The Gathering Man (A DI Erica Swift Thriller Book 7)

by M K Farrar

  She left her half-eaten cereal and got to her feet. Her bag and coat were by the door.

  “Bye, Mum. Bye, Flo.”

  They chorused back, ‘bye’.

  “Let’s go.”

  She left the house and joined her dad. Her stomach churned with nerves. She hadn’t had the chance to check her reflection before she’d left the house. What if her eyebrows had smudged while she’d been eating breakfast? She got into the passenger seat of her dad’s van and surreptitiously tried to check herself out in the rear-view mirror. Her dad didn’t like it when she did that, he said she was being vain.

  Her hand fluttered towards her face, and she snatched it back down, her heart beating faster. She’d caught herself that time, but there were plenty of times when she hadn’t. Sometimes, she didn’t even notice what she was doing until she looked down and saw a clump of her hair tangled in her fingers. It wasn’t just the hair on her head either. Her eyelids were pink and bald from her pulling out her eyelashes, and the skin above her eyes was free from eyebrows.

  Occasionally, she went through phases where she managed to stop herself, and with hope, she’d see the faint, fragile hairs of regrowth, and she’d swear to herself that this was it now, she’d be able to look like everyone else. But then something would happen to set her off again, and she’d realise she’d managed to tug out even those baby hairs. She’d cry and get angry, and curse herself, and the sense of hopelessness would drag her down until she visited those dark, dark places where the text messages telling her to kill herself would start to make sense.

  She slid down in her seat during the fifteen-minute drive from their home in West Hackney to Millway Academy in Clapton, hiding from the groups of students walking down the street, all of them in the same uniform she was wearing now. Her secondary school had over a thousand pupils, and even though she wished she could vanish, people always seemed to seek her out.

  Her dad pulled over, and Bethany jumped out.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Be good today, Bethany. I don’t want you upsetting your mother again. I can’t stand her complaining to me all the time.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  She was always good. What choice did she have? While other girls her age were getting into pubs early and dating older boys, she didn’t do anything. She was the most boring sixteen-year-old she knew.

  Bethany slammed the door shut, and her father drove the van back out into traffic. She joined the stream of teenagers walking into the school. Year seven pupils, appearing impossibly small, interspersed them. She was earlier than she liked to be, preferring instead to be able to go straight into her tutor room and sit at her desk. Now, she’d have to find a way to distract herself until it was time to go in. Other girls stood around, gossiping with their friends, but Bethany didn’t have any, and being on her own only made her more conscious of that.

  She was feeling particularly self-conscious today. It was ironic that the thing she’d done to try to make herself fit in more actually made her feel as though she was standing out.

  Not wanting to hang out where there were lots of other students, she wandered up behind the bike shed, to sit on the grassy knoll. She caught sight of the caretaker—a middle aged man in his fifties—using a rake to claw fallen leaves off the grass. He spotted her and straightened slightly, frowning at her, then he turned and hurried away.

  Jeez, she even scared the caretaker off.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  A familiar girl’s voice came from behind her, but she ignored it and kept walking, though her stomach churned. Her plans to try to remain invisible had failed.

  A different girl joined in. “She’s such a freak.”

  “Are you trying to look like you have cancer?” the first one called out to her.

  “She wants to make people feel sorry for her.”

  “Such a fucking loser.”

  Tears pricked at Bethany’s eyes, and she put her head down and held on to the strap of her bag. Her fingers curled around it, squeezing tighter, until the leather cut into her skin. At least when she was holding the strap, she knew her hand hadn’t strayed to her face or head.

  Only a few more months, she told herself, and then I’ll be out of here.

  Her plan to sit on the grass until it was time for tutor group vanished. There was no way she could stop now. She kept going but was hugely conscious of the group of girls following her. She didn’t need to turn around to know who they were. Their ringleader, Amber, used to be her best friend in primary school.

  Amber shoved past and spun to face her. “I asked you a question, Bethany. Do you think you’re too good to speak to me now?”

  Heat rushed to Bethany’s face. She should just push Amber out of the way, but the other girls were behind her as well, and she was outnumbered, four to one. Instinctively, she put her head down.

  “No, I don’t think that,” she muttered.

  Amber’s tone suddenly brightened to a cruel glee. “Oh my God. What the hell did you do to your face?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Guys,” Amber said to her friends, “you have to come and see this.”

  They bade their leader’s wishes willingly and all screamed with laughter.

  “Did you think you could make yourself normal?” Amber taunted. “You’ll never be normal.”

  Amber suddenly snatched out at her, with the speed of a snake striking, and tore one of the fake eyelashes from her eyes. Bethany cried out, heat and pain searing through what had already been raw and delicate skin from all her picking.

  “What’s this? You forgot to pull this one out, Baldy!”

  The strand of eyelashes dangled from the other girl’s fingers.

  Bethany grabbed at it but missed. “Give that back.”

  “Give it back,” the girl mimicked in a singsong voice. “How about we take the other one as well.”

  “Please, leave me alone.”

