Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller Read online

  ‘Connor, it’s fine,’ I say, not wanting him to interfere. He means well but it will only make things worse. I meet the detective’s gaze. ‘Yes, that’s right. It’s the anniversary of her death today.’

  ‘You were a witness to that murder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what age were you at the time?’

  ‘Six.’ I stare at the wall above the kettle. The white gloss paint is still slightly damp from the steam. ‘I was six years old.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful.’

  Carrick takes another minute to scribble a few crabbed lines in his little black notepad. I wait for his next question, watching him. Tris is staring down over his shoulder at the open notepad. I wonder if he can see what the detective is writing.

  Friends defensive. Hiding something? Witness a complete fruitcake with a compulsive need for attention.

  The police sergeant frowns over his notepad, then looks up at me again. ‘Perhaps you could talk us through everything that happened this morning. In particular, we need you to pinpoint the exact location of your find for us.’

  ‘My find?’

  ‘The body,’ he says gently. ‘Two of our officers are already down in the woods but the area is quite large, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. We have to know where to start looking.’

  Hannah sits beside me, which is when I realise that I have not answered the police officer’s question and everyone is looking at me. ‘Do you need anything, Ellie? Some painkillers, maybe?’

  My hands and legs are stinging, but I shake my head. The pain is useful. It gives me something to focus on. To distract me from the questions.

  DS Carrick hesitates. ‘I know it’s difficult to get your thoughts together when you’ve had a shock. But perhaps if you were to describe exactly what you think you saw, and where you think you saw it.’

  What you think you saw, and where you think you saw it.

  He does not believe me either.

  I’m feeling a bit chilly now in my running gear, bare-armed, bare-legged, everyone watching me like I’m an insect under a microscope.

  The kitchen falls silent.

  I cup my hands round the hot tea, and wearily launch into my story again. ‘I went out for my run at about seven – ’

  ‘Wait, can I just check this? You went running in the woods?’ DS Carrick asks, his eyes narrowed. ‘Deliberately? On the anniversary of your mother’s death?’

  I glare at him resentfully. ‘Yes.’

  Connor seems to get it immediately. Or perhaps his brother told him on the way here. ‘Like an act of defiance,’ he explains to the sergeant. ‘Two fingers to the past, and all that.’

  I shoot him a grateful smile.

  Tris is shaking his head disapprovingly. I remember his terse reply to my text. Don’t. Not a good idea.

  ‘Very well.’ But Carrick sounds dubious. More scribbling in his black notepad. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was still misty in places, but I could see it was going to be a sunny day. I took the lane down to the village, then cut across the fields into the back of the woods. There was nobody about, but I felt like someone was watching me.’

  I take a sip of my tea. It tastes horrible. Tristan must have put half a cup of sugar in there. For the shock. ‘I know that probably sounds stupid. But it was like one of my nightmares.’

  DS Carrick looks at me sharply. ‘Nightmares?’

  ‘I suffer from bad dreams. Mostly about what happened to my mother.’

  ‘Still? After all these years?’

  I shrug, not bothering to reply to that. I could have said, I’ll never get over it. But what would be the point?

  ‘Can you try to describe what you saw in the woods, Eleanor?’ PC Flynn asks gently, coming to stand behind Tristan.

  I stare into my mug of tea, considering that request. A flurry of images, some blurred, some horribly clear.

  ‘I can try.’

  I’ve stopped running now. It had to happen sometime. I take another few steps on the woodland path, then come to an abrupt halt. I can see it clearly now, the obstacle lying still under the rustle of leaves in the dappled sunshine. Only it’s not a fallen tree trunk stripped of its bark, as I thought at first.

  It’s a woman.

  A naked woman, lying across the woodland path as though she stripped off there and lay down for a nap. Except she’s not asleep.

  I creep forward, expecting at any moment to see the woman jump up and laugh at me for having fallen for her trick. But then I see how still and pale she is. Like a woman made of polished wood.

