by Louise Voss
‘Great.’ Winkler looked relieved.
‘But only if you apologise to him.’
‘What?’
‘He told me about your behaviour at his house. What you did to his personal property. I’ve persuaded him not to make a complaint against you by offering my own time. I’m going to talk to the children at St Mary’s and the other children’s homes where he volunteers, help Mervyn out by talking to them about a career in the police force. A good cause, and one I’m happy to help with. But he also wants a personal apology from you.’
‘But—’
She jabbed a finger at him. ‘Not just an apology, Adrian. He wants you to grovel. Now get out there and do it.’
As Winkler slunk from the room, Patrick was almost able to raise a smile.
‘Carmella, after Winkler’s begged for Mervyn’s forgiveness I want you to go in and get the details of who was at the party.’
‘And I’m going to talk to Kai Topper,’ Patrick said. He rolled his eyes. ‘Hopefully he’ll have stopped crying by now.’
Topper had indeed ceased his blubbing. He sat in interview room three, twisting a can of Coke in circles, fidgeting and chewing his grubby fingernails. As soon as Patrick entered the room he looked up hopefully. ‘Have you found her?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ Patrick took the seat opposite Kai.
He had already asked the boy if he had any idea where Jade might have gone, if there were places where his girlfriend hung out, friends she might be with. Topper had simply repeated that he was sure Jade had gone off with another bloke. ‘They’re probably doing it right now.’ He’d sniffed, but he sounded less sure.
‘Kai,’ Patrick said now, ‘I need to ask you some more questions about Jade, OK?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘Kai. It’s vitally important that you tell me the truth, that you don’t try to protect Jade or yourself. All we care about is finding Jade. If there’s anything she did that might have got her into trouble, we don’t care about that right now.’
Topper gawped at him. ‘What do you mean? You think she’s in trouble? What kind of trouble?’
Patrick knew there was only one way to ensure Topper told him any uncomfortable truths, assuming he genuinely cared for Jade and hadn’t been spilling crocodile tears. ‘We think Jade might be in danger, Kai.’
To guarantee the full impact of this he opened his Moleskine and wrote ‘DANGER’ in block capitals at the top of a fresh page, then underlined it twice, making sure Kai could see it.
‘Oh my days.’
‘But if you tell me everything you know, we can find her. Stop her coming to any harm. OK?’
The boy nodded eagerly.
‘Firstly, how come you two ended up working at Mervyn Hammond’s party? Do you know him or something?’
Kai shook his head. ‘Nah, man. Jade got us the jobs with some temp agency. It was the first time we’d worked for him.’
‘Bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it, that the first job you got was working at a party that Jade’s idols were at?’
‘Not really. She got told to apply, by someone on the forum, like, a tip-off that the band would be there. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise. She hates working.’
‘And how was it?’
Kai shrugged. ‘Boring. Shit money. The guests were horrible, dead rude to me—’ He stopped abruptly, slapping his forehead. ‘Shit!’
‘What?’
The boy swallowed hard. ‘I did something.’
‘What? What did you do?’
‘I think it’s my fault, if someone’s got Jade.’
‘How come?’ Patrick held his breath, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Oh man.’
‘Tell us, Kai.’
He looked up at Patrick with eyes like a cowed puppy. ‘It wasn’t my gear, so you can’t nick me for dealing! I swear to God I, er, found it, under a railway bridge couple weeks ago, someone must’ve dropped it . . .’
‘Drugs? What’s that got to do with Jade? What sort of drugs?’
‘It was a bottle of liquid acid. In one of them ziplock bags. I don’t do acid, and I didn’t want to sell it ’cos I ain’t no dealer . . . I’d put it in me backpack and forgot about it . . . until that night.’
‘What did you do, Kai?’
In a tiny little voice, Kai said, ‘It was near the end of the party. I got fed up with them all being ungrateful twats. Jade was in a right strop with me, flirting like mad with that Kerry and all. So I thought it might be funny if they all got off their tits, specially him – but that didn’t work, did it, ’cos he was driving, so he didn’t drink the punch . . .’
