Good Girl, Bad Girl(12)

Nobody answers.

“Is there anyone who might want to hurt your family?”

Dougal makes a scoffing sound. “I drive a cab. Maggie works in the school canteen. We’re not low-life crims or scumbags.”

Lenny doesn’t react. Perhaps she should be talking to the parents separately to gauge their different responses. Dougal has the stronger personality and Maggie defers to him, never questioning his answers or interrupting. She’s not subservient, but neither is she an equal in the relationship.

I walk to the sliding doors and peer into the darkness of the garden. An outside light reveals a deck with a hot tub, covered for the winter. I try to picture Jodie here but have too little information to breathe life into her pale corpse. I need to discover who she was before if I’m to understand what happened to her. Was she friendly and approachable? Would she say hello to a stranger who passed her on the footpath late at night? Would she nod and smile or drop her head, avoiding eye contact? Would she run if attacked? Would she fight back? Would she submit?

“Can I see Jodie’s room?” I ask, directing the question at Dougal.

He hesitates for a moment before showing me up the stairs. Jodie’s room is nearest the shared bathroom. Dougal won’t come inside. He hovers in the doorway, as though waiting for permission to enter from a daughter who will never be able to grant it.

The pillow on Jodie’s bed has a small indentation where her head last rested. Next to it is a floppy rag doll with yellow yarn curls and button eyes. It is a typical teenager’s room. Messy. Cluttered. Characterful. Dirty clothes are strewn near a wicker basket and a lone shoe has been thrown towards the wardrobe. I have to stop myself wanting to bend down and put it in place. A damp towel from yesterday is lying on the floor.

Studying the room, I imagine Jodie sitting cross-legged on the bed, a little girl playing with dolls and cutting and pasting pictures. She grew up and graduated from crayons to eyeliner, from Barbies to boy bands. Every detail resonates; the book on her bedside table, doodles on a piece of foolscap paper, a collection of lanyards hanging from the doorknob.

Her shelves are lined with ice-skating trophies and medals. The wall above her bed is covered in photographs and posters of skaters, some of whom I recognize but can’t name. Katarina Witt is among them, as well as Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. The camera has captured many of them in midair, seemingly defying gravity, while others glide across the ice with the grace of ballet dancers.

Polaroids are pinned to a corkboard above Jodie’s desk. Most of them show Jodie and Tasmin together. They are sitting on each other’s laps in a photo booth, pulling faces at the camera. Jodie is the prettier of the two. Tasmin is more self-conscious about her looks, tilting her face to hide the weight she carries around her neck. Jodie is smaller, with a skater’s body, slim and muscled. She’s more at ease with her body, showing it off in miniskirts and tight tops.

I notice a barrel bolt lock on the door, which has been affixed crookedly.

“That was Jodie’s doing,” explains Dougal. “She wanted her privacy.”

“Who was she trying to keep out?”

“Her brother mainly. Felix can push her buttons.”

“He’s older?”

“Twenty-one.”

I remember the youth I saw at the community center, urging Dougal to go home.

“Does Felix live here?” I ask.

“He comes and goes.”

There are more trophies on a shelf above Jodie’s bed. Some have come from junior competitions in Moscow, Berlin, and Hungary.

“You must have been very proud,” I say.

“Every time I watched her skate.”

Dougal inhales, holds his breath. Exhales.

“Most people take figure skating for granted. They don’t realize what goes into it—the courage and skill it takes to glide across the ice and spring into the air and spin three or four times before landing on a single blade as sharp as a knife. I’m a boneheaded man. I don’t read books or recite poetry or understand paintings, but Jodie was beautiful on the ice . . . truly breathtaking.”

Lenny calls up the stairs. She’s ready to go.

We offer our condolences and leave the two devastated families to their grief. Outside, as I reach the police car, I pause and turn back towards the house. A figure is standing motionless in an upstairs window, gazing steadily in our direction. Felix Sheehan is shirtless, or perhaps naked, his lower half shielded. He flicks at a cigarette lighter, triggering a flame and dousing it, while looking directly at us with a hatred that sustains rather than corrodes him.

What does he want to burn, I wonder, and why does he want to burn it?





6




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ANGEL FACE




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“Do you remember your mother?” asks Guthrie.

“With her long blond hair and her eyes of blue, the only thing I ever got from her was sorrow, sorrow.”

“You’re quoting David Bowie.”

“I like David Bowie.”

Guthrie is wearing a funky patterned sweater that was probably knitted by his mother. It’s too heavy for the central heating, but he won’t take it off because he doesn’t want to show his paunch.

“What about your father?” he asks.