Kiss Her Goodbye: The most addictive thriller you'll read this year Read online

  KISS HER GOODBYE

  Susan Gee

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.ariafiction.com

  About Kiss Her Goodbye

  Kirsten Green is my best friend

  Kirsten Green has gone missing

  I killed Kirsten Green

  Seventeen year old Hayley Reynolds is unwanted at home, and an outsider at school. Pushed away by her best friend Kirsten Green, she makes a deliberate, chilling decision – if Kirsten can’t belong to her, then she won’t belong to anyone…

  DI Beverley Samuels has the body of a schoolgirl on her hands – a murder that brings back the hauntingly painful memories of the case she’s tried so desperately to forget. There’s something deeply disturbing about this crime – and yet with little hard evidence it’s up to her to decide who she will believe…

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Kiss Her Goodbye

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Acknowledgements

  About Susan Gee

  Become an Aria Addict

  Copyright

  To Paul

  1

  Hayley Reynolds

  Friday 20th September 1985

  The day that I kill Kirsten I find her in her usual place: on the bench by the river. She looks out over the weir, blonde hair hanging over her turquoise-blue tee shirt as she watches the rushing water through the blue curved railings. She’s seventeen, only a few months older than me. Her skin is pale on the curve of her neck and she’s beautiful – I’ve always thought so. She turns to look over her shoulder as I walk past the wooden sculpture of a carved fish on the edge of the path.

  The industrial estate is behind us, masked by trees, and the faint rumble of a delivery truck from one of the warehouses builds then fades. On the far side of the river is the farmland that stretches out towards the motorway. Kirsten’s eyes are swollen from crying as she glances at the bag on my shoulder. It’s hers; I picked it up after Maxine emptied it out onto the college field.

  ‘You should stand up to her,’ I say, and she sneers as though I am stupid.

  ‘Get her on her own,’ I continue.

  She turns to face the weir. ‘You don’t understand.’

  Kirsten gets up and walks towards the yellow path that goes along the river and I follow. The wind picks up and the long grasses hiss by the water as our feet crunch over the sandy ground. The path curls upwards so that the river is directly below us and the water is high and fast. It’s quiet here and there’s nobody about: only the occasional clatter of wings as a bird flies out of the trees. She walks on and ignores me.

  If I’d just let her go then things would have been different, but I don’t. I keep following. On the back of her leggings is the reason for today’s bullying: a dark bloodstain from the period that she’s having. In some ways, what happens next is Mike’s fault. He’s Mum’s new boyfriend and the one to blame for everything, because if he’d left us alone then I wouldn’t have been here in the first place. I’d have been at home. As I walk behind her, I press my nail into the skin on my thumb until it hurts. I haven’t been able to sleep since he came, but I can’t even talk to my best friend, Leila, about it. She doesn’t seem interested these days; it’s as if she doesn’t care any more. Nobody does.

  Just before we get to the sewerage pipe, Kirsten turns around. Her orange hoop earring bounces against the side of her cheek.

  ‘Stop following me, will you?’

  ‘I’m trying to help you,’ I tell her.

  ‘I don’t need it.’

  I take the bag off my shoulder and hold it out to her. She lifts her hand to take it, but I pull it back before she has chance to get it. ‘What if I don’t let you have it?’ I ask, while she purses her lips. ‘What will you do then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t care,’ she says.

  ‘Well, you should!’

  I want to help her, because we’re so alike. She’s an outsider at college just as I’ve been pushed out at home. I’ve tried to talk to her before, but she doesn’t listen. The bank is steep here and there are concrete steps that lead to the water. I walk down them while she stays and watches from the top. The river rushes over the weir.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you what to do,’ I say as I wave the bag at her. I want her to do something, but she crosses her hands over her chest and I hold it out over the water.

  ‘I’m dropping it. Come and stop me.’ I wait, but she does nothing. She’s useless. ‘Oh, forget it,’ I say, and put the bag down and turn to face the rocks.

  She comes down the steps and picks it up.

  ‘You should have at least tried,’ I tell her. ‘They’ll just keep doing it otherwise.’

  She looks in her bag to check if anything is missing, while I sit down on the bottom step to watch the river. As it waits to swallow up more bodies, the black mouth of the sewerage pipe yawns from further along the bank, but for now everyone is alive and the sun shines on the water as it does in one of Dad’s photographs. The current is strong, but I see my face reflected back at me and the thick dark lines of my eyeliner make me look like another girl that isn’t quite me.

  ‘I look different,’ I say, more to myself than to Kirsten.

  ‘I wish I was someone else,’ she says, as if it’s a joke, but we both know that it isn’t. The river makes a hush sound and neither of us speaks. I turn towards her and resist the urge to move a curl of hair away from her cheek.

  ‘My dad used to bring me here.’

