A DI Meg Dalton thriller

‘Oh Christ, really?’

‘I can’t be arsed with trying to meet someone at the moment either. I wonder if looking for men online is more fun than actually meeting them.’

‘Much like house-hunting online, as opposed to turning up and seeing the desperation in the eyes of the poor bastards who’ve spent three hours cleaning away all residue of their sticky children and moulting dogs, and then you realise within two seconds of stepping into the house that it’s not for you, but you have to go through the whole sad rigmarole of traipsing round saying, “That’s nice,” in every room.’

‘House-hunting going well then, Meg?’

‘I’ll get there.’ My eyes drifted to the damp corner of my living room. I was fond of my rented place, despite its undoubted problems. It was on a beautiful cobbled street in Belper, and I’d started to see its uneven floors and draughty windows as features rather than irritants. It had been good in the hot weather, its perpetual dampness creating a refrigeration effect, although I’d be wandering around in my extra-long scarf tripping over penguins come winter.

‘I used to wonder if this cottage was haunted,’ Hannah said.

‘Whaaat?’ She was normally so logical, and yet she thought ghosts might be stalking the property.

‘It’s cold and there are strange noises. And you always used to look up at the ceilings …’ Hannah blushed. ‘Sorry. I know why you did that.’

‘I think we can lay the blame at the door of the geriatric boiler. You know there’s that company called Victorian Plumbing, which I always thought was a weird name. Well, my boiler actually is Victorian plumbing. And as for me looking at the ceilings …’

‘I’m sorry. I know.’

‘Yes. It’s okay. I’m over it. Most of the time I can walk into a room without thinking a family member’s going to be hanging from the rafters. It’s all good.’

Hannah winced. ‘I honestly don’t know why I said that.’

‘It’s fine. And maybe the house is haunted. It’s ancient and it has its own microclimate and socks disappear all the time. Maybe there’s a poltergeist.’

‘Ha. Yeah, why can’t poltergeists ever tidy up, if they’re in the market for shifting stuff around.’ Hannah paused. ‘Seriously though, I know you’ll battle on and work hard and get far too emotionally involved in your new case, because that’s what you’re like, but you do need time … you know, to get over your gran.’

‘Time to get over being a coward and letting her suffer needlessly, after all she’d been through?’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Meg. She said she didn’t want to go to Dignitas after all.’

‘She was just protecting us. And me and Mum knew it. We knew the kindest thing was to take her, but we let her persuade us not to.’

‘You’d been through a lot too. And you weren’t to know it would drag on so long and so … horribly.’

I felt my eyes mist over with tears. I wanted to tell Hannah how much I appreciated her, how important she was to me, even though I could be prickly. She knew what I was like, knew how I could fall into that pit. I couldn’t find the words. ‘Hannah, I’m okay. But … thanks for keeping an eye on me.’

She shook her head slightly. ‘Someone has to. And how’s your mum doing?’

I closed my eyes and pictured Mum rigid with grief and horror at what Gran had gone through. ‘She’s a lot better at coping than me. Throwing herself at causes like a silver-haired ninja. I’m not sure her reaction’s entirely normal.’

‘Since when has your mum been normal? For her, heading off to El Salvador on a mercy-mission is quite in character.’

A knock on the door. ‘Oh shit, Jai’s here.’ I blinked and leaped up, negotiating the hallway, which was narrowed by the presence of too many books. The front door had been sticking in the hot weather and I had to give it such a wrench, I stumbled backwards when it finally opened.

Jai looked at me with a slight frown. ‘Always so composed and dignified.’

‘Yeah, maybe Stiletto Woman isn’t my destiny super-hero.’ I grabbed the bottle of wine and six-pack of beer he was holding. ‘I can barely stay upright in flats.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He caught my eye. ‘Are you okay?’

I hurriedly rubbed my face. ‘Yes, come in.’

Jai stepped in, surveying the piles of books stacked along the wall. ‘Have they been breeding? Asexual reproduction?’

‘I had to move them around to do some cleaning. They’re reeling from the shock of it, but they’ll be fine. Come and meet Hannah.’

I led Jai into the living room and made the introductions.

‘I finally get to meet him!’ Hannah cried, then turned to Jai: ‘She’s always going on about you.’

