Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Struggling to get her breathing under control before Hassan and Zuri notice she’s in trouble, Jennie forces herself to stay looking down into the trench. She can’t show them the effect these remains are having on her because compared to a lot of the dead bodies she’s seen in her time this is extremely tame. But the other dead bodies she’s seen haven’t been people Jennie knew.

Hassan, never one to like a silence, fills the void. ‘It looks like our victim had been buried and concreted over, but the demolition crew took up that part of the floor to lay the charges last week. When the basement flooded, some of the earth surrounding her remains got washed away, revealing her.’

Jennie takes another deep breath. Doesn’t respond.

Hannah never left. She’s been here all this time.

‘I had an initial conversation with the head of the demolition team,’ says Zuri. ‘He said there were old pipes in this section of the floor and they pulled some out when they were preparing the ground for the charges.’

Jennie frowns. ‘They buried her under the pipes?’

‘It looks that way. We also found a purple rucksack partially obscuring the body,’ Hassan adds. ‘The contents, mainly clothes as far as we could tell, looked rather worse for wear as you’d expect, but the bag itself was remarkably well preserved. Forensics will work whatever magic they can.’

A rucksack?

Jennie feels a rush of emotions. Questions too.

Was the rucksack Hannah’s luggage for their move to London? Was Hannah killed before she could meet her at the bus stop?

Hassan, undeterred by Jennie’s silence, continues, ‘I’ve got a theory about what happened to her if you’re interested.’

Jennie nods, but doesn’t look at him as he moves alongside her at the trench.

‘Well, you’ll see the hyoid bone is broken,’ says Hassan, gesturing down towards the skeleton’s neck. ‘My initial view is she was strangled.’

‘So it’s murder?’ says Zuri as she scribbles down what Hassan’s telling them into her notebook.

‘I need more time with her back in the lab to be sure,’ says Hassan. ‘But, as a preliminary hypothesis, yes, I’d say there was definitely foul play involved.’

As Hassan and Zuri continue to talk about the details, Jennie finds it increasingly hard to focus on what they’re saying. She finds it difficult to envision someone enacting that kind of brutality against Hannah, especially here, in what was meant to be her safe space.

Jennie, on the other hand, was no stranger to violence at school. Lorraine and Becky made her familiar with it. Quickly, too. The worst of it came only three weeks into her time at White Cross. Jennie had always hated PE. It wasn’t that she was particularly unfit, but cross-country running wasn’t her thing. She was slow, always falling behind the group and finishing as one of the final stragglers. Lorraine and Becky knew that.

On that day they hung back with Jennie, constantly mocking her with comments about her being a hippo, a tank, a sumo wrestler. She tried to run faster and catch up with the others, but she was soon breathless and exhausted.

Lorraine and Becky bided their time, waiting until everyone else was out of sight before they tripped her. As Jennie lay on the ground, fighting back tears and clutching her injured ankle, they laughed and taunted her.

‘Ugly bitch. You pissed up like your mum?’

Becky joyfully told the story of how she’d seen Jennie’s ‘deadbeat’ mum vomiting in the alcohol aisle of the local Tesco at the weekend. ‘OMG, you should have seen it, your mum yelled at a shop assistant who was trying to help her and hit the security guard who escorted her from the store. It was so embarrassing. Who wants a shit mum like that?’

‘Or a wife like that,’ sneered Lorraine. ‘Your dad probably got himself blown up on purpose so he didn’t have to see you or your crap mum again.’

Struggling to her feet, Jennie lunged towards Becky and Lorraine, but that only made things worse. Becky pulled Jennie’s arms behind her back while Lorraine whacked Jennie in the face. With blood pouring from her nose and a split lip, Jennie tried to fight them off. Eventually she managed to wrestle free from Becky’s grasp, but Becky quickly grabbed for Jennie’s cheap sports top and clung on tight. As Jennie twisted away Lorraine snatched at her top too and pulled hard. Seconds later there was a loud tearing sound as the side seam ripped, exposing Jennie’s ancient grey bra. Becky and Lorraine had screamed with laughter. Tears pricked Jennie’s eyes as she clutched the tattered fabric to her chest.

