A whisper in his head: Only those girls weren’t asleep when they saw that rabbit man on the roof, were they? They were wiiiiiiiiide awake.
She said nothing. Just listened.
‘I appreciate that you’re scared and unsettled. We’ve all had a rough few months, and remember we can always talk about that, whenever you want.’ It was a veiled reference to what happened in Hobbs Hill. The real spectre that he suspected was hanging over both Amelia and Lucy. They’d tried to keep her away from the news reports of her sister almost being murdered up there, but she wasn’t an idiot. Amelia had Google written into her DNA. He looked at her for a few moments. ‘But I don’t think you have to worry about ghosts, okay Midget?’
She said nothing. The beam didn’t move. She was biting her lip. Was she shivering? He thought of Josh Ellis, building his mother’s Lego.
Crumble time.
‘But if you want your bedroom light on …’ he said. ‘Then you have the light on. No worries.’
He saw her shoulders relax, and then her tiger beam moved again and fell on the video player.
‘So what’s on that video thing you brought home, anyway? A film?’
Yes. It’s a new flick called The Holly Wasson Interviews. That’s what it said on the spine of the tape Bob had handed over, anyway. But to Amelia he just said, ‘It’s a work thing and it’d be boring, I bet.’
She nodded. ‘Then grab that Airfox thing as well, and we’ll try that sometime.’
‘Airwolf,’ he beamed at her, and grabbed the tape. ‘You won’t regret it.’
He headed down the ladder first, so he could be there with his arms open in case she slipped. Outside he noticed that the sun had sunk, and he could see droplets of rain falling from the dark sky and slapping against the pane. For some reason, it made him think of that big old oak tree, out there in Menham Park. Getting wet and swaying in the wind, scraping the wood of that gazebo.
‘Er … you two?’ Wren appeared at the bottom of the steps. ‘It’s time she started winding down for bed.’
‘Okay, Mummy,’ she called out from the hole in the ceiling.
She started to climb down, and it was just as her foot left the ladder and sank into the carpet that he heard his mobile phone ringing. It was the theme music to Murder She Wrote.
Which meant Larry was calling.
‘Larry,’ Matt closed his bedroom door and peeled off the Velcro monkey torch. It left the scar outline of a primate’s face on his forehead. He tapped one of the bedside lamps on and it threw his shadow up the wall. He lay back onto the bed with the video player and Bob’s box of delights next to him. ‘Did you get my message?’
‘About your little picnic in the park, with Steph Ellis’s friends?’ Larry said. ‘I did.’
‘And those two ghost hunters … sorry, how crass of me. I mean those demonologists.’
‘The Hodges … yes. I’m aware of them. And you’re saying you reckon there’s not much to this thing about Steph being followed before her death?’
‘Not really. Looks like the Hodges have been filling her head with supernatural ideas. Demon rabbits and whatnot. I suspect Joyce may have even passed on the pelican symbol, even though she says she didn’t. Bottom line is, I guess this is why you get paid the big bucks cos you were right. Seems like it’s just a crazy dog story, after all.’
Larry said nothing.
‘You still there?’
‘U-huh.’
‘So … why’d you call me?’
‘Erm …. well, you got me thinking this morning. When you asked about the CCTV, and if anybody had seen Steph and her dog arrive at the school that night …’
‘You said only one camera picked them up.’
‘That’s right. The playground one.’
‘But you’ve found another?’ He felt his eyebrow spring up.
‘No … but this afternoon, I did have a little wander round the back of the school. There’s an old people’s home there, called Sapphire House. Their garden backs onto the Menham Primary.’
‘They have CCTV?’
‘Shut up about CCTV … you’re obsessed.’
He laughed. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I chatted to the warden there. Seems like one of the residents can’t sleep at night, so she often sits in the lounge and watches TV. She was up two nights ago. The night Steph was actually killed. Right around the same time, too. She says it was 2 a.m. because she’d just started watching a rerun of Dallas on ITV 3, and that’s when it’s on. I checked.’
‘What did she see?’
‘She saw a dog, looking at her through the glass window.’
Matt glanced at the windowpane. The night was throwing bigger drops of rain now, and they trickled down the glass in jerky rivers.
‘And get this … it was dark, and the security lights had tapped off again. But she insists that the dog had blood all over it. All over its mouth and right down its front.’
Matt frowned. ‘Hang on a sec. Steph’s dog was black. How could she see blood in that sort of light?’
‘Because this dog was white.’
Matt pushed himself up from the bed, with his elbow. He sat on the edge. ‘Really?’
‘Really. And she said this one was very skinny, with its ribs showing. She said its eyes looked a bit mad and it was licking blood off its lips while it watched her. Scared the shit out of her.’
‘A different dog?’
‘Yep, and it kept watching her till she heard someone calling it away. Then she says it just turned and loped off into the bushes.’
‘Who called it?’
‘She didn’t see.’
‘Then what was the voice like. A man, a woman?’
‘Well, this is where it gets a little spooky. She said it
