Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) (8 page)

Downstairs Mummy and Daddy were arguing – he could hear their raised voices. Wendy had put him to bed, put him in his woolly sheep pyjamas and dressing gown, put socks on his feet.
Keep you warm.
Told him that Mummy and Daddy were tired tonight, stressed.
Be a good boy. Go to sleep.

He had gone to sleep, like Wendy had asked him, but the shouting had woken him. He liked Wendy, felt safe when she was here. Now she was gone. He had seen her from his bedroom window, hurrying to her car, head down, glancing around her as she walked. He had heard her engine puttering out of the drive.

It was only him, Mummy and Daddy in the house. Him upstairs alone, and their raised voices coming up through the floor.

Daddy was shouting:
I don’t want people interfering in our lives.

Sitting up in bed, he looked towards the window. Wendy hadn’t pulled the curtains all the way across – they didn’t join in the middle. A sliver of moonlight cut through the gap, glinting across his room like a knife. He wanted them closed, wanted the knife gone. But he didn’t want to go near the window, to pull them closed himself. He was scared of what might be outside the glass. He had seen the light in the garden, flashing close to the house, had asked Wendy about the light.
Light? I didn’t see a light. You must have imagined it. Go to sleep now, like a good boy.

Sami swallowed. A lump was stuck in his throat and it wouldn’t go up or down. Inching silently to the end of his bed, dragging his torch with him, he slid on to the floor. He sat for a second, panting, his chest tight with fear. Was he alone? The darkness in his bedroom seemed to be moving.

On hands and knees, he crawled silently into the corner, squeezing himself behind the toy buckets, curling himself into a tiny ball. He could see nothing but the smooth coloured plastic of the buckets. Red. Blue. Yellow. Green. He couldn’t see the void of darkness beyond; the darkness couldn’t find him.

Mummy and Daddy were arguing. He pressed his hands over his ears, could still hear them.

Mummy was shouting. Daddy was angry.

He wanted to curl up in Mummy’s arms, like he used to before Mummy got sad.

Quietly, he tugged Baby Isabel out of the dolls’ toy bucket, shrunk back into the corner, clutching her tight to his chest.

‘The boy is bad,’ he whispered into Baby Isabel’s ear. ‘The girl … the girl is good. The boy is bad.’

He felt for his torch. It was next to him. Having it there made him feel safer. He wanted to switch it on, but he was too frightened to move again.

‘The bad girl has got out of bed.’ His lips moved silently against Baby Isabel’s ear. ‘Stay in bed. Don’t get out. Bad girl.’

He breathed in – a deep, sucking breath – trying to make his heart stop drumming in his chest. The noise of his heart was too loud. Someone would hear. The darkness would hear. Shadowman would hear. Pressing his hand to his chest, he tried to hold his heart to stop it from thumping. He couldn’t. Jamming his eyes shut, he started to cry.

Daddy was shouting. Mummy was sobbing.

He had to switch his torch on, had to keep himself safe.

‘Go away, Shadowman,’ he whispered. ‘Go away, Shadowman, goway, Shadowman, goway, goway, goway.’ Chanting under his breath, clutching Baby Isabel tight with one hand, he swung the beam of his torch back and forth across the room with the other. ‘Stay in bed. Gowayshadowman, goway, goway, goway.’

Nineties bubble-gum music pumped from the doors as Jessie pushed them open. Britney Spears. Was she still knocking out tunes?

It was a typical Mc-bar in a side street in Aldershot, one that could be lifted and replanted in any small-town high street in England and look as if it belonged. Modern brushed gold fittings, pale wooden bar, mushroom-coloured walls, pairs of fat leather sofas for chilling arranged either side of low wooden coffee tables, booths heaving with twenty-somethings clutching alcopops and bottles of Becks, eyeing each other up.

Jessie pushed her way over to the bar and slid on to a stool, ordered herself a vodka and tonic. She had dressed with intent: wore a thigh-length red dress and nude stilettos, a slash of Ruby Tuesday lipstick and statement eyes. A jet-black curtain of hair hung almost to her waist. It was a tried-and-tested outfit, though one she rarely wore, dragged from the back of her wardrobe and dusted down when cleaning the house had failed to keep her demons at bay. She knew that she looked hot. Hot and available.

