The Wicked Girls (11 page)

A fractional pause. ‘Who’s calling?’

‘Martin,’ he says.

‘Martin who?’

‘Martin Bagshawe.’

He hears her breathe. The voice is faintly familiar. It’s someone he’s met before, someone he knows. Not well, but he doesn’t
know anyone well, really.

‘OK, Martin,’ she says, ‘I need you to listen to me very carefully and pay attention to what I say.’

A surge of adrenalin makes him dizzy. She’s dead. Something’s happened to her.

‘Is Jackie OK?’ he asks. ‘What’s happened?’

‘She’s fine,’ she says sharply. ‘And Martin, in answer to your question,
you’re
what’s happened.’

Her voice changes, as though she’s reading a pre-prepared speech off a piece of paper. ‘Listen, Martin, you need to understand.
Jackie is not your girlfriend. She’s not your friend. In fact, she finds your behaviour aggressive and frightening.’

‘I—’ he begins to protest, but she ploughs on, ignoring him.

‘Martin, I want you to listen very carefully. Jackie wants nothing to do with you. What you’ve been doing, all this following
and watching, it’s harassment. It’s not a show of devotion and it won’t persuade her to change her mind. You need to stop
it. Now.’

Who is this woman? He knows the voice; it’s maddeningly familiar. Now he hears his own breath, coming fast.

‘I don’t know who you are …’ he begins.

‘It doesn’t matter who I am. All you need to know is that
Jackie is in a place of safety and she wants you to leave her alone.’

‘Place of safety …? What are you—’

‘You heard me, Martin. And I’m telling you now, you’d be well advised to listen to what I’m saying. You need to leave Jackie
alone. You need to stop.’

‘If Jackie wants that,’ he snaps, abruptly angry, ‘she can tell me herself. Who are you? Who are you to tell her what to do?’

‘No,’ says the woman. ‘She’s not coming to the phone. I’m going to hang up now, Martin. And when I do, you’re not to call
this number again. You’re not to call, or send any other type of message, to this number. You are not to come to her house,
not to come to her place of work, not to follow her in the street. Do you understand? Because if you do, we will be calling
the police. Do you get that?’

He can barely articulate. His lips are cold and numb, his throat constricted. ‘Yes,’ he mumbles. Whoever this woman is, she’s
not going to listen to reason. She’s got to Jackie and she’s going to destroy everything, twist it till it looks ugly, deformed.
He won’t argue with her. People like that – it’s not worth wasting your breath.

The line goes dead. He dials again. It goes straight to the plummy robot woman, who tells him that the mailbox has been deactivated.

His hands are shaking.

He’s a cocky young sod. Kirsty can tell by the swagger, by the imperious curl of the lip, by the way he wears his hat slightly
offcentre, as if to make a point. By the fact that he’s got his nightstick out as he patrols up and down the line and slaps
it against his palm, rhythmically, as he eyes the women with an expression somewhere between a sneer and a leer. There’s a
few of them in every town. He reminds her of her brother Darren: his air of sex with a predatory edge. A nasty young man,
but he might well be useful.

She can’t wait to be done with this piece. She wants to get home and sort things out with Jim. And she still has the remains
of her two-day hangover. She wants to be at the dining-room table that doubles as her office, back in Farnham, with a cup
of proper coffee and the laptop open and her husband mollified. She will be, soon. Just needs to mingle, like the rest of
the press pack, with the first trippers back into Funnland, and she’s out of here. She has fifteen hundred words to file by
lunchtime tomorrow and needs to get writing.

The queue edges forward. She’s amused to see that a lot of her colleagues are also mingling undeclared among the civilians
in the hope of picking up some juicy, usable quotes without having to seek permission, studiously ignoring each other though
they will all be buying each other drinks in a couple of hours. Stan shambles up the street, looking as hungover as she feels.
The
landlord of the White Horse will probably be able to take the rest of the summer off. Few drinkers are as free-spending as
a journalist on expenses.

He walks past the straggly queue and straight up to her.

‘Sorry about that,’ he says loudly, for the benefit of the people behind. ‘Took ages to find a parking space.’

He slots himself in beside her, lowers his voice. ‘Of course, it’s less about the queue than the company.’

‘Is that you being roguish?’ she asks.

He slide his specs down his nose, twinkles at her over them. ‘I wouldn’t know how.’

