Jamie’s breath caught and suddenly, despite the dry too-hot warmth of the room, he felt cold. He felt caught in a magician’s trick. While you were over here concentrating on saving a dying girl, over HERE – voilà! – your young friend was making his getaway! His memory of defending Aiden to Becca by saying he wouldn’t be so stupid as to lie to the police was turning to ash.
‘I didn’t leave my car the whole time,’ Aiden said quietly. He glanced at Jamie and then sat up and leaned his elbows on the table. ‘If there’s a camera in the car park you’ll see that.’
‘But there isn’t, Aiden. So I’d have to take your word for that.’ Bennett’s eyes didn’t leave Aiden’s. Jamie might as well not have been there. ‘And as you’ve already proved, your word is not something I can trust.’
There was a long moment of silence as Aiden grew more tense and Caitlin Bennett leaned back in her chair and folded her arms as if she had all the time in the world to break the boy.
‘I didn’t hurt anyone,’ Aiden said eventually. ‘I sat in my car, smoked some weed and fell asleep. I didn’t see any other cars or anyone or anything that would be of any use to you, so I didn’t see the point of telling you I’d been there. And I didn’t want to own up to possession of cannabis.’ He looked up at her then, all earnest blue eyes. ‘I mean, would you tell you any of that?’
Aiden’s surliness had evaporated. Jamie kept staring at the photos. They were gritty and real and they made his stomach turn. They looked like pictures of some wrongdoing, sneakily taken in the middle of the night.
‘The same way you didn’t tell us you knew Nicola Munroe?’
‘That was different! I didn’t remember that I’d met her! I couldn’t tell you something I didn’t remember!’
Another long pause.
‘Look,’ Aiden said, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. But I do know Tasha – well, I used to – and I asked her out once when I was at school and she was epically shit about it – which I presume you already know. And I figured if I told you I’d smoked some weed and fallen asleep in the car park then none of it would have looked good for me. So I didn’t tell you, and when you asked about the Nicola thing, I didn’t know how to tell the truth.’
‘I can almost understand that. Almost,’ she stressed. ‘But what I don’t understand . . .’
She paused again and Jamie couldn’t help but be impressed. She was one step ahead of Aiden all the way. She was tying him up in knots.
‘What I don’t understand,’ she continued, ‘is why you lied to Becca. You told her you were going straight home and the following day you didn’t say anything different. I would have thought – if you were innocent – the first thing you’d do was tell her you’d been there. Shock reaction. The need to share. Your “holy shit” moment when Natasha was found so close to where you’d been. But you didn’t tell her. You didn’t tell anyone. Why not?’
Aiden was chewing his bottom lip, his eyes darting left and right at nothing in particular, but Jamie knew the signs that he was thinking hard. Looking for a way out of something. Suddenly it struck Jamie. It was so obvious. And it wasn’t murder or attempted murder, that was for sure.
‘You weren’t alone, were you, Aiden?’ he said. The boy looked up.
‘I’ll ask the questions, Mr McMahon.’ Caitlin tried to interrupt but Jamie wasn’t going to stop. He knew why Aiden had lied.
‘Did you have another girl in the car with you, mate?’
Aiden’s shoulders slumped and suddenly Jamie’s question had the policewoman’s attention.
‘Was there someone else in the car with you?’ she asked.
Aiden stayed quiet for a moment longer before finally starting to speak.
‘Becca can get so jealous. She’s insecure, you know? If I’d told her, she wouldn’t have understood. She’d have thought it was something more. You saw how she can get.’ He glanced up at Bennett. ‘Like she did when you told her Nicola Munroe had my number in her phone. She thinks every girl is a threat or something. So I don’t always tell her if I hang out with other girls. It’s easier that way.’
‘So who was the girl?’
‘Her name’s Emma. She works in the bar on Queen Street. JoJo’s. It doesn’t shut till one a.m. and sometimes I go in there after finishing at Jamie’s. We got talking one night and kind of became friends. She’s pretty cool. Into the same sort of shit as me.’
‘And she was with you in the car park that night, after you dropped Rebecca off?’
