Soul Fire (2 page)

I’d lose the Beach, lose
everything
.

‘Later, Danny,’ I say. My voice sounds like a stranger’s, hoarse with dread.

The Guests are moving forward, packed together so tightly that we’re being pulled along with them.

Tim is dead. But how did he die?
Was he murdered too?

I watch him scrambling ashore, as though he’s climbing the summit of a mountain, rather than simply stepping out of the water onto the sand. He’s come a long way, so he must be
exhausted. My instinct is to run to him, hold him, help him ashore. Tell him everything will be all right.

But that would be a lie.

He’s blinking constantly, as though if he does it often enough, he’ll see something different.

Already the Beach has changed him. In real life, he barely noticed what he wore, sticking to jeans and t-shirt whatever the weather or the occasion. I remember him at Meggie’s first
outdoor gig, his face turning ice blue because he’d not realised everyone else was wrapped up for a winter’s night. He hadn’t even remembered his coat. His mind was always on
higher things.

Now he’s in ‘Beach uniform’ – surfer shorts, linen shirt in flame red – and even though it’s dripping wet, it makes him look like every other Guest here. He
never had those muscles in his arms before, and I don’t think I ever saw him clean-shaven, as he is now.

He’s a Guest. No doubt. A too beautiful version of his living self: transformed by death into a phoenix Tim, bearing no sign of how he died.

Danny takes my hand. ‘You’re frozen.’

‘It’s the shock of seeing Tim.’ Then I realise what I’ve said. Perhaps even speaking his name is a breach of the rules.

But Danny doesn’t disappear. He stares at me. ‘Tim? Meggie’s
boyfriend
?’

I nod. It must be safer than speaking.

‘Jeez, Alice.’ Danny shakes his head. ‘Does that mean . . . the person who killed Meggie might have killed Tim? Why is he here, else?’ Danny doesn’t have to be
careful what he says, because he won’t be banished from the Beach, even if he wanted to be. Paradise is forever.

Even as I nod, I realise there’s another, darker possible reason for Tim being here. Maybe he
did
smother my sister. And he’s here now because he couldn’t live with the
guilt . . .

‘Danny, we need to find Meggie before—’

But then I see her myself, three rows of Guests away from me. I shout out, but my voice is lost in the chatter as Tim finally makes it onto the shore.

Too late.

‘Tim?’ Her voice trembles as she pushes towards him. I try to reach her but too many Guests are in the way. They’re not moving. They’re too gripped by the drama.

‘
Tim,
’ Meggie whispers. It’s not a question anymore. He’s gawping backat her.

Meggie stops a couple of steps away from him. She’s shaking her head, but there’s something in the way she’s gazing at him that tells me nothing has changed for her, that she
still loves him.

The Beach holds its breath.

And then I hear knocking. It’s coming from such a long way away.

‘Alice?’ My father’s voice, his breaking-bad-news voice, the one I’ve heard too many times in the last few months.

Shit
. Not now.

Meggie takes another step towards Tim.

‘Alice, if you’re online again, I promise I won’t tell your mother. But I do need you to open the door
now
.’

I shut the laptop lid as gently as possible. ‘Dad? I’m not online. I’m asleep. It’s one in the morning.’

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I wouldn’t wake you if it wasn’t urgent. It’s just . . . we have a visitor. And he wants to talk to all of us together.’

The policeman is sitting at our dining-room table, his backside too big for the chair. Usually they send the family liaison woman. She knows us so well now that she always puts
the right number of sugars in Dad’s tea and offers Mum a tissue before she even begins to cry.

Either Mrs Family Liaison has got the night off, or the fat guy is here because the news is too serious for her to break.

I think about Tim, on the Beach.
Of course it’s serious.

We sit round the table as though we’re about to have Sunday lunch, even though the sky is midnight blue, and we’re all in our dressing gowns except for the policeman. He puts his
chubby fists together, and I half expect him to say grace.

Instead he says, ‘I’m afraid I have some shocking news.’ His breath condenses like smoke in the cold air.

