Charley (2 page)

Releasing his grip, my father flinched backwards, stunned, as if he had been punched. ‘Is that what you really believe, Charley?’ he asked. ‘Do you really think so little of me?’

‘“You should keep away from that girl. She is as mad as you if she really believes you have flashes. You have exams to revise for! The girl is a know-it-all. I don’t like the way she stares at me. I’m your father!” Isn’t that what you used to say?’ I reminded him, choking on my tears. “‘Why doesn’t that girl Natalie stop poking her nose into other people’s business? Why doesn’t she just leave you alone?’”

I watched my father’s face turn ashen, as his fingers slid from my shoulders. ‘I only had your best interests at heart, Charley. I never wanted anything bad to happen to the girl …’

‘Her name is … was … Natalie.’ To hear those words from my own mouth sounded odd – like the crunching sound of breaking bones.

‘Okay. I never wanted anything bad to happen to Natalie,’ my father said.

‘Well it did,’ I sniffed. ‘And you can’t take back all of the nasty things you said about her.’

‘I know I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Charley.’ Again, he stepped towards me, his arms open wide. This time I fell into them.

CHAPTER 2

Charley – Sunday: 23:43 Hrs.

F
lashes!
That’s what I call them. I’m Charley Shepard, the girl who can see things, the seventeen-year-old with an overactive imagination, the
freak
who can see lights like a thousand photographers crammed inside her head snapping away all at once!

With one hand clasped to the side of my head, I staggered into the bathroom. If anyone had been looking, I wouldn’t have blamed them for thinking I was trying to hold my head together – like it might just explode at any moment.

It was agony, like my brain was being rubbed against a cheese grater. I leant over the sink. Bile burnt the back of my throat. Then, as if slapped, my head rocked backwards and my neck made a cracking sound.

Let go of me!
I heard the voice say.
Please, I just want to go home!

I opened my eyes long enough to find the tap and turn it on. Water sloshed into the sink. I splashed some against my face. The flashes of light came again, jerking my head violently to the right. My knees buckled beneath me and I crashed to the bathroom floor.

Please just take me home
, the voice whimpered in my ear. It seemed so real, and for just the briefest of moments I was sure I could feel the girl’s breath against my cheek. I shuddered.

I promise I won’t tell anyone about you
, the girl whispered, her voice trembling inside me.

‘Please stop,’ I groaned, gripping the side of the bath. I tried and failed to pull myself up. I lay sandwiched between the side of the bath and the toilet. It always happened like this. For as long as I could remember it had always been the same. The voices first, then the pictures.

It was the pictures I hated the most. They came in sudden flashes of light, bright and unrelenting, searing their hideous images into my brain. They came so fast, jittering past my mind’s eye, like a series of ancient black and white photographs. But somehow, today’s flashes were different. Brighter and faster than ever before. And the pain – I felt as if I were dying.

The girl was being dragged. I could see her white trainers splattered with mud. It was raining and there were puddles – God, so many puddles – and they rippled, sending out distorted reflections of the girl. Horror and fear masked her prettiness. Seventeen years old, maybe eighteen, but no older. Green eyes, red lipstick, tear-smeared eyeliner.

Kerry.

Yes, her name was Kerry. The
flash
of the necklace showed me that. Jeans, jacket, raining … Her hair was wet and clinging to her face, blonde even though the rain had darkened it.

Help me!
the girl cried out, but what I couldn’t figure out was if she was calling to me or someone else.

Flash!
A hill set against the night sky. There was a car nearby,
the engine still running. I could hear its purr and smell its exhaust. Another sudden burst of bright light. A muddy field, the smell of earth, the smell of alcohol.

‘Where are you?’ I mumbled, my skull feeling as if it were being crushed in a vice. I twitched and it was like I was no longer aware of the real world. All I was aware of was the girl, the dirty trainers and the puddles. There was something else though. I could hear music. It was faint at first, drowned out by the sound of the rain and the girl’s hysterical sobs.

That’s my mum calling
, the girl pleaded with him.
Please let me speak to her – she’ll be wondering where I am
.

Shut up!
Another voice. Male.

As I twitched on the bathroom floor, my eyes half open, pupils rolled back into my skull, I knew the voice belonged to the man who had dragged the girl through those puddles.

