Killing You Softly Read online

  And I couldn’t think of anything to say in the dark wood. Instead, I brushed his dirty cheek with my fingertips, swept the mud from his jacket and let him cry.

  Detective Inspector June Ripley was impressive in her press conference. There was the usual desk with its row of microphones, and she was flanked by fellow officers on both sides.

  In her dark suit with shiny buttons, with her glossy black hair neatly bobbed and her small, even features maintaining a steely, unemotional focus, it seemed she’d been destined to join the police force since birth. You would have found no Cinderella tiaras or Tinkerbell wings in five-year-old June’s dressing-up box. No, she would have been a caped crusader with a light-sabre, putting right all the wrongs of her tiny world.

  I was alone in my room, lying in bed watching the press conference on my laptop. The scarily professional inspector gave us the facts all over again – Scarlett’s body had been found in the canal close to the lock. A murder investigation was underway and evidence removed from the scene. An intensive search of the surrounding area was continuing in an attempt to discover the murder weapons, believed to be a ligature plus a heavy, blunt instrument. Inspector Ripley spoke quickly but matter-of-factly. She appealed for witnesses to come forward.

  ‘We know that Scarlett attended a New Year’s Eve party at a nearby address and that she left alone at around one in the morning. There is evidence from CCTV footage that she stopped outside The Fleece pub near to Ainslee Westgate train station to talk to a man judged to be in his late teens – Caucasian, over six feet tall, dressed in a dark jacket, knitted hat, jeans and trainers. CCTV also tells us that Scarlett, alone again, approached a taxi rank outside the station, but was unable to find a cab. She then walked off in the direction of the canal towards a path that would have been a shortcut to her home.’

  I listened to the detective’s every word – learned that the police were satisfied that no one had left the party with Scarlett, which fitted Ursula’s account, but who was the guy she’d talked to outside the pub? Had the camera caught him from in front or behind? Had anybody there actually seen her with him?

  Then my personal line of enquiry was rudely interrupted.

  ‘Go away! I don’t want you! I hate you!’ Galina screeched from below the window. She lapsed into furious Russian and didn’t let up – so much so that I got out of bed and went to look.

  There she was, out on the front lawn, caught in a pool of yellow light cast by the lamp over the stone archway leading into the quad, waving her arms at Mikhail. ‘Leave me alone, stupid, stinky idiot!’ she yelled in childish English after she’d run out of insults in her native tongue.

  The bodyguard remained inscrutable throughout, hands behind his back, soaking up the abuse.

  ‘You hear me? Why don’t you and Sergei leave me alone?’

  Because they’re paid not to, was my thought. I leaned over the array of expensive cosmetics for a better view and it was only then that I noticed that two of the small, diamond-shaped panes in the leaded window were broken and a cold wind was whistling in.

  ‘What are you – peeping Toms?’ Galina screamed at Mikhail. ‘Do you watch me use lavatory? Are you there when I take shower? I bet. Yes, I tell Papa he has perverts working for him. You and Sergei are finished, Mikhail – wait and see!’

  The wind whistled in and I remembered the sinister rattling at my window, the small voice pleading, ‘Let me in!’

  A girl’s fingers tap at the glass, her desperate voice sighs inside my head. Frantically she breaks a small pane and reaches through the jagged gap. ‘Let me in!’

  A tube of moisturiser was leaking on to the windowsill. Galina was still yelling at Mikhail as I screwed the top back on to the tube then recoiled.

  There was a small bird lodged between two aerosol cans, its wings spread wide, its neck limp and broken.

  ‘Let me in! Rescue me!’

  The bird’s breast was red, its eyes glassy.

  I gasped and backed away, heard the shouting stop and Galina’s footsteps enter the quad.

  Poor robin dead on the windowsill, oozing blood on to the stone. A small bird lying in a crimson pool. Not imagined, but stone-cold and real.

  chapter three

  ‘No big deal,’ Galina told me. ‘It is dead bird – so what?’

  She’d stalked in out of the cold and then immediately blocked the broken panes with a copy of Vanity Fair and chucked the feathered corpse into the metal waste bin.

  The robin landed with a light thud.

