‘I’m Marcus now. They used to call me Chloe, when they thought I was a girl.’ He gave a little shrug of his shoulders, shielding his face as he spoke. With a feeling close to hysteria Annabelle recognised this as a hint of vulnerability. He wanted her to like him, to approve of him. She had imagined something from a horror movie – a psychopath, a monster – but here was someone like her, with their own insecurities.
‘I think Marcus suits you,’ Annabelle said quickly. Reaching for that moment of connection with both hands. ‘I think it’s the perfect name for you.’
‘Do you really?’ He dropped his eyes to the carpet as he spoke. Annabelle nodded enthusiastically and took the opportunity to look him up and down. He was wearing black boots, blue jeans, a green military-style jacket with the hood still half pulled up. He was a little under average height and slimly built. His hair was black, he had a round face and his skin was light brown.
‘Thank you.’ His hand hovered over his face as he cleared his throat. And for a moment the long hours Annabelle had spent alone staring at her useless phone seemed to belong only to a nightmare. Marcus seemed normal; surely her being here was a mistake? Someone would come to collect her soon, now they’d had a chance to talk?
‘You should probably eat something, but I guess you’ll need to use the bathroom first?’ Marcus said. Suddenly his air was that of an awkward hotel employee, first day on the job. It hadn’t occurred to her until that moment, but now Annabelle focused on it she realised her bladder was close to bursting. ‘There’s a toilet along the corridor, but the Doctor said it might be easier to use a bucket in here …’
‘I’d really rather use the toilet,’ Annabelle replied quickly, because the need to leave that room was desperate, even if just to go along the corridor. Even though she had no doubt the pain from her leg would be immense.
‘Well, that’s not a surprise.’ He gave a throaty laugh. ‘There’s a wheelchair we could use? You’d have to promise not to mention it though.’
Annabelle felt the pressure on her bladder grow. She nodded quickly. ‘Yes … I promise.’
Marcus disappeared through the door and came back moments later with a foldable wheelchair. He opened it out and Annabelle shunted herself to the edge of the bed. Trying her best to keep her leg very still and ignore the shots of pain. He flipped open the right leg rest and, with surprising strength for the size of his body, reached around her back and under her legs to lift her the few inches from the bed up onto the chair. Annabelle exhaled in discomfort as he then gently manoeuvred her injured leg onto the rest. She looked away as her eyes alighted on the bolt protruding through the skin of her ankle.
‘It was a very bad break,’ Marcus said, his eyes following hers. ‘The bolt and some screws are holding your leg together …’
She nodded, the thought of those pieces of metal under her skin turning her stomach. ‘I really need to go …’
‘Of course. Full steam ahead, I suppose.’ He gave a forced laugh, turned the wheelchair and pushed it out of the room.
The corridor outside was more grey concrete. Tunnel would have been a better description. It was wide and high enough for a truck and lit by a series of electric lights attached to the wall. Marcus turned to the left. The tunnel ran downhill for a long, long way into a shadowy distance. Smells of bleach and a dampness drifted in the air, shuttered by a heavy stillness. The wheelchair made a trundling noise over the tarmac floor, echoing back from the walls.
Annabelle stared down the tunnel in disbelief. Her moment of relief, her thought that that Marcus had seemed like a normal person, not a monster, evaporated. She remembered the hideous mask; in her euphoria over connecting with another human her mind had suppressed the memory of it.
The renewed panic brought a shake to her voice. ‘Is it far, Marcus?’
‘Not far. Just here. You must be bursting.’ After another hundred feet of the same grey featureless tunnel he stopped outside a white wooden door. He pushed her a little past, unbolted the door, then backed the chair inside. The room was dark.
‘Just a second.’ She stared out at the tunnel through the open door as Marcus’s footsteps echoed across the room. After thirty seconds the lights flicked on. ‘The cord snapped; you have to use the other switch,’ he explained. Annabelle nodded slowly and took in the large room. It felt more like a hotel bathroom from the 1970s than anything. Utterly incongruous after the tunnel Marcus had just wheeled her down. Covered in white tiles and with avocado-coloured bathroom fittings – sinks, urinals and several stalls.