  Her hair is tousled, with what appears to be grass caught in it, her right arm lying stiffly above her head at an angle, face turned away so I can’t be sure how old she is nor even if I know her. Her skin is like white marble except for her throat, which is bruised. Dark and livid. That shocks me more than her nudity.

  ‘Hello?’

  I’m hit again with that terrifying sense of familiarity, of déja-vu. I stare at the woman, both of us motionless now, me holding my breath, her daring me to go further. We’re statues in one of those playground games where if you move, you’re out. Grandma’s Footsteps. Not that she has much chance of losing this round; she has too great an advantage over the living.

  She’s slender, almost flat-chested. Her nipples look discoloured. Her legs are bent at the knee, slightly drawn up. She’s twisted at the hips too, one of her bare feet smudged with dirt. The index finger on her outstretched hand is slightly crooked, pointing at the sky or maybe the stream, like that portrait of God’s bulbous finger outstretched towards Man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo Buonarroti. The Creation of Adam. I remember the first time I saw that painting, thinking how bored Adam looked, as if he would much rather be somewhere else. Like I would now.

  She is younger than I thought. Early-to-mid twenties, my own age. Gently upturned nose, parted lips – bare, no lipstick – and her eyes closed, lashes startlingly dark against the paper-pale skin. Chestnut hair, worn long. Probably shoulder-length, though it’s hard to tell, because it looks damp and slightly matted.

  What I can see of her throat is horrific: blocks of mottled bruising, the marks almost overlapping at times, running like a rope-burn all the way from one side of her throat to the other. Two distinct shapes stand out on either side.

  Thumb marks?

  I take another step, and suddenly I see what had been hidden from me up until that moment.

  A digit, marked in thick black pen on her forehead.

  The number three.

  The bottom curve of the 3 is flatter than the top curve and slightly wonky, as though the writer started too big and nearly ran into the woman’s eyebrows. It looks like permanent marker.

  There’s another crack of twigs.

  I hear a rustling high up on the wooded slopes above me. Like someone moving through the trees.

  I glance up, my breath catching.

  Out of the corner of my eye a dark figure shifts behind a trunk as my head turns. But when I stare, I see nothing but the haphazard trunks of trees, an empty slope, sunlight on the leaves.

  I plunge through the shallow stream without bothering with the bridge and head away from the path, charging through the trees, making a hell of a noise. There’s an old track somewhere ahead through all this undergrowth. Nature is trying to reclaim it, a strip of deteriorating tarmac seeded with grass and vast clumps of cow parsley, tinged white for May. But it’s still there.

  I find the track, struggle over the locked metal gate that bars the way, collapse on the other side in the long grass and weeds. I can smell dog shit somewhere nearby.

  I lurch onto hands and knees, head hanging, then crawl to my feet. Stumble through weeds, sunlight and flies in my face. Somehow I keep running.

  ‘That’s the one I was telling you about,’ they used to say behind my back. ‘The one whose mum was murdered in front of her. When she was a little kid.’

  I’ve had years to get used
to this sick notoriety. All the whispers and stares they think I don’t notice. The gossip I catch at the tail end of someone’s conversation as I enter the staff room. The bloody ridiculous assumptions. That I’m going to be quiet and withdrawn, emotionally scarred, not fit to work with kids. If anything, the opposite has always been true. I can identify with their problems because I’ve been there myself, down in the dark.

  ‘It was on the television and in all the newspapers. They did one of those crime reconstructions, but never caught the murderer.’

  That was one reason I came back to Cornwall after university. Not to lay my mother’s ghost to rest, but because my old school was one of the few places where I could make a fresh start. When your past is already known, no one can blow your life wide open with some grim revelation.

  ‘So the killer is still out there somewhere?’

  I burst out of the track at the top of the hill. I haven’t run so hard in years. My legs are shaking. There’s the church ahead of me, I can see the squat bell tower above the trees, its clock face precisely three minutes fast.

