Even Pretty Things Rot: A dark, heart-pounding psychic thriller

by Farah Ali

  Maggie shrugged. ‘I know. But Mrs Hayle says Bianca always calls if her plans change.’

  ‘Okay. Is she in the waiting room? I’ll see her.’

  Belinda Hayle paced the waiting room wringing her hands. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she clearly had not slept.

  ‘Mrs Hayle? Please sit down.’ He gestured to a red padded chair and sat next to her offering her a tissue from the conveniently placed box on the table.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry for bothering you, but I’m so worried.’

  Jack nodded, his voice gentle. ‘There’s no need to apologise. This is what I’m here for. So your daughter, Bianca, didn’t come home last night. I take it that’s unusual?’

  Mrs Hayle wiped her nose. ‘Yes. Very. That’s why I’m afraid. If she stays the night at a friend’s house she always phones me. Always. She’s a sensible, responsible girl. I’ve phoned her friends and they haven’t seen her. Neither has Daniel—that’s her boyfriend. He says they went to dinner and then saw a movie. But she didn’t stay the night.’

  ‘Does she drive?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes. She’s passed her test, but doesn’t have her own car. She borrowed the family car last night.’

  Jack scratched his chin. ‘So she could have driven out of Deerleap?’

  Mrs Hayle choked back a sob. ‘But that’s the thing. She knows her father would need the car for work in the morning. And she had work herself in the morning. She works part-time as a waitress. She got an offer for an internship so will be leaving Deerleap Hollow in four months time.’ Her voice rose in distress. ‘I phoned the Antler—where she works—but they haven’t heard from her. And Bianca never misses work.’

  Jack shifted in his seat.

  ‘Have you called the hospital?’

  Her shoulders shook. ‘Yes. This morning. But she isn’t there.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’ Careful to keep his voice neutral he went on. ‘And what about the car? Anybody seen that? No accidents have been reported here.’

  Mrs Hayle raised her watery eyes, panic ready to surface. ‘No.’

  ‘Could you give the make, model and number plate?’ He fished in his pocket for the pen and small notebook he always carried with him.

  ‘And are you certain that nothing is missing from her room? I mean clothes, luggage, her passport, things like that.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘I didn’t check. But I will, right away.’ Then her face crumpled. ‘But Bianca wouldn’t just leave without telling me. She just wouldn’t and she had no reason to.’

  Jack patted her arm attempting to soothe her. ‘There’s probably a really simple explanation for all of this. Leave it with us. Do you have a picture?’

  Belinda groped through her cavernous handbag emerging with a family photograph. Bianca had her arms around her mother and father. A young boy of about thirteen stood in front with his father’s restraining hands on his shoulders.

  ‘And here’s one with just Bianca. You can keep this one.’

  This photo was a close up showing a grinning Bianca in a blue sundress with sunglasses perched on her head. A pretty, healthy looking girl with confident eyes who looked nothing like her sibling or parents.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Hayle. You’ve done everything right. Now please go home and don’t worry.’

  Later that day the Hayle car was found a mile away from the family home on a dirt track. Bianca was not inside and there was no sign of struggle within.

  Two days passed and Bianca was still missing. Jack sent Warren, Rhea and Graham door to door in the neighbourhood while he and Alika, his detective sergeant, questioned Bianca’s friends and boyfriend.

  They all said the same thing: Bianca wasn’t the type to disappear without telling anyone and she had no problems or worries.

  Deerleap Hollow held its breath. But not for long.

  Chapter Seven

  The sun eased down behind the mountain leaving pink hued violet in its wake. Lila was deep in the forest looking for cast antlers, a hessian sack folded under her arm. She had been here for two hours already and did this several times a month. It was one of her favourite activities, away from people who judged and criticised, away from the noise and traffic, and for a short time, away from the shadows of the past.

  If she was lucky she would spot a graceful doe with a shy fawn, or a young male peeping through the foliage. If she was extra lucky she would see a muscular stag gazing back at her with a pride that humbled her. Unlike elsewhere, the deer of Deerleap did not flee when a clumsy person stumbled into their path. Brave and unafraid, with a human intelligence, they slipped through the trees, not seeking or encouraging contact.

