by SJI Holliday
‘Sorry, doll,’ Mandy says. Her voice is hoarse from the crying and the endless cigarettes she’s smoked since they arrived. Before, in fact. The ashtray is full to the brim. ‘I’m sick of telling people to shut the bloody doors in this house, ken what I mean? And it’s bloody Baltic out there too.’
Louise sits down. ‘Is that a regular occurrence, then?’
‘Is what a regular occurrence?’
‘Someone leaving the door open. Do you mean both, or just the back?’
Mandy looks at her like she’s grown horns. ‘The front, hen. Did you not hear me shouting at your pal out there? Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with folk.’
Louise inhales and has to try hard not to sigh it back out. ‘Who leaves the front door open, Mrs Taylor?’
‘Fucksake. It’s miss. And I told you to call me Mandy. Mrs Taylor was my mother. The old bat. God rest her soul. She’d know what to do about all this . . .’ She waves the hand that is holding the cigarette and ash flies around the kitchen like embers off a bonfire. ‘This. This shite. Our Katie. Jesus Christ. Can someone make me another tea, please? I’m bloody gasping here.’
Malkie stands up. ‘I’ll get it. Steph’s gone out to wait for Neil. School called. The headmaster has told him. Thinks he’s on his way up here.’
‘I’ll go and see what’s happening,’ Davie says.
Louise tries again. ‘Do the kids leave the door open a lot, Mandy? Only, I’m just trying to find out if there’s a chance that someone could’ve come in this morning without anyone hearing. Do you lock the door at night?’
Mandy rolls her eyes. ‘Yes. But like I said to the other officer earlier – I’d already gone out to work before Katie came home last night. I was working a seven-seven. Katie was to make their tea. I don’t know what any of them were up to after that. I didn’t get home until half eight this morning, and when I got here the house was empty. Well, at least I thought it was. Until I went upstairs to collect the sheets. I always wash their sheets on a Monday. Brett and Brooke had dumped theirs on the floor next to the machine – look. See? They’re still there. Only I knew Katie’s weren’t there because her sheets are yellow, and all the sheets in that pile are white.’ She pauses and takes a heavy drag on her cigarette. ‘It wasn’t like her. She’s always the first to do what she’s told.’ She looks away. Louise can see she is trying to hold it together, but she’s shaking. Little angry sobs are escaping with each exhale of smoke.
Louise hadn’t even noticed the kettle boiling until Malkie laid the cups down in front of them both. She picks hers up and lets the warmth of the mug heat her hands. She gives Malkie a grateful smile.
He says, ‘What we were discussing a wee while ago, before you came down, Louise, was who were the usual people, other than the family, that might be round here regularly, you know? Friends, boyfriends. Whoever. And whether anyone else had a key.’
‘You know, it was probably Brooke. In fact, I’d say it was definitely Brooke. It’s just like her. Especially with me being away.’
Louise isn’t sure she’s heard this right. ‘Sorry. What was probably Brooke? Are you saying—’
‘I’m saying she’ll have left the door open. She’s a little bugger for it. I think she gets her kicks from it. Likes the sound of me yelling at her to shut the damn thing.’
Louise lets out a relieved breath. For a minute there she thought the woman was accusing her younger daughter of killing her eldest. Not that it wasn’t a valid possibility. They didn’t know much about Brooke yet, and what they did know didn’t paint a particularly pretty picture. ‘Did Katie and Brooke get on? I used to fight with my younger sister all the time when we were younger, but we’re good friends now.’
Mandy snorts. She stubs her cigarette out and pulls another one from the packet. ‘Those two are a bloody nightmare.’ She lights another cigarette and takes a drag. ‘Can’t stand the sight of each other. There were plenty of times I came home from working a backshift – you know, four till ten – and found them screaming and pulling each other’s hair in the kitchen. Place covered in spaghetti hoops and trampled toast. I often thought, Jesus Christ, one of these days they’re going to kill each other.’ She stops abruptly and sucks in a sharp breath, which leads to a coughing fit. ‘Oh no. Oh no. I didn’t mean that, I . . .’
