Pretty Little Things

by T. M. E. Walsh

  Yes, there’s guilt there, and jealousy, I can tell, but I’m not about to throw that in Iain’s face, no matter how much I’m tempted.

  ‘His life’s going nowhere, Charlotte,’ Iain says now. ‘It’s no wonder he wants to be a part of yours, to feel important.’

  I’m taken aback by his bitterness. ‘That’s not his fault.’

  ‘His wife’s divorcing him, and he hardly sees his kids.’ He pauses as if to let that sweeping statement hit home. ‘You know what they say about no smoke without fire?’

  I’m dumbstruck.

  I stand there and feel stupid and he thinks he’s won this. He turns to retrieve his keys from the countertop. He chucks them into his other hand, as if triumphant.

  ‘You’re not meeting him for coffee. That’s the end of it,’ he says with his back to me.

  He gets as far as the utility-room door before I go after him.

  ‘You’re really forbidding me?’ I say. My hands grip either side of the doorframe, as if it will hold me upright.

  Iain stops, turns to look at me over his shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, we are living in 2018, yes?’ I add, when there’s no reaction. ‘I can go if I want to.’

  I see his cheeks begin to colour.

  Iain’s laid-back for the most part, but he’s far from immune to jealousy. I can’t help his ego right now.

  We need John. I need John.

  ‘You know as much as I do that he’s a crucial witness.’

  I can’t believe I have to spell this out for him.

  By the look on Iain’s face, he’s getting tired of me raising this point.

  The man who caused the accident, Paul Selby, is still protesting his innocence, despite admitting he hit my car. But the cause of this? Well, that’s where our account of events differs and where John becomes crucial.

  It’s because of this that John feels we should stay in touch regularly.

  ‘You really like to rub my face in that fact, don’t you?’ Iain says now, turning to face me properly. ‘You think I don’t feel bad that I wasn’t there to protect you? That I wasn’t the one taking you to hospital?’

  I remain silent.

  ‘It was an accident, Charlotte. Tragic, horrible for you, for me and Elle too, but you need to start trying to move on from it.’

  ‘It’s not that black and white, though, is it?’

  ‘Selby is guilty.’

  ‘But what he’s saying—’

  ‘Is irrelevant.’

  Iain smiles now. I let his hand rest on my face as his other hand smooths my hair back. He kisses my forehead, my scar.

  ‘We should focus on us, Charlotte.’

  His breath is hot on my skin but I feel cold inside.

  ‘I’m sorry your life hasn’t turned out quite so perfect,’ he says, letting his lips brush my scar again.

  Then he kisses the tip of my nose.

  I shudder.

  ‘Enjoy the day with Elle.’ His eyes linger on mine. He smiles. ‘Leave John where he belongs. On the outside of this, of us.’

  I look at my feet.

  He squeezes my shoulders. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  *

  From the kitchen window, I watch Iain drive off and harden my resolve. I feel bad about letting him believe he has that power over me, to stop me doing what I want to. What I need to, and must, do.

  I can’t talk to Iain about what happened to me in that car. He just doesn’t understand. It’s like he’s afraid to.

  He just wants us to be perfect, undamaged, but what family is?

  I text John to reiterate that I will call him later.

  So long as Iain believes I haven’t seen John, the better for all of us, for my marriage.

  I love Iain but, right now, he doesn’t know what’s best for me, for our family. I need someone to talk to about what happened. It gives me the type of comfort only John really seems to understand.

  My thoughts drift back to Elle and her sulky outburst.

  After my strong words with Iain, I don’t want to ruin any more of the day, especially with my daughter.

  I climb the stairs and peak around her bedroom door.

  Elle’s sitting on her bed, big headphones on top of her head, and I’m relieved. It means she didn’t hear Iain and I downstairs.

  I stick my head around the door a bit more and wait for her to look up.

  She doesn’t but I know she knows I’m standing there.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, and knock on her door, loud enough for her to look at me this time.

