Soul Fire

‘No. It’s not Lewis. Um, it’s . . . Maybe you’d prefer to meet them downstairs?’
    ‘ Them?’
    I go onto the landing and look down.
    Suspects number 1 and 3.
    Instinctively, I dart back, out of sight.
    Dad sees my face. ‘I could send them away,’ he whispers, ‘but . . .’
    But they’ve come all the way from Greenwich for a reason , I think. ‘No. I’ll be down in a minute.’
    ‘Sure. I’ll sort them out a tea or something . . .’ he tails off.
    I go into the bathroom, comb my messy hair, splash my face with cold water and when I look up, my eyes are wide. They’re not my friends. So why have they come here?
    As I dry my hands, they’re trembling. Whenever Sahara is near me, so is that fear . Is this how my sister felt? Perhaps it’s why she started pushing Sahara away.
    Deep breaths . . .
    ‘Hey, you guys,’ I say, forcing a smile onto my face as I head downstairs. ‘What are you doing here?’
    They’re in the hall, jackets still on, carrying his ’n’ hers crash helmets.
    ‘We were on our way to see friends,’ says Ade, ‘in the area. But we wanted to see how you were. After . . .’
    ‘Oh, God, Alice,’ Sahara cries, opening her puffa-padded arms. Her thin hair has been flattened by the crash helmet, and it’s hard to tell where her skull ends and her hair
begins. ‘How are you coping?’
    I submit to the hug for a few moments, before twisting my body out of her grasp. ‘I’m all right. But what about you, Ade? It must have been so shocking.’
    He shrugs. In his biker’s leathers, he looks tougher, though he’s still deathly pale. His hair’s swept back like a fighter pilot’s and I wonder yet again why he’s
with Sahara. He’s so much better looking.
    Dad appears holding a couple of cups of coffee. ‘Sorry about the delay. Make yourselves comfortable down here. I’m going to get some jobs done in the garage.’ He offloads the
coffees and rushes out.
    In the dining room, they unpeel their layers, put their helmets on the table, and sit down. It still makes no sense that they’re here. I didn’t even know that they knew where I
lived.
    ‘Ade has been more deeply affected than he’s letting on,’ Sahara says. ‘It’s been a very difficult time. We’ve been terrified that the media would make the
connection between him and me and that they’d come after me too.’
    My sister’s dead. Tim’s dead. Ade must be traumatised by finding his best mate dead. Yet Sahara still manages to make it all about her .
    ‘How had Tim seemed?’ I ask Ade. ‘Before . . .’
    Ade scratches at a patch of imaginary dirt on the visor of his helmet. ‘Low. Paranoid. Well, you spoke to him last year, he was pretty bad then but with the anniversary coming
up—’
    ‘You spoke to him, Alice?’ Sahara interrupts him. ‘I didn’t think you’d had any contact with him since he killed Meggie. What an odd thing to do.’
    She thinks she’s in a position to tell me what odd is?
    ‘I was desperate to know if he killed my sister.’
    ‘Well, I think we all know now, don’t we? How desperate you must have been, Alice. I understand why you did it, but . . .’ she turns back to Ade, ‘I can’t believe you helped her. So irresponsible.’
    He looks like a man who’s used to being in the doghouse. ‘Sahara, you know I thought he could be innocent. Until I found him . . . well, dead.’
    We stay silent for a moment or two because, guilty or innocent, no one wanted Tim to die the way he did.
    I make eye contact with Ade. ‘So now you do think he did it?’
    He shrugs.
    I feel so ashamed making him go back over it, but this has to be done, for Meggie’s sake. ‘How was he acting before that? Was he scared of something?’
    Ade shakes his head. ‘There was nothing, Alice. I promise.’
    ‘Was he drunk? The police said there were bottles.’
    ‘When I saw him there . . .’ Ade closes his eyes, ‘I panicked. Ripped the bag open, tore at the scarf, in case he was still with us. You know the rest.’
    ‘The scarf?’
    He blinks. ‘That was what he used, a red silk scarf. To tie the bag in place. The police think it was probably Meggie’s though they said they’re trying to keep it out of the
press. He might have kept it as a trophy. They said it’s what killers do. Perhaps that was his way of admitting he was responsible.’ Ade shakes his head.
    I stare at him. The scarf could implicate Tim. Or it could be the real killer mocking the police, proving they can get