Terry Boland liked motors. He used to drive a limousine – one of those posh white ones that are stretched out. In the beginning he let me ride up front with him, but later when he had his shitty old Ford Escort I had to hide in the boot when we travelled.
He’d make me curl up in a long zip-up bag, which he slung over his shoulder and carried to the car. I was allowed to undo the zipper when the boot lid was closed. I lay curled up above the spare tyre, smelling the diesel fumes and oil and hearing the sound of the road only inches from my face.
Terry sometimes took me out of an evening, but it was always in the bag. We’d drive for miles and stop at one of those motorway service centres with a McDonalds or a KFC. He’d park in the darkest corner and let me out of the boot.
‘Remember our story,’ he’d say. ‘You’re my daughter. We’re driving to Liverpool to see your grandparents. Your name is Sarah. I’m Peter.’
‘What’s our last name?’
‘Jones.’
‘Where do I go to school?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Stay close to me. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. Don’t start a conversation.’
I nodded and took deep breaths, enjoying the fresh air. I remember looking up one night, but I couldn’t see the stars. I thought they might have all fallen and other people had made wishes, but Terry told me that you don’t see stars when you live in London because of all the other lights.
He held my hand as we walked into the brightly lit food hall, passing racks of glossy magazines, most of which had Kate Middleton on the cover. She’d married William by then and people were on ‘baby watch’. Terry let me watch the wedding on TV because there ‘was nothing else on’. When Kate said, ‘I do’ I wanted the camera to zoom up close on her face, so I’d know if she was lying or thinking, ‘What am I doing?’
Normally, I ordered a cheeseburger because I ate meat back then and I liked the way the fat coated my tongue. I also had French fries and a chocolate shake. One night I threw up on the way home, which made Terry angry because he had to wash the mats and the bag. It wasn’t my fault. It was the fumes.
He didn’t take me out again for a long time. And the next time he gave me drugs to make me sleep. When I’m anxious or nervous, I think of that zip-up bag, because it was somewhere soft and secret and safe.
Davina touches my shoulder. I pull away.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ she says, laughing.
‘They’ll cost you more than that.’
26
Slipping a new disc into a DVD player, I fast forward through the early minutes until Craig Farley appears on screen. He’s sitting at a familiar table in the interview suite at West Bridgford Police Station. Anxious, yet eager to please, he sits up straight, occasionally sipping from a can of soft drink.
Two detectives are seated opposite him – Prime Time and Edgar. Edgar is closer in age to Farley and they soon discover a shared interest in football, discussing favourite players and Premiership results from the weekend. The conversation moves on to pubs and the best ones for ‘pulling a bird’.
Farley begins to relax because he’s not being asked about Jodie Sheehan. He even banters with the detectives, telling a blonde joke that is older than the Bible. The detectives laugh, letting him feel like he’s not so different from them.
‘You must meet a lot of women at the hospital,’ says Edgar. ‘All those nurses.’
‘Yeah, nothing beats a woman in uniform, eh?’ echoes Prime Time.
Farley grins and nods enthusiastically. ‘Some of them are OK – the young ones, before they get too old and cranky.’
‘Yeah, the young ones,’ says Prime Time. ‘You must get plenty of action.’
‘A bit.’
‘Only a bit?’
‘Some of them are pretty stuck up, you know. All fur coat and no knickers.’
‘What sort do you like, Craig?’ asks Edgar, dropping his voice to a whisper, as though they’re sharing a secret.
‘I don’t like ’em too fat,’ says Farley. ‘Some meat on the bone is OK, you know. And I don’t like ’em to be too mouthy or loud.’
‘How do you meet them?’ asks Edgar.
Farley perks up. ‘I got Clancy trained.’
‘What?’
‘My dog. I got her trained. She goes up to them in the street and they start patting her and we get chatting and next thing . . .’
‘What?’
‘You know.’
‘Is that how you met Jodie?’
Farley hesitates.
‘Come on, Craig, you must have seen her around. Everybody seemed to know Jodie. She was a champion skater.’
Again nothing.
‘Where did you see her? Waiting at the tram stop? Walking to school? In the park?’
‘I never met her.’
‘We found your semen in her hair.’
Farley shakes his head, as though refusing to listen to what’s being said.
‘You know about DNA, don’t you, Craig? You might as well have written your name and address on a Post-it note and stuck it on her forehead.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘Maybe it was an accident,’ says Prime Time.
‘How could it be an accident?’ scoffs Edgar.
‘Maybe she tripped over. Hit her head. Was it an accident?’ asks Prime Time.
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Who then?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Maybe you and your mate decided to double-team Jodie and now you’re in the shit,’ says Prime Time.
‘No.’
‘It’s only a matter of time before we catch your mate, Craig, and I’m betting he’s going to sing like Susan Boyle, saying it was your idea to follow Jodie, to knock her unconscious and take off her clothes.’
Farley doesn’t know what to say. He’s leaning further away from the table, expanding the space between them, going all silent and choked.
Edgar and Prime Time ease off, letting him recover before starting again.
I move through the rest of the interviews, making myself coffee to stay awake. As the hours pass, I see a different man at the table. At first, Farley backtracks, refining his answers, adding extra details or discarding those that haven’t served him well so far. But slowly, he is worn down and his attitude changes. I hear the tension in his voice and see how his lips narrow into bloodless lines when he’s caught lying. Eventually, he stops striving to please his interrogators. He switches to defiance, remonstrating about the wrongness of his arrest or the unfairness of the questions.
The interview teams change regularly, taking Farley back over his answers, pointing out the discrepancies. They work together, but often sit apart, making Farley swing his head from side to side as though he’s watching a tennis match. Questions are fired quickly, giving him less time to react. His body bends under the weight of the accusations, slouching lower in his chair as he grows more and more despondent.
‘Come on, Craig. Don’t treat us like idiots,’ says Lenny.
‘I’m not.’
‘Sure you are. Your mate is going to say that you followed Jodie, that you knocked her unconscious, that you pulled down her jeans . . .’