Cut to the Bone

by Roz Watkins

  ‘So people have actually seen the Pale Child and then died,’ I said. ‘It’s not all made up. Why didn’t we check this before?’

  ‘Because it’s totally bloody irrelevant?’ Craig said. ‘Coincidences happen. Or people make stuff up after the event. Oh yeah, he definitely said he saw the Pale Child. People love that shit.’

  ‘There was also a three-year-old kid who died back in the Eighties after seeing the Pale Child,’ Fiona said, ‘but I don’t have full details yet.’

  ‘It’s bizarre,’ I said. ‘Three people have died in the past after seeing the Pale Child – Lucas, Daniel’s younger brother, and this toddler. We know there’s a secret about the Pale Child that Gary told Violet, and now they’re both gone too. The Pale Child isn’t completely made up – we have the mask I found on the moor and the video, but that clearly can’t be the same person who was seen in the Eighties or Nineties, unless she’s no longer a child. So what the hell is going on? What’s the secret? And is someone so determined to keep it that they’re prepared to commit murder?’

  I always made a point of chatting to the indexers. They sat at the end of the incident room typing everything into the HOLMES database. Statements, exhibits lists, forensic reports, etc. A good indexer knew a lot about the case. They knew the exact words witnesses had used, they listened to the briefings, they made connections. But historically they’d been ignored, so they didn’t always come forward. Some of the old-school detectives even used to send ‘the girls’ out of the room for the briefings. Very unwise.

  I wandered over and perched against one of their desks. ‘Noticed anything?’ I asked. ‘Particularly about a secret in the village, or anything to do with the Pale Child?’

  Donna looked up. The new indexer. Ex crime scene officer. ‘There was a reference to it,’ she said. ‘Might not be relevant, but …’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. What is it?’

  ‘I was typing a statement in the other day,’ she said. ‘From one of the house-to-houses. The woman was a talker. You know the sort.’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘She was going on about her friend who used to live in the village but left years ago. Saying her friend had a son who went off the rails and there was a secret involving the son. That her friend had left the village because of it. The friend’s name was Gwen. And I saw a reference somewhere else to Daniel Twigg’s mum being called Gwen. I think it might be the same woman.’

  My heart pumped a little faster. A secret. Possibly involving Daniel. ‘Okay. Potentially interesting. I’ve tried to read everything but don’t remember making that connection.’

  ‘It all sounded a bit mad and irrelevant, but if the son was Daniel Twigg, then I just thought … You never know.’

  ‘Daniel said his mother won’t come to Gritton,’ I said. ‘And we know he had problems – he’s been done for death by dangerous driving. And we now know his younger brother died after apparently seeing the Pale Child. Then there’s this supposed secret that Gary told Violet. So, yes, I’m definitely interested.’

  Donna blushed. ‘I thought you might be.’

  ‘Thank you, Donna. Can you print a copy of the statement out for me?’

  Donna pressed a few buttons and a printer started whirring.

  She passed me the statement. ‘There you go.’

  I took the papers. ‘Thanks, Donna. Well spotted.’ But all I could think was, Please don’t let the secret be something bad about Daniel.

  37

  Bex – October 1999

  It was a bright, cool day, and the light coming through the leaded windows of Bex’s aunt’s living room felt harsh. Bex’s dad and Kirsty had come all the way to Southampton to persuade her to do what they wanted.

  Her dad sat on the large sofa, Kirsty beside him. Aunt Janet was next to Bex, but it wasn’t clear if this meant anything in terms of allegiances.

  A pot of tea was on the low wooden table between them, and Bex realised she’d lined up the milk and sugar in front of her like a defence.

  Her dad coughed. ‘You can’t have the baby, Bex.’

  Bex touched her stomach. Did her dad not care that she felt destroyed? That him sending her away aged three had started the process, the rape had carried it on – demonstrating in the most compelling manner how worthless she was – and his lack of support afterwards had finished it. She was literally nothing. There was no reason to live now other than the baby.

  ‘So that’s agreed then,’ her dad said.

