Down to the Woods

by M. J. Arlidge

  ‘Did something happen? Did she say something that upset you?’

  ‘I don’t like her. Please can I come to work with you …?’

  Irritation now flared in Charlie. She was exhausted, strung out, trying to make the best of a difficult situation. But nothing she said seemed to make things any better.

  ‘I’ve explained why you can’t do that, Jessie, and we are running late …’

  Charlie shot a nervous look at the clock. They would have to drive if they were to make it on time today.

  ‘… so if you’ve finished your breakfast, let’s grab your book bag and go.’

  Jessica stayed where she was, looking disgruntled and a little lost. Suddenly all irritation evaporated, as Charlie felt anxiety master her once more.

  ‘If there was a problem, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  She couldn’t suppress a slight wobble in her voice.

  ‘Sweetie …?’

  Jessica considered this for a little while. Then she looked up at Charlie and said:

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  48

  They traipsed out of the house in single file – mother, daughter, then dad. They were carrying the standard paraphernalia of the morning run – book bags, PE kits, recorder – and seemed to be in a hurry. Doors were flung open, bags thrown inside, the engine fired up. They went about their task in earnest and with practised slickness, unaware that they were being watched.

  Helen took a step back, fearful of being spotted. There was little chance of that in truth – she had chosen her vantage point well – but she didn’t want to freak them out. Nor did she want her presence detected. Christina would definitely remember her and wouldn’t take kindly to her sudden appearance at her home. Helen never brought anything but bad tidings to this family.

  It had been years since Helen had laid eyes on Christina, but she looked well. With expensive clothes, glossy hair and artfully applied make-up, she was doing a good job of middle age. Elsie also looked in good form. Predictably, Helen was surprised by how much she’d grown – not just in stature, but in maturity. The toddler she remembered was now a young lady, pushing teenage years. She looked sparky, intelligent, talkative – a far cry from the surly child she had known. Helen felt a brief spark of shame at having been away for so long.

  Helen had had a brief relationship with her father, after Christina had kicked him out. Mark was struggling with the breakdown of his marriage, with being a part-time father, and had turned to drink. He was Helen’s principal DS at the time, so she had taken him in hand, helping him beat the booze. In the process, lines had become blurred and they had started seeing each other. It was a mistake which had catastrophic consequences, Mark dying in action, partly because of his connection to her. Helen had felt hugely guilty, her heart breaking for Christina and Elsie, both of whom were poleaxed by his death, and she’d resolved to keep an eye on the pair of them, aware of the long, hard road they had to travel.

  She had honoured her promise for a couple of years, but inevitably, as life grew more complicated, her unheralded visits had tailed off. She had heard on the grapevine that Christina had remarried, but this was her first sight of him. He was what she expected – Christina liked the people in her life to be handsomely turned out – but there seemed to be a kindness to him too. He was affectionate and good-humoured with Elsie, teasing her as he chivvied the dawdling child into the car. Their relationship seemed warm and relaxed. They looked happy.

  It was a far cry from those early days, after Helen had broken the news of Mark’s murder. Christina had been in pieces, her residual love punching through despite their split, and Elsie had just been uncomprehending, at a loss to understand why she wouldn’t see her daddy again. It had been bitterly hard to watch and Helen was cheered to see how they had rebuilt their lives. It proved that there was hope after all.

  Helen had spent another restless night, her mind turning on Joseph Hudson’s pursuit, but also on Grace Simmons’s words to her. ‘Don’t cling to the past, or it will eat you up.’ They came back to her now as she watched the family drive off, chatting and laughing together. Something had driven Helen here this morning. Was it to honour the ghost of Mark, the last person she had a serious relationship with? Or was it to reassure herself that it was possible to recover from tragedy? That it was possible to move on?

  Helen was still pondering this, when her phone started buzzing. It was Hudson. A moment’s hesitation, then Helen hit receive.

