Helen Fields - Perfect Silence

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Lorna said, fighting the rising sense of panic that was drawing a black veil over everything around her. ‘I had a difficult life. Things went wrong. I made some bad choices but I’ve made it all better. If you let me go, I can go back to my baby. I can be good for her. I’ll be good for her forever.’

‘You’re a bad girl,’ the man said, holding a quivering hand over her pubic hair. ‘A bad girl who let anyone and everyone into this.’ He slapped down hard and Lorna cried out, still raw from the stitching after labour.

‘Please don’t,’ she sobbed. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I want to see my daughter again.’

‘Do you not think she deserves better than you, slut?’ he asked, pulling the belt from his trousers, red in the face and panting.

‘I know she does,’ Lorna cried out. ‘I know she does and I try so hard every day to be the best I can. I’m begging you, let me go back to my baby.’

‘I’m going to let you go back to her,’ he said. ‘When this is over, I’ll take you back. When you’re clean. When you’re saved.’

Lorna saw the truth in his eyes. Her bravado had been pointless. She knew what hatred looked like. It was the black full stop in each of a man’s eyes. Once again, she filled the air with the desolation of her screams.

Callanach handed Dr Spurr a bottle of Oban single malt and sighed. ‘Don’t you ever wish you’d chosen a different career, Jonty?’

‘The dead would miss me, I fear. It takes a number of years to properly understand how to strike up a conversation with them. It’s the last thing my trainees learn. These are not just bodies; they are untold stories,’ the pathologist said. ‘Thanks for the whisky. What’s the occasion?’

‘You’re away from home and I thought you could use the comfort. This isn’t the easiest case. And … I’m worried about Ava. I know she can handle herself, but she’s taking it particularly hard. I’d like to move the investigation forward as quickly as I can. Is there anything more you can tell me about the doll?’

‘Quite a lot, actually,’ Jonty said. ‘Come through. I was in the process of writing up my report, so I’ll take you through it as I go.’

They walked into the lab, pulling on gloves. ‘Regarding the other young woman who’s been taken, Jonty, we’ve made no progress overnight. You’ve seen more of these cases than me, and I worked enough of them with Interpol. How long do you think she has? Zoey Cole survived a week.’

‘The relentlessly ticking clock. I always hear it as the number of heartbeats we have left until we die. If it’s good news you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong man. I appreciate the single malt, although I think we might want to drink it together. The doll has provided additional information, none of which favours Lorna’s situation.’ He pointed towards a tray where various piles of materials had been left accessible. Both skin sections from the doll were laid out flat. Next to that was a mound of cut-up cloth. Finally there were two clear evidence bags. Callanach could see hair in the first, but nothing in the second. ‘I spent yesterday conducting tests on the skin sections after you left. It has a strange texture, so much so that I broke the golden rule and handled part of it without my gloves on. That was the only way I could be sure, but the skin feels hardened. A medicated ointment had been applied to encourage the skin to thicken. It’s used for people who have various conditions and it would have made cutting the skin easier, and less prone to tearing.’

‘That’s quite some level of preparation,’ Callanach said.

‘Which indicates that the kidnapper knew exactly what he or she had in mind well before taking Zoey. It took research and care. Not only that, but they knew that Zoey would need to be kept restrained for a minimum amount of time, requiring a place where she couldn’t be discovered easily or accidentally.’

‘Now they have Lorna, too.’ Callanach crossed his arms. ‘You think she’s headed for the same treatment. That means we have just six days to find her.’

‘Five days, given that it’s nearly 5.30 p.m. now. And there’s more,’ Jonty said. ‘This pile of cut-up rags was used to stuff the doll. It’s cotton and contains a clothing label. Here.’ He picked up a bag, inside which Callanach could see a small, silky label proclaiming a high street brand name and that the item had been a size 8.

‘The killer cut up some of Zoey’s clothes to stuff the doll with?’ Callanach asked.

‘I’m certain of it. We’re testing for skin cells and DNA, but it makes sense. There are strips from a shirt and what is probably underwear. The shirt strips match the description of the clothes Zoey was wearing when she left the shelter,’ Jonty said.

‘What’s in the other bags?’ Callanach asked.

‘This one,’ Jonty held up a bag containing blunt snippets of brown hair, ‘is hair from Zoey’s head. We’ve matched it up with a section where you can see recent cuts. It was stuck onto the doll’s head very crudely with superglue, a standard brand available from any supermarket, but it wasn’t very effective. The doll’s skin wasn’t a good surface – too many oils and the medicated cream prevented the hair from really bonding. Much of the hair had fallen off into the pram.’

Callanach took another look at the skin sections, taking a closer look at the side where a face had been drawn. ‘The eyes drawn on here are the same colour as Zoey’s, and the mouth is small with thin lips, even with these weird vertical stitches over them,’ he said. ‘The killer literally tried to recreate her, right down to the details.’

‘Hence the second bag,’ Jonty said. ‘In here are a few eyelashes, pulled out from Zoey while she was still alive. The injuries were too minute to have been spotted until the doll pointed us in the right direction, but under a microscope it’s possible to see the redness on Zoey’s eyelids where the lashes were plucked.’

‘How many?’ Callanach asked.

‘Maybe a dozen from each eye, hard to be specific, and not all were stuck onto the doll,’ Jonty said. ‘Again, they didn’t bond well.’

‘Perhaps the killer gave up halfway through, or ran out of time,’ Callanach said.

‘That’s a fair theory. It’s meticulous work and that level of skill isn’t on show here. Have you ever seen items made from human skin before, Luc?’ Jonty asked.

‘I haven’t,’ Callanach said, ‘although I’ve read about it.’

‘It’s labour intensive, expert work. Human skin is hard to fashion. Various monsters throughout history became quite adept at it, but this is a clumsy recreation. Let me show you the stitches. I have close-up photographs on my computer.’

In Jonty’s office, they sat next to each other in front of a computer screen. The images resembled a child’s crude attempt at patchwork.

‘The knots are quite basic. In places the cotton thread has been pulled too tight and has split the fine edges of the skin. The stitches are irregular and change direction,’ Jonty said.

‘It’s like a work in progress,’ Callanach said. ‘A carefully thought out idea, highly symbolic, but which was poorly executed.’

‘Exactly,’ Jonty said. ‘But now your killer holds another young woman.’

‘You think the first doll was disappointing, but that it’s a learning curve?’ Callanach asked.

‘It doesn’t feel like a one-off to me,’ Jonty said. ‘The killer worked too hard at it. So much effort for a single pay-off. Then there’s this.’ He picked up a flat plastic folder from his desk. ‘There was a message rolled up to form a tiny scroll, right in the centre of the stuffing. I found it minutes before you arrived. I was just processing it.’