“The girl,” says Derrick, quietly. “There was a third girl. Freya.”
Pearl lets a tiny smile disturb the mill-pond of his face. He nods. “Turns out she hasn’t got much in the way of family. Nobody making a fuss. She’ll write to the school, or maybe to that nice vicar – tell them she’s doing fine. And the police will leave well alone. Give it time and people will forget there ever was a third girl.”
“No,” says Eve, shaking her head. “That isn’t how things work. We can still find her. Can make a story work …,”
“She’s gone,” says Pearl. “You did right. Everybody’s happy. The other two remember nothing. It’s over. Rest easy.”
“Deaghlan, please ..,” begins Derrick.
“Don’t,” says Eve, glaring holes in Pearl’s forehead. “I’m a DCI. I’m Evelyn Fucking Cater. People have been hurt. People killed. Cormac took those girls and it’s only pure good fortune that two of them got out alive. We can still find the other one. Still find Freya. I’d rather die than let somebody like you have a hold over me …,”
“There is no Freya,” says Pearl, quietly.
“Derrick, hand me the radio, I’m calling all this in …,”
Pearl jumps forward so quickly that it seems as though a bomb has pitched him forward. In an instant his nose is against hers, his eyes distorted and huge against her own, and he’s grinning into her mouth, baring his teeth like a cornered rat.
“You’ll do what I tell you to do, Eve. You’ll show me where he’s been playing his games. And when I’ve done what needs to be done, I’m going to go and lay down beside my wife and we’re going to drink a fine Jameson’s full of all her lovely pills. And we’re going to fall asleep and go to Mother Mary our Blessed Virgin, and we are going to hold hands with Jesus for all eternity. And if Cormac’s soul ever gets there, I will embrace it. And the only speck of darkness in that perfect place will be my memory of a debt unpaid. It will be my memory of you, taking my money and my information and promising to deliver my son to me, and failing in that task. So you will do what you’ve been paid for Eve, or I will come back from Paradise just to stick my fingers in that hole in your gut, and pull you apart until you burst.”
Eve refuses to let the fear show. Holds his stare.
“Try,” she whispers. “I’m a DCI, you wouldn’t …,”
She doesn’t even see his fingers move. Just feels the grotesque, burning penetration. The sound of tearing skin is almost lost beneath her scream.
Creative Writing Assignment,
By Catherine Marlish
His feet are naked; toenails painted a shade of green that makes me think of old glass bottles and mint jelly.
I’m 14, and I’ve never seen nail polish on a man before. Never seen a man in baggy harlequin trousers or with braids in their scabby beard: wrists wrapped up in a gaudy maypole of beaded bracelets; lips singing around a cigarette. I certainly never imagined I would see such things today. Not so close to home. Not in the little subway beneath the footbridge on the edge of Keswick town centre. Not on a Tuesday.
“He looks so cool..,”
“Does he heck as like, he looks a proper tit. Looks as if he’s been swimming during a fly-fishing contest!”
“He must be freezing.”
“Don’t look. Come on, he hasn’t seen us …,”
“Go give his feet a rub, then. Stick them in your armpits.”
“You’re gross.”
“You’re gross.”
The stranger stands with one foot half submerged in a puddle, the other planted on the grimy cement. The bulbs in the underpass are bathing him in a warm, sodium glow. His shadow, stretching away to the far end of the subway, has the likeness of a gnarled and knotted tree.
“You fancy him.”
“You fancy him.”
“Let’s go say hello then.”
“Piss off!”
The singer’s eyes are closed, head raised slightly, as if preparing to receive the sacrament. His fingers, grimy around the nails, inked across the knuckles, move lightly over the strings of the battered guitar, hanging from his neck on a length of cord; half as thick as the ratty dreadlocks which gather in the hood of his sodden purple coat.
We’re sheltering beneath the little pagoda by the park. Freya is sitting cross-legged on the floor, a pile of books spread out around her as if for sale. I suppose we look out of place in this touristy part of Lakeland: a black smudge among the green and brown. There are guest houses and mountaineering shops a little further up the street; all crampons and Gore-Tex and fleece. The shops are mostly empty today. Many have shut early, including this blue-painted kiosk that offers a little protection from the swirling wind. In summer, it sells ice creams and Kendal Mint Cake, rents out old golf clubs and gaudy pink balls to families willing to endure a round of crazy golf. On this ugly February day, the shutters are down. It was the same up at the boating lake. Nobody was renting out the rowing boats. The ducks and geese pecked miserably at the gravel near the water’s edge. The quacks seemed decidedly half-hearted.
From where we’re huddling, we have a perfect view of the busker, his guitar case open in front of him, two solitary coins catching the light.
“What the hell is he wearing?” asks Violet, scornfully. “Oh my God, he looks like he needs to be sheep-dipped. Can you imagine kissing that? Bet he tastes like shoes.”
I laugh, the way I always do when Violet says something loud. I don’t agree with her though. I actually rather like the look of him. And his voice. There’s something hypnotic about it. Something that makes me think of honey.
“What’s he expecting to make today anyway?” asks Violet, unthreading her hair from the inverted crucifix necklace that hangs, as if for extra blasphemy, in the shallow cleft of her expensive and somewhat unnecessary bra. “There’s nobody daft enough to be here. Keswick’s so boring.”
“I think he’s just singing because he likes it,” I say. “Shall we give him some money? I’ve got my bus fare. I can just keep 10p for the phone and ring Dad for a lift …,”
“I need to borrow that for some chips anyway,” says Violet, carelessly. “I spent my allowance on the new boots.”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” I say, automatically. I make a mental note to start saying ’allowance’ instead of ‘pocket money’. She still hasn’t forgiven herself for saying ‘playtime’ instead of ‘break’ in front of Freya.
I sit silently for a while, staring out through the misty rain. Keswick rain. That’s what Mam and Dad call it: a kind of haze that hangs in the air and soaks to the bone. It blackens the tarmac, which twinkles, like iron ore, in the light of the half moon. It darkens the trunks of the trees: turning sycamore and elder into great columns of steaming charcoal.
“Crusties – that’s what people like him are called,” says Freya, quietly. “New Age Travellers. There’s something called the Peace Convoy, people living this kind of gypsy life. They smoke pot and campaign to stop nuclear bombs and bring down Thatcher and stuff. I saw one of them on the news. He wore a cloak and said he was the true heir to Camelot, or something. I’m pleased they’re on our side.”