The Society Of Dirty Hearts (A crime thriller novel) Page 9

  Chapter 10

  Julian lay pretending to sleep as the doctor reassured his parents that, with the exception of some bruises and a minor case of whiplash, their son was unhurt. “He’s been very lucky, you know,” the doctor said. Julian didn’t feel very lucky. He felt about as low as he ever had in his life. “We’ll keep him in overnight, just for observation,” continued the doctor. “If everything checks out, he can go home in the morning.”

  What home? Julian felt like saying, but he kept silent. He heard the doctor leave the room. He sensed his parents looking at him. He felt a hand – his mum’s, he guessed, from its cold softness – rest gently on his. He didn’t open his eyes. He knew he was in trouble – before the doctor arrived, he’d seen his parents talking to a policeman. “Julian,” his dad said.

  “Shh,” said Christine. “Don’t wake him. He’s had a car crash, for God’s sake. He needs rest.”

  “He could’ve killed somebody. They’re talking about charging him with dangerous driving.”

  “Shut up, Robert, or leave the room.”

  Robert huffed out a breath, but said nothing. There was a warning in his wife’s voice that suggested she didn’t care about any of that stuff – at least, not while her son was laid up in a hospital bed in a neck brace. She gave Julian’s hand a squeeze. “Get a good night’s sleep, darling, and try not to worry about anything. All that matters now is that you get better.”

  Her soothing voice took Julian away from his anxiety to a place where he was willing to let go. As usual, the dream was lurking in the shadows of sleep. Only this time it was Mia in her Susan Carter get-up who writhed and struggled beneath him. Ducking his head, he bit her windpipe, chewing deeper and deeper, blood spurting around his jaw. He saw his face reflected in her dying eyes, mutated by a violent orgasm into something a thousand times uglier than the face in her diary. He awoke with a heavy, choking sob in his throat and Mia’s words seeming to echo in his mind. You’re too late. The bad thing already happened. Too late. Too late…

  Julian didn’t go back to sleep.

  In the morning, after the doctor had checked him over, his dad took him home. At the very least, Julian expected a lecture about the idiocy of running red lights, but all his dad said was, “The garage called. Looks like your car’s a write-off.” He wore the tight-lipped expression of someone who’d been strictly warned to keep his thoughts to himself.

  Julian shrugged. Right then, he couldn’t have given a shit about his car. Right then, all he cared about was finding out if Mia was okay. He would’ve left the hospital before his dad arrived and gone in search of her, if it hadn’t been for his neck. The pain was something else. Even with the brace and pain killers, every slight jolt made him wince.

  His mum and Wanda were waiting at the front door. “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” Wanda said to Julian. “I know what hospital food’s like.”

  Julian nodded and wished he hadn’t. “You can eat in bed,” said Christine. “The doctor said to give your neck total rest for at least three days.”

  Robert looked on with ill-disguised disapproval as the women fussed over Julian, almost as if he suspected his son had somehow contrived to injure himself so that they’d be forced to let him return home. When Julian was propped up in bed with everything he needed close to hand and everyone but his mum had left the room, he said, “So what happens when my neck’s better?”

  “We’ll talk about that when that time comes. All I’m going to say now is what I already said, everything’s going to be alright.” Christine smiled. “It’s okay, Julian. It’s okay to be confused. Nineteen’s not an easy age to be. When I was your age I doubted and questioned everything. But it’ll work out. You’ll work it out. You’ll see, you just need time.”

  Looking at his mum’s concerned, sympathetic face, Julian wanted to break down and tell her everything, talk to her about what was happening to him until he was empty like a drained cesspool. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to open up to her. Partly because, like she’d said the other day, he was a grown man. His problems were his own to work out. She already had enough to contend with without him dumping more of his shit on her. But mainly because the thought of describing the dreams made him shrivel with shame. He wondered why he hadn’t felt like that with Mia. She’d asked him if he could smell her. And perhaps, in some strange way, he had. Perhaps he’d smelled what was inside her, and, through the feeling of that smell, felt safe opening up to her.

