A Velvet Scream (20 page)

FOURTEEN

A
grumpy Christine Bretby opened the door and without a word led Joanna and Danny into the small lounge where Kayleigh was sitting, watching television. The girl continued to stare fixedly into the TV screen but Joanna knew from the stiffening of her shoulders that she was perfectly aware they were there.

‘Hello, Kayleigh,' she said easily enough, settling down on the sofa. ‘How are you today?'

Kayleigh was dressed casually in a loose-fitting white smock top and black leggings which emphasized her bony thighs. The room felt warm and was scented by a candle burning on the fireplace. It threw a strange light on to the Klimt, the flames catching the gold; the movement almost making it look alive. In this light it looked – not a cliché as Joanna had judged it – but beautiful.

‘I'm OK,' Kayleigh replied, still staring pointedly into the screen. Her mother sat in the window seat, silhouetted against the glass and watching with scant interest.

The hatred between mother and daughter was palpable; visible and poisonous as mustard gas. The air between them was electric with tension, hostility and suspicion, yet as Joanna glanced from mother to daughter she realized that although Christine undoubtedly had her cross to bear, Kayleigh was the more vulnerable. Right up until she opened her mouth. ‘I don't wanna see no friggin' shrink,' she said. ‘I ain't nuts.
I'm
the victim here.' She scanned the room of its three occupants and challenged them. ‘Don't you lot realize?'

Little Miss Harrison could stick up for herself, Joanna thought, her sympathy leaching away until she studied the girl and revised her opinion. Not always. There was a look in the girl's eyes: fright, bewilderment, vulnerability and, above all, a question.
Why me? Why do things always happen to me?

The girl's vulnerability made Joanna alter her approach. She had come to the house quite prepared to bully Kayleigh Harrison into revealing whatever it was that she was holding back. Now she began more gently. ‘Kayleigh,' she said, ‘you do realize that a girl's gone missing from outside Patches?'

‘What's it to do with me?' Her look was pugnacious now. She was wary and on the defensive, which made Joanna even more convinced that she was concealing something she knew was important.

Joanna kept her temper with difficulty. ‘We don't know,' she said steadily. ‘Maybe you're right and it is nothing to do with you. But look at it from our point of view. Same club; within a few days of the assault on you a girl goes missing. What would you think if you were me?'

It was a new police tactic; appealing to witnesses to look at crimes from the police point of view instead of their own. The approach took Kayleigh aback, as it was meant to do.

She tried, ‘'Spose I can see it's a bit of a coincidence, like.'

Joanna continued smoothly. ‘Maybe Molly Carraway's disappearance has nothing to do with the assault on you but we are naturally suspicious that the person who attacked you is the same person who has abducted Molly.' She paused to give her next words their full effect. ‘She's been missing since very early Saturday morning.' She aimed her glance at the leaden sky outside the window. ‘It's freezing out there, Kayleigh. You were found
hours
after the assault. Not days. It was lucky for you that Steve Shand came back to collect his car.'

The sentence stopped her in her tracks. Luck?
Had
it simply been luck? Or had Shand returned to the scene of the crime to make sure that she was dead? Then why sound the alarm? No. That wasn't it.

‘This girl, Molly,' she continued, ‘has been missing for sixty hours.'

Now Kayleigh's truculent expression was replaced with one of cunning. It was just as ugly as the pugnacity but when she spoke her voice was as quavering as an old lady's. ‘Wha-at makes you think it's the same person?'

‘It's the same place.' Joanna kept her voice steady, though it was as much of an effort as holding a ship's wheel on course through a hurricane. Her emotions were surfacing.

She dropped the accusation as deftly as skimming a stone. ‘You're holding something back, Kayleigh.'

The girl's stare dropped away but not before Joanna had read consternation, fright – and, surprisingly, guilt. Guilt?

She waited for the girl to speak. And she did. With difficulty, her eyes, the colour of mud, lifted to meet Joanna's. ‘What?' she began then stopped. ‘What do you think's happened to her?' Now she sounded no more than her fourteen years old. If anything even younger. Eleven. Twelve.

‘We don't know. We have no idea. She's simply vanished.'

Kayleigh summoned up every inch of teenage bravado. ‘People don't just vanish.'

