Killing You Softly by Lucy Carver Page A

that from his tone of voice. Who was he talking to, do you know?’
    ‘Someone called Salomea.’
    ‘Really! What else?’
    ‘He said Galina had to go to the hospital but not to worry, they fixed her lip and now she was back at St Jude’s.’
    ‘You know that Salomea is Galina’s stepmother? Sergei definitely told her that things didn’t work out?’
    ‘Yeah, but what does that give us? He could have been talking about a plan to go to the movies, an appointment at the dentist’s – anything.’ Will carried on with the guy
thing of backing off from the day’s drama and I gave up trying to involve him.
    I stared at him – at his guarded expression and the bruise fading from under his eye. ‘How did you get that bruise?’ I asked.
    ‘Hey, Alyssa,’ I hear him say again last Saturday afternoon. His hair is shorter, lighter. He looks in good shape.
    ‘Hey, did you hear about the Ainslee girl in the canal?’
    ‘Well, yeah,’ he drawls.
Everyone in Ainslee had heard about that.
    ‘You knew her?’
    ‘Yeah,’ he says again.
    ‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’
    ‘They’re not sure yet. Why?’
    ‘Just wondering.’
    ‘Quit that, Sherlock, while you’re ahead. You worked things out for Lily but you should leave this one alone.’
    ‘It was in the gym. I was lifting weights, training for a half marathon at the end of March,’ Will told me. End of translation, end of conversation. Goodbye.
    For some reason he stayed in my mind and I replayed our short Saturday conversation all the way up to my room.
Quit that, Sherlock, while you’re ahead. You worked things out for Lily,
but you should leave this one alone.
    Galina’s bed was empty. The duvet was thrown back and a pillow with small spots of blood on it was tipped on to the floor.
    My stomach flipped – where the hell was she?
    Then I saw a scrawled note on my own neat bed.
    C AN ’ T SLEEP. A M IN C ONNIE AND Z ARA ’ S ROOM . D ON ’ T WAIT UP - G ALINA
X
    OK, Alyssa – chill. Take off your top, hang it in the wardrobe, do normal stuff to keep yourself calm.
    I’d finished with my clothes and was checking to see whether or not Molly had got the guy in to fix the window when I came across another note, printed out in red ink on a sheet of A4, not
scribbled in felt-tip pen like the one from Galina. It was on the windowsill where the robin had been, folded then slotted between two bottles of my roommate’s miracle moisturiser. This one
was in verse and it was really weird.
    Who killed Cock Robin?
    ‘I,’ said the Sparrow,
    ‘With my bow and arrow,
    I killed Cock Robin.’
    I read the first verse of the old nursery rhyme then the first two lines of the handwritten message beneath.
    Come on, Alyssa - they said you were smart! Why so slow to pick up clues?
    My hand shook as I read the lines again, turned the paper over, saw that the back was blank, turned it over again and reread the verse. Then my freaky eidetic memory kicked in and I remembered
exactly how the rhyme went on.
    Who saw him die?
    ‘I,’ said the Fly,
    ‘With my little eye,
    I saw him die.’
    There was a knock at the door and I jumped a mile, screwed up the paper and stuffed it into my jacket pocket.
    ‘I saw him die.’
    Jack poked his head round the door. ‘Can I come in?’
    ‘I caught his blood.’
    ‘You’re not meant to be here!’ I cried. The screwed-up paper fell out as I ran to the door. ‘It’s after eight o’clock!’
    He kicked snow off his boots then pointed to the paper on the floor. ‘You dropped that.’
    I stooped to pick it up, but he was there first. Straightening it out, he laid it flat on my bedside table and read the rhyme out loud.
    ‘Stop!’ I pleaded.
    ‘Who’ll make the shroud? . . . Who’ll dig his grave?
    Jack came to the message underneath the verse.
‘Come on, Alyssa – they said you were smart! Why so slow . . .’
    ‘Stop!’ I said again. I knew there was more handwritten stuff – I just hadn’t had chance to read