  ‘Poor thing,’ I murmured, wondering whether it had been a bird’s wings fluttering against the window that had been the real ghost-child of my dream.

  ‘Stupid thing,’ Galina insisted. ‘It flies at glass and breaks neck. Glass is old and cracked. Anyway, how long does it lie there dead if I don’t share a room with you?’

  She’d found me cowering in a corner, admitting that I daren’t touch it, that it creeped me out.

  ‘You’re weird, Alyssa. They tell me, oh she’s so clever and so brave, she finds killers of roommate. But no. You run away from tiny dead bird – what do you call it?’

  ‘Robin,’ I muttered, and shuddered at the memory of almost putting my hand on the cold, feathered corpse. ‘Why were you yelling at Mikhail?’ I asked, quickly changing the subject.

  ‘He’s so stupid – that’s why.’

  Everything, everyone for Galina was ‘stupid’, pronounced with an explosive ‘p’.

  ‘You want to talk about it?’ I asked.

  Slumping on to her bed fully dressed and with her boots still on, Galina glowered at her fibreglass fingernails. ‘These two men – Mikhail and Sergei – they follow me everywhere like shadows. I’m not free.’

  ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t like it,’ I agreed. ‘And they don’t exactly blend in here at St Jude’s.’

  ‘I tell my father they’re mafia, not nice men. He replies nice men cannot be bodyguards. Bodyguards need to shoot people; they must have cold hearts.’

  Realizing that the magazine wasn’t doing its job of keeping out the wind, I decided to pile some books against the gap instead. ‘What does Saint Sam think about your security?’ I wondered. ‘Saint Sam – the head teacher, Dr Webb. That’s his nickname.’

  Galina shrugged. ‘He knows Papa doesn’t let me stay alone since accident in Monaco. He pays extra money for Mikhail and Sergei to be here. Dr Webb agrees.’

  ‘But they don’t actually live here in the grounds?’

  ‘No. They have hotel in Ainslee, I think. In the day they work together, guarding school gates, buildings. At night, one goes to hotel to sleep, other stays here. But don’t ask me – I know nothing about their stupid lives.’

  ‘So the accident on the boat – it must have been serious for your dad to need these guys around 24,’7?’

  ‘Scary, yes. We’re in harbour and another boat drives fast towards us and doesn’t stop. It hits us – bang! Our boat tips over. Me, my friend Isabella and her boyfriend, Carlos, we all fall into water. Engine of our boat doesn’t stop like it should and now there is no one to steer it so it goes crazy in water while other boat goes away. No one helps.’

  ‘So then you have to swim to the shore?’

  ‘Yes’ but our boat is going very fast in circles. Carlos can’t escape. The boat crashes into him and he is killed.’ Galina shuddered at the memory.

  ‘And they never found out who was in the other boat?’

  ‘No. The police in Monaco – they say that maybe it was accident, that boat engine was faulty to make it go round and round that way and Papa should blame guy he bought it from. Isabella says no because other boat, it drove straight at us – bang! And then it went away. Papa agrees. After this, he tells Mikhail and Sergei, never let Galina out of your sight. And that’s what happens – I’m in prison in this horrible place, never alone.’

  ‘Were you very scared?’ I pictured a blue bay lined with palatial villas, a hot sun, a speedboat cutting through the water.

  ‘Ver
y,’ Galina admitted, her eyes clouding. ‘But I don’t show this fear and you must not tell anyone. Promise.’

  ‘OK,’ I agreed, rearranging things on my bedside cabinet – mobile phone, hairbrush, iPad, small framed picture of Jack, all in order. That’s the OCD me coming out. ‘Time to turn out the lights?’

  ‘Tell Molly Wilson that someone dumped a dead bird in your room,’ Eugenie suggested before breakfast next morning.

  Galina had drifted off down the girls’ corridor to scrounge some chewing gum. She’d gone into Eugenie and Charlie’s room and told them about the robin. They’d all gasped then laughed about it and come back to Galina’s and my room. Charlie, still in her PJs, sat down on the spare bed while Eugenie examined the remains of the dried patch of blood on the sill.

  ‘What’s the point? Galina thinks it flew into the window and killed itself,’ I explained.