‘You spiked the punch?’ Pat shook his head. Stupid idiot. ‘How much did you put in it?’
Kai shrugged. ‘It was a small bottle. Big bowl, though. Are you gonna nick me?’
Tears filled his eyes again and he held out his wrists, inviting Patrick to handcuff him.
‘Nick me. Go on, I deserve it. I reckon someone got so high that he followed Jade home and has done something to her. I thought it was that Mangan bloke, but it must have been someone else . . .’ He dissolved into sobs again.
Patrick feared the interview was getting out of control. He handed Kai a tissue and the boy scrubbed at his face.
‘Kai, I don’t think that’s the case. We know that Kerry drove her home. It’s hardly likely that someone else followed them, is it? If anyone was that high, there’s no way they’d have been capable of that. I’m not going to nick you, not right now. It was a dangerous and, frankly, moronic thing to do, but we need to concentrate on finding Jade. So – let’s go back a bit. Who was it on the forums who told Jade to apply for the job?’
Kai shrugged. ‘No idea.’
Patrick sighed. It would have been too good to be true, if Kai could have given him a name.
‘OK. Let’s talk about something else. What do you know about Jade and StoryPad? Specifically a story she wrote called Fresh Blood.’
Topper went pale, sitting back in his chair. His reaction was worse than when he’d confessed to spiking the punch and Patrick suddenly had a horrible feeling that he was going to have to ratchet up the ‘Jade’s in danger’ stuff.
‘What are you asking about that for?’
‘We know that Jade was one of four co-authors of that story. Two of them are dead, Kai. The fourth, Chloe Hedges, is also missing.’
‘Chloe? What, F-U-Cancer? I only saw her the other day. She had this UV nail thing of Jade’s and I went round to get it back. She’s a nice girl.’
‘A good friend of Jade’s?’
Kai tipped his head from side to side. ‘They fell out, didn’t they? After that . . . Fresh Blood thing.’
Patrick wanted to grab Kai and shake the story out of him, wished he could lift off the top of his skull and pluck the answers out of his brain, rather than having to drag them out of him like this.
‘Tell me from the beginning, Kai.’
‘All right. Like you said, there was four of them: Jade, Chloe, MissTargetHeart and YOLOSWAG.’
‘Rose and Jess.’
‘Yeah. Jade didn’t really know them in real life, not properly. She’d met them at some OnT gigs and sort of became mates with Chloe. We went to Rose’s vigil, but I don’t think Jade ever really knew her. She wasn’t that cut up when Rose got killed, anyway.’
‘So they were mainly online friends . . .’
‘Yeah. Jade’s on the OnT forum all the time. It does my head in, to be honest. But she met the others on there and I think they started chatting about StoryPad and all the OnT fan fiction on there. Jade had written a few things, same as the others had. But Jade thought most of the stuff on there was pretty shit and suggested that they team up to write something really, like, epic.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, that’s w
hat they did. I barely saw her for a couple of weeks because she was spending all her time, when she wasn’t at school, writing. Jade’s really imaginative. She came up with most of the story, I think. But Chloe was better at writing it down. I don’t think the other two did that much. Just wrote the odd bit here and there. Jade was always moaning about how them two didn’t contribute enough, you know?’
‘And the story became popular?’
‘Yeah, it was well popular. Thousands and thousands of hits, and loads of comments too. Most of them were, like, really gushing about how great it was, the best OnT story ever. Jade was in ever such a good mood. That was when we first, you know, did it.’ He blushed. ‘But then her mood totally changed.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Because some girl started slating it. Leaving loads and loads of negative comments, saying the story was shit, that it was a rip-off of Twilight and that the writers had got Shawn and the other OnT boys all wrong. Jade was fuming, said this girl was a jealous bitch, a troll, and that she was going to get revenge, teach her a lesson.’
He was twisting the Coke can around again, faster and faster.
‘And what happened after that, Kai?’
