“Feel it,” he said, so I did, and I laughed. He seemed to be in charge. He went over how Billie and I went our separate ways home. “Was there anything out of the ordinary?” he said.
“Nope.” I shook my head. “I’m sure she’s just out exploring and has lost track of time.” I felt a need to cover for her, so she wouldn’t get told off. The police didn’t seem that worried. I forgot to mention the walker and the predictor, which Georgie the policewoman asked me about a few days later, but they had both seemed pretty ordinary at the time. I didn’t know then that the walker might be the killer, or even that Billie was dead. Billie always made predictors, and sometimes we tailed people if we thought they were up to no good. They must have found out about them afterward, from reading my diary. I looked at it. “Is it okay if we borrow this diary, Thera?” the blonde policeman said. “It would really help us out.”
“Of course. We always cooperate with the police,” I replied, meaning Billie, Sam, Mum, Dad, and me. And probably I also meant Billie’s mum and dad, and the people in my village, like Mrs. Stephenson the dinner lady and Mrs. Underwood the shopkeeper. I thought of the village as “us” and the rest of the world as “them” before Billie got killed. Now I know a killer lurks among us, I’m not so sure about my village.
The policeman laughed, and I still don’t know why.
“If you need extra help, you just give me a call,” I said.
“Thanks, Thera, I will,” he said sincerely.
“You could hire me if you needed to.”
“We’ll certainly think about that.” He smiled. I imagined it. It would have been so great if they had hired me. For years, I have thought a secret government branch might take me out of school and train me to become a spy, because I’m the smartest in my class by miles, and I win all the races too. They could train me in martial arts and boxing, and give me a license to kill. I’d only kill bad guys, though. I’m seriously surprised they haven’t come to me for help. The bait idea seems almost too easy and clever. The fact that they haven’t thought of it makes me worry the police are total ninnies and as bad as everyone is saying.
Back in our kitchen, on the night Billie went missing, I added, “Don’t worry. She’ll turn up. She won’t have got far yet. The trains don’t run all night.” I figured, if she was running away, she could make it to the station on foot by dawn, and then take the earliest train to London. I was wrong, obviously. She only made it to the wood. When I was talking to the policeman, she was probably already dead.
When I get to the copse, there is a policeman stood next to the gate. He smiles at me, and I smile back at him, then slink a little away and sit on the fence. I pout my lips, and reapply my lip gloss, and then sit with my legs showing and the top of my boobs visible above the neckline of my dress. I’ve only been there five minutes when the policeman calls over to me. “Do you need some help, miss?”
I turn around and shake my head at him. “No. I want to be alone.”
He stops walking toward me and holds up his hand in a wave to say “Okay.” I guess even he could be the killer. Every so often while I sit on the fence, I think I hear him close by, and then I jump in fright and whirl around, but every time he’s still there, stood at the entrance, his hands clasped together.
It’s half past one now. Nathan Nolan is watching me from the hedge. I don’t think the policeman can see him, but I recognize him. I won’t make the first move, since he shoved me and ran away last time I saw him. I want to, because I want him to love me again, and I think he’s being really stupid, but I can’t. My pride won’t let me. I hope I’m not cutting off my nose to spite my face. I don’t know exactly what that means, but that’s why I’m so worried about doing it.
I adjust my Wonderbra to make my boobs pop up more. They are sadly lacking a line between them—cleavage, it’s called, or, as Granddad says, décolletage—unless I straighten my arms, and push them together with my biceps. I hold them like that for a bit, but my muscles start to tremble, so I stop and sigh. Hmm. No perverts here today, I guess. I wait another million years, until it’s two o’clock, then I decide to try my luck hanging around the village, and I set off toward the center. There will be plenty more possible perverts in the village, because of the pub and the workmen who are fixing the telegraph wires today and all the men you usually see loitering around the…around the…I squint into the distance, and as I approach the green triangle I slow down, feeling pinpricks of sweat burst out from under my armpits. I stop in the middle of the road, my throat tensed, my body frozen. I feel like screaming, but all I do is stand there and watch, my shoulders trembling, my fists clenched in fear and determination.
