by Jane Casey
I followed Valerie down a narrow corridor into an overheated and untidy office and sat in the chair she told me to use, beside a desk that was covered in files. The chair was a utilitarian number with rough orange fabric on the seat. It had a greyish tinge from years of use, and at some stage someone had picked a hole in the seat cover. Little crumbs of yellow foam spilled out through the frayed fabric and attached themselves to my running shorts. I brushed at them half-heartedly, then gave up.
As ordered, Valerie produced a cup of tea, strong and dark, in a mug with Fun Run ’03 on the side, then bustled off, leaving me to contemplate the posters that someone had stuck up around the little office. Florence’s skyline from the Belvedere, overlooking the city. A stagnant green canal lined with gorgeously decaying buildings – Venezia written in hysterical italics across the bottom. Someone liked Italy, but not enough to stick the Venice poster up properly. One corner curled upwards where the Blu-tac had lost its stick, and it had been by no means straight to begin with.
There was only a mouthful or two of tea left in my mug when the door swung open and DS Blake strode in.
‘Sorry for the wait. We had a few things to finish up at the scene.’
He sounded abrupt, distracted. I could tell that his mind was moving at a million miles an hour and felt even more lethargic in comparison. He leaned on a radiator behind the desk, gazing into the middle distance, and didn’t say anything else. After a minute or two, I felt that he had forgotten I was there.
The door banged again as Vickers came in, carrying a cardboard folder. He threw himself into the chair opposite me and leaned on the desk for a second, one hand to his head. I could practically see the effort that was going into gathering his strength.
‘So, they tell me that in addition to finding the body, you know our victim,’ Vickers said at last, pinching the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed.
‘Er, yes. Not well. I mean, I teach her.’ All that time to think, to compose myself, and there I was, getting flustered by the first question. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as unobtrusively as possible. My heart was racing. Ridiculous. ‘I’m her English teacher. I see – saw – her four times a week.’
‘And that’s at the posh girls’ school on the hill, is it, just off the Kingston road? Edgeworth School? Costs a fair bit, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose it does.’
Vickers was looking at a piece of paper from the file. ‘The family home isn’t in a particularly posh area. Morley Drive.’
My eyebrows shot up. ‘My house is just a couple of streets away from there. I had no idea she lived so close to me.’
‘So would it surprise you that they sent Jenny to such an expensive school?’
‘I got the impression that the Shepherds were happy to spend their money on school fees. They wanted what was best for Jenny. They pushed her to achieve. She was a bright girl. She could have done anything with her life.’ I blinked rapidly, annoyed by the tears that were thickening my voice. While I waited for Vickers to think up another question, I concentrated on picking at the chair innards. It gave me something to do. I now saw how the hole had developed. If Vickers minded me making it worse, he didn’t say anything about it.
‘Did you know she was missing?’
‘Michael Shepherd came to the school this morning to see if he could find out anything from Jenny’s classmates,’ I explained. ‘He didn’t think the police –’
‘– were taking him seriously,’ Vickers finished off as I ground to a halt. He flapped a hand in my direction as if to reassure me that he didn’t mind. ‘Did he find out anything useful?’
‘He was just … desperate. I think he’d have tried anything to find his daughter.’ I looked up at Vickers, almost afraid to ask. ‘Do they know yet? The Shepherds?’
‘Not yet. Soon.’ He looked even more exhausted at the thought. ‘Andy and I are going to tell them ourselves.’
‘It’s hard on you,’ I offered.
‘Part of the job.’ But Vickers didn’t sound as if it was routine, and Blake was frowning at his feet when I looked at him.
Vickers flicked open the file and closed it again. ‘So you didn’t have a relationship beyond teacher and student, you said. Nothing personal there. You weren’t really in touch with her outside of class.’
I shook my head. ‘I mean, I kept an eye on her. That’s part of my job, to see if the girls are happy, if they’re dealing with any problems. She seemed perfectly OK.’
