She and i, p.27
She and I, page 27
The rock pools are about a mile and a half from the main beach and promenade, and they can be accessed only by walking the length of the beach, across a mountain of stones and boulders, or by parking on the hill and forcing your way through a gap in the trees that years of lazy teenagers have created. The car park for the rock pools has been padlocked shut since the girl drowned.
I put up the hood of my coat to stop my hair catching twigs as I pick my way down the hill of thick trees. More than once my foot slips and I whimper in fright.
The darkness is so close.
Keeley runs on, oblivious to my discomfort, a slight pink outline in the dark.
When we get to the edge of the trees, she stops so suddenly that I walk into her and have to grab her to stop us both falling over.
We are in a clearing of sand and grass, with two dark swells of water in the middle that make up the two rock pools. There are clusters of huge boulders around the pools, and I am sure I am exaggerating by thinking I can still see the dead girl’s blood on one of the rocks.
Keeley spins around to face me, her face set.
‘Why, Jude? Why did you do it?’
I blink at her. My breath fogs between us. The moon is high and I can see her every feature as if it were the middle of the day.
‘You were out of it,’ is all I can say. ‘You wouldn’t wake up.’
Keeley closes her eyes for the briefest moment, as though she would like to punch me but does not have the strength. Then she turns again and makes for the rock pool. I have to jog to keep up with her long strides.
‘I can explain,’ I say. ‘You took a Six and it knocked you out. I knew you weren’t going to wake up.’
She sits on the nearest boulder and pulls her knees up to her chest, her eyes on the pool.
I can’t think of how to continue with the next part of the story and am glad when she speaks.
‘They found my dress,’ she says. ‘The one you were wearing. Just a while ago. I don’t know how they worked it out. I don’t know why they were even looking, I mean … they think it’s Mack now. Right? I had the dress in the pocket of my hoodie when we left the house, when we were being taken to the station to make our first statements. I knew I had to get rid of it before they searched me, so I pretended I had to be sick just as we got into Oldry, and I hid it in a hedge at the side of the road. They only found it today.
‘I was lucky. I was going with Naomi to the station to visit Mack and we happened to drive past them: two police cars, parked at the exact spot where I’d hidden the dress. I got out of the car at the station and called a taxi to take me home. The police are going to be looking for me soon. I’m going to need to get away while I think about what the fuck I’m going to say when they ask why Pete’s blood is all over my dress.’
‘I thought you washed it,’ I say numbly. It is the only thing I can think of in the world that makes sense.
‘I did,’ she said. ‘But it’s not enough to get rid of all the traces. You’ve seen TV shows, Jude.’
Her voice is so bitter, so dismissive, that my brain is struggling to accept she is speaking to me. Of course she is stressed, I reason, she might be arrested. I know I am the surrogate of her anger and not the intended target: she is angry about the situation, not at me.
‘Go on then,’ she says quietly. ‘Tell me why.’
I move to sit on the rock next to her, my eyes not leaving her face.
‘Tell me how much you remember,’ I say.
‘I remember the fight, now. It came back to me once the shock had worn off. I remember Pete was on the phone with that girl, Leah. And you heard them talking. I read his texts. He was going to dump me for her … And then we fought, me and Pete. We really fought.’
‘I’ve never seen you like that,’ I murmur.
‘I was angry. I took one of Mack’s Sixes and you and I went to the Den. I cut it in half with … with the vegetable knife from the kitchen drawer. I took one half. You didn’t take yours, did you?’
I shake my head, slowly. ‘You took yours,’ I say. ‘And then you had another drink. The pill calmed you down instead of hyping you up. You were making sense, a lot more sense than before, saying that it was over with Pete and it was for the best. You took the other half of the pill. Then you wanted to sleep. I tried to get you to come up to bed but you took off your dress and just lay on the sofa in the Den. You were asleep in seconds. Passed out. He came into the Den … then.’ My voice, hollow and matter of fact until now, wavers just a little. Keeley’s eyes are locked on mine. ‘He was off his face. He must have had something else after you fought. He wouldn’t leave, seemed to think you’d had a stupid fight over nothing. I kept telling him to go but he wouldn’t listen. And then he was touching you. Pulling at your underwear, touching you while you weren’t even conscious and I thought he was going to …’
Now, I cannot bring myself to look at her.
