After You Die (42 page)

The only question that remained now was why she had murdered Dawn Prentice; her friend, her cool aunt, the woman who had coaxed her out of her shell.

That and why she’d gone back to retrieve the knife, leaving Holly to die when she could have saved her.

Ferreira walked over to the window and waited for her car to pull into the station, thinking of how easily Caitlin came along when she caught up with her in the lane next to the house. The uniforms were blocking her path but she might have made some attempt to slip them. Instead she just stopped and waited for the cuffs to go on her wrists.

Didn’t say anything. No explanations, no apology. Didn’t ask if Julia was alright.

She looked dead behind the eyes. Absolutely empty.

Three storeys below, Ferreira saw her Golf enter into the car park and she watched Zigic back it into a space, climb out and head for the steps at a pace which suggested he wasn’t relishing the afternoon’s work. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him as emotional as he’d been with Julia Campbell, stunned and tearful, his usual professionalism shot to hell.

It was his wife, she guessed. Impossible to see a woman lose her baby and not think about his own.

At least he’d been spared the job of passing the bad news on to Matthew Campbell. She shirked that job herself too, delegated it to Colleen Murray, who went down and released him from custody, drove him over to the hospital rather than sending him in a patrol car. She wrote a quick note and stuck it to Murray’s computer, asking her to release Arnold Fletcher when she got back, no time to deal with him now.

Zigic trudged into the office, sombre in black jeans and a dark grey shirt.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

On the way down they decided who should take the lead and Ferreira was relieved he wanted her to do it, citing Caitlin’s history of abuse and probable mistrust of men. She suspected it was about him, though, that he was self-aware enough to realise he couldn’t approach her calmly after what she’d done.

They went in.

Five chairs around the table, three occupied; Caitlin in the middle, flanked by two middle-aged women, and she was the only person to stay seated as they entered the room, didn’t even look up at them.

Ferreira made the introductions.

Susan Russell, the social worker, a twitchy woman in a brown linen trouser suit and a necklace made of buttons, who mumbled a ‘hello’ and, when she sat again, took the opportunity to draw her chair a few inches further away from Caitlin.

The solicitor – Ms Kelso – reminded Zigic that he was dealing with a minor. Made her demands clear regarding meals and comfort breaks and suggested he didn’t try ‘any funny business’.

He sat down opposite her and stared intently at Caitlin as Ferreira started the recording, rattling through the necessities, eager to get down to it.

‘You understand why you’re here, Caitlin?’

She nodded. ‘Because of Dawn.’

‘You’ve been charged with her murder.’

‘I didn’t kill her.’ Caitlin looked up. ‘Nathan did, that’s why he ran away. Dawn saw him touching up Holly. She was going to tell Julia. He told me so.’ She frowned. ‘He didn’t mean to do it. He was just scared of getting in trouble.’

Ferreira shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t. That’s quite some story, though. And you did a fairly good job of implicating him for a while. Was that always your plan or did you only decide to do it after he ran off?’

‘I didn’t.’ Caitlin glared at her.

‘You were thinking on your feet, I reckon,’ Ferreira said. ‘That’s why you went back and got the knife. You saw the opportunity to tie Nathan to Dawn’s murder and you took it. Seriously, wrapping the murder weapon up in one of his jumpers … that was inspired.’ A glimmer of pride sparked briefly in her eyes, a physical admission if not a verbal one. ‘He was right about you, Caitlin. You’re very clever.’

‘Can you actually prove she did that?’ Ms Kelso said.

‘We have ample evidence of Caitlin’s guilt,’ Ferreira told her, keeping her gaze on the girl. ‘More than enough to secure a conviction.’

No sign of fear.

She looked indifferent to the situation, almost bored, and Ferreira realised it was perhaps resignation, the same as she’d seen when the uniforms handcuffed her and put her into the back of the patrol car. All her anger had been spent on Julia.

‘More than enough evidence to charge her with the assault on Julia Campbell too,’ Ferreira said. ‘And her unborn baby.’

‘What?’ Caitlin’s hands went to her mouth. ‘I never—’

‘Oh, yes you did,’ Ferreira told her. ‘You attacked her and now she’s going to lose the baby.’

Caitlin turned to her solicitor. ‘But I never meant to hurt her.’

‘We were there,’ Zigic said darkly. ‘You were furious with her and you lashed out. You didn’t care what happened to her or the baby.’

