‘Yes, yes, exactly. But don’t you see? This is the same, Leah. Except this time I
have
done something wrong.’ Leah shook her head. Carrie continued. ‘And if I don’t get to the bottom of it, I think I will give up and die myself.’
Carrie knew that Leah didn’t completely understand but she wisely decided not to argue. In the end, she agreed it wouldn’t do any harm to drive through the estate and see if they could spot the girl or find her house. It took a while to get there, even though the journey through the depressing streets was only a mile or two.
‘Look at them,’ Carrie said, breathless, as if it was the first time she’d ever witnessed unsavoury-looking youth. She had them on her show most weeks. ‘Really look at them.’
‘They’re just kids, Carrie. Just people like you and me but with less luck in their lives. It’s not their fault.’
Carrie was agitated by what Leah said. It was the first glimmer of emotion other than grief that she had experienced since she’d learnt of Max’s death. ‘It’s not bloody luck, Leah. How can you say that?’ She knew she’d said that line many times on the show, last time to some hopeless woman who was moaning about the five kids she’d had by different men, beginning when she was fifteen.
‘It’s not down to luck to keep your legs together, is it?’ she’d shot back when the mother had said women like Carrie were plain lucky. ‘And it’s not luck’s fault either that you didn’t turn up at school most days. Neither is luck to answer for you neglecting your children or not bothering to leave your house to find a job, however menial, to pay your way in the world. What is lucky, though,’ and Carrie almost regretted saying this, ‘is that I won’t have to think about you and your drug-dealing partner once you’ve left the studio. You, darling, will. For the rest of your life.’
The audience had stood and both booed and clapped and, when they reacted this way as they had on many occasions, Carrie was often unsure who the boos were directed at – her for being so hard on the studio guests, or the guests for living such hopeless lives. Either way, she didn’t care. Her skin was rhinoceros-thick. A wired audience meant similar viewers at home and that’s what kept the show going. It was all in a day’s work.
‘It was around here.’ Carrie’s voice was barely audible. Every syllable hurt as if she had tonsillitis. Every little sound battered her ears, and every painful breath slowed her heart more. ‘We found her over there, up there by that tree.’
Leah cruised past but there was no one in sight apart from a group of very young kids playing with a crisp packet and a stick.
‘Do you know which house she lives in?’
Carrie shook her head.
‘We could ask those kids,’ Leah suggested. ‘They shouldn’t be out on their own.’ She wound down the window. ‘They’re so young and it’s getting dark. Hey!’ she called out. ‘Do any of you know where a girl called Dayna lives?’
Four pairs of sullen eyes stared back at the car. There were three boys and one girl, anywhere between the ages of three and six. The girl, who was holding the stick, brandished it at the car and, for a moment, Leah thought she was going to scratch it down the side of the Mercedes.
Carrie leant across. ‘A girl called Dayna lives around here. I’ll give you fifty pounds if you can take me to her house.’
The girl stepped forward. ‘I know it.’ Her voice was babyish and her cherry-red lips curled innocently round the words.
‘Hop in the back,’ Carrie called out.
‘Carrie, we can’t!’ Leah was horrified when the little girl actually heaved open the big car door and scrambled on to the leather seat. She brought the stick with her.
‘Which way?’ Carrie asked, leaning round. The girl pointed straight ahead and prodded the roof. Then she squealed with delight as she saw her friends racing alongside the car on their bikes. ‘Do we keep going? Do you know a number or an address?’ She didn’t think the child understood.
‘Over vere,’ she suddenly said.
‘Dayna lives there?’ Carrie asked, pointing at a house, and the girl nodded, leaning right forward between the two front seats so that Carrie could smell her sickly sweet breath from the grubby chew she was clutching.
Leah parked. ‘Are you going to go in?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Of course.’ She turned to the back to thank the child and give her the money, but she was already getting out of the car. They’d only come a hundred yards or so from where they’d picked her up. ‘Am I going in alone?’
Leah sighed. ‘No, of course not, although I don’t know what you expect to achieve.’
Carrie got out of the car without replying. The little girl had disappeared, clearly not old enough to understand bribes. Resting on the front wall of the house were what appeared to be several bunches of flowers. Carrie pulled back the paper on one of them and gasped.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh no, look.’
