by Fiona Barton
Rosie’s glittery fingernail.
* * *
• • •
She didn’t remember shouting, but she must have done because Jamie was suddenly there, pulling her out of the cold store.
“Rosie!” she said.
He went to look and came out too quickly.
“She’s dead,” he said. His voice sounded dead as well. Why wasn’t he shouting or something?
Alex was too shocked to cry. She was cold and she shook until her teeth chattered. She wanted to speak but her jaw spasmed every time she tried.
Jamie tried to lead her inside, but she pulled back.
“No,” she said between her clenched teeth. “Can’t leave her.”
“She doesn’t need you now, Alex. Rosie is dead.”
“Who did this?”
“I don’t know,” he hissed. He didn’t seem drunk anymore.
“We need to get an ambulance and tell the police. Tell someone.”
“I’ll do that. You go to bed.”
She snorted in disbelief and her anger released her jaw. “Bed? My friend is dead! What are you talking about?”
“I’m your friend, Alex,” he said quietly.
“Of course you’re not. We’ve only known each other five minutes. I’m going to get the police—there’s a police station at the corner of Khao San Road.” She was shouting into his face, but his expression didn’t change.
“You came out here earlier to get beers. You must’ve seen her,” she suddenly screeched.
“No. I didn’t.”
“Oh God, you did, didn’t you? And you didn’t say anything. Did you do this? Did you kill her?”
Jamie turned his head slowly to look at her. His eyes were blanks in his face.
“Stop shouting,” he said.
SIXTY-SEVEN
The Detective
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2014
Jamie Lawrence looked up at him through his lashes. He was dirty, his nose was running, and the healing burns on his face were a dull red.
“Hello, Jamie,” Sparkes said, reaching down to pull him up to standing. “We’ve been looking for you.”
The younger man blinked. He’d been asleep in the bin store of a children’s home, curled up like a stray cat.
The Neighborhood Watch volunteer who lived opposite had noted him wandering around the day before and rung it in to the local police.
“Possible intruder at Meadow View. Young male, baseball cap, scarf over face.”
The duty sergeant had noted the details with a small sigh. Probably an inmate returning after curfew. Who breaks into a children’s home?
But the next shift noted the cap and scarf and rang the Southampton incident room. “We may have a sighting of your suspect,” the Kingston DI said. “What do you want us to do?”
“Scope out the grounds but don’t go in,” Sparkes said. “I’m on my way.”
* * *
• • •
The intruder was still asleep when Sparkes had creaked open the bin store door and ended the hunt. There was no chase, no wrestling to the ground, no cursing or punching. Just a blink.
“I am DI Sparkes and this is DS Salmond. We want you to come with us.”
Salmond put the handcuffs on as Sparkes read him his rights.
“Jamie Lawrence, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Alexandra O’Connor on or about August the fourteenth, 2014. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence,” he said and felt a small flicker of triumph. Got you.
The boy had blinked again.
* * *
• • •
His solicitor, a dusty duty man, sat next to him in the interview room.
“Can you give us your name, please, for the tape?” Salmond said, shifting to get comfortable on her plastic chair.
“Jamie Lawrence.” The voice was boyish, as if it had only just broken.
“Why did you go to the children’s home? Was it one you’d stayed in?” Sparkes asked. He was fairly sure it wasn’t, but he wanted to ease in gradually.
“No, but it was near where my mum lives.”
“Your mum? I thought she moved to Norfolk when you were taken into care.”
Salmond had spoken to Sylvia Lawrence and she’d said she wanted nothing to do with her adopted son. “He broke my husband,” she’d said in a tight little voice. “I wish we’d never set eyes on him.”
“Not her,” Jamie said, frowning and fiddling with the grubby bandages on his hands. “My real mum. Anyway, she wasn’t in, so I started driving around and saw the sign for this council place for kids. It looked like home. Funny, isn’t it?”
Sparkes shook his head. “No, we look for the familiar in everything, don’t we? We look to anchor ourselves in safe waters.”
It was a line from a book on coping with loss he’d bought and read secretly. Like porn. Grief porn. He cleared his throat. Shut up. You’ll be singing him a bloody lullaby in a minute.
* * *
• • •
It was getting late and Sparkes wondered if Sam would still be there when he got home. He’d left her folding Eileen’s clothes into an old suitcase. “She wanted me to send them to the charity shop,” she’d said. “It’s on her to-do list. Do you remember when she bought this dress?” She’d held up a sparkly number her mother had bought on a whim last Christmas. “You said she looked like the fairy on the top of the tree. I don’t think she ever wore it again.”
He’d picked up Eileen’s favorite jumper and buried his face in it. It smelled of her still. “I’m keeping this,” he’d muttered and put it under his pillow.
* * *
• • •
“Tell us about you and Alex,” he said. “We’ve been told you spent a lot of time together in Bangkok.”
