Perfect Girls: An absolutely gripping page-turning crime thriller

by Alison James

  It was an uncomfortable idea, but Rachel was starting to see the truth in it. There were undoubtedly similarities between them, however minimal. Harland was a bloodless killer who disliked violence and gore and focused on details to make her crimes clean and tidy. Rachel had had her style of policing described as ‘bloodless’. She didn’t bear grudges or become angry with the criminals she pursued, preferring not to involve her emotions where at all possible. Her romantic partners complained of her self-containment, her detachment, her emotional unavailability. And some of that control stemmed from having been being bullied; she had learned to disassociate herself at will.

  ‘I think we are alike in some ways, yes,’ Rachel agreed, unwilling to voice the obvious fact that her own mild misanthropy was a long way from Harland’s malignant narcissism.

  Harland disappeared and came back with a peace offering in the shape of a bowl of Jello. She watched Rachel eating it; her eyes never leaving her face. ‘Do you promise you didn’t make that stuff up about when you were at school?’

  ‘It’s God’s honest truth,’ said Rachel. ‘But come on Harland, you’re highly intelligent, and you’re observant. I think you know.’

  Harland nodded. ‘Yes. I believe you.’ Her voice was soft. ‘And I’m really, really glad you told me. You get it; I can see that now. And you’ve no idea how much that means.’

  She removed the empty Jello bowl and gave Rachel a paper towel to wipe her face. ‘If I were to let you go, what would you do?’

  Rachel stared. She was so floored by this possibility that she didn’t know how to answer.

  ‘What would you do?’ Harland persisted.

  ‘I suppose I’d go straight to the airport and get on the next flight back to London.’

  ‘Because I’m thinking that I should let you go. I think you deserve it.’

  ‘When?’ Rachel’s insides curdled with adrenaline. Was there a real possibility that she was going to get out of that room?

  ‘This evening, maybe. Yes, probably. I don’t know. I’ve got some stuff to do now, but I’ll think about.’

  With that, she disappeared.

  * * *

  It was almost dark by the time Harland came back, by which time Rachel’s whole body was one jangling nerve. She looked in dismay at the supper tray that was offered: cheese sandwiches and another yoghurt.

  ‘I thought you were going to let me go?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Harland sounded sad. ‘I thought about it, and I’ve decided I can’t. Not just now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rachel struggled to quell her rising panic. Stay calm, she told herself. Stay on her side.

  ‘I need to keep you here just a tiny bit longer, just while I work some things out.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  Harland picked up the tray and headed to the door.

  ‘Harland, what did you mean, what kind of things?’

  She turned back. ‘It’s like this: I can’t use a CasaMia account any more. They’ve figured out what I’ve been doing, so any compatible home listings are being suspended. I need to find another way of getting into people’s homes.’

  Rachel stared, unable to prevent her mouth dropping open. ‘But Harland, I thought…’

  That you’d stopped. She couldn’t say it, it sounded completely absurd now she tried to articulate it. I thought now we’d had a good heart to heart and bonded over our mutual victimhood that you’d stop being a sociopathic killer.

  ‘I’m working on an idea right now, but I just need to progress it a little further before you can go.’

  ‘What kind of idea? Can you tell me about it?’ Keep her engaged, Rachel told herself, despite being on the edge of losing control.

  ‘I’m going to offer health coaching.’ Harland couldn’t hide her delight at her own resourcefulness. ‘All those super-healthy, look-at-me girls can’t get enough of their juicing and their clean eating and their Instagrammed smoothie bowls. I’ll offer home tuition, and they’ll happily let me into their perfect lives.’

  ‘I see.’ Through a clenched jaw, Rachel pushed up the corners of her mouth into a rictus smile.

  ‘Wait, let me show you…’ Harland went out of the room and came back with her laptop. She pulled up a half-built web page. ‘Look, this is what I have so far.’

  Meet Your Health Angel!

