Let the Dead Speak

by Jane Casey

  Bethany sat on a bench, her knees drawn up to her chest, other from the top of her head to the folds of her long black skirt. Not part of a family. Not interested in the antics of the penguins who were waddling around their enclosure adorably. Not normal, not like the people who strolled past her, sharing food, joking around, complaining about their sore feet or the cost of ice creams.

  Normal life. That was what she had heard her aunt saying: Paul, we’ve got to look after her. We need to give her a normal life for a change.

  Normal life seemed to amount to buying her a lot of stuff: a phone, new clothes, make-up, shower gel and shampoo and conditioner and detangler and micellar water and liquid eyeliner and a rainbow of nail varnish and anything else she showed the slightest interest in possessing. It was driving Lia insane.

  Mum, why does she get everything she wants? It’s not fair.

  Because, her aunt hadn’t said, she has nothing. Because her parents are on remand and they’re going to go to prison and they weren’t doing a very good job of being parents anyway. Because she’s not normal and we have to try to make her seem normal, so the least we can do is to make her look right.

  Lia. She ate too much, wheedling biscuits and sweets and Coke out of her parents, swelling out of her clothes, self-loathing rising in her body like yeast. She sat in her room watching make-up tutorials on the internet, emerging with alarming eye make-up, brown streaks on her cheeks, over-drawn lips.

  Normal.

  ‘You’re a freak,’ Lia had said to her, the second week they were at school. ‘Everyone thinks you’re weird.’

  Bethany had given her the look: heavy-lidded disdain.

  ‘Do you know what the boys call you?’ Lia couldn’t wait to tell her. ‘The nun.’

  Bethany rolled her eyes. ‘Original.’

  ‘Have you ever even kissed a boy?’

  ‘Have you?’

  Lia faltered. ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘I bet I know more about fucking than you do, Lia,’ Bethany had said.

  Lia had blushed, and muttered something, and abandoned her to the lunch she wasn’t eating. Bethany sat on her own, staring into space, remembering William’s smile and the way he would look at her over Chloe’s head and how she’d been sure – so sure – that he liked her more than Chloe. It was just that she was young, that was all. Jailbait, he’d said, when she had been alone with him in the empty house and she had run her hands around his neck and pressed herself against him. Chloe was late, and they were alone, and she’d touched her lips to his. It had sort of been a kiss: she’d meant it as a kiss.

  But, really, he hadn’t kissed her back. He’d jerked his head away.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Barely able to speak or stand, her heart full of love. ‘I want you. I want you to be the first.’

  ‘Come on, Bethany.’ And he’d pushed her away.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I thought Chloe was your friend.’

  ‘She is.’

  He had smiled, uneasy, flattered, running a finger down her cheek. ‘Bethany. I couldn’t do it. You’re too young. They call girls like you jailbait.’

  ‘I’m old enough to know what I want.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said slowly. ‘Look, it’ll be your turn one day. Probably not with me, though. You have more sense, don’t you?’

  No, Bethany had thought, helpless. I really don’t.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ he’d said. ‘I just can’t.’

  Footsteps on the stairs: Chloe, her lovely face full of innocent joy. Full of love for them both. No suspicion, no doubt.

  And Bethany’s heart had withered inside her, turning black, decaying to something utterly poisonous that was death to everything it touched.

  ‘There you are. Clever of you to find a bench.’ Brian Emery sat down beside Bethany, leaving a decent space between them. He handed her an ice cream cone. She took it carefully, avoiding any contact with his fingers.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I hope it’s OK.’ He frowned, his whole forehead creasing. ‘I thought – it’s such a nice day.’

  ‘It’s good.’ She concentrated on sculpting the ice cream with her tongue and the silence lengthened.

  ‘The penguins are cute.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Brian sighed. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea for an outing. You’re probably too old for the zoo. Chloe loved it here.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ Bethany said. It was the fourth time they’d had this conversation and she was getting tired of reassuring him. ‘I’m glad we’re here.’

  ‘Me too.’ He turned to her, too quick, too sincere. ‘It’s good to be with someone who loved Chloe too.’

  Bethany ate the chocolate flake before she answered. ‘I was glad when you called my aunt.’

  ‘Well.’ He looked down at the remains of his cone. ‘I knew you were on your own. And I’m on my own too, now. I moved out last month. I’m going to get a divorce.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It wasn’t going to work.’ His forehead wrinkled again and for an awful moment Bethany thought he was going to cry. ‘I can’t blame my wife for putting her sons first. That’s what parents do. That’s what they should do. But I can’t bear to be around them. I can’t help blaming them for what happened. And I blame myself – of course I do. If I’d known what was going on …’ He looked blindly at the penguins, gnawing his lower lip while he got his emotions under control.

  ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself,’ Bethany said. ‘There’s plenty of other people to blame. Like my parents.’

  ‘They said it was an accident.’

  ‘They drugged her,’ Bethany said, her voice hard. ‘She was so out of it on tranquillisers that she couldn’t walk in a straight line. She didn’t even know where she was, let alone what was happening to her. They held her under the water until she died. That makes it murder.’

  Brian flinched. ‘I suppose. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you – knowing that.’

  ‘Really hard,’ Bethany said. She let her voice quiver. ‘I know they’re my parents, but I don’t think I can ever forgive them. I don’t know how they can make it right.’

  Because it was true, wasn’t it? The betrayal of her birth was so huge that there was no sacrifice her mother could make to make up for it, no penance great enough.

