Path of Needles

by Alison Littlewood

  She forced herself to think back to the first scene. Chrissie Farrell, in comparison with Red, had had a relatively clean death, apart from the removal of her toe. She tried to summon an image of who might have done that to her, but could see only a shadow. Was the killer calm while cutting through the flesh? Did they feel anything for her as the blood vessels burst in her eyes?

  The cause of death was, as she had suspected, smothering; The build-up of carbon dioxide in her blood was confirmed in the report. She had been right in thinking she couldn’t see any bruising to the girl’s neck. Instead, Chrissie had been choked by something blocking her throat; they’d found abrasions in her windpipe, although the object itself had been removed. So that too was reminiscent of the fairy tale, like Snow White being choked by a poisoned apple, appearing dead until the offending object was jolted loose. If only life could have been restored so easily to Chrissie Farrell.

  The fairest of them all, Cate thought. She’d read some texts on forensic psychology and remembered that this particular cause of death – smothering – was usually a spur-of-the-moment act, born of rage, often carried out by someone who knew the victim. The way this had been done was different: it smacked of premeditation. It had remained true to what happened in the fairy tale, but also to the image of Snow White, killing her without destroying her beauty.

  There were other injuries besides the ones she was already aware of. There were several small cuts on the inside of her arm, which could not have been seen from the way the body had been laid out. What had that meant? There were ligature marks on her wrists, too: she had been tied up while this had been done to her – but where? There would have been blood; the girl would have screamed. It had to be somewhere she wouldn’t have been heard.

  Cate drew in a deep breath and read on. She almost didn’t want to know what must surely come next, but then she found it, and breathed out in relief. Chrissie Farrell’s toe had been cut off post mortem. She wouldn’t have felt the pain, wouldn’t have known anything about it. That would be one small consolation for her mother, at least. She scanned down the page, and the next item made her wince. The toe had been done post mortem, but her fingernails had not. The blood in and around the wounds showed the girl had been alive. Cate closed her eyes against the thought. Why would anyone do that? Had the killer actually enjoyed torturing her?

  She picked up the photograph of the girl lying in the clearing, her dead eyes staring up into the sky. She remembered Chrissie as she had been in another photograph, in another time: her direct gaze, her smile. She breathed in deep, forced herself to think. Snow White was supposed to be murdered in the wood before the huntsman brought a piece of her back, wasn’t she? Maybe that was the reason the toe was done later. But in order to take care of the dwarves’ house, she’d have to be alive – hence what had been done to her hands. Maybe someone hadn’t done this for their sick pleasure; maybe they were sticking to the story after all.

  The story seemed to underpin everything now – or maybe Heath was right, she was getting too close to it; she had paid too much attention to Alice’s way of seeing things. The fairy tale didn’t belong with the dry words of the report, analysing and cataloguing the girl’s death.

  Off with the fairies, Stocky had said. And Heath: There a big bad wolf around here somewhere?

  Exept there was, wasn’t there? There was.

  She knew the SIO’s humour was just a necessary part of his role – if the police didn’t have that as a defence mechanism to shield them from the sick things people could do to each other, they wouldn’t be able to cope for long. She remembered Alice’s calm seriousness when she had looked at the body. Alice had never had to develop that kind of shield in her job. Perhaps it would have been easier on her now if she had.

  Maybe she needed to work on that too.

  She examined the picture of Chrissie once more. If she didn’t look at her face, she could almost – not quite – imagine the girl was sleeping there, dreaming, perhaps, of some story she’d become a part of. Her dress shone out against the earth, a clean sharp colour. Cate frowned. That wasn’t right, surely? Little Red’s clothes, hidden by the cloak, had been spattered and stained. Had someone undressed Chrissie and then dressed her again for her final display? They hadn’t found any buttons fastened wrongly or anything of that kind, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened; whoever it was could have taken their time. Something must have been done about the blood.

