Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller

by Jane Holland

  Tris carries me to the bank and lets me hop down.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘This seemed like a good idea back at the bridge. But he can’t have come this way. Looks like I got soaked for nothing.’

  I don’t answer. I’m too busy studying the ground between the bank and the wire fence. The muddy soil looks unusually soft and loose there, considering it’s covered in a huge tangle of brambles, where you might expect the earth underneath to be tough and compacted, a mass of roots. Only some of the brambles look oddly wilted. At this time of year they are usually fresh and bursting with bright green leaf buds, or tiny white flowers ready to be pollinated. The beginnings of berries. But the brambles nearest me look old, like last season’s growth, all the flower heads drooping.

  ‘What is it?’ Tris asks, watching me.

  For answer, I push my foot into soft dirt under the brambles. It gives easily, leaving an impression of my trainer sole behind.

  I stare, and cannot breathe properly. This soil has been freshly dug. And recently.

  ‘Ellie?’

  ‘I don’t think you got soaked for nothing,’ I manage to say. ‘How are you at digging?’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We have no spades, no implements for digging. So I forage in the debris along the bank until I find a suitably shaped fallen tree branch amongst all the leaves and dirt. Tris puts his foot on it at the mid-point, snapping it in half with a loud crack that sends birds clattering away in the trees above us. Reluctantly, he hands me one half of the broken branch, then uses his own half to dig over the loose soil.

  We take one end of the bramble patch each. I’m nearer the stream, he’s nearer the wire fence. The brambles are covering most of the soil at my end, so I have to beat back the thorny tangle of branches before I can even start digging.

  ‘I’m not sure we should be doing this,’ he says, poking at the soil as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world. Which is a feeling I’m beginning to share. It’s not an enviable job, digging for a corpse in a lonely wood.

  I heave at the brambles, feeling a bit over-heated and wishing I had chosen to wear a vest top.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If there’s anything here, we could be destroying evidence. Trampling all over the place. I mean, there might be footprints all round this area.’

  ‘You were the one who said he came by the stream so there wouldn’t be any footprints.’

  ‘Agreed, but he must have climbed up the bank if he buried a body here. He must have stood …’ Tris looks down, waving the branch vaguely at the ground, ‘somewhere about here. I’m probably standing in the exact same spot.’

  ‘We can’t go to the police with a suspect patch of soil. They already think I’m disturbed. What if there’s nothing under here?’

  ‘So let them find out.’

  ‘No, I have to be sure this time or I risk being charged with wasting police time.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  He digs in silence after that, and I do the same at my end, probing under the brambles with my ineffectual tool. A few scoops of soil are loosened with every poke and dig, but it’s slow progress. And I understand his reluctance, because I feel it too.

  This place is so quiet and still, a long way from even the narrowest of the tracks that crisscross these woods. The stream runs deeper here, so it’s less noisy, a smooth glide of water through the wire mesh of the fence that separates the public woods from someone’s private land. The birds flew away when Tris broke the branch, so there’s no longer any cheerful birdsong from above. And the skin on the back of my neck is prickling, like we’re being watched.

  I stretch my back, hot and tired. There’s no one in sight. Just hundreds of trunks and leafy branches, standing in staggered rows up and down the gentle undulations of the woods.

  But when I look away, I catch a tiny shiver of movement out of the corner of my eye. As if someone has ducked behind a tree. Someone who had been standing perfectly still a second before when I was looking. Acting like a tree in a forest.

  I force myself not to look again. As though to look again would confirm me as a nutter. Or let whoever is watching us know that I’m on to them.

  There’s no one there. No one there at all.

  I’ve cleared about a foot down when my branch-spade hits something under the next layer of stony soil.

  I hesitate.

  Probably another stone.

  But at the back of my mind I’m panicking, because it didn’t make the hard clunking sound that the stones have been making. It was a soft-hard contact. Like something organic. Like flesh.

  I poke my branch back into the soil.

  ‘Shit.’

  Tris is next to me in seconds. ‘What is it?’ He sounds as on edge as I feel. ‘Did you find something?’

  I swallow and nod, pointing with my branch to the spot where something pale and dirty is protruding through the soil. It could be a trick of the light, but there’s a kind of greenish tinge to it which makes me want to vomit.

  ‘I think it’s a … a hand.’

  Tris stares over my shoulder, then slowly presses his own branch into the shallow indentation left by my digging. He gives a start when a little more soil runs away, uncovering more of the hand.

  ‘Christ.’

  It’s definitely a knuckle, the finger bent back like it was clawing at its own grave. I can see the tiny whorls on the skin, ingrained with dirt, but white under that. And sickeningly real.

  ‘That’s it, we’ve got to call the police.’ Tris drops his branch, fumbles for his mobile instead. Stares at the screen with a blank expression. ‘No signal. You’re kidding me. Okay, think, think. Where’s the nearest phone we can use?’

  ‘The vicarage,’ I say automatically.