‘I planned to go home. That was true. But I wasn’t tired and it can get cramped in my mum’s place so I thought I’d just stop in and say hi. It was quiet for a Friday so her boss said she could go early. The rest you’ve got on the pictures. We went back to my car, we smoked, we talked shit and fell asleep.’
‘Does this Emma have a surname?’
‘I don’t know it.’
A knock on the door interrupted them and a uniformed officer came in. ‘A word, ma’am?’ Bennett nodded and suspended the inteview before stopping the tape before getting to her feet.
‘Hasn’t that answered all your questions?’ Jamie said as she turned to leave. ‘Can’t we go now?’
‘We’re still doing tests on Mr Kennedy’s car. And until we’ve confirmed his story I wouldn’t look so pleased with yourself, Mr McMahon. One girl is dead and another, as you know better than most, is very lucky to be alive.’
He smarted at that. She was right. And she was just doing her job. If he and Aiden had to sit here for a few more hours, it wouldn’t hurt them. His work deadlines, maybe, but that was it. And once Aiden was in the clear, they’d race through to the end anyway.
As she closed the door, the room slipped into the awkward silence of a doctor’s waiting room. How long were they going to be here? After a few minutes, Jamie felt his bladder twitching. Aiden might not have touched his tea, but Jamie had drunk two cups.
‘Could I . . . perhaps?’ He looked at the po-faced sergeant, who was clearly bored babysitting them from the other side of the table, and pointed at the door. The sergeant had the air of a man who knew he could be in here for some time until someone remembered they were there. ‘Bathroom?’ Jamie finished. He held up a his empty teacup and felt immediately stupid, like he was being an Englishman abroad and trying to make himself understood to a scathing Spanish waiter.
The sergeant nodded. ‘Two doors down on your left.’
Jamie had expected an escort, but he wasn’t the suspect. And as they were down in the basement of the building, there probably wasn’t much trouble he could get into on this floor. He nodded his thanks and left.
He hadn’t expected Bennett to still be in the corridor. She was standing near the toilets with her back to him, focused on watching some colour footage on an iPad with the policeman who’d interrupted them. He took a couple of steps closer.
‘And he’s not on here at all that day?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I know that coat. I’ve seen that coat somewhere.’
‘So have I,’ the policeman said. ‘Sandra on the front desk has one like it.’
‘That’s not where I saw it.’
‘Where, then?’
‘We need to go,’ she said. ‘First, we need to see Sandra.’
She turned around and almost walked straight into Jamie.
‘Sorry,’ he said and pointed towards the toilet entrance which she was currently blocking. ‘I was going in there.’
She pushed past him and he watched her go, small and curvy but with absolute drive. He’d never met a woman like her. Not that it mattered, given the situation. He had no chance, he decided. Her contempt for him was absolutely clear.
Thirty-Five
Becca, Hayley and Jenny were called out of English before the lesson had even really started, and now they sat in a row in the Head’s office st
aring at DI Bennett, who was leaning against the back of a chair in front of them and watching them silently. Ms Salisbury was behind her desk shuffling papers around, but Becca was pretty sure she wasn’t doing any actual work. How could she be? Becca’s palms were sweating. What were they doing here? What did Bennett want?
‘Are we waiting for Tasha?’ Hayley asked when the silence became unbearable, only the tick of the Head’s old carriage clock carrying over Jenny’s twitches and foot-tapping.
‘She’s on a free,’ Becca muttered.
‘I don’t need to speak to Natasha,’ DI Bennett said and moved away towards the window as if looking out at something. A coat that had been hidden from view by her body was folded over the back of the chair. Silver-grey and shiny with a hood trimmed in red fur.
‘What are you doing with my coat?’ Jenny asked, frowning.
Bennett turned, and Becca, her heart thumping, thought she looked like a cat who’d just spotted a mouse in the middle of a kitchen floor with nowhere to hide. Behind her cool exterior there was a hint of excitement.
‘That’s not yours,’ Hayley said. ‘Yours has that cigarette burn on the sleeve.’
