PERFECT SILENCE

Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Helen Fields 2018

Cover photograph © Getty images

Cover design © www.blacksheep-uk.com 2018

Helen Fields asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008275174

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008275181

Version 2020-10-29

Dedication

For Gabriel

When I look at you, I see the man you will become.

That man is kind and loyal, strong but gentle, steadfast and principled.

He is a leader.

I am more proud than you could ever possibly know.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Keep Reading for a sneak peek of The Shadow Man …

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One
Zoey

Skin scraped stone. Gravel lodged in raw flesh. Still Zoey crawled.

Death was a ghoul in the dark, creeping up behind her one rasping footstep after another. Soon its freezing fingers would land on her shoulder. Then she would stop, but not until there was no blood left inside her. She was grateful for the pitch black of the autumn night. It meant she could not see the grotesque mess of her own body. What little strength remained in her upper arms deserted her. On her elbows, she dragged her body forward, hope still pulsing through her veins where plasma had once flowed.

Bad girl, she thought. The man had promised she would live if only she confessed. ‘Bad girl,’ Zoey whispered into the dirt. She did so want to survive.

Agony claimed her, planting her face down at the roadside, humbled by the devastating scale of it. Until that day, she had believed herself to be something of an expert on pain. There had been broken bones, a burst ear drum, a busted nose, but none of it had prepared her for how much torment the human body could withstand before death descended.

Picking her face up off the hard ground, she forced her unwilling right knee forward a few more inches. Someone would come, she thought. Soon, someone would come. But she’d been thinking that for days. Where were those movie-screen nick-of-time rescuers when you needed them?

Ripped from her normal life on a Sunday afternoon, it had been a week since her nightmare had begun. Time had transformed as if in a fairground mirror, bloating grotesquely with slowness as she waited pathetically for her imprisonment to end, and splintering into nothingness when the end – her end – was finally in sight.

Zoey had lain for days on a cold, hard table in low light. The cruel joke was that she had been kept fed and watered, relatively unharmed until the end. The sickness was that she had allowed herself to believe she might survive. Years of watching horror movies, of smugly knowing which victim would die and which would live, and still she had fallen into the age-old trap. She had allowed herself to believe what she was told in order to get through the next second, the next minute, the next hour without terror consuming her.

Zoey had a new perspective on fear. There was plenty she could teach the other women at the domestic abuse centre now, not that she would ever get the chance. A bolt of pain shot from her spine through to her stomach, as if her body had been pierced by a spear. The scream she let out sounded more animal than human as it bounced off the asphalt and echoed down the country road. No one was coming. With that thought came a new clarity. She hadn’t been dumped at the roadside in the middle of the night to give her a chance for survival. This was her final punishment. It was her grand humbling.

Her decision wasn’t hard to make.

Zoey put her face to the pillow of road and allowed one leg after the other to slide downwards until she was laid out flat. With the last of her strength she pushed herself onto her side, rolling further into the road, then gravity completed the manoeuvre onto her back, away from the trees at the verge. It didn’t hurt. The good news – and the bad news, she supposed – was that all the pain had gone. All sense that her body had been torn in two had dissolved into the cool October air. If there was nothing else left, she could stare at the moon one last time. Complete dark. She wasn’t within the boundaries of the city, then. No light spilled to dampen the shine of the stars. Scotland’s skies were like nothing else on earth. Zoey might not have travelled much, but she never underestimated the blinding beauty of her homeland, never tired of the landscapes and architecture that had birthed endless folklore and song.

The stars had come out for her tonight. Perhaps they were doubled or trebled by the tears in her eyes, sparkling all the more through the brine, but it was a night sky to die for. She wasn’t a bad girl, she thought. No point pretending any more.

‘I’m good,’ her lips mouthed, even if there was no sound left to escape them. Had there been enough blood in her muscles to have fuelled the movement, she would have smiled, too.

Happier times. There had been some. Early days when her mother had doted on her father, before her brother had left home. A day when her father had pretended it was their six-monthly trip to the dentist, only to take the family to a dog rescue centre. They had spent the afternoon cooing over every mutt before finding a scruffy little terrier forgotten in the last pen. They had called him Warrior, a sweet joke, although he had proved a fiercely faithful pet from that day on. Every day Zoey wondered if she would tire of walking, feeding and grooming him as she’d seen her friends grow bored of the neediness of animals they’d been given. Not so. Warrior had remained by her side from the age of five until she was twelve. He had slept on her bed and quieted her crying when the big girl from over the road had bullied her every day for a month until her father had a quiet word with the girl’s parents. Warrior had let her carry him around the house like a doll when she was sad. He sat on the doormat of their house Monday to Friday at half past three waiting for Zoey to walk in from school. It had always astounded her that dogs could tell the time. And Warrior had pressed his furry muzzle into her face as she’d cried when her father’s car had been hit by a vehicle containing a man with more alcohol in his bloodstream than anyone had a right to. There had been no trip to the hospital, no long farewell, only a police officer at the door, solemn of face and softly spoken. Her mother had evaporated in grief.

Eighteen silent months later her stepfather had arrived. A year later her brother had celebrated his sixteenth birthday by signing up to join the army with their mother’s consent. Zoey had hated her for it. She wondered if she would be able to find forgiveness with her last breath, but forgiveness required effort and concentration. It needed to be nourished by hope. There was none left where she was lying. Her brother’s escape had been her entrapment. There was no barrier left between Zoey and her mother’s new husband.

The fists her brother had tolerated until he could leave were turned to her. Her mother, a shard of broken china, said and did nothing. Perhaps she didn’t care. Perhaps she was only grateful the blows did not touch her. The bruises were limited in their geography. Zoey’s face remained untouched until the school summer holidays came around and then it was a free-for-all, the fear of prying teachers alleviated a while. Zoey had cried her tears into Warrior’s warm fur, and shivered into his skinny but comforting frame in her bedroom at night. Until her stepfather had found the love she had for the hound too much joy for Zoey’s life. He had declared himself allergic, and the dog food too expensive, in spite of their large house and his good income. Letting out the odd, badly faked sneeze, he had said the dog must go.

That day had been etched in Zoey’s memory like the scene from The Wizard of Oz, only Toto had not escaped from her stepfather’s clutches to return to her. Warrior was pulled from her arms as she huddled on her bed, declaring that she would die if they took him.

‘Stop making such a fuss,’ her mother had said. Those five words had been a death sentence for whatever mother-daughter bond still fluttered like a fragile butterfly in the summer of Zoey’s childhood. Her stepfather told her Warrior had gone to the dogs’ home. He would go to a loving family better suited to him, he’d lectured. Zoey sat down that night and calculated how many days it was until her own sixteenth birthday, when she could flee as her brother had. Seven hundred and two. She had marked each one down in a notebook, ready to cross off with a red pencil as she waded through them.

What a waste of a life it had been, she thought. And the horrible truth right now was that if she could have even a tiny percentage of those bruise-filled, hate-inducing days back, she would take them with a grateful heart.

By seventeen she had been living with a college friend until the girl’s mother had lost her job and couldn’t feed or house Zoey any more. She had tried and failed to study and pass exams, but the constant moving between sofas was too exhausting. In the end she had given her mother one last try. Promises had been made. They were just as swiftly broken. Fists had flown once more.

At eighteen, Zoey had been wise enough to know when to cut her losses. She had walked out into the street to shout her opinion of her stepfather to the world, publicly enough that he wouldn’t dare retaliate. Then she had taken herself and her plastic bag of clothes to a shelter she’d heard about. Sporting the bruises that were her passport inside the safe haven, she had settled down while she waited in the endless queue for social housing. Scars were examined. An offer to prosecute was made. Still Zoey couldn’t be so cruel to her mother that she could put the man who kept a roof over her head in prison. Even if he deserved it a thousand times over.

The sky came closer as she stared at the moon. A gust of wind danced through the branches of the trees above her, scattering a sheet of golden leaves over her body. A many-legged creature skittered over her neck, but Zoey didn’t mind. No point flinching now. In a while, all she would be was bug food. The road was long and straight, unadorned by regulatory white lines. She was in the countryside, then. The next car might not pass until morning. It would be an awful discovery for the poor driver, Zoey thought. Imagine starting Monday morning with such a monstrosity. That was if the car didn’t run over her.

The last seven days of her life had begun with a mistake. How many times were children told not to get too close to a car asking for directions? She had been distracted, wondering what to cook for dinner as she made her way to the local supermarket in Sighthill. Zoey hadn’t noticed the car following her, although she knew now that it had been. There had been no sixth sense as she’d cut through a car park between tenements. It hadn’t occurred to her that the man who wanted to know how to get to the zoo might have a large knife up his sleeve, ready and waiting to poke into the side of her neck. Get into the car or bleed out in the parking lot, had been her options. She wished she’d chosen the latter in hindsight. It would all have come out the same in the end.

In the passenger seat, knife pointed into her chest, he had told her to put on handcuffs. Her hands had shaken so badly that she hadn’t been able to close the locks until the fourth attempt. Just rape me, she’d thought. Just get whatever this is out of your system. Use me, then let me go. But let me live. Please let me live. I crossed so many days off in red pen. It’s not fair for me to die now. The man had driven her further away, beyond the scope of roads she recognised as she lay across the rear seat. No bravery had been lacking. She’d slipped a foot under the door handle and tried to prise it open, only to find the child locks engaged. Dark windows at the rear of the vehicle had ruined her chances of waving for help. Even attempting to hit the man over the head with her bound hands had won her nothing but a contemptuous laugh and an elbow in her eye.

‘Please don’t kill me,’ she’d said, as they’d finally pulled up into an overgrown driveway.

‘I’m not going to,’ he’d said. ‘But you’ve been a bad girl.’

‘What?’ she’d asked, her mouth dry with fear and the shameful knowledge that her bladder had allowed its contents to run away, even while the rest of her couldn’t.

‘I need you to say it,’ the man had said calmly. ‘You’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you?’

‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ Zoey had replied. ‘I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not bad. I’ve never hurt anyone. If you let me go, I promise I won’t say a word. I won’t get you into trouble.’

‘But you are a bad girl,’ the man said. ‘You’re disrespectful. You’re uncaring. You only ever think about yourself. Say it.’

‘I’m not,’ Zoey had cried, slinking away from him in the back seat. ‘I’m not bad. You don’t know me.’

At that, the man had climbed out of the front seat and opened the rear door. He was tall. His close-set eyes were such a dark shade of brown that Zoey couldn’t discern pupils from irises. He smelled. As he leaned over her, grabbing a handful of hair to wrench her off the backseat, she caught the whiff of rotten matter.

‘I’ll do whatever you want. You can … you can have sex with me. I won’t fight you. If you want me to be a bad girl for you then I can be. Okay? I can be whatever you want,’ she had whispered, turning her face away as he pulled her to stand against him.

‘You see? How many seconds did it take for you to show me exactly what you are? Say it to me,’ he said.

‘I’m a bad girl,’ Zoey had complied, as he’d grabbed a handful of hair and marched her along the driveway towards a cluster of trees at the rear of the garden. The freedom with which he’d paraded her had signalled the end of hope. There could be no one around to notice what he was doing if he was so confident that they wouldn’t be seen.

‘Touching her is against the rules,’ he had muttered as they walked. ‘No touching. None at all.’

She had lifted her head to peer over the boundary bushes. Not a building in sight save for the one she was destined to enter. No one to hear her scream.

An owl hooted in the trees above her. Zoey had always loved owls. A snuffling sound came from the verge beyond her line of sight. It’s Warrior, she thought. Warrior’s coming to sit with me, and I’ll be with Daddy again. Nothing to be scared of any more. The stars reflecting in her eyes went dark. Edinburgh’s autumn was set to be long and cold.

Chapter Two

Detective Inspector Luc Callanach brought his car to a halt on the verge of Torduff Road. A pair of curious horses watched passively over a six-bar gate as blue flashing lights destroyed the early morning peace. Pulling a hoodie over his t-shirt, he checked the time. Five thirty in the morning. The crime scene investigators were in the process of erecting floodlights around the scene to make up for the lack of sunlight. The weak October rays wouldn’t touch the ground until six thirty at the earliest. DCI Ava Turner pulled her car up behind his and climbed out in sports gear that had already seen a work out that morning.

‘Do you never sleep?’ he asked, as they fell into step together.

‘Is it a French thing, using a question as a greeting? Because in Scotland we tend to say hello first. Surely you’ve been here long enough to know that by now. What do we know about the victim?’ she replied, rubbing her hands together furiously.

‘I haven’t seen her yet,’ he said, peeling off his gloves and handing them to Ava. ‘Put those on, it’s freezing out here. It’s quite a long way up the lane. The route’s long and narrow, heading south towards the reservoir, so the squad have sealed off a full mile section. Scenes of Crime are already getting started. I gather it’s a single victim, young adult female.’

Ava showed a uniformed officer her identification as they ducked under yellow tape. ‘The usual pathologist, Ailsa Lambert, is on leave at the moment, so who’s looking after the body?’ she asked.

‘I am,’ a man replied from behind them. ‘Jonty Spurr. It’s nice to finally meet you in person, DCI Turner.’ He held out his hand, smiling. ‘Luc, it’s been a while. I would say it’s good to see you again, but not under these circumstances.’

‘Jonty,’ Luc replied. ‘What are you doing in Edinburgh?’

‘Stepping in for Ailsa while she looks after her sister. Had a stroke, I gather. I have a good deputy in Aberdeen, but you’re short-staffed here, so I’m on a temporary transfer. Shall we go and visit the young lady who’s waiting for you?’ he asked, handing them suits, boots and gloves. As they dressed, the forensics team erected an awning beneath the trees a few metres ahead of them, and the sound of a generator sent birds flying from the nearby woods. ‘Sorry about that, seems incredibly loud out here,’ Jonty said. ‘The body is getting covered in leaves and water droplets, hence the tent. You’ll need to keep your distance. There’s a substantial area covered in blood and we don’t want to disturb the trail. Have either of you had breakfast yet?’

‘Only coffee,’ Ava said. ‘Why?’

‘I’ve had two of my people lose their stomach contents so far this morning. We don’t need any more distractions,’ Jonty replied.

‘We’ve both been doing this long enough to keep our lids on,’ Ava said. ‘But thanks for the warning.’

They trod slowly forward on the white matting path beneath the canvas roof, avoiding stepping to either side and contaminating whatever articles of evidence might be lying there. Dr Spurr went ahead of them and hunkered down next to a small mound that was covered by a forensics sheet. He lifted it slowly, as if trying not to wake a baby.

Callanach looked away. Ava covered her mouth with a hand. There were crime scenes, and then there was carnage. Whatever had happened to the young woman on the ground fell firmly into the latter category.

‘Luc, call the station. Ask them if they have a young woman listed as missing in the last forty-eight hours. Just say between sixteen and twenty, long brown hair, red-brown dress. No other description for now,’ Ava instructed Callanach.

‘It’s not,’ Jonty said.

‘Not what?’ Callanach asked.

‘It’s not a coloured dress,’ Jonty replied. He slid a gloved hand under the girl’s left shoulder to raise her a few inches off the floor, exposing a small section of the dress behind her shoulder blade. The bright white patch of cotton glowed in the floodlights.

Ava took in a sharp breath. ‘It’s a white dress?’ she muttered. ‘How the fuck did she …’

Jonty answered the question by raising the hem up over the girl’s thighs and abdomen. A massive section of skin had been cut from her stomach, the raw sections of flesh curling back where her body had begun to dry out. Blood was crusted over the whole of her lower half, washing down her legs and her bare feet.

‘That’s not all,’ Jonty said. ‘There’s another equally large section of skin cut from her back. Her underwear was missing when we found her. I was preserving the scene for you to see it first-hand.’ He stood up, covering the girl again as he pointed along the road in the opposite direction from which they’d come. ‘She crawled several metres along the road. There are pieces of skin in the tarmac, which we believe came from her hands and knees. The bleeding increased as she crawled. We’ve found two large wads of wound packing that must have dropped away from her, both completely blood-soaked. Whoever left her here gave medical assistance initially, then abandoned her to die where she almost certainly wouldn’t have been found until it was too late.’

They stood silently, contemplating the scene for a few moments. A tractor could be heard starting up in the distance. The wind rushed noisily over the expansive reservoir to the south. It was a place of extraordinary beauty, just a few miles south of the Edinburgh City Bypass, and now it was home to a ghost.

‘She was on her back,’ Ava said. ‘You think she collapsed from her knees and rolled?’

‘No, she’d have stayed face up if she’d simply collapsed. There’s not enough of a gradient for gravity to have moved her. I believe she stopped crawling and decided to rest. Or gave up hope. She’d have been delirious with blood loss and shock by then. Can I move the body now? I don’t want it to degrade any further before I start the post-mortem,’ Jonty said.

‘One more look,’ Ava said. ‘You were right about the breakfast, Jonty. Every time I think my years in the force have hardened me, something new comes along.’

‘Peace and justice. It’s all we can do for them at this stage. I’ve some documents to sign. You can take another look but don’t disturb her and stay on the mats, okay?’ Jonty said.

