Path of Needles

by Alison Littlewood

  The house was set into a row of others towards the top of a hill. The whole place was lined with wooden gates and gardens that would be described as pleasant, the houses self-contained, neat, separate. Number 17 seemed as quiet as the rest. Cate glanced towards it; in the largest window, between wide-slatted blinds, a face looked back.

  She paused to radio in her time of arrival before stepping out and reaching for the doorbell, wondering briefly if it would be better, after all, that she had got there first. PC Stockdale was an old hand, but his ‘don’t mess’ demeanour – possibly also carefully cultivated, more likely the product of his experience – was better suited to handling Saturday-night drunks than a woman in distress. She could already imagine the way he would look at her when she opened the door; no, the face she had seen at the window didn’t need Stocky, not just now. Cate, on the other hand … she took another deep breath as the door opened.

  The woman was older than Cate had first thought. Her skin was pale, even against her harshly bleached hair, and her hands claw-like as she grasped at the dressing gown she wore, a shining silk thing printed with brilliant purple bougainvillaea. She smelled of coffee, old perfume and perhaps, beneath, the taint of stale wine. Cate identified herself and the woman nodded, though she didn’t appear to understand the words. She stepped back and Cate followed her into the house.

  The woman led the way into a spacious kitchen and indicated the table. There was a box on it. It was surrounded by the litter of white tissue paper, the remains of breakfast, and an empty wine glass. Cate looked at it, automatically noting the ring of lipstick around the rim. She wasn’t sure why she did this, only that she wanted to miss nothing.

  ‘There.’ The woman was crying, silently and without fuss, tears oozing from her eyes as if crying was something she always did.

  Cate pulled a pen from her pocket. She reached out to use it to pull the box towards her, realised even that might disturb any evidence and instead leaned over the table, peering to see into it. Her eyes widened. She could smell it, a kitchen smell that made her think of knives. She could see the glass nestling inside the box, the light catching the ridges on its surface. It floated across her mind that its texture would probably capture only fragmentary fingerprints on its surface; then she focused on what it held. She could see the toe. There had been trial cuts, she saw that at once; the skin was severed in a couple of places, crushed where the blade had pressed down. Either that or someone had failed to cut all the way through and started again. She looked away from it, moved her gaze to the crumpled paper scattered across the table.

  ‘You touched it?’ It was a needless question but she asked anyway. She had to keep calm, allow herself time to think. There was only silence, and she turned to Mrs Farrell to see the woman’s eyes fixed and staring, her pupils a pale, fragile blue. She was terrified. Of course, she was terrified, and Cate knew she wanted nothing but reassurance: It’s all right, ma’am, we see this sort of thing all the time. It’s just someone having a laugh; that’s not really a toe in there. You didn’t really think—

  ‘And your daughter didn’t come home?’ Cate prompted again, and the woman shook her head, though there was still no sign of understanding in her eyes, only that blank fear. ‘Is there someone who can be with you? A husband or a friend – someone I can call for you?’

  Mrs Farrell didn’t answer. Cate reached out, touched her arm, and she jumped. Cate’s mind was racing. She had to get CID in here, crime-scene tech, make sure supervision was on its way. They’d need the area securing – the kitchen, the hallway, anywhere the parcel might have been. They needed to get a description of the child circulated, a family liaison officer contacted for the mother. And Mrs Farrell – she would need checking herself, her fingerprints taken to eliminate any traces she’d left on the things she’d touched. The thoughts came in a rush. Cate could feel fine prickling all over her skin, like a faint breath of static.

  They’d also need to check the house, as discreetly as possible. If there was any sign of struggle … Most murders were committed in the home, and most murderers were family members. She looked again into Mrs Farrell’s blank eyes. The woman was traumatised – but how badly, and from what? Was it only the thought of what had happened to her child, or something else? It didn’t seem likely.

  She thought of the skin around the severed toe, the way it had been crushed and cut, and she shuddered. It might have been better, after all, if Stocky was here: he wouldn’t have had to think about what to do or what to say.

