A Velvet Scream

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘What?’ He was going a bit deaf. She repeated her request.

  ‘All right, Piercy.’ He sounded his normal, gruff self, not hostile at all. ‘Though I’d have thought with only a few weeks to go before the wedding that you’d have other things to worry about.’

  ‘I have, sir,’ she responded, ‘but it would help if I could have some advice.’

  ‘All right, then. Come now and make it snappy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Though Matthew was obviously otherwise engaged he still made a fuss about her going out to do something connected with work. When he looked up briefly his eyes looked stormy. ‘On a Saturday?’

  ‘It’s an opportunity to talk to him away from the station.’

  Eloise’s eyes bounced from one to the other. Taking it all in. No doubt to report back to her mother if Jane was still interested, which Joanna doubted.

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Lunchtime. I have a fitting of the dress this afternoon.’

  His face softened at that. Matthew was so predictable at times. There were ‘encouraged’ activities and ‘discouraged’ activities – basically anything to do with work was classed as the latter.

  ‘OK. See you later, then.’ He tried to make a joke of it, smiling now – or at least curving his mouth into the shape of a smile – but it was nothing like his normal merry grin. ‘Well, I hope you won’t be late for the wedding, Jo, because you’re out there catching some villain.’ He winked at Eloise. Underneath the light banter Joanna caught the hint of sarcasm and resented it.

  She didn’t even bother to say goodbye to Eloise. The girl looked up briefly; her eyes hostile. They flickered with a light as cold as winter before she bent back down over her book without uttering a word or even making the weakest attempt at a smile.

  Joanna sighed. ‘See you later,’ she said to the room. Normally she would have kissed Matthew goodbye but in front of Eloise it would have seemed a deliberate act, so she simply smiled and left.

  Clara checked her phone every few minutes, expecting at any time a text from Molly. She decided her friend was mean not to tell her where she was and where she’d vanished to last night. After all, Clara was putting herself at risk of trouble too. If her mother found out all the lies she’d told on her friend’s behalf she’d be in the shit and grounded for weeks. Her mother and father were liberal and easy-going but they would not approve of the lies she told for Molly. Clara gave a loud, irritated sigh and texted Molly the questions again. Where r u now? Where did u get 2 last night?

  Then she leaned back against her pillows.

  Molly was probably still asleep. Somewhere.

  Superintendent Arthur Colclough lived in a Victorian semi-detached house on the Buxton road out of Leek, practically the last one in the town, just before the road climbed and climbed and climbed towards a rocky crag known as The Winking Man which was part of the climbers’ Mecca – The Roaches. Mrs Colclough let her in with a disapproving look, showing her into a pretty sitting room decorated in pale green with a circular Chinese carpet in the centre. Colclough was sitting in a deep, green armchair, wearing a cardigan and slippers and looking homey and relaxed. To her relief he gave her a warm smile as she entered. It was a smile which reached his eyes with a twinkle; a smile she hadn’t seen for months. She was forgiven.

  ‘Piercy,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you came over.’

  So the awkwardness was over. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Sit down. Mrs Colclough will bring in tea and some biscuits. Now, then.’ He settled back in the chair and gave her a benevolent look. ‘What is it that’s bothering you?’

  She outlined the two cases of Kayleigh and Danielle and he listened intently, his bulldog jowls quivering with interest. She realized he’d never lost his love of being a copper and wondered whether her enjoyment of the job would last as long.

  ‘And you think there might be more victims?’

  ‘Possibly, sir, but the thing that is really bothering me most is whether to proceed with the investigation. Kayleigh is a young woman who exaggerates. Worse than that, she’s not above fabricating the evidence.’

  ‘But if her story is the truth I think you must,’ he said gently. ‘Someone is preying on young women and assaulting them, not caring whether they live or die.’

