by Lucy Carver
chapter five
Life was full of surprises – wild boy Jayden, with his hunched, feral look and his warning for me not to go near the Scarlett Hartley murder, had changed his mind.
‘Don’t worry – I’ll be careful,’ I told Jack over breakfast.
‘I’d come with you but …’
‘… But you’ve got a class with Shirley. I know.’ I was still feeling the afterglow of our train-station reunion so I reached out and took his hand. ‘It’ll be OK. Jayden is the hero who rescued me from Harry Embsay, remember, and I promise not to get dragged into anything I can’t handle.’
Jack was still edgy. ‘It’s not Jayden who bothers me. It’s the nutter who’s sneaking into your room and leaving weird notes.’
‘Yeah, it freaks me out too. But everyone knows what’s happening now and sooner or later the guy is going to make a mistake – someone will spot him or we’ll be able to track him down.’
‘Why not wait until I’m through with maths? Then we could both meet Jayden.’
‘It’s not dangerous,’ I insisted. ‘I can deal with it on my own.’
‘So let me write down the number of the text with the hearts,’ Jack decided. ‘I’ll run through my list of contacts, and if it’s not there I’ll ask around to see if anyone recognizes it.’
‘OK, and I’ll meet Jayden, find out why they arrested Alex.’
We agreed on a plan and went to our morning classes – Jack to physics with Dr Alex King, and me to English literature with Bryony and Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.
I got to the classroom five minutes early to find Hooper and Eugenie already there.
‘Did you notice that Mikki the gorilla’s back?’ Hooper mentioned as he lifted his bag from an empty seat and invited me to sit next to him.
‘Mikhail? How come? Did they charge him then release him on bail?’
Hooper gave a quick shrug. ‘You share a room with Galina – I thought you’d know the answer to that.’
‘No, she didn’t mention anything.’ Actually, I hadn’t talked to her at all that morning since she’d still been asleep when I left the room. ‘She definitely won’t be happy that Mikhail’s back on the scene and I don’t blame her.’
‘Anyway, he’s here. I saw him outside Saint Sam’s room on my way to class.’
After that, Bryony arrived and plunged us into an analysis of the romance between Christy Mahon and Pegeen Mike – is it more comic than tragic or the other way round? Etcetera, etcetera.
Back in my room at eleven, I found Galina crying on her bed. Her glorious mane of dark hair was tousled, her stitched lip swollen and sore.
‘Here,’ I said, offering tissues from the box I kept in my top drawer. I sat beside her and waited for her to dry her eyes.
She blew her nose and grimaced when her hand brushed against the scar. ‘The police, they let him go,’ she murmured.
‘Mikhail? Yes, Hooper told me. Did they charge him?’
‘No. They do nothing. He tells them it’s his job – he must protect me. He says sometimes I am wild and do stupid things. Like yesterday, I yell at him and run away. I fall over in forest and cut my lip. What can he do? The police believe what he says.’
I handed Galina more tissues. ‘I suppose they don’t have any witnesses or evidence – it’s your word against his. And you couldn’t make your dad understand what actually happened?’
‘I can’t talk to him. He is in New York at meetings. Salomea takes his calls.’
‘And she said it was OK for Mikhail to carry on doing his job?’
She nodded and blinked back more tears. ‘Before Salomea, me and Papa’ we have good life. We travel; we have fun. Then he sees her dance in St Petersburg – he loves women like this – my mother too, she dances in Bolshoi Ballet when she is young. Salomea is beautiful as Mayerling in story of lovers who die. She is out of this world. Papa goes backstage to meet her; he falls in love.’
As Galina’s voice fell away, I understood for the first time how tough it must have been for her. An image flitted through my head of a beautiful glossy blackbird trapped inside a golden cage. ‘How old were you?’
‘Thirteen. In this year Papa marries Salomea and runs from Putin’s Russia. Putin says Papa is corrupt, that he steals oil and gas from people of Russia. They will put him in prison for rest of life.’
‘So he can’t go back? But you can, I guess.’
Galina dabbed at her eyes and shook her head. ‘There are too many bad people there. They hate Papa so they promise to hurt me. I cannot go back, even to visit my mother.’
