Charley Read online

  ‘You’d only be telling lies if you had something to hide,’ Jackson said.

  ‘I haven’t got anything to hide,’ Lane said, looking down at the table.

  ‘So what happened?’ There was a moment’s silence, before Jackson said, ‘I’ll tell you what happened shall I? You went after her. You got her into your car – perhaps she didn’t come willingly? Then once you had her trapped, you drove her out to some desolate spot like that deserted lane. And let’s be honest, Jason, you would have known that place would be deserted as you’ve spent enough time up there smoking gear – you’ve even been arrested up there.’

  ‘That’s not what happened,’ Lane said.

  Jackson wasn’t listening. ‘So you’ve driven up to that remote spot and you’ve begged her to go back out with you. She refuses and you get angry – you’ve already told us that you got angry with her. You told us that didn’t you, Jason?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lane nodded. ‘But …’

  ‘And we know that you’ve got previous for violence. You’ve been nicked in the past for assault …’ Jackson continued.

  ‘But …’

  ‘So, Kerry tells you to get lost and that just makes you even angrier,’ Jackson went on. ‘You lean over and try to kiss her, put your hand up her skirt to show her what she’s been missing. But Kerry won’t have any of it because she knows what a loser you are. All her mates know what a loser you are. They’ve just been laughing at you, mocking you. How dare they? You’re going to show her that you’re not a loser. You’re going to show that bitch that you’re not some kind of joke. You’re going to show her what a real man you are. But she manages to escape. You go after her and she runs in fear. Kerry’s scared of you, so in a panic, she runs through the dark, blinded by the rain. You run faster, calling her a bitch and waving your fists just like you did in the pub. But this time it’s worse for poor Kerry, because it’s just you and her and she doesn’t have her friends’ protection. And being the pathetic coward that you are, you hound her down onto those railway tracks. Then, when she thinks that she has escaped you, she looks back to see if you’re still behind her and in doing so, she trips and falls. But she can’t hear the train coming towards her, because all she can hear is you screaming Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!’ With each word, Jackson slammed his hand down on the table. ‘That’s what happened isn’t it?’ he screamed. ‘You’re as guilty as if you pushed Kerry in front of that train with your own hands!’

  ‘No!’ Lane cried out, covering his ears with his hands. ‘I never touched her. I promise.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ Jackson said coolly. He got up and went to stand menacingly behind Lane. ‘You’re so doped out of your skull you wouldn’t know the truth if it came and bit you on the arse.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Lane started to sob. ‘I would’ve never hurt Kerry. I loved her.’

  ‘What colour is your car?’ I asked Lane, just wanting Jackson to stop. This wasn’t an interview, it had become an interrogation and I didn’t want any part of it.

  ‘Red,’ Lane whispered, tears running down his face.

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Jackson grunted at me.

  I ignored him and said to Lane, ‘What were you wearing last night?’

  ‘What I’m wearing now,’ he sniffed, and by the look of his dishevelled state I got the impression he was telling the truth. I glanced under the table at his feet.

  ‘We know what he was wearing,’ Jackson sneered. ‘We can see that on the CCTV, and the colour of his car.’

  I stood up and opened the interview room door. ‘Jason, you’re free to go now. I’m done.’

  Lane stood. Jackson shoved him back into his seat. ‘You might be done with him, but I’m not,’ he said. ‘He’s telling us the truth,’ I said.

  ‘And how do you figure that out?’ Jackson snapped.

  How did I know that? Despite the kid having some minor convictions for drugs and an assault that took place during a drunken brawl outside a nightclub in Truro, Lane wasn’t a killer. He was pathetic. But not only that, the car Charley said she had seen parked in the lane had been white, not red. It was unlikely Lane was responsible for the death of Kerry Underwood and I couldn’t sit back silently and watch Jackson persecute him.

  ‘Can I have a word outside?’ I asked Jackson.

  ‘Stay put,’ Jackson said to Lane.

