Written In Blood

12-2

“OKAY, NOW OLIVER’S out of the way,” Mitchell said once he was alone with Kieran. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news...”

“It’s okay, I know why you’re here,” Kieran said sadly. “You’ve found Georgie.” He didn’t look at Mitchell as he said that, instead he focused on righting the table and chairs overturned during his fight with Kieran.

“Who told you?” Mitchell asked, bending to help with the table, he would not have liked to lay odds on who had contacted Kieran, the list of possibilities was too long.

“I must have been called or text by half the village in the last hour and a half,” Kieran said. He gave a short, humourless laugh. “You know how it is around here, nobody can wait to pass on any news they hear, especially if it’s bad news.”

Mitchell nodded, well aware of how much the villagers liked to gossip. “So what has everyone been telling you?” he asked, wondering how accurate the gossip had been – not very, was his guess.

“They all said pretty much the same thing,” Kieran said. “That Georgie was found this morning, and that she was – she was killed.” He could not bring himself to say murdered.

“That’s right,” Mitchell said. “I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t necessary to trouble you with this, and I wish you hadn’t had to hear about this from the village gossips, I had to tell the family first, though.”

“I understand, of course you had to tell Georgie’s parents first.”

“I hope you also understand that I need to ask you some questions. Some of them I might have asked before, but I need to ask them again, in case you’ve remembered something you didn’t think of before.”

“What sort of questions?” Kieran wanted to know.

“Well, first off, where were you on Friday evening, a week ago?”

“You already asked me that, last week.”

“I know, but as I said, some of the questions I need to ask, you’ve already answered, but I need to be sure you didn’t forget something that you now remember,” Mitchell told him. “So, where were you last Friday?”

“At the cinema.”

“What time was that?”

“I got there, musta been about half-eight.”

“As I recall, you said you were supposed to meet Georgina.”

Kieran nodded. “We were supposed to go to the cinema together. She text me just after six to say she was stopping at her cousin’s, and would meet me at the farm after, then we could head into town. She never turned up, though. I hung around for ages, waiting for her, then I went looking, but couldn’t find her. In the end I gave up and went into town on my own. I never saw her.”

“Weren’t you worried when she didn’t show up like she was supposed to?”

Kieran thought about that briefly and then shook his head. “I think I was more annoyed than worried. When she didn’t turn up, I figured Georgie had let her bloody cousin talk her into sticking around and cleaning up after him and his moron friends, like he always does. I thought, if that’s what she wants to do, it’s fine with me, I’d just go and see a film I wanted to see, instead of the stupid, sappy romance I was supposed to see with her.”

“What time did you get back from the cinema?”

Kieran shrugged. “Half-twelve, one a.m., something like that I’d guess. I don’t really remember. It was definitely after midnight, ‘cause the film didn’t finish ‘til about eleven, and it’s over an hour’s drive to get back here from the cinema.”

“Can any of your family confirm what time you got home?”

“No, they were all in bed, so it was definitely after midnight ‘cause Em’s usually up ‘til ‘bout midnight. Wait, yes, Tara can. She might not know exactly what time it was, but she can give you a rough idea,” Kieran said as he remembered. “A ninja I’m not, I dropped my phone on the way up the stairs, and it bounced all the way down; the noise woke Tara, she came to see what was going on, had a go at me for waking her, went to the bathroom for a pee, and then went back to bed.”

“Why didn’t you pick Georgina up, instead of her coming out here to meet you?” Mitchell asked. “You could have met her at Oliver’s, it would have been more sensible than her walking up here.”

“I was supposed to meet her down in the village,” Kieran admitted. “But I was having problems with my car. I’ve been trying to save up enough to get it fixed for good, but I can’t afford it right now, so I’m having to bodge it. Damn thing conked out on me just as I was leaving to pick Georgie up, took me and dad about twenty minutes to get it going again. I text Georgie to let her know what was going on, that’s when she said she was gonna stop in at her cousin’s, and head up here if she didn’t hear from me first.”