‘Leave her alone.’

The shout came from behind them. Jennie didn’t recognise the voice, but she saw fear flicker across Becky and Lorraine’s faces. As she turned around, Jennie smelt the heady scent of Opium perfume, and then there was Hannah. She was wearing PE kit, but she’d added her own flare to it: a red plaid shirt over the regulation sports top and shorts, and long over-the-knee socks rather than the usual ankle length.

As Hannah came closer, Lorraine and Becky seemed to shrink back, away from Jennie. Hannah tilted her head to one side, seemingly amused by this. She was so vital and alive with this wild energy that just seemed to emanate from her; it was mesmerising. To Jennie she seemed like a kick-ass guardian angel.

Hannah had put her arm around Jennie and said to Becky and Lorraine, ‘Touch her again and you’re dead.’

As the bullies legged it through the gate and off across the playing field towards the school building, Hannah gave Jennie a dazzling smile. ‘They tried to bully me when I started here. It didn’t go well for them.’

Following Hannah, Jennie limped back to school and down into the basement. Hannah opened the first door off the hallway and told her to come inside. Jennie had never been in that room before. She didn’t know what she’d expected but it wasn’t what she found. The soft red light. The not-unpleasant smell of chemicals. A rickety old external door. A cosy space: dark wood-panelled walls, an old burgundy sofa, a long, thin table up against one wall with a stack of shallow trays and plastic bottles of chemicals at one end, and a washing line with what looked like photographs pegged along it.

A darkroom.

‘This is Jennie,’ said Hannah. ‘I’ve said it’s cool for her to hang out.’

The four people in the room all stared at her. Jennie looked down, feeling awkward. She hated to be the centre of attention.

‘Welcome to the darkroom crew,’ said Hannah. She gestured towards a long-haired, hippie-looking guy, who was wearing a long grey coat even though they were indoors and it wasn’t cold. ‘That’s Rob, and over on the sofa are Simon and Lottie.’

‘Hi,’ said Jennie, smiling at them, even though it hurt her split lip.

Rob raised an eyebrow and then lifted his hand in a small wave. Simon, a broad, blond jock who she recognised as captain of the football team, gave her a casual nod. Lottie, her blonde curly hair perfectly styled and wearing an expensive-looking pink shift dress and black platform sandals, just stared back, unsmiling.

‘And that’s Elliott over there,’ said Hannah, turning towards the tall, nerdy-looking boy with a mop of black hair, wearing jeans, a blue T-shirt and John Lennon glasses.

Elliott smiled a broad, generous smile. ‘Hey, Jennie. Are you into photography?’

His eyes met hers and Jennie blushed. It felt as if a flock of butterflies had taken flight inside her stomach. ‘Yes,’ she said, inwardly cringing at how lame her voice sounded. She cleared her throat. ‘I love taking pictures.’

Until that moment her life in White Cross, and at the school, had been hell. But meeting Hannah and the darkroom crew had changed everything. Jennie knew she’d finally found her people in this mismatched group brought together in a sanctuary beneath the school. She had wanted to be part of their group, whatever it took. And although she’d become firm friends with Hannah and Elliott almost immediately, it had taken a little while longer for the others to warm up to her. But they did. For the rest of the year, until they went on study leave before their exams, the six of them were inseparable. Then, suddenly, Hannah had disappeared.

‘Don’t you think, DI Whitmore?’

The sound of Hassan’s voice pulls Jennie back into the present. Not wanting to look any more at what she is sure will prove to be her friend’s remains, Jennie turns to face Hassan and Zuri. ‘Sorry, I missed that.’

Hassan peers at Jennie over the top of his wire-framed glasses. ‘I said if you’re done with looking at the body, I can have her exhumed and transported to the lab.’

‘Sure,’ says Jennie. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

‘How long until you’ll be able to do the post-mortem?’ asks Zuri as they turn away from the trench and walk back across the boiler room towards the door.

