The Lies and Crimes of Sweet Caroline Read online

Caroline shook her head. “I left them in the crags at the top. I didn’t see them. I came home.”

  “Why did you come home?”

  “Because the rabbits weren’t there.” The little girl looked despondent, reliving the disappointment.

  “What were they doing when you left them?”

  “Messing about. Throwing stones and stuff. I told them it was dangerous to throw stones.”

  “What did they say to that?”

  “They didn’t say anything. What’s happened to them?”

  Hawkins became more intense. “Were they near the railway line throwing stones?”

  The child didn’t answer straight away. Eventually she felt able to shake her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Could you hear them as you walked down the hill?”

  “No.”

  “Can we go now?” asked Judy. “We’ve been here ages.”

  He felt himself reddening. “Listen. Two children have died. We can’t end this until we know all that Caroline knows.” He pointed in the direction of somewhere further along the corridor. “Their mum and dad need to know.”

  After about half a minute of silence, Judy unfolded her arms again and made a conciliatory gesture with her open palms. “Of course I’m sorry. I’m sorry if something’s happened to those two kids, absolutely gutted. But it’s nothing to do with Caroline. As if it could be. Just look at her.”

  Butter wouldn’t melt.

  Hawkins, irritated, said, “She can go home soon, but we do need to know more. Two children are dead, Mrs Lawrence. We need to figure out why.”

  Caroline had found a place away from the questions. She was watching a memory play out in her mind.

  That sunny afternoon had had the lightest of breezes. The gentle gusts of wind had caressed her face and made her almost smile. Eddie and Sally had agreed to go exploring with her. This had been a surprise. She had thought they would refuse. They had called her names too many times over the previous two weeks, nasty names. They had said she smelled. They had said she was stupid. Sally had said she was as stupid as dog muck and Eddie had laughed loudly at that. She had felt hurt. The pain had grown. She had thought about that pain in bed. Something had needed to be done about it. She hadn’t been sure how she would do it, but had hoped that exploring would help something to happen.

  It had helped.

  They had said more bad things. Eddie had been angry with her. “You said there were rabbits up here, but it was a lie. You always tell lies.”

  Sally had been an echo. “And she steals.”

  Caroline had hated that echo. She had felt her face tighten and her right hand had become a fist.

  Then that fist had loosened and her eye had sharpened.

  Click click click. Something had landed in her head. “It doesn’t matter about the rabbits. This might be more fun,” she had said. “Here’s a dare,” she had said. “A train is coming,” she had said. “We walk alongside the train as it passes us. We walk like heroes. We’ll be soldiers like in Ancient Greece. Anybody who gets scared or who moves away has to walk home with no clothes on.” She had said.

  Sally had protested. “That’s silly. That won’t prove anything. I’m not walking home without my clothes on.” She had turned to her brother. “I told you she was an idiot. I don’t know why we came up here with her.”

  Caroline had felt the pain being rekindled at being called an idiot again. She had stood still and tried to appear unaffected, but the hate returned. It was a feeling that burned.

  Eddie had wanted to prove himself. He liked Caroline, this girl from the next road who was only a year younger than he was. “No. We can do it. There’s no way I’m going to have to walk home with no clothes on. It’s easy to walk at the side of a train.” Caroline had nearly smiled at that. Well, almost nearly.

  She had made sure they were walking in front of her. When the train roared past, one push was all it had taken. With the desperate grabbing of a hand, Sally had taken Eddie with her into the wheels of the metallic monster, which had chewed them up. There was lots of blood. Caroline had never seen so much. It had been like a big red wave. It was good that none of the red stuff had gone on her clothes.

  Hawkins closed the book in front of him and gave a telling look to his colleague. “Thanks for trying to answer our questions, Caroline. We may want to talk to you again if that’s OK. So we may be seeing you again soon.”

  Caroline came out from her memory but said nothing.

  “No way,” said Judy. “We’ll go to the funerals, but that’s the end of this. It’s just a horrible accident and she’s not suffering for it. Nothing to do with her. Anybody can see that.”

  The mother and daughter were escorted from the interview room. Caroline had a half-smile on her face as she left the police station with her mother firmly clasping her hand. She made sure that her mother didn’t notice.

  Another Dawn

  The coming of daylight has its own natural fanfare. The singing of the birds isn’t particularly loud, but it’s enough to provide a clear signal for the emerging day. Is it music? Perhaps not, perhaps too lacking in tunefulness, although some think differently and some may seek solace in the natural sound.

  The time is important. The mood inside the room seems to be steadily and unceremoniously leaving behind the dark shades of grey as daylight begins to make its presence felt. Uncomfortably, she allows more of the coming brightness to enter, raising herself gently from the pillow and craning her neck to peer through a crack she forms between the edge of brown curtain and the magnolia wall. Connecting with the outside world, her eyes scan the various branches and clusters of branches within her eyeline, as she tries to locate where the birds actually are. There are a number of trees outside, all deliberately and obviously planted at intervals in an orderly way that shows intention rather than accidents of nature. She wonders if the little creatures she admires so much occupy every one of those vertical creations or just one or two.

