Liar Page 21

  ‘Carol lured them both into her nastiness. I can only suppose they went along with it because they were afraid Carol would turn on them if they didn’t. But what they did the next day haunts me now. Carol sat astride me in the tent and got Rosie to hold my arms down and Lucy my feet. Then she smeared Immac hair-removing cream in circles on my head. I thought that was bad enough, but then she pulled all my clothes off and set fire to my pubic hair. She kept calling me Hairy Hilary, and laughed at me as I was pleading for her to stop. She burned my thighs and stomach along with the hair. I started to scream, so she gagged me.

  ‘When she finally got bored with hurting me, she pushed me out of the tent stark naked. There were hundreds of people about. I wanted to die. I went back in the tent to try to get my clothes, but she’d taken them away somewhere.’

  ‘Didn’t the Guide mistresses do something?’

  ‘One found a nightdress to cover me up, but when they rinsed off my hair, there were all these big bald spots. I looked so terrible I wanted to die. I was afraid to say who had done it because she said she’d do something worse next time.’

  ‘And Lucy and Rosie didn’t try to help you?’

  ‘They were almost as bad as Carol. But it didn’t end there. That whole week they found ways to humiliate me. I had to keep my Guide beret on all the time to hide my hair. They’d trip me up, throw stones at me. I got in my sleeping bag one night and they’d put a soiled sanitary towel in it. By the time the week ended I was nearly a basket case.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Miss Briggs? I’ve met her. I know she must’ve seemed a bit fierce, but she struck me as a fair person, and I don’t think she would’ve let Carol get away with that.’

  ‘I was too scared of Carol to do anything. She said if I started telling tales she’d get me. I believed her too.’

  ‘But it ended when you got home?’

  ‘No, it got even worse. It was the school holidays. She’d be hanging around close to where I lived in Chiswick, and she’d follow me, taunting me with what she was going to do next. The other two were around most days, too, and bullying me was their favourite sport. You wouldn’t believe the things they did! Then one day they seemed to be nice, and they had a bag of doughnuts. They gave me one, but when I bit into it, there was dog shit in it! Can you imagine anyone being so completely evil that they’d do something as repulsive as that? I was sick, vomiting right there in the street, and they just laughed. I never really got over that. I could taste it whatever I ate.’

  Amelia was beginning to think the three girls deserved punishment, not to die, of course, but something severe. Especially Carol. Having been on the end of bullying herself, albeit nowhere near as bad, she knew the complex it gave a child. But her priority had to be to get away from here, as soon as possible.

  The knife was between her feet now, and unless Kat got up, she wouldn’t see it. But Amelia knew that to get away she had to be prepared to use that knife to defend herself. If she faltered, Kat would kill her.

  ‘So what made you decide to kill them?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t say I killed them.’

  That threw Amelia. It wasn’t so much the words, but the way she delivered them: strong and indignant, not snivelling and hoping to put the blame on someone else.

  ‘But you did, Kat. And you hit me with that bit of pipe. But that was just to frighten me, wasn’t it? So I’d lose interest and move on to something else.’

  ‘Like I said before, you’ve got too much imagination. I told the social workers I wasn’t happy in Chiswick, and they said they’d find new foster parents for me. But it was out of the frying pan into the fire. The Coles were cold people. They fostered me for the money, not out of compassion or love. But they fed and clothed me well, saw I got to school and did my homework. Like I was a dog in a kennel when the owners go on holiday. But never a stroke, a pat on the head. Just business.

  ‘Then I went on to the Hardys in Kentish Town. Pop Hardy, as he made me call him, kept putting his hand up my skirt, Mrs Hardy slapped my face when I told her. They drank a lot, and I never felt safe in that house. By then I wanted to kill myself. There was no light, no happiness at all in my life. I was an outsider in the new school I’d been sent to – no one wanted to know me. The social worker said I’d got to grow up and stop complaining. I took an overdose of aspirin but Mrs Hardy found me and called an ambulance.’

  ‘Oh, Kat, that’s awful.’ She could completely sympathize with that feeling. She’d often thought of taking an overdose herself. ‘Did you have to go back with the Hardys?’

