Dead Girl Walking (17 page)

With my heart pounding, I unlock the back door and stick my head out.

‘Marmalade…’ I hiss. ‘Come on you stupid cat….’

There is no movement in the yard, no sound apart from the traffic on distant roads. Eventually, I have to concede defeat and close the door again. It feels lonely in my kitchen without her. My mind goes back to the specks on the windowsill. I just hope she’s alright.

My neck cricks as I lift it from the table. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the gloom. Shivering, I feel my way to the light over the oven and flick it on. My notebook lies open on the table with a mug still full of tea that went cold when I fell asleep. I half expect Marmalade to come and wrap herself around my legs, but then I remember she’s missing. I wonder whether I should give her a little more time or go and look for her. Perhaps she does this all the time, perhaps she gets bored of being
owned and runs away as soon as things get too domesticated. It makes sense, I suppose; after all, that is how she came to me.

My gaze flicks to the black plastic bags that line the wall by the back door. Someone else is probably in Gran’s room at Meadowview already. One minute you’re here, the next minute someone else occupies the space where you used to be. Life is like that.

It’s when I think about Meadowview that it hits me. Another nugget from my visions, another detail. I remember the smell, the one on the killer. Of course I’ve smelt it before – at the hospital, at Meadowview – I don’t know why I didn’t realise it sooner. It’s antiseptic gel, like cleaning alcohol, the stuff you buy in little bottles to sanitise your hands.

I massage my neck as I mull this new detail over. The guy looks so grubby, his hair greased back and the stink of old sweat. Why would I smell instant sanitiser on him?

I look at the kitchen clock. It’s just after ten. Karl would probably still be up. So would Dante. I wriggle around to retrieve my phone from my jeans pocket and lay it on the table. But then I think about the last conversations I had with both of those people. So it sits untouched, next to the notepad. I could phone Robert, maybe he could help track this guy down. After all, he’s a reporter, he’s supposed to be good at following leads. He found me. I think about how smug he’d be, though. Pulling the pen over, I write
cleaning alcohol
on the pad. There must be something else, I think, as I chew on the pen, before realising quickly that it’s Tish’s pen and guilt stabs at me once more.

Tish would track this killer down. She wouldn’t sit crying at the front door whenever she thought about going out to stop him, she wouldn’t sit cowering in the kitchen making excuses and writing pointless stuff on a notepad. She’d take her knife and stab him right through his heart and then she’d come home knowing she’d done a good thing and sleep soundly in her bed. Why do I have to be such a monumental screw up? Gran was right, someone else should have come back to life.

I pull on my coat and pocket my phone.

In the sitting room, the rucksack still sits on the floor where I left it with the tip of the blade pulling at the fabric. I hoist it onto my shoulder and head out into the night.

It’s the sort of night you can crack – cold and harsh. Above me the stars, what I can see of them beyond the glare of the streetlights, look like points of ice. I recognise some of the constellations: The Plough, Orion’s belt, Pleiades – Dad taught me when I was still young enough to be interested. Jupiter is up there too, a miniscule pearl in a velvet sky. For two hours I’ve wandered the streets around the murder scenes with no idea who I’m looking for or where to find him. In fact, I assumed that it wouldn’t be long until he found me; after all, the guy is hunting girls my age and I’m growing increasingly convinced that he’s hunting me. You wouldn’t think it would be this hard to be attacked. Maybe it’s not late enough yet. The streets are quiet but there are still knots of people making their way home from meals out with friends or from nights in the theatre or evening shifts at work.

I sit on the wall of a car park hugging myself as the cold seeps beneath my too thin jacket; it’s not right in the centre of town, but close enough for there to be people passing. Behind it lies a huge swathe of derelict land. The factory that once stood on it is now rubble, buried beneath tangled claws of weeds and shrubs. Karl didn’t tell me where the girls were found, and the memories I have of Rachel’s death are still incomplete, but if I wanted to drag someone away to kill them, this is just the sort of place I’d be waiting.

I pull my phone out and see a text from Dante, still unopened. My finger hovers over the icon for a moment.

R u ok?

