Dead Girl Blues, page 6
Her mind wandered to who had filmed the original video. Willow was positive that the girl from last night had shot the footage on the phone. Perhaps she had stumbled upon it somewhere, and filmed it as evidence before making her escape.
Whilst totally nude.
Sure, why not? Maybe she would have been next? Was there some cult out there, kidnapping women and killing them? But why film it? For pleasure? Or money?
A headache gnawed at her and she washed down some Ibuprofen with a Coke. This wasn’t her line of work. Murder should never be normalised, and yet every time she watched the video it did get easier, right until the end. Sometimes, she stopped before the flattened, smashed face opened its mouth and started screaming. She didn’t need to see it again — it was there whenever she closed her eyes.
She took her headphones off and selected iMovie on her Mac, then opened the Untitled folder on her desktop, the folder where she had stored all the information from the dead girl’s phone.
Jessica. That was her name. Use it. Jessica Chalmers.
She dragged the video into the Project Media section and double-clicked, the video appearing in a window.
Willow navigated to the midpoint of the timeline and paused the film. The image was dark, obscured by shadows and tracking lines and digital grain. She hit an onscreen button that looked like a magic wand and the picture adjusted, taking on a blue tint.
It was not helpful.
She dragged a slider bar and the image darkened considerably.
‘Shit.’
She dragged it the other way, the screen brightening but revealing no new details, the background still unidentifiable. There seemed to be only one light source from somewhere in the corner of the room. She moved through the film frame-by-frame until she found something in the background, a white square. It looked like a sign. Willow zoomed in on the picture. An EXIT sign? She couldn’t be sure, so she zoomed in further, until the screen broke up into a mass of useless pixels.
She played around for a while, and when Cat knocked on the door to tell her dinner was ready, she found Willow inches from the screen.
‘You’ll get square eyes sitting that close to the telly. That’s what my mum used to say, anyway.’
Cat had been weird all day, skipping uni and pottering around the house like last night hadn’t happened and everything was normal, fine, tickety-boo.
We all have our ways of dealing with things. At least she hadn’t seen the video.
‘Just checking something,’ muttered Willow.
‘What’d you say? Doesn’t matter. Tea’s ready if you want.’ Cat waited a while, then left, off to water the plants again or rearrange the furniture, anything to keep her mind busy.
Willow didn’t notice her leave. She stared at the screen, into the eyes of the girl. Her tortured face filled the monitor, blending with Willow’s own reflection.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, and then a tear rolled down the girl’s cheek and Willow realised it was her own.
12
The warm water cascaded over Willow’s shoulders. It had been a long night, the crowd less receptive than normal, the applause muted. Perhaps it was her own fault. There was too much going on inside her head for her to commit to the performance with her usual gusto. She felt distracted, and also…what? Depressed? Was that it? Something about that video had really messed her up. Not just watching someone die — fuck, that was bad enough — but the idea that someone had murdered them. To see the victim’s face, to hear her whimpers and moans and cries…how could someone stand there and attack her until she was no longer recognisable as human?
She stepped out of the shower and felt the warmth of the underfloor heating on her wet feet.
CB, you’re a lifesaver, she thought. A sleaze and a perv, but a lifesaver too.
Wrapping a towel around her waist, she padded through to the dressing room and parked herself on the leather couch. She was still sitting there when Eve came offstage twenty minutes later.
‘Hey Will, how’s it going? That was shite,’ she continued, not waiting for Willow’s response. ‘Just did two slots back-to-back cos Jane called in sick, but we all know she’s on holiday with that cunt from the bank, and she’s going to turn up next week with an allover Mallorca tan and CB’s gonna hit the roof.’
Willow nodded as if she was listening.
‘And he wanted me to dance to dubstep tonight! I mean, you ever tried dancing to dubstep? It’s not sexy, no way. I was like, “CB, you’re my boss and all, but leave the music up to me, okay?” and he was all, “You’ll do what I say or else you’ll be out on your arse,” and you know what I said Willow?’
