When She Was Good, page 20
“They were together,” I say.
“I don’t understand,” replies Lenny.
“Sometimes Ruby slept with Evie,” I say. “She had nightmares.”
“When you say ‘slept’?”
Lenny wants to know if they were lovers. Would Evie tell me? I don’t know. Would it surprise me? Probably not. She’d tell me almost anything if she thought it might shock me. That’s one of the weirdly counterintuitive things about Evie—her ability to lie so easily, yet to recognize when others are lying to her.
“Are you saying that Evie killed Ruby?” asks Lenny.
“No.”
Spinning on my heels, I return to Evie’s room, where the pathologist is scraping beneath Ruby’s fingernails and brushing lint from her hair. Concentrating on the scene, I notice how the cupboard is open and clothes have been pushed along the runner. These aren’t signs of a search.
A pair of pajama pants lies bunched on the floor. The cotton bottoms are printed with cartoon polar bears and they belong to Evie. I know because I bought them for her. Crouching on my haunches, I touch the pajama bottoms and raise my fingertips, smelling the urine.
“Is the mattress wet?” I ask
The pathologist touches the fabric and shakes her head.
I move to the adjoining bathroom and scan the white tiles, the sink, the toilet, the shower. The shower curtain has been pulled closed. I crouch and study the tiles. I smell urine again.
Half thoughts are becoming whole. Two men disabled the night manager and used his security pass to unlock the office and access the control room. Having identified Evie’s room, they triggered the doors and came for her. Evie must have heard them coming and hid in the shower cubicle, crouching in the dark. Terrified. She listened to Ruby being killed. History on repeat. The girl in the secret room. A mouse in the walls.
“They came to kill Evie,” I whisper, “but they got the wrong girl.”
“How can you possibly know that?” asks Lenny.
I point to the shower. “Evie heard them coming and came in here. She was so frightened she wet herself. Her pajama bottoms are sodden.”
“Where is she now?”
“I think she waited until they’d gone and changed her clothes.”
“They could still have kidnapped her.”
“They didn’t come to kidnap her. They came to kill her.”
Lenny stares at me in stunned confusion. It’s like I’m explaining a complex mathematical equation to someone who is still grappling with her four times tables. She grabs my forearm and pulls me out of the room and along the corridor as far as the dining room.
She spins to face me. “Who is this girl?”
I hesitate, unsure of how much I’m allowed to say. She’ll find out soon enough. Files will have to be unsealed, names revealed.
“Angel Face.”
Frown lines write bold headlines on Lenny’s forehead. It’s her tabloid face, full of shock and awe.
“You’re saying that Evie Cormac is Angel Face.”
I nod.
“Even if that’s true—it doesn’t explain this.” Her voice is harsh and low. “Who wants her dead?”
“She doesn’t know their names.”
“Enough fucking riddles, Cyrus. What aren’t you telling me?”
Again I hesitate. This time Lenny leans closer. She’s like a boxing referee standing over a fallen fighter, counting me out. Either I tell her the whole story or the fight is over, along with our friendship.
“Angel Face is a ward of court. She was given a new identity seven years ago because nobody ever learned her real name or age or where she came from. Evie has always refused to talk about what happened to her because she’s frightened that she’ll be found.”
“By who?”
“She’s never said. Perhaps the people who abducted her in the first place. All I know for certain is that three days ago, somebody visited Langford Hall and asked about her. Evie overheard the conversation and recognized the man’s voice. She’d heard it before when Terry Boland was being tortured.”
Lenny sits down at a dining table, breathing heavily.
“Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m not allowed to reveal Evie’s true identity. She’s protected by the courts.”
“She was in danger.”
“Nobody would have believed her.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I didn’t,” I whisper. “I told her she was safe at Langford Hall.”
A detective appears in the doorway, looking for Lenny. The center manager has arrived.
Mrs. McCarthy is waiting in the foyer, flanked by two female constables who must have collected her from her home. Middle-aged, with sleep-tousled hair, she is still wearing her slippers.
She asks about the children, concerned for their welfare.
“They’re in their rooms,” says Lenny. “We’ll need to take statements from them.”
“Where’s Peter? Is he hurt?”
“Your night supervisor has been taken to hospital with chest pains. It’s a precaution. He’ll be fine.”
Mrs. McCarthy looks past him. “The officers said—”
“A girl is dead,” says Lenny.
Mrs. McCarthy makes a sign of the cross and notices me for the first time. Her hand flies to her mouth and she whispers the name “Evie.”
I shake my head.
“We believe another girl was in Evie’s room,” says Lenny.
She frowns. “That’s not right. One person per room. We check.…”
“It was Ruby Doyle,” I say.
Mrs. McCarthy snatches twice at the same breath and her eyes swim with tears. “Oh, her poor parents.”
“I’ll need their contact details,” says Lenny.
“Where’s Evie? Is she here? Did she say what happened?”
“We’re still looking for Evie Cormac,” says Lenny.
“Where has she gone? She’s not allowed to leave.”
