Skin Deep (32 page)

‘If you drank from it and didn’t just pour it out then we’ll find saliva traces.’

‘Won’t that take days?’

‘Yes. There’s secure juvenile accommodation about thirty miles away. If we charge you, you’ll go there. If we don’t find the bottle then . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Makes the decision easier.’

Suddenly it was real. It wasn’t going away. I wasn’t going home. Maybe ever.

Cole made them give us some time alone before they took me down to the cell. He said it was best I did go in there – lie down and get some rest.

‘They’re never going to make this stick. That guy knows you didn’t do it. It’s all over his face. But you’re all they’ve got. Come on, if you’d been setting your lass up as cover, you’d have told them about her from the start. He knows that.’

‘Cole, will you look after Mum for me?’ I couldn’t focus on him properly. The colours of his face whirled and mixed to a blur.

He grabbed me and shook me. ‘Pack that in. You’re getting out of here. They’ve got to exhaust everything before they let you go. But they will let you go.’ He softened his grip and rubbed my arms. ‘What Karen said, none of it was true. You know what a bitch she is when she’s losing it.’ I nodded and he stepped closer and pulled my head to his. ‘Worse thing I ever did, leaving you two.’

‘What about that woman? Your new one.’

He snorted. ‘Lasted all of two months. Just long enough for me to stop being mad at Karen and start missing her.’ He ruffled my hair. ‘And you.’

‘Why didn’t you call?’

‘Your mother’s not exactly the forgiving type when it comes to men who screw up. I didn’t think she’d listen.’

‘Do you love her, Cole?’

He flushed. I’d never seen him do that before. ‘Yeah, always have. Only I never told her.’

‘Look after her for me. If I need you to.’

He started to protest.

‘Please? I need to know you will.’

He sighed and nodded. ‘You get your head down and get some rest. You look all in. I’ll be here waiting. I’m not going anywhere till they let you out.’

The car wound along the lanes as Dad drove me back from the police station, and I stared out of the window.
At the forked roads leading to Strenton, a herd of cows was moving from one pasture to another and filling the lane we normally took. Dad grunted and took the longer route to avoid getting stuck behind them.

I stiffened as I realised where we were heading and he glanced over at me, but he said nothing.

Harton Brook. We never came this way any more.

‘Can you stop for a minute, please?’ I asked as we slowed to take the bridge.

He pulled over without answering and we sat there with the engine idling. By the side of the bridge, a white rose stood in a tin vase. I frowned at it. Weird – a rose in November.

‘Thanks for taking me to the station,’ I said.

‘Do I need to take you to the doctor?’ He stared down into the field where Steven’s car had exploded. ‘I suppose it’s your mother you want to talk to about this.’

‘Why do I need to see a doctor?’

‘To test . . .’

‘What? If I’m pregnant?’ I didn’t shout – not here. ‘There’s no need. I told you. I told them. In a police statement. We kissed. We went to sleep. End of. Why can’t you believe me?’

The field beside us gave me my answer.

‘Dad, I made a mistake when I got into that car. I did something stupid. I knew it was wrong. I knew I couldn’t trust them. I knew that all along. But this is different. Ryan’s different.’

He slipped the brake off and put the car into gear. A petal fluttered from the white rose in the draught of air as the car passed. I saw it fall to the ground in the side mirror as we drove away.

I went straight upstairs when we got home. Mum came and sat on my bed. ‘You’ve done your best, sweetheart. Let’s hope it’s enough.’

‘You don’t believe he did it then?’

‘Oh, Jenna.’ She sighed. ‘You read such awful things in the paper about what teenage boys do to each other. And the people who know them always say they can’t have done it.’ She shifted position to sit against the pillows beside me. ‘But I can’t believe it of Ryan, no. Dad told me about the questions they asked. I can’t imagine how they can think a boy of that age could plan all that, and then act as if nothing had happened.’

‘Unless they think I’m covering up for him. That I wanted Steven dead too.’

She leaned her head against mine. ‘I know you didn’t.’

We sat for a while in silence, watching the afternoon sun move lower towards the horizon through my window.

‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said. ‘To do that. All those questions and accusations. You’ve come a long way since . . . A long way.’

Tears welled up in my eyes. I blinked them back. ‘He’s helped me so much, Mum. None of you understand.’

‘I do, Jenna. I see it every day. And if you tell us nothing happened between you that Dad and I need to worry about, then I believe you.’ She smiled. ‘I’d better go down and think about dinner. You have a rest. I’m sure we’ll get some good news soon.’

As she got up, I remembered something. ‘Mum, have you ever seen roses flower at this time of year?’

She thought. ‘Iceberg does. It’s a floribunda. You won’t remember, but we had one at our old house.’

‘What colour?’

‘White. A beautiful milky white. Sometimes ours even had a few blooms at Christmas in a mild winter. A very prolific flowerer – goes right through the summer and on through the autumn if you keep deadheading. They tend to ball in the rain, but that’s their only fault. Why?’

‘Nothing. Nothing really.’

The hours passed and still there was no call. I thought about Ryan, locked up in that place, and I tried not to cry because he wouldn’t want me to. But when the sun disappeared and the room slipped into darkness, I couldn’t stop myself.

My door opened. ‘Jen?’

I scrubbed my face with my hand and turned the bedside lamp on.

My little brother edged towards me. ‘Have they let Ryan out?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t they believe you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

He crawled on to my bed and sat on his knees. ‘Jen, will you come and help me with something? I can’t do it on my own.’

‘Not now, Charlie. Really, I can’t.’

He grabbed my hand and tugged it. ‘You don’t understand. I-I might be able to help.’

