Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (19 page)

I
give up and head back into the living room. That’s when I notice the door. It
looked like a simple wood panel before, half hidden behind a tall, wooden room
divider. I slip behind the screen and try the door. It opens easily enough into
a small office of some kind: there’s a tired-looking desk with an old-fashioned
table lamp, and a four shelf bookcase, and a gun cabinet.

I
cross the room and check the gun cabinet. But it’s locked, and through the
glass front I can see the lone shotgun inside is secured with a chain in the
approved manner. I know they have a valid licence for it too. Nothing suspect
there.

When
I turn, I’m faced with a row of square, glass-covered box frames hung at
precise intervals on the wall opposite. Each frame contains a selection of
butterflies, pinned to the felt backing, their tiny labels meticulously written
out in black ink and placed inside next to each butterfly.

I
step closer to read one of the labels.
Vanessa
Atalanta, or Red Admiral.

 
The frames are
dusty, like the glass-covered photograph upstairs, and look like they’ve been
there for decades. I’m guessing their father was the butterfly enthusiast. On
the narrow table below the frames are three dead creatures, stuffed and
preserved. A fox with glass eyes, a magpie, and a weasel with bared teeth,
mounted on metal stands. Taxidermy. I have a dim and unpleasant memory of my
dad taking me to a museum of stuffed animals at Jamaica Inn. I found it
horrific, though Dad seemed to enjoy it, and even visited it again several
times before the museum closed down.

I
eye their rigid forms with misgiving, then stiffen at the unmistakeable sound
of a vehicle approaching the farmhouse.

Time
to get out.

I
head straight for the window in the living room. But it’s painted shut and I
can’t loosen it. The front door is too risky. And the back door is probably the
way they will come in. I stand in the gloomy hallway like a ghost, thinking and
listening hard. Two car doors slam, one slightly after the other. Then I hear
familiar male voices in the yard.

The
Taylor brothers are back.

I
take the stairs two at a time, not caring how much noise I am making this time,
and dive into Tris’s untidy bedroom.

The
back door is being unlocked. I can hear barking now. Connor must have taken the
dog with him to pick up Tris.

I
pick my way to his bedroom window over discarded socks and underwear. I need to
climb out and get myself home as fast as possible. There will be no easy way to
explain my presence if they find me here. And I could end up being the one in
trouble with the police.

I
overbalance on something hidden under the clothes on the floor, and lurch
sideways, grabbing onto the bed frame. There’s a bag under the clothes. An old
blue rucksack that I recognise as belonging to Tris. With something poking out
of it.

It’s
a photograph.

Crouching, I draw it out of the rucksack and
stare down in disbelief at one of our own family snapshots. A holiday photo of
me and my parents on a sandy beach, taken while my mum was still alive. Only a
short while before she was murdered, in fact, so I would have been six at the
time. My face is beaming, my hand tucked in my mum’s, my little red bucket and
spade lying on the sand beside us. It’s a photo I know intimately, one of the
old family snaps in the keepsake box under my bed.

How
the hell did Tris get an extra print of it?

I turn the photo over, and feel like someone
has just thumped me hard in the chest, almost stopping my heart.

Angela,
Ellie and me. Polzeath.

My dad’s handwriting.

This is not an extra print.

It’s
exactly the same photo I have at home. Or rather,
had
at home. Because it’s been stolen from me.

Abruptly I remember one night not long ago when
I woke up and thought someone was in my bedroom, standing over my bed. When I
got up and groped along the wall for the light switch, I found the room empty,
but my keepsake box out in the middle of the floor, the lid off.

The
shadow man.

I stare at the photo, my heart plunging into
the pit of my stomach. I have always assumed it was my disturbed imagination,
that man-shaped shadow standing by the window. But perhaps it is a real person,
climbing in through my unlocked window at night and watching me while I sleep.

Tris?

I can’t bear the thought, yet here’s the
evidence of this stolen photograph. He’s the right build too, for my shadow
man. And I did see him at the night club in Newquay. Maybe he often goes there
at the weekends to dance and hang out. Maybe he met the dead woman there, lured
her away, and …

I slip the photograph into my bra, rather than
risk a crease by folding it into the tight rear pocket of my denim shorts.

Then I freeze, listening. There are voices in
the kitchen below, raised in anger. The two brothers are arguing.

‘You’re not Dad, Connor. You can’t tell me what
to do.’

‘Dad’s dead, remember? And he left me in
charge. So stop arguing the toss and do what I bloody well tell you.’

‘Why should I? You’re not even my
real
brother.’

‘You ungrateful little shit.’ Connor sounds
furious, and I’m not surprised. ‘I’m telling you to be careful with Eleanor.
No, don’t you walk away from me, I mean it.’ His voice deepens. ‘She’s not
right in the head. Never has been. A woman like her can only land you in
trouble. And I mean serious trouble.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

‘Oh right, I see. So you didn’t just spend a
night in the police cells because of Eleanor Blackwood?’

