Killing You Softly (19 page)

‘So I told him.’

‘Are you happy to share?’

‘I went home. I’m a saddo, Alyssa – I went home before midnight and watched Jools Holland welcome in the new year on TV.’

‘No witnesses – that’s a pity. OK, why leave the party early?’

‘Saddo again. You want to know the truth? I was missing Scarlett. I didn’t want to be there without her.’

‘So why not leave your uncle’s and hotfoot it over to her?’

‘My Uncle Chris lives way out in the country, miles from anywhere. I’m on foot, I’ve got no spare cash for a taxi. By the time I reach civilization it’s way too late to
walk the extra distance into Ainslee. So I go home and veg out in front of the telly.’

‘And, anyway, I hear you’d had a fight?’

He frowned. ‘Yeah. She said I was a wuss for not standing up to Dad. She was so mad she said not to try calling or texting. We’d only been going out for a week. I didn’t know
what to do.’

‘Yeah, I get it. But listen, Hooper and I – it just so happens we found Will’s phone,’ I informed him then deliberately paused to let this sink in. I waited a long time
but all I got was the closed, dead look from Alex. ‘Don’t you want to know what was on it?’

‘A ton of messages from Scarlett,’ he muttered.

‘You knew she was texting him and he wasn’t texting back? Why did she need to see him – have you any idea?’

‘She told me he’d kept some stuff that belonged to her and she wanted it back.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

There was another long pause – enough time for me to turn round and see that Bolt was following us, tongue lolling, breath forming clouds of steam in the freezing air. Suddenly he was a
comedy dog, the bruiser bulldog from
Tom and Jerry,
wheezy and bandy-legged.

‘Some pictures.’

‘Pictures of them when they were going out?’ I had nasty flashes of ‘me’ in a red bikini, which I had to block in order to carry on with the conversation. ‘They
were personal?’

Alex nodded. ‘They belonged to Scarlett. Will should’ve deleted them.’

‘But he refused. That’s why she wanted to see him – to persuade him?’ Another lightning flash – this time of Alex and Scarlett sitting together in Starbucks at
lunchtime on New Year’s Eve.

Alex stands up and starts to yell.

‘At Scarlett?’ I ask waitress Lucy.

‘No,’ she says. ‘At another kid who came along.’ He says something that makes Alex jump up and swear.

‘What did he look like, this new kid?’

Lucy doesn’t get a good look at him, she doesn’t have any useful details except one.

‘Could you tell what colour his hair was?’ I ask.

‘Fair,’ Lucy says, frowning as she remembers. ‘Yeah, definitely blond.’

There you go – it was ages since I’d had the brief talk in Starbucks but, as you know, nothing fades. I mean – not a single thing. Tall kid wearing a big scarf and grey knitted
hat, blond.

‘So you bumped into Will by accident on New Year’s Eve?’ I prompted Alex. ‘You want to tell me what you said to him?’

‘Easy. I said, “Delete Scarlett’s photos, you bastard!” ’

‘And?’

‘He said sod off, he didn’t have them on his phone any more, the lying swine.’

‘OK, I get that too. Just one thing, Alex. When you and Will had the stand up argument, did he have a black eye – a bruise just here?’ I put my fingers across my right eye
socket.

‘No.’

‘No bruise – you’re sure?’

Alex stopped and turned back towards me. ‘Where are you going with this? Who cares about a sodding black eye?’

Will turns up at the start of term minus the Louis Vuitton luggage. He’s bulked up, blond and nervous when we talk about Scarlett. He has a bruise under his right eye.

I press him for information about the dead girl.

‘Quit that, Sherlock, while you’re ahead,’ he tells me.’

‘So he didn’t get it working out in the gym over Christmas like I thought,’ I mused as Jayden and the others came within earshot. ‘Jayden, you were there on New
Year’s Eve – do you happen to know how Will Harrison damaged his face?’

‘He walked into a door?’ was Jayden’s suggestion, like he couldn’t give a damn.

‘Did he get involved in a fight at the party?’

‘Not with me personally. Anyway, he didn’t hang around long enough.’

‘He left early?’

‘Come to think of it – yeah.’

‘Was he in a bad mood? Did he argue with anyone?’

