Forward Slash

by Louise Voss

  ‘I added you into my Favourites, actually.’

  ‘Did you now?’ he said, putting his head to one side and regarding her flirtatiously. It was incredible how different he looked to the miserable-looking man who had shuffled into the park not five minutes earlier.

  He looked at his watch, pushing his arm forward in an exaggerated manner. As his sleeve shot up, Amy caught a glimpse of what looked like either a hospital bracelet or a festival wrist pass. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got time for a coffee, have you? Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say?’

  He grinned hopefully at her, and Amy smiled back.

  ‘I could murder a latte,’ she said, and he gestured towards the little café behind them.

  ‘Let’s go!’ He whistled to Wiggins and they set off together, Amy marvelling at how easy it had been. Now all she had to do was work out what to say to Ross to find out what, if anything, he knew about Becky’s vanishing act.

  Ross hooked Wiggins’s lead over the fence outside the little café, picking up an empty stainless-steel dog bowl on the ground by the gate. ‘Can we sit out here so I can smoke?’ he asked. ‘I’ll go and get the hounds a drink. Latte for you?’

  Amy nodded, and sat down at the picnic table inside the little picket fence. Boris sat next to her, regarding Wiggins with curiosity. She took out her phone again and checked Twitter. Four new retweets of her appeal – that was good. Then something caught her eye, in her Mentions folder: BColtman …

  Amy’s hand flew to her mouth. A tweet from Becky! All it said was:

  @Amyjo stop looking for me. I’m in Thailand. I’m fine.

  Amy felt as though she had been winded, all the breath left her lungs in a weird squeeze of suction. So Becky really was in Asia? But even after an argument, surely she’d never write something as cold as that, knowing from the appeal how worried Amy had been.

  She typed a reply immediately, as a direct message: WTF? Why didn’t you tell me? She paused, thinking that it sounded a little aggressive, then sent another message: I love you. Been so worried.

  As she hit Send, Ross emerged carrying a tray containing two coffees and a bowl of water, which he put down for the dogs. He handed Amy her latte and, as she took it, he saw her face. ‘Hey, are you OK?’

  He climbed over the fixed seat of the bench and sat opposite her, pulling out a pack of Silk Cut. ‘Want one?’

  ‘No, thanks, I don’t smoke,’ she said. Her hands were suddenly shaking so much that she could hardly pick up the cardboard cup.

  ‘Has something just happened?’ Ross looked concerned, but slightly wary, as if the last thing he needed was to listen to a strange woman’s troubles.

  Amy hesitated, then decided. She would just have to go for it – not least because she did not believe herself to be nearly a good enough actress to be able to pull off a convincing flirting act.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been straight with you. I did see you on CupidsWeb, but I came here today to try to find you, after you put on your blog that you walk Wiggins here every afternoon. I need to talk to you.’

  Alarm was printed all over his face, almost comically. Amy wondered what he’d do if she leaned forward and said, ‘You’re going to be a daddy!’ just to freak him out, but she was in no mood for levity. The expression he didn’t wear, though, was guilt, or any sort of fear.

  ‘My sister’s gone missing,’ she blurted. ‘And I think you went on a date with her recently. Becky. Becky Coltman. Do you remember her?’

  He raised his eyebrows and, if anything, seemed relieved. ‘God. Sorry to hear that. How awful. A teacher? Yes, I remember her. Lovely girl. I really liked her and wanted to see her again, but she emailed me afterwards and said she only wanted to be friends, that she didn’t think there was any chemistry between us. I left it at that – I’ve got enough girls who are mates, I’m after a girlfriend.’ He looked momentarily sad, and Amy felt sorry for him. ‘How long has she been missing for?’

  ‘She was last seen on Wednesday. Then on Sunday, I had this weird email from her saying she was going away. Did she mention going travelling to you?’

  Ross thought for a moment then shook his head. ‘Definitely not. I specifically remember asking her if she had any plans for the summer holidays, and she said, no, that she was skint and had already had a holiday this year – let me think … yeah, hadn’t she been to Spain, or Portugal or somewhere at Easter?’

