Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (20 page)

‘That’s correct.’

Respectfully, with careful precision, DI Powell
lifts a corner of the white sheet and drapes it over the dead woman’s face
again. Her body discreetly disappears, just as it did under the soil. But I’m
still aware of it lying there between us. Like a silent accusation.

‘Preliminary results indicate that she died
about a week ago,’ he adds slowly, as though reluctant to share too much
information with a member of the public.

I feel queasy. The unpleasant smell is
beginning to get to me.

‘Can
we get out of here?’

DI Powell indicates the door behind me and we
go outside. In the corridor he waits in silence, hands back in his trouser pockets,
while I lean my forehead against the cool wall, breathing slowly in and out,
trying not to throw up.

Me
and dead bodies. We can’t seem to stop meeting. But we don’t get on.

‘Better?’ he asks.

‘I want to go home.’ I look up and down the
corridor. Everywhere looks the same in this place. I can’t remember now which
way leads to the exit. ‘Where’s the way out?’

‘I’ll arrange for someone to drive you home.’

‘Thanks.’

He walks ahead of me down the corridor. ‘So you
simply went back into the woods to look for her on your own?’

‘With Tris.’

‘With Tristan, sorry.’

‘Not
to look for her. I had a hunch, that’s all.’

‘I
thought you said it wasn’t a hunch.’

‘I
said knowing she’s a different woman isn’t a hunch. But going back into the
woods … It was something I needed to do. For my own peace of mind.’

‘And
Tristan was there as back-up? Was it his idea to go into the woods?’

‘I
already told you, no. It was my idea.’

‘And
your idea to go digging in that particular spot.’

‘The soil was loose there. It looked freshly
dug. That made me suspicious.’

‘So
why not call the police?’

I
stop and look at him directly. ‘Why do you think, Inspector? Calling the police
didn’t work out so well for me last time.’

‘Fair
enough.’

‘I
suppose I wanted to be sure you hadn’t missed anything. That’s about as far as
our premeditation went though. We didn’t take any spades, there was nothing
planned about it. Even when we started digging, we didn’t really expect … ’

‘To find a body?’

I nod, and duck through the door he is holding
open for me.

‘Especially not a
different
body?’ he murmurs.

‘Dead right.’

He looks at me, brows raised, but says nothing.

We head out into
the station waiting area, which is surprisingly quiet this evening, only one
middle-aged woman sitting in a corner with a faux snakeskin handbag on her lap.
I wait by the glass doors while Powell speaks to one of the officers behind the
front desk. It’s getting dark outside. The sky even looks a little threatening
to the north of the town. I wonder if the weather is going to break at last and
bring us rain.

I
think about the next few days at work, and the various track and field
activities we have planned in the run-up to Sports’ Day. It will not be much
fun if we get a downpour.

I
try not to think about Tris, and the stolen photograph I found in his bedroom.
I’m not going to mention it to Powell. Two things there: first, I would have to
admit I got it by entering his house illegally, and second, I want a chance to
confront Tris about the photo on his own. Whatever he’s done, he’s still my
friend and I want to believe in him. However bloody stupid that may turn out to
be.

‘Right,’ Powell says, coming to join me at the
door, ‘my sergeant will drive you back to Eastlyn. He’s just getting his coat.’

‘I
appreciate it.’

‘One
last thing before you go, Eleanor,’ DI Powell says, pulling a see-through
plastic evidence bag out of his jacket pocket. There’s something in the bag.
Something small and golden and shiny. He holds it out to me. ‘Have you ever
seen this before?’

I take the bag and stare at it. My heart jerks
in shock. ‘Where … where did you get this?’

His gaze changes, becomes intent. ‘So you do recognise
it?’

I nod, my voice coming from a great distance.
‘It’s mine. Or it could be mine. My gold anklet. I thought I’d lost it.’

‘Where? When?’

I turn the bag over in my hand, examining the
chain more closely. Of course, there must be hundreds of plain gold anklets in
the world. Though this one looks identical to mine, I have to admit. Right now
to the bent clasp, which is probably how it fell off my ankle in the first
place.

The
bag has been tagged with a label. Numbers and letters, some kind of identity
code. I struggle against a sense of unreality.