Ava stepped forward to the girl and knelt down next to her, peeling the sheet back once more to reveal her face and arms. ‘Her right arm’s almost semi-circular on the ground. It’s as if she was holding something,’ Callanach said.

‘It might have just fallen that way,’ Ava said. She moved to the end of the body and lifted one foot. ‘I can’t see any injuries beneath the dried blood. No obvious bruising. I don’t think she walked very far. She was dropped off close by.’

‘It wasn’t raining last night, and there’d have been no reason for the vehicle to have pulled onto the verge if there were no other cars around. We won’t get tyre tracks,’ Callanach said.

‘Agreed. We don’t know which way it was going so CCTV at the nearest junctions will be a needle in a haystack. There are a few houses dotted along the road, though,’ Ava said. ‘Get uniformed officers doing a house to house. Any vehicles seen or heard late at night. Ask if local landowners mind us searching their premises. Anyone who says no, do a background check.’

Jonty Spurr rejoined them, stripping off his gloves as a photographer stepped in to capture the scene before the body was prepared for transfer to the mortuary.

‘Dr Spurr, any possibility this was an operation gone wrong? The cotton wool packing, the incisions. And dumping the body so publicly. Whoever did this wanted her to be found,’ Ava said.

‘It would have been obvious that the blood loss would have been beyond her capacity to recover from. There’s no medical reason for what happened here. The wound packs might have been applied to simply keep her alive longer,’ Jonty said.

‘You’re suggesting that treating the wounds was actually a way to prolong the agony?’ Callanach asked.

‘My remit is science, not speculation. It’s a wonder she survived as long as she did. She was tough and brave. To have crawled at all, even just a few metres was, in the circumstances, remarkable,’ Jonty said.

‘How long since she died, do you think?’ Ava asked him.

‘Three to four hours. Apparently, she was found by a farmhand who was on his way to let out some cattle further down the lane. I saw him talking to the first officers on the scene. Given that he’s being treated for shock himself, I’d say he’s nothing to do with it. The pathology aside, it took someone with a strong stomach to take a knife to this girl, then to turn her over and do it again. It’s not like stabbing in anger. It takes medically trained professionals a long time to prepare themselves to make major incisions.’

‘A psychopath, then,’ Ava said. ‘Or someone completely inured to the extremes of violence and bloodshed.’

‘Someone you shouldn’t underestimate, I think I’d say,’ Jonty confirmed. ‘We’re moving her now. I’ll perform a post-mortem today but it’ll take some time. Join me first thing tomorrow morning for some answers.’

They said their goodbyes. Luc and Ava stood watching as the corpse was moved from the ground into a body bag and onto a stretcher. The ground where the young woman had died was crimson in the centre and black at the edges. With the body removed, the trail she had crawled was more obvious.

‘She didn’t get very far at all,’ Callanach said. ‘My guess is that when she was left here, the perpetrator knew she wouldn’t last much longer. I also think they drove away south west, towards the reservoir.’

‘Why?’ Ava asked.

‘Because she started crawling towards Edinburgh. There’s no way she’d have crawled in the same direction the vehicle went. You move away from your attackers as fast as you can. Gut instinct makes you go in the opposite direction to where they’re going.’

‘Do you think it was someone she knew?’ Ava asked him.

‘I’m not sure which would be more dangerous, having the capacity to do that to a total stranger or being able to look into the eyes of someone you know and cutting into them. It’s like she was attacked by an animal. I’ve never seen that much missing skin,’ he said. ‘Let’s walk down the road a bit, see if there’s anything that’s been missed.’

They walked quietly for a hundred yards, knowing each other’s stride, finding some calm in the greenery. ‘I hate this job,’ Ava said.

‘No, you don’t,’ Callanach responded, ‘you just hate why it’s necessary. You need to remind yourself that the decent people outnumber sick bastards like this one by the millions. If we weren’t here, how many more bodies would end up mutilated at the side of the road?’

‘Do you never think about going back to Lyon? I know what happened to you there was bad, but time has passed. You could rejoin Interpol, your name has been cleared. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,’ Ava said, turning around to stare back up the lane at the lights and the parade of white-clad personnel walking methodically to and fro.

‘You never clear your name after a rape allegation,’ Luc said. ‘It’s like trying to get ink out of a white shirt. I’m settled here now. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Scotland feels like home, but I’m comfortable. If we could just replace all of Edinburgh’s fast food joints with delicatessens it would be better.’

‘You’re never going to forgive us for our food, are you?’

‘If you expect me to accept atrocities such as haggis, porridge, and what I believe you call mince and tatties, then no.’ Callanach’s French accent accentuated the words as if they were exotic foreign diseases.

Ava smiled. ‘This route becomes more track than road as it goes past the two reservoirs, but it’s stony. The one time I wish the ground was soft, and we’ve had virtually no rain for a week. You’re right. No fresh tyre marks. The vehicle will have her blood in it, though. We have to find the person who did this, and quickly, before they have a chance to destroy the evidence.’

‘Which is what they’ll be doing right now,’ Callanach said. ‘Let’s get back to the station. I’ll brief the squad while you sort out the resources we’ll need.’ His phone rang as they were turning around to go back. ‘Yes, that’s right. Get hold of next of kin. Ask for a photo first. We can’t have anyone seeing this body if we’re wrong about the identity. Thanks.’ He rang off. ‘A young woman was reported missing last Sunday who fits the general description. DC Tripp is chasing an up-to-date photo.’

‘I didn’t hear about that. Any reason why the missing person report wasn’t widely circulated?’ Ava asked.

‘She was living in a domestic abuse shelter. Women come and go quite regularly. I guess sometimes they just get sick of the lack of privacy, or go back to their previous situations, and many don’t want to be found. Police at the time took a statement from the shelter but there was no evidence of foul play, so they haven’t done much about it since.’

‘Did you get a name?’ Ava asked.

‘Zoey Cole. Eighteen years old. Caucasian, brown hair, hazel eyes. Sounds like our girl.’

‘It does,’ Ava said, picking up the pace as they walked. ‘The question is, how did she come to be living in a women’s shelter in the first place? Maybe whoever made Zoey scared enough to move there might have found out where she was and decided to pay her a visit.’

‘I’d be surprised if this stems from domestic violence. It would be the most extreme evolution of offending I’ve ever seen,’ Callanach said.

‘People can suddenly erupt and reveal a completely hidden side to their nature. You only went on one date with Astrid and look what happened at the end of that. She was sufficiently fixated to accuse you of rape and to hurt herself dramatically to back it up. Can you imagine how much more obsessed and deranged she’d have been if you were in a relationship with her for six months, or two years? Human beings don’t have any limits when they’re broken. It’s the damage you can’t see on the surface that’s the most dangerous.’

Chapter Three

The Major Investigation Team’s incident room was empty. Detective Constable Christie Salter stood in the doorway, coffee cup in one hand, box of doughnuts in the other. One step forward would take her back into a world she’d left months earlier, when a hostage situation had gone terribly wrong and she’d been stabbed in the abdomen with a shard of broken pottery. Salter had lost her baby. Her sanity, too, for a short time, if she was completely honest. Coming back to work hadn’t been a choice. If she’d spent one more minute at home, staring at the wallpaper and flicking through the TV channels, the damage to her mental health might have slid up the scale from temporary to irreparable.

‘I hope they’re all for me. I’m not sharing my trans fats with the rest of the greedy bastards when they get back,’ DS Lively said behind her.

Salter smiled at the blank room she’d been facing, then made the effort to straighten her face before turning around.

‘Sarge, you’re such a lardy bugger anyway, I’m sure eating another twenty chocolate-iced custard-filled cakes won’t make a dent. Knock yourself out.’ She offered the box in his direction.

‘Glad to see your wee holiday hasn’t blunted your tongue. You recall that as your sergeant, you still have to make me coffee and shine my boots every morning,’ Lively said, grabbing a week’s worth of calories and taking a bite.

‘The way I heard it, Max Tripp has taken his sergeant’s exams and is waiting for the results. I’m guessing it’s him I’ll be making coffee for pretty soon. I’m sure you’ll still have plenty of your usual goons willing to fetch and carry for you,’ Salter grinned. ‘Speaking of which, where are they all?’

‘Got a call to a body found on the Torduff Road. They’ll not be back for a few hours yet. Starting house to house enquiries, about now I reckon. DCI Turner and the underwear model I get to call sir are both down there,’ Lively said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You and DI Callanach still sharing the love, are you? I thought you might have got over your infatuation by now. Maybe I should get down there. If they’re kicking off a new murder investigation, they’ll need every pair of hands they can get.’

‘I think they’ll need backup here. You know how it gets. The phone’ll start ringing off the hook with leads and enquiries. Pretty soon the whole place will be chaos. They’ve plenty of officers down there for now,’ Lively said.

‘That’s ridiculous. We can get any number of people in here to answer the phones. I’ll take a car from the pool. Traffic’s not too bad this morning. It’ll only take me …’

‘Christie,’ Lively said. ‘It’s a bad one. Young woman with her stomach messed up. I really don’t think …’

‘Stop,’ Salter said. ‘You’ll call me Salter, just like you always did. And we don’t talk about what happened. If I wanted to do that I’d have stayed at home with my family popping round twice a day to check on me. This is work. I need it. So don’t patronise me and don’t try to wrap me up. It’s too late for that.’

The phone rang, sparing Lively a response. He picked up a pen and began scribbling details on a notepad, muttering a stream of affirmatives as he wrote.

‘Give us ten minutes,’ he said, before putting the receiver down. ‘Get your coat then, Salter. We’re off into town.’

Crichton’s Close provided pedestrian access onto the Royal Mile and was a regular night stop for the homeless, courtesy of high walls at either side stopping the wind, and providing some shelter from the rain. As a no through route for traffic, it had the added bonus of excluding passing police vehicles. Only the drunks or unwitting tourists passed that way in the small hours. Unless you were looking for trouble. Lively and Salter took the car up Gentle’s Entry and parked it in Bakehouse Close, walking the few metres round the corner to where uniformed police officers and paramedics were doing their best to persuade a man to get medical help.

‘Who is he?’ Lively asked an officer as they approached.

‘Name’s Mikey Parsons. Long-term homeless, known drug user. We see him fairly regularly on the beat. Never had any trouble with him except for public pissing, and then he moves on without getting nasty.’

‘How’s it going, Mr Parsons?’ Salter asked, walking up to him.

The man swung round, trying to face her but missing by ninety degrees, staring instead at a poster for a gig that was hanging off the opposite wall. The whites of his eyes were an angry shade of red and his mouth was hanging open. Arms swinging at his sides, he swayed but remained standing. A paramedic took another step towards him with wipes, aiming for Mikey’s left cheek. As he mopped the dried blood away, the three slashes on his cheek became clearer.

‘That’s just fuckin’ great,’ Lively muttered. ‘We’ve got a deranged Zorro impersonator in the city.’

The top line of the Z ran from the bridge of his nose to the outer edge of his cheekbone, with the diagonal following down to the corner of his mouth and the final line reaching right back to his ear lobe.

‘Lucky they didn’t cut his neck,’ the paramedic said. ‘Mr Parsons, are you in any pain?’ he asked loudly.

Parsons groaned. His face was sweaty in spite of the chill and he seemed oblivious to his wounds.

‘What’s he taken, do you think?’ Salter asked.

‘I’d put my money on Spice,’ the paramedic said, sticking butterfly plasters every few millimetres along the slash to hold the sides together. ‘We’re seeing an epidemic of it at the moment. The accident and emergency room is stretched to capacity and it’s freaking members of the public out seeing people standing in the middle of the street like zombies. The drug causes hallucinations and psychosis. Total oblivion like this is common. It can render the user completely incapable of normal communication. If Mr Parsons is still in there, he may well be in agony. No sure way of knowing.’

‘Who notified you?’ Lively asked.

‘A shopkeeper walked past this morning, saw the blood, called it in. We didn’t realise what had happened until we got a proper look at his face. He was trying to hide his head in a bin when we first arrived.’

‘Well, it’s not accidental,’ Salter said. ‘What do you think, Sarge? Row with his dealer, unpaid debt, or a fight gone wrong?’

Lively took out his phone and got a few close-up shots of the wound as the paramedic finished up, then added a few more of the general area for good measure.

‘Not a fight,’ Lively said. ‘This is more of a branding. The lines have stayed pretty neatly on one side of his face and they’re quite straight. It was planned. Any blood on the ground around here?’ he shouted across to one of the uniformed officers.

‘Over there, by the pile of bin bags,’ came the response. ‘We think that’s Mikey’s stuff.’

Salter and Lively walked across to the mound of stinking clothes and cardboard that constituted Mikey Parsons’ home. An arrow of spattered blood decorated the external wall of a shop, a metre from the ground. Lively completed his portfolio of pictures with the images.

‘If he’d been sitting down on the cardboard there, the spatters would have been level with his cheek,’ Lively said. ‘Given that he’d have been hard pressed to have rolled a joint with half his skin hanging off, I’m going to put my money on him being well and truly stoned before he was attacked.’

‘You think someone just walked up to him while he was out of it, and decided to slash his face open?’ Salter asked. ‘Could it be another Spice user? If the drug causes psychosis, it’s possible they looked at Mikey here but saw something completely different.’

‘I strongly suspect that we’ll never find out,’ Lively said. ‘Mr Parsons here doesn’t seem to want to cooperate or go to the hospital, and he’s sure as hell not going to be giving any coherent statement to us about it. Have you done all you can?’ he asked the paramedics.

‘Everything we can out here. Ideally we’d have taken him to the hospital to clean the wound, administer antibiotics and stitch him up properly, but he won’t get in the ambulance and we’re not going to try restraining him.’

‘Fair enough,’ Lively said. ‘Salter, I hope you’re not wearing your best frock. You and I are about to get Mr Parsons here into the back of the squad car. Could we borrow a couple of pairs of gloves?’

‘Be my guest,’ the paramedic replied, handing over scrunched-up rubbery balls to each of them. ‘Good luck.’

They slipped the gloves on. Parsons remained in place, staring off into the distance, his mouth opening and closing as if trying unsuccessfully to speak. Salter went to one side of him and Lively took the other, guiding him slowly towards their car. It took some time to get him to fold his body into the right position to get in the rear seat, but eventually he was in. Salter closed the door and sighed.

‘It’s almost as if you planned this for me on my first morning back to put me off,’ Salter said.

‘Did it only take eight months for you to forget how glamorous and fun our job is?’ Lively replied. ‘I’m driving. You watch our guest.’

Salter checked out Mikey Parsons in the mirror. His head was bouncing up and down like a nodding dog with the movement of the car, and the white butterfly strips over his dark red wound resembled ghoulish Halloween face painting. He looked up suddenly, his pupils contracting as his eyes met Salter’s.

‘Hey, Mikey,’ she said. ‘Do you know where you are?’

He let out a long, whistling breath. The sourness from his mouth wafted through the vehicle. Fighting his seatbelt, Mikey threw himself forward to bash his head against the dividing screen at the rear of Lively’s seat, then thrust backwards to slam the back of his skull into his headrest. Back and forwards he went, hammering his head harder each time.

‘Stop the car,’ Salter said. ‘We’ve got to do something before he knocks himself out.’

‘No, we’re getting back to the station. If he’s unconscious by then, we’ll call an ambulance. I’m not touching him while he’s like that and neither are you. We’ve no idea what he’s capable of with that crap in his system. An officer got bitten last month during an arrest.’

‘How much do you know about this Spice drug?’ Salter asked.

‘They market it as an alternative to cannabis, only it’s completely synthetic. Supposed to work like cannabinoids but the effects are more like LSD from what I’ve seen. Each brand is made using different chemicals so users don’t really know what they’re smoking.’

‘Where are they getting it?’ she asked, trying to ignore the thumping from the backseat.

‘Everywhere. It’s relatively cheap to produce, they package the stuff so that it looks professional, and it’s less risky than trying to import heroin or cocaine. We won’t get this stuff off the streets for a decade. Unless the anti-Zorro scares the crap out of users so badly, they stop.’

‘Come on Sarge, don’t go calling whoever did this the anti-Zorro. The press gets a whiff of that and it’ll be everywhere.’

Mikey turned his head to the side for one last monumental smash against his headrest and split all the butterfly stitches open. Blood began to pour down his cheek in horror movie tears fashion, and Salter raised her eyebrows at Lively.

‘Whoever’s in charge of the carpool these days isn’t going to like us very much,’ she said.

They got him into the station fairly easily until the desk sergeant stopped them. ‘You’re not expecting me to process him, are you? He’s straight for the hospital and you know it.’

‘He’s refused medical assistance, but he’s drunk and incapable, needs a few hours in the cells. We’ve got to try to take a statement from him when he’s slept it off,’ Lively said.

‘Stop the bleeding,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Clean him up. If I’m satisfied, I’ll book him in. Good to see you back, Salter,’ he added.

