The Facts of Life and Death (16 page)

Shirley turned to him so suddenly that he flinched. ‘Did you order the hotel brochures?’

‘Yes,’ said Calvin. He’d started saying yes before he’d properly processed any question. It was safer that way. There was a list of hotels that Shirley and her mother wanted to hire for the reception. It was his job to order the brochures and price lists. He hadn’t done it yet, but there was plenty of time.

‘Thanks, Pookie!’

Pookie was her affectionate name for him. He didn’t know why.

Jeremy Kyle’s audience booed. ‘I knew it!’ said Shirley. ‘I can always tell when they’re lying.’

She leaned against his arm, which was often a sign that she was open to offers, and they were on the leather couch too …

But Calvin wasn’t in the mood.

There was a killer on the loose. Not the one-off, fumbling, accidental killer they’d all hoped for, but a killer who had started small and was escalating, and whose trajectory could be charted and predicted along psychological
x
and
y
axes.

Ever rising.

The school was abuzz with murder.

Miss Sharpe was a little appalled to discover that a class of ten-year-olds were quicker to lurid speculation than a tabloid journalist. Wide-eyed children told each other the story of Jody Reeves, even though they all knew it already and almost none of it was true. Then they told it again a different way – to even greater effect.

Their diaries testified that several of them had heard screams in the dead of night. Shawn Loosemore had patrolled with a torch and a pellet gun.
Its for rabbits
, he wrote,
but it would blow a hole in your face if you put it rite up close.
Craig Hunter had hitched a ride home with
a weerd man with half a beerd
, Essie Littlejohn said she’d found the dead woman’s shoes in a hedge, and even Ruby Trick had entered the fray …

If she was hichiking then she was just asking for it.

It was straight out of the Dave Marshall school of sexual liberation.

Even in the staffroom, the teachers crowded around Melanie Franklin, whose husband was Jody Reeves’ cousin. From her they gleaned every possible detail about the deathly phone call – using tea and digestive biscuits as sly leverage – while Dave Marshall himself stood on the fringes and said loud, pointless things like ‘I know what
I
’d do to the bastard,’ and ‘Just give me five minutes alone in a room with him,’ which guaranteed a no-risk return on his empty machismo.

Miss Sharpe would love to have granted Marshall his wish of five minutes alone in a room with a serial killer. She believed she could have sold tickets.

She sighed and turned to the window to watch the children at play. In the tarmac yard beyond the staffroom window, games of tag and football and hopscotch were in full flow. Kids bickered and laughed, and a black and white ball rang against the brick-wall goal. Ruby Trick’s red hair drew her eye. She was alone, as usual, but as Miss Sharpe watched her crouch on the tarmac to re-draw the blue chalk squares melting in the drizzle, her reflection relaxed into a more familiar smile.

She had done the same thing when she was that age. In identical long white socks.

Things changed, but things stayed the same.

Feeling encouraged, her eyes drifted across the playground. She became aware of a pattern emerging in a group of children near the school gate. It was mostly 5B, she noticed – all playing some rough game of pushing and pulling and running away screaming, then back in, laughing. A boy would grab a shrieking girl around the neck and hold her, while the others scattered. Then one of them would speak urgently with their fist at their ear, then the others would rush in, release the girl from the boy’s grip and wrestle him roughly to the ground with his hands behind his back.

Then the whole thing would start again.

For a moment Miss Sharpe just stood there, trying to make sense of it. Then gooseflesh skittered up her arms as she realized that they were playing murder.

She put down her mug with a sloppy bang and elbowed her way past the ghouls. She stormed out of the staffroom, down the short corridor and out into the rain.

The playground air was filled with the shrieks and chatter of a giant aviary, and although Miss Sharpe shouted ‘Stop!’ three times, she was almost on top of the children before they looked up. Connor quickly dropped his arm from around Essie’s neck and the giggling child hitched her coat back into place.

Miss Sharpe was shaking. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. ‘What are you playing?’

Nobody answered. Her eyes drilled into them one by one. ‘This game is
sick.
Do you understand?’

Their faces said they sort of did, sort of didn’t.

‘Two young women are dead,’ she snapped at them. ‘And that’s not something you laugh about in a playground and tell lies about in your diaries! It’s something very, very serious!’

Connor laughed and then stopped. The other children stood and looked uneasy and didn’t make eye contact. Essie and Amanda Fitch started to cry.
Good
, thought Miss Sharpe.
Teacher’s pets, the pair of them, and not used to being yelled at.

‘If I see
anyone
playing this game again, you’ll be coming to Miss Bryant’s office with me. The whole lot of you. And your parents will get a letter. Do you understand?’

Rose Featherstone, who was on playground duty, wandered over and said, ‘What’s going on here then?’

‘Nothing,’ said Miss Sharpe, and brushed past her to walk briskly back inside. As she did, she felt tears start to spill from her eyes. She’d been wrong: things
did
change; they got worse. And there
was
no innocence. Not any more.

‘All right?’ said Dave Marshall as she passed the staffroom doorway.

‘Fine,’ she said curtly, then shut herself in the staff toilet and cried until the bell rang for the end of break.

Little children playing murder.

Ruby Trick’s well out of it
, she thought.

Nanna and Granpa came round with a copy of the paper and a bunch of bananas for Ruby, as if she were a pet chimp.

‘What do you say, Ruby?’ said Mummy.

‘Thank you, Nanna and Granpa,’ said Ruby, appalled.

