The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Page 27

  “You were following me.”

  “Me? No. Why would I do that?” I felt vulnerable at the edge of the cliff, aware of the golden sand so far below, and as I spoke I tried edging slowly forwards. But Riley stood his ground, and right now he didn’t seem shy at all.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I saw you. Maybe it’s something to do with Mary Jane?”

  “Mary Jane?”

  “You know I loved her. Until that . . . that freak came and took her away from me. Still, he’s got what he deserves. Let him rot in jail.”

  “Now, listen Riley. You don’t have to say anything to me.” The last thing I wanted was to be Riley’s confessor with a hundred foot drop behind me. “Let’s just go back, huh? I don’t want to miss my ferry.”

  “I used to watch them, you know,” Riley said. “Watch them doing it.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I swallowed.

  “They’d do it anywhere. They didn’t care who was watching.”

  “That’s not true, Riley,” I said. “You know that can’t be true. You were spying on them. You said so.”

  “Maybe so. But they did it down there.” He pointed. “On the beach.”

  “It’s a very secluded spot.” I don’t know what I meant by that, whether I was defending Mary Jane’s honor, deflecting the shock I felt, or what. I just wanted to keep Riley talking until I could get around him and . . . well, getting back to the ferry was my main thought. But if Riley had other ideas there wasn’t much I could do. He was bigger and stronger than me. Drops of rain dampened my cheek. The sky was becoming darker. “Look, Riley,” I said. “There’s going to be a storm. Move out of the way and let me go back to the ferry dock. I’ll miss my ferry. Mr Kiernan will be looking for me.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it, you know,” Riley said.

  I had been trying to skirt around him, but I froze. “Didn’t mean to do what?” There I was again, speaking without thinking. I didn’t want to know, but it was too late now.

  “Kill her. It just happened. One minute she was . . .”

  Now he’d told me I just had to know the full story. Unless I could make a break into the woods when he wasn’t expecting it, I was done for anyway. I didn’t think I could outrun him, but with the cover of the trees, and the coming dark, perhaps I had a chance of staying ahead of him as far as the ferry dock. “How did it happen?” I asked, still moving slowly.

  “They had a fight. I was watching the cabin and they had a fight and Mary Jane ran out crying.”

  The baby, I thought. She told him about the baby. But why would that matter? The Newcomers loved children. They would have welcomed Mary Jane and her child. It must have been something else. Perhaps she wanted to get married? That would have been far too conventional for Jared but just like Mary Jane. Whatever it was, they had argued. Couples do argue. “What happened?” I asked.

  “I followed her like you followed me. She went down to the beach. Down that path you both thought was your little secret. I went after her. I thought I could comfort her. You know, I thought she’d dumped him and maybe she would turn to me if I was nice to her.”

  “How did it go wrong?”

  “She did it with him, didn’t she?” Riley said, his voice raising to a shout against the coming storm. “Why wouldn’t she do it with me? Why did she have to laugh?”

  “She laughed at you?”

  He nodded. “That’s when I grabbed her. The next thing I . . . I guess I don’t know my own strength. She was like a rag doll.”

  There was a slim chance that I could slip into the woods to the left of him and make a run for it. That was when he said, “I’m glad I told you. I’ve been wanting to tell somebody, just to get it off my chest. I feel better now.”

  I paused. “But Riley, you have to go to the authorities. You have to tell them there’s an innocent man in jail.”

  “No! I ain’t going to jail. I won’t. Only you and me know the truth.”

  “Riley, if you hurt me they’ll know,” I said, my voice shaking, judging the distance between his reach and the gap in the trees. “They’ll know it was you. I told Mr Kiernan I came here to talk to you.” It was a lie, of course, but I hoped it was an inspired one.

  “Why would you do that?” Riley seemed genuinely puzzled. “You didn’t know anything about it until just now. You didn’t even know I existed. You didn’t want to know. None of you did.”