Lively nodded at her. ‘You go upstairs and report in with the boss. Someone should be back by now. Update the team with what we’ve got. I’ll be up as soon as this mess is sorted. And have a cup of tea. That’s enough for your first morning back.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ Salter said, heading for the stairs.

‘Oh yeah, not arguing with me now. Let me do all the dirty work,’ Lively mumbled.

‘Stubborn and stupid are two different things, Sarge,’ Salter grinned as she disappeared.

As soon as she entered the upper corridor, the buzz from the incident room electrified the air. Ava Turner appeared from the opposite end of the hallway and stopped, a smile spreading slowly across her face as Salter walked closer.

‘Detective Constable Salter, good to have you back with MIT,’ Ava said.

‘Good to be back, ma’am,’ Salter said. ‘There’s a murder, I gather.’

‘Looks like it,’ Ava said. ‘I’m not warning you off any particular duties. You’ve been declared fit to return and that’s good enough for me. Just communicate with me if you need anything. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ Salter said. ‘And congratulations on the promotion ma’am, even if I am a few months late saying it.’

‘I’m not sure congratulations is the right word. Feels more like a punishment most days. Where have you and DS Lively been this morning?’

‘Someone slashed the letter Z into the face of a homeless drug addict. He was found this morning covered in blood. No witnesses, no leads. The victim’s taken a drug – it’s sufficiently strong that he’s still unaware of what’s happened to him. Lively’s downstairs now booking him in as a drunk and incapable, in the hope that we’ll be able to take a statement in a few hours.’

‘Spice?’ Ava asked.

‘That’s Lively’s theory. Paramedics seemed to agree,’ Salter said.

‘The city’s riddled with it,’ Ava said. ‘Let the drug squad know. If there’s a new batch on the streets that’s turning users violent, they ought to start checking it out.’

‘Salter,’ Callanach said, walking out of the incident room to join them. He hugged her and Salter blushed.

‘Sir,’ she said. ‘Nice to see you again, but I’d better get going. I need to write up my notes, and DS Lively’ll go off on one if there’s no coffee ready when he comes up from the cells.’ She hustled away into the kitchenette.

‘Wow,’ Ava said, turning to Callanach. ‘Are you okay? That’s the most emotional I’ve seen you since … ever, actually.’

‘You’re funny,’ Callanach said. ‘Should she be back so soon, though? After all she went through and the loss of the baby.’

‘Give her time,’ Ava said. ‘I suspect she’s pressing the bruise to see how much it hurts. Keep an eye on her. Let me know if you think there’s a problem. Salter’s a good detective. We need officers like her.’

DC Max Tripp poked his head out of the incident room and called to them. ‘Ma’am, we’ve got some background on Zoey Cole and her stepfather, Christopher Myers. You’re going to want to hear this straight away,’ he said.

Chapter Four

Zoey Cole lay on a trolley beneath a sheet. Ava and Callanach stood silently, waiting for Jonty Spurr to join them. A worker from the domestic violence shelter had provided an up-to-date photo, and attended the previous evening to positively identify the body.

‘Good morning to you both,’ Jonty said, snapping on gloves as he entered. ‘Public records have Zoey as eighteen years of age and I would concur with that. In addition, I spoke to the shelter worker who attended yesterday.’ Jonty flicked through his notes. ‘Here we are, a Miss Sandra Tilly. She explained that Zoey had complained of pain in her hands from badly reset finger fractures on her left hand. I found three old breaks, I suspect from two separate incidents in time. In addition, four healed rib fractures and a probable broken nose, although that one is always harder to be sure about.’

‘Makes sense,’ Ava said. ‘Zoey was living at the shelter having left home. She claimed that her stepfather had been violent to her over a number of years. Mother was aware but did nothing to correct the situation.’

‘There was never a police investigation?’ Jonty asked.

‘No. Zoey didn’t want to press charges because her mother was still living there,’ Ava said.

‘MIT hasn’t spoken to the stepfather or mother in person yet,’ Callanach added. ‘Uniforms went round yesterday and notified them of the death. That was before we had the full story. We wanted to get the facts from you before following up with a formal interview of the stepfather.’

‘You may want to hold fire on that. I’ve been making my own enquiries overnight, but they’ve come up blank so far. Let me show you what we’re dealing with.’

Jonty removed the sheet to reveal Zoey’s naked body. The skin on her abdomen that had peeled back and lost its form had been laid back down and repositioned to reveal an outline.

‘What the fuck?’ Ava said, stepping closer to look directly down onto it.

‘My exact words when I began laying the skin flat,’ Jonty said.

Dried blood around the incision added a freakish outline to the miniature figure cut from Zoey’s skin. A head shape had been taken from the area between her ribcages. Tiny arms spanned out to her sides and the legs extended down towards the top of Zoey’s thighs.

‘Was she pregnant?’ Callanach asked. ‘Is this supposed to represent a baby?’

‘That was the first thing I checked when I identified the shape, but she wasn’t pregnant at death, nor has she ever given birth. That doesn’t exclude the possibility that she hadn’t ever conceived and decided on a termination.’

‘In which case we might be looking for a boyfriend. Someone who resented her decision,’ Ava said. ‘You said you were doing some research overnight, Jonty. What were you looking for?’

‘Other similar cases. I found nothing, I’m pleased to say. In twenty-five years, I’ve not come across anything so outrageous. Will you help me turn Zoey over, Luc?’ Callanach stepped forward and assisted. ‘It’s exactly the same shape, cut out of the skin in her back. That would have been a more difficult procedure as the skin is tighter and there is less loose flesh.’

‘Tell me she wasn’t conscious when this was done,’ Ava said.

‘There’s good and bad news on that front,’ Jonty said, pointing at a few places along the cut line. ‘I believe she was conscious, although the likelihood is that she would have passed out quickly from shock if she could see what was happening. You can see at these two points that an outline was drawn onto Zoey before the incisions were made. The ink is still just about visible although hard to make out.’

‘What was the cut made with?’ Callanach asked.

‘A scalpel, medical grade. Easy to get hold of. We ran some tests on the skin around the edge of the incisions and have found substantial amounts of topical numbing cream. I think your murderer rubbed the cream into Zoey’s abdomen and back over several days in advance of doing this to her.’

‘They couldn’t just have killed her first?’ Ava asked.

‘Not what they wanted, apparently,’ Jonty said. ‘There are also four injection sites. I’ve sent off tissue samples to the lab and confirmation will take a couple of days, but given the proximity to the incisions,’ he pointed at tiny pin pricks at each shoulder and leg area of the cut-out shape, ‘I’d say the surgeon – and I use that term as loosely as possible – injected Zoey with a local anaesthetic before starting. Both sides have the same marks.’

‘Why bother?’ Callanach asked. ‘And before you say it, Jonty, I know that deduction is our remit, not yours. But if torture was the idea, surely there was no point alleviating the pain.’

‘As a medic, the answer is simple. If Zoey had felt the full extent of the cuts, she’d have moved her body in a way which would have made cutting clean edges impossible. Also, she’d have died from shock, I think. Her heart wouldn’t have coped. Her breathing would have suffered. The small amount of anaesthesia allowed her to live through the operation, and to make it easier to cut out the baby shape.’

‘Then the killer packed her wounds and drove her somewhere public to die?’ Callanach asked.

‘That’s where you take over,’ Jonty said. ‘The incisions were made not long before dumping her at the roadside. The wound packs wouldn’t have stemmed the blood flow for long, and the loss of an area of skin that size would have killed her sooner or later whether infection had kicked in or not.’

‘Where would the murderer have got the local anaesthetic from?’ Ava asked.

‘A contact in the medical profession. Theft from a hospital or GP surgery. Quite possibly from the internet. There are sites that specialise in providing medical supplies no questions asked, and this wouldn’t normally be regarded as a high-risk item to sell. Tracing it will be almost impossible, which brings me to the gown she was wearing when she was found.’

‘It wasn’t a dress?’ Ava asked.

‘No. It was difficult to establish at first because of all the blood, but the opening is at the back, with three ties evenly spaced from the top down, which would have given easy access to her abdomen and back as necessary. No branding or label, and a very standard cheap cotton mix material, often found in clothing transported from China.’

‘The chances of tracing its source?’ Luc asked.

‘Several thousand to one, I’d say,’ Jonty replied.

Ava sighed. ‘You said surgeon, but loosely. So is this a medical professional? What’s your opinion on the surgical skills?’ she asked.

‘It’s not butchery, but it’s not anyone who’s been trained. They made a poor job of lifting the skin away – all layers, epidermis, dermis and the subcutaneous fat. At one point the depth is one centimetre, but it thins out at the ends of the arms and legs to three millimetres. If you look closely you can see some hacking with the blade to lift the skin section out,’ Jonty said, pointing.

‘I’ll take your word for that,’ Ava said. ‘What about the restraints? I can’t see anything obvious.’

‘That’s because it was cleverly done. There’s an area of skin worn off the ankles and wrists, between two and three inches wide with no knot mark. I’m assuming a binding was used to secure the limb against an immovable object like a pole. That would explain the lack of obvious bruising. A thinner binding would have chafed. Under a microscope you can see that the binding has left green fibres on Zoey’s skin.’

‘Her captor didn’t find that out by chance,’ said Callanach. ‘Either they’ve done it before, practised, or they spent a long time researching. Any DNA or prints on the body?’

‘Not that we’ve found,’ Jonty said. ‘Your murderer wore gloves. They probably washed her just prior to cutting the skin. Obviously the lower legs, arms and face had dirt, dust and foliage on them from crawling up the road, but nothing that will help identify her captor. There’s only one other thing of note. A section of hair has been cut from Zoey’s head. The roots are intact so it wasn’t pulled out. It’s not very much, but it does beg the question why.’

‘A trophy?’ Callanach asked.

‘He’s got plenty of those,’ Ava said. ‘The killer’s already got her clothes, shoes, whatever jewellery she was wearing, possibly her handbag. Not to mention a large section of her skin. Is there anything else, Dr Spurr? I need to get back and speak to the superintendent.’

‘Only that before she was cut, she was kept comfortable. Not injured in any way. She was hydrated and still had food in her stomach. Consciously kept alive and unharmed. No sexual assault as far as I can tell,’ Jonty said. ‘Good luck with this one. Whoever did this to Zoey …’

‘Deserves to die,’ Ava said. ‘That’s all there is to it, really. They’d better hope it’s not me who finds them first.’

‘I was going to say, is dangerous in the extreme, although I can’t disagree with your sentiment, DCI Turner. There was no anger, no lack of control, no force used. It was seven days between this girl going missing and turning up again. That’s a long time for her killer to be with her, to watch her plead and cry. Hard then to cut her and leave her to die.’

‘That’s what psychopaths do,’ Callanach said.

‘This is a psychopath with an especially strong stomach and an iron will.’ Jonty stripped off his gloves and turned to go. ‘Take your time.’

Callanach waited until the pathologist was gone before turning to Ava. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never heard you express the desire to kill anyone before.’

Ava peeled the sheet back from Zoey’s face. ‘Look at her,’ she said. ‘On the precipice between childhood and adulthood. She lived through violence, but had the strength to get out and seek help, even when her own mother failed to protect her. We know she doesn’t have a criminal record, so in spite of her childhood she kept herself from spiralling downwards. Moving into the shelter should have been the start of a new chapter. She should have been safe. And the cruellest factor in it all was that Zoey was kept alive for a whole week, unhurt. She would have had hope. No matter how dismal it seemed, there would have been a part of her that thought she would go free. Having survived so much, surely it wasn’t possible that she could die tied up and terrified. That’s what she’d have been thinking.’

‘You can’t make it personal,’ Callanach said. ‘We have to take a step back and look at this dispassionately. The stepfather has to be the best bet.’

‘It’s a hell of a jump from domestic violence, however long-term, to this,’ Ava said.

‘Maybe Zoey had decided to prosecute. Maybe the stepfather hated that she’d left and couldn’t handle it. The chances are that this was perpetrated by someone known to her,’ Callanach said.

Ava pulled the sheet further down to reveal Zoey’s abdomen. The layer of flesh below the missing skin shone greyish-pink in the bright electric lights.

‘It’s unreal,’ Ava said. ‘How do you start to conceive a torture so inhumane? Perhaps she did know the person who did this to her, and perhaps she didn’t, but this was personal. Zoey was chosen. It can’t be random because there’s a purpose to it in her murderer’s mind. Some twisted relevance.’

‘Do you want me to get straight over to the stepfather’s place now?’ Callanach asked.

‘Go to the shelter first,’Ava said. ‘It sounds as if Sandra Tilly, who identified the body, knew a lot about what Zoey had been through. Get everything you can out of her to arm yourself with. When you interview the stepfather I don’t want him to have any wiggle room at all. Speak to the other shelter residents. I want to know if she was still scared, if she thought she was being followed, or aware of any threat. Most of all, I want to know what sort of things the stepfather did to her. Then go through Zoey’s personal items. Communications, diaries, an email address might help.’

‘All right,’ Luc said.

‘Visit her stepfather, Christopher Myers, after that. Separate him from Zoey’s mother during questioning, if you can. We’ve already got enough for a search of the house. I want it inspected from top to bottom, including any loft space and the garage,’ Ava said.

‘What about Zoey’s mother?’ Luc asked.

‘I don’t know what to expect from a woman who failed to protect her child against long-term violence. She ought to be grieving. Take it easy on her. I don’t want any complaints jeopardising the investigation, but make sure she knows we have independent evidence about the violence. Perhaps suggest we might charge her with child cruelty,’ Ava said.

‘Wouldn’t work without Zoey alive to make the case,’ Callanach said.

‘We know that, she doesn’t. Scare the crap out of her off the record if you get the chance. She failed her daughter while she was alive. Perhaps now that Zoey’s dead, her mother can finally be a half-decent parent and tell the truth.’

‘You’re telling me to break the rules?’ Callanach asked.

Ava smiled tenderly at Zoey before covering her once more with the sheet. ‘I’m asking you to do whatever it takes to find the bastard who did this. When you do, I intend to put them in a prison cell and keep them there until their last breath. Even then, justice won’t have been done.’

Chapter Five

‘Brought you a coffee, ma’am. I gather you’ve just got back from the mortuary. Thought you might need a pick-me-up.’ DS Lively walked into Ava’s office and deposited a steaming mug on her desk, closely followed by an unopened packet of rich tea biscuits. Ava inspected the gifts then studied Lively’s face.

‘For fuck’s sake, Lively, tell me you haven’t killed someone in police custody,’ she said.

Lively managed to look offended for a few seconds before smiling. ‘The job’s making you cynical. Can’t a lowly sergeant bring his chief inspector a hot drink without you assuming the worst?’

‘We’ve worked together how long now?’ Ava asked.

‘I believe it’s in the region of a decade, ma’am,’ Lively said, sitting down.

‘And in that time, how many hot drinks have you made me?’ Ava continued.

‘You’re overthinking it, boss. What’s the news on the girl you found out on Torduff?’ he asked.

‘Grim,’ Ava said, ripping open the biscuits. ‘Are you expecting me to share these, only you appear to have made yourself comfortable for no apparent reason.’

‘No, they’re all yours. I’ve been hiding them at the back of a drawer to stop the other thieving gits from nicking them.’

‘That’s enough. Tell me what you’ve done and how much shit you’ve got MIT in,’ Ava demanded.

Lively reached over and plucked a biscuit from the packet. ‘It’s Detective Constable Salter. I’m worried about her,’ he said, before stuffing the biscuit into his mouth whole.

‘Has something happened, only I wasn’t notified that there was an issue,’ Ava said.

‘Without wanting to sound like a paternalistic asshole, it’s too soon. Christie shouldn’t be back on duty yet.’ He looked longingly at the coffee. Ava moved it beyond his reach before he began dunking.

‘You got injured quite badly too, on a recent case. I seem to recall you being advised to get surgery on your left shoulder, not that you took any notice. When I questioned your decision to come back to work, you said you knew your own body better than anyone else.’

‘This is different and you know it. You can’t compare losing a baby to getting your arm into a fight with a crowbar,’ Lively muttered.

‘The doctor declared Salter fit for duty,’ Ava said. ‘I’ve spoken to her. She believes she’s ready and I trust her judgment. What is it you know that no one else does?’

Lively brushed crumbs from his lap onto the floor, frowning.

‘Come on, Sergeant, you came in here to say something to me. Get it over with.’

‘Christie Salter nearly died in my arms, ma’am, on a kitchen floor after some sick fuck had taken her hostage and a dotty old woman misjudged her target and stabbed her. If the paramedics hadn’t been on the scene, we’d have lost her. She was in surgery for hours. Her baby girl died in her womb. You can’t tell me she’s fit to be back out on the streets, not with the sort of crap we deal with every day.’

‘Sergeant,’ Ava said gently, ‘you don’t think that perhaps it would be a good idea for me to refer you for some counselling, given what you went through that day? DC Salter wasn’t the only one who suffered a trauma. It must have been an appalling thing for you to have witnessed.’

‘Would you fuck off! Oh shite – sorry, ma’am, I forgot who I was talking to,’ he said.

