Dead Girls Read online

  “I’m fine. No panic. Have you heard from Jen or Kevin yet?”

  “No, I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  I tried to keep my voice steady; did a better job than usual. “Do me a favor,” I said. “See if you can get a ping off her car if it’s tracked, or failing that, either of their phones. Straight through to mine, if you can.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “You are the best,” I said, and hung up without saying goodbye, like all the cool cops do. I didn’t feel very cool, though. I felt sick. “Annie,” I said. “Get your shoes on. Something’s happened to Jen and Kevin.”

  Erica frowned and reached for her bag despite not being invited.

  Annie looked down at the shoes she was already wearing, turned the color of swamp water, and threw up on them.

  “That’s normal too,” said Erica.

  I looked at the pair of them, and at myself in the mirror, and tried very, very hard not to cry.

  Chapter 32

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  I wasn’t, not even remotely, so I looked at Erica in the rearview mirror and said, “It’s the only idea,” which I realized answered the question as well as if I’d just said, “No.”

  * * *

  We’d been five minutes from headquarters with our stories finally straight when Dan rang.

  “They’re on the marsh at Two Mile Bottom,” he said. “There’s a Vodafone mast right across the road. Last ping came from there about twenty minutes ago. Probably left their phones in the car.”

  My gut feeling told me that wasn’t what had happened, but I couldn’t let myself imagine that any Bad Thing had happened, not with my harsh words to Jenny still bouncing around in my head. Of all the things to be able to remember, that was simultaneously both the most and the least helpful; it made sense of Jenny being at the crime scene, but if anything had happened to her, then it was on my head, and I really didn’t want to think about that.

  In any case, they were either alive and fine and hadn’t heard their phones ringing, or they were dead; That Man didn’t waste time standing around explaining his dastardly plan. He’d have cut their throats through to the bone and left them where they fell.

  Nevertheless, the plan changed, and I mashed the pedal to the metal and set a course for the center of the forest.

  * * *

  There were vehicles parked on the access road: two CSI vans, a support unit and a panda car. Neither Jenny’s BMW nor any of the unmarked pool cars were anywhere to be seen.

  I pulled the car up to the head of the path leading into the flint pit and told Annie to go check. Her shoes were already wet, after all.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Erica, from the backseat—the first words she’d uttered since Dan had called.

  I didn’t answer. I waited for Annie to come back and tell me what I already knew: no one had seen Jenny or Kevin all morning. “We’re looking for bodies now, aren’t we?” she said.

  I didn’t answer that, either, though I thought she was probably right. Nor did I get out and walk up the hill to take a long, meaningful look over the treetops to the house in the distance. I just brought up the map on my phone and pinpointed the house and gambled on the fastest way of getting there.

  * * *

  The track ran parallel to the railway line and the river, the forest both looming beyond and flashing past my window at sixty miles an hour. Passing the row of shuttered railway cottages on the left, I hit the brakes and swung the Alfa across a narrow footpath and a clump of protruding tree roots and squared it against the pedestrian tunnel under the tracks. For a brief, gutting moment I didn’t think it was going to fit, but give or take some paint on my already-scuffed door mirror, I managed to squeeze it through.

  “Left,” Annie said, pointing my phone to the right.

  I stopped the car. “My left or your left?”

  “That way.”

  I went right, blowing down weeds and startling a flock of Highland cattle, pinning the throttle open just far enough that the pitch and roll of the road felt only mildly unsafe until I reached a T-junction. “That way?”

  Annie opened her eyes and checked the screen. “Yeah, then again at the next turn.”

  I didn’t need directions after that. There was no mistaking the mouth of that driveway, or the shade of the darkness as it curled away into the trees.