  “I mean it, Riley. If you hurt me, they’ll find out. You can’t get away with murder twice. You’ll go to jail then for sure.”

  “They say killing’s easier the second time. I read that in a book.”

  “Riley, don’t.”

  “It’s all right, Grace,” he said, leaning back against the tree. “I ain’t going to hurt you. Don’t think I don’t regret what I did. Don’t think I enjoyed it. I’m just not going to jail for it. Go. Catch your ferry. See if I care.”

  “B-but . . .”

  “Who’d believe you? The police have got the man they want. There sure as hell’s no evidence against me. My daddy doesn’t know where I was, but he already told them I was home all day. Last thing he wants to know is that his son killed some girl. That would surely upset the applecart. Nobody saw me. The Preacher’s with us, too. He was at the house talking real estate with daddy. I don’t know if he knows I did it or not, but he don’t care. He was the one told me about Mary Jane and that freak, what they were doing and how it was a sin. That’s why I went to spy on them. He told me he knew she was really my girl, but she’d been seduced by the devil. He told me what that long-haired pervert was doing to her and asked me what I was going to do about it. The Preacher won’t be saying nothing to no police. So go on. Go.”

  “But why did you tell me?”

  Riley paused. “Like I said, I knew I’d feel better if I told someone. I’m truly sorry for what I did, but going to jail ain’t going to bring her back.”

  “But what about Jared? He’s innocent?”

  “He’s the Spawn of Satan. Now go ahead, Grace. Catch the ferry before the storm comes. It’s going to be a bad one.”

  “You won’t . . .?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t matter what you say. Go ahead. See if I’m not right.”

  And I did. I caught the ferry. Mr Kiernan smiled and said I was lucky I just made it. The storm broke that night, flooded a few roads, broke a few windows. The next day I took the bus into the city to see Detective Lonnegan and told him about what Riley had said to me on the beach. He laughed, said the boy was having me on, giving me a scare. I told him it was true, that Riley was in love with Mary Jane and that he tried to . . . I couldn’t get the words out in front of him, but even so he was shaking his head before I’d finished.

  So Riley McCorkindale turned out to be right. The police didn’t believe me. I didn’t see any point running all over town telling Mr Kiernan, father, the Preacher or anyone else, so that was the end of it. Riley McCorkindale strangled Mary Jane Kiernan and got away with it. Jared – David Garwood – went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. He didn’t stay there long, though. Word made it back to town about a year or two later that he got stabbed in a prison brawl, and even then everyone said he had it coming, that it was divine justice.

  None of the Newcomers ever returned to Jasmine Cove. The cabins fell into disrepair again, and their property reverted to the township in one of those roundabout ways that these things often happen in small communities like ours. I thought of Mary Jane often over the years, remembered her smile, her childlike enthusiasms. The Mad Hatters became famous and once in a while I heard “her” song on the radio. It always made me cry.

  After I had finished college and started teaching high school in Logan, the property boom began. The downtown areas of many major cities became uninhabitable, people moved out to the suburbs and the rich wanted country, or island, retreats. One day I heard that McCorkindale Developments had knocked down the cabins on Pine Island and cleared the land for a strip of low-r
ise, ocean-front luxury condominiums.

  I suppose it’s what you might call ironic, depending on the way you look at it, but by that time the Preacher and Riley’s father had managed to buy up most of the island for themselves.

  TELL ME

  Zoë Sharp

  “So, where is she?”

  Crime Scene Investigator Grace McColl ducked under the taped cordon at the edge of the crime scene and showed her ID to the uniformed constable stationed there.

  The policeman jerked his head in the direction of the band shelter as she signed the log. “You’ll have your work cut out with this one, though,” he said.

  Grace frowned and moved on. She was already dressed from head to foot in her disposable white suit and she made sure she followed the designated pathway, picking her way carefully to avoid undue contamination.

