Cut to the Bone

by Alex Caan

  She pictured Ruby with no awareness, brushing branches across her face, tripping over loose rocks, fallen bits of wood. To be filmed, to be led.

  ‘Dan must have used night-vision glasses,’ she said. ‘He knew where he was taking her. Her scent leads this way for a reason. There are no tyre tracks; he didn’t drive.’

  They walked on, Diva barking softly ahead of them. They caught up with her, eating treats from her handler’s palm, about a half hour later.

  ‘What happened?’ said Kate.

  ‘Take a look,’ said the handler.

  Kate walked forward, and saw why they had stopped.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  She was sitting in the passenger side of Zain’s car, the door open.

  ‘Any joy?’ she said, when Rob walked past her.

  ‘They’re bringing another dog, searches for cadavers. Tomorrow we can access one that searches under water. In case.’

  ‘Sounds like a circus act,’ said Kate.

  ‘The rest is going to be a manual job for now,’ Rob said.

  ‘We’ll stay and help,’ she told him. ‘Get DS Lowe to recommend a hotel in Winchester, then get Lia to book us in.’

  Diva had run until she reached a creek. She lost Ruby’s scent there. A rowboat was moored to the side. It reminded Kate of home, a boy she had loved. He used to take her sailing at night, the banks lit by fireflies. Had it been love? Probably teenage hormones confusing her feelings. She remembered the ache he used to cause in her body, just seeing him, knowing he was near.

  Ruby must have been put in that boat, and taken somewhere. Diva could track over water, but the stream was running. She had set off in one direction along the bank, but had then become unsure, headed the other way.

  ‘I’ll take her across, start on the other bank,’ said her handler.

  Diva had run along, trying to pick up the scent, until the creek hit a bank of trees that acted as a dam of sorts. The dog then became excited, picking up speed, and headed onwards. Until it reached a minor road.

  ‘She got into a car here,’ said her handler.

  Kate looked on, seeing nothing but road in either direction. Planning. Dan had known what he was doing. He was taunting them, wanted them to be part of his game. To be part of the chase.

  The curse of the internet. Too much information on how to commit crimes undetected.

  It meant the search area for Ruby was expanding further. Until they knew where Ruby had been taken, where she got out off the car, the dogs would be of little use. Kate wasn’t taking any chances, though; she was dealing with someone who was meticulous. The body might have been dumped in the water, buried somewhere nearby. A painstaking, intensive, laborious search was starting. Rows of officers and volunteers had agreed to search while there was still daylight. The officers would search on into the night, but she wasn’t hopeful. It felt like filling the time, doing something because doing nothing wasn’t an option.

  Hope was arranging a second press conference with the parents.

  And through it all, Twitter was being used as a weapon to criticise her and to campaign for Dan’s release. It seemed that if you were famous or vaguely attractive, you couldn’t possibly be guilty.

  Back in London, Stevie Brennan had interviewed Dan, confronting him with the facts of what they had found at his Hampshire property.

  ‘He was shitting it,’ she said when providing an update. ‘His eyes kept widening, on cue, every time I mentioned something. The cottage, the cellar, the chair, the stream. He denied it, said it was someone setting him up. I asked him who hated him that much; he said half of YouTube did. The jealous, failed half.’

  ‘Was he really that articulate? Last time I saw him he was in floods of tears,’ Kate said.

  ‘Yes. I think prison is sobering him up,’ said Stevie.

  ‘Still no alibi?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Still no alibi,’ said Stevie.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Lia had booked them into a Holiday Inn, outside of Winchester. It was midnight when they checked in, Kate’s legs feeling as though she had climbed twelve flights of stairs. Through her window she looked into a black shadowed copse, the tops looking like broken glass shards.

  Kate kicked off her boots and lay back on the bed in her room, curled up and started to fall asleep. She woke up a few minutes later, her room phone ringing.

  ‘Riley,’ she said.

  ‘They’ve opened the restaurant for us, if you want to get something?’ said Zain.

  ‘You’re going to eat at this hour?’

  ‘I’m starving,’ he said.

  ‘I need to shower. I’ll be another half hour yet,’ she said.

  ‘That’s fine, I’ll wait.’

  ‘Where’s Pelt?’

  ‘Asleep,’ said Zain.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Liar, she thought.

  They were seated in the bar, sated after a rough and ready dinner. Zain had opted for a tuna and red pepper Panini, while she had gone for steak.

  ‘You don’t drink?’ she said, as he sipped his lime and soda.

  ‘Rarely,’ he said.

  She was on her second vodka. It felt indulgent.

  ‘Don’t think we’ve ever done this,’ he said. ‘Just hung out.’

  They weren’t alone in the bar. Executive types were drinking amiably around them. She noticed inebriated heads turning her way, becoming more blatant as the time wore on. She was the only female there.

  The bartender was black, with short hair and a French accent. He stood with his hands behind his back, leaning against a tall stool, when he wasn’t serving.

  ‘You haven’t been with us long enough,’ she said.

  ‘Or am I just not welcome at Friday night drinks?’

  ‘There is that as well,’ she said, smiling.

