Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by Jane Holland

  A police constable is already standing in the room, hands behind his back, face impassive, as though he’s always been there, part of the fixtures. He looks at me, then away. Like I’m contagious.

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Eleanor. Please take a seat.’ The inspector shrugs out of his jacket and slings it about the back of his chair. ‘Let’s make ourselves comfortable. Would you like a coffee? Maybe a cup of tea?’

  I sit down at the interview table. ‘Thanks, tea would be good.’

  He is carefully laying out the manila and plastic see-through folders he’s brought in with him. ‘Sorry for the delay, we’ll start in a couple of minutes.’ He glances up at the constable, and then nods. Like it’s a pre-arranged signal between the two of them. ‘Two teas, constable.’

  The constable nods back solemnly. ‘Sir.’

  It’s not a signal, I tell myself firmly. That’s just the stirrings of paranoia speaking. I force myself to smile at the constable as he leaves the room. ‘Thank you.’

  He does not smile back.

  Now it’s just the two of us. I place my hands on the table, then remove them to my lap because my palms are sweaty and I don’t want the inspector to notice. Last time I did anything like this my father was in the room because I was a child. Now I’m an adult and alone.

  Though if my dad was here now, he would probably shout or throw up on the inspector’s highly polished shoes. So I tell myself it’s a good thing that I’m on my own.

  I am worried about what Connor said outside though. Do I need the duty solicitor? Should I demand a lawyer along with the obligatory cup of tea? Surely I am only here as a witness, like Tris, and not under suspicion myself?

  It’s ridiculous but I can’t seem to shake this feeling of unease.

  The interview room is functional, not particularly welcoming. There are grey blinds at the window, blocking the late sunlight, a bare noticeboard displaying nothing but a No Smoking notice, and this table with four chairs set about it.

  The door opens, and I glance round. It’s PC Helen Flynn, the woman officer who came to the cottage when I saw the first body.

  ‘Ah, PC Flynn, there you are.’ DI Powell gestures her to sit down beside him. ‘We’re just waiting on some cups of tea. Are you having one?’

  ‘No thank you, sir,’ she says, her manner very correct, seating herself straight-backed in the seat opposite mine. My eyes meet hers. Hers are coldly professional. There will be no help from that quarter.

  The constable returns with two plastic cups of tea, and places one in front of me, and one in front of his superior officer. The name on his uniform sleeve says Hanney. My tea does not look very appetizing, a greyish brown swirl with flecks of white. Powdered creamer? Or off-milk?

  ‘Sugar?’ the constable asks quietly, pushing a plastic spoon and small paper sachet towards me.

  I shake my head.

  It’s like a dinner party without the dinner. I wonder if paper hats will be handed round next.

  Powell brings a notebook out of his pocket and lays it in front of him, then arranges it neatly alongside the manila folders, making sure everything is properly aligned.

  Obsessive Compulsive, much?

  PC Flynn prepares the statement sheets. She asks for my full details. I answer in a monotone, feeling like a criminal. I am half disappointed not to find a mirrored wall in the room behind which psychologists are lurking unseen, waiting for me to make some fatal slip. To reveal my guilt. My secret psychosis. They’ll be waiting a long time for that to happen, I think grimly, and lay my hands flat on the table, looking straight across at Detective Inspector Powell. Sod the sweaty palms.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  Powell shakes his head, smiling. ‘Of course not. Mr Taylor is mistaken. Like I said, we need a simple statement about your discovery of the body today. To get the facts straight.’

  ‘Perhaps I should get a lawyer.’

  ‘That’s up to you, of course.’ DI Powell shrugs as though it makes no difference to him whether I ask for a lawyer or not. But I can hear the impatience in his voice. He leans back in his chair, his smile forced. ‘No one’s saying you’ve done anything wrong though, Eleanor. And it’s a Sunday. You would probably have to wait several hours for a lawyer to arrive, and I suspect you’d rather just get this over with.’

