Perfect Silence

by Helen Fields

  ‘What about the baby’s father?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Lorna slept with a number of different partners while she was using drugs. She’s not sure of the father’s identity and doesn’t know the surnames of many of the men, so they can’t be traced. Whoever the father is, he has no idea that he has a new daughter,’ Jenkins said. ‘Given the fact that Lorna was previously in contact with drug dealers, one possibility is that she bumped into someone she owed money to, or who felt there was an old score to settle, which is why we called you so promptly.’

  ‘All right,’ Ava said. ‘We’ll expand the resources and see if we can identify her last movements. I’ll get the Police Scotland media liaison team on it. We’ll put out a statement later today to see if any members of the public noticed anything. Do you have a recent photo of Lorna we could use, and details of the clothes she was wearing when she left here?’

  ‘I’ll go and sort that out for you now,’ Jenkins said. ‘Give me a few minutes.’

  Ava waited until he’d closed the door. ‘So that’s not just one but two crimes linked to the drug users in the city. Who’s to say whether or not Zoey had come into contact with some of the same people. The news will have spread around the city’s drug community by now that Mikey Parsons’ face was slashed. The small-time dealers who sometimes help when we need it won’t be talking to the police. If Lorna’s disappearance really is related to her previous drug use, there are hundreds of undesirables she might have crossed paths with.’

  ‘Selina said Mikey’s injury was atrocious,’ Callanach said. ‘Sharp blade, steady hand, clear intent. You think there’s an anti-drug vigilante on the prowl?’

  ‘I think we need a greater police presence on the streets until we get to the bottom of it. Lively described the Z on Mikey’s face as something akin to a branding. I’m not quite sure what the shape cut out of Zoey’s stomach is supposed to represent, but it may well have been born of the same sick imagination. It’s all close-up blade work. Then there’s the fact that Zoey’s body was found the same day that Mikey’s face was cut. I’m not sure which is worse – thinking there’s one person out there capable of causing this much chaos alone, or the idea that perhaps there’s more than one psychopath out to maim and kill,’ Ava said. ‘I’ll need to speak with Overbeck when we get back to the station. She won’t want to agree the budget, but I can’t see a choice. This needs to be a cross-division effort. The Major Investigation Team can follow the leads, but we can’t be out there stopping all these incidents at once. Let’s get Lorna’s details then organise a briefing. We need to find that girl in the next twenty-four hours or baby Tansy might never be reunited with her mother.’ Ava stood up and ran her hand down the soft, pale blanket in the pram. Its silky edge had been tucked in at the bottom to keep tiny toes warm. ‘It’s true about that baby smell. I always thought it was a ridiculous myth, but something makes me think of freshly baked bread and Christmas morning when I hold a small baby.’ She untucked the blanket and held it up to her face, breathing in deeply and smiling into the fleecy material.

  ‘I remember when the first of my close friends became a father,’ Luc said. ‘We all thought he was ruining his life, but the look on his face when he brought the baby to visit …’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Ava took half a step back from the pram, then leaned over it to look inside again. ‘What is that?’

  Luc peered over Ava’s shoulder at a scrunched-up sheet that had been left in the bottom of the pram. The head of a doll peeked out, with strands of brown hair stuck roughly on, eyes drawn with pen onto the pale grey face, and a series of darting black stitches in an arc, as if her mouth had been sewn shut. Reaching into his jacket pocket, Luc took out a pack containing gloves and reached in to gently extract the doll from the pram.

  ‘You don’t think …’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ava replied, stepping away from the pram and pulling out her phone. ‘I do think. Have you ever seen anything made from human skin before?’

  ‘We can’t be sure of that,’ Luc said, holding the doll well away from his own body.

  ‘Its hair is the same colour as Zoey’s,’ Ava said. ‘And the doll is fractionally smaller than the cuts to Zoey’s body, even to the naked eye, which would account for the margin needed to stitch it.’

  Luc turned it over. The doll had been created by stitching two matching cut-out shapes together. A rag doll with crude arms and legs, no detail, no clothes fitted over it. The seams had been sewn with rough thread, the stitches pulling at the red-tinged seams.