  “Okay,” I said, the car idling between the gateposts. I tried not to think about my pulse or my breathing or the smell of burned oil and brake dust or Annie’s trembling hands or Erica’s wild, frightened eyes in the mirror or the open gate or the menacing shadows or the memory of what had happened the last time I’d driven into them. I had no idea of what we were going to find at the end of the drive. Maybe two dead police officers. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe I’d completely lost the plot. Maybe I was about to walk into a trap. Maybe I should call for backup, and embarrass myself even further. Maybe I was just sitting in a car with a fugitive and a corrupt alcoholic detective and the joke was entirely on me.

  “Ali?”

  I looked at Annie, aware that I’d probably said all that out loud. “I guess there’s one way to find out, right?”

  She nodded.

  Erica sighed from the backseat. Leaned forward and poked her startlingly sweat-drenched face between us. “Are we nearly there yet?” she said. Her mouth was joking, but her eyes most certainly weren’t.

  * * *

  The high sun was no match for these woods. They were darker than I remembered, dense at the top and dense at the bottom with ferns and brambles, dead branches and fallen trunks. You could hide pretty much anything you liked in there and no one would ever find it.

  That thought made me shudder even more than the sudden cold inside the car, so I shut it out of my mind and concentrated on following the track. Behind me, Erica was pale and deathly silent, her eyes darting between the trees, probing the shadows, peering up to look for the sky. I dreaded to think what those eyes had seen in this place. Sooner or later I’d have to ask her, or someone like me would, and she’d have to see it all over again. She was strong, there was no doubt about that, but her strength was neither here nor there. I’d signed up, implicitly at least, for what I’d been through. Erica had signed up for a day out with her best friend, and she’d been punished for it every day since.

  And Annie? Well, Annie had signed on the same dotted line I had. Wherever it had gone wrong for her, whatever had driven her to the drink that had led her here, and whatever I thought about the way she’d dealt with it, she knew she’d done wrong, and I knew she’d find a way to atone for it without my interference.

  And that thought filled me with dread, too, because on top of everything else I knew, however much I tried to kid myself, however much I ran the numbers in my aching head, I knew in my gut that we were driving once more into a situation for which we weren’t remotely prepared.

  Erica knew it, too. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  Annie reached over her shoulder, offering her hand, and Erica took it.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “Nothing’s going to happen. Just stay in the car and if anything’s even slightly out of place we’ll hunker down and call in backup. And if anything does happen, don’t hang about, just get to the police station in town. You’ll be okay, I promise.”

  I caught her eye in the mirror. She wasn’t stupid—she knew I couldn’t promise that—but she smiled anyway, and said, “Okay.”

  And then there was light at the end of the tunnel. The trees ended abruptly and the sun blazed into the car, blinding me for a second. I blinked it away, squinted out at the house as its familiar ordinariness spread across the windscreen. I clocked the open door as I brought the car to a halt and silenced the engine. As my stomach began its descent toward my pelvic floor
, I turned my head and took in the missing garage door and the tangled wreckage of the white BMW. I saw the open boot and the blood smeared across the rear bumper, the shattered glass and the crumpled wing and the wheel folded in at an awkward angle. I saw a flash of That Man’s van, in the warehouse at headquarters—the incongruous stillness, the explosion of violence frozen in place. And then it was me who was frozen in place, staring at the car, dragging my unwilling eyes toward the door of the house, the door I’d walked in through and been carried out of, and I was suddenly, horribly aware that I was belted into my seat, entirely vulnerable to whatever horror might hence unleash itself.

  There was a stunned silence in the car for a long, tense moment.

  Erica was the first to take a loud, gasping breath. Annie was the first to say, “Oh, fuck.” And I was the first to know someone was going to die.

  Chapter 33

  “Okay, so we call for backup.”

  I stared at the door. Counted ten seconds, listening to the blood rushing through my head. Annie was right. Call for backup—that was what I’d said. I nodded, tried to find the words to agree, but my hand was already on the door handle and all that came out was, “Erica, stay in the car.”

