by Anne Cassidy
‘I know but this is different. I liked Emma. Well, a little bit. I mean I think I could have liked her a bit more.’
‘That’s something coming from you!’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You don’t make friends easily, do you?’
He gave her a sideways look and she felt herself on the edge of a blush. She remembered something that Emma Burke had said to her. You should lighten up. People might get to like you. She winced at the thought of Emma, who was gone. Not just for a while but for ever. She hadn’t been close to her, hadn’t known her at all, but now she would never have the chance to.
Did she care if people liked her? She thought of the awkwardness with Skeggsie. That had been his fault. He had been the rude, offish one. But was that what people at school thought of her? In Mary Linton? That she was offish and rude? She had never exactly been overwhelmed with friends. There was Rachel, of course, but she didn’t want to think about her. Joshua had been her best friend for three years. Now she hoped he would be again. She remembered then something that Skeggsie had said.
‘Hey!’ she said. ‘Skeggsie said that you and I are not really stepbrother and sister!’
‘Legally speaking, we’re not,’ Joshua said.
‘But I always think of us as that. Not brother and sister. I didn’t meet you until I was nine. But I do think of you as my stepbrother.’
‘Maybe it would be common-law stepbrother.’
‘That’s a mouthful.’
‘But most likely the best description.’
She frowned. It wasn’t the answer she had wanted. She’d wanted him to say, I think of you as my stepsister.
‘But we are related.’
‘No, we’re not. Not by blood and not by law.’
‘So what are we then?’
‘Maybe we’re just a different kind of family.’
‘But a family. We are a family of sorts.’
‘I guess so.’
His answer almost satisfied Rose. To be part of Joshua’s family was important to her. She wished he sounded more convinced of it.
‘OK, if we are a family then there’s something I do have to talk to you about,’ he said, pursing his lips.
She knew what was coming and she felt instantly on edge. He began to walk along the bridge towards Tate Modern and she followed a little behind. When he got to the other side he stopped and waited for her.
‘You know my website OLDMURDERS.COM?’
She nodded. She’d known what this was going to be about.
‘I got an email from a woman who worked in the Tuscan Moon. She was there on the night Dad and Kathy had that last meal. She was the waitress. I got it a couple of days ago and didn’t know whether to tell you or not.’
‘She saw Mum and Brendan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why has she got in touch with you? Why didn’t she come forward at the time? Did she see something? What did she …’
Joshua put his hand up to stop Rose talking.
‘She’s Russian. She lives near Moscow. She worked in London for a couple of years in her early twenties and then went back home. She says she was researching her London stuff, you know, looking for old friends, places she’d been to and people she’d met and she put Tuscan Moon into Google and came across my website. She read my stuff and remembered that night five years ago.’
Rose didn’t say anything. Her face was screwed up, trying to work out how to respond to this. She knew about Joshua’s drive to find out what had happened. He’d explained it in his emails and she’d seen the websites herself. She’d also seen how committed he was to it. It wasn’t just some project that he was following, some puzzle to be worked out. This was his dad and he wanted to find him.
Why didn’t she feel the same? Why wasn’t she searching for her mum in the same way?
‘Say something,’ Joshua said.
‘I just think you’re going to end up getting hurt again. Haven’t we both been hurt enough?’
A great lump had formed in her throat. Why wasn’t she bustling about, trying to get to the bottom of it? Why had she accepted the police’s explanation that their parents had almost certainly been the targets of some underworld gang, some assassination plot. When the the officer had explained this to her, sitting on the sofa in Anna’s drawing room, she had nodded and taken in every detail as solid, true facts. She, who was only twelve years old, had drunk in his words and quenched a thirst that had been there since the night her mum and Brendan had gone for a meal in the Tuscan Moon and never returned. Joshua, fourteen years old, sitting in his uncle’s front room in Newcastle, had heard the same story and hadn’t been nearly as accepting.
‘This woman was there, Rose. She saw them after we did.’
‘I don’t think this is anything to do with me,’ Rose said. ‘I know you have to go on searching but I think that the police were right when they said …’
‘They didn’t have one bit of evidence …’
‘Mum and Brendan were working on old criminal cases. They could have uncovered something dangerous. That theory made sense.’
‘But that was it. It was just a theory! Why didn’t the police follow it up? Why did they drop it? They knew which cold cases Dad and Kathy were working on. They knew all the individuals. Why didn’t they track down every lead? They knew everything. Yet they weren’t able to show us one bit of solid evidence.’
Rose stared at Joshua. He was looking out at the river. He had become angry. His neck was tense, the veins standing out. His shoulders were square. His head was full of websites and facts and hypotheses. It was as if she wasn’t there. She reached out a hand to touch the top of his arm.
‘It’s only going to upset us,’ she said, her voice croaking, her eyes misting.
Joshua looked back at her.
‘Oh, Rosie,’ he said.
He put his arms around her and pulled her close. His hand patted her back and she hugged him tentatively. He was her family now. She didn’t want him digging into the past but she knew he wouldn’t be happy until he had exhausted the search.
She let go of him and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.