  Our health and wellbeing are about so much more than diet. It’s all about a holistic approach to life, and being the best person we can be. Being our authentic selves!

  We all know what we should be doing, but so often we’re just not doing it. And it can be tough to do it alone. When you book a one-on-one consultation with Your Health Angel, we will discuss your goals and create a plan that works with your busy lifestyle.

  This could be anything from clean eating, to fitness, to managing stress. After your initial consultation you will get regular follow-up support online, for as long as you need it.

  Behind the text, there was a stock image of a fit-looking young woman doing yoga in front of a sunset, and another of a vibrantly green smoothie.

  Rachel was at a loss. This was horrific: an online conduit to deceiving and killing innocent women. If she endorsed it, Harland would know she was faking it. But she couldn’t risk flipping the switch marked ‘Psycho Harland’. She might end up having all four of her limbs tied up. Or worse.

  ‘The page looks impressive,’ she said truthfully. ‘I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Harland looked happy again. ‘Maybe we can talk it through together when I’ve worked on it a bit more. You can give me some ideas.’

  This is it, Rachel thought, when the door was closed and she was alone again. I can’t lie here waiting for someone to find me while she’s cooking up a new plan to prey on women she sees as the mean girls of this world. There’s only one option: I have to escape. Now.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  It had been dark for hours, and for a few minutes the silence was absolute. Then, at last, came the faint sound of snoring.

  Rachel had waited what seemed an interminable time for Harland to go to bed, listening to her tapping furiously on the keys of her computer. Her new ‘health coaching’ initiative was clearly keeping her engrossed. Eventually Rachel heard the noise of the toilet and basin being used and the tiny crack of light from under the door was eventually extinguished.

  Meanwhile, she had put her waiting time to good use. Bracing her feet as hard as she could against the mattress, she had fumbled under its edge with her fingertips and strained to pull out the piece of broken cup she had hidden there. The satin coverlet made her feet slip and slide, and it took her several attempts, but eventually she pressed two fingers around the china in a pincer movement and edged it out. It had been severed cleanly, but with a slight bevel to the crack that had left the edge as sharp as a knife. She tested it gingerly with the pad of a finger. She could tell that if she were to run her finger over it with a quick movement, it would slice through the skin and draw blood. Good. This meant it was sharp enough for her needs.

  Bracing her manacled right arm as firmly as she could, she rolled up onto her side and reached the piece of china to the thick plastic tie around her wrist. She attempted a sawing motion, but her porcelain blade just slid off the plastic. It didn’t help that she couldn’t really see what she was doing. Grunting and sweating with the effort, she tried again, but could not get enough downward purchase on the plastic binding with her makeshift tool. Instead, she was going to have to insert the sharp point of the china inside the loop of the cable tie and saw upwards, using a pulling rather than a downwards pushing movement. The risk was that if the china slipped she would sever the inside of her wrist, but it seemed a risk worth taking.

  Saw. Rest. Saw. Rest.

  Progress was painfully slow, but after around twenty minutes she could see that she was creating a furrow in the cable tie, shedding powdery plastic dust. The deeper into the plastic she penetrated, the quicker the progress,
and after the best part of an hour of sawing at it, a sharp tug made the plastic tie snap. Her arm was free.

  Rachel sat up and massaged her sore left shoulder and wrist. She did not dare get off the bed, not until she was sure Harland was asleep, but she did some silent leg exercises and some yoga stretches while she waited. She also weighed up how things would play out if it came to a physical confrontation. At five feet nine inches she was taller and heavier than Harland, and she had been trained in self-defence and combat techniques. And she was no stranger to running. On the other hand, she had been handcuffed motionless for nearly three days, which had left her weak and light-headed. The physical advantage she had before had probably been lost. All the more reason to proceed with infinite care, and get out of the building without being detected.

