Killing You Softly

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Killing You Softly Page 12

by Lucy Carver


  ‘Galina’s gone walkabout,’ Eugenie told her. ‘There was something weird on her voicemail.’

  Bryony took us back down the stairs into the quad, where we stood under a starlit sky. The light from the full moon was strong enough to cast shadows and to pick out the masonry over the arched doorways and windows. Two gargoyles carved in stone – one grinning, one sticking out its serpent-coiled tongue – squinted down at us. ‘What kind of weird?’

  ‘Some guy left a rambling message for Alyssa – on Galina’s phone.’

  ‘Let’s focus on Galina for now,’ I interrupted. ‘She told me she was meeting someone, but I talked with Raisa. She said Galina didn’t plan to go out this evening. Galina left in so much of a hurry that she forgot her phone. And there’s something else – Mikhail or Sergei should still be on duty and they’re not.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true – I haven’t seen either of them,’ Bryony confirmed. ‘Let’s think this through. OK – given what happened to Galina earlier in the week, I think I should tell Dr Webb right away.’

  I stayed behind in the quad while Eugenie and Bryony hurried down the drive to the principal’s house, which was close to the main entrance. Having heard the voices and footsteps on the stone flags, Luke opened his window and called down.

  ‘Alyssa?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s me. You haven’t seen Galina by any chance?’

  ‘Not lately.’

  ‘Could you ask everyone in the boys’ corridor for me?’

  ‘Marco, Alyssa wants to know where Galina is,’ Luke spoke over his shoulder. Seconds later, Marco appeared in the quad with bare feet, in T-shirt and jeans. Luke leaned out of the window again. ‘Sorry about Marco. I don’t know what got into him. I just mentioned your name and he was like a greyhound out of the traps,’ he apologized.

  ‘Marco, can you go back in and find out if Galina’s up there in someone’s room?’ I insisted as patiently as I could.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Marco asked, full of concern. ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘No – not me. It’s Galina. I want to know where she is.’

  ‘Alyssa, you’re freezing.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I turned and yelled up at the window. ‘Luke, will you hurry up and look for Galina for me?’

  Luke disappeared but Marco didn’t move. For a second I thought he was going to put an arm round me to shield me from the cold. He stood so close I could feel his body heat. ‘Bryony will be back soon,’ I told him. ‘She’s gone to fetch Saint Sam.’

  ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘We have to find Galina – it’s important.’ I’m tall, but Latin lover boy Marco is three or four inches taller, so I had to tilt my head back to speak to him. As I did this, I noticed over his shoulder that Jack was standing at his window, watching us. I swore silently to myself.

  ‘Come inside,’ Marco invited. ‘At least wait where it’s warm.’

  I shook my head and stepped away. Luckily Bryony and Eugenie were soon back, with Saint Sam in tow.

  I gave him the facts and he acted fast, calling Molly and asking her to check CCTV footage in her office while he called the police. Bryony insisted that Eugenie and I go back to our rooms before we caught our deaths. There was nothing else we could do – it was out of our hands, she said.

  ‘But, Alyssa, don’t stay in your room by yourself tonight,’ Bryony insisted. ‘Eugenie, you’ll make sure she doesn’t?’

  It was agreed – there was a spare bed in Eugenie and Charlie’s room and I’d spend the night there.

  ‘Give me five minutes while I go and fetch my toothbrush and PJs,’ I told Eugenie. I needed breathing space and a chance to make a last check of the room. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but there might be something I’d missed.

  I went up and at first I thought everything was as I’d left it when Eugenie and I had dashed out. I picked up Galina’s phone and didn’t find any new messages – only a final warning that the battery was about to die. Hoping that someone else might have a compatible charger, I put the phone down again on Galina’s bed. Then slowly the prickling sensation of dread crept over me – a sense of interruption or intrusion – the feeling I always got when I found a sinister message or a threat. I began to notice small things that felt wrong – the wardrobe door hung open and I always, always kept it closed. The duvet was crumpled, as if someone had been sitting on the bed, and my blue PJs weren’t under my pillow in their usual place. Remember, I’m a methodical girl.