  “Fuck no,” she said, scrambling out faster than I had, her feet on the ground before Annie was even out of her seat belt. “We’re already a walking horror-film cliché. You’re not leaving me alone. We’re not splitting up. If anyone’s going in there, we all are.”

  I ducked back into the car and took the revolver from the glove box. Cracked it open and took the bullet from my pocket and slotted it into the chamber. Turned the cylinder to next-up the round and clicked it shut. “I’ve told you what I want you to do,” I said. “If you don’t do it, it’s on you.”

  “What else is new?”

  Annie came around the car as I scanned the windows, the tree line, the distinctly uninviting barn, before starting for the garage. I kept to the left, indicating to Annie to watch the side wall of the building while I peered into the darkness within.

  “I don’t like this,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. “None of us like it. We’re only going to check the car so we know what we’re dealing with. Okay?”

  “What if there’s no one in there?”

  “Then we’re too bloody late,” I said, and raised the revolver and pivoted around the door frame and pressed my back to the wall and swept the garage with the gun sight. “Okay, it’s clear.” I crossed to the BMW, keeping the gun trained at first on the open boot and then, as I sidestepped the rear of the car, each of the windows in turn. There was no one inside. “Fuck,” I said.

  The BMW almost looked like an old-school motorway patrol car, a thick red stripe running most of the length of its bright white flank. Someone had lost a lot of blood.

  “What’s that?” Erica, huddled beside me, pointed at the driver’s door, just ahead of the handle, where the smear of blood ended in what looked for all the world like an arrow head.

  The air fell thick with dread as three heads turned to the pitch-dark opening in the garage wall.

  Annie leaned in close and whispered, “What’s in there?”

  “That’ll be my room.” Erica took two steps toward the doorway before I managed to catch her arm.

  “Trap,” I said, and held her back as I edged quietly to the threshold. I touched a finger to my lips and held my breath and listened.

  Birds. Annie, breathing. My own heartbeat.

  Erica tapped my shoulder and mimed reaching around the doorway and flicking a switch. I closed my eyes and listened some more, to the hairs on my neck and the tingling in my spine. There was someone there; I was almost sure of it. Right on the other side of that wall, listening, holding their breath, waiting to cut off whatever part of me was first through the door. I could feel it.

  I motioned for Annie and Erica to stand back, and then I took a step away from the wall and held the gun close to the door frame and cocked the hammer. Took three deep breaths and summoned my voice.

  “Armed police,” I said, loud enough to startle all three of us. “Place your weapon on the ground where I can see it, and come out slowly, hands-first.” I had no idea if that was right; I’m not authorized to carry a gun, and if I had to fire it I’d be in a world of shit, but at that moment I didn’t care. Every nerve in my body was on edge, every muscle rigid, my eyes focused on the ridge of the revolver and the darkness beyond, an urgent memo scrolling through my brain: Check before you shoot. Check before you shoot. Check before you shoot.

  No movement. No sound.

  “I repeat. Throw down whatever you’re holding, and follow your hands slowly out the door.”

  Nothing.

  I looked back to Annie and jabbed a finger at the car outside and mouthed the word torch. She nodded and Erica watched her as she darted out to the Alfa, grabbed the Maglite from the glove box and hurried back inside. I took another step back and gestured to her to take my position against the wall.

  Silently, “Okay?”

  Nod.

  “Three. Two. One.”

  Annie flicked on the torch and angled it around the frame, bathing the stairwell in sudden and blinding light as I stepped in and swung the gun around the corner, finger tight on the trigger, heart pounding, ears already humming in anticipation.

  There was no one there.

  I reached in and flicked on the light switch and waved to Annie to turn off the flashlight. Stood for a moment, just breathing and trying not to succumb to the dizziness threatening to tip me down the thick carpeted stairs. I kept the gun trained on the doorway at the bottom, the room beyond now filled with bright white light. “Kevin?” I yelled. “Jenny?”

  Nothing.

