Charley (7 page)

I suspected that her being at the scene of a death was more than
just mere coincidence. She had gone up there for a reason. There was a nervousness about her that told me as much. I could’ve driven her straight to the station, but she would’ve clammed up, especially if she had come across top detective Jackson and his collection of thumb screws.

‘I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to have a Big Breakfast and some hash browns.’

‘I’ll just have tea, please,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Okay,’ I said, and placed the order.

‘You know you’re not going to stay in shape if you keep eating fast food,’ she said.

I turned to her and smiled. ‘You think I’m in shape? Thanks for saying so.’

‘It’s not what I meant,’ she said, her cheeks flushing.

‘No?’ I teased. ‘So what did you mean?’

‘You’re not going to be chasing too many criminals if you stodge up on junk food,’ she said. ‘I thought cops had to be fit.’

‘So you don’t think I’m fit then?’ I winked at her.

‘Oh, please,’ she sighed, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m going to find us a table.’ She headed off across the restaurant.

I paid and carried the food over to the table. Sliding into my seat, I said, ‘So, you never told me your name.’

‘Why do you need to know my name?’ she asked, taking her tea and warming her hands against the paper cup. ‘Is this some kind of interview?’

‘Are you always so hostile with every guy that buys you breakfast?’ I shot back, opening the lid off my food.

‘You’re not just any guy, you’re a cop,’ she smiled over the rim of her cup.

‘Is that a problem?’ I asked, forking scrambled egg into my mouth.

‘No, problem,’ she said. ‘It’s just that cops are meant to always be on duty, aren’t they?’

Putting my fork to one side, I reached into my coat pocket and removed my radio. It hissed with static. I switched it off and placed it on the table. ‘Okay, so now I’m officially off duty.’

‘My name’s Charley Sheppard.’

‘Good to meet you, Charley,’ I said, reaching out across the table.

Slowly, she took my hand. Her skin felt soft but cold. I let her hand go so she could warm it again around her cup.

‘So how old are you?’ I asked her.

‘Are you sure you’re off duty? It’s just that this is beginning to sound like some kind of interrogation,’ Charley said. ‘Why do you need to know my age?’

‘Just being friendly,’ I said with a shrug, returning to my food.

There was a pause. ‘I’m seventeen. Seventeen and a half in fact. Actually I’ll be eighteen in just a few months. Well six months …’

‘So you’re seventeen and a half,’ I smiled.

‘Is that a problem?’

‘No problem,’ I said with a casual shake of my head.

‘So what about you?’

‘Twenty years, two months, three days, five hours and four seconds …’ I said.

‘Ha-ha, very funny,’ Charley said, looking through the window and out onto the cobbled high street. A few people passed by, bent forward against the rising wind.

‘I was just messing with you,’ I said, fearing my teasing might have hurt her feelings. ‘Honest, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ she shrugged.

I didn’t need to be a cop to know she was worried about something.

‘You look tired,’ I said, not knowing what else to say but not
wanting the conversation to dry up. I needed to keep Charley talking.

‘So do you,’ she said.

‘Is that a polite way of telling me I look like a sack of shit?’ I said. She just looked at me. Now I felt like I was on the spot. ‘I’ve been up all night,’ I told her.

‘Investigating the death of that girl?’ Charley said.

Why was she so keen to know that?

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘So why were you really up on that deserted road this morning?’

Charley looked out of the window again. She did know something. I could see her whole body tensing up. Picking up one of the hash browns, I tore it in two and offered her half. ‘Go on, it’s good,’ I said.

Looking down at the food and not at me, she took it from between my fingers. She pulled a piece off and popped it in her mouth. I watched her chew it slowly, thoughtfully.

‘My best friend was killed by a train on the railway tracks a few weeks back,’ she said. She must have seen my look of surprise because she quickly added, ‘Didn’t you know? I thought it would be your business to know something like that. Her name was Natalie Dean.’

Charley was right, I didn’t know. I had only made the move from force headquarters in Truro to the coastal town of Marsh Bay a week ago, so I wouldn’t have known about her friend’s death. But why hadn’t Harker, Taylor or Jackson mentioned it? Why had they kept that from me? I didn’t like the fact that I was being kept out of the loop.