I stand there, and I watch him. The walker.
The walker is sat on the bench in the middle of the green grass triangle. This time he is eating an apple. Not a sandwich. He stretches his jaw like those extinct dogs Granddad told me about that can stretch their jaws to ninety degrees and then CLAMP down on their victims. Fear creeps all through my body, making me cold even though it’s hot. I look back and forth, but for the first time, it seems, in ages, there isn’t a policeman around. Which…I guess is good. For my plan. I’m alone with the walker.
I am frozen like those kids should have been in front of the T. rex in Jurassic Park. It seems absolutely crazy to me now that they wouldn’t be able to stay still, because I’m frozen by animal instinct in front of this predator, just like they should have been. I wish I could run. But a part of me knows that if I ran he could run faster than me, catch me, rape me, and kill me. The idea of me attacking him works only if he doesn’t see it coming. I take a deep breath. For the first time, I wish the ghost-girl dogs were here with me. So they could tear him apart.
He continues to eat the apple. Because I am so focused on him, even though he is still maybe thirty feet away, I can hear him munching. CRUNCH. It sounds like the bones of small animals snapping, like when you step on a snail and break its shell.
I swallow, and I wonder if he can hear me. But he doesn’t move. A predator doesn’t need to hear every little sound around him. He can just wait until someone gets really close and then snatch them. I stand there for ages. No cars drive by. Sweat is making my arms stick to my ribcage at the armpit. I feel like I could melt into a puddle of tears and being scared and shaking and sweating.
No, I remind myself. I’m supposed to be the predator here! I’m the one out to catch him. That’s the thing. He doesn’t know. But I know. I’m here to get him. For the dead girls. For little Ellie. For Billie.
The air is thick and heavy with heat and silence. I draw myself up so I’m the tallest I look. I pull my shoulders back so my boobs are pushed out. I straighten my dress. I feel the zip on my bag, where my pocketknife is hidden. I smoosh my lips together to make sure my lip gloss is good, and then I walk toward him slowly through the humid air. I walk toward the man who killed my best friend, who lay on top of her, and made her dead. He looks up. I smile at him. “Is this seat taken?”
He laughs. “No. Go ahead.”
I sit down. He keeps looking at me. Good. The makeup and clothes are working. I wink at him and he smiles.
“Haven’t we met before?”
“Yes, I saw you here.”
“Yeah, you were with your friends!”
“Mm, yes, I was with my friends,” I say in a sophisticated way, like Mm, yes, we were having a conference. “And you were walking,” I add.
“Oh yes,” he says cheerfully. “I love to get out on the weekend. Day off work today so I thought I’d take the opportunity. My wife doesn’t like me walking, so I have to do it when I have alone time.”
“Why doesn’t she like you walking?”
He laughs. “She likes to spend all our time together, but she doesn’t like walking and I do. She’s jealous of the time I give to my mistress.” He grins. “Walking, I mean. That’s a saying, like football is my mistress, or beer is my mi
stress, or walking—”
“Yeah, I get it,” I say.
“I’m sure you do—you seem smart.” He takes a bite of his apple.
He’s quiet for a bit, and I think of what ladies say to men. I turn to him, smile, and say, in a pleasing, high voice. “Do you like my dress?”
“Yes, it’s very pretty,” he nods. “Is it a new dress?”
“Yes, it is. Do I look fat at all?”
“No, not at all, you look lovely! You shouldn’t worry about things like that at your age. You’re perfect just as you are.”
I beam. Excellent. Now I draw attention to my lips. “I’m wearing lip gloss.”
“So you are. Girls are wearing makeup younger and younger these days, but it’s not always a bad thing. These days! Listen to me, I sound like an old man. I’m only twenty-nine.”
“How do you know girls are wearing makeup younger and younger these days?” My heart is starting to pound really quick.
He munches on his apple and shakes his head, looking at a bird in the sky. He seems quite happy. I had expected a pervert would be mean and grumpy.