  ‘I don’t think anything’s agreed, Tony.’ Aunt Janet folded her arms and shifted in her seat as if squaring up. She was on home ground, surrounded by her chunky wooden furniture, her acres of dusty books, the wall-hangings she’d brought back from her travels around the world. She wasn’t about to be bullied by her older brother.

  Bex’s dad hurled her an irritated look. ‘I don’t want the girl to ruin her life.’

  Janet said, ‘Nobody wants that. But you haven’t been a parent to her since she was three years old. You can’t just storm in here and demand she does as you say.’

  Silence around the table. A collective breath-holding. Bex felt as if she might float up and out through the window, away from it all. None of them would understand. But she couldn’t kill it. She needed to be one of two again.

  ‘I might want to keep the baby,’ she said.

  Kirsty breathed out abruptly as if she’d been hit in the stomach. ‘You can’t have the baby of a rapist, Bex.’

  The air settled down over them, still and heavy.

  Bex felt a spark of anger, and the part of her that was drifting above looking down was glad that she still had it in her. ‘So he’s a rapist now, is he? I thought it was all my fault.’

  ‘I was upset about Lucas.’

  Bex took the sugar bowl, grabbed a teaspoon and started making patterns in the white granules. Nobody spoke.

  Finally Bex looked up at Kirsty. ‘I won’t tell the child about the rape, so that doesn’t matter.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be able to keep a secret like that,’ Kirsty said.

  ‘Or we could find out who it was,’ Bex said. ‘And … do something.’

  ‘You can’t use your baby as evidence in a rape case,’ Aunt Janet said. ‘It’s not fair.’ And that at least was true.

  And anyway, Bex had tried to go to the police and she’d failed at the first hurdle. When she’d heard the cops joking about how shaggable some young woman was, she’d freaked and bottled it and gone home. She wasn’t going through that again.

  ‘You’d passed out,’ Kirsty said. ‘How could we do something? Can you imagine what the police would say? We didn’t report it at the time, it’s your word against his, and you don’t even remember what happened. It wouldn’t even count as rape.’

  Bex looked again at Kirsty and felt that familiar shift inside her. Kirsty’s expression was wrong. ‘Do you know, Kirsty? Do you know who it was? Who raped me? You need to tell me.’

  Kirsty looked straight at her and her expression changed to concerned, as abruptly as a TV channel-change. ‘Of course not, Bex. I told you. You said you’d seen the Pale Child, we all went off looking for her, and then we came back and found you. I know it wasn’t Lucas. He was with me the whole time. I don’t know about the other two.’

  ‘But you said my dress was rucked up. Did you know what had happened? Did you see who it was?’

  Bex had been over it in her head so many times. She’d humiliated Daniel, laughed at him. He’d been furious with her. They said rape was more about power than sex. And Gary – he was used to getting what he wanted, and she’d sensed a darkness in him.

  ‘No!’ Kirsty said. ‘We’d all split up, apart from me and Lucas. We came back when it started lashing it down, and you’d passed out. You were cold and we had to get you home.’ She spat the final words. ‘You know the rest.’

  Bex flicked her eyes between her dad and Kirsty. Had they exchanged glances? What did they know? Why would her dad and Kirsty protect the boy? It hit her
that growing up with Aunt Janet had been a blessing, not a curse. Escaping Gritton and her family. Why had she resented her dad for sending her away? She should have thanked him.

  ‘Quite honestly, Bex, I don’t know why you allowed yourself to get so drunk,’ her dad said.

  ‘Oh? Was I asking for it?’

  ‘Well, yes, you were to an extent.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Tony!’ Janet’s voice was low and scarily angry. ‘What century are you living in?’

  Bex felt a thickness in her throat. She hated the stress, the arguments. ‘I could have the baby adopted,’ she said. ‘The child wouldn’t need to know who its father was.’

  Her dad thumped his cup down on the table and stood, his bulk filling the small room. ‘We have to get back for the animals. But Bex, you are not having this baby.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bex sobbed. ‘Okay, I won’t have it!’

  Kirsty was staring at her black boots and saying nothing. Finally she stood too, and cast a sideways look at Bex. ‘It’s the right decision, Bex. You’re doing the right thing.’