  Ava called for backup and a forensics team. Arnold Jenkins opened the door and stared at them. ‘Stay there, Mr Jenkins,’ Ava said. ‘No one who has handled this pram since it was brought in leaves the unit. In fact, no one leaves at all until every person residing and working here has been spoken to by a police officer.’

  Jenkins blanched. ‘Has Lorna been found?’ he stuttered. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Do you recognise this?’ Callanach held up the doll. Jenkins wrinkled his face in disgust and shook his head. ‘Lorna hasn’t been found yet, but we do need to bring in a Scenes of Crime team to ensure that any evidence contained within the pram is preserved.’

  Jenkins shut the door once more, his footsteps rapid as he disappeared up the corridor. Ava sat down, still clutching the baby blanket.

  ‘This means that whoever took Zoey has Lorna,’ Ava said. ‘It was one week from Zoey’s disappearance to her death. Lorna’s abductor is a few hours ahead of us now. If we don’t find her …’

  ‘I know,’ Luc said. ‘What do you think the relevance of the doll is?’

  ‘Something to love? Something to play with? It might be sexual, or even a sort of reverse trophy that the killer is presenting to us, rather than keeping for himself,’ Ava suggested.

  ‘You said him. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but we don’t know that yet,’ Luc said.

  ‘It’s the most likely scenario. The victims are both young women. Men are statistically more likely to use cutting as a form of torture. I don’t know, maybe he can’t find a partner who’ll give him a baby so he’s creating his own quasi-offspring from their skin. God, that even sounds insane to me.’

  ‘We’ve dealt with insane situations before,’ Luc said.

  ‘I’ve never seen a doll made from skin cut from the body of a young woman who was still alive when it happened,’ Ava said, her voice less than steady. ‘And I’ve never been more certain that the same is going to happen to another young woman who is already beyond our help.’

  ‘The dolls are a calling card, then. An announcement of intent. Zoey’s killer wants us to know what’s in store for Lorna.’

  Sirens followed by a knock at the door signalled the arrival of the SOCOs, who appeared white-suited and ready for action.

  ‘I need a bag straight away,’ Ava said. ‘This doll and the pram need to be logged into evidence, then I’m taking the doll directly over to the mortuary. Somebody contact the pathologist and tell him we’re on our way. I need him there, and I’ll need access to Zoey Cole’s body at the same time.’

  ‘What about that?’ One of the officers motioned towards the baby blanket that Ava had in her hand.

  ‘Yes, this too,’ Ava said. ‘The pram needs a complete DNA, skin cell and foreign fibres check. Someone put their hand down inside the blanket and sheet, and tucked the doll out of sight at the baby’s feet. We only found it by accident.’

  Ava’s hands were stripped with sticky tape to make sure she hadn’t removed any crucial trace evidence from the pram, then she and Luc left the room. They found Arnold Jenkins, the unit director, in an office with four female staff members. He introduced each in turn – a nurse, an administrator, a catering manager and one of the other residents. Each had handled the pram at some point, moving it or lifting the baby, and every one of them was tearful and shaken. Ava was glad they had no idea quite how bad the situation really was. Uniformed officers took over to record statements as Ava and Luc headed back
towards the car park.

  ‘You don’t need to come to the mortuary with me,’ Luc said. ‘I can handle this alone.’

  ‘I know,’ Ava said. ‘But I feel like I owe it to Zoey. We’re taking part of her back. I know it sounds stupid, but I want to be there with her when we take this monstrosity in.’

  ‘I understand,’ Luc said. ‘Sometimes it’s personal.’

  ‘It is,’ Ava nodded. ‘I can’t even explain why. Dr Spurr, the temporary pathologist – you dealt with him before. Is he good? I mean as good as Ailsa, because if not I’m calling her back in. I need answers, and I’m not risking any mistakes.’

  ‘Jonty Spurr is excellent,’ Callanach said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

  They drove their cars in convoy to the city mortuary. Dr Spurr met them in the reception area, already gowned and gloved. Ava and Callanach suited up, handing the bagged doll to Jonty, who peered at it with undisguised revulsion.