  We left the interview room. I closed the door and we eyed each other in the corridor.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ Jackson said. ‘I was just about to get him to cough and you started going on about the colour of his frigging car and the clothes he was wearing.’

  ‘It’s important,’ I said.

  ‘Important, my arse.’ Jackson’s face was red. ‘Listen to me, Columbo, you don’t just walk in here and start throwing your weight around. I’ve been in CID for nearly six years …’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ I shouted. ‘But you’re wrong about him.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Just take a look at his boots, for crying out loud. It was raining last night and that dirt track was covered in mud and puddles. If Lane had chased Kerry like you reckon he did, then they would be covered with the stuff. But his boots are clean.’

  ‘So he washed them,’ Jackson took a step closer but I stood my ground.

  ‘Lane doesn’t even bother washing his hair let alone his freaking boots! Can’t you see that he is genuinely upset by Kerry’s death?’

  ‘Give me a break, that’s just an act,’ Jackson roared, his face so close to mine I could smell stale cigarette smoke on his breath. ‘You don’t really buy the tears and the snivelling do you? That’s not a result of him crying, that’s from all the shit he’s snorted up his nose. The guy’s a drug addict, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘He does a bit of blow,’ I said. ‘He’s not on crack.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a toss if he’s stuffing Smarties up his nose and shooting Sherbet Dips through his veins. What matters to me is what happened to that girl last night.’

  ‘You’ve suddenly changed your tune,’ I said. ‘I thought you couldn’t wait to write the whole thing off as an accident?’

  ‘That’s before I got hold of Lane,’ Jackson said. ‘He has something to do with that girl’s death and I’m going to tear him up for arse paper.’

  Before I’d had the chance to try and convince Jackson he was wrong, Harker appeared in the corridor looking grim. ‘What’s going on down here? The custody sergeant said he can’t hear himself think for all the shouting and hollering you two are doing.’

  ‘You’d better speak to Poirot,’ Jackson said, hooking his thumb in my direction.

  ‘Henson?’ Harker said. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘There’s no problem,’ I said.

  ‘Yes there is. He’s the problem,’ Jackson said. ‘He thinks he knows everything. I was seconds away from getting Lane to admit to taking that girl up to the tracks last night when he has to go and poke his nose in.’

  ‘Did you?’ Harker asked me, fixing me with his icy stare.

  ‘Lane’s innocent,’ I told him. ‘DC Jackson is wasting his time.’

  ‘See what I mean, Boss?’ Jackson groaned. ‘He reckons Lane couldn’t have been involved because he hasn’t any mud on his boots. I think the kid has been watching too many episodes of Sherlock.’

  ‘Is this true?’ Harker asked me.

  ‘What, that I’ve been watching too many episodes of Sherlock or that Lane is innocent because he hasn’t any mud on his boots?’ I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth; I sounded like a wise-arse, just like Jackson said.

  Harker pointed a bony finger at me. ‘You need to cool off.’

  ‘I don’t need to cool off …’

  ‘This isn’t a debate,’ Harker said. ‘This is an order. Take the night off and go home.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Home!’ he almost snarled. ‘Get some sleep. You look like a sack of crap.’

  Without sayi
ng another word, I skulked back to the CID office, snatched my coat from the back of my seat and left the station.

  I drove out of the car park, hardly remembering a time when I had felt so frustrated and angry. Why wouldn’t anyone listen to me? Why wouldn’t anyone believe what I was saying? Because I couldn’t prove any of it, that was why. And what did I really know anyhow? Just a bunch of stuff that some pretty girl had told me over breakfast. Perhaps Harker had been right to send me home. Maybe I did need to cool off. Maybe it was me who had put his personal feelings before the case he was investigating. I had let a little flirting with a pretty girl go to my head. Why was I prepared to believe her and not my colleagues? Because something told me she was telling the truth. I had to know. I headed back towards the tracks and the little house on the hill.

  I parked my car along the dirt track then made my way down towards the railway lines. It was full dark and the crescent moon did little to light my way. I took my police issue torch from my coat pocket and peered to the left.