‘
I
know that.' Joanna knew she was using the voice of a teacher. An indulgent but firm teacher; the sort one always respects because they speak the absolute truth, never bending it for a story or altering the facts for expedience. ‘But after Clara, Molly's friend, saw her around midnight, no one seems to have seen her. It's Monday today. No one has seen her for almost forty-eight hours. Where is she? Is she freezing, like you were?'

Kayleigh went rigid.

Joanna ploughed on, relentless. ‘Or is she dead?' She deliberately aimed her glance outside the window, to the freezing, grey day. ‘Is her body out there somewhere?' Interestingly it was Kayleigh's mother who flinched.

Joanna pursued her questions ruthlessly. ‘Where is she?'

It had been a rhetorical question – she had not expected it to be answered but bravely Kayleigh tried to. ‘She must be with
him
,' she said, and now her expression had softened.

Who is he? Who do you mean?'

Kayleigh licked dry lips. ‘The bloke that went for me,' she said quickly.

‘Who is he?'

A swift glance at her mother. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Honest, I don't.'

Joanna pulled out the picture of Molly Carraway. ‘This is the missing girl,' she said. ‘Do you know her? Have you ever seen her at Patches?'

Kayleigh's perusal of the photograph was wary, puzzled and cursory. ‘I think I have seen her at the club,' she said. ‘She's quite a good dancer.'

Which would have drawn attention to her
.

Kayleigh kept her gaze on the picture then swivelled her gaze up to meet Joanna's. ‘Pretty, ain't she?' There was a note of regret in her voice now.

‘Yes, she is.'
Or was
.

Next Joanna showed her the photograph of Clara, which again provoked admiration from the less sophisticated Kayleigh. ‘She's just gorgeous, ain't she?'

Again Joanna agreed. She watched the emotions cross the girl's face: grey clouds across a clear sky, and decided to change tactics. Impulsively she put her hand on the girl's arm. ‘Kayleigh,' she appealed, ‘please help us find her.'

The look of alarm on Kayleigh's face was obvious. Even her mother, who had sat, zombie-like, watching the interchange, was bound to say something, but being Christine Bretby it was neither comforting nor reassuring but aggressive. ‘What 'ave you been up to, my girl,' she said. ‘What hole 'ave you dug for yourself?'

Kayleigh practically cowered into the corner of the sofa. ‘Nothin', Mum. I ain't done nothin'.'

Christine leaned forward. Slid a cigarette out of the packet and lit it before she responded to this. ‘And if I believe that, my girl,' she said, ‘I'll believe anythin'.' She wagged her finger at her daughter. ‘You're up to somethin', Kayleigh Harrison.' She sucked in a long drag then wagged the burning tip in Kayleigh's direction. ‘I don't know what it is but you're definitely up to somethin'. Probably lyin' through your teeth again.'

Wisely her daughter did not respond to this but lowered her eyes and muttered, ‘No, I'm not.'

‘Kayleigh.' Joanna appealed again. ‘Please. Anything. A car, a smell, a sound. Something. Please. I want to find Molly.' In the doorway Hesketh-Brown shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Kayleigh stared straight in front of her. ‘All I can remember,' she insisted, ‘is that he weren't local. He was tall and skinny. He smoked. I can't tell you anythin' more because I don't know it. It was cold. It was dark. There weren't much light in that 'orrible car park. I was frightened and that is it. There's no point you keepin' squeezing me for stuff I can't tell you 'cos I don't know.' Her eyes were begging to be believed but Joanna knew she was lying. It was the way she had just spoken: rehearsed, remembered lines. But not the truth. Which bit of her story was she hiding behind? She could not bully it out of the girl. There was a core of steel in Kayleigh Harrison, probably forged by years of dislike and contempt from her mother and complete neglect from her father. If Kayleigh did not want to tell she would not.

Well.

She stood up, ready to go, and fired her last question. ‘Tell me, Kayleigh,' she said, in a sweet voice, ‘do you think Molly Carraway is alive or dead?'

The girl looked straight at her. ‘Alive,' she said. ‘She's alive.'

Joanna said her goodbyes and, feeling confounded and frustrated, she and detective Constable Danny Hesketh-Brown returned to the station.

