One Dark Night, page 18
Ben nods. “We’re chasing a few leads, but the case still feels wide open.”
“And to think Ellie was in the woods that night! That was sneaky of her to lie, especially when she should’ve been here with us,” Chrissie adds.
“We’ve talked to her.”
“You have?” Chrissie turns to him. “You and Rachel?”
Ben nods. “Yeah. Last night.”
He realizes his mistake too late. He hadn’t told Chrissie about his stop-off at Rachel’s the previous night. It had seemed easier not to involve her, but now, of course, it looks as though he’s kept it secret. Excluded her.
“I thought you said you were working late,” she says archly.
“I was. Then I popped round to see Ellie. It was important,” Ben stresses. “I needed to be there for her.”
She lifts one eyebrow. “For Rachel?”
“For Ellie,” he snaps.
Chrissie purses her lips. He’s not an idiot. He understands why it would bother her. It was only twelve months ago that he and Rachel were still living together as a married couple, albeit an estranged one.
The soup starts to boil over in the pan and Chrissie turns back to the cooktop, stirring carefully. Ben’s cell phone rings, cutting through the deep silence. He sees Chrissie glance at it, then look away. It’s not a number he recognizes and when he answers, he is surprised to hear Connor Carlisle’s voice at the end of the line. “Connor. How can I help?” He slips out of the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
“Look, man, you caught me off guard yesterday. I was on the de-fense.”
Connor is talking like a phony American gangster and Ben can’t help an internal eye roll. In the background, he can hear traffic noises and the low thump of bass and knows he’s probably calling from the pimped-up SUV. “I’m listening,” he says.
“You said to call if I remembered anything.”
“Go on,” says Ben, a glimmer of interest building.
“While we were in the woods, one of the girls started freaking out. She said someone was watching us.”
Ben’s excitement slumps. “Yeah, Danny told us about that already. He said he and a friend went off to investigate, but there was no one there. They said the girl had imagined it.”
“Yeah, but they was wrong.”
Ben frowns. “Who was?”
“Danny and his mate. They didn’t find anyone, but there was someone watching us. I saw him too.”
“Him?”
“Yeah. Up in the trees above the quarry.”
Ben frowns. What’s Connor playing at? Is he for real, or simply trying to muddy the investigation, to divert suspicion away from his younger brother? “You saw a man in the woods on Saturday night?”
“Yep.”
“Could you describe him?”
“I dunno. It was dark.”
“Try.”
“So… I guess he was older. White face. Sunken eyes. Kind of creepy-looking, but that could’ve just been the dark. Maybe if I saw him again…”
“If I asked you to come in and give a proper description, could—”
“Ah man. Police stations aren’t really my vibe… You know, it was pretty dark… maybe I didn’t get the best look at him after all…”
Ben can feel Connor backtracking, the lead sliding away. It’s not much to go on. If he were to call Khan and ask him to consider this, he’d sound like a desperate man clutching at straws, anything to distract them from their focus on Ellie. “Why didn’t you say anything at the party?” he asks, frustrated. “Why didn’t you back up Jasmine?”
Connor sighs. “Look, if everyone gets scared, they scarper, right? I figured we were a big group. Some random perv in the woods wasn’t going to spook me.”
“And if they all leave, you don’t have anyone to push your ‘product’ onto?”
Connor falls into a stony silence, just the heavy bass of the car stereo thudding in the background. “I didn’t say that.”
“So why tell me now, Connor?”
Connor sighs. “Look, the girl may have been a spoiled brat, but she didn’t deserve what she got.”
“So, this isn’t about covering your arse. Or protecting your little brother?”
“No man. My alibi’s tight. And there’s no way Danny was involved in this. He’s a pain in my ass, but he’s not a bad kid.”
The conversation breaks with the sound of a blaring horn and Connor yelling, “Wanker!” at full volume. “Look,” he says, returning to Ben, “you can believe me or not. It’s no skin off my nose. I didn’t have to call you.”