Jamie nodded. “We were best friends.”
“But you’d only just met.”
“It didn’t matter. We felt like we’d always known each other.”
“Is that how Alex felt, too?”
“Yeah.” Jamie didn’t meet his eyes. “We were going to go traveling together.”
“That isn’t what she told her friend Margaret Harding. She said you wouldn’t leave her alone. That you were in her face.”
Jamie’s head jerked up and he pushed his chair away from the table. “No. We were in love.”
“But Alex wasn’t, was she? That must have been very hard for you. You were desperate to keep her, weren’t you?”
Jamie was nodding along, lulled by the gentle sympathy.
“You even drugged her,” Sparkes added quietly.
Jamie’s face flushed and the fists were back.
His solicitor came to life and interrupted. “What evidence is there for this, Inspector?”
“We have a witness,” Sparkes said.
“The owner of the guesthouse, Mama,” DS Salmond said. “She says you put Rohypnol in Alex’s drink to stop her going out with Jake Waters. It made her ill for days.” In truth, her conversation with Mama had been informal—the landlady had vanished again before her request for an official statement could be sanctioned—but she’d confirmed the details from her talk with Kate Waters.
“I couldn’t let her go off with him,” Jamie said, moving onto the edge of his chair. “I didn’t know it would make her so sick. I used too much. Anyway, I was protecting her, making her safe.”
“Safe from Jake? Why was he a threat?”
“He was trying to take Alex away!” Jamie shouted, and his solicitor put his hand on Jamie’s arm.
They were almost there. Sparkes leaned forward and said gently, “Why don’t you tell us what really happened on the night Alex died?”
>
“I don’t know. I expect it was an accident,” the young man opposite said, his voice squeaking as he spoke the words.
“What was an accident?”
“Alex dying,” he whispered.
The solicitor was about to speak but Jamie kept going.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen. I loved her. I didn’t want to hurt her ever. But she pushed me away. I tried to hold on to her. It all went wrong.”
Salmond pushed a box of tissues across the table. Jamie took one and wiped his eyes and nose, wincing when he brushed his burned skin.
“I need to understand how it all went wrong, Jamie,” Sparkes said, leaning back, giving the suspect room to tell his story.
“She agreed to have a farewell drink with me. I was a bit drunk already—I’d helped myself to some beers from the guesthouse—and I was upset that she was leaving me. I must have held her too tightly. She stopped breathing . . .”
“Why was Alex leaving you?”
“Because of Rosie. Rosie had disappeared and Alex wanted to go home. I couldn’t bear it when she said that.”
“Was it just the two of you at the farewell party?”
Jamie nodded. “There was no one else left. Jake had been arrested.”
“Did Alex know?”
“No, she thought he’d just gone off. I let her think that.”
Sparkes saw Jamie’s bandaged fists clench on his lap.
“She was supposed to hate him.” His voice was getting louder. “I told her Jake had slept with Rosie, but she didn’t believe me. I was so jealous when I’d walked in on them. I wanted her so badly my hands went all tingly when I saw her. It was how I felt when I thought about Mum. My real mum, I mean. I hate it when I think about her. Brings up all these feelings that the social worker said I need to let go. But they won’t be let go. They feel as though they are rooted in my stomach.” The young man reached for his abdomen as if to locate the feelings. “They are always here, smothering all my other feelings, strangling them when good things happen to me.”
The words electrified the atmosphere and Jamie looked down at his hands.
“I’d stolen Jake’s passport and wallet from his bag the day before, after I saw him with Alex. I broke into his locker and took his things from his backpack. I put my own passport in there so he wouldn’t notice straightaway.”
“Why did you do that, Jamie?”
“I’d decided I’d be Jake if that was who Alex wanted,” he told his fists. “Sounds mad, doesn’t it? Do you think I’m mad?” His eyes flicked back up to Sparkes.
The detective shook his head gently. “Go on.”
“I probably would have swapped them back again the next day when I’d calmed down, but he never came back. Jake was arrested before I could. Mama must have fingered him to the police. They’d fallen out big-time—I heard them arguing. Jake was saying Alex wouldn’t stop talking about Rosie. That it was all going wrong. Like the last time, with some Scottish bloke. That the police would come and he didn’t have any money to give Mama to pay them off. Mama told him to shut up before anyone heard him.”
“But you already had . . .” Sparkes said, and the younger man gave a small smile.
“I heard everything that was going on. No one ever noticed me in that place,” he said. “Anyway, Jake picked up the little backpack he took everywhere and marched out without even looking at me. Mama must have made a call. Jake always said she was well in with the police. He was gone. Rosie was gone. I was sure Alex would come with me to Ko Phi Phi. She’d have to or she’d be all on her own.”
“But she didn’t want to?”
