The Quiet Girls: An absolutely addictive mystery thriller

by J. M. Hewitt

  Melanie was hesitant, and, mindful of her people-skills training, Carrie faced away from her, bent over to tie her lace even though it hadn’t come undone.

  ‘I see people’s colours, they tell me what the person is feeling, what mood they’re in. When I first saw you, when you came into the field, I saw the prettiest colours I’d ever seen, that told me you were a really strong person, and capable, and… just wonderful.’ Out of the corner of her eye Carrie saw Melanie’s face blush to a deep red.

  ‘Wow, that’s… awesome,’ said Carrie, at a loss how to actually respond. ‘What colours was I?’

  ‘A deep blue, flashes of silver. It was wonderful,’ repeated Melanie. She glanced over at Carrie, emboldened suddenly. ‘Then I mentioned that book, and my name, and your colours kind of… died.’

  Despite the sunshine, Carrie shivered.

  For a few moments they sat in silence.

  ‘Do you know the film, too?’ Carrie asked eventually.

  Melanie nodded solemnly.

  ‘My sister was named Hattie, after the woman who played Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She was the first African American to win an Oscar.’ Carrie swallowed, realising she had never, ever told the history of her sister’s name to anyone before.

  ‘Is your sister black?’

  The question, asked in an innocent, straightforward manner that only a child can pull off, brought a genuine smile to Carrie’s face. It stayed there, on her lips, for just a moment before fading, apparently just like her colours had.

  ‘She was black, yes.’

  Carrie braced herself for more questions from the deliberate past tense use.

  Eventually, Melanie said, ‘So who were you named after?’

  ‘Carrie Fisher.’ Carrie smiled over to Melanie. ‘Do you know who she is?’

  Melanie nodded, a serious look on her face. ‘She died too,’ she said.

  An unexpected lump in her throat made Carrie cough. ‘Yep,’ she said. It was all suddenly too much, the indirect talk about Hattie, about Carrie’s past, subjects she usually buried deep.

  ‘I always wondered why my parents didn’t call me Scarlett, because she was the best, right?’ Melanie looked up at Carrie, a frown knitting her forehead. ‘Melanie was…’ she trailed off before coming back stronger. ‘Melanie let everyone walk all over her.’

  Carrie detected the undertone in the girl’s voice, along with the ‘second-best’ name her parents had given her.

  ‘Melanie Hamilton was kind,’ she said. ‘She was loyal and very determined. There’s a lot to be said for that.’

  Melanie tilted her head and looked up at Carrie. Her eyes shone as though she’d never considered that possibility.

  Carrie cleared her throat. ‘We should get back to the cottages, back to your father, okay?’

  Melanie nodded, pushed herself up. ‘What about him?’ she asked.

  Carrie followed her gaze to the form of the man who still lay motionless. ‘We’ll deal with him,’ she said.

  Carrie walked towards Paul, and in tune with her as always, he led her a few feet away from the others.

  ‘We need to get them back to Harry and Lenon, and hope to God that Ben has come back with the boat,’ she said.

  Paul nodded in agreement, jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘And him?’

  Carrie looked around Paul. ‘We’ve got no way of restraining him ourselves. How secure is that trap?’

  ‘Very secure,’ replied Paul. ‘But his leg could be in a bad way.’

  ‘Did you get a look at it?’ she asked, concealing a shudder.

  ‘No, not with them so close.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘And then we’ll get them back to the cottage, I don’t want them seeing any more than they have to, don’t want those kids any more traumatised than they are already.’

  Willow spoke up, her eyes not leaving Gabe as he lay in the grass, until she turned to face Carrie, her eyes flashing suddenly dark. ‘I told you I would do this. If you’d have listened, when I first called you…’ Her lips pinched together and she glared meaningfully at the blood-spattered rock by her feet.

  ‘It’s all right, we’re here now, we can deal with this,’ Carrie said.

  Thank God they had come to the island. She felt a burst of relief mixed with pride. What if she hadn’t insisted on tracking the mystery calls? It would have been so easy to dismiss them, to not take it seriously. And if she had shrugged them off, a man would soon be dead, and a girl would be taken through the messy courtrooms with the stigma of murderer attached to her for the rest of her life.

