Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (13 page)

At first the going
is fairly easy. Tris stepping from slippery stone to stone, their edges bearded
with green weed, or splashing across wet shale in the shallows nearest the
bank. It’s warm, perched up here on his shoulders, the sun striking through the
trees here where the canopy is thin above us. I listen to his breathing, steady
rather than laboured, and am impressed by his strength. I’m not exactly a
featherweight.

We’ve moving against the flow of the current,
and the water is growing deeper. I see tiny shoals of fish flicking past us in
the shadows. There must be a pool ahead, perhaps around the next bend. Dragonflies
skim across the surface of the water, jewelled wings moving so fast they’re a
blur.

It’s
really quite beautiful here.

Round the next bend, Tris comes to an abrupt
halt, both of us staring at the unexpected obstacle in our path.

‘Shit,’ he mutters. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

The stream has been fenced off with a wire
fence, higher than a man and dipping several feet into the deep-flowing water.
An ancient greening sign, tacked onto the wire fence by all four corners at one
time but now hanging by one edge, says: PRIVATE PROPERTY. DO NOT ENTER.

The fence extends onto the bank, though it’s
clear that people have climbed over it in the past, treading it down until the
fence is bowed. Even so, a man carrying a heavy weight would not find it easy
to climb over. And he would have to scale the bank first, and risk leaving
prints in the loose soil there.

Tris carries me to the bank and lets me hop
down.

‘Sorry,’
he says. ‘This seemed like a good idea back at the bridge. But he can’t have
come this way. Looks like I got soaked for nothing.’

I don’t answer. I’m too busy studying the
ground between the bank and the wire fence. The muddy soil looks unusually soft
and loose there, considering it’s covered in a huge tangle of brambles, where
you might expect the earth underneath to be tough and compacted, a mass of roots.
Only some of the brambles look oddly wilted. At this time of year they are
usually fresh and bursting with bright green leaf buds, or tiny white flowers
ready to be pollinated. The beginnings of berries. But the brambles nearest me
look old, like last season’s growth, all the flower heads drooping.

‘What is it?’ Tris asks, watching me.

For answer, I push my foot into soft dirt under
the brambles. It gives easily, leaving an impression of my trainer sole behind.

I stare, and cannot breathe properly. This soil
has been freshly dug. And recently.

‘Ellie?’

‘I don’t think you got soaked for nothing,’ I
manage to say. ‘How are you at digging?’

We have no spades, no
implements for digging. So I forage in the debris along the bank until I find a
suitably shaped fallen tree branch amongst all the leaves and dirt. Tris puts
his foot on it at the mid-point, snapping it in half with a loud crack that
sends birds clattering away in the trees above us. Reluctantly, he hands me one
half of the broken branch, then uses his own half to dig over the loose soil.

We take one end of the bramble patch each. I’m
nearer the stream, he’s nearer the wire fence. The brambles are covering most
of the soil at my end, so I have to beat back the thorny tangle of branches
before I can even start digging.

‘I’m not sure we should be doing this,’ he says,
poking at the soil as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world. Which
is a feeling I’m beginning to share. It’s not an enviable job, digging for a
corpse in a lonely wood.

I heave at the brambles, feeling a bit
over-heated and wishing I had chosen to wear a vest top.

‘Why?’

‘If there’s anything here, we could be
destroying evidence. Trampling all over the place. I mean, there might be
footprints all round this area.’

‘You were the one who said he came by the
stream so there wouldn’t be any footprints.’

‘Agreed, but he must have climbed up the bank
if he buried a body here. He must have stood …’ Tris looks down, waving the
branch vaguely at the ground, ‘somewhere about here. I’m probably standing in
the exact same spot.’

‘We can’t go to the police with a suspect patch
of soil. They already think I’m disturbed. What if there’s nothing under here?’

‘So
let them find out.’

‘No,
I have to be sure this time or I risk being charged with wasting police time.’

‘Fair enough.’

He digs in silence after that, and I do the
same at my end, probing under the brambles with my ineffectual tool. A few
scoops of soil are loosened with every poke and dig, but it’s slow progress.
And I understand his reluctance, because I feel it too.

