by Simon Lelic
Fleet had left the table at the country hotel willing the man to choke on his granola. But the message from the superintendent had been clear: find Sadie and find the truth, or be prepared to settle for what they had. And he’d spelled out the timing to Fleet as well. The river search would be called off within twenty-four hours. At which point it would be considered beneficial to community relations if Fleet could coordinate the announcement of the arrest. It was a cheap PR trick, and the fact that Fleet had been expecting it did nothing to make him feel any less like a politician’s patsy.
“So what did the CPS say?” Nicky asked.
“That there was enough evidence to start proceedings against Mason,” Fleet told her.
Nicky showed her puzzlement at his tone. “Which is good news,” she said. “Right?”
Not for Mason, Fleet found himself thinking. He glanced toward the corridor containing the interview rooms.
“Is everybody here?” he asked.
Nicky gave an almost nod. “Cora and Abi arrived just before you did. Fareed is in room one. No sign yet of Mason.”
Fleet checked his watch. Already it was almost ten o’clock, another reason the superintendent’s little breakfast gathering had caused him such irritation—Fleet had lost time he could profitably have spent doing exactly what his superior had asked him to: hunting for the truth about what had happened to Sadie.
“Give him another half an hour, then send a taxi,” said Fleet, half wanting to be there to see Mason’s reaction when a squad car pulled up outside his house.
“The kid gloves are coming off then, I take it?” said Nicky.
“They are for Mason,” said Fleet. “In the meantime, until he gets here, let’s make a start with the others.”
Nicky rose from her desk. “Before we do, boss, there are a couple of things you’ll probably want to see.”
Fleet raised his eyebrows.
“Sadie’s financials, for one thing,” said Nicky, handing him a clutch of papers. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took another look at these myself when I realized something was bothering you.”
“What did you make of them?” said Fleet, scanning the figures himself.
“Not a lot, to be honest,” said Nicky. “Other than to feel slightly depressed at the thought a sixteen-year-old girl had more in her bank account than I do.”
“She was saving for university,” said Fleet. “That’s what her parents said. Sadie paid in almost every penny of the money she got each week for working at the local Harvester. Except . . .” Fleet turned to Sadie’s wage slips. “Here. Look. She was working extra shifts over the summer. But almost from the first day of the holidays, the deposits into her savings account stopped.”
“So that leaves . . . what?” said Nicky. “About four hundred quid unaccounted for?”
“Literally,” said Fleet. “Because it wasn’t in her bedroom and it wasn’t in her purse.”
“She could have spent it. It was the summer holidays, after all.”
“Spent it on what, though? Ice cream and candy floss?”
“Cider and cigarettes, more likely,” said Nicky.
“Except that’s an awful lot of cider. And Sadie didn’t really smoke. Only socially, from what her friends have said. And she didn’t have any fancy new clothes. No new trainers or anything like that.”
“Not that she would have needed to pay for that stuff herself, anyway,” said Nicky. “All the things she wanted, her parents bought. She was Daddy’s little princess, after all.”
“Quite,” said Fleet. He tapped the paperwork against his leg.
Nicky allowed him a moment to ponder before she moved on.
“We made a start on the social media stuff, as well,” she said. “Trying to trace the source of the rumors about Sadie? I say we, but really . . . Well. Maybe you should speak to him yourself.”
Nicky led Fleet deeper into the open-plan office. It was as busy as it would be all day, with every one of the dozen or so desks occupied. Soon enough, people would be heading out to follow up on their particular assignments—some to the woods, others to the Overlook and the river—but for the time being they were working the phones, frowning at their computers or wading through hours of almost certainly useless CCTV footage.
“You remember DC Dalton,” Nicky said, stopping at the workstation of a detective who, in his baggy suit and spectacles, looked barely any older than Sadie’s friends.
Fleet nodded a greeting. Dalton made to stand, but Fleet gestured him back down.
“You look like you’ve had about as much sleep as I have,” Fleet said to him, which he hoped the young man would take as the intended compliment.
Dalton cracked a lopsided grin. “I managed to snatch an hour or two, sir.”
Fleet leaned closer to the DC’s computer screen, which was tiled with browser windows showing various social media websites.
“So, what have we got?”
Dalton glanced at Nicky over Fleet’s shoulder. Fleet sensed, rather than saw, Nicky nod her head.
“Well,” said Dalton, flicking between windows at such a rate that Fleet had to blink to keep focused. “This.”
On-screen, the DC had maximized a window showing a page with an Instagram header, and a message announcing, Sorry, this page isn’t available.
“OK . . .” said Fleet, waiting for Dalton to explain.
“You see, what I thought was,” the DC said, “if we were going to try to work out where the rumors about Sadie sleeping around originated, simply by following the posts, it would be like trying to untangle Christmas lights. Like, when they get all knotted? And you can’t tell the beginning from the end? And that made me think of bulbs.”
“Bulbs?” said Fleet.
