Path of Needles

by Alison Littlewood

  There was another light too, somewhere higher up and further away. It streaked the sky, almost as if it were floating; Cate knew it must be from the wooden platform built across what would once have been the highest point of the castle.

  She had visited this place with her parents when she was young, and occasionally she still came walking here when the mood took her. Though little remained of the original castle keep, it was set atop a huge mound – the motte – probably created with earth excavated from the moat. In recent years that wooden platform had been built over it so that tourists could walk up there and enjoy the view without clambering over rough stones, destroying the history under their feet.

  Battles had been fought and lost in the fields around this site. Somewhere was a commemorative stone that marked the death of Richard Plantagenet at the Battle of Wakefield – she’d never forgotten that old mnemonic for remembering the colours of the rainbow: Richard of York gave battle in vain. Now there was nothing to see but a field.

  Someone strode towards them, his feet silent on the grass, but his presence commanded attention all the same. ‘Ms Hyland,’ Heath said. ‘Come with me.’

  He headed away with Alice at his side and Cate followed, keeping close so that she would hear anything that was said; but he didn’t speak, didn’t give anything away at all. They paused only to pull on protective clothing before he led them towards the moat. Cate began to make out details: a short distance away was one of the newer wooden structures, a bridge that crossed the ancient defences – but they stopped before they reached it, near the glow she’d seen which resolved itself into individual points of light. Figures were moving down there, passing in and out of the shadows.

  Heath took one step onto the banking. ‘A moment,’ he said, addressing Alice again; he still hadn’t said a word to Cate. He half stepped, half slithered away from them, disappearing into the ditch with a muffled curse. Alice glanced at Cate, then followed, taking Heath’s hand when he backtracked to help her down. Cate scrambled after them; Heath was already heading further along the moat, taking Alice with him.

  The girl lay a short distance away, surrounded by more lights and the pale overalls of scene-of-crime officers, who stood back when Heath approached. Both of them stopped and looked on, not speaking. Cate peered between them and saw the body.

  She was facing upwards, her blank eyes staring into the blank sky. She had been covered with a large coat, but her dress spread beneath it, the white fabric of the full skirts shining in the spotlights. She looked a little older than Chrissie Farrell and Teresa King; her face was pale, calm, almost serene. Cate thought at first that her dark blonde hair was patched with colourant, then realised it was streaked with mud.

  Heath said something in a low voice and a SOCO stepped forward and lifted the coat away, revealing that the girl’s dress was muddied too, as if she had been rolled down the slope. Perhaps whoever placed her here had struggled to move her. Cate looked at the bank next to the body and noted that the area had been kept clear; probably the reason they’d climbed down further along the moat, so as not to trample over any footprints the killer may have left behind.

  There was something else too. The way the girl was lying – it wasn’t quite right, not organised enough. One arm was splayed at her side, the other trapped beneath her. For a moment Cate wondered if this was linked to the other cases at all, or was something else: then she saw what had been revealed beneath the coat. A single white rose had been placed on the girl’s body, and an image flashed into Cate’s mind of the girl’s hands resting on it, holding it in death. Was that how she’d been left? She had been discovered by someone who’d assumed she was alive; perhaps they had done this, disturbed the positioning of the body when they tried to revive her.

  Cate squinted and saw a narrow band wrapped around the girl’s dress, drawing it in close to her body. She thought at first it was a belt, but it was too thin, like twine; then she saw it was green, a wiry stem, and there were thorns jutting from it.

  There was something lying next to her head, too. Cate shuffled further around; no, it wasn’t next to her head, it was fastened to it, a small hat such as a child might make out of paper. She almost hadn’t seen it in the shadows because it was completely black.

  Heath stirred, squinting around at Cate as if he’d just noticed her. ‘PC Corbin,’ he said, ‘you’ll do. I want you back up top. The people who found her are waiting up there – accompany them out of here, would you?’

  Cate murmured her assent. She felt the night’s cold cut through her as she turned her back on the scene – and on Alice. Why keep her contact here and send Cate away? But there was work to do, and she was needed to do it; she couldn’t think about that now. She concentrated on retracing her steps and climbing the steep side of the moat in the dark.

  *

  The couple who’d found the body were middle-aged, their faces pale, and they didn’t ask questions, didn’t say anything at all; they just waited for instructions. The woman drew her coat tightly around her and looked at Cate with a plea in her eyes. We don’t belong here, that look said.

  For a moment Cate felt lost, as helpless as the girl who had been left in the ditch; then she led them away back to the edge of the car park by the visitors’ centre. Dan was still there and he caught her eye and came over.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming with me,’ he said to the man, and led him a short distance away from his wife.

  Cate looked after them and realised he’d done the right thing in separating the couple. It meant they could each take an initial account of what they’d witnessed before the pair could discuss what had happened, possibly influencing each other’s formal statements. All the same, she wished she could hear what they were saying.

  She turned to the woman, who watched as Cate took out her notepad and flipped it open. Cate spoke gently, taking down her details for the record and so that any background checks Heath felt to be necessary could be carried out; though her instincts told her that the couple were just as they appeared, innocent passers-by who’d encountered more than they had ever wished to see on their evening walk.