  ‘The Crown Prosecution Service will think it unlikely we will secure a conviction on Kayleigh’s evidence and there’s no DNA,’ she said. Colclough shrugged and reminded her that the force had solved crime and secured convictions well before the days of the wonderful DNA. They both looked up as Mrs Colclough entered carrying a tea tray and not even trying to disguise her disapproval of Joanna’s mere presence. ‘Don’t forget we’re taking Catherine to the birthday party,’ she reminded her husband pointedly. He smiled and shook his head.

  When she had closed the door behind her Colclough leaned forward and picked up a ginger biscuit, nibbling on it absently. ‘Catherine will soon be the age of those young women,’ he said quietly but with menace in his voice. ‘These girls have mothers, fathers, grandparents. If anyone did that to my granddaughter I would think castration too good for him.’

  Joanna nodded and drank her tea. Colclough recovered his equilibrium; his face returning to his more normal bland expression.

  ‘You need to ascertain whether young Kayleigh’s story is the truth,’ he said. ‘That’ll at least be a start. If she is lying leave the previous investigation to the Newcastle-under-Lyme Police. After all, you say that girl died of natural causes?’

  ‘Matthew told me she died from inhalation of vomit.’

  Colclough made an expression of disgust, then smiled at her. ‘Notwithstanding your recent . . . mistake,’ he said, ‘I continue to trust your judgement, Piercy.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘So my advice is to do a little research around young Kayleigh.’

  He drained his cup and set it firmly back on the tray.

  She finished hers quickly, thanked the superintendent and left, returning along snowy, single-track lanes until she reached Waterfall village. As she let herself in the phone was ringing.

  It was her mother.

  Joanna let her rant on about being selfish, telling her that Lara, her niece, had changed her mind, yet again, about wanting to be a bridesmaid; that her aunt had managed to book a last minute flight from Sydney, that her uncle Bob was not going to be able to make it from San Diego and that Daniel would want to leave early as he’d been invited to a New Year’s Eve sleepover. And she was worried about her hat.

  Joanna listened impatiently, finally managing to squeeze in a few words. ‘Mum, I have to go. Eloise is here and I need to make lunch. Then I have a fitting.’ She thought that mentioning this would mollify her mother.

  She was quite wrong. ‘You’re cutting it very fine,’ she snapped.

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Her mother tried one more time. ‘So what about Lara, dear?’

  ‘Tell her to get a dress,’ Joanna said. ‘I’ll pay. If she wants to do it, fine. If not that’s fine too. OK?’

  Her mother’s reply was smooth and well rehearsed. ‘We have time,’ she said, ‘to sort everything out.’

  Something in Joanna snapped then. Her mother could always manage to do this to her. ‘Well, I haven’t. I have a rape case on and it’s complicated.’

  ‘Darling, what could possibly be more important than your own wedding?’

  There was no reply to that. Except . . .

  The sitting-room door was open. Through it she met Matthew’s eyes – surprised, disappointed, and Eloise’s – smug and self satisfied.

  She caved in and felt dreadful. ‘OK, Mum,’ she said, turning her attention back to the phone. ‘That’s fine. Yes, I’m happy with that. Lara would have made a beautiful bridesmaid. But if she doesn’t want to do it I don’t mind and at least she’ll have got a dress out of it. And mum . . .’

  Her mother’s, ‘Yes, dear,’ was wary.

  ‘Thank you. Y
ou’re being brilliant. I don’t know how I’ve had managed any of it if it wasn’t for you.’

  Even her mother couldn’t quite respond to this. She simply said, ‘Good practise, dear. Goodbye, Jo,’ leaving Joanna wondering what on earth she’d meant by that.

  She put the phone down and radiated a deliberately wide smile to Matthew. ‘Looks like we just might not have a bridesmaid,’ she said, then turned to Eloise. ‘Sure you don’t want to accompany me down the aisle?’

  Eloise’s reply was predictably frosty but impeccably polite. ‘I don’t think so, but thanks all the same, Joanna.’

  Clara’s mother thought her daughter was very quiet during lunch. She looked at her sharply. ‘You haven’t fallen out with Molly, have you?’

  ‘No, Mum.’

  ‘But she always stays after you’ve been out for the evening.’

