Path of Needles (25 page)

‘Sarah.’ Her mother stepped forward and put a hand on the girl’s arm. ‘Sarah, don’t.’

‘He looked like he fucking
hated
me.’

Cate absorbed the words, waiting. She knew there was more.

‘He liked me before, I knew it,’ Sarah wailed. ‘I gave him a book, see. I gave it him and he took it, and it
meant
something, I knew it did. But this time it was like he didn’t even
know
me. I tried to make him – I wanted to talk, but he—’ Her words dissolved into a gulping sob. She rubbed at her face, and when she lowered her hands her cheeks were streaked, her eyelashes standing out from her skin in wet points.

‘Did he touch you?’ her mother said at last. ‘If he touched you, I – I’ll – Sarah, I’ll
kill
him.’

The girl sniffed, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. She shook her head. ‘He led me on. He took my present, didn’t he? I thought he
liked
me.’ She started to cry again, loud and gasping.

I thought he liked me
. The same words she’d said before, right at the start of it all.

‘So what did he do, Sarah? Did he ask you to leave?’

Slowly, the girl nodded.

Cate sighed. But he had been there, the teacher had been there and he had lied, had said nothing about seeing this girl after the dance, this
child
.

But then, wouldn’t anybody have done the same?

‘You were there,’ she said under her breath, ‘the two of you. And you didn’t like Chrissie Farrell, did you, Sarah? Did you see anything of her? Did you—’

She didn’t see the mother move, only heard the air hissing between her teeth; then she was standing in front of Cate, her face contorted. ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘It’s time you went, right now.’

‘All right, Mrs Brailsford. I apologise. But a girl is dead, and I have to—’

‘It’s all
right
, Mum,’ said Sarah. ‘You have to stop being so— I can do this. Look, he didn’t do anything. Is that what you want to know? And I went off on one. I said he shouldn’t have taken my book. I said he shouldn’t have led me on. And he kept saying he didn’t mean to and he didn’t know and he didn’t want this, and that I should go home. And then after a bit I called the cab. I had to wait, and he waited too until it came. He didn’t even speak to me, then – he just sat there staring into space. And then I went, and then, I suppose, so did he. That was it, all right? Is that it?’ She looked from Cate to her mother. ‘Can I go now?’

‘There is just one more question,’ said Cate, ‘if it’s all right with your mother. I just wanted to know – the gift you gave him. What was it about, Sarah? What was the name of the book?’

She sniffed, looked away.

‘Were you studying folklore with him, Sarah? Was it something about that?’

She frowned, shook her head. ‘Shakespeare,’ she said. ‘He was doing Shakespeare. I gave him a copy of
Romeo and Juliet
.’ She glared at Cate. ‘He shouldn’t have taken it. He knew what it meant. He knew it as well as anybody.’ She looked from Cate to her parent. ‘He shouldn’t have taken it if he didn’t mean it, should he?’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Cate frowned. A word was circling in her head, but it wasn’t one she liked.
Vanity
, Len Stockdale had said.
Vanity
. And now they were on their way, the word wouldn’t leave her. Was that what this had been about, all the time? A man so charming that a schoolgirl hadn’t been able to keep her crush under control; one whom even Mrs Farrell, attending a dance for her child – her daughter’s night – had become so distracted by she’d even uttered the same words.

I thought he liked me.

Now Cate was going to see him at last, along with Dan: they had permission to do so from Heath himself. And all she could think about was this – would she
know
, after all? Would she look into his eyes and be charmed as the others had been, or would she see a killer there, looking out at her from behind a lovely mask?

‘Penny for them,’ Dan said, glancing at her.

‘I think he lied,’ said Cate. ‘I think maybe they both
did. Chrissie was there, she had to be. I don’t think the girl was involved – I just can’t see it – but I think maybe Chrissie saw them fighting, was jealous herself. Maybe she went to talk to Cosgrove afterwards; maybe he snapped, lashed out. The posing of the body – all that could just have been a blind. He wanted to make it look like a stranger killing, like some headcase …’

Dan gave a low whistle. ‘I think you need to slow down.’

