Honestly, I don’t know if it was my fault or Hannah’s, but I cannot say I enjoyed her company. Oh, but, horror of horrors, Liam seemed to.
At first I was just convinced that an overload of arty pontification had dulled his senses and that normal service would soon be resumed. However, within a matter of just a couple of weeks, Hannah was a fixture, as were her somewhat bemused group of friends. Suddenly my world had gone from the known and the relatively comfortable, to the unknown and the distinctly uncomfortable. Liam had a way of letting the world bounce right off him, leaving him totally unaffected.
Not me; I caught every snotty comment or eye roll that passed between Hannah’s girlfriends, Fliss and Amelia. I felt every cell of my skin warm up as I was treated to the surreptitious once overs I generally got as soon as they came over to us. I wasn’t scruffy by any stretch of the imagination, but most of my stuff came from charity shops and such the like. And Hannah herself had a way of looking me up and down that made me want to dissolve with shame.
Fliss had a boyfriend called Richard Allencourt, who tagged along behind her everywhere she went. Despite being what I would have called one of them, he was actually alright. By which I mean he didn’t spend ages trying to come up with the sort of comment that could put you in your place but be completely denied if challenged. To be honest, that was enough for me. He was the best of a really crappy bunch, in my opinion.
All in all, the last five weeks had not exactly flown by. I knew it had a lot to do with my world being altered and my inner puppy objecting wildly and cocking its leg everywhere. Liam was my friend, my very best friend and, at that point, my only friend. I’d been suffering from the dull ache of the unknown which kept prodding at me and telling me everything was changing.
So, it is with a certain amount of shame – well, a rather sizeable helping of shame, actually - that I shall openly admit that, for a good few moments, I pretty much wished that Hannah had gone missing. Not Liam’s kind of missing, but News at Ten’s kind of missing.
“Dude? Where’d ya go?” Liam was staring at me and picking his empty polystyrene cup to bits.
“Sorry, I was just thinking. Look, have you called either Fliss or Amelia? Maybe she was out with them?” I was back on the detective track.
Even my self-involved bout of victimhood knew that wishing a young woman was really missing was beyond wrong.
“No, I don’t have their numbers. Still, I reckon Hannah’s mum will have called them.”
“Really? Whose mums have the phone numbers of their kid’s friends?” I was thinking of my own mum, I guess.
I could be consorting with Lucifer himself and still not hear so much as a mind how you go, sweetheart from my beloved parent.
“Well, she had my number.” Liam looked up at me with this kind of dopey expression he gets from time to time.
It was a mixture of things, and I knew them all by heart. Hunger mixed with confusion mixed with anxiety. Well, I could help him with one of them, at any rate. I rummaged in my rucksack and pulled out a foil wrapped cheese and marmite sandwich and a packet of crisps.
“Here you go. Eat them, and then focus, ok?” I smiled at him.
“Dude? What are these?” Liam looked up in horror. “Euro-Saver crisps? I never heard of them before. What are they, like, five pence?” Liam had opened the bag and was peering in doubtfully. “Dude! They’re totally shining with grease and really, really small!”
“Seriously, Liam, at a time like this you’re gonna become a crisp snob?” I looked at him in mock horror.
“I’m not a crisp snob, Dude. I’m just…. what’s the word?....discerning!”
With that, we both burst out laughing. It wasn’t that Hannah was forgotten, it was just that we had always faced life’s traumas this way. Liam had a way with him that always made me laugh.
No, Hannah wasn’t forgotten, she was just on hold for a few seconds whilst we let humour do what it had always done for us. Still, that was probably not the best moment for the Police to show up, if I’m totally honest.
“It’s the cops, Dude!” Liam hissed at me through his teeth. We were immediately silent, which probably made us look as guilty as sin. I peeked out from under my overgrown fringe and felt momentarily relieved to see that one of the two uniformed officers approaching us was PC Dale Webb.
Dale Webb was actually a nice guy, but he knew way too much about the seedy horrors of my home life for me to be comfortable seeing him there at the university. As much as he’d helped me out at home when things had been at their worst, somehow his presence at the university made me feel angry.