  They’d circled her now, a gang of hyenas creeping in on their prey. Bethany took a couple of steps, trying to push through the smallest of the girls, but several hands reached out and took hold of her and pushed her back into the middle again. Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked them away. Crying wouldn’t help—she’d learned that several times over. Better that she acted tough now and then give in to the tears when she was at home alone in her bedroom.

  Movement came from behind her, and an arm wrapped around her throat. “Quick, get the other one.”

  Bethany tried to jerk her face away, but there were too many of them, and they were all too quick and too strong. The other strand of eyelashes was torn from her eyelid and then dangled in front of her face like a prize.

  “Hang on, I’ve got some wipes.”

  One of the others produced a pack of face wipes. “Quick, before a teacher comes!”

  They pinned her down, and a wet wipe made contact with her skin, scrubbing hard at the places on her forehead where she’d so carefully used a microblade pen first thing that morning to draw on her eyebrows.

  “What’s going on here?”

  The stern female voice cut through the gaggle of girls. The effect was instantaneous, and immediately everyone straightened, and the laughter fell silent.

  “I said, what’s going on? Bethany, what are you doing on the ground?”

  “She fell down,” Amber piped up, “didn’t you, Bethany? We were just helping her up, Miss.”

  “Is that right? Bethany?”

  There was a warning tone in her voice that Bethany recognised. They didn’t really want to know. The teachers all said they were ‘anti-bullying’, but the truth was that they’d rather turn a blind eye than deal with it. Dealing with it would mean phoning parents and having extra meetings—most of which would take place after school, when the teachers would prefer to use that time to wade through lesson planning or marking homework, or whatever else it was they did once the schooldays ended and the hallways were free of children. They believed what they wa
nted to believe.

  “Yes, that’s right, Miss Steed.”

  She frowned down at her. “Are you hurt?”

  Bethany’s eyes stung from the other girls stripping off the eyelashes and eyelash glue, but there was nothing new there. People were used to seeing her with red, bald eyelids.

  “No, Miss.”

  “Well, get up off the ground then.”

  Bethany scrambled back to her feet. She kept her head down, not wanting to make eye contact with any of the other girls.

  “Get to class,” Miss Steed said. “You’re all going to be late.”

  Tears burned Bethany’s eyes, and she held in her sobs. She’d hold them in all day, and even after she’d got home and told her mother that everything was fine, and then she’d go upstairs to her room and put the pillow over her face and cry until her throat and chest hurt and she was utterly drained.

  Chapter Five

  After Erica had finished with George Wiles and had a uniformed officer drive him back to his car, she called a briefing. DCI Gibbs sat in on the meeting as well, though she’d already brought him up to speed with the events of that morning.

  She stood in front of a board on the wall, photographs of maps of the local area, the crime scene, and close-up images of the strange marks that had been cut into the victim’s skin pinned onto it.

  “As I’m sure you’ve all heard, the as yet unidentified body of a teenage girl was found in a park in Upper Clapton at seven-thirty this morning. We don’t have the exact cause of death yet, but the marks cut into her body appear to be ritualistic. We may be looking at a sacrificial murder, but there’s also a chance the victim did the cuts herself. Until we know for sure, we’re treating her death as suspicious.”

  Erica surveyed the people in the room. Among them were her team; DS Shawn Turner, and her two DCs, Hannah Rudd and Jon Howard. Some additional officers had also been brought in due to the severity of the case. Each of their faces were serious, and they followed her every word.

  “A Mr George Wiles, who works as a park warden, was the one who found the body and called it in. He doesn’t have an alibi for last night and claims he was home alone all night. He has a history of violence against women and has served time for committing grievous bodily harm against his ex-wife. Considering his past and that he doesn’t have an alibi, I don’t think we can rule him out at this stage. He also knows the area.” She paced the front of the room. “One thing that did come out in the interview was that he often sees groups of teenagers hanging around the park at night, so there’s a possibility our Jane Doe is one of them. We might be able to get an ID from one of the other teenagers, if we can track them down.”

  A murmur of agreement rose from her team.

  Erica continued. “We have CCTV to go through, mostly from the buildings surrounding the park, in particular the tennis club, and also the café. We need to focus on the times between eleven p.m. the night before the body was found, and five a.m. Once we’ve got a more precise time of death from the postmortem report, we should be able to narrow that down again. I want every person caught on CCTV at that time to be found and spoken to. No one goes to a public park in the middle of the night and is up to any good.”

  Howard raised his hand. “What about camera footage from the surrounding streets? Shouldn’t we check for vehicles that might have been canvassing the area? If the girl didn’t do that to herself,” he pointed his pen at the pictures of the cuts on her skin that was pinned to the wall, “then someone must have brought her to the park, and I doubt they walked.”

  “Yes, good idea. Can I leave that with you? In particular, keep an eye out for vans, ideally without windows in the back. Somewhere a young woman could be locked in without risk of her getting out again.”

  Howard nodded. “Yes, boss.”

  She paused to take a quick drink of water. “Uniformed officers have been canvasing the local area, in particular asking those living in the canal boats on the river that runs through the park to see if they might have seen or heard anything.”