  I can see the sense in that. ‘Okay,’ I agree, perhaps recklessly. But he is right; I do want to get this over with. ‘What do you need to know?’

  Powell looks relieved. ‘I’ll ask you a few questions, and you must answer them as accurately as possible, and we’ll start to piece together a statement from there. PC Flynn here will take notes to keep us on the right track, and make sure nothing gets missed. Is that okay with you?’

  I shrug. ‘I guess.’

  PC Flynn gives me a cool look, then sits waiting, pen poised above the lined sheet of paper. I begin to dislike her intensely.

  He smiles. ‘So let’s start at the beginning, Eleanor. Why were you in the woods this morning?’

  The table surface is tacky. I shift my palms, unsticking them. ‘It was a nice day, and I felt like a relaxing run.’

  ‘With Tristan Taylor?’ When I nod, his eyes narrow thoughtfully on my face. ‘Is Tristan your boyfriend? I know you said you were “just friends” when we were in the woods. But maybe you didn’t want to be too specific in front of him. I know how delicate these things can be.’ He hesitates, his smile persuasive. Then gives me another nudge. ‘Especially if you’ve only just started seeing each other.’

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’

  Not entirely accurate, but a strategic response. If I say no, he will ask if I have a boyfriend. I will then be forced to say yes, and he will then ask his name. Denzil is known to the police, and if they should discover that we have history, they’d jump on that at once. He would look like a golden ticket to the police. Once his name came up, they would never believe Denzil has nothing to do with this.

  Besides, I would not characterize Denzil Tremain as a boyfriend. Especially after the way he treated me last night. And as for Tris, it’s complicated. From my side, not his. Unfortunately.

  ‘No boyfriend,’ I insist when the inspector stares, and draw my clammy hands out of sight under the table. ‘Like I said, Tris is a friend. A good friend.’

  ‘So you went for a walk in the woods with your good friend, for a spot of weekend relaxation?’

  I nod, looking him in the eyes.

  His face hardens. ‘And then you decided to head off the main path and follow the stream instead. Near where you saw a dead body last week. Doesn’t that strike you as rather odd behaviour for a peaceful Sunday walk?’

  ‘I thought it might help me get over it. If I could see the place again, get things straight in my head.’

  Powell considers me for a moment. Then shrugs, nodding. ‘Okay.’ He opens the notebook in front of him, and consults its spidery writing with a frown. ‘Now, according to the officer who questioned you at the scene, you walked along the stream from the bridge, and found a patch of loose soil that looked like someone had been digging there recently.’

  ‘That’s about it, yes.’

  ‘Whose idea was it to go that way in the first place?’

  ‘Tristan’s.’

  ‘And what did Tristan think about this “loose soil”? Was he keen on digging it up? Was that his idea too?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’ I can still feel that gritty soil under my nails from where I cleared her face, even though I washed my hands thoroughly in the ladies when I got to the station, soap and hot water. ‘It was mine. My idea.’

  PC Flynn has been scribbling all this time, looking at me occasionally while writing down what’s being said. DI Powell leans across and whispers something in her ear, then sits upright again, his gaze returning to my face.

  ‘So it was you who wanted to dig up the ground? Is that what you’re saying?’

  I nod, feeling uncooperative.

  But he presse
s me, asking, ‘Why?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Indulge me, Eleanor. For the record.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly.’ I shrug, trying to verbalize the thing. ‘It was a hunch. Like police work. Detectives get hunches too, don’t they?’

  ‘When we’re lucky.’

  ‘I had that kind of feeling about it. A suspicion. The soil looked freshly dug and I couldn’t see a reason for that. So I decided we should dig there. We didn’t have spades, so we used what was to hand.’

  ‘And what was Tristan doing during all this? Did he dig too?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I suppose he thought it was a good idea as well.’

  ‘No, in fact he didn’t. He tried to stop me, said we should wait for the police. He said we could be destroying evidence.’

