10

Chris Mullery wasn’t going into school at the moment. How could he, he asked Beth, with his girlfriend missing? He was worried sick, hadn’t been able to eat, sleep or do anything. He had barely left his room since the news reached him, and the boy did genuinely look beside himself – but was he just a good actor? Beth reminded herself of all the murders of young girls she had read about and how often it turned out to be the boyfriend who was the guilty one. Usually, this was only discovered after his tearful appearance at the press conference, when he sobbed through an appeal for the safe return of the woman he’d killed.

Alice’s boyfriend did have dark hair, so it was possible he could have been the shirtless man Bryan saw through her bedroom window, though he hadn’t fully filled out yet and still looked like the teenager he clearly was. Chris was so pale Beth suggested they might go outside for a while so he could get some fresh air, and he agreed to accompany her to the garden. It would also separate them from Chris’s mother, who had been hovering in the background since Beth arrived. She was virtually wringing her hands with concern over her boy, which was understandable enough under the circumstances, but Beth wanted to speak to Chris on his own.

As he walked out of the back door Chris picked up a bag of seeds and brought it with them.

‘To feed the birds?’ Beth asked.

‘The squirrels,’ he said. ‘Some people don’t like it, though.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they are grey and a pest, supposedly, not the red ones everyone seems to love.’ Then he said, ‘But, personally, I’m against squirrel racism.’ She could tell it was a joke he had used before, and his heart wasn’t in it.

He poured a generous mound of seeds on to a bird table near the fence and retreated, then, instead of sitting down, they walked, slowly making circuits of the back garden together.

Beth eased into the conversation by asking the boy some simple questions she already knew most of the answers to, like where he and Alice went to school, what subjects they were studying and how long he had been going out with her. All this was in his first statement, taken by DC Ferguson, a suspiciously thin document that looked as if it had been done in a hurry at the outset of the investigation. It ended with the assertion that Chris had been at home on his own when his girlfriend vanished. Beth wanted to get the lad used to answering her questions before they tackled more contentious issues, like the lack of a real alibi.

‘I was in all evening,’ he assured her. ‘Mam and Dad both went out, but I was still here when they got back.’ When she pressed him on the time in between, he said, ‘I was on my own. I’m sorry.’ He meant he couldn’t prove it.

‘Weren’t you tempted to go out and meet Alice?’ she asked, keeping her tone neutral and avoiding the obvious accusation in the words. ‘The school’s not far. I might have been if I had spent hours studying, particularly on a Friday night.’

He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted me to.’

‘Why not?’ He shrugged, and it seemed it was the only answer she was going to get. ‘Weren’t you guys getting along?’

‘It wasn’t that. Alice is a very independent person and she doesn’t like to be viewed as somebody’s girlfriend. She likes alone-time.’

Good for her, thought Beth. ‘How did you feel about that?’

‘I don’t own her. She can do what she likes. I’m there for her, always. We’ve already been through a lot.’

‘Your break-up last year?’

‘You know about that?’ He seemed surprised.

‘And her relationship with your best friend’ – the boy looked sick then – ‘short-lived as it was.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That.’

‘That must have been a really bad time for you,’ Beth probed. ‘When she started seeing Tony?’

‘Yeah.’ He avoided eye contact with her. The memory clearly hurt him, even now.

‘But you patched it up?’

‘We got back together. It was my fault, anyway.’

‘Because you broke up with her before she started seeing Tony?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Still,’ pressed Beth. ‘Of all the people to start seeing … your best mate,’ and when he didn’t answer: ‘Do you think she did that to hurt you?’

‘No, I don’t know. Maybe. No.’

‘Which?’ she asked softly.

‘I know what you mean, but we all hung out together. I think she was upset when we broke up and he was the shoulder to cry on, wasn’t he? Anyway, it didn’t last.’

‘You got back together instead.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you forgave her?’

