Too quickly for my liking. I only managed to squeak a quiet, “Gory enough for you?” to Connor as he passed, and to my delight, he winked at me in response. Yes, my life was so boring that a wink could be the highlight of my day.
I watched him walk off with his mum, wondering again if she’d enjoyed the film or if instead a psychotic Night Watcher would be visiting her dreams tonight.
I nearly fell over when Ralph and his band of idiots raced past me, 3D glasses held high in the air in a victory pose. I ignored them; they stole them every time.
I hadn’t yet had chance to return Veronica’s call but I figured I’d be seeing her at the Diner soon enough.
I couldn’t wait to tell her all about Connor Maguire.
***
Rach was being understandably standoffish with me when I got back to the counter - having been left on her own to deal with all the customers - and I smiled at her sheepishly.
We usually had only three people working on the counter in the day; it was a small cinema and we didn’t regularly get great hordes of people. Still, today there was just the two of us working front of house and leaving Rach on her own downstairs had been pretty harsh. I was trying to apologise when the main doors opened again.
I braced myself to deal with more customers and looked up to see two policemen approaching the counter. They weren’t our local PCs from the Little Forest Police Station, which immediately put me on edge. They were Rick Wood (who actually lived in Little Forest but worked at the HQ in Willowton) and his sidekick Paul.
Rick was well known and respected in the area. I remembered him from when I was younger as being insanely tall and thin, with jet-black hair and a friendly smile. His nose was crooked from some fight he’d had when he was an officer, but it didn’t look weird to me; I’d always known him to look like that. Nowadays he was plumper and his black hair was in danger of becoming completely overrun with greys. He still had a friendly smile, but these days it seemed to be constantly underlined with a grimace, something which I supposed came from being in his line of work for so long.
I only recognised Paul through knowing Rick. Paul lived in Birston, the nearest big city to Little Forest, and therefore wasn’t often seen around the village. He looked about ten years younger than Rick, and was at least a foot shorter. His blonde hair and blue eyes were a striking contrast to Rick’s harsher appearance and he looked far too sweet to be a policeman.
He obviously knew his place; he stood just behind Rick and let his boss do all the talking.
I exchanged a glance with Rach, who looked just as worried as me. I briefly thought it might be to do with mine and V’s little peace-disturbing stalking adventure of the night before but then realised how ridiculous that would be; they wouldn’t send an Inspector for something like that.
“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Rick Wood and this is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Paul Lawrence. Is the manager in?”
I cleared my throat, feeling extremely self-conscious. I always felt nervous around policemen, even if I knew them. I usually felt so nervous, in fact, that I often ended up saying something stupid and looking guilty, and so my voice shook as I answered, “I’m afraid she’s not in today, but you can try her at home.”
DCI Wood nodded and then looked at the stairs leading up to the screens. “I know where Hannah lives, thank you. We need to ask you both some questions.” He turned to me. “We’ll start with you if that’s OK,” his eyes drifted to my tag and he nodded to himself, “Beth. Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”
I grabbed onto my chair to steady myself, wondering what they were going to ask us. Was Hannah in some kind of trouble? She was an awful boss and a deeply horrible person but I didn’t want anyone to be in trouble with the DCI.
I cleared my throat. “Sure. We can talk in the staff room.” I hesitated, not wanting to piss off a policeman but not wanting to be questioned on my own. I smiled at Rick, hoping that he’d waive the rules as he knew me and my family. “Please could you just ask us both at the same time? We can close the cinema for a few minutes.” I checked the time; there weren’t any showings at the moment and it was an hour until the next film was scheduled to start.
Rick glanced at Paul and then nodded. “That would be fine.”
Rach put the sign up that we kept for emergencies while I showed the police to the back room. It was called the staff room but it only really contained a table, a few chairs, and some lockers. I felt like I should offer them a drink but I didn’t think an orange Super Slushie would be appropriate, and I never trusted the staff room kettle - it looked like it had lived there for decades.