  The girl was on the stone steps in front of the band shelter, no more than sixteen years old but still a child, with dirty blonde hair. As Grace approached she could see the girl had her thin arms folded, as though hugging herself against the cold. And she must have been cold, to be out in the park in this weather in just a mini skirt and a skimpy top. Unless, of course, he’d taken her coat with him when he’d left her . . .

  Over to the right, the rhododendron bushes grew thick and concealing. It might have been Grace’s imagination, but she thought the girl’s eyes turned constantly in their direction, as though something might still lurk amongst the glossy foliage. She squatted down on her haunches next to the girl and waited until she seemed to have her full attention.

  “Hello,” she said quietly. “I’m Grace. I’m going to be taking care of you now. Can you tell me who you are?”

  There was a long pause, then: “Does it matter?”

  Grace eyed her for a moment. The girl might have been pretty if she’d taken a little time, a little care. Or if someone had taken a little care over her. Her hair was badly cut and her fingernails were bitten short and painted purple, the varnish long since chipped and peeling.

  “Of course it matters,” Grace said, keeping her tone light. “Finding out about you will help us find out who did this to you. Help us to catch him. You want that, don’t you?”

  “‘Spose.” The girl shrugged, darting a little glance from under her ragged fringe to see if her attitude achieved the desired level of sullen cool. The action revealed the livid bruise, like spilt ink on tissue, that had formed around her left eye.

  Grace tilted her head, considering. “He caught you a belter, didn’t he?” she murmured.

  “I bruise easy,” the girl said, suddenly defensive now. “And I’m clumsy.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Grace said, setting her bag down and opening it. “You were always walking into doors at home, falling down the stairs.” She shook her head. “Did no one stop to wonder?”

  The girl’s face darkened. “They knew, all right,” she said. “They just didn’t give a—”

  “No,” Grace said dryly. “I can see that.” She pulled out evidence bags and swabs, and paused. “Is that why you ran away – ended up on the streets?”

  The girl’s head jerked up and she looked at Grace fully for the first time, scowling. “Who said I’m living rough?”

  Grace regarded her calmly. “Your clothes are dirty enough,” she said.

  “What do you expect?” the girl snapped. She gestured angrily towards the rhododendrons. “Being dragged through the mud, having him –” She broke off, bit her lip, looked away.

  “Your clothes were dirty before that,” Grace said, no censure in her quiet voice. ‘And you’re a pretty girl. Your nails are painted – or they were. You wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t wanted to look nice, once upon a time.”

  The girl’s lip curled. “That’s for fairy stories.”

  “Mm,” Grace said. “Let me see your hands.”

  Reluctantly, the girl put both hands up, backs towards Grace, fingers splayed rigidly. Grace almost smiled at the defiance she read there, taking hold of one carefully in her gloved fingers, scraping out minute debris from under the receded nails.

  “Ah-ha,” she said, under her breath. “You got a shot in, I see. Marked him. Oh, well done, you.”

  The girl looked unaccountably pleased at this praise and it occurred to Grace that she must have received very little by way of approval in her short life. She thought of her own mother, who lavished praise and nurtured self-confidence in her only child. Ironic, then, that the pre-adolescent Grace had always been so desperate to win the approbation of her more distant father.

  “Your father wasn’t around much, was he?” she said absently, noting the time and date and case number on the evidence bag as she sealed it.

  The girl scowled at her again. “You’re guessing,” she accused. “No way can you tell that from looking at my hands.” Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “Read tea-leaves as well, do you?”

  “No,” Grace said levelly, “but I’ve been doing this job long enough to recognize the other signs.”

  The girl took her hand back and folded her arms, a challenge in her voice. “So, go on,” she goaded. “If you’re so clever, you tell me. Who am I?”

  “All right.” Grace sat back on her heels, oblivious to the activity going on around her. She focused inwards, closing her eyes for a moment.

  “You can’t do it, can you?” the girl jeered.

  Grace’s eyes opened. “Your father left when you were young,” she began. “Your mother blamed you and lost herself in the bottle – pills or booze, or possibly both.”

