by Alex Marwood
‘Oops.’
‘I was so hungover, I actually threw up.’
‘Not at the table, I hope?’ asks Stan.
She laughs.
‘We’ll make a pro of you yet, my girl.’
‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I don’t think you can call him a ripper, can you? Strangler, surely?’
His face takes on a contemplative look. ‘The Whitmouth Strangler. It doesn’t have much of a ring to it, does it?’
‘The Seaside Strangler?’
‘Nice. Like it. I found what looked like some dried snot on my bedspread. Which wasn’t very conducive to a good night’s sleep.’
‘Bed-bug numbers are up globally, you know.’
‘For God’s sake. I’m getting that camper van. I hardly ever go home as it is.’
‘Then you could go to the seaside every day,’ she says.
‘Ah, wouldn’t that be lovely? I must say, I’m enjoying this little interlude.’
‘Me too,’ she says. ‘It’s like being on holiday. Are you going on the rollercoaster?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. You?’
‘Still feeling a bit frail,’ she says. ‘I might have to give it a miss.’
‘Amateur,’ says Stan, and shakes his head. ‘How’s your piece shaping up?’
Kirsty shrugs. ‘Oh, you know. You can find whatever your editor wants you to find. Jack’s after Third Circle of Hell stuff. So that’s what I’m giving him.’
‘That’s why I joined the press,’ says Stan. ‘The relentless quest for balance. Jack does so love to sneer at the proles, doesn’t he?’
‘That’s a bit harsh. Have you seen what the Guardian’s been saying?’
‘Well it is the Guardian. It’s either that or they’ll have to find a reason why Israel’s to blame,’ he says. ‘So how was the press conference?’
‘Oh God. I didn’t go. I was sort of expecting you would.’
‘Ah. Oh well. It’ll all be on AP anyway. You home tonight?’
She nods. ‘As long as he hasn’t changed the locks. I’m on the motorway the second I’m done here. Can’t bloody wait.’
She catches the look on the face of the woman behind her, that peculiarly British suspicion of snobbery, and corrects herself in a louder voice. ‘I hate these overnighters,’ she tells Stan, while looking the woman in the eye. ‘Doesn’t matter where. I just miss my family so much, you know?’
Stan nods. ‘Yes. I remember the days when I had one of those to miss.’
*
Jim calls just as the gates to Funnland open.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘How are you?’
‘More to the point, how are you?’ he asks. ‘You didn’t say goodbye before you went.’
‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t entirely sure of my welcome.’
‘Yeah,’ says Jim. ‘You are an arse, you know.’
She feels a rush of relief. If he’s back to administering direct insults, it means he’s over the hump. ‘Accepted and understood,’ she tells him.
‘Save it for the judge,’ he says. ‘Are you still coming home today?’
‘Trust me,’ she says, ‘I’ve only had a bottle and a half of Chardonnay. I can drive it blindfold.’
They laugh. The queue edges closer to the gate and she tucks the phone into her chin to look for her wallet. The nasty young security guard has moved up to stand by the kiosk and smirks at people as they pass, as though he’s got a dirty secret on each of them.
‘OK. I’ll see you later. Oh, and Kirsty?’
‘What?’
‘I missed you saying goodbye this morning. Don’t do it again, eh?’
The words wrap her like a warm blanket. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll remember not to repeat the error.’
Who wants to ride dodgems at half-ten in the morning? There’s actually a queue for them, though perhaps that’s more a reflection of the fact that half the rides and stalls aren’t open yet than of any particular desire for whiplash. There’s a startlingly handsome man in charge: dark-haired, with a panther-like grace. He’s clean, unpierced, no signs of the inking you’d usually expect on the arms of someone in his trade. Kirsty wonders idly how someone so good-looking ended up working here, rather than for, say, Models One, and passes by.
Most of the other hacks make a beeline for the offices, in the hope that Suzanne Oddie will be on the premises. Kirsty hangs back as Stan wanders over to the café, sees him sit down watchfully at one of the fixed tables outside. He always looks like he’s not working, but he’s the one who actually comes up with the goods. Plays on the fact that the young all believe that men revert to childlike innocence the minute their hair turns grey; gets the waitresses gossiping in a way she can never manage.
