Cut to the Bone

by Alex Caan

  No messages accompanied the extracts. No explanation. Just random poems of hatred, sent to Ruby via email.

  Kate closed her eyes, imagined Ruby, in her bedroom, reading these. What must she have felt? Was she trapped, unsure, caught between letting Dan rant and just ignoring him, and reporting him? Had she told anyone? She must have been terrified, as the man she loved turned.

  It happened to women all the time. Every day. Kate knew. She had been there, seen it happen.

  Little girls growing up thinking of heroes, knights, men who would make them the centre of their universe and love them. So they let them do it, let them in. Only to find the doors locked, and the monster was in the bedroom, not the basement.

  Other messages about James. Saying Dan would like to stick a hot poker into him, then watch his flesh melt and fall off his bones.

  The darkness, it angered her. Men thinking they could control women, scare them. Angrier still at women so beaten down, so insecure, they didn’t fight back. Until it was too late.

  Kate had been too late.

  For Ruby, and for herself.

  She shut the laptop, finished the cocoa. A movement outside. She looked up, through the glass. She thought it was him, staring back at her. She dropped her cup, stepped into the shattered pieces, her feet pinching on sharp ceramic edges and points.

  It was nothing. Not him. How could it be? Only her own reflection. She switched the light off, looked out into the garden, tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

  It was late, nearly 2 a.m. She was due at the hospital at ten. She messaged Harris, told him to meet her there.

  Kate looked again out of the kitchen window, just to make sure. She was being absurd. She left the cup where it was, her skin goosed, her heart beating. She was unsettled, and felt as though she wasn’t alone in the room. She went quickly to her bed, trying to find sleep under her heavy bed covers.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Zain read the text from Riley as it came through. Didn’t the woman ever sleep?

  He was calmer now, another pill dulling his instincts and paranoia.

  Two in one day; he hadn’t been there for a while. It had been a full-on day, though, maybe a trigger day. He still couldn’t work out why he had fallen so quickly. It was the old anxiety, the sense of purpose lost, a useless existence. What was he?

  Underlying it all was the remembered pain. Not just a memory. It was tangible, visible. He lifted his right foot into the air. It cast a shadow on the wall behind him. Zain stared at the hardened flesh where his toenails should have been.

  He turned onto his side, trying to relax. He needed to. He would have another busy day tomorrow; he couldn’t be tired. The pills only achieved so much. If he stared at his bedroom wall long enough, he would fall into sleep. It was always temporary, fitful, but it happened. And was enough to rest his body. His mind. His nightmares.

  He checked his phone again. Again that sense of betrayal. Riley was a good person. All the team were.

  So why do this? Why disappoint himself so easily? Because he had no choice.

  No, that was crap. Everyone had a choice, always. He had decided to be part of this, because he wanted what was on offer. It was self-preservation. And was what he was doing so bad?

  Zain thought he had a gut instinct for right and wrong. That was before his time with the shadow world of SO15. Dealing with spooks and undercover operations, when all the players were bathed in grey light. You started to blur the lines between right and wrong, it became about something else.

  Was he letting that experience cloud his judgement now?

  He imagined what Riley would say if she knew.

  In his dreams it was her. Pulling the nails from his feet. One by one. Hearing him scream, and laughing as he did.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Rob Pelt wore plastic boots over his shoes, his fingers sweating inside latex gloves. The flat was being checked, square metre by square metre, being marked off on a shared file drive. He held an iPad in one hand, watching entries appear as the CSIs made their discoveries.

  He was in Dan’s bedroom, with its views across to Canary Wharf. The sky was blue, clear. The warmth from the storage heater made it feel like a summer’s day. His jeans and V-neck jumper clung to him, making him uncomfortable.

  Boxes were piled up on one side of the room. The contents were mundane. Roller skates, school notebooks – Rob had laughed at that, at the idea of Dan being still young enough to be proud of achievements at school. CDs, DVDs. All empty cases, the discs kept in plastic index folios. Weights, 10 kg the heaviest, with spiral bars and locks to keep them in place.

