Dead Girls

Chapter 4

I can’t remember his name, or what he looks like. However many times they tell me, or show me his picture, it’s always the same: within minutes, I’ve forgotten.

I’ve all but given up trying. His picture is only an e-fit anyway, and no one really knows his name; he went by so many that in the end they just picked one and stuck with it, even though they knew he’d stolen it from a baby’s grave. I tend to just call him That Man. That man who hurt me. That man who took away my memories, my hopes, my future. That man who all but killed me with his bare hands.

It’s not just the forgetting. There’s the falling down, too. Some days I can’t walk very well because the nerves to my right leg are fused, or snagged, or . . . something. I’ve got it all written down. In any case, I might be in the street, or in the supermarket – never anywhere soft like the garden or a bouncy castle – and oh! There it goes, folding under me like the bolt just fell out. It happened in the car once, and I couldn’t get to the brake and had to swerve into a hedge to avoid a cyclist. I didn’t tell anyone in case they stopped me from driving, but I’m scared sometimes.

Often, I feel like I’m not entirely inside myself, like I’ve fallen out of my body and haven’t quite slotted back in right. It’s like there’s a satellite delay between my body and my senses, like having a fever but, most days, without the cold sweats and the nausea. It’s surreal and a bit frightening, and when it happens it’s often accompanied by a little shock, like when something makes you jump. I used to pay good money to feel like that of an evening. I miss having the choice.

But it’s not every day. Some days I can walk and grip and find things funny. And there are a lot of things I can remember, too. Most days I can think of my own name, which comes up more often than you’d guess if you’ve never had to write it on your hand in biro.

I can remember liking broccoli, which makes me gag on sight now.

I can remember my wedding day, looking at my ridiculous cake of a dress in the mirror and wondering how I’d ever let him talk me into it. I can remember holding my decree absolute in my hands and trembling under the sudden weight of my freedom.

I can remember sunshine and walks in the park, watching other people’s children hurtle down the slide and boing around on those spring-mounted wooden horses, and wishing not to be among the throng of parents standing by with pride or impatience or overprotective anxiety or idle indifference, but to dare to come back when they’d all gone home and play on the rides myself.

I can remember our family Keycamp holiday in France, a hundred degrees, me at eight chaining Calippos in my mini bikini, my sister Reena at thirteen head-to-toe in black and wincing through cups of bitter coffee, trying to impress the pool boy with the 750 Suzuki. I can remember him offering her a ride to the beach on the pillion seat, and Dad’s face turning from brown to purple at the very idea. I can remember the sirens blaring past the caravan site when he roared off on it alone and died under a farm truck.

I can remember my first day at school, screaming for my mum while the other kids stared at me blankly, and I can remember my last day, laughing off my A-Level results and wondering how I was going to break the news at home.

I can remember all of my first days as a police officer; my first day of training, my first as a probationer on the beat, my first dead body, my first arrest of a blushing teenage shoplifter who didn’t run, struggle or even argue but just sat sadly in the back of the car, crying over the trouble he was in. I can remember my first day as a detective, my first incident room, my first post-mortem. And, clearest of all, I can remember the first time I knew I was going to die.

It was ten twenty-five, Tuesday morning, nine weeks ago. Twenty-six degrees C and pouring with rain. I was standing in the car park behind the constabulary’s headquarters, watching it bounce off the tarmac and soak through the canvas of my shoes. I was wearing a twenty-year-old pac-a-mac from Gap, which in the heat was keeping me as wet inside my clothes as out. I was confused.

I’d read the DNA results four times and I didn’t understand. The victim, Mark Boon, was a twenty-five-year-old convicted sex offender. He was one week dead, his neck snapped, his face slashed with a knife as an afterthought. His apartment, a grim, barely furnished sweatbox on a council estate north of the city, had been a mine of bodily secretions, hair, fibres, fingerprints. But none of it made sense.

His bed had been made up on the sofa, the stains all his. Though he ostensibly lived alone, the bathroom had been littered with women’s clothing and beauty products, and the one bedroom had reeked of perfume.