‘No hint of trouble?’ Blake asked. ‘Nothing that gave you cause for concern? Drugs, boyfriends, bad behaviour in class, truancy – anything like that?’
‘Absolutely not. She was completely normal. Look, don’t try and make Jenny into something she wasn’t. She was a twelve-year-old girl. A child. She was … she was innocent.’
‘You reckon?’ Blake folded his arms, cynicism in every line of his body.
I glared at him. ‘Yes. There’s no scandal there, OK? You’re barking up the wrong tree.’ I turned to Vickers. ‘Look, shouldn’t you be out looking for whoever did this? Checking CCTV or what the local paedophiles have been up to? There’s a child killer out there, and I don’t see what Jenny’s attendance record has to do with it. It was probably a stranger – some creep in a car who offered her a lift or something.’
Before Vickers could speak, Blake answered, his tone sarcastic. ‘Thanks for the advice, Miss Finch. We do have officers following up a number of lines of enquiry. But it might surprise you to know that, statistically, most murders are committed by people who know their victims. In fact, very often the murderers are family members.’
He didn’t mean any harm. He didn’t mean to sound condescending. He didn’t know it was absolutely the wrong thing to say to me.
‘As if the Shepherds don’t have enough to worry about, now you’re suggesting they’re suspects? I hope you’ve got a better opening line than “statistically speaking, you probably did it”, or I doubt you’ll find it easy to gain their trust.’
‘Well, actually—’ Blake began, then broke off as Vickers reached out and patted his sleeve.
‘Leave it now, Andy,’ he murmured. Then he smiled at me. ‘We have to consider all the angles, Miss Finch, even the ones that nice people like you don’t like to think about. That’s what they pay us for.’
‘They pay you to lock criminals up,’ I snapped, still rattled. ‘And since I am not a criminal, maybe you could let me go home.’
‘Of course,’ Vickers said, and he hit Blake with a pale-blue stare. ‘Take Miss Finch home, Andy. You can meet me at the Shepherds’ house. Just wait outside until I get there.’
‘There’s no need,’ I said hastily, jumping up. That earned me a cold stare from the stonewashed blue eyes. Vickers kept it well hidden, but he had a serious edge under the rumpled grey exterior.
‘You won’t miss much at the conference, Andy,’ he said mildly. ‘You know what I’m thinking anyway.’
Blake hooked his car keys out of his pocket and looked at me without enthusiasm. ‘Ready to go?’
I headed for the door, not bothering to reply.
‘Miss Finch?’ came from behind me. Vickers. The senior policeman was leaning across his desk, forehead crinkling with sincerity. ‘Miss Finch, I just want to reassure you before you go that violent crime is very rare. Most people never come into contact with it at all. Please, don’t feel threatened by your experiences today. It really doesn’t mean that you aren’t safe.’
I felt he had delivered this little speech more than a few times before. I smiled a silent thank you. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was all too familiar with violent crime already, one way or another.
Blake’s car was a silver-grey Ford Focus that was parked at the far end of the police station car park. I collapsed into the passenger seat. The dashboard clock read 9.34 and I blinked at it, exhausted. I felt like it was the middle of the night.
The detective was digging around in the boot. While he couldn�
��t see me, I had a good look at my surroundings. The car was exceptionally tidy, with none of the rubbish that accumulated in mine – no papers, no empty water bottles, no shopping bags or parking dockets. The inside was as clean as if it had just been valeted. Somewhat guiltily, I checked the mat at my feet to discover that the muddy soles of my trainers had left two dark imprints on the previously spotless pile. I put my feet down carefully, fitting them into the outlines I had already made. No point in making things worse. Besides, that way the mud would be completely invisible until I got out of the car.
There were only two clues to the life of the car’s owner: the radio handset that lay on the dashboard and a laminated card that read ‘Police Vehicle’ in the storage space beside the handbrake. There was nothing personal at all. It didn’t take an enormous leap of intuition to work out that DS Blake lived for his job.