  ‘Yes, but they virtually ignored me from then on, and as soon as I was sixteen, I was transferred to a girls’ hostel in Archway. I’d been accepted to work in Harrods then, and for a short while I thought my life would improve. I suppose it did, given that I wasn’t being bullied any more, just pushed around at work. But it was only the other rejects who ever talked to me in the canteen. The girls in fashion and beauty were all convinced they were goddesses.’

  ‘But then you moved to Godolphin Road?’ Amelia saw that Kat had turned her head away. She picked up the knife and slid it up her left sleeve. ‘What a shame we didn’t meet back then. We might have been good for one another.’

  Kat turned towards her, tears running down her cheeks. ‘I used to see you all the time. You looked so pretty in your cheesecloth smocks. You went out one night in a brown velvet kaftan – it had gold stars appliquéd on it, and you had a gold band around your forehead. You didn’t notice me, but I was trying to pluck up courage to tell you how lovely you looked.’

  It was strange to discover Kat had been watching her for years, scary strange too, like she was under a microscope. She thought it was just as well she’d been genuinely friendly to her when they’d met in the launderette, or she might have become one of her victims.

  ‘I would’ve appreciated that,’ she forced herself to say. ‘I never believed I looked right. That dress was ruined – I caught it on a metal fence and the tear was too bad to mend.’ She looked out onto the garden – she could see it was nearly dusk. ‘Let’s go home now, Kat. It’ll be dark soon, and it’s been a long day.’

  ‘You don’t really think we can go home as if nothing’s been said today, do you?’ Kat asked. She sounded so forlorn that Amelia almost felt like cuddling her, like she would a sad child.

  ‘If you didn’t kill the three girls, but knew them all, why not just come with me and we’ll go to the police so you can tell them that, too?’

  Kat’s head came up sharply. ‘I can’t do that! Are you mad?’

  ‘You know I’m not. I just want you to do the right thing. You can’t pretend any more, Kat. If I don’t get home soon the police will start looking for me, and as they know I’m with you in Chislehurst, it won’t take them long to find this place. If I come with you to the police I can speak up for you. I’m used to talking to people in my job. I’ll be able to convince them that terrible things were done to you in the past. I can even embellish it – I’m good at that.’

  Amelia knew she was waffling. Nothing she could say would convince Kat to give herself up: she was like a wounded animal that would fight till the last.

  ‘You mean well, I know that,’ Kat said. ‘Earlier you said something right – that if we’d met years ago it might all have been different.’

  Amelia stood up, picking up her shoulder bag and putting it over her head so the strap crossed her chest. ‘Whether you go to the police or not is up to you. I’m going home,’ she said, even though she was shaking with fear.

  Kat stood up, too, and her expression was terrifying: her eyes were wild and her nostrils flaring. Amelia knew it was make-or-break time.

  She began to move towards the door.

  ‘Stay here,’ Kat said, her voice low and threatening. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll have to if you try to go.’

  Amelia had let the knife slide a little down her sleeve so she could grab the handle with her right hand. She quickly pulled it the
rest of the way out, snatched the plastic sheath off and brandished it. ‘Okay, Kat. You’ve got a choice between letting me go in peace, or me sticking this into you,’ she hissed, holding the knife in front of her. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you come near me.’

  ‘You’ll never use that knife. You haven’t got it in you,’ Kat taunted her, moving closer.

  Amelia pulled the door open with her left hand. ‘Just try me.’

  Kat sprang forward, attempting to knock the knife out of Amelia’s hand. But Amelia was holding it tightly and she made a warning slash, catching Kat across her knuckles and drawing blood.

  ‘I told you I would do it,’ Amelia roared at her, as she walked out of the door. ‘Now back off or next time it will be serious.’

  It was dusk now, and Amelia was forced to walk backwards for fear of Kat coming up behind her. She’d noticed earlier in the day that although Kat was so tall and a little ungainly she moved silently and quickly. It seemed the Creeper had been an apt nickname.