  She always wants to know where the birds are, always has. She never seems to be able to see them properly. She never has, yet she knows they are there and likes their music. Just like always, she feels supported and encouraged by their tuneless meaningful warble, their song of morning. She half-smiles. It’s such a shame that she can never understand what the birds actually mean. Why do they exist?

  The musing gives way to a reality check. There is an accompanying sound that is less welcome, and which irritates, shattering the early morning mood, and she finds herself disturbed by a buzz-saw within the room that cuts through any harmony. This unpleasant sound comes from the hill of slumbering humanity next to her. This masculine lump has in the past twelve hours displayed a wide repertoire of unwelcome sounds, including absurd ridiculous sentences, sexist jokes and farting while in a state of oblivion. It was some night, last night. This is some morning.

  She puts her hand over her mouth to prevent herself sighing. Last night’s Moet is now making its presence felt. It always does, even a mere one and a half glasses of the stuff. From underneath the lump formed under the fabric, further communication of an unwelcome kind comes from the unhealthily bloated body that pressures the surrendering mattress. Should such a creature continue to breathe? she asks herself. In the wild, animals like this die, far more tragically.

  It’s five o’clock and it is time to move. She purposefully but gently raises herself from under the pale blue duvet and frees herself from the bed so that she can quickly put on her dress and shoes. There is an urgency about this, since speed is an important part of the game she is playing this morning. Underwear and stockings are quickly pushed into a small black handbag. She does this just like she has done it before. This is a game she once again plays adeptly, one that she has played many times, one in which she has expertise, one in which she demands and expects success and gain.

  This woman, a slender twenty-six-year-ol
d brunette, surveys the room, ensuring that she has missed nothing, all the time preserving the silence. She doesn’t quite manage contentment or appreciation, but why should she? She has been under no illusion regarding this room, both for what it was last night and for what it remains this morning. Admittedly, to call it a hovel would be harsh. She has stayed in worse, and at least it’s clean, with a new-looking little white plastic kettle and two untouched undersized mugs with twin glass tumblers that attempt to be crystal. All in all, the room probably justifies the amount he has paid for this night.

  It has been no night of restful slumber. She hasn’t resorted to sleep. She never does.

  Sometimes a bad bed is a good thing. This bed has helped her to stay alert. Overly hard and unyielding for her light frame, definitely a bad bed, it has far too little give for her tastes, so staying awake was inevitable. Being conscious through the night is fine and necessary, since she has to be awake to win. Even so, she thinks, if she had been on her own after a long and difficult day, in a more relaxed situation, perhaps grabbing some private solace away from a world of distractions, sleep would still have been a challenge on this mattress.

  She daydreams at this point. Life won’t always be like this. One day, it will be a five-star first-class lifestyle, with a four-poster bed and twenty-four-hour room service. By then, whenever that time is, she will be living a much more luxurious life, like the one she experienced in the dream she had last week, the one where she was swimming in a river of fifty-pound notes. Or maybe it will be like the one she had a couple of weeks ago, where she owned a plush hotel next to a beach. She has not had her recurring dream for several weeks, however, the one where she is surrounded by paintings, as though she is living in some kind of art gallery. That dream disturbs her, although she’s always liked painting and drawing.

  One day, at the very least, she tells herself, the bottom line will be something special. She will be reliant on no one and will envy no one, because she will have everything she needs. She hangs on to that belief with determination and firmness. She is set on making it more of a certainty than a speculation. With the ideas she is forming, fact will at some point replace fantasy and what happens after that is a mystery she looks forward to dealing with.

  Having dressed, well almost, she walks around the room, never losing the stealth, never discarding alertness, taking in every bland detail of the room as if there might be something of significance. Business-like, she picks up the black suit trousers on the other side of the bed. She takes from the back pocket the thick shiny leather wallet that resides in the left-hand pocket with the golden initials DVN in the corner. Classy stuff, but on the other hand, is it just ego-led garishness? She opens it up and the half-smile returns as she enjoys the true meaning of the evening. Everything has led to this. Whilst intermittently monitoring the snoring lump, she takes from the folded leather the wad of notes, as well as the bank card, before dropping the wallet back onto the floor. The notes, folded tidily around the card, are all deposited alongside her underwear in the small leather handbag that she now clings to like a trophy.

  The buzz-saw continues, oblivious, and he makes an unintelligible utterance. Perhaps he’s dreaming about her. Whatever is going on inside his head, she despises the sound he’s making and would willingly silence him forever, but this morning she will settle for just robbing him. Taking a life creates risk. Anyway, that awful snoring means security, as it affirms his lack of consciousness. However, she is not one to surrender caution. As she puts on her jacket, she is icily prepared for confrontation, as always, but believes that the temazepam she added to his drink several hours ago has done the trick. He probably won’t wake up before noon. They don’t, usually.

  She sneaks out of the room, gently closing the door behind her. This is always one of the best bits of the whole process. She strolls briskly down the lightly-carpeted corridor to the stairs and descends. There is nobody around and she makes a point of turning her head away from the reception desk as she exits. Within just over a minute and a half from leaving the room, she is on the pavement a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel. She could feel vulnerable. She doesn’t.