  A row of trainers, shoes, Converse, lined up in a straight line against one wall. A cloud of foot funk suspended over them. The flat smelled of boys. Sweat, food, rubbish bags not emptied. He wondered if his own flat gave off the same stench.

  He felt a twinge of envy at the idea of being as young as Dan, having a flash pad in the centre of London. Money at an age when you could have some serious fun with it.

  At Dan’s age, Rob had been holding down shifts at McDonald’s and Gap, while trying to study chemistry at Birmingham. After that he had been fast-tracked in the police, and nearly a decade into his career, here he was, detective sergeant for SOE3, working for the PCC himself. Not bad for a boy from Manchester, born below the poverty line.

  Dan’s bed was against the wall under the windows. The mattress still in the manufacturer’s plastic.

  ‘Lazy git,’ said Rob to one of the CSIs. ‘He couldn’t even be bothered to tuck the bed sheets in.’

  They were spread over the plastic, a duvet rolled up in one corner. Pillows on the floor.

  ‘How could he sleep with all that going on?’ he said.

  The CSI ignored him, checking and tapping away. Another called him over, indicating Dan’s dresser drawers.

  Rob looked in, whistled. ‘And we have a winner,’ he said. ‘Freaky little perv.’

  The CSI put his hands in, pulling the contents out, individually. Rob held them up to the light coming in through the window, turning them around. He put one closer to his nose, taking in the faint smell of perfume and body odour.

  ‘They’ve been worn?’ Rob asked him.

  The faceless man nodded behind his mask.

  ‘Bag them,’ said Rob.

  ‘There are fifty-six pairs in all,’ said the CSI when he’d finished.

  ‘Either Dan’s got a fetish,’ said Rob, ‘or he’s been collecting trophies. My bet’s on him getting his fans to send them in. Like Tom Jones, only by post. I hope.’

  Rob sent a message to Riley, telling her what he’d found.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Kate met Zain in the hospital cafeteria, where he sat drinking a rare coffee. That was her addiction; normally, her second in command didn’t touch the stuff.

  ‘You look tired, Harris,’ she said.

  His skin looked washed-out, pale. His eyes were lined with ribbons of red, smudges under the lids.

  ‘I feel wrecked. You, on the other hand, look like you just came back from a mini-break.’

  Kate was feeling relaxed. Ryan did that to her. For her. She had weighed up the moral arguments long ago, decided she was a better functioning individual this way. A better daughter, a better police officer. She wasn’t trying to take Ryan from Chloe; neither of them wanted a shared life.

  ‘Where’s Brennan? Thought she’d be dragging Dan in. Like a cat with a dead bird. Or rat,’ said Zain.

  ‘She’s interviewing.’

  ‘Still? She must have interviewed half of London by now. She going to start on the two million psychos stalking Ruby?’

  ‘No, she’s interviewing, as in applicants. Hope signed off an expansion of staffing, so we’re getting a set of detective constables.’

  ‘How? Is someone shitting diamonds and giving them to him?’

  ‘There have been some acrimonious allegations and confrontations. About us using Met resources. So Hope applied for budg
et a couple of months ago, and the home secretary signed it off.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Zain.

  It was murky, not nice. She didn’t like opaque management; she wanted the sort of transparency Julie Trent gave her. She had managed to grab her DCS that morning. Trent claimed she was suffering from sciatica, and had been signed off work by her GP.

  ‘I know it’s tough, just play along. Do what you have to, and focus on the case. Promise me you won’t care about the politics?’ Trent had said.

  Kate never lied, so hadn’t responded to that. Instead, she’d said, ‘I’m going to ask you again. You might not be able to say now, but I’ll come and see you soon.’

  She wanted that conversation with her boss, to find out what had gone on between her and Hope, and why her boss had really ended up at home with a fake illness. Not once in four months had Trent mentioned issues with her back. Sciatica didn’t just happen, Kate was sure of it.

