Killing You Softly Page 3

  ‘How long have you been creeping around, keeping everyone awake?’

  ‘Not long. Two minutes.’

  She looked as if she didn’t believe me – a default mode with her, as it turned out. I guess she was born with an overdeveloped hostile gene.

  ‘Go to bed,’ she ordered as she clicked the door shut.

  Nice! I sighed, shivered and shook my way back to Room 27.

  Galina snored on. Her phone beeped again. The window rattled as I slid my whole body, head included, under the duvet and waited for my core temperature to rise back to normal.

  ‘Let me in!’ the voice in my head pleaded.

  I imagined a girl’s fingers tapping at the glass, a desperate voice – so frantic that she broke a small pane and reached her hand through the jagged gap, cutting her wrist and making it drip with blood. ‘Let me in!’

  It was Cathy from Wuthering Heights, Scarlett Hartley running from her attacker on New Year’s Eve, the ghost of Lily rising from the bottom of the lake – a combination of all three muddled together inside my restless brain.

  It was someone begging me to let her in, to give her space, to rescue her from a situation too lonely and terrible to describe.

  chapter two

  Galina woke up with a tear-stained face and panda eyes, thanks to the mascara she’d left on overnight. I was already up and showered, recovering from the bad dreams of the night before.

  ‘Where’s my phone?’ she wailed.

  I retrieved it from under Lily’s bed and handed it to her.

  ‘Where are my jeans?’

  ‘Bottom drawer?’ I suggested.

  ‘And my socks?’

  What was her standin ladies’ maid? I headed off to breakfast before she could ask me any more questions. Along the corridor Lady Anne seemed to raise her faint eyebrows at me and her blank gaze followed me down the stone stairs, where I bumped into Raisa on her way up to help Galina get dressed. I gave her a quick, sympathetic smile. Out in the quad Sergei and Mikhail lurked. They looked cold and bored.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, not expecting an answer. Then it occurred to me that maybe they were the ones patrolling the corridor during the night, making the creaks and squeaks. But no, surely not, because the rule was that after eight o’clock the girls’ dorm was a female-only zone. I hadn’t solved the mystery.

  ‘Good morning, how are you?’ Sergei replied.

  I hadn’t expected him to speak English because of what Galina had said so I took another look – Sergei was the younger of the two security guys, quite small, thin and agile-looking, with prominent, bony features and a brutally short haircut. I wouldn’t have put it past him to scale the outer wall of the dormitory building in the dead of night to install a secret camera for spying-on-Galina purposes – hence the scratching noises. Walking on towards the dining hall, I laughed at myself for watching too many Bond movies.

  It turned out I wasn’t the first one down to breakfast. Hooper was already there, sitting by himself in a corner with his iPad. Connie and Zara were at the counter, choosing between yogurt and fruit or full English, taking ages to decide because Marco Conti was there too.

  ‘So, Marco, how do you like St Jude’s?’ Zara asked, words being less important for her than body language. I mean, what kind of boring, banal opening question was that?

  Marco didn’t seem to mind. ‘So far I like it. What is this?’ he asked, pointing to a dark, congealed mess in the metal container next to the bacon.

  ‘Black pudding.’ Zara’s expression of disgust involved wrinkling her cute nose. ‘Pigs, offal and blobs of fat mixed with blood. I wouldn’t if I were you.’

  Marco quickly opted for a croissant and some cheese.

  Zara grabbed some fruit and went with him to an empty table by the window. ‘So how do you like to spend your time?’ I heard her ask as she bestowed her special smile that makes guys melt. ‘Are you into sport? Football, tennis, rugby? I imagine you’re excellent at everything like that.’

  Still at the counter, I exchanged glances with Connie. When did Zara ever have a conversation about whacking or kicking a ball? She was exercise-phobic, unless high-octane flirting falls into that category.

  ‘You look knackered,’ Connie told me in her no-holds-barred way.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Less prowling up and down corridors,’ she recommended as she went across the room to bother Hooper.

  I followed her with my cereal and yogurt, and saw the grateful look on his face when I joined them.

  ‘Why so bleary eyed?’ he asked.