  “I love you. You know that, don’t you?” said Christine.

  Julian smiled back at her. “Of course I do.”

  “Just shout if you need anything.”

  “I will.”

  When his mum left the room, Julian flipped open his laptop and logged onto Facebook. He clicked on Send Morsus a message and wrote ‘Are you okay? That’s all I want to know’. Throughout the rest of the day, every few minutes, he checked his inbox. It remained empty. He sent more messages, each increasingly anxious and pleading. Still no response. He considered phoning Kyle, asking him to see if he could find Mia, but decided against it. Knowing how Kyle felt about her, he’d probably tell him to go fuck himself. Besides, there was only one person he could really depend on, and that person was Eleanor. But he couldn’t bring himself to contact her. It wasn’t just the thought of coming clean about why he’d stood her up, and fielding the stream of awkward questions that would inevitably follow which stopped him. It was the thought of getting her involved at all, of exposing her to something she wasn’t equipped to handle, something which, although he had no idea what it was, he sensed in his heart and in his brain to be not just ugly, but sordid and degenerate.

  Julian’s mum looked in on him several times during the day. His dad didn’t look in on him once, perhaps fearing he wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue. That evening, after Wanda had gone home, he heard raised voices from the lounge. He couldn’t make out much of what was being said, but it was obvious his parents were arguing about him. There was the sound of the front door slamming, a car starting up and driving away. Despite the pain in his neck, Julian guiltily considered going to see if his mum was okay. The thought was swept away by the car returning almost as soon as it’d gone. Even angry, his dad couldn’t bear to leave his wife alone for long. His love for her was the most important thing in his life. He never said it outright, of course. Just as he’d never have admitted that when Julian was living in the house, occupying the centre of his wife’s anxious care, he sometimes acted more like a jealous sibling competing for her attention than a father.

  The night, when it came on, seemed to go on and on. Julian staved off sleep for a long as possible, but the painkillers made him drowsy and he nodded off. He jolted awake with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and found that he’d bitten through his lip.

  He managed to resist logging on until after Wanda brought him breakfast. His heart slumped at the empty inbox of his Facebook page. He picked up his mobile-phone, put it down, picked it up again, started to dial, then hung up. With every passing minute, the sense that something was wrong, that something terrible had happened to Mia grew in him. At last, it got so strong he couldn’t resist it. He phoned Eleanor. “What now, Julian?” she asked.

  “I want to explain why I stood you up.”

  “Does that mean you’ve sorted things out with your parents?”

  “No.”

  “So why the sudden urge to tell me now when you didn’t-”

  “If you’ll just listen, I’ll try to explain,” Julian cut in impatiently. He told Eleanor about Mia – only what she needed to know, nothing else. He suddenly had the feeling that every second counted.

  “I knew it. I knew it had to be something like that, the way you’ve been acting.”

  “It’s not like you think. I don’t fancy her or anything,” Julian was quick to point out.

  “So what is she, a friend?”

  “She’s…” Julian struggled to find the words to define what she was to him. “She’s someo
ne I feel responsible for.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because I found her best-friend’s body.” Julian knew that wasn’t the reason, but he wasn’t about to try and explain something to Eleanor that he couldn’t explain to himself.

  After a moment of silence heavy with doubt, she said, “It’s an awful thing, I know. And I can’t begin to imagine how bad Mia must be feeling, but I don’t get why that should make you feel responsible for her? Joanne Butcher’s death has nothing to do with you.”

  “To be honest, I don’t really get it either.” Before Eleanor could say anything, Julian added, “Look, the thing is, Ellie, I need to ask a favour.”

  She clicked her tongue in exasperation. “And here was me thinking you simply wanted to straighten things out between us.”

  “This isn’t about you and me. It’s about Mia. I need you to find out if she’s okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “I think she might be in some kind of trouble.”