  I see the note on Denzil’s windscreen again, the way he burnt it so aggressively and drove away. I should tell the police about the note, it could be important. But the inspector would not understand the delicate nature of things, how my sanity is balanced on a knife edge, nor can I explain my uncertainty over that note, or what happened to it. If I tell Powell about the note, he will want to question Denzil, and I don’t want this man trampling all over my private life.

  ‘Tris was the one who wanted to call you at once,’ I decide to add, ‘but I wouldn’t let him. So if anyone’s to blame, it’s me. Not Tristan.’

  His gaze flickers over my face, then drops lower. It is as though he can see my hands through the table, twisting restlessly out of sight. I try to keep still, to look calm and normal and sane. But this whole business is hitting me on so many levels at once, I can feel it triggering every defence mechanism I’ve ever had. I struggle to remember my mantras, to control my breathing, and keep smiling.

  ‘You said in the woods that you’d never seen that woman before.’ He is suspicious, his eyes narrowed. He knows I am withholding information. ‘Which is strange, given the circumstances.’

  ‘That’s right, she was a completely different woman.’ Carefully I describe what the first woman looked like, and compare it to the one I saw in the shallow grave. ‘I know it sounds weird but that’s the truth. I don’t understand it either.’

  ‘It is almost unconceivable that she is not the same woman,’ Powell agrees calmly, and plays with the pencil on the table, watching me. ‘Unless the woods are peppered with dead bodies. Any chance you might have made a mistake in your initial description?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were in a state of shock, Eleanor. And the woods were very misty that morning, you said so yourself. Perhaps you didn’t look as closely as you thought.’

  ‘It was a different woman.’

  The inspector smiles. ‘Okay, let’s put that possibility aside for now and focus on the facts.’

  He doesn’t believe me. DI Powell did not believe me when I reported the first body. Now he accepts that I was not imagining things, but does not believe that there could be two dead women out there, neither of them yet identified. That’s one step too far for him.

  I say, ‘It’s just as well they’ve proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world isn’t flat, or we’d be in serious trouble.’

  Powell gives me an old-fashioned look.

  Someone knocks on the interview room door and Powell barks, ‘Come in,’ then listens impatiently as a young police officer enters the room and bends to his ear, whispering urgently.

  I catch the words, ‘woods’ and ‘body’ – but nothing else.

  When the door closes behind the police officer, Powell gives me one of his unrevealing half-smiles, the kind that briefly plucks his lips upwards for a second, then drops them again like smiling hurts him.

  ‘Right, we’ve made a useful start on your statement.’ He stands up, grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘I’ll have to leave you, I’m afraid. I’m needed urgently elsewhere. But PC Flynn will help you draw up a full statement. Once you’re happy with it, you can sign it and you’ll be free to go.’

  There’s something about his flat expression that leaves me cold after his departure, like there’s a sudden draught in the room.

  PC Flynn smiles at me, rearranges the various papers in front of her, then clicks the top of her ballpoint pen a few times. I can tell it’s an irritating habit of hers.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘This won’t take much longer, I promise.’

  Despite her promise, it’s another hour before I get away from the police station. Too late to expect Hannah to come out and pick me up. She’ll probably be on her way to work by now. PC Flynn ushers me out into the brightly-lit lobby, says goodbye in a consolatory way, presses a Victim Support leaflet into my hand, then disappears back inside without another word. The heavy door locks automatically behind her and it’s over.

  The place is not empty. People are slumped in plastic chairs or reading the noticeboard. A few turn to stare as I ask the sergeant on the desk to call a taxi for me. I have no money and will have to run into the cottage for my purse once we get there. But walking is out of the question, it’s a good five miles to the village through treacherous country lanes, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask the police to give me a lift home.

  I head for the exit, and stop dead in the doorway as Connor appears from the direction of the visitor car park, coming in just as I am leaving.

  I stare. ‘Connor?’