  ‘Right.’ He grabs my hand and jerks me to my feet. ‘Come on, we’ll go back down the stream, then run up to the church, same way we came down. Fifteen minutes, tops.’

  I shake my head, refusing to move. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  He meets my eyes then. His face is almost as white as the hand in the makeshift grave below us.

  ‘Eleanor, please.’

  ‘You think I’m going to risk the killer moving her again while we’re away, fetching the police? No thanks, I’m not playing that game.’

  He looks confused. ‘Game?’

  I tug my hand free. ‘You make the call. I’ll stay and watch the grave. She’s not going anywhere this time, and neither am I.’

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s not safe. This grave has only recently been dug. What if the killer’s still here, in the woods, watching us?’ Tris pauses. ‘Hasn’t that occurred to you?’

  ‘Then he’ll be ecstatic. Because this is precisely what he wants, isn’t it? Some serious attention at last.’

  He frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’

  I tell him about the note on Denzil’s car. You’re my Number One. Then my scare in the lane after Denzil dropped me off.

  Tris looks furious by the time I’m finished with my explanation. ‘I don’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell me at once? Or the bloody police? Why keep a note like that to yourself?’

  Then his eyes widen. He stares at me fixedly, as if everything has clicked into place for him. I can see him struggling not to lose his composure.

  ‘You think I’m the killer.’

  ‘It did cross my mind. But that’s not important right now. Go ring the police, Tris. I’ll be fine here.’

  I see him struggle, still staring at me. Then he makes the decision, an angry flash in his eyes.

  A moment later, he’s gone.

  I hear his continuing progress long after he’s out of sight, echoes bouncing off the trees at first, then fading rapidly to silence.

  Everything in the wood looks calm and still. There’s no one among the rows of trunks. The water glides past in the dappled green shade of the tree canopy above me, empty and innocent.

  I turn and force myself to look down at her exposed knuckle
. I think of the woman’s face, hidden beneath layers of dirt, and wonder what her name is. I’m standing next to a dead woman whose dead body has been dumped in a shallow grave, and I don’t have a clue who she is or even why she was killed.

  Dropping to my knees, I knock the soil away. Slowly, a pale hand emerges. Long fingers and short stubby nails, like she used to bite them. There’s a mark on the back of her hand. I can’t quite bring myself to touch her skin, but use a leaf to gently brush the last of the soil from her hand.

  I thought it was a tattoo, but it’s too faint, one side missing like it wasn’t done properly. A stamp of some kind. A faint red triangle with a circle in the middle?

  It reminds me of the ink stamp you get on the back of your hand when going into a night club, to say you’ve paid.

  I frown, looking from the back of her hand along her wrist. The skin is pale but there’s bruising on it, all the way round. It looks like she’s had her wrists tied at some point.

  I push the brambles aside with my feet. Clear the grave so it can be dug out properly. I know I’m probably destroying evidence, as Tris warned me not to, but if the killer is even half as clever as I think, there won’t be any forensic evidence to destroy. Soon the police will descend again with their specialist tools and their sniffer dogs. I imagine they’ll set up a forensic tent here. They’ll take photographs before moving her, messing her about, touching her impersonally.

  But right now it’s just the two of us in the sunny woodlands. And I’m going to do what needs to be done.

  Once the brambles are cleared at what I judge to be the ‘head end,’ I drop to my knees and dig with my bare hands. Carefully and gently, tiny scrapings, not wanting to disturb her. I’m aware all the time of the very real possibility that the killer is out there somewhere. Maybe watching me from behind the trees. But I pay no attention. He has no place here. It’s just me and her now.

  A hint of something pale in the soil catches my eye, and I pause, then scrape more slowly. Strands of hair.

  I stop.

  The silence is suddenly deafening. My skin prickles and I feel cold. It’s almost as if I can hear him behind me, breathing quietly, watching me, only a few feet away …

  How long has Tris been gone? I seem to have lost all sense of time. I glance at my watch, but it makes no sense to me. My brain has stopped working.

  I dig again, two-handed, my fingers pushing deeper into the soil, nails crusty black now, packed with dirt. I find her face by touch, the high forehead, bony and hard. The eye sockets below. I avoid them, feeling nauseous, and dig lower, scraping soil away to expose her face, one dirty patch of skin after another.

  Her face comes clear and I stare, hardly able to breathe.

  You’re my Number One.

  I hear Tris from a great distance, crashing through the undergrowth and calling my name. I guess it won’t be long before the police arrive. For the second time.

  I stumble to my feet and vomit into the stream.

  My stomach heaves again, but there’s no more. Hurriedly I wash my face in the clear moving water, then my hands. The soil under my nails refuses to be washed away though, and my knuckles are still dirty when I stand up to meet Tris. Just like hers.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Tris tells me when he finally reaches me, bending over and panting, out of breath. There’s a fine sheen of perspiration on his face, like he ran the whole way without stopping. ‘The vicar wasn’t there, but his wife was. I called the police, told them we’d found her body, and where. They’re sending a car out.’

  ‘A body,’ I mutter. ‘We’ve found a body.’

