Dead Girls Read online

  I may not remember everything, but I know he won’t hurt anyone else.

  I won’t let him.

  It’s been two months since a serial killer brutally attacked police detective Alisha Green and left her for dead. Two months since she could effortlessly recall simple things, since her mind felt remotely sound. The nameless killer thinks he knows her, thinks she’s just another dead girl among many. Ali Green plans to show him he’s dead wrong about that.

  Ali has two enemies now: the dangerous man she’s hunting and her own failing memory. As explosive new evidence comes to light and conflicting accounts from a witness and a surviving victim threaten both her investigation and her credibility, she begins to question what is and isn’t real. And now Ali has no choice but to remember the past...before it buries her.

  A hypnotically gripping thriller that proves international bestselling author Graeme Cameron is one of the most unique voices in contemporary fiction today.

  “Chilling [and] blackly humorous...Normal marks Cameron out as one to watch.” —Daily Express, 4 stars

  “Original and gripping.” —Clare Mackintosh, New York Times bestselling author, on Normal

  Praise for Normal

  “Hypnotic and chilling—you won’t forget this in a hurry.”

  —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Original and gripping.”

  —Clare Mackintosh, New York Times bestselling author

  “This is simply a brilliant book—utterly compelling and unforgettable. I loved it.”

  —Jamie Mason, author of Three Graves Full and Monday’s Lie

  “Chilling [and] blackly humorous...Normal marks Cameron out as one to watch.”

  —Daily Express (4 stars)

  “A black comedy...a painfully funny story.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Highly unusual [and] darkly humorous...a big departure from the standard serial killer trope.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Normal is a wild and fun yet serious debut sure to garner many fans.”

  —The Oklahoman

  “Brilliant...original and hilarious...this is a book that will have you rooting for a psychopath and hating yourself for it.”

  —BarnesAndNoble.com

  Also by Graeme Cameron

  Normal

  DEAD GIRLS

  Graeme Cameron

  For Helen Cadbury, the best and bravest

  And

  For Derek

  Contents

  Introduction

  Half Title Page

  Episode 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Episode 2

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Meanwhile...

  Episode 3

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Episode 4

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Episode 5

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Episode 6

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Normal by Graeme Cameron

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Detective Sergeant Eli Diaz, formerly of Thetford CID, latterly seconded to the Major Investigation Team at police headquarters, and until today engaged in the search for a number of young women missing from across the county, took a moment to consider the redundancy of his statement.

  He was standing at the foot of a metal-framed single bed bolted into the ground through the black rubber floor. The bed was in a steel mesh cage some twenty feet across, the cage in a basement, the basement concealed beneath a garage, the garage nestled beside a stone cottage in a twenty-acre clearing in the forest.

  It belonged to a man largely suspected, at least until that moment, of harboring Erica Shaw, formerly a missing young woman, latterly upgraded to the status of fugitive and last seen in front of the garage an hour ago, shooting one person dead and attempting to kill two of Eli’s fellow detectives before effecting her escape.

  And now one of those detectives, Sergeant Ali Green, formerly of Norwich CID, latterly of the aforementioned Major Investigation Team and currently somewhere up there alone with that man, was not answering her phone.

  Diaz snatched up his own phone from the floor where he’d thrown it and made for the door of the cage, throwing an afterthought of a wave at a constable who was about to feel very alone and decidedly uneasy. “Keep trying to call her,” he barked.

  He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the splintering pain in his skull from misjudging the height of the false cupboard as he burst through into the garage.

  “Green,” he snapped, seizing on the first pair of eyes to meet his own—one of the DCs from Norwich Road, he thought. Winters or Winterbourne or something. “Have you seen Ali Green?”

  A shrug. A confused shake of the head. A voice from somewhere behind him: “She’s with the owner. They were heading to the house.”

  “Fuck.” Less a word than a grunt, choked by panic. Diaz bolted from the garage into chaos and driving rain, shouldering aside the crime scene techs struggling to erect a white tent over the body on the drive, forgetting his breathing, legs out of sync, staggering at full tilt toward the house, nothing like the machine he imagined himself on his morning run, as though the absence of Lycra and trainers and a Fitbit reduced him to a gangly, stumbling foal.

  He knew before he got there that he was out of control and wasn’t going to stop, that if the door didn’t break when he hit it, then this was going to hurt.

  It was ajar. He wasn’t expecting that. It cannoned back on its hinges, barely slowing his progress, and his feet found a bundle of coats and an overturned hat stand and then he was sliding on his face across the hallway, breath punched out of his lungs, skin peeling from his nose and elbows and knees.

  He didn’t notice the pain. Fear had him on his feet and pushing off from the wall that had further dented his head and he whirled around from door to door, from kitchen to stairs to living room.

  He stopped dead still and held his breath, strained his ears over the roar of the rain and the chatter of radios and uniforms and diesel engines.