Tris raises his voice. He sounds like he’s
ready to thump his brother. ‘You are bang out of order. You know my arrest was
total bullshit. It was just for the tourists, to make the area look safe again
for walkers and ramblers. Why do you think they let me go so quickly? Because
that lawyer showed them up as idiots.’

There’s
a long silence below. Then Connor says in a hoarse voice, ‘Have you forgotten
what Dad told me before he died?’

‘I
haven’t forgotten.’

‘Dad
didn’t think you knew how much he loved you, Tris. He made me promise to take
care of you. And that’s what I’m going to do.’

I climb onto the window ledge as quietly as
possible and ease first one leg, then the other, over the top of the sash
window, standing on the narrow window ledge below. At least with all the noise
they’re making, they are less likely to hear someone sneaking out of an
upstairs window.

I hear Connor swearing below, his voice
muffled, then a thud of feet on the stairs. Tris, heading for his bedroom in a
rage.

‘Shit,’ I mutter.

Tris is about to find his window open. And the
mad girl outside, hanging onto his window frame by her fingertips.

There’s no time to
worry about breaking the corrugated roof below. I let go and drop the last few
feet, landing in an unsteady crouch. It cracks ominously under my weight but I
can’t take it slow this time. I balance hurriedly to the edge, making one hell
of a noise, then swing down, this time straight into brambles at the back of
the house.

Landing awkwardly, a white-hot bolt of pain
shoots up my ankle. I stifle a cry of pain and lean against the house wall,
eyes closed, waiting for my racing heart to settle. For all I know, Tris is
looking out of his window above me, wondering why it’s open. But that’s a risk
I’ll have to take.

I count backwards from ten, then test my ankle.
It hurts, but not so badly that I can’t walk. Not too much damage done,
thankfully. I can’t afford yet more time off work.

I limp up the hill at the back of the farmhouse,
hoping I’m out of sight of the windows. Nearing the top of the steep field, I look
back, sweaty and panting in the late afternoon sun. There’s no one following me.
No sign of anyone, in fact. The valley lies beneath me like a patchwork quilt,
a higgledy-piggledy network of fields and sprawling hedgerows and farm buildings,
the untidy cluster of houses that make up the village invisible from here,
nestled in a dip beside the woods.

I wriggle the old photograph out of my bra,
turn it over and study the handwriting again.

Eleanor,
Angela and me. Polzeath.

It
does look like my dad’s untidy, slanted handwriting. Especially the big loop of
the
P
on Polzeath. But to be
absolutely sure it’s my own copy of the photograph, I’ll have to check in my
keepsake box at home.

She’s not
right in the head. Never has been.

Is
that what he wanted to talk to me about? To warn me off his brother?
 

Climbing the stile at the top of the field, the
back of my neck prickles like someone is watching me.

I
look round, narrowing my eyes. High above I can hear the skylark again, a
distant dot enjoying the last of the day’s sunshine. The shadows stretch long
and stark all the way back to the farmhouse. But there’s no one moving in them.

I scramble through
an old deer gap in the hedge a few hundred yards from home, and find a car
marked with a familiar stripe and the words in blue,
Devon Cornwall Police
, parked outside the cottage. There’s a young
officer leaning against the bonnet, checking his smartphone. I remember him
from the woods, He’s got a faintly stubbly chin and looks about the same age as
Connor.

As
I approach, he straightens up and nods. He’s wearing a black earpiece linked by
a curly wire to his radio, and even at this distance I can hear a thin crackle
of voices.

‘Miss
Blackwood? DI Powell would like a word.’

‘Where
is he?’

The
officer looks embarrassed.

‘Here
I am, Eleanor.’

I
turn, surprised, at a rustling from the sunlit field behind me where the hedgerow
was damaged by my violent attack with the stick. Suddenly, the hedge shakes,
and DI Powell emerges through a gap. He has a few petals of white hawthorn blossom
caught in his hair, and a long, drooping grass stalk between his lips. He’s in
wellington boots again, and looks like a country yokel from a previous century.

‘Sorry,’
DI Powell says, striding off the grassy verge to greet me, ‘I was just …
investigating.’

‘Investigating
in a field?’

He
smiles vaguely and shakes his head. The hawthorn petals drift to earth. ‘Looking
around, getting a feel for the place. I’m glad I caught you though. Shall we go
inside?’

‘I’m
really bushed. I’m back at work now, and it’s been a long day. If you’ve got
something to say, perhaps you could just tell me out here?’

He
looks at me thoughtfully, then shrugs. ‘Eleanor, I need you to do something for
me.’

‘Do
what?’

‘I
need you to look at the body again.’