  The bell is tolling the hour.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Detective Sergeant John Carrick stops writing, checks through what he’s written, nods once, then flips his notebook shut. I can tell nothing from his expression, which is still calm and professional.

  He stands up and pushes his chair under the table. ‘I’ll have a quick chat with the officers in the woods, see how they’re getting on. The signal’s stronger outside. If you don’t mind.’ He jerks his head at PC Flynn to follow him outside. ‘Thanks for the tea. Back in a tick.’

  I know what that means; Carrick wants to talk about me to his colleagues behind my back.

  Hannah disappeared while I was speaking to the police; I remember her muttering something about putting the water heater on, then slipping unobtrusively out of the kitchen door. But I know she’s headed back to bed, still recovering from her night shift.

  That’s another thing I like about living with Hannah. She’s unfazed by all this, totally focused on her own life, and I love her for it. There are plenty of people in my life to look concerned and take statements. What I need is someone who will just shrug and go back to bed, make me feel like all this insanity is somehow ordinary.

  The police come back in. They know something. The detective sergeant charges in with arms swinging, looking for me. The police woman is fumbling with her phone, her expression grave.

  ‘Are those the training shoes you were wearing earlier?’ Carrick asks, studying my Mizuno trainers. They are still a little damp from where I splashed through the stream, toes tinged green from the undergrowth. ‘In the woods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Everyone looks at my trainers. I resist the urge to do up my right lace, which is trailing again.

  With a bright smile, PC Flynn says, ‘They look new.’

  ‘That’s because they are new,’ I say, not smiling back at her. I can’t stand being patronised. ‘I only bought them recently, because my others were getting worn.’ Then I add, by way of explanation, ‘I teach PE. We get through a lot of trainers during the school year.’

  ‘We need a photograph of the soles,’ Carrick announces, then nods to the policewoman. ‘Both feet, please.’

  I don’t move, mystified.

  ‘Don’t worry, this will only take a minute.’ PC Flynn peers at her mobile phone screen as she fiddles with the settings, then adds, ‘Probably be easiest if you take them off.’

  I know this routine. Good cop, bad cop.

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Okay.’ Her voice has hardened. The patronising smile has gone. ‘Could you stand then, please, and hold your foot up behind you? Left foot first. Then we’ll do the right.’

  Connor is frowning. ‘Why do you need a photograph of her trainers?’

  ‘For elimination purposes,’ the sergeant tells him flatly, and I can tell that is the most we will get out of them for now.

  Last time I went through this, at the tender age of six, my father was always there, one step ahead the whole way, his arm round my shoulder, protecting me from the police and the journalists, making sure I was not put under pressure, that the horrors of the past could be forgotten as easily as possible.

  This time, I’m on my own. I’m not even sure my dad registered what I told him this morning, still locked in the misery of the past.

  Today, of all days.

  Tris moves his kitchen chair out of the way. ‘Come on, Ellie,’ he says, his smile cajoling, ‘let’s get this over with. You can lean on me.’

  Not quite on my own, I concede.

  I stand rigidly, holding onto Tristan’s shoulder for balance, my left leg thrust back like a flamingo’s, then the right leg, while the constable shuffles about behind me. She takes several shots of both soles of my Mizuno trainers, muttering under her breath about the dim lighting in the kitchen.

  ‘Thanks, we’ll be back later,’ Detective Sergeant Carrick tells us as his constable finishes her work, ‘when there’s something to report.’

  Connor shows the police to the front door of the cottage, then hurries back into the kitchen, looking furious. ‘Unfeeling bastards. Anyone would think you were the bloody suspect, not the victim.’

  ‘I’m a witness, not a victim,’ I remind him.

  ‘All the same.’

  Connor is another one who’s always been there for me. Hannah, Tris, Connor, Denzil, even my father until the night of the fire. And Jenny is a good friend now too. I have a network in place, and one of which even the exacting Dr Quick would approve. But perhaps it’s time I shouldered the burden on my own for a while. I still need a shower, after all, and some time alone in my room sounds very welcome. I’ve never been one for crowds.