Mum reaches for my hand and my dad’s. Perhaps she thinks that we’re safe, so long as we’re all together. She’s wrong.

‘Timothy Ashley was found dead tonight. Well, last night. A little over four hours ago.’

Mum’s hand flies to her mouth. Dad closes his eyes. And even though I knew already, the words are still shocking.

‘Suicide!’ my mother cries out. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Her eyes have a crazy glint, the one they always get when she’s thinking about Tim.

The policeman’s face doesn’t change. ‘At this stage we are awaiting the results of the post mortem examination.’

Dad shakes his head. ‘Come on. Surely you can give us more than that? We are . . . involved, after all.’

The policeman sighs. ‘The circumstances are that Mr Ashley’s flatmate,’ he checks his notes, ‘. . . Adrian Black, returned home last night just after nine o’clock,
and discovered the deceased’s body in the kitchen.’

Ade found him
.

‘How did he die?’ I ask.

The policeman looks at me for the first time. ‘He appears to have died from asphyxiation.’

That means suffocation.
Meggie was suffocated
. Someone held a pillow over her face until all her breath was gone.

‘Someone
smothered
Tim?’ Dad whispers.

The policeman shakes his head. ‘No. A plastic bag . . . It’s a method suicides sometimes use. He was slumped over the kitchen table. Alcohol was found alongside his body,
too.’

Acid fills my throat as I picture him drinking alone, then deciding he couldn’t face the world anymore.
She lit up my world . . . and now the world feels so dark without her.

It’s one of the last things he said to me.

‘And a note?’ Dad asks.

Dad’s question helps me focus. I need to know more before I go back to the Beach, before I talk to him. If it
was
Tim who killed Meggie and then himself, I am certain he’d
have left a note to explain what he did, and why. He’d know that he owed us that.

‘As I understand it, nothing in the nature of a note has been found.’

The Tim I know wouldn’t have left this unfinished. So any doubts I had about his guilt disappear, in an instant. I feel I can breathe again.

Until I remember: if he didn’t kill himself, someone must have killed
him
.

‘However, the circumstances do point strongly towards Mr Ashley having taken his own life,’ the officer says.

‘But you’re keeping an open mind? While you investigate?’ The policeman looks cross with me, almost. ‘The details have been passed to the coroner. It’s not our
remit anymore.’

‘You’ve already decided it’s not suspicious! Even though it’s possible he could have been killed by the same person that killed Meggie. Did you think of that?’

Mum stands up and puts her hands on my shoulders.

‘Alice, love, it’s over. I know you thought Tim was innocent, but you must see this changes things.’

Dad’s still thinking it through. ‘You understand why emotions are running high, officer. I know you can’t talk on the record, but does this effectively mean the inquiry into
Meggie’s murder will be closed?’

The policeman examines his neatly clipped fingernails. ‘Uh, I’d say that’s a fair assumption. We reached certain conclusions about Mr Ashley many months ago. This pretty much
confirms them. I’m sorry. This must all be very distressing.’

A flash of anger passes across Mum’s face and I think she’s about to launch into a rant: that
she
’s not sorry, that Tim deserves all he got. But then Dad squeezes her
hand and tears cascade down her face.

‘It’s over,’ she whispers, then she stares over my shoulder, as though she’s seen someone behind me. ‘Meggie. My darling. It’s over, at long last. You can
sleep soundly now, darling, wherever you are.’

My blood turns to ice. I’m ninety-nine per cent sure that Meggie’s killer is still on the loose.

But the one per cent doubt is enough to terrify me. If it’s
really
over, then my sister will be leaving the Beach, forever. Before sunrise.

Please,
no
. I’m not ready to lose her for a second time.

I need to get back online
now
.

‘I think I’ll go back to bed,’ I say. Mum kisses me on the forehead and Dad hugs me and I go into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water.

Dad walks into the hallway with the policeman, who is trying to whisper but can’t control his bossy, booming voice.

‘. . . obviously the work of a lunatic fringe, but I wanted to warn you, in case they try to get in touch with you or your family.’

