Good Girls Don't Die

by Isabelle Grey

  To her surprise, Colin didn’t contest her assertion. Instead he looked calmly first at John Kenny and then at Lena Millington, who both appeared to give their assent to something previously discussed. Then he turned back to face Grace. ‘Roxanne Carson’s notebooks threw up another issue that we need to discuss. Perhaps best done in private, if you don’t mind, DS Fisher?’

  Colin pushed open the door to Keith’s office and waited, a triumphant gleam in his eyes. Grace knew immediately what this was about. She had no choice but to walk past him, sickeningly aware as she did so that the curious eyes of everyone in the room were upon her.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Half an hour later Grace walked down North Hill feeling as if she was hurtling down a precipitous slope. Was it over? Had her call to Roxanne from Colchester Town railway station and their subsequent drink at the old coaching inn – both of which she had just admitted to the three superintendents – ended her career? She was certain that if it had been up to Lena Millington and John Kenny she’d already be suspended. And she had no illusions that Colin’s delay had been prompted by kindness or even to make amends for the past; she knew him well enough now to be convinced that he’d been hedging his bets, sliding away from accepting responsibility by suggesting that, given Grace’s recent media exposure, they wait to inform both the communications director and the chief constable.

  But Grace knew it was only a reprieve. Given this morning’s hostile coverage in the Courier, the chief con might prefer to seek a discreet route by which to institute disciplinary proceedings, but the result would be the same: Grace would be out on her ear. Where would she go? What could else she do? She began to panic: no income, no friends, nowhere where she belonged, saddled with the lease on a flat she hated while still paying the mortgage on the house in Maidstone. She must call her solicitor first thing on Monday, push to get the divorce settlement finalised and the Maidstone house on the market. There wouldn’t be much left once it was sold, but it would be something.

  She stopped at a crossroad, waiting for the traffic signal. It was rush hour, and even though the good weather was supposed to break soon there was a long queue of cars thanks to people heading off to weekend escapes. She looked at the tired drivers with elbows stuck out of rolled-down windows, fingers drumming on shiny paintwork, waiting for the red lights to change. When she’d been offered this job, she, too, had fondly imagined exploring a new area – Dedham Vale, Southwold, the Broads or the sweeping sands of Holkham beach – but now she had nothing.

  Her phone buzzed and she felt a sour taste in her mouth as she looked at the screen, hoping it wouldn’t be Trev – again. But it was Hilary, who had just heard the news; shocked yet genuinely sympathetic, Hilary offered to meet for a coffee the following morning to discuss the best way to handle the inevitable interview with Irene Brown. Grace was grateful once more for her kindness, and gladly agreed.

  The lights had changed again while Grace was on the phone, and she had to wait once more for the green man to appear. On the opposite corner, outlined against the evening sun, she spotted an all-too-familiar silhouette and laughed: a bad day was turning into farce. Trev waited for her to come across to him.

  ‘Grace! I didn’t expect you so early. I know you don’t want to see me, but I have to talk to you and you won’t take my calls.’

  ‘Now is really not a good time.’

  ‘Please, love. It’s important. I’ve done something really daft. And you need to know. I had to come and warn you.’

  ‘What?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘I was angry,’ he said with a rueful shrug. ‘You sent that text, telling me to fuck off, and then there was this journalist banging on my door. So I let him in.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, Trev!’

  ‘I know, I know. It was stupid. But you kept rejecting my calls.’

  ‘So it’s my fault?’

  Trev didn’t answer. Grace set off at a march, intending in her blind fury just to escape him, reach her flat and barricade herself inside. He followed at a distance, trying not to crowd her. By the time she reached the entrance to her building it had sunk in that he was right: whatever he had done, she did need to know.

  ‘Who was it?’ she asked, though she could already guess the answer. ‘Which paper?’

  ‘Some guy from the Courier. Ivo Sweatman.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘He already knew quite a lot. All I really did was confirm it, you know? They’re clever, these guys. Make out like they’re just asking questions, that you’re not really telling them anything they don’t already have, but they sure know how to press the right buttons.’

