Killing You Softly (12 page)

‘Here it is,’ Jack said as he fished the iPad out from under my pillow. We’d spent an hour in bed together and now we were getting dressed. ‘How did it
get under there?’

‘Someone hid it?’ I suggested.

Jack handed it to me. ‘You’re sure you didn’t put it there? . . . OK, you didn’t!’ He put up both hands to defend himself as I attacked him with the pillow.

‘Why would I hide my own iPad?’

‘OK, but Galina might – just to annoy you.’

‘No, we’re best buddies now.’

‘Yes, Alyssa. You can be my friend,’ she says with melting, puppy-dog eyes.

‘She’s super-rich and lonely. She loves her dad but not her stepmother. Someone probably tried to kill her in Monaco and now she’s convinced that her bodyguard wants to kidnap
her, but the police don’t believe her. You can understand why I’m feeling protective.’

‘See – heart of gold,’ Jack reminded me. ‘Zara, Eugenie, Connie, they’re all jealous because Galina’s so bloody hot. You’re the only one on her
side.’

With alarm bells still ringing in my head, the first thing I did was check my inbox. There was only one new message and the sender’s email address was [email protected].

‘Oh God!’

My legs went weak and I sat back down on the bed. I realized that the guy must have found my iPad in the classroom and had been about to return it to me. But then he’d had the warped idea
of sending me another message –
Tut-tut – still no warmer?
– and hiding the iPad to cause maximum stress. He could’ve been typing in my room, maybe even sitting on my bed .
. .

Jack saw my reaction and took the iPad from me. He read the message out loud.
‘Hi again, Alyssa.
Tut-tut – still no warmer?
In fact, maybe even colder. I’m disappointed in
you.’

‘Listen.’ Jack insisted on reading the rest.
‘First Scarlett, now you. I’m doing all I can to join the dots, make the comparisons and point you in the right direction,
but you’re just not paying attention. I care about you, Alyssa. I want to warn you. I don’t want to hurt you.’
Jack stopped reading and swallowed hard. ‘For fuck’s
sake!’

I snatched the iPad back to see how the message ended. It was a quote from ‘Killing You Softly’, an old song from the seventies – something I’d heard Aunt Olivia play,
but not quite the right words.

I murmured as my eidetic memory conjured up the lyrics whether I wanted it to or not. I stood up and obsessively checked everything in the room as I went through the words of the song –
opened my wardrobe and looked inside, pulled out the top drawer of my cabinet to see if anything had been moved, OCD in overdrive, which is what happens when I’m scared.

‘This pen wasn’t in here,’ I told Jack, ‘and those shoes were on the floor, not in the wardrobe.’

‘Alyssa, calm down,’ Jack said softly.

But the words in my head wouldn’t go away – the ones about a man playing on his lover’s pain, adoring her one minute then ignoring her, treating her as if she was invisible
– a way of killing her softly with his love. ‘Killing Me Softly’.

Not ‘you’, but ‘me’. Didn’t this psycho realize he’d got the lyrics wrong?

Yes, of course he did. Killing
you
softly was exactly what he meant to say.

‘And this isn’t my lipstick – it’s Galina’s.’ I stopped long enough to pick up the small gold tube from my cabinet and take off the top. ‘See –
bright red. It’s not my colour. Whoever did this put it there deliberately!’

Jack couldn’t stop me from running out of the room and down the corridor, crossing the quad and taking the stairs up to the boys’ dorm two at a time.

It was nine o’clock at night – starlit and cold.

‘Where are you going?’ he demanded as he sprinted through the snow to catch up with me.

‘I need to talk to Will. And before you ask – no, it can’t wait!’

‘Why now? What’s Will got to do with this?’

‘It’s something Jayden told me. I need to talk to him. Are you with me?’

Jack nodded and we knocked on the door of the room that Will shared with Hooper. It was Hooper who answered.

‘What’s up?’ he wanted to know, blinking like an owl in the daylight. He was in his usual baggy grey sweater and beat-up jeans, barefoot and tousle-haired, as if he’d
been lying on his bed fully clothed. ‘You two look like you had a fight.’

‘No – no fight,’ I said.

‘So why are you freaking out?’

‘I need to speak to Will.’