‘What?’ The question seemed to make him feel uncomfortable.

‘I’m not saying she did anything wrong, but it must have bothered you when she became intimate with your closest friend. Some guys would have moved on, but you forgave her, obviously.’

‘Yeah.’ He mumbled it quietly.

‘You did forgive her?’ she pressed.

‘’Course.’ He turned sullen then.

‘Lately, though, things haven’t been great.’ She framed it as a statement, not a question, and he looked defensive.

‘They have been,’ he contradicted her. ‘Just not the same.’

‘In what way? Was she cooling off?’ Would Chris concede that? Would he even admit it to himself?

‘No.’

‘We heard she might have been.’

Chris looked angry. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Is it true?’

There was another gap while she waited for Chris to admit it but, instead, he said, ‘Her fucking brother. Was it him?’

‘Was Alice cooling things down with you, Chris? Can you answer my question, please?’

‘It was him, wasn’t it? Fucking Daniel, jealous bastard. No, she wasn’t cooling it with me.’ He spat the word ‘cooling’ at her.

‘Why would you say that?’

‘Say what?’

‘That her brother was jealous. Are you saying he was jealous of you?’

He looked guilty then, and said, ‘Not jealous … Possessive, I mean, over-protective. That’s what I meant. He was always …’

‘Looking out for her?’

‘Yeah, but too much, you know. She’s seventeen, not eleven. She doesn’t need her big brother any more. She’s got me.’

‘But they remain close?’ asked Beth.

‘I tell her, “Don’t let him rule your life, just because he hasn’t got one.”’

‘You think Daniel hasn’t got a life?’

He seemed to realize he’d sounded harsh. ‘All I meant was, he didn’t do well at school, he works behind a bar and he hasn’t got that many friends, or even a girlfriend. It’s not much of a life, is it?’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘If Alice wasn’t cooling it off with you, then why did you say things weren’t the same? In what way?’

‘I don’t know. We used to spend all our free time together, we’d talk for hours, but there’s a lot going on now – exams, her job at the club, all sorts of stuff.’

‘Did you argue?’

‘About what?’

‘Her not being around quite as much.’

‘We’ve always argued, but it doesn’t mean anything. We’re fine the next day. It’s hard, you know, some days. It’s like everything I do gets on her nerves. If I’m not there for her, she gets upset, but if I am there, it’s like I’m an irritation. Alice can be moody, she admits it. That’s why I didn’t go and meet her after school that night. She told me she wants her own space.’

Beth knew it was likely that a young girl would want space for its own sake, but she might also need it for another reason.

‘I have to ask you this, Chris,’ she said, ‘but is it possible she might have been spending that time with someone else?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, but she could tell he knew exactly what she meant.

‘Alice has disappeared and our priority right now is finding her and getting her safely home. For that to happen, I need you to be very honest with me. Is there any way that Alice might have been seeing someone else?’

‘No. No way,’ he blurted, and he looked shocked and hurt even by the suggestion.

‘Not someone else from school, somebody she worked with, or Tony?’

‘No. Absolutely not. No chance. I would have known, and she wouldn’t do that to me.’

‘You’re sure? She and Tony were definitely …’

‘Over. Yes. She doesn’t even speak to him any more, and there was no one else. Sure, guys are always hitting on her, but she doesn’t let them …’ He left the sentence unfinished.

‘Okay, I get it.’ She needed him to be calm, and he was far from it. ‘You guys were enough for each other. I’m sorry, I had to ask – we always have to ask.’ That seemed to placate him. ‘So when you wanted time alone together, where did you go? Here? Her place?’

He snorted. ‘Not her place. Have you met her dad? No, my mum’s cool with it, so we’d be in my room, here.’

‘Never in hers?’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

Because your girlfriend was seen in her bedroom, in her underwear, with another man. ‘Because I have to build up a picture of Alice’s life, her habits and movements.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see.’

‘Did she ever talk about running off, or anything like that?’

