The Perfect Girl

by Lorna Dounaeva

  “My, what pretty handwriting you have.”

  He turned to see DCI Stavely, the collar of his mac turned up against the wind.

  “Thank you,” he said evenly. “What can I do for you?”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?”

  “No, go ahead.” He tried to remain calm. If he were running the investigation, he would want to talk to Jock Skone, too.

  “What are you doing in Fleckford, Mr Skone?”

  He swallowed. “Looking for inspiration.” The panicky feeling had reached the pit of his stomach.

  Stavely raised a bushy eyebrow. “That’s a new one on me.” He leaned closer, giving Jock an unnecessary close-up of the crow’s feet around his eyes. “You’re a mystery writer, aren’t you? So tell me, Jock, who do you think did it?”

  Jock didn’t like the way he had worded the question. Not ‘what happened?’ but ‘who did it?’ How could he be so sure?

  “In my books, it’s always the last person you’d ever suspect. The one you’d never think could be a criminal. Either that, or the person who is so obviously bad, you rule them out straight away.”

  “Huh! If only it were that simple.” Stavely attempted a smile, but it looked unnatural on his downward-slanted mouth. “A lot of people know something about this case and most of them think what they know is insignificant. My job is to get all the pieces and stick them together so I’m looking at the whole picture. So any time you want to share your piece, that’s fine with me.”

  “I don’t know anything,” he said, reaching for the teapot. He didn’t quite know how he managed to keep his hand steady.

  “No, of course you don’t. Do you love her, Jock?”

  “Sapphire?” He couldn’t keep the quiver from his voice. “We’d only just met.”

  Stavely tilted his head. “That doesn’t really answer the question, though, does it?”

  Jock felt his cheeks tingle. His heart quickened and his brow filled with sweat. He had heard of women having hot flushes, but not men. He gave an emphatic shake of his head. “You can’t love someone a little bit. Either you love them or you don’t. I like Sapphire very much. I wanted to get to know her better. But it’s too soon to be talking about love.”

  Stavely gave him a long, hard look. It was just a matter of time until they found his fingerprints in her flat.

  7

  “She’s coming round.”

  The gentle voice jarred Sapphire’s head. Gingerly, she opened her eyes. She was lying on a cold, hard floor, surrounded by women in posh dresses.

  “What is this? A party?” Her eyes shifted from left to right. The walls were painted a very dark shade of metallic green, the exact shade found in model aeroplane kits. There were no windows or lamps. The only source of illumination was a beam of light that shone from under the door at the top of a flight of stone steps.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  Silence.

  It was as if they wanted her to remember. She closed her eyes and tried to replay the memory, but her mind was filled with strange images that didn’t ring true. She willed herself not to panic, but she couldn’t remember where she was or how she had got there. She tried to stand, but she couldn’t get her balance. She grabbed someone’s arm to steady herself but missed and sank back down to the floor. She was like a coin rattling around in a jar, unable to stop the perpetual motion. She must have been drinking. What on earth had possessed her?

  “Where am I?” she asked weakly. She was aware of a terrible smell, like extremely rotten eggs.

  One of the women knelt down beside her. Her ice-blue eyes were filled with concern. “Shh! Don’t try to speak. You must rest.”

  There was a certain rhythm to the way she spoke that suggested she wasn’t British. German? Dutch? Scandinavian maybe. Her mangled mind couldn’t work it out. She patted herself down, but she had no bag or pockets. She glanced about. “Can someone lend me a phone?”

  “A phone?”

  “Look, I really don’t feel well. Could you call me a taxi?”

  The other women exchanged glances, as if she had suggested they rob a bank.

  “I want to go home,” she said firmly.

  “That’s what we all want,” said the woman with the ice-blue eyes.

  Sapphire looked at each of them in turn, taking in the significance of their dress. One had flowers sewn into her hair and another had a rusty tiara. May Queens. They were all May Queens.