“Please, Mrs. McCarthy. No more questions. Call any members of staff who live nearby and get them here, particularly any counselors or social workers. We have to arrange interviews with the children and to search their rooms.”
“Is that necessary?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. McCarthy goes to her office, escorted by the female constables. Lenny watches her leaving and shifts her weight onto her toes before dropping her voice to a whisper. “A teenage girl gets murdered in a council-run home and another is missing—this is a complete clusterfuck.”
41 EVIE
Darkness can be a blessing or a torment, a comfort or a burden. I am crouched beneath a hedge, half-buried in fallen leaves and cut grass. From here I can see the police cars and ambulances and people in uniform, their faces bleached white by the spotlights.
I haven’t run far. Not yet. I wanted to see who came to my funeral. I wanted to see who celebrated and who cried and who bagsied my stuff.
Langford Hall is swimming with people, who are streaming in and out. The fluorescent yellow of emergency workers. The dark suits of the detectives. The pale coveralls of the forensic teams, who look like ghosts.
Poor Ruby. Dumb Ruby. Deep as a puddle. Thick as a plank. As friendly as a puppy. She’s dead because of me. I heard her die. I waited in the bathroom until the men had gone and other voices filled the corridors.
“Why are the doors open?” someone asked. “Where is everyone? What time is it? Is it a fire drill?”
My pajamas were soaked and clinging to my thighs. I peered through a crack in the bathroom door. Ruby’s eyes were open and one arm lay across her waist, another on the pillow. My pillow. Ruby with her piercings and her nonexistent eyebrows. With her six brothers and sisters. Poor Ruby.
They expected to find me. They thought they killed me.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t explain. I had to go. I peeled off my wet pajamas and pulled on jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, along with my boots. I shoved a change of clothes into a small rucksack, along with a deck of cards and a wooden box of my mementos: buttons and colored glass and pictures of Poppy.
All the while, Ruby was staring at me, accusing me, blaming me. I wanted to reach out and close her eyelids, but I knew I’d crumble if I touched her. Instead I took a pillow and rested it over her face.
People were filling the corridors.
“Someone opened the doors,” said Nathan.
“We should raid the kitchen,” said Russell.
“Maybe we should stay in our rooms,” said Claire, ever the voice of reason, the adult.
I lifted the hood over my head and slipped past them, moving quickly to the nursing station and the first set of security doors.
Nathan called after me. “Where are you going? You can’t just leave.”
“Tell them I didn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Any of this.”
I reached the front desk. The night manager sat on the floor with a cotton shopping bag over his head. I pressed the wall button and the outer doors unlocked. Jogging down the steps, I crossed the parking area and ducked under the boom gate, crunching gravel beneath my boots.
A voice in my head kept saying, This is not my fault. This is not my fault. I should be dead, not Ruby, but this isn’t on me.
I reached the road and crossed into the shadows beneath the trees, crawling under the hedge, trying to still my heart, but the blood was pounding in my ears, telling me to run.
Cyrus came in a police car. He looked distraught, and I could picture him as the boy who lost his family all those years ago. I didn’t have time to leave him a note, but he’ll know by now that I’m not dead. He might think they’ve taken me, but he’ll work it out eventually.
He says I’m too clever by half, but Cyrus is smart and there’s a difference between being smart and clever. Smart means you know lots of shit. Clever means you can pretend you know it. Cyrus is smart but not very clever. I’m too clever for my own good.
What would I have written if I had left him a note?
I told you so.
I said this was going to happen, but he didn’t believe me. He promised me I was safer at Langford Hall than anywhere else, but he didn’t understand. He’s never understood how much I know and what I’ve seen, what’s been done to me.
Yes, I tell lies occasionally, but I wasn’t making this shit up. I wasn’t “catastrophizing”—one of his favorite words for teenagers, who turn molehills into mountains.
Cyrus will know I didn’t kill her, but he won’t be able to find me. I have sixty-five pounds and a travel card, which will get me as far as London or Edinburgh but not enough to last a week.
I could ask Cyrus for money. Would he help me? I like to think he would, but Terry told me that I shouldn’t trust anyone. I might be in love with Cyrus, although I’m not sure if I’m capable of caring that much about another human being. I know I wouldn’t kill for love. I wouldn’t piss on love if it was on fire. I wouldn’t give love the time of day. I wouldn’t cross the road for love or give up my seat on a bus or share my last slice of pizza. But I would do all those things for Cyrus. Maybe that makes it more than love.
Another vehicle arrives. A small van with mesh windows. The driver is in dark blue coveralls. He opens the back door and two dogs leap off the back tray, sniffing at the ground and the wheels of the van. The handler clips leads onto their collars. They’re Alsatians, just like Sid and Nancy. The police are going to give them a piece of my clothing—maybe my pajamas—and have them search for me. I can’t stay any longer. My funeral is over.
I slide backwards from the hedge and crouch beneath the windows of a house until I reach the next fence. I climb over and drop down, crossing another garden before climbing a new fence. When I’m far enough away from Langford Hall, I cut back to the road, avoiding the streetlights and sticking to the shadows. The streets are unfamiliar in darkness. The houses are quiet. The world asleep.