  Once the snoring had started, Rachel inched herself carefully off the bed. Her soiled jeans were still in the laundry basket where Harland had left them, but the rental car keys were no longer in the pocket. She put on the jeans, thrust the piece of broken china – her only weapon – into her back pocket and searched around the room for her trainers, groping blindly underneath the bed. They were nowhere to be found. With slow, careful steps she went into the walk-in closet and closed the door behind her, feeling along the wall for the light switch.

  The shoes belonging to glamorous size-6 Harland were all high-heeled and decorative, their un-scuffed soles confirming that they had never been worn outside this room. Rachel pictured Harland’s presence at the homes of her victims. She may have been in heels when she arrived, but she couldn’t possibly have disposed of their corpses, done a professional clean-up job and then fled wearing such impractical shoes. There had to be others, Rachel reasoned, but every second she spent searching put her at increased risk of discovery.

  Forcing her pounding heart to slow, she scanned the shelves in a logical order, left to right, top to bottom. Eventually she reached a plastic storage crate on a lower shelf, containing a few pairs of flat ballet pumps and some canvas sneakers. They were in a slightly smaller size than Rachel’s own, but they would have to do. She put on a pair of the sneakers and switched off the light before emerging from the closet. Bending over to lace up the shoes had left her dizzy, and her legs felt as wobbly as a newborn foal’s, but she could not afford to waste any more time. She had to get out of the apartment immediately.

  Out in the hallway, she paused and listened. The snoring had stopped, but there was no other sound. The front door was locked from the inside, but ever-organised Harland had left the keys on a hook on her hall stand. Breathing with such focused intent that she thought she would pass out, Rachel inserted the two keys in the locks, one after the other, and turned them. The second one made a heavy click. There was a faint movement from the bedroom. Rachel froze, but after a couple of seconds it stopped again. She eased the door open inch by inch, crept out into the communal hallway then pulled the door to behind her, afraid to close it completely unless the sound of the latch woke Harland.

  Then she lunged towards the stairwell and stumbled her way down flight after flight until she reached the ground floor.

  * * *

  Rachel’s rental car – a pale metallic-blue Mazda – was still in the parking lot where she left it, only now she had no key. She knew that it was nigh-on impossible to hotwire a modern car, but her bag, containing her trusty Swiss Army knife and her passport, was locked in the boot. She should have taken the knife with her: that had proved to be a costly oversight.

  Using the point of her all-purpose piece of broken china, she tried to flip open the boot catch. No dice. She made a split-second risk–reward assessment in her head, scooped up a rock from the landscaping around the parking lot, and smashed the rear window.

  The noise from the alarm was so deafening it was like a form of torture. Unable to endure it a second longer, and fearful of the attention it would attract, she reached into the boot, grabbed her bag and ran out of the parking lot, heading for the main road. Behind her, the car wailed indignantly.

  * * *

  The motel she had stayed in was only around a mile away. If she could reach it on foot as quickly as possible, the twenty-four-hour reception would be open and someone would help her to raise the alarm. She would be safe. But running was much more difficult than she had anticipated. The sort of speed she normally achieved – between ten and twelve kilometres an hour – was completely beyond her reach now that her legs were so weak. She staggered and swayed like a marathon runner with heat stroke, the too-small sneakers chafing her feet raw. After a few hundred yards she was forced to slow to a trot, then a walk.

  The occasional car flashed past her on the road, their headlights dipping then blazing. Then came one that wasn’t passing her. This car was slowing right down and crawling behind her, so close she could feel the heat from its engine on the back of her legs. She willed herself to look straight ahead, not to turn back. But she had to turn, and the light from the headlights illuminated the half-familiar number plate. She recognised her rented Mazda. And there was only one person who had the key.

  Harland stepped from the vehicle without cutting the engine. She held out what looked like a gun and pointed it directly at Rachel’s body. Not a gun, Rachel’s muddled brain told her, Harland wouldn’t use a gun. Too messy. Far too messy. And when the shattering pain surged through her body, felling her instantly, she knew she was right. It wasn’t a gun; it was a taser. Available cheaply on the internet; easy enough for someone of Harland’s resourcefulness to get their hands on.

