The Doll's House: DI Helen Grace 3

by M. J. Arlidge

  The old team was breaking up. Tony Bridges had left the Force for good, DC Grounds was due to retire shortly and Charlie was on maternity leave, a few weeks shy of giving birth. Lloyd was the new DS, they had two new DCs – the Major Incident Team had a very different feel now. If she was honest, it made Helen uncomfortable. She hadn’t got a handle on the new personalities, was yet to establish an easy rhythm with the freshly assembled team. But the only way to do that was to go through fire together.

  ‘What have you got for me, Lloyd?’

  They were already making their way under the police cordon and across the sand towards the trench.

  ‘Young female. Buried about three feet down. Found by a couple of kids an hour or so ago. They’re over there with their parents.’

  Lloyd indicated the family of four, huddled in police blankets, giving their statements to a uniformed officer.

  ‘Any connection to the victim?’

  ‘No, they come here most weekends. Usually have the place to themselves.’

  ‘Anybody live near here?’

  ‘No. The nearest houses are three miles away.’

  ‘Does it pick up anything from the lighthouse at night?’

  ‘It’s too far round.’

  ‘Making this a pretty good deposition site.’

  They walked in silence to the lip of the trench. Meredith Walker, Southampton Central’s Chief Forensics Officer, was at the bottom, carefully excavating the body. Helen took in the scene, the white-suited Forensics Officer crouching sinisterly over a woman who looked completely at peace, despite the wet sand that stuck to her hair, eyes and lips.

  The woman’s face, shoulders, upper torso and arms had been revealed. Her limbs were painfully thin and the skin very pale, which made her single tattoo stand out even more. Despite the partial decomposition, she was a strangely beautiful sight, her black hair still framing those vivid blue eyes. It reminded Helen of the Grimms’ fairy tales, of gothic damsels awaiting love’s true kiss.

  ‘How long has she been down there?’ Helen asked.

  ‘Hard to say,’ replied Meredith. ‘The sand at this depth is cold and wet – ideal conditions to preserve the body. There are no animals or insects to get to her here either. But it’s not recent. Given the levels of decomposition, I would say two, three years – Jim Grieves will be able tell you more once he gets her back to the mortuary.’

  ‘I’ll need the Crime Scene Photos tonight if possible,’ Helen replied.

  ‘Will do. Though I’m not sure how much help they’ll be. Whoever did this has been careful. Her earrings and nose studs have been removed. The fingernails have been cut. And you can guess what time and tide have done to any residual forensic evidence.’

  Helen thanked Meredith and walked down to the water’s edge to get a better view of the scene. Already her nerves were jangling. This was a careful, premeditated disposal by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. This wasn’t the work of an amateur. Which strongly suggested to Helen that their killer had done this before.

  5

  ‘Stay away. Don’t come near me.’

  Ruby was backed into a corner of the room. She held out her arms to ward off attack, but knew immediately that it was an empty gesture.

  Click. A powerful torch beam fired straight at her. Her heart raced as she watched the torch beam run the rule over her, creeping down from her face, over her chest to her thighs and then her feet. Despite her determination to appear strong, her composure abandoned her now and she started to sob.

  ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  His voice was measured and steady. She didn’t recognize it, though the Southampton accent came through clearly.

  ‘Please let me go,’ she gushed through tears. ‘I won’t tell anyone. I –’

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘Please. I just want to go home.’

  ‘If you’re cold, I can get you an extra blanket. I want you to be comfortable.’

  His calm pragmatism was crushing. He was speaking as if nothing unusual had happened. As if this were normal.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘I want to go home, you motherfucker. Stop … stop talking to me. Just … take me home. The police will be looking for me –’

  ‘Nobody’s looking for you, Ruby.’

  ‘My parents are expecting me. My mum’s coming round today –’

  ‘Your parents don’t love you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They never have.’

  ‘Why are you say—’

  ‘I’ve seen the way they treat you. What they say about you when you’re not around. They want rid of you.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Really? You walked out on them, remember. So why should they come looking for you?’

  The horrible logic of it rendered Ruby speechless.

  ‘No … no. You’re wrong. You’re lying. If you want money, they’ve got –’

  ‘I’m just telling you the truth. They don’t want you. But I do.’

  Ruby sobbed louder. This couldn’t be happening.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she whimpered.

  The torch beam moved still closer. He was beside her now. Ruby hung her head, clamping her eyes shut. She could feel his breath on her. She flinched when she felt him stroke her hair.

  ‘That’s good to hear, my love.’

  His voice was a warm whisper.

  ‘Because this is your home now.’

  6

  Alison Sprackling was furious with her daughter. They had made an arrangement to meet at eleven – it was now nearly one p.m. Where the hell was she?

  The doorbell had gone unanswered, so Alison had let herself in. Ruby lived alone in a tiny, down-at-heel flat. She was by nature a party girl and often went out drinking on Friday nights, so it was not beyond her to cower under the duvet, nursing a hangover, blocking out the world. There was of course always the chance that she had brought someone home with her – not something Alison liked to dwell on, given her daughter’s romantic history – but there was too much riding on this to be bashful.

