Good Girl, Bad Girl(30)

“I didn’t mean to trouble you,” I say.

“Well, don’t.” She turns in her slippers and disappears inside the house, slamming the heavy door so violently it rattles the windows.

“Don’t mind Francine,” says a voice from across the fence. “She’s never been very friendly.” The jug-eared old man has a Scottish accent and is leaning on a rake in his garden. His baggy trousers make him look bowlegged. “I don’t know what she’s complaining about—she didn’t live here when it happened. That was a real circus.”

“Circus?”

“The police and the reporters and the TV vans. We could barely get into the place. And the smell.”

“You were living here?”

He holds out his hand and introduces himself as Murray Reid.

“It was me who called the landlord because the dogs were howling at night and the lawn hadn’t been mown for weeks. I figured the tenant had done a runner—skipping on the rent, you know—so I knocked on the door. When nobody answered, I pushed open the mail flap. That’s when I got a whiff. That smell could have routed an army.”

“How well did you know Terry Boland?”

“I didn’t know anyone by that name. Called himself Bill. We said hello a few times. Waved over the fence. I’d see him outside, working on his car or carrying stuff back and forth.”

“Did you ever see him with the girl?”

“Never. I mean, people came and went—the killers obviously, although nobody took much notice—but I never saw that wee girl. Still makes me shudder—the thought of her alone in that house with a dead body. Then again, maybe she was better off.”

“What do you mean?”

“He couldn’t hurt her anymore.”

The temperature seems to drop, as though a cloud has suddenly passed across the sun.

“Why do you think they tortured him?” I ask.

Murray shrugs. “At first I figured he must have been a gangster or a drug dealer, you know. He pissed off the wrong people. But when they found Angel Face that all changed. Pedophile like that—kidnapping a wee girl—he deserved everything he got.”

A group of school-age children are pushing bikes along the footpath. As they get nearer, their chatter ceases.

Murray yells out to one of them. “Hey, George.”

A teenage boy looks up, embarrassed to be singled out. Leaving the group, he wheels his bike towards us.

“This is Dr. Haven—he works with the police,” explains Murray. “George lives over the road. He saw Angel Face.”

“Only one time,” says George, who is tall and gangly, with a foppish fringe that falls over his eyes, while the rest of his hair is cut short in a wide band.

“When did you see her?” I ask.

“My dad says I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Property prices.”

Murray finds this funny. George doesn’t like being laughed at. “Dad says we get too many rubberneckers driving up and down the street, looking for the house. He says the police are useless. No offense.”

“None taken. Did you ever talk to the man who was murdered?”

“No.”

“But you saw him.”

“Sure.”

“You must have been young when it happened.”

“Ten.”

“And you saw the girl.”

George shrugs. “I didn’t know she was a girl. I thought she was a boy because she had short hair.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In the window, upstairs.” He points towards the house. “I waved to her, but she didn’t wave back.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Only the police woman.”

“Sacha Hopewell.”

He nods.

“She came to talk to us about the robberies,” says Murray.

“What robberies?”

“A lot of us had stuff going missing. Little things, you know. I lost a cashmere blanket and a bag of liquorice allsorts. Mrs. Vermeer had dog food stolen.”

“Someone took my Harry Potter books,” adds George, “and my snow dome of the Eiffel Tower.”

“We thought it was local kids until Constable Hopewell found Angel Face,” says Murray. “It’s amazing how that wee lass survived all those weeks. I often wonder what happened to her; if she made it back to her family. I hope she’s OK.”

*

A different house in a different street. A shadow passes behind the frosted glass.

“Who is it?” asks a woman from behind the door.

“Dr. Cyrus Haven. I’m looking for Sacha Hopewell.”

“She’s not here.”

“I work with the police. Can you tell me where she is?”

“No.”

“I’m going to slide my business card under the door.”

I push the card halfway and it disappears onto the far side. After two beats of silence, the deadlock releases. A woman with burnt-orange hair and thick spectacles peers at me over the security chain.

“Why do you want Sacha?”

“I’m looking for information about a cold case.”

“Angel Face?”