The Girlfriend: A Josie Cloverfield Detective Novel

by Jack Carteret

  It didn’t take a lot of thinking about; I simply darted in through the nearest door and walked the through the university corridors which effectively corralled the outdoor Quad in a neat square.

  After two complete circuits, I finally found myself alone in the east corridor. Although the corridors were lined with windows, I was able to tuck myself behind one of the great stone mullions, surveillance style.

  Not that Fliss would have been looking at the windows. A solo journalist and a photographer had arrived on the scene and Fliss was suddenly busy. She approached them with a fixed smile and, judging by the way she kept surreptitiously looking off into the distance behind the pair, I rather thought that she was expecting more than just an appearance by the Grantstone Echo, Visitor, or Herald; whichever they were from.

  Her fixed smile notwithstanding, Fliss had really gone to a lot of trouble with her appearance. Even on a bad day, she dressed like an off-duty model. However, at the vigil, Fliss had applied even more make-up than ever. I could clearly make out her eyelashes from several yards away.

  They were so heavily caked that any kind of rapid blinking would cause the sort of backdraft that would take the rather skinny photographer right off her pins.

  My eye was suddenly drawn to the sight of Amelia struggling across the Quad with a heavy-looking bin bag.

  She looked over at Fliss with a where shall I put this? shrug, only to be treated to vigorous bout of pointing which aimed her in the direction of a massive photo of Hannah on a tripod stand. Amelia seemed to take Fliss’ crap in her stride, and dutifully set off across the lawn with her heavy burden.

  Had I been in her shoes, I would probably have tipped the contents out onto the grass and used the empty bag to suffocate Fliss with.

  I watched as Amelia began to take an inordinate amount of chunky cream coloured candles out of the bag. So many, in fact, that it was a true wonder that the bag had not split long before she’d had a chance to set it down. She set them all around the base of the tripod and began to light them. I could not help but feel relieved for Amelia that it was a pretty still evening and her candle-lighting was not in vain.

  I stared at the photograph of Hannah. It was a head and shoulders shot of a smiling and extremely pretty woman in her late teens, with glossy brown wavy hair and flawless skin. The press would love it.

  Still, as I continued to stare, I wondered where that teenager was now, and if she would ever smile again. Once more I was knocked sideways by a sudden belt of emotion and had to blink hard for a moment or two.

  If I’m honest, it wasn’t Hannah as such whom I was getting emotional about; it was the girl in the photo who was young and carefree and who should have been at home studying, or out eating pizza with her bad-boy goon of a boyfriend. It seemed suddenly sickening that a human could be reduced to a giant photo and more candles than you see in a church. Nobody should be the centre-piece of a candlelight vigil, even if that someone was no more my cup of tea than I was hers.

  Fortunately, the vigil attendees began to arrive in dribs and drabs before I could be swept away any further by my truly un-helpful bout of melancholia. I instantly spotted the girls I’d seen earlier with Fliss, who seemed to constitute her new set. They smiled broadly as they approached Fliss, and seemed to be rather inappropriately congratulating her on her organisation of the event. The journo and photographer had wandered away, seemingly looking for some good shots, and Fliss greeted her new besties with a certain amount of self-satisfied gusto.

  Finally, the photographer called Fliss, who bounded over to her like an excited puppy. As I watched Fliss pose for a photograph at the side of the big picture of Hannah, I felt my stomach churn with distaste.

  Fliss, who had been smiling and almost twinkling with excitement, was suddenly transformed into the sad and forlorn beauty whose best friend had disappeared leaving her broken hearted. I wanted to climb out of the window, fly across the lawn, and rugby-tackle the heartless little beast to the ground.

  Whilst I’d had the very same suspicions as Rich Richard about Fliss’ motives for the vigil, to actually see the evidence of it with my own eyes left a very bad taste in my mouth. In that moment, I felt rather sorry for Hannah.

  Being missing without a trace aside, I wondered how Hannah would have felt to see her best friend totally capitalising on whatever it was the poor woman might be going through at that very moment.