I lock the screen again and suddenly I have that instinctive, primal awareness that I’m being watched. I look up to see that there’s a man walking towards me. I stiffen and pull my rucksack off my shoulder, my hand creeping inside for the handle of the blade. He draws closer.

‘Got the time, love?’ he asks.

I can smell the alcohol on him from here. Not the cleaning sort, but the pissed-as-a-fart sort.

‘Half twelve,’ I say, looking at the clock on my phone.

He stares at me for a moment, swaying on the spot. ‘You shouldn’t be out here all on your own,’ he slurs. ‘You should come home with me.’

‘I’m not on my own.’

‘I can’t see anyone. You going out with the invisible man?’ he laughs.

‘My boyfriend has gone to get me some chips.’

‘And he’s left you sitting ’ere? I’d knock his block off. Serve him right if he comes back and you’ve gone off with someone else.’ He grins and can barely control the lust in his eyes. ‘Come back with me, darlin’; teach him a lesson.’

I can’t help but grimace as I take in his thinning hair and pot belly. The sallowness of his skin is visible, even in the half-light of the streetlamps.

‘You’re alright, thanks. I’ll wait for him.’

He moves closer, frowning for a moment as he stares at me, trying to focus. Then his features brighten.

‘You’re that girl,’ he says.

‘What girl?’ I reply automatically, even as the dread of knowing exactly what he means creeps into my heart.

‘The dead girl in the paper,’ he says.

‘I don’t think so,’ I try to laugh, my pulse now roaring in my ears. ‘If I was dead, how could I be sitting here?’

‘You are,’ he insists. ‘You’re that girl who came back to life, I read about you.’

He starts to edge closer, his drunken, stupid curiosity abhorrent. He reaches for me and I whip out the knife.

He leaps back as the streetlight glints off the blade.

‘What the…’

‘Just back off,’ I growl.

He stares at me, his mouth hanging open. He looks as though he will speak again, but then staggers off without another word.

I watch him turn the corner and disappear from sight. Once I’m certain he won’t come back, I slip the knife back in the bag. My hands are shaking. I want to go home now but I don’t think my legs will support the walk. So I sit, head in hands, waiting for the tremors and cold sweats to subside.

I’ve no idea what I’m doing here. One thing I do know, there are plenty of creeps around this town. Do I really want to be sitting here waiting for one of them to get me?

When I finally get home I’m freezing like I’ll never be warm again. I long to curl up in bed and wrap the duvet tight around me, like I did as a kid, thinking that nothing could penetrate my feathery safe place. Even on the hottest summer nights I couldn’t
sleep uncovered. It used to drive Mum mental but Dad would just shrug and tell her to leave me be.

At my front door, something doesn’t look right. I take a quick look around the little tiled forecourt of our terraced house. The flowerpots, still containing the shrivelled leftovers of last year’s plants, have been moved from their usual positions. I go to move them back and in my shock, almost drop one on my foot.

On my front step, carefully placed, is a dead robin. My first instinct is that Marmalade has left it, but something about the way it has been arranged and the fact that there isn’t a mark on it stirs an irrational fear in me that the real source is someone with far more sinister intent.

For a moment I stare at it, the urge to touch it, just to see, almost too great to deny. Its slick feathers gleam in the streetlights. My hand inches forwards, my breathing shallow. But then I shudder, yanking myself back to the cold night and the real world. Too freaked out and emotionally spent to pick it up, I open the front door and step over it before I slam the bolts on and hurry upstairs to shut the world away.

I climb into bed with my jacket on and pull the covers right over my head. What sick bastard plays a trick like that? It had to be deliberate: birds don’t die in perfectly symmetrical positions in the middle of people’s doorsteps. I conclude it must be one of the local kids. I shouldn’t let it get to me. I close my eyes and try to sleep.

Just as I’m starting to relax, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out; the bright screen hurts my eyes. Another text from Dante:

Can I c u tomoz?

I tap out a reply:
why are you still up?

Nightmare. U didn’t answer
.

I gaze at the message. The memory of his lips at my throat is all jumbled up with other memories that I can’t shake; of hands around my neck and the stench of sanitiser, of a drunk trying to take me home and a lechy git fondling my hair, of a bird with a bright red breast on my doorstep. I need to get my head straight. I can’t decide whether seeing Dante will make things better or worse.

