The Reckoning

by Jane Casey

  ‘Remind me why I should?’

  ‘Oh, I will.’ He looked up at that and I smiled wickedly, enjoying the expression on his face as he crossed the room to where I was standing.

  Desperate he may have been, but there was no sign of it from how he behaved in bed. He was as considerate and intuitive as ever, as completely in tune with me as he had always seemed to be. I forgot the bruises, the worries I had about work, the strange little scene with my neighbours. I pretty much forgot my own name now and then, not that anyone was asking.

  Afterwards, lying back in the circle of his arms, I sighed. ‘Why don’t we do that all the time?’

  He kissed the top of my head. ‘Remember how you were saying you were an idiot?’

  ‘I said you were an idiot.’

  ‘I wasn’t listening properly. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with me. It’s all about you being stubborn.’

  ‘Smug git.’ I yawned. He kissed me again.

  ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘Mm.’ I was thinking about what we had just done, how it had been the opposite of screaming, chandelier-swinging show-off sex and all the better for it. I had never felt as close to anyone as I did to him – close, but not stifled or overwhelmed. Deeply involved in the conversation in my head, I found myself mumbling, ‘What’s wrong with being quiet anyway?’

  ‘Nothing?’ he suggested, sounding mildly baffled and I was going to explain but instead, quite suddenly, I fell asleep. It was a deep and dreamless sleep, and when I woke up some time later, I was alone. I heard the shower running and sat up, confused. The clock on the bedside table said it was a quarter past one. I couldn’t think why Rob wasn’t lying beside me. I checked my phone twice to see if I’d missed any calls while I slept.

  When the door opened, he came in soundlessly, gathering up clothes as he moved through the dark room. I waited until he was right beside the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.’

  I put the bedside light on. ‘Where’s the fire?’

  He started to get dressed, as if what he was doing was perfectly normal and reasonable. ‘No fire. It’s just time to go.’

  ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah. Time I left.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said flatly.

  He was buckling his belt. ‘Have you seen my T-shirt?’

  ‘Over there somewhere.’ I pointed, distracted by his bare torso, the muscles moving under his skin. I made myself concentrate. ‘Explain, please. Where are you going?’

  He turned around before he put his T-shirt on and his face was affectionate. ‘Look, I don’t want to make a nuisance of myself. I want to leave before you think I should go.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to go.’ I hugged the bedclothes to my chest, suddenly cold.

  ‘Not now, you don’t. But later on, you might change your mind. And I’d rather you missed me than that you were fed up with having me around.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I protested.

  ‘You’ve got form for it.’

  ‘People change. Maybe I’ve changed.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ He was pulling his socks on. ‘But you’ll have to prove it. Anyway, it’ll make it easier to keep it quiet like you wanted.’

  Dimly, I recalled what I had said before I slept. ‘That’s not what I meant, I think.’ I bit my lip. ‘Would it help to convince you to stay if I told you that at this moment, I don’t care who knows about us?’

  ‘“At this moment”? Not really.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted? No relationship, just uncomplicated sex?’

  ‘You know there’s no such thing.’

  ‘I do. But you seem to need convincing.’ He leaned across and kissed me one last time. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Today,’ I said sulkily.

  A quick grin. ‘How right you are. See you later, then.’

  He was gone before I could stop him, and I listened to the front door of the flat closing, then the muffled thud of the main door. A car engine started a minute later and I pictured him driving away. He was right; it was what I had wanted. I was free.

  It felt an awful lot like being alone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Friday

  At half past seven the following morning I was back in hospital, but this time as a visitor rather than a patient. But I could have done with some medical care myself; I had a headache that painkillers couldn’t touch and my eyes felt gritty, as if I hadn’t slept at all. I took the lift to the fifth floor, risking only a brief glance in the mirror that confirmed I was as pale and drawn as I felt.

  When the lift doors opened I hurried out and collided with Derwent, who had been pacing up and down the hall.