‘Forgiven. This isn’t easy. I understand that the prospect of talking to someone about your emotions isn’t natural for the more mature members of the force, but times have changed. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about and no one need know except us,’ Ava said.

‘I don’t need a bloody shrink. I need to make sure DC Salter’s safe and right now, as her ranking officer, I’m not convinced she is,’ he replied.

Ava held out the biscuits as a peace offering. Lively took a handful.

‘All right. Your choice. But you can’t make her feel as if she shouldn’t be here, however well-intentioned you are. This is what she needs to help distract herself from her loss. You and I would both do the same in her position.’

‘If you’re keeping her in MIT, I want your word you’ll keep Salter off the Torduff Road investigation. It’s too much. I heard what a mess that poor girl’s body was in.’

‘I agree with you on that score. You picked up a face slashing, I understand. Probably a dead-end case, but it needs investigating. I’m leaving it with you and Salter. I need every other body on Zoey Cole’s murder, so don’t expect help from anyone else. Wrap it up as quickly as possible, then I’ll review DC Salter’s suitability for another case. This stays between us, all right?’

Lively stood up, nodding, as Ava’s office door opened.

‘Sit your carbohydrate-endowed arse straight back down in that chair, Sergeant,’ Detective Superintendent Overbeck said.

Lively crossed his arms and remained standing, but stayed where he was.

‘Is there a problem, ma’am?’ Ava asked her superior, who was looking stunning in a tight-fitting midnight blue suit and six-inch stilettos, with bright red nails. It was a wonder she could hold a pen or type, Ava thought, wondering if she was aware that all the police under her command called her the Evil Overlord out of her earshot, not entirely unjustly.

‘When isn’t there a frigging problem in your team, DCI Turner?’ Overbeck said. ‘I’ve just had the pleasure of being interviewed by some of those do-gooders who occasionally get to come in and visit the prisoners in their cells, just to check we’re providing five-fucking-star care for Edinburgh’s charming criminals.’

‘I think the ones in our cells are usually called suspects, ma’am,’ Lively smirked. ‘Something about innocent until proven—’

‘Sergeant, if you speak again before I ask you to, I will pour that steaming coffee on the desk all over your balls, get me?’

Lively winced and Ava did her best not to smirk. Lively was regularly insubordinate to her, and even more so to Luc Callanach. This was the first she’d seen him silenced by a superior officer and it was pleasing to watch.

‘Am I to assume there was a slip in our usual standards?’ Ava enquired.

‘To be fair, only if you call having an incomprehensible man with half his frigging face hanging off, stuck in our cells instead of being in a hospital – or preferably still on the streets given how badly he was fouling up the custody area – a slip!’ Overbeck hissed. ‘Now,’ she stood directly in front of Lively, ‘as you were the arresting officer, you’d better have the shiniest, most watertight explanation for why this has happened to me on a day when I finally got my husband on a plane for a month-long golfing vacation and was looking forward to a serious amount of alone time without anyone pissing me off.’

‘Gone somewhere nice, has he?’ Lively grinned.

‘Pass me your coffee, Turner,’ Overbeck said, holding out her hand.

‘Don’t you dare, ma’am,’ Lively said. ‘That’s the first cup of coffee I’ve ever made anyone in this police station. I don’t want it wasted!’

‘Sergeant, would you please answer DS Overbeck’s question?’ Ava said.

‘Only if she says please.’

‘Lively, you’re going to get yourself fired.’ Ava shot him an unmistakable look.

‘Stay out of this, Detective Chief Inspector,’ Overbeck said. ‘I don’t have any problem at all with your sergeant giving me a reason to fire him.’

‘Lively,’ Ava said, getting to her feet and glaring.

Lively tutted and gave in. ‘He’s a victim of crime, refused an ambulance but we need a statement from him. He’s also homeless and a drug addict. We need to question him, and the only way to stop him from disappearing was to book him as drunk and incapable, and wait it out.’

‘So you just made up the drunk charge?’ Overbeck asked. ‘Even though he actually wasn’t?’

‘That’s right.’ Lively smiled.

‘So you’ve not only broken every procedure we have in terms of custodial care of the seriously injured, you’ve also reported a false charge against him.’

‘Aye, that pretty much sums it up,’ Lively said. ‘Was there something else you wanted, or am I free to go and try to extract a statement from our guest?’

Overbeck stepped closer, her eyes level with Lively’s, their bodies forming strange polar opposite silhouettes against the window, one stick thin and the other seriously paunchy. Ava held her breath while she waited for one or other of them to concede defeat.

‘Get him out of my cells, out of this police station and preferably out of this city,’ Overbeck said. ‘Ensure not a single particle of shit is going to hit any proverbial fan, then either retire or make sure I never have cause to speak with you about this again. Do you understand, Detective Sergeant?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Happy to oblige,’ Lively said.

Callanach and Tripp parked around the corner from the domestic abuse shelter, then phoned ahead to have the back door opened up, the front door being used as little as possible to disguise the nature of the property from any save for those who needed to know. Most of the women inside were running or hiding. The police weren’t always welcome visitors, either. Too many victims had been ignored, told there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, or just plain disbelieved. Modern policing was attempting to bridge the trust gap, but that was a long-term project. There were generations of failings to make up for, Callanach thought, as he rang a silent doorbell and looked into the security camera, holding up his identification for closer viewing. Tripp did the same. Eventually the door buzzed open and they stepped through into a vestibule. A woman appeared behind the glass of an internal door.

‘Would you check that the outer door behind you is firmly locked, please?’ she asked. Tripp did so. She unlocked the inner door and let them into a wide hallway. ‘I’m Sandra Tilly, the deputy shelter manager. Would you mind coming into the kitchen to talk, only I don’t want to disturb the women in the lounge.’

‘Of course. I’m DI Luc Callanach,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to disturb anyone unnecessarily but it would help if we could see Zoey’s room. I know other officers have already been in there, but it’s useful to get a better idea of who she was.’

They walked down the corridor and entered a functional room with cupboards marked only with numbers. ‘They correspond with the bedroom numbers upstairs,’ Sandra explained. ‘The women who stay here often don’t use their real names, although Zoey actually did. She said it was therapeutic for her to feel as if she’d stopped running. Other women use pseudonyms until they feel really safe with each other. If anyone ever does manage to break in, they won’t find it easy to figure out which room they want. Zoey was in number four.’

‘Do you mind if we have a look in her kitchen cupboard?’ DC Tripp asked.

‘Sure,’ Sandra said, opening it. ‘Have you arrested anyone yet?’

‘Not yet,’ Callanach said. ‘Were you aware of anyone harassing Zoey, or trying to contact her? Any letters, emails, texts?’

‘Nothing that I was aware of,’ Sandra said. ‘A lot of the women here choose to spend a period of time in the digital dark. They get rid of their old mobile numbers, change email addresses, shut down every form of social media. This shelter isn’t for mild cases of abuse. We have limited places and it’s expensive to run. As horrible as it sounds, we only house women or girls who have suffered long-term, major-impact abuse and who are judged to still be at risk and vulnerable.’

Tripp took out a few packets and tins, a couple of mugs and a cookbook. ‘Healthy Eating for One,’ he read. ‘Looks like Zoey was trying to take care of herself. No junk food in here. The tins are all vegetables rather than desserts. She was thinking about her long-term future.’

‘How much did Zoey tell you about what she’d been through?’ Callanach asked Sandra.

‘She shared quite a lot in our group sessions. The girls have a daily meeting to share their experiences, when they feel ready. Zoey kept herself to herself when she first arrived, but gradually she started to talk to the others. She’d suffered violence and psychological abuse. Nothing sexual, at least not that she ever told us about.’

‘Her stepfather?’ Callanach checked.

‘Yes,’ Sandra said. ‘Christopher Myers. He once broke her nose because she called him Christopher rather than Dad. Seems he couldn’t bear to be reminded that anyone had ruled the family before him. Zoey had a brother, too, although she didn’t talk about him much. Would you like to see her room now? I’m off duty in ten minutes and I can’t leave you in the property.’

They followed Sandra upstairs, where she opened a door with two different keys to reveal an orderly bedroom with a chair, a chest of drawers and a matching wardrobe. A small en suite with a shower was behind a second door.

‘The bed’s made, all the clothes are away,’ Callanach said to Tripp. ‘Zoey didn’t go anywhere in a panic and there’s a suitcase under the bed. She wasn’t running from any threat she was aware of and it looks as if she had every intention of returning.’

‘And if she was aware of a threat, I’d guess she’d have reported it to someone here as a precaution. Not least to keep the other women safe,’ said Tripp. ‘So was this a random kidnapping and murder? Just an unfortunate coincidence that she crossed the path of an opportunistic killer?’

‘Possibly, but the wounds inflicted have a personal meaning to whoever caused them. Come on. There’s nothing else here, no laptop or mobile.’ Callanach shut the drawers he’d opened. ‘No letters or diary. I guess it’s time to visit the stepfather.’

They walked back down the stairs to find Sandra waiting for them with her coat on and keys in hand. She let them out and followed behind.

‘Thanks for your help,’ Callanach said.

‘No problem. I’ll just stay and lock up. Call if you need anything else,’ Sandra replied.

Callanach and Tripp walked around the corner towards their unmarked car. ‘Do we have Zoey’s medical records yet?’ Tripp asked.

‘Still waiting. Hopefully we’ll get them within the next couple of days.’ Callanach stopped and sighed. ‘I meant to ask Sandra for a copy of the CCTV footage from when Zoey last left the shelter. I’ll go back. You start the car and put the stepfather’s address into the SatNav.’

He turned around and made his way towards the shelter’s back door. He was about to call out to Sandra when he saw a man approach her, kissing her at length before letting go. Sandra laughed, said something Callanach couldn’t hear from that distance and kissed the man again.

The male shouldn’t have been that close to the back door of the shelter, was Callanach’s first thought. Even if he wasn’t a threat, the women living there should be able to come and go without anyone seeing them. Judging by the intensity of the greeting, it looked like a new relationship. People rarely kissed for more than a couple of seconds after the first few months – not in public anyway. Keeping his footsteps light, Callanach walked in the shadow of the property’s rear wall until he was close enough to Sandra to say her name quietly.

‘Oh God, you made me jump,’ she said. ‘Did you forget something?’

‘One last query. Hello.’ He held out a hand to shake Sandra’s boyfriend’s. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Callanach.’

‘This is my boyfriend, Tyrone,’ Sandra answered for him.

‘Tyrone?’ Callanach let the missing surname hang in the air between them.

‘Tyrone Leigh,’ the man muttered. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘DI Callanach’s here about the incident,’ Sandra explained to her boyfriend, before turning her attention back to Callanach. ‘Tyrone knows because I asked him to drop me at the mortuary to identify Zoey’s body.’

‘Sandra shouldn’t have had to do that,’ Tyrone said. ‘This job’s tough enough already.’

‘I agree,’ Callanach said. ‘It’s a terrible thing to ask anyone to undertake, but unfortunately it was necessary. Did you ever meet Zoey?’

Sandra and Tyrone’s eyes met briefly before he answered.

‘We bumped into her once, in the supermarket up the road,’ Sandra said. ‘I was picking up dinner on the way home and Zoey happened to be in there.’

‘Who else other than residents knows the address of the shelter?’ Callanach asked. ‘Have you told any of your friends or family, Mr Leigh?’

‘Did I do something wrong?’ Tyrone asked.

‘Not at all. I’m just covering all bases. We need to know how Zoey was located by her attacker.’

‘Seems pretty bloody obvious to me you should be arresting her stepfather,’ Tyrone said.

Sandra glared at him. If looks were kicks, Tyrone would have been holding his shin, Callanach thought. He raised his eyebrows.

‘I only told him because Zoey was a bit off with him in the supermarket, didn’t want to shake his hand when he offered. I was just explaining that she’d had a rough time of it at home,’ Sandra muttered, red-faced.

‘I understand,’ Callanach said. ‘Probably best in future not to share any of your residents’ details though, no matter what the circumstances. Could you let me have a copy of the security CCTV showing the last time Zoey left the shelter? I’ll send an officer to fetch it tomorrow. Thank you, Miss Tilly.’

Callanach took out his phone as he walked away and made a note of Tyrone Leigh’s name, knowing that a row would be starting behind him.

Chapter Six

The Myers household was opposite the bowling club in Broxburn, its front windows affording a view of the river, with neighbouring properties adjoining on either side.

‘This is nice,’ Tripp said. ‘Not quite what I was expecting.’

‘Domestic violence doesn’t only happen in tenements, Tripp,’ Callanach said.

‘I know that, it’s just hard to understand why a man would provide for a family, with a pretty house in a good village, then ruin it all. What’s the point?’ Tripp asked.

‘Control. It always boils down to that. Some people just need to feel powerful, and if this is their only way of achieving that, they don’t care what the peripheral damage is. I asked PC Biddlecombe to phone ahead. They’re expecting us.’

The door opened before they reached it and a short, thin woman opened it, clutching a handful of tissues. The paleness of her face and red eyes needed no explanation. Callanach studied her for signs of recent injury or older scarring, but saw none.

‘Come in,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m Elsa Myers.’

Tripp and Callanach introduced themselves as they wiped their shoes on the mat. Mrs Myers showed them into a pastel-shaded lounge. There were two photos on the mantelpiece, one of a young man in a soldier’s uniform and one of Zoey in school uniform, looking shy as she smiled for the photographer.

‘How old was your daughter in that photo?’ Callanach asked.

‘Fourteen,’ her mother said. ‘Please sit down. My husband’s just coming to join us.’

She looked like Zoey, Callanach thought. There was a frailty about her that had to have preceded the news of her daughter’s death. It looked as if the slightest breeze would bend her. Her wrists were almost skeletal beneath the white blouse she was wearing, and her cheekbones were harsh in her face.

‘Where’s Zoey’s brother?’ Callanach asked.

‘Afghanistan,’ Elsa replied. ‘We hope he’ll come back when we have a date for the funeral. Do you know when that’s likely to be?’

‘We can’t release the body until we’ve made progress with the case, I’m afraid. I know that’s terribly difficult to deal with but it’s important that we get justice for Zoey, and that means preserving her body in case further investigations prove necessary. Have you spoken to your son about what happened?’

‘That’s not been possible. He’s out on manoeuvres away from base. He’ll be contacted as soon as practicable to let him know,’ a man said from the doorway. Christopher Myers was well over six feet tall, with wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. He stepped forward, offering his hand. ‘I’m Christopher. It’s good of you to come out to speak with us. You must be Detective Inspector Callanach. Has my wife offered you a cup of tea?’

‘That’s all right, we don’t need anything, thank you,’ Callanach said, sitting back down as Christopher took a seat by his wife, wrapping a protective arm around her shoulders. She collapsed into him.

‘So have you found something? Arrested someone?’ Christopher asked.

‘I’m afraid not, but it’s early days. We are following up multiple lines of enquiry, however. That’s why we’re here. What we’d like to do is speak with each of you separately. I hope you don’t mind. It’s important that you recall events individually. Sometimes one person’s recollections cloud another’s, and we miss vital pieces of information.’

‘Let me stop you there,’ Christopher said. ‘I know what this is about. It’s no surprise. Zoey made a number of allegations against me when she lived here. To be honest, I was surprised the officers who came before didn’t ask me about it.’

‘We’d still like—’ Tripp began.

‘She claimed I was violent to her,’ Christopher continued. ‘I’m afraid Zoey suffered a terrible trauma when her father died. She was very emotionally reliant on him. When I arrived, she painted me as the wicked stepfather, and things only got worse during her teenage years.’

Elsa Myers nodded, tears forming in her eyes as she leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder.

‘Please don’t mistake me,’ said Christopher. ‘Zoey was a precious, sweet, lovely girl and we both adored her, however hard that was at times. When she started self-harming we considered calling in outside help, but Elsa was worried that Zoey might end up institutionalised or taken away from us.’ He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief before continuing. ‘Perhaps if we had asked for help sooner, she’d still be alive.’

‘When did you last speak to her or see her?’ Tripp asked.

‘When Zoey left here a few months ago, she had a sort of miniature breakdown, I guess you could call it. I think a friend had let her down and she took it out on us, screaming and shouting terrible things in the street before walking off, all of her possessions in a carrier bag, without even a coat. It was a dreadful day. I tried to stop her, but the law says she’s an adult. What can you do?’

He looked tired, Callanach thought. Certainly Christopher hadn’t shaved that morning, and perhaps not the previous day either. His shirt was ironed, though, and the house showed no sign of disruption. It was odd that there were no flowers or cards around the place from family and friends. Usually a couple of days after such a tragedy, the family home was unrecognisable.

‘Have you had much support from friends and family?’ he asked. ‘Parents can sometimes feel swamped by the amount of cards and letters they receive, imagining they need to respond to them all. Flowers particularly …’ He let the obvious question hang in the air.

‘My wife’s allergic …’ Christopher Myers started to say.

‘They’re too morbid …’ Elsa muttered at the same time. There was a moment of silence.