  Without exchanging a word, they filed into the autopsy suite, where Zoey was waiting for them, sheet pulled back to reveal her skinned abdomen. Jonty took the doll from the bag, laid it on a sterile tray and photographed every aspect of it, recording each measurement and dimension as he went. With immaculate care, and making sure he preserved the knotted parts of the thread, he opened the stitching and separated the two sections of material.

  Holding the material up to the light, he turned it over and around. ‘That’s human skin, without a doubt,’ he said. ‘I can clearly see the follicles, lines and pores.’

  He walked slowly to Zoey, holding the front section of the doll by the ends of each arm. A sheet of plastic had been placed over Zoey’s abdominal wound, and he placed the first section of skin flat over the top of it, smoothing out the parts that had been folded over at the edges. It almost perfectly filled the shape that had been stolen from Zoey’s body.

  ‘It’s shrunk as it’s dried out,’ Jonty said, ‘which accounts for the size difference, but you can see where there are tiny imperfections in the cuts. They match both the wound edges on Zoey’s body and on the doll. There is no doubt at all that what you’ve found was made from Zoey’s skin.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Spurr,’ Ava said, talking a step forward and gripping Zoey’s cold hand for a few moments. When she walked away, Luc could see tears in her eyes. She dumped her gloves in the bin and left.

  ‘When Ava finds the person who did this, I think she might be serious about killing them,’ Luc said.

  ‘I believe you might be right,’ Jonty said. ‘You’d better just make sure you get there first.’

  Chapter Nine

  Lorna

  True terror was exhausting. That sliver of knowledge was just one step on the steepest learning curve of her life. Twenty-four hours earlier, she had woken at 6.45 a.m. with her baby in a cot at her bedside, and wondered what to cook for breakfast. Now she knew how it felt to sleep strapped to a table in the dark, smelling dirt and rotting leaves. Lorna lifted her head, but the immobility of her arms and legs made it pointless. Through dirty, green-stained glass, a waning moon cast cold shadows. The blanket over her naked body was making her itch, but it kept off the insects that buzzed and flapped through the dark. Beneath her, the table stretched longer than her frame head to toe, and was a foot wider at either side, as if it had been taken from the dining room of some grand old house. What she couldn’t believe was that she had slept. How was it possible to fear for your life and still fall into dreamless sleep? Lorna remembered crying. Being made to eat and drink. Screaming uselessly for as long as her voice held out. Then nothing. At some point she had simply burned out.

  Beyond the creaking walls of her prison, she could hear the rustle of leaves and the movement of branches in the wind. It was a cruel parody of the few holidays she had enjoyed as a child, before drugs had reduced her mother to a silent, shadowy creature. They had borrowed a tent and trekked out with friends or family to sleep in a field and toast marshmallows for a night or two in the summer. It had been all her mother could ever afford, and it was uncomfortable – usually freezing cold – but Lorna had loved it. So much adventure could be found just by stepping beyond the walls of their tiny flat, even if they did have to pee behind trees and wash in a cold stream each morning.

  Pins and needles prickled her skin from inactivity as she flexed her legs. With ankles tied fast to the table legs, the best she could do was slowly clench then relax each muscle to get some blood flowing. Her breasts throbbed. It was two in the morning then. Like a farmyard cockerel, baby Tansy awoke hungry at the same time each night. This would have been the moment when Lorna would have plucked the baby gently from her cot, quickly enough so that the crying didn’t wake the other mothers who were grabbing precious hours of sleep, and held her to a breast. Tansy’s warm snuffling as she grabbed Lorna’s hair would have been worth the lack of rest. For a moment, she could actually smell her baby. Milk, talcum powder, a fresh Babygro after her bath, and the slight acidity of a nappy as yet unchanged after six hours’ wear. Lorna was determined not to cry for her. If she started crying, then it was as good as an admission that she would never hold her girl again. And she would. She would escape, get help, and find her way back to the mother and baby unit. If she could get clean of drugs and persuade a judge not to take her baby from her, then she could do this. The bastard who had abducted her had no idea what he was up against.

