Dead Girls: An addictive and darkly funny crime thriller

Praise for Graeme Cameron

‘If you loved Graeme Cameron’s Normal, you’d better hold on tight, because his exceptional follow-up hits it out of the park. Shot through with dry humour and darkness, and starring a female detective who will blow your mind, Dead Girls is an utterly compulsive read’

Fiona Cummins

‘Deeply creepy and very clever story’

Heat

‘An utterly compelling crime novel with an unforgettable heroine. I hope this is only the start of Ali’s story’

Elly Griffiths

‘Hypnotic and chilling – you won’t forget this in a hurry’

Lee Child

‘Blackly humorous …. Normal marks Cameron out as one to watch’

Daily Express

‘Original and gripping’

Clare Mackintosh

‘I didn’t like Normal. I loved it’

Michael Robotham

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Graeme Cameron 2018

Graeme Cameron asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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, downloaded, 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 © May 2018 ISBN: 9781474046688

For Helen Cadbury, the best and bravest

and

For Derek

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Episode 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Episode 2

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Meanwhile . . .

Episode 3

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Episode 4

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Episode 5

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Episode 6

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Acknowledgments

Extract

About the Publisher

‘Something’s wrong.’

Detective Sergeant Eli Diaz, formerly of Thetford CID, latterly seconded to the Major Investigation Team at Police Headquarters, and until today engaged in the search for a number of young women missing from across the county, took a moment to consider the redundancy of his statement.

He was standing at the foot of a metal-framed single bed, bolted into the ground through the black rubber floor. The bed was in a steel mesh cage some twenty feet across, the cage in a basement, the basement concealed beneath a garage, the garage nestled beside a stone cottage in a twenty-acre clearing in the forest.

It belonged to a man largely suspected, at least until that moment, of harbouring Erica Shaw, formerly a missing young woman, latterly upgraded to the status of fugitive, and last seen in front of the garage an hour ago, shooting one person dead and attempting to kill two of Eli’s fellow detectives before effecting her escape.

And now one of those detectives, Sergeant Ali Green, formerly of Norwich CID, latterly of the aforementioned Major Investigation Team, and currently somewhere up there alone with that man, was not answering her phone.

Diaz snatched up his own phone from the floor where he’d thrown it and made for the door of the cage, throwing an afterthought of a wave at a constable who was about to feel very alone and decidedly uneasy. ‘Keep trying to call her,’ he barked.

He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the splintering pain in his skull from misjudging the height of the false cupboard as he burst through into the garage.

‘Green,’ he snapped, seizing on the first pair of eyes to meet his own; one of the DCs from Norwich Road, he thought. Winters or Winterbourne or something. ‘Have you seen Ali Green?’

A shrug. A confused shake of the head. A voice from somewhere behind him: ‘She’s with the owner. They were heading to the house.’

‘Fuck.’ Less a word than a grunt, choked by panic. Diaz bolted from the garage into chaos and driving rain, shouldering aside the crime scene techs struggling to erect a white tent over the body on the drive, forgetting his breathing, legs out of sync, staggering at full tilt toward the house, nothing like the machine he imagined himself on his morning run, as though the absence of lycra and trainers and a Fitbit reduced him to a gangly, stumbling foal.

He knew before he got there that he was out of control and wasn’t going to stop, that if the door didn’t break when he hit it, then this was going to hurt.

It was ajar. He wasn’t expecting that. It cannoned back on its hinges, barely slowing his progress, and his feet found a bundle of coats and an overturned hat stand and then he was sliding on his face across the hallway, breath punched out of his lungs, skin peeling from his nose and elbows and knees.

He didn’t notice the pain. Fear had him on his feet and pushing off from the wall that had further dented his head and he whirled around from door to door, from kitchen to stairs to living room.

He stopped dead still and held his breath; strained his ears over the roar of the rain and the chatter of radios and uniforms and diesel engines.

Silence.

He gambled on the kitchen, sliding to the edge of the door frame and peering inside. Empty. Chair upturned. A slippery crimson mess on the splintered oak floor. His stomach flipped and he tasted bile in his throat. Christ no, what did he do to her?

Opposite the kitchen, the living room. The door open. A sense of something inside. A sofa. A spray of dark hair. Stillness.

Diaz panted three painful breaths and, with one eye on the top of the stairs, edged to the door, darting his head just far enough inside to get a snapshot of the room.

Empty, except for her.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. His back to the hallway. His ears wide open. ‘Green?’

No reply.

‘Ali?’ he snapped, loud enough to startle himself.

Nothing.

He blew out the adrenaline from his lungs. Checked the stairs again. Winced at the pain in his head. Squeezed his fingers into his palms and nodded some kind of vain self-encouragement. Then he said, ‘It’s okay, I’m here,’ and stepped inside the room.