Despite the remorseless pain from her leg and the waves of disorientation, the need to pee was overwhelming. She waited, dancing internally, as Marcus rolled her into one of the stalls. He set the brake on the wheelchair then lifted her torso carefully onto the toilet. ‘It’s probably better if your leg stays there,’ he said, pointing at the leg rest. ‘I’ll wait for you outside.’
Annabelle nodded, managed to hold on until she heard the door to the corridor bang shut then hurriedly pulled the nightdress up and peed into the bowl. The physical relief swamped all her senses for a moment. But only for a moment, because her eyes registered a different quality to the light. She lifted her head. Above her was a small skylight. Not much bigger than a letter box. But through the mottled slice of dirty glass she could see the distant but unmistakable brightness of daylight.
She sank forward, recognising her error immediately. Why hadn’t she brought the phone? She pushed her head into her hands. The battery would die soon. Here, close to the window, she might have been able to connect to the network.
‘Is everything OK?’ Marcus called with something like cheeriness in his voice. ‘We should get back. We really don’t want to be caught out in the corridor when the Doctor appears.’
CHAPTER 19
Eight hours later the memory of those empty eyes was still clawing at Monica’s brain as she and Crawford went down under the ground. Into Raigmore Hospital morgue to witness the autopsy. In those eight hours they’d confirmed a likely ID on the body. Theo Gall, dismissed by DNA evidence as their first body that morning, was now back in the frame. Victim number two of just whatever kind of murderer they were dealing with. Because when Monica and Crawford had sat in the Volvo comparing an image of the dead man’s face with the file photo of Theo Gall it was an obvious match. Alive, he had had greying hair, a wide, opportunistic smile on his narrow face. She turned to the picture of the body. The same narrow face, the same high hairline. She was almost certain it was him. She’d recalled Gall’s long criminal record. Any experienced police officer would have put money on him coming to an unsavoury end. Not like this though, this was something different.
‘What is this then? A serial murderer?’ Crawford had asked, his voice low. Did he secretly hope that it was? A monster to pit himself against. Wasn’t that what all men wanted on some level? Whether they knew it or not. Maybe what she secretly needed herself – an external horror to take the focus away from the horrors in her mind? Monica had shaken her head in response though, because a serial killer didn’t fit for her, not in the sense that Crawford meant it – someone who killed for a personal, pathological reason, out of sexual sadism. Despite the obvious brutality of the murders, she didn’t see a sexual element to these crimes.
Dr Dolohov’s footsteps on the tiled floor broke Monica’s chain of thought, and she looked up. He was pointing a knife at the remnants of the corpse, now lying on the slab between them.
‘This one looks a real treat, Detective,’ the doctor said, running a hand over his bald head. ‘Two now, isn’t it, Christian?’ he shouted over his shoulder to his assistant at the back of the room. ‘Keeping our mortgages paid.’ Neither Monica nor the assistant replied, and Dolohov shook his head sadly. ‘Sometimes it’s better to laugh at this world,’ he continued, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves and reaching for his mask and hat. ‘Even in strange times,’ he added theatrically. His assistant finally came to stand beside him, holding a recording device. Dolo
hov picked up the knife. Tapped it three times on the metal slab, the noise ringing round the morgue. A sounding bell of this dark ritual.
‘I make the initial incision,’ he said softly into the microphone. He laid the gloved fingers of his left hand on the chest, and with the knife in his right hand he began to apply pressure.
Monica winced but didn’t look away as she watched him make the Y-cut from armpits to sternum, sternum to belly, slowly opening the body for inspection. All the time as he peeled the flesh back, reached for the saw to open the chest cavity, her thought at the riverbank niggled at her. The idea that the body had been purposely left there for them to find.