  ‘Look,’ I tell the Taylor brothers, ‘you two have been great, but this could take hours and I don’t need anyone to babysit me. I need to shower and change my clothes. Besides, Hannah is in the house if I do need anything.’

  Connor hesitates, then nods. ‘Of course.’ He nudges Tris. ‘Come on, let’s give the woman some space. We’ve got to shift the sheep down from the top field anyway.’

  Tris, who has never done this before, looks at me with an uncertain expression. ‘Are you sure, Ellie? Because we can stay if you want.’

  ‘Go, both of you.’

  Connor kisses me on the cheek and heads back outside to the quad bike, whistling an old Cornish tune. He’s probably already thinking about his sheep.

  Tris hovers in the kitchen doorway, still unwilling to leave me alone, bless him. ‘But what happens now?’

  My head is still in the green space of the woods, but I glance at the clock on the kitchen wall. It’s one of those fake antique clocks with a large face and stiff black hands, the kind you might find in a Victorian railway station. One of Hannah’s discoveries at the local garden centre. The time is a little after half past nine. I’ve been awake less than three hours.

  ‘Now we wait until they find her.’

  Much as I have always relied on my old friends to keep me sane, it’s good to be on my own for a while. I ring the school and check with the cover supervisor that he does not need me to email any instructions for the lessons I’m missing. He doesn’t, which is a relief. I chuck my sticky running gear in the bathroom wash basket, one of those tall wicker baskets with a lid that look like they’re concealing a snake, then take a leisurely fifteen minutes to shower and wash my hair.

  As the warm water runs over me, I close my eyes. The darkness comes back and I push it away with an effort. Ten, nine, eight, seven …

  After the shower, I drag a bath towel from the shelf and wrap it round myself, anchoring it above my breasts. When I pad through barefoot into the bedroom, everything is just as I left it this morning.

  I pick up my phone from the crumpled bed. Several concerned voice messages from the school, a text from Connor – We love you, even if you do see dead people. Call us anytime – and a monthly notificatio
n about my bill, which I don’t bother to open.

  Still nothing from Denzil.

  I root for matching bra and knickers in my drawer, then change into jeans and a strappy gold top. My weekend wear. It feels odd on a work day, but then I am hardly likely to be going into work today.

  Carefully, I hang my work clothes back up in the wardrobe. A grey tracksuit with a pink V-necked polo shirt underneath: typical PE teacher fare. My damp Mizuno trainers are sitting on an old newspaper near the door. I study them a moment, then choose a fresh pair from the box under the bed. Nike, with a pink stripe. A little worn on the instep, but perfectly good for casual wear.

  I towel-dry my hair for speed, then fix it up in a ponytail again. I don’t bother with make-up. I rarely do these days, unless I’m going out for the night.

  There are two vehicles parked in the turning area by the time I walk down the stairs after my shower: a black Vauxhall Corsa, tinted windscreen glinting in the sunlight, and a marked police transit van. A small group of men is standing beside the police van, some in uniform, their heads bent together, deep in conversation.

  One of the men is Carrick. Another is my father.

  I stand in the hallway a moment, staring at them through the glass panel, then open the front door. ‘Hello?’

  Dad stops speaking. I can’t decipher the look on his face as he glances in my direction. Guilt? Suspicion?

  The man in the light grey suit has turned as well, staring at me. His eyebrows rise slowly.

  Suddenly I recognise him. DI Powell.

  My stomach pitches, rolling horribly. It’s like I’ve stepped straight back into the past, into a time when our world was falling apart around us and there was nothing to cling onto, no safety rope.

  Just when I thought things could get no worse, a vision right out of my childhood nightmares has appeared to prove me wrong.

  Detective Inspector Powell. Tall, white-haired now, easily in his sixties. I thought he would have retired by now. He was one of the officers who investigated the unsolved murder of Angela Blackwood eighteen years ago.