A Cry in the Night (12 page)

‘I don’t want to get her into trouble.’

‘Did she murder her children?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Then spit it out.’

‘I promised I wouldn’t.’

‘Matthew Bryden, I’m arresting you on suspicion—’

‘No, don’t, please!’

‘Tell me. Tell me everything.’

‘She just, oh shit.’

‘Tell me!’

‘She had some drugs in the house. She had drugs in the house and she was scared that the police would search the place and find them. And then they’d think she was worse than she was and do all the things that you lot do.’

‘What do we do?’

‘You twist things, you screw things up. Just because people don’t fit into the way you want them. I’m not right like that and you’re always after me. Council, cops, always the same.’

‘And Sarah?’

‘Yeah. She’s different too. It’s why we get on. We’re rejects.’

He said the word with a bitter sense of pleasure. Again, she wondered if he’d worked this out on his own, or if Sarah had spelled it out for him. But either way, the words made sense.

‘She didn’t do anything,’ he said again, his voice stronger now the truth was out.

‘Thank you for telling me this. I’m sorry I was so angry. But you mustn’t hide things from us.’

He just nodded back at this.

‘Now. For me,’ Zoe continued. ‘One last time. You went down to the lake …’

‘I went down after work to walk Meg,’ he said, gesturing to the Labrador. ‘And I saw Arthur’s bike and I took it up to the house. And Sarah was there. And Mr D. And they ran down with me and we looked everywhere and called the police. And it was then, after we’d searched and searched and got home, that Sarah remembered she had some stuff on her. And she got even more scared. She was in bits ’cos of the kids, see? She was frantic. And so she asked me to take it and get rid of it. Do you see? It’s bad but nothing like … you know.’

‘What were the drugs, Bud?’

‘I don’t know.’ He saw her disbelief. ‘I don’t! I’m not into any of that. She just said it would get her into trouble and she asked me to dump it.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yeah. Of course. Burnt it on the bonfire.’

She winced inwardly; the evidence was gone.

‘We already knew she took drugs,’ she said. ‘We found that out almost as soon as we got here. You’ve wasted our time.’

‘Sorry,’ he said without much conviction.

‘You’ve made us suspicious of her for all the wrong reasons.’

Bud just sniffed and picked up the wood and began
his work again. Zoe wanted to say something else, but his answers made perfect sense, and in so many cases the truth was just dull and depressing. Sometimes the job felt equally messy; digging up the dirt and shining a light on it. But on this one it felt as though too many people were already peering and pointing.

Sarah was no murderer, and Bud no accomplice. It didn’t matter what everyone said, she needed to look elsewhere. In the field opposite, two sheep had wandered over and stared at her, chewing hard like teenage brats. She headed off without bothering to say goodbye to Bud. She needed to talk to those bloody teenagers.

Sam found Ashley sitting alone in a small brick shack that passed as a bus stop. She was smoking a cigarette, her feet up, headphones on. Sam could hear the pumping bass as he approached her. She saw him and didn’t move, just blinked slowly and looked away. He stood in front of her and waited. Eventually she turned off her music and looked at him.

‘Now?’

‘No, I want to talk to you.’

‘Well I want to fuck.’

‘Jesus, Ashley.’

‘What? Come on, you like it too.’

‘This is about the case. About the boy.’

‘I heard he turned up without his eyes, but his skin was still perfect.’

‘I’m sure there are all sorts of stories going around.’

‘I know you want to.’

‘I want to talk to you about Sarah Downing,’ he said, ignoring the tease. ‘Can you go back through everything you saw on the evening when Arthur and Lily disappeared?’

‘Everything? God, I’ve already done it for the last coppers.’

‘Ashley, it could be important.’

‘Are you saying she did it?’

‘No. I’m not saying anything like that at all.’

She shrugged, bored, then reached out and grabbed at his belt buckle. He took a step back.

‘The time. Come on, girl, the time.’

‘I don’t know, whatever time I said before. Five? I don’t know.’

‘Did any of you go down to the lake earlier?’

‘No, we all went down together.’

He sagged, hoping for more.