‘Where is Brooke at the moment, Mandy?’ Malkie pulls out a chair and sits down next to her. He throws Louise a look that says ‘find her’.
‘She’s . . . she’s . . . I don’t know where she is. I texted her, told her to come home. Told her to bring Brett – he follows her around like a lost puppy. They’re too alike. They even sound the bloody same. She didn’t reply. I assumed they’d have told them at school, brought them back.’ She lets out a long, low wail.
Louise feels a sudden lurch in her stomach. ‘You mean you don’t know where they are, Mandy? Either of them?’
Mandy shakes her head violently. She tries to light another cigarette off the butt of the last, but her hands are shaking too much. ‘No . . . no,’ she says.
Louise feels a blast of cold air from behind her. The front door is open again. She wonders if Mandy is going to lose it completely, or has the realisation that she has one dead child and two missing knocked out all other thoughts from her head? What the hell is going on here? Louise knows they weren’t at school. The headmaster had called earlier, after checking the place thoroughly. No one has seen them. They weren’t in registration. They hadn’t turned up late, or if they had they’d disappeared again before anyone knew. They could be anywhere. Maybe they’d heard the news and were too scared to come home. Any other option didn’t bear thinking about. Could someone really have walked into this house, killed one child and abducted the other two? For a start, it didn’t make any sense.
‘Mandy, I know it’s difficult for you. But we need to know of everyone who might’ve had reason to come round here,’ Malkie says.
‘I’ll tell you. I will. Just . . . God. I can’t believe this is happening. My baby. She was such a good girl. Such a good girl. She was going to university, you know. To study all these scientific things that I’ve never even heard of. I don’t know where she gets it from. All of my lot are thick as two short planks. Her dad, though . . . Christ.’
‘Mandy, I wanted to ask you something about the university stuff. She was interested in insects, is that right? I noticed the print on her wall – the butterflies. Did she have anything else like that? Maybe something more real? The print was of the type of boards the Victorians were fond of. I don’t suppose she had a real one of her own? A board of mounted insects?’
Mandy looks at her and frowns. ‘Well, aye. You must’ve seen it. It’s up on the wall, next to the butterflies print. She cracked the frame last time she cleaned it, so all the wee beasties are out on display. Makes me shudder. I told her I wasn’t going in there to dust and hoover until she put the glass back on the front. Creepy thing, isn’t it?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. It’s not there. I had a feeling there was meant to be one, but someone had taken a photo off her dressing table and hung it up in its place. I found this, though.’ She holds out the plastic bag, with the damselfly sitting on the lid of the eye-shadow case.
Mandy reaches out, but doesn’t touch it. ‘The damselfly. That was her favourite one. She told me about them. Endangered species. She got this one when they went on a field trip down to the New Forest. She never said how she caught it. I don’t think they were meant to bring anything back with them. Wee bugger. They’re pretty wee things, but they creep me out. The buggy eyes are the worst. Where did you find that? Where’s the rest of them?’
‘I found this one down the back of the radiator, but the board isn’t there. Maybe she lent it to someone? Maybe she’d taken it away to get a new piece of glass?’
Mandy starts shaking again. And crying. And that wail. That awful, awful wail. ‘She’d never let that thing out of her sight. Her friend Lucas helped her make it. It was her pride and jo
y. She caught all of the insects herself. Dried them and positioned them – relaxing, they call it. She learned how to preserve them. Pinned them on that velvet backing. Fiddly wee things, some of them. Can’t say it’s my cup of tea. Like I said, I found it all a bit creepy. But she was so proud of that thing.’
‘Who’s Lucas,’ Malkie says. ‘I thought her boyfriend was called Neil.’
‘He is. Neil Price. Nice laddie. But she had other friends too. Not many. I think she had a falling out with some of them last summer. I don’t know what it was about. But Lucas was a good friend, although—’ She pauses, looks up, as if trying to remember. ‘I don’t think I ever met him.’
‘So he’s never been round here?’
‘Not that I know of. But then I’m out a lot. My shifts are all over the place. Any old Tom, Dick or Harry could be coming in and out of this place.’
‘So anyone could’ve come in here this morning?’
