The girl stood very still and watched the seagull as it balanced on her bedroom windowsill and snatched at the torn segments of bread she had left out for it. She had spent countless hours over the years watching the seagulls swooping past her window, soaring out over the sea in the distance, silvery clouds billowing behind the fishing boats as they chugged back into the harbour with their catch.
She had promised herself many times that, one day, like those seagulls, she would escape. Live right by the sea in a proper house, have money. Money and a good life.
The seagull on her windowsill had webbed feet, like her feet. But the seagull was free to go where it wanted and she was trapped in this shitty flat with only her mother and the television, that smug blonde girl in the advert, for company, and the view from her bedroom window, a knife sliver of cobalt sea in the distance between the grey stone tower blocks.
When she was little, she had loved the blonde girl in the advert, had wanted to be her, wear that white broderie anglaise dress, run in that field of wild flowers. She had loved her mother too back then. But now that she was older and wiser, she hated them both. Hated the smug blonde bitch for having what she didn’t and despised the weakness in her mother that had stranded them both here, that made her put her next hit above her daughter’s welfare.
She had never known her father. Her mother told her that he had been a sailor and that the relationship hadn’t lasted, that he’d left before she was born. But she didn’t believe that. She was twelve now and she believed none of that shit any more. Her father was one of the men who her mother fucked for drug money. At night, she lay in bed and listened to her mother’s headboard slamming against the dividing wall, the grunts of the men, her mother sucking and wheezing while they fucked her, as if she was punctured.
The girl had known from a very early age that she was alone, that she could only ever rely on herself.
In the cramped, dirty kitchen, she peeled another slice from the white loaf and returned to her bedroom. The seagull was still perched on the windowsill, but as she approached, ever so slowly, the bread held out in front of her, he shied away, stretching out his wings and taking flight.
As she watched him circle on the wind and head out to sea, envy twisted her bitter heart even more out of shape. She wanted to be as free as that seagull. She wanted to be that seagull. She wanted to steal his power and his liberty.
51
The doorbell’s ring, muted through the huge, carved oak front door, sounded like a bee buzzing under a towel. The house was modern; cubist, it would probably be called if it were a painting, blocks of whitewashed concrete embedded with huge rectangular plate-glass windows. Workman and Cara had given up hope of finding a ‘live one’ inside and were turning away, when the door was opened by a middle-aged man wearing baggy jeans rolled up to mid-calf, and a grey kite-surfing logo T-shirt. His clothes said ‘ageing beach bum’, but his salt-and-pepper buzz-cut, the enquiring focus in his grey eyes and the Lambo said banker or successful entrepreneur. Which was it, or a combination of all three? They would probably never find out. Workman extended her hand.
‘Detective Sergeant Sarah Workman and Detective Constable Darren Cara from Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes.’
‘Anthony Moore. How can I help you?’
‘You may have heard that a young girl was found dead on the beach on Thursday afternoon, around the corner, on the peninsula,’ Workman said. ‘We believe that she was murdered sometime between four and five p.m. We’re looking for witnesses.’
Moore nodded. ‘Thursday? Yes, I heard about the little girl and yes, I was here. Come on in.’
The room they stepped into was spectacular, a double height open-plan space painted a soft, dove grey, a wall of glass overlooking the garden, the beach and Solent beyond. Titanic-sized white sofas were arranged around a driftwood coffee table this end of the room, a glass dining table seating twelve at the far end. It was a masterpiece of seaside minimalist chic. Moore noticed Cara looking at the telescope lined up in the middle of the picture window.
‘So my kids can watch me kite-surfing when they come to stay. It’s inspirational for them, seeing their old dad getting out there doing stuff.’
Cara nodded, thinking that he was sure Moore’s kids’ attention would be rapt by the sight of their father blasting up and down two hundred metres out to sea. Not.
‘I’m divorced. Kids live with their mum in Belgravia. Good for them to come down here and experience real life occasionally.’
Real life. Cara’s parents had divorced when he was six. Real life for him when he went to stay with his father had been a trip to William Hill. He turned from the window and the view, pushing a lid down on his envy. Though he didn’t earn much, he loved his job and he knew that his lot could be worse, much worse.
‘As my colleague mentioned, a nine-year-old girl, Jodie Trigg, was murdered on the beach on Thursday afternoon,’ Cara said to Moore. ‘We’re looking for witnesses, anyone who could have seen her before she was killed, walking on the beach perhaps, either alone or in company, or seen anyone else on the beach around that time.’
‘I was out kite-surfing that afternoon,’ Moore said. ‘It was windy, raining, no one else out on the water. I love it when it’s like that. I get too much of people in the office.’
‘Did you see anyone on the beach, sir?’
‘Two people. A woman and a child, a girl.’
‘Together?’
‘Yes, walking together.’
A ‘live one’ finally. Cara pulled a photograph of Jodie Trigg from his suit jacket
