Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jennie wakes with her heart racing.

Yanked from sleep by the foghorn going off beside her head, she gropes for the phone and presses the screen, trying to silence it. It takes another few seconds to register that it’s a phone call and not her alarm. She reads the caller ID: Zuri Otueome.

Jennie squints at the time: it’s barely seven o’clock. Still groggy, she answers the call. ‘Morning.’

‘But not a good one by the sounds of it,’ says Zuri, cheerful as ever. ‘Sorry to wake you, boss, but we’ve got a body.’

Jennie’s head is banging and her throat’s so dry it feels like sandpaper. ‘Where?’

‘White Cross Academy. The old site, not the new one,’ says Zuri. ‘Over on Chalkton Road.’

‘The Academy?’ Jennie’s voice is a croak. Her brain feels scrambled. As she sits up, she winces at how much her body aches after falling asleep on the sofa.

‘Any more details?’ Jennie asks, biting back the other questions flooding her mind.

‘Not much, just that the body was found by the contractors working on the demolition and, from the description, sounds like it’s been there a long time. They’ve paused all work for now. Shall I meet you there?’

‘Yeah,’ says Jennie, unsure whether the sick feeling in her stomach is due to last night’s overindulgence or the thought of returning to her old school. ‘Give me half an hour.’

Twenty-four minutes later, Jennie arrives at the old White Cross Academy site. Getting off her bike, she wheels it along the pavement towards the entrance. The once pristine black paint has flaked from the iron railings, which are now riddled with rust. The high arched entry gates, with the school’s initials set into the iron, have been removed from their hinges and dumped in the dirt just inside the entrance.

Builders in hard hats and high-vis tabards are milling around the no man’s land between the railings and an eight-foot-high wooden fence that’s been erected to stop locals rubbernecking at what’s going on in the buildings behind.

Pushing her bike through the open gateway, Jennie heads along the weed-lined pathway towards what looks like a gate in the new fence. The high-vis guys look over. A couple of them start walking towards her.

‘You more police?’ asks a well-tanned contractor.

‘I’m DI Whitmore,’ says Jennie. ‘Has my colleague DS Otueome arrived?’

‘Yeah, she went over to the main building, to the basement, with the doctor bloke and the others in the paper suits.’

Jennie smiles. ‘Thanks.’

The contractor nods but doesn’t return the smile. ‘Any idea when we’ll be able to get back to work?’

‘Sorry, not yet,’ says Jennie. ‘We’ll be able to give you a timescale once we’ve had a look, but it’s unlikely to be today, and probably not tomorrow.’

The contractor swears under his breath. ‘The boss isn’t going to like that.’

‘Like I said, we’ll give you a timescale once we’ve assessed the situation.’

Leaving the contractor shaking his head, Jennie continues to the wooden fence and lets herself through the gate. Leaving her bike propped up against the fence, Jennie ducks under the tape. She looks across the yellowing lawn, past the uniformed officer standing at the bottom of the steps to the portico door, and up at the main school building.

The Victorian frontage is still as imposing as ever, but it’s clearly been neglected. The grey stone is crumbling and the windows have been boarded up. Nature has started to take back the space; moss covers most of the black slate roof, and ivy has twisted itself around the once-white columns either side of the grand portico. Jennie supposes the decay was inevitable. After the school moved to a new purpose-built campus almost fifteen years ago, the old buildings were sold off to developers. Since then, they’ve stood empty and uncared for as the new owners tried and failed to get planning permission. Over the years, there’s been trouble with squatters and with kids setting fires in the building. Maybe the body is a homeless person or junkie who sought shelter and died while they were here.

It can’t be Hannah, can it? The police said she’d run away.

Behind the school, the woodland stretching up into the Chiltern Hills looks dense and foreboding. The early morning ground mist hasn’t yet been fully burned away by the sun, its ghostly veil partially shrouding both the trees and the school building. It’s almost impossible to see the huge chalk cross that dominates the hillside above.

As she walks towards the building, Jennie’s stomach lurches. She’s not looking forward to going down into the basement again after all these years.

As her footsteps echo off the stone floor, she repeats the mantra over and over in time with them, as if wishing something can make it true.

It can’t be Hannah. It can’t be Hannah.

With the boarded-up windows blocking any external light, and what’s still working of the fluorescent strip lighting flickering overhead, the corridor seems far longer and much spookier than Jennie remembers. The last time she was here – the day she sat her last A level paper – this corridor was a bustling hive of activity. The football team had won the County Championship final the evening before, and Johnny Mackenzie, who’d scored all three of the winning goals, was carried on the shoulders of his teammates through the corridors, accompanied by frenzied cheering. Only the twins, Daisy and Carl Winkleman, didn’t cheer. They were frantically speed-reading the English paper set text, as if it would make a difference to cram information into their brains up to the very last second before the exam.

Mind you, it wasn’t as if Jennie could talk. Following Hannah’s disappearance Jennie gave up any pretence of revision and the A and two Bs she’d been predicted ended up being a C and two Ds. Considering she’d felt discombobulated and shell-shocked, and had very little memory of sitting the exams, she was amazed the grades were that high. Hannah’s boyfriend, Simon Ackhurst, was captain of the school football team but he missed the championship match and failed to show up for any of his A level exams. Of their friendship group, Simon was the only person other than Jennie who truly fell apart in the vacuum left by Hannah’s disappearance.