  And Lila was glad, for their lack of fear filled her heart with peace. She might have spent most of her years away from the Hollow, but she was born here and the story of the Ayal resounded within her soul. It was difficult not to feel a spiritual connection to her birthplace—after all her mother and father had been born and married in Deerleap. Her mother gave birth to Maura and Lila here. And her parents and sister had died here in the most awful way.

  Perhaps that was why she ached for hours after reading about the slaughter of the Ayal during her first visit to the Deerleap Museum of History. Lila was tethered to Deerleap by love and by loss, an umbilical cord that nurtured and tormented her.

  A single antler half hidden by bracken caught her eye and crowing in delight she stooped down to grab it. Holding her prize up against the fading light she inspected it. It was a nice size, almost half a metre in length with seven points. After cleaning and painting it would make a wonderful decoration, or a handy coat hook, or even an unusual mount for jewellery. Some customers preferred matching pairs so she searched eagerly for its twin, without luck.

  Shrugging Lila reverently placed the antler in the sack and gazed up. It would be dark soon and she knew it was time to go back. In such a vast forest it would be all too easy to stray from the familiar path she was on and end up lost and disorientated. The forest was three hundred square miles and mostly unexplored—lingering there at night was especially foolhardy whether you were superstitious or not. It was hard to ignore the whispered tales of cursed souls who haunted this wild land trying to lure people to their doom and Lila had experienced some uneasy moments in the past.

  Once she could have sworn she saw a man in bloody rags holding a flaming torch, beckoning her to follow. She had held her breath and covered her eyes until she was alone again. Another time she was certain she was being stalked through the trees—she kept hearing childish whispers and giggles, but when she turned there was nothing there.

  So Lila, tired, hungry, but satisfied, turned back and headed for home, following the stream that would lead her within metres of her road.

  The stench of rotten flowers slammed up her nose and she gasped, dropping the sack. She pinched her nostrils shut. Taking her hand away, she sniffed. Nothing, just wood and earth. But her head felt cottony and her breathing slowed as her eyes glazed over.

  ‘Oh no.’

  Golden hair with a crown of flowers. Lila blinked hard, but it remained in her head, not fading away as it should, but actually increasing in brightness until the image hurt her eyes with its lurid intensity.

  Unable to stop herself, almost in a trance, Lila veered away from the babbling stream, crashing through the trees until she came to a clearing she had never visited before. She scanned the small meadow unblinking, her mouth open.

  Her breath caught in her throat. There in the centre. Lila took reluctant steps forward until she was standing over the body. Her vision swam, then her eyes focused and the scene before her was revealed in all of its cruelty.

  ‘Oh no. No no no no.’

  Lila raised her hands to her head, whimpering. More images slapped into her. A screaming girl, her wrists and ankles bound in darkness. Bunches of flowers. A noose around a slim neck.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Lila fled.

  ***

  Jack stared at the bizarre scen
e in front of him. The calm and control of only days before had crumbled, replaced with a hard anger and a fierce desire to bring the perpetrator of this...this atrocity to justice.

  Alika shifted unhappily by his side, shooting anxious sideways glances his way. Graham made notes and talked to a stiff, skinny woman chewing on her sleeve, distress evident in her jerky movements. Every now and again he too looked in Jack’s direction. Rhea, short and compact at the outskirts, cordoned off the clearing with blue and white tape, weaving it in and out of the trees determinedly not looking at the body. When she caught Jack’s eye she pushed up her glasses and looked hurriedly away. Warren, pale, his hands shaking a little, circled the body taking photographs with a fancy DSLR. With his photography qualifications and his high-tech equipment Warren was Deerleap Hollow’s official crime scene photographer.

  Jack squared his shoulders and attempted to regain his equilibrium. His team needed leadership. He was an outsider but they had lived here for many years, some of them he knew were born here. They were shocked and scared. He inhaled deeply and forced himself to focus on Bianca Hayle’s body.

