DS Ben Chase’s car is being waved through the police cordon when he hears the notifications on his phone, two high ‘pings’ in quick succession. He guides his mud-splattered 4×4 into the space beside DCI Hassan Khan’s pristine saloon and reaches for the mobile. Two messages. Both from Rachel.
Just the sight of her name makes him grip the handset a little tighter. He scans her messages and bristles. A kiss? Really? As if that’s going to soften the fact she’s stuffed them about this weekend. No excuse or apologies. He punches out a curt reply. Can’t talk. I’m at work. He hesitates, then adds: We have a schedule for a reason. Changing it last minute doesn’t work for us. He catches his error just in time, backspacing to delete ‘us’ and replacing it with a far more tactful ‘me’.
A rap on the window brings his attention back to the woodland car park. He waves at DCI Khan, looming through the glass, reaches for his jacket and steps out into the chill morning air. ‘Morning, boss.’
‘Sorry about your day off,’ says Khan, already gesturing to the start of the walking trail and the direction they are headed. ‘Ferguson’s off sick and this one’s going to need careful handling. Hope I didn’t drag you away from anything important?’
‘As luck would have it, no.’ His phone buzzes deep in his pocket as he falls into step beside the shorter man. He ignores it. He hasn’t got time for a snippy back and forth with Rachel. ‘What’ve we got?’ he asks, zipping up his jacket.
‘A body up at the folly. Young. Female.’
‘Shit.’ Ben winces. ‘Suicide?’
‘Doesn’t sound like it. I’m told the scene is “unusual”. Silverton and her team are setting up now. We’ve started closing the main trails up to the tower, but given the way the woods sprawl, we’ve got a job on our hands protecting the integrity of the site. There’s clear signs of activity up here last night.’
Ben tries to conjure the topography in his mind. Their rendezvous point, a small car park at the lower eastern edge of the woods, offered the easiest vehicle access to their destination. From there, the shortest of the steep walking trails wound up approximately half a mile or so through the woods to the top of the escarpment where the abandoned stone folly sat high above them. There were incredible views across the Avon Valley, for anyone brave or foolish enough to climb the internal spiral staircase to the platform at the top. Heading west, away from the tower, you could descend a number of longer paths to the winding road known to locals as Sally in the Wood. Once at the road, you could head south to the private school, veer north towards Bath, or take a turn-off heading further west into the nearby town of Thorncombe.
Ben hasn’t walked up to the folly in years, but he remembers the forbidding stone tower, sitting like an axis point at the top of the woods, as well as the hills below littered with a series of abandoned quarries and caves, which had provided much of the local building stone, back in the day.
Ben turns his jacket collar up against the chill and follows Khan along the start of the trail. It’s been an unseasonably dry autumn and the ground is mercifully hard beneath their boots. The morning air holds earthy notes of timber laced with the faintest trace of woodsmoke and something heavier, something dank and fetid, almost fungal, autumn’s organic matter already in decay.
‘I used to come here years ago as a teenager,’ Ben tells Khan. ‘Back then it was the place to come – the only place, really.’ Memories return of dark, damp nights, spitting bonfires, music playing on a portable CD player, cheap, too-sweet bottles of wine and kids hollering and cussing, their cries echoing through the trees.
‘Doesn’t look like much has changed,’ says Khan, kicking at an empty cider bottle poking from the undergrowth.
‘This is what Ellie’s been banging on about,’ says Ben. ‘She’s been saying for months that there’s nowhere to go. She’s dead keen on the skate park plans, but it seems the new housing development’s put the final nail in that coffin.’
‘I heard,’ says Khan. ‘Shame, but money talks round here.’
Ben’s legs begin to protest at the steep incline and the two men fall silent, preserving their energy to tackle the hill. Khan, the shorter of the two, drops back a little and Ben subtly slows his pace to allow his boss to catch up.
The last time he walked this trail would’ve been with Rachel and Ellie. A spring day, he remembers. There were muddy puddles, branches coming into bud and Ellie, probably around eight years old, scampering up the trail, dragging a long stick behind her. Gemma had been staying with them, visiting from London. ‘Auntie Gem’ as Ellie had called her, the two of them playing hide-and-seek amongst the trees, hunting for animal tracks and imaginary fairy doors, while he and Rachel had ambled along behind, hand in hand.
