Cut to the Bone

by Alex Caan

  ‘She sounds fun,’ said Kate.

  ‘She’s great. Unless she’s your mother, when she becomes a monumental embarrassment.’

  Zain got blasted by drivers behind when he cut across two lanes of the motorway.

  ‘The crime scene’s not going anywhere; let’s not become road accident statistics,’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, boss. How did Michelle find this place?’ he said. He wondered if the expensive toffee was having any effect at all.

  ‘She found pictures on Dan’s hard drive, got the scent. Trawled through his social media. She found references to it, pictures. She alerted Pelt, who found the deeds in Dan’s flat.’

  ‘Dan must have known we’d find out eventually. Why did he buy a place out there, anyway?’

  ‘His parents live in Winchester.’

  ‘He doesn’t strike me as being the family type,’ he said.

  ‘How can you tell? Family ties lie deep; they’re not always obvious on the surface.’

  ‘You going to interview them?’

  ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ she said.

  ‘What else did Michelle say?’

  ‘Interestingly, Dan gave himself away on Twitter. The cottage was bought as a wreck. He fancied himself an architect, wanted to build his dream house.’

  ‘Grand Designs? It’s a TV show,’ he clarified, when Kate looked blank.

  ‘He had to have his DSL installed, but BT got the timings wrong. He boasted on Twitter that he’d had to rush to the cottage and back, to make it to a meeting. He said he used his knowledge of back roads and country lanes, and cut across private tracts of land. He got there in just over an hour, had his internet installed, then got back to London. Within three hours.’

  ‘Meaning he could easily have driven Ruby down there, done . . . whatever, then got back to London? In the time he was missing from his place, I mean?’

  ‘Precisely. I know I lambasted you earlier for pursuing him, but it seems he had motive, means and a place to act out his murderous intentions.’

  ‘Sick fuck,’ he said. ‘I swear, if this was a different country, I’d batter him to get a confession.’

  ‘Well, luckily for us all, we have the rule of law, and protection for the rights of all citizens.’

  Zain stayed quiet and gripped the steering wheel tighter as he stared at the road ahead. Some people didn’t deserve rights. He didn’t care about the human rights brigades when it came to rapists, paedos, wife beaters and child killers. That was his list. And Dan Grant was now on it, too. He just felt wrong.

  ‘South Downs National Park is six hundred and twenty-eight square miles,’ said Kate. ‘I just hope Dan had the decency to keep her close by, and she’s not in some random place we’ll struggle to get to her. I don’t want her rotting in an unmarked grave; I want her parents to have closure.’

  Zain wondered again at his boss. The attractive woman from America, with plenty of charisma and strength. He didn’t buy her story about coming to London because she loved history. She was hiding something. He was a cop, he had instincts too, and he knew she was keeping things to herself.

  Still, he would figure out Kate Riley another day. Today, they needed to scour a forest to find Ruby’s body.

  Chapter Sixty

  Justin Hope filled two glasses with bourbon shots, handed one to his guest. At twenty-eight, Paul Newton was one of the youngest MPs, and already a minister for the Home Office. They had spent the morning interviewing potential detective constables for the team. With the brash Stevie Brennan.

  ‘She is quite something,’ said Newton. ‘Very forthright.’

  ‘Yes, she is. Riley made a mistake sending her to do the job though. Riley’s been making a number of mistakes of late.’

  ‘Anything we need to take action over or be concerned about?’

  Hope swirled his drink in his glass, imbibed it through his nose first, before swallowing. It felt warm, energising, as he did so.

  ‘I’m watching her carefully. I think possibly Trent gave her too much free rein. Let’s see what happens with me micro-managing her. And she has Harris now, so he’ll keep an eye on her, I’m sure.’

  ‘You have a lot of faith in him.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I think he’s unstable. You know what he went through, don’t you? There are a lot of rumours flying around about him.’

  ‘Hearsay, old wives’ tales. I am far from being influenced by such peculiarities. Anyway, he is dispensable, like most people. If he, as Brennan would say, fucks up, he will be got rid of.’

