Cut to the Bone (18 page)

As the text messages opened up, he glanced at Michelle. She was sitting with arms tight across her body.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I get that you have to lead on cyber protocols; I understand you are a cyber crime expert. Downloading from phones, technical support, though. That’s my role.’

Zain opened his mouth, but nothing except air came out.

‘I think I’m done for the day,’ Michelle said.

She shut down her computers, grabbed her coat, and was gone.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think,’ he said, as she walked past him. It sounded feeble even to him. ‘Shit, fuck, damn,’ he said.

‘Everything OK, Zain?’

Zain turned to see Deborah Scarr walking into the room.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘Genuine question. I just saw Michelle Cable storm out of here.’

‘Thinks I’m stepping on her toes,’ said Zain.

‘And are you?’ Deborah said, with knowing overtones.

Zain thought for a moment. Should he be candid with Hope’s right-hand woman? She had inducted him on his first day, shown him around. She had seemed genuine. Then again, would she repeat everything he said to Hope? Fuck it, he decided, he needed to vent.

‘Probably. Yes. It wasn’t intentional. She should be happy, anyway. I was getting stuff done so she doesn’t have to do it.’

‘Remember she has been doing this job for four months, in this unit. And she has been working for a decade in law enforcement. It is probably difficult for her.’

‘Don’t take her side. I’m the new guy being ostracised,’ he said, smiling.

‘Being facetious won’t help,’ she said, putting an envelope down on his desk.

‘You sound like Riley,’ he mumbled.

‘The warrants you needed to access the phones and computers . . .’

Zain grinned at her. She raised her eyebrows in response.

‘Just pretend you had them before you did whatever it is you did. And brittle toffee with cashew nuts. Fortnum and Mason. Expensive, I know, but Michelle melts when she has them in her mouth. Just a tip.’

Deborah patted him on the shoulder, then squeezed it.

Zain did an online search, found the toffee she was referring to. It cost the same as an expensive bunch of flowers, but if it would ease the tension with Michelle, then it was worth it.

His laptop told him it had reached the end of its download and search. Zain filtered for Ruby’s texts, and Dan’s replies to her.

‘You can hide, but you can’t be invisible,’ he said into the empty office.

No one was there to see his results, his handiwork. He didn’t feel a sense of triumph, though, just emptiness. A pocket of darkness enveloped him, and he felt himself fall through a series of ten floors. He ran to the bathroom, emptying his guts out into the sink.

He was shaking, and feeling anxious as he looked at his face in the mirror.

He checked his pockets, but he didn’t have any of the little green pills on him.

Chapter Fifty-one

The house was loud in its silence. The rafters stretching their muscles. Central heating gushing through radiators.

Kate reset the alarm, left her shoes in the lobby. She walked up the stairs in darkness. Gently opened the door to her mother’s room. Loud breathing, but confident, assured. No nightmares tonight. She hoped.

Kate went into her own bedroom. She stripped off her clothes, switching on the en suite light, walking on the cold tiled floor. She peeled off her bra and underwear, dropped it into the laundry basket.

The water was hot. She stood under it for five minutes, letting it scald her. Washing away the grime of the day, the tiredness. Kate massaged soap into her skin, her scalp. She dried herself, brushed her teeth.

Kate climbed into the bed, her body still damp, her hair still wet.

Ryan was awake. She reached out for him, his skin warm, smooth. He let her pull him closer, let her feel her way in the dark. Kate found his mouth, salty from sleep, his tongue hard as it sought her own.

He kissed her neck as she grabbed at his T-shirt, pulling it over his head. It got stuck and they laughed as he struggled. She tasted him, her mouth on his chest, following the line of hair down his stomach. He pulled her back up and they locked mouths as his fingers found their way inside her.

Kate gasped as he pushed her onto her back. He moved his hands back between her legs, his tongue in her mouth, his feet rough against her legs.

She pulled his lips down to her breasts, let him explore, felt soft hammer blows through her body, explosions she craved.

He whispered into her ears, phrases her mother would term blasphemous. She undid the string on his shorts, and, naked, he covered her, then was inside her.

They sunk into the mattress, covered by the duvet, trying not to cry out.

