Kate Medina - Two Little Girls

He was a pot calling the kettle black, pulling Debs Trigg up on her parenting skills, particularly as he recognized that she had little choice, but at least his own parental failings had been compensated for by his ex-wife, a caring, responsible woman. Even so, his daughter had gone off the rails. It sounded as if poor little Jodie had had no such stability and his heart went out to her, to her memory. Many nine-year-old kids he’d dealt with in his career had had it far worse, but he still felt that every child deserved a fairy tale childhood. Adulthood was tough enough, without hard times starting long before.

‘Would she have gone to West Wittering beach voluntarily?’ he asked.

Trigg gave an evasive shrug. ‘What reason would she have to go?’

‘I was hoping that you would be able to help me with that.’ A sharp edge to this tone that he was struggling to suppress. ‘She has four and three-quarter hours from when school finishes to when you expect her home and another three hours after that, before you actually get home. It’s a long time.’ A very long time, particularly for a nine-year-old child .

Trigg waved the stub of the cigarette towards the corner of the caravan. ‘We’ve got the telly and often as not she’s got homework.’

Marilyn nodded. ‘But she could have gone down to West Wittering voluntarily. She could have been meeting someone without you knowing.’

Trigg’s red-rimmed eyes remained fixed on the blank square of the television screen in the corner, looking but not seeing.

‘Couldn’t she, Miss Trigg?’ he prompted.

‘Yeah, I suppose she could ’ave.’ The words drew a little jerk out of her, as if the effort of acknowledgement hurt her.

‘I’ll need that list of her close school friends and everyone else she knew and saw around here on a regular basis. Detective Sergeant Workman will give you a hand with it.’

Trigg gave a dull nod. All the aggression, the fight had leaked from her. Tears welled in her eyes and a barely audible voice came from the back of her throat. ‘How was she killed, Detective Inspector? How was my baby killed?’

‘She was strangled,’ Marilyn said plainly. There was no benefit in sugar-coating, not for anyone.

‘When?’

‘Mid-to-late afternoon.’ He glanced at his watch. It was half-past midnight. Yesterday afternoon. ‘Thursday afternoon,’ he added, probably unnecessarily.

‘When I was at work then,’ Debs muttered. ‘When I was on the fucking packing line, knowing nothing, some bastard was strangling my baby to death.’

Marilyn didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

‘She wasn’t …’ Her body twisted with anguish at the question. ‘She wasn’t sexually assaulted, raped, was she?’

Though only Dr Ghoshal could confirm with 100 per cent certainty whether Jodie had been sexually assaulted, Marilyn shook his head, ignoring the look of chastisement that Workman shot him. He was getting good at ignoring her looks. He had seen the child’s body in the InciTent, still dressed in her school uniform, shirt and trousers, none of her clothing disturbed. Zoe Reynolds hadn’t been sexually assaulted and he would be happy to stake his professional reputation – what little he had left when it came to solving child murders – on the fact that Jodie Trigg hadn’t either. Every fibre of his instinct told him that Jodie’s murder, as with Zoe’s, wasn’t a sexually motivated crime. Every fibre told him, still, that Zoe’s mother Carolynn was responsible for her murder. And Jodie’s? He’d find out. This time he would find out.

‘No, she wasn’t sexually assaulted,’ he repeated firmly. ‘We’ll know a lot more once the, uh, once the autopsy has been performed later today.’

At the word ‘autopsy’, Trigg began rubbing her hands convulsively up and down her arms, her clawed fingers leaving raw weals on her pale skin.

Workman caught one of her wrists again. ‘Please don’t.’

‘Autopsy. Why? Why can’t you just leave her alone? Give her back to me to bury in one piece.’

‘It will help us to catch her killer,’ Workman said gently. Her hand was knocked away as Trigg shrank into the corner of the sofa, looking from Marilyn to Workman and back, like a cornered animal.

‘Look, I know this is difficult, Miss Trigg,’ Marilyn said, measuring his tone.

‘You don’t know anything,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t know me. You didn’t know Jodie. Has your daughter died, Detective Inspector?’ She caught his gaze and held it defiantly, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘So don’t fucking pretend that you know anything about us, or anything about how I’m feeling.’

‘Miss Trigg,’ Workman said.

Trigg spun around, eyes blazing. ‘Or you!’

‘We’re trying to help you, Debs.’

A sob washed over her. ‘No one can help me. Jodie was the only good thing that had ever happened to me. No one can help me now.’

Workman’s jaw was rigid. The colour had completely drained from her face. Looking across at her, sitting stiffly in the passenger seat next to him, Marilyn cursed himself for not bringing DC Cara with him instead. The death of a child was emotionally the toughest crime for an investigative team to deal with; he knew that from Zoe Reynolds. But it had to be easier for a twenty-two-year-old DC who’d never had his own kids and was aeons away from wanting any, than a forty-six-year-old woman who had tried everything to have them and failed. Her voice was thick and Marilyn realized, with horror that she was struggling not to cry.

His own coping mechanism relied on his focusing with blinkered efficiency on the investigation, the hard evidence. The emotional aspects he locked in a small box deep in his brain, stowing the key somewhere he hoped never to find. It hadn’t quite worked out that way with Zoe. The little girl’s ghost seemed to know exactly where he’d hidden the key, chose his weakest moments to unlock the box and unleash the flood of memories, the world of self-recrimination.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Workman sniffed, embarrassed.

Marilyn slid his arm around her shoulders, a move which they both found awkward in the cramped car. Dropping his arm quickly, he muttered, ‘You’re human, Workman. And so am I. Believe it or not, so am I.’

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