  Connor looks at me blankly, like I am the last person he expected to see there. He’s looking tired and strained, and is carrying a small plastic bag. ‘Hey, Ellie,’ he says, not meeting my gaze. ‘You on your way home? What’s going on?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing. The police took ages taking a statement from me. I thought we’d never get away. Tris must have finished hours ago, surely. Why are you back again?’

  ‘Tris is still here,’ he says grimly. ‘I had to go home again for an hour. To check on the livestock and grab some things for Tris.’ Connor holds up the plastic bag. His voice is uneven. ‘Toothbrush, toothpaste, and so on.’

  ‘Toothbrush?’

  ‘Didn’t I say? They’ve arrested him on suspicion of murder.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY- ONE

  I sleep badly that night, waking several times with the old absurd fear that someone is standing by the window, watching me sleep. Shadow man, shadow man. Where will it all end?

  I cannot stand another day of inaction though, and ring Jenny first thing. ‘I’m going insane here,’ I say, which is probably not the best to say under the circumstances. But I trust Jenny not to take it the wrong way. ‘I need to come back to work.’

  I explain about the body we found, then about Tris’s arrest. I keep the details to the bare minimum. Before I left the station, PC Flynn warned me not to talk to anyone about the particulars of the case, even if the newspapers should get in touch. Not that I need that warning. I have a long history of hating reporters; I’m not about to feed them. But knowing what to say to close friends like Jenny and Hannah is less clear-cut.

  Jenny is shocked and falls silent for a moment, then says, ‘Well, under the circumstances, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t come back to work. But it’s not my decision, of course. I’m only head of department. I can recommend you come back, but for the official go-ahead, you’ll have to speak to Patricia.’

  ‘She’s my next call.’

  Jenny hesitates. ‘Poor Tris. He didn’t do it, of course.’

  A few days ago, I would have agreed without the need for thought. I would have said, ‘No way in the universe did he do it.’ But today is different. Today I am less sure of everything.

  ‘Yeah, it took me by surprise too.’

  ‘Well, keep in touch. I’m heading into work in a few minutes. I’ll hope to see you there.’ She pauses. ‘It will be good to have you back.’

  ‘It will be good to be back, believe me. Fingers crossed Patricia doesn’t find an excuse to keep me at home. Like she’s worried I might start finding bo
dies buried under the playing fields.’

  She laughs. ‘What, the skeletons of teachers past?’

  ‘Something like that. Speak to you later.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  I end the call, then dial the head teacher’s office. She’s not in yet, unsurprisingly. It’s just her answering service. I leave a brief message on her service, again avoiding any specifics, then put down the phone and fix myself a healthy breakfast of oats and fresh, chopped apples with dates. It seems Hannah has been shopping, which means I owe her money. She’s in bed though, recovering from her night shift, so after I’ve eaten, I write a quick note of thanks on the memo board in the kitchen. Then the phone rings.

  It’s the head teacher, Patricia, calling me back. ‘So you’re off the hook,’ she says bluntly, her voice a hoarse bark like a sergeant-major’s.

  ‘No more crazy lady,’ I agree, perhaps a little too flippantly. The sugar rush from the fruit must have gone to my head. I force myself to sound more sober and measured during the explanation that follows, avoiding all mention of the fact that we could not agree on the provenance of the body. ‘To sum up, the police have apologised. I no longer have the need for therapy hanging over my head. And I’d very much like to come back to work.’

  Patricia thinks it over for a moment, then says slowly, ‘Very well, yes. But bear in mind that this latest development may not be public knowledge yet. Until it is, you will have to run the gauntlet of some hostility from the student body.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Also, if there are any more unfortunate incidents with the students, I may have to reconsider this decision.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be extra careful. Thank you very much, I appreciate it.’

  ‘Don’t make me regret this, Eleanor.’

  I end the call, and perform a little victory dance around the kitchen. I am going back to work. And I did not even have to grovel.