‘Yes,’ she says; it’s practically a whisper. ‘Yes.’
Louise hears the front door close, hears shuffling footsteps. Three voices.
Mandy’s wail peters out to a whimper. ‘Who’s that?’ she says. ‘Is it Brooke? Brett?’
Davie and Steph come into the kitchen, half-supporting, half-dragging a teenage boy between them. His eyes look glazed, as if he’s not quite sure where he is.
‘Mandy?’ he says. ‘What’s going on? Please . . . I don’t understand. Where’s Katie? Mr Poole said she was . . . said she was . . . ’
Mandy stubs out her cigarette and stands up. She’s shaking as she walks around the table. Takes the hands of the police off the boy and pulls him tight towards her. Soon, the sound of their combined cries fills the air. Louise has to leave the room to stop herself from joining in.
18
Polly
Jon closes his eyes and lets out a long, slow sigh. Polly can see that he’s angry, but he’s trying hard to keep it in.
‘What were you doing at her house?’ Jon says.
Lucas opens his mouth to speak, but before he can answer Polly interrupts. ‘Does anyone else know about this?’
‘Yes. I mean, I’m pretty sure. Not from me, I mean. I didn’t not tell anyone on purpose. I thought it was OK. I mean, no, I knew it wasn’t OK. Not really. But I thought I had a handle on it. Thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t do anything to encourage her, I swear.’ Lucas looks away.
‘Who knows?’ Jon is pacing up and down the small office. The air has become thick with fear. ‘Who knows, Lucas?’
‘I think . . . well, she told her boyfriend. See, that’s why I thought it was OK. He spoke to me one day. Asked me about it. I told him it was extra study, that’s all. He didn’t seem too bothered.’
‘Neil’s a pretty relaxed kid,’ Jon says. ‘I’m sure he didn’t assume anything untoward was going on. If he had, I imagine he’d have said something.’
‘Yes, well. Right. And nothing was going on, but—’
‘Who else knows, Lucas?’ Polly is getting sick of his dithering now. She understands that he’s upset, but they need to get to the bottom of all this before it goes any further. They need to make sure they’ve no case to answer when the police start asking questions. It’s a mess, of course it is. But if nothing sexual happened, then maybe it’s OK. Maybe it’s nothing.
‘She told her friend, Hayley. It didn’t go as expected. I’m not entirely sure what she said to the girl, but Hayley started giving me sly looks in the corridor. She thought there was something going on, something—’
‘Something sexual?’ Jon says, his face wrinkled with distaste.
‘Yes, and I swear it wasn’t like that. We were friends.’
‘So you keep saying, Lucas,’ Polly says. ‘Why was Hayley so suspicious? What happened?’
Lucas sighs and rubs at his face. The tears have gone now. The reality of the situation is sinking in.
‘I don’t know. Honestly I don’t know.’
‘Does anyone else know?’
‘I think Hayley told Brooke.’
‘Katie’s sister, Brooke?’
‘Yes. Because I’m pretty certain that Katie wouldn’t have told her. She’d never have spoken to her sister about anything like that. Anything she saw as important. Anyway, I know that Brooke knew, because she started doing stuff.’
Polly glances at Jon. His face has gone from deep red to purple.
‘What stuff?’
‘Leaving me notes. I wasn’t sure at first. I thought it was Katie having a laugh. But then, it wasn’t her style. And it wasn’t her writing – although whoever had written the notes had tried to mimic her handwriting. Not very well, but at first glance, with nothing to compare to . . . I didn’t do anything at first. I cancelled a couple of meetings with Katie, told her I was too busy with marking and class prep. She understood. Never questioned it. That’s when I knew for sure. I checked the notes against one of Katie’s essays, and I knew that she hadn’t written them.’
‘What did they say?’ Jon says.
‘The first one—’
‘Have you still got them?’ Polly says. Her voice is hopeful. If he has the letters, and they can show that they weren’t from Katie, it might help.
