The Wicked Girls

Chapter Thirty-two

‘Nice piece yesterday,’ says Stan.

Kirsty blushes. ‘Thanks,’ she replies. ‘I’m in deep shit now, of course.’

‘Yeah,’ says Stan. ‘Thoughtless bastard, getting himself arrested after Features went to bed. He could’ve bloody waited till today so it wasn’t so obvious. Still. They can’t be that pissed off. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

‘Don’t you believe it. I’m only here because the daily and the Sunday don’t cross over. I don’t suppose I’ll ever write for the Sunday again. And Dave Park doesn’t work Mondays. I’ll be right back on the phew-what-a-scorcher circuit after today.’

Stan shoves the strap of his man-bag back up his shoulder. ‘Hardly your fault, K. And apart from the fingering-an-innocent-bystander issue, it was a good piece. Good drama.’

‘Yeah.’ She shrugs miserably. ‘And now I look like a hysterical dick.’

Stan laughs. They shuffle up as Nick from the Mirror pushes through the crowd to stand beside them.

‘Kirsty Lindsay,’ he says. ‘I’d’ve worn my anorak if I’d known.’

‘Fuck off,’ she grunts. To be fair to my peers, she thinks, we’re just as gleeful about each other’s misfortunes as we are about the civilians’.

‘Don’t sweat it,’ says Stan. ‘We’ve all cocked up in our time. Jesus. Remind me to tell you about how I libelled the chief of the Humberside Police one day. Lost a bit of sleep over that, I’ll tell you. You just need to put a dozen pieces between yourself and this, and they’ll forget all about it.’

‘I hope so,’ says Kirsty. ‘Because I’m screwed otherwise.’

Nick pats her shoulder. ‘It was a good piece, if it’s any consolation. Made my hair stand on end, that’s the main thing. And you can always work the was-he-working-alone angle for a bit, till they’ve all forgotten.’

‘Thanks, Nick.’

‘Don’t be too grateful,’ he says, ‘I don’t want you stalking me’ – and she punches him on the upper arm.

‘So what’s the scoop, anyway?’ he asks.

They’re outside the police station. Nobody really knows why, as it’s obvious that no one will be coming out to talk to them for a good while. But the pubs won’t open till noon, so they might as well be here as anywhere else.

‘Bugger-all, at the moment,’ says Stan. ‘Now he’s been charged for Saturday night’s shenanigans, they can stay quiet for as long as they want, basically. I reckon it’s going to be speculation and hearsay till tomorrow now.’

A BBC outside-broadcast van pulls up on the other side of the road. ‘Uh-oh,’ says Stan. ‘Here come the Royals.’

‘Don’t let the bastards through,’ says Nick. ‘If they can’t be arsed to show up on time, they can stand at the back.’

‘Don’t tell them anything,’ says Stan.

‘They never ask me anyway,’ says Kirsty. ‘So c’mon, Stan. What rumour and speculation have you been privy to?’ Stan knows everybody. And anybody he doesn’t know knows someone he does. If anyone’s going to be up on the rumour and speculation, it’s going to be him.

He lowers his voice. He’s not handing his gleanings over to the whole world. Especially not the BBC. ‘Don’t quote me on this, but I heard it’s the same guy they had in for questioning last week.’

‘Seriously? But I thought he had an alibi.’

‘Less of an alibi than an explanation,’ says Stan. ‘Just because he had a reason to be there some other time doesn’t mean he wasn’t there at the time in question.’

‘There’s a few political writers who could do with remembering that,’ says Nick.

‘Huh,’ says Stan, and laughs.

‘How’s the girl?’ asks Kirsty.

‘Still in ICU. Pretty beaten up. Her windpipe’s swollen up from the bruising, so they’re keeping a tube in it till it goes down. They reckon she’s lost an eye, too. He’s been getting more violent as he’s gone along, hasn’t he?’

‘Well, I suppose if you can escalate beyond murder… Poor kid,’ says Kirsty.

‘Lucky kid,’ corrects Stan. ‘If it weren’t for the pissed-up youth of today, she’d be a dead kid.’

