Steven Dunne - Deity

‘Oh, is that what matters?’ said Becky. ‘Well, that’s not what matters to me, Ade. I want to know if they really died. I mean, they must have found out what happened. Three girls can’t just vanish like that, can they?’

‘One of them was found a week later, remember,’ said Rusty. ‘But she had no memory of what had happened.’

‘D’uh!’ said Becky. ‘I’m not a mong. I saw the film.’

‘Yes, you did. And you should already know the most important thing,’ said Kyle. ‘They left their pain behind them for everyone else to bear.’

‘Yeah, okay, they left their pain behind. Boo hoo! But what actually happened to them?’ she insisted. ‘I can’t write a five-hundred-word review on just that. Three girls climb a rock and disappear. End of.’

‘It’s a mystery,’ said Rusty, risking another smile.

‘Stop grinning at me, Geek Boy, or you’ll be wearing your teeth as a necklace.’

‘He fancies you.’ Fern laughed, leering at her friend. Rusty looked away, suddenly flushed.

Becky sidled round to him and put a hand up to stroke his cleanshaven cheek. ‘Course he does. He’s got eyes, hasn’t he?’ She remembered a line from the film. “Am I your Botticelli Angel?” ’ She giggled at Fern then turned back to Rusty and kissed him on the same cheek. ‘Mmm, you’ve got quite the manly stubble, haven’t you, Geek Boy?’ She laughed.

‘Don’t be dread, Becks,’ said Adele.

‘What?’ Becky held her hands open to underscore her innocence.

Rusty didn’t move, a faint smile fixed on his face. He pulled the camcorder up to hide his reddening features and began filming her.

Becky’s expression betrayed an objection but she didn’t voice it. ‘Stop hiding behind that thing, Geek Boy. Tell me.’ Rusty kept filming so Becky gave in and pouted at the lens, fluffing up her curly blond hair with her hands and striking several poses. ‘I mean, if it’s based on a true story, where did they go?’ she said as she looked at the camera with a startled expression.

‘Here’s a theory even somebody shallow and superficial can understand,’ said Adele, an icy edge to her voice. Becky narrowed her eyes. ‘Without doing a day’s work in their lives, those girls became famous. They were frozen in beauty and time forever and here we are talking about them over a hundred years later. Jealous?’

Rusty put the camcorder down and smiled hesitantly at Adele. ‘That’s very clever, Ade.’

‘Jealous? Me?’ sneered Becky. ‘You mental bitch.’

‘When I go that’s what I want,’ said Fern. ‘People everywhere talking about me, missing me. It’ll be so sad. Like Romeo + Juliet .’

‘Kylie’s the jealous one,’ continued Becky. ‘He’d have loved going to a girls’ school, wouldn’t you, sweetie?’ She directed her laughter towards Fern, who cackled her approval.

‘All those gorgeous dresses to wear,’ Fern answered.

Kyle managed a good-humoured middle finger.

‘Never mind, Geek, I can guess what happened,’ replied Becky, sitting back down. ‘I’ll bet those blokes raped and murdered them. Only sensible solution. Men are only interested in one thing. Isn’t that right, Kyle?’

Kyle squirmed under her accusing gaze but this time didn’t react. The limelight shifted quicker that way.

‘No answer from Faggot.’ Becky downed her drink and stood to leave. Fern followed suit. ‘Well, I’ll see you all at Sad Bastard Central tomorrow night. And you better not tell any cool people I’m coming to your party, Kylie.’

‘I don’t know any,’ quipped Kyle.

Becky glared at him but decided not to challenge. She stalked away as if on a catwalk, Fern trailing in her wake.

Rusty stood to film them as they walked away. ‘Poor Becky.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kyle.

Rusty stared at the table. ‘To be so ugly inside.’

Adele gazed at him, a thin smile forming around her mouth. ‘Maybe it’s a cry for help, Rusty.’

Rusty turned the camera on Adele but lowered it when she became uneasy. He looked into her dark eyes briefly.

‘Do they really not know what happened to those girls on the Hanging Rock?’ asked Kyle.

‘No, though there are lots of theories,’ said Rusty, finishing his drink. ‘The favourite is that they were buried under a rock fall somewhere near the summit. Me? I prefer not to know. That way they do live forever.’

‘Live forever.’ Adele nodded at him. ‘Like angels.’

‘Or gods,’ chipped in Kyle.

‘And poor Sara who flew to her death from the roof of the school — did she really kill herself? For real, I mean.’

‘Sara?’

‘The orphan — the girl who wasn’t allowed to go on the picnic because her school fees hadn’t been paid. She lost her best friend on Hanging Rock and later jumped off the roof of the school.’

Rusty shook his head. ‘I don’t really know. Most people concentrate on the girls who disappeared.’ He looked at her, pleased, and then a moment later said, ‘She had to content herself with being mortal.’

Adele nodded at him, her dark sad eyes mesmerising. ‘And alone.’

At that moment Rifkind entered the refectory and glanced across at Adele. She darted a quick peek in his direction then looked away.

‘You okay?’ asked Kyle.

She raised her dark eyes to him and smiled. ‘I will be.’

Brook did a few hours’ paperwork then set off home in the late afternoon as there was little more to be achieved after details of the incident had been entered on the PNC. It was a fine warm day though he was so tired he hardly noticed. The post mortem on the unknown corpse would take place in the morning, and without a cause of death and an ID, there was nothing left to do except pointless theorising.

Dr Higginbottom had already emailed a copy of his preliminary report. He couldn’t speculate on COD but his initial inspection had shown that several, if not all, of the deceased’s organs had been removed, so the corpse had clearly undergone a rudimentary post mortem.

One possibility mentioned by the doctor was that the body might have already been somewhere in the mortuary system but had been misplaced or misappropriated, so Brook had Noble contact the Coroner’s Office to request a list of all recent post mortems performed on corpses fitting a broad description of their John Doe. Brook then compiled a list from Yellow Pages and the trade website for undertakers and funeral directors of all organisations who might employ a mortician. He restricted the search to Derby and the surrounding area but even so there were still dozens. Death was a reliable employer.

One drawback to Higginbottom’s theory was the unusual incision in the man’s side. The doctor had never seen a corpse after a PM with such an aperture, and neither had Brook or Noble for that matter. More often than not, a British pathologist or mortician would cut a corpse down the middle of the chest from the neck to the pubis with a slight detour around the sinew of the belly button, because it was difficult to both cut and sew up afterwards. Brook had known pathologists who’d trained in the United States as Medical Examiners and used the Y-shaped incision often preferred over there. But no reputable pathologist would extract the organs of a cadaver from a six-inch opening on the flank. It just wasn’t practical, according to Higginbottom.

Before heading for home, Brook and Noble searched the Missing Persons databases for both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and marked the files of the dozen men around the right age who were unaccounted for. Unfortunately, though some had seen the inside of a prison, none had been born in Scotland. The attached photo IDs for the subjects didn’t look promising either, though some of the images were out of date, sometimes by many years, depending on the date of disappearance.