Purged

by Peter Laws

‘Well somebody found it and dragged it here. Unless, of course, that fox crawled out of the grave on its own.’

  She visibly shivered at the thought. And after one glance back at the woods, she said, ‘It is kind of spooky here. Isn’t it?’ Then she blinked her eyes in a snap, like a quick re-programme. ‘Anyway. Got to get these plans finished.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll be upstairs. I’ve got a call to make.’

  He headed up as the two girls passed him on their way down.

  ‘It’s still okay for us to make cookies, isn’t it?’ Lucy said.

  He nodded. ‘Just give me a shout when it’s bowl-licking time.’

  ‘Hosay, no way!’ Amelia said, then hurried down the stairs. Lucy followed, hastily correcting her phraseology. They vanished behind the click of the kitchen door and both girls became muffled sounds.

  He passed those two stuffed animals on the landing and for some reason he tipped his imaginary hat to them. ‘Morning, you little oiks.’ Then with his phone in hand he closed his bedroom door and sank into the white quilt of the creaking bed.

  Larry answered after the first ring. ‘Detective Inspector Forbes.’

  ‘Larry, hi. It’s Matt Hunter.’

  ‘Well, well, well …’ There was a ruffled sound of movement on the other end. ‘So how’s the old sabbatical thing going? Is it sunny? Is your book published yet?’

  ‘I think you’re supposed to finish writing it first, and yes, it’s sunny. Mostly.’

  ‘Ah, right. Well it’s pissing down here. Everything stinks of wet concrete.’

  ‘I’m very sad for you.’ Matt switched ears. ‘Look, I wanted to know how the Adakays were doing?’

  ‘Arima’s been psych assessed.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’s completely normal, apparently.’

  ‘They did actually meet her, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, and they said there were no red flags. She acted weird in the noodle bar because of shock. Which is fair enough, considering the husband-knife thing.’

  Matt shook his head into the phone. ‘How is Kwame?’

  ‘You shattered his kneecap when you kicked him.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘Yep. The guy’s in agony.’

  ‘I feel bad about that.’

  ‘Don’t. Nobody died. Kwame’s going to prison for a bit, their son’s being assessed by the Social. But all in all, it’s turned out okay. He’ll be back with his mum soon enough.’ There was a pause. A long silence on the phone. ‘You think that’s the wrong decision?’

  ‘Frankly?’ An image flicked up, of Arima in a kitchen eating salad with her trembling, wide-eyed son. Glaring at him while she sucked lettuce slowly through her lips. ‘That makes me feel edgy but then what do I know? I’m not a psychiatrist.’

  Larry sniffed. ‘So is that why you called?’

  ‘There’s something else. I’m helping out the police here. With a case.’

  Low laughter came from the other end of the phone. ‘So I hear. Do you find university life boring or something?’

  Matt ignored the comment. ‘They’ve got two, maybe three missing people.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard that too. Tell me the bits I don’t know.’

  Matt told him all of it. The missing women, the prowler last night, the emails, the zombie fox. Even the part about the Bridezilla with a baseball bat. Larry laughed hard at that. Eventually, Matt got round to his requests. ‘So can you free up some of your staff to do a bit of digging for me? I just need a few checks doing.’

  ‘I’m not sending them up, if that’s what you mean. I need them all down—’

  ‘They can do it all from the office. They never even have to leave London. Maybe get Worthington or Ribchester on it. They owe me a favour.’

  ‘Worthy owes everybody favours,’ Larry said. ‘I take it the officer in charge knows you’re doing this?’

  ‘Yeah, I called him. He figured you might be able to speed things along a bit. Plus he’s not really used to using Holmes 2.’

  Holmes 2 was a massive computer database which Larry’s team used a lot. It was filled with searchable records on murders, frauds and missing persons. Throwing a few names at it might cross-reference some interesting results.

  ‘Email me the details,’ Larry said. ‘And the search terms. I’ll get Worthy on it. Ribby’s mine, though. He’s busy helping me with a rapist.’