‘What am I – his keeper?’ Jayden was about to go off on a typical one when he suddenly saw where I was going. ‘Yeah, he did. Nobody wants to hang out with him since he
left Ainslee Comp and his head grew to twice the normal size. All he was interested in at the party was avoiding Scarlett. He didn’t stay long – in fact, he was out of there before
midnight.’

‘And still no bruise?’ I checked.

‘He was well pissed but there was no facial damage,’ Ursula confirmed calmly before a sudden thought lit up her expression. ‘Hey maybe it was Will on the CCTV footage –
hassling Scarlett!’

‘It’s a definite possibility,’ I said quietly.

‘Sammy Beckett – he’s cool,’ Zara told Eugenie.

Jack and I had cycled home. He’d gone off for a Sunday session with his tennis coach and I’d gathered the girls in the sports-centre coffee bar.

‘Very cool,’ Charlie agreed.

Eugenie, who has my pale complexion, coloured up bright red.

‘Have you taken him home to Farfield Hall?’ BWS wanted to know. Rich girl takes poor boy home to meet her parents.

‘Ouch!’ Zara winced.

Eugenie flicked her hair back behind her shoulders and withered Connie with her scorn. ‘Your class prejudices are so twentieth century, Connie Coetzee. And, sure, my parents have met Sammy
and they like him.’

We all backed Eugenie and disagreed with Connie, making up our minds that Sammy (who incidentally is cool because, though he may be a statistic-obsessed nerd, actually looks like a young Johnny
Depp with that honed, exaggerated jaw line and those big, dark-lashed eyes) was in the clear.

Down below on the indoor tennis court, Jack’s coach fired balls from a machine and Jack returned them at a hundred miles per hour.

‘So what did Ripley say about the video footage?’ Completely unfazed, Connie pushed us forward to another burning topic.

‘Ripley hasn’t come back to me yet,’ I replied. ‘It’s only twelve hours since I gave it to her. The techies will do their thing and try to trace where it came from.
Today’s Sunday, so maybe not until tomorrow. Anyway, I expect the guy’s an IT geek who’s clever enough to block that info, even from police experts.’

Jack’s coach called him to the net and the machine tried to lob him. Jack jumped and smashed, sprinted and retrieved from the base line. I stood up for a closer look.

‘Any more nasty messages?’ Zara enquired. She was with me, leaning on the rail, looking down at the court.

Catch me quick, memory girl. It’s going to get worse, one hundred per cent guaranteed. Killing you softly.

‘Nasty doesn’t cover it,’ I muttered.

‘Surreal?’ Zara suggested.

‘Yes – like we’re playing a game where no one tells me the rules or the score.’ I stared down at Jack executing a perfect forehand drive. ‘The thing is, I’m
beginning to realize now that if I lose Galina could die.’

Zara sidled close. ‘I’m sorry, Alyssa. I guess there’s nothing I can do?’

I shook my head and felt the urge to cry that you get when someone is being especially nice.

Jack picked up balls from the corner of the court, glanced up and flashed me one of his bright smiles.

Thank you, thank you! I smiled back down.

‘You want my advice?’ Zara said. ‘You probably won’t take it but I could give it anyway.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Deep breath, Alyssa. Are you OK? You’re sure you’re not going to cry on me?’

‘No.’

‘So this is what I would do if I were you. I’d step right back from this crappy situation. Hand over everything you know to the police, stay out of it from now on and let them do
their job.’

‘I can’t,’ I sighed.

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve already said – he’s got Galina. He could kill her if I don’t work out a way to stop him. How do I step away from that?’

‘But think about it, Alyssa. This really isn’t down to you. You’re getting dragged in, and it’s probably too dangerous for you to deal with.’

Leaning on the rail, I closed my eyes.

‘You’re sure you’re OK?’

‘Yeah, just dizzy.’

‘So I’ll quit talking. But remember, we’re here for you – me, Eugenie, Connie, Charlie – whenever you need us.’

I took the deep breaths and choked back the tears. ‘Thanks. That means a lot.’

‘And guess what,’ Zara rattled on. ‘I’ve decided to switch from physics to neuroscience in my UCAS applications. I’m more and more fascinated by how this stalker
guy’s brain works. It’s turned me on to neuroscience – trying to understand the brain of a psycho. I’ve started to read about temporal lobes and synapses. It’s
incredibly complicated.’

‘I think you’ll be brilliant at it,’ I told her. Then we hugged and I felt a whole lot better.

