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Sam’s face changed, he looked genuinely confused; she couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or not. Imogen slapped him across the face. She could feel Adrian silently cheering her on. Sam grabbed his cheek and his face flushed with anger.
‘Find Bridget, that’s all I care about.’
‘We will.’
DI Brown left the office, still rubbing his face. When he was well out of earshot and view, Imogen turned to Adrian.
‘I believe him,’ Adrian said as he rested on the edge of the table, folding his arms across his chest. ‘I know you hate him, Imogen, and I still don’t know what the hell happened to you back in Plymouth, but if DI Brown knows something about this investigation we owe it to ourselves to look into it. After what happened a few weeks ago … We need to be on it.’
‘I know. I agree.’ Imogen kicked the chair.
Chapter 6: Just a Boy (#ulink_74d1fbff-c64c-5fad-a34b-5783e6986f46)
Age 10
I’m trying really hard to concentrate on the face in the wallpaper. When I stare at it long enough I see the face of a grumpy old man. He is staring at me, frowning. The pattern is really girly but it’s always the old man I see. Sometimes I pretend the old man is God and I pray to him. I say pray, but really I just give him a list of questions and wait for his expression to change. Naturally his expression never changes and my questions remain unanswered, loitering in my head.
This is my sister’s room but she’s not here any more. My mum keeps it the same in case she comes back, but she’s not coming back. You don’t come back from there. I don’t know if I believe in heaven, really, or hell for that matter. I like to pretend heaven is real though, and that she is there, stuffing her face with ice creams and chocolates. Pistachio ice cream was her favourite, sometimes Baba would buy a whole big tub of it, just for her.
Since my sister died, my mum cries a lot. Understandable, I suppose, but when I walk into the room she dries her eyes and smiles at me, as if her smile could disguise the despair. I may be young but I’m not stupid. She doesn’t talk about my sister and we aren’t meant to either, but I do. I come here and talk to God about her.
My mum’s cooking lamb for dinner; she must have upset Dad in some way because lamb is usually reserved for Sundays. Today is Tuesday. In four days I’m going to be eleven years old, so maybe this is an early birthday dinner. My stomach is rumbling. I can feel the hollow pit; I haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday. I should go back to my room before I get caught in here. I’m not supposed to be here, if my father catches me I will likely have to do without dinner. On an ordinary day I might risk it, because I like being in this room more than the food my mum usually prepares. The smell of that lamb though – it’s made my mouth water.
Back in my own room, I feel more alone and the smell of the food isn’t nearly as strong as it was in my sister’s room, which is just a few steps down from the kitchen. I can’t feel my sister in here. I pick up the book that sits by my bed. It’s my father’s favourite book so I’ve been instructed to read it. Apparently it will prepare me for when I am older. It’s important to him that I am not weak. Every day he gives me a passage to learn and I must recite it for him before dinner, before I’m allowed to eat. Yesterday I wasn’t in the mood but the smell of the lamb has made me not want to take another stand. My father likes it when I stand up to him, to a point. I see his lips curl upwards when he thinks I am not looking, so sometimes even if I’m starving I make the sacrifice in order to make him like me. I like it when he likes me.
At dinner, I recite the passage he has asked me to remember. He seems disappointed that I couldn’t hold out even longer, he’s disappointed that I learned the words. It seems that no matter what I do I am the disappointment. Some days I think it is all about the words I’m asked to remember, some days I think he wants me to defy him and other days I think he wants me to starve to death. I gave up trying to figure my father out a long time ago. Soon he will think of an alternative punishment for learning the words, as I seem to have got better at memorising them. I guess that comes with getting older. He can’t trick me any more. I wonder what I will have to do next.
My mother is silent throughout dinner; she is often silent. Her face has changed since my sister died, I don’t know whether it’s just because she has cried so much that she has changed her face forever. She is thin, too; sometimes she’s not allowed to eat either.
