Dead Girls Read online

“The thing is,” Annie said, warming to her theme, “you told me you needed that picture because all you had relating to Fairey and Keith was the presence of that van at the crime scene. And from what you’re saying, there’s more evidence that proves Erica was walking around free all the time she was missing than that she wasn’t. So what have you actually got on this Reed character? What can you prove he did? You’ve got, what, some CCTV of his van close to where one of those girls went missing?” She leaned in and spun the photo to face me. “But it doesn’t tell you who was driving it, does it?”

  Well, despite the shiver running through me, I could answer that one. “He attacked me,” I said. “And he cut Eli Diaz’s throat so deep he almost decapitated him. That’s what we’ve got on him.”

  Annie considered that for a few moments while I silently willed her to get onside, though I knew deep down she wasn’t going to. I’d sat beside her as she’d cross-referenced maps and input location data into the ViPER system. She’d hit a string of incorrect keys and had to back out again, copied the wrong set of coordinates and caused an error. To be honest I’d had little confidence in her ability to find anything, even if there were anything to be found.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I wasn’t expecting to be doing this today. It’s been a while.”

  “They sprung it on you, huh?” I’d laughed, trying to make her feel more at ease.

  “Well, sort of. I got my emails mixed up, thought I was here for something else. Guv insists he left me voicemails, but I don’t know where. Not on my phone at any rate. So, yeah, surprise secondment. Change of plan.” She’d stopped short of expressing her displeasure at the situation, but I’d known it was burning bright.

  “Same old story,” I’d said. “I came in here one morning and the first thing my old DCI said was, ‘You’re not working with Fairey anymore.’ Guess that was no bad thing, though, considering.”

  We’d shared a moment’s silence then, while we’d waited for ViPER to do whatever it is that ViPER does. And then it had thrown up a spreadsheet of results from the list of plates Annie had entered for the locations she’d selected. Or result, to be more precise. One result, with a pin-sharp image attached.

  I’d sucked in my breath and held it there until I saw stars, desperately trying to make sense of it, scrabbling for the words I was going to use to mitigate it in front of Jenny.

  Annie, on the other hand, had visibly relaxed, and had looked a strange kind of satisfied when she’d set off for the printer.

  Now, she quietly conceded my point and retreated into deep thought.

  “Open mind,” Jenny said. “That’s what we all need to have on this. Right now, from where I’m sitting, it’s clear that Erica was at least complicit in what happened to John and Julian, which obviously raises questions about what else she’s been complicit in, and to what extent. We know that she assaulted both Kevin and you, Ali, and potentially would have killed you if it weren’t for Reed’s intervention. That in itself raises questions, given what we think happened immediately afterward, so the firs—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait wait wait. What do you mean, ‘what we think happened’?”

  “Okay,” she said, as Kevin uttered a little dry cough beside me. “What we know is that there was one other person besides you in the room when Eli was killed. What we think is that that person was Reed.”

  I stopped breathing again. She couldn’t be, could she? She couldn’t be suggesting that anyone other than That Man was responsible for what happened to Eli and me? Surely?

  I sensed three pairs of eyes swivel toward Erica’s face in the photograph on the desk, and had to swallow the scream that rose in my throat. “You’re fucking joking, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Ali,” Kevin began, “Jen’s just talking about what we can prove and what we can’t—”

  I was out of the room before he finished his sentence.

  * * *

  Annie found me in the car park, halfway through my third cigarette. She lit one of her own and stood beside me silently for a moment, not smoking it, just letting it burn. Eventually, she flicked an inch of ash onto the floor and took another inch in one long drag and stubbed it out with her heel and said, “I’m sorry if I pissed you off.”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “This investigation is a joke anyway,” I said. “Some days I feel like I’m the only one here trying to catch a serial killer.”

  “Suspected serial killer,” she said.