  Tansy – her pride and joy – had also been her Achilles heel. The man had seemed harmless enough, following her through the lanes from the unit to the shops, whistling and texting on his phone. As he’d got nearer to her, he’d said a cheery good morning, stopping to peer into the pram and exclaim at the bonniness of the wee girl. Lorna had been delighted. No matter how many times she heard it, a compliment about the baby was affirmation that finally she had done something right. Her first selfless act, she often thought. She had given life to another human, and giving up her vices for the baby had made it even sweeter.

  There had been bad times before that. Smoking the odd joint at school had matured into taking the occasional ecstasy tablet at a party. Those ecstasy tablets had introduced her to cocaine, and that had seemed so grown up and glamorous, and God knew it really did make you feel good. But there were bigger highs out there. More explosive ups and more mellow downs, with nothing in between but floating and colours and warmth. She had taken heroin for the first time while she was coming down from crack. It had seemed almost harmless, just smoking it. She had never taken a drug that had controlled her, and she managed to convince herself for a few ignorant weeks that heroin wouldn’t either. Her mother had done nothing about it. After all, it was her boyfriend who had sold her the crack in the first place, and one of his colleagues who had promoted her into the narcotics big league. Addiction was swift, and a casual modern-day tragedy had followed. Drugs were expensive. Her need for them ruled her world and rendered her unfit for work. The lack of money had been met with suggestions that she could offer her body to her dealers and others for cash, favours and freebies. And the need to forget that she was effectively prostituting herself had required ever-increasing doses of drugs. Then she had fallen pregnant. It was give up the drugs or give up the baby. There were no other options. Lorna wished the decision had been easier than it was. She would have been more proud of herself if she could claim a revelation, and a magical new start. Fortunately for her, the lure of motherhood and the sense of a growing bond with the wriggling, churning thing inside her won out. Methadone was easier than cold turkey, and not getting screwed every night to pay for her drugs was a positive blessing. Tansy had literally saved her life.

  Which was why, when the happy, whistling man had held a knife to the baby’s throat as they’d walked together down a side street, she hadn’t had to think twice about saving her baby’s life in return. She had climbed into his vehicle, followed his instructions to clip on handcuffs and watched as he pushed the pram into the nearest alleyway to await a kind passer-by who would figure out that something was wrong
. Lorna stared up at the moon. Her baby was safe. The man hadn’t wanted Tansy. Someone would have found her and returned her to the unit where she was now being looked after. The bargain had not been unfair. Looking back, she wondered why she hadn’t screamed and run, protested and fought him. The truth was that she would have done anything – anything at all – to have secured her baby’s safety, and heroics had been just another risk. Seeing the blade pressed into the chubby flesh beneath her baby’s face had been enough to drain the fight from her. It had been enough to make her realise that whatever was coming – rape, mutilation, death – was preferable to the prospect of living with the memory of her baby dying in her arms.

  Lorna tugged a few more times at the restraints around her wrists. There wasn’t even enough movement to try scraping the twine against the edge of the table beneath her. She would wait. That was all there was to it. If nothing else, she could be grateful that she’d remained unhurt throughout the process of being kidnapped. Her early decision to remain compliant had meant that not so much as a fist had been raised. No one had responded to her screams and her kidnapper hadn’t bothered silencing her. Wherever she was, it wasn’t in the middle of civilisation. Having blindfolded her and led her over a gravel path, twigs brushing her face, he had opened a door and pushed her into an outbuilding.

  ‘Take your clothes off, then lie on the table on your back,’ the man had directed her.

  Lorna had the perverse benefit of being unafraid of rape. Men had used her body in ways she tried not to think about any more. One more wasn’t going to add to her nightmares. If that was the worst of it, then she would celebrate. If the sick fuck wanted to tie her up first, and keep her in the cold outdoors for a while, then she could take that, too. She would keep her nerve and stay strong. Come hell or high-water, she would be reunited with her baby. Lorna slept again.