Screen of Deceit (10 page)

Arriving home minutes later, he manoeuvred his bike into the hallway and burst into the living room, switching on the TV in the corner of the room, channel hopping to see if he could find any mention of the shooting. It was all fashion tips, political crap and cartoons. He went on to the local Teletext news page – 160 – and found the index. Sure enough, page 161's headline read: ‘
Police investigate Blackpool shooting
.' Mark sat down heavily in front of the screen and waited for it to scroll to page 161.

As it revealed, he read it slowly.

The details were sketchy, but enough for him to feel rising panic.

He slumped back against the settee and read it a few times more.

He knew there was nothing he could do. Just follow Jack's advice. Keep quiet and keep your head down and hope it goes away. One thing was for sure – he wouldn't be going back to that KFC in a hurry.

The problem was, something inside Mark told him he should do the right thing and go to the cops.

But he wanted to keep on Jack's right side too and he could see the logic of his big brother's argument. Eventually he came round to accept the situation.

He and Jack had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just one of those things. Bad Karma, he'd heard people say, whatever that meant. One of life's little hiccups. Fate. All that sort of crap …

… Just so long as the girl didn't die.

He pointed the remote at the TV and it went blank.

The house was quiet.

All he could hear was his own breathing, which had calmed down now.

Suddenly his hunger returned with a vengeance. He needed something to eat. Beans on toast sounded good. Maybe he would go to school after all. Maybe nothing would happen now. Maybe the cops wouldn't come knocking – and why should they? Maybe, maybe, maybe. He stood up stiffly, trying to shake it off.

Food, he decided, then school.

Face it head on.

Mark left the living room and turned in to the hallway. The kitchen door was at the far end of the hall, closed. With his mouth screwed up thoughtfully, his mind still a raging mess, he walked the few steps in the direction of the kitchen, pausing at the door, his hand resting on the handle. He turned it slowly and pushed the door open and stepped into the kitchen.

It was as though 100,000 volts of electricity had hit him, arcing with searing agony through his whole being.

Mark stood open mouthed, hysteria rising rapidly through him as he sagged down to his knees next to the body lying across the middle of the kitchen floor.

‘Beth?' he gasped. ‘Beth?' This time more desperately. ‘
Beth?
' He touched her face, and her skin was cold.

He knew she was dead.

S
he must have been lying there for some while, spread-eagled face up on the tatty vinyl floor, dressed only in her bra and knickers. The blood in her body had settled to the lowest parts of her, making her top half a kind of marbled bluey-white and her bottom half – buttock, thighs and back – red with blood.

Her eyes were still half open, her head skewed in the direction of the kitchen door. Her pupils were a milky colour, her mouth twisted open with dribble, vomit and blood having trickled out, mingling in a horrible concoction on the floor, underneath her head, neck and shoulders.

The palms of her hands were open and lying across her right hand was a hypodermic needle, a small, tiny one really, half filled with blood. There was a tourniquet around the bicep of her left arm – a belt trimmed down to size to do the job – and red pinprick-sized marks in the soft flesh of her inner elbow, showing where she had been injecting herself.

Mark looked desperately at her chest.

Was it his imagination? Did it just rise and fall? Was she breathing? Mark stared, hoping it would be true.
Please be alive
, he intoned silently to himself.

He kept staring.

But she did not move. She had not moved.

Mark knelt over her, knowing she was dead, but not wanting to accept that truth.

His sister. Dead.

‘Beth?' he said hopefully, his voice cracking. He bent his head low so he could look into her eyes. ‘Beth.' They were blank, milky, no longer seeing anything.

It took a great deal of courage to do what he did next.

He touched her. Remembering the lesson on first aid at school – how to check for a pulse – he placed his first two fingers on her neck, trying to discover the artery there, hoping there would be a beat.

Touching her reminded him of touching a fresh chicken from Asda.

Quickly he pulled his fingers away with a shiver.

Nothing.

It was building up inside him again.

He began to rock back and forth on his knees.

