Cry for Help

by Steve Mosby

  ‘Like I said, you barely knew her. What are you so upset about?’

  Lewis seemed to wrestle with what to say.

  ‘Because she’s dead.’

  A fair answer to an unfair question. Even so, Currie stared him out, and after a second the man looked down, shook his head once. Currie slid the photograph back and put it away again.

  ‘Okay. Let’s work through this a little. How did you meet her?’

  ‘On a dating site.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘A dating website.’

  Currie made a note to himself to follow that up. ‘Why?’

  ‘Lots of people meet online.’

  ‘So you meet lots of people that way?’

  ‘No. I just meant that lots of people do it these days.’

  Currie frowned. Maybe he’d been baiting him a little with that question, but the truth was, Lewis did seem strangely upset. He wasn’t even looking at him now. Currie had already grudgingly acknowledged to himself that Sadler’s death was news to Dave Lewis - but he still had the feeling that something was wrong.

  He settled back.

  ‘What about Julie? Did she meet lots of people online? Guys?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘What about last year, then?’

  ‘A few, I think. She was just out for fun, really.’

  Currie smiled. ‘Were you not fun enough for her, then?’

  Lewis raised his head and looked at him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Is that why she broke up with you?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. It was a mutual thing.’

  ‘That’s not what her friends told us.’ Currie leaned forward and opened the file. ‘They told us there was an incident. Is that right? You bumped into her while she was on a date with someone else?’

  ‘It wasn’t an incident.’

  Some of the shock had gone: Lewis seemed distracted now. He was looking around the room curiously, as though suddenly it interested him far more than Currie did.

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘She met someone else from the web. We just had different attitudes to things. I thought we were in a proper relationship and she didn’t.’

  He wanted to click his fingers: get Lewis’s attention back.

  ‘That made you angry? You caused a scene?’

  ‘When I saw them?’ He shook his head, glanced over to the other side of the room. What’s he looking at? ‘I didn’t even go over. But we talked about it the next day, and decided to break up.’

  ‘Her friends said you pestered her afterwards.’

  ‘No. It was fine.’

  ‘She was bothered enough to mention it to them.’

  Currie picked up the report and read over the notes inside. Julie Sadler had mentioned it to two of her friends, laughing a little, making light of the situation: Oh God, you won’t believe what happened … They probably wouldn’t have remembered it at all if they hadn’t been searching for something. After a second, he turned the page to make the accusations within seem lengthier than they were. In reality, he had about half a paragraph to spin out.

  ‘Apparently, there were emails and texts. You wouldn’t leave her alone.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘You even sent flowers to her lab. Is that right?’

  Finally, Dave Lewis looked back at him, much calmer now than at the beginning of the interview. Currie felt this had slipped from him somehow, but he wasn’t sure how.

  ‘I did try to persuade her to give it another go, but we were just emailing, talking stuff over. The flowers were to let her know everything was okay. That there were no hard feelings. I even said that on the card.’

  ‘So why do her friends see it differently?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lewis leaned back and folded his arms. ‘She was probably joking around. Maybe she made fun of me all the time.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Currie said. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I like this room, by the way.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The room.’ Lewis nodded at the corner. ‘The walls aren’t at right angles, are they? Just slightly off. And the light, too. It’s very clever.’

  Currie stared at him.

  ‘Dave—’

  ‘I didn’t kill her. You’re wasting time with me when you should be out there finding the man who did it.’

  ‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘We have to follow—’

  ‘Okay. Why did we go out for coffee those times?’

  ‘What? You’re asking me?’

  ‘If she was so scared of me. If I’d been harassing her. Why would she suggest meeting for lunch to catch up on things?’

  There was no obvious answer to that. Currie knew he should end the interview now, because he was riled, but instead he shot back at random.

  ‘So why didn’t you keep in contact with her?’

  And for some reason, that hit. He watched as the anger slipped from Dave Lewis’s face and was replaced by something closer to the guilt he was feeling himself. But instead of triumph, it felt more like an own goal. He was stressed and annoyed with himself, and he knew he shouldn’t be taking that out on someone else. It wasn’t the way to do things.

  Currie stood up, the chair squeaking, glanced up at the camera in the corner and then reached across to the digital recorder.

  ‘One ten,’ he said. ‘Interview terminated.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Currie said. ‘That’s it. A duty officer will be through in a moment to get you to sign some documents. After that, you’re free to go. We’ll be in touch.’

  Currie closed the door behind him, then paced away down the corridor.

  Swann was sipping coffee when Currie walked back in.

  ‘That went well,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t it just.’

  ‘Next time, can I do it? I hate it when you get the fun ones.’

  ‘I messed up.’ Currie sat down, leaned his head back and closed his eyes, trying to massage some life - and sense - back into his face.

  ‘We happy?’ Swann asked.

  ‘I don’t buy him for Julie Sadler.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s for sale on that one.’

  ‘But I buy him for something.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Swann drank some coffee. ‘Maybe he’s got a bag of dope in his flat. It doesn’t really matter, Sam. We’ve got to keep our priorities straight here.’