  ‘DI Grace.’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you early,’ he said breathlessly. ‘But I thought you’d want to know …’

  He paused, before delivering his punchline:

  ‘Someone’s just reported their girlfriend missing from a campsite in the New Forest.’

  49

  ‘You’re becoming vain …’

  Emilia breathed the words as she stared at her reflection, barely suppressing a smile. She was in the ladies’ loos at work and quite alone. It was not customary for her to talk to herself as she touched up her make-up, nor for her to feel anything other than dismay as she surveyed her scarred face, but she was feeling buoyant this morning, even a little skittish.

  Last night’s edition had been one of the fastest selling in the paper’s history. It had flown off the shelves, newsagents and supermarkets struggling to keep up with demand. Most of the city’s inhabitants were in the midst of making summer plans, a sizeable chunk of them planning to head for the New Forest. But not any more – not while a homicidal maniac was stalking its confines. Locals had drunk in the detail – the shadowy clearing, the hanging corpse, the crossbow bolts – then hit social media, the panic spreading virally. Not bad for a day’s work.

  The continuing radio silence from the police had further helped her cause. In the absence of any other concrete information, media outlets had turned to her for insight. She was well known following her brush with Daisy Anderson and once again she seemed to have the inside track on a breaking story. Always keen to bolster her profile, Emilia had been happy to oblige. She had already done two radio interviews and was due to put in an appearance on BBC South shortly. The thought made her smile. Radio was all very well, but every print journalist dreams of having their moment on the small screen.

  Tucking her foundation away, Emilia checked her lipstick once more, before gathering her things. Leaving the toilets, she hurried down the corridor, aware that her taxi would be arriving shortly. As she did so, she pulled out her phone, checking WhatsApp, before opening Twitter. She was immediately intrigued to find a large number of tweets featuring #newforestkiller. Most of them were idle speculation and scaremongering, but they were all reacting to a tweet written earlier that morning.

  ‘Commotion at our campsite this morning. Random woman gone missing. Should we be worried??? #newforestkiller’

  It was tweeted by Squeakybum74 and featured a couple of smiley faces, so presumably the sender wasn’t too concerned. It was just a joke to her, but Emilia was taking it very seriously, scanning the photo which accompanied the tweet. It was of an unshaven man with riotous, curly black hair, speaking to uniformed police officers. The pictures were snatched and from a distance, but even so it was clear that the man was very distressed.

  Gripping her phone, Emilia hurried to the exit, tweeting as she went. She would contact the sender, find out where the campsite was and advise her not to send any more messages until she got there. It was a simple plan but one which might pay dividends, if the killer had claimed his second victim. Running towards the exit, Emilia felt that familiar thrill, that excitement as a new lead broke. Suddenly all her plans for the morning were up in the air, but she didn’t care one bit.

  Her spot on BBC South would have to wait.

  50

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Helen’s tone was gentle, but firm. She was closeted away with Matteo Dominici in the manager’s office at the Sunnyside campsite. He had reported his long-term girlfriend, Lauren Scott, missing
first thing this morning and was still in an emotional state. Distracted, anxious, pale, he ran his fingers through his thick hair, while casting around him. It was as if he expected Lauren to pop up somewhere in the office, but the young woman had not been seen for several hours, despite leaving all her possessions and clothing in their tent.

  ‘Please, Matteo, I need you to focus.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t feel good …’

  ‘Can we get you something? Water? Nurofen?’

  ‘Both, please. I feel like shit,’ he croaked, rubbing his forehead with his hand.

  ‘Heavy night, was it?’ Helen replied, trying to keep the conversation light, as she signalled to the uniformed officer to get the painkillers.

  ‘No way. Nothing like that.’

  He looked almost affronted, which surprised her. Matteo obviously clocked her reaction, because he now expanded:

  ‘We don’t drink. Or do drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’re both recovering alcoholics.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘That’s where we met, at AA. We’ve been dry for over two years now.’