  ‘Shall we head up?’ she said.

  ‘You want a coffee first? I don’t think I can handle Dan Grant without being pumped full of something.’

  ‘No, I had some before I left home.’

  Zain followed her out of the cafeteria with his coffee, its aroma then filling the lift as the doors closed. He looked her over from where he stood in one corner; she felt his eyes trailing over her. The heels, the legs in sheer tights, the maroon dress falling to above her knees. She had her jacket hanging over her wrist, her arms bare in the sleeveless outfit. The shape of her body on display.

  She turned her face and Zain was caught out in his appraisal. Kate saw his eyes on her calf muscles. He looked up at her. Unembarrassed. His mouth twisted into a half smile. She was conscious of his judgement of her body. She hadn’t been to her mixed martial arts or Pilates for a couple of months now. She would have to go back to classes, as soon as she got a break.

  Kate gave Zain a direct stare, putting her jacket on and shaking her hair out over the back. As the lift doors opened, she walked two paces in front of him, her shoes clacking on the hard floor of the hospital.

  Jerk, she thought.

  Dan was sitting up in bed, wrapped in a blue dressing gown.

  ‘You have to wait,’ he said to them.

  ‘Why? So your doctor can save you again?’ said Zain. He pulled up a chair, leaning back into it, then put his feet up on Dan’s bed.

  Kate stood at the foot of the bed, looking through Dan’s vitals on a clipboard. The room smelled like the ward outside. Old food and decay, with an overriding hint of bleach and alcohol.

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’ said Zain.

  ‘I’m not speaking to you without my brief,’ said Dan.

  Zain rubbed his eyes, slurping his coffee.

  Swallowing his irritation, Kate thought. ‘You are, of course, entitled to have legal representation, now that you are in our custody,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, silly me, I forgot,’ said Zain. ‘So where is this lowlife?’

  Dan looked to Kate; he was afraid, shifting his body subtly away from Zain. She had seen him do the same back at his flat, when they had first met him.

  Dan looked younger than she knew he was; his widened eyes looked infantile. Her instinct was to reach out to him, comfort him, save him from boorish Harris. Until she remembered the texts, the emails, the stories of dismemberment, the collected underwear.

  ‘What you got on under that dressing gown?’ said Zain.

  Dan didn’t look at him, pulled it tighter, bent his legs under the blanket, pulled them close to his chest.

  ‘How long do we have to wait?’ said Kate.

  ‘He said he’d be here for ten.’

  There was a knock on the door. Dan’s legal representative came in. He was dressed in a tailored suit, had a fake tan and very square white teeth. He held out a hand to Kate.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Zain.

  ‘Nice to see you again, too, Detective Harris.’

  Zain didn’t hide his feelings as Karl Rourke took a seat at Dan’s bedside.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Michelle Cable looked at the box on her desk, read the note again.

  ‘Sorry. Z. xx.’

  How did he manage it? He must have picked it up as soon as the store opened, dropped it off, then headed to the hospital to meet Riley. That took effort, sincerity. She sighed, unsure now of her own emotions.

  She had spent the night unloading to her husband. She had gone home to find her children asleep, and she had felt something inside her tear apart. She hadn’t seen them since breakfast, wouldn’t speak to them until the morning now. She had lost twenty-four hours of their lives.

  Somehow she made that Harris’s fault. She should have left early, on time. Even when there was a case, she did that. Riley understood; they all did. She often logged on from home, after the kids were asleep, once Aiden was vegging in front of the TV or playing a computer game.

  Only last night she had stayed in the office, because he, Harris, had made her feel inadequate. Because he made her feel as though leaving on time would be some measure of failure.

  A night of complaining had followed – of advice, of imagining what she would say, how she would prove her worth. She had come into work armoured, shielded, armed. Only to find he had sued for peace already.

  The tension bottled up inside escaped through her sighs.

  She opened the box. She knew she should wait, share it, keep it for a special occasion. But having a shit day at work, getting stressed by office politics, and then coming out the other end, well, that was an occasion, wasn’t it?

  Michelle chewed on the toffee, letting it fill corners of her mouth, under her tongue, savouring its feel against her palate, before finally swallowing.

  Harris was still the enemy. But she decided to sheath her swords. For now.

  She went to work instead, looking through Dan’s hard drives. They had been dropped off by Forensics earlier, under Rob Pelt’s instructions. She marvelled at how it had become the norm to have multiple hard drives. Made it twice as complicated to get results.

  Although Harris probably had some software that did it in a nanosecond.

  She put another piece of toffee into her mouth. It was like Pavlov’s dog, she thought. Eventually, she would think of Harris, and her mouth would taste toffee. Not yet, though.

  An hour later, Michelle was on the phone to Pelt, who was still at Dan’s flat.

  ‘Nice one,’ he said when she told him.

  ‘Can you have a look, see if you can find the paperwork?’

  ‘Do we need it?’ he said.

  ‘You know Riley; she’ll ask. I’ve only found references to it, not the exact location.’

  ‘I’ll try one of these boxes; it must be here amongst this junk. How did you find out?’

  ‘The good old-fashioned way. I checked his Facebook, Twitter, some of his YouTube videos and files on his computer.’

  ‘Who needs spooky stuff, right?’

  ‘Call me when you find it,’ she said.

  Michelle flexed her fingers, cracked her knuckles, then started looking again. There was a faint hope, just a glimmer, but she might just be on her way to finding where Ruby was.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Zain set up the digital camera to record, tilting it until he had the perfect angle. Karl Rourke sat by Dan. He had a tablet in his hands.

  ‘The new Surface,’ said Zain. ‘Expensive bit of kit. How does it run?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Rourke.

  ‘So how come you’re here, anyway? I thought he wasn’t your client anymore?’ said Zain.

  ‘Later,’ Kate said, interrupting them.

  She took a seat on the opposite side of the table to Rourke, with Zain next to her.

  They were in an interview room at Southwark police station, on Borough High Street. Zain had been reluctant to use them, said they were already complaining about the resources she had pulled from them.

  ‘They get paid fo
r anything they do for us,’ she had reminded him. ‘And we get priority. For the moment.’

  Dan was now dressed in jeans and a T-shirt of thin material. She could see the outlines of his ribs through it. He had asked for a wheelchair to transport him from his hospital room, and was limping when he walked. She didn’t know if he was exaggerating, trying to garner sympathy, or if he was still suffering from the aftereffects of his overdose.

  It all seemed suspicious to her. He had collapsed in the reception area of his building, where he would be seen and helped. Why not alone in his flat?

  ‘I was home all night. I was having a party, with my friends,’ Dan was insisting.

  ‘No you weren’t,’ said Kate. ‘CCTV showed you left your building at 5 p.m., and didn’t return until around 8 p.m. on the day Ruby disappeared. You left again at 9.30 p.m., and didn’t come back until just before 11 a.m. the morning after she disappeared.’

  ‘CCTV is lying. I was home.’

  ‘The security guards also confirmed what we saw on camera,’ she said.

  ‘Those illegal immigrants? Did you threaten them with deportation or something?’

  ‘Are you accusing us of corruption?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I saw the hacking trial. You’re all at it, getting backhanders. I should’ve done that.’

  ‘Are you offering to bribe a police officer?’ she said.

  ‘Go on, then, pretty boy, bribe me. See what happens,’ said Zain.

  Dan looked at Rourke, who was making notes with a digi-pen on his tablet. He seemed bored. Dan turned back to them, but avoided looking at Zain.

  ‘Can you name these friends you were with?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I was with him, with Karl. Tell them, I was with you.’

  Rourke was obviously startled at the sound of his name, taking a few seconds to rewind what Dan had said. He smiled apologetically. Shook his head.

  ‘Your lawyer can’t be your alibi, you dumb fuck,’ said Zain.