Hide and Seek, page 8
“Gilly did?”
Abigail nodded. “The diary didn’t say who and she wouldn’t tell. But, you know, rumors were flying.”
Sent on their way by Abigail and her friends, I had no doubt. I certainly hadn’t heard about it, but then they didn’t really talk to me. “So who was it? Not Max Thurston?”
“No, not him.” Abigail grinned triumphantly. “That was the whole point. They were going out—which no one knew, by the way. When he heard about it, he broke up with her. I mean, he went completely crazy. He told her she’d humiliated him. She tried to apologize, but he wouldn’t even speak to her. She had a black eye and everything.”
“Did he hit her?”
“Yep.” But then she added, “At least, that’s what I heard. She was off school for a few days until it healed so I didn’t actually see it.”
And neither had I.
“What else did you hear?”
“Well, you know she and Nessa Mullen were best, best friends? Nessa wasn’t talking to her, either.”
“Why was that?”
Abigail shook her head. “Neither of them would say. I asked. Gilly just told me to get lost.”
Good for her. “Was this at the party?”
“Yeah. It seemed like a good opportunity to find out what was going on.” Abigail smoothed her hair again, a giveaway that she felt guilty about the next bit. I was willing to bet the next thing out of her mouth was going to be a lie. “So we asked her about it. It was totally her choice to tell us. We didn’t make her talk or anything.”
I could imagine how they’d done it—friendly at first, then more insistent. What did you do? Why aren’t you talking? Did you really do it at school? Who was it? Why did you cheat on Max? Do you love him? Why not? Do you love the guy you screwed at school? Why not? Are you just a slut? Tell us the truth, Gilly. Tell us everything. We’re your friends. Trust us, because if you don’t, we can break you …
She’d talked, of course. Not much, but she’d had to give them something. She had no way out. And then I’d blundered in, along with everyone else in the world. Gilly had been trapped, and it had tipped her over the edge.
“What did she tell you?” I asked Abigail. “Before I came in?”
“Just that she had done something at school but we’d never guess who it was with.” Abigail looked bored. “We tried, obviously. But she said we were way off.”
“Who did you suggest?”
“Um, everyone? Every single guy in our year, the year above and the year below.” Abigail began listing names, counting them off on her fingers, and it was true: she had been thorough. I was dazed by the sheer number she could remember. It was a feat of memory that would probably have surprised her teachers too. Abigail was known to be impervious to knowledge of all kinds, which was another way of saying she was spectacularly dense. Eventually she wound down. “Unless she was cradle-snatching and it was someone further down the school, I think we covered everyone.”
I nodded. “Well, I’ll be sure to pass on what you’ve told me to Inspector Henderson. He might still want to talk to you himself.”
She opened her mouth to complain, but I hurried to reassure her that it was unlikely. “He’ll probably be able to leave you alone because you’ve been so forthcoming and honest.”
“Thanks so much for this.” Abigail reached across the table and patted my hand. “I’ll never forget it. I completely owe you one.”
I twisted my face into something like a smile and watched her wiggle away. Darcy skidded across the café and plumped down in the seat she’d vacated.
“Well, that looked like fun. What did she tell you?”
“More than she realized.”
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head at Darcy, and laughed when she sulked, but my mind was racing. Because while Abigail was listing all the people she’d suggested as Gilly’s possible partner in crime, I’d thought of quite a large group she’d left out.
The girls.
9
I wasn’t stupid enough to go straight round to Nessa Mullen’s house and accuse her of anything. I’d seen what she’d done to Max Thurston. Although if he had hit Gilly—could he have hit her?—I wasn’t hugely upset he’d had a chance to see what that was like. But Nessa was a tough prospect. I needed to be better informed before I took her on. I knew where I had to start, even if that was with the one person I really never wanted to see again.
I left the café and made the short journey to Pollock Lane, choosing the quieter streets and checking both ways before I attempted to cross any of the roads. It was dark by now, and a late-afternoon mist had come in from the sea, filling the streets with a lung-searing chill. Every sound was muffled or distorted by it, and I jerked round once to see who was walking behind me before I realized that it was the sound of my own footsteps. The air was bittersweet with wood-smoke that the mist had trapped. These days you were no one in Port Sentinel if you didn’t have a wood-burning stove. And if ever there was a night for a fire, it was this one. I pulled my sleeves down over my hands and drew my scarf up around my face, hiding from the cold. If Gilly was out of doors … if she wasn’t capable of calling for help … I tried not to think about it.
I made it to Pollock Lane unharmed, and found it looking much the same as it had before, with the exception of Gilly’s house. Every light seemed to be on, shining through thin curtains. This time when I knocked, firm footsteps came toward the door within seconds, and Mrs. Poynter wrenched it open before I had time to think.
“Yes?” This version of Mrs. Poynter was pin-sharp, with neat hair and an intense, hawkish stare. I found myself cringing, almost preferring the zombified Mrs. Poynter of the previous night.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Poynter. I just needed to get something I left here.”
She frowned. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Jess Tennant, Mrs. Poynter. I’m Gilly’s friend from school. I was here yesterday, looking for Gilly.”