The lamb is delicious and I want more as soon as I’m finished. When I am older I want to be a chef so that I can cook for myself. My father doesn’t think there is any money in that profession, though; he wants me to be a businessman. I never really understood the term ‘businessman’ – surely any work is business and so anyone with a job is also a businessman. I don’t really understand a lot of things like that. My father is a businessman, he wears a suit and he makes money. Sometimes I will open a drawer at home and there will be a big bundle of notes held together with an elastic band. I once found twenty thousand pounds in the bottom of my parents’ wardrobe. My father doesn’t talk about his business much in front of my mother; occasionally he might say he has a good or a bad day but never any more detail than that. He has promised me that when I am older he will take me to work with him and I can see how to earn good money, because nobody wants to be poor.
My dad usually goes out again after dinner. Sometimes when he comes home he smells funny. I don’t know what the smell is exactly but it’s a mixture of smoke and whisky. I don’t know how people can drink whisky; I think it tastes horrible. One time my father left the drinks cupboard open, he has a lot of whisky from all over the world. He is a collector of whiskies, he told me that one of his bottles of whisky cost as much as our house. He wouldn’t tell me which one though. I look through the collection and try to figure out which one it might be, but they all look the same, and when I unscrew the cap and sniff, none of them smell very nice. I took a few swigs though and it was like that horrible washing-up-liquid taste, like your mouth just wants it gone. It burned my throat, too.
After dinner I make a start on my next passage in my room. I tend to go up as soon as possible in case my parents argue, because they like to bounce insults off me: your mother wraps you up in cotton wool, how will you ever become a man? If I’m not there the arguments are usually over much faster. If they’re not arguing about each other’s shortcomings then they’re arguing about my sister and whose fault it was that she died. The general consensus in my family is that it was my fault.
Before I have read through the passage even once, my bedroom door opens and my father’s head appears. He tells me to get my shoes on and go with him. I am excited and nervous. Sometimes when my father comes home from his night-time expeditions his knuckles are bloodied. I’ve seen him hit my mother with some force before, but never enough to make his own hands bleed. So it must be from something else.
In the car we don’t talk. He puts loud music on. We pull up to a restaurant of some kind but when we get out of the car we don’t go inside, we go through an alley down the side of it instead, and into a house that’s nestled behind it. My father has the keys. The house is smoky and smells strange. There are two women whose faces instantly change when my father enters the room; they look scared and they sit up straight. I feel somewhat better now that I know it’s not just at home that my father makes people uncomfortable. There are lots of weird things on the coffee table. Strange-shaped jars and containers, white powder, bags of pills and green leafy stuff and razor blades strewn about.
Mindy is the blonde girl’s name. She has black smudges under her eyes, she doesn’t look very clean and her hair is dark in places where it’s greasy. She has bruises on her legs although she doesn’t seem to notice them. I see her eyes travel to my dad’s hands and she relaxes when she sees they are empty. The other girl is called Margot. Margot seems like a posh girl’s name, or I always thought it was, it reminds me of that old TV show with the lady who wears the long wafty dresses. Margot doesn’t look anything like that though, she has blue hair and so much eye make-up I can barely tell what colour her eyes are. Margot’s head is shaved up one side and she has a tattoo on her neck. It’s a word, but I can’t read it.
The girls refer to my dad as ‘Daddy’, which is confusing to me because they obviously aren’t related to us in any way. Margot jumps up and comes over to my dad, she kisses him on the lips but he pulls away and pushes her hard, so that she knocks into the table and some of the beer falls to the ground. Mindy rushes to pick it up. It occurs to me that Mindy is also a name from an old TV show my dad likes to watch sometimes. I wonder what the girls’ real names are.
Dad tells me to sit on the sofa while he does some work and he tells Mindy to look after me. He takes Margot by the wrist. I can see he’s grabbing her hard but she doesn’t pull away or cry or anything, she just follows as he leads her out of the room. Mindy puts the television on a music channel; it’s all rap music which I don’t really like. She takes the bag of green leafy stuff and rolls it into a cigarette. I watch as she lights it and draws in, sucking hard, so that almost half burns away before she pulls it from between her lips. She exhales straight into my face. The smoke smells strong and musky, not like my dad’s cigarettes. Her lips are cracked and sore looking but she gives me a nervous smile. She looks so much prettier with it. Her hand is on my leg and I act as though it were not my leg at all, even as she circles her fingers around my knee. I watch the TV instead.