‘That’s really tough,’ I sighed. And I remembered her vivid account of the accident that wasn’t an accident in Monte Carlo. ‘The bad people you’re talking about – were they involved in the thing with the boat, where one of your friends died?’
‘At first I think no but now I think maybe. These men, they follow us everywhere but you never catch them. They hide, they wait for next chance.’
‘You poor thing, that must be awful,’ I said. I almost told her about the conversation I’d overheard the day before – Sergei talking to Salomea on the phone, saying that things hadn’t worked out – but I held it back for later, after Galina had had time to get herself back together. ‘Right now, can I do anything to help?’
She looked at me with moist, puppy-dog eyes. ‘Yes, Alyssa. You can be my friend.’
At that point Raisa had come into the room and clucked around Galina like a mother hen. She spoke in short, gentle sentences that ended in an endearment that sounded like lyublmaya moy. Then she took up a brush and drew it through Galina’s tangled hair.
Relaxing now that my roommate had someone with her, I’d hurried off on one of the school bikes, cycling down the cleared drive between banks of snow and out between the wrought-iron gates, along the lane to the Bottoms, where I managed to catch the 11.30 bus into town. From the bus station I walked on towards the canal and Lock-keeper’s Cottage.
Jayden was already there and, though he’d set up this meeting, my heroic rescuer didn’t look pleased to see me. Mind you, he never looks cheerful (he has the wrong set of facial muscles, I guess) and there can’t be many reasons to smile when a student in your school gets killed and one of your best mates lands in police custody.
Hands thrust deep in his pockets, with biscuit-coloured Bolt sniffing busily at a couple of crushed cans that had recently been dumped on the steps down to the canal, Jayden scowled a greeting. ‘You’re late.’
‘Five minutes. Sorry – the snow was bad. I had a lot to do …’
‘Oh, I know, Alyssa – you’re always so busy, running around picking up clues, chasing killers …’
‘… Dealing with your sarcasm,’ I added. ‘And, you’re right, I am busy so go ahead and tell me what we’re doing here.’
‘I wanted you to take a look at where it happened to see if you notice anything. It’s a hundred metres in that direction.’ He pointed along the cycle path, past a high brick wall bordering a supermarket car park. Beyond that I could make out police tape, a square white tent erected by a forensic team and a ‘Closed to pedestrians’ notice half obscured by snow.
‘I’m not sure what you think I’ll see that the cops haven’t already spotted,’ I told Jayden who was trailing a couple of steps behind.
‘Look anyway,’ he insisted.
‘OK, you lead the way.’ I stood to one side then followed him down the steps, noticing a thin film of ice on the surface of the canal and taking care not to slip on the path. Close to the spot where Scarlett’s body had been recovered, I saw that the ice had been shattered and transparent shards floated on the black water – possibly where police divers had gone in to search for clues.
Turning to Jayden, I thought one more warning might be in order. ‘You have to understand that I might not be able to help this time round. Memory is my thing. I can rerun events that have happened to me – what I saw, what I heard, even smells and how things felt – but I can’t conjure stuff up out of
thin air.’
‘OK, I know you weren’t around when Scarlett died. But you did talk to Ursula then Alex, so now you’re involved.’
‘Even though you didn’t want me to be,’ I reminded him. ‘What changed?’
‘They got Alex, remember!’
‘So your buddy gets arrested and now you expect me to come riding in on my white charger?’
‘You got it,’ he said, moody and hating to admit that he needed me. ‘You people at St Jude’s are the brainy ones. You know the right people; you’re in the right place at the right time.’
‘OK, I’m involved,’ I admitted. ‘But only on the margins and something is telling me to keep it that way.’ I wouldn’t share with Jayden that I’d been freaked out by imaginary fingers scratching at the window, or any of the other creepy things that had happened lately – the fake Facebook pictures, the dead robin, the notes, the emoticon hearts. Somehow I felt he wouldn’t make the most sympathetic of listeners.
‘But I asked you and you’re here,’ he said stubbornly.