Ask me in the morning
.

I wait for a reply. When nothing comes through, I drop the phone onto the floor and curl up into a ball to try and stop the shivering.

My arms are wrapped around the cornflake box as I stare out of the window. The day is bright and fresh, the sort of day that banishes night so that you can never imagine having been scared in the dark. I wish I could feel that brightness. When I went outside to clear away the dead bird from the step, it had gone. I can’t decide whether this fact makes me relieved or even more concerned. I suppose it could have been picked up by a cat, or a fox or something. I have to be content with that theory although I still feel uneasy. After another scout around the house, in cupboards and wardrobes, and then out in the back garden again, I have to surmise that Marmalade has left me too. Feeling utterly alone, I scoop the remains of her cat food into the bin and leave the dish to soak.

My phone bleeps to remind me that I have an appointment with Helen today. I dip into the box for another handful of cornflakes and cram them into my mouth. I don’t know what I’m going to tell her. I haven’t done any of the things she suggested. I went out with the intention of murdering someone. But they deserved it, right? I slept with one of her other patients. I cleared away Gran’s life and discovered that she had the power to move me in a way I never thought possible. I’d call that an eventful week, but is it progress? The thought creeps in alongside this, that I have a funeral to arrange and a will to hear. Gran had the foresight to leave the name of the solicitors with Gail. I know what’s in it: there’s only me left to inherit. I’m not sure she had much anyway; the government took her house to pay for her time at Meadowview. They’ll phone me if they want to tell me about it, I suppose. When I see Helen today I could tell her that I’m still lonely, that I pushed away Dante and Karl, just about the only two people in this world who gave a shit about me. Perhaps that’s for the best though. People who give a shit about me end up dead.

The phone skitters along the kitchen table, buzzing a call. Despite what I have just decided, my heart leaps at the thought that it may be Dante. But when I look, the number is from a landline, and not one I recognise.

‘Cassie? It’s Karl.’

I feel the blood drain from the roots of my hair, like the seconds before the anaesthetic freezes your veins. I drop into the chair and cornflakes spill over the floor.

‘Cassie, are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wanted to see if you were ok.’

I feel sick, numb. ‘I thought….’

‘Nothing has happened,’ he explains quickly. ‘Sorry, I should have realised you might think the worst. I was worried. You haven’t returned any of my calls and I wanted to make sure you weren’t out doing anything stupid…’

My breathing is shallow and rapid. I fight to level it but my head is spinning and I can’t focus.’

‘Cassie?’

I try to speak but nothing will come.

‘Cassie, I’m coming over.’

I drop the phone and just make it to the sink in time to throw up.

‘You didn’t need to come over,’ I say as Karl fills a kitchen chair, his colleague, Mark, hovering near the window and scrolling down his phone as if deliberately demonstrating to me that he isn’t listening, even though he obviously is. ‘You can see I’m fine.’

He throws me a disbelieving glance from beneath his unruly eyebrows. ‘It didn’t sound like it.’

‘You just scared me, that’s all. I thought…’

‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to worry you.’

I can’t help a short laugh. ‘
Worry
me? I’m
worried
about the gas bill or the rate of global warming. This is definitely beyond worry.’

‘To be honest,’ Karl begins slowly, as though what he’s about to say is against his better judgement, ‘I was hoping you’d have something else for me today, some more information.’

Mark’s head snaps up from his phone, and although he shoots a loaded glance in Karl’s direction, he says nothing.

‘There’s something… I’m not sure how important it is.’

The sun from the window catches threads of silver-grey in his hair. ‘Anything,’ he says. ‘Everything is important in this case, so don’t worry about wasting my time.’

I’m guessing, even though he doesn’t say it, that he’s pretty desperate now to end this investigation. He’s probably working on it or thinking about it every hour of the day; after all, how could you not? He looks so tired I almost wish it for him. It must
be hard, knowing that every day this man is at large there’s the danger of another life being snuffed out. I know it better than Karl could ever imagine. ‘Hand sanitiser,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit crap but it’s all I have.’