  Grace was afraid she was going to throw up. She leaned a hand against the rough brick wall beside her and bent over, breathing slowly through her mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry, love, I am,’ said Trev, ‘but he wound me up. You wound me up.’

  ‘And you just can’t help yourself, can you?’ she shot at him, her eyes blazing. She had never hated him more than she did at this moment. This was worse even than the night she’d spent nursing broken ribs in a freezing cold hotel bed. Then she’d struggled to find explanations, to understand, desperate to find some way to forgive and conserve all the love that she’d poured into their relationship. Now her hatred was like a fire, burning up the past – their first night together, the moment he proposed, their honeymoon, everything – in one mighty conflagration. It felt good: empty and terrifying and soulless, but good.

  ‘Fuck off, and don’t ever, ever come near me again,’ she said. Her hand was steady as she got the key in the lock, opened the street door and slammed it in his face.

  Once inside her flat, she felt like an automaton. She was able to kick off her shoes, fill the kettle, drop a tea bag in a cup. She imagined that soldiers about to go into action must feel this way. Life might be about to be extinguished but the body went on functioning.

  But as she carried her mug of tea over to the square window that looked across to a row of identical square windows, her hand began to tremble. What did Ivo Sweatman know? What didn’t he know? The thought of what that man might do with the details of her past made her feel sick again. She wondered if she should call Hilary, but the idea of having to explain, to tell her story, was too much.

  She made herself sip the hot tea, trying not to slop it on the anonymous beige twill carpet. How had Ivo Sweatman managed to latch onto Trev? How had he found out enough about her past to bother doing so? The answer was a body blow: Roxanne!

  Grace was barely conscious of putting down her mug, sitting on the uncomfortable couch, placing her arms around her head and rocking with the pain of the betrayal. Why would Roxanne have passed on Grace’s most intimate secrets to Ivo Sweatman? For advancement? Was that all Grace’s friendship had been worth? A trade in return for the promise of some part-time shifts on a national newspaper?

  Grace got up and went to rummage in the boxes lined up against the living-room wall that she had yet to unpack. In one of them was her running gear. She had to get out of here. Had to do something that would empty her mind and enable her to survive the next few hours at least. She would worry later about how she’d get through the night.

  As she pulled on her crop pants, then laced up her trainers, she told herself that there was no point in nourishing her anger against Roxanne. OK, so she could add her to the list of people she’d been wrong to trust, but Roxanne was dead, and she was alive. It was irrelevant what Roxanne had or hadn’t done; her life had been taken from her, and – forget Colin Pitman, Trev, Ivo Sweatman, the lot of them! – it was still Grace’s job, officially or not, to track down her killer.

  After two circuits of the cricket ground, she crossed the river and jogged up towards the castle. She was out of condition and, feeling a stitch in her side, was glad to drop onto an unoccupied bench that looked back down the gentle slope up which she had come. Grey clouds were gathering on the horizon, but for now the view was green and restful, and the people around her were out t
o enjoy their start to the weekend. She reminded herself that for most people in this unremarkable market town life went on as usual, that violation, death, suspicion and betrayal were rare aberrations. She tried to tell herself that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she could no longer be a detective but, however sensible, the thought was like facing some kind of ritual disembowelment. It would be the end of her world.

  She recalled the idea she had voiced earlier, that Danny could have killed Polly. Did she really believe that? Could she back it up? It would be a calming distraction from her own problems to think this through, even if there was never going to be another chance for anyone to take her seriously.

  If the question was why such a mild and unassuming young man would do something terrible to a young woman he liked so very much, then the answer was coursing through her own veins: hurt, rejection, disappointment, betrayal. Such emotions turned you inside out, made you into someone you barely recognised. Yet however absolutely she had hated Trev when he’d stood before her, however much she might have wished him in some way instantly struck down, if only to know the intensity of her reaction to what he’d done to her, she had not raised a hand to him. She had not wanted to actually kill him.