This was my place of learning. This was a different world where I had opportunities and the sort of inner peace that came from order. Suddenly Dale Webb felt like a man on a bridge, and that bridge was joining two worlds which should never be joined. I wanted to pound on the bridge with my knurled staff and scream You shall not pass! in the style of Gandalph. But I didn’t; I just pulled myself together and smiled politely at him.
“Hey Josie. How’s it going?”
“Not bad. How are you?” I felt kind of surly but was determined to battle it.
Dale Webb had been good to me over the years. Whenever the police attended my house, and it was usually some mum’s drunk again episode, it had always been a time of high stress and high embarrassment for me. Quite often, the cops who came into my home almost dismissed me with the assumption that I was likely to be a mini-me version of my mum, which I most certainly am not.
I know the training they get these days is all touchy-feely and geared towards ensuring they make the right noises in any given social situation, but if the cop who actually turns up to your particular crisis is judgemental by nature, then no amount of training will cover it up.
Trust me, I know. I’ve had loads of them trotting through my home since I was a little kid. I’ve seen enough police officers to be able to write a thesis on the various types.
Anyway, my point is, Dale Webb never judged. He’d first appeared in my world when I was about thirteen. Dale had joined the Police at just eighteen, and he’d looked it then. God knows how he’d managed to get older people to behave themselves when he’d looked like a giant schoolboy, but somehow he had.
Dale was pretty calm and patient and it seemed to work. My mum has called him some truly appalling names over the years, names which I cannot possibly repeat, yet he never seemed to take it to heart. Every time he met my mum, it was like the first time. Dale never held her past behaviour against her. Amazing, really, because I certainly do.
The very first time I met PC Dale Webb was when my mum had called the police to tell them that I was trying to kill her. Let me just tell you that she was drunk. I wasn’t actually trying to kill her; I’m not that sort of a daughter. I was simply trying to get on with my homework.
I’d hidden away upstairs in my room, throwing across the bolt which I had fixed on myself to keep her out, and had put cotton wool in my ears to drown out the noise of her shrieks. I had always been a keen student, and I always made sure my homework was done properly and in on time.
My mum never really got that. It was weird, but my conscientiousness seemed to make her angry for some reason. She just couldn’t understand where I was coming from with that one.
Anyway, she had demanded that I go down to the off-licence and get her some more vodka. Oh yes, at just thirteen years old they served me booze alright. For most of my childhood, I hadn’t even realised that selling alcohol to a child was illegal. Anyway, I had refused to go out and get the vodka because I had homework to do.
By the time I’d reached thirteen, there wasn’t a great deal else left for my mum to do to me, so I had grown pretty used to saying no to her. Anyway, on this particular occasion, when she found she couldn’t distract me or get into my room, she resorted to calling the police and telling them that I was trying to kill her, complete with death screams and desperate cries for help.
I’d heard the blues and twos from a mil
e away, and knew that they were coming to our house. So much for getting my homework done. Anyway, I waited in my room until there came a most polite and gentle knock at the door.
“Hello? I’m looking for Josie. It’s alright, love, I’m a police officer.” And there was me thinking it was Santa come to drop my presents off early.
I un-bolted and opened the door without speaking. I was a bit taken aback to see him standing there, since he didn’t seem to be so much older than me. Well, you know, five or six years, but not like some of the crusty old fossils that the Grantstone Constabulary routinely sent round to our house.
“Can I come in and speak to you for a minute?” He was one of those big police officers, you know, the sort that was always going to be a police officer purely because the giant uniform would fit him perfectly.
PC Dale Webb was kind of rugby player shaped and, to my thirteen-year-old self, epitomised all that a young man should be. For one thing, he was sober, for another, he was in gainful employment. In my world, two minor miracles.