‘And you’re certain this Burning Truths website is connected to Meggie’s case?’ Dad asks. ‘But there are hundreds of tribute sites, aren’t there? We
discovered that after she died.’

‘Yes, except this isn’t really a tribute site. This one focuses on trying to convince the world that Tim Ashley didn’t kill your daughter.’

‘What?’

Someone else believes he’s innocent!
It’s enough to make my heart stop pounding, to make the fear that Meggie’s gone disappear. This must mean I’m not the only
person who realises Tim’s death is not the end of the story.

‘One of our detectives found it by accident a fortnight ago. It’s a hysterical hotchpotch of wild statements with no evidence to back them up. We were pretty convinced that Tim was
behind it except it’s been updated tonight. Since . . .’

‘Since he was found dead?’

‘Exactly. So we think he must have had help from a friend.’

‘Didn’t he pretty much lose all his mates after the stuff in the papers?’

‘You’d be surprised, Mr Forster. The smarter the killer, the more able they are to manipulate people. Especially females. You might want to keep an eye on that daughter of yours.
They’re very vulnerable, teenage girls.’

As if my dad needs reminding of
that
after losing his eldest daughter.

I hear them say goodnight, and the front door opens, then closes. I peer into the hallway to see if the coast is clear for me to go upstairs. This Burning Truths website could change
everything.

But my father hasn’t moved. He’s leaning his head against the wall, as though he’s about to fall over.

And when I turn towards the kitchen window, I see Mum step through the patio doors, onto the decking. Something’s changed. It takes me a few seconds to realise what. It’s snowing.
Snow, in April. This has been the longest winter.

White flakes land on Mum’s hair as she reaches out to touch Meggie’s tree, a spindly olive we bought last autumn. In the moonlight it looks so fragile. I doubt it’ll survive
this snow.

As I watch, my father joins her. He’s standing close to Mum, but he doesn’t touch her. She was always so warm and affectionate before Meggie died, but now she often can’t bear
to be held.

I close my eyes, make a wish. We can’t go back in time, but I wish my parents could comfort each other, the way the Beach comforts me.

When I open my eyes again, my father is brushing snowflakes off Mum’s dressing gown sleeve. Mum looks up, then lets her body lean into his.

Despite the cold, watching them makes me feel a tiny bit warmer inside. If only I could join them.

But I
need
to be back on the Beach. I’m no longer terrified that Meggie’s gone, yet if anything, that makes it even more urgent.

Because if Meggie’s killer is still out there, and has murdered Tim too, then I cannot waste another second.

I wedge two cushions against the gap under my bedroom door so Mum won’t be able to see the glow from the computer. Lately, she’s been nagging me more and more about
how much time I spend online.

You’d think she’d be grateful that I’m at home, out of harm’s way. Not out
there
where Meggie and Tim’s killer could still be free . . .

For the first time, I realise the murderer could come after me. It’s like someone’s dropped an ice cube down my back. My fingers tremble as I type
Burning Truths
into my
browser.

I hesitate. If I’d never clicked on the invitation to Soul Beach, I’d have seen the world differently. I might even be beginning to get on with my ‘real’ life.

But then I’d never have found my sister.

I click through. The screen turns black, before red and yellow lick across the screen like a flame, revealing the site behind.

The lettering is the Goth kind they use on vampire books. The whole design is like a Halloween piss-take. Except this is not funny at all.

I’ve seen some strange things online since Meggie died. First, her Facebook page filled up overnight with badly spelled messages, and videos of people sobbing into their webcams as though
they’d known her personally.

When we closed her account down, fans moved to sickly tribute sites where virtual candles burned, and virtual angels with her face on them floated up to heaven.

But this is the strangest site yet.

I scroll down . . .

‘Oh, Tim.’

His picture fills the screen. Not a snatched newspaper shot, or the airbrushed version I just glimpsed on the Beach. This photo was taken in a park, and makes him look hopeful and normal and
bursting with, well, with
life
. His chestnut hair glows in the sunlight, and his hazel eyes look directly at the camera with no trace of guilt.