  The bastard had been here again! He wasn’t here now because there was nowhere in this small room he could hide. But he’d definitely been in and I suspected he’d left me another ‘gift’, a memento of his visit.

  I took a deep breath and threw back the duvet, but didn’t find anything. Then I quickly went through the clothes in the wardrobe until my phone rang. I jumped, dragged it from my pocket and threw it on to my bed as if it might bite.

  I read the screen – ‘Blocked number’.

  Don’t answer it!

  It rang out and I waited, hardly daring to breathe. Then the voicemail alert beeped – one new message, which I steeled myself to listen to.

  ‘Hey, Alyssa. Don’t you know I can read your finely tuned mind? Right now you’re thinking maybe the Russian mafia succeeded this time around. They snatched Galina. C’mon now, ’fess up.’

  Oh God, it was the same fake Texan drawl with the slow distortion, each word drawn out, with long gaps in between. It was so JR from Dallas that it would have been funny except that my skin crawled with disgust. I felt the walls close in on me and I jumped at my own fragmented reflection in the leaded window.

  ‘Well, how wrong can you be? But I feel for you, darling, I really do. So here comes another clue. Forget the Russians. Use that fabulous memory talent of yours and focus closer to home.’

  There was a sound in the background – a door opening and a girl’s muffled voice – then the message ended abruptly.

  Breathe! I told myself. Think. This is someone close enough to know what’s going on from minute to minute and arrogant enough to take big risks. He’s leaving clues, setting a challenge.

  Or ‘she’, I realized. Why does it have to be a ‘he’?

  Because of the fake voice, the deep drawl.

  But it’s distorted by a special phone app. It’s slowed down from a normal pace, impossible to recognize.

  I was breathing, thinking these things through, when a message alert came up on my phone – number blocked again, and this time there were no darlings and honeys, no deliberately cheesy love and kisses.

  ‘Better catch me quick, memory girl,’ I read. ‘You think this is bad but it’s going to get worse – one hundred per cent guaranteed.’

  We handed Galina’s and my phones straight to the police when they showed up just before midnight. They tracked down the creepy messages and calls to different numbers – all from pay-as-you-go or stolen phones, as it turned out.

  Inspector Ripley arrived with an older plain-clothes guy, Sergeant Jimmy Owen. He was skinny with hunched shoulders and looked as if he’d tried to give up smoking for decades but failed. His lined face and tired eyes behind heavy-rimmed glasses were a big contrast to Ripley’s bright and bushy manner.

  ‘We wouldn’t normally respond to a missing persons call until more time had elapsed,’ she told Saint Sam, Molly and me in the principal’s office. ‘But, given what’s happened lately, we didn’t want to wait.’

  ‘We appreciate it,’ Sam said smoothly. I know that he never reveals what he’s thinking, even when someone has interrupted his viewing of his favourite Saturday night Dan Snow documentary on BBC4. ‘I’m hopeful that everything will work out fine, but of course I have ultimate responsibility for the safety of pupils at St Jude’s and it would have been negligent of me not to inform you of Galina’s disappearance.’

  You think people don’t talk in officialese in real life, but I assure you they do – at least, Saint Sam does.

  The smoker cleared his throat and
invited the principal and Molly to come next door and provide more details – Galina’s age and appearance, a photograph from her file, contact number for her parents and so forth. This left me with Ripley.

  ‘This latest thing with Galina has upset you a lot, Alyssa.’ As usual, not a question but an observation.

  ‘Definitely. I’ve been worried about her ever since Tuesday – you know, when she told me she was trying to get away from Mikhail.’

  We’re outside the churchyard on Chartsey Bottom Main Street.

  ‘Leave me!’ Galina yells at Mikhail. ‘I tell my father what you do!’ Then some Russian insults and a sprint towards Jack, Marco and me, with Mikhail lumbering behind.

  ‘Back off, buddy!’ Jack warns.

  Galina runs through the lych gate, Marco stands in Mikhail’s way. There’s a fight while Galina runs on into the church porch. I find her there, trembling and hiding her face in her hands. Then I see the blood.

  ‘He did it,’ she sobs. ‘Mikhail, he did this.’