“Yeah, come in.” I’d gone back to sit down at my tiny desk, purely because I didn’t know what else to do. Dale Webb did what every other police officer before him had done when they came into my room. He looked about him, and let his mouth gape open in wonder. He had seen the rest of the house, and the terrible disarray that was to be found there. So, when he had walked into my room, a tiny oasis of order and respectability, he’d been unable to contain his surprise.
“So, getting on with your homework then?” Dale had said, clearly casting about for a way to open the conversation.
“Yes, I know, shocker, right? Chav kid has aspirations.” I laughed without any real humour, and waited for him to turn against me for being snotty.
“I’m sorry, I suppose you’ve seen and heard it all before, haven’t you? Well, I just want you to know that I’m not like that. I’m not amazed that you would have aspirations, I’m just amazed that you are able to follow them when your mum is behaving so badly.” Dale Webb had parked himself on the edge of my tiny single bed.
He was a big guy, and I was really hoping that he wouldn’t wiggle about much, because the bed no longer had legs at the bottom end, and was propped up on books and stuff. Even I had to get in with a certain degree of caution, and remember not to turn over with too much gusto in the middle of the night. If one of the makeshift legs went down, I kind of slid down the bed slowly, as if I was on a sinking ship.
“Oh, right. Ok, I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“Look, you have nothing to be sorry for. Your mum is behaving like a child and you are behaving like an adult. That’s got to be so stressful. I get that you’re annoyed, and I don’t blame you. Anyway, since you’re the adult in this house, I’m going to ask you what is that you want to happen next. Now we can take your mum in for a Breach of the Peace, or something along those lines, but that means either Social Services for the night, or an appropriate adult for you to stay with. I can see how that would be a nightmare for you if you’re trying to get your homework done, but I also can see that your mum would be a nightmare too if we leave her here. Just tell me what it is you want us to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Just leave her downstairs. I’ll put these back in.” I lifted my two pieces of cotton wool, and Dale began to laugh. “I’ll just lock myself back in here, and I can get on with my homework just fine. I’m used to it really. She’ll either go out and get her own damn vodka, or she’ll whine until she falls asleep. Now that she’s had her little bit of revenge on me, she’ll more or less forget I’m here.”
“Cool, we’ll do that for you. But call us if you need us, ok.” Dale Webb began to rise, and the bed shifted in a way which made me wince. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice. “By the way, what are you studying?”
“Oh, it’s just my maths homework.”
“You like it?” He was smiling, clearly expecting me to grimace or say no.
“Yeah! God, I love maths. I’m going to go to university one day.” I knew my exclamation had come out in a most dreadful, dorky way, and my cheeks went from peaky-pale to beetroot-blush instantly.
“Good for you, Josie. Don’t let anything take you off your path, you understand?” I understood perfectly.
He wasn’t patronising me at all. Dale Webb had meant every word of what he just said and, for reasons I could not understand at the time, it had kind of brought tears to my eyes.
“So, I’m guessing you know we’re here about Hannah Davenport?” Dale took a seat at the table next to me.
I’d totally drifted off, but I was glad I had. My little hop and skip down memory lane had reminded me that PC Dale Webb was one of the good guys, and it dragged my hostile demeanour back into check.
“I know, Dale. Me and Liam were just talking about it, wondering if she might have gone out with Fliss or Amelia.”
“Oh, that’s …. Felicity Hardcastle and Amelia Ledbetter, is it?” Dale was looking through his notebook, reading off the names.
“I suppose so. They’ve never introduced themselves to me exactly, so I never got surnames. They’re Hannah’s best mates, I suppose.”
“Yep, they’re the ones. No, they haven’t seen her either. Liam?” Dale turned to look at Liam, who now seemed grateful for the distraction of the Euro-Shopper crisps he was picking out of the bag. “When did you last see her?” From any other police officer, it would have sounded like the preamble to a lifetime in prison.
However, as always, Dale Webb spoke in a way that didn’t accuse.
Liam went through the same as he’d told me. It wasn’t until I heard him explaining, we were going out, but then she had a thing, and I thought it was a surprise thing for me, and so we didn’t go out and I haven’t seen her since…. that I realised how confusing Liam must appear to the uninitiated.