‘Got any rescuers’ names?’

He checks his pad. ‘Ashok Kumar, twenty-three, Anthony Langrish, twenty-two, Ravinder Doal, twenty-four, and another one. Barred from Stardust for wearing trainers, God bless the doormen of the south coast.’

‘So, Victor Cantrell,’ says Kirsty. ‘That was the name, wasn’t it? Of the guy they were questioning before?’

‘Yes,’ says Stan, ‘but I’d keep it out of your copy for now. Don’t want a libel suit on our hands.’

‘’Specially not you,’ says Nick.

She rolls her eyes. ‘Settle down. OK, but… Funnland employee, lives in town, drinks at the Cross Keys, popular, nobody would ever have guessed, right? Did you get the address before he was released?’

‘Yup,’ says Stan. ‘I’ll pop up there again later. Best way to verify is to see if he’s at home, I’d say.’

‘And how the little lady responds,’ says Nick.

‘Well, she’s not answering the door at the moment,’ says Stan. ‘Curtains shut tight.’

‘Poor cow,’ says Kirsty. ‘I wonder how she’s feeling today.’

‘Guilty, I should think,’ says Nick. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, c’mon. She must’ve had her suspicions.’ ‘Why?’ she asks again. ‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?’

She remembers the look of blank incomprehension on her mother’s face as she saw the squad car bumping up their lane. Remembers the dawning horror as she turned and looked at her daughter and understood why they were there. Thinks about Jim and the kids, and feels sick. ‘A lot of partners don’t have the first idea.’

‘Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ he replies.

‘Thanks, Miss Rice-Davies,’ says Stan. ‘Whatever, she’s in for some fun anyway. I don’t suppose people round here are much of the empathetic persuasion.’

A stir on the street side of the crowd. The hacks instinctively close ranks; don’t want any newcomers thinking they can steal their pitches. Kirsty cranes, and sees the top of a blond head weaving a stilted route through the rows behind. Sees the edges of a pair of oversized sunglasses and thinks: Oh God, I know those.

‘Someone coming,’ she says. ‘Not one of us.’

‘Ah, right,’ says Stan. Starts to edge aside; knows that being remembered for being helpful can swing the odds in his favour later on. ‘C’mon, guys!’ he shouts. ‘Let the lady through!’

Grudgingly the crowd edges apart and the blond head starts to progress. A couple of flashbulbs go off: opportunity photos, the sort that, in the digital age when no one has to worry about wasting film, everybody takes by the thousand just in case they turn out relevant later.

‘Christ,’ says Stan, who’s taller and can see better.

‘What?’

‘Bang on the nail, as ever,’ he boasts. ‘That’s Victor Cantrell’s missus. For definite.’

And Kirsty guesses, with plummeting dread – before the grey-white, tear-streaked face comes fully into her field of vision – that Victor Cantrell’s missus is also Amber Gordon.

1.30 p.m.

‘I’m hungry.’

Debbie Francis shoots her sister a look so filled with venom it almost burns. ‘Shut up, Chloe,’ she says.

Chloe squats, troll-like, on the verge on the other side of the road, sucking on a Chupa-Chups lolly. ‘Mum said you was to look after me,’ she says.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Debbie, and climbs off Darren Walker’s lap. She pulls her T-shirt down under her leather jacket – it’s too hot for leather, but this black, studded blouson is the coolest item of clothing she’s ever owned, and she’ll take the discomfort for the sake of style. She stalks across the tarmac in her four-inch heels and towers over her sister.

‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll pinch you,’ she says. ‘Mum left me in charge and that means you have to do what I tell you. All right?’

‘But-’ begins Chloe.

Debbie sticks out two hard red-nailed fingers and pinches the skin above her elbow. Chloe yelps, then begins to cry. Debbie made her take her anorak off an hour ago, and her skin is already lobster-pink; stings hard enough where the pinch was to make her eyes dazzle.

‘Now shut up,’ she hears Debbie’s voice through the haze of pain, ‘or there’ll be more where that came from.’

‘But she said. She said!’