There had been three distinct DNA profiles in that room. One, naturally, had belonged to Mark Boon, and its make-up had been fairly repulsive: specks of blood on the skirting board, traces of vomit on the carpet, fossilised tissues under the bed.

The second had belonged to Erica Shaw, twenty years old, missing from home for three months by then but known to be very much alive. I’d seen her with my own eyes, two days before Boon’s murder, in That Man’s home – that man who, at the time, despite circumstantial evidence linking him to a disappearance, I suspected of being little more than an arrogant prick.

Erica seemed to have been sleeping in the bed; hair and other traces on the sheet and pillow, and her underwear strewn about the place. There was no indication that she’d shared the bed with Mark or with anyone else, or, crucially, that she’d touched anything but her own belongings. And that’s where it began to baffle me.

The third profile had been that of Erica’s best friend. Sarah Abbott had vanished on the same morning as Erica, and by all accounts she hadn’t been seen or heard from since. But there’d been a thong with her DNA on it stuffed behind the bed, and a hairbrush in the bathroom wrapped in strands of her hair. And yet there’d been only one batch of her prints in the entire flat, on a pack of cigarettes and a lighter with her initials engraved on the side. And for however long they’d sat in the centre of the chipped old fake-pine coffee table, nobody else had laid a finger on them.

‘It’s horseshit,’ I said, to no one in particular.

‘What’s that?’

Kevin had emerged from the building, having done whatever it is he spends so long in the toilet doing, and he was standing behind me, just far enough away not to give me any of the benefit of his umbrella.

‘What are we supposed to believe?’ I asked him. ‘That Erica’s been shacked up with a rapist for three months, and now she’s killed him, and what? That she’s on the run with Sarah? Or that Sarah was with them, but Boon did something to her? And that’s why he’s dead? She did it in self-defence? In which case, where is she? I don’t get it. Why now?’

Kevin gave me the side-eye and said, very slowly, ‘Well, that’s what we’re meant to find out, isn’t it? That’s what detectives are for.’

I ignored his sarcasm, for now, because actually it was Kevin who was being a bit thick. ‘You’re missing my point,’ I told him. ‘It’s bollocks. Sarah Abbott hasn’t been living in that flat, for a start. A few strands of hair and a packet of fags is hardly proof of residence. They could have come from anywhere. She might have been there at one time, but if that’s the case, where else has she been? She’s been nowhere. So if Boon killed her, he did it back in February. In which case, why was Erica still around? We know Boon wasn’t keeping her hostage. So did she plan Sarah’s murder with him, or just choose to carry on living there like nothing had happened? And in either case, why were those cigarettes still on the table?’

He thought for a long moment, and then shrugged out a ‘Dunno’.

‘Can we talk about this in the car? I’m getting soaked.’

A glimmer of mischief flashed across Kevin’s face, but he followed me into the Focus anyway.

‘Think about the one other place we know she’s been,’ I said. ‘Which, coincidentally, happens to also be the home of someone I questioned myself because we suspected him of being a killer. Is this making any sense to you?’

‘Not really. It all seems a bit . . .’ He shrugged again.

‘Far-fetched?’

Nod.

‘Exactly. It’s horseshit.’

‘So what do we actually think?’

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? ‘Christ knows, but someone’s been playing us for idiots. We’ve been told a story that makes no logical sense, and the only part of it that’s demonstrably true is that Erica is still alive, or was a week ago, and the only reason we know that is because I saw her.’

I didn’t bloody realise I’d seen her until after the fact; she wasn’t even my case then, and by the time I’d notified the Major Investigation Team, and we’d secured a search warrant, and Mal Lowry and Eli Diaz and John Fairey and I had piled into a couple of cars and sped out to the forest in the south of the county and searched every square inch of that house and questioned That Man, whom we knew at the time as Thomas Reed, all knowledge was plausibly denied and the trail had run cold.