The pressure grew. Bursting point approached.

His face distorted as the agony and pain of the gruesome discovery hit him harder than anything had ever hit him before. His whole being convulsed, then his hands tore at his own face and he scratched himself madly as though afflicted by some horrendous disease. A kind of non-human roar burst out of his lungs.

‘
No-o-o-o-o!
'

He sank back on to his heels, howling at the ceiling, then toppled over on to the floor beside Bethany, so his face was only inches away from hers.

His sister. Bethany Carter. Aged seventeen.

Dead.

He huddled on his bed, knees drawn up to his chin, his duvet wrapped around his shoulders – but not stopping him from shaking. His head rested on his forearms and his eyes were tight closed as he unsuccessfully tried to stop his tears from falling. Deep, raking sobs tore his whole being, making him feel as if he too was going to die. Just at that moment, death felt as though it would have been a good option. His grief was all consuming, all pervasive, like nothing else he had ever experienced. He moved his arms and, keeping his forehead on his knees, covered his ears with his hands and started banging his head against his knees in a rhythmic beat.

Bang, bang, bang …

‘Mark Carter?'

Mark continued to pound his head.

‘Mark Carter?' a voice asked again from somewhere a million miles away.

Still he did not respond. The voice did not really penetrate his world, meant nothing to him.

Then somebody touched his shoulder, sending a jolt through him like a crack of static. He stopped the banging and raised his ravaged, anguished face.

A man stood there. Mark could only guess at his age, maybe forty, maybe fifty. He had a stern, lived-in face, hard, yet with a compassionate edge to it. His hair was closely cropped, a grade two on the clipper scale. It wasn't a close enough cut for it to be threatening, but near enough to give him a bit of a fear factor. He was wearing a suit, looked smart. He was about six-two, broad shouldered and had a middle area that could've done with a few sit-ups. He looked cool, in control.

He was a cop.

‘May I come in?'

‘You're already in.'

The man shrugged.

‘Who are you?'

‘My name is Henry Christie … I'm a detective chief inspector, what they call a senior investigating officer. I work at Blackpool nick and I'll be in charge of this … incident.'

‘Oh, right.' Mark had switched off. The words were just an incoherent babble, meaning nothing to him. He dropped his head on to his knees again.

‘Mark … I need to ask you some questions.' Christie sat down uninvited on the foot of Mark's bed. ‘I know this'll be a tough time for you, I know you must feel terrible—'

Mark cut in, instantly enraged. ‘You don't know sod-all,' he blasted the cop. ‘Not a thing. No idea how I'm feeling. That's my sister down there, dead in the kitchen.'

Christie blinked, allowed Mark his rant, not in the least sidetracked by this outburst. ‘I need to establish facts,' he said calmly with an undercurrent of assertiveness. ‘That need won't go away, however you might be feeling … and yeah, it will be hard for you, but it has to be done.'

Mark glared at him, eyeballing him ferociously. Christie held the look impassively, with a slight sadness behind his eyes. Mark tried to outstare him, but eventually he dropped his eyes and replaced his forehead back on to his knees again. He convulsed with sobs.

Christie sighed and laid a comforting hand on Mark's arm, letting him cry until the torrent subsided. In due course Mark raised his head again. His eyes were red raw, nose running, snot and tears mixing down his face. Christie removed his hand.

‘I hate crying.'

‘Everybody needs to cry at some time. Nothing wrong with it.'

‘Feels so pathetic.'

‘But you have good reason.'

Mark's eyes looked into Christie's once more, this time without the anger, trying to weigh up the cop. ‘I need to wash my face.'

Christie nodded. ‘Do it.'

Mark shrugged the duvet off his shoulders and slid off the bed, leaving the detective in his room while he went to the bathroom. He ran the water cold, as cold as he could get it, and filled the washbasin. Then he dunked his face in it, keeping his eyes open, holding himself there until he thought his lungs would bust, then lifted his face out of the water, gasping for air, sending water splashing everywhere.