  The freight train had long since gone and trains were once again thundering past in both directions. It was as if what had happened to Kerry Underwood the night before had already been forgotten, and the trains were back to carrying their freight across the country while the world slept.

  Both sides of the track were covered with deep foliage. The first time I’d been here it had been dark, and rain had been driving through the tall leafless trees. The second time I had come across Charley. Now that I was alone I had a chance to have a good sniff around.

  I forced my way through the undergrowth to the right of the area that led down to the tracks. Nettles and thorns snagged at my clothes and scratched my hands. It didn’t look like anyone had been here before me, so Kerry Underwood must have gained access to the tracks through a hole in the fence near to where she was hit by the train.

  I turned around and saw something through the closely knitted trees. It was the house Charley had spoken about. Even though it sat on a small hill, it was so well hidden that from this side of the tracks it couldn’t be seen. I pushed on through the bushes and thorns until I found a narrow track. I followed it up the hill and through the trees until I stood before the derelict looking building. I shone the torchlight over it. The glassless windows stared back at me like dead men’s eyes. What had looked like a hovel from the tracks was in fact a small house that looked as though it hadn’t been lived in for some time. It was covered in wild ivy and moss and the bricks were yellow and green with age. The roof slanted inwards at one end where too many slate tiles had fallen away. Perched on the roof was a broken down chimney, just as Charley had described.

  Just the sight of it made my heart quicken and my flesh turn cold. The front door was open like an oblong slice of darkness in the front of the building. I stood before it, and with the sound of a crow squawking in the distance, I shone my torch into the darkness.

  The floor was covered in mounds of bricks and rubble and there were several old beer cans and broken bottles littered about. I didn’t need to be in CID to realise that the discarded syringes said this place had been frequented in the past by drug users – Lane and co. There was a scratching sound in the corner. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw a long black shape scurry along the back wall.

  Rats! I hated them. Copper or not, I made my way from the abandoned house and back down the path. I hadn’t gone far when I looked back, and already the old building was barely visible through the trees. All I could make out was that tumbled-down chimney sticking up from the roof like a broken finger.

  I reached the end of the path and got back on the dirt track. I looked left and could see my car parked several yards away. Unless you knew the location well, you would never have known about that tiny path that wound its way up the hill. Whoever had dragged Kerry to her death must have been local. They would’ve known about that hidden path. Lane would have known about it. My heart began to sink in my chest.

  Perhaps Jackson had been right about him. If I’d never met Charley then I would be thinking just like Jackson. Lane would be my prime suspect too. But I had met her and she had told me something different, and I just couldn’t shake that off no matter how hard I tried.

  Back in my car, I pulled my mobile from my pocket. The screen on the front flickered into life then died. I tapped it against the dashboard. The phone hadn’t worked properly in months and I knew I needed to get a new one. But it was one of those ‘pay as you go’ phones and was cheap. I liked cheap – when it worked. I hit the phone harder against the dashboard and it flickered into life.

  I texted Charley. Even before I’d hit ‘Send’ I’d decided to bring Charley back out to the crime scene.

  But was it a crime scene? I wondered, driving back to my flat for some much needed sleep. Had a crime been committed?

  Perhaps Charley would be able to help.

  CHAPTER 11

  Charley – Tuesday: 01.13 Hrs.

  Ilay on my bed, feeling too numb to move or to even sleep. To hear that my mum had killed herself by being hit by a train just like Natalie and Kerry was like being punched in the stomach. I closed my eyes and all I could see was my father slowly walking away from me.

  ‘You can’t just tell me that and walk away,’ I’d called after him.

  ‘I never wanted to tell you, Charley,’ he said, pausing by the door to look back at me. ‘I wanted you to believe your mum had taken some tablets and fallen asleep. It was never my intention to let you know that your mum had … Well, you know now, so no more secrets.’