She sees the fingers come up again and feint towards her, and shrinks back into the grass. ‘And. I’m. Bloody. Busy,’ snaps Debbie. ‘Just sit there and eat your lolly and I’ll get you some dinner when I’m good and ready, OK?’

She turns her back on the weeping child, and her stalk becomes a sashay as she sees her Romeo, legs apart on the bench, his arm laid out along the length of its back. With his crotch thrust forward, she can see the outline of his erection and feels a rush of teenage pride. Not everyone can get Darren Walker. He may be rough, but he’s choosy. She reaches the bench, glimpses his self-satisfied smile as she climbs on board. I shouldn’t like him, she thinks. No girl should like a boy who look at her like that. But I do, I can’t help it. There’s something about him that does something to me.

There are no subtleties, no niceties, with Darren. The boys she’s known before are fumblers; apologetic and tentative. They’d never simply return to where they were before an interruption. Within ten seconds his hand is back up inside her shirt, inside her bra, stroking her nipple with his thumb. She’s used to the squeezing, probing, poky fingers of her peers. The sensation makes her melt, makes her shift her purchase on his lap the better to feel his tumescence. She hears a surprising, delicate sound – half sigh, half moan – escape from somewhere deep inside her, and wonders: where did that come from? Sees the smile – that look of triumph – return to his face and feels him bury his free hand in the hair at the back of her neck. He smells of cigarette smoke and chewing-gum.

Thighs astride his, she presses herself crotch to crotch with him, feels that familiar twitch deep inside. ‘Nice,’ says Darren Walker. ‘Now, where were we?’

‘What are you doing?’ asks Chloe. Gives a huge snotty sniff as emphasis.

‘Never you mind,’ says Darren, and shifts beneath Debbie on the bench. He moves his hand round to attempt to unsnag her bra at the back, and she slaps it away.

‘Someone’ll see,’ she says.

Darren laughs at her nastily. ‘Bit late to worry about that now. And besides, they’re all down at the river, ennit?’ Most of the population of the village has taken off to a stretch of the Evenlode by the railway tracks a couple of miles away: a chunk of broomy watermeadow that’s gradually turned into a communal swimming-hole since the embankment rendered it unfit for grazing anything but sheep.

‘Not all,’ says Debbie.

‘Yeah,’ he says, and throws her sister a look of disgust. He’s finished with trying to impress Debs by getting the kid rides on the swings and tuppenny chews; she’s served her purpose and now she’s nothing more than an annoyance. ‘We can go up Chapman’s barn, if you like,’ he offers.

Debbie sneaks a look around her to hide her excitement. Chapman’s barn is one of the village teens’ most fabled places, somewhere the grown-ups rarely go. She knows that Chapman’s barn has been the venue of many of Darren Walker’s conquests; that girls older and more experienced than she is have been pinioned by him on its dusty straw bales. And because she knows it, the very mention of the place is enough to produce a musky, salty taste in her mouth. She knows this will be a brief and feral coupling; that it will be accompanied by no protestations of affection or even much effort to ensure any satisfaction for herself, but the thought of Darren Walker’s thick, stubby cock inside her, of the scratch of straw on her buttocks and the breathlessness as he crushes her carelessly beneath him makes her weak with lust, impatient of anything that will get between her and its satisfaction. She’s sixteen years old, been on the pill for a year, and it’s about time she started living.

As if reading her mind, he bucks sharply against her pelvis, making her yelp.

‘What are you doing?’

Now they both speak together. ‘Shut up!’

‘That boy’s called Darren Walker,’ announces Chloe. ‘Mum said you wasn’t to go near him.’

They break apart, sit angrily side by side on the bench and glare at her.

‘You don’t know nothing about it, Chloe Francis,’ says Debbie. ‘You best keep your mouth shut or you’ll be sorry.’

‘Take me home,’ says Chloe. ‘I’m hungry.’

Darren groans. ‘Fuck sake,’ he says. ‘Can’t you get rid of her?’

‘You know I can’t.’

‘How old is she anyway?’

‘I’m four,’ says Chloe. ‘Well, fuck sake,’ he says again. ‘I’m thirsty,’ says Chloe. ‘I want my dinner.’