  He didn’t bite, or take it badly, just stared into the distance. His blue eyes gave him a lupine quality, smouldering against his olive skin.

  She checked her phone. Ryan had sent her a joke, making her smile.

  ‘Boyfriend?’ said Harris.

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘My sitter, actually,’ she said.

  The word hovered; Zain pulled it out of the air and ran with it. ‘Babysitter? I didn’t know you had kids.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. Her face was hot; she tried to cool it with the ice in her drink, but failed. What could she say? House-sitter? Dog-sitter?

  The tiredness, the intensity and the drink were all loosening her up, and she said to Zain, regretting it as soon as she did: ‘No, a sitter for my mother.’

  He raised his eyebrows slightly.

  ‘Like a carer?’

  ‘Yes. In a way.’

  ‘Body or brain?’ he said.

  ‘Brain,’ she said, draining her glass. ‘Get me another vodka, will you? Straight up.’ Zain returned a few moments later, long enough for her to carry out a discourse in her head. Should she tell him the details? Would everyone else find out? Would it affect how people saw her, her ability to do her job?

  Her mind was clouded, and she had an urge to confess. See his reaction. If he was OK, then maybe that was a start? She could peel off the layers of deception with the rest of the team?

  ‘Were you all right today?’ she said instead. ‘You went a bit quiet in the basement.’

  He didn’t meet her eyes, looked away at the other drinkers. ‘Yeah, I was OK. Just had a flashback to something, that’s all.’

  ‘Anything to do with what happened with SO15?’

  ‘It always is,’ he said. ‘Everything is to do with what happened.’

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  He ran his fingers through the hair on his face. What was that? It wasn’t quite a beard, but was too long for stubble. She caught herself imagining what it would feel like, running her fingers over it. She remembered doing that to her brothers when they had shaved their heads, feeling the pri
ckly new growth. She didn’t think it would feel that way if she reached out and touched Zain Harris. The sensations in her fingers would be the least heightened part of the process.

  He caught her staring at his mouth. She smiled with her own.

  ‘You really want to know?’ he said.

  Kate felt awake suddenly. Excited, even.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Zain went to the bar, ordered a Scotch diluted with ice and a splash of soda water. His father’s drink.

  The bartender was obviously tired, his movements laboured. He struggled to pick the ice up with a fork and spoon. He filled another glass with vodka, diluted it with Coke, for Kate.

  It was nearly 2 a.m. The bar was empty. Just the two of them left. A heater was pumping warm air over him when he sat down, making him uncomfortable. It was prickly. His mother used to say that about British summers. The heat is prickly. She was used to summers in Istanbul and Delhi.

  Zain was wearing a navy T-shirt he had in his car, with jeans. Pelt had borrowed a second T-shirt from him. He thought of the cocky sergeant, wrapped up in his sheets, wrapped around DS Lowe. The feeling of resentment and disapproval twisted in him again. As did a sense of arousal.

  Zain took a sip, feeling the fire in his throat. The heat made him sweat as he watched Kate leave her drink untouched. She already had three vodkas swimming around in her. She seemed eager, a willing audience.

  ‘You told me you were taken, caught in a trap?’ she said.

  Caught in a trap. Like an animal. That fit.

  ‘Yes. They grabbed me, blindfolded me, bound my hands with plastic ties, my legs, too. Kicked my head a couple of times. Out of sheer hatred or to cause me to black out. Probably both.’

  ‘You were alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did they take you?’

  Zain remembered snatches of a drive, some moments awake, some not. The smell of greased cloths, the taste of the metal. The hardness of the van floor.

  ‘I still don’t know. It was a holding cell, a basement somewhere. I was left shackled to some pipes. My eyes were never uncovered. Even when they beat me.’

  She moved her chair closer to him. He caught the scent from the body wash she must have used earlier.

  ‘I lay there, and I didn’t have a clue what was happening around me. Time, it just goes. I tried, I mean I tried to count the seconds, the minutes. But you give up after a while. And I was never awake all the time.’

  ‘Did they ever speak to you?’

  Conversations he couldn’t repeat. Ones he had shared in his debriefing. The relentless questions, the breaking down of Zain Harris. He wasn’t a spy; he wasn’t trained to deal with interrogation techniques. He didn’t have a cyanide capsule. He’d had to learn the hard way.

  ‘No,’ he lied. ‘They were trying to trade me. It was hopeless. They weren’t in some Middle Eastern dugout; they were operating on British soil. Where could they go?’

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘Safe passage, destination of their choice. It was all bollocks. They were on a suicide mission; they wanted to take as many people like me with them they could.’

  He remembered the electrodes. Attached to his feet first, his nipples. Then his testicles. The pain, it got so intense he’d passed out.

  ‘How long did they hold you?’

  ‘A week I found out afterwards.’

  The words seemed inadequate to his ears. A week. Is that all it was?

  ‘Portsmouth. That’s where I ended up.’

  ‘Why there?’ she said, her voice a whisper now.

  ‘They had a shipping container. They were going to use it to smuggle me out.’

  ‘What happened then?’ said Kate.