  ‘Tell Worthy I appreciate—’

  ‘Sorry, Matt, but I’ve got to go.’ Voices suddenly filled the background of Larry’s office, but Larry said one more thing before ringing off. ‘Finish the book, mate.’

  Click.

  Matt ran a hand through his hair and let himself crash back onto the bed, head plunging in the pillow. Then he lifted his phone and flicked it on, to write the email for Larry. At the same time he pulled out a folded piece of A4 paper from his back pocket and set it on his knee. He’d written down all the case details earlier and started to jab them into the phone with both thumbs. Tabitha Tansy Clarke, Isabel Dawson, Nicola Knox, Chris Kelly. And why not check out Billy Stephenson while they were at it?

  Then finally he typed in the Verecundus messages they’d found on Tabitha’s and Nicola’s phones. He didn’t need the notes for that because by now he knew them by heart.

  I’m at home with God now. Maybe someday you could believe and come too. Kiss Kiss, Verecundus.

  He clicked send and dropped the phone on the bed. He had to wiggle his thumbs to get some feeling back into them.

  There was a tiny knock on the bedroom door.

  He quickly gathered up the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Yes?’ He swung his legs off the bed as Lucy walked in. She was holding a big pink plastic bowl with a wooden spoon sticking out of it. ‘We saved you some of the sugary bits, if you still want them.’

  ‘Wow. Thanks.’

  She waited, holding onto the bowl.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  More silence. She was just looking around the room, at the ceiling, the carpet. Anywhere but him.

  ‘Lucy?’

  ‘Thanks for staying with us last night. For not chasing after him, whoever it was.’ She started to look into the bowl as she spoke. ‘Amelia was pretty scared. You being there and not running off. It helped.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  She hovered in the doorway. ‘You know I did think it was him, for a bit. Thought he might have hopped the prison wall and tracked us down.’

  He caught her eye and held it, his voice gentle. ‘He won’t get out for a very long time.’

  She nodded, but her smile was crooked.

  ‘Lucy, are you sure you’re alright? Is this stuff with your dad getting you—’

  She shook her head, and her eyes flickered. Like her brain was gearing up for something. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Is it the fox thing?’ he said. ‘We should probably talk about it. I’m sorry you had to see me killing—’

  ‘No,’ she raised her hand and quickly shook her head. ‘It was dying. You set it free.’

  Matt could hear Amelia downstairs, cackling loudly about something.

  Lucy waited for the laughing to stop, then softly said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘You can ask me anything.’

  ‘Well, I know you hate God and everything. But … I’m just confused. If a person hates God, does that mean God is going to hate them back? Like, is that how an eye for an eye works?’

  Matt frowned. ‘I don’t hate God.’

  ‘’Course you do. You dropped him. You ran away.’

  ‘I just stopped believing in him. I can’t hate something I don’t believe in.’

  She looked back down at her bowl, like there was something at the bottom of it, looking up. ‘I’ve hated God for a very long time.’

  Her words hung so heavy in the air that he found himself pausing for a long time before speaking. ‘I don’t blame you for that at all. You’ve been through a lot.’
/>   ‘But, the thing is. I’m pretty sure he hated me first.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘He must do. Otherwise he would have stopped …’ her voice trailed off. ‘You know. My dad, and everything.’

  They hadn’t talked like this in such a long time.

  All he really wanted to do, in that moment, was to slip off the bed, rush over and hug her. One of those proper dad hugs with one arm around the back, and another cradling her head into his chest. Chin in her hair. But it had been ages since they had done anything approaching that. He had no idea if it would be right to do it now. Lately with Lucy, he felt like a bomb disposal expert trying to pick the right wire to cut. Only it was always more complicated when you happened to love the bomb.

  ‘And now?’ he said. ‘Do you still think God hates you?’

  ‘I hope not … because … because I really don’t want to go down to hell. And I’d rather you didn’t either, to be honest.’ She turned the bowl a full 360 degrees in her hands, caught his eye and shrugged. ‘Anyway, here’s the goo.’ She handed the bowl to him quickly and then headed back down the stairs.