Crossing her legs, she spun the stool, tilted back against the bar and scanned the crowd. In less than a minute, she had locked eyes with a man standing near the door with a few of his mates. He looked a couple of years younger than her – twenty-six or -seven, perhaps. He wore a tight white long-sleeved T-shirt that hugged his abdominals and navy-blue jeans. He was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, good looking enough, with a nice smile. Nice enough. She didn’t intend to marry him.

Dropping her gaze, she twisted a lock of hair around her finger. Looking up, she found his gaze again. The corners of her mouth tilted in a tiny smile. She took another sip of her vodka and tonic, eyes locked with his, then twisted back to the bar.

Thirty seconds later, a voice in her ear. ‘Can I get you another?’

Turning, she laid a hand on his chest. ‘Why not.’

Jessie ran her hands up the man’s torso under his T-shirt, feeling the hard ridges of his abdominals, the muscles of his chest warm and solid under her fingers. He worked out three times a week, he had told her proudly. She could tell.

They had left the bar, walked down a side street to the car park at the back. The air was freezing, a light layer of frost coating the tarmac, silvery in the moonlight, the car park, unsurprisingly, deserted.

She could feel him, already hard, pressing against her thigh. Sliding her hand to the back of his neck, Jessie moulded her body to his and slid her tongue into his mouth. With her other hand, she found his belt buckle.

The rough brick sandpapered her back through her leather jacket as he shoved up inside her. She closed her eyes and her mind locked on to the feel of him, the rhythmic movement, the sensation. Nothing else mattered. Only the pure, uncomplicated, animal feeling. She bit her lip, felt heat building. For a second her mind filled with an image of Callan, looking at her across his desk, looking wrecked. Pushing the image away, she blanked her mind, focused only on the man, the feeling of him inside her. Closing her eyes, she clung to him as the orgasm came, tucking her face into the crook of his neck, drawing in his smell, feeling his warmth, the twin manic beats of their hearts.

For a brief, incredibly intense moment, she wished that she were in a normal relationship, could lie back now, feel strong arms around her as she drifted into sleep. Wake up to someone who gave a shit. Wished that she could make the commitment, gain that level of trust with another human being. Knew that it was impossible.

The man slid out of her, turned sideways to tuck himself back inside his trousers, zip himself up.

‘Can I see you again?’

Jessie smiled. She could feel his semen dribbling down her leg. ‘Sure.’

He leaned forward to kiss her, but she raised a hand to his chest, held him at arm’s length, T-shirt bunched teasingly in her fist
.
She was done.

‘Give me your number and I’ll text you mine.’ She pretended to key his number into her phone as he recited it. ‘Great.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll see you soon.’

He held her wrist. ‘This weekend? Dinner?’

‘That would be lovely.’ Twisting her wrist gently to free it, she touched her lips to his cheek. ‘I’ll call you.’

She didn’t look back as she walked away, her brain stilled from its obsessions, for the moment at least, by the hormonal surge. She knew that by the time she got home the hormones would have dissipated. Knew that she would step straight into a scalding shower, scrub his liquids from her skin feeling dirty and stupid, fighting the rush of negative emotion that would engulf her. Shame, loss, emptiness and guilt – always guilt.

You were with your boyfriend? Why weren’t you with him?

Every time it felt a bit shallower, sadder. Worked a little less.

You promised me you’d look after him. You
promised
me.

Darren. She knew the man’s name. Virtually nothing else about him.

He died because of you. Jamie died because of
you.

‘I’ve got netball practice after school.’

‘Can’t you miss it this once? I’m working late.’

Jessie shook her head, the lie sliding smoothly off her tongue. ‘It’s team selection. I need to be there.’

Her mum sighed, already on the edge of her patience, nerves frayed from digging two kids out of bed, getting them uniformed and fed, herself ready for work, all by 7.30 a.m. ‘I don’t like Jamie being alone in the house. He’s only seven.’

‘Ask Felix’s mum to drop him home. He can watch TV or play with his PlayStation. I’ll be back by five. He’ll only be on his own for half an hour.’ Jessie ran out of the house, not bothering to take her netball kit.

It was getting dark when she got home. The sun dipping below the pitched roofs of the sixties detached houses lining the end of their cul-de-sac. Someone’s music pounded from an open window, down the street, ‘YMCA’,
happy music.
She smiled. She had spent longer with Adam than she had planned, hanging out on the common and smoking, lying in the grass, fumbling and kissing, making plans. Her first boyfriend, the one. She was fourteen and sure of it. She glanced at her watch – it was nearly six thirty. Jamie had been alone for two hours.
Shit.
Her mum would kill her if she ever found out.