  Silence.

  He gambled on the kitchen, sliding to the edge of the door frame and peering inside. Empty. Chair upturned. A slippery crimson mess on the splintered oak floor. His stomach flipped and he tasted bile in his throat. Christ, no, what did he do to her?

  Opposite the kitchen, the living room. The door open. A sense of something inside. A sofa. A spray of dark hair. Stillness.

  Diaz panted three painful breaths and, with one eye on the top of the stairs, edged to the door, darting his head just far enough inside to get a snapshot of the room.

  Empty, except for her.

  “Shit,” he muttered. His back to the hallwa
y. His ears wide open. “Green?”

  No reply.

  “Ali?” he snapped, loud enough to startle himself.

  Nothing.

  He blew out the adrenaline from his lungs. Checked the stairs again. Winced at the pain in his head. Squeezed his fingers into his palms and nodded some kind of vain self-encouragement. Then he said, “It’s okay, I’m here,” and stepped inside the room.

  It was cold. Cold, and still, and quiet. The television was on, but it wasn’t regular programming; it was something else, and Diaz knew what from a single glance. It was a high-definition feed from inside the cage, where the constable he’d just left behind was still poking at his phone, presumably searching for a number he didn’t have.

  It was dark, too. The curtains were drawn across both of the windows, one to the front and one to the side, and the lamps were off and the fire unlit and everything was shadow—the hulking bookcases overstuffed with books and trinkets and paperwork, the corner tables with their strange disfigurines, the long, low couch and the wingback chairs and the coffee table with the two full mugs and the solitary mobile phone—everything but the TV screen and the dome of light that it cast, unflickering but dancing with particles of dust, and reflected as two tiny pinpricks of silver in Ali Green’s eyes.

  They were open, but vague, unfocused. Her legs had fallen open and her hands lay at her sides, fingers curled into her upturned palms, and her hair was splayed roughly over the back of the sofa where she’d slumped down in her seat. Her mouth was open and as Diaz knelt, cursing, between her knees, he could see the pool of saliva around her tongue and hear it bubbling in her throat as she took each shallow, unsteady breath.

  “Ali,” he whispered, suddenly painfully aware of the silence and the need to preserve it, to hear whatever small sound she might make, should it be her last. “Can you hear me?” He placed a hand on her arm and could feel a trembling that he couldn’t see, a vibration almost, from deep inside her somewhere, but she didn’t respond, didn’t so much as blink.

  He leaned in closer then, moved to put his lips to her ear, but the blood stopped him. A thin trail, trickling through the neat channel between her ear—such delicate ears, he noted, and pointed sweetly at the top, like pixie ears—and the back of her jaw, and down the side of her neck and onto the collar of her shirt, to bloom inside her jacket.

  He painfully swallowed his breath and rocked back on his haunches and pulled out his phone from his pocket and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay, Ali, you’re going to be okay,” as calmly as he could, as though he believed it. And he punched in the code to unlock the phone, and keyed in the number to summon help, and he looked up into her eyes and was startled to see that she was looking right back at him in piercing focus, and her lips were moving as though she were trying to speak, and he let the phone drift away from his ear as he nodded and said, “You’re okay,” and placed a comforting hand on her knee.

  “B—” she whispered. “B—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, shaking his head and nodding at the same time and hearing the voice on the other end of the phone and shushing and telling her, “Help’s coming. Just relax, you’ll be okay. We’re going to find him.”

  And he raised the phone back to his ear, and the voice on the phone said, “Sarge?” and Ali Green said, “Beh—” and a single tear rolled down her cheek, and his breath caught in his throat, and in the second before she closed her eyes, one of the tiny spots of silver turned black.

  And all he could think of to say was, “He’s behind me, isn’t he.”

  DEAD GIRLS

  Graeme Cameron

  Episode 1

  Chapter 1

  Two Months Later

  It’s funny, isn’t it, how your mind can always find a way to surprise you? Take mine, for example. After thirty-four years together, I like to think I know it pretty well. And having spent the whole of my childhood being forcibly drummed into myself, and most of my adult life breaking my back to conform to it, God knows I should. And yet, here I was with an unexpected dilemma.

  I could hear my phone ringing over the splashing and thumping coming from the bathroom, and I knew that at six in the morning the call was likely important enough that I should answer it. But I didn’t know where I’d left it, and that was a problem.

  Normally, like anyone else, I’d crawl out of bed, take a moment to steady myself and for my head to stop spinning, and I’d assume I’d left it in my bag and that my bag was in the lounge, and I’d go find it. And if it wasn’t there and had stopped ringing, I’d call it from the house phone and sooner or later I’d track it down and return the call and receive some bad news and then drink a gallon of coffee in the vain hope that it might make me somewhat safe to drive, and I’d get dressed in a hurry and be on my way.