  He called after her but she either didn’t hear him or she ignored it. So he just sat in the room for a moment, stunned at her sudden vulnerability, wondering how hard Chris must have preached on hell and damnation at the service the other morning.

  He was getting very sick of this church, this place.

  He headed down to be with them, taking the bowl with him. Perhaps today they’d head up the road into Oxford. Catch an industrial-sized pizza and a film. Something funny and stupid and normal.

  It was just as he was leaning against the butcher’s block kitchen counter, licking the edge of the spoon, that the front door of the cottage suddenly hammered under four hard knocks. Lucy jumped and spilt some shards of white chocolate across the black-tiled kitchen floor.

  Amelia rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a Scooby Doofus.’

  Lucy looked at Matt, shoulders tense. ‘Who’s that?’

  Wren suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway, staring at the door.

  ‘It’s okay. It’ll be the police.’ Matt set the bowl down and headed for the door. ‘They’re just following up from last night.’

  Another four hard bangs rocked the door as he headed to answer it. Like that ticking clock of tension had suddenly demanded centre stage.

  ‘Alright,’ he called out. ‘Just a second.’

  He checked through the spyhole before opening it.

  It was Marion Fellowes, the mystery-loving special constable from the other day. Who helped him find his way from Tabitha’s farmhouse to the pile of torched paintings. When he opened the door, the first thing he spotted was a tiny sliver of fingernail resting on her bottom lip. She looked pale.

  ‘Hi, Marion.’ He stepped out and closed the door behind him. ‘So you’ve come to find a fox?’

  Her face crinkled with puzzlement, but it quickly turned gaunt again. ‘Morning, sir … I mean Professor.’

  ‘Matt’s fine.’

  ‘Okay … erm … Sergeant Miller wonders if you might be able to join him up at Cooper’s Force.’

  ‘When, now?’

  ‘Yes, right now.’

  ‘Why, what’s going on? What about the fox?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’ She shifted her stance. ‘We’ve found a body, sir. A woman.’

  A tingle, like tiny drops of ice, rippled down the back of his neck. ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s not Tabitha. Or Nicola, thank God.’

  ‘Isabel Dawson, then?’

  ‘We’re not sure.’

  He frowned at her. Miller had already dished out pictures of Isabel to the other officers. They knew what she looked like. ‘What do you mean you’re not sure? Doesn’t anyone recognise her face?’

  ‘That’s just it.’ The curls in her hair quivered in the breeze. ‘She doesn’t have one.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A policeman with long fingers lifted the plastic cordon tape. ‘Mind your step, it’s slippy down there.’

  Matt and Marion ducked under the tape and headed up to a slimy-looking metal gate, welded into the arch of the rock. It felt wet and cold as he pushed it. The old iron groaned and squealed, like a warning telling them to keep away. But they pushed through and stepped into darkness, down a few damp steps and along through the corridor cut from rock. Electric lights in shielded plastic buzzed along the side of the rough wall. Like a bomb shelter.

  The waterfall, unseen, echoed furiously.

  The ceiling pushed itself down in places, so they had to hunch over now and again to avoid slitting their scalps on the jagged rock above. Huge drops of water fell to the floor, making black puddles under their feet.

  Marion said, ‘Blood and hatred down here.’

  ‘What?’ he shouted over the gushing water, pointing at his ears. ‘I can’t hear you!’

  ‘I said I bloody hate it down here.’ She held the wall on each side so that she wouldn’t fall. When Matt felt his trainers squeak and slip, he did the same.

  Weird how this very same corridor had been filled with the laughter of his wife and kids just a few days ago when they came to view the falls from inside the rock. He’d pretended he was Bruce Wayne strolling through the Batcave as Amelia tried her best impression of the Joker.

  There wasn’t much giggling now.

  They turned the curve of the corridor and stepped into the arched room of rock that history, like it or not, had called the Devil’s Den. It was, to be fair, pretty magnificent. He could see the waterfall gushing down at the mouth of the cave, morning sunlight trying its best to push itself through. It cast the most unnatural natural light he’d ever seen.

