Chapter 17 Ash
Ash
NOW
Iris only needs one adult present and Ash has had to rearrange a meeting and two appointments at work, but there’s no way he’d leave Iris and Carla to go through this without him.
They’re doing this round at his place – Mayflower Farm.
Carla thought it would give them more privacy than at Crooked Oak Cottage on a Saturday morning.
Ash is secretly pleased he won’t have to face Dandruff.
He’s not a bad bloke, but Ash doesn’t like him.
Perhaps it’s an alpha male thing. Perhaps it’s just because Ash resents Dandruff for living in Crooked Oak Cottage, which used to be his house, under the same roof as his kids.
His dislike for the guy has grown over the past few months.
Dan wasn’t as supportive as he should have been with Iris.
Carla didn’t say so, not in so many words, and fair enough, Iris isn’t Dan’s daughter and Ash lives just up the road.
But Carla is a great stepmother to Margo – the kid even calls her ‘Mum’ – whereas Dandruff failed to measure up as a stepfather. And as a partner. Don’t be judgey, Ash.
He hears Carla’s car pull into the driveway and watches out of the window as his ex-wife and their daughter make their way to his front door.
He opens it before they can knock. Carla is dressed in smart casuals and she’s wearing make-up.
Most of the women in Ash’s life – and there have been a few – get togged up on weekdays, but can’t be arsed to make an effort at the weekends, unless he takes them out to dinner or something.
But Carla is the other way round, probably because she works from home.
She sits at her laptop, in pyjamas or jeans and a hoodie, and she sees more people at weekends than during the week.
She doesn’t need make-up anyway. She turned fifty at the beginning of the year – quietly, in the middle of all the chaos – and she’s still the most beautiful woman he knows.
With the possible exception of their daughter, who has also made an effort with her make-up and clothes.
Everyone always said his daughter looked like him, but that was because of the blond hair.
She’s all Carla, really. Now Iris has cut her hair and dyed it dark, she resembles her mother more than ever.
Standing next to each other, on his doorstep, both with anxious expressions on their faces, they make him think of a before-and-after advert.
They have time for coffee before Roly is due to arrive.
Ash makes it in the kitchen and ushers them through to the living room.
They’ll be more comfortable in there than sitting up to the table in the kitchen.
They’re careful about what they say in front of Iris, although Ash doubts she’s listening.
She’s barely looked up from her phone since she arrived.
Ash’s eyes flit from his daughter to his ex-wife.
He sees half a dozen questions race across her face.
He notices her hands trembling slightly, even before she drinks from the coffee cup she’s cradling.
She’s leaning forwards in the armchair, her elbows on her knees.
‘All right, Iris? Nothing to worry about,’ Ash says, as much to reassure Carla as Iris, who looks like she couldn’t care less.
‘Yeah, I know. Routine. Mum said.’
Ash knows her nonchalance is an act. He doesn’t remember seeing her glued to the screen of her smartphone like this for a long, long time. And she’s chewing gum so fast her jaws must ache. She’s no doubt playing the role she thinks a typical teenager would play.
Ash is stressed, too. He thinks he’s doing a better job of hiding it than Carla and Iris, but his mouth is dry despite the coffee and he can’t sit still.
Roly has insisted that this is an informal chat, nothing to worry about, and that Iris is not a suspect.
But how long, realistically, before the police zero in on Iris?
When Roly arrives, he’s not alone. Neither he nor the officer with him, who Roly introduces as Detective Constable Gail Ward, is wearing a uniform.
Ash thinks this is standard, that CID get to wear plain clothes, but perhaps it’s to put Iris at ease.
What does he know? He leads them through the kitchen to the sitting room, where Carla has stood to greet them.
Iris has remained seated on the sofa, but at least she has put away her phone.
‘Hi, Carla. Hi, Iris,’ Roly says, then introduces his DC again for their benefit.
Ash leaves the armchairs for Roly and his colleague, and sits back down on the sofa, next to Iris, who is sitting in the middle, bracketed by him and Carla.