‘He’s not here. I’m working on something important so he went over to Luke’s room to give me some peace and quiet. Are you sure you’re OK?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ I hurried on, leaving Jack to give Hooper a quick explanation for me breaking yet another rule. When I knocked on Luke’s door, it was Connie who answered. She
was half dressed or half undressed, I couldn’t tell which – anyway she was also definitely breaking the rules.

‘Don’t ask!’ she warned.

‘I’m not even interested,’ I told her truthfully. ‘I’m looking for Will.’

‘Here, miss!’ he called from inside the room like a kid in class answering a register.

I went in and found Luke, Marco and Will sitting cross-legged on the floor with Zara and a pack of playing cards. Again – don’t ask.

Jack and Hooper joined us, so now we had me, Zara, Connie, Will, Marco, Luke, Jack and Hooper crammed into one tiny room. There was a low light from the bedside lamp and a muggy, airless
atmosphere.

‘Yeah, Alyssa – what’s up?’ Will asked with his back turned and without bothering to get up.

‘You might not want to talk about this in front of the others,’ I told him. ‘We could go outside.’

Cue a new frisson from Zara and the Black Widow, followed by a duet of lilting ‘whoo’s and ‘ooh’s.

‘Miss, can I finish my game of cards first?’ he asked.

‘Will, this is important and I’m saying you might want to keep it private between you and me.’

‘Whoo!’ BWS said again, but this time Zara kept quiet. The tension in the room was as thick and heavy as the air.

Will shrugged. ‘Say whatever you have to say – I don’t care who hears.’

I was still staring at his broad back and blond crop. ‘It’s about Scarlett Hartley,’ I said slowly and quietly.

I saw his spine stiffen and then he swivelled round, ready to stand up and leave the room with me. But it was too late – Connie moved in and blocked his way. ‘I think we all need to
hear this, Will.’

He blanked her to look straight at me. ‘What about Scarlett?’

Somehow I managed to steady my heartbeat and shrug off the creepy feeling I had about my repeat intruder. ‘You two were together when you were at Ainslee Comp – she was your
girlfriend.’

‘So?’

Will’s monosyllabic response was drowned out by the reaction of the others. ‘You dated the dead girl?’ Zara gasped.

‘Whoa, Will, you kept that one quiet,’ Luke laughed.

‘So?’ he repeated. If looks could kill I’d have been dead on the spot.

‘So why didn’t you have any reaction to her murder? Why did you warn me to stay away?’

‘And why didn’t you share with any of us?’ Connie added, more intense and confrontational than either Zara or Luke.

None of us were expecting Will’s next move, which was to launch himself like a rugby full back, not at Connie but at me. He didn’t think it through, obviously.

It happened so fast that he actually made contact, knocking me off my feet. I felt the air leave my lungs in a rush as I crashed into the door, slamming it shut and knocking Jack and Hooper out
into the corridor. Luke and Marco piled straight in to drag Will off me, giving me space to stand up. I felt the door swing open and saw Jack move in on Will. We were all crushed together, arms
flailing, everyone yelling, me trying to calm things down.

‘If there’s a reason for keeping quiet, now’s your chance to tell us,’ I insisted. ‘You have to – the police have arrested Alex Driffield and I think
he’s innocent. We need you to be straight with us.’

‘
You
think!’ Will hurled his comments at me over the general noise. ‘Alyssa Stephens thinks Alex Driffield is innocent – holy shit! Now she’s got her
super-sleuth claws in me!’

Jack didn’t wait any longer – he swung a punch at Will, made contact with his abdomen and I watched him bend over double. Luke and Marco did their macho thing of dragging them
apart.

‘Wait – give Will a chance,’ Zara said, while I heard Hooper sprint off down the corridor. ‘Come on, Will, we’re listening.’

Holding his ribs, Will straightened up. ‘So I knew Scarlett,’ he began.

‘“Knew” in what sense?’ Connie was the one who wanted to get this bit straight. ‘Come on – no need to be shy.’

‘Eff off, Connie, it’s none of your business. So I knew Scarlett and, yeah, it affected me when they found her. But what am I going to do – go around telling everyone I was her
ex and she dumped me for some other kid who she met on holiday? Look what happens when you guys do find out – straight away I’m suspect number one.’

‘Yeah, I get that,’ Luke conceded. ‘The cops are going to be looking at all of Scarlett’s exes.’

‘And it wasn’t like it was a big thing between us.’ Will played down the relationship, which the guys in the room didn’t react to but the girls did.