  She remembered Lance’s sense, after they’d interviewed Danny, that he knew where Polly was. She’d discounted it, recalling his grief at Polly’s candlelit vigil. That had been real, she was convinced. But what if he did know where her body was?

  Danny was isolated, sensitive, unable to finish his education, soft on a girl even after she’d been rude to him and paraded the fact that she was taking a university lecturer home to her bed. Had he suffered so much that his resentment became murderous? And had he resented Matt Beeston enough to get a kick out of implicating him, knowing that with Roxanne dead there was no one to call him a liar?

  Grace felt the pieces click into place. If Danny was responsible for Polly’s disappearance and feared Roxanne suspected him, then he had a motive to kill her – and shove her knickers in her mouth to shut her up. How had they missed it!

  But what possible reason did Danny have to kill Rachel Moston, with whom he had no apparent connection? And yet whoever had strangled Roxanne had positioned the wine bottle in a way known only to Rachel’s killer. Granted, such an ambitious high-flyer as Rachel would never have given a shop assistant the time of day, but would her attitude have pissed Danny off enough to make him want to kill her? And then violate her body?

  Except, thought Grace, he was sorry afterwards.

  Keith and the rest of the team always discounted the cushion under Rachel’s head, but it spoke more powerfully to Grace than anything else. For her, it always came back to that. Where the others saw misogyny, sexual dominance, humiliation, power and control – all common reasons why men killed women – Grace saw only that folded red jacket.

  Matt Beeston was too narcissistic for such a gesture: she simply couldn’t see him bothering. Pawel Zawodny had a short fuse and might have been driven by his Catholic conscience to show remorse, yet she still couldn’t quite see his anger as murderous. But she could so easily picture Danny neatly folding Rachel’s jacket and lifting her head to place it softly underneath, imagine him pulling down the patterned skirt to hide what he had done to her with a half-empty bottle of vodka.

  So where was Danny now? And, even when they found him, would Keith and the rest of the team be willing to trust her?

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Ivo got to the meeting early. He was hoping to see Keith, but he would have come anyway. He was shaky, no doubt about it, and he needed to acknowledge it here in the fellowship. Even after all this time, it still scared the hell out of him to stand up and speak about himself. But he had to say something, even if only to hear his own words spoken aloud. He had taken photographs of a dead girl, a young woman he knew and liked. He had been stone-cold sober and taken photographs of a dead girl when any normal human being would have been weeping or kneeling to pay their respects. And he couldn’t even get away with saying it was his job. It was him. He wasn’t normal. Wasn’t sure he ever had been. Maybe that’s why he did this job. It was no excuse to spout all that bullshit about the romance of Fleet Street; there was no romance in what he’d done. He must be fucking psychotic to do a thing like that.

  A few regulars stood in a group chatting, and Ivo knew he’d be welcome to join them, but he went over to the window that looked onto a walled garden, laid to lawn and dotted with small trees. Gardens weren’t his thing: he had no idea whether this was a nice garden or not, but it was green and empty of people. But as he stood there it seemed to darken and the trees to grow alarmingly in stature, their shadows like bony fingers creeping towards his throat: fuck, it was happening again! He kept seeing her, kept seeing the flashlight from his phone throwing into pinpoint-sharp focus the neatly waxed line of her pubic hair and the glistening wine bottle. He wanted to throw up. Maybe he should just get out of here, find the nearest bar, drink himself to death and be done with it.

  But that would be sheer self-indulgence. This wasn’t about him. Roxanne was the victim here, Roxanne and the other two. This was about getting the twisted little fuck who’d done these things banged to rights. Ivo wanted to see a diabolically Photoshopped portrait of the bastard adorn the front page once the guilty verdict came in. Ivo owed Roxanne that much at least. Better than flowers on her grave any day.