Darren reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and produces a single cigarette. He lights it with an Army Surplus Zippo and sits there looking up at the sun, flipping the lid open and closed. ‘Don’t give me one then,’ says Debbie.

‘You’re not old enough to smoke,’ he replies.

‘Am too,’ says Debbie. ‘Have been since April.’

Darren takes a long, long drag, holds it deep in his lungs, joint-style, and exhales a thick stream of smoke into the air. ‘Sixteen, huh? Not jailbait no more then.’

Debbie doesn’t know whether to laugh or snarl, so she settles for something in between. Chloe glares at them from her perch on the verge, digging the heels of her sandals over and over into the turf to expose a pair of brown earth runnels. She’s a pretty child – fair in a pink, formless fashion, dimples in her cheeks – but she looks like a grubby hobgoblin right now, glowering under the hedge. ‘I’m telling Mum on you,’ she says.

‘Telling her what?’ says Debbie. ‘Who d’you think she’ll believe, anyway?’

Christ, she thinks. I’m sixteen. I’m starting work in two months. This should be the best summer ever, and instead I’m stuck being a babysitter because Mum couldn’t be bothered to take her on the bus to Chipping Norton. Shouldn’t have had another kid if she couldn’t be bothered to look after it.

Darren takes a small curl from behind her ear and twists it round his finger. She feels that small rush of liquid lust once more.

‘I want a drink,’ says Chloe. ‘Take me home.’

‘Why don’t you just go home?’ asks Darren nastily. ‘Go on. Shoo.’

Chloe looks stubborn.

‘Bloody hell,’ says Debbie. ‘I’ll give you ten p.’

‘You haven’t got ten p,’ says Chloe doubtfully.

‘Yeah, but I do,’ says Darren grandly. His erection is painful in his drainpipes and he’s afraid they might cut off his circulation altogether. ‘Here. You can buy a Mars Bar.’

‘Don’t like Mars Bars.’

‘I don’t care,’ he says, and throws the coin at her. ‘Just bugger off, will you?’

Chloe is torn between crying and collecting the money, so she does both. ‘I’m telling Mum,’ she assures her sister again. ‘You said bugger.’

‘Didn’t,’ says Debbie. ‘He did. Now, you go straight home after the shop, yeah?’

Chloe unbundles her anorak from under the hedge and starts to slowly put it on. ‘Come on,’ says Debbie. ‘Seriously. I’m going to have to start throwing stones in a minute.’ Darren’s hand has slipped under her skirt and a single finger is working its way inside her knicker elastic.

Chloe starts to plod up the road. Gets about twenty yards, then stops uncertainly. ‘I don’t know the way,’ she says.

‘Gaaaah!’ Debbie’s eyes roll back into her head with frustration. ‘Chloe! We come up this way every day! Just go, will ya?’

Chloe’s eyes fill with tears. ‘I don’t want to! Mum said you was to look after me!’

‘Oh Christ,’ says Debbie, defeated. ‘Well, you can’t keep the ten p.’

‘Chrissake,’ says Darren, and slings himself across the bench temperamentally to change the pressure on his ’nads. ‘We’ve got to get rid of her,’ he says. ‘I’m not taking her with us.’

‘Yes, but, Darren,’ says Debbie, torn. ‘Mum’ll rip me to shreds if anything happens to her.’

‘Oh yeah - Mummy,’ says Darren, and turns his back on her.

Silence. They can hear how summer-sleepy the village is; can hear the cattle lowing all the way down at the home farm.

‘You’re just a kid anyway,’ he says sulkily. ‘Don’t know what I was thinking.’

Debbie heaves a sigh. She hates her sister, hates her mother. This is meant to be my summer. They’re all so selfish.

She gazes up the road despairingly, feeling the moment slip away. He’s the sexiest boy I’ll ever go with, she thinks. And bloody Chloe…

Two small figures round the corner from the war memorial. One sturdy, brown-haired and wearing red, the other willowy in comparison, and blond.

‘Oi, Darren,’ she says. ‘Isn’t that your sister?’