“Bulbs,” agreed Dalton. “On the Christmas lights.” He nudged his glasses farther up his nose and shifted in his seat, his tiredness evidently forgotten as he excitedly continued to explain. “You know, when one of them blows. And even though the lights are probably fine, the only way to get them working again is to check each bulb individually. My dad used to make me do it every year. It was like a tradition, as much a part of Christmas as putting up the tree. I remember, this one time, years ago now this was, I—”
Nicky coughed meaningfully.
“Right,” said Dalton, nudging his glasses again. “Sorry. But my point is, it’s like that old story about shovels. You know, the idea that when a man walks into the garden center to buy a shovel, it’s not a shovel he really wants. What he really wants is a hole.”
Bulbs, shovels—Fleet was losing the gist. He stole a glance at Nicky, whose expression told him to stick with it.
“I’m not following you, Detective Constable.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. All I’m trying to say is, it’s not the posts themselves we should be interested in. It’s any suspicious activity around the posts. Such as a deleted account, for instance.”
“The broken bulb,” said Fleet, catching up.
Dalton’s face lit up, almost as though he were plugged into a power source himself. “Precisely.” He turned back to his computer screen. “And of all the Instagram accounts most heavily involved in spreading rumors about Sadie, this is the only one that was deleted after Sadie went missing. Although what the user probably didn’t realize is that when it comes to social media, nothing is ever gone forever, not if you know where to look. Or maybe she did realize, but there wouldn’t have been anything she could do about it.”
“She?” said Fleet.
“Don’t get too excited,” Nicky chipped in. “The user data associated with the account was all fake, as far as we can tell. But Garrie here uncovered the name of the account itself.”
She nodded at Dalton, who flicked to another window on his screen and highlighted a line of text amid the code. “The account’s an old one,” he said. “It’s been active
on and off for a couple of years.”
“SweeneyTodd2002,” Fleet read aloud. It took him a second or two to make the connection. “Sweeney. As in, Lara Sweeney?”
“It has to be a possibility,” Nicky replied. “The nature of the previous posts would seem to fit. Sarky comments and stupid jokes, mainly. All very teenage-girl. Garrie here is going to dig a little deeper to see if there are any other ways to identify the user. But the rumors about Sadie definitely originated from this account. It’s much easier to untangle a ball of string if you have an end to start from.”
“Or a ball of Christmas lights,” said Fleet, letting his hand fall on the young detective constable’s shoulder. “Let me know when you have anything more.”
“There is one other thing, actually,” said DC Dalton. “The stories about Sadie’s parents. You wanted to know about those, too, right?”
“Tell me,” said Fleet.
“Well, it’s pretty much the same story,” said Dalton. “Another deleted account, another anonymous user—although my hunch is it’s the same person. Same pattern of messages, same syntax, that sort of thing. This time they were posting under Princess_69.”
Fleet rubbed a hand across his cheek. A phrase he’d repeated the night before came back to him. Something the couples counselor had said to him and Holly. It sounds like there’s more than one thing going on . . .
“I’m assuming you’re on that, too?” Fleet said to Dalton. “Trying to trace who owned the account?”
“Absolutely,” Dalton replied. “In fact, I’m hoping having two leads to follow might make things easier. At the very least it doubles our chances.”
Fleet nodded. A bit of good news, finally. “We should talk to Lara,” he said to Nicky. “Find out what she has to say for herself.”
“Sure thing,” Nicky answered. “I’ll set it up.”
Fleet clapped Dalton on the shoulder. “Good work, Detective Constable. Outstanding, in fact. Keep it up.”
“Sarge?”
Both Fleet and Nicky turned. One of the uniforms had appeared behind them. “Sorry to interrupt, guv,” he said to Fleet. “But, Sarge”—he turned to Nicky—“you said you wanted me to let you know when he arrived. The Payne kid.”
“He’s here?” Nicky asked him.
The officer nodded. “I’ve stuck him in interview two.”
Nicky turned to Fleet, who took a breath.
“Shall we?” he said.
MASON
HERE WE GO again. You really don’t give up, do you? Why don’t you just arrest me and have done with it? I mean, if you’re really that sure I did what you’re accusing me of.
There’s only one reason you’re focusing on me. You know it, I know it. So let’s talk about that, shall we? Let’s talk about what you found in Sadie’s bedroom.
You’ve said over and over that it gives me motive. But that’s bullshit. I loved Sadie. She loved me. I would never have hurt her. Never.
And anyway, this is exactly what I’m talking about. You find something and you call it evidence, but really you don’t know the first thing about it. You might as well have found a . . . a packet of condoms in her room. A morning-after pill. Just because you found a pregnancy test doesn’t mean I killed her.
What, you think I murdered my unborn baby, too? Besides, how do you know the pregnancy test was even hers? If Sadie had been pregnant she would have told me. We would have figured out what to do together.
I bet you think you can blame me for what happened in the woods as well, don’t you? Just because I was the one to bring the knife. And, as it happens, that’s the only reason I bothered coming in today. I almost didn’t. I almost just said to myself, They never listened to me about Sadie, so why’s it going to be any different this time? Which is what I figured yesterday. What I still believe, even now. But what I decided was, at least if I get my side of things on record, you won’t be able to claim that I changed my story later.