‘No. I burned them in my fireplace at home. I clean it out once a week. There’s no way there’s any trace. Anyway, the first one – it was odd, because it sounded like Katie. Like the kind of thing she would say. But I didn’t understand why she’d leave me a note in my desk, I mean – I saw her often enough. She could’ve left me a letter at home if she thought she couldn’t say it to me to my face. But it wasn’t really her style. She was pretty forthright.’ He pauses and takes a drink from his mug. The tea must be stone cold by now, but he doesn’t comment. ‘The first one said: I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s not enough any more.’
Polly picks up a pen and starts rolling it back and forth in her hand. ‘And you didn’t react to this? You didn’t say anything to Katie?’
‘No. Like I said, I cancelled the next meeting we had planned. Then the next. And then I got another note.’
‘And?’
‘It said: I’ve been fantasising about you. I’ve been thinking about your beautiful hands. Thinking about what they could do . . .’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Jon spits, ‘tell me you spoke to Katie then?’
Lucas shakes his head. ‘She came round one night. It was unplanned. She was working on a project, said she needed my help. I was paranoid the whole time, trying to work out a way to bring it up. There was no indication in her behaviour that she was expecting me to react to the note, so then I started to doubt it. I asked her if she had told anyone about our friendship, and she got upset, told me about Hayley and how Hayley had said she was a filthy bitch. So I didn’t say anything. I started to wonder if maybe Hayley was writing the notes. Next morning at school, I had another one: I miss you so much. I want to do things with you. Please, I know you want me too. That’s when I knew they weren’t from her. She’d only just seen me. Why would she leave that note at lunchtime the next day? That’s when I checked the handwriting. I checked it against Katie’s, then Hayley’s. But neither matched. So that afternoon I told Katie – I asked her to stay behind after a biology class. This wasn’t unusual. I did that with lots of kids. Anyway, I didn’t say anything. Just showed her the notes.’
Polly clicks the lid of the pen and drops it into a drawer. ‘What did she say?’
‘One word: Brooke.’
Jon stops pacing and sits down hard. ‘OK. So her little sister was stirring things up. Causing trouble. Did you ask Katie to talk to her?’
‘Yes, but I knew she wouldn’t want to. Hers and Brooke’s fights often got physical, and I knew she was trying hard to keep away from her, keep things calm. Their mother expected Katie to look after Brooke and Brett when she was at work, and despite her frustrations she loved her mum. She wouldn’t have wanted to make things more stressful for her.’
‘OK, OK,’ Jon says. He holds his
hands up in surrender. ‘This is a mess. A real mess. But I’m not sure it’s got any bearing on her death, has it? Unless there’s something you’re not telling us.’
Lucas looks down. He is clenching and unclenching his fists.
‘Katie called me last night. Asked me to come round. She said that she had confronted Brooke about the letters and that Brooke was furious, was planning to spread more rumours about us. Said she was going to try and get me sacked.’
‘Hang on, so this is all recent? The letters? And why would she want you sacked?’
‘Just for kicks, I suppose. I’m not even sure that Brooke cared what her sister got up to. She certainly didn’t care about me. Brooke is one of those kids who is always on the lookout for trouble. And yes, it’s recent. The third letter only came last week. I think Brooke was pissed off that her little game had been sussed out so quickly.’
The same thought hits Polly and Jon at the same time.
‘You don’t think . . .’
‘You don’t mean . . .’
‘I don’t know what I think or what I mean,’ Lucas says. ‘But that girl is out of control. Katie was so upset last night. She wanted me to speak to Brooke, but she’d already gone out after their argument. I didn’t want to hang around. Their mother was still at work. What was she going to think if she came round and found me in the house at half ten at night?’
‘Hang on,’ Polly says, ‘if Katie had an argument with Brooke, why didn’t she call Neil, her boyfriend – get him round?’
Lucas sighs. ‘They’d had an argument of their own, earlier in the day. She was ignoring his messages. She was scared about what Brooke was going to do. Scared it was going to get me in trouble. She didn’t care about herself. She knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really. But she knew it wouldn’t look good for me. People think what they want to think, don’t they? No one would believe me if I said we were just friends. And what am I supposed to do now? It’s only going to get worse, when Katie isn’t here to defend me—’
