Tom Page 2

  ‘Wake up!’ she screamed.

  Her arm dropped to her side again, and she slumped forward, like a puppet whose strings had been severed.

  ‘Charley?’ I said, crouching beside her, hand hovering, not knowing if it was safe to touch her.

  ‘Sick,’ she breathed, trying to stand.

  ‘You feel sick?’ I asked, helping her up.

  ‘He’s sick,’ she gasped, sounding short of breath.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s deranged,’ Charley murmured. ‘Sick in the head.’

  With my arm wrapped about her shoulder, and her head resting against me, I helped her up the path and back up the dirt track towards my car. ‘What did you see?’ I asked.

  ‘He just wants to hear the train approach and kill them,’ Charley said, and instead of pushing me away, she pulled me tight. ‘He gets a kick out of the anticipation of knowing that she’s going to be hit by the train. He waits in his car, listening for the sound of the train and the impact.’

  ‘But why not just kill Kerry himself?’ I asked, pushing aside brambles and thorns with my free hand.

  ‘He doesn’t want to physically hurt them. Not with his own hands. He told Kerry he wasn’t going to hurt her, but he still wanted her to die. He justifies what he does to them by not murdering them himself.’

  Halfway up the embankment, I took Charley by the shoulders and looked at her. ‘Charley, you keep saying them. You think he’s murdered before?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down and nodding her head slowly.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ I asked, my stomach beginning to knot. ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘No,’ she said, still refusing to look at me. ‘It was the way he spoke. As he stood looking down at Kerry after he had placed her on the tracks, he said, “You’re just like the rest of them. You look so beautiful, lying asleep in the dark, Kerry”.’

  ‘You said this guy laid Kerry on the tracks,’ I said, remembering how the driver had said it looked like the girl was asleep.

  ‘I think the killer got Kerry drunk on whiskey or something stronger, a concoction perhaps. I could taste it during the flashes. It really made me want to gag. Once she was literally legless, he carried her down onto the tracks, placed her arms over her chest …’

  ‘What did you say?’ Tom cut in.

  ‘The killer placed Kerry’s arms over her chest,’ she repeated. ‘Is that important?’

  ‘The driver of the train said he thought it was strange how the girl had been lying across the tracks with her arms folded,’ I said, staring at her, ever more convinced she was telling the truth, however weird it was, and ever more guilty I had grown frustrated with her earlier that day. I ran my fingers through my hair. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ I groaned.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘If what you are saying is true we could have a serial killer on the loose, and there’s naff all I can do about it.’

  ‘I thought that’s why you brought me up here,’ Charley breathed. ‘I thought you wanted me to tell you exactly what happened up here so you could go catch the man who did this. This is a good thing isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s not good, because I can’t keep this to myself, but I can’t tell anyone either,’ I snapped. I wasn’t angry at Charley, I was angry with myself. ‘If I keep it to myself, then that just leaves this guy out there to kill more young girls, and if I tell the Guv …’

  ‘Surely he’ll be pleased. Isn’t it a good thing you can provide him with clues?’ Charley asked, turning and heading back towards the car.

  ‘What am I meant to say, Charley?’ I said. ‘Pop my head around his office door and say, “Oh by the way, Guv, you know that poor cow Kerry Underwood, well this guy actually dragged her up onto those tracks. But first he took her to this little house where he spent time getting to know her. He got her drunk. And oh yeah, he drives a white car, he’s white European and single.”’

  ‘It’s all true,’ Charley said.

  ‘I guess it is, but isn’t my DI just going to be the slightest bit curious as to how I know all this stuff?’

  ‘Tell him the truth.’

  ‘No way,’ I barked.

  ‘Oh, okay, I see,’ Charley sighed. ‘Frightened he might think you’re some kind of a Looney Tune? Well get used to it Tom. I’ve spent a lifetime feeling like that.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I sighed. I didn’t want to get into another row so soon. ‘If anyone in the police were to discover I’d brought you out here, I’d be in deep shit.’

  ‘Even if it meant finding the killer?’ Charley asked me.

  ‘Charley, you don’t know the people I work with like I do,’ I tried to explain. ‘They wouldn’t believe a word of what I told them even if I explained how I’d come by the information. They wouldn’t just boot me off the force because I’d brought you out here, they would get rid of me because they would think me unstable.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I whispered, my mind racing over the possibilities and the consequences of each one of them. ‘I need to think about it.’

  ‘Well, don’t think about it for too long,’ Charley shot back. ‘There’s a killer out there somewhere.’

  Before I’d the chance to say anything else, Charley was heading away from me again. I walked in silence behind her, my brain feeling as if it had been scrambled. Why had I brought her out here?

  Because if I were to be honest with myself, maybe the reason was that deep down she had been right – I hadn’t believed her. But now that I did believe, what did I do with the information she had given me? Write it all down and send it anonymously to Harker? He would probably just chuck it in the bin. The police were always receiving crank information from members of the public. Some of them even confessed to crimes they hadn’t committed. Maybe the search teams had found something? Perhaps they had found the track up to the house? But so what if they had? That route could have been walked by anyone – trespassers, graffiti artists, people taking a short cut … There had to be a way of slipping this information into the enquiry. There just had to be.