  Not even agreeing that she had brought Chloe to the church, when it had been Bethany who had dragged her there, promising that it was all going to be all right.

  Not even admitting that the diazepam was Eleanor’s own supply (which was true).

  Not even accepting that she had crushed them up and spiked Chloe’s drink with them (which was not true. Bethany had done that herself).

  Not even assenting to the suggestion that she’d known Chloe was too heavily drugged to react when she started to drown. (Only Bethany had known, and had said nothing.)

  Not even going to prison.

  It was what any parent would do for their child, if they loved them, Bethany thought. It was what her mother should do.

  ‘Nothing works out the way you think it will, does it?’ Brian sighed and dropped the remainder of his cone in the bin. ‘People let you down. You think you fall in love and it will last forever and then it doesn’t.’

  William and the way he had looked at her in the hospital, when she’d told him they could be together now, now that Chloe was gone forever.

  His horror.

  Her heart.

  Her black heart.

  ‘You have to pick yourself up and go on.’

  Sending him to confront her father about Chloe. Calling her father from her hospital bed to say William had touched her, that he had forced her to do disgusting, depraved things. Sobbing down the phone, sounding heartbroken because she was heartbroken; William Turner had broken what was left of her heart, so that all that was left was dust and ash.

  But no one would ever know, now. No one would ever guess.

  No one saw
her as anything but a victim.

  ‘You have to make the best of it and keep going,’ Brian Emery said bleakly. ‘Or else what’s the point?’

  Bethany edged along the bench, moving closer to him. He wasn’t her father and she wasn’t his daughter, but she leaned her head against his shoulder and it was some comfort to both of them.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Brian said, his voice rumbling through Bethany’s body so she felt the words rather than heard them. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘Who?’ Bethany sat up straight, trying to see.

  ‘I was just thinking about her.’ Brian Emery was waving. ‘DS Kerrigan!’

  It still took Bethany a second to pick her out, tall and slim in her usual dark trouser suit as she made her way towards them. Behind her sunglasses she looked paler, thinner, more tired than she had been in the summer, but her focus was unwavering. The scowling detective inspector was beside her, making a path for them through the crowd. Bethany looked around, suddenly noticing the people who were standing around in twos and threes, watching her rather than the animals: faces she recognised and faces she didn’t. Faces that all said the same thing: the lies she had woven into proof of her innocence had come undone. Someone, somewhere, had thought about what she’d said and decided to see if the evidence backed it up, and Bethany had a feeling she knew who that might have been. DS Kerrigan, with her warm smile and her clear eyes and her trick of understanding more than she should.

  ‘I wonder what she wants,’ Brian Emery said, and Bethany, who could have told him, said nothing.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would have remained nothing more than an idea without the help and encouragement of the following people:

  Everyone at HarperCollins, particularly Julia Wisdom who edited Let the Dead Speak with patience, kindness and, best of all, rigour. I feel very lucky to have her! I’m also very grateful to Lucy Dauman, Finn Cotton and Fliss Denham for their hard work. Special thanks to the team at HarperCollins Ireland for their enthusiasm and support, and my foreign publishers for their commitment to the series.

  The team at United Agents, the best support any author could wish for. I’d particularly like to thank Ariella Feiner, to whom this book is dedicated. She makes it her business to make my dreams come true and she has impeccable judgement in all things.

  My fellow crime writers, especially the Killer Women and the CS gang. The crime-writing world is small and close-knit, full of encouragement and fellow feeling when it’s needed, and I am very lucky to be a part of it. I’d like to thank Sinéad Crowley, Liz Nugent, Alex Barclay and the rest of the Irish crime writers for their friendship and solidarity.

  The librarians who work so hard to provide an essential and underrated service to the community. Properly staffed and funded libraries give so much to their users and to authors. They are a precious resource. I would not have been able to write this book without the facilities in my local library: huge thanks to the librarians and staff of Earlsfield Library.

  The bloggers, reviewers and book club admins who give their time and attention so generously, for love of reading. Special thanks to the indefatigable Liz Barnsley who is a true champion of good writing and Tracy Fenton of TBC who has a genius for promoting authors and making reading fun.

  My lovely readers, who keep asking me for a happy ending. (Possibly this should be an apology.)

  My friends and family, who waited patiently while I tackled this book and learned not to ask how it was going. Nothing would get done without my husband James, who is always willing to talk police procedure or sort out domestic chaos while working on terrifyingly complex cases in his day job. He makes it look easy, and I know it’s not.

  Finally, my thanks to Edward and Patrick for being the best distraction there could be, and Fred, who burns the midnight oil with me and only walks on the keyboard now and then.

  About the Author

  Jane Casey is no stranger to the crime world. Married to a criminal barrister, she’s got the inside track on some of the country’s most dangerous offenders, giving her writing an unsettlingly realistic feel.

  This authenticity has made her novels international bestsellers and critical successes. They have been nominated for several awards and in 2015 Jane won both the Mary Higgins Clark Award and Irish Crime Novel of the Year for The Stranger You Know and After the Fire, respectively. She is also an active member of Killer Women, a London-based group of crime writers.

  Born in Dublin, Jane now lives in southwest London with her husband and two children.

  @JaneCaseyAuthor

  Also by Jane Casey

  THE MAEVE KERRIGAN SERIES

  The Burning

  The Reckoning

  The Last Girl

  The Stranger You Know

  The Kill

  After the Fire

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Missing

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