‘This will do nicely,’ she said, heading back for the chairs. She wheeled two out at the same time, one with each hand. Interviewees would have to pass them to get to the cupboard in which they’d originally been placed.
‘Not sure Thorpe is going to be all tickety boo with this arrangement,’ he said, as they sat down facing the entrance door.
‘His problem, not mine,’ she said, already feeling the cloying darkness evaporate from around her. She took a deep breath and began to relax.
‘Okay, so seeing as our counsellor is MIA, who are we interviewing next?’
Bryant took the list from his pocket and appeared to do a double take before a slow smile spread across his face.
‘The next one is a person I feel will need no introduction at all.’
Fifteen
Dawson sat on the bed and took a moment. How many times had Sadie Winters sat in this exact same spot and contemplated life, and even possibly death?
There was an alien feeling inside him at the thought of going through her possessions despite the fact he knew she wasn’t going to barge in and accuse him of snooping. A teenage girl’s bedroom was her safe place; somewhere she could express herself and evolve into someone that felt at ease with the world. A place she used while she found somewhere to fit and the person she was meant to be. And as this corner of the room was the place Sadie had spent most of her time, this was as good as it got.
He wondered why she had been so unhappy here and if she’d asked her parents if she could leave. He remembered pleading with his mother to take him out of school after Johnny Croke and his gang had forced him to eat ten cream crackers straight. The moisture in his mouth had been swallowed up by the second, leaving him coughing and choking as the dry flakes of each cracker tumbled down his throat. His discomfort had only made them laugh more. Only once the last bite had gone did Johnny Croke give him back his school bag.
He had been ten years old.
His mother had always offered him a goal. Kept him moving forward to the weekend, to a day out, a special event, a holiday. And it got him to the age of fifteen when he took things into his own hands and began to lose weight.
He hadn’t left school with many friends and had failed to pick up many more along the way. His earlier experiences at school had left him suspicious of people’s motives. Many times, kids had attempted to befriend him and always with the intention of ridiculing him.
He was aware that all those hours spent in the gym and running in the early morning when no one could see his rolls of fat jiggling along the pavement had instilled in him a selfishness and self-obsessed nature. But as the years since his school days increased he was able to take a breath and accept that he would never be forced into such a place of powerlessness again.
Time had also taught him to value the few friends he now had.
He wondered if he would find any evidence of the friendships in Sadie’s life as he gingerly opened the top drawer of her bedside cabinet.
It contained a hairbrush, an array of dark nail varnishes, a few pieces of costume jewellery, marker pens and elastic bands. Dawson surmised this was her junk drawer. Everyone had one. It was the drawer that held everything you didn’t know where to place.
The second drawer was full of textbooks, and the third held a few notebooks, two chocolate bars and a packet of crisps.
He looked around, ready to move on to the next space, wondering why there were no family photos: her parents, sister, even a dog.
He stood and opened the wardrobe door. The left-hand side was devoted to school wear and the right to casual wear, with a few smarter pieces shoved in at the end. The bottom of the wardrobe was filled with different coloured trainers and the top shelf with warm jumpers and a couple of jackets.
He felt along the shelves to see if anything had been placed there, but it was all clothes.
He stood at the foot of the bed and frowned. His search was complete.
He sat back on the bed and opened the top drawer of the bedside cabinet again. This was the space that bothered him. In addition to being the junk drawer, the bedside cabinet was also normally used for quick access. The place you kept the most important stuff.
There was nothing of any importance in this drawer, which could only mean one thing.
Someone had been here first.
Sixteen
Kim’s expression gave nothing away as the familiar figure sauntered across the great hall towards her.
‘Cheers, mate,’ she said, under her breath to her colleague who really could have warned her.
The expression of Joanna Wade was amused as she took a seat on the other side of the reproduction desk.
‘We meet again, Miz Wade,’ Kim said, meeting her gaze and recalling her insistence on the title the last time they’d met.
‘As I knew we would, Inspector,’ the woman offered, sitting back and crossing her long legs.
‘Death unites us once more,’ Kim observed. ‘But what brings you here?’
Kim had first met Joanna Wade a couple of years earlier while investigating the murder of school principal Teresa Wyatt, a woman linked to the discovery of bones at the site of a derelict children’s home. After interviewing most of the woman’s colleagues and receiving the exact same ‘saintly’ description, this woman had been the only one to tell them the truth, while flirting outrageously with Kim.
She had changed very little, Kim noted. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail revealing a strong, square jaw and piercing blue eyes. Her plain black trousers were well cut, emphasising her long legs, and a plain white silk shirt showed a St Christopher around her neck.
‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you,’ she said, smiling.
Kim ignored the response and continued. ‘You taught Sadie Winters?’ she asked.
All amusement disappeared from Joanna’s eyes and was replaced by sadness.
‘I did, indeed, Inspector,’ she said.
‘For how long?’
‘Since I joined the team last September.’
‘So, just over six months?’
‘Six months is a long time here,’ she replied.
The response took Kim by surprise. Not so much the words as the tone. It was covered with a quick smile, the type one uses to convince the other person it was a joke, but Kim had not missed the regret. She really found herself wondering why Joanna Wade had made the move but guessed that she was not going to find out.
‘Different to your last school?’ Kim asked. If she recalled correctly Joanna’s teaching methods had sometimes been unconventional and derided by her boss despite getting and keeping the attention of her students.
Joanna simply nodded, and Kim understood she was getting no more.
‘So, what was she like, Sadie?’ Kim asked. ‘And please don’t say troubled,’ she added.
Joanna shook her head. ‘I wasn’t going to. I’d describe her as introspective, reflective and far more talented than she gave herself credit for.’
‘In what way?’
‘Poetry,’ Joanna answered. ‘She saw her writings as pointless ramblings. They were expressive and occasionally a little self-indulgent, but she was thirteen. I think we were all captivated by our own emotions at that age. Her poems reflected much of what was going on in her mind.’
Kim saw Bryant make a note. She guessed it was to ask Dawson about such writings amongst her personal possessions.
‘Like what?’ Kim asked, wanting to understand the girl better.
‘Her place in the world, fear, often loneliness, just stuff,’ Joanna said, glancing away.
Kim waited for her gaze to return. ‘“Stuff”?’
There was something that Joanna was keeping to herself.
‘As I said, Inspector, she was thirteen years of age.’
The set expression was back, and Kim felt the woman’s resolve to say nothing more on the subject. She had a feeling that Joanna’s stubbornness mirrored her own.
‘Did you ever have any trouble with her in lessons?’ Kim asked.
Joanna shook her head. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Indicating that someone else did?’ she pushed.