He offers her an Extra Strong Mint and they shuffle along companionably.

‘Get back to your room all right the other night?’ she asks.

‘I should be asking
you
that,’ he says. ‘You were so many sheets to the wind I thought you might go flapping off across the Channel. And how
was
your room, after you dodged the Ripper?’

‘Thanks for that, Mr Pot. It was great. It had a sink in the corner for throwing up in. But tell you what, I’m in such bad
odour at home, I should be wearing a hazard label. I completely forgot we were having some City cheeses over to dinner to
try and oil them up for a job for Jim.’

‘Oops.’

‘I was so hungover, I actually threw up.’

‘Not at the table, I hope?’ asks Stan.

She laughs.

‘We’ll make a pro of you yet, my girl.’

‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I don’t think you can call him a ripper, can you? Strangler, surely?’

His face takes on a contemplative look. ‘The Whitmouth Strangler. It doesn’t have much of a ring to it, does it?’

‘The Seaside Strangler?’

‘Nice. Like it. I found what looked like some dried snot on my bedspread. Which wasn’t very conducive to a good night’s sleep.’

‘Bed-bug numbers are up globally, you know.’

‘For God’s sake. I’m getting that camper van. I hardly ever go home as it is.’

‘Then you could go to the seaside every day,’ she says.

‘Ah, wouldn’t that be lovely? I must say, I’m enjoying this little interlude.’

‘Me too,’ she says. ‘It’s like being on holiday. Are you going on the rollercoaster?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. You?’

‘Still feeling a bit frail,’ she says. ‘I might have to give it a miss.’

‘Amateur,’ says Stan, and shakes his head. ‘How’s your piece shaping up?’

Kirsty shrugs. ‘Oh, you know. You can find whatever your editor wants you to find. Jack’s after Third Circle of Hell stuff.
So that’s what I’m giving him.’

‘That’s why I joined the press,’ says Stan. ‘The relentless quest for balance. Jack does so love to sneer at the proles, doesn’t
he?’

‘That’s a bit harsh. Have you seen what the
Guardian
’s been saying?’

‘Well it
is
the
Guardian
. It’s either that or they’ll have to find a reason why Israel’s to blame,’ he says. ‘So how was the press conference?’

‘Oh God. I didn’t go. I was sort of expecting
you
would.’

‘Ah. Oh well. It’ll all be on AP anyway. You home tonight?’

She nods. ‘As long as he hasn’t changed the locks. I’m on the motorway the second I’m done here. Can’t bloody wait.’

She catches the look on the face of the woman behind her, that peculiarly British suspicion of snobbery, and corrects herself
in a louder voice. ‘I hate these overnighters,’ she tells Stan, while looking the woman in the eye. ‘Doesn’t matter where.
I just miss my family so much, you know?’

Stan nods. ‘Yes. I remember the days when I had one of those to miss.’

*

Jim calls just as the gates to Funnland open.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘How are you?’

‘More to the point, how are you?’ he asks. ‘You didn’t say goodbye before you went.’

‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t entirely sure of my welcome.’

‘Yeah,’ says Jim. ‘You
are
an arse, you know.’

She feels a rush of relief. If he’s back to administering direct insults, it means he’s over the hump. ‘Accepted and understood,’
she tells him.

‘Save it for the judge,’ he says. ‘Are you still coming home today?’

‘Trust me,’ she says, ‘I’ve only had a bottle and a half of Chardonnay. I can drive it blindfold.’

They laugh. The queue edges closer to the gate and she tucks the phone into her chin to look for her wallet. The nasty young
security guard has moved up to stand by the kiosk and smirks at people as they pass, as though he’s got a dirty secret on
each of them.

‘OK. I’ll see you later. Oh, and Kirsty?’

‘What?’

‘I missed you saying goodbye this morning. Don’t do it again, eh?’

The words wrap her like a warm blanket. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll remember not to repeat the error.’

Who wants to ride dodgems at half-ten in the morning? There’s actually a queue for them, though perhaps that’s more a reflection
of the fact that half the rides and stalls aren’t open yet than of any particular desire for whiplash. There’s a startlingly
handsome man in charge: dark-haired, with a panther-like grace. He’s clean, unpierced, no signs of the inking you’d usually
expect on the arms of someone in his trade. Kirsty wonders idly how someone so good-looking ended up working here, rather
than for, say, Models One, and passes by.