‘You were wearing your coat in the hospital, when I met you?’ Bennett asked.
‘I think so,’ Jenny said. ‘Probably. I wear it a lot.’
‘Thank you.’ Bennett smiled. Becca couldn’t see anything reassuring in her expression. ‘I couldn’t remember which of you it was.’
‘Do we all look the same to you?’ Hayley said, with a hint of contempt that Becca knew was aimed at her. She definitely didn’t look the same as the gorgeous blondes, but it still surprised her that she’d speak like that to the policewoman. If Jenny was nervous and twitchy, Hayley was the opposite. Bennett did a good line in impenetrable, but Hayley was the ice queen. She sounded bored and was looking at Bennett as if the DI was just an inconvenience. Becca’s heart thumped and she hunched over slightly, trying to make herself invisible. Forgettable. Something was going on here, something to do with Jenny, and she didn’t want to be sent away before she found out what it was.
‘A blonde girl wearing a coat matching this one was caught on CCTV footage taken in the One Cell shop in Brackston Shopping Centre on 14th October last year.’
‘So?’ Jenny wiped her nose. Her foot tapped on the floor. Becca watched Bennett taking it all in. Logging it.
‘Were you in the shop that afternoon?’
Jenny laughed and tugged at a strand of her hair. ‘I don’t know. How am I supposed to remember a random day in October?’
‘Try.’
‘No,’ Jenny said, after a moment. ‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘You suddenly sound very sure.’
‘I got my iPhone in the summer, so why would I go into a phone shop in October?’
‘Loads of girls have that coat,’ Hayley said. ‘Loads of women have that coat.’ A small smirk formed on her face and it didn’t take a genius to read its meaning. An elegant fuck you and swivel to the detective.
‘What does it matter, anyway?’ Jenny said. She looked slightly teary. Maybe she was starting to come down from whatever she’d been snorting all day. ‘I need to get back to English. Mr Garrick is waiting for us. We’ve got exams.’
Becca suddenly couldn’t breathe. A phone shop. The text Tasha got. An unknown number. Meet in the usual place. That’s what Bennett was needling Jenny about. She thought Jenny had bought that pay-as-you-go phone. Why didn’t she come out and say it? Why was she just standing there, looking thoughtful? Becca was building up the courage to say something, to point out the links, when the detective spoke again.
‘You can go back to your lessons now,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your help.’
Becca was stunned. That was it? She had to find Tasha. She had to tell her. Hayley sauntered to the door, Jenny in her wake, and Becca hurried behind them.
‘One moment, Rebecca.’
She turned. ‘Yes?’ As the two Barbies scurried off, heads together, Becca almost blurted everything out. But then she bit down on it. She needed to talk to Tasha first and she didn’t want to say anything in front of Ms Salisbury. The Head Teacher would tell her she was being ridiculous. She’d say anything if it meant the school would stop being the focus of unwanted attention.
‘If you’ve been trying to reach Aiden Kennedy today, then you should know he’s at the station helping us with our inquiries.’
Helping us with our inquiries. She knew what that meant. That meant they thought he’d done something. Something bad.
‘Have you arrested him?’ she asked, her mouth drying.
‘No. He’ll be released later. I just thought you’d want to know.’
Oh, you’re all heart. She bit her tongue from asking more questions. Was that what Bennett wanted? Was she trying to lure Becca into confessing something, too? Did she think Becca and Aiden had conspired together?
‘Thanks.’ She forced the word out and left.
In the cool corridor, Becca’s face was hot, her breathing rapid. She had no intention of going straight back to English. Bennett clearly still thought Aiden was somehow involved and she needed to prove her wrong.
She ran across the quad to the sixth form common room, cold air burning her lungs. Her heart had lifted a little, though, she couldn’t help it. Aiden hadn’t gone off her. He wasn’t ignoring her. He just couldn’t answer her texts. A second thought followed which made her want to cringe with embarrassment. Shit, when he did turn his phone on again he was going to get all her messages and texts, and there were a lot of them. Some were properly passive-aggressive, too. Why wasn’t there some fucking app that would let you recall unseen texts? Why hadn’t someone Kickstarted that? Why did she have to be such an idiot? Aiden loved her. Why couldn’t she believe that?