  ‘Mine died when I was one,’ she replies, looking back at me. Her eyes are dark green and her lips are pink and fat. As she says the words, her eyes moisten with tears and my heart quickens. We’re so alike and I knew that we would be. I’ve waited so long for this moment. The concrete step is cold through my skirt, but I feel warm inside as Kirsten comes closer. The nervous sweat that has soaked into her top and the weedy smell of the river merge together as she leans forwards so that her face appears in the water next to mine. The turquoise colour of her T-shirt flickers on the water’s reflection. In there, her eyes don’t look as if she’s been crying: she’s beautiful and happy just as she could be with me.

  ‘I don’t remember him at all,’ she says.

  I rub my fingers over the hard bumps on the concrete step. This is the moment that I’ve been waiting for. If Kirsten will let me in, then maybe all the shit with Mike and Mum won’t matter any more and we’ll both
be happy. When I put my hand on her arm she doesn’t push me away, she lets me do it, because it’s what she wants too. We’re both lost and we only have each other. She understands me and it feels so right.

  ‘I don’t remember mine much either, but he’s not dead, he’s a photographer in Brighton.’

  ‘Nice town.’

  ‘He never visits us cos Mum hates him. She says it’s a shame the IRA didn’t blow him up too last year. She’s awful.’

  She exhales. ‘I might quit college.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I reply, even though it is, because I want her to stay.

  She wets her lips with her tongue and I put my hands onto her shoulders and lean in to kiss her, but she pulls back.

  ‘Hey, pack it in.’ She frowns.

  ‘Relax. We’re the same.’

  ‘I’m nothing like you,’ she sneers.

  She looks to see how hurt it’s made me feel, just as Mum does sometimes, and I start to get angry. I take my hand away and put it back onto my lap. Her skin is milky pale and all I want to do is to hold her close.

  ‘I just want to help you.’

  ‘I don’t need your help. Just leave me alone.’

  I was wrong about her, but I can’t bear to walk away. She wants to leave me and I can’t let her go. The downy fair hairs on her legs look soft, like the dandelion seeds floating past on the breeze, and I inhale to smell her, but the only smell is the river. She leans forwards to get up, but I push her as hard as I can and she falls off the step. It’s not something that I think about: it just happens and she lands with her knees on the bank and her hands in the muddy reeds. I hold her shoulders down into the water; she struggles, but I press down harder until her head goes underneath. She tries to pull up, but I’ve got a good hold on her and she slips in further.

  ‘Don’t struggle. This will make you better.’

  She’s smaller than me and I can feel her bones through her top, but she’s stronger than she looks and it’s hard work. I put my knee on her back and hold her down with her face into the current. As the life slips out of her, I get a rush that sends a tingle all the way through my body. She’s fixed.

  I’m tired, but I drag her back through the reeds and when I roll her over she looks back with open eyes filled with sludge. The river mud is all over her face and I wipe it off her lips with the back of my hand so that it leaves a streak of pink across her cheek. While she lies flat on the floor, I bend into her and place my lips gently on hers. Her mouth is plump like ripe fruit and when I kiss her the bits of grit from the mud cut into my lips. It’s lovely. She should have just let me kiss her in the first place.

  Everything’s better now and they can’t hurt her any more. She isn’t going anywhere and while she’s next to me I put my hand in hers as we stare up at the sky together. I’ve not had a moment this perfect with anyone before and I stay for as long as I dare to make it last. I’d like to keep her forever, but I know that I can’t. I take out the nail scissors from inside my bag, hack off a chunk of her hair and put it in my pocket. The silver locket around her neck glints in the sun and I unclip it and hold it in my hand.

  ‘Do you mind if I keep this? To remind me of you?’ I ask, and she doesn’t say no. ‘I wish I had something for you too,’ I tell her, but all I can find is a dandelion from the grass and I stick it in her hair. I don’t feel bad about what I’ve done, because no one is ever going to bully her again. She loves it here. It’s her place as well as mine and I knew I had to help her all those months ago. I just didn’t know how. I couldn’t let her walk out of my life like everyone else. When I sit her up and lean her against me, a thick stream of mud pours from her mouth and I laugh, because it looks funny.

  ‘There we are, all better now,’ I say, as I rock her from side to side.

  I look out at the water, with her head slumped against my chest and my arm around her shoulder as though we are two lovers watching the sunset. I sing her my favourite New Order song and even though I forget some of the words she doesn’t mind, because we’re together. I think about the first time I saw her here, sitting on the bank with her head in her hands, staring at the water in an oversized orange jumper. Her shoulders moved up and down as she sobbed, unaware of me. Now all her pain has gone. I stay with her until I hear the distant sound of a truck coming out of the industrial estate.