  Newton tipped his glass to him.

  ‘To Brennan,’ said Hope, draining what was left.

  ‘How is the investigation into Ruby Day progressing?’ asked Newton.

  Hope took a moment to consider. This was a stealth mission in itself, he had no doubt.

  ‘Very well. We think we have the location she was taken to, where the videos were made. Riley and her team are there now.’

  ‘So the boyfriend is likely for it, then?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I can’t see him getting out of it, to be honest. He’s made threats, he has no alibi, and soon they’ll find the forensics to seal the case.’

  ‘Sounds positive,’ said Newton.

  Yes, thought Hope, you can scurry off and report back. Tell them it’s all done with, that MINDNET will soon pass out of all suspicion. That Jed Byrne is safe. For now. And whatever debt Newton owes them won’t be called in today, at least.

  Back in the office, Stevie banged her drawers shut, bashed her computer keys, and flung her suit jacket across her desk.

  ‘Rough day?’ said Michelle.

  ‘Get dressed up in this crap, and sit and listen to those two pricks, while doing pointless interviews. Sorry, I know you don’t like swearing.’ Stevie pulled her shirt out of her skirt. ‘I’m sure I had some spare jeans or trousers somewhere in here,’ she said, hunting through more cupboards.

  ‘You look nice.’

  ‘Fuck off, I feel like a fake in this. Normal clothes, that’s what I need.’

  ‘What is normal anymore? You want some toffee?’ offered Michelle.

  ‘No, I’m heading to the gym later. Isn’t that the posh stuff you like?’

  ‘Yes. Harris got it for me this morning. As an apology.’

  Stevie tried to bite back her resentment. Who was he to start stealing Michelle from her? This was her team before it was his.

  ‘He’s given me jack for stealing my job,’ she said.

  ‘I might have overreacted with Harris,’ said Michelle, turning back to her screen.

  ‘So he’s charmed you, then? Slimy wank. I knew he would.’

  Michelle ignored her. Stevie found some jeans in a drawer under mandatory health and safety documents she’d been given. Which she’d never read. There was a T-shirt, too.

  She stopped by Michelle’s screen on her way to change. ‘Fuck off,’ she said, reading what was on it.

  ‘It’s his fans, they’ve found out. Hashtag FreeDan is trending,’ said Michelle. ‘And check this one out: PoliceState is also trending, as is DanStitchUp.’

  ‘Sad bastards,’ said Stevie.

  ‘FindRuby is still trending, though, but pretty low down.’

  Stevie didn’t say anything. She hoped there was good news from Hampshire. If finding a dead body could be called good news.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Rob Pelt led the way to access the basement, through a door off the kitchen. Zain had thought it might be a utility room when they initially saw it. Now it was a gaping black rectangle, leading to the underbelly of the house.

  There was a steep set of stairs going downwards. Zain took a moment to let his eyes adjust. He sensed Kate look back up at him.

  Zain had become used to the dark when he had been taken, trying to figure out what the movements of air meant around him. The experience had stayed with him.

  He felt something touch his spine, and his nerves tightened. It was just sweat, bro
ught on by the forensics suit, but it was enough. His anxiety was let loose and it was crawling through him.

  The darkness was complete as they made it to the bottom of twelve steps. Zain walked as though on a wire in a circus. The room turned blue as Rob switched on the torch on his phone.

  They were in a small space, another door in front of them.

  ‘Bit brighter in there,’ said Rob.

  Rob pushed at a door that, as it opened, sounded the way Zain was feeling. The CSIs were combing the room behind it, busy in their phantom drone outfits. Tasks Zain knew the technical details of, details read from enough forensic reporting forms.

  Someone brushed past him; he jolted. Just a faceless figure, with plastic evidence bags in their hands.

  The cellar smelt of mould and damp. The sharp feral smells of animal, like cat piss, probably rats. Did foxes hide away in country basements?

  The room had been lit scantly, low lamps set up where the forensic staff were working. A hum of evidence collection. Someone opened a water bottle and drank from it.