  I gave her a death stare as I finished my cigarette. She held it, but I could see the nervousness in her eyes. I didn’t shout, but I did have a question. “Why are you so keen for him to be innocent?”

  “What do you mean?” She shook another cigarette out of her packet and slipped it between her lips; offered me one, which I took.

  “I mean I can’t figure you out,” I said, and let her light me up. “What’s your angle? You’ve been in the incident room. You’ve been briefed on the case. What do you see when you look at all this? What’s it all about, to you?”

  “I...”

  “Because to me, this is about at least four women in this county alone who are still missing, and it’s about the man who abducted and murdered them. The same man who nearly killed me. But I saw your face in that meeting. You’re ready to pin everything on a twenty-year-old girl who was kept in a cage for three months. Why?”

  Annie blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth and shook her head. “I was just saying what I saw,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. The evidence is what it is, that’s all.”

  I ignored her, because frankly I was angry with everyone and everything and it wouldn’t have mattered what she’d said at that point. “I’ll tell you why,” I spat, and she flinched noticeably but I told her anyway. “Because the fucking media take a man like this and they paint him as some kind of dark fucking folk hero, all sexy and mysterious, and they give him a cool-sounding name that everyone’ll remember for years after they’ve forgotten the names of all the poor girls he raped and tortured and cut into pieces, because you know what? Nobody likes a rapist or a murderer, do they, but everyone loves a serial killer. Everyone wants the handsome, charming psycho to get away with it in the end, and if he doesn’t, well, they’ll just write him love letters in prison, or write a fucking book about him. And meanwhile, where’s Sarah Abbott? Where’s Kerry Farrow? Sam Halloran? Caroline Grey? Where are they, Annie? Who the fuck cares about them?”

  I don’t know what I expected her to say, so when she took a long drag on her cigarette and threw it on the ground and said, “You don’t know anything about me,” it didn’t really take me aback.

  I just squeezed my throbbing temples and blew out the hot, furious breath from my lungs and said, “Right. Well, all you need to know about me is that I’m going to prove That Man is a killer, with or without anyone’s help.”

  “I believe you,” she said, which was more than I could say to myself. I’d seen the same evidence she had, after all. “But I also believe Erica Shaw isn’t as innocent as you want her to be.”

  Ouch.

  “DI Riley said to tell you she’s calling a press conference naming her as a suspect. She wants to talk to you in her office.”

  I waited for my heart to finish sinking, then stopped Annie as she turned to walk away. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know anything about you. I’m sorry for shouting.”

  “It’s alright,” she shrugged. “It’s bloody frustrating to believe something so strongly and have no one want to listen to you. Just...don’t assume things about me. Please.”

  I nodded.

  “To be honest,” she said, “I reckon Riley’s a bit of a wet blanket and I think she’d struggle to catch a cold. But then I don’t know anything about her, either.”

  I met her wink with a smile, and said, “Annie, I know I don’t really deserve it, but could you do
me a favor?”

  “Put the kettle on?”

  “Ha, no,” I said, although I’d have loved one. “Just...if she asks, could you tell her you didn’t see me?”

  Annie got a twinkle in her eye right then. That was when I knew I was going to like her—when she twinkled and smirked and slipped back in through the fire escape. It was also when I knew she was going to be trouble.

  Chapter 12

  I had five missed calls from Jenny by the time I got to Erica’s house, and two voicemails, which I had no intention of listening to. As much as I could have used some information, I didn’t need the questions or arguments that would come with it. Instead, I followed the sat nav to the address I’d pulled via my laptop in the car park, and checked my scribbled notes on the doorstep.

  Van/Fairey. Press conference. Erica guilty?

  The door opened as I rang the bell, and I was met by a face I recognized from a photograph in a newspaper, or from some other press conference on TV, or perhaps from the dark eyes I’d studied in school photos, and glimpsed in That Man’s hallway, and that had bored into my own in the desperate fight before Erica’s flight.

