by Danuta Reah
He went back through the pages of the diary, aware of Judith Martin’s eyes on him. Phones. There was no phone in Cara Hobson’s flat – she’d probably had a mobile, but that had gone missing. The phone at the Fraser house had been cut off for months. The planned meetings had gone wrong. As far as he could tell from the diary, all the contact since Cara’s death had been via text messages.
‘I’ll talk to the mother,’ he said.
Mrs Fraser was still slumped over in the chair. She looked at him with dull eyes as he came into the room, taking a drag on her cigarette. The room smelt of smoke and acetone. Her face was puffy and her eyes were red. ‘Mrs Fraser…?’ he said.
She looked at him. ‘What do you want with Kerry? What’s she done now?’ She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one.
‘Mrs Fraser…’ She seemed about to say something, but shook her head and waved her hand at him to go on. ‘We’ve been looking at Kerry’s diary…’ He opened the book at the pages he’d marked. ‘We know she spent the afternoon with Stacy, the day Stacy disappeared. We need to know who she’s been seeing,’ he said. ‘Who’s been contacting her. She keeps talking about Lyn, about meeting Lyn…’ He looked at her to see if she was taking in what he was saying.
‘She’s nothing but trouble, takes after her father.’ Her eyes, already bloodshot, looked redder.
‘Who was that, Mrs Fraser?’ Save him from drunks, particularly maudlin drunks.
‘Lyn,’ she said. ‘We were fine, me and Mark and Kerry. It was always Lyn causing trouble.’
Farnham suppressed his impatience. ‘Tell me about Lyn,’ he said. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Always fighting, her and Kerry.’ She lit another cigarette, ignoring the one that was burning in the ashtray.
‘Kerry was meeting her,’ Farnham said. ‘She says so in her diary. Tell me about her.’
‘I don’t know.’ The woman was fidgeting and looking towards the door. She seemed to make an effort to concentrate. ‘She left. She wanted to go. She never liked Mark. She was always causing trouble. We never had a chance.’ A tear ran down her cheek.
Maybe Lyn had had good reason not to like her stepfather, Farnham thought. The woman seemed to have forgotten that. ‘Where did she go?’ he said.
Her gaze moved away. ‘She left home,’ she said, after a pause. ‘I couldn’t cope. Not after he…’
‘Mark Fraser?’ Farnham prompted.
‘Yes. Him. I couldn’t cope with her.’
Fraser’s stepdaughter had gone into care. Cara Hobson had been in care. ‘Where is she now?’ The Fraser woman sat looking out of the window. ‘Mrs Fraser?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘It isn’t Fraser,’ she said. She looked round the room. ‘I need a drink,’ she said.
Farnham needed a drink too, but after half an hour spent in this woman’s company, half an hour of breathing in the acetone smell of her alcoholdamaged body, the sourness of her breath, he felt as though he didn’t want to touch another drop as long as he lived.
Judith Martin tapped on the door. She looked at Farnham, and he made a quick apology to the Fraser woman. ‘Kerry’s friends,’ Martin said. ‘A couple of the dads are panicked now and have gone looking for them, but Meadowhall is crawling with kids of an evening, and without knowing where the girls were headed…’
Farnham checked the time. Half past seven. He didn’t want the Fraser child on the streets for any longer than necessary. ‘Tell them to keep looking,’ he said. They’d need to be discreet. The Fraser child wasn’t co-operative. If she got the idea the police were looking for her, she might well do a runner. There wasn’t much to come home for that he could see.
Then he registered what the woman had said. He turned back to her. ‘It isn’t Fraser?’
‘My name,’ she said. ‘I divorced him. Fraser. After…’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. They should have got this sorted out. ‘What…?’
‘It’s Young,’ she said. ‘My maiden name. When I was Young…’ She smiled vaguely at a distant joke and for a moment he caught an image of what she must have looked like before the alcohol took its toll. Then the significance of what she had said struck him. ‘Young?’ he said. He was aware of Martin looking across, puzzled. ‘Mrs Young…’
‘Ms…’ she corrected him, still smiling.
Oh, for… ‘Ms Young. Lyn’s name – what’s it short for? What’s Lyn’s full name?’