‘I am not always going on about him, Hannah. Jesus.’

I sat Jai on the chair in the damp corner. Hamlet gave him one of the slow blinks I loved so much, and settled deeper into Hannah’s knee, purring furiously. I went to check on the food.

When I returned with drinks, it was obvious they were bonding. Possibly over-bonding.

‘Does she give you that look too?’ Hannah said. ‘Like it could freeze boiling oil.’

I put wine glasses on the coffee table. ‘I am here, you know.’

‘There’s the look,’ Jai said.

I ignored him. ‘I think we’ll eat in here. It’s too cramped in the kitchen and the garden’s complicated.’

‘That’s fine,’ Hannah said. ‘Saves me having to move. Are you working on that case too, Jai? The sausage girl?’

‘She’s a real person,’ I said. ‘Just because you’ve seen her eating sausages in a bikini doesn’t mean she’s pretend.’

‘Sorry,’ Hannah said. ‘You’re right. Famous people never seem real.’

I wanted to say, She’s not what you think. She’s not just a girl in a bikini. She reads feminist books and appreciates art. But obviously I couldn’t say that.

I nipped out to check on the food and returned with three plates on a tray. I overhead Jai saying, ‘Yes, Suki wants kids of her own, but she doesn’t like mine very much. It’s as if she thinks by accepting mine, she’s giving up on having her own. But I don’t want more.’ How did Hannah get people to do this? I should have had her on the interrogation team.

I handed them plates. ‘It’s like my silver service days all over again. Guests chatting away to each other; me the irrelevant waitress.’

‘Except you haven’t chucked boiling-hot soup in my lap,’ Hannah said. She was attempting to eat her food without moving Hamlet. There’s an unwritten rule in my house about moving cats.

My mobile went. I put my plate down and fished it from my pocket, in case it was work-related. Dad. The father I hadn’t heard from in months, who hardly ever phoned me and was relatively monosyllabic when I called him. I stared at the screen, frozen. My finger hovered.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s Dad. I’d better take it. He never calls. Something must be wrong.’

I touched the green button. ‘Dad, are you okay?’

His voice came over too loud, as if he was nervous. ‘Yes, fine. And you?’

I stood and mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ to Hannah and Jai. They were already deep in conversation. No doubt Hannah was telling him all my most excruciating stories.

I walked into the hallway. ‘What’s going on, Dad?’

‘Do I need a reason to phone my daughter?’

Irritation fought with that old desire to please him. ‘You never normally call.’

He separated his words, as if it was the early days of telephone communication. ‘I thought I might visit you.’

I sank onto the hall stairs. ‘Visit me? Why?’

‘To see you. I know your grandmother died recently. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’

I felt tears welling up. He hadn’t visited me for years. ‘Have you spoken to Mum?’

‘She doesn’t like talking to me.’

‘But Dad, she tried calling you about Gran and you didn’t get back to her.’

‘I never got those messages. So is it okay if I visit?’

‘Of course it is. My house isn’t big though. You know that? Or tidy.’

‘I heard. Your mother said you were thinking of buying somewhere.’

‘So you did speak to her?’

‘Briefly.’ No surplus information there. Dad had a tendency to miss out the bits that other people added to conversations without being asked. The bits that kept things flowing and meant you didn’t spend the whole time feeling off-kilter. I couldn’t remember the last time Mum and Dad had spoken. Dad and Gran had never liked one another, and he hadn’t come to her funeral. I felt out of my depth – the kid who didn’t understand her parents’ conversations.

‘You know what my work’s like.’ The very thought of managing both Dad and the new case threw me into a panic. ‘We’re swamped. And I’ve just taken on a case that could be big. You’ll barely see me if you come soon. When were you thinking?’

There was a moment of silence. I’d learned with Dad not to fill these gaps. You got more out of him if you waited.

‘I thought maybe tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re busy, I can amuse myself.’

‘Tomorrow? As in the day after today?’ I pictured my spare room, the bed piled high with books, the floor covered in old paperwork, the spiders lurking in the corners with long-term tenancy rights.

‘Is tomorrow all right with you?’