  Visions flooded his head. Zain felt anxiety in his bloodstream. The pills. He didn’t have any. Fuck, no. Panic joined the anxiety. His heart started hammering inside his ribcage, loud and fast and strong. So strong he thought it would burst. He imagined it exploding, the way Ruby’s head had exploded, the way the brain matter spattered out from her skull. His heart spattering out from his chest.

  Kate held his wrist, put a hand to his face.

  ‘Zain,’ she said. ‘You’ve turned pale; you’re sweating. What’s wrong? Shall I get you some water?’

  Zain looked at her. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever called me Zain before,’ he said.

  Illogical, but it was enough. It drew him back, he took a drink of his Scotch, his heart still playing drums, but the loss of consciousness that threatened had abated.

  ‘Can we go for a walk?’ he said.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  The hotel was surrounded by forest. They stood at the back of the hotel building, looking out over a lawn, staring into the black trees.

  ‘You got a smoke?’ he said, shivering.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  The sky was clouded, but stars flashed like coins between them. The moon was almost full.

  ‘At least you know where the moon was in its cycle,’ he said. ‘It looks so different, doesn’t it? Without all that light pollution in London.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Reminds me of home.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘Always,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you go back?’

  ‘Sometimes you can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  She looked up, over the forest line. Her eyes caught the stars, shone in their light, her head tilted back, her mouth slightly open. Zain felt the urge to kiss her. He imagined it.

  ‘What happened at Portsmouth?’ she said.

  Zain looked into the sky now, all thoughts of Riley’s mouth gone.

  What had happened at Portsmouth? He was in a shipping container, one of thousands stacked up along the harbour.

  ‘Desperate acts happened there,’ he said. ‘They took my toenails off. One by one.’

  Kate shuddered next to him. He had no jacket to offer her, so he moved closer until their arms were touching. His bare arm against the cloth of her shirt. Heat sealed the place where they touched. Desire rose in him.

  ‘I gave them nothing,’ he said, lying.

  They weren’t there to disagree.

  ‘They found us, though, the SAS. I got rescued, the terrorists got killed, imprisoned.’

  Zain remembered those moments. He’d thought it was all over for him.

  ‘Fuck, you must be depressed. I’ve depressed myself, and I went through the whole shitty experience.’ Zain laughed. He heard only a trace of mania through it.

  ‘And you got over it?’ she said.

  She looked into his eyes, her face blue in the glow of hotel security lights and moonlight. Kate reached out, her fingers running over his forehead, his cheeks, his lips. She was as tall as him, and leaned forward to kiss him.

  Zain did the same, closing his eyes, feeling the adrenalin, the sheer lust. He felt himself respond to her, and for a moment it was OK. They were hungry, raw. He lived in those seconds, when two people were giving in to something. He kissed her neck, his hands going under her shirt; he sucked at her breast through her shirt.

  She reached her hands back, over the nape of his neck, through his hair, and that’s when he started to panic. The touch against his neck. And then they weren’t two people kissing anymore; this wasn’t a prelude to sleeping together.

  He felt trapped, the heat of their bodies cloying. He tasted her tongue, hoping it would ease the anxiety, but it felt fleshy, like meat. He gagged, pulled away, and threw up.

  ‘Well, I’ve never had that effect on a guy before,’ she said.

  Outside her bedroom door, he tried to explain. She brushed him off, said it didn’t matter.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, again.

  ‘Goodnight, DS Harris,’ she said.

  She opened her door, but before she could close it behind her, he put his foot in to stop it. He pushed the door back, and shut it softly. Kate didn’t pay attention to him
. She took her boots off, sat down on the bed. She stared at him, daring him to watch her. She started unbuttoning her shirt, then took her trousers off. She got into bed, in just her underwear.

  He felt stirring again; he should be all over her.

  She lay staring at the ceiling, then switched the light off.

  ‘Please go away,’ she said. ‘You’re making it worse.’

  He took his own boots off, and lay down on the bed next to her, on top of the duvet. The downy material separating them.

  ‘I haven’t been able to,’ he said. ‘Since they did that. When I get close . . . when you touched the back of my neck like that . . . they were going to behead me. In that container, they had a sword to my neck. They were going to stick me on the internet.’

  She didn’t reply, but turned around so she was facing in his direction. He had his hands under his head, looking up at the darkened ceiling.

  ‘Being touched, like that, I can’t explain it. I freak out, and I panic, and I can’t do it.’

  ‘You could have said, told me to stop. You didn’t have to demonstrate your disgust.’

  He laughed. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never done that with a girl before, either.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, sarcastically.

  ‘I was pushing through it, because I wanted you so badly. I ignored the warning signs.’

  ‘Probably for the best,’ she said. ‘I am a little drunk right now. I think we both would have regretted it in the morning.’

  He agreed in his head. When she found out he had betrayed her, and lied to her, it would feel a thousand times worse if they had slept together.

  ‘I don’t think I would regret it,’ he said.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  The grainy images played out in front of him. He froze, then zoomed in. Pressed play again.

  ‘Who else has seen this?’ said Jed Byrne.

  ‘Just the two of us, internally,’ said Anderson.

  They were in Byrne’s office in Soho, the blinds closed, all calls being held.

  ‘How did you get hold of this?’ asked Jed.