  The girl rolled her eyes, gave a derisive laugh. “Oh, big deal,” she said. “You could be talking about half the kids round here.” She jerked her head towards the nearby high-rise. “Not good enough.”

  “OK,” Grace conceded. “Then you’re going to tell me it’s also obvious that your mother brought home a procession of one-night stands to pay the rent. How old were you when the first of them asked if you were for sale, too?”

  The girl wouldn’t meet her eyes. “None of your business,” she muttered.

  “Mm, I thought so.” She paused again but the girl wouldn’t respond. “But you didn’t leave then, did you? You clung in there. For a while. Until it got too much and you attempted self-harm.”

  “Who says I did?”

  Grace nodded towards the old scars on the girl’s wrists. “You cut yourself,” she said, picking her words with care. “Not a serious attempt, I don’t think. A cry for help. But nobody answered, did they?”

  The girl twisted the cheap ring round on her finger and didn’t speak, staring across the grass to where the row of uniforms swept the parkland.

  “He listened,” she said at last, so quietly Grace hardly caught the words.

  “Ah,” she said softly. “Of course he did.”

  The girl’s head jerked up at the tone in her voice, eyes flashing. “Don’t say it like that,” she snapped, harsh. “You don’t know how it was. He loved me!”

  “I’m sure he told you he did,” Grace said, bland. “Gave you that ring, didn’t he? Told you that you were his girl now. Just like all the others.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “So how long was it before he told you about the man he owed money to? About how it would all be all right if only you’d just have sex with this man. Did you refuse? Is that why he hit you?”

  “I made him angry. He was sorry – after.”

  “But he still made you do it, didn’t he?”

  “I wanted to help him. He didn’t force me or nothing.”

  “Not that first time, no,” Grace said. “But that was just the beginning, wasn’t it? When did you realize he wasn’t your boyfriend any more, but your pimp? Or did you ever realize it?”

  “If I’d had someone looking out for me,” the girl said, her voice bitter now, “do you think something like this would’ve happened?”

  “It might have done. If it was him – your boyfriend – who did this to you.”

  The girl shrugged
. “Might have been,” she said, dismissive. Her glance was defiant. “Might not.”

  “So, was he a client?”

  “Client?” the girl spat. “Would that make it better for you if he was? Would that make it not so shocking, not so bad, if I was on the game? Oh well, just another hooker picked the wrong john. Had it coming.”

  “No,” Grace said evenly. “It would just give us a better place to start looking.”

  “Yeah, right,” the girl snorted, still surly. “You’re thinking it, though. I can tell.”

  “I try to keep an open mind but you’re not making it easy for me. You shouldn’t have been here at that time of night, you see. It’s where the working girls come with the men they pick up when the clubs turn out. And you could have just been trying to make the money for your next fix.”

  The girl opened her mouth, saw Grace’s gaze on the evidence of her addiction that tattooed the crook of both arms, and shut her mouth again with a glower.

  “You see too much,” was all she said.

  “It’s my job,” Grace agreed. “Just as it’s my job to find out who you are, and who did this to you. To stand for you, when no-one else would.”

  The girl looked at her with doubt and speculation in her eyes for the first time. “And you’ll do that, will you?”

  “I will.”

  “Just for me?”

  “Yes.”

  The girl sighed. “You’ll be the first, if you do.”

  “Well, better late than never, then.”

  The girl was silent again. The sky had darkened overhead and she looked up into the gathering clouds. “It’s going to rain,” she said.

  “I know,” Grace said. She stood. “I’d better get back to work. The rain will destroy the evidence if we don’t protect the scene quickly.”

  The girl nodded. “You’ll be back, though, won’t you?” she said. “You won’t leave me?”

  “Of course,” Grace said. “They’ll take you in, but you’ll certainly see me again. I’ll need more from you, if we’re to catch him.”

  “That’s good,” the girl said and gave a small smile, rusty from lack of use.