  She shoves one ear cover back and looks confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Get your coat,’ I say.

  She pauses, brow furrowed. ‘So, we are going then?’

  ‘I never said we weren’t.’ I then add quickly, ‘Although I thought about it after your outburst.’

  Elle looks indignant, like she’s playing our previous conversation back in her mind. ‘I thought—’

  ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ I interrupt. ‘You coming or not?’ I look at my watch.

  Elle slides off the bed. She’s giving me an odd look but I wave it off, head back downstairs.

  After what seems like an age, she finally follows me.

  CHAPTER 10

  ANON

  I’m in the news! And I’m not just talking about the local rag here, I’m talking BIG national papers – The Sun, the Mirror, even the broadsheets.

  I’m talking even the Daily-fucking-Mail.

  Well . . . online anyway.

  I checked earlier and you should’ve read the comments section. Some of the things these losers write . . . and they have the damn cheek to call me a sicko, to label all my hard work as being that of a madman.

  Tory-voting tossers.

  Still, can’t be as bad as what I’ve just seen . . .

  The local rag I’m currently reading over this old woman’s shoulder has come up with this little gold nugget of a headline: Lock up your daughters: Fears grow for missing teen.

  Ha-fucking-ha.

  Yes, really, I’m not kidding, that’s what it fucking says. I mean, Jesus-effing-Christ, it’d almost be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting.

  They mean Bryony Keats, by the way, in case you were wondering.

  The only one they’ve yet to find any trace of. I didn’t need to see that joke of a press conference earlier to tell me they’ve got squat right now.

  OK, yes, stupidly, I’ll admit, I’d left the bodies of the others intact . . . well, relatively anyway (☺). I mean, I think it was Katie that ended up missing an arm. I think you should know, that wasn’t my fault.

  A fox did that.

  I know that because I found the stupid animal with the aforementioned appendage in its jaws a little way from her body a day or so after I’d killed her.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have left them on the wasteland . . . That pit – the earth was hard and it took a lot of energy, even for me, to dig through the stony, dry soil. I should’ve left them in the soft earth, among the trees, food for the flowers.

  My own little garden.

  I kinda regret that they were found (relatively) quickly. I took one a week, and it’s taken a little over four weeks for all of this to really hit the headlines.

  Still, I’m delighted I made the news . . . well, almost. I mean, Lock up your daughters . . .

  The old woman has just folded up her newspaper and it’s pissed me off a bit because I hadn’t finished reading the article, but never mind.

  I shove up a bit on the bench when this fat girl sits next to me, gives me a smile. I try to smile back but it’s hard. I like my personal space and she’s just occupied my little world here. She’s practically in my lap. I shift up again, try to make myself smaller.

  She’s sitting here next to me because there really isn’t anywhere else to sit and take five minutes.

  It’s busy today. Sundays here usually are – they’ve become the new Saturday, but today it seems busier than usual. Still, it’s perfect when
it’s like this – fat chick attached to my hip aside. I can sit, take my time, drink it all in and just watch.

  Above all, I can blend in.

  No one to pay me no nevermind.

  I’ve been here for some time now, sitting on one of the benches a little way along from some slutty teen clothing shop.

  I stare at the two coming out of there now.

  I know it’s May but that hardly constitutes dressing for the tropics. The wind outside is still cutting and even if the sun is out, it gives little warmth.

  Yet here this teen is, skin-tight jeans, hanging low on her hips, crop top showing off a flat stomach, with a thin, short cardigan her mother no doubt made her wear.

  Her thick black hair is set in corn rows to her scalp, the ends finished off with bright-coloured beads. I notice what looks like one of those new smart Apple watches on her wrist.

  Her right wrist. She must be left-handed.

  Ah, good, Fatty has just moved – Hallelujah, praise the Gods, I can breathe – and is heading into the same shop. Doubt they do plus-size clothing in there, but she can dream, right?