  As I walked, with my head down, chin almost touching my chest, I heard Charley say, ‘What about Kerry’s phone?’

  ‘Phone?’ I asked, still distracted by my own thoughts.

  ‘You told me the reason you’d come back here was to look for it. Do you know the number?’ Charley asked.

  ‘Yeah, her mum gave it to me,’ I said, taking my notebook from my pocket and thumbing through it. I read it out, then looked up at Charley; I could see that she was typing it into her phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I cried, snatching for it. But I was too late. Charley had hit the dial button and had brought the phone up to her ear.

  ‘Calling Kerry’s phone,’ she said.

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’ I cried, reaching for her phone again. ‘If Kerry’s phone is found it will be handed over to the tech-guys and they will download the sim card.’

  ‘So?’ Charley asked me, her phone pressed to the side of her head.

  ‘They’ll check all the numbers that have called her phone,’ I snapped. ‘And they’ll be particularly interested in the calls made to her phone since her death.’

  ‘Well, let’s just hope we find it first,’ Charley said. ‘I saw the man throw it away. So it’ll be out here somewhere. If I get through to it, then we might hear it ringing and we can find it.’

  ‘Charley, just hang up!’ I shouted at her.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘It’s ringing.’

  ‘Charley, hang up!’

  ‘Shhh,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips. ‘Can you hear it?’

  I listened, but all I could hear was the branches of the trees swaying overhead, and the trains roaring past in the distance.

  ‘Charley, I can’t hear anything,’ I told her. ‘Please just hang up. I’m in enough shit …’

  ‘Shhh!’ she hissed. Then, speaking i
nto the mouthpiece, ‘Hello? Hello? Who’s there?’ She took the phone from her ear. ‘Tom, somebody has Kerry’s phone.’

  ‘What are you going on about?’

  ‘Somebody answered her phone.’

  ‘What?’ I breathed, praying it hadn’t been discovered by the search team already.

  ‘Tom, someone definitely answered Kerry’s phone because I could hear what sounded like someone shovelling earth.’

  CHAPTER 19

  Charley – Tuesday: 20:57 Hrs.

  ‘Who d’you think answered Kerry’s phone?’ I asked as Tom started the car. ‘It sounded like they were shovelling mud or something.’ I remembered the gravediggers at Natalie’s funeral and shuddered.

  ‘How should I know?’ he moaned, switching on the wipers against the rain. ‘Knowing my luck, it was probably one of those tech guys at Headquarters, or worse, Harker. I can see that phone now, sitting on his desk with an exhibit label hanging from it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ I said, glancing at him. He did look stressed.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he sighed. ‘You were only trying to help. But if they analyse that phone, then your number will come up.’

  ‘Who’s to say it’s the police who have the phone?’ I said, trying to ease his mind.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, leaning forward in his seat as the rain bounced off the windscreen.

  ‘I saw that man throw Kerry’s phone away, right? The phone could have been found by anyone.’

  ‘That place is pretty remote,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe, but that old house looks like it’s used by kids as some kind of camp. You must have seen the empty beer cans and all the other junk that’s been left up there,’ I said. ‘It could’ve been found by them.’

  ‘I guess,’ he said, stopping at a set of traffic lights. ‘That could be an important piece of evidence.’

  ‘You might never find it,’ I said. ‘Whoever has it now they’ll probably remove the sim card and put their own card inside. What’s the difference between that and it getting crushed by that train? You wouldn’t have the phone anyway if that had happened.’

  ‘I guess,’ he said again, and moved the car forward, heading in the direction of my home.

  ‘I saw a child. It was crying,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry?’ Tom said. ‘What?’

  ‘I saw a child in those flashes.’

  ‘A child?’

  ‘I could hear it crying in the distance. Then it was beside me in the killer’s car.’

  ‘He brought a kid along with him?’ Tom asked. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. Those flashes came so quickly. I don’t know if the child I could hear crying was something to do with what that man did to Kerry, something he has done in the past or something he’s planning to do in the future.’

  ‘This just keeps getting worse and worse,’ Tom breathed.

  ‘There was something else too,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When we first got up to that dirt track—’

  ‘Before you stropped off,’ he half-smiled at me.

  I rolled my eyes and continued. ‘I told you, I had flashes as if I were looking through Kerry’s eyes as the train struck her,’ I said.

  ‘I remember,’ he said, nodding his head thoughtfully. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Kerry wasn’t looking at the train, when it hit her,’ I told him. ‘She had her eyes closed.’

  ‘That’s what the driver said,’ Tom said. ‘He said she looked as if she were asleep.’

  ‘So, whoever’s eyes I was looking through, they weren’t Kerry’s,’ I whispered. ‘They were somebody else’s.’

  ‘Whose?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and turned to look out of the window again. But I feared that perhaps I had been looking through Natalie’s.

