‘We’ll be right down, ma’am.’
Archer narrows her eyes at me suspiciously. ‘Don’t be late.’ They’re still fixed on me as she closes the door behind her.
‘Go and gather the troops together, Lucy,’ I say. ‘I just need a moment to think.’
‘Well, don’t leave it too long, boss,’ – she nods behind her – ‘you’ve seen what kind of mood she’s in…’
They say a watched kettle never boils, but maybe the same rule doesn’t apply to mobile phones because the moment I look down at mine, it rings. Hallelujah, please let it be Erin.
‘Dan Riley speaking.’
‘What the blazes has she done now, eh?’ the gruff voice on the other end says. It’s an Australian voice, the accent is thick and strong and unmistakable.
‘Sorry, who is this, who am I speaking to?’
‘The name’s Edwards, Ken Edwards,’ he booms.
Edwards?As inJulie Edwards?
‘There was a message on our answer machine. Some sheila-woman left a message saying you wanted to speak to us about Julie. As soon as I heard that name… well, like I say, what’s the little bastard gone and done now?’
‘Is Julie your daughter?’
‘No, thank Christ,’ he says quickly. ‘She was my brother Ray’s girl, my niece. Haven’t seen her in many years now though. Why d’you wanna know about Jools? Has she been up to her old tricks again?’
‘What old tricks are they, Mr Edwards?’
‘Ken. Well, like I say, I haven’t seen the girl in years, but I remember her back when she was a kid. “Troubled” is the kindest way of puttin’ it.’
‘Troubled?’
‘Yeah, she was one strange little girl was Julie. The wife never liked her much, thought there was something off about her. He married a Pom – Vanessa. A few years after they had Julie, hebrought them both out to Oz with him, She lived over with her mother, my brother’s ex-wife, in a prefab in Subby. I s’pose I felt a bit sorry for the little girl really, having those two for parents. He was a wrong ’un, my brother, used to beat the livin’ daylights out of her mother, he did, the brute. Julie must’ve witnessed a lot of things she shouldn’t have as a kid. I think it turned her funny.’
‘Turned her funny?’
‘Yeah… as she got older, after her dad buggered off back to the UK and left them, she began to get herself into trouble, got herself known to the law, ended up in some naughty girls’ school for a while. I know that her mother struggled to keep her in check. A “chip off the old block”, she called her, just like her dad. She was close to her dad. I dunno what it was that she did exactly that got her sent away, conned a friend and her family out of some money, or something like that.’
I hold my breath.
‘Anyway, a stint in a naughty school didn’t do much to put her on the right path, Vanessa reckoned it made her worse if anything. After that she just carried right on doing whatever she wanted. She started stealing people’s identities so she could take out loans and buy stuff in their names. I guess Vanessa was right and that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree because he was a shyster himself, was old Ray, changed his own name a few times – though it caught up with him eventually, like it always does.’
He pauses, releases a breath.
‘Julie was a bit of a bunny-boiler type, she stalked people and all of that bullshit… I think she had a restraining order out on her at one time, I remember her mother telling me. Some poor fella she got fixated on… She was a very pretty girl though, all the boys liked her, and she was smart, like she could pick things up in an instant,’– he clicks his fingers down the line, in demonstration, – ‘languages, accents, computers… that girl learned to play the piano in just one weekend! Can you believeit? She just taught herself the notes one day, and the next, she was playing like she’d been practicing for years. I suppose she was quite gifted really. Shame she was a total psycho.’ He pauses again. ‘Ya can’t choose yer family, can you, mate?’
‘When you say psycho…?’
‘No conscience, that’s what her mother told me and the wife. Julie could do really shitty things to people and she just didn’t care. She seemed to enjoy it, get a kick out of it even – or that’s how Vanessa told it anyway. I think secretly she was glad when she went AWOL around the age of seventeen. One day she just upped and vanished. Pouf! Gone! Her mother never saw her again.’
‘Do you know the name Samantha Valentine, Ken? Have you heard that name before?’
He thinks for a moment.
‘The kid who hanged herself, you mean? Yeah, the wife always thought that Julie had something to do with it – they were friends, her and that little local girl who topped herself. Sandra reckoned there was something evil about Julie, but then again, she’s a sheila and we all know they’re prone to a bit of drama, don’t we, mate?’ He laughs. ‘Jools could be very persuasive, quite manipulative, but she was only a child herself at the time, so what could we do? It was Ray’s girl, wasn’t it, my own niece. But me and Sandra, the wife, we had our own thoughts on why that tragedy happened…’
‘I don’t suppose you have any old family photos you can send over, Ken? Any pictures you may have with Julie in them?’ If I can just get a positive ID…
‘I’m afraid not, mate.’ He sighs in apology, ‘Well, all except the one. I wasn’t that close to my brother in the end. Like I say, Ray was a monumental arsehole. He ended up where he deserved, in prison – where he topped himself too, as it went, stupid, selfish bastard…’ His voice trails off a little. ‘No ideawhat happened to Vanessa in the end, probably drank herself to death, poor bitch… I can send it over if you like, though I don’t know if it’ll be any good to you? I dug it out after you left that message, got me thinking about it all again.’ He sighs. ‘It was taken the day that Julie was born. I’d been with my brother that afternoon, wetting the baby’s head in advance.’ He chuckles.
