Past Mortem (34 page)

THIRTY-ONE

M
ark Pearce had not known that Spencer was dead. Newson didn’t consider Pearce the sharpest knife in the drawer and he was certain that he could not have faked his furious bewilderment at the news that he was too late to kill his tormentor. Staring at his list of victims’ victims on the train home Newson felt reasonably confident in his mind that at least four of them had had nothing to do with the murders, beyond the obvious fact that they had unwittingly provided the killer with his targets and his methods.

Against the name of Helen Smart he put a large question mark.

Newson bought two cans of lager from the trolley, feeling angry with himself. He knew so much and yet he still knew nothing. He felt scarcely closer to identifying the killer than when he had first stood staring at the punctured body of Adam Bishop. Since then the killer had killed twice more and Newson had been powerless to stop him. What was more, the pace had picked up. There had been a number of months between each of the first three murders, and three weeks between the last How long would it be before he was once more looking up Friends Reunited to unravel the wicked past of another corpse? Newson opened a beer and glanced at the
Manchester Evening News
. He was sick of bullying and yet he couldn’t get away from it. Without really wishing to do so, he found himself reading the further coverage of the Tiffany Mellors case. As he read he began to realize that there was an element to the tragedy that did not feel quite right. All of the coverage had dwelt on the fact that nobody had had any idea that the bullying was taking place, and this was seen as the most disturbing aspect of her death. Something which must, without doubt, form a major part in any future policymaking on the subject.

The phrase ‘invisible bullying’ had been coined by the news talk shows and in the newspaper editorials. But what
was
invisible bullying? Newson had never come across it before. Certainly many a victim had suffered in silence but it seemed difficult to credit that a girl could be harassed into suicide without
anybody
being aware that there was a problem. He thought back to his schooldays. It was true that he’d been unaware of what Helen had gone through at the hands of Christine Copperfield and her friends, but he was certain that
someone
would have known about it besides the bullies and the victim. There must have been girls on the edge of it, people in the locker room who knew what was going on.

Newson read the paper thoroughly and thought back to the coverage he’d seen on the previous day. He realized that so far there had been not even the vaguest speculation about who the bully might have been.

Tiffany Mellors was a victim without a persecutor, or at least without one who could be identified. And yet she’d been driven to the despair of self-mutilation and suicide. He could not help wondering if something was being missed.

Newson fell asleep at Milton Keynes and was jolted awake thirty minutes later by the train’s arrival at Euston. He had nodded off determined to focus his brain on the facts of his investigation instead of speculating on the world of bullying in general. He woke up, however, with the conviction that the answer
had
to lie in the greater picture, in the psychology of either the victim or the bully. His killer had to be one or the other. Tiffany Mellors appeared to have been a girl with tremendous self-confidence until something drove her over the edge. Perhaps in her he would find the personality of his killer. On the other hand, if the killer had been a bully at school then he was a clever one, one who still knew how to cover his tracks, in fact an
invisible bully
.

If Newson could understand Tiffany and her mysterious persecutor then he would understand the killer. He was convinced. In the absence of any other obvious lines of enquiry he resolved that in the morning he would visit Tiffany Mellors’ school in Ruislip to discover the psychology behind a confident victim and an invisible bully.

Newson did not find it easy to explain his thinking to Natasha the following morning when he asked her to go with him to the school.

‘I just feel there’s something there for us, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Things we need to know, and you have to come with me. The victim was a girl. I’m not wandering round some school on my own trying to talk to a bunch of adolescent girls.’

‘I hate schools,’ Natasha complained. ‘They remind me of school.’

‘Well, imagine what it’s like for me. I had six years of being ignored by juvenile females and now I’m going back for more.’

Natasha took a little mirror from her bag and for the fifth time in as many minutes she checked her reflection. Her bruised eye was looking better, but she was inevitably still self-conscious about it.

‘How have things been with Lance?’ Newson asked. ‘Fine. Great. He’s been really, really nice. I thought he was going to be furious because I didn’t bring his flowers home with me, but he wasn’t. He said he understood. Since then he’s been lovely.’

‘Natasha,’ Newson said gently.

‘What!’ she snapped back. ‘
What?
’

‘He hits you and now
you’re
grateful because
he’s
not angry.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Yes, I do. Anyway, let’s go.’

They were not the only visitors to the Aneurin Bevan Comprehensive that morning. There were still clusters of media hanging about at the gates along with the endless stream of local residents arriving to lay flowers and teddy bears at the base of the perimeter wall.

Inside the school things were nearly as crowded. Newson had expected the media presence and the flowers delivered outside. What he had not expected was the army of counsellors.

‘There are so many of them,’ Natasha said.

‘We have a statutory obligation to provide grief support,’ the school secretary explained. ‘If any of the pupils were to become traumatized as a result of this incident, we could be held responsible.’

‘Well, I think you’ve covered yourselves,’ Newson replied.

They had. Every classroom had its own support group, grief counsellors and trauma counsellors.

‘Shit, if this much effort had been put in beforehand,’ Natasha said, ‘Tiffany Mellors probably wouldn’t be dead.’

‘I doubt it,’ Newson replied. ‘There are always going to be bullies and there are always going to be victims. Being trained or prepared for it doesn’t necessarily protect you.’

Newson had not meant this comment to reflect on Natasha’s relationship with Lance, but she clearly took it that way. Her lips set firm and she went silent. Newson desperately wanted to backtrack, but he knew that he would only make matters worse. Besides which, whether he’d meant it or not, it was true.