After half an hour of cutting and inspection Dolohov finally gestured at the organs inside the opened ribcage. ‘The lungs have both collapsed, been torn open, the rear ribs broken. Looks to be a blunt force trauma. It’s possible he went over a waterfall or hit a rock in the river—’
‘Are you certain he was in the water? That he drowned?’ Monica cut in, sensing that Dolohov would prolong his explanation if she didn’t force him to the point. It had been a long day, and she knew Theo Gall’s brother was already on his way to the hospital to formally identify the body. Lucy’s bedtime was also approaching, the second in just a few days that she seemed destined to miss.
The doctor looked up at her. ‘I don’t suppose I can say with certainty. The lungs are ripped, there’s nothing in his windpipe to indicate he inhaled any water. No leaves or other debris.’
‘What was the cause of death?’ Monica asked, pushing thoughts of Lucy away and thinking again of the location where the body was discovered. The bridge, the dark pool and the power station.
‘Well, it wasn’t blood loss.’ He nodded at the amputations in turn – two arms and one leg. ‘His wounds were probably closed by tourniquet during the amputations, then cauterised with a blowtorch.’ He nodded to the preliminary forensic report this time, lying on a table alongside his row of surgical implements. ‘Whoever did this would have needed a degree of medical knowledge to stem the blood loss and prevent him from developing sepsis. Clearly someone wanted to keep our man alive to enjoy his suffering. And oh, he would have suffered. There’s been some clotting in the lungs. He was still alive when they were smashed. Ultimately he was asphyxiated. I can’t say for certain if that was a result of him being injured in the water and drowning or if he received the blunt force injuries in some other way and was then in the water for some time post-mortem.’
Monica nodded, trying hard to repress an unsavoury flash of excitement. The mixture of horror and intense focus that being this close to a monster’s work could elicit after her time away. Instead she turned her mind to understanding and storing the information Dolohov had relayed. And answering the obvious question: why might someone commit these crimes then stage the dump sites to look like the clearly murdered bodies had ended up there unintentionally?
CHAPTER 20
Annabelle stared down at the tray of food that Marcus had placed on her lap. She pushed herself further up on the bed, feeling the pain in her leg again. Though the agony was changing slowly to an ache. Deep and insistent as the snapped bones began the slow job of knitting together again. The matching ever-present thrum of anxiety that had settled in her stomach since she’d first woken in this place.
She swallowed and glanced up at the ceiling then down at the food again. Four rashers of bacon, the strip of fat still white and rubbery-looking. Beside them a row of sausages, the horrible thick kind like a fat man’s fingers. Fried bread, mushrooms, beans – almost a tin of them. The plate covered in a sheen of grease. What her dad would have called a man’s portion, and for a second she pictured his face, years ago at a restaurant table somewhere. His neat hair and suit, the smile of rapt attention he gave the person serving them. As if this stranger were the most important person in his life.
‘You should eat. You should eat a lot,’ Marcus said. ‘The Doctor told me that your leg will heal faster if you give your body a lot of energy.’
Annabelle turned to look at him, took in his dark eyes and thick eyelashes. Eating was the last thing she felt like doing, but the memory of that metal mask was fresh. He seemed eager to please her now, but not so long ago he’d also threatened to strap that thing on her.
‘Could I have a drink first?’ Refusing his enthusiastic request really didn’t feel like a good idea.
‘Oh. I forgot the tea, didn’t I?’ He sounded irritated, but stood up and glanced around then realised he’d left the teapot over on the chair by the door. Annabelle watched as he splashed some into a mug then set it beside her plate on the tray. It was milky orange. She took a mouthful. Despite everything, the hot, sweet drink was comforting. It even seemed to waken her stomach.
Slowly she started with a piece of bacon, then some of the beans. Marcus watched her intently from the corner of the room. She managed another piece of bacon before the nausea rose up from her belly. She dropped the knife and fork with a clatter on the tray and held her hand over her mouth.
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Shhhh …’ Marcus came over and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched, expecting some kind of sexual suggestion in his touch, but he kept his hand high on her back. Despite her nausea, the hovering fear of sexual violence eased down a notch. She caught the smell from his green army jacket: the outdoors with a hint of something like petrol. ‘You’ll feel better in a second.’