  Amy had forgotten that, because she herself had been away then, at a big craft expo in Manchester. Becky had gone on a week’s tennis holiday in Portugal in April. There was no way she could afford another holiday this year.

  ‘You need to go to the police,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette beneath his shoe.

  Amy looked at him. He certainly seemed utterly transparent, and genuinely concerned – but some people were expert liars, weren’t they? ‘Can I ask you a question? What’s that on your wrist?’ She pointed at his sleeve, and he blushed slightly.

  ‘Couldn’t find any scissors at home,’ he said, showing her that it was a hospital wristband. ‘I just got out of hospital last night. I was in for three nights. Kidney stones. Awful. That’s why I look so shit, in case you were wondering. It really took it out of me.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ Amy said. ‘Which hospital were you in?’

  ‘West Mid— Hey, are you going to check up on my alibi?’ He sounded offended, but Amy smiled wryly. ‘The police will want to know, if I can ever get them to take this seriously.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, it’s certainly a solid alibi.’

  ‘It sure is,’ said Amy. She paused, then added, ‘I’m glad it couldn’t have been anything to do with you.’ It was her turn to blush, hoping he wasn’t going to ask her out. He was a really nice guy, but, like Becky, she didn’t fancy him at all.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said, getting out her phone again. ‘You asked if something had just happened, and it has – I’ve just had a tweet from her account. I sent out an appeal last night, asking if anyone had seen her, and she – or someone – has replied from her account. But I still don’t believe it’s her. I’ll show you.’

  She scrolled through the icons to TweetDeck, and opened it on the same column the first tweet had arrived in.

  The tweet had been deleted.

  After saying goodbye to Ross, Amy walked back along the path with Boris, deep in thought and barely concentrating on where she was going. She walked with her phone in her hand, gazing at the screen, obsessively refreshing Twitter every few seconds to see if the phantom tweet would return. It didn’t.

  ‘Mind where you’re going!’

  She had been so focused on her phone that she had almost bumped into a jogger.

  She looked around her. Absentmindedly, she had wandered into a quiet area of the park, where the trees were dense and there were few people around. No other people, in fact, except the jogger who was now retreating into the distance.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ she said aloud.

  As she turned around, to retrace her footsteps, she saw and heard something move in the trees, about twenty feet away. The foliage was so thick that she couldn’t see through it. But the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. If it hadn’t been for everything else that was going on, she might not have thought anything of it, but now she was convinced she was being watched.

  ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Is someone there?’

  Silence.

  She took a step towards where the sound had come from – and a pine cone fell from a branch and landed at her feet, making her jump and catch her breath. She laughed to herself and was about to make a comment to Boris about how she was being stupidly paranoid, when she heard a phone chirrup – from the spot where she had heard the noise. There was someone there.

  ‘Who is that?’ she called.

  At her feet, Boris growled.

  She stooped and picked up the largest stick she could find, and ventured into the trees, the dog straining against his leash, his li
p curled, baring his teeth.

  ‘I’ve got a dog,’ she said. ‘He bites.’

  She reached the point where she was certain the noise had come from. There was no one there – just trampled grass on the path that led back into the heart of the park.

  10

  Declan

  Tuesday, 16 July

  A body.

  They had found a body, smack bang in the middle of nowhere. Detective Inspector Declan Adams leaned forward in his car seat, shifting his hips, unable to sit still. His lower back, which had seemingly got fed up with his shoulder getting all the attention, ached like hell. Ever since ‘the incident’, his body had developed a pain zone that roamed around his body like one of those wandering wombs from ancient medicine.

  ‘This sat nav is shit.’

  He turned his head to look at the man who had spoken, DS Bob Clewley, who was looking at the TomTom rather than the road.

  ‘I know we’re in the countryside, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any other cars on the road, Bob.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, but this thing is crap. How do you turn the fucking volume down?’