  The blood. Cate flicked back through the report. The toe had been cut off post mortem, after her heart stopped beating. There wouldn’t have been much blood. How had he filled the bottle to send back to her mother? Of course – that must have been the reason for those cuts on her arm, that’s how he’d collected her blood. She’d been alive then, maybe watching her killer as he’d caught it in that old glass bottle. It would have been neater, surely, more true to the story, if he’d cut off her toe when she was alive and taken her blood that way, rather than leaving more marks on the body. Maybe he’d had difficulty doing this, after all. But Little Red – her stomach had been ripped open. The blood: the smell of it … Had he found it easier the second time? Was the killer starting to relish the things he did, push himself to go further?

  She realised she couldn’t help thinking of the killer as ‘he’. It would have taken strength to move the body, even more so in Little Red’s case, and that suggested a man. Now she wished she’d been able to see Cosgrove herself, to look into his eyes. Would she have thought him a man capable of doing this?

  She went back to the report. Whatever else she’d had to endure, there was nothing to suggest the girl had been raped. Cate frowned. There were no conclusions she could draw from that; it didn’t mean the attacker had been a woman. If it was a man, he might have been incapable, or had so far objectified the girl he didn’t see her in a sexual fashion – that could rule out Stocky’s theory about this being an attack on her vanity.

  That didn’t seem like Cosgrove, though, or at least what she knew of him. I thought he liked me, Angie Farrell had said. I thought he liked me, but he didn’t, I saw him watching her.

  Or perhaps the killer hadn’t touched the girl because that wasn’t part of the story he was trying to tell.

  There wasn’t much else relating to the body. They’d found some trace evidence on the dress, fibres clinging to the back of it, most likely picked up from car upholstery. That might have happened when the body was dumped, but it was telling that the fibres were found on her back – she might have been seated. Had she got into a car of her own free will? Possibly – so that could mean it was someone she knew, or someone who could lure her into their vehicle. A taxi driver, maybe?

  Cate sighed and looked back over the report. She had wondered if Chrissie had set off to walk home, but aside from the severed toe there were no signs of injury to her feet – only a small blister which could have been caused by nothing more than wearing towering heels to a school dance. There was no reason to think she had set out to walk, but it couldn’t be ruled out either. And the girl had been drunk, that was confirmed by the alcohol levels in her blood. She could have been confused, possibly incapable of fighting someone off, or maybe she’d been happy to accept a lift from anyone if it meant getting away from the friends she’d quarrelled with.

  That made her think of the girl’s mother, that photograph with their faces close together, wearing the same dress. How close had they really been? Angie Farrell had left her daughter at the dance, after all. And Alice Hyland had pointed out that it was often the stepmother who was the villain. Cate had looked into that, but as she’d expected, she’d found that Mrs Farrell was Chrissie’s real mother; she’d thought as much from their resemblance. But then, hadn’t Alice said that in the original tales – the older versions – it was the true mother who did such terrible things?

  That could be Angie Farrell as she had seen her in the photograph. In real life … she remembered the woman’s terror, her bewilderment. She’d given the impression o
f being vain, yes, but it ended there: Cate didn’t believe she could have done these things to her daughter. Maybe Heath was right – she was getting too caught up in the stories, at the expense of the evidence before her eyes.

  She went back to the file and scanned down the last items, leafed through the details of the rubbish that had been found alongside the body. There had been an apple, half eaten and discarded, she had seen it. At the time she had considered it as something that might yield DNA evidence but was probably unrelated, just another piece of human detritus – until she had spoken to Alice, when she had asked Heath for some further tests to be done.

  She found that report and read it with increasing puzzlement. The apple hadn’t yielded any human DNA evidence, which was odd; there were traces of insects and birds, nothing more. She had thought it might have been used to choke the girl – it would have fitted the story. How had the bite-marks been made, if not with a human mouth? Were they carved into it deliberately, or was it nothing to do with the scene at all?