Whilst Dale Webb knew Liam well and wasn’t at all fazed by his explanation, the other police officer he had come in with might well be. There was an air about this police officer; she had the kind of frame and bearing that made you feel that you wouldn’t argue with her on a dark night in a deserted alley.
However, there was also something in her face which struck me as being very sensible. Almost as if she was the kind of woman who would give a person a fair hearing before pummelling them into non-existence.
“As Liam told it to me, they had been due to go out, either to the cinema or for a pizza. Hannah called and said she couldn’t make it, because she had something to pick up, which was a surprise. Liam was all smiles, because he thought that this surprise might be something for him. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to put words in his mouth, I’m just kind of translating Liam-speak.” I smiled at the policewoman, all the while hoping that she wouldn’t pick me up in one paw and bite my head off like I was just a tiny lollipop. Muscles I hadn’t even realised I’d been tensing all relaxed at the same time when the policewoman laughed heartily.
“It’s alright, love, I’ve got a teenage boy myself. You never get a story in a straight line from him either. It’s the testosterone.” She reached out and softly patted my shoulder. Immediately I warmed to this woman. In that moment, if I’d been given the choice of having any mum in the whole wide world, she would have been it.
I was sure she’d be the type of mum who would look after me like a lioness with her cub. She’d always make sure I had enough to eat, and she would mutilate anyone who messed with me. That’s what mums were supposed to be like. I smiled back at her, like some sort of goofy idiot.
“I’m Josie Cloverfield, by the way.” I held out a hand to her.
I could feel Liam’s eyes on me, and hoped that his mouth wasn’t hanging open. At least I stopped myself from saying please will you be my mum?
However, I thought it might be prudent to introduce myself since, sooner or later, she was bound to end up at my house. Best get the introductions out of the way now.
“I’m PC Elizabeth Butler, but you can call me Betty.” I had never, ever met a policewoman called
Betty before.
“And Betty when you call me, you can call me Al.” Dale sang from the old Paul Simon song.
Betty rolled her eyes, and smiled at me with the most amazingly straight teeth I’d ever seen in my life. Seriously, they were the sort of teeth that you saw in toothpaste commercials.
“Funny, isn’t he?” She laughed. “Well, at least he thinks he is.” Betty shrugged, and I wanted to curl up in her lap and go to sleep until it was time for her to give me my tea. “So, you don’t know where she was going to get this thing, Liam?” Betty turned back to Liam.
“No, I didn’t even ask actually. Anyway, she said it was, like, a surprise or something. I suppose it might not even have been for me.” Liam was chewing his bottom lip, thinking hard. “I suppose I just kind of assumed it was.”
“And she didn’t say if she was meeting a person to collect the thing, or going to a shop for it?” I was in quiet amazement; Betty really did speak Liam.
“No, she didn’t. I didn’t really ask enough questions, but I hadn’t realised at the time that she’d be going missing. Not a lot of help, am I?” Liam looked down at the little pile of polystyrene pickings that he’d left on the table.
He seemed to sag a little, and I realised that he was suddenly thinking that this was very real. If Fliss and Amelia had no idea, and Liam had no idea, and Hannah’s family had no idea, then where the hell was she? Suddenly, the theme tune to the News at Ten began to march a beat through my head, and I felt like the biggest git on the planet.
“Not at all, you’ve been very helpful Liam. At least we know where she wasn’t, and that all goes towards helping to find out where she is.” Dale gave Liam’s shoulder a manly punch, and followed it up with a smile of encouragement.
“Yeah, Dale is right. Look, don’t go thinking all sorts of terrible things right now. Hannah could have gone off of her own accord. After all, she’s a grown woman.” Betty began, and it felt really strange to hear someone of my own age been described as a woman. I mean, I know that, strictly speaking, it’s true, but somehow, I still felt like a little kid. “Was anything getting to her just lately?” Betty changed tack altogether, and I sat up with interest. Betty was a proper copper.
The Girlfriend: A Josie Cloverfield Detective Novel Page 2
