slightly queasy. What kind of game was he playing?
She started up the stairs, moving slowly – unsure why – the soft carpet giving under her socked feet. On the landing, she stopped. All the doors were open save Jamie’s, but she could see light shining from the crack under his closed door. As she walked past her mother’s room, she caught sight of the unmade bed, pyjamas strewn on the floor, make-up, hairbrush, cleansers and face creams, scattered on top of the dressing table, abstract shapes framed in the twilight cutting through the window. Her mother: naturally orderly, but with so little time these days to do anything except lurch from one crisis to the next.
Jessie stopped outside Jamie’s bedroom door and panic gripped her without warning. Quite what she was afraid of, she didn’t know. Staring blankly ahead at the white-painted wood in front of her, she turned the handle.
As the door swung open, her gaze caught the poster on the wall above his bed, an Athena poster of a litter of chocolate Labrador puppies squashed into a wicker shopping basket. Too old to keep it, he’d said, but he hadn’t taken it down. The bed below, unmade – nothing strange in that – his school bag dumped beside it – so he
was
home – the tension in her stomach so acute she could taste bile in her mouth.
‘Jamie.’ Hearing the sob straining her vocal cords.
The door swung fully open. And she saw.
The blue Batman curtains first.
And then Jamie. Hanging by his neck from the curtain rail by his red-and-grey striped school tie.
Somewhere someone was screaming. A scream so raw that it could only mean pain. Jessie fought upwards towards it, through dense, hot layers of unconsciousness. The taste of vomit, rich and acid, filled her mouth. She was lying on the carpet, a part of her brain realized, head resting on the soft wool, the stain of vomit forming a halo around her head, clotted in her hair, damp and sticky against her cheek.
If she turned her head, just a fraction, opened her eyes, she would see him hanging there. She kept her eyes jammed shut, but the image filled the insides of her eyelids with microscopic detail. His face, puffy where the circulation had been cut off, purplish-blue around the lips. The chair from his desk overturned beneath him, the papers he mustn’t have bothered moving off the desk itself before he clambered on to it, scattered on the floor. The absolute gaping, yawing void of silence.
A car swished down the street, Westlife thumping from its speakers. Shoving herself to her feet, Jessie barrelled out of Jamie’s bedroom and into her mother’s.
Clutching the phone to her ear, she punched at the keys. Couldn’t see through the hot tears streaming from her eyes. 999. A dial tone. 9 … Sobbing now. 99 … Sobbing, choking, howling in utter desperation.
19
Clearly nothing of much excitement occurred in this corner of West Sussex, as the crime scene tape strung across the front of the Art Deco house was now home to a line of onlookers, dressed for endurance in wellies and all-weather gear. Many, from the red, pinched look of their faces, had been there for some considerable time, even though it was barely eight thirty in the morning. Marilyn remembered the same from the murder in Smuggler’s Lane last year: the constant stream of ‘near neighbours’, some of whom came from as far afield as Bognor Regis thirty miles to the east, or Petersfield, twenty north, every one of them professing concern at a murder on their own doorstep lest they be the next victim, every one all ears for the tiniest, goriest detail.
He watched from a distance – having no intention of getting close enough to be buttonholed by any of them – as the uniformed constable guarding the integrity of the tape waved them out of the way to let the ‘Police Dogs’ van through. From the rigidity of his stance to the way his hands were cutting staccato arcs through the air, Marilyn could tell that his patience was
She started up the stairs, moving slowly – unsure why – the soft carpet giving under her socked feet. On the landing, she stopped. All the doors were open save Jamie’s, but she could see light shining from the crack under his closed door. As she walked past her mother’s room, she caught sight of the unmade bed, pyjamas strewn on the floor, make-up, hairbrush, cleansers and face creams, scattered on top of the dressing table, abstract shapes framed in the twilight cutting through the window. Her mother: naturally orderly, but with so little time these days to do anything except lurch from one crisis to the next.
Jessie stopped outside Jamie’s bedroom door and panic gripped her without warning. Quite what she was afraid of, she didn’t know. Staring blankly ahead at the white-painted wood in front of her, she turned the handle.
As the door swung open, her gaze caught the poster on the wall above his bed, an Athena poster of a litter of chocolate Labrador puppies squashed into a wicker shopping basket. Too old to keep it, he’d said, but he hadn’t taken it down. The bed below, unmade – nothing strange in that – his school bag dumped beside it – so he
was
home – the tension in her stomach so acute she could taste bile in her mouth.
‘Jamie.’ Hearing the sob straining her vocal cords.
The door swung fully open. And she saw.
The blue Batman curtains first.
And then Jamie. Hanging by his neck from the curtain rail by his red-and-grey striped school tie.
Somewhere someone was screaming. A scream so raw that it could only mean pain. Jessie fought upwards towards it, through dense, hot layers of unconsciousness. The taste of vomit, rich and acid, filled her mouth. She was lying on the carpet, a part of her brain realized, head resting on the soft wool, the stain of vomit forming a halo around her head, clotted in her hair, damp and sticky against her cheek.
If she turned her head, just a fraction, opened her eyes, she would see him hanging there. She kept her eyes jammed shut, but the image filled the insides of her eyelids with microscopic detail. His face, puffy where the circulation had been cut off, purplish-blue around the lips. The chair from his desk overturned beneath him, the papers he mustn’t have bothered moving off the desk itself before he clambered on to it, scattered on the floor. The absolute gaping, yawing void of silence.
A car swished down the street, Westlife thumping from its speakers. Shoving herself to her feet, Jessie barrelled out of Jamie’s bedroom and into her mother’s.
Clutching the phone to her ear, she punched at the keys. Couldn’t see through the hot tears streaming from her eyes. 999. A dial tone. 9 … Sobbing now. 99 … Sobbing, choking, howling in utter desperation.
19
Clearly nothing of much excitement occurred in this corner of West Sussex, as the crime scene tape strung across the front of the Art Deco house was now home to a line of onlookers, dressed for endurance in wellies and all-weather gear. Many, from the red, pinched look of their faces, had been there for some considerable time, even though it was barely eight thirty in the morning. Marilyn remembered the same from the murder in Smuggler’s Lane last year: the constant stream of ‘near neighbours’, some of whom came from as far afield as Bognor Regis thirty miles to the east, or Petersfield, twenty north, every one of them professing concern at a murder on their own doorstep lest they be the next victim, every one all ears for the tiniest, goriest detail.
He watched from a distance – having no intention of getting close enough to be buttonholed by any of them – as the uniformed constable guarding the integrity of the tape waved them out of the way to let the ‘Police Dogs’ van through. From the rigidity of his stance to the way his hands were cutting staccato arcs through the air, Marilyn could tell that his patience was
Similar Books