  “What’s going on?” she cried. She felt as if she were hanging from the edge of a cliff. She needed to pull herself back up, but she didn’t quite know how.

  “Please!” whispered the foreigner. “You must keep quiet or there’ll be trouble. For all of us.”

  The women, one of them just a schoolgirl, looked at her with mute sympathy.

  “What is this place?” she asked, lowering her voice. “What are we doing here?”

  The young girl covered her mouth with her hand, as if to stop herself from speaking.

  “What’s wrong with you all?” Sapphire asked in exasperation. Her feet made contact with the ground, wobbling as she took a few tentative steps towards the stairs. She gripped the rail with both hands and pulled herself up onto the first step.

  “Sapphire, don’t!”

  She looked down. How did they know her name? She didn’t remember telling them. But then, she didn’t remember a great deal. The last thing she recalled was talking to a customer. He had come back to the shop for a scarf he had left behind – deliberately, she suspected. The rest was a complete haze. She couldn’t even remember shutting the door. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe he had done something to her.

  Her memories might have been stuck, but her survival instincts were sound. She needed to do whatever it took to get out. Inch by inch, she climbed her way up until she reached the top step. She searched for a handle, but there wasn’t one. She grabbed the bottom edge of the door frame and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried pushing instead. The door was stuck fast.

  “Come back down,” one of the May Queens called out to her. “You can’t get out that way.”

  “Then how?” She pounded on the door with her fists. “Help!” she shouted. “Help!”

  “Shh!” the others hissed in unison. “They’ll hear you!”

  “Who’ll hear me?”

  “You don’t know what will happen!”

  “Then tell me!”

  Her blue-eyed friend climbed the steps and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “We’re just trying to keep you safe. You haven’t learnt the rules yet. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  There was really only so long that she could bang and kick the door, anyway. She sank down onto the top step, giving into the pain of her aching head. She was dizzy and confused. But most of all, she was frightened. She looked around the dusty cellar. There were no chairs or tables, not even a rug to lie on.

  “What’s going on?” she begged. “Just tell me. I can’t stand it.”

  “My name is Ingrid,” the woman said softly. “And I was a May Queen, just like you.”

  “What happened?” Sapphire felt her voice quiver. “How did we all end up here?”

  “None of us remember exactly,” Ingrid said. “But we were taken. We were all taken.”

  “By whom? Don’t you know anything at all?”

  “Shh!” Ingrid pressed her finger to her lips. “From now on, you must be as quiet as a ghost. It is very important. It’s best not to attract attention.”

  “From whom?”

  Ingrid looked up at the locked door with foreboding.

  If the mood of the mob had been hopeful that first night, a sense of destructive pessimism followed. Trainloads of people arrived from London and Cardiff, swelling the search party numbers to unhelpful levels. Some, Jock suspected, just came to ogle the village where the latest May Queen had disappeared. And then there were the news crews, armed with their cameras a
nd booms. Few ventured into the Dragon, though. The dimmed lights and threadbare stools weren’t to many people’s liking, nor was Neil’s sour wit.

  Jock and Dylan sat at the bar that night, eating microwaved shepherd’s pies while Neil flicked through the TV channels.

  “Stop! Stop!” Jock cried, as a picture of Sapphire flashed up on the screen. “Quick, put the sound up!”

  “The May Queen is an ancient tradition which dates back to Pagan times,” an historian was explaining. “Traditionally, the May Queen led the May Day festivities, just as she does today. And legend has it that at the end of the day, she was sacrificed to the gods.”

  The presenter turned to the guest sitting opposite him in the studio. Jock sat up straight as he realised who it was.

  “DCI Stavely, do you think the history of the May Queen tradition has any bearing on the disappearance of Sapphire Butterworth and indeed, on any of the other missing May Queens?”