  He looks a question at me, and I point down at the shallow grave.

  Still breathing hard, he looks down at her in silence for a moment. Then says, ‘I thought you said she had a number three on her forehead?’

  We both look down at the number on the dead woman’s forehead. Faded now, dirtied by the soil, but still legible, written clumsily in black permanent marker.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any chance you made a mistake?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, perhaps the number was changed.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘But you said the woman had dark hair,’ Tris continues, frowning. ‘I remember the statement you gave to the police.’

  I nod.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he says at last.

  ‘Neither do I. Yet there it is, right in front of us.’ I stare down at the dead woman’s face, glancing from the number on her forehead to the dirty blonde hair above it, and hear myself saying the impossible. ‘Different number, different hair colour. This is not the same woman.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I don’t know the two police officers who are first to arrive in the woods. They descend the track from the church heavily, trying to avoid slipping on loose soil and stones, then stand a moment, glancing up and down through the dappled shade.

  Tris cups both hands to his mouth and calls, ‘Over here,’ then waves. Like we’re meeting them for a barbecue or something.

  They approach without any sense of urgency, barely looking at us. One is swatting away flies on the back of his neck. They introduce themselves briefly. Both constables, Cornish accents, unsmiling. I sense some low-level irritation too. Have we disturbed a quiet Sunday afternoon in some sunny layby off the A30?

  One of the constables takes a quick look in the grave, prods the exposed hand with the toe of one boot, then turns to stare at us. Perhaps he had assumed it was a hoax.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ his colleague says, looking over his shoulder. He walks back up the slope a little way, probably for better reception, then gets on his radio.

  The other officer asks us a few more questions, conscientiously writing everything down in his notebook. Including my name. Which he does not appear to recognise.

  When he has finished taking notes, the constable nods at us calmly, as though people find dead bodies in the woods every day. He says, ‘Best to stay here until the detective inspector arrives. Either of you hurt or in shock?’

  ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ I say for both of us.

  He takes a long, thoughtful look at my face. I suppose there is still a mark there where my father hit me. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  Tris has fallen silent. He is staring at the shallow grave a few feet away. Despite the exercise of running up to the village and back, his face is still pale.

  I ask, ‘Do you mind if we move a bit further away from the body?’

  The constable looks at me dubiously, but agrees. ‘Don’t stray too far though. The DI will probably want to speak to you in person.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ I say drily.

  But the officer has turned away, and is writing in his notebook again. Something suspicious about these two …

  We wander slowly along the damp bank until we’re roughly a hundred feet upstream of the two police officers. Tris finds a mossy old stump to sit on, staring down into the stream. I look back, watching as the two constables confer. After a lengthy conversation, the one who spoke to us disappears back up the track towards the village, leaving the other one to stand guard over our find. Like buried treasure. Mouldering buried treasure.

  ‘Macabre,’ I mutter.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The way my mind works.’ I shrug. ‘Never mind, I was talking to myself. But one thing about this certainly surprises me.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I expected all this to feel different. For me to feel different. After all, I’ve been proved right. There was a body in the woods.’

  ‘But not the same body,’ Tris interrupts me.

  ‘No, but at least we can be sure I’m not going mad. Well, probably not. Or no madder than I was before all this started. But whoever she is, that poor bloody woman’s existence – or lack of it – proves that somebody killed somebody else. None of this has been my imagination.’

  ‘I wish it was, though.’


  ‘What’s the matter?’

  I look at him searchingly. He’s one of the few friends I have left, and I need to look out for him.

  I also feel bad for suspecting him of being the killer. Having seen the way he reacted to unearthing that dead body, I can’t believe him capable of having put her there. Unless he’s a Jekyll and Hyde killer, the sort who can block off one entire half of their personality in order to commit atrocious crimes, while the other half is blissfully aware that they are a total psycho.

  ‘Is the shock catching up on you?’ I ask. ‘Don’t feel bad if it is. I felt a bit sick too, looking down at her lying there.’

  ‘It’s not that. The problem is … ’ He stops.

  ‘What?’

  Tris glances across at the lone police constable, hands clasped behind his back, no doubt waiting for the forensics team to descend. But the man’s too far away to hear what we’re saying, and anyway we’re both speaking quietly. Too quietly to be heard above the rushing noise of the stream beside us.

  ‘I’m worried about you, actually,’ he says frankly. ‘You’re too calm. After everything you’ve been through, to find a body like this … I’m no expert in psychology, but shouldn’t you be running about screaming, or having a nervous breakdown?’

  I meet his open gaze. He’s lying, I’m sure of it. He was going to say something completely different, but then thought better of it.

  There’s no point demanding the truth. He would simply deny it. I wonder if he’s suspicious about my find. It’s true that we found her grave rather easily, almost as though the killer had done a poor job of concealing it on purpose. Perhaps Tris thinks I already knew where the dead woman was buried, and he’s protecting me by keeping his suspicions to himself.

  Neither of those possibilities make me feel very good.

  ‘Maybe I’m saving that up until later.’