In your experience, how would you expect an exiled Russian oligarch to look? Here’s how I see it. He’d have no hair to speak of and a thick neck, giving him a
bullet-headed look, and his grey eyes would be cold and hard. His suit would be hand tailored to cover a thickening waistline. He would ride horses bare chested and go fishing in a raging river
like Putin and he would attend film premieres with a trophy wife at his side.

In fact, Anatoly Radkin had the suit and the wife, but a head of thick, dark hair, no paunch and eyes full of concern when Molly called me to meet him in her office on Sunday afternoon.

‘This is Alyssa Stephens. She’s Galina’s roommate,’ Molly told him.

Anatoly shook my hand. ‘You were the last person to see my daughter before she vanished.’

I nodded and stole a glance at Salomea’s face as she stood quietly by the long window overlooking the lawns. Her expression was tight and guarded.

‘How did she seem?’ he asked.

‘Excited. She said she was going to meet someone special, that she would tell me about him later.’

‘She hadn’t told anyone else?’

‘I don’t think so. I got the impression it was a big secret and she planned to slip off to meet him without Mikhail or Sergei finding out.’

Anatoly blinked away the two names without comment. ‘I’m sorry to ask you so many questions, Alyssa. You have told this to the police and I’m sure that soon they will actively
question everyone here at St Jude’s, but you understand I’m impatient because I’m very afraid for my daughter. I need to know from you everything that happened on Friday
night.’

‘It’s OK. I’ll do all I can to help.’

‘And the video footage – you were the one who handed it over to the police?’

‘Yes. At first I was totally shocked. Then I started to think it through. It’s all cut up into quick, two or three second segments. When the kidnapper first filmed her walking down
the drive it was from behind, so that probably means he followed her out of the quad where the boys’ and girls’ dorms are. Maybe he watched her from one of the boys’ rooms and
left just after she did.’

Galina’s father listened closely and calmly, considering the circumstances. I got the impression that he agreed with what I’d just said.

‘The second segment is filmed as she moves towards him, which must mean he’d taken a short cut and got to their prearranged meeting place before her.’

‘Or else he’d kept her waiting,’ Molly suggested. ‘She could have sat for a while – in someone’s house, in the cafe in the village.’

I disagreed. ‘Inspector Ripley will have checked that out – it’d be the first thing she’d do. As far as I know, no one saw Galina in Chartsey Bottom on Friday night.
Besides, the video shows them meeting out in the open, in the dark – there were no street lights.’

‘OK, so he took a short cut and overtook her,’ Anatoly decided. ‘He’s ready to film her as she arrives.’

‘And she knew him because she was smiling.’ I was totally clear about this. She knew her attacker/abductor/potential killer. That was the most chilling thing – Galina’s
smile of anticipation, lips parted, eyes sparkling as she approached.

‘No street lights?’ Anatoly repeated.

‘No. There were trees behind her, but there was nothing else – no landmark that would help to identify the place.’

‘What kind of trees?’

‘Oaks. There are lots of those around here, everywhere you look. It was only a couple of seconds before that segment ended then the video cut to a close-up of Galina’s face without
any background detail, and that’s when suddenly she wasn’t smiling.’

I stopped, unable to go on until Anatoly pushed me.

‘It helps me to know this,’ he insisted. ‘If you could continue, please.’

Catch me if you can.

Galina is in school uniform, she’s eager to meet her abductor, she risks meeting him late at night, in the middle of the countryside. She smiles at him. Cut.

Her lips stop smiling, her eyes widen and her pupils dilate. That’s when she opens her mouth to scream.

What has changed? Has he said something to her? Is it something he’s done? What makes her change from delight to terror as the camera comes close and her features dissolve into a blur?
Does he produce a knife or a gun as he reaches her? Does he put a hand to her neck to throttle her?

She’s backing off, screaming, pleading.

Cut to the final sequence. Galina lies curled up in foetal position on the back seat of a car. The car has fancily stitched cream leather seats, which means it’s high spec.
Galina’s mouth is taped with silver duct tape. Her hands are tied behind her back with cable from a phone charger (her own, presumably) cutting into her wrists. Her eyelashes and cheeks are
wet with tears, her nostrils flared. She looks up and sideways at her ‘someone special’, who must be leaning into the back of the car to film her. She is betrayed, afraid for her life,
desperate. Cut.