‘Maybe not a big thing for you,’ Connie pointed out. ‘But maybe for her.’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Scarlett dumped me, not the other way round. I wasn’t into it and neither was she.’

The Black Widow was the one to back up my original train of thought. ‘So why hide it – what’s the point? Was it really to stay off the police radar? Cos, if it was, from this
point on you failed.’

‘Who’s going to tell them?’ Will used his newly bulked up body to block the exit and set up another challenge.

Connie screwed up her lips, paused then delivered her answer with perfect timing. ‘Everyone in this room,’ she said. ‘When Detective Inspector June Ripley comes knocking,
we’ll all make a point of telling her what you didn’t want us to know.’

It turned out June Ripley was as impressive and scary in person as she had been when I’d seen her on the small screen.

‘Thanks for the coffee, Molly,’ she said as I went into the bursar’s room and sat down opposite her. Smaller than I’d pictured, she was clean cut and polished in tailored
trousers and the same black jacket that she’d worn on TV, with a heavy silver necklace over a high-necked cream sweater. Her movements as she reached out to take the cup were quick and
precise.

Molly checked with me to see if I wanted coffee too.

‘No thanks.’ I waited as calmly as I could, running through last night’s exchange of texts with Jayden.

Nothing useful from this end,
I’d said.
Alex had an argument in Starbucks last Thursday, but I can’t fit it into the picture yet.

He’d texted me back.
Cops called at my house. Phone charger cable we found was used to strangle Scarlett before killer hit her on head. Thought you should know.

So now, in the weak wintry sunlight, sitting opposite June Ripley, I expected a follow-up line of questioning.

She studied me closely and for ages didn’t say a word, though it felt as if she was dissecting me on a mortuary slab. I tried not to fidget and to concentrate instead on the melting snow
on the lawn outside Molly’s window. Then the connecting door between the bursar’s room and Saint Sam’s office opened and the principal joined us.

Dr Samuel Webb deserves some space here. He runs St Jude’s and gives himself totally to the school’s nothing-but-the-best ideal. To do this he sacrifices any personal life that he
might ever have had – well, none of the students know that stuff because he keeps it so much in the background that you just assume it doesn’t exist. No wife, no kids, no family photos
on his desk, not even a pet dog, but he’s an excellent PR man: ‘Results prove that St Jude’s offers the highest quality preparation for the baccalaureate examination in the UK. We
offer our students the opportunity to develop both scholastically and as individuals.’

You name it, Saint Sam has it covered.

Incidentally, he got his nickname because he never loses his temper, is always on-message, plus his male baldness pattern makes him look like a medieval monk.

So when he joined June Ripley and me in the bursar’s office, Saint Sam smiled calmly and emptily at me. ‘The inspector is here as a result of yesterday’s incident by the
canal,’ he explained. ‘There really is nothing to worry about, Alyssa, as long as you answer a few simple questions.’

‘That makes it sound a little bit formal,’ June Ripley interrupted. ‘I’m really not here for answers – just to thank you for helping us to find the phone cable. It
belonged to the dead girl, Scarlett Hartley. I’m sorry if this upsets you, but I can tell you it was used to apply pressure round her neck.’

‘I didn’t find it,’ I interrupted with a shiver. ‘It was Jayden’s dog.’

‘Yes – Jayden Johnson – I saw him last night. Well, whatever. The cable is with forensics now and will form an important piece of evidence.’

I thought it was a long way for June Ripley to drive from her office in Ainslee just to thank me for this, and I was still feeling dissected by her sharp gaze. All I could do was sit it out and
see what came next. Meanwhile, Saint Sam smiled and hovered.

‘Jayden didn’t give me a good reason why you and he arranged to meet by the canal yesterday afternoon,’ Inspector Ripley said, quick and direct. ‘I’m assuming
he’s a friend of yours.’

‘He is.’

‘And a friend of Scarlett and Alex.’

‘They all went to Ainslee Comp together.’

‘Jayden told me Alex wouldn’t have had any involvement in Scarlett’s death. I guess you share that opinion.’ She said this without any rising inflection – a
statement, not a question. ‘People who know Alex seem to like him. He’s very popular.’

‘I do like him – yes.’

‘And the meeting with Jayden at the crime scene – it was to show respect to Scarlett.’

This time I didn’t have time to respond before suddenly and without warning the inspector veered into fresh territory. ‘Tell me about last night, Alyssa.’