  ‘In the cafe?’

  ‘No, outside village, on small road. I ran away.’

  Eventually Jack wrestles Mikhail to the ground. Marco stamps on his chest and says nothing.

  ‘Not an accident,’ Galina sobs. ‘He punches me. He tries to kidnap me.’

  I relived these details and shared them with Ripley.

  ‘That’s remarkably detailed,’ she commented when I’d finished. She didn’t sound admiring, more suspicious, as if I might have made it all up and rehearsed it to make myself word-perfect.

  ‘And true,’ I insisted quietly.

  ‘Ah, yes – the total-recall facility. What’s it really like, Alyssa, to have your kind of memory?’

  ‘It’s like hard-disk overload,’ I tried to explain. ‘Eidetics never get a break from remembering things they’d rather forget. Sometimes I just get information overload and crash. I turn into a sort of zombie – my mind goes dead, there’s nothing there.’

  ‘So I wouldn’t want it?’ she decided.

  ‘Not if you want to stay sane – no.’ I thought for a while then revised what I’d said. ‘Actually, in your job – yes, you might.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s interesting, what you just said. Scarlett’s mum told me the same thing – that having total recall was a curse rather than a blessing for her daughter too.’

  ‘You see – we’re freaks.’

  ‘It’s rare but I wouldn’t call you freaks. And it helps me, for sure. I know I can rely on you.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ I told her. ‘What else do you want to know?’

  ‘Plenty. But what do you say we get out of here and go for a drive? It might do you good to get away from school while we carry on talking.’

  Without waiting for an answer, Ripley went to tell Sergeant Owen she was taking the car.

  ‘OK, boss.’ He sat out of sight in Molly’s room but I could tell by his voice that he wasn’t happy.

  ‘Half an hour,’ Ripley promised as she led me out and sat me next to her in the unmarked police car parked outside the main entrance.

  Before I knew it we’d sailed off down the drive, out through the gates and along the lane leading to Hereward Ridge.

  ‘So carry on,’ she invited as she adjusted the heating. ‘I’m interested in hearing more about what people might have told you about Scarlett Hartley.’

  ‘Not much. It’s mostly what I read in the paper and saw on TV. A little bit from Jayden and his girlfriend, Ursula.’

  ‘Oh yes, Jayden Johnson,’ Ripley smiled. ‘He’s an interesting kid. Totally focused, just like you, Alyssa, but it manifests itself differently.’

  ‘Yeah, Jayden’s cool.’

  ‘How about Ursula?’

  ‘I like her too. She’s the one who told me that Scarlett went out with Matt Brookes and Sammy Beckett before she and Alex were an item – I’m not sure for how long or how serious those others were. And it turns out Scarlett went out with Will Harrison while he was at Ainslee Comp, but she dumped him some time last summer.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’ Ripley seemed to be making careful mental notes then switched subjects as the car swept up the dark hill. ‘Moving on again – tell me how you’re dealing with the bullying and the messages you’ve been receiving.’

  ‘They creep me out more and more,’ I admitted. ‘Whoever this guy is, he’s now telling me that Galina isn’t the end of it, that it’s going to get worse.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I picked up when Dr Webb called the station.’ Ripley pulled into a small lay-by overlooking the valley so she could fully concentrate. She switched off the lights, but kept the engine running.

  ‘He left a message on Galina’s phone. He said to forget the Russians and concentrate on the clues.’

  ‘So he’s threatening to raise the bar?’

  I nodded. ‘Is this what happens? Is it normal?’

  ‘Nothing is normal about stalkers – believe me. I’ve seen all kinds from ones who occasionally shadow celebrities and send them pathetic proposals of marriage to those who stalk their victims every single minute of the day without ever saying a word. They stay in the shadows and are the most difficult to deal with.’

  ‘And I know you’re probably not supposed to share this, but can you tell me if someone did the same thing to Scarlett?’ I pressed for an answer to the question that Jack and I had wondered about, even though I wasn’t really ready to handle this if the answer turned out to be yes. ‘Did he set her challenges to see if she could work out who he was?’

