Come and Be Killed: A Chilling Psychological Thriller, page 3
Not much lower.
Frankie’s stomach rumbled as the smell of warm bread met her nose, but no way could she eat anything. Not for a long while. And where was her forty quid? No sign of it so far.
She’d woken up to a pitch-black bedroom, her mouth seeming full of sea water. Her tongue rough and sore.
Bastard.
But who else could she tell? Who’d believe her?
She thought of Mrs Beavis warning her to keep out of trouble. Instinct told her that if she was ever to earn that magical sum per week for caring, that’s exactly what she had to do.
‘Cat got your tongue, then?’ Shannon sat at the table, her lipgloss now overlaid by margarine oozing from her toast. Her mouth crammed so full she couldn’t scream when Frankie reached down and took a studded ear lobe between thumb and forefinger and pinched.
‘You bitch. I’ll tell Mum.’ Her stepsister’s eyes began to fill up. She looked pathetic.
‘I wouldn’t if I was you. Not if you want to keep your looks.’
‘Threats are all you can do, isn’t it, pie-face?’
Frankie bit her lower lip till it hurt. No one had called her that for years. Look, she told herself, in seventy-six days’ time she’d be walking through the glass doors of Openshaw Tech. That’s all she could think of. The rest wasn’t worth it.
She’d delivered her application form by hand as neither Beryl nor John Arthur had cooperated with its signing until the last minute. Beryl had insisted that she find evening shift work to keep some money coming in, while he made her promise that when care was needed at 358 Dartmoor Road, she’d provide it.
Frankie had licked down the envelope’s flap and run all the way to the college’s front entrance, with no intention of fulfilling either of their selfish demands. She’d need her evenings for study, not putting toys into cereal boxes or packing toiletries for Christmas.
After this stressful and nail-biting interlude, a kind of lull descended upon the soot-covered semi during the next fortnight, in which Beryl Holt worked longer hours at the school and John Arthur spent more time hanging round Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens and the pubs there. Then he’d keep out of everyone’s way, sitting in front of the TV in the front room until the small hours.
The whites of his eyes were pinker. His BO was worse too, from wearing collarless nylon shirts for weeks on end, until Beryl ordered him to bundle them into the machine. He obeyed her, since it was her monthly cheque which kept him in beer. But now they slept apart, with him in the box room next to the toilet. And he still owed Frankie forty pounds. As if she would ever forget.
*
Frankie agreed to spend the rest of the summer holiday at Mellor’s, a liquorice factory in Oldham Road, then going straight on to work a late shift as a potato sorter for six quid an hour, ruining her hands in the process.
But what about Shannon, the White Goddess of Dartmoor Road, whose photos since birth lay dotted around the house? Shannon had ignored her, except to rub her nose in it that she’d got all As in her A-levels, a photo in the Manchester Evening News and was going to university to read geography.
How do you ‘read’ geography, mused Frankie, who thought it the most boring subject. Who needed to know Bolivia’s annual rainfall? Or the biggest producer of alfalfa in the southern hemisphere? After three years, Shannon would know everything there was to know about the world, yet that still wouldn’t stop her from plucking the cruellest little arrows from her sling and firing them where they hurt the most. Worse was the fact that Beryl intended to make up any shortfall in her expenses from her Woolwich savings account.
That Sunday morning, Frankie had sneaked a look in her handbag. The total in the little navy book was £8,520.25.
Beryl’s gesture of favouritism represented the chasm between her and her stepsister, as deep and dark as the River Irwell itself. So Shannon was worth it. But not her.
She heard Shannon slam the front door and watched her stride towards the bus stop. Her jeans snug around her arse. White ankle boots clicking on the tarmac. Her hair like a sheet of silk against her back, lifting up at the corners as she walked.
Frankie pressed her lips to the window and mouthed the foulest words she knew. All from Elm Park Comp. Suddenly, without warning, Shannon paused, glanced back as if she knew she was being cursed. A frown spoilt her perfect face. Frankie ducked down. Heard the WC flushing and Beryl using air freshener.