‘So,’ Kevin said, stifling a yawn. ‘Now what?’

‘Simple,’ I said. ‘We start again, at the last place Erica was seen alive.’

‘Reed’s place?’

I nodded. ‘Happy with that?’

‘Makes sense to me,’ he said. ‘Can we stop and get a McDonald’s on the way?’

‘If you’re pay—’ I was interrupted by a startling thump on the window. Kevin jumped in his seat. I gave Eli Diaz a smirk as I slid the glass down a crack. ‘You made one of us jump,’ I said.

Diaz laughed. ‘Sorry, Kevin. Ali, you haven’t seen John Fairey this morning, have you? He was meant to be taking the new guy out canvassing toms last night and they didn’t check back in. Their phones are off and apparently no one’s heard from them since lunchtime. Any ideas?’

Knowing John, they were probably locked in a pub somewhere, but my blood ran cold of its own accord. ‘Can you not track his car?’

‘What do you think?’

I glanced over at Kevin. There was no way of telling whether he was thinking what I was thinking, but he looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘This is all about Erica, isn’t it?’

‘You read the report,’ Diaz reminded me. ‘It doesn’t add up, does it?’

‘That’s exactly what I was about to ring Lowry about,’ I said, which was only a white lie. ‘I want to head down to the Reed place and re-interview him. Maybe we can stir something up.’

He nodded. ‘Great minds think alike,’ he said. ‘We’ll be ready in twenty minutes.’

Fine with me. ‘I’ll meet you there,’ I said. ‘Kevin needs feeding.’

Diaz patted the roof of the car and tried to get back in through the fire escape he’d emerged from. It was shut. He swore to himself and hurried off around the corner of the building, out of sight. Kevin laughed.

‘Grab my bag from the back,’ I said, once we were a few miles from the house. ‘My notebook’s in there, it’s got Reed’s number in it.’

Kevin wiped his greasy fingers on a paper napkin and retrieved the book. ‘Dial it?’

‘Yes please. Let’s rattle this guy’s cage. Use mine, it’s on the hands-free.’

He held my phone up for me to tap in the unlock code, and then keyed in the number. It went half a ring before That Man’s voice barked out of the speaker, startling both of us.

‘I’m here! Where are you?’

I had a brief moment of doubt then. He couldn’t have known we were coming, could he? ‘Hi,’ I stuttered, trying to sound unfazed. ‘It’s . . . Are you okay?’

‘Who is this?’ he said. That voice. I remember that voice – deep, like a river of dark chocolate. Like leaning over an abyss. I wasn’t who he was expecting to hear from, but that knowledge didn’t settle me one bit.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s Ali Green. Have I caught you at a bad time?’ I sensed Kevin shifting to attention in his seat and glanced at him, mirroring his raised eyebrow.

‘Sergeant Green,’ That Man said. ‘No. Perfect timing. I’m having a shitty day anyway, you can’t ruin it this time.’

I feigned laughter. ‘That’s not my intention,’ I said. ‘I was hoping I’d catch you, though.’

‘You don’t say,’ he replied. Indifferent. Smug, almost.

Kevin chuckled beside me, and I shot him a look. Then I went for broke. ‘I’m on my way there,’ I said. ‘There are a few things I need to talk to you about.’ Silence on the other end. ‘And before you say it, they’re actually not all about you.’

There was a long pause before he said, ‘I don’t understand.’ There was a definite crack in his voice then, barely detectable, but there. Something wasn’t right.

‘Neither do I, believe me. The sky’s probably about to fall down, but I’ve been over and over it in my head, and it’s hugely irritating, but we might actually need each other’s help.’ We were ten minutes away. ‘I’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Okay?’

Another interminable silence. Then, ‘Actually, I was just about to go out.’

‘You’ll wait,’ I said, perhaps a little more firmly than I intended, but it seemed to do the trick because his tone lifted instantly.

‘Oh, yeah, of course,’ he said, and faked his own laugh. ‘I just meant I’ve got to fix something round the back, that’s all, so if I’m not around when you get here, just come in and make yourself at home.’