  Cate’s heartbeat quickened as she flicked through to the results of the tests she’d suggested. And then she found it: significant quantities of a toxic pesticide. The apple found at Snow White’s side had not been eaten, but it had been poisoned.

  *

  As Cate finished scanning the files, Len Stockdale appeared at her shoulder. He slid into the seat opposite, looking her up and down as he did so. She felt suddenly conscious of being in plain clothes while he was in uniform.

  ‘Going well, then?’

  ‘Not so you’d notice.’ She tried a smile, but he didn’t return it. Instead he handed across a crumpled piece of paper, presenting it with a flourish, playing secretary.

  ‘Message,’ he said. ‘You looked busy.’

  She wasn’t sure if he was really being helpful or if there was a trace of sarcasm in his words. He was no doubt wondering why they hadn’t already collared the teacher. Vanity, he’d said, and he’d be sticking to it. Stocky liked to get things done; paperwork irritated him. Taking telephone messages would no doubt irritate him too, unless he’d done it to make a point.

  Cate kept her expression neutral and glanced at the note. Alice’s name was written across the top; she hid her reaction to that too. Stocky would have known who she was: her expert on fairy tales, part of her theory on the case. But with Little Red her theory had been vindicated, hadn’t it? But she couldn’t help thinking of what Heath had said about her contact. It was a little strange: Alice had only just seen a body mutilated and dumped in the woods, and off she went, all alone, into the trees. And yet the lecturer was her lead, her insight into what might be going on here. She might even be her passport to keeping her place on the team.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. How are things with you?’

  He grunted. ‘A lot to be getting on with.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I left you in the lurch, Len. I didn’t know this chance was going to come along – it’s a good opportunity for me to learn.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to do this. It would be good if we—’ Her voice tailed away.

  ‘If we … ?’ Len’s face was without expression.

  ‘Never mind.’ She looked at him. Here first, he’d said at the body dump, and now he looked almost sulky. Was he wishing he was on the case himself, thinking about how he’d be doing it differently? It occurred to her to wonder if he’d ever thought of applying to CID. Maybe he’d even done it; maybe his application had failed. She bit her lip. No, he could surely have made different choices if he’d wanted to. And it couldn’t be helped now, she was on this case; it was too big for her to turn her back on it.

  Here first. She sighed. Was she so very different, after all? It was a great chance for her, and she couldn’t deny she found the investigation exciting. And if she decided to specialise in future, to join CID for good, her experience in this investigation would surely be a boost to her career.

  She thought of the dead girl she’d so recently seen, her face pressed into the fallen branches, and she grimaced. No, Stocky was probably just thinking of his own kids, wanting to see justice done to whoever had hurt Angie Farrell’s. She looked up, meaning to ask after them, his family; but Stocky was already pushing himself from his seat. He walked away without looking at her again.

  *

  At first Cate didn’t think anyone was going to answer the telephone, and she started to wonder what Alice might be doing. She had an image of the girl walking through the woods, ducking under low-growing branches; she knew what Heath would say to that and tried to push the idea out of her mind. It just seemed fitting to think of her that way – and why not? Alice loved nature, that was obvious from the place she’d chosen to live. She belonged there, and Cate could envy that, in a way. She thought of her own small flat, its walls freshly plastered and painted when she moved in, and compared it unfavourably with Alice’s untidy kitchen. She hadn’t had time to accumulate any mess; she wasn’t planning on staying long enough. She’d needed somewhere, and the flat had been convenient. It suited her that it didn’t feel like home – that might even have been part of the reason she’d chosen it. This was not her destination, not somewhere to put down roots, get into a relationship, settle down; it was a stopover. For Alice, though – she belonged at the edge of the woods, her head full of fairy tales; a half-wild, storybook place.

  The phone was picked up with a breathy, ‘Hello? Sorry. I was outside, picking some flowers.’

  Cate’s mouth twitched. She greeted her contact.