  She never does.

  With daylight shining on the windows, windscreens and car bonnets that she passes, there is the sound of some kind of street cleaning vehicle moving along the next road, whilst the sun is beginning to make its mark on the day. She hopes it will be a nice sunny day, even if she will end up sleeping through most of it. It is always good to wake up to sunshine.

  She looks down the road, seeing nothing of note, so she turns her head the opposite way. The headlights of a car about a hundred yards away blink on and off. The enterprising young woman, this pretty brunette in a black dress, Caroline Lawrence, to the few people who know her, JoJo to some who are more often than not less fortunate, feels a sense of reassurance. The half-smile returns. Moving into a jog, she makes her way confidently towards the vehicle.

  When she reaches the car, a dull red Nissan Micra, with a dent in the wheel arch on the passenger side, yet with an engine that purrs resiliently and optimistically, she drops herself into the passenger seat and smiles at the driver. This one is all ears and expectation, underneath a mass of blonde curly hair. With hands gripping the steering wheel, she is a similar age to Caroline. Unlike Caroline, she is all smiles and anticipation.

  Instantly the engine of the car roars into life and straight away they make their getaway, driving along a deserted road in the town centre.

  “How much?”

  Caroline takes the wad of notes from her bag and quickly counts them, with all the speed and confidence of a bank teller. “A hundred and eighty quid.”

  Leoni nods her head without taking her eyes off the road. “Not bad.”

  Caroline points a finger ahead of her into an imagined distance. “There’s more. A lot more.” She puts the money away. “Cashpoint. You got those numbers?”

  “Yes. Think he’s using his son’s birthday. First digit was a five and his son’s born on the 5th of June. Reckon it’ll be zero-five-zero-six or zero-five-zero-two. Only just got it though. He was a big bloke.”

  “A heavyweight geezer, the Londoners would say.” Caroline is studying the shops they pass, thinking that she may never pass this way again, and sees nothing to suggest to her that it is something to feel sorry about. She turns from the dullness and looks ahead.

  “Yep. A real sun blocker, so I only just caught it. Do you think he’ll be good for it?”

  “Not half. Top of the range Porsche. You don’t drive one of those and have an overdraft.”

  “Plenty in there then?”

  “I reckon so. We’ll soon know.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Lu, it’s a two-hundred grand car. Loaded. Trust me.”

  “OK. Cashpoint one on the left. The one on the right’s not working.” They park up bang next to the machines. They both look around, turning to survey their surroundings in all directions and their eyes meet in approval. There’s no one around. From the glove compartment, Caroline grabs two Mickey Mouse masks. She passes one to Leoni and secures the other to her face. With the card in her hand, she goes up to the cash dispenser and inserts it. She presses the buttons and requests two hundred pounds. Some clicking and whirring, then a metal door opens, signalling success. Zero-five-zero-two works and brings forth smiles all around. She takes out the crisp twenty-pound notes. They feel nice. Tonight has done some good.

  “Remember, the CCTV is to the right, next to the exit.” The work isn’t complete yet.

  First stop is the nearest Asda, open twenty-four hours thankfully, where they use that same card to do some shopping, this time with baseball caps and sunglasses as meaningful disguises. The supermarket is deserted thankfully, with just three cars in the far corner of the car park, and they make their way to the spirits aisle. They select some expensive bottles, mainly Moet et C
handon and specialist gins, put them in a basket, then head for the only checkout that is operating at this time of day.

  Leoni does the little talking that is necessary, and Caroline almost smiles. She has never become used to her partner’s feigned London accent. They are buying six bottles of champagne and five bottles of gin, which they both know they can trade when it suits, or even drink if they feel like a crazy night. While Leoni makes the purchases, Caroline is constantly scanning the area around her, positioning herself so she faces away from that camera near the exit.

  After that, they head quickly to the car and put the bottles in the back. The journey now resumes, and they work their way through the outskirts of the town and find the blue signs they now need. Soon, they are on a slip road. “Well, here we are again. The multi-lane experience.”

  Caroline sighs.

  “One day we can do a local job perhaps, and just fall into bed. What about somebody on the next road? Sharp Street is good for me.”

  “We did plenty of local jobs, didn’t we? Too many. That’s why we’re doing this now.”

  “Yeah, I know. The travelling makes the work harder, though.”

  Caroline keeps her lips firmly together. She knows they are both very tired.

  “What was he like, then?” Leoni doesn’t take her eyes off the road, although she strokes Caroline’s leg.

  Caroline responds by touching her friend’s hand with her fingertips. “He was like most of them. Just wanted my knickers off and a ten-second shag. Wanker.”

  “Was he rough with you?” Leoni takes her eyes off the road briefly and scans Caroline’s arm for bruising.

  “Not really. Enthusiastic though.”

  “Yuck.”

  Caroline remains matter of fact. “He just shot his load then became unconscious. Thank God for the Tammy. Did the trick.”

  “Was he interesting?

  “Was he fuck! He just talked about himself. On and fucking on. Kept telling me all about travelling business class to the Caribbean and these famous people he knew.”