  Calmly, Declan pressed a few buttons on the sat nav and the – admittedly irritating – voice of the navigator fell from a bellow to a murmur.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’ Bob was five years younger than Declan, just starting to lose his hair, a fact that made Declan feel blessed, as his black hair was as thick as it had been when he was a teenager, back in the days when he used to backcomb his hair in an attempt to look like Robert Smith from the Cure. Declan knew that if any of his colleagues ever got hold of any photos from his Goth days, he would never hear the end of it. He still loved listening to his old Cure records, though. That and the Sisters of Mercy and the Fields of the Nephilim. Those were the bloody days.

  ‘What’s got into you this afternoon?’ he asked Bob, who was in a right mood.

  Bob rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Sorry, I’m knackered.’

  ‘Freddie still keeping you up?’ Freddie was the sergeant’s one-year-old son.

  He sighed. ‘Freddie. Jessica, the world’s only four-year-old Nazi. The dog. The bloody cat.’

  ‘Everyone but Isobel, eh?’

  They laughed. The countryside sped by. Sheep, trees, boring stuff. It was a glorious day, though, the sky so blue it made Declan want to hum that old ELO song, which would have got him thrown out of the Cure fan club years ago.

  ‘Well, look on the bright side. Only, what, seventeen years to go before you have a nice empty nest. Then what are you going to do?’

  ‘Fucking celebrate.’

  ‘You won’t, I bet you. Because then you won’t have anything to bitch and moan about. And let’s face it, Bob, you’re never happier than when you’ve got something to moan about.’

  Bob looked at him sideways. ‘And you’re never happier than when you have a real ball-acher of a case to work on.’

  ‘If anyone else but you said that to me, Detective Sergeant Clewley, they’d be the one with the ball-ache. How is Isobel, by the way?’

  ‘Still lovely,’ Bob said, smiling at the thought of his wife.

  They drove on for a while. They were based with the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team in Eastbourne but were heading for a tiny village called Stonegate, roughly halfway between Tunbridge Wells and Hastings. More accurately, they were heading to a farm several miles outside the village. It was beautiful around here, if you liked that kind of thing. Declan, who had grown up in a place similar to this, associated rolling hills and sheep with his stultifying teen years. He had fled to London the moment he could, ditched the black drainpipes, joined the Met, found noise and fumes and crowds far more to his liking than silence and fresh air and flocks, before circumstances had driven him back out of the city. But at least he lived and worked in a large town. This place wasn’t even a hamlet.

  ‘Watch Serial Killers last night?’ Bob asked.

  Declan rolled his eyes. ‘You and your bloody crime documentaries. Don’t you get enough of that at work?’

  ‘It’s research,’ he said. ‘The one last night was awesome. You heard of BTK?’

  ‘A kind of burger, isn’t it?’

  ‘Lol.’

  Declan looked at his partner. ‘Did you actually just say “lol”?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s what all the kids are saying these days. Sir.’

  Declan sighed. ‘There really ought to be a law against it.’

  ‘Rofl.’ While Declan banged his forehead with the flat of his palm, Bob went on. ‘Anyway, BTK was this mild-mannered bloke who murdered at least ten people in Kansas. “Bind torture kill” – that’s what it stands for. That’s how he signed off his letters to the police.’

  ‘Oh, he was one of them, was he? A letter writer.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you love to work a serial-killer case?’

  ‘I worry about you sometimes. Actually, I worry about you quite a lot.’

  ‘Arriving at destination on left’, said the sat nav. It had instructed them to turn off the A-road and they had soon found themselves on winding country lanes framed by tall trees and strewn with roadkill, before emerging again into open countryside.

  ‘What, here?’ said Bob. ‘It’s just a field.’

  ‘Over there.’ Declan pointed. In the near distance, they could see a small cluster of farm buildings. They drove towards them down a dirt track, baked hard by the sun. As they grew closer, Declan got a better view of the farmhouse, which appeared to be held up by scaffolding, its thatched roof full of gaping holes, the red brickwork crumbling. Close by was a barn that was in an even worse state of repair. Yellow-and-black crime-scene tape had been strung up around an area between the house and the barn.