  But walking backwards in an overgrown garden was not easy. She didn’t know if there were obstacles hidden in the grass and weeds, so she kept turning her head to check. Kat was still standing at the doorway of the summerhouse, but Amelia didn’t think for one moment she was going to stay there.

  Once at the side of the house and out of Kat’s line of vision, the path was a little clearer, so Amelia made a run for it, pushing her way desperately through the bushes that were almost blocking the path to the lane. She was listening for Kat coming after her, but she couldn’t hear anything.

  Reaching the lane, she paused just for a second to listen again, but there was nothing, so she broke into a trot as she went up the hill towards Chislehurst Common.

  She remembered a house about fifty yards or so from the lane leading to Kat’s old family home. She would run in there and ask them to phone the police.

  But suddenly Kat was on the lane in front of her, nearly giving Amelia a heart attack. She had no coat on, just her jeans and a cream sweater.

  ‘You aren’t much good at this, are you?’ she said scornfully. ‘I went through the bushes and over the neighbour’s fence to head you off. They aren’t in so there’s no point in screaming. Just give me the knife.’

  It was fortunate Amelia had stuck it into the side of her bag, so she had both hands free, but at Kat’s words she snatched it up again and brandished it as she continued to walk up the hill, passing Kat.

  Terror made Amelia bolder. She knew she could use the knife if it was a choice between her life and Kat’s.

  ‘There’s only one way this might get better for you,’ she shouted, hoping against hope that Kat’s neighbour might be in and had come into the garden to see what the noise was. ‘You let me call the police and you tell them your side of the story. If you won’t do that, then Heaven help you because I will stab you if you come near me.’

  ‘You turncoat,’ Kat shouted back at her. ‘All day you’ve been my friend. You said you liked me, but it was all lies, wasn’t it? You want to see me behind bars so you can write for your paper how you identified and captured the Creeper. Shall I tell you something else? Remember how I went to your flat when you were out and brought you some flowers? Well, I had sex with your precious Max in your bed. How do you like that?’

  ‘So what?’ Amelia replied, even though she was shaken by what Kat had said. ‘He was a liar and a no-hoper like you.’

  Kat rushed at her then, but Amelia stood her ground, holding the knife firmly, waiting for the other girl to try and grab her. As Kat reached out for her shoulders, Amelia thrust the knife into her.

  Kat’s eyes widened with shock. She took a step back looking down at the knife. It had gone in just above the waist of her jeans, only the hilt sticking out and her cream sweater was already turning red with blood.

  Amelia might have said she’d stab Kat, but the reality of it made her want to be sick. ‘Don’t try to pull it out, you’ll bleed to death,’ she said instinctively, something she’d picked up from the TV. ‘I’ll run to get an ambulance.’

  As shaken and sick as she felt, Amelia ran like the wind to the top of the hill. She’d remembered seeing a phone box just around the corner.

  She dialled 999 and blurted out breathlessly that her friend had been stabbed, and told the operator where she was. She didn’t linger to give names or any details – there was too much to explain. Besides, she was fairly certain a stabbing in Chislehurst was an extremely rare event and that the ambulance would be there within minutes.

  She heard the ambulance bell in the distance almost as soon as she came out of the phone box. Still out of breath from her run up the hill she walked back down the road.

  But as she turned the slight bend, where the nearest house was, she couldn’t see Kat.

  She broke into a run again, thinking she had collapsed and fallen into bushes.

  But Kat was not there, just a pool of blood on the road at the spot where Amelia had stabbed her.

  19

  ‘You’d better come with us, Miss.’

  Amelia looked at the two policemen’s faces and saw that they believed her to be either a fantasist or on drugs as there was no girl with a knife sticking out of her. There was the blood on the road, but they seemed not to be taking any notice of that.

  She was so overwrought, not just by what she’d done but that Kat was gone, that her story didn’t even make sense to her.

  The ambulance, which had come so speedily, left when the police, who had followed very soon after in two cars, had searched and found no one injured. They were local men who knew the area, and while two of them stayed with Amelia, listening to her tearful and somewhat garbled story, two more men checked the burned-out house and its grounds. Now those men were knocking on doors and asking questions. It was pitch dark and very cold.