Ms Kelso tapped the table lightly. ‘For now let’s stick to the matter in hand, shall we?’

‘You lost it. Didn’t you, Caitlin?’

‘Inspector—’

‘You lost your temper with Julia and now her baby’s going to die.’ Under the table Ferreira nudged his leg, reminding him of their plan, but his full attention was fixed on Caitlin as she muttered denials, saying she hardly touched her, that it was an accident, she didn’t mean to hurt her, she wouldn’t hurt the baby.

‘Is that what happened with Dawn?’ he asked. ‘An accident?’

She went on as if she hadn’t heard him, talking in an unbroken stream, looking through the tabletop. ‘Julia was pushing me around. You never saw that. She started the whole thing. It’s not my fault she fell over, is it? You can’t make out I did something I never. She’s old, that’s why she lost the baby. Old women shouldn’t get pregnant. That’s her fault. Not mine. I can’t—’

‘We know you killed Dawn,’ Zigic said. ‘You’re going to be prosecuted and you’ll be found guilty because there’s no room for interpretation in the evidence.’ His voice was pitched low and Ferreira knew he was struggling to keep that steady tone. ‘We don’t even need to question you, this is a courtesy, it’s your chance to explain why you did it.’

Caitlin was shivering inside the baggy cardigan she’d drawn around herself, the reality of the situation hitting her all at once.

‘I don’t think you meant to hurt Dawn,’ Zigic said, opening the file and extracting the post-mortem photos. He spread them across the table as he found the one he wanted, a headless shot, Dawn’s bloated and degraded torso captured under the bright lights of the morgue, hyper-real and saturated with colours that didn’t belong on human skin, every stab wound clear and distinct. ‘These weren’t the actions of a rational person. You were furious with her.’

A small murmur escaped Caitlin’s lips as she stared at the image.

‘What did she do to you?’

No answer.

‘Did she start the argument?’

Susan Russell leaned forwards, staring at Caitlin, desperate for some reason, anything to explain the photographs she was studiously avoiding looking at.

‘She was your friend, wasn’t she?’

Caitlin blinked rapidly through her fringe.

‘Dawn welcomed you into her home, treated you like family …’

Her fingers dug into her sides, handfuls of thick cotton cable-knit bunching into her hands.

‘Families aren’t always happy though, are they, Caitlin?’ Still no answer. ‘They have their ups and downs. They argue. Fight.’

The social worker’s mouth opened, but she closed it again fast. A woman used to voicing whatever came into her head, Ferreira thought. She knew something but she couldn’t say it here, not when she was serving as Caitlin’s ‘responsible adult’. There to look out for her interests.

‘The night you murdered Dawn you’d argued with Julia, hadn’t you?’

Caitlin glared at him but wouldn’t answer.

‘Matthew told us all about it,’ Zigic said. ‘You were happy living with them. They’re good people. But then Julia falls pregnant and just like that, you’re out.’

She pressed her mouth into a hard line.

‘You were angry with them.’

‘Julia promised me,’ Caitlin said, voice quiet but thick with emotion as she spoke Julia’s name.

‘Promised what?’

‘First day I got there she promised they’d look after me as long as I needed them. She’s a liar.’ Her nostrils flared. ‘They’re all the same. Say they care but they don’t. It’s all about the money. That’s why they do it.’

‘I can see why you’d be angry,’ Zigic said, returning to his usual role, the sympathetic ear. ‘You were upset but Julia wouldn’t listen. She was more interested in going out to her book club. What about Matthew?’

‘He does what she tells him.’

‘So you went to Dawn for sympathy?’

Caitlin’s fingertips pushed holes through the fabric of her cardigan.

‘Wasn’t she interested?’ Ferreira asked.

The colour rose in Caitlin’s ashen cheeks.

‘No, Dawn cared about you, didn’t she?’ Zigic said. ‘All that time you spent together … she liked you. More than she liked Holly, maybe.’

‘Who told you she said that?’

‘It’s obvious, the way she was with you. You two were really close, weren’t you?’

‘She should have been my mum.’ A brief tremble rippled her bottom lip. ‘I wanted her to be.’

‘Because you were going to have to leave Julia and Matthew’s?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you tell Dawn how upset you were about that?’

‘She didn’t think it was right. I told her what was going to happen to me.
She
was going to dump me in a home.’ Caitlin turned on Susan Russell. ‘Then you were going to send me to live with some other family who wouldn’t want me either. You don’t care where I end up, do you?’