Turn that thing off
, he hissed at her.

The music was a ringtone. My head jerked to the right, hitting the side of the bath as I tried to listen to it. Those light bulbs popped again in time with the music coming from the girl’s mobile phone.

‘
Burn
,’ I whispered, recognising the song. ‘You like Ellie Goulding – don’t you?’

The girl was being dragged like an animal down a … dirt track? It was too dark to see clearly. The road was very narrow, there were trees on either side, and I could hear the rain and the wind as it tore through the branches.

The music ended abruptly.

He’d made a mistake. He cursed himself and it was as if I could hear his thoughts:
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I should have taken her phone!
The flashes shone light into his soul and it was black. No amount of light could illuminate such a place. I felt his fear as his mind scrambled through the consequences.

They’ll triangulate the signal
, he cursed inside, pulling the girl
through the mud.
They’ll trace it – find it
.

I felt his fear and my body locked in a violent spasm. In some small way, I took pleasure in it. He was human, after all.

Switch it off!
he hissed at the girl, bringing his face close to hers.

‘Let me see your face, you bastard,’ I called out from the bathroom floor, my voice muffled and distorted. But I knew I wouldn’t see it. I only ever saw the faces of those about to die. Wide-eyed and full of fear.

Flash!
One after another in rapid succession. Blinding me again before I’d had a chance to see him. Then, somewhere close by, the sound of a train passing and a snapshot image of a broken chimney pot. What did those flashes mean?

Give me the phone, you silly bitch
, he seethed, and my stomach knotted at the hatred in his voice.

I could see the girl’s fingers curled around her mobile. She held it as if it was her last connection to the life she feared would soon end. The flash bulbs popped again, this time showing a close-up view of the girl’s fingernails. They had been recently painted, and four of them were broken, but there was something white and flaky beneath them.

‘Paint!’ I cried out.

The fragmented images blinded me again. I saw the mobile phone cartwheeling through the air.

Mum!
the girl screeched, knowing that any connection to the world she had once known had now gone.

Keep quiet
, he hissed and the girl flinched at the sound of his voice.

But you’re going to hurt me
, she whispered.

You know that
, he whispered back.

CHAPTER 3

Tom – Monday: 02:19 Hrs.

‘
W
ho are you?’ DC Jackson asked, pulling the collar of his jacket up against the rain.

Strobes of blue light from the nearby police vehicles lit up the night. The air crackled with the sound of radios sending messages back and forth between the control room and the officers who were searching the dirt road, which led down to the railway tracks. The light from their torches lit up the undergrowth.

‘PC Tom Henson,’ I replied, trying to find my warrant card in the dark.

Before I’d had the chance to show my ID, Jackson was talking at me again. ‘So you’re the new proby? The Guv mentioned you might be joining us for an attachment.’

God, I hated that word –
proby
. I wasn’t a probationer any more.
I fished my warrant card from my back trouser pocket and held it up, but Jackson had already turned away, no longer interested.

‘I’m not a probationer any more,’ I told him, despite his apparent lack of interest.

‘Whatever,’ Jackson said, flicking away a cigarette he had been shielding from the rain with his hand. ‘You’re the kid who has a hotshot lawyer for a dad, ain’t cha?’

I’d heard this all before. There was resentment from some of my colleagues because I was only twenty and had been singled out by my senior officers for an attachment to CID. It had nothing to do with my father. He hadn’t even wanted me to be a copper. I’d been sent to CID because I’d worked hard for it. Nothing else.

But old sweats like Jackson always had this look of dislike and distrust whenever someone young and ambitious joined their team. I had seen it more than I cared to remember over the last two years. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. Officers like Jackson were guarded, reluctant to share their knowledge, preferring to see officers like me make mistakes, when all I wanted was to learn.

‘I didn’t ask to be posted to CID,’ I said, hoping I might win the trust of Jackson if I explained how I’d ended up working alongside him.

‘So what are you doing here then?’ Jackson asked, acting as if he wasn’t bothered either way.

‘Superintendent Cooper suggested …’

‘Jeez,’ Jackson scoffed, running a hand through his rain-soaked hair. ‘You’ve been in the job five minutes and you’ve already got that old wanker Cooper eating out of your hand. Are Cooper and your old man in the same lodge?’

