After You Die (18 page)

She knew they could be anywhere in the country. Christ, anywhere in the world. And the way Holly died made it highly unlikely they were involved, but she wanted them to suffer for the pleasure they’d taken in attacking her. The harassment was illegal, the mechanism for prosecuting them was in place, but she held out little hope for tracking them down.

This was Holly’s only window onto the world and the view was bleak. What had that done to her psychologically? What toll did it take, day after day, week after week?

Why didn’t she stop them?

A few minutes later Ferreira got an answer of sorts. A short post linking to a piece Holly had written for the Comment is Free section of the
Guardian
about online abuse directed at people with disabilities. She quoted the conversations directly and picked them apart, called it the last acceptable prejudice.

Ferreira pushed away from her desk and went over to the window to light her cigarette, sat down on the sill, staring at the floor between her feet.

Dawn must have known about this.

Long-term harassment, ongoing and getting worse. Holly was trying to turn it into something positive, using it to highlight a problem that was bigger than just her, but it must have been consuming her entire life. She’d been in a national newspaper – or its online version at least – for Christ’s sake.

The article was published in December last year, a few days before Ferreira visited her.

She looked up from the floor.

A few days before the car was vandalised.

‘Epiphany face,’ Wahlia said, grinning at her as he walked over to the counter where the coffee machine needed refilling. ‘Come on, then. Let’s hear it.’

Ferreira told him.

‘So what? We already know what motivated the vandalism. Not exactly subtle, were they? Spraying “Cripple” on the car in big black letters.’

‘No, think about it, Bobby. We’ve got a brutal and sustained online harassment targeting Holly. This is every fucking day for her. And then she publishes a piece in the
Guardian
. Attention, right? Prestige even. Her troll hates that. He wants to see her cut down to size but months of nasty comments haven’t made a dent – she’s turned them around, benefited from them. So he wants to strike in real life.’ Ferreira waited, hands spread wide, inviting him to finish the thought, but he didn’t. ‘This isn’t just some one-off bit of graffiti any more. It’s the first physical act in a campaign of harassment that’s been going on for months.’

Wahlia considered it for a moment. ‘Why didn’t Dawn mention any of this?’

‘She didn’t know.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah, fucking seriously. Do you think kids tell their parents what they’re doing online?’

‘It’s a massive leap,’ Wahlia said. ‘Wankers like that, they don’t go out and actually do stuff in real life, they just sit on their arses and troll people for cheap entertainment.’

‘This is concerted,’ Ferreira said firmly. ‘And it’s personal. Go look at it and tell me I’m wrong.’

She flicked her cigarette out of the window and followed him over to her desk, stood with her hands braced on the back of the chair, watching over his shoulder as he started to read.

‘See?’

‘What’s this?’ Zigic asked, pulling at his tie as he walked into the office, free to remove it now the press conference was done with.

Ferreira explained again, getting the same look of guarded interest as before and the same reservations. Wahlia stood up and Zigic replaced him at the desk, scanning through the posts, stopping when she told him to, pointing out the worst comments, the ones she thought went beyond standard-issue insults.

‘We can’t ignore this.’

Zigic murmured agreement. ‘How does it lead to Dawn’s murder, though?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ she admitted. ‘But I think there’s something here. Although maybe the harassment wasn’t about Holly’s disability, that was just the weak point. This person might have had their own, totally separate, reasons to hate Dawn and they thought hurting Holly would hurt her.’

‘Look into it,’ Zigic said, rising from her chair. ‘Tomorrow, though.’

‘I’ll give it another hour.’

He pushed her chair under the desk before she could sit down. ‘No, it’s gone seven, get out of here. Both of you. I want clear heads in the morning.’

Reluctantly Ferreira switched off her computer, closed the window she’d left open and gathered her things into her bag, knowing she could go straight back to the blog when she got home. One night away from the gym wouldn’t hurt her recovery.

In the car, bombing along the parkway towards Werrington with the Dead Weather blaring, she thought about the faceless, nameless pieces of shit who’d targeted Holly and wondered if they knew she was dead yet, whether any of them would feel guilty when they found out or just annoyed that one of their toys had been taken away.