  Anyway, I turn my attention to the other teen, next to the black, slutty one in the ‘fuck me’ jeans.

  Oh, I see she’s wearing that Nirvana top again. She certainly looks more respectable than her friend, I’ll give her that, but I still don’t like the company she keeps.

  The girls are out of the shop, and they look around.

  I sink, slouch down, like a hermit, hiding in my shell. I’ll observe for now.

  CHAPTER 11

  Madeleine and Charis had stood side by side in the lift, being taken to the lower level of Amersham Hospital’s large building. They had barely spoken, both feeling the sense of dread and unease. Both had been to a postmortem before but this time it was different. This time they knew they would be looking at the bodies of four teenagers, each in various states of decomposition, not all of them intact.

  That would weigh heavily on anyone’s mind.

  ‘I’ll never get used to this,’ Charis said.

  Madeleine was standing next to her but didn’t speak. She couldn’t.

  Her eyes were drawn to the four gurneys before them, each with a body on it. Each covered with a sheet.

  The air here was cold and it threatened to steal Madeleine’s breath away.

  The room seemed to have a blue tinge to it and Madeleine felt like she was drowning in the cold sea, ice sheets overhead, preventing her from surfacing.

  As the pathologist, Dennis Roach, pulled the sheet back from the first body, revealing Caroline White, Madeleine felt herself scream inside.

  She couldn’t get used to seeing bodies, Y incisions sewn shut again, especially those of teenagers.

  Dennis gestured to the body. ‘All the girls have been photographed and swabbed. I’ve taken samples from under their nails and collected surface debris from each: body and hair. Caroline White is the only one I’ve opened up.’

  Madeleine saw the look Charis gave her. Dennis Roach was not known for his subtlety. He was a man who dealt in facts, and he had no room for sentiment, although he was always professional and respectful of the dead in his care.

  ‘Any signs of sexual activity?’ Madeleine said.

  ‘I used the ultraviolet light and found no traces of semen externally, and internally I found no signs of trauma. Caroline wasn’t a virgin but there are no signs to indicate she’d recently engaged in any penetrative sexual activity, so we can rule out rape. I have yet to process the others, although I don’t see anything to indicate they’d been sexually assaulted, before or after death.’

  Charis shivered. She folded her arms across her chest, the cool edge of the room as well as Dennis Roach’s clinical way of speaking getting under her skin.

  ‘That’s something at least,’ she said.

  Madeleine saw the marks on her wrists. ‘And these?

  ‘She has ligature marks to her wrists, you can see by the bruising. Interestingly,’ he said, and pointed to Caroline’s mouth, her cheeks, ‘I found some residue on her mouth which I believe is from some tape that was used to cover her mouth as well as bind her.’

  Madeleine’s face lit up. ‘Can you find out the type of tape, the brand?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘That could prove useful. What else can you tell us?’

  ‘Well, I believe the cause of death, for Caroline at least, was loss of blood by severing of the carotid artery with a very sharp knife.’ He went to the side counter and retrieved an A4 photograph to show her. ‘A blade not too dissimilar to this one.’

  Madeleine and Charis studied the colour picture of a long, thin blade, with a smooth edge.

  ‘The cut is very precise and the wound is neat. There wasn’t any hacking. Caroline’s throat was cut in a fluid left-to-right movement, indicating that the killer is right-handed.’

  ‘Do you think that’s the case with the others?’ Madeleine said, pointing towards the other bodies.

  He nodded. ‘An initial examination would indicate so, yes.’

  ‘What about stomach contents?’ Charis said.

  He pulled a face and shook his head. ‘There’s little left to work with on Caroline, given how long she’s been exposed to the elements and wildlife . . .’

  A silence fell upon them all as they took in that information.

  ‘I have something else that was interesting,’ he said and beckoned them over to a table where samples were encased in solution. ‘In Caroline’s hair I found traces of fibre that’s consistent with carpet or, more commonly, upholstery used in the boot of a vehicle.’