‘Never. I mean, we both talked about being away one day – at uni, obviously, and then afterwards, in a job somewhere, and there aren’t many of those around here. She never said she was going to actually run away, though.’

Beth chose that moment to bring up the subject of Alice’s journal. ‘Another thing her brother did for her,’ he said, and his tone was distrustful.

‘You knew about it, then?’

‘She was always writing in it, but then she’d be like’ – he mimed someone hastily snapping an invisible book shut – ‘whenever I walked in the room. It was pathetic.’

‘I guess she wanted to keep her private thoughts private,’ said Beth.

‘We weren’t supposed to have any secrets,’ he said. ‘That was sort of the point, you know: openness, honesty – that kind of thing.’ And his sarcastic tone betrayed just how annoyed he had been about the journal.

‘She never let you read it?’

‘Are you having a laugh?’

‘What do you think she was writing about in it – if you had to make a guess?’

‘Me, I suppose, among other things.’

‘It wound you up?’

‘Wouldn’t it wind you up if your boyfriend wrote stuff about you in a journal but wouldn’t let you see it? Wouldn’t you want to know what he’d written?’

‘I suppose I would.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Did you argue about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she carried on writing in it, anyway?’

‘You can try arguing with Alice, but she never backs down. It’s always her way or … Well, there is no other way.’

‘You’re saying she could be selfish?

‘She’s a complicated person. Alice can be so lovely, and she can also be so …’ He settled on: ‘Cold. If she doesn’t agree with you, then she just won’t listen to you, and there is no way you will ever change her mind.’

‘She’s headstrong,’ offered Beth. ‘Stubborn, even? That must be infuriating.’

‘It is.’

‘Yet you put up with it?’

‘What can you do?’ He shrugged. ‘I love her.’ And then he seemed to contemplate the girl and the way she made him feel because he suddenly said, ‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t.’ He forced a laugh. ‘I don’t, really, it’s just that she drives me crazy, and not always in a good way.’

They talked some more about Alice’s friends and family and Chris gave similar answers to Daniel’s. Beth was building up a clear picture of Alice’s private life by now, but none of this was particularly new or likely to impress Lucas Black. Hopefully, he’d be too preoccupied with the outcome of his press conference.

‘Did you notice anything else out of the ordinary recently? Anything at all in the way Alice talked or acted that made you think, This isn’t right?’

‘There was one thing.’ As soon as he said it, he seemed to backtrack. ‘It seemed weird at the time.’ Chris looked reluctant to come to the point and Beth waited patiently for him to explain. ‘A couple of weeks back, we were both at sixth-form club and I went looking for Alice, but I couldn’t find her. I even went out on to the courts to see if she was watching her mates play netball, but she wasn’t there. I went back down the side of the school building to go in again, and that’s when I saw her.’

‘Where was she?’

‘On the roof.’

‘Why would she go up there?’

‘I don’t know. It just seemed bizarre.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Called up to her, but she waved me away, so I went inside. There’s a metal staircase that leads up to the door there. It’s supposed to have an alarm on it, but someone set it off ages ago and they never reset it. As I reached it, she was coming back down.’

‘What did she say?’

‘I asked her why she had gone up on the roof, but she just said, “You can see everything from there.” I told her she would get into trouble if anyone caught her, but she was dismissive and changed the subject. There’s no reasoning with her when she’s like that.’

‘You didn’t think she was harbouring any dark thoughts while she was up there?’

‘About killing herself, you mean? God, no. It never even crossed my mind.’

‘What about now?’

‘Now? I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t press her on her reasons for being there, then?’ Beth couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t, particularly if Alice was being evasive.

‘I told you,’ he snapped. ‘I tried, but she cut me off – just blanked me.’ And then he said something that stayed with Beth afterwards: ‘You don’t understand what it’s like for me. I do love Alice, completely, but sometimes, she can be a real bitch.’