Kennedy 03 - Where Petals Fall

by Shirley Wells

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’ He drained his glass and immediately refilled it.

  ‘Can I have one?’ she asked.

  ‘What? Yes. Sorry.’ He walked over to her, handed her the full glass, sat on the bed beside her and took a swig from the bottle.

  ‘Drinking yourself into oblivion won’t help, Max.’

  ‘Oh, Christ! Don’t let’s start on that again!’

  That’s exactly how it used to start, she realized. She’d make a comment about his drinking, he’d fire off an angry retort and they’d soon be hurling abuse at each other.

  He was right; the last thing they needed was to go down that route again. They’d done that too many times in the past.

  She grabbed a pillow and used it as a back rest. The whisky was neat, but she couldn’t be bothered to fetch water. Besides, she needed a stiff drink.

  ‘It really isn’t your fault, Max,’ she said again. ‘You can’t be a one-man vigilante. You can’t weed out people who might, just might, be capable of murder. It’s your job to see that justice is done and –’

  ‘Justice? God, that’s a laugh. I’ll get the lowlife responsible for this if it’s the last thing I do, but justice? How long will he get? Hm?’

  She knew how he felt. Louise would have to spend the rest of her life without her little girl and the perpetrator would spend a few years in prison. Max was right; justice wouldn’t be done. It couldn’t be done.

  ‘So much for my hunches,’ he muttered. ‘While I’ve been wasting time fixating on Roberts, the real killer has destroyed a family.’

  The whisky was burning Jill’s throat, but it was warming. Maybe if she drank enough, the horrors of the night would recede. She doubted it. She knew from experience that she would feel ill long before that happened.

  ‘Come and lie down,’ she said.

  He did, but with great reluctance. Jill lay down beside him, rested her head on his shoulder and felt his anger in every tense muscle . . .

  The next thing she knew, Max was leaning over her to kiss her forehead. He’d showered and changed.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said, adding a grim, ‘I’ve got an autopsy to attend.’

  The horrors rushed back at her, and she sat up quickly and held him briefly.

  ‘I’ll be in about –’

  ‘No. Stay here.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to. I’ll call on Louise first to see if she’s all right, or as all right as she’s likely to be, and then I’ll be in.’

  ‘I’ll be there at some point, but talk to her, Jill. I want to know the name, address and phone number of everyone – and I mean everyone – that Nikki’s been in contact with since she returned to Kelton.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her, but I doubt Louise knows. Nikki didn’t discuss her friends. She spent hours on her mobile phone or in internet chat rooms.’

  ‘If it were up to me, I’d ban the bloody internet. It causes nothing but sodding problems.’ He squeezed her hand and his voice was gentler as he said, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘We’re all sorry, Max, but it’s not our fault. Not yours and not mine.’

  He wasn’t going to argue, and a couple of minutes later she heard him drive off.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jill’s arrival at Louise’s house coincided with the departure of Dr Thorpe. She had a few words with him, and then went inside.

  Charlie was in the kitchen, finishing his breakfast. It looked to Jill as if he’d had a full English. She hadn’t been able to face a thing.

  ‘He’s given her some sedatives,’ he explained between mouthfuls. ‘She’s not good,’ he added in a whisper, ‘but at least the doctor’s persuaded her to go to bed. I expect she’ll sleep now.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  When he’d finished his breakfast and put the plate in the dishwasher, he moved restlessly from one corner of the room to another. As he did so, he picked up items of Nikki’s – a magazine that had been on top of the microwave, a bottle of black nail varnish, a long, black scarf – and put them in a pile.

  ‘I’ll get rid of these while Louise is out of the way,’ he said, speaking in a whisper.

  Jill suspected that Louise wouldn’t want anything belonging to Nikki getting rid of, but it wasn’t her place to argue.

  She watched him pacing around. He was a good-looking man and, even in times of stress it seemed, impeccably dressed. This morning, he was wearing immaculate cream-coloured trousers and a crisp, blue shirt. His dark hair was thinning, and Jill guessed it bothered him. It had never struck her before but she had the feeling that he might be vain about his looks.