Cate subsided. She knew Stocky would have said the same thing.

‘There isn’t anything to show they even spoke that night. We need to work with the evidence, probe his relationship with Sarah, why he lied about seeing her. That’s all we have, Cate, and let’s face it: it’s understandable under the circumstances, if you think about how it would have looked.’

She fell silent. Of course he was right. And there was nothing to connect the teacher with Teresa King or Ellen Robertson. But Chrissie had been the starting point, hadn’t she? The beginning of it all.

Her eyes narrowed. Matt Cosgrove had been accused of having a relationship with Chrissie Farrell that went beyond school, and now there was this Sarah, with whom he might also have overstepped the boundaries by accepting her gift. Had he been doing other things too – out looking for casual sex, kerb-crawling even? If so he might have come across Teresa King. There had been nothing on his record to suggest he’d done such a thing,
but that would only be the case if he’d been caught. Cate bit her lip. They should speak to his wife, see if she’d harboured any suspicions before any of this began.

But this latest victim – Ellen Robertson. She had moved to the area only a couple of months ago, hadn’t yet had any children to connect her with the school, and she lived several miles away. It wasn’t likely they would have met.

But had they?

She pinched the bridge of her nose. If it
had
been the teacher and he’d fought with Chrissie, he would have panicked afterwards. The first scene had been posed, but aspects of it weren’t quite right, not in terms of the fairy story – the colour of her dress, even the choice of dump site. It hadn’t been quite organised enough. Maybe he’d set it up in haste. And after that, when he became a suspect, he needed to take the heat off. Teresa King might have been unlucky, that was all; he’d needed to make it look like there was a pattern, a serial killer, and had picked her at random to use as a prop. He might even have used an accomplice to do it, made sure the police had eyes on him at the time.

But –
torture
her? Her fingernails had been pulled out. That was a sign of cruelty, not randomness. And someone had bled her before her death, taking the blood to send back to her mother. It was odd too that Teresa King’s nearest relative had been a grandmother – almost as if someone had been watching her, making sure she fitted the story.

It was too late to wonder. Cate looked up to find Dan pulling in at the kerb on a long, ordinary street lined with boxy semi-detached properties. He let the car roll forward so that Cate could open her door without striking one of the trees planted along the pavement and pointed towards a plain house with blinds half drawn across every window.

‘This is it,’ he said.

*

Cate couldn’t take her eyes from Matt Cosgrove’s face. She knew she was staring from the way he kept glancing at her, shifting his feet as if he could evade her look.

‘So tell us again what happened when you were locking up,’ Dan said. ‘We know that Sarah was there as well as Hayley. We want to hear your version of events.’

Cosgrove shifted his gaze to Dan. His eyes looked empty. When he spoke, his voice was distant. ‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you,’ he said. He sounded tired; beyond tired. ‘My solicitor would go mad.’

Cate could hear his wife pacing in the next room; she’d said she would put the kettle on but there was no hiss of boiling water, only the sound of her footsteps, back and forth.

‘If you haven’t done anything wrong, there isn’t anything to worry about,’ Dan said.

‘That’s what you folk keep saying.’ Cosgrove pressed his mouth closed. There were flecks of dried spittle at the corner of his lips and it made him appear vulnerable. His
cheeks were hollowed out, grey. He didn’t look like a man who would inspire women to throw themselves at his feet. He didn’t look like a man anyone would find attractive. His hair had been cut short; unevenly, as if he’d done it himself. There was a livid shaving cut on his neck, as if he’d been picking at it.

He didn’t look how Cate had expected. He gave the impression of being hollowed out on the inside too, as if he had nothing left, as if there was nothing he even cared about any longer.

Prince Charming
, she thought. Was that who she’d expected to find? If so, this wasn’t it. This was no fairytale hero, not a teacher whose pupils would have admired and giggled and preened over him, tottering to see him on high-heeled shoes. She heard Stocky’s voice somewhere in the back of her mind:
vanity
. She shook the thought away and forced herself to concentrate.