  There were two lamps shining up at the object in the centre of the space. It cast a shadow angled over the walls and onto the low ceiling. It expanded in dimensions, but when he was close to it, Zain saw what it was. He recognised it.

  The final frame from the first video.

  The chair belonged to the set of used furniture he had seen upstairs. It was splintered, the nails in it rusted. Over the arms were two loops of silver tape, looking like bracelets that didn’t join. He recognised those, too. They would find Ruby’s skin and hair on them, he was sure.

  ‘Did they find the camera?’ Kate asked.

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Rob.

  There wasn’t much to see. Just trails of dirt.

  ‘She must have been brought back here after she was running out there,’ Zain said. ‘You can see the mud.’

  ‘They think they found blood traces, think her feet were lacerated while she made a run for it,’ said Rob.

  ‘I don’t see how. She was locked down here. We saw the bolts. Unless she was waiting? Managed to release herself, and then jumped whoever held her here?’ said Zain.

  ‘Possible,’ said Rob.

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Kate. ‘She was filmed running away. It was planned. I think she was let go, to heighten the sense of pleasure for the perpetrator. It was always their intention, part of their game.’

  ‘Well, we can ask him,’ said Rob.

  Rob moved away from the chair, towards the back wall. He stopped some distance from it. Lamps lit the floor. Yellow markers were spread out across it.

  ‘There’s no light,’ said Rob. ‘Someone removed the only bulb.’

  ‘She was kept in darkness?’ said Kate.

  ‘We saw from the video that she was filmed in that grey-green colour,’ said Zain. ‘It’s what they use on Most Haunted and crap like that. Fuck.’

  Another memory, coldness in the pit of his stomach. A light trilling sensation began in his temples. He felt the base of his skull, as though it was detaching itself from his spine. Making him nauseous.

  ‘Stuck down here, tied to a chair, waiting for that sick bastard. Might explain what they found. She pissed herself. Sitting there,’ said Rob.

  Zain looked back at the chair, feeling sicker, but also angrier. He couldn’t help the images in his head; he’d seen Ruby taped to the chair. He remembered the fear in Millie’s eyes. Dan would never get the sort of punishment he deserved. Zain wanted to hurt him.

  ‘Do we know where she was shot?’ said Kate.

  Her voice was calm, unaffected. She was a visitor to a museum, keeping her emotions in check.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Rob.

  ‘I think we’ll find her body wherever she was shot, just dumped,’ said Zain.

  He was feeling pressure build inside him, felt sweat on his hands inside plastic gloves, on his face, throughout his body.

  ‘Any signs there might have been a second victim?’

  ‘You thinking he might already have done someone else in?’ asked Rob. ‘Forensics haven’t found anything yet.’

  ‘I need to breathe,’ Zain said, rushing from the basement, his legs giving out under him.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Outside, there was peace. The sort of country peace he wasn’t used to. Birds and stuff, background noise. A tractor or some other farm machine.

  Zain took in deep breaths, to clear his system. He needed something to clear his mind as well.

  Kate joined him. She was dressed in black again, but wore boots like his, and a maroon shirt. Her face still had the fresh hue he’d seen that morning.

  ‘You OK?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Just a bit claustrophobic down there. Kept seeing her, and when he said about the piss . . . fuck, people are just twisted, sometimes.’

  ‘I understand. At least we can do something meaningful about it,’ she said.

  ‘Can we?’

  She looked out at the trees, thick and black in places, that surrounded them.

  ‘If he took her through, there will be a trail,’ she said. ‘Broken tree branches, disturbed foliage. I don’t think Dan would be strong enough to carry her; she must have walked.’

  ‘At gunpoint,’ he said. ‘Did she think she was going to live? If she kept walking, I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘Always. It’s how the power plays out. People do whatever they are told, hopeful of release, survival. No matter how slim the chances, our desire to live is stronger than anything else. Even rational logic and experience.’

  He knew all about that. He had done the same. Believing they would let him go. Even when they told him what they were going to do to him.

  Zain massaged the back of his neck. He often did when he thought of that time.