  It had taken so long to get the family back to a point where a reconciliation might be possible – Alison was determined not to blow it now, however unreliable and wilful Ruby could be. Months of diplomacy had gone into engineering Ruby’s return to the family – today was the day when they were going to contact her landlord, book a removals firm. It was a day of celebration, a day to rubberstamp a hard-fought victory for common sense over hurt.

  It was all Alison craved. A return to normality, a happy united family. So where was she? Where could Ruby be – today of all days? Should she call Jonathan? Get him to come over? No, best not give him any more ammunition when the truce was so fragile.

  Ruby’s year-long exile from the family had been awful. Not just the bitter accusations, the tears, the threats, but more the sheer lack of her, their eldest, at family gatherings, holidays, barbecues. It had all just felt wrong, as if they – and she – were somehow wilfully ignoring a burning building or drowning swimmer.

  Alison stalked through the flat again – bedroom to bathroom to living area – but there was no sign of her. What was this? A final act of rebellion? A warning that she could – and would – still be her own woman? Or was this something more serious? Was she reneging on their agreement? The uncertainty made Alison deeply nervous.

  Then suddenly, birdsong – Alison’s phone heralding the arrival of a new tweet. Ruby was a regular tweeter – it was largely how Alison kept tabs on her – so Alison rushed over to her bag, pulling out the contents in search of her phone.

  It was from Ruby. Alison read the tweet. Frowning, she read it again. She couldn’t be that selfish, could she?

  ‘Need to get away and be by myself If people had loved me better then I would stay … Rx’

  She could. Ruby had pulled the roof down on them. And Alison knew immediately there would be no coming back from this.

  7

  Having finish
ed tweeting, he turned the phone off and stowed it safely in his jacket pocket. He checked again that the coast was clear, but he was being over-cautious: no one penetrated this deep into the forest.

  Pushing on, he made his way slowly through the undergrowth, careful not to snag his clothes on any of the thorns or brambles. His synthetic clothing was unlikely to leave any fibres behind, but you could never be too careful.

  He emerged into a small clearing. The foliage was less thick here, the soil sandy and dry. Perfect for his purpose. Clearing a small patch of vegetation, he retrieved the large bundle of sticks from his rucksack and laid them carefully on the ground. Soon he had a good pile, encircled by the little trench he had dug carefully with his trowel. The trench would catch any stray sparks – a forest fire here would be catastrophic. Safety first, always safety first.

  A little crumbling of firelighter to set it going. This was more dangerous than using newspaper of course, but newspapers could provide useful clues to a half-intelligent police officer, so paraffin it was. It seemed odd to feel the heat of the fire on an already warm Saturday afternoon, but needs must. If anyone did see it, they would think it was holidaymakers having a barbecue – there were loads of them about at this time of year. Anyway, he’d be long gone by the time anyone did find it, so …

  The thought of discovery, as ridiculous as it was, prompted him to action. He pulled Ruby’s pyjamas from the bag and laid them on the fire. He watched them burn, riveted by the slow conflagration. They resisted stubbornly at first, then came the first flicker as the fibres began to catch, before eventually they succumbed to the inevitable.

  It was stupid to enjoy it as much as he did. But he couldn’t help it. It was beautiful – the leaping flames, the glowing embers and finally the gossamer soft ash. He was moved by what he saw, aware of its wonderful significance. This was the end of Ruby. She was dead and gone now, but from the fire, from the ashes, something new and beautiful would rise.

  8

  The young woman lay cold and lifeless on the slab. The sand that had encased her for so long had been swept away grain by grain and sent for analysis, leaving the victim looking strangely clean. Now that she was away from the beach, exposed and unadorned in the police mortuary, she was a pitiful sight. She was so thin – skeletal was how Jim Grieves, the pathologist, had put it over the phone. As Helen stared at the corpse, she felt a wave of nausea sweep over her. This had once been a vibrant young woman, but now her skin was grey, her lips cracked and her bones strained everywhere to puncture what remained of her skin. Helen felt profoundly sorry for her.

  They had searched the Police National Computer and made the customary missing persons enquiries, but had come up with nothing. So Helen had decided to head straight to the police mortuary to see if Jim could throw any light on who she was and how she had come to this.

  ‘She’s been starved,’ Jim offered as his opening salvo. He was not without compassion, but he was to the point, years of service and hundreds of corpses having eroded his desire to engage in pleasantries. ‘Her stomach has shrunk to the size of an orange, bone strength has been compromised and I found traces of non-edible objects – wood, cotton, even metal – in her digestive system.’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘I’ve more work to do, but so far I can find no obvious cause of death. The neck and vertebrae are intact, there are no bullet or knife wounds, no signs of manual or ligature strangulation either, so for now we’ll assume that she starved to death.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘This would fit with a few other things I’ve observed. Her skin has a grey, leathery quality – even where it has been well preserved – and her eyes have deteriorated markedly. I would say she was virtually blind by the end. Also, bloods show that she had a total absence of vitamin D in her system.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Taken all together it suggests that she was kept in total darkness in the final weeks or even months of her life.’

