Dead Like You

by Peter James

  Was he the only one in here who was affected?

  Present in the room, and all gowned, masked and rubber-booted, were the Coroner’s Officer, the forensic archaeologist, Joan Major, the SOCO photographer, James Gartrell, who was busy alternately videoing and photographing every stage of the examination, Cleo and her assistant, Darren Wallace, and, centre stage, Nadiuska De Sancha. Spanish born and of Russian descent, the Home Office pathologist was a statuesque beauty almost every male police officer in Sussex lusted after – and liked to work with, as she was fast and good-humoured.

  Also present was Glenn Branson – not that it was necessary for him to be here, but, Grace had decided, it was better to keep him occupied, rather than leaving him on his own to mope about his calamitous separation.

  It was always strange attending a post-mortem when Cleo was at work. She was almost a stranger to him, bustling around, efficient and impersonal. Apart from the occasional smiling glance at him.

  Since the start of the post-mortem, Nadiuska had painstakingly taped every inch of the dead woman’s skin, bagging each strip of tape separately, in the hope that it might contain an errant skin or semen cell invisible to the naked eye, or a hair or clothing fibre.

  Grace stared down at the body, mesmerized. The skin was almost black from desiccation, in a virtual mummified state. Her long brown hair was well preserved. Her breasts, although shrunken, were still clearly visible, as were her pubic hairs and her pelvis.

  There was an indent in the rear of her skull, consistent with a heavy blow or fall. Before going into a detailed examination, just from what she could see, Nadiuska said that would be enough, in that part of the skull, to kill a normal person.

  Joan said that her teeth indicated the woman was between late teens and mid-twenties.

  Rachael Ryan’s age.

  Is that how Rachael Ryan would look now?

  Dead like you? If you are not her.

  In an attempt to ascertain her age more accurately, Nadiuska was now removing some of the skin around the corpse’s neck to expose her collar bone. As she did so, Joan Major watched intently.

  The forensic archaeologist suddenly became increasingly animated.

  ‘Yes, look! Look at the clavicle, see? There’s no sign of fusion on the medial clavicle, or even the beginning of it. That normally occurs around the age of thirty. So we can say pretty much for certain she was well below thirty – in her early twenties, I would estimate. I’ll be able to get a more accurate age estimate when we’ve exposed more of the skeleton.’

  Grace stared at the dead woman’s face, feeling desperately sad for her.

  Rachael Ryan, is that who you are?

  He was feeling increasingly certain that it was.

  He remembered so vividly talking to her distraught parents on those terrible days following her disappearance at Christmas 1997. He could recall her face, every detail of it, despite all that had happened in the intervening years. That smiling, happy, pretty face; such a young face, so full of life.

  Have I found you at last, Rachael? Too late, I know. I’m sorry it’s much too late. I apologize. I tried my best.

  A DNA test would tell him if he was right and there was going to be no problem getting a good sample. Both the pathologist and the forensic archaeologist were profoundly impressed with the condition of the corpse. Nadiuska declared that it was better preserved than some bodies that were only weeks old, and attributed it to the fact that she had been wrapped in the two layers of plastic sheeting, and buried in a dry place.

  At this moment, Nadiuska was conducting vaginal scrapings, carefully bagging and tagging each separate sample as she worked her way deeper up inside it.

  Grace continued to stare at the body, the twelve years slipping away. And suddenly he wondered if, one day, he’d be in a mortuary, somewhere, looking at a body and nodding his head that it was Sandy.

  ‘It is quite remarkable!’ Nadiuska announced. ‘The vagina is absolutely intact!’

  Grace could not take his eyes from the body. The long brown hair looked in almost obscenely fresh condition, compared to the wizened scalp it sprouted from. There was a myth that hair and nails kept growing long after death. The prosaic truth was that skin contracted – that was all. Everything stopped at death, except for the parasitic cells inside you, which revelled in the fact that your brain no longer launched the antibodies to destroy them. So as your skin slowly shrank, shrivelling, being eaten away from inside, so more of your hair and nails became exposed.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Nadiuska suddenly exclaimed. ‘Look what we have here!’

  Grace turned towards her, startled. She was holding up, in her gloved hand, a small metal object with a thin handle. Something dangled on the end of it. At first he thought it was a piece of torn flesh.

  Then, looking more closely, he realized what it actually was.

  A condom.

  109

  Sunday 18 January

  He ripped away the duct tape covering Jessie’s mouth, and as he pulled off the last layer, tearing it from her skin and lips and hair, she croaked in pain, then moments later, almost oblivious of the stinging pain, began gulping down air. Momentary relief that she was able to breathe normally flooded through her.

  ‘Nice to meet you properly,’ he said through the mouth slit in his hood, in his small voice.

  He put the interior light in the van on and for the first time she could get a proper look at him. Sitting on a seat, staring down at her, he didn’t appear particularly big or strong, even dressed in his macho head-to-toe motorcycling leathers. But the hood chilled her. She saw his helmet lying on the floor, with heavy gauntlets folded into it. On his hands now he just wore surgical gloves.

  ‘Thirsty?’

