Dead Girl Walking (12 page)

‘More water?’ she asks, nodding at the jug on the side-table.

‘What’s she going to do with it?’

‘I don’t know,’ the nurse replies, putting her hands on her hips, a harder edge now creeping into her tone. ‘But maybe her visitor would like some.’

‘Her visitor just wants to be alone with her,’ I say.

She throws a disdainful glance in my direction and bangs the door as she leaves. I give her a moment to get back to the nurse station.

‘Sorry, Gran, I won’t be a minute.’ I kiss her forehead. ‘I think you’d approve, though.’

Pulling my coat from the chair, I head out into the darkened corridor.

‘It’s Cassie,’ my voice is low as I clutch the phone to my ear, shivering outside the main doors of the hospital.

‘Cassie, it’s late… what’s wrong?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m ok. But I think I remembered something about Rachel’s attacker.’

Karl’s voice sharpens. ‘Are you at home?’

‘Not right now. I could come to the station tomorrow if you want.’

There’s a brief, hissing silence. ‘Can I come and see you now? Is it somewhere convenient?’

Gran is dying, or at least, no longer really living. I should be with her; she should be my only focus right now. But then, if she was able to unleash the full force of her acid-coated tongue onto me, I know what she’d tell me to do. And for the first time, I feel certain that there is a purpose to me, a reason I came back from the dead.

‘I’m at the City General. I’ll wait for you in the café.’

The imprint of creased cotton is still faintly visible on his cheek as Karl scans the café for me, barely fifteen minutes later. When I see him at work he has a tie and suit on – the whole professional nine yards. Tonight he’s thrown a denim jacket over combats and a sweatshirt and his hair could give Einstein something to be jealous of. As soon as he clocks me he strides across to the table where I nurse a cup of weak tea.

‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ I say as he takes a seat and pulls off his jacket. ‘I hadn’t realised it was so late or I would have phoned you tomorrow.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you phoned straight away. Time is the one thing we don’t have – the quicker I can wrap this investigation up the better.’

The memory of my dream is sucking the moisture from my mouth and my palms are beginning to slick with sweat. I take a gulp of my tea. It’s like warmed up water but the action of hugging the cup somehow helps me to feel better.

‘So, you said you remembered something about the attacker. Did you see his face? Could you identify him if we showed you some photos?’

‘Would that stand up in court?’ I say, momentarily thrown off track by the idea.

‘Probably not,’ he replies frankly, folding his huge hands across one another on the table. ‘But it would give us somewhere to start.’

I stare into my tea, suddenly feeling foolish. ‘I didn’t remember it at first. But I dreamt about it again – like I said before, that seems to happen once I’ve connected with someone. And in the dreams the details always seem sharper, like my brain has had time to process them so I can see them more clearly. I don’t suppose that will stand up in court either.’

His appraising gaze holds mine. Behind those unruly-browed eyes is a human lie detector. I feel sure he knows every criminal’s guilt as soon as that look bores into them. There is no reply and I continue.

‘There was a tattoo, like this…’ I trace a line around my wrist and down the back of my hand towards my index finger. ‘It was a snake, maybe a cobra or something. Its mouth was open with fangs showing. It was really unusual; at least, I’ve never seen one like it before.’

He continues to stare at me for a moment before seemingly snapping from some trance.

‘Could you draw it?’ he asks, pulling a small notebook and a pen from his coat pocket.

‘I’m not a very good artist,’ I say. ‘I could try.’ I drag the pad across the table and try to sketch a coiled, scaled body and fangs dripping with venom, just like the one I saw in my dream. I can feel Karl watching me as I work.

I push the drawing over to him and he stares at it.

‘You’re right,’ he says, looking up with a wry smile, ‘you’re not very good and this would stand up in court on a freezing day in hell.’

‘I’m sorry, I – ’

He holds up a hand to stop me. ‘There’s no need to apologise. This is more than we had before and I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate you wanting to help. I’ll start checking this on the databases tomorrow; see if we can come up with any matches. Is there anything else?’

I shake my head. ‘Not yet. But there might be later on. Like I told you it comes to me in pieces, a bit more at a time, until there’s a whole picture.’