  She remembered Louise telling her he’d been married before, and even had a couple of children – sons, she recalled – somewhere.

  ‘As terrible and as shocking as this is, Charlie,’ she began, feeling awkward, ‘I have to work with the police. We need to catch the maniac who did this.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve spoken to Nikki lately,’ she said, and he pulled a face at that.

  ‘I tried, as you probably know, but she didn’t want to know. She’d rather die than speak to me.’

  Jill cringed inwardly at the choice of phrase.

  ‘I’m wondering if she met someone new recently,’ she said. ‘Louise said she was spending a lot of time on the internet. It can be a dangerous place for the reckless.’

  ‘She was certainly that.’

  Reckless, yes. She was a young woman who made some foolish choices but, no matter how low she had slipped, she hadn’t deserved this.

  ‘Do you think Louise would mind if I had a look in her room?’ she asked him. ‘I expect the police will take her computer away to see if there are clues on it, but I’d like a look.’

  ‘I’ll ask her when she gets up,’ he said.

  Jill guessed he was merely trying to protect Louise from unpleasantness, but that was impossible. ‘It’s OK, I’ll pop my head round and ask her.’

  ‘No need to disturb her,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind. I’ll show you where it is.’ He seemed reluctant to let her see Nikki’s room, probably because it was too unbearable to think that she would never walk into it again. ‘Mind you,’ he added as they walked up the stairs, ‘I doubt you’ll find anything on her computer other than her moaning to her mates about the evil Charlie trying to wheedle his way into her mum’s life.’

  Louise, the woman he loved, was suffering the worst pain imaginable so Jill supposed that gave him the right to sound hostile. Max was furious with the world and taking it out on everyone, so why shouldn’t Charlie?

  He pushed open the door to Nikki’s bedroom and stood back to let her enter. Jill had assumed he would leave her alone, but no. He was like a shadow as she moved around the room.

  The bed was neatly made, Louise’s work no doubt. On the dressing table was a child’s jewellery box given to her, Jill supposed, by her mother or her grandmother. It was clearly cherished and, sitting on top of several cheap bangles and beads in every colour, was the ankle bracelet Jill had bought her.

  Next to the box was a photo of Nikki dressed in black and looking like something from a second-rate horror film. It was in a frame that had the legend World’s Best Daughter on it.

  Considering Nikki had only been in Kelton Bridge for a few months, and considering that she’d only wanted a room for a ‘few days’, there were a lot of CDs and DVDs. Despite turning up with only the clothes she’d stood in and a small backpack, the wardrobe was crammed full, too.

  ‘Probably all stolen,’ Louise had worried.

  Jill pulled open a drawer that was stuffed with scraps of paper, magazines, an empty crisp packet, pens, jewellery – ‘I wonder if she kept a diary,’ she mused.

  ‘That went out with the ark,’ Charlie scoffed. ‘Young folk are barely literate these days.’

  ‘Nikki was an intelligent girl,’ Jill said, reminding herself to use the past tense.

  She walked over to the window and
gazed out at a view that was the same as the one from her cottage. Apart from half a dozen white clouds, the sky was clear after yesterday’s downpour. The Pennines were bathed in sunshine.

  Charlie was behind her, six inches from her right shoulder. It was almost as if he was checking to make sure she didn’t steal something.

  You don’t know him.

  Nikki had been right, Jill didn’t know the man. At the moment, he was making her uneasy, but how did sheexpect him to behave? How were any of them expected to get through this with any semblance of normality?

  Louise had fallen in love with him so he must have something going for him.

  Jill turned away from the window and looked around the room.

  ‘She was very close to her grandmother, wasn’t she?’ she murmured as her gaze rested on a photo of a woman who was an older version of Louise.

  ‘She was close to anyone who gave in to her demands.’

  He was wrong there. Louise had given in to her, but the two hadn’t been close for years . . .