‘Newquay.
Last Saturday night. I went clubbing there with … ’

‘With whom?’ the inspector prompts me when I
hesitate, his tone urgent. ‘A man? Sorry, I really need a name from you. Just
so we can exclude him from our enquiries.’

‘Denzil,’ I say reluctantly. ‘I was with Denzil
Tremain.’

‘Thank you.’

DI
Powell slips the evidence bag back into his inside jacket pocket, looking
grimly satisfied.

‘Wait,’
I say as he turns away, ‘aren’t you going to tell me where you found that?’

Powell
glances round cautiously, but the middle-aged woman has got up and is talking
to the desk sergeant through the glass. There is no one to overhear us.

‘This
information has to remain completely confidential,’ he says.

‘Understood.’

‘It
was found on the victim,’ he admits. ‘The woman in the grave. She was wearing
it round her ankle. No fingerprints, no DNA on it except hers. So we can assume
it was wiped clean beforehand. Given that this anklet was all she was wearing,
it must be significant, it must hold some kind of symbolic importance for the
killer.’

‘What
are you saying?’

‘I
think it’s a message. A message for you, Eleanor.’

I
stare at him. A message?

I
feel cold inside.
No fingerprints, no
DNA.
I see again Denzil setting fire to the handwritten note on the
windscreen, and dropping it to the ground.
You’re
my Number One. Thanks for the anklet.

‘Inspector,’
I say, ‘there’s something I haven’t told you. Something important.’

I grab my leather
jacket and helmet from the school staff room, then fish my phone out of my
rucksack. Nothing from Tris. Nothing from Hannah. Nothing from Denzil.

Though
the latter is hardly a surprise. DI Powell rang this morning to tell me Denzil
had been arrested.

I
have been feeling guilty all day. I cannot believe Denzil has anything to do
with this, anymore than I can believe Tris is involved. But of course the
police are desperately looking for a scapegoat to reassure local voters, and
Denzil Tremain, with his long history of social problems and minor arrests,
must fit their criteria very nicely.

They
let Tris go. They will let Denzil go soon too. They will ask him about the note
on the windscreen, and the anklet, and his relationship with me, and then they
will let him go. There will be no evidence against him, I’m sure of it.

I
study the clock on the staff room wall. Just over an hour until my next
hypnotherapy session. I could do some shopping for tonight’s dinner, or go for
a coffee somewhere comfortable. There’s a sharp wind blowing today, and the sky
is cloudy. Not good weather for a walk through the park as I had originally
planned.

I
tell myself not to do it, but ignore that warning and tap the letters into the
empty text box with deliberate recklessness.

Need to speak to you asap.

As soon as I send the message, I wish I could
unsend it. I have not spoken to Tris since the police took him in for
questioning. And I’m still smarting from Connor’s damning portrayal of my
character. I know he wants to protect Tris from getting in trouble with the
police again, which probably does entail staying away from me, but does he have
to suggest to his brother that I’m not right in the head?

A few minutes later though, I feel a buzz in my
jacket pocket. Too late to back out now, I think, glancing down at the text on
the screen.

Where are
you? Call me.

I hesitate, listening again to that nagging internal
critic, then ring his mobile anyway. He answers almost immediately. ‘Eleanor?
What’s up? I thought you were at work today.’

‘The head gave me the afternoon off. For
another hynotherapy session.’

A short silence, then, ‘You okay?’

‘Not so much.’

Shut up, Eleanor.

‘I thought you had been let off the hook for
those sessions. They found the body, they know you’re not having a relapse.’

‘I
chose to keep going of my own accord,’ I tell him, but warily, not quite sure
how much I should trust him. ‘I used to hate hypnosis when I was a kid, but I
find it oddly relaxing now.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes,
seriously,’ I insist, stalling on what I really want to say.

‘So
where are you now? Still at work?’ He does not sound much like a man who has
been warned off seeing me. ‘We can come to you. It sounds like you could do
with some company. It won’t take long, I’m already in town with Connor.’

‘Doing what?’

He sounds awkward. ‘Shopping, believe it or
not.’

‘I
don’t
believe it.’