‘My father isn’t a Freemason, if that’s what you mean,’ I said. Jackson wasn’t much older than thirty, yet he was acting as if he knew every freaking rule in the book. ‘Superintendent Cooper is my mentor.’

‘Mentor?’ Jackson laughed out loud. ‘What is this job coming to? Mentor my arse. When I was a proby, it was sink or swim, mate. I didn’t have anyone wiping my arse.’

‘He’s not wiping my arse,’ I said, putting away my warrant card.

‘I ain’t really interested,’ Jackson said, walking to the shelter of a nearby tree and lighting another cigarette. DC Jackson was tall, about six foot three and had one of those builds that said he spent way too much time in the station gym, probably getting off on watching himself lift weights in the mirrors. His hair had gone prematurely grey and was cut short like a marine. I watched the end of his cigarette wink on and off in the darkness as he smoked.

‘Where’s the Guv anyway?’ he asked.

‘Gone to collect DS Taylor, she was—’ I started.

‘Here they come now,’ Jackson cut over me, stepping out from beneath the tree.

I shot a glance back over my shoulder and shielded my eyes against the glare of the approaching headlights. They lit up the narrow dirt track, casting eerie shadows amongst the trees. Leaving the lights on, DS Taylor and DI Harker climbed from the car.

‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Harker groaned as he plunged his foot straight into a puddle.

Jackson stifled a grin. He hid it quickly by chewing on the cigarette that dangled from the corner of his mouth.

‘Don’t just stand there gawping, son,’ Harker barked at me. ‘Fetch my wellies from the boot.’

‘Okay, sure. Sorry, sir,’ I said, making my way to the rear of the vehicle.

‘And while you’re there, fetch a couple of Hi-Vis. If we’re going trackside we’ll need ’em,’ Harker yelled.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said again, rummaging through boxes of exhibit labels, statement forms, interview tapes and evidence bags that had been crammed into the boot of the car. I eventually spied the Wellington boots and a couple of fluorescent jackets, pulled them
out and, with the items balanced in my arms, struggled to close the boot with my elbow. The rain came down harder, bouncing up off the roof of the car and drumming into the puddles.

I could see DI Harker sitting half-out of the passenger seat, and he looked back just in time to see me slip on the mud and go flying through the air and onto my back.

‘Oh for the love of God,’ Harker groaned. ‘We’ve been sent a right one here.’

To make matters worse, as I hit the ground the air exploded from my lungs, causing me to make a hideous belching sound.

‘What a muppet,’ Jackson laughed, and I could feel my cheeks burning red with embarrassment.

‘That’s enough, Jackson,’ someone else said.

I looked up to see DS Taylor holding out her hand towards me. Rain ran through her black hair and down her pale face.

‘Get up,’ she said.

Gratefully, I gripped her hand and she yanked me to my feet.

‘Thanks,’ I muttered, trying to rub the mud from my jacket and trousers but only succeeding in smearing it further into my clothes. ‘I feel a right tit.’ Then, noticing DS Taylor’s look of disapproval, I quickly added, ‘Sorry, Sarge, but you know what I mean.’

‘We can all get a little overexcited on our first day,’ she half-smiled as she stooped to pick up one of the fluorescent jackets from the mud. ‘You’re amongst friends.’

‘Am I?’ I breathed, looking over the roof of the car at Jackson who stood in the rain smirking at me.

‘Take no notice of him,’ she said, slipping on the bright yellow coat. ‘Jackson can be full of shit at times, but his heart’s in the right place. You’ll get used to him. He just feels a bit threatened by you.’

‘Threatened?’ I asked.

‘Beats the shit out of me,’ she half-smiled again. Then, turning away, she said over her shoulder, ‘It must be a guy thing.’

‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ Harker roared, one
rain-soaked foot sticking up in the air.

I looked at him. ‘Sorry, sir?’

‘
Boots!
’

I had only met Detective Inspector Harker once before. It was two days ago when I’d first arrived at Marsh Bay police station, and before the start of my first night shift. I’d wanted to go and introduce myself, but he had been busy and just as pissed off as he seemed now. Perhaps that was just the way he was.