‘Lyn. She didn’t want Mark, didn’t want Kerry. She was always on about her father. Her dad. She never saw him. He never came near her. It spoiled things. We had a lovely relationship, me and Mark, until Madam got to work.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘And then Mark met her…’
‘Lyn’s name, Mrs – Ms Young.’ Farnham was holding on to his patience with difficulty.
‘No one cares about it,’ she said. ‘She’s not a nice person. It’s my own daughter, I know, but she’s not a nice person.’ Her eyes focused on Farnham. ‘Melinda. It’s a pretty name.’
Lyn. Melinda. Mel. Mark Fraser’s stepdaughter, Mel Young.
Tina swung her car into the parking space. The restaurants and the bars and the cinemas were all lit up, and the lights were flashing: Old Orleans…Bowling…Eating, dancing, cavorting! The car park was busy, even in the snow. The concrete expanse gave a sense of bustle and life, until she got out of the car and looked around. There was music, loud music, coming from the bars. Behind the doors of the cinema, she could see the ticket booths, the steaming popcorn, the banks of sweets and drinks, but it was a world inhabited by sound and machines. It was like being abandoned in an electronic world that went about its business, entertainment, oblivious to the fact that the people were long dead, long gone.
And as the machines ran down, the lights would vanish, one by one, the doors and windows would be boarded up, leaving an abandoned tower in the night from which a figure plummeted down…
‘Bit of a dump. Where’s the mooring?’ Steven Calloway had pulled up behind her. ‘I didn’t come this way yesterday.’
She blinked. Daydreaming in the middle of an investigation. Pull yourself together, woman! ‘We can cross the tram tracks,’ she said. ‘It’s easy to park here – that’s why I use it.’
He was looking round as she led the way to the tram stop. ‘Which circle of hell is this, do you think?’
She looked sideways at him. Thick plod? But he seemed to be talking half to himself, looking round almost in bewilderment. ‘It’s the one for people who watch too much television,’ she said. He laughed, and followed her as she made her way across the tramlines and over the bridge to the towpath.
The snow was falling heavily now. The mooring was in shadow, the towpath lights dim in the winter night, the sky heavy with cloud. It looked very different from when she had been here in the daylight. She could see the shapes of the boats, but there were no cabin lights, no signs of any life. ‘Where…?’ The darkness was confusing her, stopping her from getting her bearings.
‘Along here,’ he said, moving away from the light to a place where deep shadow lay across the canal. ‘She’s over here.’
Tina followed, her eyes squinting into the darkness, trying to ignore the flicker across her vision that was the snow, the sense of falling, of imbalance. The night was playing tricks with her eyes. She couldn’t see any boat in the darkness. She stumbled as her foot caught on something on the path. She reached in her pocket for her torch. ‘Here.’ Calloway’s voice out of the darkness again. Then, ‘What the…?’
‘Mr Calloway?’ Her foot slipped in the slush. The snow was starting to settle. ‘Mr Calloway? Steven?’
‘It’s…’ He was standing by the mooring, looking round. ‘I’ve lost my bearings. It’s…’ He turned back.
‘What is it?’ She could see the faint gleam of the light on the water.
‘The boat,’ he said. ‘My boat, the Mary May – she’s gone.’
Tina looked at the dark water of the canal, the towpath vanishing into the night ahea
d. The mooring was empty. The Mary May was out on the canal.
The snow was settling on the towpath as Kerry trudged towards town, towards the railway bridge. She’d meet Lyn – she was going to be early this time – and she’d get the stuff, then she’d tell Lyn about Stacy, about Mum, and maybe Lyn would tell her what she should do. ‘You’re too soft,’ Lyn would say. ‘You want to stand up for yourself, Kizz.’ Lyn could stand up for herself. No one messed around with Lyn.
She’d pulled the hood of her jacket up, but the wet of the snow had soaked through. She was starting to shiver with the cold. She pulled the phone out of her pocket and looked at it again, afraid she might have read the message wrong, got the time and the place wrong. MT U ON TOPATH RLY BR 7.30 RGNT DNT B L8. She was passing the high walls of the factories and warehouses now, getting closer to the city centre. She could see the railway bridge ahead. The towpath lights wavered as the snow got thicker. Where was she going to go tonight? How could she go home? They’d know by now she’d been lying.
