‘Maybe. Of the two people most likely to know what actually happened, one is dead, and the other is the killer and probably less chatty.’
Oliver drummed a beat on the car roof with his fingers. ‘Mmm, recent experience has taught me that dead is not always gone.’
In the distance he heard the bell ring, signalling the end of the day. As if released by a starter pistol several cars crawled past and pulled into the pick-up area.
‘Although…,’ Oliver muttered, ‘there’s always a third option.’
‘What’s that? Speak up, Oliver.’
‘Sorry, just thinking out loud.’
(Your thinking is always loud.)
‘Who discovered Brigid?’ he said as the first children poured out of the gate searching for friends or parents.
‘You think they might have seen something?’
‘Worth asking, don’t you think?’
‘I’ll see if Graeme knows,’ Alice said and clicked off.
He glanced at the phone screen and saw the icon telling him there was still a message to listen to. He was about to press play when Reed came running up asking for an ice cream. To be fair it came after “Hi, Dad”, but barely. Rose was close behind with a suspiciously similar greeting. When Debbie chimed in, he felt his resolve waver.
(He’s giving in.)
‘Yay,’ Rose shouted.
‘What?’ Reed said.
‘Dad’s going to say yes,’ she informed her brother.
Just for that I should say no.
(Then you’ll look bad.)
He looked at the excited faces of his children and held his hands up in surrender. ‘You need to do some reading homework afterwards.’
‘Sure, Dad,’ Reed said.
‘An actual book, with more words than pictures.’
‘Sure, Dad,’ Reed repeated with less enthusiasm.
‘And no eating in the car.’
Oliver always felt it was a touch ironic that he was a writer and his son disliked reading. Luckily Rose made up for it by reading everything she could lay her hands on, often well past when she was supposed to be asleep.
After a couple of ice creams, eaten outside the dairy, they were pulling into the driveway when his phone rang again.
‘I’ll answer it,’ Rose said.
‘Opps! Sorry, darling, I already pushed the button,’ he said a fraction later.
(You did that on purpose.)
Keep quiet.
‘What are you doing in an hour’s time?’ Alice asked.
‘Probably cooking dinner,’ he replied.
‘Wrong, you’re coming with me to talk to Graeme.’
‘And why are we doing that?’
‘Because he was the one who found Brigid’s body.’
TWENTY FOUR
‘He kept that quiet,’ Oliver said as he and Alice climbed onto the cable car.
‘Yes, interesting don’t you think?’
(Yay, I love this thing. Look at the water. Look at the water.)
He looked at the water.
‘Where are the kids?’
‘I managed to find someone to look after them for an hour, so let’s make this quick because I used twenty-five minutes of that getting here.’
The cable car jolted to a stop and he opened the gate for Alice to get off, then followed her.
‘Then you’d better get straight to the point,’ she said.
He thought about letting her press the doorbell, but didn’t want to be an accessory to her death if the noise was too startling for her heart.
(Ha, she probably wouldn’t even notice.)
Debbie was undoubtedly right, but he couldn’t take the chance, so Oliver stepped around her and knocked firmly on the door.
There was a short pause, then the sound of footsteps, and the door was flung wide.
‘Come in, come in,’ he gestured with his whole arm, then ushered them into the lounge. ‘Too early for a drink?’
‘Never,’ Alice said.
‘Let me guess, gin and tonic?’ Graeme suggested with a point of the finger. ‘And for you, Oliver, a whiskey?’
‘Spot on,’ Alice said.
Oliver declined a drink, as he was driving, and hated whiskey.
Graeme vanished through the door leading to the kitchen.
‘Tell the truth,’ Oliver said, leaning towards her, ‘you hate gin, right?’
‘Can’t stand the stuff,’ she whispered back, ‘but the more comfortable he feels the more information he’ll tell us.’
A few minutes later their host was back with a short glass for Alice, and a tall glass of water for Oliver.