  ‘Look at the state of you. Did you get run over on the way?’

  ‘Thanks a lot. Do I have to remind you the boss said I was to take things easy this morning? I shouldn’t even be here.’

  ‘If you’d wanted to stay in bed, you could have said.’

  ‘Obviously, I didn’t. But you can’t expect Vogue-standard glamour in the circumstances.’

  ‘You don’t want to aim that high, love. Shoot for human and we’ll all be happy.’

  I forbore to point out that he wasn’t exactly model material himself. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Forgrave is in room 422.’ Derwent started to head in that direction and I fell into step beside him.

  ‘On his own?’

  ‘A private room. Nothing but the best for our William. Also, it makes it easier to guard him.’

  ‘Do you really think Skinner would try to get at him again?’

  He shrugged. ‘Better safe than sorry. John Skinner being in custody doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to what happens on the outside. If he wants to kill him, he get someone to do it for him.’

  ‘Cheery stuff.’

  ‘I won’t tell Mr Forgrave. Mind you, I don’t think he’d be much of a loss.’

  We had arrived at room 422 and Derwent waited impatiently as the uniformed officer who was posted outside the door examined our warrant cards.

  ‘Good to go?’

  ‘Knock yourselves out.’

  I might have thought it was a chance remark if the officer’s eyes hadn’t been trained on the bump on my head. It was the first dig of the day, but I could guarantee it wouldn’t be the only one. I followed Derwent into Forgrave’s room, thinking black thoughts and not actually caring if it showed on my face.

  It was hard to tell what expression William Forgrave was wearing between his beard and the bruising. His eyes were so swollen they had narrowed to slits, the skin around them the colour of ripe plums. His lip was quilted with stitches and looked as if it hurt. One cheek had blown out, giving him a distinctly lopsided appearance. He was bare-chested, the dressings on his chest mercifully hiding the burns I had seen the previous day.

  ‘All right, William?’ Derwent picked up the chart from the end of the bed and flicked through it. He whistled. ‘I don’t speak medic but this looks nasty.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Forgrave’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘Police. We’re the ones who saved your bacon.’ Derwent sat on the edge of the bed, one foot swinging. I sat on the upright chair by the bed, moving it back so I wasn’t too close to Forgrave. He smelt of stale sweat and old blood, and his breath was rank. Derwent didn’t seem to care, leaning forward to say, ‘Remember when the cavalry turned up yesterday? We called them.’

  Well, technically I did. I decided not to tout for recognition, though. It just wasn’t worth it.

  ‘Ta.’ Forgrave didn’t sound particularly impressed.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ Derwent flipped through the chart again. ‘Actually, it’s probably all you can say considering the state of your face.’

  ‘I can manage.’ The words were blurry on the consonants but recognisable.

  ‘Excellent. In that case, you can answer a few questions for us. What
happened yesterday?’

  ‘Got beaten up.’

  ‘Why?’

  Forgrave rolled his head on the pillow. ‘Ask them.’

  ‘We will. But I want to hear your story. You’re the victim here.’

  ‘No story.’

  ‘You were tortured, William. That’s not normal. Did they tell you why they targeted you?’

  A nod.

  ‘So you know it’s because you’re a registered child abuser.’

  Another nod.

  ‘Do you know what William here did, Maeve? I’ve been looking him up.’

  ‘I don’t, actually.’

  ‘He raped a young girl.’

  ‘Technically.’ Forgrave’s hands had bunched into fists.

  ‘Actually. She was only fifteen.’

  ‘Almost sixteen.’

  Derwent shook his head. ‘It was illegal. She couldn’t consent to it even if you convinced her it was a good idea. She was underage. That’s why you got convicted.’

  ‘I made a mistake.’