‘Full of potassium,’ said Nanna to Mummy. ‘And at least it’s
good
sugar. She’s still a bit tubby, isn’t she?’

She said it right in front of her! Like she was deaf or something. Ruby hated Nanna, with her high voice and her chicken neck and her poppy eyes. She was glad Mummy always said
No, thanks
when Nanna and Granpa offered to take care of Ruby on the nights Daddy was out and she had to work – even if it
did
mean she was alone.

‘It’s puppy fat,’ said Mummy. ‘She’ll grow out of it.’

Nanna made very high eyebrows, then she shook the paper at Mummy. ‘Did you see about this other poor girl?’

‘Yes,’ said Mummy, glancing at Ruby.

‘He made her call her mother while he did it!’

‘Ruby,’ said Mummy, ‘go and put the bananas in the bowl in the kitchen.’

Ruby knew Mummy didn’t want her to hear about the murder, but she knew anyway, because of school and Mr Preece’s headlines. It was scary, but it was exciting too.

Ruby went through to the kitchen and put the bananas in the fruit bowl. The bowl was always full of keys and old pens and shrivelled-up apples, and the bananas looked too bright in there.

‘You want me to cut one of those up for you?’ said Granpa behind her.

‘No, thank you,’ said Ruby.

‘You sure, maid? Chopped-up banana with a little bit of cream on it?’

That didn’t sound much better. A banana was a banana. But Ruby pretended to think about it for a while so as not to hurt Granpa’s feelings.

‘No thanks, Granpa.’

He winked at her and lowered his voice. ‘I know. Bananas. Ugh.’

Ruby laughed.

‘But they’re full of potassium,’ he said in a high whisper with an exaggerated shrug.

He was being Nanna. It was pretty funny.

Then he said, ‘Is there any cake?’

‘No,’ said Ruby wistfully. She looked at the door to make sure nobody could hear them. ‘But there
are
biscuits.’

‘Good,’ said Granpa. ‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know. Mummy hides them.’

‘Your Mummy can’t hide anything from me.’ He winked.

They looked through all the cupboards together. He even looked in the pedal bin, which made her giggle.

‘What about on top of the cupboards?’ he said, stepping back to see.

‘Maybe.’

‘You want to see what’s up there, maid?’

‘OK,’ she said and reached for a kitchen chair, but Granpa said, ‘Don’t bother with that—’ and picked her up under the arms.

‘No!’ Ruby hadn’t been picked up for years and she didn’t like it. She stiffened and Granpa’s fingers dug into her armpits, and Granpa regretted it too, because he muttered
‘Jesus!
’ and almost dropped her before plonking her down on the kitchen counter with a huge puff of air from his red cheeks.

‘I’m not as young as I was,’ he chuckled, but his whole head had gone so red that Ruby could see it through his ginger hair. She went red too, at the embarrassment of nearly killing Granpa from being fat. But it was his own fault; she
told
him not to pick her up.

He stood for a moment, getting his breath back, and Ruby checked the doorway to make sure nobody had heard them. While they were quiet Ruby could hear Nanna, still talking about the dead girls.

‘What that poor woman must be going through. Not being there when her daughter needed her most…’

‘Get up there then,’ Granpa said, and Ruby got to her knees and then her sock-clad feet on the counter so she could feel along the top of the cabinets. Granpa put both his hands on her bottom in case she fell.

‘Careful now, baby girl,’ he whispered as she shuffled along. He gripped her a bit tighter to hold her steady.

‘There’s nothing up he—’

‘
What are you doing?’

They both jumped and Ruby nearly fell off with fright. Mummy was in the doorway.

‘Nothing,’ said Granpa.

‘Granpa wanted a biscuit,’ said Ruby.

‘Get
down
from there.’ Mummy came over, took her hand roughly and made her clamber down quickly on to the floor.

Nanna tutted and said, ‘The last thing she needs is biscuits.’

‘Just
leave
it will you, Mum!’ said Mummy, and Ruby knew it was serious. Her face was all tight and her lips had gone white. About
biscuits
!

‘Go to your room,’ she said.

‘What did I do?’ said Ruby.

‘I said go to your
room! Now
!’

‘It’s not fair,’ said Ruby. ‘I only—’

‘NOW!’

Ruby made as much noise as she possibly could going upstairs to show everyone it wasn’t fair. Then she got out last week’s
Pony & Rider
and flicked through it angrily.

Nanna and Granpa left soon afterwards, and she heard their big fancy car start up on the cobbles and drive slowly up the road. Their car was red and in the boot there was a carpet that was nicer than the one she had in her room. In the
boot.

She listened to Mummy clearing up downstairs and then the creaking of the wooden steps. If Mummy was still cross with her she was going to be rude. She was going to tell her it was all
their
fault. Nanna with her stupid bananas and Granpa wanting a biscuit.

But instead Mummy came into her room with a glass of milk and a custard cream and said, ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you, Rubes.’

It took all the angry wind out of Ruby’s sails and she said, ‘OK.’

Mummy sighed. ‘Nanna really winds me up sometimes.’

‘I know,’ said Ruby. ‘She winds me up too.’ She put down her magazine and nibbled the end of the biscuit.

Mummy smiled and touched Lucky on the head.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘Adam gave him to me. His name’s Lucky.’

Mummy picked Lucky up carefully and touched the lettering on the sledge. ‘I thought Granpa might have given it to you. You know, as it comes from Clovelly.’

‘No,’ said Ruby. ‘Adam walked all the way there and all the way back and it rained the whole time.’