  ‘Ah – yes, I’d been thinking about things and I wanted to talk to you. It’s a woman, do you see that? From the stories. It must be; it was always a woman.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  Alice drew a deep breath. ‘Sorry; it’s my fault, I’m not explaining myself very well. It’s just, in the stories, it’s the stepmother who tries to kill Snow White, we know that much. The wolf in “Little Red” – well, I think that’s misleading, because it’s the mother who sends her into the forest, isn’t it? All alone, where the big bad wolf lives? And telling her not to leave the path – isn’t that asking for trouble, really, putting the idea into her head?’

  Cate caught her breath. ‘That’s just the story,’ she said. ‘The reality could have been different. Anyway, are you saying they were both killed by their mothers, and left that way coincidentally?’

  ‘No – I’m saying everything’s been done to fit the stories, and it would fit them too if the killer was female.’

  Cate paused. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s a theory. I won’t rule it out, but we have to take into account that someone overpowered these girls, and that probably required strength; someone certainly had to move them. We can’t rule out the idea that it could be a man.’

  But Alice hadn’t finished. ‘A woman could have lured the girls to go with them somehow. It’s obvious, really, isn’t it? They might have trusted a woman, gone with her for some reason. And it’s not just about the characters in the stories, the evil stepmother or the faulty mother – women tend to know more about fairy tales than men. I’ve never had more than 5 or 10 per cent of males on my course. Someone knew a fair amount in order to set this up.’

  Cate narrowed her eyes. Yes, they did: the killer was someone who was knowledgeable, who knew the area. And she remembered Heath’s words: went for a walk. A walk. Don’t you find that strange?

  She said goodbye, hung up. They had to focus on the facts, not Alice’s fictions, and that came back to the victim; it was the girl they had to think about now. They had to find out who had killed her and how they’d done it, and to do that, they also needed to know who she was. Cate was obviously going to be busy, assuming Heath kept her on the team. Stocky might not like it, but she couldn’t help that. She looked around the desks, couldn’t see him now – perhaps he was getting on with some of that work he’d mentioned, no doubt wishing he could pass the filing on to her. Would she always be around to do it for him? Stocky seemed happy where he was
, despite his odd demeanour earlier. But did he think she would stay here for ever? Unlike him she had no family here, only a half-empty flat and her own ambition, pulling her in different directions.

  ‘We have an estimated time for the body dump.’ She jumped as the voice came from behind her. It was Dan Thacker. ‘It was in the early hours. We’re double-checking Cosgrove’s movements now, but Heath’s right, it doesn’t look like it could have been him.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘We also have a possible lead on a mis-per.’ He paused, grinned. ‘Come on. Looks like you’re with me.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The girl’s figure was little removed from a lithe young boy’s, and her hair was white – it could be a wig or possibly it was so tormented by bleach that it had turned to straw. Her eyes were close-set and looked shrunken behind harsh black eyeliner. Her thin lips were also rimmed with a dark line of some plum-coloured make-up, which was bleeding into a smoker’s puckered skin. She looked about seventeen, and as if she hadn’t slept in three days. She had given her name as Kiara, something that sounded so unlikely Cate found herself wondering if it was actually true.

  They sat on either side of a chipped Formica table in a greasy spoon on the outskirts of Leeds. It was raining outside, a warm spring shower, and the café was overheated. The greasy glass was steamed up and running with moisture; there was no way Dan could keep an eye on them as he had promised.

  The girl was on edge, paranoia making her skittish, which was why Dan had opted to stay outside and let Cate talk to her alone. Kiara’s black-lined eyes kept darting towards the door, as if she was expecting a pimp to burst in on her at any second, or maybe other toms, ready to rip her to shreds for talking to the police.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Cate said, ‘you’re not in any trouble, like we told you. It’s just, we heard you’d spoken to someone on the beat, that’s all – you said your friend was missing, and we want to help, if we can. We want to try and find her.’