‘Ok… I don’t suppose I need to say it, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t broadcast the details of this case and your involvement with it. Aside from the fact that it is highly unorthodox policing, I don’t want you put in danger either.’

‘Me, in danger?’

‘I’m probably being paranoid, but if the killer himself gets to hear about what you’re doing with the case…’

My limbs suddenly feel cold and numb, nausea rising in my throat. He must see the dawning look of terror in my face as he forces a smile.

‘I’m sure it’s not a real threat. I’m just saying that we should keep this under wraps. Is that ok?’

I nod.

He pauses for a moment. ‘You’re getting help with this, right?’

‘With what?’

‘Your grief, the things that have happened to you over the past few months. It strikes me that this is a huge burden for anyone to shoulder alone.’

‘I have a counsellor.’

He seems satisfied and scrapes his chair away from the table to leave. But then he stops and looks at me, deep in thought. His next sentence is spoken as if he’s only just been struck by this bolt of lightning. ‘Why are you in the hospital? Is everything ok?’

I shrug. ‘My Gran’s ill.’

His gaze is drawn to the gusting blackness outside the windows. ‘How are you getting home?’ he asks, his attention back on me again.

‘I’m not, I’m staying here tonight with her. The nurses said it would be ok.’

‘She’s that bad?’

I nod and grip my teacup.

His eyes narrow as he pulls on his jacket. ‘Stay here tonight, then, and don’t get any ideas about going home by yourself. While this man is on the loose no young girl should be out alone.’ What he fails to add is:
particularly the girl who is trying to put him behind bars
. But he doesn’t need to; the risks have been spelled out to me now. I’m scared, I’d be crazy not to be, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to do something and the notion almost takes me by surprise. It makes me feel incredibly positive and gives me that little bit of false bravery I never had before.

‘I am staying here, honest,’ I say with as much cheer as I can muster.

‘Cassie… I’m a policeman but I’m a father too and I know how this works. You’ll let me go with good intentions of staying with your gran, get fed up of sitting around and want to go home in a few hours. Then you’ll think you’re invincible enough to go it alone.’

I think about Gran, no longer Gran but a slab of warm meat covered in blankets upstairs. She doesn’t know if I’m there or not and I’m tired and desperate for my own house, despite the ghosts and the guilt. Perhaps he’s right after all.

‘Maybe I will go home,’ I say. ‘I don’t suppose my sitting with her will help anyway and it’s not like she knows I’m there.’

He looks at his watch and sighs. ‘Come on, I need my bed too, so the sooner we get you back the better.’

As I cradle the warm mug, my absent gaze on the street outside, I think about going to sit with Gran. It’s been three days since she was taken in and each day it gets harder to visit. How can I sit and watch her disappear from existence? She’s always been this amazing, vital woman, the woman I looked up to, the only person now who really matters to me, but now she’s nothing, simply a body taking up a bed, waiting to die. But the temperature is kinder this morning, only a brisk breeze rattling through the bare trees, and I’m running out of excuses not to go.

Except for the one that lurks, thinking he’s out of my sight sitting on a low wall outside the park gates across the street. He’s been there for an hour. Just watching and waiting. Every now and then he takes a brisk walk along the pavement, stops to look at my front door, and then returns to his seat. Setting down my mug, I pull my mobile and the scrap of paper from my jeans pocket.

‘Hello?’ he says, the wind around him roaring through the phone mic.

‘You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.’

‘Cassie?’

‘Why are you hanging around my house?’

‘I’m not,’ he says. ‘Not deliberately.’

‘I suppose you want to come in?’

He hesitates. ‘Only if you want me to.’

Going to the mirror, I reach for a comb. ‘Come to the front door. I’ll be down in five.’

‘I’m not a stalking crazy axe murderer,’ Dante says as he follows me down the hallway to the kitchen.

‘I never said you were. But the description sprang to your mind before mine. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.’

‘You didn’t call me. And I never got your number. I just wondered how you were doing because I hadn’t seen you at the health centre.’ He hovers at the kitchen table.

‘You can sit down if you want,’ I say and he does. ‘I’m not seeing Helen now.’