  My stomach tightened at the thought and I knew I would have to get a grip. Sadness, anger, revulsion, guilt; these emotions were going to have to be swallowed down for the time being.

  There simply wasn’t room for them all; they would have to be addressed and dealt with a later time. I needed to start looking on the scene before me with the eyes of a detective, and not with the eyes of a girl who could not keep her thoughts and feelings in check.

  As the vigil began to get underway, I decided that it was probably best if I just stayed where I was and continued as a spy, rather than an attendee.

  Since all the action was happening outside, the Quad corridors were totally deserted, and I was able to move about them to get good views of the whole proceedings.

  I recognised lots of the students on the Quad as being people to whom Liam either nodded, or spoke to outright; mainly other art students doing the same classes as him. No doubt many of them either knew Hannah, or knew her by sight, and felt that there was something to be achieved in attending.

  In truth, most of them looked truly concerned, and in some cases, disturbed by it all. Maybe attending a vigil such as this one was the only course of action available. Maybe it was the only thing which made the gathered students feel as if they were doing something to help.

  People seemed to be wandering past Hannah’s giant likeness, almost procession-like. Most of Amelia’s candles were still burning, although the breeze had obviously picked up a little and a handful were either guttering, or extinguished completely.

  Suddenly, the art lecturer, Matty Jameson, was crouched down at the foot of Hannah’s photo. It startled me a little, since I hadn’t even seen him approach, and with his long coat and scarf, and the general appearance of being a total parody-come-throwback, he was not really an easy man to miss.

  Matty was fumbling about in the pocket of his long, shabby coat, and I wondered what an earth he was doing. I squinted hard, as if this would somehow magnify my target.

  He had evidently pulled a lighter from his pocket, and was attempting to re-light the candles which had gone out.

  Several of his students looked on sadly, and even the photographer was touched enough to hurry over and snap a few shots of him. For a few terrible moments, I classed him right alongside Fliss, assuming that his actions were nothing more than attention seeking mixed with a dreadful, cheesy kind of pathos.

  I was actually beginning to shake my head and tut in annoyance before something in his manner made me stop. As he rose to stand and look at Hannah’s picture, his shoulders seemed to hunch slightly.

  It wasn’t a big shift in his stance, and clearly wasn’t contrived, or else it would have been so much bigger. It was just a slight rounding forward, almost as if he had sagged just a little.

  I stopped tutting and felt a little awkward, kind of in the way you do when you make a really stupid comment in public. I felt as if I’d misjudged what I was seeing, and that Matty Jameson’s actions were far from the act I had judged them to be.

  Just as I was mentally castigating myself for letting judgement get in the way once more, I had the creeping feeling that I was not alone. It was the same inexplicable feeling I’d had in the library which had caused me to think a simple movement had been somehow significant.

  The sudden feeling of fear made my scalp tingle and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I was hoping that I was just being overly sensitive and hyper-vigilant. After all, I hadn’t heard footsteps approaching.

  “You total nosey parker!” I squealed like a pig and spun around so fast I almost fell over.
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br />   “God Almighty!” I said, clutching my chest and gasping for breath.

  “No, it’s just me.” PC Dale Webb grinned like a fool, completely loving the fact that he had almost hastened my departure from this world.

  “What did you do that for, you clown?”

  You know when you’ve had a shock and you kind of have that angry stage? Well, that’s just about where I was at that moment. Not only could Dale Webb see it, but he was thoroughly enjoying it.

  “Did I startle you?” His shoulders were bobbing in that I’m about to burst out laughing way.

  “No. I’m pretty much squealing for kicks these days.” I said, sarcastically. “Anyway, what are you doing here and why the hell are you creeping about frightening innocent members of the public out of their wits?”

  “Same as you, I suppose. I wanted to see who turned up at the vigil without actually attending the vigil.” Dale looked really different in his own clothes; by which I mean he was not in uniform.

  He looked more like someone who might hang out with me and Liam. Well, a bit older, I guess, but he would more or less pass in our demographic.