  ‘You targeted her, William. You found her on the Internet, in a kids’ chat room. And you thought she was younger than she actually was, didn’t you? You were looking for thirteen-year-olds. That’s your type.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Don’t think so. What happened in 1993?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You joined a fan club for a boy band so you could meet girls. You started writing to a thirteen-year-old in Scotland – all nice and friendly, pen pals. You groomed her. You told her you loved her. You told her you wanted to marry her. You persuaded her to lie to her parents and get a train to Manchester, where you had booked a hotel room. What you didn’t know was that she was going to turn up with her best friend. Imagine your surprise when you opened the door and found two of them. You must have thought it was Christmas.’

  ‘That’s not how it was.’

  ‘You tried to have sex with them, didn’t you? But you couldn’t get it up. And you found it too hard to control two of them anyway. You ended up losing your nerve and doing a runner.’

  ‘That’s your version.’

  ‘That’s what happened. The two girls were very clear about it. Plus, you left DNA all over the place.’ He turned to me. ‘The DNA database didn’t exist yet but William was unlucky. The samples were kept on file and when the database was set up, the local coppers remembered to register him. They knew it was just a matter of waiting until he tried it again. People like that always do.’

  ‘No.’ Forgrave sounded definite. ‘It was different.’

  ‘You met the next one on the Internet. You persuaded her to meet you. You had sex with her. The only thing that was different was how you contacted her – and that you were able to screw this one.’ Derwent leaned forward. ‘You’re a dangerous predator, William. You proved it. You got ten years. That’s not a light sentence.’

  ‘I got counselling in prison. I got parole after five years. I’ve changed. The parole board believed me.’

  ‘People like you don’t change – you just get better at hiding what you are. You probably got let out because of overcrowding.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not going to impress us, William, so don’t bother.’ Derwent paused. ‘Did you know Cheyenne Skinner?’

  ‘That’s what they wanted to know.’ Forgrave swallowed. ‘I’d never heard of her until yesterday.’

  ‘So you hadn’t been in touch with her? You hadn’t been emailing her?’

  ‘No. I don’t do that any more.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I told them – I stopped. I grew out of it.’

  ‘Ever had a girlfriend? I mean, one that was old enough to be legal?’

  ‘I find it hard to meet women.’

  ‘You have to try in the first place.’ Derwent jerked a thumb in my direction. ‘You haven’t even glanced at my colleague since we’ve been here. Admittedly, I’ve seen her look better, but she’s not ugly.’

  I could have murdered Derwent.

  ‘I’m not really in the mood for flirting.’ Forgrave raised a hand and gestured at his face.

  ‘Still, though. You have to admit it’s strange.’

  ‘Do I?’ He coughed a little, then closed his eyes. ‘Are you finished?’

  ‘For now.’ Derwent stood up. ‘Come on, Kerrigan.’

  I didn’t bother to say goodbye to Forgrave; I just headed for the door, aware that Derwent hadn’t moved but not realising why until I turned around. He was watching Forgrave, who was watching me.

  ‘Yeah, you looked that time. I knew you would. But it’s too little, too late, I’m afraid.’ His voice was soft. ‘I can always spot a liar, William. We’ll find out who you’ve been emailing and what else you’ve been doing since you’ve been out of prison. Because you didn’t convince Mr Skinner that you were pure as the driven snow, and you haven’t convinced us. One way or another, you’re going to get your comeuppance.’

  ‘You won’t find anything.’

  ‘Think not?’ Derwent smiled. ‘Good luck with your recovery, Mr Forgrave. Try to think happy thoughts, won’t you.’

  I wasn’t doing that well with the happy thoughts myself. I had enough self-control to wait until we were out of earshot of the officer who was guarding Forgrave before I ripped into Derwent.

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asked me to come here. You told me you wanted me to help with the interview, and you didn’t even ask me if I had any questions for him.’

  ‘Yeah, that wasn’t the help I was looking for.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘Don’t feel bad, Kerrigan. You did your bit.’

  ‘You used me.’

  ‘Oh, spare me the feminist outrage.’ He pressed the button to call the lift. ‘I told you; you need to make the most of being young and relatively attractive. Use the tools at your disposal and don’t fucking whine about it.’