She thought of Chloe then. The wife. The other woman. Something borrowed. A husband borrowed, to dull her desires.

And sadness filled her, as Ryan did. Lonely in the arms of another woman’s husband, in a bed where her ghosts made love to her as much as any man of flesh.

Ryan fell into a deep sleep soon after, having shifted to the guest bedroom. For appearances’ sake.

Kate sat downstairs with hot cocoa, her laptop switched on. Darkness beyond the kitchen window. Shadows moving in the corners of her eyes. The wind picked up, the rain tapping on the glass. Don’t look; don’t let it disturb you.

She called Stevie Brennan.

‘The duty nurse, Becky Molloy, she’s been great,’ said Brennan. ‘But Dr Kureshi, the consultant . . . guy’s a dick. Won’t let us near Dan. I said to him, what you going to do, call the police? He didn’t see the funny side. Said Dan’s too fragile. If we want to question him, we come back in the morning.’

‘So we will,’ Kate said. ‘Go home, get some sleep. I need his flat searched first thing.’

‘How? We’re not charging him yet?’

‘Yes, we are.’

Harris had found incriminating messages and emails on Dan’s phone, saved to his cloud, or something. There were gaps, but on particular days Dan had sent enough vile words for them to start building a case against him.

Kate scanned them now.

If I can’t have you, no one else can. You think you’re going to be OK without me?

You will regret leaving me.

I’ll fucking hurt you, make you feel the pain you’re giving me.

I never loved you, this was all a game, you know it was. Are you that stupid? Ugly and stupid. Girls like you don’t deserve to live.

You might as well kill yourself. Before someone does it for you. Useless cunt.

Was it enough? It might just be anger, high emotion, a spoilt brat losing his toys? Could she use these messages as a foundation, create a noose from the sentences swimming before her eyes?

Dan had also cut and pasted cases from the internet, serial killer court cases. Detailed forensic minutiae on how women had been stalked and kidnapped, then, layer by layer, had their skin, hair, dignity taken from them.

No messages accompanied the extracts. No explanation. Just random poems of hatred, sent to Ruby via email.

Kate closed her eyes, imagined Ruby, in her bedroom, reading these. What must she have felt? Was she trapped, unsure, caught between letting Dan rant and just ignoring him, and reporting him? Had she told anyone? She must have been terrified, as the man she loved turned.

It happened to women all the time. Every day. Kate knew. She had been there, seen it happen.

Little girls growing up thinking of heroes, knights, men who would make them the centre of their universe and love them. So they let them do it, let them in. Only to find the doors locked, and the monster was in the bedroom, not the basement.

Other messages about James. Saying Dan would like to stick a hot poker into him, then watch his flesh melt and fall off his bones.

The darkness, it angered her. Men thinking they could control women, scare them. Angrier still at women so beaten down, so insecure, they didn’t fight back. Until it was too late.

Kate had been too late.

For Ruby, and for herself.

She shut the laptop, finished the cocoa. A movement outside. She looked up, through the glass. She thought it was
him
, staring back at her. She dropped her cup, stepped into the shattered pieces, her feet pinching on sharp ceramic edges and points.

It was nothing. Not
him
. How could it be? Only her own reflection. She switched the light off, looked out into the garden, tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

It was late, nearly 2 a.m. She was due at the hospital at ten. She messaged Harris, told him to meet her there.

Kate looked again out of the kitchen window, just to make sure. She was being absurd. She left the cup where it was, her skin goosed, her heart beating. She was unsettled, and felt as though she wasn’t alone in the room. She went quickly to her bed, trying to find sleep under her heavy bed covers.

Chapter Fifty-two

Zain read the text from Riley as it came through. Didn’t the woman ever sleep?

He was calmer now, another pill dulling his instincts and paranoia.

Two in one day; he hadn’t been there for a while. It had been a full-on day, though, maybe a trigger day. He still couldn’t work out why he had fallen so quickly. It was the old anxiety, the sense of purpose lost, a useless existence. What was he?

Underlying it all was the remembered pain. Not just a memory. It was tangible, visible. He lifted his right foot into the air. It cast a shadow on the wall behind him. Zain stared at the hardened flesh where his toenails should have been.