The path ran into the darkness under the bridge. The flat metal of the girders made a roof above her. She was briefly sheltered from the snow, and she paused to shake it off her jacket and her hood. The bridge funnelled the wind that seemed to cut through her – she was past shivering. A numbness was starting in her hands and feet that made her feel – almost – warm. She checked her watch. It wasn’t half-past yet. She was going to get there in time. She was going to get there early. There was a singing in the metal, then a drumming, and the bridge thundered as a train ran towards the station. Kerry leant against the wall and let the noise and the vibration run through her, emptying her mind of everything except the one thing, the thing that mattered. She had to get to Lyn.
Her mind was flying ahead as she hurried the last quarter mile. Lyn would have to tell her now what she meant – its abut yor dad meet u at the cafy 7 dont b l8…, why she’d been sending all those cuttings. Lyn must think that Dad was in danger, but Kerry knew that. And she knew that Dad hadn’t done anything to Ellie. They’d said about Dad doing things to Lyn. Kerry felt something deep and ashamed inside her. He never. That was wrong. But she’d told them that already. They hadn’t believed her. Maybe they’d believe Lyn.
She pulled the phone out of her bag and switched it on. The message icon flashed. New message. She pressed Read new and watched the letters running across the screen: WR R U? Lyn. Lyn was waiting somewhere near. She keyed it in quickly – rlwy brij topath – and hurried on. She could see it now in the darkness ahead, the low arch of the bridge.
She heard a noise behind her, a strange cracking sound. She looked back. A boat was coming along the canal towards her, the ice breaking under its bow. It drifted out of the darkness, appearing and disappearing through the snow. Kerry tucked her chin in against the flakes that landed wetly on her face. It would be nice to be on a boat, it would be sheltered and it might be warm. She remembered the times she’d seen orange light shining through the windows of the cabins on the houseboats at night; they’d always looked warm and welcoming. But this boat was dark and silent, drifting past her, slowly, slowly, and it bumped gently against the canal side, slowing, stopping. Kerry quickened her pace.
The boat was a darker shadow against the darkness of the canal. It was like a ghost boat, cutting through the water with no one there, coming out of the shadows and then vanishing into the shadows again…Like Ellie, walking into the woods, out of the bright sunlight of the last day as the darkness under the trees swallowed her up.
Then something came out of the darkness and hooked on to her arm. The pain shot into her shoulder, making her shout out as the thing that had gripped her jerked her back and she sprawled forward, towards the canal, towards the water. A white face with a sad mouth and a red, leering smile hung in the darkness in front of her. Something grabbed her hair as she fell and hauled her on to the boat, a hand covering her mouth as she gasped with the pain and shock. Then she was face down on the wood, in the slime of water and snow and muck, and the pain in her arm was throbbing and throbbing. Her arm felt wet, a warm wetness that made her feel weak and sick, and the hand that had caught her was twisted in her hair, forcing her head up, and there was a heavy weight on her back.
The weight pressed down and her head was pulled back further. A voice whispered in her ear: ‘Not a sound, little one, or I’ll snap your spine. But you’ll still feel it when I cut your throat and you bleed to death like a dog. So, not a sound, please.’ The voice was bored, cold, but she could feel the edge of the knife burning against her throat, and all of her went leaden as a surge of cold ran through her. She couldn’t control the shaking and she realized she’d wet herself like a baby.
‘Someone wants to cavort with you.’
SEVENTEEN
Kerry lay on the floor of the cabin. She had given up struggling against the tape that was wrapped round her arms and wrists, her legs and ankles, across her mouth. Her arm was stiff and sore, and stung where the boat hook had cut it. ‘Keep you out of trouble, hey, Kizz?’ the voice had whispered. The weight of the knee in her back lifted, but the voice was whispering in her ear now, close, tickling as the breath disturbed her hair. ‘Like a crab. Tie up its pincers and put it on ice. I worked in a bar, Kizz, a year ago, on the seafront, in Greece. The tourists would come to eat – best seafood on the island, they said. And I’d take a crab, all its little legs trying to scuttle, and put it on to the fire, where the coals were red hot. They jump off, you know, Kizz, and they try to crawl away and you let them go a little bit, then you put them back. And they watch, the tourists, and they look away, and you ask yourself, will they eat it when you put it in front of them, all hot and melting and wonderful? They do, you know. They can’t resist.’ A waft of sour breath caught her. ‘Oh, Kizz. Did you really think you could save your dad?’