Another security guard has been posted outside the entrance to Innfinnityland, where the body was found. He’s arguing with the hack from the Star, arms folded firmly across his chest, head working slowly and firmly from side to side. Of course he is. The attraction is closed, ‘out of respect’. The forensic team have departed, but no one’s going to get in for the money shot.
Except Kirsty.
She finds the cocky guard from the front gate drinking a can of Fanta behind the teacup ride. Now here’s a man with ink on his body. He’s not gone as far as LOVE and HATE knuckles, but a smidge of spiderweb sticks out of the back of his starched blue collar.
She stops beside him. ‘Hi,’ she says.
He lowers the can and looks at her. He looks a bit like a whippet, except that no whippet has mean little watery blue eyes like that.
‘Bet you’re all glad to be back at work,’ she says.
He looks her up and down once more, then realisation dawns. ‘Oh, right, you’re a journalist,’ he says.
‘Yes.’ She sticks out a hand. ‘Kirsty Lindsay,’ she says.
He shakes it, weakly, just like she’d expected.
‘And you are?’
‘Jason,’ he says, uncertainly.
‘Hi, Jason,’ she says, and gets out her wallet. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got the keys to everything here, haven’t you?’
*
She meets him at the back of the café; he doesn’t want to risk being seen walking across the grounds beside her. There’s a door by the disabled bogs that leads through to the storage alley. The alley runs between the perimeter fence and the backs of a series of stalls and sideshows: old-fashioned hoop-la, a shooting gallery, Dr Wicked’s House of Giggles, the NASA Experience, The House of Horrors, Innfinnityland.
At first glance, the alleyway looks as though it’s strewn with dead bodies. Dead, naked bodies. Kirsty feels a shudder of horror run through her before she realises that they’re just rejects from the waxworks, chucked out carelessly to rot in the daylight.
Jason emerges from between the shooting gallery and the ghost ride. He looks both shifty and pleased with himself in equal measure. Getting one over on the bosses, she thinks, is as important to him as the twenty quid which is burning a hole in his pocket. He beckons with a jerk of the head, and starts walking towards the back of Innfinnityland. She hurries to catch up. Now that she’s out the back here, where no one’s bothered with paint jobs and carved fascias, she sees that the attractions are housed in shabby Portakabins: bits of insulation tumbling out where cladding has come loose, spaghetti-knots of thick black wiring leading from the junction box against the fence.
‘Five minutes,’ he says. ‘That’s all you get.’
‘That’s all I need,’ she says. She wants to grab a couple of rough photos, drink in a bit of atmosphere, that’s all. It won’t take long. She can make up anything she can’t remember. After all, no one’s going to be going in and correcting her.
‘And I’ve got nothing to do with it,’ he says. ‘I’ll come and get you, but if there’s anyone there, I’m here to throw you out, OK?’
‘Of course. Thank you for this.’
He grunts. Stops at the foot of a set of metal steps. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘It’s up here.’
She brushes past, puts her hand on the tubular banister. Jason starts to hurry away.
She’s halfway up when the door at the top of the steps opens. She freezes. Nowhere to go. She’s caught in the act. A woman emerges. She’s tall, and dyed blond: short, practical hair, skin that’s seen better days, rubber gloves and a pail full of cleaning materials hanging from her arm, a large black mole on the edge of her smile line. She stops, looks puzzled.
‘Can I help you?’
‘I was just …’ Kirsty hunts for an excuse. Arse. That’s twenty quid wasted.
‘This building’s closed,’ says the woman. ‘What are you doing back here anyway? You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I just …’ Kirsty says again, then thinks, what the hell. I’m here now. What’re they going to do? Arrest me? She puts on her most persuasive, friendly, conspiratorial face. ‘I just wanted to get a look inside,’ she tells her. ‘I don’t suppose you could …? Just for a moment?’
The woman looks at her as though she’s crawled out from under something. She’s familiar, thinks Kirsty. Why’s she familiar? She gives her a nice open smile. Wonders if she’s got another twenty in her wallet. ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘Just for a minute.’