‘What are you doing?’ Beryl asked from the bedroom doorway, bringing a hint of Floral Glade and something else in with her.
‘Nothing. Just mucking about.’ Her blush was the giveaway.
‘I thought your liquorice shift starts at ten on Sundays.’
‘I’ve packed it in, OK?’
Beryl Holt came closer. Prodded her finger into Frankie’s back.
‘Perhaps you’ve not understood me, but in this household we all have to pull our weight.’
Frankie couldn’t look at her. Nor bear to see those granite-coloured eyes, that floury skin, and to mention John Arthur just then would have risked her head being shoved down the bog bowl. Like the last time she’d stood up for herself.
‘Mellor’s not good enough for you. That it, eh?’ Beryl began tidying up without so much as a by your leave. First her precious books, lying topsy-turvy on her shelves, then the worn Dralon armchair full of T-shirts and underwear. Next, her bed with its furrowed candlewick bedspread and then . . .
‘No. Please leave her alone!’
‘It’s only a bleeding doll, you.’
‘She’s Lila, and she’s mine.’ Frankie edged towards her. The bitch was holding her aloft, by her hair. Her just-brushed hair . . .
‘How old are you, Frances? Just remind me.’
Frankie didn’t reply. Instead she head-butted Beryl off the scene but not quickly enough to stop her flinging Lila high into the air to hit the landing light and tumble down the stairs. With each bump came a cry. But more than that. A gross distortion of such a familiar and comforting sound; high and wild, nothing like those times when she’d gently pat her back to bring up wind after a feed or brush imagined snags out of her hair. No, Lila was hurting, dying, and Frankie knew, as she scooped her broken body off the bottom step, something inside her too, had died.
Seconds later came Beryl’s hateful voice behind her like a spike through her heart.
‘Honest to God, Frances, I wish we’d never taken you on. You’ve brought us nothing but bad luck.’
‘I never asked you to, did I?’ Frankie retaliated, running to the front door.
Frankie saw the bus arrive and Shannon step on to it with all the confidence under the sun, leaving for the briefest moment a white bootee glinting, an elbow jutting out. For a split second she wanted to catch her, but Beryl’s shadow was touching hers and Mrs Tilley from next door was lingering by the low dividing wall, pretending to fiddle with her flower pots.
Beryl tapped her watch. Her lips puckered like a dog’s arse.
‘You’ve got ten minutes to get to Mellor’s or else. I don’t want you back here till your shift’s finished. Got it?’
Lila felt cold to the touch. Her big blue eyes half covered by their eyelids as her left leg suddenly came away in Frankie’s hand. A piece of twisted elastic still attached to its joint.
‘And I don’t want Mr Holt making me suck his cock any more. So there.’
The neighbour let out a gasp of astonishment and scuttled indoors. Frankie didn’t hang around either.
Chapter Five
Martin sat at the edge of Blackheath Leisure Centre’s pool, letting his bare feet dangle in its warm chlorinated water. It was too early for the yobs and poolside pimps to be polluting the place. Instead the city’s workers were sluicing away another hot, humid week alongside parents with kids.
So far he’d heard nothing from the Metropolitan Police or Ria and he didn’t know which was worse. A slightly embarrassed Mrs Lewis had fobbed him off with the news her daughter had gone to Bali. Whenever he’d called her number there’d been no answer and keeping her house under surveillance might land him in trouble when he least needed it.
Donald Webb was still away after six weeks, ferrying tourists back and forth across the Balearics and the Mediterranean. Places he himself had no desire to visit. He preferred the green, green grass of home. He thought of his best mate Chris Mears, cooped up as a trainee call-centre manager in a seventh-floor office in the Tottenham Court Road. His dream was to travel the world on a black Suzuki. Fat chance now, he mused. Yes, Chris was out there in a suit, getting his first foot on the ladder. Him and Martin, the only two from their year not to have applied to uni.
‘Penny for them, baldy.’ Liz Stirling touched his shoulder with her toe as she walked behind him. But he wasn’t interested in this other so-called lifesaver, though she carried herself a certain way. She wasn’t Ria. Never would be.
‘What time d’you finish here?’ she asked.
