Good Girl, Bad Girl(10)

“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Lenore Parvel,” says Lenny. “I wanted to speak to you and your wife.”

Wordlessly, he turns and leads us into an overfurnished sitting room with a lumpy sofa and two worn armchairs. A TV is showing football with the sound turned down.

Maggie Sheehan is standing in the arched doorway to the kitchen. Everything about her is crumpled and diminished. The forward cant of her shoulders. The dark rings beneath her eyes. A string of polished wooden rosary beads are clenched in her fist.

Beyond her I see a couple sitting at the kitchen. The man looks like family. He’s dressed in dark trousers and a white shirt, buttoned to his neck. The woman is physically the same size and clearly the most resolute of the four, ready to prop up the others.

“Mrs. Sheehan,” begins Lenny.

“Please call me Maggie,” she replies mechanically, before introducing her brother, Bryan, and his wife, Felicity, who are sitting at the kitchen table. The Whitakers are Tasmin’s parents, come to offer support.

Lenny is standing in the center of the room with her legs braced apart and hands clasped like she’s on a parade ground. Some people own every space they inhabit, but Lenny seems to conquer the room quietly, taking it inch by inch with the force of her personality, until everyone is concentrating on her.

Maggie takes a seat on the sofa. The skin above her collarbone is mottled and there are cracks in the makeup around her eyes. Dougal is next to her. She reaches for his hand. He takes it reluctantly, as though unwilling to show any frailty.

The Whitakers are side by side in the arched doorway, their faces filled with dreadful knowing.

Lenny begins. “It is my sad duty to inform you that the body of a teenage girl has been found beside Silverdale Walk. She matches the description of your daughter, Jodie.”

Maggie blinks and glances at Dougal, as though waiting for a translation. His eyes are closed, but a tear squeezes from one corner and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

“How did she die?” he whispers.

“We believe her death to be suspicious.”

Dougal gets to his feet and sways unsteadily, gripping the back of the sofa for support. He’s a big man who looks like a builder or a butcher. Big arms. Big hands.

“We will need one of you to formally identify Jodie,” says Lenny. “It doesn’t have to be today. I can send a car in the morning.”

“Where is she now?” asks Maggie.

“She’s been taken to the Queen’s Medical Centre. There will need to be a postmortem.”

“You’re going to cut our baby up,” says Dougal.

“We’re investigating a homicide.”

Maggie Sheehan’s fingers have found her rosary beads. She clutches the tiny crucifix in her fist, squeezing it so tightly it leaves an imprint when she opens her palm. She must have prayed all day, daring to hope, but nobody has answered her.

Bryan and Felicity hug each other in the doorway. She seems to be holding him up.

“We need to establish Jodie’s movements,” says Lenny. “When did you last see her?”

“At the fireworks,” whispers Maggie.

“We go to Bonfire Night every year,” echoes Felicity. “We used to call it Guy Fawkes Night, but people don’t do that anymore. Maybe it’s not politically correct. Didn’t Guy Fawkes try to blow up the Houses of Parliament? The Gunpowder Plot and all that.”

She’s a tall, striking woman, with a plume of silver flowing through her thick dark hair from the left side of her temple to the collar of her blouse.

“Who was Jodie with at the fireworks?” interrupts Lenny.

“Tasmin. Our daughter.”

“Anyone else?”

Maggie looks lost for words. “Schoolmates. Friends. Neighbors.”

“Everyone was there,” explains Felicity. “It was like a big street party. I took a bottle of champagne and glasses.”

Maggie takes a cotton handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and blows her nose.

“I shouldn’t have let her stay out. I should have made her come home. She would have been safe.”

“Nonsense. This is not your fault,” scolds Felicity in a tender voice.

Dougal doesn’t react, but I can already sense the tension between husband and wife. The recriminations are just beginning. Guilt has to fall somewhere when logic fails.

“What time did you last see her?” I ask.

“She found me at eight o’clock,” says Maggie. “She asked if she could sleep over at Tasmin’s house. I told her she had to be up early for training.”

“Training?”

“The nationals are coming up,” explains Bryan Whitaker, sounding apologetic. “We’re on the ice by six thirty, six mornings a week.”

“You’re Jodie’s coach,” I say.

“I taught her to skate.”

“Almost before she could walk,” echoes Maggie.

Brother and sister have similar eyes and the same-shaped noses. Maggie is rounder and softer while Bryan has slim hips and slender hands. He looks like a dancer in the way he stands with a straight back, square shoulders, and raised chin.

Attention shifts to the TV, where the football has been replaced by a news bulletin. Drone footage shows the pale outline of a forensic tent, almost hidden from view by overhanging branches. The next pictures are of police searching the uncut meadow, walking in a long straight line through knee-high grass. One of them pauses, crouches, and picks up a discarded soft-drink can, which he places in a plastic evidence bag. The picture changes again. This time Jodie’s body is being carried up the embankment.