  That word again. Currie rubbed his hand over the side of his jaw. He needed to shave as well as sleep.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I’m happy. So what have we got next?’

  ‘Keith Dalton. A more recent ex.’

  ‘Great, let’s get him in there. Your turn to waste time while we ‘‘should be out there catching the killer’’.’

  Swann smiled grimly and left the room; Currie settled down at the table and watched on the small television monitor as Lewis signed off the forms.

  Priorities. His partner was right, of course. Even so, he filed Dave Lewis’s name down in his head. The man had been expecting them. It might not have been to do with Julie Sadler, but there was definitely something going on with him. And not just a bag of dope, either.

  Perhaps eventually, Currie thought, he’d find out what.

  Chapter Eleven

  Wednesday 31st August

  ‘You know,’ Sarah told me, ‘this isn’t quite the second date I had in mind.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that.’

  ‘Seriously, is this the way it’s going to go? One nice meal out, and from then on you chain me to the sink?’

  I smiled over at her. We were in my parents’ old kitchen, where Sarah was sporting rubber gloves and working at a sink full of foamy water, leaning down hard as she scrubbed at the porcelain. I was on the other side of the room, a cardboard box at my feet, clearing out the pantry. Various items had become stuck to the shelves over time - old jars and bottles, a half-burnt candle, rusted keys - and I was
busy peeling them off the tacky Formica.

  ‘Hey,’ I reminded her, ‘you volunteered.’

  ‘That’s true. I’m only messing.’

  I was still slightly bemused that she was here with me at all - bemused, but also about as happy as I’d managed to be in the last few days. With everything that had happened afterwards, my date with Sarah had slipped to the back of my mind. When she’d called last night, suggesting we could do something today, it had been a little like waking from a bad dream and remembering you had a winning lottery ticket on the nightstand. I said yes immediately - then realised I’d arranged to come here with Rob to make a start on the place. I’d called her back to apologise, but she’d taken it in her stride, surprising me.

  ‘Plus,’ I said, ‘I’ll cook for you later to say thank you.’

  ‘That’s just a cheap excuse to get me back to yours.’

  ‘You turning me down?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ She smiled at me; my stomach fluttered a little. Then she turned back and grimaced at the sink. ‘Just don’t expect me to do the washing up, okay?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Beneath the cleaning fluid, the whole house smelled of dust, even though we’d opened all the windows. Linda had done a good job of cleaning the basics, but once we’d delved below the surface and started moving stuff, it had been like unleashing a curse from an Egyptian tomb. A yellow skip waited at the bottom curve of the drive; we’d only been here a few hours, and we already had enough rubbish to half-fill it. Bin bags full of musty clothes lined the hallway all the way to the front room, from where I could hear Rob pulling books off shelves and dropping them into clumping piles.

  The only room we’d not yet touched was Owen’s. I was gearing myself up for that.

  ‘Oh, this won’t come off,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Don’t worry. Here: I need to wash my hands.’

  She stripped off the gloves, then moved aside to let me clean the tack from my fingers. As I rinsed them beneath the foam, she stared dubiously into the pantry.

  ‘God. It’s awful in here.’

  ‘Awful, but empty. I’ll give it a clean in a minute.’

  I closed the pantry door over, and was about to take the cardboard box into the hallway when I saw what was on the door.

  The husk of a drawing I’d done as a child. My mother had sellotaped it to the wood and left it there, the corners now stained and curled and crisp. Four scribbled figures stood on a green line at the bottom, next to a red house half their height. Blue was smeared across the top, in that universal way that children conceive of and draw the sky.

  Sarah saw me looking and poked one of the corners back to get a better look.

  ‘Is this one of your pieces?’

  ‘I imagine it’s my earliest surviving work.’

  ‘It shows such promise. You should have been an artist.’

  I smiled but it felt a little forced. I didn’t know what made me uncomfortable about the picture. Was it that my mother must have looked at it every day, through all those strained years when we barely spoke? Or was it the scene I’d drawn - the four of us together? I peered closer at the figure on the right. Little more than a lopsided circle with a curved line for a smile, smudged dots of crayon for hair. No hands, either: just splayed fingers that started at the wrist, touching the line-fingers of the person beside him.

  ‘Come with me a second,’ I said.

  ‘Intriguing.’

  She followed me out into the hall and we stopped outside Owen’s room.

  If not now, I thought, when?

  As far as I knew, nobody had been in here since the night we returned from the hospital, where my brother’s body had been taken. With the door closed, it was almost possible to believe he was still in there. Sleeping, perhaps, or picking his guitar, or doing his hair in the mirror in that new way he’d started in the weeks before he died.

  Deep breaths.

  I opened the door, felt a whump of decompression, then reached in and turned on the light. The bedroom blinked into bright life in front of me.

  And of course, it was empty.

  ‘Wow,’ Sarah said. ‘This was your brother’s room?’

  I nodded.

  It was like opening a door into another world: a silent, forgotten place. There was a quiet covering of soft, grey snow over everything. The bedclothes, the cupboards, the floor - all hidden by it. I glanced up. The corners of the ceiling were lost to cobwebs, and dust seemed to hang in the air.