‘Forward the email to me,’ she said, ‘and I’ll read it. I’ll tell you what I think. I’ll be honest, though.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to be anything else,’ he said, smiling.
They went back to the flat. They both stood on the street while Skeggsie came down the stairs and unbolted the door. They followed him upstairs and she headed for the living room to retrieve the bag that she had left there earlier. Then she went into Skeggsie’s room to see if he’d managed to get any CCTV images from the footbridge at the end of Cuttings Lane. Joshua was standing in front of the biggest screen. Skeggsie looked round when Rose entered and gave a curt nod.
‘Any luck?’ she said.
‘Skeggsie’s got some images.’
Skeggsie looked pleased with himself. He’d most probably been sitting all afternoon using his computer to tunnel away into the Network Rail CCTV footage. Why was he doing it? What was in it for him? Was he just helping her out or just taking pleasure using his own programs to unlock a puzzle. What was it with boys? Why did they have to take things apart to try and understand them? She remembered then the bits of bikes that Joshua kept in his room. He dismantled them until they were just oily joints.
‘Look,’ Skeggsie said.
On the monitor was a photo.
‘The CCTV camera is high up here at the edge of the footbridge. So here we see a person on the far side of the bridge, coming from the cemetery end.’
It was as if Rose was on the first floor of a building looking down. The person in the photo seemed very small, a long way away. It was twilight. There was just enough light to make out the footbridge and the rails beyond. It was wider than the station footbridge and the sides were higher, tightly packed railings with sharp, spear-like ends.
‘It is possible to zoom in.’
The image becam
e bigger, cutting out the surrounds and just showing the person.
‘Here’s the next one,’ Skeggsie said.
The person was moving towards the camera, their feet taking giant strides, or perhaps they were running. Now she could see a bit more clearly. The figure was in black and had a hood on. He or she had long thin black legs.
‘And here …’
The third image came up. This was the closest the figure would get to the camera. The clothes were clear and it might have been possible to get a glimpse of the person’s face, albeit a blurry one. It might have shown whether they were male or female, old or young. But whoever it was had turned their head to the side away from the camera.
‘Clever. This guy knows that the camera will pick the picture up,’ Skeggsie said.
The next picture came up and showed the footbridge empty.
‘He’s gone.’
‘Go back one,’ Rose said.
The previous picture came up: the hooded figure seemingly looking to the right, one hand holding the edge of the hood to cover the profile of the face.
‘This guy has clocked the camera and knows how to keep his face hidden.’
‘What’s that?’ Joshua said, pointing to the screen.
‘What?’
Joshua picked up a pen and pointed to the arm that was hanging down. Rose leant closer but it was hard to see what Joshua was talking about.
‘Hang on,’ Skeggsie said.
He tapped on the keys and fiddled with the mouse and the picture enlarged so that only a part of it could be seen on the screen. Now it just looked like blocks of blurred colour.
‘When you zoom in a lot you lose the sharpness of it,’ Skeggsie said apologetically.
‘There,’ Joshua said. ‘What’s that? On the wrist?’
The area Joshua was pointing at was the right-hand wrist. The sleeve was showing but there was something on the wrist, above the top of the hand.
‘The guy’s got gloves on,’ Skeggsie said.
‘But what’s that?’ Joshua kept on.
He was pointing at a block of colour above the hand. It had a slight sheen to it. The rest of the image was matt but this section looked as though the light had caught it.
‘It’s metal. The footbridge light is glinting in it.’
‘Is it a knife?’ Rose said, puzzled at the chunky oblong mass. ‘It’s an odd shape. Can we see it more clearly?’
Skeggsie turned back to the screen and continued to move up and down the image as if he was searching for clues amid the pixels, but couldn’t improve the image any further.
‘How do the police ever find criminals from these pictures?’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Anyway, I should be going.’
Joshua followed her down the stairs.
‘Still OK if I send you the email from the Russian woman?’ he said, unbolting the door.
She nodded without looking round and headed out on to the street.
On the bus she thought of the CCTV image. Now that she wasn’t looking at the screen she embellished the figure. Dressed in black with a hood up, she pictured the head turning dramatically away from the camera, one hand up to the face, the other hanging down, one step after another. Maybe the hand that was hanging down swung back and forward, the beam of the footbridge lights catching on something metallic.
Not a knife, though. Not the right shape. And it was above the hand, not in it.
She suddenly knew what it was.
Bangles. Silver bangles.
The person on the footbridge was not male.
She got her phone out and sent a text to Josh.
Ask Skeggsie to magnify the feet of the person on the bridge. What does it show?
She hugged her rucksack and watched people out of the bus window; walking along the pavement, looking tired, on their way home from work. Among them was a boy on skates. He wove through them turning this way and that. His face was bright, happy and he was mouthing the words of a song.
A female, wearing bracelets; twenty or thirty silver bands that moved up and down the arm, that looked solid when together but split apart like single hairs.
A beep sounded and she looked at her phone.
Seems to have light-coloured boots on? Why?
She smiled to herself.
Bee Bee had silver bangles and silver boots. Rose had seen them that day in the cafeteria when Lewis Proctor was showing off, pretending to stab himself in front of Emma. Bee Bee was Lewis’s girlfriend. Bee Bee had been desperate for Lewis for months, Emma had said.