‘The knife you’d used to cut the Six was still on the table. I lifted it, just to point it at him, scare him, I don’t know. I wanted him to leave you alone. To leave. He wouldn’t.’
A single tear rolls down my cheek. It is more the frustration that I am not explaining myself properly than it is sadness. Keeley makes no attempt to comfort me.
‘You have to believe me,’ I say. ‘When I say that I thought he was going to try it. To try and … and have sex with you, I had to do something. He was so sure I’d move away if he came closer, but I didn’t. I stayed beside you, I wasn’t going to leave you.’
‘He was my boyfriend, Jude. He was just touching me.’ Her voice is flat.
My pulse quickens, anger stirring deep in my stomach. ‘Don’t say it like that,’ I say sharply. ‘Don’t act like it would have been OK because he was your boyfriend, because you’d done it before. You weren’t there – you weren’t consciously there; you have no idea. You don’t know what he’s capable of. I know he would have forced himself on you. I’m glad I was there.’
I want her to ask me for more. She only stares.
‘He just sort of stumbled into the corner, then,’ I say. ‘And after a while he stopped breathing.’
This makes her start. She has been motionless for minutes, but this makes her look at me differently. ‘After a while?’ she repeats.
I blush scarlet.
‘So you just … you let him fight for breath?’ I can tell she is struggling to keep her voice calm. ‘You just left him on the floor of the Den? Gasping and spluttering? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘I didn’t want to leave you.’
‘You could have phoned. You could have shouted. You could have got an ambulance.’
‘I was scared.’
‘You could have got Mack. He could have taken him to a hospital and said he found him at the side of the road, you could have done something! Pete didn’t have to die because you made one stupid, drunken mistake.’
Though it doesn’t seem the right moment to say it, I feel I must say something, so I mumble, ‘I wasn’t drunk.’
She stares. ‘What? Of course you were. Don’t be silly, you …’
‘I had two ciders. Nothing more. And that was early on. I haven’t been drunk since your eighteenth birthday.’
Her mouth seems to fumble around some word, a question, just out of reach. Whatever it was slips away in the dark.
Detective Inspector Chris Rice
4th January 2020, evening
My first stop is the right stop.
I park at the side of the road, pulling in as much as I can. A car speeding past beeps its horn at me as it has to veer into the right lane to get around. I don’t bother looking up.
Keeley Mackley’s Ford Cortina is parked just up ahead, unmistakable in the orange glow of the street lamps. She has done a much better job of moving in off the road than I have. She continues to impress me.
My door slams shut in the wind. The bitter air pinches my cheeks and neck.
I trot along the pavement until it thins out and is replaced by road. I look behind me to make sure there are no cars and start the ascent up the hill. Down to my left, boats bob in the harbour. There are no lights, now, no sound but the waves.
My breathing becomes more and more shallow as the road becomes steeper. I have to stop halfway up and take a breath.
When I finally arrive at the break in the fence, I step through, pulling my coat around me tightly so the low-hanging branches do not snag it.
I walk for less than five minutes before I see them.
They are sitting in the clearing, on the same patch of sand by the rock pools where they once posed for a picture. Where Rebecca and I posed for a similar picture for Aisling.
They are side by side and I cannot tell which is which. They both have their hoods up. Then the one on the left tugs her hood down and runs her hand through her hair, and I see it is Keeley.
Keeley’s legs are stretched out in front of her and Jude’s are pulled up to her chest. Jude’s chin rests on her knees. I do not think they are speaking.