‘Twelve.’ They’d cut his normal hours by three for filter repairs so he’d put in for extra tomorrow. ‘Why?’
‘Ditto. Fancy a drink afterwards?’
His hesitation let him down. Gave her the chance she needed.
‘See you at the George, then.’
Ria’s favourite watering hole.
But before he could come up with an alternative, she was out of reach at the far end of the pool near the diving boards and there was a mum near the 2.5m marker with an asthma attack. He could spot the signs a mile off. He got up and dived in.
Two other swimmers helped him haul her out of the water and stayed with her while he fetched a nebulizer from the first-aid store. He could see Liz staring, motionless at the far end. She’d done this before with Kelly. Left him to deal with the kid, but he’d never shafted her.
Was this how it would be in the police? he asked himself, trying to calm the woman and keep her warm. Everyone sticking together, watching their backs? If so, this might be the one factor to make him change his mind.
He gestured for Liz to come over and instead of responding by running, she took all the time in the world. Time in which a small crowd had gathered and a dark-skinned man in his forties arrived on the scene. Ricard. His boss.
‘Have you called an ambulance?’ he asked in a strong French accent.
‘Yeah. Just now.’ And in minutes, a siren wail snaked closer through the neighbouring streets.
Liz pulled back the woman’s hair none too gently. When she saw Martin looking, she held her hand.
‘You could have bloody got here,’ Martin hissed at her.
‘Someone had to be up the deep end,’ she replied. ‘Supposing I’d had an incident there?’
Jesus, she was smart and confident. Teflon-coated, more like. And Ricard hadn’t noticed anything, so how on earth could he, Martin, be the turncoat? He couldn’t.
The struggling, wheezing woman was stretchered away to the ambulance and, after the form-filling in Ricard’s office, Martin showered before jogging out of the centre towards his car. He heard a voice behind him.
‘Look, I know you’re pissed off with me, but are you still up for a drink?’
The sun was on her face, her hair sleeked back. The kind of smile he’d missed.
‘OK. Jump in.’
‘Thanks. Look, Martin,’ as she chucked her holdall on the back seat and climbed in next to him, ‘there’s something I’ve not told you. Nor anyone else, for that matter.’
He started the engine and hit first gear. Remembered he needed fuel.
‘Go on.’
She looked straight ahead as he drove along Berwick Avenue.
‘The reason I held back there, and it’s been twice now, is because . . .’
‘Because what?’
‘I can’t swim, can I?’
He crashed top gear. Slowed up to look at her. All her confidence was slipping away.
‘I hate the water. Always have. I’m sorry.’
‘But how the hell did you get the job? I mean, I had to do three lengths plus a frigging interview.’
‘I lied and said it was that time of the month, you know. Then I showed him my sister’s swimming certificates. Took me ages changing Emma’s name to mine.’
‘And lifesaving?’
‘Emma’s certificate again. She’s like a fish.’
What could he say? He wasn’t a copper yet, but people’s lives were at risk. He wondered if Ricard had noticed. He was the one who dealt with complaints.
‘Look, it was the only job I could get. My mum’s off work since Dad started seeing this other woman. I swear to God it was that one with the asthma just now. I’ve never seen her in the flesh, but she was the spit of a photo I found in his trouser pocket. And she had two sprogs.’
‘How old’s Emma?’
‘Thirteen.’
He saw the George set well back from the kerb, fronted by clusters of benches and flower tubs still full of colour. A more welcome sight he couldn’t imagine and so involved was he in her story that he forgot all about the possibility of meeting Ria there.
‘What will you do now?’ she asked, retrieving her holdall once he’d found a parking slot behind the pub. ‘Tell Ricard?’
He shook his head, knowing he had to tread carefully, for if any of this came to light and he was found to have kept quiet, what then? His Met application was already being processed. His future just beginning.
‘I’m going to order you a double of whatever you’d like.’
*
They sat with their drinks and a packet of crisps apiece, within range of the wall-mounted TV screen not because there was anything worth watching but seats were scarce, and as an antiques programme finished, a slightly strained silence fell between them. Normally Martin would have freely admitted to his plans to join the police, but not now, and when, as if mind-reading, she asked if he was planning a career at the leisure centre, he immediately said no.