  It wasn’t too late. She breathed out.

  Paul spoke up. ‘Everyone needs to go back to the cottage, we’ll deal with him,’ he nodded to the inert man. ‘Ben will come back, and we’ll get the river police over.’

  Carrie raised her eyebrows at Paul’s confidence that their river taxi would return. She wished she shared his optimism. But Paul was right; Ben was their only hope and she needed for the rest of the group to stay together and be ready to board.

  She clapped her hands together. ‘Guys, start heading back to the cottage, don’t separate from each other. We’ll soon be home.’

  She grimaced, hoped it was true, offered up a prayer to a God she didn’t believe in that Ben would return. Next to her, Paul herded the others together, opening his arms wide, looking just the way he did when he was at a crime scene, cordoning it off, keeping everyone in check. When the cluster of people had moved back to stand at the edge of the field Carrie took a deep breath and bent down over the man.

  ‘Mr Hadley?’ she said, brisk and business-like. ‘Gabe Hadley?’

  He moved, slightly, at the sound of his name. Slowly he turned his head to face her. She took in the mess of him first, the smear of blood near his eye, the skin on his temple, grey with a fresh bruise. His forehead, red and white, the skin pink and tender…

  Red and white and pink.

  She lifted her gaze back to rest on his face. He met her stare head on.

  This time she couldn’t conceal the feeling of the punch. There was no covering it up. It broke her and she leaned over, one hand on her stomach, the other seeking the ground. Her fingertips grazed the dirt and she sank to her knees.

  Look at him, she screamed at herself. Look at him!

  She swallowed back the bile in her mouth and with great effort she looked up at him again.

  ‘You,’ she said, her words ragged and ruined. ‘It’s you; you’re the man who took my sister.’

  36

  Carrie and Hattie – 1998. The Locked Memory

  She didn’t go far. She’d been running for less than a minute before the guilt set in.

  Carrie smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. What was she thinking? You didn’t leave little girls alone in the woods. Carrie hung her head in shame as she turned back. She would collect Hattie, they would go home, and Carrie would take a few quid out of her mother’s money jar and they would go to the little shop on the corner and get ice-creams.

  Carrie nodded, a smile twitching her lips. Hattie would forgive her then. Hattie would forgive her anyway, without ice-cream, Carrie realised. The thought made her feel even worse, and at that moment she swore that for the rest of her life she would treat Hattie like the princess their mother believed her to be.

  ‘Hat!’ she called. ‘Come on, we’re going home.’

  The sun beat down, Carrie stopped. Ahead, a hundred yards away, stood Hattie.

  ‘Hattie!’ Carrie laughed, relieved to see her sister. She raised a hand. ‘Come on, I’ll get you an ice-cream.’

  Carrie put her hands in her pocket, walked towards her sister. Stopped again, a frown knitting her brows. Why was Hattie so still and silent? So not Hattie.

  Carrie’s heart beat a little faster. Was Hattie moving further away? And where were Hattie’s shorts? Carrie blinked. Kermit the Frog stared out at Carrie from Hattie’s shirt, his mouth open, his frog hands on his head, an image which always made Hattie la
ugh, but to Carrie, suddenly it seemed like a scream. Carrie raised her gaze to her sister’s face. Brown skin, shiny, with tears or sweat? There was something else, something… wrong.

  Her sister’s shorts were missing!

  Panicked, Carrie broke into a run. A tree root reared up out of nowhere, clawing at Carrie’s ankle, bringing her down, her face landing in the undergrowth of leaves, twigs and dirt. Carrie pushed herself up, blinked, her hand going up to her face to scrub the dirt away from her eyes. She blinked again, closed her eyes, opened them.

  A man was there now, behind Hattie, one hand on her shoulder, his fingers large and white, digging into her sister’s skin, pulling the T-shirt with his grip. Hattie was motionless, the whites of her eyes large, staring, chest heaving, shuddering sobs wracking her small body.

  ‘HATTIE!’

