‘She’s trying to trick you. She’ll get you in trouble. You can’t trust her.’
That’s not the lavender voice – it’s the monster one. It scares me. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to hide, but no matter where I go, it comes after me and I hate it. The lavender voice doesn’t come very often now. Maybe if I draw Helen or my mum, it will come back. Tell me it’s all right. I wish it would.
‘She’s trying to trick you. She’ll get you in trouble. You can’t trust her.’
The thurrumps are getting faster and the maggots are back in my tummy, like squidgy little creatures eating me up from the inside out. My hand’s all sweaty and it slips, and a big dark pencil mark appears right over my drawing. Right over my mum’s foot. This is bad. Very bad now. I can’t have that. Can’t have a pencil mark on her foot, that shouldn’t be there. No, it shouldn’t, not there. So bad … thurrump, thurrump, thurrump. The maggots wriggle and the colours flash. ‘Ouch’
‘You didn’t stop it then. You can’t stop it now.Who will be next?’
‘NO!’ I roar the word and the girl flinches, but still the voices come.
‘Don’t trust anyone!’
I want to scream it – let it out because keeping the words inside is hurting me. Thurrump, thurrump, thurrump, bang, bang, bang. I need to get this right. Need to make it right. I reach over for my eraser. Not to call it a rubber – don’t know why. It’s an eraser now. That’s what I call it. I don’t call it a rubber. Thurrump, thurrump, thurrump. Can’t breathe, can’t see.
‘Don’t trust her. Don’t trust anyone!Don’t trust yourself.’
‘You didn’t stop it then. You can’t stop it now.Who will be next?’
I fall to the ground and curl up, my hands over my head, my knees digging into my chest as the thurrump, thurrump, thurrump gets faster and the maggots wriggle and the colours explode from the top of my head and I remember…
‘Don’t trust her. Don’t trust anyone!Don’t trust yourself.’
When I wake up, I’m in bed. In my pyjamas, the nice ones that smell clean,
like being outside. She’s gone – the woman with the dark eyes. I look round my room to make sure. Then I lean over and peer under the bed, but she’s not there. She wouldn’t like it under there, I can tell. No, she wouldn’t hide under the bed, not in her nice clothes. Listening for a second to see if anyone’s in the corridor, I wait. No one’s out there, so I get up and pad across to the wardrobe. My heart’s thurrumping again – just a little bit. Not like before. Holding my breath, I yank it open, but the girl with the dark hair and brown eyes isn’t there either. Only place she could be now is the bathroom. I open the door and peer inside – it’s empty. Satisfied, I head back to bed, pull the over-bed table towards me and begin to draw the girl with the dark hair and brown eyes from memory. Nobody can see what I’m doing, so nobody can tell the voices to come.
Chapter 4
Bradford
Typical Carlton, the man had turned up, giddy as a kid at a fairground, cheeks flushed, specs askew, and wearing a pair of shorts that revealed remarkably pale and quite hairy legs which, due to the presence of his luminous turquoise and lilac trainers, unfortunately drew the eyes. Seemingly, he’d been to the optician because his glasses were new, the frames a bright purple, with yellow stripes – and rivalled any Elton John had ever worn. A bright, multi-coloured face mask in adherence to Covid 19 rules, set his entire ensemble off.
‘God’s sake, couldn’t he have covered those things up, for once?’ Gus’s grumpiness was tinged with slight amusement. Nobody, but nobody, would dream of co-ordinating their attire in quite the way that Sebastian Carlton did – not even Gus’s dad, and let’s face it, Fergus McGuire had his moments on the dress front – but no, not even he could rival the small professor from Leeds Trinity University, who was always keen to put his forensic psychology skills to good use for Gus and his team.
Rated highly by the FBI, Carlton, despite his incongruous appearance, had helped Gus successfully capture various killers in the past. For that, Gus could forgive him almost anything – even the overdose of doughnuts that were bound to take up semi-permanent residence in the incident room back at The Fort. Thinking about The Fort made Gus cringe. His DC, Compo, the computer whizz, and Professor Carlton were as thick as thieves. This unlikely pairing, for some unknown reason, irritated Gus beyond measure and was a source of amusement to both Alice and his other DC Taffy, Talvinder, Bhandir.
Oblivious to the sniggers of the CSIs who were processing evidence in the garden and alleyway, Carlton, with unseemly eagerness, thrust his peely wally legs inside an oversized crime scene suit, for which Gus was truly thankful. At least those spidery looking legs wouldn’t be a complete distraction. Gus’s smile widened when the shoe covers relegated the obnoxious trainers to a nightmarish memory. Now, Carlton looked more like the professional he was, although Gus suspected that would only last until the psychologist opened his mouth again.
Alice was talking with the postman who discovered the body. The poor guy had knocked to deliver a parcel, but on getting no reply, which was unusual at this residence, he had peered through the letter box. With the stair door open, the victim’s feet were directly in his line of view. Shocked, but with a presence of mind, he’d promptly called it in. Gus led Carlton along the alleyway and into the garden. Familiar with the way the forensic psychologist worked, Gus resigned himself