He turned onto his side, trying to relax. He needed to. He would have another busy day tomorrow; he couldn’t be tired. The pills only achieved so much. If he stared at his bedroom wall long enough, he would fall into sleep. It was always temporary, fitful, but it happened. And was enough to rest his body. His mind. His nightmares.

He checked his phone again. Again that sense of betrayal. Riley was a good person. All the team were.

So why do this? Why disappoint himself so easily? Because he had no choice.

No, that was crap. Everyone had a choice, always. He had decided to be part of this, because he wanted what was on offer. It was self-preservation. And was what he was doing so bad?

Zain thought he had a gut instinct for right and wrong. That was before his time with the shadow world of SO15. Dealing with spooks and undercover operations, when all the players were bathed in grey light. You started to blur the lines between right and wrong, it became about something else.

Was he letting that experience cloud his judgement now?

He imagined what Riley would say if she knew.

In his dreams it was her. Pulling the nails from his feet. One by one. Hearing him scream, and laughing as he did.

Chapter Fifty-three

Rob Pelt wore plastic boots over his shoes, his fingers sweating inside latex gloves. The flat was being checked, square metre by square metre, being marked off on a shared file drive. He held an iPad in one hand, watching entries appear as the CSIs made their discoveries.

He was in Dan’s bedroom, with its views across to Canary Wharf. The sky was blue, clear. The warmth from the storage heater made it feel like a summer’s day. His jeans and V-neck jumper clung to him, making him uncomfortable.

Boxes were piled up on one side of the room. The contents were mundane. Roller skates, school notebooks – Rob had laughed at that, at the idea of Dan being still young enough to be proud of achievements at school. CDs, DVDs. All empty cases, the discs kept in plastic index folios. Weights, 10 kg the heaviest, with spiral bars and locks to keep them in place.

A row of trainers, shoes, Converse, lined up in a straight line against one wall. A cloud of foot funk suspended over them. The flat smelled of boys. Sweat, food, rubbish bags not emptied. He wondered if his own flat gave off the same stench.

He felt a twinge of envy at the idea of being as young as Dan, having a flash pad in the centre of London. Money at an age when you could have some serious fun with it.

At Dan’s age, Rob had been holding down shifts at McDonald’s and Gap, while trying to study chemistry at Birmingham. After that he had been fast-tracked in the police, and nearly a decade into his career, here he was, detective sergeant for SOE3, working for the PCC himself. Not bad for a boy from Manchester, born below the poverty line.

Dan’s bed was against the wall under the windows. The mattress still in the manufacturer’s plastic.

‘Lazy git,’ said Rob to one of the CSIs. ‘He couldn’t even be bothered to tuck the bed sheets in.’

They were spread over the plastic, a duvet rolled up in one corner. Pillows on the floor.

‘How could he sleep with all that going on?’ he said.

The CSI ignored him, checking and tapping away. Another called him over, indicating Dan’s dresser drawers.

Rob looked in, whistled. ‘And we have a winner,’ he said. ‘Freaky little perv.’

The CSI put his hands in, pulling the contents out, individually. Rob held them up to the light coming in through the window, turning them around. He put one closer to his nose, taking in the faint smell of perfume and body odour.

‘They’ve been worn?’ Rob asked him.

The faceless man nodded behind his mask.

‘Bag them,’ said Rob.

‘There are fifty-six pairs in all,’ said the CSI when he’d finished.

‘Either Dan’s got a fetish,’ said Rob, ‘or he’s been collecting trophies. My bet’s on him getting his fans to send them in. Like Tom Jones, only by post. I hope.’

Rob sent a message to Riley, telling her what he’d found.

Chapter Fifty-four

Kate met Zain in the hospital cafeteria, where he sat drinking a rare coffee. That was her addiction; normally, her second in command didn’t touch the stuff.

‘You look tired, Harris,’ she said.

His skin looked washed-out, pale. His eyes were lined with ribbons of red, smudges under the lids.

‘I feel wrecked. You, on the other hand, look like you just came back from a mini-break.’

Kate was feeling relaxed. Ryan did that to her. For her. She had weighed up the moral arguments long ago, decided she was a better functioning individual this way. A better daughter, a better police officer. She wasn’t trying to take Ryan from Chloe; neither of them wanted a shared life.