I couldn’t very well say no, but this didn’t feel normal. ‘It’s fine. Just don’t expect to see a lot of me. I can’t take time off work at such short notice. If you arrive before me, you’ll have to let yourself in and make yourself at home. The key’s in the key-safe on the left side of the front door, and it’s the first four digits of root 3.’

I cursed his unwillingness to tell me what the hell was going on. Because clearly something was. There was no way this was a social call.

9

Meg – Present day

Tuesday

I woke early and flicked on the bedside light, trying to remember how much wine I’d had the night before. At least I was calculating glasses rather than bottles, which was promising. I’d stayed up late talking to Hannah about Gran. Not a sensible move in the circumstances.

Violet was still missing. With each hour, the chances of finding her alive notched down. I crawled out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown, headed downstairs and stuck the kettle on. Hamlet emerged from a cardboard box by the door and stretched a front leg at me. He gave a supportive and rousing commentary while I sorted him out a breakfast of fine fillets of horribly slaughtered animal.

While Hamlet tucked in with enviable guilt-free gusto, I plonked myself down at the table and opened my laptop. Dawn was shining through my grubby kitchen window and suffusing the room with golden pink light, the summer continuing to hold a hot, dry finger up to climate change deniers.

If Violet’s birth mother was this woman Bex Smith, who turned out to be alive after all, could Violet be with her? But why not contact her family or friends? It seemed inconceivable that someone so connected wouldn’t get in touch with anyone.

I wanted to get a feel for Violet. Who she’d been before she became a case. A few years ago, missing people were like shadows. All the information about them came from others. Hearsay. We didn’t see them talking and, unless they wrote diaries, we never heard from them directly. This had all changed. The murdered and the missing were amongst us still, with their blogs and vlogs and social media presence. Violet had taken this to a new level. There was so much online, you could practically resurrect a virtual version of her, like an episode of Black Mirror. And since everyone interacted online anyway, it would be almost as if she’d never gone, although she might not be making any new bikini videos.

I went to the Great Meat Debate website and clicked through to one of Violet’s YouTube videos. She was cooking chops, wearing the trademark skimpy swimwear and the pelican brooch on a slim silver chain around her neck. Flat stomach, cellulite-free thighs. The evening sunshine cast a rose glow on her lightly tanned skin. I wondered what it would feel like to look like that. She probably took it for granted, like I did my uncanny ability to pass exams. I prayed to the imaginary friend I kept in my head for these purposes – please let her still be smooth-skinned and beautiful, not seething with maggots in a vat of pig guts.

Violet flashed a bright smile at the camera and chucked a sausage on the barbecue. She might not be contributing greatly to the sum of human knowledge, but she’d notched up several million views.

I clicked on another video, dated a week later. It was just as well we’d had a good summer – Violet was cooking again, in another bikini. Burgers this time. Music blared in the background and Violet danced along as she tended the barbecue. Halfway through, she reached for a vest-top and slipped it on over her bikini. It was bright pink, with the caption, This Sexy Bod was Built by Meat. The comments under the video were mainly enthusiastic, if on the sleazy side. Lower down the thread was the aggression. The assertions that she was a stuck-up bitch. The suggestions that she should try having her throat slit in an abattoir.

Other contributors to the Great Meat Debate website received less attention. Anna had recorded earnest videos about how it wasn’t meat as such that was an environmental disaster but the quantities consumed and the way it was currently produced, in low-welfare systems where animals were fed grain instead of grass and straw and other foods which didn’t compete with humans. Gary had a few videos in which he showed off his muscles, Daniel explained the design of the abattoir, and Kirsty Nightingale, Tony Nightingale’s daughter, talked rather provocatively about the high carbon footprint of free-range farming methods.

I went through everything carefully. Gary did indeed make snide jokes about weedy vegans, and there was a spirited debate in the comments, in which the words game changers cropped up with some frequency. Kirsty also came in for plenty of criticism. Anna’s videos and posts were thoughtful, scientific and detailed, and nobody commented on them, which pretty much summed up the internet.

Daniel talked about the curved walkways and rubber matting in the abattoir with great passion. Having read the comments – If anyone ever slits your throat, let’s hope they do it on rubber matting – I understood his nervousness.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Was this really about meat? Bad stuff was usually more personal, the culprit a family member or boyfriend. Or the person herself. I of all people knew that.