It was cold. Cold, and still, and quiet. The television was on, but it wasn’t regular programming, it was something else, and Diaz knew what from a single glance. It was a high-definition feed from inside the cage, where the constable he’d just left behind was still poking at his phone, presumably searching for a number he didn’t have.

It was dark, too. The curtains were drawn across both of the windows, one to the front and one to the side, and the lamps were off and the fire unlit and everything was shadow; the hulking bookcases overstuffed with books and trinkets and paperwork, the corner tables with their strange disfigurines, the long, low couch and the wingback chairs and the coffee table with the two full mugs and the solitary mobile phone – everything but the TV screen and the dome of light that it cast, unflickering but dancing with particles of dust, and reflected as two tiny pinpricks of silver in Ali Green’s eyes.

They were open, but vague, unfocused. Her legs had fallen open and her hands lay at her sides, fingers curled into her upturned palms, and her hair was splayed roughly over the back of the sofa where she’d slumped down in her seat. Her mouth was open and as Diaz knelt, cursing, between her knees, he could see the pool of saliva around her tongue and hear it bubbling in her throat as she took each shallow, unsteady breath.

‘Ali,’ he whispered, suddenly painfully aware of the silence and the need to preserve it, to hear whatever small sound she might make, should it be her last. ‘Can you hear me?’ He placed a hand on her arm and could feel a trembling that he couldn’t see, a vibration almost, from deep inside her somewhere, but she didn’t respond, didn’t so much as blink.

He leaned in closer then, moved to put his lips to her ear, but the blood stopped him. A thin trail, trickling through the neat channel between her ear – such delicate ears, he noted, and pointed sweetly at the top, like pixie ears – and the back of her jaw, and down the side of her neck and onto the collar of her shirt, to bloom inside her jacket.

He painfully swallowed his breath and rocked back on his haunches and pulled out his phone from his pocket and said, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, Ali, you’re going to be okay,’ as calmly as he could, as though he believed it. And he punched in the code to unlock the phone, and keyed in the number to summon help, and he looked up into her eyes and was startled to see that she was looking right back at him in piercing focus, and her lips were moving as though she were trying to speak, and he let the phone drift away from his ear as he nodded and said, ‘You’re okay,’ and placed a comforting hand on her knee.

‘B—’ she whispered. ‘B—’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, shaking his head and nodding at the same time and hearing the voice on the other end of the phone and shushing and telling her, ‘Help’s coming. Just relax, you’ll be okay. We’re going to find him.’

And he raised the phone back to his ear, and the voice on the phone said, ‘Sarge?’ and Ali Green said, ‘Beh—’ and a single tear rolled down her cheek, and his breath caught in his throat and in the second before she closed her eyes, one of the tiny spots of silver turned black.

And all he could think of to say was, ‘He’s behind me, isn’t he.’

EPISODE 1

Chapter 1

T wo months later

It’s funny, isn’t it, how your mind can always find a way to surprise you? Take mine, for example. After thirty-four years together, I like to think I know it pretty well. And having spent the whole of my childhood being forcibly drummed into myself, and most of my adult life breaking my back to conform to it, God knows I should. And yet, here I was with an unexpected dilemma.

I could hear my phone ringing over the splashing and thumping coming from the bathroom, and I knew that at six in the morning the call was likely important enough that I should answer it. But I didn’t know where I’d left it, and that was a problem.

Normally, like anyone else, I’d crawl out of bed, take a moment to steady myself and for my head to stop spinning, and I’d assume I’d left it in my bag and that my bag was in the lounge, and I’d go find it. And if it wasn’t there and had stopped ringing, I’d call it from the house phone and sooner or later I’d track it down and return the call and receive some bad news and then drink a gallon of coffee in the vain hope that it might make me somewhat safe to drive, and I’d get dressed in a hurry and be on my way.

But I couldn’t do that, not this morning. For one thing, unlike most mornings, I was completely naked under the duvet, and the one eye I could open was so blurry and achey that I couldn’t see any of my clothes. Which, given the mortifying likelihood of bumping into whoever was about to jump out of the shower, meant wrapping myself in a king-size quilt and stumbling around trying to figure out the layout of this house, which, I dimly realised, wasn’t mine.

And now the ringing had stopped, and the light shafting through the thin blind was a dagger to my skull, and then the shower was abruptly silent and my heart began to thump against my ribs and all I could think to do was pull the covers over my head and pretend I didn’t exist.

I don’t know how long I waited. I heard footsteps on the landing, the creaking of stairs; assorted kitchen clangs and clunks and tinkles. My phone again. Damn it. And then the footsteps coming back up the stairs, and the ringing getting louder, and oh God, it was coming into the room.