A frown. The woman shouts, down the alleyway, at the guard’s hurrying back. ‘Jason! We’ve got a stray here!’
Kirsty sees Jason turn reluctantly back towards them. She has seconds to make her final pitch.
‘Come on,’ she says, ‘be a darling. I’m not going to do any harm.’
‘Jesus,’ says the woman. ‘You people disgust me. Seriously. Don’t you realise? There was a girl dead in here. Not some – dummy in a movie. A girl. A sweet, breathing, laughing teenage girl. She was alive, and now she’s dead, and people’s lives are devastated—’
Her voice cuts off halfway through the sentence and Kirsty hears a gasp, as though someone’s punched her in the solar plexus. She looks up at the woman’s face and sees that it has gone white, the eyes bulging, the jaw dropped back to show snaggled teeth.
‘What?’ she asks.
‘No,’ says the woman. ‘No, no, no. Shit, no. No. You can’t be here. You can’t. Shit. You’ve got to go.’ She clutches on to the top of the railing as though the strength has gone from her legs. ‘Oh Christ,’ she says, and she’s almost weeping. ‘Oh my God, Christ, please no. Jade, go. You’ve got to go, now.’
Chapter Thirteen
Amber understands now what they mean when they talk of a rush of blood to the head. She feels a pressure inside her skull that makes her fear that it will crack, like an eggshell. She feels her heart, thump-thump-thump, feels the strength leave her limbs, sees darkness creep in around the edge of her vision. This can’t be happening. It can’t. Sixty million people in the country; what are the odds she’d just … be here.
Jade, now that she’s heard Amber speak her name, looks as though the same physical phenomena are afflicting her. She sways, shroud-white, on the bottom step. Stares up at Amber as though she’s seen a ghost. In a way, she has. They’ve both been dead and buried for decades now. Annabel Oldacre and Jade Walker, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist when they vanished into the system. It wasn’t safe for them to keep their names in detention, even when they were still theoretically presumed innocent. They might never have had visitors themselves, but their fellow hoodlums did, and even back then there was good money to be made from the News of the Screws for tales from the inside. Especially tales of Wicked Girls and their Wicked Ways.
Jason Murphy, Maria’s little jackal of a husband, is approaching, slowly and unwillingly.
‘Bel,’ says Jade.
Amber shivers. She hasn’t heard the name as a form of address in decades. She is no longer that girl. Everything about her is changed. Only continuity can keep you the same, and she has been Amber Gordon for almost as long as she can remember.
‘Please,’ Amber says again. ‘You’ve got to go.’
Jesus, she thinks. She looks ten years younger than me. She feels a surge of resentment towards this woman. Hair well cut – not showy, but fall-into-place neat, subtly highlighted, shiny; skin unlined; clothes not flashy-expensive but clearly not from market stalls either. Her black leather boots are classy, though. You don’t get that sort of firm-yet-yielding leather in Primark. Incarceration’s treated you well, then, she thinks.
She glances up. Jason Murphy is a few feet away now, lurking in that vulpine way of his. Has he seen that something’s going on? Something more than he’d expect? She has always suspected that Jason’s studied indifference to the world hides a sharp eye for a situation – as long as that situation provides an opportunity for himself.
She pulls herself together. ‘This area’s off limits,’ she says sternly. ‘Even if – even if the situation was different, you’d still not be allowed back here. Staff only.’
Jade’s still not found her voice. Amber looks up the alleyway, nods at Jason. ‘I don’t know how she got back here,’ she says to him, ‘and I’m not going to ask. Just get her out of here.’
Jason steps forward and takes hold of Jade’s arm. She jumps, as though she’s been ambushed, whirls her arm from his grip as though it burns.
‘Come on,’ says Jason. ‘No point arguing.’
She turns back, looks at Amber, wide-eyed. ‘Bel,’ she says again.
Amber pretends to ignore her. The name, each time she hears it, makes her jolt inside. Stop it. Stop it. Do you want them to find out? Do you? Do you want the crowds on your doorstep, the shit through your letterbox?
