Roz Watkins - Cut to the Bone

‘Why not?’

‘Can’t stand the place.’

Again the strange undercurrents. ‘Do you like living in Gritton?’ I said.

‘You drove through the village?’

I nodded.

Something dark and desperate passed across his face. ‘Can you imagine growing up there? Spied on the whole time, fences everywhere so kids can’t even leave their gardens, constantly corralled like prize ponies until they go crazy.’ That was the most animated he’d been since we’d arrived, his voice quick and forceful.

‘Did it drive you crazy?’ I said.

‘A little. A long time ago.’

The situation with Anna, Daniel and Gary made my detective nose twitch. They all worked at the abattoir and yet none of them wanted to be there. I got the impression they didn’t want to be in Gritton at all, and yet they were trapped in this place, bound together somehow.

‘Do you know anything about the Pale Child?’ I asked.

Daniel gave a small shake of his head.

‘If she sees your face, that means you’re going to die?’ I added.

He clenched his hands together, knuckles tight. ‘It’s not real. I told you – people here are strange. The old people moved here when their village was drowned under the reservoir in the 1940s. They claim you can still hear the bells of the old church ringing, even though it’s underwater and had been knocked down anyway, plus the bells had been taken to Chelmorton and Chaddesden. That’s how reliable the locals are. They’ll tell you about a vicar who gives a sermon for the dead once a year. The Pale Child thing is just an offshoot from all that. There’s nothing in it.’

‘What’s the story behind it?’ I asked.

A muscle twitched under Daniel’s eye. ‘She’s supposed to be a child who died in Victorian times. People see her through the trees. Or her ghost or whatever. If she sees your face, it means you’re going to die.’

We were all silent for a moment, then I said, ‘Did Violet see the Pale Child?’ I recalled that Anna had claimed she didn’t.

A flash of fear passed across Daniel’s face. Then he gave a quick nod and said, ‘Yes. At dusk in the woods on the edge of Gritton. She was sure the Pale Child saw her face.’

We pulled up outside the home of Anna’s girlfriend, Esther, where Violet rented a room. It was one of a row of stone cottages facing a park. Roses and hollyhocks around the door; full-on chocolate-box front garden. It was in the excessively perfect part of the village, bordering the valley that swooped down to the abattoir, but far enough away that the abattoir didn’t make its presence felt.

The bucolic view was ruined by a police van and assorted members of the search team. There was always a conflict in these cases – preservation of life came first, so we had to comb the area with the thoroughness of a Labrador looking for treats. But if this turned out to be a crime scene, we’d have inevitably compromised the evidence. We got out of the car and suited up.

‘What was that about a child?’ Jai said.

I filled him in on what Anna had told me. ‘She was reluctant to talk about it,’ I said. ‘And she claimed Violet hadn’t seen the Pale Child, whereas Daniel just said she had.’

‘Hmm. Weird.’ Jai struggled with one of his overshoes. ‘Daniel likes Violet, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes. And there was a hint of someone a little less passive under all that hippieness.’

‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ Jai said.

‘Except it isn’t. It’s often the belligerent, aggressive and extremely loud ones. But yes, I wonder what Daniel’s like when he’s angry. And I think he saw something this morning at the abattoir that he’s not telling us about.’

One of the plants in the garden was scenting the air with a sweet and nostalgic fragrance. A memory hit me from childhood. From the time after my sister became ill. Playing in the garden, me wanting Carrie to be her old self and help me make a mud-castle for worms. What a strange child I’d been.

We made our way to Violet’s small bedroom. It was simple and serious-looking, not what I’d expected from someone who frequented YouTube in a pink bikini. A bookcase dominated one wall, the bed was covered by a plain white duvet, and a printer sat neatly on a desk in the corner.

I walked over to Violet’s bookcase and scanned the titles. A wide range of novels, from detective fiction through to a cluster of magic realism and a whole shelf of orange-spined classics.

‘Poncy books,’ Jai said. ‘Not your Fifty Shades type of girl.’

‘And look at the non-fiction,’ I said. ‘ Journalism after Fake News , Journalism for the Internet World, The New Feminism, Women and Art.’

‘Feminism?’ Jai said. ‘She prances around semi-naked on the internet. Does that count as post-feminism?’

I walked over to Violet’s desk. There was no sign of a laptop. I leafed through a pile of papers by the printer. Articles from the internet: ‘Art and ethics’, ‘Creepypasta and internet memes’, ‘When stuff goes mad on the net’, ‘Why stripping can be a feminist act’ and ‘Why stripping can never be a feminist act’.

‘Looks like there’s more to Violet than meets the eye,’ I said. ‘Nothing about meat though, or the threats from the animal rights people.’

‘Hang on,’ Jai said, and reached for a paper from the floor. He held it up for me to read: ‘When online threats turn to physical violence’.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘She was worried.’

I turned to Violet’s bed. The duvet had been dragged across it in a half-hearted effort to make things look neat, but you could still see the indentation in the pillow where her head had been the last time she’d slept there. On the other pillow was a neatly folded cotton nightshirt with a penguin on it.

I stared at the penguin. I could feel the old me starting to come back. Struggling to get to the surface like a drowning swimmer. I wanted this girl to be okay.

Back at the station, I stood in the incident room we’d been allocated, wondering if the temperatures were breaching any health and safety regulations. The place had the ambience of a Turkish sauna. I eyed my team. They were fanning themselves and muttering about the heat, sweating extravagantly.

In front of me, too close, was DS Craig Cooper. Red-faced, puffy, damp. There was a small cut above his right eye. I knew this was a bad thought, but if someone had smacked him, I reckoned he deserved it. Next to Craig – turned slightly away – was DC Fiona Redfern, usually competent almost to the point of being annoying, but currently distracted by a workplace conflict I hadn’t got to the bottom of. Then Jai, not looking too bad, but unable to stop moaning about the weather for more than five seconds, partly to wind up Craig, who could never grasp that Jai had been born in England and was not acclimatised to the weather in the Punjab. Then a few more DCs I didn’t know well, and then the indexers, including a new civilian investigator called Donna, shipped in and paid a pittance to type stuff into our HOLMES database. She was a retired crime scene officer, so at least she knew the ropes.

I steeled myself to do the briefing. This case had all the makings of being seriously high profile and I knew my boss, DCI Richard Atkins, would be concerned about me. My gran had recently died in circumstances which he knew had pushed all my buttons. But if anything it had left me numb, lacking in emotion, closer to what Richard would find desirable in a detective. Maybe this could be a chance for me to not get too involved. To prove I could follow the rules and do everything by the book. But for now, Richard wasn’t around. He was on his way home from sunning himself in a secret location that we were all very intrigued about.