“Sure.” I can’t stop seeing the marks on his hand though, as if someone had desperately been trying to fight him off. Recently, too – they were fresh and raw. Should I mention it? What if I’m wrong?
What if I’m right?
“Listen,” I begin. “I saw Will in the library just now, and. . .”
“No. You can’t have done.”
I blink at Jess. “Yes, I did. I bumped into him and he dropped all these books, and that’s when I saw—”
“Whoa, slow down!” Jess holds up the white lid like a stop sign and I take a breath. “He’s not working today. His name wasn’t on the log-in sheet.”
“You checked the log-in sheet?”
“No, it’s on the door to Mum’s office. Makes it obvious who’s on shift.”
“Oh. Well he was there, I swear it!” I tell her all about the encounter and as soon as I start I can’t stop, it’s all pouring out of me like a leak, even though I sound like a complete nutter.
“OK, give me a minute.” Jess steals my cup and takes a sip of tea, pulling a face when she realizes it’s more sugar than liquid. “So, you think that this Spring Heeled Jack character might be connected to the attacks?”
“Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that.” I sigh. “But, maybe, yeah.”
“And Will had cuts on his hands?”
“Defensive wounds, yeah.”
“Niamh, not being funny, but how do you know what defensive wounds look like?”
I mumble a response.
“What?”
“CSI,” I say, louder, and Jess starts to giggle. “Look, I know how it sounds, but they really did look like someone had been trying to pull his hands away.”
Her laughter subsides.
“You really are serious, aren’t you?” I nod, scared to say any more. “OK then, come on.” She stands up. “We’re going back to the library.”
“What, no, I. . .”
“It’s fine,” she says firmly. “Mum will be there, and if Will gives us any trouble she’ll know about it. And if he’s gone, then I know a way to figure out what books he was looking at. It might help us make sense of this. Either that,” she hesitates, “either that or we’ll have some kind of theory to take to the police.”
Back in the library, there’s no sign of Will, not even a stray book on the table. We offer to hold the fort for Ruth while she runs some errands, and as soon as she’s gone Jess types Will’s name into the database.
“This should list every book he’s borrowed.” She frowns at the screen and I peer over her shoulder. It’s a list of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie novels.
“Couldn’t he just take them off the shelves? I mean, there wouldn’t be any need to scan them out that way, would there?”
“I guess.” Jess slams down the mouse in frustration. “They could have been anything, then, from any part of the library.”
I try to remember the titles. “There was one about Spring Heeled Jack, one about Penny Dreadfuls and a big one.” I stretch my arms out wide to indicate the size of the large book that was on the table. “Huge. Like a scrap book, all old and worn looking.”
“A folio?”
“Er, yeah?”
Jess snaps her fingers in triumph. “They might be in the Victorian collection! Did they all look old?”
“Yeah, leather-bound with gold writing on the spines.”