By the time my dad comes back, my head hurts a bit, not like a headache, like a foggy soup inside my mind. Margot is nowhere to be seen and Mindy looks somewhat panicked for a moment until music starts upstairs, obviously reassuring her that Margot is OK. I know that feeling; sometimes my dad goes into a room with someone and they don’t come back out. I’ve waited outside my mother’s room for hours before, waiting to see if she reappears. She always does.
My dad speaks to Mindy in whispers and I can see her biting her lip, trying to look pretty but she looks so tired and scared. I didn’t notice it before but now I can see that she’s shaking, a barely noticeable shudder every time my father reaches for her. She’s afraid to flinch but her body desperately wants to. She obviously knows the penalty well. I can hear her making quiet excuses as her breathing grows shallow. She’s telling my dad that I’m only a kid and she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do what? Apparently I have to grow up some time and she should do what she’s told. I still feel woozy and guilty for not helping Mindy. My dad is going to hit her, we all know it and so there is nothing more to say. I just sit and watch the spectacle.
As expected, Dad grabs a fistful of Mindy’s hair and smashes her face into the wall. Blood spurts from her nose but she barely whimpers. To my surprise, my father calls me over and pushes Mindy’s face towards mine. She kisses me gently on the lips and I can taste the metal in her blood as it drips from her nose. She also tastes a bit like liquorice, which I don’t really like. My father lets go of Mindy and she takes my hand. My father tells me he will be back for me in a little while and then Mindy leads me upstairs to her bedroom.
Later, as we drive home, I go over in my mind the passage I am to recite for my father tomorrow. The words take on a new significance.
Just as I have come from afar, creating pain for many
men and women across the good green earth,
so let his name be Odysseus …
the Son of Pain, a name he’ll earn in full.
Chapter 7: The Fixer (#ulink_62d7d954-fbb3-594b-995a-223bd6029104)
Plymouth, two years earlier
The girl was lying on the ground, her skirt hitched up around her thighs, exposing needle marks and soiled underpants. Imogen looked at the room: cold, stark and empty. What a place to die. The former girls’ school had certainly lost its charm quickly after its closure. Obscenities were scribbled on the blackboard and the windows were thick with dirt. She wanted to cover the girl with a blanket, to keep her warm, to lie with her and stroke her hair, tell her everything was going to be OK. She looked so lonely and forsaken. Imogen had to look away for a moment, and force those feelings down.
‘Jesus!’ she exclaimed, slipping back into her role as someone who wasn’t bothered by things like dead bodies. She held her nose for effect. The smell of the week-old corpse left festering on the floor of the unventilated room was overwhelming. Imogen had to maintain the guise of a hardened exterior, everyone in the Plymouth Police Force did. It was important that they all kept up the bravado, the illusion of morale. If they expressed their true response when they saw these things, these hideous things that occurred, then it would be easy to fall apart, inevitable even. It wasn’t always the big things that got you, it was the things like the girl’s hair being stuck to her face, or that it was winter and she had summer clothes on.
‘Any ID on her?’ her partner DI Brown asked. He’d been her partner ever since she’d started at Plymouth a few years ago, and the pair of them got on well. Most of the time.
‘You look if you want, I’m not touching her.’
‘We’ll let the techs look, I’m not touching her either. She looks about ready to pop.’
Imogen noted the distended and discoloured skin. Her body had reacted the way we all do when we die; it started destroying itself, digesting itself. The bacteria in the poor girl’s body were trying to make their way out, the gases under the skin causing it to swell until even the slightest touch could cause it to burst.
‘You ever touch a popper, Sam? It’s not cool,’ she muttered, subconsciously smoothing her own skirt down because she couldn’t adjust the girl’s.
‘No, I guess it isn’t,’ Sam said, distracted. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here, I’m starving. I’ll buy you lunch.’
‘You’re hungry?’ She couldn’t imagine anything worse than eating at this particular moment in time.
‘A nice mixed grill or something extra greasy, that’s what I fancy.’ Sam smiled.
‘You’re going to have a heart attack if you keep eating like that.’
‘I’ve got to take care of my figure, Grey, takes a lot of work to maintain this fine physique.’ He rubbed his belly. Samuel Brown was a short man with a thick-set body and more hair poking out of his shirt than was actually on his head. You couldn’t accuse him of being vain, that was for sure.
‘I’ll pass, thanks. I’m off shift in an hour so I thought I might go get this paperwork filed.’