She obviously had no recollection whatsoever of having seen me before. “Do you know where she is?” she asked abruptly.
“No. That’s why I came here yesterday. She was supposed to meet me at the library and she never turned up.”
“That’s what the police officer said.” Mrs. Poynter muttered it. I could see she was thinking. “What did you say you wanted?”
“I left something here. In Gilly’s room. My notebook.”
“Oh. That’s where that came from.” Very reluctantly, she stepped back. “You can come in and get it, but be quick about it.”
I pulled off my boots without being asked and padded in. I’d been expecting her to be with a friend, or family, or even a police family-liaison officer, considering her daughter was missing. But the sitting room was deserted. The armchair was surrounded by books that lay open, splayed and bent. They ringed the chair like the petals of a daisy. I imagined Mrs. Poynter sitting there, hour after hour, reading a line or two from a book and letting it fall from her hands. There was a smell in the air, and not a pleasant one: bleach. Because of course, that was your first thought when your child went missing: domestic tasks.
“I’ll be really quick, I promise.” I shot through the living room. Mrs. Poynter was right behind me. I wondered if she was going to follow me all the way up the stairs, but she stopped at the bottom with her arms folded and watched me walk up, as if to make sure I went only where I was supposed to go.
In Gilly’s room there was no time for subtlety in case Mrs. Poynter decided to check up on me, or in case Dan arrived to search it. He would kill me stone dead if he knew where I was and what I was doing. I ignored the little voice that told me I was out of my depth, and put on the overhead light. The room looked just as bare as it had before, though the bed was neatly made now, and the wastepaper basket was empty. Someone had searched through the books and papers on the desk. Mrs. Poynter? The police? Maybe I was too late. I found my notebook quickly, and my note to Gilly, and started to search, looking for something I didn’t know if I’d find. If I had a diary, where would I keep it?
On my computer was the answer, and maybe Gilly had taken the same approach after her diary went missing at school. But she had liked pen and paper. I remembered the doodles down the side of her school notebook. There were people who thought best with a pen in their hand, and I hoped Gilly was one of them.
I went and stood by the bedside table, trying to think. Under the pillow. Nothing, and of course if she had kept it there, her mother would have found it when she made the bed. The mattress. There was nothing but the bare bed frame underneath. I peeled back the rug on the floor and saw floorboards, but there was no loose board to lift. I checked the bedside table, knowing that it was too obvious. It would have taken hours to search through the clutter and mess of my bedroom, but Gilly’s was so bare I could see at a glance there was nothing to find. I went over and flicked through the books on the shelf, finding nothing. Frustrated, I stared around the room again. The little rabbit picture looked back at me. It was aiming for whimsical but landing on creepy because of the pale brown spots that had almost obliterated its face. The frame had left a mark on the wall like a shadow, it had hung there for so long.
And I shouldn’t have been able to see the mark, I thought, frowning. The picture was hanging slightly crooked. I went over and lifted the frame off the wall, very carefully, and turned it over. It was the kind with two loops of wire across opposite corners to hold the picture in place, and tucked under the wire, wedged tightly against the cardboard backing, was a small blue notebook. I pulled it out of the frame and hung the picture back on the wall. Then I opened the notebook and flicked through, seeing Gilly’s writing, seeing dates and names I knew. Bingo! I slid it inside my notebook and headed for the door. Mrs. Poynter wasn’t waiting at the bottom of the stairs, I was relieved to see. I paused on the top step. The door to her bedroom was very slightly ajar. Gently, tentatively, I pushed it open and peered inside, curious about the mark I’d seen on the wall.
Curious was how I would have to stay. Where the mark had been there was a patch of missing wallpaper, about thirty centimeters by twenty. Someone had peeled off the old cream wallpaper with its pattern of roses, just in that place and no other. And while the wallpaper had definitely had its day, there were other places on the wall to start peeling, like where there was a giant damp patch the shape of Italy.
I’d spent more than long enough upstairs. I padded down, holding my notebook tightly so the other one didn’t fall out of it.
“Did you get it?” Mrs. Poynter asked, her voice harsh.
“Yep.” I held it up. “I couldn’t find it straight away.”
“I tidied Gilly’s room.” Her mouth tightened. “She was supposed to keep it clean, but that didn’t always happen.”
It had been more or less immaculate both times I’d been in it. The first time there had been a sense that someone lived there. This time, the space was dead.
Like Gilly? I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. Gilly couldn’t be dead. Gone, yes, but not dead.
“Are you and Gilly … close?” Mrs. Poynter ground out the words as if it pained her to say them.
“We’re in the same history class. We were supposed to do a project together.”
Mrs. Poynter’s face lightened a fraction. “Gilly’s good at history. She’s going to study it at university.”
“Oh,” I said. “Great.” I couldn’t remember Gilly ever demonstrating a particular gift for history, but it was the first warmth I’d seen from her mother, so I was going to go with it.
“I just don’t know who helped her,” Mrs. Poynter said, and it took me a minute to realize she meant when Gilly disappeared, rather than anything to do with history. Before I had to answer, I heard a knock on the front door and Mrs. Poynter clicked her tongue, annoyed.