She pushed it all away in her head. When she cleared Aiden’s name, he’d forgive her for all her shit. She wouldn’t look so needy and insecure then. But first she had to find Tasha. Any suspicions still on Aiden would be blown out of the water if she and Tasha took what they suspected to Bennett. The phone shop CCTV footage combined with the evidence in the clearing would surely exonerate him. She took the stairs two at a time and arrived in the common room sweaty and panting. Smoking and running might work for Hayley but they weren’t a good mix for her.
Natasha was at her usual place in the corner and she looked up, confused. ‘I thought you were supposed to be in Eng—’
‘Listen.’ Becca cut her off. ‘That Detective Bennett was here. I think she thought Jenny bought the phone that texted you. Something to do with her coat, and someone in the shop that day looking like her. Only I think she believed Jenny when she said she wasn’t there because she stopped asking questions and now she’s leaving.’
She was talking too fast, that was clear from Tasha’s face.
‘Slow down,’ Tasha said. ‘Bennett thinks Jenny’s the one who sent that text?’ Colour was draining from her almond-perfect complexion. The truth of their suspicions was suddenly sinking in.
‘Yes.’ Becca nodded. ‘But we have to tell her the rest of it. Come on, Tasha, we have to tell her. You’ve got her number, right? Call her. Like now.’
Tasha seemed to shrink into her chair. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘It’ll sound so stupid. What will my mum say? What will they say?’
‘Who gives a shit what they say?’ This wasn’t the reaction Becca expected at all.
‘Maybe we should forget about it, Becca. Maybe it’s all just crap. I mean, we don’t know anything, not really.’ Her eyes glanced up to Becca’s face and then lowered back to the carpet. ‘I don’t know, Bex, perhaps I’m just being stupid. What if they’re right and I’m making connections that aren’t there?’
‘Like the way Jenny was at lunchtime? Like Hayley calling you paranoid every time you say you’ve remembered something?’ Becca was almost shouting with frus
tration and Tasha flinched. ‘Jenny’s off her tits at school. She’s scared. And look at Hayley all trying to be Miss Nice-As-Pie. Why would she be like that? Why would she be like that with me?’
‘I know.’ Tasha leaned over, hugging her stomach as if she suddenly had bad period pains. ‘But I keep thinking about it. What if it’s something else? What if we’re wrong? What if by accusing them, whoever actually did it gets away with it?’
‘But we’re not wrong! You know that. What are you afraid of?’
‘Say I talk to Bennett. What if they find out? What if she doesn’t believe me? What will they do then?’
Becca suddenly got it. It wasn’t that Tasha had changed her mind about anything. She was just afraid. Pure and simple. Frustrated as she was, Becca could understand it. Tasha had died in that freezing water. Tasha was the one who was lucky to be resuscitated. And it was Tasha who was faced with the truth that maybe her two best friends had something to do with it.
‘They already think you’re getting your memory back so staying silent isn’t going to keep you safe. Not if they’re the ones who pushed you into the river.’
‘It could have been an accident,’ Tasha said slowly. ‘Maybe we did argue. They were doing something mean, maybe that’s all true. But maybe I got away, like you said, and fell in the river? So it might not be anything as major as we think? Shouldn’t we try and find out for definite first? I mean, why would they do it? Why?’
Becca wanted to scream. Tasha was blowing so hot and cold about this when she was the one who’d started it!
‘I get that you’re shitting yourself about this, Tasha, I do. But the police have got Aiden and this could clear him,’ she said and turned for the door. ‘If you’re not going to talk to her, then I will.’
*
‘Wait!’
DI Bennett was about to get into her car when Becca ran into the car park from the back of the school. She was still warm from her last sprint and her face was burning pink when she came to a halt. Bennet had a mouthful of flapjack and was carrying a sandwich from the canteen, the silver coat stuffed awkwardly under one arm as she ate, and Becca felt a surge of relief. She was sure she’d have missed her.
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