But recently, tempers had been rising. People were angry. About appalling animal welfare in farms and abattoirs. About carpets of pig manure from intensively kept pigs being spread over the countryside (it being particularly tragic when an animal’s waste products saw more daylight than it did). About rainforests being incinerated to provide grazing for cattle. People were asking questions. Why should your desire to eat meat every day jeopardise my child’s right to a planet that’s not an uninhabitable fireball? Meat producers had become fair game. Could one of those angry activists have decided to make an example of Violet Armstrong?

I sighed. My money would still be on a boyfriend or family member. I navigated through to Violet’s personal website and clicked on a video that looked different from the rest. Violet was fully clothed. She spoke to the camera like a professional. ‘In the village of Gritton in the Peak District, there have been strange sightings over the last thirty years. Of a mysterious girl …’

That was weird. I wondered if this was the Pale Child that both Anna and Daniel had been so unwilling to talk about. I took a swig of tea and switched to full screen. Violet carried on speaking: ‘The child is thin and light-skinned, and dressed in white, Victorian clothes. Locals call her the Pale Child.’ Violet leaned closer to the camera and lowered her voice: ‘Stories of strange, silent children are common in urban myths and creepypasta. This one is supposedly the ghost of a murdered child who lived in the beautiful manor house that was drowned under Ladybower Reservoir. People in this village don’t like to talk of the child, and are scared of her. The rumour goes that if she sees your face, you’ll die.’

How strange. I wrapped my dressing gown tighter around me, even though it wasn’t cold.

I moved the cursor to the most recent video, dated three days ago, and clicked to play. Violet looked less composed this time. Strands of dark hair fell over her face and she was wearing no make-up. ‘I talked before about the Pale Child,’ she said. ‘And … well, I think I saw her.’

So it was true: Violet had seen the Pale Child. I crossed my legs and leaned closer to the screen. Violet’s voice was quiet, and husky as if she had a cold or had been shouting. ‘On the moor in Gritton. A girl, thin and pale with blonde hair, wearing old-fashioned clothes and a creepy Victorian-doll mask. She turned as I was watching and I think she saw my face. By the time I got out my phone to take a photo, she’d gone.’

In the video, Violet reached for a glass of water and took a sip. Her voice was less resolute than her words. She flicked her eyes down as she spoke. ‘You’re probably wondering if I’m worried now. Worried I’m going to die because of the Pale Child. Well, I’m not. I’m glad I saw the girl. And I’m going to find out who she is. Because I don’t believe in ghosts.’

I sat back and studied the last frame of the video: a close-up of Violet’s face. I played the video again, pausing it now and then to look closely at her. I stared into her eyes. Behind the professional veneer, she was scared.

I nipped upstairs to shower and dress, then remembered the phone call from Dad. It felt like a drunken dream, but I knew it had been real. He wanted to visit today, of all days. I stuck my head into the spare room. Dad had always been the tidy one – trailing round after me, Mum and Carrie, tutting and putting cereal boxes in cupboards, books on shelves. When Carrie got ill, she’d had a free pass. Cancer trumps having to tidy up. Cancer trumps everything. So his full irritation had been unleashed on me and Mum. The prospect of him staying in this room didn’t bear thinking about.

At least I’d changed the sheets, and there was a path to the side of the bed. I frantically piled the books into higher towers, thus freeing more floor space, albeit at the risk of Dad becoming entombed in the night. While I worked, I thought about Violet and the Pale Child. Obviously the child wasn’t a ghost, but who was she? Was she the reason for all the fences? The sign about Village of the Damned?

The vacuum cleaner enjoyed a largely untroubled life in the corner of the spare room. I plugged it in and shoved it halfheartedly over the areas of carpet not covered by books. It made quite an impact – one advantage of cleaning on an annual basis was that you could see the difference. I reminded myself that I was in my thirties and if I wanted to live in a house with books piled on the floor and cobwebs hanging from the beams, that was my decision. It wasn’t that I enjoyed living under layers of dust, surrounded by spiders, but getting the hoover out had never been a priority in my life. Besides, spiders had the right to a peaceful existence.