The line goes dead. It’s hardly new information, but it does corroborate Jasmine Ware’s statement. Besides, Connor had a point. While Ben wasn’t particularly keen to take the lad at face value, Connor had no real advantage to getting back in touch with him. Ben knew from past experience that Connor would do pretty much anything to avoid a brush with the law. Maybe there was a glimmer of hope for Connor Carlisle after all.
He returns to the kitchen table and sits with a still-sulky Chrissie, the air crackling between them as they eat the soup she has cooked, the tension remaining between them until Chrissie announces she’s tired and going up for an early night.
“I’ll join you,” he says, still hoping to soften the mood, but Chrissie won’t meet his eye and as soon as she hits the mattress, she flicks off her bedside light and rolls away.
Ben lies next to her in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, wide awake. “Chrissie, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you I’d seen Rachel.”
Chrissie mumbles something inaudible in reply.
“What was that?”
“Go to sleep,” she says. “I don’t want to argue. Stress isn’t good for the baby.”
Ben turns away, chastened. It’s not fair of him to feel annoyed. None of this is Chrissie’s fault. She’s been nothing but sweet and decent since the first night he’d met her, when Rachel had asked him to leave and he’d stormed out to find the nearest pub.
Furious at the injustice of it all, he’d downed two pints of IPA and a whiskey chaser in quick succession. Only when he’d raised his head from the bottom of his glass had he noticed Chrissie, right there, perched on a stool at the end of the bar, looking dangerously hot in a black leather miniskirt and knitted cardigan, her blond curls spilling down her shoulders. She’d raised her gin and tonic at him and offered a wry smile. “Looks like you might be having a worse night than me.”
She’d been stood up by a Tinder date, it transpired. He had been drunk and morose. Terrible company really, when he thinks about it. God knows why she’d invited him back, but when he’d woken in Chrissie’s bed the following morning, hungover and sick with shame, he knew that what he’d done had put the final nail in the coffin of any possible reconciliation with Rachel.
From that night on, it had been easier to look forward than back. He’d kept his blinkers tightly fastened. Chrissie was pretty and fun and he was bruised and hurt and—yes, childish. Chrissie was right there, ready to stroke his ego and make him feel like a man again. She didn’t ask searching questions about his emotions or force him to confront painful losses from his past. When he was with her, he didn’t have to think about Rachel—or Gemma—and soon, the woman who had started out as a convenient distraction seemed to have become a permanent fixture. It wasn’t easy to manage Ellie’s emotions or face her hurt at the collapse of their family, but he told himself it was better to be happy with Chrissie than make them all suffer. Chrissie represented an easy life and he was here for it—all in for that easy, blinkered life—right up until she’d told him she was pregnant.
“There is one good thing about you being stood down,” Chrissie says quietly, her voice lifting off the pillow beside him, jolting him from his thoughts.
He rolls back to her. “What’s that?”
“You can come with me tomorrow.”
Ben frowns in the darkness.
“The antenatal appointment. You haven’t forgotten?”
There’s no way he can admit that in the tumult of the last couple of days, it has clean escaped him. He nuzzles into her warm shoulder. “Course not. I’ll be there. Promise.”
The solid wall of her back remains, but she relinquishes a hand, her fingers reaching over her shoulder for his. He squeezes tightly and kisses her palm. “I’m sorry, love. I’ll do better. I promise.”
Chapter 21
Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.
Rachel receives a late phone call from the duty officer asking her to collect Ellie at 10:00 p.m. She’s told there’s been a delay on the forensics report, but that she will most likely be required to attend the station again the next morning. “Don’t go skipping the country,” says the officer, only half joking.
It’s a relief to see Ellie, just a short time later, being ushered through the swinging doors into the station’s waiting area. “Come on,” says Rachel, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, “let’s get you out of here.”
They drive home in near silence. Rachel doesn’t want to press Ellie about her experience. They are both too tired and Ellie’s face remains fixed on the passenger window, only stirring when her phone pings in her lap. She angles the screen away, but Rachel can see the color rising in her cheeks as she reads the message. “Your friends checking up on you?”