‘Because I talked to Alex and I felt sorry for him.’ I watched Bolt trot ahead, detour around the Closed to pedestrians sign and scoot under the police tape, making a neat pattern of prints in the snow. ‘Anyway, I don’t think he did it,’ I added.
Bolt sniffed at a heap of shifted snow then cocked his bandy leg to pee against the white forensic tent. ‘I hope no one’s working inside there,’ I commented.
Jayden shrugged. ‘So exactly how did it go – your conversation with Alex?’
‘I was walking in the school grounds, Alex was on his bike. He fell off. I didn’t recognize him at first so I ran up and asked what he was doing on private property.’
‘Yeah, Alyssa – a guy falls off his bike and you tell him he’s trespassing. Typical.’
‘We could stop right now,’ I said angrily. ‘I could walk away.’
Jayden’s scowl deepened. He tilted his head forward then looked up at me from under knotted eyebrows. ‘Sometimes you come across as a hard bitch, you know that, Alyssa? Anyway, forget I said that – you still owe me one.’
A favour for him stopping Harry Embsay from throttling me. It was totally true that without Jayden and Bolt I wouldn’t still be alive, but somehow with Jayden it didn’t pay to show gratitude. ‘You saved me, now you want me to help you get your mate out of jail. OK, I’ll try.’
Still glaring, he waited for me to come up with something.
‘Do you know why they arrested him?’
‘Socos picked up fingerprints on the wrench they found.’
‘Scene-of-crime officers? Alex’s prints?’
Jayden nodded. ‘Plus, it turns out he didn’t have an alibi for the time Scarlett was killed.’
‘But he told me his dad dragged him off to a family party.’
‘Yeah, but he made an excuse and left before midnight – the cops dragged that out of one of the cousins.’
‘Not good,’ I muttered as Bolt disappeared round the back of the flimsy tent. I went through the few facts I’d picked up from my meeting with Alex. ‘He didn’t mention that. And there’s something else that I’ve been wondering about – which is why didn’t Alex try to contact Scarlett on New Year’s Day? They’d only been together for a week, but from what I hear he was totally into her. Ursula said he’d practically stalked her for weeks before she agreed to go out with him. So he would want to talk to her, send texts, meet her every chance he got.’
‘How do we know he didn’t?’ Jayden asked the same thing Sammy Beckett had at Ainslee station.
‘We don’t.’ For the first time I heard scuffling noises from inside the tent then the sound of Velcro being unfastened. A figure in white overalls emerged and yelled at us.
‘Is this your dog?’ the police forensic woman demanded.
Bolt reappeared, still sniffing and peeing against the side of the tent.
‘Call him, Jayden!’ I muttered under my breath.
‘He’s contaminating a crime scene,’ the woman warned. ‘If this is your Staffie, grab him before I get our dog handlers to come and deal with him.’
‘Call him!’ I hissed.
‘Heel!’ Jayden said between clenched teeth, and Bolt obeyed.
‘Let’s go,’ I told him, turning back the way we’d come. I was eager to leave because the place where Scarlett had died was seedy – high walls and rotting fences to one side, the frozen canal to the other – and it was all too easy to picture her lonely, dark, violent death. They’d found the wrench used as a weapon, which of course had further implicated Alex. ‘Did they find her phone to see if Alex did try to make contact?’ I wanted to know.
Jayden shrugged. ‘How would I know? Come on, Alyssa – you’re the brainy one and you’re not giving me anything!’
‘What do you want? You want me to invent something just to get you off my back?’
Then suddenly I stopped. I heard Alex’s voice again and I saw the stricken, wounded look on his face.
‘The first I knew about it was the cops coming knocking at my door, not telling me what it was about, asking when did I last see Scarlett? I say, in Starbucks in the shopping centre at one o’clock on New Year’s – why?’
‘OK, maybe there is something I can do,’ I decided.
Trotting ahead, Bolt had stopped at the worn stone steps we’d used to come down on to the towpath. He turned and panted, waiting for Jayden to tell him what to do.
‘Stay!’ Jayden called, then turned his attention back on me. ‘About effing time, memory girl.’
I pressed my lips together and tried not to retaliate. ‘I’ll be in touch later today,’ I told him.