‘We made the joint decision not to turn the place into any sort of shrine. It was too painful for my wife, and it seemed rather inappropriate given the lies Zoey had told about me.’

‘I understand,’ Callanach said, making brief eye contact with Tripp, who was busy making notes. ‘Did you know where Zoey was living prior to her death?’

‘With friends, we assumed,’ Christopher said.

‘Mrs Myers?’ Callanach checked. Elsa shook her head. ‘Zoey was in a domestic abuse shelter,’ he continued. ‘The allegations against you were quite detailed, Mr Myers, although Zoey declined to press charges. She had a number of unexplained fractures, old breaks that had healed over, but more than one would expect an eighteen-year-old to have suffered.’

Christopher Myers looked down at his wife. ‘Tell them,’ he said. ‘They need to know how bad it was.’

‘I don’t know why she used to do it,’ Zoey’s mother whispered. ‘Whether she felt she didn’t get enough attention, or that she was trying to punish me for remarrying. It started off small but got bigger. She would pinch herself, mark her body, deliberately bang into furniture to leave bruises up her arms. Once she even slammed her hand in a door. We suspected she’d broken several fingers but she refused to go to the hospital. By then I was too scared of how she’d react to insist.’

‘Scared that she might be taken away?’ Callanach checked.

‘Or that they would believe her stories and Christopher would be arrested. What sort of choice is that? Lose your husband or your daughter. So I stayed silent.’ Elsa let out a sudden sob. ‘And now she’s dead, and there’s nothing I can do to protect her any more.’

Christopher rocked her in his arms, whispering soothing nothings into her hair and sniffing back his own tears.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Callanach said. ‘Does Zoey still have a bedroom here?’

‘It’s the guest room now,’ Christopher said. ‘We redecorated recently.’

‘Do you mind if we take a look around?’ Tripp asked.

‘Help yourself. I’ll stay here and look after my wife, if you don’t mind,’ Christopher replied.

Callanach and Tripp took the stairs quietly, Elsa’s sobs fading as they reached the upper floor of the house and began opening doors. Two of the bedrooms were blank canvases, each with a double bed and standard furniture, ready for guests to arrive and make themselves comfortable. Only the main bedroom showed signs of life. Christopher and Elsa’s room was warm and comfortable. A photo of them on their wedding day sat on Elsa’s dressing table, next to a jewellery box and a hairbrush. The bed was neatly made and a small wooden cross hung above the headboard on the wall.

‘Do you think it helps?’ Tripp asked, looking at the cross. ‘When you lose someone, but believe they’ve gone somewhere better?’

‘I hope it helps them,’ Callanach said. ‘If it were me, I’d be wondering what sort of god could allow such an atrocity to happen in the first place.’

‘What did you make of them?’ Tripp whispered as he poked his head into the en suite bathroom.

‘They seem to be genuinely grieving,’ Callanach said. ‘Substantial difference between Zoey and Christopher’s versions of events though.’

‘Zoey would have to have experienced serious mental health difficulties to have made up so many stories and maintained them for so long. Especially if she was breaking her own bones,’ Tripp said.

‘It’s been done before,’ Callanach said, wondering how much Tripp knew about his own history, and the woman who had inflicted dreadful injuries on herself to bolster her false rape accusation.

‘Still, breaking her own fingers?’ Tripp asked. ‘Did Christopher’s record show anything?’

‘He’s not on the police system,’ Callanach said. ‘Never convicted of so much as a traffic offence.’

‘I can’t see anything relevant up here. Officers checked the house when they visited to notify the mother of Zoey’s death. They said both Elsa and Christopher seemed genuinely shocked, and they were given full access to the entire property at that stage,’ Tripp said. ‘The thing about the flowers was weird, though. His first instinct was to lie about it.’

‘Embarrassment, perhaps, thinking how heartless it would seem to have thrown out the flowers and cards from well-wishers. Maybe they really couldn’t bear to be reminded of it every minute of the day,’ Callanach suggested.

‘How could you forget, flowers or not? I wonder if throwing it all out was Christopher’s idea or Mrs Myers’?’ Tripp replied.

‘They’ll present it as a united decision, whatever the truth of the matter. Let’s go back down. I have a couple more questions then we can get back to the station. I’d like to confirm with the army about Zoey’s brother, too,’ Callanach said.

Back downstairs they found Elsa making a pot of tea and Christopher washing up. ‘Best to keep busy, we’ve found,’ Christopher said. ‘If you let yourself sit and think about it for too long, you just can’t get up again.’

‘We understand,’ Callanach said. ‘For our records, as you’re obviously related parties, could you tell us what you were doing last Sunday? We know where Zoey was until 11 a.m., then she went out and was noted as missing at 4 p.m.’

‘We were at an autumn fete,’ Elsa said, pouring milk into a teacup. ‘A community event over at Kirknewton.’

‘I’ll write down the names of a few friends we were there with, plus there are photos. You know how it is these days. Everything’s all over social media before you know it. We got there to help set up in the morning at about ten. I was running the bouncy castle.’ Christopher gave a sad smile. ‘Elsa was on the cake stall. It was a charity fundraiser. We were there all day. Got home about six in the evening.’

‘And you didn’t leave at any stage?’ Tripp asked.

‘Not at all. There was a bit of rain so we were huddled together under shelters for quite a lot of it. Didn’t stop the children wanting to run around outside though,’ Christopher said. ‘Are you sure about that tea?’

‘We’ll be off, thanks. If you could just write down those names …’

‘Of course.’ Christopher busied himself with a sheet ripped off a notepad as Elsa poured tea for the two of them. When he handed his alibi list over, there were no fewer than a dozen names on it.

Callanach and Tripp made their way out of the front door.

‘Is that your garage?’ Callanach asked.

‘It is. Feel free to go inside. Just pull it shut when you’re finished,’ Christopher said, shutting the front door.

Tripp pulled up the garage door. The floor had been recently brushed. No dirt or leaves remained. A few tools hung in neat rows and old kitchen cupboards had been rehung to house half-used tins of paint and essentials like WD40.

‘This is the tidiest garage I’ve ever seen,’ Tripp said.

‘Check the cupboards.’

‘Are we looking for anything in particular?’

‘Green rope or string,’ Callanach said. ‘Blades, gloves, duct tape, needles. Anything you wouldn’t want to see if you were kidnapped and woke up trapped in here.’

Chapter Seven

‘Wait for me,’ Ava said. ‘I’m not making it that easy for you. If Overbeck’s going to storm into my office and bollock you, I’m overseeing whatever steps you take to remedy it.’

‘Don’t sweat it, ma’am. If the Evil Overlord wants to use me as a whipping boy for a while, that’s fine with me,’ Lively said.

‘And that’s supposed to reassure me how …?’ Ava asked.

‘You’re coming to the cells with me, are you then?’ He ignored her question and responded with his own.

‘I am, so no cutting corners. Write up a detailed statement afterwards, and so we’re clear, you’re to avoid sarcasm, aggression and all forms of fiction,’ Ava said.

‘I think you’re being a bit harsh, to be honest,’ Lively said, getting out his notebook which gave Ava a vague sense of hope that the proper processes might be complied with.

‘Do you? I think I’m a goddamned angel,’ Ava said. ‘Come on then. Down to the cells.’

A few floors below, and a few locked doors into the heart of the building, Mikey Parsons’ face was grim. Even Lively had the decency to let out a whistle of sick appreciation at the extent of the damage.

‘How’re you doing there, Mikey?’ he asked.

‘Hurts,’ Parsons muttered.

‘Aye, that was always going to happen when you could actually feel your face again. This here is Detective Chief Inspector Turner. She’s come to ask you about what happened,’ Lively said.

‘Am I under arrest? Did I do something?’ Parsons muttered, his speech slurred either from years of addiction or the wound across his cheek; it was hard to tell.

Ava unlocked his door and walked into the cell, leaning against the wall opposite the bed Parsons was laid out on. He didn’t attempt to sit up.

‘You’re not under arrest, Mr Parsons. You’re here for your own protection because you refused medical assistance and you were deemed too vulnerable to remain outside. Is there anything at all you can tell us about how you got that injury?’

Parsons raised a shaking hand to his face, investigating the extent of his injury. His fingertips came away bloody as he attempted to plaster the loose flaps of skin back down onto the structure of his cheeks.

‘Don’t remember anything,’ Parsons said, turning his head away from her to stare at the wall.

‘Perhaps the sergeant would get you a cup of tea,’ Ava said. ‘He’s good at making hot drinks for people.’

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Lively said, scuffing his feet as he walked away. ‘Give an inch and they take a bloody mile.’

Ava ignored him. ‘Mr Parsons, whatever happened, you’re in no trouble. I understand that drugs were involved, but I’m not interested in prosecuting individual users. Life is tough and you’ve got your reasons. What I want is to find the person who assaulted you. You could have died. Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you’re worth less than anyone else. It’s not okay to pretend this doesn’t matter.’

‘I’ll heal,’ Parsons said.

‘If you don’t get medical help, those scars will be more painful than they need to be and liable to infection. Would you mind if I took a closer look at the injury?’ She crossed the cell to stand nearer to him.

Slowly, he rolled his head to the left for Ava to get a better understanding of the extent of the injuries. The slashes were clean, and there was no mistaking the fact that they had been designed to form a Z. This had been no chance encounter. The perpetrator had gone looking for a semi-conscious Spice user to mark. Edinburgh’s so-called zombies were becoming a feature of city life, and apparently attracting the wrong kind of attention.

‘It needs stitching. Not even glue will help with that and it’s beyond our first-aid capabilities. Where did you buy the Spice, Mikey?’ she asked.

‘Traded it for half a bottle of vodka,’ Mikey said. ‘Don’t remember who with.’

‘Did you feel any pain when you were attacked?’

‘Was asleep. Or unconscious. I had a dream there was something biting me. It wouldn’t let go. I thought it was all just part of the trip. I woke up here. Do I get food?’ he asked.

‘I’ll see what the custody sergeant can rustle up,’ Ava said. ‘I need you to give a statement, though. Someone else will write it out for you and you’ll just have to sign it. Also, I’d like to take photos of your injury. Do you consent to that?’

‘Am I under arrest?’ Mikey asked again.

‘No. As I said, you’re not in any trouble.’ Ava sighed. His brain was obviously still too addled to retain information. Taking her phone out of her pocket, she snapped a few photos. He didn’t seem to notice. Lively walked in with a polystyrene cup of lukewarm milky water.

‘Sit up and get this down you, Mikey. It’ll make you feel better,’ he said. ‘Does he remember anything at all?’ he asked Ava.

‘Not a thing. He dreamed some unspecified animal was biting him. Probably a similar dream to the one I’ll be having about Overbeck tonight, thanks to you. Get a statement from him, just so there’s something on record, then spend as long as it takes persuading him that he needs medical treatment. He doesn’t walk out of here and back onto the streets without having that stitched up. I don’t care how long it takes you, understand?’

‘Can one of the uniforms not do that, ma’am? It sounds like rather a waste of MIT time.’

‘Your mess, you clean it up,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea if DI Callanach is back in the building?’

‘Tripp just walked back in. I think the DI is in reception dealing with someone. Apparently he’s looking for you, too. You and DI Callanach should probably stop asking after each other, truth be told. People will talk.’

‘If I didn’t need you to sort out this man’s face, I’d fire you immediately,’ Ava said, walking out.

‘Promises, promises,’ he muttered.

Callanach was exactly where Lively had said he would be, which was a surprise in itself. He had his back to Ava and was talking intensely to someone just out of sight. Whatever enquiry he was dealing with would have to wait, Ava decided.

‘DI Callanach,’ she said. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but can I have a moment?’

He turned to face her, frowning. When she saw the woman behind him, she understood why. Ava had known Callanach was involved with someone, even if he’d been careful to keep his work and private life separate.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Callanach said. ‘Sorry,’ he told the woman next to him. ‘I’ll call you later, okay?’

‘No, finish your conversation, it’s fine,’ Ava said. ‘I’ll see you in my office when you’re ready.’

The woman stepped forward, extending a hand. ‘DCI Turner,’ she said, her voice husky, with a Spanish accent. ‘I’m Selina Vega. We met briefly at Luc’s once before.’

Ava remembered. She tried not to look Selina up and down, but there was too much not to see. With long dark hair that gleamed auburn at its ends, melting brown eyes, and legs whose shape were not the least bit hidden by her tailored skirt, Ava figured Selina must be at least five foot nine. She suddenly felt short, underdressed and in need of a hair appointment.

‘Selina’s a registrar at the hospital,’ Callanach explained as the two of them shook hands. ‘We met when MIT was investigating a death a few months ago.’

‘Of course, good to see you again,’ Ava told her. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. This can wait a few minutes.’ She withdrew her hand and stepped back.

‘It’s no problem,’ Selina said. ‘Luc has talked about you so much that I feel as if I know you already.’

‘Oh,’ Ava said. ‘Well, that must have been very boring for you, so I apologise.’

‘Hardly. It’s obvious how much he admires you. I’ve been suggesting for months that we should all go out,’ Selina said.

‘Months? Wow, I didn’t realise …’ Ava’s voice trailed away into nothing. ‘Anyway, I’ve left DS Lively trying to change the mind of a man who’s refusing medical assistance in spite of the fact that his face is hanging off, so I ought to get back and check on that.’

‘I’ll find you in a couple of minutes,’ Luc said.

‘No rush, honestly.’ Ava smiled broadly at Selina. ‘So glad we bumped into one another.’

‘Can I help?’ Selina asked. ‘My specialisation is emergency medicine. Perhaps I could take a look at the injury and make an assessment. If he knows I’m a doctor rather than a police officer, he might be more inclined to take advice.’

‘No,’ Ava and Luc said simultaneously.

‘That’s not fair on you,’ Ava said. ‘You’re off duty and I wouldn’t want to impose. I’ve got it in hand.’

‘It’s no problem. I was going to wait until Luc had finished his shift anyway. I have a surprise for him,’ she said, winking.

‘You really don’t want to spend the next hour in the cells,’ Luc said. ‘If it’s necessary we’ll call an ambulance.’

‘Luc, you know I don’t have an off switch. If there’s a person in the cells who needs help, then it’s my duty to step in.’ She looked at Ava. ‘Luc says he has another hour before he can get away. I’d rather fill my time usefully than sit here and do nothing. Besides, I’d like to get a look around backstage. Hopefully it’ll be the only time I end up in a police cell.’

She laughed, and Ava noted how beautifully white her teeth were against the tan of her skin, which had somehow not lost any of its native Spanish glow in spite of the cooler Scottish climes. Selina was rolling up her sleeves before Ava could think up an excuse to dissuade her. Not that she wanted to dissuade her, she told herself. It was helpful. She had no idea why she felt suddenly territorial. What better compromise than for Mikey Parsons to have access to a doctor without going through the rigmarole of persuading him to get in an ambulance?

‘Great, that’s kind of you,’ Ava said. ‘I’ll have the custody sergeant sign you in. Detective Sergeant Lively will stay with you to make sure you’re safe, although the patient is very passive. He’s a drug addict though, so help yourself to gloves. We keep a stock behind the desk.’

‘Thanks,’ Selina said. ‘See you in an hour.’ She leaned across to kiss Luc on the lips as she walked past him. Ava looked away until the doctor had disappeared into the space beyond the doors.

‘She’s really lovely,’ Ava declared brightly to Luc.

‘It’s casual,’ Luc said. ‘But I guess it’s easier seeing someone who understands shift work and why you’re effectively on call all the time.’

‘And you two have the European thing. That must be good for you. Not having to understand the Scottish accent, for a start. So how long have you been seeing each other now?’

‘Weeks, in reality,’ Luc said. ‘Not that often either, given our work schedules. What was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘Just a catch-up on Zoey Cole. We should talk in my office for confidentiality,’ Ava said, waving her security pass in front of the electronic lock and pushing the door open.

‘Sure,’ Luc said.

‘You want a coffee or anything?’ she asked as they left the stairs and walked down the corridor.

‘Um, no, I’m okay,’ he said. ‘Listen, I didn’t ask Selina to come to the station. She was trying to surprise me. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Ava said. ‘I encourage my squad to invest time in their private lives. Happier homes make for happier officers, as far as I’m concerned.’ She looked at him and cringed. ‘God, I’m sorry, I don’t know where that corporate sound bite came from. Listen, Luc, I’m glad you’re involved with someone. I know how hard it’s been for you, and Selina seems great. We absolutely should go out sometime. I could, I don’t know, bring Natasha maybe.’

As they stepped into her office, Ava tried not to roll her eyes at her own suggestion. Going out for a foursome with Luc and the best-looking female he could have identified north of the border with her lesbian best friend as her plus-one wasn’t exactly an ego boost. Somehow everyone on her squad seemed to have someone to go home to, or go out with, except her.

‘I’m not sure Selina and Natasha would …’ Luc said.

‘You’re just worried that Natasha would seduce her,’ Ava said. ‘You know how she is about women with legs that long. I’m not sure even a man as good looking as you would be able to compete with Natasha in full flirtation mode.’