  ‘I’ll have a quick look at her computer.’

  Nikki’s laptop was sitting amid a pile of clutter on a small desk in the corner of the room. Louise had bought it a month ago and, as might be expected, it was one of the best models available. In Jill’s opinion, it was far too good to be used only for games, internet chat rooms and the like, but Louise had hoped Nikki might use it for job applications or looking at training courses.

  She switched it on, immediately received the message that the battery was almost flat, and, with Charlie’s help, hunted through a pile of clutter for the mains cable.

  Charlie plugged it in for her and she switched it on.

  The laptop’s screen had a picture of a devil bedecked in black cloak and boasting huge red horns on it. Jill went straight to the email program. It was impossible to download any waiting emails without knowing Nikki’s password, but someone on the force would manage that.

  There were a dozen messages that had been sent on Sunday and Jill read through those.

  One message, to her friend, Rhianna, said: ‘It was gr8. Jills ok 4 a shrink. We LOL. An escape from PC.’

  OK for a shrink. Coming from Nikki to her friend, that was praise indeed. What was LOL? Jill never had been able to grasp text-speak and, if anyone used it on her mobile, she replied asking them to put it in English. Did LOL translate as laughed out loud? Perhaps. And whatwas PC? Jill doubted it was anything to do with political correctness.

  ‘Any idea what PC is, Charlie?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s all gobbledegook to me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yes, me, too.’

  The other messages were of no obvious interest. They were short notes to various friends. One simply said she was ‘bored, bored, bored’. Another was arranging to meet someone called Jodie next week. That meeting would never take place.

  Jill looked through the history on the web browser but there was nothing obvious there, either, and it was impossible to connect to the internet until they had her password.

  ‘Nothing there then,’ Charlie said.

  ‘No.’

  Unless she was mistaken, he was relieved that she hadn’t stumbled across something. What could that be? Something bad that Louise didn’t know about?

  ‘What were you expecting us to find?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘Me? Nothing.’ He made a show of looking at his watch and being amazed at the time. ‘Look, I’ve got to shoot off. Do you think Louise –’

  ‘I’ll stay with her,’ Jill offered immediately. ‘You’ll have the business to manage.’

  ‘I ought to show my face. Are you sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not. You go. Hopefully, she’ll sleep for a bit and then I’ll try and get her to eat something. What time will you be back if she asks?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back this evening. About nineish, I expect.’

  Nine? That was almost twelve hours away.

  You don’t know him. Nikki’s words seemed to echo around this room. How right the girl had been. Jill had imagined he would stay by Louise’s side every minute of every hour. Some people, however, simply couldn’t handleother people’s grief. With no idea of what to say, time dragged on hopelessly.

  ‘I’ll be here until you get back,’ she said, adding, ‘She’ll be OK, Charlie. Try not to worry too much. She’s strong. She will get over this.’ At least, Jill hoped she would.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I know she will.’ He gave her an awkward smile. ‘I’ll see you later then, Jill.’

  She stood at Nikki’s bedroom window to watch him drive away. He hadn’t even popped his head round Louise’s bedroom door to see if she was sleeping. As he drove off, he didn’t so much as glance at the house.

  Last night, Jill had thanked God that Charlie was there for Louise. Now, she wasn’t sure that he was going to be as much help as she’d anticipated.

  And what had he expected her to find?

  Curious, she began a thorough search. She checked every pocket, every drawer, every book – nothing. She even checked under the bed.

  At a little after one o’clock, when Jill was tidying up in the kitchen, Louise came downstairs. She looked awful, worse even than Jill had expected and she’d tried to prepare herself for the worst. Louise’s face was grey and her eyes were like black holes.

  Jill went forward and held her close for a few minutes. ‘Sit down, love.’

  ‘Where’s Charlie?’

  ‘He’ll be back. He thought he’d nip out while you were having a rest.’

  ‘Ah, yes. He’ll have work to do. Life has to go on, I suppose.’