“What is it now?”
She strode across to answer it, and I heard Dan Henderson’s voice. I stayed where I was, biting my lip. Mrs. Poynter left the door open and walked back to her chair, leaving Dan and two uniformed police officers to come in by themselves. I should have been grateful she’d held the door for me, it seemed.
Dan’s expression was serious as he walked in. He glanced across and saw me, and surprise briefly flickered across his face. “Jess.”
“Hi,” I said, and felt compelled to add, “I was just getting my notebook.”
The corner of Dan’s mouth tilted upward, and it reminded me so sharply of Will that I bit my lip, tasting blood.
He turned back to Mrs. Poynter. “It would really help us, Mrs. Poynter, if we could take the investigation forward. At this stage Gilly’s been missing for twenty-four hours. I don’t want to make you think there’s a reason to be concerned, but I would like to have a look in her room, just to see if there’s anything there that might give us a clue to her whereabouts.”
“I don’t want you in my house.” Her voice was quiet but determined.
I blinked, surprised, but Dan looked weary, as if this conversation was all too familiar. He took a deep breath and went on, “It’s routine, Mrs. Poynter.”
“No. I don’t want you here.” Her hands were folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the floor.
Dan’s expression was murderous, even though his voice was soft. “We’re trying to help you and Gilly.”
“You don’t need to poke around in our business to find her. She’s not here. You should be looking for her out there. That’s why I called you, so you could look for her. I’ve looked in her room. There’s nothing there.”
Not any more, anyway. My hands tightened on the notebook.
“We’re trained to see things that other people might miss,” Dan said.
“I know what should be there and I know what isn’t there. How could you begin to guess what clothes she’s taken with her? What bag?”
“So she did take things with her?” Dan checked.
“There are some clothes missing. And a shoulder bag.”
“What color is it?”
“Blue.”
“I’m going to need a description of the clothes too,” Dan said, and I could see that he was struggling to keep his temper.
“Two pairs of jeans, a gray jumper, underwear. That’s all I noticed.”
Dan’s voice was pleasant, conversational even. “When did you find this out?”
“Earlier today? Around lunchtime, I think.”
“Do you see,” he said carefully, “that it’s important for the police to know this kind of thing? If she was planning to leave, that makes a difference to how we look for her. It suggests that she wasn’t taken off the street, Mrs. Poynter. It suggests that she was a willing participant in what happened. It makes it more worthwhile to do an appeal for her to contact you.”
Mrs. Poynter’s eyes were hooded, her expression remote. “Is that all?”
“I still want to search Gilly’s room.”
“No.”
“If you make it necessary for me to get a search warrant, I will do that. But it would be a lot easier if you’d let me and my officers have a look upstairs now. I promise we won’t do any damage or interfere with your property.”
“No.”
Dan’s voice was cold. “If I have to get a warrant, it will be for the whole house and garden, and we will tear it apart. We’ll be back later on, probably late tonight, when it’s far less convenient for you to let us into your home.”
Mrs. Poynter’s face hadn’t changed. “There’s nothing for you to find here.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Dan said. He turned to the uniformed officers. “Off you go, lads.” They went out. Dan looked around. “Are you finished here?”
I nodded. “Thanks, Mrs. Poynter.”
She ignored me. I picked up my boots and hurried out, aware of Dan behind me. He slammed the door as hard as he could, relieving his feelings just a little bit. I stood on one leg, my feet freezing as I tried to get my boots on quickly. It was all so much more complicated because I didn’t want to put the notebook down. Dan watched grimly. When I was finished, he jerked his head toward his car and I went to sit in the passenger seat again. He clambered in the other side and sat for a moment, not looking at me. I braced myself to face the music. And I needed to brace myself, because the look on Dan’s face when he turned round told me exactly how much trouble I was in.
“Talk,” he said. “Now. And this time, tell me everything. What were you doing there?”
“I had to get this book for homework.” I held it up. “Mrs. Poynter let me go up to Gilly’s room.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.” I blinked up at Dan, all innocence.
“Find anything?”
I shook my head, mute. I was going to tell him about the diary at some stage, but not until I’d looked through it myself. An hour or two couldn’t delay the investigation too much. If I gave it to him now, I’d never see it again.
“What did you make of her?”
“Anyone would think she didn’t want the police to find her daughter.”
“You thought that too.” Dan rubbed his jawline with a pensive thumb. “You said she was out of it last night.”
“Yeah. She was slurring her words, stumbling around. She seemed totally different today.”
“Maybe that’s why she doesn’t want me to search the house. She’s afraid I’ll find her stash.”
“Maybe,” I said slowly. “Or it could be that she has something else to hide.”
“Like what?”
I told him about the mark I’d seen on the wall, and how carefully the wallpaper had been excised, and the bloody tissues in the bin.
As he listened his frown deepened. “How much blood was on the tissues?”
“Not a huge amount,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t go through the whole thing, but it was splotches.”
“And you’re not sure it was blood on the wallpaper.”
“No, I told you. I just saw it as she went into her room and the lights were off.”
“We might still get something if I send in the forensic officers.” Dan started the car. “Thanks, Jess. Very helpful.”
