Throwaways (4 page)

Donna Di Marco had feline green eyes accentuated by thick black eyeliner, olive skin and said, “you know” a lot as she popped bubblegum. She was also sulky and sullen and largely unhelpful: a bit like I was when I was a teenager. Not even Tommy could work his charms on her. Not that it stopped him from trying. In the end though, I reminded him about an “appointment” he had so he’d take the hint and leave us alone for some girl talk. Not that we got to be alone. Donna’s mum insisted upon sitting on the sofa beside her daughter to offer “her some support.”

As I sat there listening to Donna chewing away, I couldn’t help thinking the only support the huffy, overgrown child needed was a good slap. Her friend was missing; she should have been pulling out all the stops to help find her instead of being an evasive little bitch.

“We’re happy to help, aren’t we, Donna?” said Mrs. Di Marco, a trim brunette in her 40s with a pleasant voice. “Anything that helps to find the monster who took poor Sheena has got to be a good thing. But I’d like to be here in case Donna needs me. She’s been so upset. Since, well you know.”

She patted her daughter’s hand, but Donna was too busy fiddling with the buttons on her phone to acknowledge her mum. She was probably tweeting. Her teenage apathy wasn’t just reserved for me and I pitied her mother. How did she manage to maintain a sunny disposition with Little Miss Moody around? She must have been popping happy pills.

With her mum in the room we were getting nowhere, so I was relieved when after five minutes of small talk she finally went into the kitchen to make some tea.

From my comfy chair, I leaned in towards Donna lowering my voice to make sure her mum couldn’t hear. “Now it’s just you and me, Donna, you can tell me what happened between Sheena and
your teacher Miss Fredericks?”

Donna twirled a strand of her long brown hair around one of her fingers and avoided my gaze. “You know, it was all like Sheena told her folks. Freaky Fredericks made a move on her. She used to eye up all the girls. Lesbo bitch.”

For the first time, I felt sorry for Fredericks for having Donna in her class, stirring things.

“Did Fredericks ever threaten Sheena after people found out?”

Donna rolled her eyes. “Nah. It was Dr. Cassidy the freak blamed. Sheena said Freaky told her the doctor shouldn’t have made her feel dirty for having feelings for her. She said lots of people have crushes on their teachers and that there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Donna, we spoke to Marie Fredericks and she claimed Sheena did all the running. Is that true?”

The schoolgirl looked furtively at her nails. Then she gave an embarrassed giggle. “It was only supposed to be a joke.”

“What was?”

“On freaky Fredericks. She was always flirting with the other teachers and trying so hard to be everyone’s friend. So, me and Sheena started to send her love notes, underline lines in love poems, leave her presents. We wanted her to think she had a secret admirer.”

I didn’t get it. “Why would you do that?”

“For a laugh, of course.” She eyed me as though I was an idiot and she was Einstein. “Eventually we were gonna arrange a meeting, a secret rendezvous and we’d hide and film it on our phones as she turned up to meet her admirer. Only there’d be a
SUCKER
banner.”

I couldn’t believe anyone could be so cruel and I told her so.

Donna didn’t have the decency to look ashamed. “What I didn’t know was the freak had caught Sheena slipping one of our notes into her handbag and as a punishment she’d made her tidy
up the art room. That’s when Sheena and her started to, well you know.” She made a face.

So, they did have a relationship.

“And, it was all consensual,” I said. Donna looked confused, so I added. “Did Mrs. Fredericks make Sheena do anything she didn’t want to?”

Donna shook her head.

“How did Sheena end up working on the streets, Donna?”

“I dunno.”

Her body stiffened; she was lying.

“Come on, Donna there’s got to be a reason. I’ve seen where she lives. I know her parents are loaded.”

She looked down at her lap. “She needed money. She met this guy called Jake. He was a lot of fun, always partying. He was good looking too. She was hurting after Freaky Fredericks stopped answering her calls. Jake started asking her for money so he could buy coke.”

Sheena’s story was starting to fall along similar lines. So many women were pimped out by their partners. “At first, she got money from her parents, but they stopped giving her any when they found out she was shacked up with him and Jake said he’d this good looking pal who’d pay Sheena 50 quid if she was nice to him, got dolled up. He said if she did that he wouldn’t have to move back to Aberdeen so he could get money from his gran.”