Then she was alone. The blood from her arm felt sticky. She tried to struggle, but the tape wouldn’t give. After a few minutes, she heard the sound of an engine and the floor underneath her began to vibrate. And the shapes of the buildings began to move past her. She struggled again, trying futilely to free her hands, but then the engine stopped, and she felt the slight thump of the boat drifting into the bank. They’d arrived.
She heard feet again, and twisted her head round, trying to see, but the cabin was dark. A light from the towpath shone through the window. She could feel the vibration under her as feet crossed the cabin, and then, in the dim light from the towpath, she could see a face. She would have screamed if the tape hadn’t stopped her. It was a white face with a contorted red smile painted over a crying mouth, eyes like black holes. And then she realized. It was a mask, a clown mask like some of the kids wore to parties or for Halloween. Just a mask, just a clown-face. Then the figure became a shadow again and moved away.
She could see a dim glow, blue, and for a moment she could make out the figure crouched over, the blue light illuminating the mask. A phone display. It was a phone.
A phone. She turned her head quickly before the light went out. She could see her bag, a dark shape on the floor by the bench. She tried to roll on to her side, keeping her eyes on the place where her bag was. Her phone, it was inches away, it was switched on. She tried to push herself closer, get her bound hands nearer to the bag. Nearer.
She heard the beep of her phone as it received a message, and then a hand cracked across her face and her head thumped against the floor. ‘Stupid, stupid.’ The clown face smiled its painted smile. The clown mouth wept.
Kerry’s voice struggled against the tape, but no sound came out. She felt something touch her face, her tight-shut eyes. Gloved hands. ‘Look, Kizz.’ She opened her eyes. A phone, her phone with the Buffy cover that Stacy had given her for Christmas, was in front of her. The message icon flashed.
‘Look.’ The letters were running across the display, but she screwed her eyes shut again. A hand covered hers and bent her little finger double, pressing the top joint back and up against the base. Kerry tried to shout, but the ta
pe held her mouth. Another jolt of pain shot through her finger, and her teeth clamped shut against her tongue. The warm taste of blood filled her mouth. She wanted to be sick. ‘Look.’ The insistent whisper, the gloved hand threatening.
She opened her eyes and tried to read the words. SO SORY KIZ DIDNT MEAN IT. There was a soft laugh. ‘So now you know.’ Kerry’s head was hurting, and her hand was throbbing. She tried to move to take her weight off it. She couldn’t straighten her finger.
She was aware of the figure crouching down beside her, and she was pushed on to her back. ‘I’ll have to take some of this off, after.’ And something cold touched her neck. It was so cold, it stung like a wasp on a hot day, and her neck felt sticky and warm. She began to struggle. ‘Don’t fight, Kizz. There’s worse things than this, you know.’
She tucked her chin down against her chest and heard the soft laughter again. She could feel the tears of panic running down the sides of her face, clogging her nose. She could feel the warmth and the stickiness on her neck, on her hair. Dim in the moonlight, she could see the hand holding the knife, lifting a handful of her hair and letting it trail back to the floor. She could see the glints of gold and red as the light caught it.
‘It’s the fine detail they don’t notice, Kizz. They’ll see the whole picture, but they won’t see the details.’ The whisper was further away now and the warm stickiness was trickling down her neck, matting in her hair. ‘In the water, the blood trails away in streamers, and it floats and curls around. But you won’t bleed to death, Kizz, you’ll drown. Don’t worry. You can’t struggle. You’ll breathe in the water. The next bit won’t be nice, Kizz. You’ll choke and you’ll shit yourself and you’ll have convulsions. It won’t last too long. Then you’ll die.’ The hand gripping her hair had tightened, the pull against her scalp making her eyes water. ‘The canal’s not so deep, Kizz. If they’d leave you, I’d come back. We could keep company, you and me. You’ll lie in the mud on the bottom, and slowly, Kizz, slowly, you’ll start to rot. Then you’ll float, and your skin will be swollen with water. But they won’t leave you, and this time, I can’t be here.’