I don’t have a plan—not yet—but I can’t go back to Langford Hall. If they found me once they can find me again.
42 CYRUS
Lenny and I are sitting in the security control room at Langford Hall, watching a young technician flick his fingers across a computer keyboard with all the skill of a concert pianist.
“This is Justy,” says Lenny. “He’s our resident computer whisperer.”
The young man blushes slightly and a mop of black hair drops over his eyes as he types. On the surrounding desks, TV screens have been shattered or torn from their fittings and the floor is covered in broken glass and plastic.
“Normally these screens would be getting live feeds from cameras in the corridors and on the outer fences,” explains the technician. “They tried to destroy the recordings, but the footage was automatically uploaded to hard drives that are off-site.”
Justy presses a key and his laptop screen divides into six different CCTV feeds. One of them shows the parking area, where two figures dressed in black make low, crouching runs towards the main doors of Langford Hall. In the background I hear the repetitive blaring of car alarms.
“According to the neighbors, they were set off just after two o’clock,” says Justy. “The night supervisor went to investigate.”
The footage shows a middle-aged man emerge from the glass doors. He’s carrying a heavy flashlight, which he aims into the parking area and the surrounding gardens. As the light swings towards the camera, red dots appear on his shirtfront followed by a flash of silver as two snaking wires from a stun gun hit his chest. His body spasms and jerks as the electrical current surges through him.
He’s still writhing on the ground when a black-clad man appears wearing a full-faced balaclava. He pulls a cloth bag over the manager’s head and binds his wrists with plastic ties, before picking up his legs and dragging him inside the foyer and behind the reception desk.
A second man, wearing similar clothes, follows him through the glass doors and immediately steps onto a chair, aiming the nozzle of a spray can at the camera. I glimpse his eyes before grey paint covers the lens. One by one the CCTV cameras were disabled.
“We still have the audio, but they don’t say much,” says Justy. “From the foyer they went to the control room, where they unlocked the accommodation wing automatically.”
Justy fast-forwards through the footage. “This is eight minutes later.”
We’re looking at the car park again. The same two dark-clad figures are leaving the main doors, jogging under a streetlight, and turning down the driveway.
“That’s it,” says the technician.
“Keep it running,” I say.
We watch and wait as the minutes tick by, staring at the static image of a near-empty parking area.
“There!” I say, pointing at the screen. “It’s Evie.”
A lone figure appears in a hooded sweatshirt and carrying a small rucksack. She’s dressed in her favorite jeans and her fake Doc Martens, which make her look like a biker chick. Ducking down between the cars, she peers over the bonnets before crouching and running from one dark shadow to the next.
“We have to put out a missing person’s report,” says Lenny.
“Maybe you should let her go.”
She looks at me incredulously. “She’s a witness to a murder.”
“If they think she’s dead they’ll leave her alone.”
“You still haven’t explained who ‘they’ are.”
I wish I could. Evie’s “faceless men”; the creatures of her nightmares. The monsters beneath her bed.
“There’s something I haven’t mentioned,” I say.
Lenny taps Justy on the shoulder and nods towards the door. He closes his laptop and leaves us alone.
“I’m listening,” says Lenny.
“A week ago, I showed Evie some photographs of Eugene Green’s known victims—along with the children who he was suspected of having abducted. She reacted to one of them—a picture of Patrick Comber. Evie wouldn’t confirm it, but I’m sure she’d seen the boy before.”
Two vertical worms of concentration form in the center of Lenny’s forehead.
“You’re talking about a pedophile ring.”
“Yes.”
“And Evie Cormac can identify the people involved?”
“Their faces, not their names.”
“All the more reason to find her.… We can protect her.”
“She’s safer on her own.”
Lenny doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t know Evie like I do. She hasn’t read the files or seen what Evie can do. How she survived in a secret room while a man was tortured to death and for the weeks that followed.
“She’s been here before,” I say. “You won’t find her unless she wants to be found.”
* * *
Lenny is being summoned. I stay with Justy and ask him to search the CCTV footage for a man who visited Langford Hall on Monday and referred to me by name. Pushing his small, round spectacles higher up his nose, Justy makes humming sounds as he types in the search parameters.
The screen images keep changing to various camera angles.
“Could this be him?” asks Justy.
A man in a dark suit enters through the automatic doors and approaches the front desk. He’s wearing sunglasses with metal frames and seems to purposely avoid the CCTV cameras.
“Is there another angle?”
Justy changes cameras and I glimpse one side of his face. He’s tall and broad-shouldered with short-cropped hair. It could be the man who posed as a detective and visited Eileen Whitmore.
“Go back to the other camera,” I say. This time I see him from behind. “Notice how he walks.”
“What am I looking for?”
“His left arm doesn’t swing as freely as his right.”
“A disability?”
“He’s wearing a holster under his left arm.”
“Is he a copper?”
I don’t answer. “Can you pull up the audio?”