The pupils, of course, were having a fabulous time. None of them had ever felt so important or found it so easy to skip lessons. Groups of girls hung about in the corridors hugging each other, red-eyed. Lads ran around the place looking tough and firm and clearly ready to deal with the invisible bully should he ever seek to try anything with them.

Natasha and Newson were given the use of the nurse’s quiet room in order to conduct their interviews. One by one Tiffany’s classmates were brought before them.

First came her close friends, the members of the gang that Newson had seen pictured in their bikinis on the front of the
Manchester Evening News
. Newson was irritated with himself to discover that, despite the fact that he was now a senior police officer, he was as intimidated by fourteen-year-old girls as he had been more than twenty years before.

These were the pretty girls, the confident ones, their uniforms and faces all girlishly adorned to the limits of what the school would allow. Newson thought about his old classmate Sally Warren desperately trying to subdue a screaming toddler in a hotel foyer, no longer an object of desire. She’d been a golden girl once. All the boys had wanted to dance with her, but the last time he’d seen her she’d been dancing with her fatherless child. Newson wondered what kind of entries these fresh-faced girls would be making on Friends Reunited twenty and thirty and forty years on.

‘She was great. The best friend ever. I’ll miss her till I die,’ said a girl called Nikki, echoing the sentiments of the previous three girls who had sat before Newson and Natasha. ‘It’s like, you know, she always knew the best stuff to get, right? And, like, you know, the party was always at Tiff’s? And she’d say let’s do something and we’d all just do it?’

‘They were all jealous of her,’ Natasha said after Nikki had left the room. ‘I remember feeling like that. Some girls just have the lot. The boys want to have her and the girls want to be her. Tiffany Mellors was one of those girls. We had one in our class. I remember that I sort of loved her and I also secretly hated her because I knew that I was brighter than her and better than her but that if she called me and said come round I’d have dropped everything to be with her.’

‘Did she ever call?’

‘No, not for me. I was kind of halfway between the nerds and the cool gang. They sort of tolerated me and I got invited to parties to make up the numbers. But I wasn’t at the centre, not like these girls. Not like young Nikki. I’ll bet she’s a right bitch, that one.’

‘Ah, yes. We’ve met the class’s golden girls. And Tiffany Mellors was the boss, wasn’t she?’

‘No doubt about that.’

‘In which case it seems to me that everything that’s being said about why she died contradicts who she actually was. I think a very major point is being missed here.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m going to find out. And God knows, Natasha, I hope I’m wrong, because if I’m not what’s happened here is truly terrible and what’s more is going to happen again.’

The school secretary knocked and entered. ‘Shall I bring up another group, Inspector?’

‘No,’ said Newson, ‘I’d like you to bring back the ones we’ve just seen. I’d like to see Tiffany’s closest friends again, please. Bring them in together.’

The four girls returned. One of them was destined soon to take Tiffany’s place as coolest girl in class.

‘Now then, ladies,’ said Newson. ‘I want to talk to you some more about bullying.’

The expressions on the girls’ faces indicated that they had hoped for something more exciting. They did not think that there was anything left to say on the subject of bullying.

‘We’ve told you,’ Nikki volunteered wearily, ‘we don’t know who was getting at Tiff. If we did she’d be dead, right? ‘Cos we’d get her.’

The other girls nodded In agreement.

‘I don’t want to know who you think might have been bullying Tiffany Mellors. I want to know who Tiffany Mellors was bullying.’

Newson let this hang in the air for a moment before adding, ‘Who
you
were bullying, Nikki.’

The girls were dumbfounded.

‘Come on,’ Newson persisted. ‘You look like a pretty cool bunch to me. You don’t look like girls I’d want to mess with, that’s for sure, and Tiffany was the boss, right? All the boys wanted to go out with Tiff, didn’t they? All the girls wanted to be her, right? So what I want to know is, who paid the price for all that power? Who was on the receiving end? Whose life have you been making a misery?’

The girls did not reply. Nikki glared defiantly at Newson and the other three fiddled with their rings and stared at the floor. Clearly it was Nikki who was destined to inherit Tiffany’s crown.

‘I’m not saying anything,’ said the girl who would be queen. ‘None of us are saying anything,’ she added, just in case any of her friends had had other ideas.

‘Right, that’s all I need to know,’ Newson said. ‘Thank you, girls. That’ll be all.’

The four girls left and the secretary returned.

‘Right,’ said Newson, ‘I’d like to see the rest of the class, one at a time.’

‘Send up the girls first,’ Natasha added, and then, turning to Newson, said, ‘Save you a bit of time, Ed. You’re looking for a girl, believe me.’

§

Both Newson and Natasha picked her out the moment she walked into the room. Tanya Waddingham was obviously a victim, or at least she’d been turned into one through being in the wrong year with the wrong girls. Her hair, parted in the middle, hung limply in front of her face, a face that was staring resolutely at the floor as she entered the room and which she scarcely raised at all as she sat down. She wore a long skirt and a big jumper that made it impossible to imagine what shape her body was, and her skin was pale and spotty. They stared at the greasy crown of Tanya’s head as she sat before them, her chin stuck firmly to her chest.

‘Tanya,’ Natasha said, ‘we want to ask you something and we’ll treat the answer in complete confidence. Were you being bullied by Tiffany Mellors?’

The girl did not answer.

‘Please, Tanya. It’s very important. We need to know.’

After a few moments Tanya mumbled something.