  He had seen many dead bodies in his long career. He’d seen men blown to smithereens in drug wars, women mutilated beyond recognition by their pimps, children with their heads smashed in by their stepfathers, and worse. Jack had truly believed nothing could shock him.

  Until now.

  Bianca Hayle lay in the long grass under the bright dawn, her blonde hair fanning around her naked shoulders, a crown of flowers on her head, her arms neatly at her sides, her left hand grasping a posy of pink and white flowers. A band of purple-blue bruising around her neck made Jack wince yet that was only the beginning of the barbarity. She had been split open from diaphragm to groin, her breasts on either side of a gaping cavity stuffed with soil. Someone had planted a rainbow array of flowers and they trembled in the breeze. Bianca’s mouth was split wide with soil, more flowers growing inside her scream. Her eyes had been removed, the sockets stuffed with soil. Each eye had a single bright yellow flower growing from it.

  Buttercups. They’re buttercups. Do you like butter, Jack?

  Julie, his sister, would hold one under his chin, twirling it in her fingers as she studied him closely.

  What is this? What the hell is this?

  ‘Kidnapping and murdering a young woman to stuff her full of flowers? Have you ever seen anything like this before, Inspector?’ asked Alika in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘No. Nothing like this.’

  ‘What does it mean? I can’t even...I mean...her poor parents.’

  Jack nodded, but only half-heard so intent was he on the crime scene. If the murder had been committed in the city he could depend on a huge amount of resources and a battalion of crime scene personnel. But in Deerleap Jack knew collecting forensic evidence would fall on him and his small team.

  Not that there appeared to be any evidence to collect—this wasn’t where Bianca had taken her final breath. He, Warren and Alika had scouted the clearing for anything of interest, and Jack was certain any evidence would come from Bianca’s body.

  ‘When is the ambulance going to get here? The sooner she gets to the forensic pathologist the better.’

  Alika nodded not taking her eyes off the body. ‘They’ll be here soon. I left them a trail to follow.’

  Everything was so much harder without radio or mobile communication. Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. A tension headache was forming behind both eyes.

  ‘They found us,’ Alika murmured.

  Jack looked up. Rhea lifted up the tape for two men and a stretcher who hurried over and instantly paled. As Bianca was zipped into a body bag, Graham jogged over.

  ‘The witness wants to leave. She’s jittery. Can she?’

  Jack frowned. ‘No, not yet. I want to talk to her. How the hell did she know the body was here?’ He glanced around the tiny clearing. ‘It’s so isolated. What did she say to you?’

  Graham tugged at his uniform. ‘She said she “just knew” and...uh she found it last night. Not this morning.’

  Jack stared. Graham, rubbing a wary eye, exchanged a knowing look with Alika then coughed.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Lila Cassandra. I should probably tell you something about her, she’s a psy—’

  But Jack had already stridden over to Lila who was twisting her fingers and edging closer to the tree line.

  ‘Miss Cassandra? I’m Inspector Jack Montague. I need to go over a few things with you.’

  Lila crossed her arms sulkily. ‘I’ve already spoken to him.’ She pointed to Graham. ‘I want to go home. Please.’

  He ignored the request. ‘This won’t take long. First of all, please explain to me how you found the body?’ He studied her. There was something familiar about her.

  She exhaled, closing her eyes. ‘I was looking for antlers last night. I smelled rotten flowers. Then I saw the body.’ She poked her forehead, hard. ‘In my head. That’s how I found it. I just knew it was here.’

  Jack looked at her incredulously. ‘You expect me to believe that? And what rotten flowers? The flowers are fresh.’

  Lila studied the ground. ‘I don’t know. But it’s the truth. I...I see things. Feel things.’

  Jack’s jaw twitched, but he kept his irritation in check. ‘Why didn’t you report it last night? You waited all night and reported it to us this morning? Why?’

  Lila’s bottom lip trembled. She wanted to go home. She hated this. Hated the hostility coming off the man in spiky waves, hated the way he looked at her like she was something nasty he’d trodden in.

  ‘Well? Miss Cassandra?’