They both turn around as I come nearer. Their faces are lit by the moon and its reflection on the water, and they appear ghostly.
Neither of them is surprised to see me.
It strikes me that this is the first time I have seen them together outside of photographs. I cannot explain why, but they complement one another perfectly. Tendrils of Keeley’s hair are floating in the wind, obscuring Jude’s expression for a moment. When they fall, I see that she, like Keeley, looks calm and settled.
Keeley brings her hand up to rest on Jude’s knee for just a second. They do not look at each other, but something passes between them, and in a moment, Keeley stands up and walks towards me.
I give her a cigarette and she takes it.
‘Why did you tell everyone you broke Beth McKenna’s jaw?’
Her face doesn’t change. She lets me light the cigarette, leaning down, holding her hair back, her eyelashes almost brushing my hand. She takes a small drag and I see her face screw up, just for a second, with disgust.
‘Jude would have been expelled,’ she says, after a moment. ‘And her life is going somewhere. She has the brain to go to uni and get a first. She can do anything she wants whereas … Well, what am I going to do?’
‘That’s bullshit,’ I say calmly. She looks at me. Moonlight bounces off her beautiful cheekbones. ‘She’s failing every single subject. And I know you know that because she got you to phone the school and pretend to be Linda Jameson. So don’t bullshit me, Keeley. Why did you say it was you when it wasn’t?’
She glances towards Jude and I know she is thinking, deciding whether or not to accept that the game is up. When she looks back, there is the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. The cigarette hangs limply from her hand, forgotten.
‘I told them it was me because it wasn’t me,’ she says simply. ‘It wasn’t me. But it should have been.’
It should have been.
‘It all came out after the fact,’ Keeley continues. ‘About the bullying. Have you heard what they did to her, Chris?’
‘I’ve heard.’ My stomach churns as I think of the raw chicken incident.
‘And I had no idea. All of it was going on right under my nose and I didn’t know a thing about it. If they hadn’t been fucking her around, she would have been fine. She could have done anything. That’s why I took the rap for breaking that silly bitch’s jaw. It wasn’t me … but it should have been. If I didn’t help her, if I didn’t know … the least I could do was make sure she didn’t get into trouble for stopping it.’
I nod at the ground, making a circle in the sand with my foot.
‘I thought you were coming here to ask me about the dress,’ Keeley says.
I look up.
‘You found the dress,’ she says. ‘The one I hid on the way to the station on Wednesday morning. I assumed you were going to ask me about that.’
I take a deep breath and consider. I do not have the energy to ask how she knows we found it.
‘Are you going to arrest me, Chris?’ There is the slightest hint of flirtation in her voice when she says it. Unmistakable this time. Her eyebrows are raised, her eyes wide and playing with me. Her head is cocked to the side and I can see, then, why someone might want to do something so terrible if it meant keeping her face just like this.
But then I see her delicate throat vibrate as she swallows in fear. She isn’t fooling me.
I shake my head and look back to where she had been sitting. Jude waits by their spot at the rock pool, watching me. She knows I am here only to see her.
I come to a halt in front of Jude and pull my cigarettes out from my pocket again. Keeley hasn’t followed me and I am glad. I offer the packet to Jude and she takes one, mumbling thanks. I take a second that I don’t want.
‘Your mum’s worried about you,’ I say. ‘She called and asked me to find you.’
She says nothing.
‘I’ve been asking a lot of questions,’ I say. ‘Going round and round, investigating every possibility. Trying to work out what the hell happened on Tuesday night. I’ve had a lot of very interesting conversations, Jude. Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me?’
The fear I have seen in her eyes has vanished entirely. She stares at a place a few feet behind me, her mouth set, her right arm curled around her chest, the other holding the cigarette.