‘Huh?’
‘I said, “Well this arse is about to get out there and make you a lot of money, so…” Willow, are you even listening?’
Willow looked at her. ‘Umm, yeah, you were saying something about your arse?’
Eve headed for the shower. ‘Not quite, Will. Close, though. And why are you sitting with your tits out?’
‘I’m posing for a Renaissance painting.’
Eve didn’t understand, and stuck her tongue out in response. When she got out of the shower, she found Willow sitting naked in front of the mirror.
‘Have you had a fucking stroke or something?’ she asked, compassion not being one of Eve’s stronger personality traits. ‘You’re acting weird.’
‘Got a lot on my mind right now.’
Eve plopped herself in the chair next to Willow and spun to face her. ‘Boy trouble?’ she said in her most sympathetic voice. ‘You can tell me.’
‘Boys? Fuck no. This is real trouble.’ She looked at Eve. ‘Can I trust you?’
She knew she couldn’t, but Eve said she could and Willow, wanting someone to talk to, told her about the phone and the video.
‘Oh my god,’ said Eve, nodding appreciatively at this extraordinary gossip that had landed right in her lap. She placed a hand on Willow’s knee, her skin almost dry now, and gave Willow what she thought was her most intense look.
‘Can I see it?’
‘The video?’
‘You kept a copy, aye?’
‘Yeah, but it’s fucked up.’
Eve smiled at her. ‘Come on, Will. You’re not the only one with a dark side. I wanna see,’ she pouted, the face of someone used to getting their own way.
‘I mean…if you really want to…’
‘I do.’
Willow took the phone from her bag, unlocked it, and handed it to Eve. She dressed as Eve watched the video, trying to ignore the sounds that had bothered her throughout her performance tonight. She put on her t-shirt, not noticing it was inside-out. The video finished with the cut-off scream and she saw Eve typing away at her phone.
‘What are you doing?’
Eve didn’t look up. ‘Sending this to my phone.’
‘Why?’
The girl shrugged. ‘I think my boyfriend would like to see it. He’s into some freaky shit. This one time, he asked me to lie totally still while he fucked me, like I was dead. I wasn’t allowed to make a sound.’
‘That sounds like a healthy relationship.’
‘You gotta keep it interesting,’ remarked Eve, hitting Send and passing the phone back. ‘Your shirt’s inside-out, by the way.’
Willow didn’t care. Eve’s attitude towards the video fascinated her.
‘You don’t think it’s real?’ she asked.
‘Dunno. Probably not.’
‘But a girl was killed, and that was the last thing on her phone.’
Eve started dressing. ‘Doesn’t mean anything. If I died tomorrow, you wouldn’t believe some of the shit on my phone. With my Google history, I’ll be on an FBI watchlist.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Everyone’s hiding something, Will. Even you have your little secrets.’
Eve turned away with an unfamiliar expression on her face. It looked to Willow like thoughtfulness.
‘See you tomorrow then,’ said Eve, as Willow slung her bag over her shoulder and left. The door closed with an audible click and she waited until Willow’s footsteps disappeared down the hall. She glanced around the dressing room in case someone was there, listening in, but she was alone. Heart racing, she took out her phone.
This was it. Her ticket out of this dump, out of this life of stripping and being ogled by men. She wanted more. She wanted to be rich, to be looked after, waited on hand-and-foot. She wanted servants and butlers and maids and chefs and personal trainers.
A voice answered and she cleared her throat.
‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said, pleased with the authority and gravitas she had injected into her little act. All the best dancers were great actors, that’s what CB had told her once. ‘And I have proof. It could fucking bury you.’
‘Who is this?’ said the voice.