‘I suppose I owe you both an apology and an explanation. Here, read this.’ He sat down in the single armchair, which had been pulled around to face the couch, and plucked a single sheet of paper from a file on the ground.
Oliver read it, then passed it to Alice. She took longer to read it, but finally she set it down on the arm of the couch and stared at Graeme thoughtfully. The man looked down at his own drink, unable to meet her gaze.
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Oliver broke the silence. ‘It’s an article on the death of Brigid O’Shey.’
‘Is it?’ Alice handed it back to him and he read it again.
‘Ah,’ he said.
(What does hubris mean? Even your thoughts are boring.)
‘Yes.’ Graeme took a drink. ‘I was young and incredibly keen to write the big story. I’d been there for a week and didn’t have anything different from all the other reporters. Then I discovered Brigid’s body and the first thing I did after calling the police was write that article. I thought it would be the one, the moment that would put me on the map. But there was a delay in sending it to my editor, and when I took another look at it I was…ashamed. The whole thing was about me, about how I discovered the body. Here was this eight-year-old tragically killed and my first thought was to try and use that to leverage my career.’
Graeme cradled his drink, misery radiating from him.
‘Tell us about finding Brigid,’ Oliver said gently.
‘I didn’t drive very much in those days so I was biking everywhere. Raumati was a small enough place that I could get from one end to the other on a bike in about ten minutes if I was pushing it. I was frustrated at the lack of progress on the case so was riding down to the beach to have a swim. That’s when I found her. She was lying there on the road. For a second I thought she was playing a game, or maybe she’d fallen over…’
‘But then you got closer,’ Alice prompted.
‘Yes,’ he replied glancing at her before returning his attention to the glass in his hand. ‘I called out but there was no response. When I got close enough I could see her head was at a weird angle.’
Inside Oliver’s head Debbie began to cry.
‘Did you see anything else?’ Oliver said quickly.
‘Well, her body had this…’
‘I mean apart from her body.’
He could feel Alice looking at him and hoped that she understood why he wanted to change the subject.
Graeme shook his head. ‘Nothing that I can recall.’
‘What time of the day was it?’
‘It was mid-afternoon.’
‘What was the weather like? Was it sunny? Overcast? Windy? Rainy?’
‘It was sunny, I remember the sweat running down my back and into my…’ his eyes darted to Alice, ‘…shorts.’
Stifling his frustration, Oliver took a deep breath and remembered what his writing tutor had once told him: “when you’re writing a scene you should show not tell. Don’t just hit readers over the head with a flood of information, let them tease it out with the details.”
He took another breath while he formed the next question. ‘What could you hear?’
Graeme looked at him with a startled expression. ‘Hear?’
‘Cars, people, birds, insects? What was in the background?’
‘No one has ever asked me that before.’
Oliver leaned forward in his seat at the same time as Graeme leaned back in his, as if they were joined in the middle by a stick.
‘It’s been a while,’ Graeme said doubtfully.
‘Just relax. Even though we think of memories as pictures, they’re more like movie scenes. Everything is stored in there, sights, sounds, smells. Just relax,’ Alice repeated.
Graeme closed his eyes and the rest of the room held its breath. Even Debbie stopped crying.
Finally Graeme shook his head and looked across at them. ‘I’m sorry, I’m trying but I can’t remember hearing anything. There must be something defective with my old memory, because back then you could always hear those annoying birds chirping.’
‘Unless,’ Oliver wondered, ‘unless there’s nothing wrong with your memory. What scares birds away?’
(Cats? Our neighbours had this big black and white cat called Dash that used to scare all the birds in our back garden. This one time…)
Oliver was getting better at tuning Debbie out.
‘Loud noises,’ Graeme suggested.
‘Like a car involved in an accident,’ Oliver said.
‘But that means I…’
‘Just missed it,’ Alice chimed in.
Graeme’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened.
‘Think carefully. Did you hear a car engine? Maybe close by?’