  They were married, the woman – Sandra – told her, and out for a stroll, like they often did at this time of day. They’d parked at the boating lake at the foot of the hill and walked up to enjoy the view from the top. She cast a concerned glance in the direction of the lake when she said that and Cate knew she was thinking that the gates would have been closed down there, locking their car in. Cate remembered what she had seen in the moat and mentally shrugged; there were worse things.

  ‘So you were the ones who called the police?’

  ‘And the ambulance, love. I mean, we’ve ’eard the stories. I asked for the police first, but Gerry said we’d better check, and I said, no, it’s like the others, the ones in the paper. He checked anyway – he was brave, braver than me – and it was like we said, she was still alive.’

  Cate looked over at Gerry, who was talking to Dan without looking at him; his eyes were fixed on the ground. He wore only a thin shirt and now he wrapped his arms around himself. Cate realised where the coat had come from that was covering the girl.

  ‘How did you ascertain that she was alive? Was she conscious – did she say anything?’

  Sandra grimaced. ‘She didn’t look like she was dead, that’s all. Gerry tried her wrist, and he thought he felt a pulse, only she didn’t seem to be breathing. I – he wasn’t sure.’ Her voice broke.

  ‘So he touched her hands. Did he move—?’

  ‘He tried to do the kiss o’ life, love,’ Sandra broke in, ‘but after that he tried her wrist again and he didn’t feel a pulse at all.’ She looked at her husband, a wild look in her eyes.

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing, love. We called an ambulance. It was me did that. Only it came and went, and that one’ – she pointed towards the motte – ‘he said she were dead after all, that it wasn’t any use. Gerry didn’t think so, though. She had a
pulse. He thought she had a pulse. That’s what he said.’ She shuddered. ‘I couldn’t have touched her, not me, but he did, my Gerry. So brave, he was. An’ he left her his coat.’ She met Cate’s eye. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll want it back, now. And it wasn’t any use anyhow, was it?’

  No, thought Cate, it wasn’t any use. They were too late, always too late. Maybe if someone had seen the girl earlier – she remembered the abandoned form lying on the ground, her pale dress, its delicate material too diaphanous to protect anyone against the dark hillside on this cold night.

  *

  When the witnesses had left, Cate found Dan again. He was still at the edge of the site, making sure no one unauthorised crossed the line. ‘Your friend gone?’ he asked.

  Cate shook her head. ‘Alice is still going over the scene with Heath.’

  ‘Ah – is she? Which one?’

  ‘Which what?’

  He pointed ahead of them and a little to the right, upwards to where the other light still shone. Cate had put it out of her mind; she had been too preoccupied, though now she thought of it, she’d heard footsteps up there too, hadn’t she? The hard echoing of footsteps on a wooden platform, way above the moat.

  ‘They found something else up there. I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Another victim?’

  He shook his head.

  Cate took a deep breath. ‘All right. I won’t be long.’

  She felt Dan’s eyes on her back, but he didn’t say anything as she headed into the dark once more. Heath hadn’t ordered her away from the scene, had he, not specifically? He’d told her to look after the witnesses and she’d done that; she had listened to the woman’s story and taken her details. Now she was simply seeing what else she could do.

  Once she’d passed the light coming from the first scene, it was easier to see the second. Cate felt exposed as she crossed the ditch via the wooden bridge, her footsteps rapping loud on its surface. She caught a brief glimpse of light and shadows in the moat below, and then she turned away and faced the steps that would take her up the side of the motte. They were steep, looming above her in the dark. At the top were more lights, and voices; she couldn’t see their source from here, or make out the words.

  The sound of her footsteps announced her approach long before she reached the summit.

  The platform was wide and flat and cold and larger than she remembered. A sharp breeze swept over the top, bringing with it a strange taint, and for a moment she thought not of death but of a childhood memory: the van that used to come round the houses when she was young, selling its wares to all the mothers along the street. Then the thought was gone.

  A huddle of SOCOs were grouped around something on the floor. One of them was kneeling on the wooden panels as they bent over a small object that glittered in their lights. It was gold, bright gold; Cate stepped forward and saw it was a dish, and she breathed in and caught a mouthful of that stench, an acrid tang that caught the back of her throat. There was something inside it that she couldn’t make out. A part of a body, maybe? She could see only that it was dark, some stinking, viscous substance with small objects floating in it. That was all; there was nothing else to show who the girl had been or who she was supposed to be, what story she had become.

  She looked out across the landscape, the roads mapped out by orange pinprick lights, houses by their yellow windows, the fields nothing but darkness. She could see for miles and it struck her that anyone up here would be exposed too; anyone could be out there now, looking up at them. Even the killer might be there, watching. She shivered before taking her leave of the SOCOs and letting them get on with their work; the girl and the things left with her passing on to others, her story becoming part of someone else’s, at least for a time.

  *

  Dan was still there when Cate returned, but Alice had not come back. She squinted across the scene and thought she caught sight of her contact with a taller figure, Heath, emerging from the moat and heading for the bridge. She might have met them there if she’d been a little longer; now she wasn’t sure if that would have been a good thing. She listened for their footsteps on the wooden stair, but wasn’t sure if she could make them out.