  ‘But why?’ I’d asked looking at him. ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘Why did she drink so much?’ he shrugged. ‘Why would I come home from work and find you screaming in your cot, with the same nappy on that you’d been wearing when I’d left for work eight hours earlier? Why was your mum crashed out on the sofa? Why did she have to climb into a bottle of vodka every day? I don’t really know the answer to any of those questions even though they’ve haunted me for the last eleven years.’

  ‘You make her sound like a monster,’ I whispered, my heart feeling as if it had been crushed underfoot.

  ‘No, Charley, your mum wasn’t a monster,’ he said, still looking at me from the doorway. ‘Your mum was sick – she had an illness …’

  ‘But didn’t she love me?’ I asked, unable to stop my lower lip from trembling however hard I bit into it. ‘I’ve always wondered that. If Mum had loved me, she would never have left me.’

  I could see he was struggling to find the right words.

  ‘Like I said,’ he sighed, ‘it wasn’t you or me that she was running away from, it was her illness, those monsters within her – that’s what she was running from.’

  I heard the front door close and I was on my own in the semi-dark kitchen. I went to the sink and splashed water onto my face. It felt ice cold and stung my cheeks.

  Through the window, I saw Dad rubbing at a dent in the boot of his car with his fingertips. His face looked ashen and his eyes dark. I felt bad for him. It couldn’t have been easy raising me on his own, knowing that one day he would have to tell me what had really happened to my mum. How did you plan for something like that?

  Maybe the death of Natalie and the girl in my flashes had opened up old scars, although I doubted if they had ever truly healed. Or maybe recent events had provided him with an opening he had always searched for but had never quite found. When would have been the right time to tell me what had really happened to my mum?

  I’d left my dad to tinker with his car, like he so often did these days, and gone to my room. When it got dark, he’d set off to cabbie for the night, picking up the drunks from the pubs, bars and nightclubs.

  I rolled over on my bed and looked at my iPhone. The battery was almost flat, but I couldn’t find the strength to climb from off my bed and recharge it. I felt like it was me who needed recharging. I checked for any unread messages. I don’t know why I bothered, to be honest. No one sent me texts these days,
not since Natalie had gone. I thought of my father and wished we hadn’t rowed.

  As I looked up at that pink lampshade, the one that I had stared up at for as long as I could remember, I couldn’t really blame Tom for not believing in my flashes. How could he make sense of what I had seen if I didn’t really understand myself ? Why did they come? Why had the flashes of Kerry been so strong – so intense? They had never been that strong before.

  Perhaps it has something to do with mum, I thought. The flashes had started soon after she had died. I didn’t know what they were back then – just very vivid dreams – nightmares. I would wake, sobbing, my head throbbing. Dad would come to my bedroom and comfort me. But some nights when those flashes had been really bad and I just couldn’t be settled he would lift me into his arms and let me sleep next to him. I would lie in the dark and listen to the sound of him snoring. Other kids had counted sheep; I had counted my dad’s grunts and snorts until I drifted off.

  My iPhone beeped. I went to my messages and could see that I had received a text from someone. At once my heart leapt. Had the text come from Natalie’s phone? I opened the text and squinted at it.

  The text read, ‘I’ll pick you up at 9 2morrow morning. Wrap up warm and wear some wellies! Tom.’

  Scraping my hair behind my ear, I couldn’t help but feel relieved the message was from Tom. But why did he want to meet up with me again? Was this a date? I doubted it. Who wore wellies on a date?

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’ I wrote. Smiling, I sent the message.

  CHAPTER 12

  Tom – Tuesday: 07:30 Hrs.

  The alarm clock woke me at 07:30 a.m., but after having only a few hours’ sleep, I stuck my hand out from beneath the covers and switched it off. I hadn’t slept well again. My tired mind scrambled with thoughts of Charley, dead girls under trains and the sobs of a heartbroken mother.

  Just five more minutes, I told myself and promptly went back to sleep. I woke again at 08:36, and seeing the time, scrambled from my bed and into the shower. I was going to be late to pick up Charley. Being late wasn’t a good idea. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her before I had to prepare for my evening shift.