‘Are you hard?’ she asked. He feigned boredom at the crudeness of the question, but his pulse was racing. ‘There’s a back way into the pub,’ she said. ‘You can go in the front, I’ll come the other way, see you in your room.’

‘Are you sure about the time?’

‘God,’ she tutted. ‘Like I said. Whatever we said to the cops before. You’re being very boring.’

He didn’t understand how this brat of a girl could have such a hold on him. The sex was meant to make up for his loneliness and help him keep his mind straight, but now this stroppy young woman had got under his skin and he
found himself thinking about her all the time. He didn’t even like her.

‘You’re in room four, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘End of the corridor. Shit carpet but the view is nice.’

He looked at her and knew he couldn’t resist. So he nodded – a nod that was small and embarrassed considering his big frame – and walked away. He knew he’d be with her in less than five minutes. And his heart pumped wildly in his chest.

*

When it was over, she spun around in the sheets, wrapping her naked body in them like a shroud. She looked at him and giggled – young and flirtatious, and he was thrown by this intimacy. He got dressed as quickly as he could while she continued to writhe on the bed, enjoying his awkwardness.

‘You’ve got a great body for an old bloke.’

‘Thank you, I think.’

‘Yeah, you’re not saggy at all, are you?’

‘Come on, you need to get dressed.’

‘Oh but honey,’ she said in a bad Southern drawl, ‘I can’t leave you yet or my little old heart will break.’

‘Ashley. Sod off and get dressed, eh?’

Her coquettishness vanished and the familiar glower returned. But she didn’t move from the bed.

‘How come you were asking me those questions before?’ she asked.

‘I can’t. You know that.’

‘I know what everyone’s saying, but I don’t think she did it.’

‘If I ran my cases on what everyone thought, I’d never get it right.’

‘Yeah, but if you’d seen her down at the lake when she was looking for him. Running about. Her make-up was all smeared and her dress was falling off her shoulders. You’d be so on her side if you’d been there.’

‘I’m not on anyone’s side. This isn’t the playground.’

‘I’m just saying. If you’d seen her, you’d be more sympathetic.’

‘Hey, I’m as sympathetic as I need to be. Now, please put some clothes on.’

He stopped, and turned to look at her.

‘We could do it again, if you wanted,’ she said, her eyes wide and beckoning. ‘I’ve got time.’

‘Say what you said.’

‘We could do it again.’

‘No, not that, Jesus, about Sarah Downing.’

‘What? Which bit?’

‘You said she was wearing a dress?’

‘Uh-huh. And it was riding up her legs and the strap hung off her shoulder because she was running about like crazy. You could see her tits.’

Sam grabbed his bag and pulled it open, rifling through the pages of a file. The girl stared at him, curious. He found
the pages he needed. A witness statement – and a description of the clothes that Sarah was wearing that day. No dress. Jeans and a dark-blue jumper. No dress.

‘You’re sure about this?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘But you didn’t say this in your witness statement. None of you did.’

‘We said we saw her. We said she was in bits. What’s the problem?’

Sam no longer cared if Ashley had clothes on or not. He needed to see Zoe. He grabbed his bag and walked out, hurrying down the corridor. And then he stopped and thought about the naked girl in his bed. A girl with the key to the case. A girl who could compromise him. He walked back to the room slowly, each step feeling heavier.

She was still lying on the bed, just as she had been, when he came in. She looked up at him – what? He sat down next to her and she ran her finger along his arm.

‘You all saw Sarah, right?’ Sam said. ‘In her dress, running around?’

‘Well, I saw her first. And then maybe the others saw her later.’

‘You said you were all down there together.’

‘Did I?’

The frustration roared up inside and he tried to hide it.

‘You said that you all went down to the lake together.’

‘Oh, yeah, I did. Well, I was a bit before them.’

‘So why didn’t you say that?’

‘Well, it was only a bit.’

‘Right.’ He took a breath and continued. ‘So you saw Sarah Downing. And then the rest saw her a bit later.’

‘Yeah, probably.’

He scratched at the back of his neck, trying to keep calm.

‘And did you notice, when the other guys saw her, that she wasn’t in a dress any more?’

Ashley looked at him blankly, as though she didn’t have a clue what this old man was on about.

