TWENTY-FIVE

‘They showed me these photographs,’ Linda said. ‘Of the body. Jess’s body. Why on earth would they do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Helen said, lied . . .

They were in Linda’s bedroom, side by side on the edge of the bed. The curtains were still drawn, noise from the crowd on the street below leaking in from outside; chat and clamour, the occasional shout.

‘They were disgusting,’ Linda said. ‘Made me feel ill.’

‘I know.’

‘Why though?’

Helen did not know what to say. That it was a stunt, a trick? That they were trying to get a reaction? That they wanted to make her feel disgusted enough to give up her husband? She did not know what to say because she had done the same thing herself many times. Pictures of battered children passed across the table in an interview room as though they were holiday snaps. A bruise big enough to cover a baby’s face, a tiny body dotted with cigarette burns. Fresh, scabbed . . .

Pictures designed to elicit horror, guilt, a confession.

‘It’s their job,’ Helen said.

‘I’m getting sick of hearing that.’ Linda looked ready to spit. ‘It’s what that cow downstairs said. Her excuse for talking to me like I’m a piece of dirt. Like I’m trying to hide something.’

‘They’re just trying to find out if you know something you don’t know you know. Does that make any sense?’

‘None of this makes any sense.’

‘Sometimes people don’t think a bit of information’s important when actually it can be crucial, you know? Something they heard somebody say. Something they saw that they’d almost forgotten about.’

Linda shook her head. ‘It’s not that.’ She kicked off her shoes then moved to lean back against the headboard; stretched to rub her feet. ‘Look, I know they think Steve took those girls. Killed that girl. I’m not daft.’

‘I know you’re not—’

Linda grunted a laugh. ‘They kept on telling me that, telling me how clever they thought I was. Like only someone who was thick as shit could possibly believe he hadn’t done it.’ She grimaced, as though there was a bad taste in her mouth. ‘“We know you’re very bright, Linda”.’ She looked at Helen. ‘I don’t need a copper to tell me that.’

Helen said, ‘Course you don’t.’ She had done that, too. Flattered when necessary, even if the individual on the receiving end was barely one notch above pond-life. Anything to strengthen a case, to secure a prosecution, to make a child safe.

‘They told me all sorts of things,’ Linda said. ‘About DNA results, stuff they’d found on Steve’s computer.’ She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. She leaned forward and gripped her toes through her tights, pulled them back.

‘Do you want to tell me . . . ?’

‘DNA in Steve’s car, from the girl.’

‘Right.’ Happy enough to talk about that part, at least.

‘Which apparently proves he’s a liar, because he told them she’d never been in his car. And obviously if he’s a liar then he’s a murderer as well, right? What kind of bollocks is that?’

‘They won’t make a case based just on that,’ Helen said. ‘Not on a single lie. It gives them a good reason to take a closer look at everything, that’s all.’

‘That’s what I’m saying though.’ Linda sat up a little straighter. ‘They base everything around that and ignore the fact that there’s so many ways those results could be wrong.’

‘The DNA?’

Linda held out a thumb, counting. ‘Simple cock-up, for a start. Some idiot gets the wrong . . . I don’t know, test tube, right? Labels it wrong.’ A finger. ‘Or . . . say it did come from the girl, but it doesn’t mean what they think it means.’

Helen waited.

‘Her DNA could have been in the car even if she wasn’t. What if her DNA was from something on one of her friends? A hair or something.’

‘Did they say it was a hair?’

‘They didn’t tell me, but that’s what it usually is, right?’

Helen moved her head; not a nod, but close enough. A hair, only one of many possibilities. Sweat, spit, skin . . .

Blood, the obvious one.

‘A hair stuck to a jacket on a mate of hers, say. Caught on a zip or a button. You know what it’s like, hair gets bloody everywhere.’

‘I suppose.’

‘These teenage girls going around arm in arm, always hugging each other, you know, like we used to?’

Helen nodded, struggled to remember. Drunken embraces at the end of a night, cheap wine on their breaths; tears from one or the other over some boy, comfort cuddles . . .

‘I can see that happening. That could so easily happen. A friend of hers, a relative or something.’

‘Feasibly,’ Helen said.

‘I bet I’ve got Charli’s DNA all over me.’ Linda held out her arms, stared at them as though her daughter’s cells might somehow make themselves visible for her; glitter like diamond dust among the freckles and soft hairs. ‘Danny’s, an’ all.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Yeah, right?’

Helen stood up and walked across to the window.

‘They just don’t even consider that,’ Linda said. ‘Whatever fits in with their theories, that’s all they’re interested in. That’s how innocent people get banged up.’ She watched as Helen pulled at the edge of a curtain and looked out. ‘How many?’

‘Twenty-five or thirty,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe a few more.’

‘Journalists?’

‘Yeah, a few.’ Alongside the predictable crop of mobile phones, raised and pointed, a couple of more expensive cameras brandished or slung around necks.

‘How many pictures of a front door can anyone need?’

Helen turned. ‘You want me to get you anything?’

‘I think I might have a lie-down for ten minutes.’

‘OK.’

Before Helen had reached the door, Linda said, ‘You think I’m in denial or something, don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘You think I’m stupid and I’m kidding myself about Steve. Ignoring what’s staring me and everyone else in the face, right?’

‘Please don’t get upset.’ Helen walked back to the bed and sat down again.