‘Are you okay?’ Luc asked.

‘Yes, of course, fine. Why?’ Ava asked.

‘You just paid me a compliment, that’s all. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s kind of unusual,’ Luc said.

Ava adjusted some papers on her desk before answering. ‘I think I’d call it a technical observation rather than a compliment,’ she smiled. ‘And don’t expect another one. That’s what your girlfriend’s for, after all.’

‘I’m not sure I’d call her my girlfriend,’ Luc said. ‘How is Natasha, by the way? I haven’t seen her for ages.’

Professor Natasha Forge – Ava’s best friend – disappeared and reappeared depending on the intensity of whatever fling she was in the middle of. Ava was used to it, but it still meant she suddenly got dropped without warning when a new woman appeared on the scene.

‘Single,’ Ava said. ‘So I’m seeing more of her than usual. Right, any progress on Zoey Cole?’

‘The stepfather has a watertight alibi and no previous convictions,’ Callanach said. ‘He was with about a hundred other people during the period when Zoey was abducted, and they’re all sending us photos to prove it. The boyfriend of Sandra Tilly, who runs the shelter where Zoey was living, turns out to have previous for blackmail and threatening behaviour, though. I’ve asked for the files. His name is Tyrone Leigh.’

‘Get an officer in the incident room to check it out for you,’ Ava said, ‘then go and rescue Selina from the cells. She seemed keen to take you away to whatever surprise it is she’s organised.’

‘I’ll stay if you need me,’ Luc said. ‘Selina can wait.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ava said. ‘We’ll have a briefing tomorrow morning to make sure the squad is up to speed. Have a good evening.’

‘I will,’ Luc said. ‘Thanks, Ava.’ He shut her office door as he left.

Ava sat down to write up her notes of the day, trying to banish the sensation that there were other things she was missing out on.

Chapter Eight

The news that another young woman had gone missing just three days after Zoey’s body had been found was treated with quiet sadness in the incident room. Everyone on the squad had been prepared for the possibility, but that didn’t make the announcement any easier to hear. Ava decided to handle the initial enquiry herself with Callanach. There was no point mobilising the full unit until they were certain what they were dealing with, but her guts were churning. There were coincidences and there were patterns, and the new missing person report felt much more like the latter.

Leith’s mother and baby unit was housed in a grey building that had unmistakably been erected in the 1970s, featuring pebble-dashed walls to protect it from the sea to its north and the ensuing gales. Callanach met Ava in the car park, where she stood clutching the pre-noon necessity of two takeout coffees. She handed one over and began to walk towards the front door.

‘Is this a hospital?’ Callanach asked. ‘I haven’t been here before.’

‘No, it’s somewhere new mothers can look after their babies with supervision if the court has concerns about the care they might provide. Better this than having the baby taken from them and adopted, but it’s a last resort. The state provides medical care, rooms, food, guidance and prepares the mother for independent life,’ Ava said. ‘The baby’s being seen by a doctor now.’

They entered the building through pale blue corridors that smelled of bleach and nappies, and were directed to a small room where a doctor was just buttoning up a Babygro.

‘This little girl’s fine,’ the doctor said, stroking the baby’s cheek. ‘No marks on her, no signs of distress, her temperature is normal. I’d say the baby hasn’t been touched. She is getting grouchy though, so I’ll hand her over to a nurse for a feed.’

‘Thank you,’ Ava said. ‘Still no word on the location of the baby’s mother?’

‘Not that I’ve heard,’ the doctor replied, ‘but you should speak to the unit director. He might have had an update.’ The doctor left them and took the baby with her.

‘How old is the missing mother?’ Callanach asked.

‘Nineteen,’ Ava said. ‘The pram was discovered a few roads away from here, left in an alleyway near a newsagent. No one saw who left it there. It was in a reasonably sheltered position out of the wind but a passer-by became concerned when she heard the baby crying.’

There was a knock at the door and a man walked in carrying a file and pushing an empty pram. ‘I’m Arnold Jenkins,’ he said. ‘I manage the unit. Thank you for coming. This is the pram baby Tansy was found in. It belongs to the unit and it has an identification tag underneath, so we can be sure it’s ours. I gather a search for Lorna Shaw is already underway?’

‘Uniformed officers are checking CCTV footage and walking the streets in the area. Do you know what time Lorna left here?’ Ava asked.

‘Three hours ago. She was taking Tansy out for some fresh air, apparently, and wanted to top up her phone credit at the shop. Lorna had permission to take the baby with her. She’d agreed to be no more than sixty minutes. We were already concerned before the police notified us that the baby had been found,’ Jenkins said.

‘You don’t think this is simply a case of a young woman under too much pressure who just ran away?’ Callanach asked.

‘Every report on her makes it clear that she was doing well. The baby is reaching all her milestones. We were helping Lorna apply for independent housing with a view to her moving out in a couple of months. All her supervisors say she’s a doting mother. If it had been one of the other women here, then perhaps, but if Lorna was going to disappear she’d have taken her baby with her,’ Jenkins replied. ‘We’re really very concerned. Lorna wouldn’t have left her daughter out on a street. If she really had to run away, if there was something going on that we didn’t know about, it would have made more sense to go to the shops alone and leave the baby safe here,’ the director explained.

‘Any violent former partners you’re aware of?’ Callanach asked.

‘None specifically that Lorna ever talked about, although she had a hard life and kept less than desirable company. She had previously abused drugs, although she’s clean now, and during her pregnancy she failed to keep medical appointments, which is why she ended up here,’ Jenkins said.

‘What about the baby’s father?’ Ava asked.

‘Lorna slept with a number of different partners while she was using drugs. She’s not sure of the father’s identity and doesn’t know the surnames of many of the men, so they can’t be traced. Whoever the father is, he has no idea that he has a new daughter,’ Jenkins said. ‘Given the fact that Lorna was previously in contact with drug dealers, one possibility is that she bumped into someone she owed money to, or who felt there was an old score to settle, which is why we called you so promptly.’

‘All right,’ Ava said. ‘We’ll expand the resources and see if we can identify her last movements. I’ll get the Police Scotland media liaison team on it. We’ll put out a statement later today to see if any members of the public noticed anything. Do you have a recent photo of Lorna we could use, and details of the clothes she was wearing when she left here?’

‘I’ll go and sort that out for you now,’ Jenkins said. ‘Give me a few minutes.’

Ava waited until he’d closed the door. ‘So that’s not just one but two crimes linked to the drug users in the city. Who’s to say whether or not Zoey had come into contact with some of the same people. The news will have spread around the city’s drug community by now that Mikey Parsons’ face was slashed. The small-time dealers who sometimes help when we need it won’t be talking to the police. If Lorna’s disappearance really is related to her previous drug use, there are hundreds of undesirables she might have crossed paths with.’

‘Selina said Mikey’s injury was atrocious,’ Callanach said. ‘Sharp blade, steady hand, clear intent. You think there’s an anti-drug vigilante on the prowl?’

‘I think we need a greater police presence on the streets until we get to the bottom of it. Lively described the Z on Mikey’s face as something akin to a branding. I’m not quite sure what the shape cut out of Zoey’s stomach is supposed to represent, but it may well have been born of the same sick imagination. It’s all close-up blade work. Then there’s the fact that Zoey’s body was found the same day that Mikey’s face was cut. I’m not sure which is worse – thinking there’s one person out there capable of causing this much chaos alone, or the idea that perhaps there’s more than one psychopath out to maim and kill,’ Ava said. ‘I’ll need to speak with Overbeck when we get back to the station. She won’t want to agree the budget, but I can’t see a choice. This needs to be a cross-division effort. The Major Investigation Team can follow the leads, but we can’t be out there stopping all these incidents at once. Let’s get Lorna’s details then organise a briefing. We need to find that girl in the next twenty-four hours or baby Tansy might never be reunited with her mother.’ Ava stood up and ran her hand down the soft, pale blanket in the pram. Its silky edge had been tucked in at the bottom to keep tiny toes warm. ‘It’s true about that baby smell. I always thought it was a ridiculous myth, but something makes me think of freshly baked bread and Christmas morning when I hold a small baby.’ She untucked the blanket and held it up to her face, breathing in deeply and smiling into the fleecy material.

‘I remember when the first of my close friends became a father,’ Luc said. ‘We all thought he was ruining his life, but the look on his face when he brought the baby to visit …’

‘What the fuck?’ Ava took half a step back from the pram, then leaned over it to look inside again. ‘What is that?’

Luc peered over Ava’s shoulder at a scrunched-up sheet that had been left in the bottom of the pram. The head of a doll peeked out, with strands of brown hair stuck roughly on, eyes drawn with pen onto the pale grey face, and a series of darting black stitches in an arc, as if her mouth had been sewn shut. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Luc took out a pack containing gloves and reached in to gently extract the doll from the pram.

‘You don’t think …’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Ava replied, stepping away from the pram and pulling out her phone. ‘I do think. Have you ever seen anything made from human skin before?’

‘We can’t be sure of that,’ Luc said, holding the doll well away from his own body.

‘Its hair is the same colour as Zoey’s,’ Ava said. ‘And the doll is fractionally smaller than the cuts to Zoey’s body, even to the naked eye, which would account for the margin needed to stitch it.’

Luc turned it over. The doll had been created by stitching two matching cut-out shapes together. A rag doll with crude arms and legs, no detail, no clothes fitted over it. The seams had been sewn with rough thread, the stitches pulling at the red-tinged seams.

Ava called for backup and a forensics team. Arnold Jenkins opened the door and stared at them. ‘Stay there, Mr Jenkins,’ Ava said. ‘No one who has handled this pram since it was brought in leaves the unit. In fact, no one leaves at all until every person residing and working here has been spoken to by a police officer.’

Jenkins blanched. ‘Has Lorna been found?’ he stuttered. ‘Is she dead?’

‘Do you recognise this?’ Callanach held up the doll. Jenkins wrinkled his face in disgust and shook his head. ‘Lorna hasn’t been found yet, but we do need to bring in a Scenes of Crime team to ensure that any evidence contained within the pram is preserved.’

Jenkins shut the door once more, his footsteps rapid as he disappeared up the corridor. Ava sat down, still clutching the baby blanket.

‘This means that whoever took Zoey has Lorna,’ Ava said. ‘It was one week from Zoey’s disappearance to her death. Lorna’s abductor is a few hours ahead of us now. If we don’t find her …’

‘I know,’ Luc said. ‘What do you think the relevance of the doll is?’

‘Something to love? Something to play with? It might be sexual, or even a sort of reverse trophy that the killer is presenting to us, rather than keeping for himself,’ Ava suggested.

‘You said him. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but we don’t know that yet,’ Luc said.

‘It’s the most likely scenario. The victims are both young women. Men are statistically more likely to use cutting as a form of torture. I don’t know, maybe he can’t find a partner who’ll give him a baby so he’s creating his own quasi-offspring from their skin. God, that even sounds insane to me.’

‘We’ve dealt with insane situations before,’ Luc said.

‘I’ve never seen a doll made from skin cut from the body of a young woman who was still alive when it happened,’ Ava said, her voice less than steady. ‘And I’ve never been more certain that the same is going to happen to another young woman who is already beyond our help.’

‘The dolls are a calling card, then. An announcement of intent. Zoey’s killer wants us to know what’s in store for Lorna.’

Sirens followed by a knock at the door signalled the arrival of the SOCOs, who appeared white-suited and ready for action.

‘I need a bag straight away,’ Ava said. ‘This doll and the pram need to be logged into evidence, then I’m taking the doll directly over to the mortuary. Somebody contact the pathologist and tell him we’re on our way. I need him there, and I’ll need access to Zoey Cole’s body at the same time.’

‘What about that?’ One of the officers motioned towards the baby blanket that Ava had in her hand.

‘Yes, this too,’ Ava said. ‘The pram needs a complete DNA, skin cell and foreign fibres check. Someone put their hand down inside the blanket and sheet, and tucked the doll out of sight at the baby’s feet. We only found it by accident.’

Ava’s hands were stripped with sticky tape to make sure she hadn’t removed any crucial trace evidence from the pram, then she and Luc left the room. They found Arnold Jenkins, the unit director, in an office with four female staff members. He introduced each in turn – a nurse, an administrator, a catering manager and one of the other residents. Each had handled the pram at some point, moving it or lifting the baby, and every one of them was tearful and shaken. Ava was glad they had no idea quite how bad the situation really was. Uniformed officers took over to record statements as Ava and Luc headed back towards the car park.

‘You don’t need to come to the mortuary with me,’ Luc said. ‘I can handle this alone.’

‘I know,’ Ava said. ‘But I feel like I owe it to Zoey. We’re taking part of her back. I know it sounds stupid, but I want to be there with her when we take this monstrosity in.’

‘I understand,’ Luc said. ‘Sometimes it’s personal.’

‘It is,’ Ava nodded. ‘I can’t even explain why. Dr Spurr, the temporary pathologist – you dealt with him before. Is he good? I mean as good as Ailsa, because if not I’m calling her back in. I need answers, and I’m not risking any mistakes.’

‘Jonty Spurr is excellent,’ Callanach said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

They drove their cars in convoy to the city mortuary. Dr Spurr met them in the reception area, already gowned and gloved. Ava and Callanach suited up, handing the bagged doll to Jonty, who peered at it with undisguised revulsion.

Without exchanging a word, they filed into the autopsy suite, where Zoey was waiting for them, sheet pulled back to reveal her skinned abdomen. Jonty took the doll from the bag, laid it on a sterile tray and photographed every aspect of it, recording each measurement and dimension as he went. With immaculate care, and making sure he preserved the knotted parts of the thread, he opened the stitching and separated the two sections of material.

Holding the material up to the light, he turned it over and around. ‘That’s human skin, without a doubt,’ he said. ‘I can clearly see the follicles, lines and pores.’

He walked slowly to Zoey, holding the front section of the doll by the ends of each arm. A sheet of plastic had been placed over Zoey’s abdominal wound, and he placed the first section of skin flat over the top of it, smoothing out the parts that had been folded over at the edges. It almost perfectly filled the shape that had been stolen from Zoey’s body.

‘It’s shrunk as it’s dried out,’ Jonty said, ‘which accounts for the size difference, but you can see where there are tiny imperfections in the cuts. They match both the wound edges on Zoey’s body and on the doll. There is no doubt at all that what you’ve found was made from Zoey’s skin.’

‘Thank you, Dr Spurr,’ Ava said, talking a step forward and gripping Zoey’s cold hand for a few moments. When she walked away, Luc could see tears in her eyes. She dumped her gloves in the bin and left.

‘When Ava finds the person who did this, I think she might be serious about killing them,’ Luc said.

‘I believe you might be right,’ Jonty said. ‘You’d better just make sure you get there first.’

Chapter Nine
Lorna

True terror was exhausting. That sliver of knowledge was just one step on the steepest learning curve of her life. Twenty-four hours earlier, she had woken at 6.45 a.m. with her baby in a cot at her bedside, and wondered what to cook for breakfast. Now she knew how it felt to sleep strapped to a table in the dark, smelling dirt and rotting leaves. Lorna lifted her head, but the immobility of her arms and legs made it pointless. Through dirty, green-stained glass, a waning moon cast cold shadows. The blanket over her naked body was making her itch, but it kept off the insects that buzzed and flapped through the dark. Beneath her, the table stretched longer than her frame head to toe, and was a foot wider at either side, as if it had been taken from the dining room of some grand old house. What she couldn’t believe was that she had slept. How was it possible to fear for your life and still fall into dreamless sleep? Lorna remembered crying. Being made to eat and drink. Screaming uselessly for as long as her voice held out. Then nothing. At some point she had simply burned out.

Beyond the creaking walls of her prison, she could hear the rustle of leaves and the movement of branches in the wind. It was a cruel parody of the few holidays she had enjoyed as a child, before drugs had reduced her mother to a silent, shadowy creature. They had borrowed a tent and trekked out with friends or family to sleep in a field and toast marshmallows for a night or two in the summer. It had been all her mother could ever afford, and it was uncomfortable – usually freezing cold – but Lorna had loved it. So much adventure could be found just by stepping beyond the walls of their tiny flat, even if they did have to pee behind trees and wash in a cold stream each morning.

Pins and needles prickled her skin from inactivity as she flexed her legs. With ankles tied fast to the table legs, the best she could do was slowly clench then relax each muscle to get some blood flowing. Her breasts throbbed. It was two in the morning then. Like a farmyard cockerel, baby Tansy awoke hungry at the same time each night. This would have been the moment when Lorna would have plucked the baby gently from her cot, quickly enough so that the crying didn’t wake the other mothers who were grabbing precious hours of sleep, and held her to a breast. Tansy’s warm snuffling as she grabbed Lorna’s hair would have been worth the lack of rest. For a moment, she could actually smell her baby. Milk, talcum powder, a fresh Babygro after her bath, and the slight acidity of a nappy as yet unchanged after six hours’ wear. Lorna was determined not to cry for her. If she started crying, then it was as good as an admission that she would never hold her girl again. And she would. She would escape, get help, and find her way back to the mother and baby unit. If she could get clean of drugs and persuade a judge not to take her baby from her, then she could do this. The bastard who had abducted her had no idea what he was up against.