This place is so quiet and still, a long way
from even the narrowest of the tracks that crisscross these woods. The stream
runs deeper here, so it’s less noisy, a smooth glide of water through the wire
mesh of the fence that separates the public woods from someone’s private land.
The birds flew away when Tris broke the branch, so there’s no longer any
cheerful birdsong from above. And the skin on the back of my neck is prickling,
like we’re being watched.

I stretch my back, hot and tired. There’s no
one in sight. Just hundreds of trunks and leafy branches, standing in staggered
rows up and down the gentle undulations of the woods.

But
when I look away, I catch a tiny shiver of movement out of the corner of my eye.
As if someone has ducked behind a tree. Someone who had been standing perfectly
still a second before when I was looking. Acting like a tree in a forest.

I force myself not to look again. As though to
look again would confirm me as a nutter. Or let whoever is watching us know
that I’m on to them.

There’s no one there.
No one there at all
.

I’ve cleared about a foot down when my branch-spade
hits something under the next layer of stony soil.

I hesitate.

Probably
another stone
.

But at the back of my mind I’m panicking,
because it didn’t make the hard clunking sound that the stones have been
making. It was a soft-hard contact. Like something organic. Like flesh.

I poke my branch back into the soil.

‘Shit.’

Tris is next to me in seconds. ‘What is it?’ He
sounds as on edge as I feel. ‘Did you find something?’

I swallow and nod, pointing with my branch to
the spot where something pale and dirty is protruding through the soil. It
could be a trick of the light, but there’s a kind of greenish tinge to it which
makes me want to vomit.

‘I think it’s a … a hand.’

Tris stares over my shoulder, then slowly
presses his own branch into the shallow indentation left by my digging. He
gives a start when a little more soil runs away, uncovering more of the hand.

‘Christ.’

It’s definitely a knuckle, the finger bent back
like it was clawing at its own grave. I can see the tiny whorls on the skin,
ingrained with dirt, but white under that. And sickeningly real.

‘That’s it, we’ve got to call the police.’ Tris
drops his branch, fumbles for his mobile instead. Stares at the screen with a
blank expression. ‘No signal. You’re kidding me. Okay, think, think. Where’s
the nearest phone we can use?’

‘The vicarage,’ I say automatically.

‘Right.’ He grabs my hand and jerks me to my
feet. ‘Come on, we’ll go back down the stream, then run up to the church, same
way we came down. Fifteen minutes, tops.’

I shake my head, refusing to move. ‘I’m not
going anywhere.’

He meets my eyes then. His face is almost as
white as the hand in the makeshift grave below us.

‘Eleanor, please.’

‘You think I’m going to risk the killer moving
her again while we’re away, fetching the police? No thanks, I’m not playing
that game.’

He
looks confused. ‘Game?’

I
tug my hand free. ‘You make the call. I’ll stay and watch the grave. She’s not
going anywhere this time, and neither am I.’

‘I’m telling you, it’s not safe. This grave has
only recently been dug. What if the killer’s still here, in the woods, watching
us?’ Tris pauses. ‘Hasn’t that occurred to you?’

‘Then he’ll be ecstatic. Because this is precisely
what he wants, isn’t it? Some serious attention at last.’

He frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’

I tell him about the note on Denzil’s car.
You’re my Number One.
Then my scare in the
lane after Denzil dropped me off.

Tris looks furious by the time I’m finished
with my explanation. ‘I don’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell me at once? Or
the bloody police? Why keep a note like that to yourself?’

Then his eyes widen. He stares at me fixedly,
as if everything has clicked into place for him. I can see him struggling not
to lose his composure.

‘You think I’m the killer.’

‘It did cross my mind. But that’s not important
right now. Go ring the police, Tris. I’ll be fine here.’

I see him struggle, still staring at me. Then he
makes the decision, an angry flash in his eyes.

A
moment later, he’s gone.

I
hear his continuing progress long after he’s out of sight, echoes bouncing off
the trees at first, then fading rapidly to silence.

Everything in the wood looks calm and still.
There’s no one among the rows of trunks. The water glides past in the dappled
green shade of the tree canopy above me, empty and innocent.