Rach joined us and we sat down at the table. I was absent-mindedly wringing my hands but stopped when I realised Rick had noticed my nervous movements. “So, how can we help?”
Rick looked extremely stern - his features all scrunched up and tight - and his formal way of speaking to us was making me uncomfortable. His professional demeanour seemed a far cry from the usual smiling, jovial man everyone knew from around the village.
“I’m afraid we have some bad news.”
Oh God.
“Emma Harris was found dead in the woods this morning.”
Silence.
I didn’t think I’d heard him right, and I instinctively responded with a stupid sounding, “What?”
“Her body was found near the castle around seven a.m. She worked here at the Picture House, is this correct?”
I couldn’t believe what he was telling us, and in such a heartless way. “She’s dead?” I must have heard wrong, surely? There’s no way she could be dead!
Rick nodded. “Yes, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we need to ask you some questions. Was she at work yesterday?”
I looked at Rach; she had tears collecting in her eyes and was starting to shake slightly. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and I wondered, rather selfishly, how I’d feel if I’d been told someone close to me had died; I didn’t know Emma well, but even this news was impossible to digest.
Rick repeated his last question, louder this time, and I couldn’t believe how insensitive he was being.
I stared at his tie rather than focusing on his face, which I currently wanted to punch, and tried to think. My brain had apparently ceased to work. “No, she wasn’t. I worked yesterday, the early shift, and… she wasn’t here.” I didn’t seem to be able to string a simple sentence together and I cringed at how stupid I sounded.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
I thought again of her cowering against the wall and felt a single tear run down my cheek. I’d let her run away. Had I let her run away to her death? Eventually I exhaled and answered, trying to make my voice sound level, “I saw her last night.”
Both Rick and Paul Lawrence sat forward. Rick leaned in closer and looked me dead in the eye. “Where?”
I took a deep breath. “At The Pit over the road. I saw her in the toilets; she said that her boyfriend had dragged her there instead of going to Willowton.”
Rick freed me from his unnerving gaze and started writing in his notebook. “And what time was this?”
I thought back. “I’m not sure, it was soon after I got there, which was around ten or ten thirty I think… she was already pretty drunk.”
Rick nodded to himself. “How drunk?”
I tried to focus on the immediate questions rather than the reason for them. At least if I did that, I seemed to make some kind of sense. “Her speech was slurred, she kept forgetting what she was saying, and she seemed to have trouble focusing on me.” I thought back to her leaning against the wall, unable to concentrate on my face. “I saw her again later, outside.” I hesitated, not wanting to admit that I’d let her go when she was clearly troubled, but knowing I couldn’t exactly lie to a Detective Chief Inspector. “She wasn’t in a good way.”
Rick stopped writing and looked up at me. “How do you mean?”
I looked over at Rach who smiled at me encouragingly, or
as encouragingly as she could with the tears still running down her face.
“She was bent over, crying, and she couldn’t concentrate on me at all. She didn’t respond to me for ages and then she started yelling. She ran away, but I could hear my friends calling for me, wondering where I was. I… I didn’t follow her.” More tears were threatening to run down my face too and Rach moved her chair over to me. She put her hand on my arm and I nodded at her. I couldn’t manage a smile.
Rick gave me a minute before asking his next question. “What did she say?”
I shook my head, trying to recall. “I don’t know, something like I should stay away from her. I can’t really remember.” She’d called me a freak, I remembered that much, but I didn’t think the police needed to know that.
“And what time was this?”
I tried to think but my brain seemed to be shutting down. Rach jumped in to answer for me. “We left The Pit around ten past one.”
Rick started writing this down but then looked up, his brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”
Rach nodded. “I checked my watch when we left.” This didn’t surprise me, Rach was very organised and methodical, and never stayed out later than two a.m. She always kept an eye on the time.
