‘Miss who?’ Edie said as Tess dragged her to the front window.
Tess pressed her face to the pane so that her breath left a mark on the glass.
‘I told you,’ she said.
A police car was outside, double-parked next to Mr Vickers’ Rover. Edie was just in time to see two uniformed police officers go into next door. She caught the words ‘Mrs Vickers’.
‘See,’ Tess said.
She ran to the wall and put her ear against it.
‘I can’t hear what they’re saying,’ she said.
There was no need to have her ear to the wall for what happened next.
‘I bloody will not,’ Mr Vickers shouted.
Tess jumped back.
The crash from next door was so loud it made the room shake.
Another voice.
‘You need to calm down right now, mate.’
Some more scraping, another crash. Then the front door was open.
‘They’re coming back out,’ Edie said and Tess was back at the window.
They weren’t the only ones, the two houses opposite had the whole family gaping from indoors and Mrs McCann had come outside to watch. Raquel must have gone to Roswell Park, because there was no way she’d miss out on this.
A policeman led a handcuffed Mr Vickers from the door, his eyes fixed to the ground. The second policeman came out rubbing his jaw.
‘He must have hit him,’ Tess said.
Edie hadn’t seen Tess so excited since their school trip to Tutbury Castle, the most haunted castle in England. Ghosts were a close second to criminals in Tess’s list of interests.
‘He must be scared to hit a policeman, knows they’re on to him. Why do you think he didn’t run away before now? He must have known they’d come.’
The second policeman opened the car whilst the first shoved Mr Vickers into the back.
‘Do you think they’ve found the body?’
More neighbours were spilling into the street, unashamed of their gawping. The police car drove off.
‘You didn’t believe me, Edie, but this proves it. He’s a murderer. He killed Valentina.’
*
When Mum came home, Mrs McCann rushed out of her house and accosted her before she could even get to the door, no doubt filling her in on what happened at the Vickers’.
‘Did you hear what happened?’ Tess asked as Mum came into the lounge.
‘It would be difficult not to. Eileen’s a lovely woman but …’
‘But what?’ Tess asked.
‘Never mind. Just make sure you two don’t go around constantly gossiping and making up any bits you don’t know.’
Tess pulled an innocent face as if such things had never occurred to her. Mum walked through to the kitchen and left the door open. Tess wriggled on the sofa, desperate to talk to Edie about Mr Vickers. She pointed to the ceiling and Edie followed her upstairs.
‘What do you think happened?’ Tess asked.
Tess seemed more elated than horrified at the thought of Valentina’s death and Edie wondered how much she really believed it; though Mr Vickers’ arrest did support Tess’s theory.
‘Let’s watch the news,’ Edie said.
‘Yes, he’s bound to be on it,’ Tess said.
They watched the early evening and late news, national and local, without any mention of Mr Vickers and were sent to bed, disappointed. And they were further disappointed when a car pulled up outside and Mr Vickers arrived home.
‘How could they let him go?’ Tess asked, her face pressed to the window. ‘Do you think they can’t find the body?’
‘Maybe it’s nothing to do with Valentina.’
‘What else could it be? If we could find the body we’d help the police solve it.’
‘You’ve never solved a crime, Tess. Guessing the end of Poirot doesn’t count.’
Tess scowled.
‘You can stay here listening to your records if you like. I’ll solve it on my own.’
Despite Edie’s sneer about Poirot, she’d always wanted to be a detective, though she fancied herself more like an American private investigator with a gun and a fast car. She knew it was silly and childish, but they had little else to do. Since turning eleven, Raquel considered herself a grown up and was spending most of her time at Roswell Park, hanging out with older kids. She even had a boyfriend, who was thirteen. ‘I know what he wants but he’s not getting it.’ Mum was working the whole time. Uncle Ray was ‘snowed under’ with the business and hadn’t been to see them for ages. And Dad was just Dad, as likely to leave the sofa as he was to fly. Being an investigator might be fun.
‘OK, but we’ll have to keep it from Mum,’ Edie said.
‘We’ll go undercover,’ Tess said. ‘Starting tomorrow.’
Tess: June 2018
Phone calls, knocks at the door and calls through the letterbox. Flash bulbs firing, a TV camera crew outside. The day’s grace we’ve been granted by the press is up. Now, we’re under siege. Would we like to get our story out there, let the public know the real Edie, quash rumours that the family were involved, she ran off with an older man, was mixed up in drugs. The first time round I was spared this by being packed off to stay with Aunt Lola in London, while Dad had to cope with the intrusions and insinuations.
DS Craven, I can’t think of him as Tony, tries to deal with them. Dad looks grey, ill and so thin he could disappear into his armchair, where he sits smoking, tapping, missing the ashtray and finally crushing the butt before reaching for another cigarette. We can’t open the windows to lift the fug for fear of being filmed. Not by the journalists but the thrill seekers, real crime enthusiasts, men obsessed with teenage girls and their deaths. Craven says it’s normal.
‘How the hell is that normal?’ Dad says.
The whisky’s finished and I’ve started on the cooking sherry. I don’t know what normal is any more, either. It’s still light but I’ve no idea what time it is. Edie’s scrawled note on the newspaper clipping, ‘suicide’, plays on my mind. I can’t see how it’s linked to her murder and yet I can’t shake the feeling that it is. I don’t want to cause Dad any more pain right now by asking him. If Edie didn’t speak to me about it, did she tell her friends, did she tell Michaela? Would she really speak to them before me?
I must have fallen asleep, because I wake up with the sherry still in my hand, calling for Edie.
Voices are coming from the kitchen. I go in to find Max standing next to Dad, who looks apologetic, a cigarette smouldering in his hand. Max is blinking rapidly. He hates smoke.
‘You wouldn’t answer your phone,’ Max says before I can speak.
Dad looks at us.
‘I’ll go to the lounge,’ he says.
‘No need, Vince,’ Max says. ‘We can go into the garden.’
He leaves by the side door. I turn to Dad.
‘You shouldn’t have let him in. You know he finished