Eighteen Kisses

here now.

‘I ordered you a hot chocolate,’ he said. ‘Hope that’s OK?’

‘Yeah… sure,’ I said, a little taken aback. How did he know about my current hot-chocolate addiction? Did he know everything about me? I decided it was probably just a lucky guess.

‘The team and I are delighted you’ve agreed to come on board,’ he said, shaking a packet of sugar into his paper cup. I looked at the stuff laid out in front of him on the table – a laptop, a sheet of paper and a blue folder, so full it looked like it was going to burst open.

‘I’m happy to help,’ I said. Although, come to think of it, I wasn’t sure what he was expecting of me. ‘Um, Sergeant Lawlor… what exactly will I be doing?’ I asked.

‘Call me Matt,’ he said kind of awkwardly. ‘Well, like I said on the phone, we’ll take it one case at a time. I really want to get working on this one. Let’s see what happens after that.’

I shifted in my seat. I was feeling a little unsure of myself – I hadn’t done this professionally before.

He hadn’t seemed to notice my discomfort, and continued. ‘The first one I’d like you to work on is the Kayla Edwards case. You know the photographs I gave you? She’s the girl with the -’

‘Red hair?’

‘… Yes.’

‘I dreamed about her last night,’ I explained.

He nodded, acting casual, but I could see the mix of astonishment and fear on his face – the mixture I seemed to evoke in people whenever I talked about this kind of stuff. He hid it especially well though.

‘We should get started on this case straight away,’ he said. ‘If that’s OK with you?’

‘Yeah, sure. Deadly.’

Deadly? That probably wasn’t the kind of word I should use when discussing a murder case. Well, technically it was a missing-person case, although I was pretty sure Kayla was dead. My dream certainly suggested that she was. I took a deep breath and tried not to feel anxious talking to Matt Lawlor. You’re helping him, remember? He had this authoritative air about him – it made me trust him, but also made me a little nervous at the same time. It was going to feel strange calling him by his first name.

He handed me the blue folder.

‘This is her file,’ he said. ‘If anybody asks, I never gave you this, you don’t have it.’

CONFIDENTIAL was stamped across the front. I opened it up. Inside was the photograph he’d given me, lots of photocopied sheets of paper filled with handwriting, and other assorted cuttings. A Polaroid photo fell out of the pile and I picked it up. It was a picture of Kayla and another girl with short blonde hair. Kayla was blowing up a big pink balloon and the other girl was holding it and laughing. I could see something written on the back. I turned it round, and printed in black lettering was the following:

Kayla Edwards invites you to her 18^th Birthday Party

This Thursday.

Location: Her House! 25 Sycamore Rd, Dublin 6.

Time: 8 p.m. till late.

‘She went missing two years ago,’ said Matt. ‘On the night of her eighteenth birthday party. She left the house at twelve thirty a.m. and went to the shop with two of her friends. On their way back to the party her friends decided to go home, and they parted company with Kayla at the top of her road at approximately twelve fifty a.m. There’s been no trace of her since.’

I vaguely remembered hearing about it on the news. She didn’t live too far from our old house. I remembered thinking it was terrible, but then the media coverage died down and I’d forgotten about it just as quickly.

‘Did they find anything?’ I asked. ‘Like her clothes, her bag?’

‘No. Nothing.’

Great. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy.

Matt opened up the laptop and a little ping sounded as he switched it on. I looked at the invitation again.

A few minutes later he turned the laptop round so that it faced me. There were people on the screen – a video was playing. I soon realized I was watching footage from Kayla’s party. Laughter and applause and giggles and screams blasted from the tiny speakers. I could see Kayla sitting on a stool. She pushed her red hair behind her ear and fixed a strap of her polka-dot dress. It looked like they were in a marquee; ‘I Kissed a Girl’ was playing in the background. Kayla laughed as a guy kissed her on the cheek, then another guy, then a kiss on the lips from a girl, then one from a guy, a kiss on the cheek from another girl. A line formed in front of her and others gathered round in a semicircle, laughing and clapping and cheering until the eighteenth birthday kiss was planted on her cheek. I felt kind of nauseous watching it. The happy smiles, the carefree chatter, the ignorance of what lay ahead was almost unbearable. A few hours after this film was taken she was probably dead. I had to force myself to keep watching.

As each second passed, I realized how much this group of friends looked like my own. Just a regular group of teenagers, celebrating one of their friends’ birthdays, with no clue as to the tragedy that was about to happen. This was all too real. In the picture she looked real, sure, but that was just a snapshot, a snippet of a person. And in the dream she was something else – unearthly and untouchable. But here she was just like me, laughing and shouting and dancing. I watched the seconds ticking down, my stomach churning as I saw her get off the chair and dance across the floor. I let out a sigh of relief when the video stopped. I stared at the final frame, her face frozen in a huge smile.

‘Did I have to watch that?’ I said, handing the laptop back.

‘Yes,’ said Matt. ‘And you might want to watch it again.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because I strongly suspect that her killer is in this video.’

I stared at him in disbelief, but I knew from the look on his face that he was completely serious.

He handed me a list with eighteen names on it. Several of the names had been crossed out.

‘These are all the people that appear in the video,’ he said. ‘Twelve guys, six girls. Some left the party before she went missing, ten have solid alibis. But you should talk to the other eight, see what you can get.’

I was finding this difficult to process. He thought she’d been murdered by somebody she knew? Somebody she trusted?

‘You really think one of her friends could be involved?’ I said. I couldn’t believe it.

‘In this case I don’t think we’re dealing with an outsider,’ said Matt. ‘Right from the beginning I suspected we weren’t being told the full story. I’ve talked to all eighteen of them myself, and things just don’t add up. That’s why I tracked you down, Jacki. I’d come across people with psychic powers before – they’d approached our team and offered to help, though most of their theories were ridiculous and we’d never seen any real results. But when I heard about the Beth Cullen case, how you’d helped solve a twenty-five-year-old murder, I knew I had to find you. Nobody ever thought that case would be solved, just like nobody thinks we’ll ever solve this one.’

He rubbed his forehead, all of a sudden seeming quite tired. ‘Plus, Jacki, I think an independent voice on this case is what we need. Someone otherwise unconnected. I need someone I can trust.’

He was putting a lot of faith in me; I hoped I wasn’t going to let him down. He carried on in his serious tone.

‘I think you should meet the remaining eight party guests. This is the perfect time, as they are all in town. You should come up to Dublin next week if possible.’

‘I have school though,’ I said. There were only a few weeks more of transition year… less than a month left until the holidays, but there was no way Mum would allow me to miss any days.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort something out.’

I didn’t argue. The idea of getting time off school was really appealing, and something about his tone of voice made me believe that he really could arrange it.

I looked down at the list. Eighteen names. Eight suspects. I felt a rush of excitement – I was going to do this.

I drank the last of my hot chocolate and stood up to leave. ‘How did you know I like hot chocolate?’ I asked.

‘Same way I knew you were playing a gig in Whelan’s last night,’ he said.

‘Garda Intelligence?’ I whispered.