He pressed on as gently as he could bear to, pointing out that while the teenagers had happily admitted to seeing Sarah Downing, Ashley hadn’t mentioned that she’d seen Sarah earlier until that moment. He pressed her for a time.

‘I don’t know. She was just running around. Can you calm down, please?’

‘This is very important.’

‘I didn’t lie, if that’s what you’re saying.’

He felt her hackles rise and recognised the silly teenage petulance within her.

‘I’m not saying that, I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong.’

‘’Cos I’m not a liar, you got that?’

He put a hand out and took hers, and she squeezed his
hand back. And as he did so, he knew that he was playing this wrong, but he didn’t know what else to do.

‘You saw her, she ran off and then when your friends came back, she was there again?’ he asked gently.

She nodded.

‘And you didn’t notice that she’d changed her clothes?’

She frowned, thinking about this, and then shrugged.

‘I like it, when we do it in your room,’ she said, and grinned at him.

‘Yeah, me too,’ he said. ‘Listen, we’re going to question you again, I’m going to get my colleague to come and talk to you. And you need to tell her what you told me. About the dress.’

‘Will you be there too?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ll have told her, so why do you need me?’

He felt a net tighten around him.

‘Are you not going to tell her?’ she asked.

‘If she knows about us then it makes things tricky.’

‘How?’

He wondered about the expression on her face; so thoughtful and so sweet. It felt put on.

‘If anyone thinks that I could have influenced what you say, then your evidence becomes invalid.’

‘What evidence?’

‘You could be the key to this investigation, Ashley.’

She sat up straighter at this, thrilled by the news, and the bed sheets fell away, revealing her nakedness. He looked at her and felt a rush of attraction and desperation in equal measure.

‘I’m important?’

‘You are.’

‘How?’

‘Will you just tell Zoe Barnes what you told me? And say it in the same way so it doesn’t sound rehearsed?’

‘Like how?’

‘Like with all of that bolshy shit you normally give me.’

She laughed at this, a delighted cackle.

‘Alright, no probs.’

She fell back onto her back and he let go of her hand. But she grabbed his and held it, placing it onto one of her breasts.

‘Tell her about the dress and the stains. Yes?’ he said.

She nodded but she was smiling and teasing. She wanted him again, now.

‘I can’t, Ashley. And we can’t. Not again. Not now. Not with this.’

But she didn’t let go of his hand.

‘But I don’t want us to end. If I tell her, then we’re over, aren’t we?’

His stomach turned over. A cold, icy spike ripped around inside him.

‘This is more important than us fucking.’

‘But I really like you. Can’t we just carry on in secret?’

She sat up and kissed him on his lips. He didn’t respond, but he didn’t pull away either.

‘You want more of me too. I know it.’

‘When she comes to talk to you, will you tell her about the dress?’

‘Maybe. Are you dumping me? Yes or no?’

He sighed and stood up, fed up with her childishness and angry at his own failings and the trap he’d jumped into. But she didn’t move, waiting for his answer. The case was dead without her.

‘No. Of course I’m not dumping you, Ashley.’

She jumped up and kissed him and then, with a sudden matter-of-factness, started to get dressed. He turned his back on her as she did. A wasted, useless gesture of fallen morality. She was dressed in the blink of an eye. She walked to the door.

‘See ya,’ she said, and somehow, despite the tenderness, it felt like a threat.

Zoe answered Sam’s call after one ring.

‘I hate teenagers,’ she said without waiting for him to speak. ‘Can’t we arrest some for crimes against fashion? Or haircuts. Or hygiene.’

‘No luck then?’ Sam replied. He was sitting on the shore, staring out at the lake, forced out of the hotel by nervous energy and unable to settle anywhere else. The forensics tent had been struck and the body taken to the local morgue. Without the horror show, the lakeside was quiet again.

‘No. Dipshits,’ Zoe said on the other end of the phone.

‘How many more to go?’

‘Two. Seriously, boss, it’s like talking to the living dead. Only half of what they say makes any sense.’

‘Stick at it.’ He heard her sigh at the other end. ‘You okay?’

‘Sarah Downing got Bud to hide some drugs she had at the house. That was his big secret.’

‘When?’

‘Later that evening, after they’d called the cops.’