  “What do you mean, some kind of trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling.”

  “Like, what kind of feeling?”

  “A bad one. Last time I saw Mia she said some stuff, nothing specific, but…well, I think Joanne Butcher’s death has pushed her into doing something stupid.” Julian didn’t mention the Mercedes, he didn’t want to get Eleanor more involved than was absolutely necessary.

  “You think she might have hurt herself?”

  Julian’s stomach knotted. The possibility that Mia might have harmed herself hadn’t occurred to him, but now his mind flashed back to her Facebook page where she’d listed her hobbies as cutting and suicide. He thought about that look in her eyes. Thinking about it made his head swim. “No. No way.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself more than Eleanor.

  “Something else I don’t get. Why do you need me? Why can’t you find out if she’s okay yourself?”

  Julian told Eleanor about the crash, leaving out the reason for it. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be in a couple of days.”

  “You weren’t drunk or anything, were you?”

  “No, just tired and…distracted.”

  Eleanor was silent a moment. Julian could sense her mind ticking over. He knew her well enough to guess what was coming. “Maybe you should call the police,” she said. “I mean, if Mia’s hurt herself-”

  “She hasn’t hurt herself – at least, not in the way you mean.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  Eleanor was right, of course, but still Julian was reluctant to follow her suggestion until he had no other option. If he got the police involved, he knew Mia would never forgive him. “Look, if I really thought she’d hurt herself don’t you think I’d have called the police already.”

  “I suppose.” Eleanor sighed. “Okay, Julian, I’ll do it. But if I can’t find her-”

  “If you can’t find her, I’ll phone the police.”

  Julian started describing Mia to Eleanor as she’d looked when he first saw her. Then, realising his mistake, he broke off and described her as she’d looked the previous evening. “You sure about that?” Eleanor asked. “That’s a pretty radical image change. They sound like two different girls.”

  “I’m sure, unless she’s dyed her hair back to its original colour.”

  “Well it’ll be a lot easier to pick her out of a crowd if she has.”

  Julian told Eleanor where Mia went to school, where she lived. “And if you come across her foster dad, don’t mention it was me who sent you,” he cautioned. He paused, before continuing awkwardly, “Thing is, he’s somehow got it into his head that me and Mia…well, that we’re, you know, screwing each other.”

  “Why would he think that?” Eleanor asked in a quieter, frowning tone of voice.

  “I don’t know, but he’s way, way off the mark.”

  “Honestly?”

  “I’ve got a lot of faults, Ellie, like most people do, but I’m not a liar.”

  Again a moment’s silence, again a deep intake of breath at the other end of the line. “If I’m going to do this, I’d better get moving. I’ll be in touch as soon as I’ve got anything to tell you.”

  The hours seemed to stretch as Julian waited to hear from Eleanor. His mum came to see him, but his attention kept drifting to his phone and laptop, and she soon gave up on trying to have a conversation. “Turn those things off and get some rest,” she gently remonstrated.

  Julian closed his laptop, but the moment his mum was gone he flipped it open again. He tried phoning Eleanor a couple of times, but to his frustration she didn’t answer. By late afternoon he was wound so tight with waiting that he flinched at a knock on his bedroom door. Wanda poked her head into the room. “Eleanor Hill’s here. She says-”

  “Show her in,” Julian interrupted. The instant he saw Eleanor’s face he knew something was up, and the knot in his stomach coiled tighter. “You didn’t find her, did you?”

  “No. I waited outside her school, but I didn’t see her. So I went to her house. Her foster dad answered the door. When I asked if Mia was in, he gave me this really suspicious look and asked who I was. I told him I was a friend of Mia’s, and he said she wasn’t in. So I asked if he knew where I could find her, and he said, you tell me, she didn’t come home last night and she wasn’t in school today. And then he asked if I knew you. I said no, but it was obvious he didn’t believe me, and as I was leaving he shouted after me, if you find them, tell them they won’t get far. I think he thinks you’ve run off together or something.”