  Stavely looked directly into the camera. “Let me make one thing clear. We are treating Sapphire Butterworth’s disappearance as an isolated incident. The Hampton Inquiry found Peter Helston guilty of the murder of the other missing May Queens and we haven’t seen any new evidence to contradict those findings.”

  “But the bodies were never found, were they?”

  “Helston died before he could lead us to them. But all the evidence still points to him as the so-called ‘May Queen Killer’.”

  “You don’t think there’s a chance you got it wrong?”

  “Given the facts of the case, it’s highly unlikely.” Stavely raised a hand to his temple. It was an unconscious movement, one he probably would have reconsidered if he could see his own reflection in the camera. He must have been wearing a little stage make-up, because the action of mopping his brow created a tell-tale streak across his forehead.

  The presenter honed in on him. “So you think it’s more likely we’ve got a copycat on our hands?”

  Stavely looked him right in the eyes. “I wouldn’t like to speculate at this point.” He unclipped his microphone, signalling that the interview was over.

  “Wow, he looked a bit hot under the collar, didn’t he?” said Dylan. “His mistake for agreeing to appear on a programme like that. I expect it was his boss’s idea. Bad ideas usually are.”

  Jock shovelled his last forkful of pie into his mouth. “What could she have seen?” he asked. “Out there in the crowd to make her run off like that?”

  “Not what, but who?” said Dylan.

  Jock nodded and positioned his knife and fork together on his empty plate.

  “You going out on the search tonight?” Dylan asked.

  “No,” Jock said. He didn’t think it would do any good.

  “Good. I’ll get the beers in, then.”

  He accepted and told himself that it made up for the money Dylan owed him. As much as he appreciated Dylan’s company, he didn’t entirely trust him. He got the feeling he would sell his own granny for a pint, if the opportunity should arise.

  “I heard they’re going to feature Sapphire on Crimebusters,” Dylan said, finishing his beer with impressive speed. “They’re doing a re-enactment to see if they can jog people’s memories.”

  “I hope it helps,” Jock said, twiddling his beermat between his thumb and forefinger. He wondered who they would get to play him.

  “Run peth eto os gwelwch yn dda!” Dylan said suddenly, raising his glass to Neil. Neil nodded and Dylan embarked upon what appeared to be quite a long-winded anecdote in Welsh. Neil laughed appreciatively, which was odd as Jock could have sworn he was English. He was about to ask for a translation when a group of strangers approached the bar. He couldn’t tell if they were May Day protesters or rubberneckers, but he knew instinctively that the group was not local and apparently, not welcome.

  Jock awoke the next morning with a kink in his neck and a mark on his face, where it had got smooshed into the window. He had watched Sapphire’s place for ages before he fell asleep, unable to shake the idea that she might return under the cover of darkness when there was no one around to see. Unfortunately, his vigil proved fruitless. He had seen nothing more interesting than a youth relieving himself in the street.

  He got out of bed and walked over to the small hand basin. He looked in the mirror above the sink and saw that his face had a grey tinge to it. It had been a couple of days since he had last shaved and his chin was coarse and bristly. He held a flannel under the hot tap, which started off warm and grew increasingly molten. He shoved his scorched hand under the cold tap until it started to go numb from the cold. Then he switched back to the hot. He hated shaving.

  The tea shop was surprisingly busy that morning. He would have thought people would drift away, after what had happened, but it was like there was an invisible force field drawing them in, more and more of them as each day passed.

  “Morning, Jock.” Angie attempted a breezy smile.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’ve been better,” she said, grimly. “But at least the shop keeps me busy.”

  He glanced out the window as a delivery van pulled up with barrels of beer for the Dragon – an impressive number of them for such a quiet pub.

  “So what can I get you?” she asked, producing a pad and pen from her pocket.

  “A pot of Yorkshire Tea, please, and a slice of Battenberg.”

  She nodded and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  He tried not to stare as a very tall man entered the shop, ducking his head to fit through the doorframe. He wasn’t just tall; he was gigantic. Jock had never seen anyone quite as tall.