Both Roly and DC Ward refuse Ash’s offer of tea or coffee.
‘Iris, you know why we’re here?’ Roly gets straight to the point.
She nods. ‘To talk about Josh.’
‘That’s right. We’ve been talking to his family and friends and, basically, anyone who knew him. If we can build up a picture of him and how he lived, we might be able to find out more about how he died and ultimately arrest his killer.’
‘OK.’
‘Now, I know you were once close to Joshua, so you knew him well and that could help us. What can you tell us about him?’
‘He was my boyfriend. We went out for, like, six months. He liked cross-country running; he was good at running. He was average at school. In the bottom sets. He flunked his A levels and didn’t even get into his last-choice university.
’ Ash thinks his daughter sneers just a little as she says this.
‘He decided to work – he was working in The Grove as a bartender – and then travel around South America when he’d saved up enough money. ’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘No. Someone else did. Josh and I haven’t – hadn’t – been in contact for a long time.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘The last time I saw him? I went back to school for a day at the end of the school year. Maybe, June? I didn’t speak to him. I just sort of saw him from a distance and headed in the opposite direction.’
‘OK. What about the last time you were in touch with him, when was that?’ DC Ward asks.
‘Right up until I blocked him on my phone. He would send messages. So I blocked him. Like, last November?’
DC Ward jots something down on a notepad. ‘What sort of messages did he send you?’
‘Usually short ones. Sometimes it was just a link to a song. He would be nice or horrid, depending on his mood, I guess.’
‘Have you kept these messages?’
‘No. I deleted everything when I blocked him.’
‘And what about when you were going out, Iris? Was he nice or horrid when he was your boyfriend?’
‘Both,’ Iris says. Ash hears the quaver in his daughter’s voice and sees Carla put her hand on Iris’s knee. ‘He could be really lovely, but also very nasty.’
‘What did he do that was nasty?’ DC Ward asks.
‘He would ghost me when I didn’t say what he wanted to hear. He would be full of praise one minute and then put me down the next.’
‘He was manipulative and narcissistic,’ Carla chips in. Everyone looks at her. ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘but he was.’
‘Did Joshua have lots of friends, Iris? When you knew him, I mean,’ Roly asks, ignoring Carla’s outburst.
‘He was popular at school, yeah.’
‘Did he get on with everyone or were there pupils he didn’t get on with?’
‘I don’t know. I wasn’t in his year.’
‘Why don’t you ask Sasha Spencer-Lyles?’ Carla asks. ‘She’s his girlfriend. I mean, she was his girlfriend at the time … um … when he died. She was in the same year as him when they were at school.’
‘Thank you, Carla,’ Roly says. ‘We’ve been talking to everyone in Joshua’s close circle.’
‘I don’t know about other pupils, but he didn’t get on with his dad,’ Iris offers, looking at Roly.
Ash notices Roly sit up straighter. ‘Go on,’ he says.
‘His dad was strict, stricter with Josh than with his two younger brothers. They would argue a lot, even in front of me. And Josh would sort of punish him by holing up at a friend’s house for a day or two without telling him where he was.
He stayed over at our place once. I mean, not here – at Crooked Oak Cottage – because things got so bad with his dad. ’
This was news to Ash. He hadn’t known Carla had let Joshua Knoll stay over. He arches his eyebrows at Carla, but she seems to be deliberately avoiding eye contact.
‘And what about his mum? Did he get on with her?’ DC Ward asks.
‘Yes. He was his mum’s favourite son, I think. She treated him like a prince and gave him everything he wanted. Money, a car. I think she sort of made up for the way his dad treated him.’
‘Didn’t his mother worry when he hid at friends’ houses?’ DC Ward asks. ‘Or did Joshua text his mum, but not his dad?’
‘Yvonne had the Find My app on her phone. She always knew where Josh was. She bought the phone for Josh and that was the deal. So she wouldn’t worry about him. He didn’t mind. She didn’t care where he was; she just liked to know he was OK, that’s all.’