I tried to mask my surprise. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your friend, but that still doesn’t account for you being up on that remote dirt track this morning.’

‘I just wanted to go up to where she died, to pay my respects …’

‘So she died in the exact same place as the girl last night?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, sounding confused, as if I’d put her under some kind of pressure.

‘So what are the chances of you stumbling across the very same place where a girl died?’ Charley was right; breakfast was turning into some kind of interrogation.

‘Look, I didn’t have anything to do with Kerry’s death …’ Realising her mistake, she stopped midsentence and looked at me.

‘Okay. So how come you know her name was Kerry?’

‘I don’t,’ Charley said, looking as shocked as me.

‘Yes you do. You just said her name was Kerry.’

‘What I meant to say was I couldn’t be certain her name was Kerry,’ she said.

I placed my knife and fork down on the table. ‘Look, what’s going on here, Charley?’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ she said, white-faced.

I wasn’t convinced she was involved in Kerry Underwood’s death, but she knew something about it.

‘Charley, we can either talk about this now over a nice relaxing breakfast or we can discuss it down at the station. I would much prefer to stay here. What do you reckon?’ I tried to keep my voice calm so as not to upset her. I feared she might not talk to me, and I liked her.

She wrung her hands together. ‘You’ve got to believe me, Tom. I wasn’t involved in that girl’s death last night.’

‘So how do you know her name?’

‘I see things. I have flashes,’ Charley whispered like she was sharing some sacred secret with me.

‘You see things? What kind of things? What did you see?’ To ask so many questions all at once definitely wasn’t a great interview technique, but I was confused.

‘I know her name because I saw it on her necklace,’ Charley said.

She knows about the necklace? I really should take her down the road to the station but if I did would she clam up? ‘How do you
know about the necklace?’ I asked, my breakfast now forgotten.

‘So she did wear a necklace?’ Charley said with a tinge of excitement in her voice.

‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘What else do you know?’

Charley leant forward and rubbed her temples. She groaned as if in pain.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked, wondering if this wasn’t all some kind of act to divert my attention away from what she had been telling me.

‘It’s just a headache,’ she winced, screwing her eyes shut. ‘I get them from time to time.’

‘You look awful,’ I said as what little colour she had left in her face drained away. This was no act. I picked up the cup of tea and closed her fingers around it. ‘Here, drink some of this.’ I helped her guide the cup to her lips. ‘Better?’ I asked.

‘Kerry didn’t walk up to that dirt road last night,’ she said, her voice hollow and breathless. ‘She was taken in a car. She was dragged onto the tracks. I could hear the trains …’

‘Charley, what are you talking about?’ I said, reaching for her hands twitching uncontrollably on the table.

She brushed me away. Although Charley looked scared, her eyes sparkled with excitement. It was like she had been proved right about something.

‘A part of me is so scared, Tom,’ she said, looking at me, her eyes wide.

‘Why?’ I asked her, not knowing or truly understanding what was happening.

‘I’m scared because I saw that girl being dragged to her death, but there is another part of me that’s happy too,’ she whispered.

‘How can you be happy about a young girl losing her life?’ I mumbled, fearing that perhaps Charley had mental health issues I had failed to pick up on.

‘It means I’m not losing my mind,’ she breathed. ‘It proves I
haven’t been making this stuff up. The stuff I saw in those flashes wasn’t the work of my overactive imagination. They weren’t dreams, nightmares or hallucinations. They were real!’

‘Flashes?’ I gasped, realising this was the second time she had used this word.

‘I saw her, Tom. I saw Kerry,’ she said, rubbing her trembling fingers against her temples. ‘I saw her last night in my flashes.’

‘Right, slow down. What exactly are flashes?’

‘Tom, listen! I saw that girl last night. I saw images of what was happening to her in my mind as I lay on the bathroom floor.’

‘Do you know how crazy that sounds?’ I said. ‘It’s impossible!’

‘Why is it impossible?’ Charley said.

‘Because …’

‘Because the stuff I see in my flashes is just the product of my overactive imagination?’ she said with tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve been told that my whole life, but now I know that what I see in my flashes is true.’