  ‘Come through,’ she said, taking Mrs Farrell’s arm. She steered her towards an open door which led into a darkened lounge. The room was a little musty, the curtains still drawn. A pair of shoes, black and strappy and with glitter on the toes, had been kicked off and left in the middle of the floor. She led her to the sofa and the woman sat like an obedient child, not saying anything, just staying where she was put.

  Cate slipped back into the kitchen and spoke into her radio. The house seemed quieter than ever, her voice too loud, but when she returned to the lounge Mrs Farrell showed no sign of having heard. She didn’t seem capable of taking in anything at all. Cate took another glance around the room and saw a photograph in a silver frame standing by the television.

  The picture showed Mrs Farrell in better days, her hair freshly feathered, smiling a red-lipstick smile. Her cheeks glowed with blusher and her eyelashes were painted with the kind of electric-blue mascara that had been in fashion once. Next to her was a young girl, blonde, pretty, effortless in her wide white grin. Cate stared at it. The thing she noted, more than the similarity in the shape of the women’s faces, their noses, their lips, was the fact that they were wearing the same dress. The daughter’s was yellow and the mother’s was white, but they were still the same. Oh dear, Cate thought, then pushed it from her mind; she picked up the frame and turned to Mrs Farrell.

  ‘Is this your daughter?’ she asked, her voice gentle. She held the picture in front of the woman. ‘How old is she now?’

  Mrs Farrell turned her head at last, not looking at the photograph. She nodded.

  ‘Can I take the picture?’

  The woman didn’t answer, just started to cry again, soundlessly, and for a moment Cate let her. ‘Mrs Farrell?’

  ‘That’s Chrissie,’ the woman said at last. ‘She’s fifteen.’

  A sound blared out as someone rapped at the door, and they both jumped. Cate hurried to answer, relieved that someone more senior had arrived. Some day, she would handle cases like this. She would be the one who stepped in, gave orders, made everything happen the way it should. For now, she was ready to hand over this scene – and Mrs Farrell – to someone else.

  *

  It wasn’t until much later that the second call came in. Cate was in the car once more, her hands tightly gripping the wheel as if she could regain some grasp on the regular routine, on the ordinary houses and streets and places she had known that morning. It was as if everything since then had passed in a daze; the things she had seen, the arrival of more senior officers, Cate following their instructions with a quiet calm that didn’t quite reach her insides.

  Now she was headed back out. Instead of taking the route she’d planned, though, she pulled up short of the junction she’d been approaching and listened. At first, she wasn’t sure what she’d heard.

  This time, when Cate responded, a frisson of excitement mingled with her nerves, like a cold line down her back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cate took the corners fast, blue lights flaring on the low stone walls as she headed away to the south, towards Ryhill village. This time she didn’t look around for road signs; she was going way too quickly, and anyway, this was an area where signs were few. There was nothing around but wide green fields, nothing to say where each turning led. She whipped around another ninety-degree turn, swinging wide and jouncing across the potholes. It wasn’t a well-kept road – it wasn’t well-used. She thought she could hear another siren under the sound of her own
and as she pulled onto a straight stretch she saw she was right: there was another police car vanishing around the next bend.

  Ahead of her, she glimpsed a row of red-brick houses that marked the very edge of Ryhill. This was ex-mining territory, where once-thriving pit villages now slept amid the greenery. Open-cast land had been reclaimed, turned into Anglers’ Country Park; reservoirs that had once fed a coal-bearing canal now provided ideal nature reserves. Not far away was the Heronry, a lakeside trail with hides for birdwatchers and its own visitors’ centre. She had gone there as a child to feed the ducks; she still remembered their squabble and squawk, the snapping beaks.

  She turned in the direction of the Heronry now, away from the houses and the village, swinging around a left-hand bend and entering the wood. The road immediately dipped and she fell under shadow, but she could see where the other car had pulled up; its siren had been silenced but its lights still sporadically lit the underside of the leaves and branches.

