This just couldn’t be happening.

She had remembered, now, where she recognised him from. The hospital. He had been there the day Shawn had come to visit her. He’d been lurking in the background, standing just behind Mervyn Hammond. He’d looked different back then, with a trendy beard, but now it made sense how he’d known what she’d spoken to Shawn about, telling him her favourite song.

Don’t look, Chloe, don’t look, Rog; no, not Rog, don’t say Rog, because it was too painful to think of her dad’s nickname for her then, because to think of that was to think of her mum and dad and how they’d been through so much with her, days and weeks and months of sitting by her hospital bed, for it to end like this with her stupidity and vanity, naked and cut up and killed like Rose and Jess . . . and soon Jade.

But somehow, unbidden, her eyes flicked open and up, just for a split second, but in that one split second what she saw made her vomit all over herself again, retching uselessly, sick and tears mingling with the piss and shit until she thought there was nothing left inside her except terror.

Jade looked like a toppled store mannequin, her limbs rigid in that split second, with him crouched over her, the knife blade glinting in the light of the oil lamp as he cut her, like her dad making Sunday roast when he would put cuts all over a leg of lamb to stick garlic cloves under the skin of it.

Amid the screaming, the man ranted at Jade, told her how he’d found Melanie’s suicide note written on the back of a poster, a poster that had been attached to the gate here. From his screeched words and Jade’s begging, Chloe made out something about how Jade had contacted Melanie telling her she’d won a competition to meet the band here at this hotel, but when Melanie turned up she’d found the place derelict, the poster containing a Photoshopped image of OnT laughing at her, ‘LOSER’ written above her head. Chloe guessed all this was in the suicide note.

It had been the final straw.

Chloe shuddered and gagged again. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t help Jade. All she could do was wait for it to be her turn, and pray that it would be over quickly.

She shut her eyes again, kept them closed.

After a few more minutes there was no more screaming, then a hmphhhmph sort of noise and Chloe could hear the man breathing loudly.

Silence. Stillness. Just the scent of Friendship hanging in the air like a poisonous gas, mixing with the smell of her fear.

Then, out of the silence, a dragging sound. Jade being moved.

Heavy footsteps across the stage, coming towards her.

Eyes still closed, Chloe started to shake and hyperventilate. Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy Name, forgive me, Lord, I’m sorry for everything I did wrong especially for the mean things I said about Melanie I didn’t mean them, look after MumandDadandBrandon I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m—

 

The man, stinking of Friendship, crouched down behind her and unlocked her handcuffs.

‘Get up. And take your clothes off. It’s your turn.’

Chapter 58

Day 14 – Patrick

We need to find where he’s taken Chloe and Jade.’

Back at the station, Patrick had pulled Carmella, Suzanne and Gareth into the incident room. Irritatingly, Winkler was there again, looking like someone who’d just swallowed a mouthful of sick.

Fran Dangerfield had filled in more details about Graham and Melanie, which Patrick now recounted.

‘Melanie was taken into care when she was eight, after they discovered what her mother and stepfather had been doing to her. Graham went into care when he was a toddler because his mum, a single mother, neglected him. Apparently they’d both been floating around the care system for years before they ended up at St Mary’s when they were teenagers.’ He explained what Dangerfield had said about how Melanie wasn’t able to cope with family life.

‘What about Graham?’ Suzanne asked.

‘Same, but for different reasons. He was too much of a handful for anyone to cope with. Always running off, stealing, being cruel. Dangerfield told me that on the surface he came across as an intelligent, normal boy. But if anyone crossed him . . . They thought he was heading for a life of crime until he met Melanie.’

‘Romeo and Juliet,’ said Carmella, with irony.

‘Inseparable, besotted, uninterested in anyone apart from each other, apparently. And Graham became Mel’s protector, the person who fought off the bullies.’

‘And killed their goldfish,’ added Carmella.

Patrick went on. ‘I guess they are used to seeing what we might think of as psychotic behaviour there. Remember, these kids, all of them, have been through a lot. These are the boys and girls who can’t adapt to family life.’

‘But he seems so normal now,’ Gareth said. ‘So . . . nice.’

‘Don’t they always.’ Winkler sniffed.

‘Apparently, Mervyn Hammond took Graham under his wing, mentored him. Encouraged him to go to college, helped him get a job after that.’

‘And what about Melanie?’ Suzanne asked.

‘We don’t know much. Left St Mary’s when she was sixteen and went straight onto benefits. She had various part-time jobs over the years but nothing long-term. It appears she led a very boring life.’

‘Maybe Graham was supporting her, helping her out,’ Carmella said. ‘I wonder why they didn’t live together. Get married. If theirs really was a great love affair.’

‘Probably didn’t fit with his image anymore,’ Winkler said. ‘He was moving in starry circles; she was stuck in a council flat. He drank flat whites; she preferred a nice cup of tea.’

In his own crude way, Winkler was probably right. Patrick had been wondering why Graham hadn’t known about the bullying of Melanie on the forums, why he hadn’t put a stop to it. Why hadn’t she told him about it? Perhaps it had something to do with what Winkler had said. The two of them lived in different worlds now. Melanie could have kept her online activities secret from her friend. He, however, was meant to police the OnT forums, to stop bullying. Why had he failed so spectacularly?

‘They must have been in contact still,’ Patrick said. ‘We know that for a fact. Because Graham found Melanie’s body.’

While Patrick and Carmella were at St Mary’s, Gareth had tracked down the officer – PC Sarah Chance – who had filed the incident report when Melanie’s body was found. Sarah told Gareth that Melanie was discovered by her friend Graham Burns, who had said there was no suicide note and that he had no idea why Melanie had killed herself.

‘The flat was full of OnTarget merchandise,’ Sarah Chance had said. ‘Posters, dolls, T-shirts, newspaper and magazine cuttings all over the walls. Seemed a bit weird that a woman in her mid-twenties was so obsessed with a boy band, but the friend said she was very immature, trapped emotionally in her early teens. She had problems forming attachments with new people. That’s why she didn’t have a job. I got the impression she sat at home all day on the Internet.’

No suicide note. It would have been easy, Patrick thought, for Graham to pocket the suicide note, especially if it revealed the reason for Melanie’s suicide, and he came up with his plan for revenge on the spot. Easy, too, for him, with his top-level access to the official OnT forum, to delete all the posts in which his first love fought with her persecutors. So no-one would know the link between the four girls he planned to kill – apart from the girls themselves, and Kai Topper. If only Topper had come forward sooner – but the boy was clearly too stupid to have realised what was going on.