‘OK, Iris, that’s very helpful. We’re almost done here,’ Ian says.
‘I just have one last question, if I may,’ DC Ward says. ‘Iris, you and Josh split up several months ago.’
‘Yeah. A year ago, actually,’ Iris says.
‘Can you describe your feelings towards him in more recent weeks and months?’ DC Ward asks.
Ash doesn’t like this. Roly must have filled in DC Ward about what happened to Iris and he can see where she’s heading with her question.
Iris is still in therapy because of the damage Joshua caused her.
She hates his guts. For all Ash knows, Iris is itching to dance on his grave.
Careful what you say, Iris. He actually crosses his fingers behind his back, although he’s not superstitious in the slightest.
Iris shrugs. ‘I didn’t feel anything for him. It was over between us a long time ago. I went back to school this year. I just want to forget what happened and move on.’
Good girl. Good answer. Ash doubts that Iris will ever forget what Josh did to her. But it would have made things a lot easier for her to get on with her life if he’d passed his A levels and moved away instead of getting a job locally.
‘Can you think of anyone who might have wished him harm?’
She shrugs again. ‘No.’
Ash hears her voice crack and turns to look at her.
A single tear rolls down her cheek. He looks at Roly.
A look that says, that’s enough now. Roly has known Iris since she was about two days old.
He’s glad Roly himself has come to talk to Iris this morning and he gets that his friend is just doing his job. But he wants him to leave. Now.
Roly seems to read the message in Ash’s eyes. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful, Iris,’ he says again. ‘We won’t trouble you any more today.’ He gets to his feet. DC Ward follows suit.
‘I’ll just use your loo if I may,’ she says.
‘I’ll show you where it is,’ Iris says and leads her out of the room.
‘He wasn’t a nice person, you know,’ Carla says to Roly once she has left the room. Ash tries – in vain – to silence her with a small shake of his head. ‘He was probably mean to someone else. He got what he deserved, Ian.’
‘Carla, no one deserves to die the way he did, especially not so young. He was only a few weeks shy of his nineteenth birthday. I saw his body, you know. And it made me feel sick to my stomach. He wasn’t much older than Millie – that’s the thought that went through my mind.
He wasn’t much older than Iris. Jaysus, Carla.
It could have been Olly. Joshua Knoll died a very violent death. ’
Carla looks suitably sheepish. Ash sees her open her mouth to say something, but she closes it again as Iris comes back into the room.
‘I’ll see you out, Roly,’ Ash says.
At the front door, as they wait for DC Ward, Roly turns to Ash and says, ‘Look, mate. About what you asked me to do. I can’t—’
‘I shouldn’t have asked,’ Ash says, combing his fingers through his hair. ‘Just forget it, yeah?’
‘I can’t plant evidence for you. I want to protect Iris. I do. I know her. I’ve known her all her life. I know she had nothing to do with this, Ash. But there’s only so much I can do.’
‘I understand.’
There’s a silence, which Roly eventually breaks. ‘I can’t tell you anything about the investigation. You know that. I couldn’t—’
‘I said I understand.’
‘I couldn’t tell you if they found anything at the crime scene – a footprint, for example.’ Roly has lowered his voice. ‘Hypothetically speaking. Even if I wanted to.’
Ash tries to read his friend’s face, but Roly is looking down, at the floor. Ash follows his gaze. Roly is staring at the floor, where Iris has kicked off her ankle boots. Dandruff has got her well trained.
‘I understand,’ Ash says once again. A wave of different emotions breaks over him: gratitude mixed with affection for his best friend as well as a stab of shame for the position he has put him in. ‘We’re quits,’ he adds, but he thinks perhaps he owes Roly now.
DC Ward materializes in the hallway and she and Roly leave.
Ash lets out a sigh of relief as he closes the front door behind them and leans against it.
He can hear Iris and Carla in the living room, but before he goes to join them, he stands there for a moment, in the hallway, and, just as Roly did a minute ago, Ash stares at Iris’s boots.