  I folded my arms. ‘Like the way you use your legendary charm?’

  ‘Don’t start.’ He jerked his thumb in the direction of Forgrave’s room. ‘That guy reeks of wrong. I know he’s been up to something.’

  ‘He does seem on the dodgy side,’ I agreed reluctantly. ‘But I’m still angry.’

  ‘All right.’ The lift arrived and Derwent got in, putting a hand out to stop me from following. ‘Work it off on the stairs. I don’t want you bending my ear about it on the drive to the office. I’ll see you in the car park.’

  I stepped back as the lift doors slid closed, speechless with rage. It would take a lot more than a few flights of stairs to make me calm down, but Derwent needn’t have worried about me complaining. Silence was what he wanted, so silence was what he got, all the way to work. And if he chose to characterise it as sulking – which he did – that was fine by me.

  The briefing room was almost full already and there were still people filing in. I pushed through the crowd to find a place to perch, swerving away from a seat near Rob in favour of sitting beside Liv Bowen. Rob nodded to me amiably enough. No one looking at us would have thought we had been together the previous evening, which I suppose was the point. I decided not to spend too much time analysing it, and promptly began to do exactly that. It was almost a relief to be distracted by the scrutiny of my colleagues. Most of them seemed to be inordinately fascinated by my bruises. I had perfected a flinty glare to ward off the crass comments.

  Liv, whom I would have expected to be more sensible than most, inspected my face as I sat down. ‘Come up lovely, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It’ll fade.’

  ‘No doubt.’ She tilted her head to one side, considering it. ‘Bruising sort of suits you.’

  ‘Oh, thanks a lot.’

  At that moment Godley entered the room in the company of a middle-aged woman who had a distinctly no-nonsense air about her. She was wearing a black trouser suit that was a shade too tight and had a buff folder under one arm. Like a classroom full of badly behaved teenagers, we settled down to something ap
proximating silence as the last of us shuffled in and sat down.

  ‘Everyone ready? Good.’ Godley stood at the front of the room, his hair gleaming silver under the harsh fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead. ‘This is DCI Marla Redmond from Brixton CID. She’s come to brief us about their ongoing investigation into the disappearance of a teenage girl on Saturday. Most of you will be aware that we have John Skinner in custody. The girl in question is his daughter.’

  There was a low buzz of conversation during the couple of seconds it took DCI Redmond to swap places with Godley and gather her thoughts. She looked tense, her pale face free of make-up.

  ‘Right, we’re currently searching for Cheyenne Skinner, a fourteen-year-old girl from Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire.’ She flipped open her folder and took out a school photograph, a girl in a blazer and white shirt. She held it up to let everyone have a look, then gave it to Liv, indicating that she should pass it around. I studied it with interest when it came to me. The first things I noted were the girl’s arched, overplucked eyebrows and a lot of honey-blond hair that had been teased into tumbling curls for the photograph. Cheyenne had heavy-lidded eyes, a full mouth and a distinctly snub nose. The embroidered crest on her blazer read ‘Our Lady Queen of Heaven RC Girls School’, which had to be less strict than the secondary school I had attended. The nuns would never have allowed me to get away with a tenth of the mascara and lip-gloss that Cheyenne was wearing. You couldn’t truthfully have described the girl as pretty but there was something attractive about her, a gleam of spirit in the dark-rimmed eyes. She looked a lot older than fourteen, too.

  ‘We have no sightings of Cheyenne since Saturday evening when she left home to attend a pop-up nightclub held in a warehouse off Coldharbour Lane.’

  ‘A what?’ Colin Vale was looking baffled.

  ‘It’s a club set up for one night only in a building that’s basically derelict. They had lighting, a sound system and a bar of sorts, all run by generators. It was illegal – they didn’t have a drinks licence, which the organisers have admitted. But the warehouse is in an industrial area that’s not too close to any residences and no one complained about noise to us, so they weren’t found out until the girl disappeared.’