Tansy – her pride and joy – had also been her Achilles heel. The man had seemed harmless enough, following her through the lanes from the unit to the shops, whistling and texting on his phone. As he’d got nearer to her, he’d said a cheery good morning, stopping to peer into the pram and exclaim at the bonniness of the wee girl. Lorna had been delighted. No matter how many times she heard it, a compliment about the baby was affirmation that finally she had done something right. Her first selfless act, she often thought. She had given life to another human, and giving up her vices for the baby had made it even sweeter.

There had been bad times before that. Smoking the odd joint at school had matured into taking the occasional ecstasy tablet at a party. Those ecstasy tablets had introduced her to cocaine, and that had seemed so grown up and glamorous, and God knew it really did make you feel good. But there were bigger highs out there. More explosive ups and more mellow downs, with nothing in between but floating and colours and warmth. She had taken heroin for the first time while she was coming down from crack. It had seemed almost harmless, just smoking it. She had never taken a drug that had controlled her, and she managed to convince herself for a few ignorant weeks that heroin wouldn’t either. Her mother had done nothing about it. After all, it was her boyfriend who had sold her the crack in the first place, and one of his colleagues who had promoted her into the narcotics big league. Addiction was swift, and a casual modern-day tragedy had followed. Drugs were expensive. Her need for them ruled her world and rendered her unfit for work. The lack of money had been met with suggestions that she could offer her body to her dealers and others for cash, favours and freebies. And the need to forget that she was effectively prostituting herself had required ever-increasing doses of drugs. Then she had fallen pregnant. It was give up the drugs or give up the baby. There were no other options. Lorna wished the decision had been easier than it was. She would have been more proud of herself if she could claim a revelation, and a magical new start. Fortunately for her, the lure of motherhood and the sense of a growing bond with the wriggling, churning thing inside her won out. Methadone was easier than cold turkey, and not getting screwed every night to pay for her drugs was a positive blessing. Tansy had literally saved her life.

Which was why, when the happy, whistling man had held a knife to the baby’s throat as they’d walked together down a side street, she hadn’t had to think twice about saving her baby’s life in return. She had climbed into his vehicle, followed his instructions to clip on handcuffs and watched as he pushed the pram into the nearest alleyway to await a kind passer-by who would figure out that something was wrong. Lorna stared up at the moon. Her baby was safe. The man hadn’t wanted Tansy. Someone would have found her and returned her to the unit where she was now being looked after. The bargain had not been unfair. Looking back, she wondered why she hadn’t screamed and run, protested and fought him. The truth was that she would have done anything – anything at all – to have secured her baby’s safety, and heroics had been just another risk. Seeing the blade pressed into the chubby flesh beneath her baby’s face had been enough to drain the fight from her. It had been enough to make her realise that whatever was coming – rape, mutilation, death – was preferable to the prospect of living with the memory of her baby dying in her arms.

Lorna tugged a few more times at the restraints around her wrists. There wasn’t even enough movement to try scraping the twine against the edge of the table beneath her. She would wait. That was all there was to it. If nothing else, she could be grateful that she’d remained unhurt throughout the process of being kidnapped. Her early decision to remain compliant had meant that not so much as a fist had been raised. No one had responded to her screams and her kidnapper hadn’t bothered silencing her. Wherever she was, it wasn’t in the middle of civilisation. Having blindfolded her and led her over a gravel path, twigs brushing her face, he had opened a door and pushed her into an outbuilding.

‘Take your clothes off, then lie on the table on your back,’ the man had directed her.

Lorna had the perverse benefit of being unafraid of rape. Men had used her body in ways she tried not to think about any more. One more wasn’t going to add to her nightmares. If that was the worst of it, then she would celebrate. If the sick fuck wanted to tie her up first, and keep her in the cold outdoors for a while, then she could take that, too. She would keep her nerve and stay strong. Come hell or high-water, she would be reunited with her baby. Lorna slept again.

When she awoke it was fully daylight. The additional hours of cold had left her muscles cramping hard. She started at her toes, tightening and loosening her muscles until there was no more she could do for relief. When the door opened, she had almost convinced herself that the man wasn’t coming back for her, and that she would die of hunger and thirst in the middle of nowhere. She knew better than to speak first. Better to wait and see what he wanted from her.

‘You have to eat and drink,’ he said, pushing a mouldy pillow beneath her head to prop her up enough that the cup of milk he held to her lips didn’t spill. He was patient as she sipped. No drops ran down her chin. When she’d finished, he took a chunk of bread from a plate. Ripping off small sections, he held them to her mouth and watched as she chewed and swallowed. He said nothing, staring at her face as she pretended not to notice. Eventually it was all gone.

‘My name’s Lorna,’ she said quietly.

‘I know,’ the man replied as he took the plate and cup away.

‘I’m a bit cold,’ Lorna said. ‘Could I have another blanket, please?’

‘The cold’s good for your skin,’ he said. ‘I have something else here for that, too.’

She raised her head from the pillow and watched him pull a bottle from beneath his coat. Spilling a dollop of cream onto his palm, he slipped his hand beneath the blanket. She waited for it. Better over sooner rather than later she thought, waiting for the violation. His hand found her stomach and began smearing on the cold gloop. Lorna shivered but knew better than to complain.

‘What’s it for?’ Lorna asked.

‘Just following orders,’ he replied, spreading the liquid down over her abdomen to the tops of her thighs. He pulled his hand out and squirted more onto his palm. This time he ran his hand under her back, lifting her a little with his free hand, beginning in the middle of her back and rubbing it in until his hand was dry.

‘Whose orders?’ Lorna asked, making sure her voice was low and compliant. So far he wasn’t showing any signs of aggression and she wanted to keep it that way.

‘You’re a bad girl,’ he said, slowly pulling the blanket down from her neck to reveal her nakedness beneath.

This was it, then, Lorna thought. This was what he wanted. No point being shy. She might only get one opportunity to get out.

‘I can be bad for you, if that’s what you want,’ Lorna said. ‘You can keep me tied up, or let me go. I won’t run. I know what men like. Let me show you.’

His face seized into a scowl, and for a second Lorna saw the snarl of teeth.

‘You see?’ he said. ‘You’re not even bothering to pretend. At least you don’t lie about it. Perhaps that’s better. Even here, on your back, all trussed up, you still want it, don’t you?’ He leaned down to breathe hot words into her ear. ‘Whores always want it. They never stop. Does it itch? Does it burn? It will. You’ll always be a bad girl while you’re alive.’

Lorna froze. The misjudgment sat heavy in her stomach like a mountain of cold pasta. She thought fast.

‘I was just scared,’ she said. ‘I was saying what I thought you wanted to hear. I’m not like that, really. I have a young baby – you saw her – and I love her so much. I’m a good mother. I take proper care of her.’

‘Are you married to her father?’ the man asked. ‘Has the baby been baptised? Do you even know who the father is?’

A sob caught in the back of Lorna’s throat.

‘How many men did you have to fornicate with before one of their seeds took in your filthy belly?’ he asked.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Lorna said, fighting the rising sense of panic that was drawing a black veil over everything around her. ‘I had a difficult life. Things went wrong. I made some bad choices but I’ve made it all better. If you let me go, I can go back to my baby. I can be good for her. I’ll be good for her forever.’

‘You’re a bad girl,’ the man said, holding a quivering hand over her pubic hair. ‘A bad girl who let anyone and everyone into this.’ He slapped down hard and Lorna cried out, still raw from the stitching after labour.

‘Please don’t,’ she sobbed. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I want to see my daughter again.’

‘Do you not think she deserves better than you, slut?’ he asked, pulling the belt from his trousers, red in the face and panting.

‘I know she does,’ Lorna cried out. ‘I know she does and I try so hard every day to be the best I can. I’m begging you, let me go back to my baby.’

‘I’m going to let you go back to her,’ he said. ‘When this is over, I’ll take you back. When you’re clean. When you’re saved.’

Lorna saw the truth in his eyes. Her bravado had been pointless. She knew what hatred looked like. It was the black full stop in each of a man’s eyes. Once again, she filled the air with the desolation of her screams.

Chapter Ten

Callanach handed Dr Spurr a bottle of Oban single malt and sighed. ‘Don’t you ever wish you’d chosen a different career, Jonty?’

‘The dead would miss me, I fear. It takes a number of years to properly understand how to strike up a conversation with them. It’s the last thing my trainees learn. These are not just bodies; they are untold stories,’ the pathologist said. ‘Thanks for the whisky. What’s the occasion?’

‘You’re away from home and I thought you could use the comfort. This isn’t the easiest case. And … I’m worried about Ava. I know she can handle herself, but she’s taking it particularly hard. I’d like to move the investigation forward as quickly as I can. Is there anything more you can tell me about the doll?’

‘Quite a lot, actually,’ Jonty said. ‘Come through. I was in the process of writing up my report, so I’ll take you through it as I go.’

They walked into the lab, pulling on gloves. ‘Regarding the other young woman who’s been taken, Jonty, we’ve made no progress overnight. You’ve seen more of these cases than me, and I worked enough of them with Interpol. How long do you think she has? Zoey Cole survived a week.’

‘The relentlessly ticking clock. I always hear it as the number of heartbeats we have left until we die. If it’s good news you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong man. I appreciate the single malt, although I think we might want to drink it together. The doll has provided additional information, none of which favours Lorna’s situation.’ He pointed towards a tray where various piles of materials had been left accessible. Both skin sections from the doll were laid out flat. Next to that was a mound of cut-up cloth. Finally there were two clear evidence bags. Callanach could see hair in the first, but nothing in the second. ‘I spent yesterday conducting tests on the skin sections after you left. It has a strange texture, so much so that I broke the golden rule and handled part of it without my gloves on. That was the only way I could be sure, but the skin feels hardened. A medicated ointment had been applied to encourage the skin to thicken. It’s used for people who have various conditions and it would have made cutting the skin easier, and less prone to tearing.’

‘That’s quite some level of preparation,’ Callanach said.

‘Which indicates that the kidnapper knew exactly what he or she had in mind well before taking Zoey. It took research and care. Not only that, but they knew that Zoey would need to be kept restrained for a minimum amount of time, requiring a place where she couldn’t be discovered easily or accidentally.’

‘Now they have Lorna, too.’ Callanach crossed his arms. ‘You think she’s headed for the same treatment. That means we have just six days to find her.’

‘Five days, given that it’s nearly 5.30 p.m. now. And there’s more,’ Jonty said. ‘This pile of cut-up rags was used to stuff the doll. It’s cotton and contains a clothing label. Here.’ He picked up a bag, inside which Callanach could see a small, silky label proclaiming a high street brand name and that the item had been a size 8.

‘The killer cut up some of Zoey’s clothes to stuff the doll with?’ Callanach asked.

‘I’m certain of it. We’re testing for skin cells and DNA, but it makes sense. There are strips from a shirt and what is probably underwear. The shirt strips match the description of the clothes Zoey was wearing when she left the shelter,’ Jonty said.

‘What’s in the other bags?’ Callanach asked.

‘This one,’ Jonty held up a bag containing blunt snippets of brown hair, ‘is hair from Zoey’s head. We’ve matched it up with a section where you can see recent cuts. It was stuck onto the doll’s head very crudely with superglue, a standard brand available from any supermarket, but it wasn’t very effective. The doll’s skin wasn’t a good surface – too many oils and the medicated cream prevented the hair from really bonding. Much of the hair had fallen off into the pram.’

Callanach took another look at the skin sections, taking a closer look at the side where a face had been drawn. ‘The eyes drawn on here are the same colour as Zoey’s, and the mouth is small with thin lips, even with these weird vertical stitches over them,’ he said. ‘The killer literally tried to recreate her, right down to the details.’

‘Hence the second bag,’ Jonty said. ‘In here are a few eyelashes, pulled out from Zoey while she was still alive. The injuries were too minute to have been spotted until the doll pointed us in the right direction, but under a microscope it’s possible to see the redness on Zoey’s eyelids where the lashes were plucked.’

‘How many?’ Callanach asked.

‘Maybe a dozen from each eye, hard to be specific, and not all were stuck onto the doll,’ Jonty said. ‘Again, they didn’t bond well.’

‘Perhaps the killer gave up halfway through, or ran out of time,’ Callanach said.

‘That’s a fair theory. It’s meticulous work and that level of skill isn’t on show here. Have you ever seen items made from human skin before, Luc?’ Jonty asked.

‘I haven’t,’ Callanach said, ‘although I’ve read about it.’

‘It’s labour intensive, expert work. Human skin is hard to fashion. Various monsters throughout history became quite adept at it, but this is a clumsy recreation. Let me show you the stitches. I have close-up photographs on my computer.’

In Jonty’s office, they sat next to each other in front of a computer screen. The images resembled a child’s crude attempt at patchwork.

‘The knots are quite basic. In places the cotton thread has been pulled too tight and has split the fine edges of the skin. The stitches are irregular and change direction,’ Jonty said.

‘It’s like a work in progress,’ Callanach said. ‘A carefully thought out idea, highly symbolic, but which was poorly executed.’

‘Exactly,’ Jonty said. ‘But now your killer holds another young woman.’

‘You think the first doll was disappointing, but that it’s a learning curve?’ Callanach asked.

‘It doesn’t feel like a one-off to me,’ Jonty said. ‘The killer worked too hard at it. So much effort for a single pay-off. Then there’s this.’ He picked up a flat plastic folder from his desk. ‘There was a message rolled up to form a tiny scroll, right in the centre of the stuffing. I found it minutes before you arrived. I was just processing it.’

Callanach picked up the folder and read aloud the words that were on the long strip of paper contained within.‘“If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him.” Oh fuck, Jonty, this sounds like a crusade.’

‘Unfortunately, I agree. I was just looking up where it comes from, if you’ll forgive me crossing into your discipline. The quote is from Leviticus, chapter twenty, verse nine. There are other references here to disrespectful children being put to death. It’s proper fire-and-brimstone, Old Testament stuff.’

‘It’s someone who’s aware of Zoey’s problems with her stepfather then,’ Callanach said.

‘Not the stepfather himself?’ Jonty asked.

‘He didn’t abduct her – we know that for sure. He has a watertight alibi. Spent the day at a community fete, photos and all. Zoey’s mother seems genuinely upset, even though Zoey had left home and wasn’t in contact with them.’

‘Were other family members aware of the allegations?’ Jonty asked.

‘There’s a brother in the army, but we’ve had confirmation that he was away on manoeuvres and hasn’t been back in the UK for eighteen months. Plenty of other people were aware of the allegations against Christopher Myers, though. Zoey had contacted social workers, staff at the shelter and friends she stayed with at times. The police were even called in at one stage to encourage her to prosecute. She declined. If we consider everyone who knows what Zoey had alleged to be a suspect, it’ll make a long list. What about the paper it’s written on?’

‘It’s a section of paper cut with scissors to the shape of the quote, probably from an A4 sheet originally, no watermark on it. Looks very standard. I hope that’s not your best lead,’ the pathologist replied.

‘Bloodguiltiness,’ Callanach read. ‘Who the hell uses language like that these days?’

‘You’ll have to check which version of the Bible it’s from,’ Jonty said. ‘I didn’t get that far in my research.’

‘I’ll need the paper transferred to a handwriting expert. Have you tested for fingerprints and DNA yet?’ Callanach asked.

‘I can’t see any fingerprints, and other tests are underway, but referring this to a forensic handwriting analyst will be a waste of your time, I fear. Look at this.’ Jonty brought up a photo of the writing, grossly enlarged. Callanach sat down next to him again. ‘Every same letter – you see these letter f’s – is exactly the same. Not just the shape and style, but the precise measurements. However, each letter has a small break before the next one. The script is cursive in style but not properly joined. It’s all too regular.’

‘They used a bloody stencil,’ Callanach said.

‘Your swearing sounds much more authentically Scots these days,’ Jonty said. ‘But I’m afraid you’re correct about the stencil. You can probably source it on the internet. The font should be copyrighted.’

‘But it means that it’ll bear no resemblance to the killer’s normal writing. Not the pressure points or the strokes, none of it. Clever,’ Callanach said.

‘Clever, well organised, dedicated, passionate. Unfortunately the word obsessive is the one that’s been in my mind.’

‘It needs to be kept quiet, Jonty. I know you won’t say a word, but anyone on the staff here who knows about this …’

‘No one knows yet, and only those with access to my report need find out. It’ll be harder to control it at your end.’

‘Can I sign this out of your evidence log and transfer it to our custody at the station?’ Callanach asked. ‘Ava will want to see it straight away.’

‘You can. Would you join me this evening to open the bottle you so kindly brought?’