He looks up in surprise. ‘You’re fixed?’

‘Not exactly.’ I click the still-warm kettle on. ‘I only have tea, sorry.’

‘You remembered I don’t like coffee?’ He seems pleased at this.

‘No,’ I say. I don’t know why I deny it and I don’t mean to burst his bubble so cruelly but the sight of his pleasure grates for a reason I can’t name.

His smile fades. ‘I can do tea. So what happened with Helen?’

‘Nothing.’

His eyes travel the walls. The room briefly illuminates as the sun breaks from behind the heavy cloud and every coating of dust on every surface becomes visible.
‘Sounds like that’s the problem?’ he says. ‘I know what you mean. You feel as though you’re just talking and nothing changes.’

‘Something like that.’ I rinse out two mugs. He watches but makes no comment on the fact that I’m probably going to give him salmonella poisoning. ‘But I think that, maybe, my problems are just too big and weird for anyone to help.’

‘I know how that feels too,’ he says, fingers knotting on the tabletop. ‘I have to keep going, though. I hate it but Mum insists.’

‘Mums do that,’ I say as the kettle clicks off. I grab a couple of teabags and drop them into the mugs.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, colour rising to his cheeks, ‘I didn’t mean –’

‘I know you didn’t. You can’t stop mentioning your family just because I don’t have mine.’

He takes a mug from me. ‘You’re lonely all the time?’

I nod and sit next to him. ‘Pretty much. I have my gran… actually, I
had
my gran.’

‘She’s dead too?’

‘More or less.’

‘Like you?’ he asks and then flushes again.

‘No,’ I smile slightly at his awkwardness, despite myself, ‘she’s ill. She’ll probably die any day now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’

He takes a sip of his tea before putting the mug down and staring into its depths.

‘You never did tell me why you’re going to Helen,’ I remind him.

He looks up at me. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Well,’ I begin slowly. ‘Now that you’re in my house drinking my tea, I think I have a right to know what kind of nutter I’m entertaining.’

He doesn’t speak right away, like he’s forming the sentence carefully in his head before he airs it, calculating my every possible response. All the while he holds me with the intensity of his gaze.

‘Every night when I sleep I dream about dying.’

It seems that everything around me is about death at the moment, even the boys I seem to attract. For a mad second, I think about the killer that Karl is trying to catch. Could we all be connected somehow? I shake the thought. It’s ridiculous and I don’t
need to be freaked out any more than I am these days. I smile slightly. ‘That does sound odd, but not like the mayor of Weirdsville.’

He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t explain properly. I mean, like, I know that it’s my true future. And it’s really soon.’

‘It’s just a dream though,’ I say, stroking the handle of my mug.

‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘But it feels real. And it’s the same every night, it never alters.’

‘Are you scared?’

‘Yeah, terrified. When it started I couldn’t concentrate on anything, dropped out of college, lost my friends. Mum decided I was going loco and sent me to see the counsellor.’

‘You don’t think you’re mad, though?’

‘It’s real. I can’t explain how I know but I do. And it feels like something I can’t escape, something that will happen no matter what I do.’

‘You believe in a fixed path?’

‘In some things, yeah, I think maybe I do. I wondered when I first had the dreams, but…’ he holds me in his dark gaze, ‘something happened recently that made me think this is fate, and I can’t escape it.’

‘Oh. What happened to make you think that?’

He stares at me. His breathing quickens. ‘Something I’m not sure I understand and something I’m not sure I can talk about. All I know is that it’s made me think my path has already been decided no matter what I do.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that I’m going to follow it, wherever it leads.’

‘That sounds very poetic and not at all practical.’ I laugh uneasily.

‘Probably.’

I take a breath. Then I reach for his hand.

‘Don’t,’ he says, pulling away.

‘I could help you.’

‘How?’

‘I thought it might put your mind at rest, if I didn’t see anything when I touched you.’

‘You see death after it’s happened.’

‘I know. But I wondered if I could also see it coming.’

He places his hand back on the table in front of me.

‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘I think so.’

I make contact. A thrill of desire rips through me.

‘Nothing,’ I say, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest.