by Diane Saxon
She shouldn’t still be awake. Exhaustion tugged at her. She needed sleep so she could function the next day. She needed to stay aware so she could find Fliss.
Jenna climbed back under the covers and tucked them under her chin, a mild shudder trembled through her at the chill in the room.
Fliss hated the cold. She always moaned about the winter. She was a bit like that dog of hers. A sun worshipper. They could lie out and sunbathe all summer long, but when winter came, they’d be huddled in front of the fire, whining about how cold the house was and Fliss would ask to turn up the heating. When the rain set in and they went for walks, the pair of them were like an old couple, each huddled in their own jackets.
Jenna huffed out as she flipped over in bed again, creating a draught down her back as she did.
She rolled over again, as the vision of the baby filled her mind. Poor little soul. Had she belonged to their Jane Doe? Is that what had lured the woman there?
Her eyes popped open.
What the hell was a naked woman doing running through the woodland? The question had been asked time and again, but the answer was the baby.
Jenna sat up, drew her knees up tight to her chest.
Where had she come from? The naked woman. Had she buried the baby?
Jenna flung back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. As she placed her feet on the floor, she stared at them for a long moment before she jumped up once more, making her way in the dark to the bathroom. Her mind full of questions. Questions she couldn’t remember anyone else asking. Perhaps they had, but she’d never heard the answers, and the Ryan kid, he’d been detailed in relating all the events of the day to her.
She flicked on the light and grabbed the thick black jumper and jeans she’d left on the small chair at the end of her bed earlier. She glanced at her watch. There should be someone at the coroner’s office to answer her questions by the time she had driven there, she could stop on her way to grab a coffee and by then there was bound to be someone available.
Back in the bedroom, she scooped underwear out of her drawer, and flung on her clothes, bounding down the stairs while she yanked the jumper over her head.
It was cold. Damned cold, and despite her hurry, she swiped up her thick, winter coat and grabbed her handbag, slamming out of her front door while she dialled Adrian. His sleepy voice mumbled a greeting.
‘Adrian, I need you.’
Voice suddenly more coherent, he replied, ‘There’s an offer I don’t get every day.’
She flung open the passenger door of her car and stuffed her coat and bag on the seat before she made her way around the bonnet to climb into the driver’s side. The chill of the leather hit her system while her breath puffed out small white clouds. She shoved the key into the ignition as quickly as she could so she could start the car and get the heater going. It made one hell of a noise, but it worked well. Within minutes it would blast out hot air and fill the car with the warmth she desperately needed.
She chose to ignore his comment. ‘I’m on police business. I need to get to the coroner’s office, and you need to meet me there.’
‘They only work nine to five.’
She pulled the seat belt around her as the phone kicked into her car Bluetooth. ‘You’re kidding me. People don’t only die nine to five.’
‘When have you ever had to visit a coroner in all the time you’ve worked for the police?’
Inborn habit had her looking over her shoulder before she pulled out into the deserted street. ‘Normally between the hours of nine and five, but only because most of my admin time is during those hours.’
His annoying ‘Uh-huh,’ like he knew what he was talking about, had her flooring the accelerator and zipping out into the early morning traffic.
‘Are you kidding me?’
‘Yeah.’ She could hear his movements as she evidently had managed to get him out of bed. ‘They’re twenty-four hours, but admin staff are normally nine to five.’ He let out a quiet grunt. ‘What did you think of that had you up so early?’
‘The victim’s feet.’
‘Her feet?’
‘Yeah.’ She unwrangled her thoughts so they didn’t just blurt out the mess they’d formed in her head, but she needed to know. It was important. ‘The victim was naked and barefoot. I need to know how far she’d travelled barefoot, how badly damaged they were. Adrian.’ She glanced through the steady downpour of rain. ‘She’s local. She wasn’t dumped. She was escaping like you and Ryan said earlier. She was looking for her poor little baby. I need to know how bloodied her feet were.’ She rubbed her fingertips across her lips as she contemplated the situation. ‘The only reason you would run naked through the woods in the middle of winter is if you were out of your mind, crazy. Which we can’t rule out yet. Or you were so desperate to escape, you never waited to pull on clothes and shoes. You had a window of opportunity to go and you took it. Ran in sheer terror. So, the question is: how far did she run from a possible monster?’
His quiet sigh floated through the silence of the Bluetooth. ‘Jenna, you have to go back to DI Taylor and do this officially, you can’t take off on your own investigation. It’s one thing to study the incident board and check all the information over for accuracy and fact, but you can’t run amok just because you have a thought no one else has yet had.’
‘But we’re running out of time. The longer it takes for us to find Fliss, the more likely…’ A soft sob escaped her throat as she gripped the steering wheel until her fingers ached. She couldn’t bring herself to face the fact that there was a possibility Fliss was already dead. Except she’d hoped whoever had taken her wasn’t a murderer. That theory had just been blown wide apart. Defeated, she pulled the car into the feeder lane, circled a roundabout and headed for the station. ‘You’re right. I can’t compromise the case.’
‘What were you supposed to be working today?’
She shrugged. ‘Lates.’
He sighed. ‘I’ll meet you at Malinsgate in twenty minutes. It’s going to be a long day.’
Without his low, comforting tones, silence consumed the car as she focused on the road ahead. Unable to bear it, Jenna tapped the volume switch on her steering wheel until Radio Two blared out the sounds of the eighties while she drove to Malinsgate.
She flicked the switch to open her window, snatching in a shocked breath as the cold wind whipped into the car. A thin layer of ice covered the button on the access barrier to the car park as she punched it, tapping her fingers against her steering wheel while she waited for the barrier to raise up and then drove through.
When she slipped from the car and slammed the door behind her, the icy air froze the clouds of breath she puffed out.
She huddled tighter into her coat while she considered the naked woman who’d risked everything to escape someone. What would drive a person to run naked and barefoot through a forest in the pitch dark?
A monster.
A monster who’d killed her child.
A monster who possibly now held Jenna’s sister.
It wasn’t the outside temperature that froze the blood in her veins.
She stepped into the station and spotted Frank by the front counter.
‘Morning, Frank.’ She scanned the intel officer as he gave her a gritty-eyed blink. ‘Long night?’
‘Yeah, and Sonya called in sick. I’m covering until six.’ He patted his hand to his thinning, dark hair. ‘Then I’m going home to my wife and I’m going to sleep all day.’ His tight smile told of his tiredness, but his red-rimmed eyes met hers. ‘You’re early though. I didn’t think you were on until this afternoon.’
‘Yeah.’ She floated past the front counter and stepped through into the open stairwell. ‘Something came up.’ She took the stairs two at a time leaving Frank to follow at a more sedate pace, still bouncing with energy by the time she reached the top.
She flung open the door into the incident room, already abuzz with people. Surprised to see DI Taylor there already, she stro
de over to where he stood in front of the board, while Frank slipped into the incident room behind her.
DI Taylor shook his head, the thick roll of muscle at the base of his neck flexed under his short grey hair and bulged out over the top of his brilliant white shirt. An officer approaching retirement, he still bulled his boots until they reflected their surroundings. If his collar was a little tight, it was because he refused to order brand new shirts when his wife kept his stock of them perfectly starched and ironed and he could eke them out until he retired, saving the force a small fortune.
‘You’re early. How are you holding up?’ Voice gruff, he barely spared her a glance.
She didn’t expect a display of sympathy from the man, but she knew she had it as he took his perfectly pressed handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew like a trumpet into it.
‘I’m fine. I had a thought.’
He gave one last swipe of his nose, tucked his handkerchief into his pocket, and then grazed his astute stare over her. ‘And what might that be?’
‘The victim’s feet.’
He nodded as though he understood and despite her respect for him, irritation unfurled at the time he took to reply, and she found herself elaborating before he prompted her to.
‘She can’t have come far, naked and barefoot. Surely, sir. She’s got to be local.’
He nodded again and turned back to the board. ‘I have extra photographs to put up.’ He reached out, picked a pile of them off the windowsill and gave her the one off the top. ‘Here.’
She studied the dark russet slashes across the woman’s feet, the caked on mud which gave a clue as to her descent, and golden-brown leaves depicting where she lay for several hours.
Taylor stuck the first picture on the board before he handed her the second. After the coroner had cleansed her. The slashes on her feet still cut deep, dark purple several of them, leaving her flesh swollen and grey, but it didn’t look so bad that she could have come far.
‘Have we visited all the houses at the top of the Gorge?’
‘We have. There aren’t many. No one reported hearing anything. Nobody recognises the dead woman.’
‘The victim.’
‘I’m not sure she is a victim. If the coroner says her neck was snapped accidentally by her fall, then we’re hardly looking for a murderer.’
Jenna shot a sideways glance at DI Taylor. ‘Oh, we’re looking for a murderer, sir. There’s no doubt in my mind. Her snapped neck may be the cause of her death, but she’d been abused. She was naked and running from danger. And the baby was murdered.’
‘Quite possibly by her.’ He tapped the photo of her. ‘We have no idea how that baby died, we can’t assume a dead person’s motive. She may have killed her own child.’
‘Possibly. But it doesn’t sit right.’
He chewed his lower lip. ‘No. None of it does.’
They studied the board, side by side, going through each photo, each link.
Aware of the moment Adrian entered the room, Jenna stretched out her fingers and almost like magic, he placed a tall cappuccino in her hand.
‘Frank,’ Jenna glanced behind her, and Frank shouldered his way to the board. ‘Have you got any further with the ring?’
‘Ring?’ Frank blinked red, watery eyes at her. ‘What about the ring?’
Jenna knew she’d have more patience if her own sister wasn’t the one who was missing, but why did Frank have to choose now to be obtuse? ‘Yeah, you know we were going to look into the initials on the ring.’
Face blank, Frank shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I thought I was told not to progress anything further with the ring so we didn’t attract attention from the public.’
Jenna raised her hand to her forehead and then dropped it down by her side. It wasn’t Frank’s fault. She probably hadn’t been clear enough. ‘No. We said not to make it public about the ring. We still need the script to be checked out. We need those initials identifying for definite.’ She kept her speech slow and controlled as Frank frowned at her, his lips moving as though he wanted to say something.
Not so subtle, DI Taylor leaned in. ‘Would you get on to that, Frank? It’s urgent.’
Jenna turned from them and stepped close to study the woman’s face, bloated in death. ‘Who could she be? Why has no one reported her missing?’
‘Because someone doesn’t want us to know she’s missing.’ DI Taylor leaned in with her.
‘But surely someone has to know who she is? Isn’t she on an antenatal list somewhere?’
‘We’ve got someone on that now,’ DI Taylor confirmed. ‘It’s slow work.’
“Have we checked the local hospitals, mental institutions?’
DI Taylor focused on the photograph. ‘We have. Nothing.’
She tapped the picture. ‘Someone knows she’s missing, dammit. She can’t have got pregnant on her own. We just have to find out who the father is.’
‘The baby’s DNA will give us that, but we can only identify him if his details are held on the system.’
‘God,’ she growled. ‘We need to find him.’
DI Taylor rested an easy hand on her shoulder. ‘It may not lead us to your sister, Jenna.’
Her gaze swept up to the photograph of Fliss in the top right-hand corner of the board. ‘It may not.’ But in her heart, she knew the two were connected.
28
Tuesday 30 October, 05:30 hrs
Silence bore down in a thick, heavy blanket she welcomed. It meant he wasn’t back. He’d been gone forever again. Whatever he did, it kept him away from home for hours at a time. Not a normal office worker. At least twelve-hour shifts. He’d mentioned paramedics. It had to be something like that. Although it was difficult to tell with the amount she’d slept. By the desperate pangs from her protesting stomach, he had to be have been gone a long time.
Fliss stirred. She needed to move. How long had she been out this time? It was hard to keep track. There was no natural light, just the single bulb burning.
The man would be back, and she’d still be lying on the cot with soaking-wet incontinence pants and the humiliation of him changing them again. Touching her.
A shiver of revulsion raised goosebumps over her flesh. She screwed her eyes shut and waited for the nausea to pass. In the silence, the gentle lap of water soothed her until she floated on a sea of tranquillity.
Her eyes shot open. Water? Why the hell could she hear water?
She jerked herself up onto one elbow and peered around the room. The dark stench of rancid water infiltrated her battered nose and filled her mouth. Liquid filth oozed under the doorway to coat the floor in a mixture of river water, soil and sewage. The dank, ominous odour of it triggered her senses. Fliss stared at the previous tide mark. If it reached there, she’d drown. She needed to get out before the water rose further.
She flopped back onto the bed, gathered her energy while her mind raced. She pushed back the fog that had engulfed her brain and forced it to work.
He couldn’t have taken her far. They were by the River Severn. The flood defences were up on the north side of the river. They didn’t use them on the south side. It was impractical and the amount of properties affected probably not worth the outlay for extra defences.
The rising waters eddied in little whirlpools across the uneven surface of the floor. If she didn’t move before the waters rose higher, she doubted she’d drown, but she may just die of hypothermia.
She stared at the swirling currents. It was even possible she’d die of some disgusting disease brought through by the sewage seeping in.
Fliss glanced at the radiator. Electrocution wouldn’t be the ideal way to go either. She judged the height of the electric socket against the rate the water slid under the door. She had no idea how long it would take for the waters to rise two feet.
Gathering her resolve, she ground her teeth and rolled onto her side to stare at the metal trolley. She needed an instrument, something she could pick the lock with. Ed had shown her
how to do it. He’d bragged of how easy he found it to pick a lock and become a burglar as he often reminded her, just to spite her sister. He’d thought it hilarious that he had a skillset to boast of. One which could easily let him slide into the criminal world.
She’d never seen what an arse he was until her mum became ill, and all he wanted was to demand more of her attention and keep her away from her sister once her mum died. His jealousy had never been an issue, or so she thought, but once she’d seen it, every last thing Ed had done made her feel like a fool for ever believing she was in love with him. Self-centred and needy, he’d clung to her, so she’d believed she was indispensable, worshipped. When, in truth, all she’d been was a victim of his emotional abuse.
Well, she was no longer a victim. She refused to be.
She sat up, grasped the bedframe between her legs with her good hand and and bunny-hopped, dragging the bed inch-by-inch closer to the trolley until she could reach out and drag it closer. Sweat popped from her pores and she dropped her head to her knees, exhaustion giving her no other choice but to rest for a minute.
Determined, Fliss raised her head and stretched out her plastered arm to grasp a pair of scissors, the scream of pain tore through her elbow into her shoulder as she flexed her fingers closed around them. Quiet whimpers sneaked from her lips, but she ignored them as she transferred the scissors to her other hand.
She needed to move to take a better look. Fine though they were, the scissors were too large to insert into the tiny lock.
She raced her swirling gaze over the trolley again. A hypodermic needle. She reached out, forced her damaged fingers to clutch it and brought it close to the handcuffs. The shake in her fingers stopped the end of the needle from going into the lock as her vision hazed in and out of focus.
Frustrated, Fliss took a moment to decide the best course of action. She held onto the needle as she rolled off the cot onto the freezing, wet floor and braced her tethered arm against the bed to hold it still. The slosh of icy waters eddied around her knees. As the clouds chased across her mind, her vision centred on the metal rail she was cuffed to.