  Ripley shook her head. ‘I’m not saying no,’ she quickly put in. ‘I’m saying we don’t know. Naturally, we’ve asked her friends about it but so far there’s not much hard evidence.’

  ‘ “Not much hard evidence”,’ I sighed as Ripley turned on the lights and did a three-point turn to face downhill. That meant they hadn’t been able to trace Scarlett’s missing phone or pick up any email messages. ‘So now, what about Galina? From what I know about abductions, the first forty-eight hours are crucial.’

  My friendly inspector let the car cruise downhill. ‘That’s true. That’s when we gather forensic information, interview witnesses and so on. After that, the pace of investigation slows down and we enter into more of a waiting game.’

  ‘So what are you waiting for – a ransom demand?’

  ‘Yes, or at least some contact with the kidnapper. Something that leads us forward into the next phase, which is usually a negotiation for the victim’s release.’

  ‘But this is contact with the kidnapper!’ I pointed to the phone lying in the CD compartment of Ripley’s car. ‘OK, so it’s not a straightforward ransom demand, but actually it’s worse!’

  ‘Better catch me quick, memory girl. You think this is bad but it’s going to get worse – one hundred per cent guaranteed.’

  ‘Before the threat turns into a reality,’ she agreed. ‘We can check the phone for prints. And, remember, it’s only been a few hours so we can still hope that Galina will show up of her own accord.’

  Ripley didn’t say this to reassure me, she said it to test me out and carefully watched my reactions.

  ‘She won’t,’ I said as a shiver ran down my spine and the car coasted down the hill.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Scarlett didn’t, did she?’

  ‘And you’re convinced this is a parallel situation? Same perpetrator, same mode of operation?’

  ‘Yes, carbon copy, minus the perfect recall, of course.’

  ‘So we’ll search the canal for another body.’ Ripley shrugged then hunched forward over the steering wheel, as though it was too late at night and the gruelling nature of her job was finally getting to her. ‘Sorry, Alyssa – ignore that. It was unprofessional.’

  ‘We have to find Galina,’ I said again, studying her profile. ‘We need to trace Mikhail and Sergei, find out when they last saw her, check Ainslee Westgate to see if she took a train, make contact with her stepmother. You never know – Salomea Radkin might have some informat
ion that we don’t.’

  The inspector turned to smile at me. ‘We make an unorthodox team, you and I. So who else should I talk to?’

  ‘Try the stepmother,’ I repeated. ‘You never know – Mrs Radkin might come up with something.’

  Ripley agreed and we drove back to St Jude’s like two female detectives in a popular cop series, Ripley and Stephens, alert and on the ball, exuding girl power.

  Next morning, the police were crawling all over St Jude’s and it was hard for anyone to go on with life as normal.

  Jack made a brave effort, though. ‘Take a look at Nadal’s forehand,’ he told me. ‘See the footwork he puts in to get him into exactly the right place to play the stroke.’

  Yes, Jack and I were talking again. Or, rather, I was with him in the technology centre and he was studying a training video featuring his favourite tennis player of all time. I stood at the window, watching another police car arrive. I saw Raisa and two uniforms step out then walk swiftly towards Saint Sam’s office.

  ‘I’m not boring you, am I?’ Jack checked. ‘Tell me to stop if I am.’

  ‘No, please – I’m listening.’ I urged him to go on, wishing that Nadal’s forehand was all we had to worry about in the foreseeable future.

  ‘Compare Nadal with Djokovic,’ Jack said. ‘They both have incredible athleticism, but totally different body language. Look how scarily cool and focused Djokovic is. With Nadal, there’s more emotion.’

  I left the window and joined him at the computer. ‘Talking of emotion …’ I began.

  Jack pressed the PAUSE button and glanced up at me. ‘Yeah, I know – we’re both still feeling bad. I’ve already said I was an idiot. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me too. I’m sorry if I did anything to give you the wrong impression about me and Marco.’ I could mention relationship rule number two again here – don’t apologize for something that is in no way your fault. But that’s in an ideal world and I was so relieved that Jack had come over to me at breakfast and sat down like nothing had happened that I happily broke my own rules.

 

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