  ‘So, a car or van?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and looking at the bodies, they seem to be covered in too much mud and dirt, more than I’d expect, even if they have been exposed to the elements. Wherever they were before that pit, my guess is they were buried at some point. There’s a lot of soil underneath their nails . . .’

  ‘Like they’ve had their hands in it?’ Madeleine said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Scrapping through it?’

  ‘Caroline’s nails are chipped or missing,’ he said. ‘I think she was digging in it, maybe trying to stop herself being dragged.’

  His words lingered in the air as they stood in a united silence.

  Madeleine swallowed hard. ‘Anything . . .’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘As well as mud, there were traces of plant life under her nails. Obviously, I’ll need to get results back before I can be sure, but I believe what I found are traces of a type of wildflower.’

  Madeleine’s eyes widened with interest. ‘Wildflower?’ She looked to Charis. ‘That means, along with the soil, we can narrow down a more accurate area to start searching.’

  ‘How long until we get the results?’ Charis asked him.

  ‘I’ll expedite the results as best I can, but I can’t promise anything.’

  Madeleine frowned. This was as good as she had right now. She took one last look at the outlines of the other bodies on the gurneys.

  ‘I’ll have the rest of the results as soon as possible,’ he said, watching her face. ‘I’ll do my best as always, Inspector, but this case seems more poignant than ever.’

  Madeleine and Charis looked at him then.

  ‘I know it’s my job to be impartial, detached, and I know I can come across as a hard bugger, but . . .’

  He pauses.

  ‘I have a teenage daughter. We live locally. Hell, I walk those country lanes myself with the dog. Lauren goes out with the dog on her own, too, and I’ve never questioned or doubted her safety. Not around these parts. It could’ve easily been her on the slab. These girls must have spent the final moments of their short lives completely terrified. For this killer? There’s no coming back from this. In all my years of pathology, I’ve never seen anything as brutal on this scale.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘There’s no chance of redemption, not in my eyes.’

/>   CHAPTER 12

  CHARLOTTE

  ‘You girls buy anything?’ I say, as I approach them coming out the shop. I’m conscious of my feet hurting in my boots, but I try not to think about it too much. I don’t want it to seem like I can’t keep up with the both of them.

  Kenzie tugs at her cardigan when she notices my gaze is drawn to her stomach and the body bar that protrudes from her navel.

  Elle had hinted about getting hers pierced but so far I’ve managed to discourage her. Ears are enough, I think.

  Elle opens her shopping bag. ‘I got a new top.’

  I peer inside.

  ‘For that party next Friday?’ she says, her eyes watching me like a hawk. She’s trying to see if I’ve relented yet.

  I give her a look and she smiles at me.

  ‘What did you get, Kenzie?’ I say, turning my attention to her. She’s pulling at her braids, playing with the beads at the ends.

  ‘A top and jeans.’ She lets me see. ‘Thought I could wear them to Elle’s party.’

  I look at her but I can see that she’s oblivious. I glance at Elle and she frowns. I’ll have to start contacting people later on about the change in plans.

  ‘Do you want to go get some food now?’ I say, changing the subject.

  ‘Pizza?’ Kenzie says, hopeful.

  I’m about to suggest maybe something a bit cheaper when Elle points to the right of me.

  ‘Isn’t that Dale?’

  I look back over my shoulder and see Dale’s lanky form walking towards us.

  ‘Hey,’ he says as he approaches. He nods at Kenzie but his attention is firmly fixed on Elle.

  He smiles shyly.

  ‘You’re not working today?’ I say, somewhat surprised. Harry’s shop may as well be open twenty-four-seven. It’s unusual for Dale not to be working.

  ‘Dad gave me the morning off.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. Well, this is a little awkward. I look over his shoulder and don’t see any signs that he’s here with friends. I guess he came on his own. I notice he doesn’t have any shopping bags on him. I watch him turn his attention to Elle again.