‘Seriously,
it’s true. We both needed new wellington boots, and Connor wants to drop by the
vet and buy some eye medicine for one of our sheep.’

‘What an exciting life you two lead.’

‘Hang on a tick.’ The phone is muffled for a
few seconds. I get the impression Connor is talking to him.
Is that the mad girl? Tell her to get lost.
Only do it subtly so she does not have a
clue we’re trying to distance ourselves from her.
Then Tris comes back on
the line, sounding friendly but a little stressed. ‘Okay, I’ll meet you on my
own. Connor’s got to shoot off before the vet closes. But I can always take the
bus home.’

This
is probably unwise. If I meet Tris now, and confront him about the photograph, I
could end up going into my hypnosis session with my head messed up. But isn’t
that why I rang him? So we could talk?

We
can’t ignore each other forever, despite what’s happened, even after his arrest
and the stolen holiday snap I found in his room. There may be an innocent explanation
for both those things.

Besides,
we’re still friends and that has to mean something. Or am I naïve to believe
that?

I make the decision. ‘I’ll be heading your way
soon. Towards town from the school. Meet me in the Turk’s Head.’

‘A secret assignation. I like it. How long?’

‘About fifteen minutes?’

I see Tris before
he sees me. I’m leaning beside the jukebox in the Turk’s Head, watching
passers-by while I sip at a tasteless half-pint of cola stacked with ice chips.
I feel more like having a large glass of chilled white wine, but I’m on my
scooter, and I still have my hypnotherapy session to get through first. It
would hardly impress the good doctor for me to turn up tipsy.

There’s
a sharp wind, and Tris comes up the steep slope of the High Street towards the
Turk’s Head with his head down, hands in his pockets. His shoulders are hunched
in his black jacket, collar turned up against the cold.

He
does not look much like a killer. And presumably the police agree, because they
released him without charge.

I
walked past a rehearsal of the Shakespeare play, ‘Macbeth,’ in the main hall earlier
today. The kids were doing some kind of modern version, I guess, rigged out in
camouflage. I stopped in the doorway to listen for a few minutes. It made me
think about all those bloody murders in the play, and the duplicitous nature of
killers. ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,’ the old
king says just before he is stabbed to death by Macbeth, who is supposed to be
his host and his friend.

Whoever
is killing these women may be exactly like that. A friend, perhaps even a
colleague here at the school, someone I know and ought to trust. Whoever it is,
he must be hoping he can drive me mad with these tricks and messages, by
wrong-footing me and making the police doubt my judgement.

Why,
though? I keep coming back to motive, and there doesn’t seem to be one.

Still, does a serial killer need a motive?
Aren’t they just driven to kill and can’t help themselves? I’m not sure of my
logic or my information, and that worries me. I need to sit down in front of my
laptop and educate myself about serial killers. Otherwise I run the risk of
being surprised by this one. Because I’m beginning to think a serial killer is
precisely what we have here, however much DI Powell may try to deny it. Two
women, two bodies, two distinct murders. And two consecutive numbers on their
foreheads. If not a serial killer, then a wannabe. A killer with pretensions of
greatness.

Tris pushes the pub door open and glances about
for me. I raise a hand and he smiles, then stops a foot away, as though afraid
to hug me. Something flickers in his face. ‘It’s good to see you, Eleanor. How
are you doing?’

‘I’m not dead yet. That’s a plus.’

His smile turns wry. ‘Yeah, same here.’

I look at him. ‘Shopping with Connor is that
bad, huh?’

‘You have no idea.’

He’s right. I try to imagine Connor being all
motherly, dragging his brother round the shops, and fail.

I find a table by the window while he wanders
to the bar for a pint.
I think about the
photograph I found in his bedroom with my dad’s handwriting on the back. It was
definitely missing from my keepsake box under the bed.

How
did Tris get it? More importantly perhaps,
why
did he take it?

I could ask him outright, and am tempted. But
then I would have to admit that I’ve been in his bedroom.

‘I’m
sorry the police kept you in for questioning,’ I say when he comes back with
his pint.

He
shrugs, saying nothing, but his expression is uneasy.

‘If it’s any consolation, they arrested Denzil
today,’ I tell him.

He looks at me directly then, startled. ‘Why?’