So here I am. Reporting for duty.
Seriously, go ahead: ask me whatever you want to know.
Ha. I thought that might throw you. You don’t even know where to start.
The scream?
Right. Huh. To be honest, it was more of a shriek. I mean, at first I figured it was my alarm clock. But when I raised my head and remembered where I was, I saw Abi standing in the middle of the clearing, tipping out the contents of her rucksack. There were sunflower seeds going everywhere.
“What the fuck, Abi?” I said. Because—and I hold my hand up—I’m not a morning person. I mean, if I ever was going to kill someone, it’s over the breakfast table I’d probably do it.
Oh, piss off.
Sitting there telling me this is serious? You think I don’t know that already?
It’s you who’s the joke. You, your little sidekick here. Your whole so-called investigation. So why don’t you get serious for once, and stop wasting time judging me?
I am calm. I was.
Whatever. Do you want to know what happened or not?
Sunflower seeds. Right. So they’re going everywhere. And there’s only one thing Abi’s more obsessed with than food, so right away I should have realized what was up.
“Where is it?” Abi was saying. “Where the hell is it?”
“Where’s what?” said someone else. Luke, I think, from the edge of the clearing, sounding even more confused about where he was than I’d been.
“My phone,” said Abi. “My sodding phone. It was just . . .” She spun around, pointed at the head end of the blanket. “Right there. I left it right there, so I could see the time if I woke up in the middle of the night.”
I looked at my watch, and realized it wasn’t even seven. The light was sort of milky, and in the sky there was an early-morning haze. They were the first clouds of any kind I’d seen in weeks. Already it felt muggy, like stepping into the bathroom after somebody else has just had a shower.
Fash sat up, blinking. Cora, lying beside me, gave a groan, like she was awake but was still in denial.
“Relax, Abi,” I said, getting up. “It probably slipped under the blanket or something.” I gave Fash a nudge with my foot, and he half crawled, half rolled to one side. But when I lifted up the top edge of the blanket that he and Abi had been sleeping on, there was nothing under it but grass.
“See?” said Abi. “It’s not there. I already looked. And it’s not in my pocket before you say anything, and it’s not in my bag either. I told you, it’s gone!”
“For Christ’s sake,” I heard Cora mumble. “S’just a phone. Wasn’t any signal out here anyway.”
“That’s not the point!” said Abi. “And it was a brand-new iPhone, thank you very much. Not your shitty old Samsung.”
Cora had given up on sleep, it looked like. She sat up, scrunching her eyes against the light. “Now you’re just getting personal,” she said. “It’s not my fault you lost your stupid phone.”
“So whose is it then?”
“Seriously?” said Cora, turning. “You’re actually trying to blame me?”
“You’re the one who was having a go at me yesterday for trying to get a signal!”
“I wasn’t having a go at you for trying to get a signal! I was having a go at you for staring at that stupid screen all day when we were supposed to be—”
“Um, guys?” said Fash. “I think mine’s gone, too.”
He was frisking himself, checking the space around him. He even stood and lifted up the blanket the way I had. Cora’s groundsheet, as well, which is what finally forced Cora onto her feet.
I’d started looking around for my phone by this point. I’d emptied my pockets and piled the stuff beside my bag. My lighter was there, my wallet—but not my phone.
“Shit,” said Cora, who’d realized by now that hers was missing as well. If anything, she looked more panicked about it th
an Abi had, whipping the groundsheet into the air and rummaging through the pockets of her rucksack.
“What the hell?”
It was Luke’s voice again. I turned—we all did—to see him holding his water bottle upside down. A single drip fell to the floor.
He looked at Cora. “For Christ’s sake. I would have shared if you’d just asked me. There was no need to drink it all.”
“What are you talking about?” said Cora. Luke was still staring at her, and now the rest of us were staring at her, too. “Seriously,” she said. “What the hell is everyone looking at me for?”
“Your bottle was half-empty,” said Luke. “And I wouldn’t let you drink from the stream. So you obviously decided to steal the rest of my water while I was asleep.”
Abi held out her hand. “Give me my phone back,” she said to Cora. “Enough messing around.”
“I don’t have your stupid phone! And I didn’t touch your water, Luke!”
Luke was holding his bottle to his mouth, tipping his head back to try to catch another drip.
“Here,” said Fash. “Have some of—”
But when he picked up his bottle, he shook it and it didn’t make a sound. Then I checked my bottle, which was lying at the foot end of the groundsheet. It was empty, and so was Abi’s.
“What about yours, Cora?” Abi said.
Cora was already reaching into her rucksack. Her bottle was still half-full.
“That . . . that doesn’t mean anything,” she said, seeing the way everyone was looking at her. “I was using my rucksack as a pillow!”
“So?” Abi said.
“So whoever messed with your bottles couldn’t have got to mine! That’s the only reason mine’s still full!”
Abi rolled her eyes. She took a step and made a lunge for Cora’s rucksack.
“What the hell, Abi! Get off.”
Abi had Cora’s bag by one of its straps, and Cora was trying to keep her from taking it.