  ‘This reminds me of one of those places where teens in horror movies get butchered by psycho hillbillies,’ Bob said.

  ‘The East Sussex Chainsaw Massacre.’

  They pulled up beside a parked police car, a sergeant from the local constabulary, sweating in his uniform, leaning against it. He looked up at them as they got out of their car. ‘Sergeant Alexander,’ he said, mopping his brow with a handkerchief.

  Declan introduced himself and Bob, then said, ‘So what have we got?’

  Alexander led them towards the farmhouse. Declan looked up as something fluttered above them. ‘Was that a bat?’

  ‘Not at this time of day,’ said the sergeant. ‘More likely a swallow. Bats come out later. You’re not wrong though – apparently, the old farmhouse is full of them. The project manager was telling me they’ve been having a nightmare with the conservation people.’

  Declan stopped and waited for him to continue.

  ‘This place is called Robertson Farm, after the family who farmed the land last century. But it’s been standing empty for years. Empty and forgotten until a couple from London decided to do a “grand designs” and bought it. They’re in the process of restoring it and converting the barn into a studio or something.’

  The three of them approached the crime-scene tape. A couple of uniformed officers in short sleeves stood a few metres away on the other side of the taped-off area, chatting to a middle-aged woman wearing jeans and a vest-top, her shoulders pink with sunburn. ‘Go on.’

  Alexander cleared his throat. ‘That’s the project manager over there. She’s a friend of the couple who’ve bought the place. She was down here this morning, supervising the builders—’

  ‘And they found a body,’ Bob interjected.

  ‘I don’t know if “body” is the word I’d use,’ said Alexander.

  ‘And what word would you use, Sergeant?’ Declan asked.

  ‘Remains. Whoever was down there looked like they’d been there a bloody long time.’

  ‘What do you mean “down there”?’

  Alexander pointed to a hole in the ground, about the same size as a manhole in the street. The top of a ladder protruded from it. Declan suddenly had a horrible feeling, like a shadow passing over him, despite the w
armth of the sun and the brilliant, cloudless sky.

  ‘In the cesspit,’ he said.

  Declan’s grandad, who’d lived in a little cottage on the outskirts of Hastings, had a cesspit under his house because it was not connected to the main sewage system. He remembered how once, on a childhood visit, a truck had arrived to empty it. The smell was unbelievable. Years later, he’d been to the Glastonbury Festival and, looking down into the pit beneath the toilets, the smell of twenty thousand digested veggie burgers wafting up towards him, he’d been reminded of his grandad’s cesspit. Declan also remembered him warning Declan and his sister never to try to open it lest they fall in. ‘Nobody wants to drown in shit,’ he said. He was very down-to-earth, his grandad. He missed him.

  As Declan approached the hole, Bob a step behind him, the project manager came over, rearranging her long ponytail as she walked.

  She stuck out her hand. ‘Fiona Phillips,’ she said. ‘Bloody nuisance this.’

  Bob eyed her. ‘Was it you who found the body?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. One of the builders. We’ve only been on site for a few days and thought we should take a better look at the cesspit. We put a ladder down and he squeezed in. He came back up so fast it was almost comical. Like one of the moles in that whackamole game.’

  ‘Where are the builders now?’

  ‘I sent them home for the day. No point paying them if they’re just going to be standing around drinking tea.’ She laughed ironically.

  ‘We’ll need their names and addresses,’ said Declan. He turned to Bob. ‘We’d better take a look.’

  Bob blanched. ‘I don’t think I’d fit through that hole.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll do it. Is it dry in there, Ms Phillips?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It must be twenty years since it was last used. So all the liquid will have evaporated and the excrement solidified long ago.’

  Declan ignored the face Bob was pulling. ‘OK, good. Have you got a torch?’

  Fiona fetched a Maglite and handed it to Declan. He got down on all fours and climbed backwards onto the ladder, treading carefully until he was fully underground.