Ross Armstrong - The Girls Beneath

PRAISE FOR ROSS ARMSTRONG

‘Addictive and eerie, you’ll finish the book wanting to chat about it’ – Closer Magazine , Must Read

‘A twisted homage to Hitchcock set in a recognisably post-Brexit broken Britain. Tense, fast-moving and with an increasingly unreliable narrator, The Watcher has all the hallmarks of a winner.’ – Martyn Waites

‘Ross Armstrong will feed your appetite for suspense’ – Evening Standard

‘Unreliable narrator + Rear Window -esque plot = sure-fire hit’ – The Sun

‘Brilliantly written… this psychological thriller is definitely one that will keep you up to the early hours. Five Stars.’ – Heat , Book of the Week

‘A dark, unsettling page turner’ – Claire Douglas, author of Local Girl Missing .

‘Creepy and compelling’ – Debbie Howells author of The Bones of You

‘The Watcher is an intense, unsettling read… one that had me feeling like I needed to keep checking over my shoulder as I read.; – Lisa Hall, author of Between You and Me

ROSS ARMSTRONGis an actor and writer based in North London. He studied English Literature at Warwick University and acting at RADA. As a stage and screen actor he has performed in the West End, Broadway and in theatres across the UK, where he has worked opposite actors such as Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Kim Cattrall and Maxine Peake. Ross’ debut title The Watcher was a top twenty bestseller and has been longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.

The Girls Beneath

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Ross Armstrong 2018

Ross Armstrong asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

First edition published with the title Head Case in Great Britain in 2018

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008182267

Version: 2018-12-19

For Edward, and all those

who think differently

‘Hush little baby

Hush quite a lot

Bad babies get rabies

And have to be shot’

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Documented Telephone Conversation #1

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Documented Telephone Conversation #2

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Documented Memory Project #1

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Documented Memory Project #2: Tape

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Documented Memory Project #3

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Documented Telephone Conversation #3

Chapter 33

I remember, a note, she passed… Documented Memory Project #4

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Afters

Acknowledgements

Extract

7 days till it comes.

1

‘Dee. Dah dah dah dee dah, dah dah, dee dah…’

It was a year of miracles. The year I learned how to walk and talk again, the year I met Emre Bartu and the year the girls went missing.

But first came December.

The weekend before my first week as a Police Community Support Officer began. The last week in which my brain’s valleys, ridges, streets and avenues remained in perfect working order.

Back when I thought a lot differently. Before I became ‘Better Than Normal’ as Ryans says. He says that because in some ways I definitely am. Better than you, I mean. No offence.

It’s a Christmas gift that will lie under my brain stem, wrapped in the folds of my cerebellum, romantically lit by my angular and supramarginal gyrus, for the rest of my grateful life.

So let’s go back to the last week when the inside of my skull was anatomically ‘correct’ and aesthetically as it had been since the day I was born.

When my brain functioned as it does for the ‘normals’. The others. The ones devoid of irregularity or uniqueness. No offence.

Before the fractures. Before the accident.

If it was an accident.

2

‘So it’s you

The one I thought I knew, I knew,

No matter what we put the other through

It’s always you’

The truth about Gary Canning is revealed to me by Anita herself. Like most things, I don’t see it coming.

I imagine Gary as a P.E. teacher, displaying his sporting prowess and gym-earned physique to the kids of Tower Hamlets as he coaxes the unwilling into exertions like rugby, basketball or maybe even worse. But in actuality, Gary is a Geography teacher with a fair to middling beard. It has pretty good coverage but is patchy in a way that suggests inconstancy of character, a fatal lack of conviction in his genes, or a rather flawed grooming technique. I know this because I find his picture on social media. That’s when I first see the face of Gary Canning.

Gary Canning blogs about food and travel and seems to have ambition beyond the school system. Photos find him caught candidly by the camera lens in clearly orchestrated scenarios, curated to paint him as a soulful character; playing a banjo with his eyes closed, or blowing bubbles with some sort of child, or larking in a European villa while holding a float to his head like it’s an antenna, in a move that will soon be lauded by his fawning friends as ‘classic Gary bants’.

He lists his favourite world cities as Tangier, Iquitos and Bobo-Dioulasso. Only half of one of which I’ve ever heard of. But I guess it isn’t surprising Gary Canning has been to places I’ve never even heard spoken aloud. Given that I’ve never even been to Paris. I thought about taking Anita once but then I forgot to book the tickets and my life moved on. But I’m sure Gary Canning’s been to Paris. Paris is child’s play for Gary Canning. Gary Canning probably went to Paris without even realising it. Because that’s just Gary Canning. Good old Gary Canning.

Anita’s hours have always seemed wildly inconsistent for a job I’d always thought was fairly strict in terms of time frame. Which I’ve never wanted to bring up for fear that it will seem like I’m misunderstanding her life, or being sexist, or teacherist, or some kind of combination of everything that shows me for the true chauvinist idiot I didn’t know I was.