“No.” Jamie’s voice dropped so Sparkes had to lean forward to hear. “She didn’t even want to talk about it. All that stuff I’d done to make her take me. For nothing.”
“What stuff, Jamie?” Sparkes said, matching his tone.
The younger man closed his eyes for a moment. “The stuff I’ve told you about. Taking Jake’s passport, telling Alex about him and Rosie. That.”
There’s more, Sparkes knew, but Jamie had rushed on with his blame game.
“All she could talk about was Rosie. Where was Rosie? And she was going to go home. She said there was nothing to stay for. I was gutted.”
“Where were you?”
“In the dorm.”
“Was she drinking?”
“Yeah, a bit. I’d got her the beer she liked from the cold store. We were sitting on the floor and I was going to tell her I loved her but I ended up telling her about being put into care. I thought maybe it would make her feel sorry for me, make her change her mind, but she didn’t really want to know. She said she was going to ring home and tell them everything. I didn’t know what to do. I thought she’d gone to her room but then I heard her shout from outside. I ran out and she was crying, saying she’d found Rosie.”
The tension in the interview room was palpable. Sparkes was in the dorm with Jamie, clambering to his feet, walking down the corridor to the back door and out into the hot night.
“Did you see Rosie’s body?”
“I saw a bit of her face. She had a mat over her but I could see her hair.”
“Where was Alex?”
“In the yard. She was shaking and crying and I tried to make her feel better. I told her I would sort it out. But she got angry with me. I tried to help her up. But she struggled. She started to shove me away as though she wanted me out of her sight. I should have let her go but I hung on. I kept thinking, ‘No one’s going to push me out again.’ And she was screaming. I think I’d frightened her. I didn’t want to, didn’t mean to. I just wanted her to stop. I pushed against her neck to stop the noise and held my hands there while she struggled, banging her hands against me and the wall. ‘Stop it, Alex,’ I said. I think I said. Then she did.”
Jamie picked up his tissue from the table and dabbed his eyes. Sparkes was replaying the hideous dance of death in the dirty courtyard. It probably only took a couple of minutes, he thought, watching the younger man slump back in his chair.
“Was Alex conscious?”
Jamie shook his head slowly. “She didn’t speak after that,” he said. “Her face was all gray and she fell to the ground. She’d wet herself—her legs had streaks of piss down them and her shoes were covered in splashes. I couldn’t stop looking at her legs. I didn’t want to see her face again. I felt as if I’d been standing there for hours. The air was all thick around me like it was setting, like a jelly, and when I turned my head, it felt like slow motion. Have you ever felt that?”
Sparkes nodded. “What did you do, Jamie?”
“I remember I told myself I had to undo this. Had to rewind. But I couldn’t. I’d have to hide what I’d done so no one else would know. I took all her dirty clothes off to make her nice and clean again and put her with Rosie. I tucked the matting round them both and then I took out my matches and looked for something to make a fire with.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
The Detective
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2014
They took a break when Jamie asked for painkillers for his burns. The fire had exploded into his face when he squirted more lighter fuel on Alex’s smoldering clothes, he’d said. It was taking too long to catch. He’d been frightened that people would put it out before it could destroy everything. He’d got the inflammable liquid on his hands, and the flames had jumped on them when he’d tried to protect his eyes. He said he couldn’t be sure who had put him in a taxi to the hospital, but he thought it might have been Mama.
* * *
• • •
Outside the interview room door, Sparkes and Salmond crushed plastic water cups in their restless hands and reviewed the situation.
“He’s saying it was an accident.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” Salmond said. “But where is his remorse? It feels like it is all a
bout him, not Alex. As if he sees himself as the victim.”
Sparkes had felt the same, manipulated by the narrative and those flirting eyes.
“Did you see the eye thing he keeps doing? Looking up through your lashes is classic passive-aggressive technique. Submissive but controlling.”
“If you say so, sir.”
“I do. I was reading about it the other day.”
“I prefer Jack Reacher.” Salmond swallowed the last drops of water.
“On we go. We have another dead girl to sort out,” Sparkes said and dropped his cup into the bin.
* * *
• • •
“Tell us about Rosie.” Sparkes plunged back in. And Jamie blinked.
“What about her? She was dead. I told you. Alex found her in the cold store.”
“And when did you see Rosie in there?”
“I told you, after Alex found her.”
“But you’ve told us that you went and got beer from the cold store earlier that evening.”
“I . . .” Jamie closed his eyes.
“I’ll ask you again. When did you see Rosie in there? The first time.”
“The day after she was supposed to have gone off to join the Dutch boys,” he said finally. The submissive glances had stopped, Sparkes noted. Jamie Lawrence was on the defensive.
“So you knew she was dead and that her body was outside the back door for two days?”
Jamie nodded. “I was too scared to tell anyone,” he said. “I thought people might think I had something to do with it.”