‘Thing is, Jude,’ I say, taking a puff of my own and savouring the feeling in my chest. ‘Somebody has to go to prison for what happened to Pete. We aren’t just going to stop looking and put the file in the cellar. It doesn’t work like that. Someone has to pay for what happened to him. If we make exceptions, if we decide that someone had a good reason for killing him, and just call it “case closed” … we’re spitting in the face of truth, in the face of … justice. There’s no grey area here. There is only a murder. There is only a victim and a murderer. You know how that has to go.’
I look off into the distance, trying for mysterious. I know she can see through me.
‘I understand,’ she says quietly. ‘Without truth … justice, we’re no better than animals. We’re as evolved as a bird who can’t bloody fly.’
‘Exactly.’ I take another puff, trying to hide my confusion. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Jude. At the minute, my colleagues think Keeley looks like our most likely suspect.’
I feel her eyes snap to me, but I keep looking ahead. I need her to believe the lie.
‘Motive. She’d just found out her boyfriend was cheating on her. Means. She used a vegetable knife from her kitchen drawer, a knife that is covered with her fingerprints and Pete’s blood. Gumption. She’s not exactly a shrinking violet, your Keeley. She’s ballsy. Feisty. They were violent with each other. She fought with him minutes before he died. And today … well, today, we found a piece of evidence that Keeley tried to hide from us and it makes her look very, very guilty.’
I wait to see if she will respond. When she doesn’t, I add: ‘They think it could be Mack. He’s not coping well in a cell with no drugs but he still hasn’t admitted anything to us, which leads us to believe he just might be innocent. As I say, the jury is out but … I promise you, by the end of this week, we’ll have at least one of you in custody, being charged with Pete’s murder. You can mark me on that. And if I had to put money on it – and I am a gambling man – I’d say it’ll be Keeley. My bosses are pushing me to arrest her too.’
Jude takes a drag from her cigarette. She doesn’t crinkle her nose like Keeley did, she lets it fill her lungs. She holds it there, and then she lets it out. It suits her: she looks grave and older and beautiful with it.
The smoke has cleared her head.
‘If it was an accident,’ she says finally. ‘Or, you know, manslaughter. What would someone be looking at?’
I suck my teeth, pretend to consider. ‘No pre-med. Heat of the moment, crime of passion. Momentary loss of control. One single stab wound … No previous. If someone just lifted the first thing they saw and reacted to, say, a threat … I’d say a manslaughter charge is likely enough.’
‘How long?’
‘Five. Six, maybe. Less with good behaviour.’
She stares in the direction of the sea, swaying. The cigarette dangles from her left hand.
‘It’s not that long,’ I say. ‘Five years isn’t forever. Five years is nothing. Not in terms of a whole life.’
It is true.
I imagine Jude up in court, sentenced, and placed in the same correctional facility as Rebecca. Maybe they would even be friends, maybe they would look out for one another. They could eat lunch side by side and count down the days for one another, telling each other what they were most looking forward to. ‘A pint with my dad,’ Rebecca might say. ‘I’m looking forward to being old enough to go into the pub with my dad.’
I think of the Project Twenty file, sitting in the footwell of my car, photographs and maps and typed statements all spilling out, covered in sweet and sour sauce. The photograph that had been taken on this very beach, in almost this very same spot, only eight years before. The girls in the photo, naturally tanned, smiling. Smiles that reach their eyes and keep on going. Skinny arms hooked around necks, hips touching.
Five years is nothing. It’s easy for me to say, I’m an old man now. What does it matter if I’m sixty-three or sixty-eight? Five years for these girls … If they missed five years of each other, could they ever go back? One on the outside, one on the inside. Who would change the most?
I realise that thinking about the photograph has pushed the smell of the salt into my nostrils, for real this time. Instead of the high moon behind the trees in front of us, I see a sun high above us, just as it shone in their eyes that day. I can even see Roddy Jameson taking the photograph, delighted that his girls were so happy. My stomach jolts. Here is another little girl who is being taken away from her dad.
The length of time doesn’t matter.
Jude won’t be placed with Rebecca.
Rebecca isn’t dangerous, but Jude just might be.