‘My dad thinks I should train to be a commercial pilot like him. But it’s a helluva life. Here, there, bloody everywhere. And –’ He recalled his mother standing like a lost soul at the window – ‘it’s tough on those left behind.’
‘Well paid, though.’
‘God, yes.’ Then he realized that wasn’t the most sensitive thing to have said. ‘But then, money’s not everything.’
‘Well, we could do with a bit more. Christ knows what’ll happen if Dad decides to up sticks. Maybe I should go and finish that woman off. Take off that nebulizer and watch her breathe her last.’ She finished her vodka and lime, unaware of Martin’s surprise at her sudden, alarming change of tone.
Just as he was thinking that despite Webb Senior’s antics, he was considerably luckier than her, something caught his eye. A girl he half recognized. The gloom made further scrutiny impossible so he excused himself, stood up and was just about to check her out when, for an instant, she turned his way.
Ria.
‘What is it?’ Liz’s voice sounded miles away.
‘Nothing. It’s OK.’
But it wasn’t. His beautiful dark-haired girlfriend was with another guy. A suit, with longer hair than his had ever been, curling over his collar. And worse was how he leant forwards, staring straight at her as if he intended to eat her face. Anger and a profound sense of loss welled up inside, swiftly followed by the thought that she’d deliberately brought the guy here to rub his nose in it. After all, this had been their regular haunt. Where all the intricacies of her life and family had become bound with his. Where after a few drinks on the eighth of March last year, a week after his eighteenth birthday, they’d gone back to her house and, while her parents had gone out to a film, made love for the first time.
She was coming into focus now. Tanned from somewhere. A scoop-necked top and black trousers. She looked stunning. Doing well without him, obviously. If she’d seemed miserable he might have backed off.
‘What’s going on?’ He stood over their table. ‘Who’s this creep you’re with?’
‘For God’s sake, Martin. I’m not your bloody wife.’ She’d had a few to drink, he could tell. Their table resembled a spritzer graveyard.
‘I’d better go, yeah?’ The other guy made a move and Martin was about to clamp a hand on his shoulder when he realized where he’d seen him before. The letting agency. This was Ian Timms.
He was aware of people staring. Of conversations petering out as the one o’clock news began to roll on the TV. For a moment he was unsure as to his next move. Ria wasn’t even looking at him, but rummaging in her bag. That same bag in which she’d kept his letters and emails . . .
Something on the TV screen caught his eye. A face which made him grip the back of Timms’s chair. Made him freeze.
His dad.
There’d been an accident on a runway somewhere in Spain. The newscaster’s words about the pilot possibly being under the influence of drink sent him flying through the bar and out into the sunshine, unable to later recall his journey home.
*
‘Mum?’
His broken voice carried up the stairwell of 10 Buckingham Avenue. ‘You there?’ Only silence replied. A silence he was used to, from those after-school days when he’d let himself in and headed straight for the fridge and the cake tin. But this time he felt no hunger or thirst. Something worse than fear.
He could switch on the radio and TV in the kitchen but what he’d already heard in the pub was swilling around every part of him. He didn’t need any more.
‘Under the influence . . . Under the influence . . .’
‘Mum?’ Her crocodile-skin bag sat in its usual place. Her jacket and mac still hung from the free-standing coat rack, rubbing up against his dad’s few things. An Aquascutum waterproof and a beige windcheater he used for golf . . .
The house was silent. The garden ominously empty. She lived outdoors, did Louisa Webb. Gardening her one consolation. What was wrong?
Next the stairs, one by one, soundless on the thick blue pile, past framed aerial views of faraway seas and beaches lined by palm trees. Up to the landing where he had a choice.
Suddenly his legs felt like leaden traitors, his throat dry as he crept towards their bedroom, only to be met by an awesome stillness. The kind he associated with the Chapel of Rest in Eastbourne where he’d once kissed his grandmother’s waxy cheek and stroked her stiff ringless fingers.