The boy looked up at him.
‘It was war. All-out fucking war.’
Chapter 55
Day 14 – Chloe
I think we’re going to have to go somewhere more . . . spacious,’ said the man calling himself Pete, once Chloe and Jade had stopped screaming. ‘Right old racket you two are making. My ears are ringing. Should have gagged you both. Although nobody will ever hear you out here. I’m not worried about that. I just need a bit more space for what I’ve got in mind.’
He sounded so calm, almost chatty, as though he was sitting next to them at an OnTarget gig, rather than in the dark in a spiky cold grotto. The sound of his disembodied voice so close to them made Chloe wet herself, and just for a moment the warmth of the urine soaking the crotch of her jeans was comforting. I want my mum, she thought, too frightened even to sob. I want my mum.
Jade was whimpering now from across the grotto. Chloe wished she could comfort her, and be comforted, but her hands were tied – and she was far too terrified to make any sort of move.
‘Right, let’s go, then, you silly little tarts.’ The girls heard the sound of him jumping up and clapping his hands together, like a primary school teacher trying to galvanise a crocodile of kids into action. ‘It’s getting too dark now. I won’t be able to see what I’m doing out here’ – his voice suddenly changed, deepened – ‘and that would never do, would it? What would be the fun in that?’
Jade burst out crying again. ‘Please, let us go! Why are you doing this? We haven’t done anything to you!’
There was a long pause, then the click of a cigarette lighter. A wavering flame appeared in the dark grotto, and Chloe gulped as she saw the man’s face, his eyes two black hollow circles like a skull’s. He moved towards Jade and held the flame under her chin.
‘You!’ Jade gasped, frantically shaking her head to try to escape the fire. So Jade did know him, Chloe thought. She tried to pay more attention to his appearance – he was youngish, tallish, good bone structure and long slim fingers. He did not look the type to be doing this.
‘Haven’t. Done. Anything. To. Me?’ he repeated slowly, menace dripping from his voice. ‘Well, that’s where you’ll find you’re wrong. You two, and the two other stupid little girls. You know exactly what you’ve done to me. What you did to her.’
‘We didn’t mean it!’ Jade cried. ‘How were we supposed to know—’
He thrust the lighter upwards so that the flame licked at the soft underside of Jade’s chin. Chloe shuddered and looked away as the smell of burning skin and hair filled the air, and Jade kept violently shaking her head from side to side, trying to get away but not being able to with her hands and feet tied, screaming and crying. The man held the flame steady for what seemed to Chloe like an eternity until she thought she was going to faint. Was it her turn next?
‘Stop, please stop!’ howled Jade, and finally the man moved the flame away. He crouched down and lifted the glass cover off an oil lamp on the floor of the grotto, touching the lighter to the wick, then replacing the cover. More light flickered around the grotto and Chloe took in Jade’s distraught face, screwed up in agony and panic. Even in the dim shadowy light she could see the huge blister that had formed on Jade’s chin.
The man opened his black backpack and took out a horrible curved, serrated knife.
So this is how it’s going to end, Chloe thought, shrinking back against the shell wall. She’d survived leukaemia, chemotherapy, jumping out of an aeroplane – but she’d fallen for this psycho’s lies, had believed he was Shawn. She wondered briefly how he had known about her conversation with Shawn when she was in hospital, but there was no time to mull it over now. Not when she was about to be sliced up and killed.
Sorry, Mum and Dad and Brandon, she whispered. I’m really sorry.
But Pete – or whatever his name really was – did not kill them. Instead he cut the ropes that bound their feet, leaving their hands tied. ‘I’m not going to gag you,’ he said. ‘As you’ve already discovered, nobody can hear you out here. But if either of you makes a noise, I will cut you. I will cut your pretty little faces. I might even cut out your tongues . . .’
Chloe realised she was hyperventilating. She staggered to her knees, and then to her feet. Perhaps if he was taking them somewhere, somebody would see. Somebody would come. Please God, let someone come, she prayed.