‘They think he might be involved.’

‘That’s crazy.’

I’m surprised. ‘I thought you didn’t like
Denzil.’

‘I don’t. But he’s not a killer.’

‘I agree. It’s not that clear-cut though. The
police think … ’ I make a face and play with a beer mat, spinning it round and
round. I dislike not feeling able to be straight with Tris. ‘They found
something on the dead woman. Something that belongs to me.’

‘What kind of thing?’

I hesitate, remembering DI Powell’s warning.
Completely confidential.
And Tris may
still be one of their suspects, for all I know.

‘I’m not allowed to say, sorry. But it’s
something I lost when I was out with Denzil last week. You remember, when we
bumped into each other at Newquay.’

He nods, not replying, but there’s that wary flicker
in his face again. Like he’s hiding something.

‘Tris, what is it?’ I ask urgently. ‘If you
know something, you have to tell me. Or tell the police. I won’t hold it
against you.’

‘I don’t know anything, Eleanor. What I know
would fit inside a match box. Less than that, even.’

‘I was in your room when you came home from the
police station,’ I blurt out, unable to rein in the guilt any longer. ‘I found
a photo there, a photo of me and my mum on the beach at Polzeath. It had my dad’s
handwriting on the back.’

He
is staring at me, his eyes wide with shock.

‘You
… you stole it from my bedroom, didn’t you?’ I continue, pressing him. ‘From
the box under my bed?’

 
‘You
broke into my
bedroom
? I thought
there was something odd when I got back. The window was open and – ’

‘I’m sorry I broke into your house. It was
wrong, I agree. I’m a very bad person, okay? But that’s not important right now.
What about the photo of my mum?’

‘Jesus Christ. You think I’m the one, don’t
you? Even though the police questioned me for hours, then let me go because
there was no evidence at all, none whatsoever, you still think I killed that
woman we found.’

I think of the shadow man standing by my
bedroom window. That dark menacing figure, his face unseen. Could it really have
been Tris, come to steal photos from my keepsake box?

‘Well?’ he demands.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know anything
anymore. But you
did
have that photograph
in your room, and it was strange how you seemed to know exactly where to look
for that body.’

‘I did
what
?’
He shakes his head. ‘No way, Eleanor. I was just following your lead. You were
the one who said, let’s dig here. I already went through all that with the
police a hundred times or more. Don’t try and unload your baggage on me.’

‘All right, so where did it come from? The
photo?’

He hesitates. ‘I found it.’

‘Oh,
come on …’

‘I
swear to God. I found it.’

‘Where?’

He drinks about a third of his lager, then
replaces the glass carefully on his beer mat. ‘I was out with the dog about ten
days ago. And I found the photo just lying there on the ground. Near the old
mill.’

The
old mill again.

‘But I’ve never even been down that way. How
could one of my old photographs have got there unless someone stole it?’

‘I
agree,’ he says calmly. ‘Only it wasn’t me who stole it.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me about it
immediately? Why not give me a call and say, hey, Ellie, you’ll never guess
what I’ve just found while I was out walking the dog?’

When
he does not reply, I stare at him accusingly. ‘You must have known it belonged
to me, Tris. That nobody else could have a photo like that. It has my dad’s
writing on the back, for God’s sake. My name. My mum’s name. So why not tell me
you found it?’

His face is shuttered, unreadable. ‘I had my
reasons.’

‘Which were?’

‘Not yet, okay? Not yet. Trust me on this.’ He
necks the remainder of his lager in one long, inelegant swallow, then wipes the
corners of his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘I’m not ready. My head’s not
straight. But I’m glad you got your photo back.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Just don’t ever break into my bedroom again.’

‘Ditto.’

‘Or, if you do,’ he says, folding his arms
across his chest and leaning back in his seat to glare at me, ‘make the bloody
bed before you leave next time.’

I should be furious with him, and more
suspicious than ever, but for some reason I’m not. Maybe because I know –
or at least I sense – that we’re still friends. Still the best of
friends.

‘Your
room was a total fucking tip,’ I agree. ‘I’m not joking, you need to get in
there with some air freshener.’

‘Better come round with your pinny on then, and
tidy up.’