‘Suit yourself. You can cover for me then, I need to eat. You seeing your mother tonight?’
‘Yep, same as yesterday. Probably same as tomorrow.’
‘You can’t keep this shit up, Grey, you need to get a life of some sort. She needs to accept help from someone other than you.’
‘Everyone we try just ends up walking out on her. She’s a nightmare, but she’s my nightmare. Anyway, she gets worried when she doesn’t see me.’
‘No wonder you’re single, you won’t even give yourself a chance at a normal bloody life.’
‘You’ve supposedly got a life, Brown, and yet you’re still single, what does that say?’
‘I’m a lone wolf. It’s a choice, you can’t harness this beast. It wouldn’t be fair to all the others. Besides, me being single isn’t a consolation prize, this is how I choose to live my life.’
‘Yeah, well, this is how I choose to live mine.’
‘I think I saw a burger van up at the intersection, I’m going to grab something on the go then talk to some of the charming residents of this street, see if they saw anything. You sure you don’t want a nice fat juicy burger all dripping with fat and cheese?’
‘As appetising as that sounds, no thanks.’ She smiled and walked out.
As Imogen turned the key in the lock to her mother’s place, she could smell burning. She rushed into the kitchen and saw smoke. There was a blackened pan on the stove, full of four burst boiled eggs and no water. Her mother must have put them on well over an hour ago. Imogen looked up at the fire alarm; it was smashed to pieces where her mother had obviously attacked it with the broom. That was the second one this month. Imogen would have to get on to their handyman about fixing it.
‘Hey, Mum, I brought you some fish and chips.’
‘You’re abandoning me, aren’t you? You’re always banging on at me about my cholesterol levels but today you bring me fish and chips,’ Irene said.
‘You should have been a detective,’ Imogen replied as she threw the greasy parcel on the only available part of the kitchen counter and searched the cupboards for a clean plate. She should stay and wash up; the stagnant water in the sink was overflowing with almost every item of crockery her mother owned. Flies hovered over the surface. She made a mental note to get her mother paper plates from now on.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have a date,’ Imogen lied, looking around the room. It was filthy; she could feel her skin crawling. God only knew what bacteria were in the air. Imogen almost wished she was back at the crime scene. She’d have to phone a cleaner at the same time as the handyman.
‘A date?’ Irene’s eyes lit up. ‘With a man?’
‘No, with a buffalo.’
‘Thank God, I was starting to think you were …’
‘Yes, I know what you thought.’
‘Is he a criminal? You haven’t gone and fallen for someone you arrested?’
‘No, he’s not a criminal.’ Imogen tipped the fish and chips out on to a plate. She hastily squirted ketchup on to the side and then handed the plate to her mother.
‘I don’t like tomato sauce.’
‘Then why do you buy it?’ Imogen walked away, wiping her greasy hands on an even greasier kitchen towel. Irene was stalling, but Imogen didn’t care. She wasn’t going to be emotionally blackmailed into staying for her mother’s own personal amusement; she did have a life, despite what Sam thought. She knew it was only a matter of time before the name-calling began, before Irene tried to make her feel like shit as per usual. She was going to make sure that she was out the door before her mother got the chance.
A little while later, away from the chaos of her mother’s house, Imogen pulled up outside Plymouth Police Station and looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. She pulled out her mascara and reapplied it.
She walked in and sat at her desk, before pulling out the relevant forms for her report about the dead girl. She looked over at Sam’s desk. He was long gone already, a discoloured apple core lying on top of the crime scene photos. It can’t have been his, she was pretty sure he was allergic to anything that wasn’t processed or dripping in trans-fats. She leaned over and picked up the photos, tossing the core in the bin. Something about apple cores made her feel sick, maybe it was the myriad of tooth marks and the knowledge of all the saliva and forensics that put her off. Since spending a weekend on a forensics seminar she had been put off a lot of things. Apple cores, hotel rooms, the backs of taxis. They were all very evidence heavy, in the form of bodily fluids.
