‘A bacon sandwich, please,’ she said.
The man tossed the red-top newspaper he’d been reading on to the counter next to the grill. Carolynn’s eyes widened.
The photograph on the front page was her. Not the beach or Jodie Trigg any more, but her, from that bloody ‘godparents and close friends only’ christening. She reached out, an involuntary movement, to spin the paper around so that she could read the headline above the photograph, her hand freezing in mid-air as her brain engaged. The man’s hooded gaze flicked from her face to her photograph and back.
Carolynn licked her lips, which were suddenly bone-dry. Look him in the eye. Hold his stare.
42
Buena Vista was a cream-coloured static caravan, jammed amongst acres of others that varied in shade from white to over-stewed tea brown. Each caravan was anchored on one side by a tarmac parking area, on the other by a narrow garden, which some owners had demarcated with flower borders, low bamboo screening, or ankle-high picket fences. A group of children were skateboarding in the road, tackling jumps made from bricks and wooden planks, a row of smaller kids cheerleading from the grass verge. Jessie could hear the voices of other children, carrying from different areas of the caravan park and from the beach, which must be about fifty metres away to the south. It was hard to remain orientated, given the densely packed sameness surrounding her. Though she’d never met Debs Trigg, Jessie was relieved that she was staying with her sister in Guildford. There were too many children here, too much joy.
The uniformed police constable guarding the caravan looked hot and bored. Stepping over the low white plastic picket fence, she joined him in the front garden and held out her hand.
‘I’m Dr Jessie Flynn. DI Simmons radioed to say I’d be coming.’
The PC – Miller, Jessie read from his nametag – obviously new to the job and just a kid, nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll let you in.’
Unlocking the front door, he held it open and followed her into the cramped kitchen.
‘I’d like to be alone, please,’ she said, easing the message with a smile.
Miller hesitated, clearly unwilling to risk screwing up his first major assignment.
‘Radio Maril— Detective Inspector Simmons, if you’re unsure. Forensics have already been through the place, and I’ll be careful not to disturb anything.’
‘Fine, OK, ma’am.’ He backed down the steps and, with a last nervous smile, pulled the door closed.
Quiet. The children’s voices and the grind of their skateboard wheels on tarmac muted now, as if she was listening through ear defenders. Moving into the middle of the kitchen, she turned a slow three-sixty, taking in dark wooden kitchen cupboards set with a small oven, a double hob and sink ahead of her. To her right, a corridor led to what looked like the master bedroom, a crumpled white duvet sagging half-off the bed, a pile of clothes and wedge-heeled gold sandals discarded on the floor visible through the open door, two other doors opening off the corridor, a bathroom and Jodie’s bedroom, she supposed. A built-in beige sofa wrapped around the far end of the caravan to her left, net curtains covering a window above it, smothering the sunlight in their dusty grey folds.
The air in the caravan was hot and stuffy and Jessie could smell the lingering scent of cigarettes. So Debs Trigg was a smoker: not unusual and irrelevant to the case. To have a vice was part of being human and, at their extreme, human vices were what kept her in a job. Her own vice was alcohol, Sauvignon Blanc, to be precise. Sauvignon and her dirty secret – OCD.
She opened one of the kitchen cupboards to reveal a jumble of cereal boxes, their tops roughly torn open, jars of jam and spreads leaking their sticky contents, tins of fruit and vegetables, an open bag of spilling fusilli. Though the electric suit fizzed as she surveyed the cupboard, she resisted the urge to clean, restack, order. She had to keep a lid on her OCD while she was here, irrespective of the triggers, and focus her mind on what was really important. Stepping back, she shut the doors – out of sight, out of mind – a policy that failed more often than it worked, but this time, with so much else of importance on her mind, the heat from the suit subsided.
She checked the other kitchen cupboards, equally as crammed as the first; the sitting room, more stuff; Debs Trigg’s bedroom, the same. The whole caravan evidenced the disorder of a woman with too many other pulls on her time. Finding nothing of particular relevance to Jodie or her murder, Jessie was stepping back out of Debs’ bedroom when she heard the telephone ring. A click and the hum of an answering machine from somewhere at the far end of the caravan.
Hello, this is the Trigg residence.
It took her a moment to realize that she was listening not to Debs Trigg’s voice, but to Jodie’s, each word carefully enunciated, the tone earnest, but clearly that of a child.
I’m sorry that we can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number after the tone, we will phone you back very soon. Thank you and goodbye.
Now that she had heard Jodie’s voice, she wanted to see her, feel her, understand as much about her as she could from whatever she could find within the four walls that the little girl had once called her own.
There was something eerie and toxically sad about intruding into a dead child’s room, opening her cupboards and drawers, handling her possessions. Clothes, toys, books, pictures … nine years of life snuffed out, leaving behind a room filled with things that had sustained her daily, things she had valued, others she’d loved, the totality of which would hopefully explain a life.
A life and
