had seen and spoken to Petra already. They didn’t know what Mandy knew.

Klara stared out of her bedroom window onto the street below. It had stopped snowing and there were people walking along the pavement. They were wearing their great coats, boots and woollen hats, and a couple of old ladies had scarves covering their noses and mouths. Some cars were driving slowly down the road, one of them skidding a little, then righting itself.

The house was warm, the radiators piping hot. She could hear a clanking sound from the radiator in the bathroom which Henryk was always trying to fix.

Klara was glad to be on her own. Zofia and Henryk had gone out for some DIY shopping because Henryk wanted to redecorate the kitchen. Henryk was never happy with rooms until he had stripped them back and changed them around. He planned a breakfast bar for the kitchen. Zofia liked the idea and they’d decided to start next week. He’d asked Klara to come and help but she’d said no. ‘You got boyfriend coming?’ he’d said to her in English.

Zofia had given him a slap on the head and told him, in Polish, that Klara was too young for boys. Henryk liked to speak the odd bit of English. ‘Keep in excellent practice,’ he’d say.

Klara did have a boyfriend, but it was a secret from Zofia who worried about her all the time. ‘Boys just want one thing,’ she’d whisper in English. When they were on their own Zofia often spoke to Klara in English but everywhere else it was Polish.

Her boyfriend was the son of a friend of Marya’s. His name was Pawel and he supported Manchester United. He liked comic book heroes and collected old magazines about them which he shopped for on the web. He had brown hair that was cut short and Klara liked to run her fingers through it. He liked to play with her hair as well, teasing it out of the grips she wore. He liked to undo her buttons too but she always stopped him, because she knew how upset Zofia would be if anything happened. Neither Henryk nor Zofia knew about Pawel but Klara suspected that Marya had a good idea what was going on. But Marya wouldn’t give her secret away.

Her phone beeped and she took it out of her pocket. It was a text from Pawel.

T
ę
skni
ę
za tob
ą
. XXX

He missed her. He’d only seen her a couple of nights ago. She smiled and tapped out a quick reply because, actually, she missed him too.

Za tob
ą
t
ę
skni
ę

She kept her phone out as she sat looking down into the street. She was playing with the cross that hung on the chain around her neck. She held it up to her lips and felt the cold metal. Once it had belonged to Klara, Zofia’s real sister. Zofia had given it to her as a gift and she wore it always. Zofia had given her many gifts over the years and Henryk was generous too. Her room was full of CDs and DVD sets, books and gadgets.

The window felt cold but she stayed there anyway. She could see all the way down the road and there was a crocodile of very young schoolchildren being led along by their teachers. They were each wearing a lime green tabard over their coat. They all had woollen hats and gloves and they were walking in twos, holding hands. They were so small that the snow was nearly up to their knees.

Klara was starting a new college after Christmas. After spending much of the autumn in Paris and London, picking up work here and there, they had returned to Lodz a couple of weeks before Christmas and it hadn’t been worth Klara going to college for that short time. She didn’t mind. She liked being at home with Zofia and Henryk.

She hadn’t had long periods of schooling. The first year after she left London she didn’t go to school at all. They moved around Poland. For a few months they stayed near Krakow in Henryk’s flat while he and his van did different trips back and forth across the continent. Then they moved north and Henryk came with them. He stopped taking long trips and started up a cab business. They spent a couple of years near the Ukrainian border and Klara went to a school there for a while. By then her Polish was fluent. Then they went to Gdansk, a port on the Baltic Sea, which Klara thought was the coldest place on earth. There she dressed up to go bed with socks, leg warmers, pyjamas and a night cap. Zofia was happy though, and didn’t seem to notice the ice-laden winds and the freezing sunshine.

Klara knew why Zofia was moving round. She couldn’t stay in one place in case her father came after them. Henryk knew who Klara really was, although she didn’t know what explanation Zofia had given him.

They finally ended up in Lotz, the place where Marya had her nail shop. Marya found a house for them and they settled, except there wasn’t much work. Henryk decided to become a man with a van in London again for a while, so Zofia said she should go with him and Klara could stay with Marya. But Klara wouldn’t be separated from Zofia. Klara went back to London with Zofia and Henryk and they worked at a variety of jobs to get money to bring back to Poland.

Early one morning, on the way to a bakery they were working at, Klara said, ‘Why don’t we just drive past the old house?’ Princess Street was on their way, so Zofia didn’t mind. They stopped at the house, except it wasn’t there any more. It had been flattened and she got out to look at it. Then
there
was Mandy Crystal, all grown up, standing in the shadows, talking to her like a ghost.

She had never been as frightened as she had been at that moment. (Actually, she had, when her father had
killed a man
.) Everything she had gained over the past five years seemed to be in jeopardy, just because she’d stepped out of a car and stood in front of a fence. How close she had been to losing her new life. Even when Mandy had turned up on her doorstep she hadn’t been so scared. Because Mandy hadn’t gone to the police straight away. Mandy just wanted to know what had happened and Klara was able to give her a version of the truth.

Out in the street in Lotz, below her window, she could see Henryk’s car coming along. Now he would moan because there was nowhere for him to park. She watched it go by and knew that he would have things in the back to carry along to the house. She pulled her boots out from under her bed and slipped her feet into the fur-lined interiors. She laced them up and looked round for her jumper. Even going out for a few minutes she had to make sure she was warm enough. She went downstairs, pulled her coat out of the cupboard by the radiator and then looked for her gloves.

Zofia had shown her the news reports about the police finding the body of Tina Pointer under the cellar of the neighbour’s house. It had surprised her because Zofia never talked about those days in Holloway when she worked in a nail shop and was the girlfriend of Jason Armstrong, Klara’s father. Klara had always assumed that Zofia had almost forgotten that bit of her life, that perhaps she had begun to believe that Klara really was her sister.

But a week ago she had waited until Henryk went out and pulled Klara over to look at her laptop. There it was, the whole story. The body of one of the two Moth Girls had been found. The disappearance of the second girl, Petra Armstrong, was still a mystery and the police would continue to investigate. Klara had cried for Tina but not for long. She had tried her hardest to go back to that night and in her imagination follow Tina out into the garden as she ran away from the old house. But it was as if those memories belonged to someone else. Klara couldn’t make herself concentrate on them. The girl Petra had gone and now she was someone different.

She did her coat up and pulled on her hat. She opened the door and felt the force of the wind and some speckles of snow that were blowing from nearby drifts. She made sure she had her door key and looked up and down the white street. Trundling along from the far corner was Henryk, carrying bags in each hand. Zofia was beside him with rolls of something under her arm. They must have parked round by the tyre workshop where there were always places. Klara walked swiftly towards them and when they met Henryk’s face lit up.

‘
Moja mała ró
ż
a
,’ he said.

My little rose.

‘
Jest tak zimno. Zrobi
ę
zup
ę
dla ciebie
,’ Klara said.

She’d make some soup for them.

‘
Dzi
ę
ki
,’ Zofia said, grabbing her collar and pulling her face down so that she could give her a big kiss on the cheek.

Klara was much taller than her sister. Some people thought this was odd but Zofia just laughed it off and told them that
everyone
was taller than her.

Her phone beeped. She glanced down at it. It was Pawel. Another text!

‘Boyfriend,’ Henryk said in English.

Klara didn’t answer. She took one of the bags off him and trekked back through the snow towards the house.

She’d answer it later. When she’d made the soup for Zofia and Henry
k.