This just couldn’t be happening.
‘Stop that fucking noise,’ he said harshly to Jade when she too had managed to stand up. He backhanded her hard across her face, making her fall against the grotto wall. Then he took out a third pair of handcuffs from the backpack, linking the two girls together so they were tied back to back. Chloe felt for Jade’s fingers and gave them a squeeze, but the burn and then the slap seemed to have put Jade into a trance. She had fallen completely silent, and only the heaving of her back and ribs against Chloe’s own back indicated that she was even breathing.
The man calling himself Pete put away the knife and picked up the backpack and the oil lamp.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, cautiously opening the grotto door. It was now almost as dark in the wooded grounds as it had been inside the shell place. He pushed them through and they had to do an awkward kind of sidestep in order to both be able to move in a forward direction, rather than one of them having to walk backwards. They moved in silence along the path under the trees, and Chloe wondered if they were getting back into the car – but when they reached the dark façade of the big house she’d seen earlier, she realised that this was their destination. The building was enormous – a once-grand ivy-covered edifice with towers and turrets and fancy woodwork on the front of it.
Pete prodded them round the back to a large conservatory. One of the panels on the glass double doors was broken, and he put his hand through the hole, deftly twisting the handle from the inside. He must have been here earlier, Chloe thought – there was evidence that it had been boarded up, but now the boards across the door were lying on the ground next to it.
The inside of the house felt even colder than the grotto had done, if that were possible. Glass crunched under their feet as he led them through the conservatory, down a long tiled corridor and through a door that led into some kind of massive room – A ballroom? Chloe wondered, until she saw the stage. No – it was a little theatre, the seats long gone. There was no furniture anywhere – the place looked as though it had been abandoned for years.
Nobody will find us here, Chloe thought in despair. She squeezed Jade’s fingers again, more for her own benefit than Jade’s, although she had started to feel weirdly calm. The man came over and undid the handcuffs connecting them; then he held up the lamp and studied their faces.
‘On
e at a time?’ he mused, as though talking to himself. ‘Or both together?’
He tipped his head to one side and Chloe thought again how weird that he looked so normal.
‘One at a time,’ he decided out loud. He pointed at Jade. ‘More fun that way. You first.’
Jade began to shake and whimper again. Pete dragged them both to the side of the stage and expertly clipped Chloe’s cuffs to a pipe running up the wall in the wings, behind the thick, dusty old stage curtain.
‘I’ll be back for you in a bit,’ he hissed in Chloe’s face, then turned to Jade. ‘It’s your moment in the limelight,’ he said, smiling a terrible smile at her before marching her back into the centre of the stage.
Chloe couldn’t look. She bent her head and averted her eyes, but could not prevent herself hearing the heavy thud as Jade’s body was pushed to the floor.
And then the screaming started.
Chapter 56
Day 14 – Patrick
Patrick emerged from interview room three, rubbing his stubble and thinking about the story he’d just heard, at the same moment that Carmella opened the door of room one to let Mervyn Hammond and his lawyer out.
‘Mr Hammond has given us a full list of his party guests and the details of the company who provided the catering service,’ Carmella said.
‘I hope you catch him,’ said Mervyn. ‘This business is terrible for OnTarget’s PR.’ He strode off down the corridor, already talking on his phone, Cassandra Oliver hurrying to keep up with him.
‘He can’t help himself, can he?’ said Patrick, amazed that Mervyn couldn’t drop the bad-guy act even now.
‘I kind of like him now, though,’ said Carmella, shrugging. ‘And at least we’ve got the list.’ She held up several sheets of A4 paper. ‘He could actually remember everyone who was there. I guess that’s one of the reasons he’s so good at what he does.’
‘Any names jump out at you?’
‘It looks like the guest list for the BRIT Awards,’ she replied.
They went into interview room one. Patrick needed space and quiet to talk to Carmella, and to pass on what he’d heard from Kai Topper, who was still in the other interview room, just in case they needed to ask him anything else.