  ‘What now?’ he said.

  ‘Dogs. I want to catch her trail. You have her T-shirt in the boot? Let’s see where the dogs lead us. Get the local police to start searching.’

  ‘That would be us. Detective Sergeant Helen Lowe,’ the petite blonde officer said, stepping forward to shake hands with them both. ‘Sorry I missed you when you arrived. I was updating HQ, had to drive until I found a signal.’

  ‘You think we can get access to a decent-sized search team? I want the dogs to hit a direction, and then I want the area scanned inch by inch,’ said Kate.

  ‘Dogs are on their way. Search team will follow.’

  ‘Any sign of a vehicle?’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes. We found tyre tracks. The whole area is pretty dense with mud, as I’m sure you can tell.’

  ‘Yeah, Pelt told us to park right up by the entrance,’ said Zain.

  He saw some colour shift into Lowe’s face. Had Pelt been asking her out already? Last he heard, he was shacking up with one of the CSIs. Just last night. A mixture of envy and irritation shot through Zain.

  ‘Any idea what type of vehicle?’ said Kate.

  ‘Small, from the measurements of space between tyres.’

  ‘Very perceptive,’ muttered Zain. ‘Sorry. Been a long drive.’

  ‘Put out an alert, see if anything comes up,’ said Kate. ‘I don’t think you get a great amount of traffic around here. Someone might have seen something.’

  Zain wasn’t sure. When you asked the public for anything, you usually got hundreds of crank calls. It just built up intelligence, more to be sifted through. The important pieces always got lost.

  ‘Did the press conference with the parents deliver anything?’ said DS Lowe, as though running on the same track as him.

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ said Kate.

  They heard the sound of tyres screeching as a Transit van came towards them. Moments later, the sound of dogs barking filled the air.

  ‘I’ll get Ruby’s T-shirt,’ said Zain.

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Hampshire police had sent two female dog handlers. Kate was impressed by the representation of women in the force, and commented on it to Zain.

  ‘You t
hink? I reckon there’s a man up there somewhere, though, sending the women, because they’re not as good. In his opinion. I’m laughing, though; they’re better.’

  ‘Are you trying to kiss my ass, Harris?’

  ‘Is it working?’

  The dogs, bloodhounds, had caught Ruby’s scent from the T-shirt they had brought with them from her flat. They went crazy inside the cottage for a while, where she had been recently. In the bedrooms, the basement. Something odd happened, though. When one of the dogs got near to the chair Ruby had been tied to, it panicked. The dog yanked its chain, started whimpering, scared.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Zain.

  The handler looked around, asked for light to be brought, and a magnifying lens.

  ‘Cayenne pepper,’ she said. ‘Someone’s put it down, to affect the dogs.’

  The dog was taken back to the holding van. It always surprised Kate how animals of strength, with the ability to tear a new throat for a man, could be rendered passive that way. The other dog, Diva, picked up Ruby’s scent, its handler avoiding the chair, back up the stairs to the kitchen, through the back door and into the woods.

  Diva started a light canter, her handler trotting along with her. She darted through a break in the trees, invisible from a distance. When you got close, you could see the disturbance in the natural alignment of forest.

  Kate followed with Zain and Rob at a brisk walk. Her boots fared better than Rob’s shoes. She glanced at them meaningfully.

  ‘DS Lowe offered me a spare pair of wellies, but I’m good,’ he said.

  ‘You should have taken her up on her offer,’ said Zain.

  ‘I have a reputation to maintain,’ replied Rob.

  ‘These country gals probably like men in wellies.’

  ‘She’s not country; she’s from a town.’

  ‘Is she indeed? What happened to the forensics woman?’ said Zain.

  ‘We had a nice time.’

  ‘Do you think work is a dating agency?’ said Zain.

  ‘I hear jealousy in every syllable, mate,’ said Rob, slapping Zain on the shoulder.

  ‘Can you check what stage the moon was at in its cycle,’ Kate cut in. ‘I want to know how dark it was the night Ruby went missing.’