Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows - A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat

‘Oh, you’re harsh!’ George took a coffee, poured for her by one of the formal hall waiting staff into a cup embellished with the St. John’s College logo. Looked grand. Tasted like crap. She grimaced at the bitter, burnt flavour. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ she muttered under her breath.

The other fellows were scattered around the drawing room in clusters: black crows in their floor-length gowns. All pleasantly pissed after a formal lunch that had been put on for some major benefactor or other. Accompanied by a minor HRH, whom George clocked on the other side of the room. Red ears and a flushed face, chatting to the Director of Studies for Modern and Medieval Languages.

‘I should be over there, rubbing shoulders with the Royal,’ Sally said. ‘Not chastising you like you’re an errant child.’

‘Well, don’t then, because I’m not one.’ George set the poisonous coffee down.

‘Get your bloody gown on, for god’s sake!’ Sally said. Fidgeting with her big chunky beads. Tugging at the blunt fringe of her short bobbed hair. ‘Christ, I could murder a cigarette.’

George took her neatly folded gown out of an Asda bag. Pulled it on over her idiotic smart black dress, which she wore only at the grand dinners that constituted the College’s formal hall. Not warm enough by a long stretch in this weather, she had concealed her thermal long johns as best she could beneath the skirt by wearing Aunty Sharon’s knee-length boots – designed for big women, they swam around her calves.

‘I’m in a spot of bother,’ George blurted, feeling overwhelmed in the fire-lit fug of the Master’s drawing room, her thoughts still on the events at 2am, when the hooded figure had appeared at Aunty Sharon’s back door.

Sally fixed her with laser-sharp hooded eyes – no less probing for being behind cat’s-eyes glasses. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.’ The lines etched into her pruned mouth grew deeper. ‘You’re a grown woman, now. You can stand on your own two feet. My time playing nanny for MI6 is over.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ George said. ‘I don’t think, anyway. But I’ve got this homeless woman who keeps tapping me up for cash.’

Sally stealthily swiped the decanter containing amber alcohol, topped up her glass and sniffed at the contents. Swirled them around the crystal so that jambs dripped in perpendicular lines around the sides. ‘A homeless woman?’

‘It’s a long story,’ George said, sighing. ‘Second time she’s shown up at my Aunty’s, asking for a handout. It was gone two in the morning. I nearly stuck a meat cleaver in her head.’ She exhaled sharply, remembering how the dishevelled woman had screamed for mercy, then shoved her way inside, once she realised George was not about to attack her.

‘What you doing at my house?’ Aunty Sharon had said, kettle in hand. ‘I told you, I don’t want you coming here, pestering my niece.’

The diminutive figure had slid the hood from her head, shedding harsh light on cheeks that were raw from being too long in the cold. She looked far older than her years. Thin, with scabs on her knuckles and stinking like those wheelie bins you get outside restaurants of rotten vegetables and stale cigarettes.

‘Please. Just a twenty would do. It’s so cold out there. I’ve got nothing to eat. No money. I’m sleeping in a freezing van. I can’t even afford to put the engine on to get the heater going.’ Imploring eyes, begging George to help.

Seeing her again in the warmth and light of Aunty Sharon’s kitchen, George had wanted to give the poor woman a bed for the night. ‘Look, I told you not to bother me again,’ she had said, pressing fifty into the woman’s hand. ‘You can’t come round here. It’s not my house. There’s a kid here.’

‘The teenager?’ the woman had asked.

Aunty Sharon had got aggressive then. ‘You been fucking spying on my boy? You fruitloops or something?’ She had waved the kettle at the unwelcome visitor. ‘Cos I got boiled water in here and I ain’t afraid to cob it on your skanky homeless head. We don’t want no trouble here, do you get me? I don’t want no raggedy white arse in my house. So, take your cash and put one foot in front of the other, darling. And stop preying on my niece’s good nature.’

In the end, the woman had stayed until nearly four in the morning. Talking with George and Sharon over a convivial half bottle of rum. Had a shower, using up some of the excessively hot water. Turns out, Aunty Sharon had been just as prone to being a soft touch as George. No surprises there.

Back in the Master’s lodge, Sally dragged George into an adjacent room. Empty in there. Together, they forced the heavy window up and lit their cigarettes. Blowing the smoke into the deep-freeze of the snow-blanketed garden.

‘Who’s the woman?’ Sally asked.

George blew a dragon’s plume of smoke out of her nostrils onto the sub-zero air. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing to do with our work here. Just some other bullshit I’ve got going on. Nothing to do with skeletons in the closet or anything. Don’t worry. I’m cool on that front. I’m not stupid.’

‘Far from it, Dr McKenzie,’ Sally said, flicking her ash onto the sill. ‘Now, I clobbered that benefactor during lunch. Flashed him my wrinkly, ageing senior tutor knees and offered him an honorary doctorate in Criminology in return for some funding to keep us afloat.’

George allowed herself a tired smile. ‘Please god, yes! I’m so skint.’

‘Not for you, smart arse. We need money for the library and to fund your little field trips to interview survivors. Where are you with our research?’

‘I’ve got qualitative stuff from at least twenty people – about twelve are women who were trafficked domestically as young girls in the 1970s and 1980s. Some are participating witnesses in the Operation Oak Tree case. Paedophiles in the media, obviously. The rest were boys in the 1960s and 1970s who were pimped out to some very prominent men in society. Runaways from children’s homes. Abductees. There was a boarding house in Sussex where the boys were taken to be abused. If I could only get that fucking idiot at UCL off my back, once I’ve finished the Home Office shit we’ll have a ground-breaking study on our hands in about a year’s time.’

‘Bugger a ground-breaking study,’ Sally said. ‘We’ll have a non-fiction hardback that tops the Sunday Times bestseller list. Mine and your name on the front.’ She grinned a piranha grin, which George did not entirely like, especially since she was doing all the actual work. Sally just opened the doors.

‘How are you coping?’ Sally asked, breaking into a coughing fit that made her sound as though she was a consumptive war-veteran from the trenches of the First World War. ‘Emotionally, I mean.’

Focusing on the Persian rug in the room, George shrugged. ‘It’s horrific, but then, I’m used to distancing myself from pain. I’m fine.’ Lies. She wasn’t fine. But George knew she had chosen to pursue criminology as a career so that she could give the silenced a voice, as she had been given a voice.

She was just becoming irritated by the fact that the rug was not in perfect alignment with the skirting boards, when a woman – roughly the same age as George – entered the room, wearing a gown that was still deepest black, denoting her newness, though the gown was stained with what appeared to be gravy. She flicked long, unkempt brown hair out of her well-scrubbed face. Dangling earrings with feathers attached told George much of what she needed to know.

‘Can I join you for a smoke, guys?’ she said. A heavy West Country accent. She pulled out a tightly rolled joint.

Sally winked at the woman. ‘Of course, dear.’ Turned to George. ‘This is your new partner in trafficking crime, Georgina. I wanted you to get here on time so I could make the introduction. Meet the new Fellow in Social Anthropology and expert in all matters regarding Roma child abduction.’