  Like a predator with its kill, Harland was on her, yanking her hands behind her body and snapping plastic cable ties onto her wrists. More ties on her ankles, so that she was trussed like an animal, and a fabric gag in her mouth. Then, with a surprising show of strength, Harland dragged her towards the car and manhandled her onto the rear seat. Her bag was tossed into the foot well next to her and the engine put into gear. Rachel closed her eyes, terrified and tachycardic from the taser.

  ‘Wanna know where we’re going?’ Harland called over her shoulder as she drove. Rachel could not see her face, but could tell she was mightily pleased with herself. Rachel did not want to know, and did not ask. The car stopped after a few minutes, and when she was dragged from the car Rachel could see that they were back at the apartment block. But instead of going into the main entrance, Harland took her to a side door, and into what looked like a service elevator. The door clanged shut and it descended before bumping to a stop. They were in the basement.

  ‘My storage unit,’ Harland told her cheerily. ‘There aren’t enough for all the residents to have one; your name has to go on a waiting list.’ She removed a padlock from a large metal sliding door. The space inside had a concrete floor and was about five feet across and six feet deep. It contained just one thing: a large wire cage. It looked like the puppy crate Rachel’s sister had used for her Labrador when it was young.

  ‘Dog crate,’ Harland confirmed. ‘Largest one you can get. It’s supposed to take a hound up to one hundred twenty pounds. You’re probably a little heavier than that – one fifty maybe? – but it should do just fine.’

  Once she had manoeuvred Rachel into the cage, she removed the ankle ties and the gag, but left the handcuffs in place. Then she filled a plastic dog bowl with water and padlocked the cage shut.

  ‘There you go.’ Her voice was hard. ‘Nighty night.’

  The metal door of the unit was banged shut and the padlock clicked back into place with a rasping sound. Then all Rachel could hear was the sound of Harland’s shoes as she walked away.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  The dog crate was such a neat idea.

  It worked like a dream: poor little Rachel didn’t see it coming. And why the hell did she waste time trying to take the car, when she didn’t have the key? She’s supposed to be a top detective, but really, how dumb can you be? She left herself with only one option: to take off on foot. And I had the car, so it was not going to be hard to catch her. She shou
ld have knocked on a neighbour’s door, raised the alarm that way. Still, it’s too late for her now.

  She can stay in the dog crate for a little bit while I figure out what to do with her. I haven’t decided which option I’m going to go with yet. I could unlock the crate and let her go.

  I could take off and just leave her there.

  Or I could just get rid of her.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  There was no light in the storage unit, so Rachel couldn’t be sure how much of Monday had been and gone. Surely someone in London would have missed her by now? The searing pain from the taser barbs and the spasms in her limbs had subsided, but she felt like the living dead. The floor of the crate was hard chipboard and she could only lie down with her legs curled up tight to her chest. Having her arms restrained behind her back had set up a burning pain between her shoulder blades. Her thirst was so severe it made her shake.

  She shuffled onto her knees, bent her head down and lapped water from the plastic dog bowl. Then she collapsed onto her side again and gave way to sobs. Rachel was not a crier, but now she cried so hard her whole body ached. No point trying to work out an escape route: there was none. At least in Harland’s apartment there had been the possibility someone would find her, but not here. She was done for.

  After some time like this – it could have minutes or hours; she couldn’t tell – Harland unlocked the storage unit door.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she observed, ‘you are in a sorry state.’

  ‘How else would I be?’ Rachel croaked.

  ‘It’s your own fault you know. I was planning on letting you go. Eventually. You just needed to be patient a little longer.’

  ‘You have to let me go. Now.’ Rachel shouted the last word, although it came out as a strange rasping sound.