  I’ve seen off duty officers in the past and, I’m going to unapologetically generalise here, they mostly look a bit dorky and uncomfortable out of uniform. Something about the cop outfit makes them look a bit cool and riddled with authority, yet something about the weirdly-cut jeans teamed with the too-clean trainers or lace-up shoes they wear in the real world makes them look like they are going to have tea with their great Aunt Augusta.

  You see, so many of the police officers who roam the Moss Park Estate looking for miscreants are totally recognisable to me; after all, most of them have been in my house at one time or another. So, when I see one of them out there in his or her natural habitat, say out shopping or what-not, I am always kind of floored by how odd they look.

  Anyway, the point I am about to make is that PC Dale Webb was by no means a fashion disaster away from the combat trousers and body armour. He was pretty cool, it has to be said. Not quite Liam’s grungy-cool, or Rich Richard’s fancy-pants cool, but maybe somewhere between the two.

  Determining to stop giving the once-over to the cop who’d seen way too much of my embarrassing home life, I grinned and shook my head, finally letting the shock-anger subside.

  “I did want to attend.” I began with a bare-faced lie. “But I didn’t think I’d be welcome.” And followed it up with a sympathy fish.

  “Yeah, right.” Dale laughed and kind of threw his head back. It was odd because it wasn’t something I saw too often. I suppose when he was all policed up to the eyeballs, unguarded laughter was not exactly encouraged.

  Anyway, for the first time I noticed that he had some pretty nifty straight teeth. Not PC Betty Butler teeth, all gleaming and stuff, but nice nonetheless. Yep, he definitely looked more like one of us when he laughed.

  “It’s all true, Dale.” I spread my arms wide in some sort of comical supplication. “And, anyway, why don’t you want to go out there and mingle?”

  “I was going to, until I saw that Felicity Hardcastle woman prancing about. I dunno, it made me feel a bit….well….a bit…”

  “Like throwing up?” I supplied, helpfully.

  “Uncomfortable was the word I was searching for.”

  “Same diff, old bean.” I sniffed, and turned to look back out of the window.

  Once again, my eyes were drawn to Matty Jameson. He was standing alone and looking down at the flyer he was holding. As I scanned the Quad I could see Fliss handing them round with an air of importance.

  “There she goes again, huh?” Dale was suddenly at my side.

  “She sure does.” My beak was so close to the window that my breath fogged up the cold glass.

  I stepped back a little and rubbed the condensation away with the back of my hand and carried on peering, much to Dale’s amusement. “Poor Hannah.” I said, hearing the sadness in my voice and hoping that I wasn’t coming off as pathos-ridden as Fliss.

  “I know. I suppose she never realised how little her pal thought of her. Maybe that’s a good thing.” Dale was pretty perceptive.

  I don’t know why I was so surprised that he’d picked up on my meaning without me saying a word. After all, he’d had years of doing just that, and never once been found lacking.

  “Maybe.” I said, a bit day-dreamy.

  I was looking at Matty Jameson again; for some reason, my eyes were drawn his way once more, without any real reason. Perhaps it was the feeling of sadness that I got from him, I don’t know. He just seemed a little more forlorn than you would expect him to be. I mean, he was Hannah’s art lecturer; I get that.

  But he would have taught her maybe once a week over the four months since we had started our first semester, so it was unlikely he knew her well enough to be personally affected by her disappearance.

  I chewed at my bottom lip in a truly thoughtful way as I wondered if it was me just placing sanctions on what people should or shouldn’t do, say or feel. Perhaps he was just a great lecturer who hadn’t just wandered into the profession as a means of making a living out of an arts degree, but was following a vocation and truly had the best interests of his students at heart. Who knew? Well, not me, and that was a fact. If I was going to get anywhere with my own detective lark, I would have to try to understand other humans a lot better than I did. I was making comparisons that probably didn’t work in the real world.

  I was thinking that I probably knew Hannah a lot better than Matty Jameson, having spent so many precious break-times in her company, and I wasn’t wandering around like I’d lost someone close the way he was.