  ‘Bye, then, got to go now,’ I say, before I roll her into the water. The current takes her and I wonder if she’s going to float off down the river, but she ends up by the sewerage pipe, stuck amongst the branches of a fallen tree, with arms outstretched as if she’s calling me back. The mud in her eyes makes them blank and dark, like a doll waiting to be painted, and she’s amazing. The dandelion hangs in her hair, before it drops into the river and is carried on the water towards Cheadle Bridge when I grab a fallen branch to cover her with. As she disappears underneath the flickering leaves I smile to myself, because it doesn’t matter what she said: she can’t leave me now. Afterwards, I press away my footprints out of the mud and walk back up the concrete steps and onto the path again.

  When I look down from the top of the bank I can hardly see her. The bright blue sky is streaked with tangerine stripes and I point upwards to show her how beautiful it is, but her muddy eyes are on me alone. I blow her a kiss and walk towards the industrial estate as she watches me go. I walk up the hill, past the grassy incline and towards the road where the war memorial stands tall on a white plinth.

  *

  I expect a lot of questions when I get home, but Mum barely looks up from her book. Mike is still at work and I put my clothes in the wash-basket and go and have a bath. The river mud drips down the white porcelain and I rub the dirt over my lips to feel her kiss again. It’s not like the kisses I’ve had from Stefan and the other boys. It’s the kiss that I’ve always wanted, but I’m glad that Mum won’t find out about it. It’s hidden under the leaves now: our special secret. The next time I see Stefan, everything will be different. Nothing is ever going to be the same again now. As I lie in the warm water, I decide that if Mum asks how I got so muddy I’ll tell her that I slipped, but I shouldn’t have worried. She doesn’t even mention it.

  After my bath, I stay in my room and hear Mike downstairs with Mum after he’s got back from work. He knows I don’t want him there and he’s stopped trying to get me to come downstairs and sit with them. His laughter creeps up the stairs and under the closed door. There’s nothing I can do to block him out. It’s been two months since he moved in and I’ve given up hoping that he won’t stay. It was around the time I first noticed Kirsten and I think about going into the living room and telling them what I’ve done, just to see their faces, but I stay upstairs.

  *

  Later on that night, I take my New Order album, ‘Low-Life’, off the shelf and slide the black vinyl from the sleeve. As the song ‘Elegia’ plays I look at the silhouettes of the trees through the window and see something out there in the darkness. The shadows blend as the song builds and I pull my duvet around my shoulders, pretending that it’s just my imagination, but I know that it isn’t. The music rises as a shape moves in the shadows and I know that she’s crept up the bank and crawled through the woods to follow my footsteps back here. As my breath steams up the window I feel her watching from behind the trees in the garden as the track fades. The needle scrapes against the grooves in the record as the album finishes. I shut my curtains and curl up in a ball under the duvet to wait. She’s heard our song and she’s come to drag me back to the river so that we can be together forever. This is our music now. She loves me so much that she’s never going to let me go.

  She is the first river body and by Christmas two more lives will be over. If Mike had moved out, then it would have stopped, but he didn’t: he stayed. Without him, none of it would have happened, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even notice that anything is different – none of them do.

  *

  Over the weekend, the warm sun brings people out and I wait for someon
e to find Kirsten’s body. The river is busy with joggers and dog walkers and when I go round the corner to the sewerage pipe I half expect her to be gone. An old plastic bag from the river has washed up and moulded to the tree next to her, but she’s still there underneath.

  I look at her with suspicious eyes and don’t sit down, just in case she slithers out. It sounds stupid, but on Saturday night I looked out of my bedroom window and saw a muddy figure crouched in the shadows behind the conifer tree. I wait to see if she moves, but she doesn’t and after a while I go back home to check the news. There’s nothing. It’s as if no one even cares apart from me.

  They mention it at college though, twice in assembly and someone has stuck black and white posters with ‘Missing’ written on them to the lamp posts near to the shops. They didn’t care about Kirsten when it mattered, so I don’t understand why they’re pretending to now.

  Going to see her has taken my mind off Mike and Mum. The excitement of wondering when they’re going to find her takes up my thoughts and I spend my time going out for walks in the day and looking out of my bedroom window at night. When I come home from college on Wednesday, there are leaves in the hall and wet footprints on the landing carpet, as though she’s got in while I’ve been out. With every passing day Mike gets bolder too. He’s got his own shelf in the bathroom cabinet now and his jumpers are all over the house.

  I haven’t been to the river much lately, because the last time I went the branches had changed slightly and a fleck of turquoise material was visible from the bank. I know that it won’t be long before someone sees her. I can’t believe it’s taken so long already.

  *

  The following Saturday, it happens. A white police van passes me at the top of Station Road and turns towards the industrial estate and I know that the day’s here. As it disappears out of sight, I walk to the end of the road and the path that leads to the river.

  Stefan is standing at the top of the road by the flats, as though he’s waiting for someone, and I cross over to avoid him, but he pretends he hasn’t seen me. When I get further down the road I glance over my shoulder, but he’s gone around the corner out of sight. He thinks he means more to me than he does and I’m not interested. There are a hundred more boys just like him, and better, in this town.