‘Hmm.’

I froze.

‘Well I’m sure she was in here a few minutes ago.’ A woman’s voice, faintly familiar. ‘Where on earth could she be?’

Dazed now, utterly confused. The phone still ringing. A clunk above my head – a mug on the table? A weight beside me, the edge of the bed sagging beneath it, pulling me towards it.

‘Are you alive under there?’

I took three breaths, and nodded.

‘Are you nodding?’

I shook my head, and heard a giggle.

‘There’s coffee here. And your phone’s ringing.’

‘I know,’ I croaked. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll just leave it here for you. Are you hungry?’

I wasn’t sure. Horror kind of feels like hunger, right? ‘Probably.’

‘Bathroom’s free,’ she said, and patted my hip through the duvet. ‘I’ll let you answer that.’ Then she stood up and was gone.

I unscrewed my eyes and eased the duvet aside. Blinked the blinding light out of them. There was a plain green mug steaming on the bedside table, face cream and biscuits and tissues and a library book shoved aside to make room. And on the floor beside the bed, my bag, jangling incessantly.

I reached down, hissing away a twinge in my back, and dug out my phone. I begged it to stop ringing, but someone was unshakeably determined to speak to me. Kevin, as it turned out. I answered. ‘Kevin,’ I sighed.

‘Ali,’ said Kevin, ‘it’s Kevin.’ Which I knew. ‘Where are you?’

I have no fucking idea. ‘What do you mean, where am I? I’m in bed. It’s fuck-off o’clock in the morning. What do you want?’

‘It’s six eighteen,’ he said, ‘the sun’s been up for over an hour and you need to be here twenty minutes ago.’

From the gentle mooing in the background, I deduced that he was most likely overdramatising. ‘I can hear cows,’ I yawned, and peeked inside the little drawer of the bedside table. It was full of hair ties and old sweets, pastel-coloured biros and Blu Tack and various kinds of charger.

‘I’m standing in a field.’

‘Sounds thrilling,’ I said, ‘but you’ve got the wrong Monday. I’m not back until next week.’ I picked up the library book; The Good Girl, it was called. I cringed.

‘Not any more.’

‘I think you’ll find I am,’ I laughed. Laughing made my forehead throb. My mouth tasted like a badger’s arse. ‘I only saw Occy Health on Friday. I’m still off sick, I’m in bed, I’ve got another headache which you’ve just given me, I’ve got a million and one things to do today, none of which involve farm animals, I’m desperate for a wee, and unless the next thing you say to me is “I’m sorry, Ali, pret—” no, “Sarge. I’m sorry, Sarge, pretend I never rang, take care of yourself, have a good weekend,” I swear to God I’m going to hunt you down and beat you savagely about the face and neck. In a week.’ She was using her library card as a bookmark. It said Edith Macfarlane on it. Christ on a bike, I knew her.

‘I am sorry,’ he sniggered as my heart sank further into my bottom. ‘DCI says otherwise. I thought you’d had a call already, but I guess I’m not surprised. Whatever, this one’s kind of got your name on it.’ He waited for what seemed like days for me to ask him what he meant, but it was quite obviously nothing I wanted to hear, so I didn’t. Also, I was holding my breath in an effort not to wet the bed. Finally, he said, ‘We’ve found John Fairey.’

And I exhaled.

The bathroom was still warm, the window and the mirror still steamed over from Edith’s tenure. The dregs of her bathwater lingered in the bottom of the tub, sending my feet aslither as I cranked open the shower. I braced myself against the tile, gritted my teeth through the cycle of polar-cold and scar-hot until the water settled on a comfortable shade of warm. I scrubbed myself with Edith’s soap until the knot of panic began to unravel. Lathered with Edith’s shampoo. I rinsed the strands of Edith’s hair from my fingers as they attracted to me from Edith’s conditioner bottle. I would have used Edith’s facial scrub, but there was only a small squeeze left in the tube. Instead, barely five minutes after I got in, I shut off the water and, in spite of it still being damp, dried myself with Edith’s towel.

Thankfully, I did have my own clothes, although they were crumpled and smelled of pub and my knickers were a bit the worse for wear. Hearing Edith still downstairs, I eased open the top drawer of her dresser, avoiding my own eye contact in the mirror as I rooted around in the tangle of loosely balled briefs at the back, behind all the neatly folded silky arrangements. I tugged a pair free and shook them out. Hello Kitty. Fine, whatever.

Everything else would have to do. My bra was on its third outing, the cropped black denims maybe their sixth. I had a bright yellow off-the-shoulder top that was okay under the arms but reeked of booze and perfume everywhere else, although deodorant and fresh air would sort that, probably. And I had at least had the accidental foresight to wear shoes I could run in, inclined as I was to duck my head and sprint straight out the door.