I would have known that he was annoyed about having to drive me home even if he hadn’t muttered something to me and ducked back into Vickers’ office just after we’d left it. I’d heard ‘Sir, couldn’t Valerie—’ before the door closed. I could fill in the rest of the sentence for myself. The answer had evidently been no; he was stuck with me, and I with him, for the duration of my journey home. And if I was uncomfortable about it and he was angry, that was nothing to the reaction I’d seen on the face of a pretty uniformed officer we’d passed on the way to the car park. Blake received a winning smile from her; I’d walked past a wall of disapproval mixed with envy. More than ever, I had the impression that what Blake did and who he was with was big news in that particular police station.
At last he sat into the driver’s seat.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ I asked diffidently.
‘Yep.’
Oh great. This was going to be fun.
‘Look, I’m really sorry you’re having to do this. I did try to tell DCI Vickers—’
Blake cut me off. ‘Don’t worry. I was there, remember? What the boss wants, the boss gets. And I do know the Wilmington Estate fairly well; I think I can find it OK.’
Not exactly gracious, but then what did I expect? I folded my arms across my chest. It was ridiculous, I told myself, to feel like crying because someone I didn’t know – someone whose opinion I had no reason to value – had snapped at me.
Blake slammed the car into reverse and tore out of the parking space, revving the engine impatiently at the exit from the car park while he waited for a gap in the traffic. As he changed gear, his elbow brushed against my sleeve. I shifted a little, moving away from him. He glanced at me absent-mindedly, then looked again.
‘Are you OK?’
Instead of answering, I sniffled. He looked appalled.
‘God – I didn’t mean – look, don’t get upset …’
I tried to pull myself together. ‘It’s not your fault. Probably just post-traumatic stress or something. It’s just been a really long, bad day. I don’t know how you manage – dealing with stuff like this all the time.’
‘It’s not all the time. This sort of case doesn’t come along that often. I’m nine years in and this is one of the worst I’ve had to work on.’ He shot a look at me. ‘But this is my job, remember? Even though it’s upsetting that Jennifer Shepherd’s dead, I have to be unemotional about it, as far as that’s possible. I’m paid to consider the evidence, and the best way to do that is to keep a clear head.’
I sighed. ‘I couldn’t do your job.’
‘Well, I couldn’t do yours. I can’t think of anything worse than standing in front of a classroom of kids, trying to keep them in line.’
‘Oh, I feel like that a lot of the time, believe me.’ Like every day.
‘So why did you decide to become a teacher?’
I blinked at him, startled. Because I’m an idiot and I didn’t know how hard it was going to be. Because it seemed like the best option at the time and I hadn’t realised I was temperamentally unsuited to it. Because I hadn’t realised how cruel and unforgiving teenagers could be to people who were supposedly in positions of authority, even if they completely lacked the ability to impose discipline, let alone teach. The last two years had been hell on earth.
Blake was still waiting for a reply. ‘Oh … it was just something to do, really. I liked English and I studied it at university. Then, well, some of my friends went into teaching, and I just did the same.’ I laughed, though it sounded brittle and forced to my ear. ‘It’s OK, you know. You get long holidays.’
He looked sceptical. ‘That can’t be the only reason you like it. There must be more to it than that. You really care about your students – I could see that from the way you reacted when we talked about Jenny.’
The truth was that I had only really started to care about her once she had gone missing. I hadn’t cared when she was alive – not enough to know that she lived around the corner from my house. I didn’t answer him; I just sat and watched the road paying out like an endless ribbon in the wing mirror. I couldn’t say that I loved my job. I didn’t even like it. I couldn’t stand to do it for ever, going over the same old poems and plays, the lines worn smooth by constant repetition. I didn’t want to spend a lifetime standing at the blackboard, teasing out the answers I wanted from sullen teenagers, watching them grow up and move on while I stayed in the same place, marking time.