  He had moved her on the floor, propped her back against the wall, but leaving her trussed up. She looked in desperation at the open water bottle he held out to her and nodded. ‘Please.’ It was hard to speak, her mouth was so dry and gummed up. Then her eyes darted to the serrated hunting knife he held in the other gloved hand. Not that he needed it; her arms were pinioned behind her back and her legs were still bound at the knees and the ankles.

  She could kick him, she knew. She could bend her knees and kick out and really hurt him. But what use would that be? Just enrage him further, and make him do something worse to her than he already had in mind?

  It was vital to keep her powder dry. She knew from her nursing days where the vulnerable points were; and from her kick-boxing training, where to land a venomous kick, one that, if she struck the right place, would disable him for a few seconds at the very least, and if she was lucky, longer.

  If she got the chance.

  She would have only one chance. It was absolutely crucial she didn’t blow it.

  She swigged down the water greedily, gulping, gulping, until she couldn’t swallow fast enough and it overflowed down her chin. She choked, coughing hard. When she had finished coughing, she drank some more, still parched, then thanked him, smiling, looking straight at him pleasantly, as if he was her new best friend, knowing that somehow she had to establish a rapport with him.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she croaked. ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I know you will.’ He leaned forward and held up the knife in front of her face. ‘It’s sharp,’ he said. ‘Do you want to know how sharp?’ He pressed the flat of the cold steel blade against her cheek. ‘It’s so sharp, you could shave with it. You could shave off all your disgusting bodily hairs – especially your pubes, all soaked in urine. Do you know what else I could do with it?’

  He kept the flat of the blade to her face as she replied, shaking in terror, almost in a whisper. ‘No.’

  ‘I could circumcise you.’

  He let the words sink in.

  She said nothing. Her brain was kicking off in every direction. Rapport. Must establish a rapport.

  ‘Why?’ she said, trying to sound calm, but it came out as a gasp. ‘I mean – why
would you want to do that?’

  ‘Isn’t that what happens to all Jewish boys?’

  She nodded, feeling the blade starting to bite into her skin, just beneath her right eye.

  ‘Tradition,’ she said.

  ‘But not girls?’

  ‘No. Some cultures, but not Jewish.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  The blade was pressing so hard she daren’t move her head any more. ‘Yes.’ She only mouthed the word; the sound was trapped, by terror, in her throat.

  ‘Circumcising a woman stops her from getting sexual pleasure. A circumcised woman can’t have an orgasm, so after a short while she doesn’t bother to try. Which means she doesn’t bother being unfaithful to her husband, there’s no point. Did you know that?’

  Again her reply would not leave her throat. ‘No,’ she mouthed.

  ‘I know how to do it,’ he said. ‘I’ve studied it. You wouldn’t like me to circumcise you, would you?’

  ‘No.’ This time it came out as a faint whisper. She was quaking, trying to breathe steadily, to calm herself down. To think straight. ‘You don’t need to do that to me,’ she said, her voice a fraction louder now. ‘I’ll be a good girl to you, I promise.’

  ‘Will you wash yourself for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everywhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you shave your pubes off for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Still keeping the knife to her cheek he said, ‘I’ve got water in this van – warm running water. Soap. A sponge. A towel. A razor. I’m going to let you take all your clothes off so you can clean yourself up. Then we’re going to play with that shoe.’ He pointed at the floor with the water bottle. ‘Recognize it? Identical to the pair you bought on Tuesday in Marielle Shoes in Brighton. It’s a shame you kicked one out of the van or we could have played with a pair. But we’ll have fun with just one, won’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Then, trying to sound bright, she added, ‘I like shoes. Do you?’

  ‘Oh, very much. I like the ones with high heels. Ones that women can use like a dildo.’

  ‘Like a dildo? You mean use on themselves?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘Is that what you’d like to do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what you’re going to do when I’m ready,’ he snapped suddenly, anger flaring from nowhere. Then he pulled the knife away from her cheek and began to cut free the duct tape binding her knees together.

  ‘I’m going to give you one word of warning, Jessie,’ he said, his tone all friendly again. ‘I don’t want anything to spoil our fun, yeah? Our little session that we’re going to have, OK?’

  She pursed her lips and nodded her agreement, giving him all she could manage of a smile.

  Then he raised the knife blade so that it was right in front of her nose. ‘If you try anything, if you try to hurt me or escape, then what I’m going to do is tie you up again, but without any tracksuit bottoms or panties, yeah? Then I’m going to circumcise you. Just think about that when you’re on your honeymoon with Benedict. And every time your husband makes love to you, for the rest of your life. Just think what you’ll be missing. Do we understand each other?’

  ‘Yes,’ she mouthed.

  But she was thinking.

  He wasn’t big. He was a bully.

  She had been bullied at school. Bullied for her hooked nose, bullied for being the rich kid whose parents collected her in flash cars. But she’d learned how to deal with them. Bullies expected to get their own way. They weren’t prepared for people to stand up to them. She once whacked her school’s biggest bully, Karen Waldergrave, on the knee with a hockey stick during a game. Hit her so hard she’d shattered the bone, and she had to have an artificial kneecap made. Of course, it was an accident. One of those unfortunate things that happen in sport – at least, that was how it seemed to the teachers. No one ever bullied her again.