  ‘Am I? Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not because you regret these pics by any chance?’ Hooper turned his iPad towards me and gave me time to study an image of a girl in a tiny red and gold bikini, posing provocatively by the edge of a swimming pool. I say ‘girl’ because it took me a while to realize that this was a picture of me.

  ‘Whoa!’ I gasped.

  ‘Let me see.’ The Black Widow grabbed the iPad. ‘Jeez, Alyssa, you’re not leaving much to the imagination!’

  ‘But … !’

  ‘Where did you find this?’ she asked Hooper.

  ‘It’s on Alyssa’s Facebook page.’

  ‘I didn’t put that there. It’s not even—!’ I whimpered.

  ‘Oh yeah. Here’s more of the same. Wow, Alyssa.’ Connie stood up and called for Zara to come and look.

  ‘It’s not … I didn’t … oh my God!’

  Zara ignored Connie. Hooper looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

  I grabbed the iPad back from Connie and skimmed through the pictures. ‘It’s not even me!’

  ‘It is – look!’ Connie leaned over my shoulder. ‘You by the side of the pool, you lathered in sun cream, slithering up and down a sun umbrella pole, you spread-eagled on a sun lounger. It says they were taken in the Maldives on Christmas Day.’

  ‘Everyone knows I wasn’t in the Maldives. I was in Richmond upon Thames. I don’t have a red bikini – it’s not me!’ It would have been funny except that it wasn’t.

  ‘Maybe someone stole your username and password and Photoshopped your face on to existing pictures of a glamour model.’ Hooper suggested what he thought was a helpful solution.

  ‘Jeez, Hooper!’

  He shrugged and apologized again, while Connie physically dragged Zara across to our table.

  ‘Wow!’ Zara said when she saw what she thought was me oiled and spread-eagled. ‘Damn, Alyssa, you look hot!’

  ‘It’s not … I don’t …’ Stupidly my face went bright red and I felt the hot prickle of tears in my eyes.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ Connie told Zara sardonically. ‘Alyssa says she wasn’t in the Maldives – she was in Richmond.’

  ‘With my aunt,’ I bleated. I didn’t care how stupid I sounded.

  ‘Look – she’s freaking out,’ Connie said as if I wasn’t there. ‘I have no idea why. It’s not as if they stuck her face on to an ugly body.’

  ‘Whoever did it must have a weird sense of humour,’ Hooper commented. ‘To me it looks suspiciously like revenge porn.’

  Connie considered this. ‘Oh yeah, where an ex-partner posts intimate stuff online so the world can see images that were meant to be private. Count yourself lucky, Alyssa – at least you’re not fully naked.’

  ‘Only an idiot would think you’d really pose like that,’ Zara sympathized. ‘Still, you’d better hope that Jack doesn’t see it – he’ll go crazy.’

  ‘God, yes,’ I gasped, punching buttons to delete the photos. ‘It’s the middle of the night in Colorado so let’s hope he’s asleep.’

  ‘Text him, just in case,’ Hooper advised as I fled.

  I wasn’t listening. I had to get out of the dining room, away from the Black Widow’s smirking face, across the courtyard and out past the main school towards the bike shed, away from St Jude’s.

  Against my better judgement I cycled shakily along the lanes towards the Bottoms. It was Sunday morning – one of those bleak winter days that neve
r seem to get light. There was no colour in the monochrome landscape, just shades of black and grey.

  It was the same monochrome inside my head – grey and shadowy – and would be until Jack finally got out of Denver and was on the plane to Heathrow, until I could look into his honey-brown eyes and hear him tell me that he loved me. Meanwhile, in an effort to take my mind off the fake bikini pictures, I focused on Scarlett Hartley and decided on the spur of the moment to go and see Alex Driffield.

  Passing the Old Mill on the outskirts of Chartsey Bottom, I was overtaken by Tom in his white Peugeot. He waved at me as he zipped by. I wobbled and waved back.

  Should’ve worn a thicker jacket, I thought to myself as I reached Main Street. And gloves and a big scarf. I had chosen the wrong clothes, as usual.

  I reached the church opposite Tom’s place – the church with the lych gate and the churchyard with the leaning gravestones, the inscriptions of which had been worn away by centuries of rain and frost. Worshippers were huddled in the church porch. I cycled on, a girl on a mission, but it was only when I reached the faded sign outside JD Car Repairs that I fully realized what that mission was.