‘I can’t tonight, Jonty. I’m seeing someone, when work allows. If I leave the office at all tonight, that’s where I’m going.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Jonty said. ‘I thought for sure you’d be headed back to France after the first case we did together. I’m pleased to see you’ve decided to give Scotland more of a chance.’

Callanach smiled at him. ‘It was touch and go,’ he said. ‘Call me when you get the other test results in? Straight away, day or night.’

Back at the station, Callanach went immediately to Ava’s office. She was wading through a mountain of paperwork, frowning at numbers.

‘Sorry to interrupt. I’m just back from the pathologist. Zoey’s murderer sent us a message.’ He explained what Jonty had shown him. Ava was on her feet before he’d finished, checking her watch.

‘Eight o’clock. The superintendent might just still be here. Come with me. I need Overbeck to sign off on the extra funding we’re going to need.’

Together they went up the additional flight of stairs to Detective Superintendent’s Overbeck’s office, neither of them saying a word. Overbeck’s reaction to them asking for more money was always the same. Keep it below budget. Finish it yesterday.

As Ava knocked on Overbeck’s door, it opened. Lively’s face appeared from within.

‘Ma’am,’ he said to Ava.

‘What have you done now, Lively?’ Ava asked. ‘You need to learn to watch your mouth. I don’t want any members of my squad in trouble at the moment. Get everyone together for a briefing. DI Callanach and I will be down in five minutes.’

Lively gave a small nod, didn’t even bother insulting Callanach, and made for the stairs.

‘What do you need, DCI Turner?’ Overbeck called through the open door.

‘Is there an issue with DS Lively?’ Ava asked.

‘Nothing that a period of suspension and a diet wouldn’t cure,’ Overbeck snarled. ‘I see you brought DI Looks Over Substance with you. This doesn’t bode well.’

Ava carried on in spite of Overbeck’s jibe at Callanach. She’d never liked him, but then she’d never liked anyone, as far as Ava was aware. ‘Zoey Cole’s killer is a religious extremist, or at the very least is using that as an excuse to kill. He or she left us a note inside the doll that was found in the pram with Lorna Shaw’s baby. There’s also the possibility that the Mikey Parsons assault is linked. It’s all twisted vigilante behaviour – cleaning up the city, exacting retribution for poor life choices or whatever the offender is telling himself. I’m also concerned that this may turn out to be a serial killer, and I believe it’s going to get even nastier.’

‘Three, Detective Chief Inspector. That’s the magic number. You wait until you have three linked dead bodies before you get to use the S-word.’ She sighed. ‘You’re here for me to lift the overtime limit, extend your funding and give you a uniformed squad as backup, right?’ Ava didn’t bother to answer. Overbeck checked her watch and flicked through a couple of pieces of paper on her desk. ‘Fine. Off you go then. I’ll see to the paperwork for the funding. Keep me updated and phone me next time you need something. It’s quicker than taking the stairs.’

Ava risked a look at Callanach, who was staring open-mouthed at Overbeck.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Ava said. ‘We’ll need to say something to the press, but I’d like to keep quiet about the doll for now.’

‘Agreed. Work out a statement with the media team. You can put my name on the bottom of it if that keeps the communications pressure off you during the investigation.’

‘I will, thank you,’ Ava said.

‘I don’t want the number three to be reached. You understand that, right? Edinburgh has had enough death to last it a while. See to it that the funding I’m extending is an effective pre-emptive strike, Turner.’

‘Yes, ma’am. I understand,’ Ava said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I know you will,’ Overbeck said.

Ava and Callanach walked slowly out of the office without speaking. They were on the stairs down to the next floor when they both stopped at the same time.

‘What just happened?’ Callanach asked.

‘I have no idea,’ Ava said. ‘But honestly, at the moment, I don’t care. We need extra officers working with MIT if we’re going to stand any chance of finding Lorna Shaw in time. I’m sure there’ll be a price to pay later, and I, for one, plan on staying out of Overbeck’s way until she’s back to her normal foul-mouthed self.’

‘Maybe she’s really changed,’ Callanach said.

‘Maybe a prince on a white horse is about to ride through the station, throw me on the back of his trusty steed and whisk me away to a world where birds land on my hand and sing to me, and I never have to see another dead body again,’ Ava said.

‘Ma’am,’ Salter called up the stairs to them. ‘We’ve got another slashing victim in the city centre. Worse than before. The paramedics called us. They’re not sure the victim will make it. The sergeant and I are going straight to the hospital. Everyone else is waiting for you in the briefing room.’

‘All right, Salter,’ Ava called back, raising her eyebrows at Callanach. ‘Then again, maybe not.’

Chapter Eleven

The Meadows recreation area in the city, due west of Arthur’s Seat, provided a vast green space for city dwellers’ use, with long paths to jog or walk, tree cover providing shade for summer picnics and tennis courts for the more adventurous.

‘Were you always told not to walk through the Meadows at night?’ Salter asked Lively as they parked the car and headed for the area where the victim, now lying in a hospital bed, had been found.

‘You’re joking. If I’d been attacked and killed, my parents might have got a few quid from the local rag for the story. They’d have been delighted,’ Lively laughed.

‘Don’t joke about it,’ Salter said. ‘No parent wants to lose a child.’

Lively’s footsteps stalled. ‘Christie, I’m sorry, that was stupid of me, I didn’t mean …’

‘I know you didn’t,’ Salter said. ‘I just think about what happened more when we’re at crime scenes like this. Somehow it seems worse when the victims are homeless or prostitutes. Imagine dying and thinking no one really cares.’

‘That’s what we’re here for,’ Lively said. ‘We pick up the pieces and make sure justice is served, even for people the rest of society has dumped. We’re the last-ditch family, or something like that.’

‘I suppose so.’ Salter smiled. ‘That’s a good way of looking at it. Right. The victim, Paddy Yates, will lose his left eye, the surgeon said. The nerves on the side of his mouth aren’t expected to recover either.’

‘How long until he’ll be out of surgery and able to talk to us?’ Lively asked.

‘Tomorrow lunchtime before they’ll let us in the same room as him,’ Salter said. ‘Not that it’ll do any good. The paramedics I spoke to found an empty Spice packet in Paddy’s pocket. He was completely incomprehensible but still on his feet. It’s amazing how Spice users stay upright with all the crap they’ve got in their systems.’

‘Aye, should call them Weebles, not zombies,’ Lively said. Salted looked at him blankly. ‘Never mind, girl, you’ve to be a certain age to remember that one.’

The tennis courts were a stone’s throw from the children’s play area. Huddled at the base of the climbing equipment was a bundle of cardboard boxes, a shopping trolley, and bin bags overflowing with clothes and tatty old sleeping bags.

‘How’re we doing over here?’ Lively called out cheerily as he approached.

‘Fuckin’ polis,’ was the response.

‘Did any of you happen to witness the incident?’ Lively continued unabashed. ‘Only there’s a man having his face stitched back together as we speak, and he’s not the first. We’d be grateful for any help you can give us.’

‘Like you’ll fuckin’ do anything about it,’ one of them muttered.

‘Got any money?’ another asked.

Salter looked across the park at a nearby row of cafes. Most were closed, but one was catering for the evening student crowd and still serving hot food. ‘Tell you what. See if you can remember anything that might help, and I’ll buy each of you a hot meal, waitress service and all. Your choice of coffee or tea, but no booze.’

A general muttering followed, then one of the huddle of men spoke up.

‘Paddy had taken that zombie shit. He’d been standing up, just staring, away with the fairies for about two hours. Stupid prick. Couldnae even speak his own name by that point.’ The man drew a bottle of unidentified clear liquid from his sleeve and took a long swig. The odour Salter caught from it was more reminiscent of a hardware store than an off-licence. ‘Then he started walking round in circles, all the way round the edge of the playground. Must have done twenty laps. Walked into that bin over there every friggin’ time. Could we have the cash instead of the meal?’

‘No, you cheeky git, you can’t,’ Salter said. ‘Did you actually see Paddy get attacked?’

‘We heard it,’ another of the men said. ‘Sounded like someone had cut his balls off. I never heard a man scream like that in my life, poor bastard. Didn’t make him run or nothing though. He just staggered out from behind those trees looking like someone had run his face through a shredder. I nearly puked.’

‘You must have checked around to see what had happened,’ Salter said. There was a shuffling between the men and a long pause. ‘Come on,’ Salter said. ‘You saw something. Now really isn’t the time to get huffy about sharing information with the police.’

‘Give it to her, Stonk,’ one of the men said, elbowing his companion sharply in the ribs.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ the one known as Stonk replied. ‘Give me a minute.’ He got slowly to his feet and began the painful process of lifting one layer of clothing after another, checking through endless pockets and cursing intermittently when he came up empty. ‘Where did I put the wee bastard?’ he muttered to himself.

‘What exactly is it you’re looking for?’ Salter asked.

‘The key,’ he said, letting the vowel sound extend as he gleefully presented it, dangling from his fingertips.

Salter watched DS Lively drift across the play area to a small copse of trees, where uniformed officers were pointing at something on the ground. His timing wasn’t coincidental. Now that Stonk had actually produced what might prove to be relevant information, Salter would have to take a formal statement from him, and that meant spending at least an hour writing it out, checking it through with him and sitting in the vicinity of fumes that would haunt her clothing until they next made it through the wash. She sighed.

‘All right. Where did you get the key and why is it relevant to the attack on Paddy?’

‘We saw three blokes running away. One of them dropped it,’ Stonk said. ‘I went over to pick it up.’

‘How far away were they from you?’ Salter asked.

‘They were taking off down that path, just to the right of the trees, where your man is now,’ said another, pointing.

Salter stared and tried to estimate the distance. It was at least thirty metres away. ‘Are you telling me you saw an object this small fall from a man’s pocket as he was running in the semi-dark? Forgive me, but that seems unlikely.’ There was a lack of reply and an uncomfortable ducking of Stonk’s head into his multiple hoods. ‘I see,’ Salter said, the picture clearer as she imagined how the scene must have played out. ‘Paddy screams, you all listen to see what’s happening and then you hear the joyful sound of metal falling onto the concrete. How quickly did you manage to get up to see if it was a coin that had been dropped?’

‘That’s not nice,’ Stonk said. ‘I’m helping you.’

‘And I appreciate it, but an accurate picture would be more helpful than the one you’re giving me. So you didn’t actually see it fall then, you just heard a metal object hit the floor and this was what you found?’

‘Aye, maybe,’ Stonk said. ‘But it was in the right place at the right time. That’s got to count for something.’

Salter rubbed a tired hand over her eyes. ‘You three stay here,’ she said. ‘I’ll need a statement from each of you. Do you want dinner before that or after?’ Predictably, there was a chorus response in favour of before. She called a uniformed officer over to stand guard so that none of her witnesses could disappear before she returned from the cafe with their food, not that they were likely to get difficult until after their bellies were full. Still, a deal was a deal.

‘Sarge,’ she shouted, holding out a gloved hand for Stonk to give her the key. She walked over to find Lively staring at a patch of ground that even in the dark she could see was crimson.

‘They cut deep this time, much deeper than with Mikey Parsons. That’s a lot of blood right there,’ Lively said.

‘Apparently three men ran from the scene. This was picked up afterwards, over here, and it was heard hitting the floor at the same time as the men ran. It needs logging as evidence.’ She dropped it into a bag that Lively produced from his pocket.

‘Could have been from anyone,’ Lively said. ‘They might just have kicked it when they ran.’

‘I know, but it’s enough that I’ve to buy them all dinner,’ Salter said.

‘Right you are. I’ll have one of the uniforms go and start taking statements. Bloody mess this is. Two attacks days apart, same Z mark on the face. What sort of animal does that to a bunch of men already down on their luck?’

‘The sort that don’t want to run any risk at all of a victim fighting back or being able to identify them,’ Salter said. ‘Cowards.’ She wandered off towards the lights of the cafe, hands shoved deep into her pockets, head down.

Ava inspected the key. ‘How good are the descriptions they gave of the men running away?’ she asked Lively and Salter.

‘Three figures that looked male, all wearing dark clothing with hoods up. Can’t accurately state height. Average weights, not obese, too tall to be young kids. Didn’t see any faces. That’s the best we can do,’ Lively replied.

‘And the witnesses themselves? If one is very poor and ten is perfect, how are we rating their reliability in terms of them being made to look absolutely ridiculous by a defence lawyer?’ Ava asked.

‘It really depends if you regard being drunk, potentially stoned and possibly with some mental health issues as affecting credibility,’ Lively said.

‘It’s a one, ma’am,’ Salter added.

‘Great,’ Ava replied. ‘Prognosis for this victim?’

‘He’ll live. Lost a lot of blood though. Might easily have died from shock alone. We phoned the hospital when we got back. He’s out of surgery but has lost an eye. They say his vital signs indicated severe amounts of drugs in his system, so to be frank, he’ll be sod-all use in terms of identifying his attackers,’ Lively said.

‘Right, let’s process the key for prints, DNA and any useful fibres. It has a tiny fob on it. Have you checked that out yet?’ She peered closer at the key, turning the bag over in her hands.

‘Not yet. We came straight to see you,’ Salter said. ‘Quite a large area of the Meadows had to be sealed off and by the time we left there were journalists grilling the officers at the cordon. It seemed likely you’d need an update as a priority.’

Ava hit the space bar of her computer and brought the screen to life. ‘“Pro Libertate”.’ She squinted to read from the fob, typing the words into a search engine. ‘Blue and white quarters, with a unicorn.’ She hit the enter button and waited. Seconds later a website appeared, displaying photos of happy young men and women under a decorative banner across the top of the screen, and the legend ‘Scotland’s future leaders, educated here today’ written in bold script below the words ‘The Leverhulme School, Edinburgh’.

‘That’s an independent school not far from the city centre,’ Ava said. ‘Its pupils must use the Meadows as a thoroughfare into the city. What we have here is probably a locker key.’ She turned to Salter. ‘What was your impression of the witness who produced it?’

‘He was reluctant to hand it over at first, but when he did I got no sense that he was lying, ma’am,’ Salter said. ‘Although I had offered them a hot meal if they gave me anything concrete to go on,’ she added slowly, her tone acknowledging the fact that such inducements were likely to produce results just for the sake of the food.

‘Feels like a hiding to nothing, but we can’t leave it without checking it out. Lively, get the key through forensics so we can take it to the school and follow it up. We’ll need a public appeal for witnesses in the Meadows at the relevant time, anyone who might have seen three men leaving the area quickly. You handle that, Salter. I also want to pursue a line of enquiry to see if we can link Lorna Shaw with either Mikey Parsons or the latest slashing victim, Paddy Yates. Same dealers, same drugs, known common associates or hangouts, anything at all. Concentrate on Lorna first, then double-check all the same information for Zoey, just in case they ever crossed paths. We now have three victims who’ve been on the wrong end of a blade, and one more still missing. I want to know what the common factor is.’

Lively seemed to be having a problem with his neck, tipping his head with increasing jerkiness in Salter’s direction. Finally Ava realised what he was doing. ‘How are you holding up, DC Salter? I’m happy to accommodate you coordinating in the incident room if the crime scenes are proving difficult for you.’

‘They’re not, ma’am, and whilst I appreciate the sergeant’s concern, I’d prefer it if he’d stop trying to send messages behind my back. With respect, it makes him look like a complete prat.’

‘I agree with you on that score, Constable.’ Ava smiled. ‘Although he means well. Just take it a week at a time, and make sure you come to me if you feel you’re being coddled. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ Salter said.

‘You can go, Constable. I’d like the appeal for information to go out while it’s still fresh in people’s minds. If we don’t get a lead soon we’re going to have to set up an undercover operation. I won’t leave the city’s homeless population to get butchered with no one out there to protect them, but uniforms aren’t the answer. More importantly, if we can find whoever’s assaulting the city’s drug addicts, it might just lead us to Lorna Shaw.’

Salter and Lively turned and moved towards Ava’s office door.

‘Not you, Sergeant,’ Ava added, waiting until Salter had left before continuing. ‘DS Lively, you’ll have noticed that we’re busy at the moment. We have one dead young woman, two badly injured vulnerable members of our community and a missing mother whose baby needs her. Is there any particular reason you appear to be choosing this week to pick fights with the Detective Superintendent?’

‘To be fair, ma’am, no one needs to pick a fight with the Evil Overlord. She just seems to have taken a shine to me. What can I say?’

‘That was more than enough, so let me issue a very clear order. Stay out of her way. Don’t break any more rules. Do not add to my to-do list, and sort this case out immediately so that I have every pair of boots back out there looking for Lorna Shaw. The only response I require is confirmation that you have heard me and understood.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lively said, managing by some miracle not to smirk.

‘Good. Now get on with it,’ Ava said.

Lively walked towards the door, stopping as he held it a few inches open. ‘You’re more like her than you realise sometimes, ma’am.’

Ava stared at him. ‘Leave now, Lively, before I make a phone call that will deprive you of that hard-earned pension you’re waiting to collect.’

Lively smiled, shook his head and did as he’d been told. Ava didn’t need to threaten to fire him. She was pretty sure Overbeck already had that in hand.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.