Julia watched the small red numbers on the alarm clock blinking: four o’clock becoming half past, becoming five. Kept closing her eyes and willing herself to sleep but her mind was ticking away too insistently, thinking about Nathan, still out there and no news from Rachel since yesterday afternoon. Even though she’d said she knew where he was. Shouldn’t she have found him by now? How long could he stay hidden in a town as small as Grantham?

Maybe Rachel had found him. That thought was a persistent one. She’d found him too late and wasn’t ready to admit that the worst had happened.

The numbers moved on, blurring as she tried to focus on them.

Next to her Matthew was snoring, big, ugly gulping growls. Grunting and snorting like an animal, the way he always did when he’d had too much to drink.

He’d spent the previous evening holed up in his study. Marking, he claimed, but she didn’t believe it. He hardly ever did it at home, preferred to stay and finish it in his classroom, preserve the separation between work time and leisure time. It was almost seven o’clock when he pulled into the drive and if he wasn’t marking then what was he doing until so late?

She didn’t ask. Didn’t want to see him lie.

Matthew let out a protracted groan, turned over and mumbled something into his pillow. She touched her fingertips to his temple, feeling the slackness of his skin, and as she traced the line of his jaw the muscles there tensed.

Even asleep he was withdrawing from her.

In the half-lit room, horribly awake and experiencing the piercing clarity which came with sleepless nights, she realised he’d been like that for months now, reluctant to touch her unless he wanted something doing; a shirt ironing or paperwork finding or just for an uncomfortable conversation to end. They hadn’t had sex since she’d fallen pregnant. He claimed he was scared of ‘stressing’ her body, that after trying for so many years he wouldn’t jeopardise the health of their unborn child with his ‘demands’. As if she didn’t have any of her own.

He’d never been particularly physical, always left it to her to instigate, but when she did he responded with enthusiasm. Not now, though.

A barrier had come up between them and it would be easy to blame it on the baby, but she couldn’t make herself believe that deeply enough to stop every loveless peck on the lips feeling like an act of duty.

Most women would think he was having an affair.

And then they would convince themselves he wasn’t, because it was easier to keep getting up and going on with your life that way.

They lied to themselves, Julia thought. Every woman did it. Maybe men did too. Built up the rickety lie of mutual fidelity, tended it and shielded it, fixed the fine cracks, plugged the holes when they opened and smoothed over the ragged scars with the same old salves; he loves me, he wouldn’t, he trusts me so I trust him.

Carefully she sat up, not wanting to wake Matthew, and slipped her feet into the sheepskin moccasins waiting on the rug at the side of the bed, shivering as the chill air hit her bare arms. She took her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door and pulled it on as she made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

The room was still and silent and something of last night’s awkward dinner seemed to be hanging in the air, a stale undertone like the odour of dirty ashtrays or food beginning to spoil.

Julia switched on all the lights and the television, changed channels away from the news and left some documentary about birds playing as she put away the crockery from the drying rack, thinking about what Caitlin had told her. The policewoman who’d come here, the one Julia took an instant dislike to, had turned up at the school and bullied her way in, demanding to know everything Caitlin knew about Nathan. She said she told her nothing, only that he’d run away, and Julia believed her, because she didn’t know any more than that.

Warren wasn’t so easily fobbed off. After he’d searched the house, storming through the rooms like a man possessed, he’d returned to the kitchen and interrogated her with a tenacity the police officers might have envied. She’d remained calm, well used to soothing tantrums and that’s what it was really, a furious venting of impotence and fear and grief. But knowing that didn’t make him any less intimidating. He’d always been volatile, she knew that much from Dawn, who chose to call it passion because that made him a brooding romantic rather than a bully.

As he shouted at her, pushing her about Nathan, she realised she’d never really known Warren, even though they’d been in and out of each other’s houses for years, dinner parties and barbecues, pub lunches and theatre trips, shared jokes and confidences. For a while the four of them had been inseparable.

