It was very similar to the tone he’d used with me when we were still in college. Hey Lizzie, I didn’t know you felt like that. How could I realize you’d take it seriously? We’re mates, right. It was a bit of fun.
As an actor, I thought again, he had a limited range. No wonder he’d had to find a day job.
There was a pause. In the distance I could hear Jess hoovering the upstairs rooms. I sat, refusing to break the silence.
‘I could take you now,’ he said. ‘Nell hasn’t gone into school today. I’ve borrowed Ellen’s car.’ Suddenly his voice went flat and bleak. ‘Please, Lizzie. You don’t know the state she’s in. I can’t go back without you.’
I considered him suspiciously. Was he better, after all, than I’d realized? A bit hammy but with more emotional tone than I’d given him credit for? Then I thought none of that mattered. If I went it wouldn’t be for Dan. It would be for the girl. She’d be blaming herself and me and Dan and her parents. Everyone except the person with the knife. And what else did I have to do? I stuck the flowers in a milk jug and left a note for Jess on the table. She’d only have tried to stop me. I closed the kitchen door quietly behind me, but I didn’t think she’d hear anyway, above the hoover. Dan drove to Whitley Bay in silence, which meant either that he really cared for this girl or that he had more sense than to be triumphalist.
Nell’s family had a house in one of the streets parallel to that where the Laings lived. Presumably Dan had been on his way there when we’d met the week before. It was on a corner, detached, mellow brick with ivy growing up the side, a more modern extension built on the back. At the gate I stopped, blocking the path, so Dan had to listen to me.
‘How did you know I’d found the body?’
‘Radio Newcastle.’
‘I was named?’
He nodded. ‘A twenty-five-year-old social worker.’
Oh, well, I thought, it could have been worse. Farrier could have added, ‘Who’s currently on sick leave following a mental breakdown.’ I’d always thought he was decent.
I stepped aside and let Dan past. He led me round the back of the house and opened a door in the flat-roofed extension. I expected to step into a kitchen, but this was Nell’s room, a cross between an artist’s garret and the Blue Peter studio. Everywhere was colour. One wall was orange, with Pollock-like splashes in red and brown, another was washed deep blue fading into lilac. On that body parts had been printed in black gloss – not just the handprints you see in nursery schools, but feet, arms, buttocks and some smudgy marks which were probably tits. There was a big window looking out over the garden. A long trestle table had been built beneath it. Below the trestle were sets of drawers on castors, baskets with brushes and tubes of paint; beside it, a couple of high stools. Everything was messy and chaotic. The tubes of oil paint had tops missing. On the opposite wall was a sink. More brushes stood in jars of white spirit on the draining board. On the floor were piles of paper. I saw some pencil drawings which made me think for the first time that Nell was more than a spoilt brat who didn’t look after her things. In one corner a construction was under way, involving chicken wire and plaster. Perhaps it was finished and making a statement about impermanence, but I don’t think so. There were splashes of plaster on the floor and they still looked wet.
Nell could have been another installation. She was curled on a huge purple cushion on the floor. There was more plaster on her hair and her jersey. When she heard us come in she sat up.
‘This is Lizzie,’ Dan said.
We stared at each other.
‘Look, coffee, yeah?’
He ran away through an internal door. He seemed very at home in the house. I presumed Nell’s parents were at work. Left alone, we continued to stare at each other.
She was very small and dark. Black hair, which I don’t think had been dyed, chopped in a jagged cut around her ears. A little face. Dark eyes made even bigger by the panda shadows which surrounded them. Even as she was sitting, cross-legged, I could tell she had that dancer’s grace which Dan always went for.
‘You found him,’ she said.
I nodded. There were no chairs, and no way would I sit on the floor with all the crap. I was wearing a decent pair of trousers you could only dry-clean. I pulled out one of the stools, dusted it with my sleeve while my back was to her and sat on that.
‘I’m not sure why you want to see me,’ I said. ‘He was dead when I got there.There’s nothing I can tell you.’
‘You must have spoken to him to arrange the visit. I want to know how he was. If he was OK, perhaps I won’t feel so bad. Now I just remember how I betrayed him.’
I know all adolescents are intense. I’d been intense myself in my search for justice, my mother and the great Newbiggin dream, but no one had ever looked at me before with such haunted and piercing eyes.
‘No.’
‘What did you want to see him for?’
I could have lied, but I didn’t see the point any more. The only people I’d have any qualms about hurting or offending were already dead. I told her the whole story. ‘My problem now is that the solicitor claims never to have heard of me. It makes my position a little…’ I hesitated ‘… uncomfortable.’
‘The police think you might have killed Thomas?’
I nodded again.
‘That’s ridiculous.’ She was scathing. ‘Why would you?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t think they need to prove a motive.’
‘At least I wrote to him,’ she said. ‘To apologize. We’d had a dreadful row. At least he still knew I cared about him.’
I didn’t say anything. No point in stirring that up either. I moved the conversation on quickly, thinking that Dan might come back any minute and the last thing I wanted was talk of letters.
‘Did Thomas ever mention his father?’
‘Not his real dad. He talked about Ronnie. His mum always wanted Thomas to call him Dad, but he never would.’
‘What did he say about Ronnie?’ I tried to keep my voice casual, but I knew it was important. The relationship between Ronnie and Thomas mattered in all this. It could explain why Kay had kicked him out of the house.
‘Thomas said he despised Ronnie. He said Ronnie let Kay walk all over him.’
‘But?’
‘I’m not sure. He was pretty screwed up about the whole parent thing, you know.’
I knew.
‘I mean, I think deep down he wanted Ronnie to like him.’
‘Is that why Thomas started volunteering for a conservation charity? Ronnie’s into the countryside too, isn’t he?’
She looked at me. One of the nuns in the kids’ home I’d been in when I was seven had looked at me like that. Appraising, judging. I’d thought she’d been able to tell exactly what I’d been thinking. It had scared me rigid.
‘What do you know about that?’ she asked.
‘Only what Dan told me. That Thomas volunteered as a fund-raiser.’
‘I didn’t approve,’ she said.
‘Oh, Dan thought you’d introduced him to the charity.’
‘I don’t think of it as a charity. More a lobby group. Field sports. Hunting. Political, really. I was surprised when he went for it. He said I didn’t understand. If I understood properly what was going on there, I’d approve.’
I remembered what Ray had said after my meeting with Ronnie Laing. ‘Are you saying Thomas worked for the Countryside Consortium?’
‘Only as a volunteer. Marcus organized it.’
When she spoke she opened her mouth wide. The words were very defined. An actor doing a voice exercise. Another drama queen. I thought she’d suit Dan fine.
‘Marcus?’
‘He worked for the Consortium in his gap year. We both knew him, though he wasn’t at our school. I was surprised when Thomas got involved. He’d made fun of the whole thing at first. Ronnie was a supporter. That was enough to turn Thomas off. And he knew my feelings on the subject. But he seemed to get sucked in. When he started with them he didn’t talk about it much. Like it could have been some secret society. Like it was some big deal and he was saving the world. He liked being mysterious.’