  “Hey, how’s the view from up there?” a young lad called out.

  The giant didn’t bother to answer. He probably heard it all the time. Jock watched out of the corner of his eye as he strode towards the kitchen.

  “Angela!” he called, an expectant smile on his sunburned face.

  Angie flung down her tea towel and ran into his arms.

  “I’m taking my break,” she called to Morgan, who was serving a table full of rowdy pensioners.

  Morgan scowled in response. From the look on her face, you would think the tea shop and everyone in it had been put there just to annoy her.

  He watched as Angie walked down the street, hand in hand with the giant, and had a strange urge to run after her and beg her not to go with him. Then he caught himself. He was being paranoid. And judgmental. Just because Sapphire was missing, didn’t mean anyone else was in danger. Did it?

  Morgan came over and plonked his tea and cake down in front of him. He attempted a smile but she seemed positively hostile, glaring at him when he asked for a spoon.

  “Er, that’s OK,” he said. “I’ll get it myself.”

  “Like hell, you will!” she spluttered. He wasn’t sure if this meant he shouldn’t get it himself or he should. He had just about resigned himself to stirring his tea with his pen when she stomped back and pressed a spoon into his hand.

  “Thanks,” he squeaked. He would leave her a generous tip, he decided. Maybe then he wouldn’t annoy her so much.

  “Alright, Jock?” A shoeless Dylan greeted him in the doorway of the gents.

  “Alright,” he echoed. Where were Dylan’s shoes? He had a feeling he shouldn’t ask.

  “It’s ridiculous,” Dylan grumbled. “You can’t even take a slash without some smeghead pointing a camera at you.”

  He glared at the cameraman who was standing at the sink.

  “Hey, I’m just washing my hands, mate.”

  “Yeah? Then why’d you bring your boom?”

  “Why d’you think? To stop some chav from nicking it!” The cameraman stalked off, dragging the offending article behind him.

  Jock walked over to the urinal. He was about to pee when he realised Dylan was still loitering.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Dylan smirked. “You just strike me as the kind of man who wees sitting down.”

  “Thanks.�
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  The Crimebusters re-enactment is a scream. I watch it over and over again, revelling in every mistake. They’ve got some young actress, barely out of her teens, playing the part of a woman well into her thirties. Am I the only one who can see through the May Queen’s lies? The papers are all reporting that she’s in her twenties. It’s a mistake I’m sure she would relish and I’m not about to correct them. If they can’t get the facts right, how can they possibly expect to find her?

  8

  The small ballet studio seemed much bigger when it was empty. Gertrude went to the barre and did a few warm-up exercises, admiring her new, pink leg warmers in the mirror. They were ever so slightly sparkly and glimmered subtly with every move she made.

  “Morning, girls,” said Madame Beringer, breezing into the room and removing her long, woollen coat.

  “Morning,” Gertrude answered enthusiastically. She grabbed her sister by the hand and dragged her up to the front. “Madame, this is my sister, Claire.”

  “Hello, Claire,” Madame said, looking her up and down. “Welcome to the class. I hope you will enjoy ballet as much as Gertrude!”

  She smiled from one girl to the other and Gertrude smiled back. There was something about the way Madame Beringer pronounced her name that made it sound quite beautiful and exotic.

  Claire was tongue-tied. She stood awkwardly as Gertrude asked Madame if they could have some music while they waited for the rest of the class to arrive.

  “Why, of course.”

  Madame obliged with a piece from The Nutcracker and Gertrude began to spin and whirl.

  “Come on, Claire!” she beckoned her sister, who was still looking a bit shy. But as soon as Claire started to dance, the energy in the room altered.

  “Oh my!” exclaimed Madame Beringer. Gertrude saw tears well up in the teacher’s eyes. She didn’t understand what was wrong and ran over to give her a hug, but Madame pushed her gently aside.