  Ever since they’d found Tabitha’s torched paintings, Miller had brought officers in from other forces to help out. One of them, a policewoman, had Matt sign into a logbook. Then Marion handed him a white paper face mask. Matt slipped it over his head and breathed in the plastic smell. Insipid but infinitely preferable to dead flesh.

  He turned to Marion but she wasn’t following. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’d almost break my neck to get down there, but sadly this is as far as I’m allowed.’ She gazed over his shoulder trying to see the body but it was out of sight. She gave a disappointed little shrug. ‘Have fun.’ She headed back up to the corridor and the darkness swallowed her instantly.

  ‘Matt.’ Sergeant Miller’s barking voice echoed into the cave.

  There was a gap on either side of the waterfall, where the cave opened up to the outside. Miller’s voice was coming from the far left edge, well beyond the safety barriers. ‘Come on out. Use the ledge, it’s plenty wide.’

  He climbed over, hoping his shoes had enough grip, then made his way toward the light. When he got out there he found Miller standing half outside, half inside the cave. A shaft of sunlight cut his body in two. His hair was already slicked back from the spray from the falls, gradually soaking into his uniform. He made no attempt to step out of it, as if he didn’t even notice he was slowly getting drenched. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the body at his feet. His normally ruddy forehead was the colour of meat left in the heat too long and it looked filled with new lines.

  ‘Would you look at that,’ he said, shaking his head and holding his mask.

  The police had covered the almost naked woman in a transparent plastic tarpaulin, to keep the water out and the evidence in. The falls weren’t actually hitting it, but the spray spattered hard against it, like a tiny machine gun sound.

  Matt quickly pushed the mask against his face to seal a slight seam in it and crouched down to look. He’d seen his share of dead bodies, in all manner of bizarre and undignified positions. But as he stared at this one, his body was generously and instantly splashing about whatever acids were required to produce nausea.

  She’d fallen from the top of the falls. That much was obvious. And she was lying face down on her stomach in her underwear, white bra claspe
d tight on her spine. The faded label of her knickers stuck up and out, pressing against the wet skin. And though her body looked distorted under the wet plastic, it was still possible, unfortunately, to make out the details.

  It started with a long brown streak just under her buttocks that splashed upwards, thick through her knickers and into the small of her back, then carried on in a long coffee-coloured stretch up her spine, jutting off at an angle.

  She’d lost control of her bowels in the fall.

  Oddly enough, other than being a hideous final robber of dignity, the forensic guys would be very happy to see a decent streak like this (probably the only job in the world when that statement was true) because they’d probably work out what angle she fell at.

  It also said something even more important. That when she fell from the top she was fully capable of crapping herself in abject terror. Alive while she fell. It was strange, the language the body chooses to speak in, once the mouth can no longer do it.

  The rocks here were massively uneven and a cluster of what looked like stalagmites (-tites down, -mites up, he reminded himself) shot up to hip height all around them, like the surface of an alien planet.

  And there, exactly where she’d fallen, was a huge, thick stalagmite. The daddy. An unforgiving bastard of a rock around the size of a Land Rover tyre at its base, but honed to a screwdriver-sized point at the top, groomed by nature for billions of years, eroding itself into the perfect little spike. All, apparently, for this.

  She’d hit that stalagmite with her face.

  A forty-foot drop would have generated frightening levels of momentum for the human body. So when her head hit the spike it had sent her spine snapping right back like a hinge. It was the yoga move from hell.

  She’d obviously tried to look away in those final seconds as the ground hurtled toward her because her face (could you even call it that any more?) had hit the spike side on. The tip had entered her left cheek and pushed straight out the other, snapping the end of the stone with the force of it. With the skull shattered, most of her features had collapsed in on themselves. Flaps of skin hung like folds of bacon and the blood looked black under the plastic. He saw fragments of bone, lots of them, scattered on the wet rock. Identical, he thought, to the flakes of white chocolate he’d seen Lucy spill on the kitchen floor earlier.