  38

  Meg – Present day

  Thursday

  The evening sun was burning through my office window and hitting me directly in the face, but I didn’t have the energy to move. There was so much that was unspoken in Gritton. It felt like we were skimming the surface while huge currents whooshed beneath, affecting everyone’s lives but never mentioned. I felt it in my bones that they were relevant to Violet’s disappearance. And was there really a secret from years ago involving Daniel? Fiona was tracking down Gwen Twigg so we could try to get to the bottom of it. Was it the same secret Gary had supposedly told Violet? The one about the Pale Child?

  The door of my room banged open and Jai scooted in and skidded to a stop in front of my desk. I felt a jolt in my stomach. He clearly had news, and I was like a mouse in some hideous experiment, trained to expect an electric shock every time a light flashed. Jai appearing with news hadn’t been good for as long as I could remember. ‘Christ, Jai,’ I said. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

  ‘We’ve got some results back from the lab. You know that razor?’

  ‘The one in the bin liner?’

  ‘Yes. There were skin cells on it. And we got a match.’

  ‘Okay, go on then, spit it out.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

  ‘What do you mean? I just want to solve the case.’ But tendrils of fear were forming in my stomach. No. Not him.

  ‘It’s Daniel Twigg’s.’

  It felt both shocking and inevitable at the same time. I wanted to sob with frustration at my own stupidity. Because Jai was right. I didn’t like it. ‘You’d better sit down,’ I said.

  Jai shifted towards my desk.

  ‘On the chair,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Jai sat on my guest chair, uncharacteristically still. ‘There’s more. Violet’s clothes were in the bin liner, but there was also a set of overalls with Violet’s blood on them. Dark blue overalls. The only one who wore dark blue overalls was Daniel.’

  I remembered holding Daniel’s collar while he reached down to rescue the lamb. The infusion of well-being I’d felt afterwards. The pleasure I’d taken in his company, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself. ‘It’s so out of character,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t know his character.’

  But I’d thought I did know his character. I’d watched him risk his life for a lamb. He worked in an abattoir to help the animals even though he hated it. ‘Have we brought him in?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ve tried, but we can’t find him. He’s disappeared. His van’s gone, there’s no sign of him at the caravan park, and he’s not answering his phone.’

  ‘You think he killed her?’

  ‘The evidence certainly suggests that. We know he liked Violet and she wasn’t interested. What if he found out she was sleeping with Gary? He was upset the morning after she disappeared, plus he referred to her in the past tense.’

  I sighed. And his mum was keeping secrets for him. Possibly. I told Jai about my conversation with Donna.

  ‘He’s definitely dodgy,’ Jai said.

  ‘Okay. Pull out all the stops to find and arrest him. We’ll release a statement. Maybe the Justice for Violet crazies can spend the night hunting for Daniel Twigg instead of committing atrocities.’

  I’d decided to visit Mum on the way home. I wasn’t going to achieve anything staying longer at work, and the revelations about Daniel, on top of all the online criticism I’d received, had left me feeling like I’d been kicked in the head. I needed a few hours away from the case.

  I pulled up in Mum’s driveway and hauled myself out of the car. Mum’s lawn was tinged yellow from the hot weather but the damn thing hadn’t stopped growing. It was ironic that, back when she’d been rushed off her feet tending to Gran, Mum had never let the garden go, but now triffid-like things were appearing in the herbaceous borders.

  I let myself in and nearly fell over a parcel in the hallway. ‘Mum,’ I shouted.

  I found her at the kitchen table, reading glasses on, scrutinising paperwork and drinking tea.

  ‘Have you been buying more stuff from eBay?’ I said.

  ‘Just a lamp.’

  ‘You have to stop, Mum, there’s no room.’

  ‘I have stopped now I’ve decided what I’m doing with your gran’s money.’

  ‘Okay …’

  ‘But why did she do that, Meg? She had that money and she never told us.’

  I filled the kettle and sat down opposite her. ‘I don’t know, Mum. It makes no sense to me either. Maybe she wanted to leave it to us rather than have us spend it on her. That would be like Gran.’