“Something like that,” she mutters.
Turning through the school gates, Rachel lets out a gasp and hits the brakes. A figure looms ahead on the drive, tall and thin, his face bleached white in the car headlights. He steps up onto the shoulder, allowing them past with a wave of his hand. Malcolm Crowe, out on one of his evening walks. “Weirdo,” Ellie mutters under her breath.
“Ellie!”
“What? He is weird, creeping around the campus at night.”
“He’s exercising. Taking in the night air.” Rachel tries to sound reassuring, but when she glances in the mirror, she sees Malcolm hasn’t moved. He stands sentry-like at the gates, a ghostly smudge in her rearview mirror as he watches them go. “You don’t have any other reason to think he’s weird, do you?”
Ellie shrugs.
“Ellie?”
“It’s nothing.”
A prickle of apprehension rises in Rachel’s mind. It does seem a little odd for Malcolm to be prowling around in the dark after such awful events, especially on a twisted ankle. Even if he has taken it upon himself to act as some sort of self-appointed school security guard, it’s hardly the sort of behavior that’s going to put a campus full of jumpy students and teachers at ease. Since Monday’s assembly, the bonfire of fear and mistrust has only seemed to grow across campus. No one, it seems, is free from suspicion, not even lumbering Malcolm. “Well then. How about a little kindness? He’s an old man, doing his best for the school.” She says it, she realizes, to convince herself as much as Ellie.
They’re almost at the cottage when Ellie speaks next. “Do you think people are inherently good or bad?” she asks, her face still fixed to the window.
Rachel frowns. She is thinking less about what her answer might be, and more about what might have prompted such a philosophical question from her daughter. Were they still talking about Malcolm? “I’m not sure, Ellie. What do you think?”
Ellie shrugs.
Rachel kicks herself. It isn’t the time for a professional counseling approach. Ellie is asking for something from her. Openness. Honesty. She tries again. “I don’t think I do believe that, no. I believe we’re shaped by our experiences. Our families, our friendships, the things that happen to us… those are the things that mold us. Human beings are complicated. Nothing’s ever black and white.”
“So, you believe in nurture over nature?”
Rachel’s still unsure where Ellie is heading with her questions. “I think it’s probably a combination of the two. But I don’t like to think that anyone is born evil. I can’t imagine that. Can you?”
Ellie doesn’t answer and for a moment they are both silent, listening to the gravel crunching beneath the tires. “I think some people have a streak of bad running through them. Like an apple with a rotten core. You can’t always tell it’s there, but it is, waiting to be revealed.”
“Ellie, you don’t think you’ve got a rotten core, do you?”
Ellie glances up at her, and Rachel sees something in her daughter’s eyes, something hot and bright, which makes her feel a little afraid.
“Because I don’t see that in you,” Rachel adds. “Not at all. I see a loving, compassionate girl. A girl who feels things deeply. There are some difficult, sad things happening right now. This terrible business with Sarah. And I know you’ve had a hard time accepting your dad’s and my separation. There’s Chrissie’s baby too. It’s a lot right now, but I promise you, it will settle down.”
Ellie releases a fierce sigh. “God, Mum. For a trained therapist, you really can be clueless sometimes.”
“So tell me, then. What am I missing?”
Ellie shakes her head. “This thing with Sarah. It’s terrible. I really wish she hadn’t died. That she was OK. But everyone’s talking about her now like she’s some sort of saint. She’ll be forever remembered as this golden girl. I guess that’s not the person I knew, that’s all.”
Rachel falls silent, thinking. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand how hard it’s been for you, transitioning to this school. I’m sorry I missed that you were having a tough time.”
She is sorry. Rachel’s always thought the benefits of working at the school, of being in such close proximity to Ellie, would outweigh any negatives, but perhaps Ellie was at a disadvantage having her mother on the school faculty. All the other students had access to her as a counselor. But for Ellie, she’d always just be “Mum.” Who else did Ellie have to talk to?