Desperate enough to kill his ex-girlfriend?
THIRTEEN
The email from Joshua was there when she got home but Rose didn’t open it until late at night. She waited until she heard Anna’s bedroom door close. The house was quiet and she padded downstairs for a hot drink. She took it back up to her room and got into bed with her laptop. She spent some time going on Facebook and visiting some blogs she liked. She wrote some things on her own blog Morpho about her day out and about on the wobbly bridge that no longer wobbled. She looked at some emails from school; reminders of work that had to be in, social events, the memorial service for Ricky Harris.
Ricky Harris. She’d almost forgotten him. The unhappiness she had felt over Emma’s death had overshadowed what happened to Ricky and now it was as if his death had been a story she had read somewhere in a newspaper. The email was short.
The school will hold a non-denominational memorial service for Ricky Harris on Friday morning. All those who would like to pay their respects are welcome. 10 a.m. George Bernard Shaw Studio.
Would there be another next week for Emma Burke?
Her mind went back to the CCTV images that Skeggsie had found. The figure on the bridge, the silver bangles on her arm, the silver boots. Was Rose reading too much into a hazy picture that was almost impossible to fathom? In any case the police had the same pictures and it was up to them to find out what had happened to Emma Burke.
Rose was feeling unsettled when she finally opened Joshua’s email. There was a brief message from him. Rosie, thanks for a good day. Here’s the email I mentioned. Underneath was a long email from a woman called Valeriya Malashenko. Rose read it. It was clearly the second email that had been sent.
Dear Joshua Johnson, thanks for your quick reply. I do remember that night when I was working in the Tuscan Moon five years ago. I should explain first why I did not go to British police in the days after it happened. Firstly I was an illegal. I am from town outside Moscow. There were no jobs so another girl and I were smuggled into Britain by a cousin who had visa to study at Canterbury. We visited him on holiday and did not go home. I spent two years in London. I did many jobs. I worked for cash. Not very much for London peoples but a lot for me. That was my first reason for not going to the British police. The second reason I will say later. I remember the night your people came into the Tuscan Moon. 4th November. There were lots of fireworks going off and I had just screamed at some boys out in the alley behind the restaurant for throwing poppers or bangers I think you call them. Your peoples came in and sat at their usual table. I remember them you see they came into restaurant a lot. They always gave me tip in hand. Five pound note. They did it quietly so that boss could not see (he take tips). This night they seemed unhappy. They did not talk much and I took their plates away with lot of food not eaten. You will wonder why I remember this. It is because of what happened after, the police and the glasses case. Of this I will tell you later. They finished their meal and left. I was out front of shop smoking (alley at the back is dangerous, too dark, too many fireworks). They did not say goodbye which was unusual. They walk away from the shop and then something odd happens. The lady she stopped. She stood still on the pavement and the man he walked on. Then he came back to her and they had some kind of argument. I didn’t like to look too much so I dropped my cigarette and went back into restaurant. A minute later I looked out again and saw the man with his hand up and black taxi pulled over. They got in and that was th
e last I saw of them. The next day the police came to restaurant and I hid upstairs. I am illegal and afraid to be sent back to Moscow.
Rose paused. The email was long. One block of text that seemed to go on and on. She glanced back at the bit that referred directly to her mum and Brendan. They seemed unhappy at their meal. Had they been unhappy when they left the house? She didn’t think so. At the time she hadn’t thought so but she and Joshua had been involved in a discussion about a programme that Rose liked when Sandy, a girl from down the street, came to sit with them. Sandy was seventeen and babysat regularly. Rose had adored her. She loved her look, her clothes, her squeaky voice, her long nails, her colourful jewellery. Joshua always became a bit strange when she arrived. He usually retreated to his room and played computer games and Rose had Sandy to herself to talk about anything and everything. That particular night was no exception. Rose had been keen for her mum and Brendan to go out so that she and Sandy could sit alone in the living room and talk about books and bands and clothes. There’d been a call from the hallway – Bye! Had she even answered that call? Had she just said a half-hearted Yeah, bye and continued to be mesmerised by Sandy and her sparkly jeans and her fringe that hung in strips.
Had she even noticed her mum and Brendan leaving?
She looked back to the email.
I work in restaurant for a while but whenever police came I kept out of the way. My boss did not care. I left soon after but I watched the story in newspaper. I felt very guilty about not speaking up because of glasses case. I will tell you about glasses case. When I saw your peoples get into the black taxi I went to clear their table for next customer. I found glasses case on one of the chairs. I picked it up and took it to counter and left it there in case they came back. I forgot about it for a couple of days remember I was worried about British police. When the police stopped coming I found the glasses case and remembered that it had come from their table. It was blue leather case. I opened it and inside were some lady glasses.
Rose held her breath. Her mum’s glasses left behind in the restaurant. The blue leather case. She remembered it. It often sat by the front door with some reading glasses in it so that her mum wouldn’t forget to take a pair out with her. Her eyes followed the words on the email, her hands gripping the sides of the laptop.