  ‘All that time we were fretting about paying for care for her, or the cost of taking her to Dignitas, and she had thousands squirrelled away. She can’t have spent any money. Ever. In her entire life.’

  ‘We should have taken her,’ I said. ‘We knew it was best for her. I’m sure she only said she’d changed her mind to save us the grief of taking her and getting into trouble.’

  ‘You’re right. I hate myself for putting her through it.’

  ‘Me too.’ If there was guilt to be shared out, I was having my bit.

  Mum sighed. ‘At least you have some money towards a deposit on a house.’

  ‘I’ll have to put a plaque up outside, or a memorial bench.’

  The kettle pinged so I made myself tea, grabbed a pack of biscuits, and sat back down. Mum might be letting her garden go, but if the biscuit cupboard was ever empty then I’d know she was in real trouble.

  Normally she’d be grilling me by now. Asking about work. ‘I’m on that case,’ I said. ‘You know, at the abattoir in Gritton.’ What a fine conversation-starter. Straight out of the book, How to Deal with a Grieving Parent. Serial killer on the loose, feeding victims to pigs. Although I had read that the emphasis on positive thinking was making us more depressed.

  ‘Oh, how awful,’ Mum said. ‘It was on the news. Aren’t they killing animals every night until you solve it? Terrible business.’

  She obviously hadn’t seen my performance at the press conference. Part of me felt petulant about this. Wanted to say, I was on TV, Mum. Aren’t you impressed? But another part was relieved she hadn’t seen. I didn’t want sympathy about the veggie-detective accusations, speculation on what a pack of hungry pigs could do.

  ‘And how’s Jai? Still with that girl?’

  ‘He is, although he does spend every day moaning about their incompatibility. She doesn’t like his kids but she wants him to have more with her.’

  ‘Oh heavens. Poor Jai.’

  ‘I know. I shouldn’t laugh.’

  ‘Some people just like being unhappy,’ Mum said.

  ‘You have to wonder. Given that his previous wife was a social-climbing monster. He must surely have seen through her before they stuck rings on each other.’

  ‘He was probably pressurised into ge
tting married by his family.’

  ‘Better to marry a total cow than just to live with her? Though from what he’s told me, they’re desperate for him to marry a nice Sikh girl. Aren’t families a delight?’

  ‘Not sure how to take that, Meg. Has Hannah found someone for you yet?’

  ‘No, despite her best efforts to hook me up with the deranged of Derbyshire.’

  ‘I’m sure she just wants you to be happy.’

  ‘I am happy. Why would I need a man to be happy?’

  Mum opened her mouth to answer.

  ‘That was rhetorical,’ I said, and I wished I could talk to her about Daniel, but of course that wasn’t possible.

  ‘I suppose you are a bit of a workaholic. Not everyone would put up with that.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Mum. Nobody ever commented on Dad being at work all the time. And male cops are positively applauded for working so hard their kids are people they meet occasionally on holiday. Anyway, I’m not a workaholic – I’m just conscientious and prefer to catch murderers rather than leaving them free to rampage around the countryside slaughtering people.’

  ‘That’s what workaholics always say. But you still deserve someone nice. You don’t have to compromise.’

  Not sure exactly what that meant, I decided to change the subject. ‘Um … did Dad mention he’d come to visit?’

  Her head shot up. ‘To visit you? Now?’

  I nodded. ‘He’s staying for a couple of days.’

  ‘Well, well, that is very suspicious.’

  ‘Why can nobody accept that he wants to see me? It’s so unfair on him.’

  ‘You need to keep an eye on him, Meg. You really do. Why’s he suddenly visiting now? I don’t want to be hurtful but he’s taken zero interest in your life, and we have no idea what he’s been up to in Scotland. Anything could be going on in his life.’

  ‘He’s split up with Pauline,’ I said.

  Mum pursed her lips. ‘I knew that would end in tears.’

  I didn’t mention the fact that Dad had been with Pauline for over fifteen years and that Mum had been predicting the demise of the relationship for all of them.