‘We’re pretty stacked up at the moment, so it won’t be today, but I’ll try and get her first on the list for tomorrow,’ Hassan replies.

‘Thanks,’ says Jennie. ‘I appreciate that.’

Leaving Hassan to organise the removal of the body, Jennie and Zuri head back along the passageway towards the stairs. Jennie’s still reeling from the discovery. Her legs are as wobbly as an hour-old foal’s. Her mind feels scattered and confused. For so long she’s believed Hannah left for London without her. She’s hoped beyond hope for almost thirty years that one day Hannah would make contact, that she’d explain why she left the way she did, and where she’s been all this time. That she’d be alive. But now that hope is gone. Hannah is dead. She was lying in a dirty, concrete-covered hole in the school basement for all these years.

‘You okay?’ asks Zuri, concern on her face.

‘I’m fine. It’s just weird being back at this school. It looks so different,’ Jennie covers, trying to keep her tone light. ‘And it smells bad, which with my hangover isn’t the most fun.’

‘I bet.’ Zuri grimaces in sympathy. ‘So, what’s the plan for when we get back?’

‘I’ll brief the boss first, then let’s gather everyone in the incident room.’ Jennie checks her watch. ‘In, say, an hour?’

‘Sure thing.’

As they pass the door to the darkroom, the place that was once her and Hannah’s sanctuary, Jennie feels an overwhelming urge to open the door and look inside. She wants to curl up on the old sofa, smell the reassuring chemicals, and feel cocooned and safe in the glow of the soft red light. She resists, though, just like she resists telling Zuri that she thinks she knows who the victim is, and that she was her best friend. Because although it might help to tell someone, and Zuri is the closest thing she has to a friend these days, she’s also a stickler for the rules – which would necessitate that Jennie step away from this case and hand the reins to another DI. Jennie can’t do that. She absolutely can’t. She has to find out who did this to Hannah.

They leave the school building and pass back through the area cordoned off with police tape. Jennie collects her bike from where she’d propped it against the fence. As they exit through the school gates, Jennie’s surprised to see the size of the crowd gathered at the barriers erected by the construction workers to keep people back from the blast zone. She recognises a few locals, serial rubbernecks, along with several ex-students, including Lottie Varney.

I’ll have to tell Lottie about Hannah.

Pushing away the thought, Jennie looks at Zuri and raises her eyebrows. ‘Busy out here.’

Zuri nods. ‘Do you think they’re here to watch the detonation or because word’s got out about the body?’

‘I guess we’ll find out in a minute,’ says Jennie, striding towards the barrier.

As she wheels her bike through the gap in the barrier, she sees Lottie pushing her way through the crowd to the front.

Lottie raises her hand, waving. ‘Can you tell us what’s going on in there? Rumour has it there’s been a murder? Is that right? Surely it can’t be right?’

‘I’m sorry, we can’t give any details,’ says Jennie.

‘But, Jennie, can’t you tell me?’ Lottie moves along the barrier towards her. ‘I mean, a murder here in White Cross? That’s just so unimaginable.’

Jennie stiffens. She can’t appear too pally with Lottie, not if she wants to have any chance of staying the lead on this investigation. And she can’t share the details either; if she does, she’ll break down. So she shakes her head. Keeps her tone professional. ‘Like I said, we can’t comment at this time.’

A flicker of confusion passes across Lottie’s face, quickly followed by hurt. Jennie keeps walking, heading along the cordoned-off section of the street towards the main road.

‘I’m over here,’ says Zuri, gesturing to the blue Toyota parked on the double yellows. ‘See you back at base?’

‘See you there,’ Jennie agrees. Undoing her cycle helmet from the crossbar, she straps it on and climbs onto her bike. Before she starts pedalling, Jennie glances over her shoulder, back towards the school and the crowd gathered outside.

There’s a woman standing slightly away from the group, facing towards the road rather than the school building. She’s frowning, yet her expression is oddly hard to read. As their eyes meet, Jennie feels her stomach clench.

Lottie is staring directly at her.