  I was being drawn in to the murder case despite myself, making emotional connections between the fates of Lily and Scarlett, on the road to becoming a one-girl crusader to discover the truth.

  Anyway, the workshop was closed. I stopped and peered in through the grimy window, saw a rusty blue car on a ramp over a mechanic’s pit, a small office at the far end with the usual calendar pictures on the wall. I shuddered again at the memory of the bikini photos on my Facebook page – who, why, when?

  ‘Looking for someone?’ a voice asked, and I turned round to see Jayden striding towards me with Bolt, his bandy-legged dog.

  Jayden the gatecrasher at Tom’s party, Lily’s ex. Jayden who had saved my life when Harry Embsay planned to drown me that night, out by the ruined abbey.

  Harry shines his torch beam in my eyes. ‘What’s wrong, Alyssa?’ he asks after he’s described how my murder will be explained away and he’s dragged me through the reeds into the freezing river. ‘Can you spot a loophole?’

  I retch and pull away, thinking, if this is it, if this is really what’s going to happen, just do it.

  The sky is black. The river rushes on.

  Just do it!

  It’s so dark we don’t know anyone is there until a dog hurtles out of the cloisters and down the hill towards us. I don’t see it but I hear it snarling as it comes. Harry just has time to swing his torch towards Bolt as the Staffie leaps chest-high and sinks his fangs into Harry’s shoulder. The torch drops to the ground. I dive down, grab it and swing it along the bank towards the stepping stones. Jayden walks in our direction – strolls actually, with both hands in his jacket pocket, shoulders hunched against the cold. I half run, half stagger to meet him with the chorus of Bolt’s snarls and growls playing in the background.

  Jayden doesn’t say anything. He takes the torch from me and aims it at Harry and Bolt. The guy is still standing, but by now the dog is chewing his face, and blood gushes from the shoulder wound. I groan and retch again.

  Reliving every last second of the scariest moment of my life as only someone with my perfect recall can, I came face to face with my knight in shining armour.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ Jayden said again.

  ‘Yeah – Alex. Do you know where he is?’ I ignored Bolt, who had padded up and was sniffing at my boot. I didn’t bend down to pat him – best not to risk it in case he took my hand off. ‘Did you hear about the body in the canal?’

  Jayden swore, turned and strode away. ‘Yeah, don’t go near this one,’ he muttered over his shoulder in a weird echo of Will Harrison’s advice.

  I cycled after him with Bolt trotting alongside. ‘Why not? Did you know Scarlett Hartley? Why won’t anyone talk about it?’

  Jayden does silence better than anyone I know. He loped on past the Bridge Inn, hands in the same jacket pockets, shoulders hunched, with that untamed look in his eyes.

  ‘You know something you’re not telling me,’ I insisted.

  ‘Back off and, while you’re about it, leave Alex out of it,’ he warned without breaking his stride.

  ‘Look, I understand – it’s all very well for you to want to protect your buddy …’

  This brought Jayden to a halt on the crest of the stone bridge that crossed the stream running parallel with Main Street. His breath emerged as clouds of steam in the damp, cold air. ‘You don’t understand the first sodding things Alyssa.’

  That was all I was going to get – a warning to back off and an angry rebuff through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Yeah, well, thanks for nothing,’ I muttered as I watched him go.

  Alex Driffield lives with his parents in a converted cottage in Upper Chartsey. I found this out by asking the first person to come out of St Michael’s and All Angels Church after morning service.

  It happened to be an old, bald, beer-gutted guy with a limp and a walking stick, who coughed as he came through the lych gate then leaned against the stone wall of the churchyard.

  ‘Up the hill at Millstones,’ he told me through a globule of phlegm. ‘I don’t think he’ll want to talk to you, though.’

  ‘Why not?’ I shot back.

  The old man looked me up and down. ‘Alex just lost his girlfriend – pretty little thing.’

  Call me thin-skinned, but I took this as a negative comment about my own appearance (not pretty and definitely not little) and I cleared my throat awkwardly.