  She frowned. If Alice and Heath were looking at the same thing she’d seen, would they view it the same way? It was like Alice had said, everything was a variant, different things noticed or interpreted differently. Why on earth had the dish been placed there, and why hadn’t it been with the girl?

  What came into her mind though was not a golden bowl but an image on a page, an illustration from a storybook she’d had when she was young. On it was a beautiful girl with golden hair, and she was clutching a rose to her breast. It was ‘Beauty and the Beast’, wasn’t it? There had been a merchant, and his daughter – the youngest, it was always the youngest – had asked him to bring back a rose from his travels, just a single rose, while her sisters demanded rich dresses and jewels. Unfortunately for the merchant, when he saw such a flower it had been in the Beast’s garden, and plucking it had landed him in deeper trouble than her sisters’ demands ever had.

  This girl had a rose, and its thorns, wrapped around her body.

  She tried to remember the rest of the story: Beauty had gone to live with the monster, had feasted in his splendid castle. Was that feast served in golden bowls? Possibly – probably. But then why the stinking mess left in the bowl here, tonight? Was the killer saying the feasting had turned foul? Why?

  She shifted her feet, impatient for them to return. Why had Heath kept Alice with him and not her? She wished she could hear what they were saying. Perhaps he was angry that she had brought her contact here – and she could understand that. He’d obviously recognised the need for Alice’s input, but that didn’t change matters: he’d told Cate to watch her. Perhaps now he wanted to observe Alice’s behaviour without her being there to interfere, to spoil it somehow. She frowned and wrapped her jacket around herself more tightly. Whatever the reason, it felt like Heath didn’t entirely trust either of them. And why should he? He hadn’t wanted Alice at any more crime scenes, and she had known that, and yet she had brought her along without so much as checking with him first.

  She looked up to see two shapes heading towards her: Alice and Heath, almost as if they’d materialised from the dark.

  Heath didn’t acknowledge Cate’s presence; instead he said, low and quiet, to Alice, ‘Thank you, Ms Hyland.’ He held out his hand and she shook it. Then he walked back the way he’d come.

  Cate found herself reluctant to speak.

  ‘It’s another classic one,’ said Alice. Her voice was sombre but calm.

  ‘Beauty and the Beast?’

  ‘No,’ Alice sounded surprised, ‘not that. It’s “Sleeping Beauty”. It’s obvious really, when you know the story. She’s surrounded by thorns – and the cap, the dish; she’s even got a rose. In some variants that was her name, Briar Rose.’

  This girl had a name, Cate thought. They all had names. She pushed the thought away. When the police knew her name, they could call her something else; until then, Briar Rose would be the way they referred to her, like Snow White and Little Red, their lives reduced to nothing but characters. It wasn’t Alice’s fault.

  ‘He wants a full briefing in the morning,’ Alice continued. ‘I’m to come down to the station. I’ll cancel my morning lecture.’

  Cate swallowed down her questions and her pride. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thank you, we appreciate that. I’ll get you home now and pick you up early tomorrow.’

  Alice stared at the castle for a long moment, lost in her own thoughts, then she caught her breath and turned to Cate. ‘All right.’ Her voice was faint, as if exhaustion had caught up with her at last. ‘Actually, no – there’s no need to fetch me. I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘Oh? You sure?’

  ‘It’ll be easier for me to drive. I can head straight into Leeds afterwards, maybe make my late-morning tutorials.’

  Cate stared at her. ‘But you don�
��t have a car.’ Her tone was half surprised, half accusing, and she moderated it. ‘Do you?’

  Alice frowned, then smiled as if she were humouring a child. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘The train’s usually easier, but – I don’t live in the nineteenth century, you know, much as I might give that impression. I just don’t park it at the house; it looks messy, and the road’s pretty narrow. People complain.’

  Cate drew a deep breath. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ Why should it be so surprising that Alice should have a car? It wasn’t exactly unusual. Still, she couldn’t put it out of her mind, though she realised it had simply never occurred to her. Did she think Alice had sprung out of her fairy tales – that she didn’t really live in the real world? Of course she had a car, and it didn’t matter anyway. Yes, it was likely these girls had all been lured into someone’s vehicle, but millions of people had vehicles; the idea was ridiculous. If it wasn’t for Cate Alice would be at home now, oblivious to events at the castle or in the wood or anywhere else. She’d never have been anywhere near this case if Cate hadn’t dragged her into it, changed her from someone who turned white at a crime-scene photograph to someone who leaned over a dead body without blinking.

  And she’d kept her off the list of visitors to the lake.

  Watch her, Heath had said. Was that what he had been doing tonight, watching her? Was he watching Cate, too?

  But Alice was turning, taking her arm. ‘We should go,’ she said, gesturing towards the car park. ‘I don’t think they need us any more, do you?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When Cate arrived at the station Alice was already sitting in Heath’s office, cradling a mug in her hands and breathing in the steam. Heath saw Cate in the doorway and gestured towards another chair. It wasn’t until after she’d sat down that she realised she’d been seated with Alice, as if she were just another outsider, rather than with her senior officer.