  Tom parked outside my house. The rain hadn’t eased and it lashed at the car. It reminded me of when I was a small girl, huddled in my bed feeling snug and warm as the rain beat against my bedroom windows.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Tom asked, leaning out of his seat towards me.

  ‘Sure,’ I smiled faintly at him. The pains in my head had almost gone now.

  ‘You look tired,’ Tom said, taking my hands in his.

  That was the second time he had held them. I didn’t pull away. ‘Those flashes kind of take it out of me,’ I said. It wasn’t just the physical exertion, but the mental strain too. Seeing such upsetting images today was even harder to deal with than usual. ‘I think that’s why the flashes stopped coming earlier today. I think my mind has some kind of pressure valve and it switches off when it all gets too much. It’s happened before, now I come to think about it. It’s a natural sort of protection, I suppose.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Tom said, still holding my hands and looking me straight in the eyes. ‘Charley, I’m sorry about how I behaved today. It wasn’t really you I was mad at.’

  ‘Who was it then?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said.

  I looked straight back at him and met his stare, ‘I think we’re more alike than perhaps we know,’ I whispered.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he smiled.

  There was a pause – a silence – that could have only been filled with a kiss. But instead, I broke his stare. ‘I think I’ll have an early night.’

  ‘I wish I was joining you,’ he said.

  ‘What did you say?’ I smiled, glancing back at him

  ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ he smiled back. I loved the crooked grin he so often had and that mischievous twinkle in his eyes. ‘What I meant to say was, I wished I was going home to get some sleep instead of having to go start my nightshift.’

  We looked at each other. There was another pause. Then, leaning in, he kissed me gently on the lips. I kissed him back. His lips were soft against mine, and I felt my heart start to race.

  Tom eased back and our lips parted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I whispered, part of me hoping he would kiss me again.

  ‘I’m a police officer and …’ he started.

  ‘And what?’ I pushed. Did he regret kissing me?

  ‘It’s just I don’t act very professionally around you,’ he said, looking away. ‘It’s like we keep a secret now. A secret about what really happened to Kerry Underwood and what just happened between us.’

  ‘Does that worry you?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, and that’s the problem,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of exciting. I find being with you exciting, Charley. When we went our separate ways today, I was mad at myself because you were right, I was using you. But I never meant to. So I told myself I would continue to investigate the case in a more conventional way instead of relying on you. Then, when I found you back at the house in the midst of your flashes again, I got a real kick out of working with you as we tried to solve what happened. It was like we were a team.’

  ‘Do you want to be on a team?’ I looked at him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he grinned back at me. ‘I want to be on your team.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Tom – Tuesday: 21:48 Hrs.

  I arrived at the police station with just over ten minutes to spare. I’d stopped off at home to change out of my jeans. But my smart work shoes no longer gleamed; they were caked with mud from where I had been trampling up and down the dirt track with Charley. The hems of my trousers were flecked with mud.

  Guessing I’d already failed to make a positive impression on DI Harker since my arrival at Marsh Bay, I hurried to the locker room. Like all locker rooms, it smelt of sweaty socks and stale deodorant. I yanked open my locker door and reached inside for the tin of boot polish I had stashed there. Unscrewing the lid, I sat down and kicked off my shoes. I looked at them and knew I’d need a hammer and chisel to remove the thick lumps of mud. If Harker and the others saw it they’d start asking questions. What would I say? That I ran cross country to work?

  I banged the flats of the sole
s together and some of the mud came away in thick chunks and covered the tiled floor. The sound of my pounding the soles of my shoes together sounded like cannon fire in the tiny room.

  I stopped, fearing that it might bring someone to the locker room to find out what all the noise was. But I was too late; the door swung open and Jackson strolled in. He was wearing shorts and a white vest that clung to him with sweat. I suspected he had been in the gym again admiring his muscles. He looked at me and then at the mud on the floor.

  ‘I hope you’re going to clean that shit up,’ he said.

  ‘It’s mud, not shit.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought it was more of the shit that keeps falling out of your mouth,’ he said, closing the door behind him. He folded his meaty arms over his chest. I put my shoes down and stood up. I would never match Jackson’s colossal size even if I spent the rest of my life lifting weights and eating tins of spinach, but at least now I came somewhere close to matching his height.

  ‘I don’t talk shit,’ I said. ‘You know what I said about the Underwood girl was right.’

  ‘All I know is that you’ve come into this station all guns blazing and trying to make a name for yourself,’ he said, stepping away from the closed door and towards me. He puffed out his chest like a gorilla spoiling for a fight. Is that what he wanted? Did he want to fight me? He was a cop and so was I. We didn’t beat each other up. That was for the school yard, right? He came close enough for our noses to almost touch. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead and upper lip. He stank of sweat.

  ‘You need to take a shower and cool off,’ I said.

  He grabbed my collar and slammed me back into the locker. I was momentarily stunned. Not because I was hurt or in pain, but because this was something that would happen in school. But why was I surprised? Jackson was nothing more than a bully.

  He had one hand pressed against my chest; I glanced down and couldn’t help noticing the indentation on his finger where there had once been a wedding ring. I pushed him away and stepped aside.