‘I can’t believe that, Charley,’ I said. ‘But what you’re telling me implicates you in her death. Can you see that?’

‘You’re right. I am implicated, in a way.’ She sounded scared again. ‘I saw Kerry last night, yet I wasn’t there. It was like she was showing me what happened to her.’

‘But why would she do that?’ I asked.

‘I think she wants me to help her … catch her killer,’ Charley said. ‘Perhaps that’s what they’ve all been showing me …’

‘
They’ve?
’ I cut in. ‘You’ve seen more than one person?’

‘Yes,’ Charley nodded. ‘But this is the first time I’ve found a physical connection between those in my flashes and the real world.’

‘And that’s the problem,’ I sighed, not wanting to belittle her. ‘Stuff like this just doesn’t happen in the real world.’

Staring at me, a grim look of determination on her pretty face, Charley clenched her fists. ‘Kerry had blonde hair, blue eyes, she
was about eighteen. She wore blue jeans and white trainers. There was a dirt track close to where she died and it was swimming with puddles. A man dragged her up that track and all the time he was calling her a bitch. Her mobile was ringing and the killer snatched it out of her hands and tossed it away. The ringtone was that song
Burn
by Ellie Goulding. The killer drove a white car. He parked it in the lane. I could see what looked like some kind of outhouse with a broken chimney pot on top.’

I stared at her. ‘You would know all of that if you had been there last night.’

‘But I wasn’t, I was home,’ she said.

‘So you say.’ There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘So arrest me then!’ she finally snapped, shooting to her feet and thrusting her wrists across the table at me.

I glanced sideways and could see some of the other customers staring. ‘Sit down,’ I hissed.

Charley took her seat again.

‘So what did this guy – the one you say dragged Kerry down onto the tracks – look like?’ I asked. I really did want to believe her. I had learnt to believe in my instincts just like I had last night when dealing with Jackson. I knew he had been wrong, and if what Charley was telling me was half true then my instincts had been right.

‘I don’t see the faces of the living in the flashes, only those who’ve died,’ she told me.

‘Convenient,’ I sighed, sounding more flippant than I intended.

‘I don’t make up the rules,’ Charley said. She drew a deep breath. ‘For years I’ve been ridiculed and laughed at because of my flashes, even my own father doesn’t believe I see things. Do you think it was easy to sit here and tell you this stuff ? I know what you’re thinking – you think I’m some kind of crazy. But why would I risk that? Wouldn’t it have been easier for me to stuff my face with hash
browns and head off home again? I told you what I saw in my flashes because I got the feeling that perhaps you were different. You had a kind smile and you got me to trust you. You told me you were off duty and we were just here for breakfast. But you’re just like everyone else. I just needed to talk to someone – a friend. But you’re not a friend. You can never really be anyone’s friend because you’re a copper first. You’d probably arrest your own grandmother if you had to, so you wouldn’t think twice about arresting someone like me.’

‘Have you finished?’ I asked. ‘You seem to be forgetting that I haven’t arrested you.’

And how could I? What would I be arresting her for? I didn’t even know if a crime had been committed yet. I didn’t believe that Kerry Underwood staggered blindly onto the tracks and collapsed like Jackson wanted everyone to believe, but I needed more evidence first.

Regardless of whether Charley was telling the truth, she knew something about Kerry Underwood’s death. Whether that came from a series of supernatural flashes, or if she had some kind of deeper involvement but was just too scared to tell me yet, I knew I had to keep her close. Gain her trust.

In my heart I knew I should really take her to the police station and do a proper interview, but what would Harker and Jackson make of her? Walking into the police station with someone who claimed they had been having psychic visions about the death of Kerry Underwood wouldn’t do any wonders for my credibility.

No, I would keep it all to myself for now. I would wait until I had more proof before I risked telling my colleagues about Charley. Besides, I couldn’t deny that I liked her – there was something different about her and not just the fact she claimed to have visions.

‘So are you going to arrest me?’ Charley asked.

‘No,’ I said.

‘You believe me then?’ she said, her voice sounding hopeful.

‘I didn’t say that,’ I said, taking a business card from my pocket and sliding it across the table.