Most of the other hacks make a beeline for the offices, in the
hope that Suzanne Oddie will be on the premises. Kirsty hangs back as Stan wanders over to the café, sees him sit down watchfully
at one of the fixed tables outside. He always looks like he’s not working, but he’s the one who actually comes up with the
goods. Plays on the fact that the young all believe that men revert to childlike innocence the minute their hair turns grey;
gets the waitresses gossiping in a way she can never manage.

Another security guard has been posted outside the entrance to Innfinnityland, where the body was found. He’s arguing with
the hack from the
Star
, arms folded firmly across his chest, head working slowly and firmly from side to side. Of course he is. The attraction is
closed, ‘out of respect’. The forensic team have departed, but no one’s going to get in for the money shot.

Except Kirsty.

She finds the cocky guard from the front gate drinking a can of Fanta behind the teacup ride. Now
here’s
a man with ink on his body. He’s not gone as far as LOVE and HATE knuckles, but a smidge of spiderweb sticks out of the back
of his starched blue collar.

She stops beside him. ‘Hi,’ she says.

He lowers the can and looks at her. He looks a bit like a whippet, except that no whippet has mean little watery blue eyes
like that.

‘Bet you’re all glad to be back at work,’ she says.

He looks her up and down once more, then realisation dawns. ‘Oh, right, you’re a journalist,’ he says.

‘Yes.’ She sticks out a hand. ‘Kirsty Lindsay,’ she says.

He shakes it, weakly, just like she’d expected.

‘And you are?’

‘Jason,’ he says, uncertainly.

‘Hi, Jason,’ she says, and gets out her wallet. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got the keys to everything here, haven’t you?’

*

She meets him at the back of the café; he doesn’t want to risk being seen walking across the grounds beside her. There’s a
door by the disabled bogs that leads through to the storage alley. The alley runs between the perimeter fence and the backs
of a series of stalls and sideshows: old-fashioned hoop-la, a shooting gallery, Dr Wicked’s House of Giggles, the NASA Experience,
The House of Horrors, Innfinnityland.

At first glance, the alleyway looks as though it’s strewn with dead bodies. Dead, naked bodies. Kirsty feels a shudder of
horror run through her before she realises that they’re just rejects from the waxworks, chucked out carelessly to rot in the
daylight.

Jason emerges from between the shooting gallery and the ghost ride. He looks both shifty and pleased with himself in equal
measure. Getting one over on the bosses, she thinks, is as important to him as the twenty quid which is burning a hole in
his pocket. He beckons with a jerk of the head, and starts walking towards the back of Innfinnityland. She hurries to catch
up. Now that she’s out the back here, where no one’s bothered with paint jobs and carved fascias, she sees that the attractions
are housed in shabby Portakabins: bits of insulation tumbling out where cladding has come loose, spaghetti-knots of thick
black wiring leading from the junction box against the fence.

‘Five minutes,’ he says. ‘That’s all you get.’

‘That’s all I need,’ she says. She wants to grab a couple of rough photos, drink in a bit of atmosphere, that’s all. It won’t
take long. She can make up anything she can’t remember. After all, no one’s going to be going in and correcting her.

‘And I’ve got nothing to do with it,’ he says. ‘I’ll come and get you, but if there’s anyone there, I’m here to throw you
out, OK?’

‘Of course. Thank you for this.’

He grunts. Stops at the foot of a set of metal steps. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘It’s up here.’

She brushes past, puts her hand on the tubular banister. Jason starts to hurry away.

She’s halfway up when the door at the top of the steps opens. She freezes. Nowhere to go. She’s caught in the act. A woman
emerges. She’s tall, and dyed blond: short, practical hair, skin that’s seen better days, rubber gloves and a pail full of
cleaning materials hanging from her arm, a large black mole on the edge of her smile line. She stops, looks puzzled.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I was just …’ Kirsty hunts for an excuse. Arse. That’s twenty quid wasted.

‘This building’s closed,’ says the woman. ‘What are you doing back here anyway? You shouldn’t be here.’

‘I just …’ Kirsty says again, then thinks, what the hell. I’m here now. What’re they going to do? Arrest me? She puts on her
most persuasive, friendly, conspiratorial face. ‘I just wanted to get a look inside,’ she tells her. ‘I don’t suppose you
could …? Just for a moment?’