Kevin’s face twisted in exaggerated incredulity, and he mouthed what the fuck at me as I tried to keep a straight face. ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ I said. ‘I’m going to stop and get a cup of coffee and a muffin. Let’s say I’ll be there in an hour, how’s that?’

‘That would be better,’ he said. I was sure he knew it was a lie, but that suited me just fine. Whatever happened next would happen through a jumble of double- and triple-guessing. ‘Can you tell me what this is ab—’ He stopped so suddenly I wondered for a moment if we hadn’t been cut off, but the speaker was clear enough that I could still hear him breathing. Fast, shuddering breaths. Either he was playing with himself or he was nervous as hell.

‘Are you alone, Mr Reed?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, hoarsely, forcing the words, sounding for all the world like he’d just seen a ghost. ‘Sorry, I’m just getting dressed and I strangled myself.’

‘Right.’ I was already pressing the throttle to the floor. ‘In that case I’ll let you go before you come to any more harm. But to answer your question, we urgently need to discuss Erica Shaw.’

‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Ms Green, I’ve already told you everything I know about that girl. I really don’t know how else I can help you.’

‘It’s just routine,’ I told him. ‘Crossing the “i”s and dotting the “t”s. I’ll see you in an hour.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘One hour.’ And then he was gone before I could say goodbye.

Kevin opened his mouth to speak.

‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ I said.

Whatever I’d been expecting to find when we arrived, I was completely unprepared for what happened. I’d radioed for urgent backup; I’d called Diaz, and he was on his way with the DCI and an armed response unit. I knew I should have waited, hunch or no hunch. But I didn’t.

I stopped for nothing but the heavy iron gate across the track that led half a mile through the woods to That Man’s house. Kevin was out of the car before it stopped rolling, and then the gate was open, and I was already moving again when he scrambled back in. My temples were pounding, my eyes as focused as a hawk’s. Kevin was silent beside me, a little pale, gripping the grab-handle above his head.

When we reached the far side of those trees, the car sliding sideways out onto the wide gravel driveway in front of the house, the shooting had already started. And it was Erica Shaw behind the trigger.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. I remember staring down the barrel of a revolver. I remember being on my back on the ground, Erica’s nails pressed hard into my cheek. I remember the rain hitting the gravel, and bouncing back red with a young woman’s blood. I remember That Man, weak but in full control, deciding Erica’s fate with nothing more than a look. And I remember Eli Diaz’s face staring up at me from the pool of blood in my lap, his body sliding away, slumping across my feet, detached.

The blood. I remember all of the blood.

Chapter 5

DCI Malcolm Lowry was missing. No one was saying it, but everyone was thinking it. Losing Eli had triggered the breakdown we’d all known was coming since his wife had filed for divorce a month before. He’d been in hospital with chest pains within hours, signed off by the end of the day, and by the end of the next he was holed up in a static caravan on the Welsh coast, ignoring all offers of counselling and pleas to go back to hospital. After a week he’d stopped returning anyone’s calls, and within a fortnight he’d fallen off the grid altogether.

I learned this from Jennifer Riley, as I stood open-mouthed in the shambles of an incident room trying to figure out exactly who was in charge. Jenny and I came up through training together; she was always a couple of steps ahead of me, always seemed more suited to the touchier, feelier side of the job. And now, true to that, she was hugging me tightly, telling me how glad she was that I was back, how much she’d missed me, and how was I, and how sorry she was, both as my friend and now also apparently as my acting DCI, that she’d thrown me straight into the deep end without offering any briefing or preparation or indeed any kind of communication as to what the hell was going on. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, plucking one of her long copper hairs from the side of my face. ‘I know it’s my arse. To be honest, everything’s my arse right now. I’ve only been active on this for a week. Look at the state of the place. This whole thing’s been a fuck-up from the start. No offence.’

I scanned the room, the rogues’ gallery of whiteboards lined up along the wall beneath the windows, each plastered haphazardly with photographs, names, dates, but nothing, as far as I could see, of any real substance.