  ‘No offence,’ Phlegm Man cackled with more perspicacity than I’d expected. ‘You’re nice-looking enough in your own way. But Alex won’t want to fill the vacancy – not any time soon.’

  ‘How would you know?’ I challenged. A combination of croaking and spitting hadn’t done anything to improve first impressions.

  ‘Because I’m his granddad,’ the old man said with a rheumy tear in his eye. ‘Our whole family is gutted, along with hers. Pretty girl, and clever with it. Vicar just asked us to pray for her – not that it’ll do any good now, of course.’

  If someone tells me I can’t do something, my stubborn streak comes out.

  It was the same when I was little. When Aunt Olivia said no to me joining the junior-school football team because it took me away from my studies, I ignored her. I’d stay after school and be busy scoring goals when officially I was in extra maths. Or there’d be a programme on TV she said I couldn’t watch – it was too gory, too trashy, too adult, whatever. So what did I do? I would secretly press RECORD and watch it the next day while she was at work. OK, it’s not big and it’s not clever, but I did it anyway.

  So when Jayden told me to back off and Alex’s granddad said Alex wouldn’t be interested in talking to me I just grew more determined. I got on my bike, cycled up the hill to Millstones Cottage and knocked on the door.

  ‘Alex isn’t in,’ his dad told me. Alex’s dad was a younger version of croaking, gobbing man. That is, he had hair and no limp, but the double chin and beer gut were developing and there were the same sags and wrinkles around his eyes.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ I asked.

  Alex’s dad shrugged and closed the door.

  I knocked again. ‘I’m Alyssa Stephens,’ I reminded Mr Driffield.

  ‘I know who you are – you’re from St Jude’s. I saw your face splashed all over the front pages of the papers. You were involved in the Lily Earle business.’

  ‘Lily was my roommate.’

  ‘I know that too. You got yourself involved in the whole nasty mess instead of leaving it to the police. Too bloody clever by half.’

  The force behind what he said made me take a step back. I remembered how strict he was with Alex, how Alex didn’t raise his head above the parapet if his dad was on the warpath. Crouch down, tow the line, don’t speak until you’re spoken to – this was Neanderthal parenting with a vengeance. And I could read that now in Mr Driffield’s square stance, which blocke
d the doorway, and in his small, mistrustful eyes.

  ‘So please tell Alex I called,’ I said, realizing that I was getting nowhere.

  He made no promises as he shrugged again and closed the door a second time.

  Head down and lost in thought, I picked up my bike at the gate and wheeled it towards Upwood House, the National Trust property overlooking the valley. If nothing else, I could make my way past the Georgian mansion on to Hereward Ridge then cycle the scenic route along the bridle path back towards St Jude’s.

  I’d only got as far as the entrance to Upwood House, however, when I bumped into another familiar figure, and felt that an already bad day was about to get much worse.

  ‘Watch where you’re going,’ Ursula growled, sidestepping me and my bike.

  To be fair, I had almost walked into her. Ursula was Jayden’s current girlfriend, following on from Lily and her exact opposite. ‘Hostile, doesn’t cover the impact her presence makes in any given situation. She’s tall, blonde and hard faced – an impression enhanced by nose piercings and rows of studs along the rims of both ears.

  ‘Sorry,’ I told her, hurrying on.

  She followed me for four or five steps. ‘So where are you going?’

  ‘Back home,’ I muttered.

  ‘How come? I thought you wanted to see Alex.’

  I stopped and turned. ‘How did you know – did Jayden tell you?’

  Ursula nodded. ‘He texted just before I finished work at the big house. Yeah, I work there and don’t look so gobsmacked.’

  ‘I’m not. No.’ It was none of my business where school dropout Ursula worked and I was caught off guard by the fact that she wanted to have this conversation. In the bad old days before Christmas, when I was involved with the whole ‘nasty mess’ of Lily and Paige, I hadn’t been able to get more than a stare and a grunt out of her. I’d even had Jayden’s door slammed in my face by her, which is why it felt weird to be standing in the cold, halfway up a steep hill, talking like this.

  ‘I’m a cleaner,’ she explained. ‘Five mornings a week. It’s a lousy job, but I left home over Christmas and this pays the rent. Jayden was no help to you, was he?’