  ‘He said it was work,’ Jill agreed, ‘but I’m sure he’s struggling, too, Lou. Anyway, I’ll keep you company until he gets back.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Normally, Louise would have told her not to bother, but she wasn’t fit to argue with anyone.

  ‘Have you managed to get some sleep?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Not really. The pills the doctor gave me knocked me outfor a while, but that’s all.’ She bit on her bottom lip. ‘I’ll be all right, though.’

  Jill hoped so.

  Right now, Louise was numb with shock and all the pills in the world wouldn’t lessen that. When it finally gave way to reality, Jill had no idea how she would get through the days.

  Soon, reporters would be gathering outside the house. Everyone in Kelton Bridge would be calling to see if there was anything they could do. The phone would be ringing constantly. Nikki’s smiling face would be splashed across the newspapers and on television screens.

  ‘I’ll do some lunch,’ Jill suggested.

  Unlike Jill’s cupboards, Louise’s were well stocked. A lot of the food, she guessed, was bought specially for Nikki, but at least Louise didn’t have to think about shopping for a week or so.

  Louise was toying with the first spoonful of soup when she said, ‘Charlie’s a good man, isn’t he?’

  The question, or rather the needy tone, took Jill by surprise. But Charlie wasn’t there. Just when Louise needed him most, he’d gone to tend to his business. The used-car market needed him.

  ‘He certainly is,’ Jill said briskly, determined to reassure her friend. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged him away if you hadn’t been sleeping so soundly.’

  Louise eventually ate her soup, but didn’t touch the bread roll.

  Soon afterwards, Max and Grace arrived with an officer Jill didn’t recognize. The man in question was soon looking around Nikki’s room while Max and Grace questioned Louise.

  Max sat next to Louise on the sofa and held her hand as he asked questions. Grace made notes, speaking only occasionally.

  ‘Tell me about yesterday morning,’ Max said gently.

  ‘We had breakfast together,’ Louise said softly. ‘That’s rare because Nikki often stayed in bed all day. She’ddecided to take up running, though. There’s this lad she fancies – fancied,’ she corrected herself, ‘and he’s a bit of a fi
tness freak. You know what she’s like. So she was up with the larks and going for a run. She had a yoghurt for breakfast, then left. She said she was going to run along the valley, from here to Rawtenstall and back. What’s that? Twelve miles?’

  ‘About that,’ Max agreed.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see her the rest of the day,’ Louise went on. ‘I guessed she’d meet up with friends and come home in the evening. Except . . .’

  She never did come home.

  ‘This lad she fancied,’ Max asked, ‘what do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m not sure she ever spoke to him – just saw him and asked about him, if you know what I mean. Oh, wait, it was something like Julian. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. I have a feeling he worked in the record shop in Harrington.’

  ‘OK.’ Max patted her hand. ‘What about other friends? Can you give us the names of her friends?’

  ‘I never knew her friends,’ Louise said wistfully. ‘To be honest, I didn’t want to know them. Only the other day, I was telling Jill how awful they were. Aggressive types.’

  Louise spent a good fifteen minutes telling them of Nikki’s antics, but she didn’t know any of the girl’s friends. She was more than willing to talk about Nikki, sometimes in the present tense as if the girl might walk in the room at any minute, and sometimes in the past tense as if she’d been dead for years.

  When Max and Grace were about to leave, Louise put her hand on Max’s sleeve.

  ‘Max, will it have been quick?’

  He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘She wouldn’t have known anything about it.’

  Jill could tell he was lying.

  ‘I know it won’t bring her back, Louise,’ he went on, ‘butwe will catch the bastard who did this. I promise you that. And although you won’t think so now, it will help. It will give you some sort of closure.’

  ‘But you can’t bring her back,’ Louise said, eyes staring off into the distance.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  While Grace spoke to Louise, telling her once again that she must get in touch if she needed anything, anything at all, Jill had a quick word with Max.

  ‘Where’s Charlie?’ he asked.

  ‘Gone to work. He said he’d be back around nineish so I’ll stay till then.’