‘I don’t think so., Maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘What about smells? Petrol, or burning rubber? Anything?’ Oliver asked.
‘Burning rubber? You’ve been watching too many American movies, Oliver,’ Alice said.
‘No burning rubber, but there was something, not a smell, but something on the body. On her jacket.’
(It was blue.)
How do you know?
(Duh, all her jackets were blue.)
‘Okay, so something on her blue jacket. A mark or stain? A tear?’
Graeme looked at him with a shrewd expression. ‘How did you know she had a blue jacket? The body was covered by a sheet.’
‘It was in the victim report,’ Oliver answered quickly.
‘Good memory. No it wasn’t a tear, but it was a mark — no, not a mark.’ Graeme paused and scrunched his face up in frustration. ‘It was tiny, the smallest piece of colour. Something yellow,’ he finished.
‘Something yellow,’ Oliver repeated. ‘Like paint from a yellow car? The yellow car that took Debbie?’ he said to Alice.
Graeme’s face lit up with excitement. ‘From a car? Maybe, yes. Does that mean there was a link between the two girls’ deaths? I knew it.’
‘If I may be the ice in your drink,’ Alice said. ‘The yellow could have been anything, a flower petal, some paint she spilt on her jacket, a mark from a crayon. It’s a big leap to say because it’s yellow it’s from a yellow car.’
‘True, but there’s nothing to say it’s not,’ Graeme responded.
‘You can’t argue with that logic,’ Alice said with a wry smile.
Graeme laughed. ‘I know the odds of it being from a car, let alone the same car that took Debbie are low, but the reason they’re odds rather than an impossibility is because there’s a chance it could have happened.’
Oliver and Alice exchanged looks but Graeme was too busy being excited to notice.
‘Jasper Yardley had a yellow car. Are you saying he did it?’
(Yes!)
Does that mean you remember?
(No, but he seems so excited I thought he knew.)
‘I should call Roman with this.’
It took a moment to click that Roman was Wilson’s first name. He was so used to thinking of the man in a professional way he almost forgot the detective had a life outside of police work, with a family, a house, possibly a pet or two. And a first name.
‘No,’ Oliver said. ‘You shouldn’t. What you have is a vague memory of a tiny splotch of yellow. If you start throwing accusations around it could hurt Jasper’s reputation.’
‘As a retired school teacher,’ Alice said with a touch of cynicism in her voice.
‘As a person,’ Oliver shot back. ‘We need to do some more digging before we start pointing fingers.’
‘Yes of course,’ Graeme replied.
There was something about those three words that rang false. ‘And the fact that his son is a lawyer means we should be doubly cautious,’ Oliver added.
Graeme gave a small shrug which could have meant any number of things, but Oliver decided to let it go.
A quick glance at his watch showed he was running out of time so Oliver pressed forward with his questions. Finally he concluded that Graeme didn’t know anything further.
One cable car ride later they were back in the car, and he was once more skirting the legal speed limit to get back into the city to drop Alice off and then get to Rose and Reed before they outwore their welcome.
‘It is starting to lead us in a particular direction,’ Alice said as he took a corner too fast and almost ran up the back of a slow moving bus.
‘It’s very thin though. All we have is a couple of unreliable references to a yellow car.’
(Hey!)
‘Which could have…’ Oliver stopped when he heard the chirping of a phone. He waited for the call to connect to the car bluetooth before realising the sound was coming from Alice’s bag.
She pulled out her phone and grinned at Oliver before answering the call.
‘Hello, Mr Atkinson’s office. Jennifer speaking.’
Oliver jerked the steering wheel in surprise, narrowly avoiding a bus. Alice’s voice had changed, sounding thirty years younger, bright and bubbly.
She listened for a moment then put her phone on speaker.
‘…son got in touch with Oliver. I do apologise. I’m not sure when exactly he thinks our roles became reversed, but he is convinced he needs to look after me.’