After a minute he moved his hand from her back and reached into his pocket. He produced a locking knife and pulled it open, laying it in the palm of his hand. SCOTT was engraved on the dark wood of the handle. She watched, transfixed by what he might do with it. The exhausting roller coaster of adrenaline threatened to start up once more.
‘Is Scott your second name?’
Marcus shook his head slowly, his eyes intent on the plate. ‘No. It’s Slate. Scott’s a friend. He’s visiting – he let me borrow this.’ He spoke quietly, almost as if in a trance. Then he picked up her fork and cut into the meat with the knife. The index finger on his right hand was missing its tip. There was just a smooth piece of flesh where the nail should have been. He held the fork up for her to eat. She stared at the piece of bacon, the grease on it. Inanely she tried to remember the last time someone had fed her, probably not since she was a baby. As she took the first mouthful the thought carried her mind back to her childhood bedroom with the shagpile carpet. There were things about that house that had been strange; it now seemed like a low-key version of the terrifying strangeness of this place. She’d spent her young life running away from the way that house made her feel only to run directly to this place instead.
CHAPTER 21
Monica watched as the man gazed down at the face of the corpse; the rest of the remains were concealed by a black body bag.
‘That’s him,’ he said finally, both hands still pushed into the pockets of his grey coat. As if they had met casually in the street and he was commenting on something distasteful but of little consequence. ‘That’s my big brother.’ He shook his head then looked up at Monica, meeting her gaze for the first time. ‘If he’d turned up like this thirty years ago it would have saved everyone …’ His voice died in his throat, another little death in the morgue.
Monica nodded to the nurse, feeling a moment of discomfort at her earlier excitement; meeting a victim’s family was enough to temper any of the job’s glamour. The nurse zipped the bag back over the body’s face. Over Theo Gall’s face, she corrected herself. At least this victim now had a definitive ID.
‘Hell of a thing to say about your own flesh and blood. To wish a member of your own family …’ Mark Gall’s voice died again. And the voice in Monica’s head spoke up in its place: You’re not alone there. You’re not the only one. The thought actually shocked her. Had she really wished her own father dead? Monica tried to ignore the question and looked hard at Mark Gall’s furrowed brow – she thought he might actually cry. Instead he dug his hands deeper into
his coat pockets and dropped his head forward in a gesture of resigned misery.
‘You had a difficult relationship with your brother?’ Monica asked. They were sitting at a shadowy table in the Raigmore Motel bar just across the road from the hospital. It was 8 p.m., and the hospital cafe had long since stopped serving. Besides, Mark Gall had insisted that if they wanted any further information about his brother they would only get it once he’d had a drink. Preferably more than one drink. Monica hadn’t exactly felt like spending the evening in a police interview room herself.
He took a swallow of his vodka and Coke. Looked across at Crawford then Monica. Something flickered in his eyes, and for a second she thought it was recognition. Maybe he knew her from somewhere. Knew something about her, or thought he did. Instead he said, ‘Anyone ever tell you that you’re a funny-looking pair?’
Monica didn’t respond. But irritation bubbled in her stomach at the little pang of relief she always felt when a potential spectre from her past failed to materialise.
‘Sorry,’ Gall said after a moment when neither Monica nor Crawford replied. ‘That’s not the kind of thing to say. It’s the first proper drink I’ve had this year.’ He finished the drink and set it down beside its companion, an oily double shot of vodka at the bottom of a long glass. He splashed a little Coke from a can over it, enough to make it palatable.
‘You didn’t seem surprised when you saw it was your brother?’ Monica watched as he took a sip of the second drink. Glad to be the one asking the questions again. As a rule things always seemed to run better for her that way. ‘When you saw it was Theo.’
‘That boy’ll die with his boots on. That’s what my grandfather used to say about my brother,’ Gall said. He looked up at Monica again from his position hunched over the table. She took in his red face with the dry skin between his eyebrows, the heavy lines at the corners of his eyes. It was the face of a man who carried tension, suppressed rage even. At what? she wondered. At his brother? At the fates?
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