  ‘I’m pleased for you,’ she replied genuinely, all too aware of the devastation alcohol can wreak. ‘And how long have you been together?’

  ‘Eighteen months. Took me a while to pluck up the courage to ask her out, but we’ve been inseparable ever since. She’s one in a million.’

  Helen smiled, trying to push away the images intruding on her consciousness – images of where Lauren might be, what might have befallen her.

  ‘And what happened last night?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing unusual anyway …’ he replied slowly, as if trying to make sense of events. ‘We turned up in the driving rain, set up camp, then spent the night in our tent. It was too wet to do anything else.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone? See anyone near the tent?’

  ‘No, we were alone all night.’

  ‘You went to sleep around …?’

  ‘Eleven, eleven thirty.’

  ‘And when did you realize she was gone?’

  ‘Just after sun-up. The light woke me up, or maybe the birds …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she was gone. All her stuff was there, but the tent flaps were open and there was no sign of her. I did three circuits of the camp, then sat and waited for an hour, in case she’d gone off to the village for some reason.’

  ‘What about a car?’

  ‘Don’t have one. We came here on the bus.’

  Helen made a mental note to check this. There was a hop-on, hop-off bus running during tourist season that would have delivered them to the campsite, but every last detail would have to be investigated.

  ‘And you called the police just after eight thirty …’

  ‘Sure. She’d been missing for nearly three hours by then. I thought I might be overreacting, but …’

  Helen nodded sympathetically.

  ‘What’s happened to her?’ He was looking at her directly now. ‘Even I know they don’t send this many police officers for a missing person.’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Helen answered truthfully, privately glad Matteo hadn’t seen last night’s Evening News. ‘But I intend to find out. Tell me, Matteo, do you often feel unwell when you wake up? Do you have any medical conditions or –’

  ‘No. Having a clear head is one of the perks of not drinking.’

  ‘So how would you account for it?’

  Helen saw his eyes narrow, as if scenting disbelief.

  ‘I’ve no idea. We went to sleep as usual, sober, clear-headed, but when I woke up, I felt dreadful. Dizzy, nauseous, with a cracking headache.’

  ‘And, during the night, can you remember anything that disturbed you? Any noises? Movement of any kind near the tent?’

  ‘No, not really,’ he replied hesitantly.

  ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘No, I mean I didn’t hear her leave or anything like that.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘But … I think I heard a car at some point. I can’t be totally sure, it was pretty faint, but it sounded like a car. A low, steady purr …’

  ‘You didn’t see the vehicle?’

  ‘No, I only half remember it, to be honest. I was so knackered last night, I don’t think I opened my eyes once …’

  He looked crestfallen, as if his lack of vigilance was to blame for Lauren’s disappearance. Taking advantage of the return of the attending uniformed officer, Helen left Matteo taking his Nurofen, promising to be back with him shortly.

  Exiting the office, she headed straight for Matteo’s tent, which was now taped off. Elsewhere on the site, Helen could make out Charlie and Hudson conducting interviews, the former hobbling from tent to tent. But she didn’t linger, lifting the cordon and approaching the tent. This time she didn’t bother with the interior, running a rule over the outside instead. Tom Campbell’s tent had been in a shabby state, old and torn, but Matteo Dominici’s tent was brand new, looking box fresh. Sliding a gloved hand over the fabric, she probed the surface, testing it for weakness. But it seemed to be in mint condition, able to repel the rain and anyone who might want to penetrate the interior. Rounding the tent, she continued her search, convinced that there must be a breach somewhere. But the far side seemed fine too, so she proceeded to the rear. Here she slowed, taking great pains to check every seam and join, fearing now that her search might yield nothing.

  And now she found it. A small tear in the fabric of the tent. No, not a tear, it was too neat for that. It was an incision. Someone had slid a knife or scalpel down the seam, opening it up, allowing access to the tent. It was small, no more than ten centimetres in length, but it would be wide enough to accommodate a hose or length of tubing.