It’s startling to remember how different everything had been. How simple. Before Gemma’s death. Before the end of his marriage. Before Ellie’s brush with the law at that protest in Bristol last month. Before the slow, slippery slide of life. Too many mistakes. He won’t make the same ones with Chrissie. He swallows to think of her, and their conversation with Ellie out in the garden last night, Ellie’s unreadable face staring at him in the dark, the merest flicker of emotion in her eyes before she’d regained her composure. She’d been a closed book, hadn’t given anything away, not even when he’d taken her to one side and asked if she was really OK. Just that infuriating, blank expression and the rigid line of her shoulders turning away.
‘Christ, I need to get back on my Peloton,’ puffs Khan. Ben spins and sees his boss’s sweaty brow, narrow shoulders hunched in his woollen coat, his black, usually slicked-back hair falling into his eyes. Khan was a sharp dresser, designer gear, always immaculately turned out, but tramping through the woods on a Sunday morning, he looks almost comically out of place in his smart suit trousers and brogues.
Khan had said the victim was a young female. Thank god Ellie had been home last night, but someone’s daughter hadn’t been and now there was a job to be done. No time for wallowing in the past or ruminating on his own problems. ‘You said the scene’s “unusual”?’
‘You’ll see… when we get there.’
‘Who found her?’
‘A couple of girl guides. Part of a troop…’ Still puffing, Khan pauses to take a breath. ‘…out on a sunrise hike.’
Ben winces. ‘How are they doing?’
‘As you’d expect. I’ve sent DC Maxwell to liaise with the girls and their families.’
Ben nods. Fiona Maxwell was one of the strongest constables on their team, a sparky, energetic recruit originally from Manchester, now relocated to Bath. ‘I’m sure she was thrilled to be woken so early on a Sunday morning.’
‘Maxwell’s a workhorse. Never complains. Her girlfriend, on the other hand,’ says Khan, ‘I could hear in the background giving me a colourful earful.’
Ben’s grin is short-lived. ‘Dealing with a bunch of traumatised kids and their parents. That’s not going to be easy.’
‘No. Fortunately, the patrol leader managed to keep most of the girls away from the scene, once she’d realised what they’d stumbled on. Maxwell will be asking for discretion, but it won’t be long before word gets out. Small town. People talk.’
Ben nods, conserving his energy as they press on up through the woods.
‘It’s an odd place to bring a group of young girls at daybreak,’ puffs Khan. ‘I’m surprised they weren’t frightened out of their wits walking out here in the dark.’
‘That was probably the fun of it. You remember what it was like as a kid? All the ghost stories… horror movies.’
Khan throws him a disapproving look. ‘I don’t like that stuff. Never have. There’s enough darkness in the world without adding to it. Some things should be left well alone.’
‘I didn’t have you pegged as a superstitious type.’
Khan shrugs. ‘I’m not, usually, but you’ve got to admit there’s something “off” about this place.’ He glances around and Ben is surprised to see his boss shiver.
‘These woods are full of stories. We’d frighten each other with them as kids,’ admits Ben. ‘But it was the folly that gave me the creeps. There’s an old folktale about a girl murdered by her fiancé up there on her wedding day; left her at the tower in her bloodied wedding dress for the crows to pluck out her eyes.’ Seeing Khan’s grimace, he nods. ‘Some say she’s the “Sally” that the road on the other side of the escarpment is named after, the ghost in a white dress that drivers report rushing out at them from the woods late at night.’
Khan nods. ‘I’ve heard the stories.’
‘That’s all it is. A story. Something made up by the locals to scare kids and tourists, and to explain the road accident statistics.’ Ben feels Khan’s keen glance in his direction and knows what he’s thinking. ‘People always want to find a reason why bad things happen.’ Ben’s hands clench into fists. ‘You and I both know the truth. If you’re driving under the influence with a phone in your hand, you’re going to come off that road, and chances are, you’re going to take someone else with you.’ Ben’s jaw has locked tight. He swallows, trying to shift the hard knot at the back of his throat. He moves a pace or two ahead on the path, so he doesn’t have to see Khan’s sympathetic look. ‘It doesn’t take a ghost story to explain that.’
‘Have you climbed the folly?’ Khan asks, sensing Ben’s desire to shift the conversation.
‘Not much of a head for heights. Vertigo.’
Khan smirks. ‘So, our resident action hero does have an Achilles heel.’
Ben rolls his eyes. Ever since he’d hit forty, shaved his head and joined the local gym, the team had taken every opportunity to rip into him about his cliché mid-life crisis. He wasn’t stupid. He was self-aware enough to recognise that the changes were, in part, due to his marriage ending; an attempt to fight his softening ‘Dad bod’; a way to keep up with his younger girlfriend. Even so, he was proud of his new abs and he certainly appreciated the extra stamina on a morning hike like this, even if it meant the relentless piss-taking from the team.