  ‘Not last night. She decided to go home.’ Clara hated this lying and she hated Molly Carraway for putting her in this situation. She fingered the mobile phone in her jeans pocket, willing it to receive a text. Why didn’t Molly ring – or at least text? She was beginning to get worried.

  As Joanna drove to the dress shop she wondered why, if their rapist was not local, he had come to Leek in the first place. It was a small moorland town. A city would have been much safer. He would have had a better chance of staying anonymous. Instead he had come here. So was he local or a visitor? Did he come here in connection with his work? Was this a first-time visit? Was he from the Potteries in spite of the southern accent? Had he gone to Patches with a predatory intention? Or had he some other reason for going to the nightclub? In connection with drugs, maybe? Or had he simply been a lad out for the night, after a bit of fun and when the opportunity had presented itself he had taken advantage of a very young, very drunk girl? If, indeed, there had been a crime at all – apart from, as Korpanski had pointed out, sex with a minor. It was all to be chewed over.

  She found a parking space in St Edwards Street and walked up the steep hill to the shop, passing mock Tudor Victorian shop fronts and the Indian restaurant on the corner.

  The shop had an upstairs room set aside for private fittings. Her dress was hanging up, waiting for her. Joanna looked at it with mixed feelings. It was a beautiful dress, the fabric exactly as she had wanted and somehow the seamstress had understood the design which she had held in her head. But the day that she would wear it felt menacing as it loomed closer. They had opted for a civil ceremony in a hotel near The Roaches. She just hoped it didn’t snow, although snow would really look beautiful in such a wild and lonely place.

  The seamstress bustled up the narrow stairs to the bridal fitting room. ‘Joanna,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  There was only one response. ‘It’s lovely. Thank you so much.’ Somehow happiness and some pride and passion took over as she looked at the dress. Foolish, wasn’t it, to believe that, like a lucky charm, a dress could mend the cracks already formed in their relationship, but if any garment could this frock would. It was magical.

  ‘Try it on, then,’ urged the seamstress, pins in her mouth and at the ready to make any alterations.

  Joanna slipped out of her jeans and sweater and let the dress slide over her head, feeling the satin slinky against her legs.

  As she’d said to Matthew it was an almost perfect fit and yes, of course she was pleased with it. But it still felt strange to think that in a few short weeks she and Matthew would be married; bonded for life, joined to each other. She might still be Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy at the station but she would also be Mrs Matthew Levin. As she stared at herself in the full-length mirror she had the strangest feeling that she was splitting into two completely separate identities. She peered at herself. She could not be two women. That would be schizoid; a split and divergent personality. It was an uncomfortable and unpleasant thought.

  ‘Ouch.’ One of the pins had stuck into her waist.

  The dressmaker tutted and spoke, her mouth full of more pins as she moved a seam in a little. ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight here,’ she said. ‘Of course, most brides do coming up to their wedding day.’ She concentrated for a while on pinning the seam straight before continuing. ‘I do hope you have a nice day for it, Joanna,’ she said. ‘No more of that horrid snow but a little sharp winter sunshine. There . . .’ She stood back. ‘It’s a spectacular dress. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite like it, particularly in this colour. If the sun shines it’ll catch all these crystals. Every one of them.’ She smiled. ‘And dazzle everyone. Now then; what about your hair?’ she fussed. ‘Your headdress?’

  Joanna shook her head. ‘I have an idea.’

  Clara was part anxious and part angry with her friend. By five o’clock when she had worried herself sick at the lack of response to her texts she tried ringing Molly’s mobile phone number. It rang and rang and rang until the answerphone chipped in with the usual cheery message. ‘Hi, it’s Mol. Sorry – can’t get to the phone now. Please leave a message after the tone. And if it’s Brad Pitt, yes, I am free tonight.’ Giggle, flirtatious giggle. Clara had heard it a hundred times before.

  ‘Molly, please ring me. I’m worried sick. Where did you get to last night? Where were you? Why didn’t you get back to me? At least let me know you’re all right.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘If I don’t hear anything in an hour I’m going to ring your home number. Molly,’ she finished, ‘this really isn’t fair.’ She ended the call.