  Carrie’s feet spun in the dirt, the man’s eyes, hooded, lazy and sleepy, widened a little, and a smirk pulled at his mouth. He’s young, thought Carrie, not old and creepy like Mr Lacey, not scary like some of the tough, leather-clad kids who hung around the town hall, revving their motorcycles and glaring and spitting at the world.

  This man was just that. A man, who looked decent, young-ish, smartly dressed, normal. Charming, her mother would have said.

  But he had his hand on her sister’s shoulder, and Hattie was missing some of her clothes, and Hattie was frightened and scared and crying and this man was not normal or charming.

  A fallen tree blocked her way, and Carrie plunged at it, tried to climb over its enormous girth. Slipping back, she shrieked in pure frustration, slapped at the tree trunk, pushing off it to circle it.

  Panting, her breathing sounding like a scream, she shouted for her sister. It came out a whisper.

  The man smiled, once, briefly, a genial grin.

  Hattie opened her mouth, a silent plea for help.

  The world circled Carrie, the sky and the trees spun. Dizzy, she fell to her knees, face down, once again in the now empty woods.

  Later, the dog and the police and her mother found her. She thought they woke her, pulled her out of a state of unconsciousness, but it hadn’t been a sleep, or a coma or a fugue. It had been everything and nothing, and Hattie was gone, and the memory of a man who looked quite young, and rather charming, and very normal, was gone too.

  37

  At first, there was a sense of euphoria. I remember! Carrie almost crowed at the breakthrough, all these years later.

  As soon as the elation arrived it vanished, like smoke, like the mist that hung over the canal back home, dissipating as soon as the sun caught at it.

  Agony, as searing as a knife wound. Twenty years had passed, how many other little girls had suffered, had vanished, had lost their lives?

  On her hands and knees Carrie shuffled a little further away from him. Not through fear, that was long gone, but if she got too close, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from picking up Willow’s rock that nestled in the grass by her feet. She saw herself raising it, bringing it down on his head, his face, the tender, fleshy parts of him.

  She blinked, trying for self-control.

  ‘W-what did you do to her?’ she uttered the words too soon, covered her mouth with her hands to try and push them back. Did she want to know?

  ‘Willow?’ Gabe raised his eyes, heaved a sigh, wincing as he tried to move the leg snared in the trap. ‘The girl is very dramatic––’

  ‘NOT HER!’ shouted Carrie. She scooted towards him, an inch at a time, animal-like. ‘I’m not talking about her,’ she added, quieter now.

  He frowned, looked closer at her, and she wondered if he remembered her at all, the little blonde girl who left her tiny sister alone to be found by a monster. Had he even looked at Carrie? Had he, for a single second, thought about changing his mind, shoving Hattie aside and taking Carrie instead?

  She would have let him, Carrie realised, if it would have saved Hattie’s life.

  A strange thread held them together. Gabe, staring, wondering, remembering. Carrie unable to break her gaze, thinking about the rock on his skin, using the sharp edge to slice, and the blunt edge to hit.

  ‘Carrie!’

  She leapt to the side, toppled, pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘Paul,’ she said, dully.

  She had forgotten about him. Had forgotten about all the others.

  ‘He stays here, right here, just the way he is.’ She snapped the words, clicking her fingers, back to who she was; Detective Sergeant Carrie Flynn, little Carrie gone for the moment.

  Paul cocked his head to one side. For the first time he touched her, his fingers closing vice-like round her upper arm, pulling her to one side. ‘Carrie?’ He said her name, a question on his face.

  She swallowed, looked back at Gabe Hadley. She said the words in her head, to herself, wondered if she could manage to say them out loud. Decided she could, she had to.

  ‘He’s the man who took Hattie all those years ago, I remember him. I can see him so clearly. We have to get him into custody, charge him not just with assault or abduction, but with murder.’

  She hardly dared to look at Paul, but she forced herself, made herself stare into his deep brown eyes.

  His nostrils flared, his mouth a straight line, his jaw clenched. He nodded, just once.

  Carrie almost fell against him with thanks for his belief, but instead she pulled herself free of his grasp.

  ‘Take the others back to the cottages, make sure they stay there. Send Harry or Alice to the dock to wait for Ben. Check Liz and the boy, they might need medical help. I’ll wait here, I don’t want to risk moving him, we’ll leave him here until back up arrives.’