I folded two towels and placed them on the bed, chucked a hotel shampoo bottle on top, and decided that would do. My eyes were drawn to a pile of framed photographs stacked in the corner. Photographs I’d not felt able to display. I fished one out and wiped the dust from it. Carrie and me on a beach, before she got ill. She was about eleven, squinting into the sun, blonde hair blowing into her eyes. I must have been around seven, although the way I was clutching a red bucket made me look younger. The colours were distorted, as if it was another world where greens were more yellow and reds more purple. I took the photograph and placed it gently on the bedside table. If Dad couldn’t cope with it, he could always put it away again.

A noise drifted up the stairs. The cat flap in the kitchen banging open. I left the spare room, resisting the urge to flick my eyes to the ceiling, and headed downstairs. Hamlet came beetling through to the hallway, his little legs a blur. I gave him a cuddle and had a quick look around with the eyes of a parental visitor. Not great.

I picked up a flyer for a pizza place that didn’t even deliver to my address, hearing Mum’s voice in my head. You need to stop trying to impress him. She certainly wasn’t trying to impress him with her recent antics. I felt a sharp stab of worry about her. I should visit but had no time. Nothing was more important right now than getting to work and finding Violet. If we didn’t find her today, we could virtually rule out finding her alive.

10

Bex – August 1999

Bex cradled a mug of tea. The kitchen was thick with the fug of wet coats and wet hair and wet dog, and she was sitting at a table with Kirsty, her dad, and the boy, plus a black Labrador who her dad had said was called Fenton. She’d tried to help them move the sandbags in the driving rain, and they were treating her as one of the heroic workers, but she knew she hadn’t been much use.

Bex had imagined it so many times, being back in Gritton, that it didn’t feel real. Kirsty was different to when she’d seen her two years ago – her edges sharper, the addition of something adult to her, a complexity to her reactions. Their dad was older, damper, less vibrant than she remembered.

Bex wanted to be nice, to get along with them, so they’d have no option but to embrace her into their lives. But she also wanted to scream at them, How could you? How could you send me away and visit me just three times in thirteen years? It wasn’t my fault!

‘You chose your moment to arrive in Gritton.’ Kirsty gave her what looked like a genuine, open smile. ‘An extra pair of hands was good.’

Kirsty was acting as if everything was normal, as if she was oblivious to the chaos of emotions Bex was feeling. But then Bex caught her eye and what she saw in those sharp blue depths made her realise that Kirsty was acutely aware.

Bex shrugged. ‘I was rubbish. Wrong clothes – I suppose I’m a townie.’ She thought of her lovely yellow coat, now sodden and smeared brown, her pretty shoes, ruined.

Her dad couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘No, you were fine,’ he said.

‘The water got into the library.’ That was the boy. About eighteen or nineteen, like Kirsty. A dark, gentle-looking sort, except that he was gulping and slurping his tea, and dunking and devouring his biscuits, chewing with his mouth open. He caught Bex’s eye, and then quickly looked away.

‘It’s fine, Daniel.’ Kirsty spoke with an edge to her voice that seemed unwarranted, given the innocuous nature of his comment. ‘We shifted the books off the lower shelves, so not a problem.’

Daniel looked up from his tea. ‘Not a problem? The library’s flooded. They’re beautiful old books in there. I can’t believe they were rescued from the reservoir and then you put them at risk here.’

Kirsty shot him a piercing look. ‘The books are okay, Daniel. Why do you get so upset about a few books?’

‘But if you’d let me divert the water to the other side of the big field …’

Bex’s dad spoke, his voice firm. ‘It’s fine, Daniel. Let it go.’

Bex flicked her eyes from person to person, feeling for the undercurrents in the conversation. Kirsty saw her and dropped her shoulders and smiled. ‘The books were from the manor house,’ she said.

‘Oh.’ Bex knew all about the drowned house. Their ancestral home, lost under the waters when Ladybower Reservoir was created over fifty years ago.

‘Daniel’s helping out this summer,’ Kirsty added. ‘Sometimes he has his own ideas about how Dad should do things. Forgets he’s paid to do what Dad wants.’

Daniel looked at Kirsty through narrow eyes, then took a breath and laughed. ‘Your dad’s put so much effort into making sure the pig barn doesn’t flood that the water ends up in the house. I just suggested we divert it.’