  Even though I didn’t care for Hannah’s personality, I did care about what had happened to her. And yet, I was sure that I didn’t feel what Matty Jameson was feeling, if his demeanour was to be trusted.

  “Who’s the guy in the big coat and the silly scarf?” Dale’s interruption mercifully ripped me right out of the confusing vortex of human psychology.

  “He’s Matty Jameson, one of the lecturers here.”

  “Arty stuff?”

  “Yeah.” I said with a laugh. “How’d you guess?”

  “Just call it a hunch. I’m a copper, after all.” We both had a little chuckle at that one. Nothing irreverent; just a breaking up of the strangeness of it all.

  “Are any of the other lecturer’s out there?” He asked, scanning the crowd.

  “Yeah, there’s quite a few.” I spent several seconds happily pointing them out.

  “I don’t know if it’s the outfit, but that Jamie Matheson stands out a bit.”

  “Jamie Matheson?” I laughed at Dale’s near-spoonerism. “It’s Matty Jameson.” Something about the accidental transposition was prodding at my left cerebrum. “Great listening skills, Dale.”

  “I could have sworn it started with a J.” Dale chuckled good humouredly at his mistake.

  “Nope, it starts with an……M.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re too sure yourself, Brain of Britain.” As Dale amused himself with a bit of low-level sarcasm, I tried my hardest to act casual and not yell A-ha! like some sort of bizarre female Columbo.

  Matty Jameson. M.J. That’s what Rich Richard had thought earlier when I had asked him if he’d ever met someone called Emjay. I don’t know anyone by those initials. That’s what he had said.

  Still, Hannah’s diary clearly stated Emjay as her, well, special friend, right? Some smarty-pants thought I’d had in the library about Bletchley code-breakers was coming back to me. I’d thought that Hannah’s diary was kind of code-like in parts, like it was written in a way that would take some figuring out to someone else reading it. Someone like me, for instance.

  Surely, I was reaching a bit with this, but Emjay never really did sound like a name, foreign or otherwise.

  Suddenly I wanted PC Dale Webb to clear off so that I could make my next move, whatever that was.

  “What time is this going on ‘till?” Dale cut in, ob
viously not noticing the sudden mental activity that was warming my brain up.

  “I think it said nine on Facebook.” I said, somewhat distractedly.

  “Facebook?”

  “Yeah, Fliss has set up a page for Hannah. It’s got lots of photos and stuff and appeals for information; you know the sort of thing.”

  “Oh, right. What’s the page called? It might be an idea if the Police can keep an eye on it, just in case anything of interest or use gets posted to it.” Dale was suddenly a police officer again.

  “Hannah Come Home.” I said, surprised that it still had the capacity to make me wince.

  “Right.” Dale said. He was all business, but I was gratified to see that he winced a little bit too.

  Maybe I wasn’t such a cynical swine after all, or if I was, I wasn’t the only one.

  Dale seemed as if he was getting restless; maybe he wanted to go off and scour the new Facebook page for any responses to Fliss’ heartfelt appeal for information. I didn’t blame him at all, I’d probably be doing something similar myself later.

  “I’m going to get moving, Josie.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I said with a smile. “Don’t go creeping up on anyone though.”

  “I’ll take that on board.” Dale winked as he turned to saunter away down the corridor. “Take care, Josie.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  So, there I was, totally police-free and with a genuine hunch to follow up on. I looked out across the Quad once more and, seeing Matty Jameson still out there, I wondered if I really had the stones to canter away to his office and have a poke around.

  Chapter Eight

  Since I was still seemingly alone in the building, I sprinted off in the direction of the Art Faculty. It was right on the other side of the campus and, by the time I arrived, I was red faced, panting, and totally sweaty.

  I didn’t know where Matty Jameson’s office was exactly, so I had to do a fair bit of roaming around. Ten minutes’ worth of roaming around, as it happens, before I finally turned down a long, narrow corridor and happened upon a door with the art lecturer’s name on it. Success.