“Why didn’t you head down to Oliver’s to pick her up once you got the car going?”

Kieran snorted. “You’ve seen what he’s like, he hates me, attacks me every time he sees me. Georgie hates it when I fight with her i***t of a cousin, so I avoid him as much as I can.”

Mitchell doubted that that was the only reason Kieran avoided Oliver; he suspected it was more because he wasn’t as tough as his girlfriend’s cousin, and didn’t want to get beaten up.

“I didn’t want to get into a fight, that’s why I stayed away; besides, I figured if Georgie was gonna choose to hang out with her cousin, instead of going to the cinema with me, I was better off going on my own.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter, but his indifference was quickly replaced by a deep sadness. “When I – when I heard the next morning that Georgie was – that she was missing...” He fell silent for several long moments. “I wished I’d looked for her, wished I’d done more than just text to ask where she was, and then gotten annoyed when she didn’t answer.

“Maybe – maybe if I’d been able to make her see how obsessed Oliver, that f*****g asshole,” he snarled, “is with her, she would – would’ve been alright.”

Mitchell saw the accusation implicit in the teen’s words, and knew he would have to ask more questions before he could move on. “What is it, exactly, that makes you think Oliver might have had something to do with Georgina’s disappearance, and how she was found?”

“Come on, you can’t tell you don’t know about his obsession with Georgie,” Kieran said. “He acts like she’s his girlfriend, not his cousin. He texts and calls her all the time, has her at his house cleaning up after him and his friends, running errands; he’s always touching her as well, like he wants her; you know what I mean?”

Mitchell didn’t need to be a genius to understand what Kieran was trying to say, even if he didn’t believe it, so he nodded.

“I think that’s what happened,” Kieran said. “He forgot Georgie’s his cousin, not his girlfriend – I mean, he gets aggro whenever she starts seeing someone – tried it on with her, and then snapped when she threatened to tell her parents what he’d done.”

“It’s certainly a theory we’ll have to look into,” Mitchell promised. “There’s something else I need to ask you about.”

“What?” Kieran didn’t even try to conceal his frustration. “Dad’ll be home for lunch any time, he’ll want his food ready, and he won’t want to see this mess.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll be as quick as I can,” Mitchell said. “Did you see Lucy Goulding yesterday afternoon? Specifically, at any point from lunchtime onwards.”

Kieran nodded. “Sure, I saw her yesterday,” he said without hesitation. “Is she in trouble?”

“No, but we are concerned about her. As far as we’ve been able to tell, nobody has seen Lucy since she got on the bus in town yesterday lunchtime to come back to the village. She would have made it back here a bit before one; did you see her after that time?”

“Yeah, I saw her, must have been about two, something like that.”

“Where?” Mitchell asked, hoping that he was about to hear something that would advance his investigation.

“Just down the road actually. I was heading out to get some stuff done after a late lunch when my bloody car conked out again. I was trying to get it going again when I saw Lucy, she was at the old Henshaw cottage, being let in by that new guy, I forget his name, the one Emily’s been helping with his gardens.”

“Zack Wild?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy.”

Mitchell could not believe it had been as easy as that to get confirmation of what he and Melissa suspected. “Thank you, Kieran; I’ve got just one last question for you, then I’ll be out of your hair.” He could see that the teen was frustrated to the point of swearing, so he got straight on with it. “Do you know how long Lucy was with Mr Wild for?”

“No.” Kieran shook his head. “But it was a while. I was fifteen, twenty minutes fixing my car, and she hadn’t come back out by the time I was done. Mind you, I’m not surprised, given what she was wearing.”

“What was that?”

“The shortest skirt I’ve ever seen her wearing. It was so short I didn’t think it was a skirt at first – she had a hell of a lot of leg on show.” A smile played about his lips at the memory. “If I was that guy, Wild, I’d’ve wanted to keep her there for as long as possible, if only for the view.”

“I’ll leave you and the girls to get things ready for your dad,” Mitchell said. “Thanks for your help.” He left then, collecting Melissa from the living room on the way out of the house.