by Roz Watkins
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 virtua
lly 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.’
‘We’re not doing that,’ said Bex’s dad, placing his teacup down in a way that made it clear this was the end of the matter. ‘If the house were to flood we can always move upstairs or outside. Pigs don’t have those options. They mustn’t get flooded.’
Kirsty said, ‘It’s sweet how much he cares for his pigs.’
Daniel smiled awkwardly at Bex’s dad. ‘I’m surprised you don’t build a robot to move the sandbags automatically when it rains.’ He was obviously trying to lighten the mood, but Bex had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Dad makes robots,’ Kirsty said. ‘In fact, normally he gets the robot to make the tea.’
Bex’s dad coughed. ‘It’s a prototype. It takes a little longer than I’d like.’
Kirsty rolled her eyes.
Fenton shoved his nose under Bex’s arm, shifting it up so she spilled tea on the table.
‘Dear me, Dad,’ Kirsty said. ‘For a competent animal trainer, you’ve done a shitty job with that dog.’
‘Sorry,’ Bex said. ‘It was my fault.’ She stroked Fenton’s sleek head.
‘You’ve just rewarded him for being an arse.’ Kirsty’s tone was blunt.
Bex felt sick. Had Kirsty become one of those unnerving people who changed from sunny to scary second by second? She pulled her hand back. ‘Oh God, sorry.’
Kirsty laughed. ‘Relax. It’s fine. You weren’t to know.’
Their dad grabbed a cloth and mopped up the tea. ‘Don’t listen to your sister. She’s only teasing. She’s been so excited about you coming.’
‘So excited,’ Kirsty echoed. There it was again. Kirsty’s voice had two layers, the sarcasm so subtle it was almost not there. Bex could tell that her dad only heard one layer, but Daniel could detect the other one. His eyes flitted nervously between Bex and Kirsty.
Bex had never imagined that Kirsty might not like her, might not want her there.
‘You should get your dad to show you how he trains the pigs,’ Daniel said. ‘He’s really into animal training. The pigs are so cool.’
‘Wow, yes!’ Bex felt a sudden rush of optimism. ‘That would be brilliant.’
Her dad smiled. ‘Good. We can do that.’
At last, something Bex could do with her dad that would avoid the awkward silences. And training pigs sounded fun.
‘Soft in the head, the lot of you,’ Kirsty said. But she gave Bex a warm smile, and Bex realised she must have been wrong. Paranoid. She could be like that sometimes. Of course Kirsty was happy she was there. Nobody blamed her. The summer wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
11
Meg – Present day
Tuesday
I was at my desk skim-reading the recent statements from the house-to-house. Violet had spoken to so many people in her search for Rebecca Smith, and the residents of Gritton had been so excessively helpful, interested and keen to share their thoughts with our officers, that we were drowning in their contributions. Most of it was tediously irrelevant, the only thing of possible interest being someone’s assertion that Kirsty Nightingale – the pig-farming daughter of Tony Nightingale – dealt drugs. Surprising but not obviously helpful.
We’d spoken to Violet’s parents when they’d changed planes in Singapore, and they’d had no demands from any menacing folk about Violet, so a kidnap was looking unlikely. The search teams had found nothing, and there had been no sightings from people who weren’t attention-seeking and/or deranged, although plenty from those who were. A huge search of the moorland was underway, with help from an over-emotional public determined to get too close to the wildfire. Crime scene officers were at the abattoir, and in Violet’s room at the cottage, and the tech team were going through her laptop. There was still no sign of her phone. To use a cliché, she’d disappeared into thin air.
Fiona stuck her head around the door. ‘We’ve got some info from the house-to-house,’ she said. ‘An insomniac who spends her nights staring out at the lane by her cottage. And her lane’s on the main route into the abattoir. She thinks she saw Violet.’
‘Sounds helpful.’
‘Yeah. She was sure she saw a small, green car drive past in the direction of the abattoir at quarter to ten. And Violet’s car’s small and green, so that ties in with Tony Nightingale saying she left his farm around nine thirty.’
‘Okay, so it looks like he might have been the last person to speak to her.’
‘Yes. And this woman – a Mrs Ackroyd – was sure no other cars passed her that night, although there is another way to the abattoir – you just have to go down a really narrow lane.’
Mrs Ackroyd could of course be mistaken, as witnesses frequently were. I’d learned that the
more vehement the account and detailed the description, the more likely it was that the large, black man with a beard was in fact a small, white man with a moustache. Still, if Mrs Ackroyd was right, Violet had driven from Tony Nightingale’s and gone to work at the abattoir as normal. But then what?
‘I’ve tracked down Tony Nightingale’s daughter, Bex,’ Fiona said, ‘who we thought might be the birth mother. She’s a dog trainer who lives just south of Nottingham. She says Violet’s not her child and she refuses to go anywhere near Gritton, or to a police station.’
Another one? Hadn’t Daniel Twigg said his mum refused to go to Gritton? What was it about that place? ‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘Do we know why?’
‘She won’t say, but she was very adamant.’
‘And she says Violet’s not her child? Did she have a baby at that time?’
‘Her answers were evasive.’
‘Arrange for us to go to her,’ I said. ‘This sounds interesting. And let’s have a closer look at Tony Nightingale. If Violet is his granddaughter, what are the implications of her turning up out of the blue? Could he have travelled with her to the abattoir? And what about his other daughter, Kirsty? Would it affect her inheritance or anything like that?’
‘I’ll look into it.’ Fiona left in a cloud of competence. Whatever it was that had been distracting her, she’d let it go.
My phone rang. Anna Finchley from the abattoir. ‘You’d better come and see this.’ Her voice was flat. ‘The Animal Vigilantes have put a banner up. Threatening us. It’s horrible.’
‘We’ll be right over.’
I found Jai in our tiny, sticky-surfaced kitchen, making tea. He turned to me, balancing a spent teabag on a fork. ‘Never interrupt a man who’s mashing.’
‘Even for a trip to the abattoir?’
‘Crikey, you know how to offer a guy a good time.’
‘They’ve had a visit from the Animal Vigilantes. A threatening banner’s appeared overnight.’