  My face felt blank.

  ‘You okay?’ Sarah said.

  ‘Yeah. Just memories.’

  She surprised me again: ‘Come here, you.’

  I did, and she gave me a hug, her hands tight against my back.

  ‘Really,’ I said. ‘I’m good. That wasn’t quite as bad as I expected.’

  ‘Hey!’

  Rob - calling through from the front room.

  ‘Come and have a look at this!’

  I stepped back from Sarah and she rolled her eyes at me. She’d got the measure of him already. I’d warned her about Rob in advance - that he could be incredibly charming, but was equally often abrasive and annoying, especially with girls I saw. And I’d warned him, too. So far, he’d been well behaved, and even nodded respectfully at me when Sarah wasn’t looking, which seemed a good sign. From her, I was guessing it was closer to fifty-fifty, but for now she seemed more amused than annoyed.

  ‘Hang on,’ I called back.

  ‘No, they’ve got Stanley’s book here. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Thom Stanley,’ I explained to Sarah. ‘He’s the psychic I told you about on the phone. The one Rob and I are seeing tomorrow night.’

  Stanley was a local man, and we’d had run-ins with him on paper before, each side firing shots at the other. We’d broken a story last year about his earnings, prompting a rather embarrassing investigation into his tax situation. Mediums don’t like the subject of money on the table. Obviously, he didn’t like us much. He didn’t know it yet, but he was going to like us a whole lot less. Stanley was about to grace the middle-page spread of our next issue, as the subject of our monthly ‘Take-Down’ section.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Sarah said. ‘I remember.’

  ‘We can’t give this to the fucking charity shop, can we?’ Rob shouted. ‘Someone might buy it.’

  I heard him ruffle through the pages.

  ‘I wonder if we can burn it.’

  ‘Just … hang on.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Sarah gave me a smile. ‘I’ll make a start on the pantry.’

  I took a last glance into Owen’s room, then pulled the door closed again.

  ‘You’re a star,’ I told her, and meant it.

  I found Rob kneeling down in the middle of the front room, surrounded by piles of books and open boxes, flicking through the one in his hands. He looked up as I came in, then tossed the book to one side.

  ‘Close the door.’

  I did. He was looking at me intently.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He leaned on his knees then climbed to his feet. ‘Just checking. I wanted to make sure you were all right. With this place, and everything.’

  ‘Thanks. How are you doing in here?’

  He kicked a pile of books with his feet. ‘Not too bad. There’s such a lot of shite here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How are you getting on in the kitchen?’

  ‘We’re making some progress.’

  ‘Not with the cleaning, you idiot. I mean with Sarah.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah, it’s okay.’

  ‘She seems very nice. I like this one.’

  ‘That’s good. I’m glad.’

  Actually, it was high praise from Rob. In the manner of incredulous best friends everywhere, he’d given nicknames to most of the girls I’d been out with over the years, and the majority of them hadn’t been nice. Tori
was ‘the mad one’. Emma, ‘the miserable one’. Julie, God help him, had been ‘the slut’.

  Thankfully, he hadn’t referred to her as that in the office yesterday when I told him what had happened. He had given me a lecture, though.

  After I’d explained about the interview, he’d gone out to get us both lunch, leaving me alone with the newspaper I’d bought on the way in. The photograph on the front page was the one Julie had used on her profile at the dating website. I think it must originally have been taken for the notice board in the department: a posed, professional shot that made her look almost innocent. But there was a slight glint in her eyes that hinted at the playful sexuality I associated with her.

  When he’d got back, he’d thrown the sandwich on the middle of the paper and ordered me to stop reading it. Every time I protested, he told me again. Eventually, he’d taken it off me altogether. Stop dwelling.

  ‘How are you holding up?’ he said now.

  ‘This place? It’s not been as bad as I expected.’

  ‘No. About Julie.’

  ‘I’m okay, I think.’

  It was partly true. The evening after the interview, all I’d really done was sit on the settee, staring through the television set while I palmed a coin, over and over. I couldn’t help thinking about her.

  I remembered how small and toned she was. The definition of her back muscles and her thighs. Julie had weighed only a shade over seven stone, but she was deceptively strong: even though I was nearly twice as heavy, she could often overpower me. On our third date, we play-fought and ended up exhausted, face to face on her living room floor, her on top of me, pinning my arms down to either side, our faces deliciously close. We’d stayed there, give or take, for most of the evening.

  Why didn’t you keep in contact with her?

  The coin had slipped and hit the carpet, quiet as a blink.

  I hadn’t seen or thought much about her in a year - but I still found it hard to believe she was dead, and that the strong, vibrant person smiling down at me in my memory was gone.

  When the police had knocked on my front door, I’d been scared they were there because of Eddie. Now, if it meant that Julie might still be alive - even if I never saw or thought of her again - I wished it had been.

  ‘You can’t lie to me,’ Rob said. ‘I know you too well. I can tell you’re feeling guilty.’