  “Run off,” murmured Julian, his face creasing.

  “So are you going to call the police?”

  Julian nodded, reaching for his phone and dialling slowly. He knew he had no choice, but in some strange way Eleanor’s words had made him more, not less reluctant to contact the police. When Tom Benson picked up, he said, “I need to speak to you about Mia Bradshaw.”

  “That’s funny,” replied the detective, “I was about to phone and say the same thing to you. I need you to come down to the station for a chat.”

  Julian guessed at once that Mia’s foster dad had beaten him to phoning the police. He explained about his neck. “Ah, yes, I heard about that,” said the detective. “Well, in that case, I’ll come to you.”

  Julian thought about his parents. Almost as much as he wanted to find Mia, he wanted to avoid causing them – especially his mum – anymore upset. “Can’t we do this over the phone?”

  “I’m afraid this is too serious for that.”

  “When are you coming?”

  “Now.”

  Julian hung up and said to Eleanor, “You’d better go.”

  She looked at him with concern. “Are you sure? I can stay if you want.”

  “There’s no need.” Whatever the policeman might have to say to him, Julian didn’t want Eleanor, or, for that matter, anybody else to hear it.

  Eleanor heaved a sigh. “God, I really hope nothing bad’s happened to Mia.”

  No matter what’s happened to her, it’s too late to hope that, thought Julian, but he said, “I hope so too.”

  “First one girl goes missing and turns up dead. Then, just a few days later, her best mate goes missing too.” Eleanor shook her head. “It’s crazy. I mean, like, what’s going on in this town?”

  “To know that, you’d have to know what really happened to Joanne Butcher.”

  “She OD’d.”

  “Yeah, but what made her OD?”

  “Nothing made her OD. It was an accident.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Eleanor frowned. “Are you suggesting someone might’ve killed her on purpose?”

  “I don’t know what I’m suggesting. I just get the feeling there’s more to it than a simple overdose.” Julian stopped himself from saying anymore. He’d already let out more than he intended to.

  “Why?”

  Julian shrug
ged. “I haven’t got any answers. Like I said, it’s just a feeling. I’m probably totally wrong.”

  Eleanor raised an eyebrow, obviously not satisfied by his answer, but she didn’t press him. A little hesitantly, she reached to lay her hand on his arm. Her touch seemed even softer than he remembered. It stirred the desire he’d always felt for her. “I know how badly you want to find Mia, but I think you should leave this to the police now. If you’re right, if there’s more to Joanne Butcher’s death than a horrible accident, you could be getting yourself mixed up in something dangerous.” Her fingers flexed lightly against his wrist. “I couldn’t stand it if anything bad happened to you, Julian.”

  He tried to smile reassuringly. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. How can it when I’m stuck in bed?”

  Eleanor released his wrist. “Will you call me? Soon?”

  Julian nodded. When Eleanor was gone, he shouted Wanda. “Where’s Mum?” he asked.

  “In the garden.”

  “Good. There’s a policeman coming here to talk to me. Will you keep her outside until he’s gone?”

  Wanda frowned. “You know I don’t like keeping things from her.”

  “Neither do I usually. But she’s already had more than enough worry these last few days, don’t you think?”

  Wanda regarded Julian uncertainly a moment, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll try, but no promises.”

  When Tom Benson turned up, Wanda showed him through to Julian’s bedroom. He seated himself, pen and notebook in hand. “Why don’t we start with you telling me what you’ve got to tell me?” he said.

  “I’m worried about Mia Bradshaw. I think she might be in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Julian gave the policeman the full story about his previous night’s encounter with Mia. “It just seemed so odd,” he said. “It was like she’d got all dressed up to play some sort of part.”

  “That doesn’t sound so odd to me. I’ve got a young daughter myself who changes her hair colour nearly as often as she changes her clothes.”

  “Well, what about the car?”

  “Did you take the registration?”