Susan Russell stammered out a few low words, about the people who were set to take her in and how nice they were, how many other children they’d looked after, but Caitlin wasn’t paying any attention. Her eyes were focused on the space above the table, teeth worrying at her bottom lip.

‘It would’ve been perfect. Me and Dawn.’ She smiled but it didn’t last. ‘She was always saying how great it’d be if I lived there with her. I was the kind of daughter she always wanted. Not Holly. They never liked each other – even before Holly got hurt, they weren’t close like we were.’

Caitlin sounded like a spurned lover, building up Dawn’s throwaway comments and basic kindnesses into a closeness Ferreira doubted the woman had ever truly felt. But she’d said those things to the wrong person, a desperately lonely girl, about to be turned out from the only security she’d known for years; toyed with her emotions without even realising she was doing it.

‘Dawn should have been my mum.’

‘Did you ask her to take you in?’ Zigic asked.

‘I told her social services would pay,’ Caitlin said, voice trembling, edged with desperation. ‘She’s got money problems, like big money problems. Her husband weren’t paying for Holly and she weren’t getting enough benefits. It would’ve worked out perfect for all of us.’ She huffed out a fast breath through her nose, frustrated, indignant. ‘I don’t know why she couldn’t get that. I told her how it works but she wouldn’t do it.’

‘Maybe she didn’t feel up to looking after you as well as Holly?’

‘I’m not a kid,’ Caitlin snapped. ‘I don’t need
looking after
. I told her I’d help with Holly. She’d have been like my sister, right? Course I’d help.’

There was an air of desperation around Caitlin now and Ferreira imagined this was how it must have gone with Dawn. Every gentle let-down she used meeting another layer of resistance, Caitlin prepared to say anything and promise anything to try and convince her that this brilliant idea she had could work. Zigic was playing her perfectly.

‘I begged her to let me move in, I swore I wouldn’t be any trouble.’ She looked down at the photograph, the stabs wounds cut into rotting flesh, blinked once, very slowly, and shook her head. ‘She knew I didn’t have anywhere else to go. She knew what they’d – what happened to me – and she didn’t care. All she cared about was Holly.’

‘Surely you understood that,’ Zigic said. ‘She had to put her daughter first.’

‘Holly didn’t love her. She didn’t even
like
her.’ Caitlin glared at him. ‘Holly wanted to die. I told her, how long do you think she’ll be around for? She don’t even love you enough to want to stay alive. She’d rather be
dead
than keep putting up with you.’

The vehemence of her words sat him back in his chair.

She touched two fingertips to the edge of the glossy paper. ‘Dawn totally lost it. She started screaming at me to get out, shoving me about. There was a knife on the side and I picked it up and just, kind of, I dunno – cut her. She grabbed me and pulled me down with her and I just wanted her to let go so I stabbed her.’ Her fingers slipped away from the photo. ‘I didn’t know I’d fucked her up that much.’

Susan Russell’s hand was at her throat, body rigid with the horror of it all. On the other side of Caitlin Ms Kelso had leaned back in her chair, nothing to do now the confession was in place.

‘What about Holly?’ Zigic asked. ‘You knew what would happen to her without Dawn to take care of her. Why didn’t you call an ambulance?’

‘I thought she’d be okay,’ Caitlin said. ‘She had a nurse go and clean her up every morning. It’s not my fault she didn’t turn up, is it? She’s the one you should be blaming for that.’

The statement fell like a chill across the room and Ferreira saw that she felt no guilt, not a shred of it showing on her face, nothing in her eyes but a hint of challenge. Zigic wasn’t finished with her, though.

‘No, Caitlin, this is on you. You went back to the house on Saturday. You knew the nurse hadn’t been or Dawn wouldn’t still be lying dead on the floor for you to remove the knife you left in her chest.’ He snapped out the words, fury on full display now he had the confession they wanted. No reason to play the nice guy any longer. ‘Did you go to check on Holly?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘How long did you think she’d last without medical attention?’

One corner of her mouth flicked up into a contemptuous half-smile. ‘Dawn always said she were stronger than she looked. Guess she were wrong.’

‘You could have saved her,’ he said, hand jabbing the air in front of her face. ‘But you didn’t. You murdered Holly just as sure as you murdered Dawn.’