  ‘You’ll still have to tell the bursar, though. She’ll need to get a guy to come and fix the panes of glass.’ Charlie came through with the same advice as Eugenie.

  ‘Good point,’ I conceded.

  ‘Anyway, if it was a suicide robin, why would there be two panes broken and not just one?’ Eugenie said as she checked the damage.

  ‘Yeah, another good point.’

  Energetically Charlie took up the argument again. ‘I agree with Eugenie – it can’t have been a kamikaze robin. I think somebody climbed up and broke the window, reached through and dumped it there.’

  ‘Yeah, poor you.’ Eugenie had turned her attention to the waste bin and was poking around amongst the screwed up paper. ‘It’s another practical joke, like those fake pictures.’

  ‘You heard about that?’ I groaned.

  ‘The whole school heard. Lots of people went on Facebook to look before you had a chance to take them off. All the boys drooled over them.’

  There was more groaning from me and a Slavic toss of the head from Galina. ‘Big deal,’ she muttered.

  ‘No, hold it, Galina. If someone’s using Alyssa’s password and faking pictures and now dumping dead birds on her windowsill, it kind of suggests she’s being targeted.’ As she spoke, Charlie gathered her fair hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. ‘Can I borrow some cleanser, please?’

  Galina nodded. ‘Help yourself. Maybe I get Mikhail to check it out, find bully,’ she told me with a stage wink.

  ‘Funny!’ Really, actually. So we all laughed at the idea that macho Mikhail should investigate the case of the expired robin and then we borrowed Galina’s expensive lotions’ rubbed them over our faces and legs and went on gossiping.

  Galina developed the picture for us. ‘My bodyguards find bird killer and get confession. He leaves school in disgrace.’

  ‘Or she,’ Eugenie pointed out. ‘Maybe a girl set up the whole thing. She climbs up the drainpipe in the dark and breaks the glass, deposits the dead robin. Why the hell not?’

  ‘You have enemies here in school, Alyssa?’ Galina wanted to know. The idea seemed to perk her up no end.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘So maybe it’s someone with a secret grudge.’ Eugenie developed her conspiracy theory. ‘Who’s left over from last term and the whole Lily and Paige thing? Who besides Harry Embsay and that lot might still have it in for you, Alyssa?’

  ‘No one,’ Please God, no one. The right people were in jail, Saint Sam had glossed over the whole thing and St Jude’s was sailing on into a future perched at the very top of the independent-school league tables. Students would get the usual brilliant baccalaureate results and go on to Oxbridge, fees would go up again, the school would continue its tradition of taking nothing but the best.

  ‘Who’s got it in for Alyssa?’ Zara burst into the room, squeezed on to the spare bed and sat cross legged next to Charlie. ‘Come on – what am I missing? Tell, tell!’

  ‘Whoever thinks spooking her out by putting a dead bird on her windowsill is a fun idea,’ Eugenie replied. ‘It turns out she has a phobia.’

  ‘It’s not a phobia,’ I protested. This whole thing was getting out of hand. ‘Look, it’s nothing. I’ll let the bursar know about the broken window. End of.’

  But Zara refused to let it drop and went off on a new tack. ‘Maybe it wasn’t Alyssa who the jokester was targeting. Maybe it was Galina.’

  ‘And he thinks this scares me?’ Galina’s voice with loaded with scorn but I knew now that this was a cover for the fear she’d shared with me. ‘A bird is dead. It’s nothing.’

  ‘Yeah but it could be a metaphor for something, or a kind of warning.’ Eugenie had performed in too many melodramatic operas. Her mind was full of gothic events. ‘Dead bird sings no more. It represents the fall of something beautiful, the ending of a brief life. Soaring in the sky one moment then dead and cold the next.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ I told her, trying not to shiver and glancing at Galina who by now wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Charlie was the first out of the room. ‘I have to work with my fitness trainer for a half hour before breakfast, and, Eugenie, you have to practise your scales or whatever it is opera singers do.’

  I haven’t forgotten that it’s Tuesday.

  As soon as the others left and Galina had begun another angry conversation with her dad about the pervert bodyguards he’d employed, I went off to take a shower. I washed my hair and rubbed in Moroccan oil, shaved and exfoliated, moisturised and tweezered. Then I went back to my room and set out the clothes I would wear later in the day.

