‘You were there, weren’t you? In the car park? Is that why you didn’t go to your interview yesterday, because you were too scared by what you saw?’
‘What if she finds out?’ the girl wailed.
‘Were you doing something you shouldn’t have been doing? Drugs? I don’t care if you were.’
‘NO! I don’t do that shit.’ Her outrage seemed to help her gather herself. She sniffed mightily, then dabbed under her eyes with the tissue – although, Patrick thought, she’d have been a lot better off wiping her runny nose. Something clicked into place.
‘You were with that boy, weren’t you? It’s OK,’ he reiterated. ‘You aren’t in trouble, not with us. We just need to know.’
‘Nan will kill me!’
Patrick knelt beside her, his knees cracking loudly. ‘She won’t need to know. You’re sixteen. It’s confidential, I promise you.’ Especially because he wasn’t here officially, though Chelsea didn’t need to know that.
She looked up at him then, her face a pulpy mess of snot, smeared make-up and tears.
‘I saw it happen,’ she whispered.
Patrick stopped breathing altogether. The only sound in the room was the gentle purring of the cat.
‘Go on.’
‘Me and – do I have to give his name? I don’t want to.’
The boy’s name would be useful. Another potential witness. But he knew if he insisted Chelsea would clam up again. ‘That’s OK – you and the boy, you were there . . . where?’
‘In the corner of the car park, although he’d gone by then. I just needed a minute to . . . get myself together again. It was dark in that corner and nobody else was there, not when we arrived. We just wanted to be on our own. We, er, you know . . .’ Chelsea’s voice was strangled with embarrassment.
‘Were having sex?’
She nodded, mortified. ‘Promise you won’t tell Nan!’
‘I won’t. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you saw.’
She took a sip of the water, her hand shaking. ‘We, um, did it, quite fast, then he had to go otherwise he’d miss his bus.’ Patrick had a flash of Bonnie telling this sordid tale in a decade and a half and shuddered. ‘I didn’t want to run with him, I hate running, so I told him to go without me. Anyway I was a bit – emotional. It was my first time. It wasn’t how I thought it would be.’
Poor kid, Patrick thought again. Her first experience of sex was a shag in a freezing dark car park, the experience topped off by her partner legging it and leaving her to witness a murder. Wendy’s murder.
‘I was about to leave and then I saw this girl come in – well, I thought she was a girl, I didn’t know then that she was a cop. She looked well young, too young to drive, so I thought it was weird she was there. She walked over to the far side – it was dark over there too, the lights were out – and next thing this man comes running in and they didn’t even speak or anything, he just stabs her and runs away and she’s lying on the floor and there’s blood everywhere and I sort of run over and her eyes were open, but then they closed and I could see that she was gone and I did mean to call 999, honest I did, but my phone was dead and I was really scared and I felt sick, so I—’
She collapsed into fresh sobs.
‘Ran away?’ Patrick supplied. He was feeling a bit emotional himself, at the knowledge that he was talking to the last person who had ever seen Wendy alive.
‘I ran away and went home and heard it on the news and haven’t been out since. I never want to go there again. I never want to see Josh again – not that he’s called me anyway. He was only after a shag . . . Nan doesn’t know I go out at night. She cleans in a hotel every weekend till 11 p.m. I’m supposed to be here. I thought if I got a job at the Rotunda, then I’d still be able to hang out there and see my mates, but I don’t want it now . . .’
Josh. So that was his name, thought Patrick. They’d need to speak to him too, although it sounded like he had gone before either Wendy or her assailant arrived. Chelsea was still gabbling, so he put a hand on her arm to stop her.
‘Chelsea, this is the most important bit: what did he look like, the man who stabbed her? Did you recognise him, from the bowling alley, maybe?’
Shoulders heaving, she puffed out her cheeks and squinched her eyes closed. Then she shook her head.
‘He was tallish. Medium size. White. Brown or black short hair. That’s all I can remember.’
‘Age?’
She shrugged. ‘Couldn’t tell. He had a big coat on.’
‘What sort of coat?’
Another shrug, then another panicked glance at the door. Patrick stood up. He knew he couldn’t push her too much when she was this anxious. He also knew that, now Chelsea had revealed how much she’d seen, there was no way he could keep this from Strong and her team. He was going to be in deep shit for coming here, but right now he didn’t care.
‘OK. I don’t want to get you into trouble, so I’m going to go now. Chelsea, thank you, I can’t tell you how helpful you’re being. I’m going to need you to phone the police station in Wimbledon and ask to speak to someone called DCI Vanessa Strong. She’s heading up the investigation into Wendy’s death and this is vital information. Your nan need not know, I promise.’
‘Will I have to go to court?’
Patrick hesitated. ‘You might. But not for ages, and we can hide your identity. We have to catch this guy, Chelsea, before he does it to someone else.’
She nodded reluctantly. ‘I knew I’d have to tell someone eventually,’ she said. Now the storm was over, she seemed almost relieved.
‘It was a horrible thing to have witnessed. We can put you in touch with Victim Support, get you some counselling,’ he said, standing up to leave. He scribbled the MIT’s main number onto the back of one of his business cards and handed it to her. ‘Promise me you’ll call DCI Strong?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I will.’
Just as they were leaving the sitting room, his eye caught the OnTarget poster again.
‘You’re a fan of OnT?’
Chelsea made a face. ‘I used to be, I guess. Not so much now.’
‘Not so keen on their latest albums?’
‘I don’t listen to their albums, never have.’
Patrick raised his eyebrows. ‘No? Why do you like them, then, because they’re . . . ?’ He had to think about whether to say ‘cute’ or ‘hot’, and it came out as a mixture of both: ‘cot’. He covered it up as best he could, but she gave a tiny smile. She was pretty when she smiled.
‘I like reading the OnT fanfic on StoryPad. I write a lot of it, but I haven’t had the nerve to put any of it on there yet.’
StoryPad. It rang a bell with Patrick – who was it at the station who had been talking about that site? It was Martin, he thought, in one of the early briefings following Rose’s murder.
A thought occurred to him, although it seemed like clutching at straws. ‘Do you ever go on the OnTarget forums?’
She opened the front door, peering swiftly out into the corridor to make sure her nan wasn’t coming. ‘Nah. Had a look, but they’re all really cliquey and bitchy. Not my scene. But I like the stories.’
‘When you had a look, I don’t suppose you came across two girls called MissTargetHeart or YOLOSWAG?’
Chelsea frowned. ‘Don’t remember them from the forums, but it kind of rings a bell . . . oh, I know! I’m sure I read a story by them. Yeah, that’s it! There was this really good story that got thousands of votes, written by them, I’m sure.’ Her face brightened at the knowledge that she was being helpful. Sweet girl, Patrick thought, feeling sorry for her again.
‘Thousands of votes?’
‘On StoryPad.’ She seemed to stop herself from adding Duh! ‘People vote for the best stories. I remember it ’cos it was written by a group of users, which is, like, quite unusual. There was MissTargetHeart, YOLOSWAG and two others, I think. I thought it was ever so good . . . but what’s that got to do with what I saw?’