  Two men stood next to the car. One was maybe in his fifties, one younger, callow; both wore oilskins and clutched fishing rods. A black and white sheepdog lay next to them, its head on its paws, one twitching ear betraying its wakefulness. The elder man lifted a hand, raised his index finger in what Cate thought of as a Yorkshire wave, then pointed towards the trees. There was a small clearing where patches of earth lay dust-bare between the trunks. It was a problem area: people came here to dump old fridges and mattresses under cover of the trees. There was a heap of rubbish there now, a pile of plastic bags, the naked spirals of bedsprings rising from the shapeless, wilting forms.

  Cate turned her head and was startled to see the fisherman up close, leaning across the bonnet, each vein on his nose and cheeks clearly visible. He was still expressionless; she found herself wondering when he’d forgotten how to smile. He pointed, sticking his arm straight out towards the trees, and she opened the door to hear a single word: ‘There.’ He pronounced it with two syllables. Thee-er.

  She followed his gesture, and this time she saw a figure standing under the lacework of shadows. She recognised her old tutor constable, Len Stockdale, at once; but she didn’t recognise the shine in his eyes. As she approached she could feel him simmering, a glow rising from him she could almost see. Then he said, as if they’d won something: ‘Here first.’

  She peered past him. She saw flashes of colour, the dirty white and garish blue of plastic bags, and something else, a clean, shining coral. There was a smell too, both sweet and bitter beneath the tang of rotting garbage, and the faint whiff of chemicals. Stockdale shook his head. ‘It’s a girl, a teenager. I checked for vital signs, just in case – no go. There’s no point in you seeing it too, love.’ He reached for his radio, started to call it in.

  She stepped to one side so she could see better. The clean coral shade she had glimpsed was a girl’s dress. It was long and flowing and spread over and around a shape that was lying on the ground. The fabric was thin and shining, satin or silk maybe, too fine to afford any warmth. It stood out clear against the dull greys and browns of the tree trunks and bare ground and the mulch of trodden-down rubbish. There was a pile of oily rags nearby, an apple that was half eaten and browned.

  Cate couldn’t yet see her face, but she remembered a photograph of a carefree young girl in a yellow dress, her features so much like her mother’s. She remembered too Mrs Farrell, tears leaking from her eyes, her expression one of blank, empty shock; the woman who needed to know what had happened to her daughter.

  She glanced at Len Stockdale and went closer.

  She had seen death before. It was a part of her work, a regular event, and often it was rough, messy death, bodies broken by a spill from a motorbike or ruined by decay before being found in some quiet flat. Now she couldn’t understand her own reluctance as she leaned in and looked at the girl’s face.

  Her skin was pale, dead white against bright red lipstick. The first thing Cate noticed though was her hair, which also heightened the paleness of her skin, because her hair was black: black. Cate felt a flood of relief as she took in the brutally cropped fringe. Chrissie Farrell, as she had seen her in the photograph, had had rich blonde waves spilling over her shoulders.

  But of course, this girl was still someone’s daughter.

  Cate’s eyes narrowed. The hair hadn’t just been cut, it had been hacked. It was jagged around her face, and so dark it was almost bluish. It was not a natural colour. It wouldn’t have been styled that way. She sniffed the air, trying to identify that chemical smell, thinking of hair colourant; she thought she had it, then it was lost beneath the tang of bleach. She felt sure, all the same, that the girl’s hair had been dyed.

  She peered more closely at her face. The skin was so pale, faded like other dead bodies she had seen, and yet unlike them too. She thought she recognised its shape, though, the line of the girl’s nose, her cheeks, her lips. She thought of Mrs Farrell once more, the picture of herself and her daughter wearing the same dresses, their faces pressed close together, and she grimaced.