On one, the sorry, bedraggled mugshots of Kerry Farrow and Samantha Halloran, two working girls at the bottom of their profession and the top of their narcotic dependency, and both missing within weeks of each other. Fairey and I, at the height of our differences, had been working on Kerry’s disappearance when I was seconded to the search for Erica Shaw.

Erica’s face, full and pouting and framed by a long, dark mass of tight curls, shared a board with her best friend Sarah Abbott and former schoolmate Caroline Gray – both of them tall, slender, high-cheekboned and blonde and missing from within a couple of miles and less than a week of one another – and Rachel Murray, who wasn’t missing at all when she died. Below them, a column of faces; girls of a similar age, with glowing hair and sparkling eyes and perfect white teeth beaming from school photos and portfolio shots. Beside each, a town: Reading. Bristol. Portsmouth. Guildford. Bradford. Chelmsford. A lot of Fords, I noted, shuddering at the photo of the white Transit van beside the e-fit of That Man on the third board.

Nothing in that face I recognised, or in the half-dozen views below it of the inside of the metal cage I now knew to be secreted under his garage. But there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that whoever and wherever he was, he was behind those girls’ disappearances.

On the fourth board, Mark Boon. A fright of pumpkin orange hair and an impetuous sneer. And below, with a gashed cheek and bloodshot eyes, the same face staring up from the floor, dark and unseeing atop a body that faced resolutely down.

And finally, blown up from their personnel files, Fairey and Keith’s ID photos, the only note below their names a giant black question mark in an emphatically drawn circle.

‘Do you want to talk me through it?’ I said.

Jenny nodded. ‘I’ll get us a coffee first though, yeah?’

‘Tell me what you saw this morning,’ she said, sipping from a mug that read Despite the look on my face, you’re still talking.

My mug had disappeared from the kitchen, so she’d given me one that said I’m not dead yet, which made me laugh, but not in a good way. ‘It’s John’s car,’ I said. ‘Whether the remains are his and Julian’s, I have no idea. It’s a bootful of calcined bone, shards of it, bits and pieces. Whether it’s two bodies’ worth, or whether it’ll even be possible to piece it all back together, God only knows. Either way, it’s obviously a deliberate act, I’d say fuelled by a lot of accelerant.

I don’t know what temperature you need to melt steel and cremate bodies, that’s not my field, but it was a hell of a fire. Twisted the whole frame of the car. And, you know, what or whoever burned up in there, they were in the boot. So there’s that.’

Jenny nodded quietly, her eyes dark, her thoughts her own. I sipped my coffee. It needed more sugar and less milk, though I was sure I’d watched her make it the same way she always had.

‘Also, we’ve got tyre tracks,’ I said, swiping open my phone and loading the photo to show her. ‘At the burn site. Landowner says they’re nothing to do with him, but they’re clear; clear enough to get a brand and size, at least. Sandra’s got Jim processing them. May give us something.’

‘What’s your instinct?’

‘I don’t know.’ My instinct was still in intensive care, is what it felt like. ‘How is it that we weren’t able to track John and Julian?’ I asked her.

‘We were,’ she said. ‘There was no tracker in the car, but we pinpointed the phone signals as soon as we knew they were missing. They were at that house the day before you—’ Her eyes flicked away for the briefest moment. The slightest hitch in her breath. ‘Before what happened. But the last signals came from right here, at five in the afternoon. We knew that before it all went down, I think.’

We might have done. ‘I don’t remember,’ I said, and left it at that.

‘No,’ she nodded. ‘Well, that’s yet another thing that muddies the waters. They were out there, but as far as we know they came back. Just, nobody ever saw them again.’

I didn’t know what that meant, or why it only cemented the connection in my head, but it did. I studied the e-fit again. It was utterly generic. Just a nothing face. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth. A chin. Some hair. ‘How,’ I said, ‘can we not have a better picture than that? It could be anyone.’