  But it helped to be amongst others who understood what it was like to live with this demon on their shoulder, whispering in their ear, promising how simple it was to make the relentless shame and anxiety vanish: one drink, only one! Pouff! Just like that! Gone. Go on, what’s not to like? He hadn’t had it this bad in a long time.

  He turned around, looking to see if Keith had arrived. No sign of him yet, even though people were sitting down ready to start. Not that he expected Keith to give him a warm welcome, not after Ivo had called him clueless in 72-point bold type. But he wanted, given the chance, to offer him a heads-up on tomorrow’s story which, let’s face it, was going to be huge. His editor had already increased the print run on the back of it.

  Danny Tooley was about to spend a second night holed up in his cheap hotel room on the ring road. Ivo had called for back-up, stipulating that a reporter who was young, female, pretty and preferably blonde come be Danny’s minder. Sharon might succeed in getting Danny to open up on topics where all Ivo’s best tactics had so far failed.

  He took a chair at the edge of a row and made himself listen to what others were saying, trying not to dismiss their confessions as minor compared to his violation of the dead. That would be vanity, another snare. No slip-up or failure was small or insignificant to an addict; constant vigilance was required. When his moment came, he stood up, holding on to the back of the chair in front and feeling his palms clammy and slippery. ‘My name is Ivo Sweatman and I’m an alcoholic,’ he began, hearing the nervous rasp in his voice. ‘I haven’t had a drink in four years, but –’ He paused to let the ripple of approving nods fall still again. ‘But I’m still an addict. I’m a reporter, a journalist, and I’m addicted to the thrill of getting a story. Sometimes I go too far.’

  Some small disturbance made him turn towards the door. He found Keith standing there and caught the unmistakable flash of contempt in his face. Ivo faced front again. ‘Thank you for letting me share that,’ he said, and sat down. His heart was pumping in his chest and he felt his face burn. The person next to him patted his arm as someone else stood up and began to speak. He didn’t hear what the woman was saying. It didn’t matter. Tonight he was here for Roxanne.

  The first part of the meeting passed in a kind of daze as Ivo’s heart continued to thump and jolt against his ribcage. Finally he heard the familiar rattle of the coffee urn, and looked around just in time to catch sight of Keith making for the door.

  He caught up with him on the paved frontage of the Friends’ Meeting House. ‘Hey, Keith, wait up a second. I need to talk to you.’ Keith stopped and spun on his heel: Christ
, the man looked like shit! Ivo almost wondered if he was drinking again, but the needle-like intensity of the fury in his eyes was too clear to be polluted by alcohol.

  ‘I have nothing to say to you, Ivo!’

  There was nothing for it: he’d have to go straight in with an attention-grabbing headline. ‘Polly Sinclair is alive. She ran away. Danny Tooley helped her.’

  ‘Danny Tooley?’

  Ivo nodded. ‘He’s given us an exclusive.’

  ‘How much are you paying him?’

  ‘He’s never so much as asked about the reward, or payment.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘We’re running it tomorrow.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  A young man came out of the Meeting House and tried not to stare curiously at them as he walked past. Keith looked around, then drew Ivo through a side gate into the garden, which Ivo now saw was part of an old graveyard. He could hear traffic from a nearby main road, the air was muggy and he could feel the first light misting of rain.

  ‘What’s he saying to you?’ Keith demanded.

  ‘He bumped into Polly in Colchester. She was drunk and on her own, so he offered her a lift home.’

  ‘Whose car?’

  ‘Belongs to his brother, Michael. He imagines Michael hasn’t twigged that he uses it. It was the only detail he was bothered about us printing.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘In the car, Polly started crying. He knew what it was about because she’d already told him earlier in the day about her romp with the randy lecturer. She said she couldn’t face telling anyone else what had happened but knew she wouldn’t be able to hide from her parents how upset she was. She spent the night at Danny’s house and first thing in the morning he drove her to Ipswich and dropped her at the train station. He gave her some cash and lent her a hoodie and some other clothes. She said she was going to a friend in London. She wouldn’t say who, and swore Danny to secrecy.’