  She drew a deep breath, forced herself to take in the rest of the scene. The body – Chrissie – had one hand resting on her chest, the fingers curled around an object she held. It looked like a hand mirror. It lay face downwards so that she couldn’t be sure, but Cate thought that was what it was, an old-fashioned mirror, its carved handle widening to a wooden oval. It didn’t seem like anything the girl would own.

  Her eyes flicked back to that black hair. She had thought there was something clinging there, that some rubbish was entangled in it, but she saw she was wrong: it wasn’t rubbish but a plastic crown, fake jewels jutting out, sequins that appeared merely dull in the filtered light.

  And the girl’s lips. The bright lipstick painted over them was clumsy, cheap-looking. Cate thought again of the girl in the photograph – that girl surely wouldn’t have painted her lips in such a way. Perhaps after all she was wrong, this might not be Chrissie Farrell; it might be the start of someone else’s nightmare.

  An image rose before her eyes of the tissue-lined box on Angie Farrell’s kitchen table. She remembered the stopper in the glass bottle and glanced towards the girl’s feet. They were covered by the fall of her dress and she couldn’t see them, but she remembered the colour of the nail polish she’d seen on that single severed toe, and she knew it almost matched the shade of the bright coral fabric.

  She took a step closer, tried to see, instead, the girl’s fingers: perhaps her nails would be painted with that same shade of polish. One hand was curled around the mirror, hiding the nails. The other lay at her side, and Cate looked at it – and she caught her breath.

  ‘Not what we’re used to seeing, is it, love?’ Len’s voice came from behind her and she jumped. Slowly, she shook her head.

  ‘Back-up’s on the way. CID are coming.’ His voice was a tone lower than usual and Cate remembered that he had two children, a boy and a girl, both teenagers. He’d complained about them endlessly on their early patrols, saying they lived to vex him; mostly, Cate had thought they actually confused him. It was odd how people could live in the same house and not understand each other at all. That made her think of Mrs Farrell again. No doubt she’d give anything, now, to be vexed by Chrissie.

  ‘We need to get a cordon set up. You better go and talk to them. Get their details for the scene log. Keep them back.’ He gestured towards the fishermen and Cate nodded. She took one last look at Chrissie Farrell, her ragged hair, her ruined hand. The girl’s eyes were open, staring up at the trees looming over her, and something about them stopped Cate. She had seen the twisting overhanging branches reflected in her sclera, but now she saw it wasn’t a reflection after all: the marks were in her eyes. The shadows were the leak and stain of burst blood vessels, rising from beneath: petechial haemorrhages, a sign of suffocation. However, when Cate’s gaze went to the girl’s neck, the skin there seemed unmarked, as pale as her face.

  *

  The fishermen were father and son, though they didn
’t even look at each other as Cate spoke to them. They only occasionally met her eye, preferring to stare down at the ground or away, along the road, as if wishing they were somewhere else. Even the dog stood a distance apart, staring into space, its tongue lolling in an unknowing grin. The boy kept glancing at it, as if trying to work out what it was doing there. His knuckles, still gripping his fishing rod, were the colour of bone.

  The elder’s face was immobile as he spoke. Their name was Dereham, and they came out here a lot to fish, but this time their trip had been cut short. They had been walking from the village – the man nodded towards the line of houses that marked the edge of Ryhill, and Cate caught a glimpse of red brick through the trees – when the dog had headed into the woods.

  ‘He dun’t normally run off,’ he said. ‘An’ ’e wouldn’t come back. We ’ad to follow ’im.’ Cate saw sorrow in his eyes. ‘It was me lad here who called the police. I dun’t hold truck with them mobile phones, me. I spoke to ’em, though. It were me as told you about it.’

  His son nodded, looked away, as if embarrassed.

  ‘An’ then we waited. That was all.’

  Cate asked a couple more questions, found that was pretty much it. The Derehams had seen a couple of cars go past – families, passing through on their way somewhere else, or heading for the visitor centre away down the road perhaps – but no one had stopped or even seemed to look into the woods, until the police had arrived.