‘One more thing before you go.’ He eyed me suspiciously, as if I was the one who was totally to blame for Scarlett ending up in the canal and for his mate being held in custody. ‘There’s a kid at your school I think you should check out.’
‘At St Jude’s?’ Immediately and illogically I locked into the existing fear that it was someone I knew well who was behind the Facebook pictures, the dead bird, the sick challenges. It was a gut feeling and I still didn’t have hard evidence for any link with Scarlett’s death, but my skin began to prickle as I realized that Jayden might be about to deliver it. ‘Who?’
‘Will Harrison,’ he muttered, hardly moving his lips.
I had to lean in and ask him to repeat the name.
‘You heard me – Will Harrison.’
My heart gave a small jolt. ‘Why – what’s the connection?’
‘Not many people know this, but he’s one of Scarlett’s exes.’
Another jolt, a tingle like an electric shock. I stared at Jayden.
‘I checked it out with Ursula – she gave me the details,’ he insisted. Then he turned his attention to Bolt, who was sniffing and cocking his leg, rummaging in amongst the tattered pages of an old newspaper blown into a smelly corner under the stone steps. ‘Fetch!’ he said when he saw his dog sniff at what looked like a length of string lying in the snow.
Bolt didn’t hesitate. He picked it up and carried it between his teeth towards Jayden, then dropped it at his feet. There it lay on the dirty snow – not a length of string but a lost or discarded cable from a phone charger.
Neither Jayden nor I had noticed the forensic officer follow us along the canal path, but Bolt did. He curled back his lips, bared his teeth and snarled.
‘Don’t even think about picking it up,’ she said, swiftly producing a plastic bag and scooping the cable into it. ‘Inspector Ripley will be very interested in this. She may even want to thank you in person – watch this space.’
Swearing, Jayden took the steps two at a time, but when he reached the top a uniformed officer stood in his way. He forced Jayden to give his name and address, a process like pulling teeth as it turned out.
I gave my details without any problem and answered questions about what we were doing and why.
‘I don’t see you leaving any floral tributes,’ the uniform said drily. ‘No mis
spelled, heartfelt messages of regret.’
Jayden upped his tally of extreme swear words and was cautioned by the officer.
Bolt emitted a long, low growl.
In turn I was cautioned about the company I chose to keep. On the whole, I reckon we were both lucky to walk away with no more than the equivalent of a referee’s yellow card and a warning to stay out of trouble in future.
‘I’ll text you later today,’ I told Jayden as he swung off towards the centre of town.
Greenlea Shopping Centre was twenty-five years old and jaded. It didn’t have two tiers of designer shops or a soaring glass roof, and if the architect who designed it was still alive he ought to be ashamed.
I walked through the wide entrance and up a slope towards H&M, with Boots on my left and a tired-looking department store on my right. Past that, I turned right towards Monsoon, and quickly came to a covered courtyard with a Caffé Nero and a Starbucks side by side.
‘Skinny latte,’ I told the girl behind the counter at Starbucks. She took the order and asked my name while I read her badge. She was called Lucy. I paid for the coffee then shuffled forward to collect my drink made by a young guy who’d stopped vacantly unloading clean mugs into the station by the till. ‘You weren’t working during the day last Thursday by any chance?’ I asked as casually as I could. ‘Lunchtime of New Year’s Eve.’
Karl (I read his name badge) looked long and hard at me. ‘Why?’
‘A friend of mine was in here.’
‘Last Thursday, hmm, let’s see. Your friend wouldn’t be Scarlett Hartley, would it? The girl who got herself killed?’
I nodded. So much for my casual sideways approach.
‘You’re wasting your time. I don’t know anything.’
‘It’s OK, relax. I was just wondering if Scarlett came in here a lot, and if you know who she used to come in with.’
Luckily for me sullen Karl was elbowed out by gobby Lucy, the girl who had taken my order. ‘Can you believe it!’ she gushed. ‘The poor kid was in here during the day, happy as anything. Next thing we knew, they’d fished her out of the canal.’
‘So who was she with?’ I prompted, only to be ignored.