I turn and force myself to look down at her
exposed knuckle. I think of the woman’s face, hidden beneath layers of dirt,
and wonder what her name is. I’m standing next to a dead woman whose dead body
has been dumped in a shallow grave, and I don’t have a clue who she is or even
why she was killed.

Dropping to my knees, I knock the soil away. Slowly,
a pale hand emerges. Long fingers and short stubby nails, like she used to bite
them. There’s a mark on the back of her hand. I can’t quite bring myself to
touch her skin, but use a leaf to gently brush the last of the soil from her
hand.

I thought it was a tattoo, but it’s too faint,
one side missing like it wasn’t done properly. A stamp of some kind. A faint
red triangle with a circle in the middle?

It reminds me of the ink stamp you get on the
back of your hand when going into a night club, to say you’ve paid.

I frown, looking from the back of her hand
along her wrist. The skin is pale but there’s bruising on it, all the way
round. It looks like she’s had her wrists tied at some point.

I push the brambles aside with my feet. Clear the
grave so it can be dug out properly. I know I’m probably destroying evidence, as
Tris warned me not to, but if the killer is even half as clever as I think,
there won’t be any forensic evidence to destroy. Soon the police will descend
again with their specialist tools and their sniffer dogs. I imagine they’ll set
up a forensic tent here. They’ll take photographs before moving her, messing
her about, touching her impersonally.

But
right now it’s just the two of us in the sunny woodlands. And I’m going to do
what needs to be done.

Once the brambles are cleared at what I judge
to be the ‘head end,’ I drop to my knees and dig with my bare hands. Carefully
and gently, tiny scrapings, not wanting to disturb her. I’m aware all the time
of the very real possibility that the killer is out there somewhere. Maybe watching
me from behind the trees. But I pay no attention. He has no place here. It’s
just me and her now.

A hint of something pale in the soil catches my
eye, and I pause, then scrape more slowly. Strands of hair.

I stop.

The silence is suddenly deafening. My skin
prickles and I feel cold. It’s almost as if I can hear him behind me, breathing
quietly, watching me, only a few feet away …

How long has Tris been gone? I seem to have
lost all sense of time. I glance at my watch, but it makes no sense to me. My
brain has stopped working.

I dig again, two-handed, my fingers pushing
deeper into the soil, nails crusty black now, packed with dirt. I find her face
by touch, the high forehead, bony and hard. The eye sockets below. I avoid
them, feeling nauseous, and dig lower, scraping soil away to expose her face,
one dirty patch of skin after another.

Her face comes clear and I stare, hardly able
to breathe.

You’re my Number One.

I hear Tris from a great distance, crashing
through the undergrowth and calling my name. I guess it won’t be long before
the police arrive. For the second time.

I stumble to my feet and vomit into the stream.

My stomach heaves again, but there’s no more. Hurriedly
I wash my face in the clear moving water, then my hands. The soil under my
nails refuses to be washed away though, and my knuckles are still dirty when I
stand up to meet Tris. Just like hers.

‘They’re coming,’ Tris tells me when he finally
reaches me, bending over and panting, out of breath. There’s a fine sheen of
perspiration on his face, like he ran the whole way without stopping. ‘The
vicar wasn’t there, but his wife was. I called the police, told them we’d found
her body, and where. They’re sending a car out.’

‘A body,’ I mutter. ‘We’ve found
a
body.’

He looks a question at me, and I point down at
the shallow grave.

Still breathing hard, he looks down at her in
silence for a moment. Then says, ‘I thought you said she had a number three on
her forehead?’

We both look down at the number on the dead
woman’s forehead. Faded now, dirtied by the soil, but still legible, written clumsily
in black permanent marker.

‘Yes.’

‘Any chance you made a mistake?’

‘No.’

‘Okay, perhaps the number was changed.’

I
say nothing.

‘But
you said the woman had dark hair,’ Tris continues, frowning. ‘I remember the
statement you gave to the police.’

I nod.

‘I don’t understand,’ he says at last.

‘Neither do I. Yet there it is, right in front
of us.’ I stare down at the dead woman’s face, glancing from the number on her
forehead to the dirty blonde hair above it, and hear myself saying the impossible.
‘Different number, different hair colour. This is not the same woman.’