She turns away and goes back through the door.
*
Once she’s safely inside, Amber allows her legs to buckle. She slumps against the mirrored wall, slides down it to the floor, stares at her grey-white reflection. Her hands and feet are cold.
‘Ah, well,’ says Jason, letting go of Kirsty’s arm the moment he knows they’re not overlooked. ‘Tough luck.’
He’s preparing to put up a fight if she asks for her money back, but she seems strangely distracted, following him like a zombie. He doesn’t really understand what he’s just seen, but knows that this was something more than her simply getting caught. He could swear he saw something pass between the two women; even that they recognised each other. Maybe he’s wrong. This woman’s small and slight, and would be no match for Amber Gordon: maybe she just got scared at the sight of her.
Most people would, he thinks, and chuckles inwardly. The woman had a face so grim on her just now that you could have cast her in Lord of the Rings without make-up, even if she didn’t have that great knobble on her upper lip. God knows what Vic Cantrell sees in her. It must be some sort of mother thing, because it sure as shit isn’t sex. Not after the nights he and Vic have had, prowling the nightclubs on the strip, fucking and fingering the slags on holiday. I must ask him one day, he thinks, if she knows what he gets up to when she’s at work. Maybe she lets him. Maybe she thinks it’s the only way she’ll get to keep him.
The journalist’s silence is disconcerting. She’s gone a strange shade of grey, and clutches the strap of her bag like a security blanket.
‘It’s OK,’ he reassures her as they emerge into the park. ‘She’s not going to tell. She won’t even remember which one you were.’
She gulps. Looks at him with huge eyes, as though she’s only just noticed that he’s there. Stumbles away towards the café.
He notices that Vic is watching them as he rides on the back of a bumper car, holding on casually with one hand. He’s seen them emerge from the alleyway, and looks amused. Jason grins at him and flashes the universal hip-spaced-hands and crotch-thrust gesture at her retreating back. Vic laughs, gives him the thumbs-up. Jumps acrobatically on to the back of a new car to give the girls a thrill.
She wants strong coffee. Her hands are shaking and, despite what the health bores say, she finds that caffeine calms her. But of course the coffee in Funnland hasn’t seen a bean in eighteen factory processes. She fills the cup up with creamer, e
mpties three sachets of sugar on top and carries it out to a bench. Checking her watch, she is surprised to see that only fifteen minutes have passed since she spoke to Jim.
The park has filled up. The kiddie rides are up and running now, and the first nappy change is taking place on the wooden table next to her. She realises that she’s still shaking. She takes the lid off the coffee, sips, scalds her mouth. She’d forgotten how much hotter instant is than the real thing. Wonders at the changes in her life since she last saw Bel Oldacre: that she has become an espresso-drinking, pesto-eating member of the balsamic classes. Back home – back in the time she thinks of as ‘before’ – a meal was Budgen tea and white toast with jam; potatoes and spaghetti hoops; and, occasionally, a glut of pig meat when her dad took the shotgun down to the corrugated-iron Nissen huts that functioned as sties. A place like this would have seemed like an unattainable heaven to her, somewhere to see on the telly and dream of visiting.
Was that really Bel? Was it? How can this have happened? Under the weatherbeaten skin, the brassy cropped hair, the stained polyester overall? My God. She looks the way I was meant to look.
Kirsty doesn’t think she would have recognised her had she not been recognised herself. Though she’s surprised no one thought to remove that blemish – so recognisable, so discussed – from Bel’s face when they were setting up her new identity. She supposes that more of the child she once was must still be recognisable in her own face, mole or no mole, than she realises; and the thought frightens her. Bel, up till now, has remained eleven in her mind. She barely remembers her, if truth be told; is more familiar with her features from those bloody school photos, the ones that get pulled from the archive whenever there’s an anniversary, whenever another child earns the sobriquet ‘unspeak able’. They only knew each other for the inside of a day. And afterwards, standing silently side by side in the dock, barely glancing at each other except for when one or the other of them was testifying. It wasn’t like they were best friends. Or even habitual ones.