  Jack is on a plane out of Denver and I’m getting ready for our reunion at Ainslee Westgate. Focus on that, Alyssa.

  First though, I put on my uniform – white shirt (top button undone), red tartan skirt and matching tie. I customized the tie by making the knot big and the ends short then dropped by Molly Wilson’s office on my way to breakfast.

  I’m glad to report that the new bursar’s room had been totally refurbed. Gone was D’Arblay’s glass cabinet with its Second World War books and trophies – the medals, the small silver box containing his macabre collection of teeth taken from victims of the Holocaust. The big leather-topped desk was gone too and the walls had been repainted in fresh, cooking-apple green. There were white flowers on the new glass-and-steel desk and Molly herself sat behind it wearing a welcoming smile.

  ‘Alyssa, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  I nodded. Impressive – the woman had done her homework, studying students’ photographs attached to our files and learning names off by heart.

  ‘Have a seat. How can I help?’

  ‘Our window’s broken,’ I replied, sitting on the edge of the seat, not planning to stay. ‘Room Twenty-seven.’

  Molly made a note. ‘Room Twenty-seven – yes. In fact, Alyssa, I’ve been reading your file and wondering if you might want to change rooms, considering what happened last term. Make a fresh start, maybe?’

  ‘Thanks, but it’s OK.’

  ‘You’re not reminded too much of Lily and Paige?’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t mind. We had fun together in Twenty-seven. I like to relive it.’ On balance I decided that it lifted my mood to give my crazy memory free rein to roam through the happy times – Paige polishing horse tack, smelling of saddle-soap, Lily energetically slapping paint on to her canvases and abandoning clothes in a heap on the floor.

  Molly sat for a while without speaking, pen poised over her pad. She looks like the type of person who springs out of bed and into her clothes without a crinkle or a crease, whose short dark hair never suffers from bed head and whose lip gloss lasts the whole day without smudging or fading. I admire that even though I’m never going to be that way – my hair’s too wavy and wayward and my clothes don’t make much contact with an iron.

  ‘I was a student here once,’ Molly said at last. ‘A scholarship girl.’

  ‘Like me.’ I said. OK, I decided I liked the new bursar – we had things in common.

  ‘Yes. I saw that you scored top marks in our entrance exam in summer of
last year – one point above Will Harrison. Anyway, I’m a local girl and my family still lives in Ainslee. I went away, though – first to King’s College, Cambridge, then I threw it all up to do voluntary work in Tanzania, which was a good move on my part. I never really felt I fitted in, either at St Jude’s or at Cambridge – I was always a bit of an outsider.’

  We were deep in conversation and I was relaxing back into the chair, identifying with Molly in a big way – except for the hair and clothes, of course.

  ‘You didn’t mention how the window was broken, by the way.’

  I thought about it then chose the easiest answer. ‘It was a bird – a robin. It flew straight at the glass.’

  Molly nodded. ‘Leave it with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll see that it gets fixed.’

  ‘Here comes Justine – whoo, check out the shoes!’ Zara hissed across the breakfast table, and Connie, Eugenie, Galina and I clocked the red-soled Laboutins.

  Our French teacher was seriously stylish, we agreed.

  Justine sat down across the room from us, next to Shirley Welford, head of maths. Shirley was over fifty and not stylish, but what she didn’t know about non-right-angled-triangle trigonometry and the unit circle and radian measure wasn’t worth knowing.

  ‘Forget Justine’s killer heels, here comes Marco,’ Eugenie sighed.

  ‘With Charlie,’ Connie noted, which made Zara sit up and pay attention.

  While Marco and Charlie chose their food from the breakfast bar and selected a quiet corner to sit, Connie went off to join Luke.

  ‘I bet Charlie and Marco aren’t talking about football,’ Eugenie said over the clatter of cutlery and the hum of conversation, while our American friend dazzled the playboy newcomer with her perfect teeth and a quick flick of her big, hot-rollered blonde hair.

  Zara frowned and rethought her Marco strategy.

  Anyway, I wasn’t really listening or contributing to any of this. I was looking at my phone to check the time, thinking, Only seven more hours to go.