  But I couldn’t do that, not this morning. For one thing, unlike most mornings, I was completely naked under the duvet, and the one eye I could open was so blurry and achy that I couldn’t see any of my clothes. Which, given the mortifying likelihood of bumping into whoever was about to jump out of the shower, meant wrapping myself in a king-size quilt and stumbling around trying to figure out the layout of this house, which, I dimly realized, wasn’t mine.

  And now the ringing had stopped, and the light shafting through the thin blind was a dagger to my skull, and then the shower was abruptly silent and my heart began to thump against my ribs and all I could think to do was pull the covers over my head and pretend I didn’t exist.

  I don’t know how long I waited. I heard footsteps on the landing, the creaking of stairs, assorted kitchen clangs and clunks and tinkles. My phone again. Damn it. And then the footsteps coming back up the stairs, and the ringing getting louder, and, oh God, it was coming into the room.

  “Hmm.”

  I froze.

  “Well I’m sure she was in here a few minutes ago.” A woman’s voice, faintly familiar. “Where on earth could she be?”

  Dazed now, utterly confused. The phone still ringing. A clunk above my head—a mug on the table? A weight beside me, the edge of the bed sagging beneath it, pulling me toward it.

  “Are you alive under there?”

  I took three breaths, and nodded.

  “Are you nodding?”

  I shook my head, and heard a giggle.

  “There’s coffee here. And your phone’s ringing.”

  “I know,” I croaked. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll just leave it here for you. Are you hungry?”

  I wasn’t sure. Horror kind of feels like hunger, right? “Probably.”

  “Bathroom’s free,” she said, and patted my hip through the duvet. “I’ll let you answer that.” Then she stood up and was gone.

  I unscrewed my eyes and eased the duvet aside. Blinked the blinding light out of them. There was a plain green mug steaming on the bedside table, face cream and biscuits and tissues and a library book shoved aside to make room. And on the floor beside the bed, my bag, jangling incessantly.

  I reached down, hissing away a twinge in my back, and dug out my phone. I begged it to stop ringing, but someone was unshakably determined to speak to me. Kevin, as it turned out. I answered. “Kevin.” I sighed.

  “Ali,” said Kevin, “it’s Kevin.” Which I knew. “Where are you?”

  I have no fucking idea. “What do you mean, where am I? I’m in bed. It’s fuck-off o’clock in the morning. What do you want?”

  “It’s 6:18,” he said, “the sun’s been up for over an hour and you need to be here twenty minutes ago.”

  From the gentle mooing in the background, I deduced that he was most likely overdramatizing. “I can hear cows.” I yawned, and peeked inside the little drawer of the bedside table. It was full of hair ties and old sweets, pastel-colored biros and Blu Tack and various kinds of charger.

  “I’m standing in a field.”

  “Sounds thri
lling,” I said, “but you’ve got the wrong Monday. I’m not back until next week.” I picked up the library book; The Good Girl, it was called. I cringed.

  “Not anymore.”

  “I think you’ll find I am.” I laughed. Laughing made my forehead throb. My mouth tasted like a badger’s arse. “I only saw Occy Health on Friday. I’m still off sick, I’m in bed, I’ve got another headache, which you’ve just given me, I’ve got a million and one things to do today, none of which involve farm animals, I’m desperate for a wee and unless the next thing you say to me is ‘I’m sorry, Ali, pret—’ no, ‘Sarge. I’m sorry, Sarge, pretend I never rang, take care of yourself, have a good weekend,’ I swear to God I’m going to hunt you down and beat you savagely about the face and neck. In a week.” She was using her library card as a bookmark. It said, Edith Macfarlane on it. Christ on a bike, I knew her.

  “I am sorry,” he sniggered as my heart sank further into my bottom. “DCI says otherwise. I thought you’d had a call already, but I guess I’m not surprised. Whatever, this one’s kind of got your name on it.” He waited for what seemed like days for me to ask him what he meant, but it was quite obviously nothing I wanted to hear, so I didn’t. Also, I was holding my breath in an effort not to wet the bed. Finally, he said, “We’ve found John Fairey.”

  And I exhaled.

  * * *

  The bathroom was still warm, the window and the mirror still steamed over from Edith’s tenure. The dregs of her bathwater lingered in the bottom of the tub, sending my feet aslither as I cranked open the shower. I braced myself against the tile, gritted my teeth through the cycle of polar-cold and scar-hot until the water settled on a comfortable shade of warm. I scrubbed myself with Edith’s soap until the knot of panic began to unravel. Lathered with Edith’s shampoo. I rinsed the strands of Edith’s hair from my fingers as they attracted to me from Edith’s conditioner bottle. I would have used Edith’s facial scrub, but there was only a small squeeze left in the tube. Instead, barely five minutes after I got in, I shut off the water and, in spite of it still being damp, dried myself with Edith’s towel.