  Her thin shoulders rose and fell. ‘I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. If it was real or not. I was scared. I ran home. It was only later on when I calmed down that I remembered. About the missing girl. Bianca. Then I knew for sure. It all made sense then. She was one of the girls I’ve been seeing.’ She tapped her forehead again.

  ‘What do you mean one of?

  Lila stayed silent.

  Jack shook his head, studying her pale, drawn face, bafflement and annoyance making him clench. He blinked.

  ‘Wait a minute. I’ve met you before, haven’t I?’

  Lila squinted at him. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yes, I have. A couple of weeks ago. I was out running, you, er...bumped into me. You were upset.’ And half-naked and raving, he thought but didn’t say.

  She flushed in shame. So he was the one. Lila had a vague recollection of running into somebody that horrible night, but her terror had been so acute she hadn’t paid attention.

  Jack lowered his voice. ‘What were you running from? Where did you go?’

  Swallowing, Lila pulled at the sleeves of her frayed jumper. She knew she should lie, but she was exhausted and frightened and sick of feeling ashamed. She lifted her chin and met his gaze.

  ‘I saw her. Bianca. In a vision. I didn’t know who it was, but I saw a girl with blonde hair. She was dead in a meadow. And stuffed with soil and flowers. Her eyes were removed. And other parts were too. And I could smell rotten flowers. It upset me. So I...ran. I go to the graveyard.’ She winced knowing how ridiculous it sounded. ‘I’ve known something bad was about to happen in Deerleap for a while now.’

  Jack rubbed his nose. ‘You’re telling me you’re some sort of psychic. Seriously.’ And why am I not surprised that you hang around a graveyard at night?

  He had absolutely no belief in the supernatural and felt intellectual pity for those who did. He also had a deep dislike for so-called clairvoyants who manipulated and preyed on the vulnerable. It was such a scam. He remembered being persuaded by Angela to have their tarot cards read on holiday soon after their engagement.

  ‘It’ll be fun, Jack, stop being a spoilsport.’

  So he had let her lead him into a tacky hut on the pier. Of course it had been nonsense and lucky guesses, but at least Angela had enjoyed herself.

  The psychic, a fat wrinkled woma
n, had an ostentatious turban on her head, and wore green eyeshadow and lashings of oily eyeliner. She had laid the cards out one after another.

  ‘The cards tell me both of you will lead a long, happy life together. I see three or four children in your future.’

  Jack frowned. What a load of bullshit.

  Lila stayed silent. There was a cottony feeling in her head. Whispering. Her muscles relaxed. Someone wanted to talk. To her? No...to him. A message.

  ‘I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m finding this all a little strange, Miss Cassandra. But I don’t have time for this. If I need to question you further I’ll...Miss?’

  There was a strange faraway look in her eye and her arms were limp. She began to sway on her feet as if to a tune only she could hear.

  ‘Miss? Is something wrong?’

  No response. Jack turned away, his temper rising. He had enough to deal with without a delusional woman who’d probably forgotten to take her medication wasting his time.

  Lila’s arm shot out and she grabbed his wrist in an iron grip.

  Astonished, Jack turned back. Her light brown eyes were wide anyway, but now they had dilated and taken over her face.

  ‘Angela.’

  Jack froze. His heart lurched. ‘What? What did you say?’

  Lila stared through him, her voice deep and unnatural. ‘Angela. Wasn’t your fault. Tell Jack. Don’t blame yourself. Not your fault. Forgives you. Forgive yourself.’

  A shudder coursed through him. Blood roared in his ears.

  ‘Angela?’ he murmured.

  Lila’s eyelids fluttered, confused, her eyes cleared. She looked down and dropped Jack’s wrist with alarm.

  ‘How did you know about Angela? Tell me,’ He grabbed her arm.

  Lila looked around uncertainly. ‘I...I don’t know. I want to go...let me go.’

  Jack squeezed, digging his fingers into her flesh, wanting to bruise the truth out of her, wanting to hurt her for making him feel like this. She whimpered, struggling, tears springing to her eyes.