‘It doesn’t matter. Just know that I have evidence, and I’m going straight to the police unless you pay me ten thousand…no, fifty thousand dollars. Wait, no, I mean pounds. Fifty thousand pounds. Bring it in a suitcase to…’ She thought hard. It had to someplace public, but also quiet. She should have considered it before phoning, but she was too excited. ‘Bring it to the old bandstand in Princes Street Gardens at nine tomorrow morning. Be there…or else. What’s that? Okay, fine, six. Ten thousand at…dammit, I mean fifty thousand pounds at six tomorrow morning. I’ll see you there. I’ll be wearing a red jacket.’
She hung up, pleased with how it had gone. The red jacket was a nice touch.
All the best dancers were great actors, CB had once said.
Eve, however, was neither.
13
Willow hunched over the laptop like a gargoyle. It was 3am. She had downloaded a copy of Final Cut Editing Software from Pirate Bay and spent the last two hours watching YouTube tutorials on how to work the damn thing. Worst of all, the videos were invariably voiced by American boys who were, at most, fifteen.
It was a ridiculous, fiddly program, with hundreds of filters to choose from, most of which seemed to do the same thing, while the rest did nothing at all. Every change she made had the opposite effect, obscuring the image further. She stopped for a while and sat smoking by the window, the night chill invading the room. Looking out at the rain-soaked streets, she watched people hurrying by. They looked so innocent from a distance. As each passed, she wondered if they had the capacity to kill.
‘Jesus, you’re losing it,’ she said to herself. It was good to acknowledge it. It made her feel like she was still sane.
Her thoughts turned to Detective Stone. He had mentioned another body with a possible link to Jessica. Willow didn’t read the papers, and actively avoided the news, so she had heard nothing else about it. She closed Final Cut for the evening and fired up Google.
The BBC apparently didn’t deem it worthy of coverage, but there was a short piece on the Scottish News website. The article said that a girl had been stabbed, but there was no mention of other victims.
She Googled ‘Edinburgh Stabbing’ and a photograph of Jessica Chalmers gazed at her from the top of the screen. She looked a lot younger, years younger in fact. Rounder in the face, with sparkling eyes and flowing brown hair. The next result was a video. Willow clicked it, and it redirected her to Twitter, playing automatically.
Jessica Chalmers lay bleeding on the pavement, surrounded by a group of onlookers. A young man rhythmically pumped his hands on her chest.
‘Stop filming!’ shouted an unidentified voice. Someone else laughed.
‘Oh my god,’ said the man holding the phone. ‘It’s about nine o’clock, and we found this girl on the street.’ He turned the camera away from Jessica and pointed it at his own bearded face. ‘It looks like she’s dying.’
‘Switch that off ya sick cunt,’ shouted someone. The man ignored the heckler.
‘What happened here?’ he continued. A siren wailed in the distance. ‘Is it a gang slaying? Or a serial killer? I was on my way to band practice — check us out on Soundcloud, real guitar rock with Kevin and The McAllisters — when I stumbled upon this horrifying scene.’
The camera turned back to Jessica. The man kneeling by her had given up. He looked like a ghost, his hands dangling limply by his sides, his head shaking.
‘She’s dead,’ he said. He looked at the camera. ‘For god’s sake stop filming, can’t you see she’s fucking dead?’ He got to his feet and started towards the camera. The image cut to black for a second, then resumed with a closeup of the bearded man. A trickle of blood ran from his nose.
‘He fucking hit me, man,’ he said. The camera tracked towards the crime scene again. The ambulance had arrived, and the paramedics were attending to Jessica's prone body. In the background, Willow could see herself getting into the police car, Detective Stone holding the door open.
The bearded man continued. ‘I’ve deleted that part of the video for now, because rest assured I’ll be talking to the police. I can film whatever I want, there’re no laws out there. This is in the public interest, aye, so the police can’t cover it up, and that wanker fucking leathered me. Well, it’s all recorded, so I’m gonna have the last laugh.’
Wait.
Willow hit pause, then scrubbed through the timeline.
There.