It can’t be Hannah.

Jennie steps around a large pile of mouldy debris where the ceiling has caved in and continues on past the rows of grey metal lockers that line this section of the corridor. She stops beside number thirty-seven – her old locker – and can’t resist opening it. The handle squeaks as she turns it, but the metal door swings open easily enough. The locker is empty, but it still bears the remnants of those who occupied it, with their stickers adorning the sides. Jennie looks at the pictures; the least faded are newer artists – Muse, Beyoncé, Foo Fighters – but beneath them, partially covered and their colours long-faded, Jennie sees Madonna, Jim Morrison, and Soundgarden. She smiles, and feels a warm hug of nostalgia: these are her stickers. On the inside of the door, remarkably intact even after all these years, is the Give Peace A Chance sticker her dad had put in her Christmas stocking a few months before he died. She wishes she could peel it off and take it with her. She has so few mementoes from her dad.

Closing the door, Jennie glances along the lockers towards forty-one and forty-two. The nostalgic feeling fades. Those were once Lorraine Chester and Becky Mead’s lockers. Jennie remembers her first day at the school and shudders. She’d spent hours that morning putting together her outfit, opting for a smart calf-length skirt, a blue blouse and school blazer. Jennie was taking her packed lunch out of her briefcase to put into her locker when she first heard the laughing. Looking around she saw Lorraine and Becky, standing there in their mini-kilt skirts, Mary Jane shoes and tight vest tops. They called her a whole bunch of names that time, but it didn’t take long for their bullying to become violent.

Hurrying away from the lockers, Jennie reaches the stairs leading down to the basement. The stone steps seem to be in good condition, unlike the rotten banister. As she descends, she feels the temperature drop with every step. The stench of damp gets stronger as she reaches the basement, and the air becomes thicker – chewy even. A sense of dread builds inside her. This basement is the place where she had the best and worst times at school. It’s the place that reminds her most of Hannah.

It can’t be her.

Jennie coughs. Her eyes start to water.

‘Hey.’ DS Zuri Otueome smiles as she hurries over to meet Jennie at the bottom of the stairs. She’s smartly dressed in a grey trouser suit with an orange blouse. Her braided hair is twisted up into a bun, and she’s wearing booties and gloves rather than a full white bodysuit. She looks the epitome of style and efficiency. Zuri gestures through the open doorway to their right. ‘We’re just through here.’

Jennie’s stomach starts to churn. She knows where that doorway leads. ‘What have we got?’

‘Human remains. A full skeleton from what I’ve seen so far, but the doc will be able to tell you more. They were found this morning by the demolition team. They’d started work early, around 6am, to double-check the explosive charges before the detonation planned for 9am. When the charges down here didn’t respond, a couple of the team were sent to investigate. They found part of the basement had flooded, probably due to the heavy rain we had during that thunderstorm early on Sunday morning. Anyway, they got to work pumping out the water, but as they were finishing up, one of the crew noticed the top of a skull protruding from one of the trenches where the charges had been laid. That’s when they called it in.’

Jennie nods, unsure whether she can trust herself to speak. She puts on the protective booties and gloves she always carries with her. Then, hoping her voice will come out sounding normal, she says, ‘Thanks, Zuri. You’d better lead the way.’

Following Zuri, Jennie goes through the open doorway and into the passageway beyond. Rather than taking a left into the basement darkroom that was Jennie’s sanctuary during her time at the school, Zuri leads her further along the corridor. They pass several store cupboards and stop outside the old boiler room at the end of the passageway.

Zuri indicates for Jennie to enter the room first. ‘The remains were found in here.’

Jennie steps inside. The smell of damp and decay is worse, and the floor is squelchy underfoot from the recent flooding. There are several white body-suited CSIs at work.

Forensic pathologist Hassan Ayad, a short, studious-looking man in his forties, is crouched down over a large trench. He looks up as Jennie enters the room. ‘Good morning, DI Whitmore.’

‘Hi, Hassan. What can you tell me?’

‘Well, it’s early days so far, but I’d say we have a female, probably a teen, who’s been down here for a long time. If I was a betting man, which as you know I’m not, I’d put my money on it being more than twenty years, possibly nearer to thirty.’ Straightening up, Hassan steps away from the trench to make room for Jennie. ‘Decomposition is highly advanced. Take a look for yourself.’

Jennie’s heart rate accelerates. Given the likely age at the time they died, and how long Hassan estimates they’ve been buried in the basement, this could be someone a similar age to her, to Hannah. She moves closer to the trench, apprehension growing with every step.

How could it be Hannah? A witness saw her at the train station. The police said she’d run away. She can’t be here. She can’t be dead.

Jennie stops at the edge of the trench.

Nausea rises within her. Her heart slams against her chest.

A skull looks up at her from the trench, but it’s not the chalk-white bone and grimacing teeth that send Jennie reeling. It’s the scraps of red plaid that cling to the skeleton’s ribcage; the rusted but still distinctive Celtic Knot buckle of a belt still fastened around the long-deflated waist; and the heart-shaped gold pendant, its delicate chain snapped in two, that lies half a foot from the remains.

Hannah’s favourite clothes.

The necklace Hannah never took off.

It can’t be Hannah.

But it is.