Christ, this guy was a right piece of work who got the death he deserved. Everybody but Sheena could tell where the story ended: with Sheena selling her body on the streets to pay for his drugs. But, as vile as he was, he was long dead by the time Sheena was grabbed.

“Was there anyone Sheena met that she was afraid of? Someone the other girls might have mentioned?”

From the cases I’d read I knew that prostitutes were usually killed by people they knew: punters and even their own boyfriends or husbands.

Donna stared off into the distance.

“Someone out of place, weird?” I leaned in closer so I was almost in her face. “Sheena’s missing and there’s still a chance she’s alive. But, she might not stay alive if you mess me about.” Then, I added for effect. “And, my cousin might not be either.”

No reaction. Still playing dumb.

“If you know anything, you need to tell me now. You’re not helping Sheena by holding anything back.” A pause. “If you’re really Sheena’s friend, you’ll help me. Tell me everything you know.”

For the first time Donna was rattled and the spell was broken. Then her mum called through from the kitchen that she’d be in soon and was buttering some scones.

“I don’t need to tell you anything, you know.” There was that phrase again; it made me want to reach over and slap her. That’d go down well with her ma.

Forcing myself to rein in my inner psycho, I spoke calmly. “You’re right, Donna. You don’t have to tell me a thing. And before you say it, I know I’m not the police. But, I’ll tell you this. If Sheena is still alive, and you didn’t tell me something that could have saved her, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” Pausing to let my words sink in, I added, “I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. How about you?”

At last I got a reaction. Donna blinked and her lips crumpled. “I…”

She’d got the word out when her mum appeared in the doorway carrying a tray. Donna clammed up faster than a miser’s purse. As hospitable as Mrs. Di Marco was, at that moment I could have throttled the woman.

Without even looking my way, Donna sniffed, “I don’t want to speak to you any more,” as she wiped an imaginary tear from her eye with the knuckles of one hand.

Her mum’s smile dimmed. “I’m sorry, but I think you should
leave. Donna’s too upset to carry on. This has been so hard on her.”

Putting the card with my phone number on it down on the coffee table, I addressed them both. “If there’s anything you do remember, Donna, please call me. I really want to find out what happened to my cousin and to Sheena.” Then meeting Mrs. Di Marco’s gaze, I smiled and thanked her for her hospitality and told her I’d see myself out.

As I headed out the door, I heard Donna’s mum say, “Are you sure you couldn’t tell that nice woman something? I know you’re upset, but she must be distraught.”

Donna’s voice was shrill. “Mum, why would I lie? Sheena’s my best pal.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” said her mum. And, I had to agree. Sheena’s pal was definitely hiding something. The question was what?

I’d have to find a way of making her talk, preferably far away from her mother.

Tommy was cursing away to a Radiohead track on the radio when I climbed in the car. When he hadn’t turned it off after a few minutes, I leaned over and did it myself.

“Hey, I was listening to that,” he said. “So, how did you get on with little Miss D? Did she dish up all the goss?”

I shook my head. “It’s good that you’re still getting down with the kids.” My voice dripped with sarcasm. “But, that’s not gonna help us here.”

Tommy fluttered his eyelashes. “Oh, I don’t know. While you were in there chatting away to the sunshine girl, I was pairing my phone with hers.”

“What?” I genuinely had no idea what he meant.

Tommy showed me his pearly whites. “I saw it in
Person of Interest.”

Like that made sense.

Tommy carried on. “It’s where you pair one mobile device
with another, so you can synchronize data between them. Say between your tablet PC and phone.”

My brother Shug had tried to show me how to do that once, but it was over my head.

“That’s to do with Bluetooth, right?” It was the only thing I did remember.

“Aye. Anyway, it means I can read Little Miss Sunny D’s text messages.”

He paused as if he was waiting for a drum roll. He’d have a very long wait. My session with Donna had tired me out.

“Christ, Nancy, if we’re gonna do this you’ll need to know this kind of stuff.”

Still no reaction from me.