I
recoil instinctively, remembering at once. Her dead face flashes up at me as
though from the end of a tunnel, her skin pale, faintly green in the gloom. ‘Oh,
no. Sorry. I couldn’t possibly.’

‘I
thought that would be your reaction. And obviously I can’t force you to do this.
But it is important or I wouldn’t ask.’

‘But why? I told you everything I know at the
station.’

He nods. ‘And I’m very grateful for that. But
we need to be one hundred percent certain she’s not the woman you saw the first
time.’

Temper flares inside me. ‘You think I’m lying,
don’t you?’

‘Not lying, no,’ DI Powell says, and clasps his
hands behind his back. He cocks his head to one side, regarding me steadily. I
get the impression he’s itching to strangle me. ‘It can be a traumatic
experience, coming across a dead body like that. We need to be sure you didn’t
muddle it in your head. Which would be perfectly natural for someone in your
situation.’

‘Someone in my situation?’

He means,
unbalanced
.

‘I need to be sure, before I authorise a
full-scale search of the area, that a second body exists. These searches can be
very expensive. Hours of manpower, whole communities involved, dogs,
helicopters … ’

‘I get the picture,’ I say.

‘So here’s my thought. If you could take
another quick peek at the woman you found in the woods, in more controlled
surroundings, perhaps you’ll be better placed to remember if she’s anything
like the first body you saw.’

‘She isn’t,’ I say wearily, ‘and I’m certain
about that. There’s the number, for a start. The number on her forehead.’

‘That could have been changed, between when you
first saw her and when you uncovered her grave.’

I remember Tris saying more or less the same
thing. I shake my head. ‘I don’t need to see her again to tell you she looked
nothing like the first woman.’

His smile looks like it’s stuck in place. ‘Humour
me, Eleanor. We just want to jog your memory. And if you need counselling
afterwards, we can arrange that too.’

I
fumble for my house key in the pocket of my shorts. ‘I don’t want to go. But
perhaps I should if it will help you find the other woman. Have you identified
the body yet?’

DI Powell hesitates, watching me unlock the
front door to the cottage. ‘Yes,’ he admits.

‘So who is she?’

‘I can’t tell you her name. We haven’t managed
to notify her next of kin yet. But I can tell you what our victim did for a
living. She was a surf instructor, working out of Newquay.’

‘A local, then?’

Powell nods. ‘Reported missing a few weeks
back. The hotel staff said she spent her days on the surfing beaches along the
north coast – Widemouth and Polzeath, mostly, judging by the parking tickets
we found in her hire car – and her nights in the clubs. She liked to
dance as well as surf, went to all the beach barbecues.’

He
pauses, looking at me closely. ‘A bit of a party animal by all accounts. Maybe
you knew her.’

I
open the cottage door but do not go inside. I don’t like the idea of inviting
the police in the cottage again. It’s our private space and it’s been invaded
too much lately.

‘Yes, I still go clubbing sometimes, though
less than when I was in uni. There are clubs all the way along the coast. Hard
to avoid them when you’re out in a group. But that doesn’t mean she was a party
animal, or that I knew her.’

He smiles. ‘You wouldn’t make a bad detective.’

I raise my eyebrows, waiting.

‘Right now, we need to focus on who she knew
locally. Presumably someone from the village, since her body was left here. She
might have met her killer on the coast, maybe gone surfing or clubbing with
them. He could be someone who knows you too, given the way you seem to have
been targeted.’ Powell looks straight at me, his gaze suddenly piercing. ‘Know
any keen surfers, Eleanor?’

She liked
to dance as well as surf, went to all the beach barbecues. A bit of a party
animal by all accounts.

There are thousands of surfers like that
hanging around Newquay and the surrounding area in the summer. I’ve met dozens myself
that would answer her description. And he was right. I might even have met the
victim at some point in the past, and not recalled her face when I saw it.
Maybe at one of those night-time beach barbecues where people are just faces
looming up out of the darkness, the fire reflected in their eyes. Without a
name, I’m not sure where all this gets us.

The
inspector is looking at me expectantly. I think of Denzil Tremain. But there’s
no way I’m dumping one of my friends in this. Not without one hell of a good
reason.

‘Hundreds,’
I tell him, then turn away into the cool of the cottage. ‘Give me a few minutes
to change, Detective Inspector Powell. I’ll come and look at the body.’

In the mortuary, the
body is lying under a white sheet on a stainless steel table. Exactly like a
corpse in one of those television shows where the dead come back to life,
slowly sitting up on the table while the white sheet slides to the floor. Not a
very comforting thought. I slow my breathing, wait for the light to stop
flickering above the metal table. I can do this. I just need to get a grip on
my emotions.

I
think of the stuffed animals I saw in the farmhouse. The sleek weasel with
glass eyes and bared teeth. That’s all a dead body is, I tell myself. The
physical form of a person without their essence. The husk without the spirit.