  She pointed at a close-up photograph of the symbols. “It goes without saying that these are the strangest part of this case. DS Turner did some image searches on Google but so far hasn’t found anything that matches. If anyone recognises them at all, now is the time to speak up, because so far, we’re stumped.”

  No one responded. Erica picked out the youngest member of their team, DC Rudd. “Hannah, can you see if you can get hold of someone who is an expert in symbols...I have no idea what that would be called.” She gestured a circling motion in the air as indication to get her team to throw ideas at her.

  “Wasn’t there one in that Dan Brown book?” Shawn offered. “A professor of symbology.”

  “Is that even a real thing?” Erica suddenly felt out of her depth.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I’m sure we can find out,” Rudd said.

  “Good. Shawn and I are going to focus on trying to find out the victim’s identity. I think finding out who she is will go a long way to figuring out who killed her.” She clapped her hands once. “Everyone knows what they’re doing, so let’s go and find out what happened to this girl.”

  She dismissed the briefing and approached where Shawn was sitting. She perched on the edge of the desk beside him.

  “These other teenagers seem like our best bet for getting our victim’s name,” she said. “Even if they don’t know who she is, they might have seen someone hanging around, checking the place out.”

  He nodded in agreement. “How are we going to track them down?”

  “Right now, I’m thinking the only way might be by doing what they do.”

  He arched an eyebrow at her. “Are you suggesting we go and spend some time at the park?”

  “Yep. Think of it like getting back to our youth.”

  “You’re not going to force a cheap bottle of cider on me, are you?”

  She laughed. “No, but I might buy you a pint afterwards.”

  “Sounds like a deal.”

  Chapter Six

  The school day went by painfully slowly. Bethany managed to avoid her bullies—or at least they avoided her, most likely because they didn’t want to set off any of the teachers’ suspicions. The moment break time arrived, she took herself into the toilets and removed the last of her makeup. What was the point in trying to repair it? It had only caused her more problems than she’d been trying to fix.

  The final bell went, and Bethany got to her feet. She was relieved the day was over, but she still had to make it home in one piece. She could try phoning her mum to come and pick her up, but she was probably busy, and her dad was at work now.

  Her teacher stopped her before she managed to leave. “Bethany, Mr Woodhouse would like to see you in his office before you go.”

  Her stomach sank. What now? This was bound to be about earlier. She prayed she wasn’t going to walk into the office to find Amber there as well. For some reason, teachers seemed to think if they could get teenagers into the same room together and make them apologise to each other, everything would be okay. Never mind that Bethany never had anything to apologise for—she wasn’t the one in the wrong.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  She wondered if that meant there had been yet another call home to her parents about what had happened. Her mother had warned her that she didn’t want the school getting in touch again. Did it make her parents think any less of her, that she was constantly getting into trouble at school? Had they hoped for a perfect daughter and instead had ended up with this awkward, half-bald girl who didn’t even have any friends? She felt bad for her parents, having her as a daughter. At least they had Florence to make up for things.

  With a deep sigh, she made her way through the building towards the headmaster’s office. The corridors were filled with loud, overexcited pupils finally going home, but Bethany wasn’t one of them. The world felt like a horribly unfair place.

  A younger boy was sitting on one of the plastic c
hairs outside the office, swinging his feet and looking bored and pissed off at the same time. Bethany didn’t bother to sit down but went straight to the door and knocked.

  “Come in,” a deep voice called from inside.

  Bethany opened the door to reveal her headteacher sitting behind his desk. He caught sight of her and smiled.

  “Ah, yes, Bethany. Come on in.”

  Mr Woodhouse was in his forties and was normally all right, as far as teachers went. He had worn a suit to school but had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves as though he meant business.

  Bethany’s stomach was a tight knot of anxiety. What was this all about?

  He gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk. “Bethany, please, take a seat.”

  Remaining mute, she slid into the chair and dropped her bag down beside it.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve asked you to come here, Bethany. “

  She shrugged.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Not really,” she muttered.

  Her left hand rose to her face, her fingers seeking the sparce remains of her eyebrows to tug and pull and twist. She realised what she was doing and snatched her hand back down again, placing it between her legs and squeezing her knees tight to try to keep it in place.

  “Your head of year, Miss Steed, seems to think you’re having some trouble with a small group of girls.”

  Maybe they should be the ones sent to the headteacher’s office.

  Nothing anyone did made any difference; if anything, interference from adults only made things worse. The girls just found sneakier ways to torture her, waiting until she was in the toilets, or hanging around outside school to catch her on her way home. She used to walk through an underpass to get to and from school until the girls waited for her there one afternoon. She’d tried to turn around and go back, but a couple of others had appeared behind her, blocking the way. They’d taken her bag off her and emptied it onto the ground, then they’d tripped her over and pulled her school skirt down, claiming they wanted to see if she was bald all over. One of the girls had commented that at least she wouldn’t need to wax, which they’d all thought was hilarious. Bethany hadn’t walked that route again and instead took the long way around, adding fifteen minutes to the journey.