‘No need to apologise, Mr Yardley. Mr Atkinson is committed to writing the article and he said that you were very generous with your time the other day.’
‘Wonderful,’ Jasper replied. ‘I was hoping to hold a follow up with him. There are a few more details that I think would be beneficial to the story.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, although I don’t think we should meet here. I’m afraid my son isn’t a fan of Oliver. Not that Oliver should take it personally. James isn’t a fan of anybody, even me.’
Alice looked at Oliver who nodded.
‘I can check with him but I don’t believe a meeting will be a problem. Where would you like to meet?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. How about Barbara Smith’s house?’
For the third time he almost crashed, earning an angry tirade from a cyclist. He did his best to focus on Jasper’s words.
‘And who might that be?’ Alice asked.
‘Mr Atkinson knows,’ Jasper said. ‘I understand he’s had several conversations with her recently.’
‘I can certainly pass on the message. I’m just looking at Mr Atkinson’s calendar right now and he has some time free tomorrow morning at 10am, would that suit?’
‘Perfect, thank you, my dear. And if he felt like bringing that delightful grandmother of his I wouldn’t mind either.’
‘She’s a peach, isn’t she?’ Alice said with a wide smile on her face.
‘From what I could see she’s the whole orchard.’
There was a click and the called ended.
‘The whole orchard?’ Oliver said.
(I don’t get it.)
‘What a smooth talker,’ Alice replied, her smile even wider.
Oliver pulled into the drop-off area outside the central railway station.
‘So I guess I’m picking you up in the morning?’
‘How can I resist seeing a man that compares me to a pile of fruit?’ She opened her door and placed one foot on the ground, before pausing. ‘Have you heard from my granddaughter?’
He started to shake his head, then stopped. ‘Maybe. I got a call from Australia earlier today but I
haven’t listened to the message yet.’
‘What?! Listen to it now.’
He pressed buttons and the robotic voice informed him that the call was received at 12.20pm today.
There was a crackling sound, then Amanda’s voice came on. She was speaking softly.
‘Oliver, things aren’t quite working out as expected over here. I may be in a little bit of trouble. When you get this, give me a call.’
Oliver stared at Alice who was trying her best not to look too worried.
‘Why would she call me and not you?’ he asked.
‘Don’t be so surprised, Oliver, she thinks highly of you.’
He noticed that she kept her face turned away as she spoke. When she turned towards him it was devoid of expression.
‘Well?’
He pressed redial on his phone and after a short delay it rang once before clicking through to the mailbox. He didn’t leave a message.
‘On the bright side we know she’s alive,’ Alice said, slowly pulling herself out of the car and into a standing position.
'Aren’t you worried?’ he called.
Alice bent slightly to look through the open door. ‘I was worried when I hadn’t heard from her. Now I have.’
‘But she said she was in trouble.’
‘Are you trying to get me worried, Oliver?’
He looked down and rubbed his hot cheek. ‘Not at all, but…’
‘If she was in real trouble she would have used our code word. If she ever asks after your cat John you’ll know she needs help.’
‘I don’t have a cat John.’
Alice raised an eyebrow and he felt the heat in his cheeks rise again.
‘Oh.’
‘I’ll catch the train out your way in the morning, Oliver, to save you coming in to pick me up. It’ll give me a chance to play couple jeopardy.’
‘Couple jeopardy,’ he looked at her blankly.
‘Yes, I like to observe couples and work out which ones are likely to stay together and which are more likely to crash and burn in a fiery heap of tears.’
‘That’s morbid.’
(Sounds like fun. Brigid and I played stuff like that.)
‘I’ve had my fair share of both types of relationships. Besides I don’t tell them they’re not likely to last the month, now that would be cruel. For the record, you and Jennifer are in it for life’ She closed the door to end the conversation and Oliver pulled out of the station and turned towards the motorway.
Ghostly Hitchhiker Box Set Page 67