‘You need to believe me, Hel. There’s no way on God’s earth he did what they’re saying. Everything they reckon they’ve got on him, there’s good reasons for all of it, and if those coppers do their jobs properly they’ll work that out eventually. They’ve got to, right?’ She leaned back again, blew out a breath that wheezed in her chest. ‘No way. There is just no way . . . ’

‘You should sleep,’ Helen said. ‘Like you said.’

‘Hel?’ Linda looked at her, reached for her hand. No need to ask the question.

Outside, somebody shouted, ‘They should nick the lot of you,’ already convinced, desperate for a police van to bang on. Downstairs, Helen could hear the tinny report of a radio from the kitchen.

‘I don’t know Steve,’ she said. She had decided that was probably a very good thing. She squeezed Linda’s hand and stared towards the curtained window.

Thinking, I don’t know you.

As Helen closed the bedroom door behind her, Charli stepped out of the bathroom. The girl stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Helen stared at the patterns embroidered on the legs. A peace symbol, a marijuana leaf.

‘All right?’ Helen asked.

Charli let her shoulders drop and smiled at the stupidity of the question.

Helen felt the blood move to her face. ‘You and your brother want anything?’

The girl looked up and stared past her, the cistern filling noisily behind the bathroom door. ‘What are we having for tea?’

‘I don’t know.’ Helen guessed that food was being brought in regularly but was unsure about the arrangements. She had not seen it happen the day before. ‘Want me to find out?’

‘Can we get chips?’

‘I’ll ask,’ Helen said.

Charli spun a multicoloured bracelet around her wrist for a few seconds, then walked past Helen, keeping close to the wall. Helen turned to watch Linda’s daughter open the door of the second bedroom, just wide enough to squeeze through the gap.

Walking into the kitchen, Helen had the distinct impression that she had interrupted something; the rise and fall of a muttered exchange, audible as she had come down the stairs. An Airwave radio unit lay on the worktop next to the sink. Carson and Gallagher watched her as she hooked her bag on the back of a chair and flicked on the kettle for want of anything else to do.

‘How’s she doing?’ Carson asked.

Helen did not want tea. What she really needed was a large glass of wine, but she thought better of it, having put a couple away over lunch with Thorne an hour before.

‘Not great.’

The pub, which Paula had told her about, had turned out to be no better than average, but Thorne had seen off a plate of shepherd’s pie happily enough, a pint and a half of Guinness. She guessed that even if he had been disappointed, he would not have said anything. She could tell that he was being . . . careful around her, still smarting from the argument by the fishing pool and, though she felt bad about it, she did not want to risk bringing the subject up. Getting into anything. She knew that his suggestion that they go for a walk had been purely for her benefit; that fresh air and exercise were right up there with heavy metal and sticking needles in his eyes. She could see how much she had pissed him off.

Eating lunch, they had talked about Alfie and about her father, an unspoken agreement to leave what was happening in Polesford behind them for a few hours. They talked about Hendricks, Helen’s sister, the holiday in Portugal or Tenerife that they both knew now was unlikely to happen.

Helen had said the right things, laughed when she might have been expected to and tried to be nice. Normal.

‘Wasn’t easy for her,’ Carson said now.

‘Sorry?’

‘This morning, at the station. A lot of things she didn’t want to hear.’

‘She told me.’

‘She tell you anything else?’

‘Such as?’

‘Anything. I don’t know.’

Helen looked at her. ‘What, like how she knows where the other girl’s body is, you mean? How the pair of them were in it together, some weird sexual thing. The two of them shagging each other’s brains out afterwards?’

‘Come on.’

‘Seriously, what do you think she’s going to tell me?’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Gallagher said. Helen and Carson turned to look at the PC. ‘But I’ve spent the morning with Jessica Toms’ parents, so you know . . . ’ She nodded up at the ceiling. ‘I’m a bit short on sympathy.’

‘So, she deserves to feel like shit?’ Helen stepped towards her. ‘That what you’re saying?’

‘Not “deserves”.’

‘She deserves what she’s getting from those idiots outside?’ Helen pointed back towards the front of the house. ‘You can hear some of the things they’re shouting, can’t you? You’re not deaf as well as stupid?’

‘Haven’t we been through this before?’ Carson waited until Helen turned to look at her. ‘Professionally speaking, this isn’t really any of your business.’

‘Aye, right,’ Gallagher said. ‘I mean that’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re her mate.’

‘What?’

The PC’s face had reddened, those freckles subsumed by blood again, but she was trying hard to stand her ground. ‘All I’m saying, you’re maybe not the best judge, that’s all.’

Helen fought to keep her voice down, its tone as even as possible. She had no desire for Sophie Carson to see her lose it. ‘Listen, whatever the twat she’s married to has done, and that still remains to be seen, you know, as far as the law’s concerned . . . she has done nothing. All right? Nothing.’

Gallagher sniffed, looked away.

‘So, until you’ve got the faintest idea what you’re talking about, constable, I suggest you keep your mouth shut and we won’t fall out.’ She turned away, walked back to where the kettle had just turned itself off. She needed that wine more than ever, but went through the motions anyway. She opened a cupboard, reached for a mug and set it down nice and carefully on the worktop. She opened the fridge and looked inside for milk.

‘They charged him with murder half an hour ago,’ Carson said.

Helen turned, one hand on the open fridge door.

‘The twat she’s married to.’ Carson stared, nothing in her face. Gallagher spread her legs and straightened a cuff of her crisp white shirt. ‘Thought you might want to tell her.’