DI
Powell is talking in a low voice to one of the mortuary technicians, a blond
young man in a white lab coat, who looks incongruously cheerful considering the
macabre nature of his job.

I’m sweating, my palms clammy. I try not to
stare at the body shape under the sheet while I wait, wondering what the delay
is. Something about the next of kin and a telephone call, from what I catch in
their muttered conversation.

‘Ready, Eleanor?’

PC Helen Flynn puts her arm around my shoulder.
Her tone is professional but sympathetic. I expect she has to deal with this situation
quite frequently: grieving relatives, shocked witnesses, people who can’t deal
with the reality of death.

I’m
not a relative though. I did not even know the dead woman. I look down at her
hand clasping my upper arm and the police officer releases me, moving back
slightly.

DI Powell is behind me. His footsteps echo on
the hard floor. ‘We can wait a few minutes if you’re not.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘Good.’

DI
Powell comes to stand at the top of the table, looking straight at me, then pulls
back the white sheet.

I was wrong. I am not ready.

I
draw in a sharp breath and take an instinctive step backwards, staring. Then
check myself, aware of the inspector still watching my face.

She looks very different from the woman I
remember from the woods. They’ve removed all the soil, you would never think
she’d been left in that shallow grave. Someone’s even combed out her blonde hair
so that it lies smooth and clean on her shoulders.

The number two is still there on her forehead,
but fainter under the overhead lights than it looked in the woods.

She has a thin build and looks fit, so she was probably
like me, physically active most days, constantly burning off calories. DI
Powell said she was a surfer. And I can see that she was used to the outdoor
life, her cheeks hollow and freckled, her face more tanned than the shoulder and
upper arm exposed by the raised sheet. But no doubt she habitually wore a
wetsuit.

She looks unreal, like a waxwork. Or a mannequin.

I take a step closer, peering at something
that’s caught my eye. Her throat shows the same signs of dark bruising with a
thin central line that I saw on the other woman.

‘So
she was strangled too?’

Powell’s eyes narrow on my face. ‘
Too
?’

‘The other woman, the first body I found,’ I
say. ‘She had been strangled as well. Don’t you remember?’

‘I didn’t see her body,’ he reminds me drily.

‘But I gave you a statement.’

He glances at PC Flynn, and she nods,
disappearing. The heavy door bangs behind her, shockingly loud in this quiet
place.

DI Powell lets the sheet settle on the woman’s
chest. He looks at me. ‘You’re absolutely sure this isn’t the same woman you
saw before?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘You definitely couldn’t have made a mistake? No
one would blame you if you had. Finding a dead body can be very upsetting in
the best of circumstances, and given your personal history … ’

‘I’m
sure,’ I say again.

‘Take
your time, Eleanor. Have a good look at her.’ He waits. ‘You say her throat
shows the same bruising as the other woman. But isn’t it more likely that she
is
the first victim?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘And you’re basing that assumption on …
what
, exactly?’

Slowly, I count to ten in my head. He waits in
silence, hands in his trouser pockets, head on one side, watching me.

‘It’s
not a hunch. It’s a fact based on simple observation. For starters, this woman
is blonde, not a brunette.’

‘But you could have been mistaken first time
round.’ He looks at me solemnly. ‘You were panicked. You were on your own. It
was the anniversary of your mother’s murder. I doubt you were thinking that
clearly at the time. Let alone taking note of the victim’s hair colour.’

‘Let’s say that’s true, but she’s also Number
Two, not Number Three,’ I point out, then look away from the body. ‘Can we have
this conversation somewhere else?’

‘Does it upset you to look at her?’

‘Pretty much.’

His gaze does not leave my face. ‘Yet you seemed
perfectly cool when I saw you down in the woods, immediately after you found
her. How do you explain that?’

‘I
was in shock.’

‘You
had dirt under your fingernails.’

‘I’d been digging.’

‘That is what surprises me most,’ DI Powell
says, and then pauses a beat, as if the idea has only just occurred to him.
Which I don’t believe. He strikes me as a man who thinks things through very
carefully before acting, who likes to plan out most conversations before he has
them. ‘I mean, why dig there in the first place? In that exact spot, when you
had the whole woods to choose from. It’s almost as though you knew she was
there.’

‘I knew there was probably a dead body still somewhere
in the woods,’ I agree, ‘because you lot had stopped looking for her.’

‘I’m sorry about that. We had our reasons.’

‘You mean the police decided I’d hallucinated
the whole thing so you didn’t bother looking any further.’

‘We looked,’ he assures me. ‘We even looked in
the same area where this woman was buried. There was nothing there that day,
according to my officers. No loose soil.’

I frown, taking that in. ‘You’re saying this
woman wasn’t buried there when you searched the woods the first time?’