‘I’ve come to tell them that Jason didn’t know anything about what was going on with those drugs.’
‘Have you really?’ Jenna spilled a splash on to her hand. It hurt, and would leave a mark, but she could hardly have cared less. ‘How come? How do you know?’
‘All right, I’m going to go back a bit. I’m Mia’s best friend from school – you met up with Mia yesterday, I heard?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, me, Mia and Jase were all the same year at school together. They were the lovebirds of year eleven, and I got left out because they were always together, and I suppose I was jealous. I took against Jason from then. Just in a silly teenage way, I mean. There wasn’t anything serious to it. I just wanted the times Mia and I used to have back. I missed her.’
‘So you and Jason didn’t get on?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say that. I put on a good face. We went to the same parties, socialised with the same people. In the end, I got so lonely I went out and got myself a boyfriend, just so I could do coupley things with Mia and Jase. We did everything together. And I mean everything.’
She gave Jenna a significant, slightly shamed look, and Jenna remembered what Jason had told her about the wild sex lives of the young people on the estate. She didn’t want to know more.
‘So, you know them. Is this what’s going in your statement?’
‘No, this is just the background. I wanted you to know the full story before you … Ah, whatever. Anyway I ditched the boyfriend, because we had nothing in common, and decided to get a life. Went to college, did my youth work qualification, kept away from the dodgy parties. But I got invited to a different type of dodgy party by a lad on my course – a party up at Harville Hall.’
‘My house!’
‘Yeah, except it was Lawrence Harville’s house, then. I didn’t know it, but it was party central. The place was falling down around him, but you could get anything you wanted there, do anything you wanted, have anyone you wanted. It was a different world. Anyway, Lawrence took a shine to me. I think he liked having a bit of rough. We got together, in a way. I mean, I were never his girlfriend. He wouldn’t have taken me out anywhere nice. But I got a lot of booty calls.’
‘Oh God, I hate him,’ muttered Jenna, unable to contain herself.
‘I brought Mia along to one of the parties, and then he dumped me and went for her. Well, she is pretty. I’d kill for her looks. She got into drugs, big time, and – I don’t know, I didn’t want to know, I never asked – I think she started dealing for him, in the pub. She stopped seeing so much of Jason because he didn’t know anything about it. I stopped seeing Lawrence and going to his parties. It was all starting to look a bit too sick for me. I just wanted a normal life.’
Her voice had a note of plea in it, and Jenna felt sorry for her, despite herself. She knew how easy it was to get sucked into dark places – she’d seen it over and over in LA. Some of her most promising talents were drying out, in psychiatric facilities, right now.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘And you’ve done well for yourself. You do good work at the Youth Club.’
‘It’s not enough,’ Kayley said, hollowly. ‘I’ve done something horrible and I can’t stay quiet about it any more.’
‘So what’s the horrible thing?’ asked Jenna, but she was starting to see the picture.
‘I kept away from Mia, Jase, Lawrence, everyone, for a couple of years. I heard on the grapevine that Mia was getting more and more involved, and Jason was getting more and more pissed off with her. In the end, I think Lawrence just decided to get him out of the way. He turned up at my flat one night, and asked me to give him my rucksack.’
‘Harville?’
‘Yeah. I was surprised to see him – it’d been a while – and I asked him what the hell he wanted my rucksack for, and he got nasty. Brought out a load of photographs of me, off my face, and naked and whatnot at his parties. Send he’d send them to the Youth Service, and the local paper, unless I just handed it over, no questions asked and nothing to be said about it ever again. If the police asked me, I was to say I’d lent it to Jason, and didn’t know any more than that. And then I was to get off the estate for the night and stay with a friend until morning.’
‘Oh, God. You’re the friend of Mia’s.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t know what was happening. Nobody told me, until I saw Mia the next day.’
‘Lawrence took a lot of trouble to cover his tracks.’
‘He used my rucksack, then got Mia to give it to Jason to deliver to the house – he’d had a tip-off that it was going to be raided, so he thought he might as well take Jason down, since he was going to lose a lot of stock.’
‘Whose was the house?’
‘Just one of his goons. A pathetic druggie called Blister. He’d got him to take the full rap for it, promised him a better crib when he got out of prison, if he kept schtum about his suppliers and higher-ups.’
‘And you knew all this, but you never said anything?’
‘I couldn’t. Law
rence had those photos. Plus he knows some bad people in Nottingham. Hitmen, even. I didn’t dare.’