  Helen couldn’t find words to express her horror this time. Had this young woman starved to death in a lightless hell?

  ‘Anything else?’ Helen said quickly.

  ‘You’ll note the tattoo – a bluebird on the right shoulder – done sometime in the last three to five years. Also, the pitting around the groin area. Looks like historic evidence of an STI – I would hazard molluscum contagiosum, but I’ll confirm when I’ve done more tests.’

  ‘How long has she been buried?’

  ‘Hard to say with any real accuracy. As you can see, the body has started to decompose. Skeletalization is about thirty per cent complete but there is still plenty of skin remaining and the hair is largely intact. Heat speeds up decomposition, cold slows it down and it was pretty chilly down there. So I would estimate two to four years.’

  Helen exhaled – those parameters were too broad for her liking.

  ‘But I do have something else that might help,’ Jim continued. Turning, he offered Helen a small metal bowl. Helen peered into it – a small, electronic device lay inside.

  ‘Your victim had a heart condition. This is her pacemaker,’ Jim explained, wiping rust and dried blood off the unit, ‘complete with manufacturer’s logo and serial number.’

  Helen mustered a half-smile: finally some good news.

  ‘Run that serial number down,’ Jim continued ‘and you’ve got your girl.’

  9

  DC Sanderson approached the flat in Millbrook with a heavy heart. Increasingly this was her lot in life – sweeping up the cases that no one else in the Major Incident Team wanted. Helen, Lloyd and a number of the others had been out at Carsholt, doing the interesting stuff. What had they left her? A glorified missing-persons case. She didn’t blame Helen, who had always treated her fairly and encouraged her as a fellow female officer. No, she laid the blame squarely at Lloyd Fortune’s door, who she felt favoured the new DCs over her. It wasn’t fair – she was more experienced, knew Southampton better than these blow-ins – but station politics is a fickle business.

  The interior of the flat didn’t improve her mood. It was amazing what landlords could get away with these days, now that no one could actually afford to buy a property. The one-bed flat was cramped and unprepossessing. Damp hugged the ceiling, the windows were ill-fitting and draughty and she was sure there were things living behind the skirting boards. Or perhaps dying. The whole place smelt of decay.

  Still it was someone’s home and the tenant – Ruby Sprackling – was somebody’s daughter. Alison, her mother, flanked by her worried husband, Jonathan, paced the floor. Tears were not far off, so Sanderson decided to press on and get as much info as she could.

  ‘There have been a lot of … issues over the last couple of years, but she wouldn’t take off like this,’ Alison was saying. ‘She was due to move back into the family home next week, we’d been talking about it for months, we’d made arrangements …’

  ‘Could she have got cold feet?’

  ‘No’ was the swift response, although Sanderson detected a hint of doubt. She was also intrigued by the fact that the stony-faced husband had not said a word.

  ‘You said that she had been in contact with her birth mother recently?’ Sanderson continued.

  ‘Not recently, but on and off during the last two years.’ Ruby’s father was keen to talk about this topic. ‘She was a terrible influence,’ he said further, ‘got her into drugs, skipping school, there was trouble with the police. Ruby completely ballsed up her A-Levels because of that bloody woman.’

  A sharp look from Alison made him rein in his anger. He ceased his rant but was unrepentant. He knew what he thought of Shanelle Harvey and wasn’t minded to change his opinion. His promising daughter had gone completely off the rails in the last year, prompting furious bust-ups and recriminations within the family – all because of an innocent and well-intentioned desire to create a bond with her biological mother.

  As he filled her in on the details, Sanderson couldn’t help feeling that Ruby would have been be
tter off sticking with what she had. Shanelle Harvey had turned out to be a small-time fence, thief and dealer with questionable hobbies and even more questionable boyfriends. Not the plucky but poor earth mother that Ruby had perhaps been hoping to find.

  ‘You said you weren’t too worried at first, but now …’ Sanderson got the conversation back on track.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Alison agreed. ‘Ruby can be unreliable and impulsive – it’s not impossible that she would wind herself up and take off for a bit. But she’s posted one tweet since last night and, believe me, that is seriously out of character. Her phone’s turned off – I’ve tried her a dozen times …’

  ‘What about keys? Purse?’

  ‘It looks like she’s got those with her,’ Alison conceded.

  ‘So she packed a bag … ?’

  ‘Her rucksack’s not here. And it’s true she’s taken most of her clothes.’

  ‘Was there any sign of forced entry?’

  ‘No, the lock’s new and pretty decent and the windows seem ok, but even so …’

  Sanderson felt herself mentally switching off, dismissing Alison as a mother in denial, then mentally slapped herself back into concentrating. Helen Grace was very hot on missing persons cases – she always said that they were just the stepping stones to murder cases, rape cases – and Sanderson knew Helen would expect her to leave no stone unturned.

  ‘Her inhaler.’

  Now Alison had Sanderson’s attention.