‘I did see her,’ he said. ‘Hayley Moorhouse had gone, and I’d – I don’t know, I was locking up, trying to set the alarm. It wouldn’t work. That part was true.’ His voice went distant. ‘I – I remember standing there for a bit, at the door. It was a nice night. I was – I was distracted, I think. But then the alarm wouldn’t work and I turned around and
she
was there.’

‘Sarah?’ asked Dan.

Cosgrove nodded. ‘She was there, and I knew – I knew what she wanted.’ He drew a deep sigh. ‘Look, I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t touch the girl. I tried to get rid
of her, but she wouldn’t let it go. She thought I had a thing for her; I don’t know why.’

His voice went quiet and Cate thought of his wife, in the next room. Her footsteps had fallen quiet too.

‘I argued and then she called a taxi and she left, and I just sat there for a bit. Then I left too,’ he said. ‘Look, I didn’t tell you: I admit that. But then what happened to Chrissie had happened, and people were saying things – I know what they said.’ He looked up, and this time a light burned in his eyes. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘The girls – they used to talk about me, that’s all. I used to think it was funny. Now I know it’s not.’ He put a hand to his head as if to run it through his hair and scraped at his scalp instead. Cate heard it rasping.

‘And you didn’t see Chrissie Farrell?’

‘I didn’t see Chrissie Farrell.’

‘She gave you a gift,’ Cate blurted. ‘Sarah, I mean. She said she gave you something and you took it. Why did you accept it?’

He just looked at her, unblinking; then the door to the kitchen opened and his wife was there, her hair greasy as Cate had last seen it, but this time she wasn’t avoiding anyone’s gaze; her eyes were full of a cold anger. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said. ‘I’ll
show
you.’

She stormed from the room and Cate heard her pounding up the stairs and crossing the landing. A short while later she was back. She carried a book and she thrust it towards Cate. It had a young girl on the front, a white,
old-fashioned dress contrasting with her dark hair. Cate took it. She almost expected it to be a book of fairy tales after all, but no: it was
Romeo and Juliet
.

‘Look at what she wrote,’ Mrs Cosgrove said. ‘Just look at it. He didn’t even know. She said she found it, didn’t she? She said it was so he could put it in the school library. He had no idea what she’d put.’

Cate flipped open the cover of the book. On the first page, in purple ink, someone had written
See you in class. xxx
. Next to it, in swirling lines, was drawn a heart.

‘That’s not all.’ Mrs Cosgrove jabbed a finger towards the book. ‘Show her, love.’

Mr Cosgrove slowly stirred himself, as if he had fallen into a torpor. He stepped forward, gently took the book from her. He flipped through it until, over his shoulder, she caught a flash of pink: he pressed down on the page and held it out.

There, on the thin paper, someone had struck through the lines with bright ink. No, not ink: with a highlighter. Cate read the words:

This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

‘You see?’ Mrs Cosgrove said. ‘This is what you don’t realise, what you’ve done to him: what
she
did to him. You made everybody think he’s some kind of villain. You even made
me
doubt him.’ She paused; her eyes filled with tears. ‘This
is the truth of it. Are you happy now? Can you see what you’ve done?’ She paused. ‘
He’s
the victim in this too.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

There was birdsong somewhere outside. Alice could hear it through the window, although she couldn’t see the blue bird anywhere. Still the singing went on, and she thought she recognised it. She couldn’t seem to get the words from its tale out of her mind:

Blue Bird, blue as the sky,

Fly to me now, there’s nobody by.

She grabbed her jacket, opened the door and headed outside.

The trees were wide-spaced and silent as Alice walked from the house, following the sound of birdsong. When she looked up she saw scraps of blue sky between the leaves; impossible to tell if the bird was flying among them. She knew it was there, though, from the shrill
chrr-chrr-chrr
it made. It felt so long ago that she’d first heard it; the sound that had heralded the springtime – and this
whole chain of events. She could almost blame the bird for beginning it all, for changing her from a bystander to a witness to a suspect.
No, not that
. But wasn’t that what she’d seen in Cate’s eyes, heard in her voice? She pushed the thought away and then the blue bird was there, a flash of bright feathers in the highest branches.