  “Mrs. Shaw?” I knew she’d long been remarried, but I wanted to see how she’d react to her daughter’s name. She frowned and shifted on her slippered feet, subtly but noticeably enough, broadening her shoulders and filling a little more of the door frame. Interesting.

  “Formerly,” she said.

  I held out my ID, mostly to show her I wasn’t a reporter. “I’m Detective Sergeant Green,” I told her, discreetly checking I was right about that as I folded my wallet. “I’ve got some news about Erica that I’d like to share with you, if I may.”

  I expected to see a flicker of fear on her face, some sign that she assumed the worst of a lone female officer solemnly bearing news of a missing daughter. But there was none. She simply stared into me for a long moment, watching me toss my gaze over her shoulder a few times to signal my wish to talk inside, before finally sighing and narrowing herself and stepping aside to let me through the door. “You’d better come in, then,” she said, quite aggressively loud in my ear as I squeezed past.

  She gestured me through to a living room that had at one time been generously spacious, back in the days before every inch of wall that wasn’t obscured by an oversize leather couch was hung with shelf upon shelf of brass ornaments. Brass kettles and brass figurines. Horse brasses and brass horses. Brass plates and brass...fish? It was so far from my own taste that I can’t even think of a tasteful way to describe it. Quite honestly, it was brassy as fuck.

  “Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee? Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name already.”

  Sunglasses. “Coffee would be great,” I smiled. “My name’s Ali.”

  She held out her hand, all but covered by the sleeve of her jumper in spite of the heat, and I shook it. Her grip was weak and slippery. “I’m Carla, by the way. How do you have it?”

  I knew that, of course, because I’d looked it up earlier and read it back to myself on the doorstep, but it only now occurred to me to wonder if her own mother, or perhaps her sister if she had one, was named Paula, or Edwina, or...well, I couldn’t think of another one, but, “White, no sugar,” because maybe that was how I had my coffee now, I wasn’t sure.

  She was gone for five minutes, during which time I sat on the squeaky couch and stared at brass things and tried to think of more girls’ names that were just boys’ names with an a on the end. I remembered one, and then eventually I came up with Philippa, by which time I’d forgotten the first one again and Carla was back with the coffee.

  “So,” she said, perching delicately beside me on the edge of her seat. “You said you had some news.”

  She quite obviously knew I wasn’t there to tell her that her daughter was dead. I wondered how as I blew across the top of my coffee and nodded, took a sip and had an instant craving for doughnuts. I’d probably have to stop at McDonald’s on the way back. “Is your husband home, Carla?” I asked.

  She looked a little startled at the question, but she kept her voice in check as she answered: “No, he’s at work. Which is for the best, I think, considering how you lot treated him when Erica—” She paused and took a breath, offered a polite smile. “He’s still a bit sore about being suspected of...you know.”

  I watched her rub a spot on her forearm with the faintest trace of a wince. “Of course,” I agreed, and wrote Abusive husband in my notebook at an awkward angle so that she couldn’t see it. “Erica has a sister, too, doesn’t she?”

  She bowed her head in a half nod. “Charlotte,” she said, and nothing else, which I took to mean she wanted to say more. I wrote that down, too. Also, bang went my theory, although...Charlie?

  “And Charlotte’s working as well, or...?”

  “So she says.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I just know she doesn’t like spending time here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not... This hasn’t been the happiest home lately, you know?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “When did you last see her?”

  “Yesterday morning. She slept here last night, but she crept in after I was asleep and left again before I got up.”

  “And when did you last speak to Erica?”

  She started to say something that began with “Sh—” then caught herself without an answer and so just flapped her mouth at me, just for a second, just long enough for me to know for sure that she was going to lie.

  “She hasn’t been in touch,” she said finally.

  “Since when?”

  “At all. Look, Miss... Ali, what’s this about?” Flustered. Flushed. Pants on fire.