‘Have you seen it?’ Ben protests. ‘The steps spiral all the way up. No handrails. No barriers. There’s a platform at the very top, and a huge floor-to-ceiling opening. Amazing views, but nothing to stop you falling.’
‘Sounds terrifying, even without vertigo. Can’t think why it’s kept open.’
‘It’s a bloody nuisance. The council installed a steel safety door a few years back, but it didn’t last long. Vandals – or kids – broke it down. The tower’s been open to the public ever since. One of those abandoned buildings that no one wants to be accountable for. A haunt for errant kids with nothing better to do – and a health and safety nightmare that seems to fall beyond anyone’s jurisdiction. The council don’t want a bar of it.’ Ben comes to a sudden stop. ‘Do you smell that?’
Khan sniffs the air. ‘Smoke?’
‘I caught the scent of it earlier. It’s stronger up here.’
They detour a few steps from the path to peer over a low drystone wall. Below them they see the carved basin of an abandoned stone quarry, dug into the side of the rocks. The shallow basin stretches like a scar a hundred or so metres across, ringed by trees and toppled, moss-strewn rocks. ‘Still party central up here then,’ says Ben, pointing.
Down in the hollow amongst the fallen leaves and broken tree branches lies the carelessly discarded detritus of a recent party. Empty cans lie amongst silver vape cartridges, shards of broken bottles glinting in the weak morning light, the blackened remains of a bonfire slumped in the centre. An abandoned pumpkin gurns at them with a carved toothy grin from a rocky ledge, while high above their heads, a forgotten T-shirt, hoisted like a flag, droops in the morning chill.
‘A Halloween party, from the looks of it. Kids from town? The local private school?’
‘Hope not. That’s the school Ellie attends.’
Khan whistles through his teeth. ‘Jesus, Chase. You remortgaged your house or something?’
‘Nothing to do with me. It’s all Ellie. She won a scholarship. Her talent got her there.’ Ben narrows his eyes, a splash of vivid red catching his attention. He jumps the wall and clambers down the steep slope of the quarry until he is standing in front of a large rock at the edge of the basin. A single word has been sprayed across its surface in red paint. SALLY. He studies the scrawl before reaching out with a finger to touch the letters. ‘It’s dry, but recent.’
‘Let’s circle back later,’ says Khan. ‘Once we know what we’re dealing with at the folly.’
Back on the path, they hike the final stretch up through the woods, until their first glimpse of the folly emerges between the thinning trees. The sky, now visible above them, is scattered with grey clouds, intermittent streaks of sunlight glancing off the tower’s high stone walls.
‘How tall is it?’ asks Khan, regarding the folly, hands on hips. ‘Thirty-five, forty feet?’
Ben nods. ‘I’d say so.’
‘What’s the point of it, standing up here in the middle of nowhere?’
‘That’s one of the few things I do know. It was a vanity project, built by a local quarry owner in the mid-nineteenth century to show off the quality of his stonework. The tower kept his labourers busy during a downturn in the industry.’
Khan grins. ‘Man erects gigantic, phallic monument to show off his business prowess. A tale as old as time.’
They emerge onto the escarpment to see the forensics team already assembled, mid-briefing. Trish Silverton, their Senior Forensics Investigator, a small, bird-like woman with short, white-blonde hair and flashing green eyes, gives them a wave but doesn’t break from her spiel to the gathered officers. Ben nods his greeting and zips into a white crime-scene suit before ducking beneath the tape pegged out in a large square around the base of the tower.
He approaches the scene with care, skirting the folly and a small heap of black ash – the remains of another recent bonfire – stopping when he sees the body lying in the dirt. He crouches down, taking it all in, forcing his breath to slow and his mind to focus.
It’s a disturbing sight and his first impression is that she isn’t real. That this isn’t a girl, but rather a posed mannequin or a wax figure laid out for display. His gaze sweeps across the details. The white gauze dress, old-looking and detailed with lace, like a Victorian nightdress or undergarment, torn at the neck, exposing the hint of a slender white shoulder. Pale arms folded carefully across her chest. Long, fair hair falling tidily around the shoulders. Feet placed together, the toes of her trainers pointing neatly skyward.
Ben swallows. He can see significant blood spatter across her chest, and more staining the neckline of the dress, as well as a dark pool of it leaking like oil beneath her skull. With a breath, he allows his gaze to travel to the most disturbing detail. Only half her face is visible, just the bruised jaw and blue lips, before the girl’s head seems to morph into a distended black beak, raven feathers ruffling against her fair hair. A mask, Ben sees, with a grotesque hooked beak, half Venetian ball costume, half plague doctor. The sight is unnerving, made all the more unfathomable by the words he can see scrawled over the girl’s limbs, daubed in black along her bare arms and calves. ‘PUNISH. DESTROY. REPENT.’ The words repeat over and over along her skin. Ben shudders. So, this is what Khan meant by ‘unusual’.