But to where?

I gingerly opened the blind, shielding my eyes with my spare hand and squinting through my fingers at the view. There wasn’t much of one; just a row of boxy houses on the other side of the street, driveways lined with German and Swedish cars in various shades of black and grey, including the one directly below the window. Mine is bright red, so it was immediately apparent that it wasn’t there. God, where the hell was it? And, more to the point, where the hell was I?

Edith was easier to locate. She was at the breakfast table, and she greeted me with a ‘Hey’ and a smile. Nothing between the lines; just your usual good-morning pleasantry. She’d clearly been listening out for me; she’d poured me a fresh cup of coffee and a bowl of Rice Krispies and the latter were still popping and cracking, or whatever it is they do. ‘Made you breakfast.’

I sat across from her, silently giving thanks for my complexion; the Middle-Eastern half of me is all on the outside, so I don’t burn in the sun and, more importantly, I blush very, very quietly. ‘Morning,’ I said, my deliberate effort to keep a steady voice naturally achieving the opposite. ‘Thanks.’

‘Sleep well?’

My insides recoiled in horror. Was it a trick question? Could she tell that I had no recollection of the night before? ‘Like a baby,’ I said. ‘You?’

Another neutral smile. ‘As well as can be expected. Did you find your towel?’

Oh. ‘Yes,’ I lied, giving it away by shaking my head at the same time. ‘Thank you.’

I watched her read the Independent as I crunched a mouthful of cereal, wishing there was a radio or television to muffle the sound of my munching. Her own efforts seemed so much more refined than mine.

She’d finished dressing; a black tailored five-button jacket with matching skirt to just below the knee. Her legs stretched beneath the table, her ankles – slender, lightly tanned – crossed comfortably beside my own. Chestnut hair lowlighted in black, thrown up into a loose ponytail. Sunlight, splayed and rainbowed by the flowers and antique bottles on the windowsill, playing on the triangles of her neck, settling in the hollow of her collarbone where it peeked from behind her shirt. The swell of her breas—

‘You okay?’ See anything you like?

I looked up, startled. Felt my face flush. ‘Hmm?’

She folded the paper and tossed it aside, slid her coffee close to her and spooned in sugar from the bowl in the centre of the table. ‘You don’t look very well,’ she said, circling the spoon handle at me as though casting a spell. ‘You’re not going to throw that back up, are you?’

I realised I had a mouthful of lukewarm milk and soggy Rice Krispies which, somewhere along my train of distraction, I’d somehow forgotten to swallow. I did so now. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, flatly.

She gave a cynical snort. ‘Oh, really?’ Stirred her coffee. ‘I’ve seen you looking fine, and it didn’t look like that.’ Raised it to her lips, blew primly across the surface before taking a sip. ‘You’re not upset with me, are you?’

I dropped my spoon into the half-empty cereal bowl and pushed it away, my appetite lost. ‘Of course not.’ Mortified, yes. Confused, bemused and deeply, shamefully embarrassed, but not upset.

‘Good, because . . . you know . . .’

Doesn’t mean I want to talk about it. ‘I know.’

‘I mean, it’s not like . . .’

‘No, I know.’

‘I mean, I had a great time last night, but—’

I choked on my coffee. ‘But now I have to go to work,’ I smiled.

She smiled back, and thought for a moment and then looked at the table and nodded firmly and said, ‘Yeah. Me too.’

‘Only I don’t know where my car is.’

‘Ah,’ she chuckled. ‘You left it at the pub, remember?’

No.

‘I’ll drop you off,’ she said. ‘Ready in five?’

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to say, really, so I just blurted out, ‘I borrowed some knickers. Hope you don’t mind.’

She gave a snort and a sideways look. ‘No, that’s fine,’ she laughed. ‘Just . . . have a good day, okay? Be careful, and don’t work too hard.’

‘Oh, I don’t intend to,’ I laughed. Riding out on a shudder of relief at the rapid change of subject, it was a laugh I would have found disproportionate and vaguely chilling were it directed at me. Fortunately, Edith either didn’t notice or at least had the good grace not to raise an eyebrow. ‘I’m . . .’ trying to think of something to say . . . ‘planning on shouting at my boss for dragging me out, and being home in time for Cash in the Attic.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ she agreed, and then giggled to herself. ‘Hey, you know what’d be even better?’

‘What?’

‘Tango & Cash in the Attic.’

Ha ha.

I knew I’d be fixed by lunchtime. The cold light of day would see my head straight and my priorities in order in no time. Or at least that was what I thought.