  The instant she had her chance, this man wasn’t going to bully her again either.

  He cut free the tape securing her ankles. As she gratefully began moving her legs, to get the circulation back, he went to the sink and ran a tap. ‘Get it nice and warm for you!’ He turned back and looked hard at her. ‘I’m going to free your hands now, so you can wash and shave for me. Remember what I’ve told you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Say it out aloud.’

  ‘I remember what you’ve told me.’

  He cut the bonds joining her wrists, then told her to remove the duct tape.

  She shook her hands for some seconds to get them working again, then picked at the strands of tape, getting purchase and ripping them free. He held the knife up, all the time, stroking the flat of the blade with his opaque, gloved finger.

  ‘The floor is fine,’ he said, as he noticed her wondering what to do with the curled strips.

  Then he reached down, picked up the leather shoe from the floor and handed it to Jessie. ‘Smell it!’ he said.

  She frowned.

  ‘Hold it to your nose. Savour the smell!’

  She sniffed the strong smell of fresh leather.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’

  His eyes, for an instant, were on the shoe and not her. She saw a glint in them. He was distracted. The shoe was at this moment the focus of his attention, not her. She held it up beneath her nose again, pretending to savour it, and surreptitiously changed her grip on it, so she was holding it by the toe. At the same time, on the pretext of working circulation back into her legs, she began to bend her knees.

  ‘Are you the one they talked about in the papers, with the little winkie?’ she asked suddenly.

  He jerked towards her at the insult. As he did so, she arched her back and straightened her knees, springing both her legs up as hard as she could, striking him beneath the chin with the toes of her trainers, physically lifting him up, and slamming his head into the ceiling of the camper van. He fell, dazed, to the floor, the knife clattering away from him.

  Before he had a chance to recover his wits, she was up on her feet, tearing the hood from his head. He looked almost pathetic without it, like a little startled mole. Then she slammed the shoe, stiletto heel first, as hard as she could into his right eye.

  He screamed. A terrible howl of pain and shock and fury. Blood sprayed from his face. Then, grabbing the knife from the floor, she jerked open the sliding door and stumbled out, almost tumbling head first into pitch darkness. Behind her she heard the terrible howl of pain of a maddened, wounded beast.

  She ran and crashed into something solid and unyielding. Then streaks of bright light darted around her.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  How could she have been so stupid? She should have taken the bloody torch!

  In the beam, she momentarily saw the disused goods carriage on the dusted-over tracks. A gantry. Part of the steel walkway halfway up the walls. What looked like massive suspended turbines.

  Where was the door?

  She heard a shuffle. He was screaming out, in pain and fury. ‘YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING TO GET AWAY – YOU ARE NOT, YOU BITCH.’

  She gripped the knife. The beam shone straight in her face, dazzling her. She turned. Saw huge double doors, over the railway tracks. For the carriages to come in and out through. She sprinted towards them, the beam guiding her all the way there.

  All the way to the padlocked chain between them.

  110

  Sunday 18 January

  Jessie turned and stared straight into the beam, her brain racing. He didn’t have a gun, she was pretty sure of that, otherwise he’d have pulled that on her, not the knife. He was wounded. He was not big. She had the knife. She knew some self-defence. But he still frightened her.

  There must be another exit.

  Then the torch went off.

  She blinked at the darkness, as if that might make it go away, or somehow lighten it. She was shaking. She could hear herself panting. She struggled to quieten her breathing down.


  Now they were equal, but he had an advantage. He presumably knew the layout in here.

  Was he creeping up on her now?

  In the torch beam, she’d seen to her left a vast space with what looked like some kind of silo at the end of it. She took a few steps and almost instantly stumbled. There was a loud metal pingggggg as something rolled away from under her feet and fell with a swoosh, splashing into water below seconds later.

  Shit.

  She stood still. Then she remembered her phone!

  If she could get back to the van, she could call for help. Then with panic rising, she thought again, Call who? Where was she? Trapped inside some fucking great disused factory building somewhere. How great would that sound if she told the 999 operator?

  *

  He was already back at the camper van. His face was throbbing in agony and he couldn’t see out of his right eye, but he didn’t care, not at this moment. He did not care about anything except getting that bitch. She’d seen his face.

  He had to find her. Had to stop her getting away.

  Had to, because she could bring him down.

  And he knew how.

  He did not want to reveal his position by switching on the torch, so he moved as slowly as he could, feeling his way around the interior of the van until he found what he was looking for. His night-vision binoculars.

  It took him only seconds to spot her. A green figure through the night-vision lens, moving slowly, inching her way left, walking like someone in slow motion.

  Think you are so smart, don’t you?

  He looked around for an implement. Something heavy and solid that would bring her down. He opened the cupboard beneath the sink, but it was too dark to see in, even with his night-vision. So he briefly switched on the torch. The night-vision flared, shooting searing light into his right eye, startling him so much he dropped the torch and stumbled back, falling over.