“I know you might not want to open up to me—or your dad. But if you’d like to speak to someone, in confidence, I could arrange it. Someone neutral. Someone private. It doesn’t have to be a therapist. Your tutor, Edward Morgan, you like him, don’t you? Perhaps we could ask if he might—”
“Drop it, Mum. I don’t need anyone.” Ellie draws her shutter down.
Rachel, chastised, parks outside the cottage and they sit for a moment, both of them staring out at the small stone building and the wooded hillside rising up steeply behind, cast in moonlight. Somewhere out in the darkness a fox screams, its cry high and unsettling.
Rachel steals a glance at Ellie, noting the familiar slope of her nose, the mirror image of Ben’s; those scattered freckles, the new, dark shadows beneath her eyes, the proud tilt of her chin. She wishes she could see inside her, understand her anger and pain.
Ellie turns to meet her gaze. “What?” Instead of waiting, she sighs and slips from the car, slamming the door behind her.
“Nothing,” Rachel replies to the empty seat.
She can’t shake it. The fear is still there. Every bone in her body screams that something is up with Ellie, that she might still be in trouble. But what can she do? She can’t hover over her every minute. She can’t pepper her with more questions—it will only push her further away.
Inside the cottage, she finds Ellie standing in the kitchen surveying their ransacked belongings. The police had moved through the premises like a well-oiled machine, but it had already taken Rachel several hours to start putting things back into order. “They didn’t find anything,” Rachel says, reaching out to squeeze Ellie’s shoulder.
Ellie shrugs her off. “I could’ve told you that.”
She slinks away upstairs and Rachel lets her go, returning more of their scattered items to drawers, replacing books on shelves, and adjusting the cushions on the sofa. After a while she gives up, looking for somewhere to settle, something else to occupy her. She is far too wired to sleep.
If she could, she would work. God knows recent events have meant she’s slipped behind. There is the statement she needs to draft for the governors’ report, notes from a student assessment to write up, reassurances to parents’ worried emails. All tasks that have slid in priority over a horrible few days. But the papers she needs for those jobs are still sitting on her office desk, right next to her laptop, exactly where she’d left everything in her hurry to get to Ellie’s interview.
She goes to the window and glances out at the night sky. Thin cloud shifts like drifting smoke over a crescent moon. It’s hardly an appealing prospect to head out into the dark again, but if she goes now, she could scoop up her belongings and be back again in twenty minutes, with everything she’ll need to work from home tomorrow—or worse, should she be summoned back to the police station with Ellie.
Calling up to Ellie that she’s popping out and won’t be long, she pulls on her coat and slips out the front door.
The temperature outside seems to have plummeted as she sets off across campus and there’s nothing for company but the sound of her boots on the winding gravel path and the ghostly call of an owl somewhere out in the trees. She shivers. Quick as she can. In and out. Then home.
In the recent past, the splendor of the school grounds has always given Rachel a thrill, a sort of chest-swelling pride at being a small part of something so historic, so prestigious. But what had once appeared as a safe haven, nestled into the shoulder of the valley, now seems sinister and oppressive. The looming trees, no longer standing like benevolent, silent guardians, now feel somehow threatening, as if they’ve closed ranks, hiding a multitude of dark secrets. There’s a pressing claustrophobia. And something else too—something she recognizes from the too-fast thud of her heart. Fear. It’s as if the school is shrouded not just in darkness, but in a strange new terror. It’s become a place of dread. A place where something terrible has happened. Where something terrible might still happen.
The hairs raise at the nape of her neck. Just the cold, she tells herself, but she quickens her pace, grateful when she’s finally standing outside the administration building, putting her key to the door and sliding into the unlit entrance hall.
Given the lateness of the hour, the whole building is silent and empty, just as she’s expected. Just as she’s hoped. No awkward questions about Ellie’s visit to the police station. No nosy colleagues to navigate. She scurries down the dark wood-paneled corridor, her path tripping a series of security lights, stern eyes boring down at her from the dour portraits of former head teachers lining the walls. When she reaches her office, Rachel stops.