He reached for a towel and dried himself off, then regarded his reflection in the mirror. He looked ravaged and older. He felt like he'd aged ten years since finding Beth's body. The image of her corpse came back into his mind and his chin started to wobble as he attempted to hold back further tears.

The detective, DCI Christie, was looking along the titles of the books on the shelf in Mark's bedroom. There were lots of them, all carefully chosen by Mark, mixing classics – such as his favourite,
Treasure Island
– with more up to date stuff like Harry Potter and some thrillers. He was particularly fond of James Bond, preferring the books to the films. There was even a book of poetry.

Christie looked around at Mark when he came back into the bedroom. He'd taken about ten minutes, but the detective hadn't pushed him by knocking on the bathroom door or anything like that.

‘You still here?' Mark snapped.

‘Oh yes.'

‘They're not stolen, you know. Nothing in this room is nicked.'

‘I never thought it was, Mark.'

‘I mean, don't tar me with the same brush as the rest of the shit-heads on the estate. I don't steal. I don't do drugs.'

‘Hey,' Christie said quietly, ‘that's enough, less of the defensive, Mark. I only come to conclusions about people when I get to know them, OK? I'm here to investigate your sister's death, not to worry about whether you nicked a library book, or not.'

The two faced each other across the room.

‘All right,' Mark relented sullenly. He sighed deeply, then sat on the edge of the bed. ‘What do you wanna know?'

‘Where's your mum, first?'

Mark shrugged. ‘Dunno … she comes and goes … could be anywhere … don't see that much of her, really.' Mark's jaw line tightened as he tried to hold back his tears for a whole different reason. ‘She's probably at work. I've phoned my big brother, Jack, though; he's on his way. He lives in Preston.'

‘And how old are you?'

‘Fourteen.'

‘I need to interview you in the presence of an adult.'

‘Why? I didn't kill her.'

‘Did somebody kill her?' Christie asked quickly. ‘Or was it just a terrible mistake?'

Mark shrugged again. It was becoming a horrible habit, but somehow he could not find the words to respond properly. He rubbed his eyes.

‘Just tell me about this morning, eh?' Christie said softly. ‘From getting up to actually finding her and calling the ambulance.'

Reluctantly Mark began to retell his morning's activities up to the point where he stepped into the kitchen. He didn't mention reading the paper about the drive-by shooting and the angst that had caused him.

‘If only I'd looked into the kitchen before setting out,' he moaned sadly.

‘I know it's no consolation,' Christie said, standing by the bedroom window, half-eyeing what was going on outside, ‘but I don't think you could have done anything to save her, Mark. The doctor said she probably died about three this morning. She was dead when you left for your paper round.'

The front door slammed. From the front hallway there was the sound of an argument. Banging, raised voices.

Mark became alert.

‘This could be your brother,' Christie said.

Mark shot off the bed, out of the room and down the stairs.

‘What the hell d'you think you're playing at?' Jack snarled, enraged and red-faced. He was shouting at the detective who'd been speaking to Mark. ‘You are way, way out of line questioning a kid without an appropriate adult present. I'm going to see my solicitor about this. I'll have your job for this!'

‘Jack!' Mark protested.

‘Keep outta this, kid,' Jack snapped. ‘They think they can walk all over you, this lot. Cops! Huh! I've crapped 'em.'

They were in the hallway of Mark's house. The kitchen door was closed. A uniformed PC stood this side of it, guarding what Christie had described as a possible crime scene. Christie and Jack were head-to-head, but the detective was more in control than Jack, who had lost it totally to Mark's eyes.

‘I was talking informally and none of it is on record,' Christie retorted, ‘and if you don't settle down, Jack, you'll find yourself locked up for Breach of the Peace – and I will do it.'

‘You wha—?'

Christie held up a warning finger. ‘I'm investigating a possible – and I do say possible – murder here. Every sudden death starts with the presumption it's a murder until we know different, and I'll talk to anyone – that means
anyone
, Jack – who is a possible witness, kid or otherwise, including Mark, whether you're there or not.'