  It was dark when Joanna got home. And she was annoyed to see Eloise’s Clio hadn’t moved. It was still covered in thick snow. Waterfall was in a frost pocket and although the snow was largely melting from Leek it hadn’t altered much out here.

  She let herself in and couldn’t resist making a comment. ‘Still here?’

  Matthew scowled at her. Eloise didn’t bother to answer and suddenly Joanna felt vicious. She was tired. She wanted to think and she wanted to be alone with Matthew, to voice her concerns and let him reassure her that everything would be all right. This was her home too and she hadn’t invited the little minx to come here at all let alone stay here. Tomorrow was Sunday. They would only have three more Sundays before the wedding. She had another objection too. Matthew was different when Eloise was around. She’d always known that he was firstly Eloise’s father and only secondly her fiancé. It wouldn’t matter quite so much if the girl had not been so overtly hostile towards her. Sulkily she flopped into the chair in front of the fire: a log-burning stove which flickered and sizzled like a dormant dragon, but gave out plenty of welcome heat.

  Matthew gave her a sympathetic look. ‘How did the fitting go?’

  She wanted to say that it had gone well, that the dress was a beautiful tribute to him, that she hoped very much that he liked her – loved her in it. She wanted him to tease her about the honeymoon destination.

  She could do none of it with Eloise here so she simply said, ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘Was he any help?’

  ‘Colclough? Yeah,’ she said, ‘in a way.’ Then, because she felt she owed it to him she added: ‘Thanks.’

  She badly wanted to talk to him about the case, wanting the benefit of his opinion. She did think about it. If there was one good thing she knew about Eloise Levin it was that she had already taken on board the rules of confidentiality. Joanna had discussed cases before in front of her – even with her at times, confident that the girl would never and had never breathed a word. It must be part of the medical training. She was completely trustworthy. And if she was anything like her father, which she was, Eloise would soon be a competent doctor. But tonight she just didn’t want to talk about this case in front of her soon-to-be stepdaughter. If she and Matthew had been on their own she might have aired her feelings. A child damaged already by a broken home and a drunken mother. A child who was well on the road to delinquency and now this. She glanced across the room and as though sensing her emotions Eloise cued her in. ‘What’s your major case at the moment, Joanna?’

 
‘The rape – or not – of a fourteen-year-old.’

  Eloise made only one comment and that surprised and angered Joanna. ‘Asking for it, was she?’

  Joanna shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, recalling the face; white and frightened against the hospital pillowcases, the child underneath the bedclothes looking tiny in the hospital bed and very much alone. No mother, no flowers, no get well cards. No father. Nothing. Even trusting and accepting a police officer as a friend because there was no one else. Was there no one to speak for her?

  She sat pondering this as Eloise and Matthew ‘chatted’; now about the immune system, viruses and antibodies, a subject which seemed to excite the pair of them as much as a thrill on a white-knuckle ride. Joanna stayed silent, picking up the newspaper and scanning its contents, knowing that when they went to bed Matthew would make some comment about her ‘adolescent sulkiness’, meaning her rather than Eloise and ‘why couldn’t she make a bit more of an effort’.

  She couldn’t explain to him that when his daughter was around it was she who was the outsider; she who felt the odd one out. Eloise knew this and made the most of it.

  Eloise, she thought as she glanced at her almost-stepdaughter’s face, was quite capable of wrecking this marriage before it had even begun. She was a mischief-maker. And these negative thoughts took her right back to Kayleigh Harrison and Neil Bretby. Only in that case it had been the child who had been rejected. Joanna was silent as she watched father and daughter talking animatedly. No need to ask whether she intended staying the night. And not much point asking what her plans were for Sunday.

  She made a pot of tea.

  By 7 p.m. Clara was really worried. She tried her friend’s phone again and left yet another frantic message. Half an hour later she made up her mind to speak to her mother. She sidled into the sitting room where her mother was watching The X Factor. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a problem.’