I swallow, steeling myself for the inevitable attack. Now I’m wearing a Wonderbra, my almost-boobies rise up and down with every slow, deep breath. I’m trying to make my breathing slow and calm, because I feel like breathing either fast and scared or not at all. He finishes his bite of apple and swallows.
“I have some nieces. I think I showed your friend their pictures.” He chomps on the apple again, juice on his lips. He’s actually really good-looking. He has big, shiny lips, good cheekbones, beautiful eyes, and soft-looking hair. He fishes in the pocket of his jeans with his hand and pulls out the leather wallet he must have shown Billie last time. “See?” he says, through apple. He flips through them quickly. “This is Kerry. She’s clever. And this is my youngest. Isn’t she adorable?” I nod, barely seeing. Instead I’m looking up at him. This is my big move. He holds the photos in front of me, and I look up to his eyes. I want to make him totally fall in love with me. Or lust. Whatever it needs to be.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” he says, frowning. “What was your name?”
“Thera. Thera Wilde.”
“Thera? What a lovely name. That sounds familiar, actually.” He puts the wallet back. “Where could I have heard that before?”
“You may know me…” I smile innocently. “Because my friend who spoke to you the other week was Billie Brooke, and she was killed that night.”
He turns back to me at once, his mouth open. He actually looks really distraught. “Oh my God! Your friend who was with you? She was the girl who…?”
“Um, yes,” I say uncertainly.
“Jesus Christ!” His eyes search across my face. “I didn’t think—it never occurred to me—I’m so sorry, dear. That’s horrible.” He reaches his hand out to me, and I take a sharp breath in. Here it comes.
But he retracts it again, like he’s afraid to touch me. He scratches his head. “That’s awful. We went off to see my parents that weekend, after my walk. They live in Shropshire. We got back late Sunday. I only saw the news Monday morning. I just didn’t think. That’s just…Her poor parents.”
“Um, yeah,” I say, annoyed. This isn’t helping the seduction. He isn’t looking at me anymore. But he’s also behaving really surprised, like he didn’t know it was Billie that was killed at all. So…maybe…he isn’t the killer? He doesn’t really have the aura of a killer. He seems just a nice, normal guy. My spider sense isn’t tingling a murderer warning at all, and I don’t feel any ghostly energy about him that might mean he has recently been associated with death. Urgh, that’s so annoying, when I spent all this time and effort seducing him. (On the other hand, if I didn’t hand Billie to her killer, this is actually awesome news.)
“Christ,” the man says, again, just like Dad. “And now I’m swearing in front of a little eleven-year-old! You must think I’m awful. Forget about me, though—are you okay? Of course you’re not. How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
“Um…” I look at him. If he isn’t the killer he’s just being nice, and basically no one has just straight-out asked me how I’m feeling in ages, probably because they don’t want to hear the answer, and they all hate me for getting Billie killed. I guess as well, if he is the killer, this still counts as seducing him, so I’ll answer. “I feel okay. I mean, I feel not that great, obviously. I mean, I feel bad most of the time.”
“Yeah? I’m so sorry, kiddo. You poor little thing.”
My shoulders droop. I’m not even pretending to be bait now. Sometimes it’s hard when people are nice to me because if I’m sad, it makes me even sadder. I start talking, and my voice gets smaller and smaller with every word until it’s not much of a voice at all, but basically a wisp of a whisper. “Yeah, life is pretty rubbish. I miss Billie…” Accidentally, a tear slips out of my eye. I wipe it quickly away. “I feel like it’s my fault she’s dead.”
“No! Of course not. Why do you feel like that?”
“Well…I left her in the field.”
“Why did you leave her in a field?”
“That’s how we always walk home,” I say. “She’s never been killed before. Well”—I roll my eyes at myself—“duh.”
“That’s not your fault, kiddo. No one could have predicted that.”
“Also…” I hesitate.
“Also what?”
“Well…they think the killer is you. ’Cause I wrote about meeting you in my diary. So they thought I led Billie to her death, because I dared her to go up to you.”