The car pulled in to the kerb and stopped. Blake looked at me. ‘Curzon Close. Which house?’
He had stopped near the entrance to the cul-de-sac, engine running.
‘This is fine,’ I said hurriedly, preparing to get out of the car. In fact, it was perfect. There was a high hedge beside us that would shield me from any curtain twitchers.
‘I might as well drive you to the door.’
‘No, really.’ I scrabbled for the door handle.
‘Look, there’s no rush. The boss won’t be finished with his conference for a while. Now, which number is your house?’
‘Fourteen, but please, don’t go any further. It’s not far; I can walk. I just don’t want – I don’t want anyone to see me being dropped off by you.’
He shrugged, then turned the engine off, leaving the keys dangling in the ignition. ‘Up to you. What is it – jealous boyfriend?’
If only. ‘It’s just that my mum might hear the car. I live with her, and she – well, she doesn’t like the police very much, and I don’t want to upset her. And the whole thing with finding Jenny this evening – I just don’t want to talk about it any more. I don’t want to have to explain where I’ve been. So if I can just go back on my own and let myself in quietly, she’ll never know anything about it.’
I risked a look in his direction to see if he understood. He was frowning. ‘You live with your mother?’
Thanks for listening. ‘Yes,’ I said stiffly.
‘How come?’
‘It suits me to.’ He could make of that what he liked. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’ Blake looked surprised, but he did reply. ‘I live on my own. No girlfriend.’
Great. Now he would think I had been fishing. Most women would. There was no denying that he was attractive. In other circumstances, I might even have been glad to know that he was single.
‘I meant, where do you live?’
‘I have a flat in the old printing works by the river.’
‘Very nice,’ I said. The printing works was a recent, impressively swanky development on the way out of town, towards Walton.
‘Yeah, it is. Not that I’m ever there. My dad wasn’t crazy about me becoming a copper, but he helped out with buying the flat.’ He yawned uninhibitedly, showing off white, even teeth. ‘Sorry. Too many late nights.’
‘I should go,’ I said, realising that there was no reason to stay in the car. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘Any time.’ I took that to be an automatic response until he reached out and put a hand on my arm. ‘Seriously. Call me if you need me.’ He held out a business card. ‘Mobile’s on the back.’
I took it, than
ked him again and got out. I pushed the card into the pocket of my jacket, unaccountably embarrassed, and walked towards the house quickly. The cool night air was like iced water on my cheeks. Behind me the lights of Blake’s car flicked on and my shadow stretched in front of me, then wheeled away to the left as he turned in the generous width of the cul-de-sac. I listened as his engine sang out, fading into the distance as he drove away. Flicking the edge of the card with my thumbnail as I walked, I hurried the last few yards to the house and let myself in. The hallway was quiet and dark, with everything just as I had left it. I stood for a second and listened to the silence. It had been a long, strange and stressful evening. It was no wonder that I felt unsettled. But there seemed to be no reason why I should have that jarring feeling, that sense that something was somehow out of place. And why, I wondered, looking around the deserted street before I closed the door, did I still feel like someone was out there, watching me?
1992
Six hours missing
I don’t look at the clock on the mantelpiece, but I know it’s late, long past my bedtime. I should be delighted; I have a long-running campaign to be allowed to stay up later, but I am tired. I’m leaning against the back of the sofa and my feet don’t touch the floor. My legs are sticking out in front of me, my calves squashed flat on the edge of the seat. The material that covers the sofa is fluffy and soft, but it prickles against my skin.
I yawn, then look at my hands lying in my lap, curved around one another, brown against the blue cotton of my skirt. If I look up, I will see my mother pacing back and forth, her sandals making tiny dents in the living-room carpet. The shape to my right is my father, leaning back in an armchair as if he is relaxed. There are black lines of dirt under all of my fingernails. A fresh scratch wavers across the back of my left hand and the skin around it has turned pink. I don’t remember when it happened. It doesn’t hurt at all.