Rick and Paul exchanged a glance, one which looked like a mix of disappointment and annoyance. “From what we can tell at the moment, Emma died between eleven and midnight. Half past twelve at the very latest. I’m afraid you must be mistaken.”
My stomach lurched, and my mind flickered back to the night before. The empty bathroom, Emma accusing me of spying on someone, opening the cubicle door to find it empty. I took another deep breath. “Are you sure of the time?”
Rick nodded, putting his notepad away. “We have a witness who can confirm this time frame as well. She could not have been outside The Pit after half past twelve.” He looked very annoyed now, like I’d been deliberately wasting his time. “Could this woman have been someone else? I imagine it would have been pretty dark at that time.”
I thought back to the red dress and blonde hair; even with the dishevelled muddy face I knew it was her. I thought it was her… surely no one else could have been wearing that dress? No one else would have been able to pull it off.
My shock at hearing of her death had subsided and I was now filled with a terrifying feeling of self-doubt. “It was dark, but I could still see, the light from Main Street…”
Rick interrupted me. “Did anyone else see her at that time?”
I slowly shook my head.
“And had you been drinking?”
I looked at Rach, defeated. “Yes.” Here we go.
“How much, would you say?”
I slumped into my chair; I knew how this would look. “I have no idea, I was drinking vodka and my best friend kept buying them for me. We were both celebrating our birthdays.” Our twenty-firsts. Emma would never reach that age now. I shuddered.
Rick nodded, seeming satisfied. “So you may not have been in the best state to see who the girl actually was? Maybe you thought it was Emma because you’d seen her previously, in a drunken state herself?”
I wondered if he’d been hitting the psychology books. “I suppose…”
The DCI stared at me for almost a full minute. If he was trying to unnerve me it was definitely working. “So you agree that you didn’t see Emma after one a.m.?”
I gave in. “If you say so.”
Rick nodded before turning his attention to Rach, dismissing me completely. “And did you see Emma last night?”
I could only guess what Rach was thinking. She wasn’t a big drinker and she thought that I drank too much; this would just be a confirmation of that. “I only saw her briefly in the club; she was at the bar with John.”
“So you can confirm she was in an intoxicated state?”
Rach nodded. “Definitely.”
“And what about her boyfriend, John Rogers? Was he intoxicated too?”
Rach shrugged. “He might have been. I think he probably just handles his drink better than Emma.”
Rick leaned forward again, completely ignoring me. Apparently I wasn’t worth talking to after my mistake about seeing Emma outside. “Why do you say that?”
Rach shrugged again, clearly uncomfortable with Rick’s questioning. “It’s quite well known that Emma is a bit of a light weight. I mean, she’s pretty tiny.” Rach stopped herself. “Was tiny…”
Paul joined in the questioning for the first time, and the sound of his voice made me jump; I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Do either of you know John well?”
I thought of John and felt like crying again. I couldn’t believe this had happened; things like this just didn’t happen in Little Forest. “Not well, we know him to say hi to.” I paused, not knowing if I should really be letting my mouth run after what just happened. “Our friend Veronica knows him pretty well, she works at the Diner.”
Rick waved my response away. “We’ve already spoken with her.”
I looked at Rach in surprise; I hadn’t heard anything from V. She sent me texts from work all the time, and this was a big piece of news not to tell me about. Maybe I’d put my phone on silent and forgotten.
“Is there anything else you can tell us about Emma? About her recent behaviour or her circle of friends? Did she have any enemies?”
“Enemies?” It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t asked the most obvious question, and neither had Rach. It must have been the shock. “How did she die?”
Rick stared at me for a few moments. “We are not at liberty to divulge that information.”
I nearly laughed. I’d never heard Rick say anything remotely like that, and I wondered if he’d heard it on the TV.
Rach found her voice again, but it was a scared and defensive voice. “Well, was she killed? If there’s a killer on the loose I think we should know!” She sounded on the verge of hysteria, a far cry from her usual calm and collected self.