  I started down the stairs, instinctively spreading my weight and rolling my feet, though I knew the steps were concrete and wouldn’t creak. I could feel Erica behind me, and hear Annie’s unsteady breath behind her. A chill ran through me from bottom to top and lodged my heart in my throat. This was wrong. We shouldn’t be here. Whoever wasn’t hiding behind that wall was waiting for me at the bottom of these stairs. And I was scared.

  And then, halfway down, a faint gurgling groan from below. I recoiled. Erica hit me from behind and grabbed my shoulders to stop me from falling.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced a breath and said, “Who’s there?” in a trembling voice that made me hate myself.

  Another wet groan, this time with what sounded like a “Help” attached.

  “Who’s down there?”

  A cough. “Ali?”

  Jesus. “Kevin?”

  “Help.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Alone... Det-Detective constable f-four-seven-t-two... K-Kevin McManus. Assistance r-r...” He gurgled again, coughed up what I guessed was a puddle of blood. “Assistance required,” he said.

  Good enough. I bolted to the bottom of the stairs, swung the gun around the door in a cursory sweep and stopped dead in my tracks.

  I’d never seen the cage before. Pictures, yes, but I’d learned about it from my hospital bed. It was bigger than I’d imagined, dominating the space. I’ve stayed in far smaller hotel rooms with worse facilities, although they generally had windows and the option to check out, and none of them had had their fixtures and fittings replaced with the shredded remains of my colleague.

  “Annie, watch the stairs. Kevin, we’re here.” I went to him, tried the latch. No go.

  “You need the key,” Kevin said.

  I took in the blood-soaked shoe, the smudged stain soaking into the concrete, the sticky handprints. And his face. Jesus Christ, what had he done to his face? His lower jaw was split in two, his chin hanging at a crooked angle, the skin slipping away from the bone. His face was entirely covered in blood, and it was oozing out from the crack below his mouth at a worrying rate. “Fuc
king hell. Okay, where is it? And where’s Jenny?”

  “I don’t know. He took her.” He brought his right arm out from under him, leaving a new trail of drips from the wide-open gash in his palm. A bunch of keys hooked over his third finger. The fourth one missing. “I don’t know which one,” he muttered.

  Erica knelt by my side and said, “Hi, Kevin.”

  He looked up at her, blinking blood from his eyes, and attempted a smile. “Hi, Erica.”

  “Show me the keys,” she said. “Spread them out.”

  He nodded and dropped the bunch onto the floor and began fanning them with his fingertip.

  I put my arm across her shoulders and asked if she was okay. She nodded. “I need to call an ambulance,” I said.

  Kevin coughed, spraying flecks of blood, and said, “He might still be here.”

  I considered that for a second, and knew there was nothing much I could do about it. I needed to get backup out here an hour ago, and I needed to go outside for a signal. “Erica, listen. Annie and I will be right upstairs, okay? If he is here, we’ll be right between you and him. Get this door unlocked, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Erica was shaking—God knows what she felt, being down in that basement—but she agreed.

  I picked up the gun and let it lead Annie and me back up the stairs, backs to the wall, hyperalert still to every corner and shadow. I skirted Jenny’s car, covering every square inch of the floor with the revolver until I was satisfied the garage was empty.

  “He’s not going to make it, is he?”

  I kept to the east wall, out of sight of the house, and took out my phone and dialed the number. “I don’t know. We need to clear this place and find Jenny.”

  The phone rang, startling us both. Jenny’s name flashed across the screen.

  “Shitting hell.” I swiped the answer button. “Jen? Where the hell are you?”

  A pause. A voice, alien, and yet horribly familiar. “She can’t come to the phone right now.”

  The floor fell away from beneath my feet, leaving me floating, spinning, flailing in space. My nerves lit up like fireworks, sparks and crackles and a thousand tiny explosions spreading through my body from the center out in waves. I felt myself falling, though my eyes told me I was petrified, feet welded to the floor, muscles locked, unmoving.