  Suddenly it was easier to breathe, issuing instruction, doing what she was good at, flipping commands the way she did. She wasn’t the victim’s sister, she was the police officer, doing the actual job she’d promised. Keeping people safe; catching the bad guy.

  Paul glanced once at the trapped man. ‘You should take them back, stay with them, I’ll wait with––’

  ‘No.’ She made herself look at Gabe once more, knowing that although she trusted her partner with her very life, she had to do this. ‘No,’ she repeated, quieter now, ‘I’ll stay. You get help.’

  ‘Did I hear that correctly?’ Alice twisted to face Paul as she stumbled along at his urging, marching back to the cottages now, back to Harry, starting the journey home, back to Ben. Blindly she reached for Melanie, pulled her close to her, the only thing that mattered now. Not Ben, not Harry, just Melanie. Melanie let herself be held in the vice-like grip for a moment before squirming free of her mother’s hold.

  Detective Constable Harper didn’t answer. She pushed on, falling into step beside him. ‘He hurt her sister? That policewoman’s sister?’

  ‘She’s a Detective Sergeant, and… that was private,’ replied Paul finally.

  ‘But that woman, that Detective Sergeant,’ Alice corrected herself, ‘said murder. I heard her, she said the word murder!’

  She stared at him, but he faced resolutely forward, marching along, his face set, his mouth firmly closed.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ Alice said, and tears sprang to her eyes. Angrily she dashed them away. ‘Why was he free, not already locked up, if his daughter reported this?’

  Alice saw Willow, ahead of her, stiffen at her remark. Alice shouted to the girl.

  ‘Willow, what’s this all about, did the police ever speak to you after you reported him?’

  Willow stopped and turned to face them, stony-eyed. ‘No,’ she said shortly.

  A fury rose in Alice, and she put her hands on her hips. ‘Why? How has this been allowed to happen?’

  ‘They don’t care!’ cried Willow. ‘That’s why I was taking matters into my own hands. The police don’t care.’ The young girl staggered before sinking to the ground, as though everything she had carried on her shoulders was suddenly too much.

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Paul, and for the first ti
me, he looked to Alice like he was out of control. He swallowed, shook his head, crouched down beside Willow. ‘When you kept ringing Carrie, she didn’t let it go, she insisted we go back over old files. You didn’t give us your name yet still she tracked you to the phone box you called from, she wouldn’t quit even when it seemed like an impossible task. She believed you, Willow, that’s why we’re here, because Carrie cares, and I do too. And I’m so sorry you were let down before.’

  Alice turned back to Willow. ‘Did you know Gabe had hurt that police officer’s sister?’ Not waiting for a reply, she turned to Paul. ‘How long ago did that happen? How old was her sister?’

  Paul, cornered, held up his hands. ‘A long time ago, twenty years, I think.’

  Alice felt her throat constrict, anger flowed through her, filling her body with a white-hot heat. ‘He’s been doing this for twenty years?’ she asked through gritted teeth.

  Melanie slipped her hand into Alice’s. Alice jumped at the sudden contact.

  ‘Carrie’s sister is dead,’ she said. At her mother’s blank expression Melanie gave an exasperated sigh. ‘That lady officer, her name is Carrie, her sister was called Hattie, and she’s dead.’

  The heat vanished, a chill settling over Alice instead. ‘Did he kill her sister?’

  Paul cleared his throat, glanced behind him at where he’d left Carrie and Gabe. ‘It’s not my business, but I don’t want to leave Carrie too long, and I need to speak with your husband. We’re alone here, and we need to stick together and find a way off this island. Please, can we get to your husband?’

  Alice spun around, her skirt swishing as she upped her pace. ‘Come on, kids,’ she said. She stretched out a hand and gently pulled Willow to her feet, keeping her close as they began to walk.

  As she walked along, she glowered. What did this police officer expect from Harry? Did he envisage him as some sort of superhero; did he want to recruit him? Did he not remember the way he was before, prone in his chair, dribbling and drooling and tanked up on medication that didn’t even belong to him?