Leah locked the car and joined Carrie. ‘What is it?’ She peered inside the paper wrapping. When she saw that all the heads had been cut off and it was just a bunch of stems, she put her arm around Carrie. ‘It’s nothing to do with Max. You’re hypersensitive at the moment.’
‘
You next
,’ Carrie said, reading the note stuck to the paper. ‘What do they mean?’ She was underwater, on the moon, dead . . . anywhere except real life.
Leah reached for the other cone of newspaper. When she opened it, nettles and weeds and something revolting spilt out. They had been bound together with soggy toilet paper. It stank. ‘Nice,’ Leah said, trying to sound casual. She brushed her hands together. ‘Amazing what people leave lying around. They’re idiots. It’ll be kids messing about.’
Carrie closed her eyes. She was about to rip up the note but knew that Dennis would need it. Carefully, she placed it in her bag.
‘Carrie, I don’t think we should . . .’ Leah trailed off. Carrie was already at the front door, knocking, her head bowed.
‘Yeah?’ The woman was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and an angry expression. A child appeared beside her legs. It was the girl they’d just picked up in the car.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ Leah said.
‘She been bad again?’The woman clipped the child round the head, sending her scuttling back inside. ‘What do you want?’
‘The stuff on the wall, was it—’
‘What fucking stuff?’ The woman peered out, squinting through cigarette smoke.
‘Do you know who left it?’ Carrie asked.
‘Course I don’t. All sorts of shit gets dumped round here.’ She was about to shut the door.
‘Wait. Is Dayna home?’
The woman pulled a mean face. ‘I reckoned you was the cops. Is it that stabbing again? Anyway, you’re too late. They already took her down the station. Been gone a while now.’ She made to close the door.
‘Who took her?’ Carrie asked.
‘That Masters cop. He can have her, for all I care. All the stupid girl does is lay about.’
Carrie glanced at Leah, who made a
come on, let’s go
gesture with her head. The two women went back to the car with the angry words of Dayna’s mother ringing in their ears.
Thank God, Dennis thought, as she spilt out everything she had already told him loud and clear for the others, and the tape recorder, to hear. Away from her home environment, off the street, the young girl suddenly seemed much more mature and sensible, knowing full well what it meant for her to make an accurate statement.
‘They weren’t going to let up. Not till something bad happened. Then one of them just had this knife, like, suddenly in his hand.’
‘Would you be able to identify the knife if we found it?’ Dennis asked.
‘Oh yeah, I reckon. It was one of those flick ones. It came out so quick.’
‘And so the boy with the knife threatened Max?’
Dayna paused to think. She pulled a face, thinking back. ‘Well, kind of. They’d all been jeering and threatening, like I said. Then it got nasty.’
‘In what way?’
Dennis watched the girl’s features as she recalled the events. He could see the trauma written on her young face. He hated making her relive it – she reminded him a little of Estelle, with her innocent eyes and that wanting-to-please look. He’d grilled his only daughter, too, when he suspected Kaye of playing away; hadn’t been proud of the way he’d reduced his daughter to tears to get the truth, not letting up as he pounded her for details of the new man.
‘They, like, they started poking and threatening and kicking us really, really hard. We didn’t have anywhere to go. Max and I weren’t doing anything wrong. Just eating chips and . . . and talking.’
‘Was it the boy who first took out the knife who stabbed Max?’
Dayna’s expression switched to a poker-faced stare and her eyes hardened to glass.
‘Dayna?’ Dennis pressed. ‘Did you see? Was it him?’
She looked straight at Dennis. ‘Yeah.’ Her eyes filled with tears as her mind regurgitated what it had blocked out. ‘Over and over,’ she whispered, gripping the edge of the table. ‘The knife went in once and everyone screamed, although not Max.’ Dayna stared at the ceiling. ‘It went in like butter and came out in slow motion. When . . . when he realised what he’d actually done, it was like, well, he had to keep doing it. There was no way back.’
‘And what about Max?’