“Oh my God!” he exclaims. “You thought—? Do the police think—?” He bites his lip, shakes his head and puts his arm around me and rubs my shoulder. “I’ll go and talk to the police.”
I sniff. He smells pretty good. “Why?”
“We don’t want them to waste their time looking for me and not catching the real killer, do we? I’ll just go to the station and talk to them; don’t worry, you won’t get in trouble. They can tell when people haven’t been involved. They’ll swab the inside of my cheek for DNA.”
“I know how the police eliminate suspects,” I say, slightly affronted by him explaining this to me like I don’t know anything. “I’ve watched Poirot.”
He nods. “Such a smart girl.”
I sigh, deflated. “So you’re not the killer?”
“You sound disappointed!” he says, and smiles affectionately.
“Well, if you look at it from my point of view, it would have been easier if you were.”
He laughs. “What do you mean?”
“Now I have to go and find a whole new prime suspect.”
He looks behind us, up the lane where I came from. “Sweetie, if you thought I was the killer, why did you come and sit next to me?”
“I’m trying to catch him.” I gesture to my outfit.
He looks down at my legs, then up to my face again, and shakes his head. “Oh, lovely, you don’t want to be doing that. That’s very brave of you but…” He looks sad suddenly. “You don’t want to tempt fate like that. You don’t know what could happen when he’s…desperate.”
“Desperate?”
He shakes his head and sighs, then tousles my hair. “I think we should get you home. Where do you live?”
“I’m not going home. I have work to do.”
“Darling—” he begins, putting his arm around me again.
I leap up off the bench. “Get off! What is this obsession people have with touching me?”
“I’m sorry,” he says gently, holding both his hands up. “It’s okay, kiddo, it’s okay. I would never hurt you. I promise, I would never hurt a little thing like you.”
I believe him.
Maybe it’s because I was so tense, ready for a fight, or so scared when I saw the killer, or so sad when he asked me how I was, but I can’t h
elp it. I start to cry. “I hate it. I hate you all. You men. It’s so confusing. First you’re nice and then you’re mean. A man killed Billie and now he’s going to kill us all.” I put my hands up to my face. I don’t want to be here. I want to be far away. I want to be dead and not have a body so no one can ever touch me again without my permission, ever, ever, EVER. I am crying really loud now, and I feel his hands on me again, but this time it’s really soft.
“Shh,” he says. “It’s okay, kiddo. It’s all right. Come here, sweetheart.” He pats my back, and I lean on his chest. He feels like my dad, but not like my dad. He feels warm and his chest is hard, like Nathan’s. He has those hard man-boobs, not fatty but muscular. He wraps his arms around me and pats my back, and I wrap my arms around him.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble into his T-shirt, although I’m not. Well, I am, but I don’t know what I’m sorry for. I’m sorry for existing in front of him, for crying, for yelling. I’m sorry I got Billie killed. I’m sorry I haven’t found the killer, that the dead girls are counting on me and instead I am crying like a weak person on the man who was my prime suspect until five minutes ago.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says into my hair. “Don’t be sorry, darling.” Slowly he pulls away from me and looks down. “There.” He wipes a tear tenderly away from underneath my eye. “There, there.”
I sniff, but the tears have almost stopped. I wipe the rest away. There is a butterfly of wet on his shirt, made by my tears. He looks at it when he sees me looking, pulls it away from his muscular chest and smiles. His hands are gently resting on my shoulders. “All right, then. Let’s get you home.”
I look down at my feet in my platforms. I want to go home. I suddenly feel really tired and sad. But if I go home now, and the walker comes with me and tells Mum and Dad or Nan what I’ve been up to, I’ll be grounded forever.
“I can’t go home,” I say.
He strokes my face. “Come with me now.”
The walker has turned out to be really nice, but I have to find the killer. I can’t let the girls down. I summon all my strength. It comes up from my feet, up my legs, under my skirt, up through my stomach, and fills my whole body, right out to my fingertips, until I shout, “NO!” shove him away, and run.
Dead Girls Page 21