The light was on in the sitting room and upstairs in Jamie’s bedroom. She could see a lumpy shadow against the curtain in his room. She stood on the pavement frowning up at his window, then pushed the gate open. He must be playing some weird game, acting out a dumb scene from ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The front garden was a mass of yellow. Early spring daffodils, mixed with weeds, clogging the beds that lined the garden path, the pathway itself studded with moss, more weeds forcing their way up through the cracked concrete between the paving stones. Her mother no longer had the time to garden, something she used to love back when they were a proper family and she was a homemaker. Jessie remembered trailing her around the garden when she was four or five, Jamie not yet even thought of – aeons ago it felt now, lifetimes. They had planted these daffodils together. Happy flowers, her mum used to say.
Happy music. Happy flowers.

Her key twisted in the lock and she opened the front door. Silence.

‘Jamie?’ She stood in the hall and called up the stairs. ‘Jamie, it’s Jessie. I’m home.’

No reply. Only the sound of her pulse, slightly raised from the fast walk home, throbbing in the silence. She stepped into the lounge. The television was off, the PlayStation tucked on the shelf under the television stand, the wire coiled around the handset, far too tidy for Jamie to have done it himself. Jessie was surprised. Usually, any chance he got, he’d have it out, be playing, oblivious to anything else.

The kitchen was also empty and there was no sign that he had helped himself to a snack. Returning to the hallway, she kicked off her school shoes and called up the stairs again, louder.

‘Come down, Jamie. I’ll make you something to eat.’

Still no reply.

Odd.

He wasn’t playing music, so he could definitely hear her. She sighed, hands on hips.

‘
Jamie.
I
really
can’t be bothered to come up and get you.’

She felt anger rising. Anger mixed with tension. A fluttering in her stomach that made her feel slightly queasy. What kind of game was he playing?

She started up the stairs, moving slowly – unsure why – the soft carpet giving under her socked feet. On the landing, she stopped. All the doors were open save Jamie’s, but she could see light shining from the crack under his closed door. As she walked past her mother’s room, she caught sight of the unmade bed, pyjamas strewn on the floor, make-up, hairbrush, cleansers and face creams, scattered on top of the dressing table, abstract shapes framed in the twilight cutting through the window. Her mother: naturally orderly, but with so little time these days to do anything except lurch from one crisis to the next.

Jessie stopped outside Jamie’s bedroom door and panic gripped her without warning. Quite what she was afraid of, she didn’t know. Staring blankly ahead at the white-painted wood in front of her, she turned the handle.

As the door swung open, her gaze caught the poster on the wall above his bed, an Athena poster of a litter of chocolate Labrador puppies squashed into a wicker shopping basket. Too old to keep it, he’d said, but he hadn’t taken it down. The bed below, unmade – nothing strange in that – his school bag dumped beside it – so he
was
home – the tension in her stomach so acute she could taste bile in her mouth.

‘Jamie.’ Hearing the sob straining her vocal cords.

The door swung fully open. And she saw.

The blue Batman curtains first.

And then Jamie. Hanging by his neck from the curtain rail by his red-and-grey striped school tie.

Somewhere someone was screaming. A scream so raw that it could only mean pain. Jessie fought upwards towards it, through dense, hot layers of unconsciousness. The taste of vomit, rich and acid, filled her mouth. She was lying on the carpet, a part of her brain realized, head resting on the soft wool, the stain of vomit forming a halo around her head, clotted in her hair, damp and sticky against her cheek.

If she turned her head, just a fraction, opened her eyes, she would see him hanging there. She kept her eyes jammed shut, but the image filled the insides of her eyelids with microscopic detail. His face, puffy where the circulation had been cut off, purplish-blue around the lips. The chair from his desk overturned beneath him, the papers he mustn’t have bothered moving off the desk itself before he clambered on to it, scattered on the floor. The absolute gaping, yawing void of silence.

A car swished down the street, Westlife thumping from its speakers. Shoving herself to her feet, Jessie barrelled out of Jamie’s bedroom and into her mother’s.

Clutching the phone to her ear, she punched at the keys. Couldn’t see through the hot tears streaming from her eyes. 999. A dial tone. 9 … Sobbing now. 99 … Sobbing, choking, howling in utter desperation.