Maybe he was thinking about it too, that closeness, and that was why he suddenly turned his fury towards Matthew.

A small moan escaped her lips.

This wasn’t healthy.

She needed to find a way to deal with it or her baby was going to suffer. She knew all the ways a mother could harm her child before it was even born, the obvious vices and what they did to a developing brain, how they could weaken a still-forming body. Any decent women cut out drink and cigarettes, didn’t do drugs, didn’t use chemical-heavy beauty products. They all thought that was enough of a safeguard.

But it wasn’t. Julia knew that all of this stress was flooding her baby with cortisol, making her more likely to suffer from anxiety and attention deficit disorder once she was born. She knew she was lowering her baby’s IQ but she couldn’t make the stress go away and that made her feel guilty which made her feel even more stressed.

If only she’d been here the night Dawn was killed, there would be no question of alibis for any of them.

Julia made herself a cup of tea and took it into the workshop, feeling the cold coming up through the uninsulated concrete floor, before she went to curl up in the armchair near the window, pulling her dressing gown across her bare legs. She watched the grey dawn recede and the sky lighten in increments, nothing but a few thin, high clouds to mar the blue, listened to the birdsong and the scratching of mice behind her workbench, losing herself in the predictable rhythms, until car engines began to sound on the lane outside, the familiar rattling slam of her neighbour’s front door as he left for the train station, then ten minutes later his girlfriend taking their dog for a walk.

The telephone in the kitchen rang.

It wouldn’t be good news at this time of morning.

‘We’ve found him,’ Rachel said.

‘Alive?’

‘Yes.’

Relief flooded over her and she smiled into the handset, only dimly registering how serious Rachel sounded.

‘What time will you be here?’ she asked, already walking to the fridge, taking out butter for a welcome-home cake. ‘Is he hungry? I’ll make you both breakfast.’

‘I’m not bringing him back to yours,’ Rachel said flatly. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘Why? Rachel, please, he needs his home now.’

‘It’s not his home.’

The words hit her like a slap.

‘You were supposed to keep him safe and you let him walk out of there. Christ, you didn’t even notice he was gone for hours. Anything could have happened to him.’

‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Julia said. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure this has been very tough on you,’ Rachel sneered. ‘You’re the real victim in all this, aren’t you?’

She wanted to snap back at her but she had no defence against the truth. ‘Please, can I talk to him at least?’

‘Later,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll ring you when we’re on the road.’

She ended the call before Julia could say any more and she stood for a moment with the phone in her hand, having to remind herself that this was good news because it didn’t feel as good as she’d expected, the relief tainted by Rachel’s attitude.

The kitchen door opened and she quickly arranged her face into a smile for Caitlin.

‘Nathan’s coming home. Isn’t that brilliant?’

Caitlin’s smile was far more genuine than hers and she rushed across the kitchen to hug Julia, throwing her arms around her neck in a rare display of spontaneous emotion. Julia hugged her back, shifting slightly to ease the pressure against her stomach.

‘I thought he was dead,’ Caitlin said.

Julia smoothed her hand over the girl’s hair. ‘Nathan must be tougher than he looks.’

‘Can I skip school today?’ she asked. ‘I want to be here when he gets back.’

‘Of course you can. We’ll say you’ve got a tummy bug.’ Julia checked the wall clock, almost seven. ‘Why don’t you go back to bed for a little bit?’

‘Okay.’ Caitlin stopped halfway to the door and Julia saw the tension flex across her shoulders before she turned around. ‘What if Nathan did kill Dawn?’

‘He didn’t,’ Julia said firmly.

‘The police think he did.’

‘And they’re wrong. They don’t know him like we do.’

Caitlin chewed on her bottom lip, eyes unreadable behind the over-long fringe Julia wished she’d get cut. ‘What if they fit him up?’

‘Rachel won’t let that happen.’

That seemed to satisfy Caitlin and she went up to bed without another word, leaving Julia to wonder if she’d reassured the girl or lied to her.

‘Please don’t tell me you’ve been here all night,’ Zigic said.