  The tall, lanky policeman with a pockmarked face had put his hand on her shoulder. Not in a reassuring way but as if he thought she was going to make a run for it.

  ‘Of course I’ll come with you,’ she said. ‘She’ll have gone somewhere to get out of the cold and have a hot drink. Will you ring the police at Shepherd’s Bush and speak to them? The girl I stabbed is called Kat Somerset, and I only did it because she was going to kill me. She’s the one they’ve been calling the Chiswick Creeper. She’s killed three girls already.’

  ‘And you say the knife was still in her stomach?’

  His tone told her he didn’t believe a word she’d said.

  ‘Well, it was when I ran to find a phone. There’ll be a blood trail, though I suppose you can’t see that in the dark. You need to find her quickly.’

  At the local police station Amelia was ushered into a small interview room and left there for a good half-hour before another much older policeman came in with a young woman officer.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Welsh,’ he said. ‘This is WPC Mortimer. I understand you are alleging that the girl you were with and stabbed is none other than the Chiswick Creeper. Is that right?’

  ‘I’m not alleging,’ she replied indignantly. ‘It’s a fact. I know everyone’s been thinking it’s a man, but it’s not, it’s Kat. I’ve been under police protection for some time now because I was attacked, too. Kat lives in the same road as me, but I never suspected her. She was a fairly new friend, and I came out to Chislehurst with her today for a change of scene. Everything was quite normal at first. We had lunch and then she took me to show me where she used to live. We were in the summerhouse at the burned-out house when her bag dropped off a chair and a long thin kitchen knife and a bag with a lead pipe tumbled out. Suddenly it all fell into place and I knew she was the killer. She even told me all about the three girls.’ She paused to take a deep breath. She might be in serious trouble herself.

  If Kat was dead, would she be charged with murder?

  ‘I only stabbed her because I was afraid she’d kill me. It was self-defence.’

  There was a heavy silence. Neither the policeman nor the
WPC said a word. That was more disconcerting than if they’d accused her of lying or taking drugs.

  ‘Please ring Shepherd’s Bush police station and tell them you’ve got me here. Sam Hamilton is one of the officers who’s been protecting me and Sergeant Roper knows me well too.’

  Welsh looked at her thoughtfully. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties, with a craggy, lived-in sort of face, tired brown eyes and sparse, sandy hair. ‘Why come to Chislehurst?’

  ‘I told you, she said she used to live here and it was a nice place. So it was, until she turned on me,’ Amelia said sharply. ‘She told me that burned-out house was her family home and her parents and sister died in the fire there. Is that true?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment, as if weighing up whether she was speaking the truth. ‘The people who own that house bought it, then went abroad with their business. While they were away some squatters got in there and started the fire. The couple who own it have no children and were going to start rebuilding it shortly. So this Kat, what’s her surname?’

  ‘Somerset. She works at Harrods, and lives just along the road from me, but I think she was called Hilary and changed her name later. But all that could be verified by the Shepherd’s Bush police.’

  ‘Very well, Miss White. I’ll look into this further and come back to you,’ he said, getting up and moving towards the door. The WPC followed him, but looked back at Amelia as she got to the door. ‘I’ll get someone to bring you some tea,’ she said.

  Amelia kept glancing at the clock in the interview room. It was a quarter past eleven now, and she wondered how she’d get home if they didn’t let her go soon. She was alone. The WPC had brought tea and stayed for a few minutes, but DI Welsh hadn’t come back. She wondered why it would take so long to verify her story with the police in Shepherd’s Bush.

  She was only a whisker away from bursting into tears. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so alone. When she’d told Kat they were alike, both lonely and friendless, she hadn’t meant it: it had been more a gambit to get Kat to talk about herself. But now she saw it was true. She didn’t have anyone. By day she could have called Jack at the newspaper, but he was only her employer, not a real friend. For a while Max had filled the big hole in her life, but the love he promised had been a mirage. Was it true that he had had sex with Kat? He had acted a bit strangely about her coming round. Was that because he was afraid Kat would tell her?