She full-screened the video and hit play. A man walked away from the scene, dressed in black. Well, walking wasn’t the right word. He was limping, like the man Willow had seen from her window the evening of the killing, the man who had stood and watched her from the street.
The video ended, and Willow instinctively stared out the window. There was no one there now. Even her personal voyeur across the road must have gone to bed.
They know who I am, she thought. They know where I live.
So why was she still alive?
Because you have nothing on them.
‘Not yet,’ she growled, suddenly feeling very alone.
She climbed into bed, drew the protective shroud of the covers around her and went to sleep. At one point she woke to find herself in an industrial building, water dripping from huge chains that clanked overhead, the walls of her bedroom covered in obscene graffiti. A girl was on top of her, naked, beautiful, and drenched in blood. She lay helpless as the girl kissed her, her hand finding Willow’s crotch, the other holding a hammer. She brought it down hard and fast, the bell of the hammer striking her square in the forehead.
She woke up sweating, checked her skull was still intact, and didn’t go back to sleep.
14
The City of Edinburgh slumbered, the curtains drawn, the sun nowhere to be seen. Eve passed a lone jogger huffing his way through the streets, and a harried looking woman walking two excitable pugs, the dogs determined to sniff every inch of the pavement. Few cars were on the road, and Eve realised she should never have agreed to meet so early.
It was too quiet.
Still, fifty-thousand pounds, eh? Not bad for a morning’s work.
She reached the gate to Princes Street Gardens, the large public park that sat in the ancient shadow of Edinburgh Castle, and found it was locked.
‘Fuck,’ she said. Of course it was. According to the sign it didn’t open til seven. She looked around the empty streets, through the fine mist that had settled. Not a soul was watching. Headlights cut through the fog and vanished, the number twenty-six bus carrying its passengers to work like the ferryman on the River Styx, and then all was silent.
What to do?
She couldn’t wait until the park opened. If she missed the meeting, she might not have the guts to go through with it again.
That left one option.
Placing her foot on the fence, she hauled herself up. Working the pole at CB’s had given her tremendous upper body strength, and she made it over with ease, landing stealthily on the wet grass. She moved away from the road, wary of being spotted by the groundskeeper. Did this place have groundskeepers? Did anywhere, or was that an invention of children’s comics? Now would not be a good time to find out.
Keeping low, she dashed from tree to tree, then checked her phone. Almost six. She cursed herself for sleeping in. She wanted to arrive early, to be the one in control. Too late for that. She had already been tricked into meeting alone.
Stupid!
She walked into a low-hanging branch and shook last night’s rain all over her. Why were there no lights? Determined not to lose her bearings, Eve headed towards the glow of Princes Street. That way, she would have to cross a path at some point, a path that she could follow to the bandstand. Sure enough, her feet found concrete and she turned left, pleased with herself. She hugged her red jacket tightly around her and shivered. The jacket would make her easy to spot, and that was dangerous. What if they were—
No, don’t think like that.
Instead, she fantasised about how she would spend her newly acquired riches. The first thing she would do would be to go on holiday. Somewhere exotic and far-off, like Zante or Ibiza. She would leave her dumbass boyfriend behind unless he paid his own way. This was her money, not his. Hell, maybe she would retire there and live the life of a princess, waited-on hand-and-foot by her servants.
Something moved in the bushes and she stopped, her throat small, breaths coming with alarming difficulty.
Think of the money!
Yes, the money. It would all be hers, and soon!
Another sound, a different direction this time. Birds? Foxes? A squirrel?
‘Hello?’ she called out, unable to disguise the tremor in her voice. ‘Who’s there?’
She turned sharply, turned again, but all she could see were shimmering ethereal outlines.
‘I’ve come for my money,’ she said, and thought she heard someone laugh.
She whirled on the spot, searching for clues and finding none, then stepped back and slipped, landing heavily and winding herself. The dewy grass soaked through her yoga pants, and as she got to her feet tears formed in her eyes. She wanted to be anywhere but here, alone in the middle of nowhere.
