‘Saffie is very independent, officers. She is sixteen years of age and rarely obeys her parents.’
Except when they were urging her to hide her sister’s possessions and obstruct the investigation of the police, Kim thought. Right now she was unsure just how many laws they had broken by medicating their own child, but she knew CPS wouldn’t touch prosecution of grieving parents.
Kim stood. ‘Well, thank you both for your time. We’ll be in touch.’
Bryant followed her out of the front door.
Kim sat in the car staring back at the house. There was a knot in her stomach that only came when she felt she was being led in the wrong direction.
She replayed the conversation in her mind.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ Kim said, reaching for her phone.
‘Bryant, we need to speak to Stacey and Dawson now.’
She had the overwhelming feeling that she’d been looking the wrong way.
Sixty-Seven
21 March 2018
Hey Diary,
The feeling is still there but I don’t know if it’s real. My senses are telling me that there is someone behind me, watching me but when I look there’s no one there.
Is it real??????????
Or is it the pills????????
But it can’t be the tablets. My parents would never have given them to me if they could make me feel like this; a shadowy half person trudging through fog every minute of the day.
The dark thoughts are still there but the sharp, angry icicles are wrapped in soft, fluffy snow. They’re there but they don’t pierce me any more.
But these pills don’t just take the bad thoughts. They’re not homing beacons attaching themselves only to the crap. I can’t think straight. Everything has a furry edge. I have a vision of the pill exploding inside my brain, releasing a gas that seeps into every part of me. Only yesterday I found myself at the wrong classroom.
I am reminded of episodes of Star Trek that my dad used to watch. Whenever they needed to save power the captain would order ‘life support systems only’ and all non-essential power would be closed down. That’s how I feel. All the unnecessary services have been switched off and I’m left just able to function.
Tonight I went to her room, to confront her. I barged in as Eric stormed out.
I wanted to ask her how she could do it, how she could be so cruel, so cold, so unfeeling.
And then I saw the redness around her eyes, the telltale blotching of the skin on her forehead that comes out whenever she’s upset. I wanted to ask who she was crying for but then I saw the hard, cold veil drop over her face. That faint look of distaste that shapes no particular feature but is present all the same.
She screamed at me to get out and I knew. I knew there was no way back for us. We would never be like sisters again.
And that is why you are special to me, Sadie. You knew and you’re up there watching and you approve. You know that secrets and lies have a consequence. A price. You condone everything I’ve done and everything I must do. We are bonded, you and I, more than you will ever know. But how I wish I could have let you live, you troubled little soul.
I wonder how you would have felt about Christian. I think you would have understood and you would have forgiven me.
But how the hell did the little fucker not die?
Thank God I approached him from behind. It wasn’t difficult to push him into the janitor’s room. It wasn’t a challenge to close my hands around his scrawny little neck, my thumbs digging into the back as my fingers pressed hard against his Adam’s apple. He spluttered and choked and then went still against me.
I tied a clean sheet around his neck and winched his limp body up over the light fitting. He dangled like a piece of meat in the butcher’s shop. I closed the door and waited for a cleaner to happen upon his hanging, lifeless body.
There was no satisfaction. He was a means to an end. He was a mistake to be cleared away like the flour on the tabletop. He was just mess that occurred from baking the cake. He was nothing to me. Not like you, Sadie.
And now he’s awake and has not named me. He doesn’t know who tried to throttle the life from his body.
I should have checked he was dead. Another mistake.
But I am learning. There will be no more errors.
Keep watching, my little Sadie, because the best is yet to come.
Sixty-Eight
Kim put the phone onto speaker and held it between herself and Bryant.
‘So we can find no motive for the murders of either Sadie Winters or Shaun Coffee-Todd?’
Everyone answered in the negative.
‘And we agree that Christian Fellows was attacked because he might have seen something, even though his parents insist he saw nothing and won’t let us near him?’
‘Looks that way, guv,’ Bryant offered.
‘And we all know is that we’re dealing with an environment that doesn’t seem to operate like the real world.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Dawson agreed.
‘So, are we looking in the wrong direction?’ she asked, remembering the conversation at the Winters’ home.
She continued. ‘Mrs Winters referred to the parents of Shaun by their first names, Anthony and Louise, but Mr Winters was very quick to state that they’d only met at a few school functions. Why would he do that when Anthony made it clear that the families were very close?’ she asked. ‘Almost like cousins, he said about the children,’ she added.
‘You think Winters would hide something to do with his own daughter’s murder?’ Bryant asked.
As a father to a twenty-year-old girl she could understand her colleague’s disbelief. But that was okay. Suspicion of everyone they came into contact with was her job.
‘He’s already hidden the fact Sadie was on antidepressants, and someone changed that note to a suicide note,’ she reminded him. ‘Now, let me ask, who believes that the events of this week are unrelated?’
No one spoke.
‘And yet the children have not done anything to anyone that we can find, so where does that leave us?’
‘Parents,’ Stacey said.
Kim nodded. ‘Stace, I want you to carry on looking for doctors. We have to sign that one off. Kev, I want you to see if you can find any link at all between Sadie’s parents and Shaun’s parents. For all we know they weren’t even at Heathcrest at the same time, but we need to rule it out.’
‘And what about us, guv?’ Bryant asked, as she ended the call. ‘Are we gonna just sit here and watch?’
‘Ha, you wish, Bryant. There’s someone I want to see, so you and I are going back to the school.’
Sixty-Nine
The possibility that she’d been looking the wrong way still hung heavily around her neck as they approached the press pack at the entrance to Heathcrest. Woody sometimes said that there were times that she couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
The thought of Woody coincided with her gaze landing on Tracy Frost standing away from the crowd, her five-inch heels sunk into the patchy grass. Her hands shoved deep into her pockets.
‘Awww… shit,’ Kim said, as something occurred to her. ‘Stop the car, Bryant.’
He did so, and she lowered her window.
Frost narrowed her eyes but approached anyway.
‘Wanna be shitty again, Stone?’ she asked.
‘He fed you the line, didn’t he?’ she asked. ‘Woody put you front and centre and told you what to say.’
Frost shrugged.
She should have seen it. Woody would never have let pressure from above stop him doing everything he could to protect the children at that school and alert the parents to the danger. He had asked Frost to shout murder knowing it would be out there in seconds. He hadn’t said it. She had.
‘Look, I’m sorry—’
‘Save it, Stone,’ Frost said, shaking her head. ‘Keep your apology but maybe next time have a bit more faith in people. Both him and me,’ she said, returning to the press pack.
‘Well, that told you,’ Bryant said, driving through the cordon.
‘Yeah, and I deserved it,’ she admitted. Frost she was still on the fence about but Woody she should have known better.
*
She sighed heavily as she got out of the car.