Dayna shook her head. ‘He just stood there for the longest time. His eyes weren’t like his eyes, even though they stared at me the whole time like he was trying to tell me something. Blood just spurted out.’ Dayna released the table and allowed her forehead to drop forward. ‘And then he fell to his knees and, finally, he went down.’
‘At what point did the gang of boys run away?’
Dayna lifted her heavy head. ‘It was after he was on the ground. I screamed out and, like, even those boys were yelling and screaming. Then they ran, when they fucking realised what had happened. Can I have a smoke? I need a cigarette.’
Jess went to the desk to fetch an ashtray. This was no time to break Dayna’s flow by making her puff out of the window.
‘So as soon as Max went down, the youths ran.’
Dayna nodded and exhaled.
‘Which direction did they go?’
‘I don’t know. School gates, I reckon. I wasn’t watching. I was trying to help Max.’ She let out sobs that wouldn’t resolve into full-blown tears. Instead, she snuffled through the cigarette. ‘I felt so useless. Like, he was dying in front of my eyes. I called the ambulance and tried to remember first aid.’
‘You did well, love,’ Jess said. ‘We’ve interviewed lots of people from your school. While no one else actually saw what happened like you did, one or two claimed to have seen the youths running away. Is it possible, and think carefully about this, that they could have left school a different way?’
Dayna frowned and stared at the ceiling. Dennis glared at Jess. What was she doing? That was as good as telling her they’d had conflicting statements.
‘What Jess means is are you sure they went out the front school gates?’
‘Yeah, pretty sure.’
‘And was the boy who did the stabbing, was he holding the knife when they ran away?’ Dennis continued.
‘Must have been.’ Dayna shrugged as if she wasn’t really sure.
‘Did they say anything when they left?’
Dayna sniffed and coughed. ‘They didn’t exactly call out goodbye or anything.’
Dennis felt stupid. It wasn’t what he’d meant, of course. ‘Anything, Dayna. If you can remember anything at all.’
‘One of them screamed twist.
Fucking twist
. I didn’t know what he meant.’
‘You said they taunted you and kicked you and Max,’ Jess continued, making notes.
‘Yeah. It was horrid.’
‘Where did they kick you?’
‘Everywhere. Like on my legs and stuff. My shins.’
‘Do you have any bruises?’
Dayna sat still for a moment then shrugged. ‘Probably. Dunno.’
‘Can we take a look? Is it possible just to push up your trousers?’
Dayna blinked and hesitated.
‘It would help,’ Jess said.
Dayna bent forward and lifted one trouser leg to the knee. ‘It was around here. And on the other leg.’
‘Can I see that one too?’
Dayna obliged. As she was bending down to straighten her clothing, Dennis caught Jess’s eye. He shook his head, indicating she shouldn’t press things.
‘I don’t see any bruises there,’ Jess said.
Dayna picked up the cigarette from the ashtray and clamped it between her first two fingers. ‘My legs still hurt though.’
Dennis shifted in his chair. He could see what Jess was getting at, but at this rate, she was going to do irreparable damage. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t hard enough to bruise,’ he said, trying to diffuse things. She was getting tense, he could tell.
The girl nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘But you did say that the youths kicked you,’ Jess continued.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Dennis thought. ‘Let’s just forget about kicking at this point, shall we?’ But both Jess and Dayna ignored him.
‘Are you saying I’m lying?’
‘Not at all. I just want to get it straight. It’s important. You said that the youths kicked you really hard. But I can’t understand why there are no bruises. Now you’re saying it wasn’t very hard.’
‘I dunno. Maybe it wasn’t that hard then. I’m really trying to remember everything properly. Really I am. I want you to catch them. My best friend is dead.’ She ground the butt into the ashtray and let her head drop forward.
Nice one, Dennis mouthed at Jess who completely ignored him. She turned to a fresh page on her notepad.
‘Let’s go back a bit in time, Dayna. I’m interested in knowing who Max’s enemies were and, as his best friend, you’re probably the one to ask.’
Dayna was laughing before he’d even finished. It was borderline hysteria as she fished in her pocket for a tissue. When she couldn’t find one, Jess plucked one from a nearby box and passed it over. ‘You lot just don’t get it, do you?’ She shook her head and blew her nose. ‘I mean, no one liked us. We were hated by everyone.’