Even without seeing the victim’s face, it’s obvious that she is young. A teenager, probably no older than Ellie. Her hands are unlined, pink glitter varnish daubed onto fingernails, a silver pendant – half a heart – hanging limp on a chain around her neck. It’s the sort of necklace he knows comes in two halves, a pendant to split with a best friend or a boyfriend. Somewhere, someone has the matching piece.
The ache in his chest swells. This girl has taken care with her appearance, excited about her Saturday night. Preparations for a party or a date. Too young. Far too young to be lying here alone in the woods.
‘You ever seen anything like this before?’ Khan asks, crouching beside him. ‘The words on her skin… the mask… the pose.’
Ben shakes his head.
Khan indicates red scratch marks on the girl’s arms and a mottled bruise on her jaw. ‘Looks like she put up quite a fight.’
‘The mask isn’t attached, look.’ Ben points to the elastic dangling loose either side. ‘It’s laid over her face.’
‘What are you thinking? Halloween night. Some dark occult shit?’ Khan glances up at the tower above, the opening set high into the stone wall.
A light breeze skims the ground, rustling the dry leaves at their feet. Strands of the girl’s hair lift then resettle on her shoulders. Ben frowns, trying to find a word circling in his mind. ‘Reverence,’ he says, the word dropping into his mind like a coin in a slot machine.
‘What?’
‘The way she’s been laid here suggests… I don’t know… a sort of care or artistry. They’ve taken their time. The words. The mask. They have to mean something. We need to work out what.’
Khan calls out to one of the officers nearby. ‘Have you found anything yet? A bag? A phone? Anything to tell us who she is?’
‘Nothing yet, Chief.’
Khan frowns. ‘Name one teenager you know who goes anywhere without their phone?’
Silverton, having wrapped up her briefing, strides towards them. ‘We’re ready to set up the tent.’
Khan nods. ‘Be my guest.’
Ben stands back to allow the technicians to move in, watching as the metal frame and white canvas walls are erected like a shroud around the girl’s body, as they swab and scrape and photograph. He notes their professionalism, their care. Another form of reverence, he thinks. As they prepare to lift the mask from the girl’s face, he takes a step closer, his breath tight in his chest.
‘Careful,’ says Silverton, overseeing the technician using a long pair of tweezers to lift the feathered object.
Ben notes the shake in the man’s hand as he peels the bird mask away to reveal the face beneath – only it’s no longer a face, not really. Half the skull is a mess of bloody pulp and bone.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ says Khan, turning away.
Silverton throws them a grim look. ‘Identification could take longer than we thought.’ She nods at the high stone walls of the folly looming beyond the tent opening. ‘It’s a long way down.’
‘She fell? Jumped?’ Ben already knows the answer. Nobody jumps forty feet off a tower and lands like this, neatly arranged on the ground. His eyes drift over the words daubed on the girl’s skin. ‘PUNISH’. The scenarios in his mind make him shudder again.
Khan clears his throat. ‘I want a full grid search of the area,’ he says. ‘From the woodland car park up to the folly, and all the way down the other side where the woods meet the road. I want anything out of place marked. And let’s get a technician up there.’ He jerks his head at the tower.
‘What about all the splinter routes and trails zig-zagging through the woods?’ asks Ben. ‘There must be a dozen at least.’
‘We’ve got our work cut out, that’s for sure. We’ll have to move fast. It’s going to be impossible to restrict the area. As soon as word gets out about the body, we’ll be overrun with journos and wannabe Miss Marples. We’ve got a jump on them, but not for long. One sniff and they’ll be all over this like flies on the proverbial. I want to know who was in the quarry last night, who was at the party. The school’s close by – could she be a student?’
Ben nods, his gaze drifting from the victim’s damaged face to focus on other details. The girl’s freshly washed hair. Her glitter nail varnish. The gleaming silver pendant at her throat. He imagines a bedroom, one with make-up spilling over a dressing table, a jewellery box left open, discarded clothes and peeling posters, a bed, currently empty where a warm body should be. It is not any teenager’s bedroom he is imagining, he realises, but Ellie’s, back in their old home, the one he used to share with Rachel.
‘We need a victim ID. We need it fast.’
Someone somewhere will be missing this girl. Hopefully it won’t be too long before it’s called in.