“Okay,” he said, eyes twinkling. “After you left, Donna sent a text message to someone called Lorna, saying, and I’m quoting this…” He looked down at his phone. “They know about Sheena. Assuming they mean us, what do you think they’re on about?”

“It could only be that Sheena lied about Fredericks coming onto her,” I said, “But, how’s that linked to Sheena’s disappearance?”

There was one way to find out who Lorna was.

Tommy dialled using a cheap disposable phone he’d bought from Tesco. “We don’t want the number being tracked back to us,” he explained. He was turning into a proper spy.

He outlined his plan. He’d pretend to be from Lorna’s bank and say that her account had been accessed illegally and been emptied of funds. Hopefully, she’d be too flustered to be suspicious and she’d give out her details, including home address.

It wasn’t until the sixth ring that he got an answer. Tommy reeled off his lies, hoping the person on the end of the line wouldn’t think it was strange he referred to her by her first name.

A woman’s voice came over the line. “I’m sorry but I’m not Lorna. This is her phone though. She must have dropped it when she was last here.”

“Hold on.” The woman sounded harassed. “I need to take this.”

There was a click but she hadn’t ended Tommy’s call, so we heard her when she said,
“Helping Hands Outreach
, how can I help you?”

She must have realised he could hear because the connection went dead.

We’d never heard of the place, so I looked it up on my phone. It was a centre that specialized in helping sex workers and drug addicts.

“How would Donna Di Marco know someone from a place like that?” I said.

Tommy thought about it for a minute, then said, “I think our mysterious Lorna must work there. Why else would they know her name? I bet most of the people who visit those places use aliases.”

He was right. We were onto something.

“What are the chances Sheena visited this place?”

Tommy grinned. “Let’s head over there and see if Lorna comes back for her phone.”

The outreach centre wasn’t what we’d expected. When we walked through the doors we were met not by hospital grey or that ugly olive colour everyone used to paint their bathroom in until they realised it looked awful, but by a calming sky blue. Along the walls there were black and white photographs depicting happy scenes: picture postcard children playing on the beach, a family walking in the snow with their two black Labradors and a happy young couple strolling along a Glasgow street, arm in arm. From what I could tell, there were no puke stains on the dark blue and white swirl patterned carpet. And the place didn’t reek of desperation either.

If it weren’t for the posters on the wall advertising the centre’s services – emergency contraception, condoms and clean needles – I’d have thought we’d walked into a hotel lobby by mistake.

Over in one corner of the room was a seated area consisting of a comfy three-seater couch and four plush comfy chairs, as well as two child-sized beanbags. The couch was occupied by a girl in her 20s with shoulder length brown hair tied back with the ponytail poking out of the hole on her Yankees baseball cap. There was a wee boy with her of mixed race who giggled as he played choo-choo with a wooden plane along the plastic table. He was dressed in little man dungarees and a GAP sweater. On the seats across from them, sat a smiling but tired looking middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun. She was wearing a suit and speaking to the girl in hushed tones as she jotted down notes in a binder.

She must be the social worker. On a poster above the couch, it said the centre did supervised access visits.

I felt a pang of sympathy for the young mum at being forced to have some stranger watch as she played with her own child. But then I didn’t know what the story was.

There were two security men in bright blue uniforms in the foyer; both of them looked reasonably fit unlike the ones you see in shopping malls. One was positioned at a cubicle next to the door and the other stood in a corner across from reception, poised to deal with any trouble.

A young receptionist with way too bright pink lipstick beamed up at us from her IKEA desk.

“How can I help you?” she said, lips puckering when she saw Tommy. He had that effect on women. When we went out I’d catch women visibly drooling. For now, he was mine. Who knew if it’d be a long-term thing? We were just having fun.

Tommy took the lead, asking if Lorna was in because we needed to speak to her urgently. At first the receptionist looked confused then understanding dawned.

“Lorna has left for the day, I’m afraid. Perhaps I can take your number and get her to call you?”

Bingo, she did work here.

We told her we’d come back.

As we were heading out the door there was a list on the wall of all the staff at the centre. We must have missed it on the way in.

Lorna Chanderpaul was listed as a counsellor.