  Right from the off, Tom Campbell’s seamless disappearance from the tent had worried her, anxieties that had only increased with Lauren Scott’s inexplicable disappearance. But in his own stumbling way, Matteo Dominici had provided a possible explanation. They had been gassed. Melanie Walton hadn’t realized it, thinking she was suffering from a hangover, but Matteo knew something was amiss. And the cut in the tent proved it for Helen.

  Moving away from the tent, Helen searched the ground for tyre tracks. In recent years, there had been a spate of crimes in which campers and caravan owners had been targeted by organized gangs, usually as they travelled through France. Their tent or campervan would be breached, then carbon monoxide from an idling vehicle would be pumped inside, rendering the inhabitants insensible before they were robbed. Was their killer doing something similar?

  It was risky – if you overcooked it, you could kill – but it had the benefit of rendering everyone within the tent unconscious. Furthermore, some enterprising thieves had started modifying their vehicles recently, adding padded, aluminium shields to dull engine noise, bolstering their chances of carrying out the attacks undetected. Was this what had happened here? Matteo Dominici had described the noise he heard as ‘a low, steady purring’ which to Helen sounded very much like an idling vehicle.

  The ground was saturated, her feet springing off the turf. And ten feet away from the tent, Helen found tyre tracks. They were deep and wide – a 4x4 perhaps – and they seemed out of place. Matteo had said they’d travelled here by bus and the car park was on the other side of the camp, near the entrance. So there was no reason for a vehicle to park up here.

  Unless you had an interest in the inhabitants of the tent.

  51

  The car bounced over the grass, as they drove slowly but steadily along the verge. Joseph Hudson had been in the middle of questioning a bemused camper, when Helen had summoned him over. Explaining her findings, Helen had left Charlie to continue the hunt for witnesses, asking him to requisition a vehicle instead. The pair then headed off, him driving, while she kept her eyes glued to the tyre tracks.

  They led away from the campsite, following a track that took them towards the forest, rather than back towards the road. Hudson drove purposefully but caref
ully, making sure to avoid the tracks themselves, which might prove to be crucial evidence. They drove in silence, intent on their task, but both were aware that a clearer picture of these crimes was taking shape. One which left them both feeling unnerved.

  ‘Stop the car.’

  Hudson reacted, braking sharply. The car slid to a stop and Helen was out in a flash. Killing the engine, Hudson climbed out, hurrying round to join her.

  Helen was down on her haunches, examining the tracks.

  ‘Same tracks, but they’re deeper here. Way deeper …’

  Looking more closely, Hudson saw that she was right.

  ‘You’re thinking that the killer stopped here?’

  ‘Could be,’ Helen replied, rising. ‘Let’s find out.’

  Moving away from the tracks, she walked cautiously to the trees nearest the tracks. Hudson followed, examining the ground for trampled grass. The grass on the verge was long and wild and it was hard to be sure, but there did seem to be some flattened areas approaching the thick vegetation.

  ‘Here.’

  Helen was now at the edge of the woods, her finger directing his attention to a tiny scrap of white material caught on a tree branch.

  ‘Her T-shirt? A vest?’

  She shrugged, stepping under the branch and proceeding carefully into the forest. Hudson followed, scouring the gloomy woodland for clues.

  ‘There.’

  He’d spotted it instantly – a broken branch hanging limply, ten feet or so further on. Examining it, Helen nodded and they pressed on. Their progress was swift – they found two more broken branches, a larger snag of fabric and then a small patch of blood. They had almost walked past the latter, but Helen had grabbed Hudson, pointing out the crimson stain that had suddenly caught a beam of sunlight on the end of a vicious-looking branch.

  On they went, following the discreet trail of devastation, until eventually the path opened out into a clearing. Helen was still on point and Hudson heard her little gasp of horror, just before she ground to an abrupt halt. Summoning his courage, Hudson emerged into the clearing and looked up.