‘Charlie, I’m really not in the mood –’

‘But it might help Ryan!’

I sat up sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. Just come with me.’

I’d never seen my brother like this, quivering with tension, his face pale and strained. Whatever it was, it was better to find out where we couldn’t be overheard so I nodded and got up.

We went downstairs together. ‘Ponies, Mum,’ I yelled, to prevent any awkward questions as he dragged me out of the front door. ‘Back soon.’

Charlie led me around the house and down to the garden shed. Turning the torch on, he opened the door and rummaged on the rack inside.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Getting a trowel. Come on.’

I stopped him. ‘Look, I want to know what’s going on. You said you might be able to help Ryan. How? Tell me.’

‘I can’t tell you,’ he said, pulling my arm agitatedly. ‘I’m trying to show you.’

This was getting annoying. If this was another of his stupid pranks . . . but he was still white and drawn. ‘One more minute, Charlie. That’s it – that’s all I’m giving you.’

He set off down the garden again and I trudged after him. He’d better not be messing me about.

When we got into the paddock, he turned the torch off.

‘Are you ready?’

‘No, I’m not going another step with you until you tell me what this is about.’

I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but the strain I’d noticed earlier was replicated in his voice. ‘I saw something. The morning after Steven died. Just after you came home. I saw something from my bedroom window,’ he whispered.

‘You saw what, and why didn’t you say anything before?’

‘I didn’t know about Dad. I didn’t know they suspected him. And I don’t know what I saw. Not really.’

‘Charlie, what are you talking about? This is crazy. Just say it, will you?’

‘Just after you came back, after I listened at the door and heard you coming up the stairs, I got back into bed and I saw something out of the window. I got my binoculars out. And I watched . . . Look, Jen, we just need to go and see . . . shut up and come on.’

He scurried off and I stood watching him for a moment. He was infuriating, and this ‘I can’t tell you’ business was grating on my already shredded nerves. But if he had seen something – what I couldn’t imagine – maybe it had upset him so much he couldn’t bring himself to tell me. Whatever, he was only ten and when he got upset, which wasn’t often, he wasn’t very good at hiding it. I sighed and followed him through a gap in the hedge into Lindsay’s garden. He was definitely upset now so I’d indulge him a little bit longer, but why were we going here?

Charlie crept ahead of me, keeping low, until we came to the rose garden where he stopped and pointed into the darkness.

I squinted and caught a gleam of something pale.

‘What?’ I whispered. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘There. In front of you,’ he whispered back.

I rolled my eyes, snatched the torch from him and turned it on.

‘Be careful,’ he muttered and stood behind me.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Hiding the light from the house.’

‘Don’t be silly. There’s only Lindz’s dad in.’

The torch shone on a rose bush which still held a few blooms. Perfect white blooms with a familiar look. I moved the torch slowly over the bush.

‘This? This is what you brought me to see?’ Ryan was locked up and he dragged me here to look at a bush. I got ready to be angry.

But something stopped me. The way Charlie’s voice had sounded, that scared look on his face, and those roses . . . that I’d seen before.

I played the torch over the bush. At the base was a plaque and I crouched down to see it. ‘God gave us memories that we might have roses in December,’ I read slowly.

A shiver ran up my spine. Something wasn’t right here. Not at all.

Charlie pushed me aside. ‘Hold the torch and keep watch.’ He knelt on the ground and began to dig by the bush. When I cast the torch beam around, I saw it was planted on its own in an island bed, no other plants near it at all. Another shiver ran through me.

‘Charlie, what are you doing? What exactly did you see?’ I recognised the feeling that started to churn my stomach. It was fear.

‘I saw Mr Norman. He was burying something here. It looked like . . . Oh, shush, Jen. I need to find out.’ He dug frantically, piling the soil to one side.

I waited, casting glances back up to the house to make sure Mr Norman hadn’t seen us. Goosepimples rose on my skin as my brother dug deeper and deeper. Lindz’s dad? He couldn’t have anything to do with this. It was as crazy as the idea that my dad could –

Charlie recoiled, bashing into my leg, and I dropped the torch. ‘Shit! Be careful, you made me jump.’

He scrabbled to retrieve it, but I grabbed it from him again. ‘What did you see?’ I shone it into the hole. ‘Oh God!’

I went cold from head to toe. My brother’s face was ashen.

We looked down at a woollen jumper. Even stained from being buried in the soil for weeks, the stiff crust on the wool was clear in the torchlight. A dark, dried crust.

Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the rubber gloves Mum kept under the kitchen sink. He put it on and pulled the jumper out of the hole.

‘Charlie, is that –’

‘Yes.’

Underneath the jumper was a pair of beige canvas trousers spattered with the same dark marks as the jumper. And beneath those, shoes and socks stuffed in them. Charlie pulled them out and last of all we saw a box, placed carefully in the bottom of the hole. A wooden casket with a brass plate on the lid. ‘Lindsay Norman. Beloved daughter.’

I think I froze for a moment. I could hear the blood drumming in my ears, but I didn’t move. Just stared at the box containing Lindsay’s ashes, even my eyes paralysed.

‘Jen?’ Charlie whispered. ‘What do we do?’

The torchlight wobbled as my hand shook. ‘Put them back. Cover them up. Quick. We’ve got to get out of here.’

I tried to steady the torch while he worked.

It couldn’t be true . . . I couldn’t have seen this . . . NO!

But I had. He’d buried those things on top of her. Like a sacrifice. Like he thought this was justice. Steven’s blood for hers.

It made me want to cry and never stop, because for a second, something inside said I understood and that it was fair. My heart broke a little bit for Mr Norman then.