Afterwards Joanna would regret that she had not pressed Kayleigh harder but it would probably have got her nowhere, except perhaps in front of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. And she couldn't afford another brush with Police Complaints.

There was a briefing at lunchtime, partly to find out if anyone had any news and partly to hand out more flyers of Molly Carraway and revise the facts of her disappearance. Joanna looked at the map they'd pinned on the wall. There was not one pin stuck in, even to indicate a false sighting. There was no proof that she had been abducted – apart from the torn-out earring. She could have gone of her own free will. Joanna was well aware that teenage girls were capable of many things. There had been a disappearance a few years ago of a thirteen-year-old who had simply pinched some money out of her mother's purse and gone on a jaunt to Blackpool for a couple of weeks. There was another who had gone with a boyfriend to his home country of Morocco and could not find her way back. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Molly had been conniving. The four uniformed guys who had been scanning the CCTV footage had spotted Molly and Clara plenty of times but not noted any particular male interest – dances with various lads but no one fitting Kayleigh's description. There were other possibilities. Lured by promises of celebrity Molly could have gone to London to be a supermodel. There were victims of abuse who surfaced dead or alive but Molly was not one of these. No more than a high-spirited teenager. The real frustration of this case was her conviction that Kayleigh held the key, or at least could point them in the right direction.

Korpanski had enjoyed his morning at Newcastle-under-Lyme and was ready to report back to Joanna. She returned to their office to find him sitting at his desk, looking smug. She caved in. ‘Go on, then,' she said, ‘shoot.'

‘Well.' Korpanski put his hands on his meaty thighs, grinned at her and took a giant bite out of his sandwich. ‘They were pretty thorough. They took lots of statements, interviewed lots of people.' He shot a sneaky look at Joanna which she interpreted correctly. ‘Sandra Johnson was really helpful,' he said. ‘She went through them all with me,' he said. ‘There are similarities to Kayleigh's case but you can't really say they're unique. There was a birthday party the night Danielle disappeared but it was a hen party; sixteen girls all dressed up with Playbunny ears, black frocks, high-heeled boots.' He grinned at her. ‘I enjoyed looking at those.'

‘Get on with it, Korpanski,' she said, knowing it was silly to rise to his bait but she was twitchy. Molly Carraway was missing and her wedding was looming, like a cross channel ferry, slicing through fog.

After a satisfied grin, Korpanski continued. ‘It was a Tuesday night at the club so it was quieter than at the weekends. Danielle was doing a course at college, learning hairdressing. She was a real looker, into beauty therapies and stuff like that. Anyway, that night six of them had gone to Lymeys as it was one of her friend's birthday parties. She'd really tarted up in a gold sequinned dress.'

‘Really?' Joanna felt a quickening of her pulse.

Korpanski looked smug. ‘Apparently metallics are the in thing at the moment so she was well up to the minute.'

Joanna resisted a smirk. ‘So glad you've swotted up on current fashion, Mike. Go on.'

‘All night she'd been shimmying around, quite drunk, everyone noticing her and then – all of a sudden, her friends said – she just wasn't there any more.'

‘I'm listening,' Joanna said, downing a mug of tea. ‘Go on, Mike.'

‘According to her friends' statements Danielle wasn't a virgin but she didn't have a steady boyfriend. She didn't want one. She'd told her friends she wanted to “play the field”, which she did.'

‘Do I sense a jealous boyfriend somewhere in the background?'

Korpanski's grin grew even broader. ‘She'd been going out with a married man. There was a suspicion that it was a teacher at her college. One of her tutors.'

‘Wait a minute.' Joanna crossed to the board. ‘One of Shand's buddies is a teacher, isn't he?'

‘Hennessey. But he teaches eight year olds,' Korpanski pointed out. ‘Anyway, DI Sandra Johnson tells me the person who had sex with Danielle could have been just about anyone. He'd worn a condom. It was a rainy night; there was precious little good forensic evidence and plenty of forensic evidence – most of which would have had nothing to do with her. In the end, as Danielle died of natural causes the CPS and the local force decided not to pursue investigations. They could never know whether the sex was consensual or forceful.'