Rick cleared his throat and nodded. “It looks like it was an accident. She choked on her own vomit.”
I tried to take that in. “In the woods?”
Rick nodded again, looking ever more annoyed. “It appears she fell over and knocked herself out on a rock.”
Good God. I tried not to but my mind immediately pictured Emma, lying on the floor in the darkness of the woods, sick resting on her face and the bright red dress. I was extremely glad my hangover meant I hadn’t eaten today.
Rach looked like she was about to throw up too. “God… it must have been awful for whoever found her.” She looked up again. “Who did find her?” She glanced at me warily, possibly thinking the same thing that had just occurred to me; that if it had been anywhere near the castle, it could have been my dad who’d discovered the body. He worked there, after all. I shuddered.
DS Lawrence leaned forward, smiling at me. “Don’t worry. It wasn’t your father, though he knows all about it now, of course.” He gestured to his boss with a nod. “Rick found her.”
I looked at DCI Wood in surprise as he glared at Paul. “Thank you, Lawrence. In future interviews, though, please keep such information to yourself.”
Paul’s face burned red as he nodded and looked down at the table. My heart went out to him; I’d been humiliated by my boss in front of customers more times than I could count, and even Hannah Green wasn’t anywhere near as scary as Rick Wood was being today.
I changed the subject quickly to try and get Paul out of the firing line. “So… why are you asking about enemies?” I paused, thinking. “What did you mean by it looks like it was an accident?”
Rick shifted in his chair. “It’s our job to cover all bases, as I’m sure you can understand. We’ll know more once the autopsy results come back. It seems to be just a drunken accident.” He seemed irritated at my questioning and his voice became louder as he stared at me. “Now, do you know anything? Other than an absurd lie about seeing the victim after she’d died?”
Rick’s previously pale skin
had become inflamed and his eyebrows were furrowed so much he looked like he was in pain. I vaguely noticed Paul look up at his boss in surprise; he’d obviously not heard him use that tone of voice before when interviewing witnesses.
“I’m sorry… I’m just telling you what I saw.”
He shook his head and stood up, putting his notebook back into his suit pocket. “What you saw was impossible.”
No arguing with that.
He motioned for Paul to stand up and then walked over to the door. “Remember that, and we’ll have no problems.”
Something suddenly occurred to me, and I addressed Rick as he was turning to leave. “Emma’s dress…was there a bit of the fabric missing?”
DCI Wood stopped mid-turn and stared at me from his sideways position. “Why do you ask?”
I took a deep breath. “I just thought, I noticed it last night.”
Rick’s eyes flickered briefly to Paul, then back to me. “And this was… in the toilets? When you first got to The Pit?”
I nodded; it’s not like I could tell the truth now.
Rick’s mouth curled up in a twisted grin. “No, you must be mistaken.” He paused. “Again.”
With that he opened the door quickly and left, leaving Paul behind, who dithered on the spot and looked at us apologetically. “I’m sorry about that, DCI Wood has… erm…” he stopped mid-sentence and shrugged. “Well, thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch if we have any further questions.” Paul smiled and went after Rick.
Neither Rach nor I could speak for a good minute or so, and I just sat there, half hugging her with one arm.
“I can’t believe it.”
I blinked, letting yet more tears run down my face. “Me neither.”
Rach’s curiosity soon got the better of her. “Who do you think you saw then, if it wasn’t Emma?”
I avoided looking at her. “I don’t know.”
“What was all the ‘we’ll have no problems’ thing about?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Rach pulled me into a hug and I hugged her back, not knowing what else to say. After a second or so I got my phone out my pocket with my other hand and checked the display.
Veronica hadn’t even tried to contact me.
***
A few hours later I left the gloom of the Picture House and walked out into an even gloomier September evening. Main Street was gearing up for Saturday night and a lot of the residents were out and about despite the cold. I nodded to a nearby couple who lived two houses away from me, pulling my jacket tighter around my body as I ran the few short steps to the Diner.