The Wicked Girls

Alex Marwood The Wicked Girls

Copyright © 2012 Alex Marwood

For William Mackesy

Prologue

1986

There’s a blanket, but from the aroma that rises from its folds, she guesses it’s never been washed. The cells are overheated and, despite the fact that Jade balled it up and pushed it into the corner of the room when they first brought her in here, the stink of stale piss and unwashed skin is hard to ignore. Officer Magill picks it up and holds it out towards her, wadded in her hand. ‘You’re going to have to wear this,’ she says. ‘Over your head. Apparently they’re not allowed to see your face.’

It’s hardly necessary. Jade’s face was all over the papers months ago, and will be all over them again tomorrow. She looks at the blanket, repelled. Officer Magill’s eyes narrow.

‘You know what, Jade?’ she says. ‘You’re welcome to go out there uncovered if you want. They’re all dying to see you, believe me. It’s no skin off my nose.’

They’ve seen me already, thinks Jade. Over and over. In the papers, on the news. That’s why they make us queue up for those school mugshots every year. It’s not for our families. It’s so there’s always a picture to sell to the papers. So they have something to hang a headline on. THE WORLD PRAYS. FIND OUR ANGEL. Or, in my case, ANGELIC FACE OF EVIL.

Through the open door, she can hear Bel screaming. Still screaming. She started when the verdict came in, and it’s been hours since then. Jade has been able to hear only silence through the thick cell walls. No sound gets through: not the baying crowd, not the hurried feet passing by in the throes of preparation. Occasionally, the metallic slick of the eyehole cover being pushed back, or the sonic boom of another heavy door slamming shut; otherwise, stone-built silence, the sound of her own breath, the sound of her racing heart. When Officer Magill opened the door, the noise was overwhelming, even here in the basement: the feral, chanting voices of strangers wanting Justice. The crowd wants her. Her and Bel. This much she knows.

Magill holds the blanket out again. This time, Jade takes it. They’ll make her wear it one way or another, willing or not. Their hands brush, and Magill snatches hers away as though the child’s skin is coated with poison.

Bel sounds like an animal, shrieking in a snare.

She’d chew her own arm off if it helped her get away, thinks Jade. It’s worse for her than it is for me. She’s not lived her life in trouble, like I have.

Officer Magill waits, her mouth downturned. ‘How do you feel, Jade?’

For a moment Jade thinks that she’s asking out of concern, but a glance at that face shows her otherwise. Jade gazes at her, wide-eyed. I feel small, she thinks. I feel small and alone and scared and confused. I know they’re shouting for me, but I don’t understand why they hate me so much. We didn’t mean it. We never meant it to happen.

‘Not good, is it?’ asks Magill eventually, not requiring a reply. ‘Doesn’t feel great, does it?’

Bel’s voice, the sound of struggle in the hallway: ‘Nonononono! Please! Please! I can’t! I want my mum! Mummeee! I can’t! Don’t take me out there! Nononono dooon’t!’

Jade looks back at Officer Magill. Her face is like a Halloween mask, all swooping lines in black and red. She glares with all the loathing of the voices of the mob outside. Jade is guilty. No one has to act as though they presume her innocent now.

That’s it, that’s us: not ‘the suspects’, not ‘the children in custody’. We’re The Girls Who Killed Chloe. We are the Devil now.

Magill glances over her shoulder to see if any of her superiors are listening, then lowers her voice.

‘Serves you bloody well right, you little bitch,’ she hisses. ‘If it was up to me they’d bring back the death penalty.’

Chapter One

2011

Martin checks his watch. It’s nearly ten o’clock. She’ll be going to work soon. The neon lights on the roller coaster at Funnland have been switched off, the halogen arc lights they flood the park with after hours – as much to drive stragglers away as to help the cleaners see the globs of gum and the sticky soft-drink splashes, the careless smears of ketchup – have come blazing on. She’ll be in the changing rooms. Like a lot of punch-card people, she is punctilious about arriving, more leisurely about actually starting work. She’ll be shucking her civilian garb and replacing it with trackies and overalls.

He feels a swell of familiar rage at the way she has just cut him off. No response, no contact; just empty silence, day after day. Is she even thinking about him? He’s left it three hours, but he can’t stand the waiting any longer. He picks up the silent, baleful telephone and pulls up her number. Types in a text: please answer me. do not ignore me. Watches the screen as it thinks and sends.

A hen party pauses in the street below. He knows it’s a group of hens because they’re bellowing ‘Going to the Chapel’ at the tops of their voices. It’s always that, or ‘Nice Day for a White Wedding’, just the chorus, over and over, or ‘Here comes the bride, short fat and wide.’ There are millions of songs, but hen parties never stray beyond this narrow selection.

A shriek in the street, then a chorus of cackling. Someone’s fallen over. Martin pushes himself off the bed and goes to the window. Cracks open the curtain and looks out. Eight young women, in various stages of inebriation. The bride – shortie veil and L-plates – is on the ground, felled by six-inch heels and a portly backside. She flumps about on the pavement in her tubular mini-skirt, stomach flopping over waistband and tits overspilling her décolletage, while two of her friends haul at a pale and dimpled arm. The other friends are scattered across the pavement, pointing and staggering as they howl with laughter. One of them – hot pants, giant hoop earrings and a horizontal-striped boob tube – is pestering men for a light as they weave their way past the flailing bride.

Boob Tube strikes gold. A stag group – the town is overrun with them everyweekend, the sort of stags who can’t afford, or who lack the passports or the probationary permission, to spread sangria vomit over warm Spanish concrete – pause, light her up, fall into conversation. Well, mutual shouting. No one communicates under Martin’s window at anything less than a roar, ears destroyed by thumping basslines, sense of other people destroyed by the alcohol and ecstasy and cocaine that seem to cost less than a packet of smokes these days. And you don’t have to go outside to take them.

The bride finally regains her feet. She is limping, or pretending to, and uses the shoulder of a stag for support. Martin watches as the man’s hand creeps down over the tube skirt, inches its way in from behind. The bride cackles, slaps him off half-heartedly and bats her lashes encouragingly. The hand goes back. They set off up the street, heading towards the nightclub quarter.

Boob Tube lags back, leaning against a shop window, talking to the man with the lighter. She sways from side to side, doesn’t seem to notice as her friends disappear round the corner. She tugs at her top, pulling the droop from squashed bosoms, and flicks lacquered hair out of her eyes. Smiles at the man coquettishly, pushes lightly at his upper arm. So goes the business of modern mating. You don’t even need to buy a girl a drink any more. Just lend her your lighter and she’s yours for the taking.