She looked at the images of the girl. As she stared, the phrase ‘There but for the grace of God,’ sprang into her head. She wasn’t a religious person, but she appreciated that particular sentiment. It could have easily been her who was lying face down in her own excrement and vomit. These things happen gradually. You make one bad decision, then another, each one slightly more fucked up and soul destroying than the last. Then bam, before you know it you’re an addict; willing to do absolutely anything to get that next fix. It wasn’t lost on Imogen; if she thought about it she could probably pinpoint the exact moments in her life where she had fought with herself to make the right decision. Where, thanks to God or whoever else was in charge that day, she hadn’t had the overwhelming urge to self-sabotage. She’d had the opportunities, she just knew that there were some decisions you couldn’t come back from. She was grateful, because it was in her DNA to mess up; it was genetic, hereditary. At least that’s what it felt like. Not for the first time, she wondered about her father – what had he been like? Had he too had the same streak as her mother, that awful capacity to self-destruct? She’d never known him. She never would.
‘Detective Grey?’ DCI David Stanton’s voice snapped her out of her trance; she put the photos down and turned around. He stood in the doorway to his office, looking sullen and stern like he always did. Sullen and stern, but undoubtedly attractive. Imogen felt her stomach flip slightly.
‘Sir?’
‘My office!’
She walked across the room, aware that the sound of her heels carried, hoping no one would look up. The day was coming to an end; only the brown-nosers would be around now. The brown-nosers and her. She stood to attention as Stanton closed the door behind her. Her boss was a tall man, a good few inches over six foot. He had medium-brown hair with flashes of grey at the temples and he was never completely clean-shaven, almost, but not completely.
‘Is there a problem, sir?’
‘I thought you were gone for the day?’
‘Just wanted to get my paperwork done tonight, sir. You know, while it was fresh in my mind.’
‘I admire that work ethic, Grey.’ He walked back around and released the shutter on the blind. ‘It couldn’t wait till tomorrow?’
‘It could have, yes.’
He was a foot taller than her. She could feel his warm breath brush the top of her ear as he stood behind her, close but not touching.
‘So, why are you really here?’ he whispered. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, her skin prickled as he said the words. She could feel his body heat, he was right there, right behind her. She wanted him to throw her down on to the desk.
‘I’m not sure, sir,’ said Imogen at last.
‘Stop calling me sir, Imogen.’
He was really close now, as close as it was possible to be without contact. She could feel the desire in him, feel his temperature rising. They were touching without touching, longing to put skin on skin. To feel fingers tracing the lines of each other’s body, to kiss, to lick, to bite. Their flirtation had almost reached breaking point. How much longer could they play this game?
‘What should I call you, then?’ she asked quietly, suggestively. Every part of him was leaning towards her. She was delirious with excitement and anticipation. As he leaned closer still, there was a sudden knock at the door and she felt Stanton take an abrupt step backwards. The spell was broken.
‘Come in,’ he said, clearing his throat, moving away from her. Imogen swallowed hard, trying to slow her heart rate back down.
The door opened as Stanton smoothed his tie and sat down behind his desk, in an obvious attempt to hide his stimulated body. He didn’t look at Imogen.
Jamie, the desk sergeant, entered and handed a file to Stanton.
‘Thanks, Jamie. Detective Grey—’ He looked up at her. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. ‘You can go home now; finish your paperwork tomorrow. You’re done for tonight.’
Imogen nodded. Without making eye contact with him, she walked out of his office and grabbed her stuff from her desk. Looking back once, she saw Stanton putting his jacket on, shrugging his arms into the sleeves. She forced herself to look away. She needed to get home, and she needed a cold shower.
Chapter 8: The Goddess (#ulink_d82bfc1f-45c0-5041-8aea-85ff36a97e83)
Plymouth, two years earlier
Imogen and Sam walked into the pathologist’s office. The dead girl was laid out on the slab. She was cleaner, her hair was brushed and she looked almost peaceful. Imogen was glad that she had finally been treated with some respect.
‘So what’s the verdict, doc? Do we know who she is or what killed her?’ Sam asked the pathologist.
‘Overdose of epic proportions; she took something pretty horrific. There’s no hits in the database for her DNA. I sent her pics over to missing persons already. You’ll have to check with them,’ Dr Carol Foster said.
‘Did you do a rape kit?’ Imogen asked.
‘No obvious signs of sexual assault,’ Foster said. ‘But there is something. She has some scarring that indicates that she’s given birth, at least once, but possibly multiple times.’