  I gave it to her straight. “Some new evidence has come to light,” I said. “My boss is going to hold a press conference, probably this afternoon, where she’s more than likely going to offer a reward for information leading to Erica’s arrest on suspicion of the murder of two of my colleagues.”

  I drank some more coffee while I let that sink in. I wished I’d asked for sugar.

  “Now,” I said, watching Carla’s jaw clench and unclench and the vein throb in her temple. “To be honest, I don’t think she did it, either, but I’m in the minority. And to be fair, the evidence looks compelling, and I do have to wonder whether I’m just trying to convince myself she’s innocent for some bizarre and unfathomable reason, because she did technically point a gun at my head and pull the trigger at one point. So what I’m saying is, I need your help, Carla. And by help, I mean don’t bullshit me.”

  A spark of recognition. “You’re the one,” she said. “The one who got hurt.”

  “I just want to help her out of the mess she’s in,” I replied.

  She closed her eyes, and then covered her face with her hands, and when she took them away and opened her eyes again they were brimming with tears. “I don’t know where she is,” she whispered.

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” I said. “I’m asking when you last heard from her, and secondary to that, how you get in touch with her.”

  She started to shake then, and sob, and repeat herself over and over: “I don’t know where she is. I swear I haven’t heard from her. I don’t know where she is. Please believe me. I haven’t heard from her.” And so that’s how I came to hold Erica’s mother for a full half an hour while she soaked my shoulder in snot and tears and my sugarless coffee got cold and, once again, I came perilously close to wetting myself.

  * * *

  I could hear Carla loading the dishwasher downstairs when I came out of the bathroom, so of course I checked out Erica’s bedroom. There was, though, nothing remotely remarkable or even unexpected about it. It was just a room, with a plain old made-up bed, and a plain old bookcase full of plain old kids’ books and pulp paperback adventure stories, and a plain old dresser di
splaying a small collection of swimming trophies—aha, I was right!—and a plain old wardrobe, and a thin layer of dust on every surface.

  So I left. Carla wasn’t going to tell me anything, including where to find Charlotte, so there was no sense in me sticking around. I thanked her for the coffee, and gave her my card, which she earnestly promised to use if she heard anything, and asked her the quickest way to get to Sarah Abbott’s house so that I didn’t have to go online and pull the address.

  And so here I was, standing in the overgrown driveway of the Abbott family home—the last place Sarah was seen alive. The place for which Erica had set out on the morning they both disappeared.

  Nobody was home. I leaned on the bell for a while, but no one came, no dog barked, nothing happened. I peered in through the front window into a living room lined with framed photographs and certificates and greetings cards with curled edges, but devoid of any signs of life, except for the thick cobwebs hanging at both far corners of the ceiling.

  I turned and surveyed the street, which was as lifeless as the Abbott house. Nobody walking dogs, or hosing down cars, or scrubbing barbecues. Just a drab smattering of newly built houses, uniform in their deliberate differences and looking about as lived-in as the show home at the end of the road. This was truly a place where dreams came to die.

  The thought made me shudder, and as I turned back to face the house, I realized that those words felt true. That gnawing twinge at the bottom of my back? That was the knowledge that Sarah Abbott had died in this house.

  There was a wooden gate to the side, which led around to the garden. It wasn’t locked, so I let myself in and edged past a border of thistles to get a look at the kitchen window. It was a tip inside; the draining board was piled high with dishes that, in my estimation, probably weren’t salvageable. The windowsill was covered in empty plastic bottles and dead flies. On the calendar on the wall, it was still snowing.

  Wherever the Abbots were, they hadn’t been here in a long time.

  I picked my way around to the rear of the house. The garden was a no-go; it was thigh-high with weeds and nettles, and there was no back gate—just a high brick wall, probably a foot taller than me, with what looked like woodland beyond. I thought about trying to beat a path around the edge of the plot and hoiking myself up for a look, but I figured it would be easier to just drive round, so I lit a cigarette instead and stared at the pattern in the frosted toilet window.