GILCHRIST ORDERED EVERYONE to, “Step back. Police. Step back.”
And louder. “Sir. Back from the body.”
He had used the word body, even though it was not a complete body, but a mostly limbless torso. As he stood by the white thing that lay before him like a lump of bloodless meat, his lungs seemed unable to pull in air. He stumbled to his knees. Seawater soaked through his trousers.
He stared at it, at the headless torso with no legs, and only one arm—without a hand—which shifted on the sands with each incoming wave. Ruddied pockmarks dotted the skin where gulls and other seabirds had pecked through.
He brushed sand from the flat swell of the stomach, revealing what looked like a black stain above the belly-button. He cupped seawater with his hands, spilled it over the torso, and a tiny love-heart swam into view.
He pushed himself to his feet, brushed his hands on his thighs. Despite himself, he could not take his eyes off the blackened nipples of her small breasts. It struck him then that her nakedness was exposed for all to see, and he snapped at the onlookers, “Go on. Get out of here. What are you looking at?”
With hesitant reluctance the crowd backed up.
He slapped his mobile to his ear, ordered the SOCOs, and gave directions. But it was not until he closed his mobile and stared at the blonde pubis that lay between twin circles of butchered meat that he realised something was missing.
Curiosity overpowered his revulsion. He kneeled again, and studied the love-heart. The finest of blonde hairs, dried by the sun, stood proud, as if refusing to give up life. His gaze shifted on to bony shoulders made all the more narrow by the missing left arm, down across a rippled ribcage to a wasp-like waist that made Chloe’s torso seem strangely thin and frail. The gulls had not done too much harm. Open pits around the upper chest looked more like unhealed sores than carrion food-spots. But other than the tattoo and the peck-holes the torso was unblemished.
A wave rushed the shore and a hacked hip bumped against his arm before he could move. He choked back the urge to throw up, trying to convince himself it was the personal nature of the torso that was making him gag. But he saw with a clarity that stunned him that it was more than that. For once, he was on the receiving end, the relative of a murder victim, the person left to cope with death. How heartless he must have appeared to relatives of other victims. And he saw that no amount of whispered condolences or words of kindness could ever salve their loss.
He forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand, see this as just another murder. And that thought stopped him. Just another murder? How had he ever let himself become this cold? He took a deep breath, gripped Chloe’s right arm, pulled her up and over, surprised by how light she felt. Her torso slapped onto the sand, and a muted gasp rushed from the onlookers as they took another step back.
He had his sixth note. Gouged into the back with vee-shaped cuts deep enough to show bone. BUTCHER.
And the sixth letter. E.
It could not be clearer.
M. A. U. R. E. E.
His daughter was next. And she was missing.
“HEY.”
Gilchrist pressed his phone to his ear, stared out to sea. “Jack?”
“Hey, Andy, listen, I’m sorry about earlier. I just—”
“Jack.”
A pause, then, “It’s Chloe, isn’t it?”
Gilchrist dragged a hand over his face. Two SOCOs in white coveralls were rolling her torso into a body-bag. A yellow cordon did little to separate the scene from onlookers. Uniformed policemen were interviewing individuals from the dwindling crowd.
“Tell it to me straight, Andy.”
Straight? What could he say? He stepped away as the SOCOs lifted the body-bagged torso and carried it dripping with seawater to the back of their van for Mackie to examine at Ninewells.
“I’m sorry, Jack. It’s Chloe. That’s all I can tell you.”
“Jesus.” And from that one word Gilchrist could almost feel Jack’s utter despair.
He wondered if he should have spoken to Jack face-to-face rather than tell him over the phone. He had handled his marriage all wrong, the break-up, too. Now he was handling his son wrong.
“Jack. Listen,” he said. “We will solve this. I promise you.” He tried to force all thoughts of failing from his mind. But you could never tell with a murder enquiry. “Where are you?” he asked.
“Down by the harbour. It’s where we used to walk. Chloe loved the sea. Did she tell you that?”
He was about to say yes, then realised Jack needed to air his grief. “No, she didn’t.”
“Chloe had something about not being able to paint the ocean, about it being too wild and beautiful. The ocean represents life in its perpetual evolution, she said. She refused to paint seascapes because she said she could never capture its beauty in its stillness. You had to see it moving to appreciate the ocean’s true beauty.” A rush of breath, then, “I tell you, Andy, Chloe was something else. She was special, man.”
“I know she was.” It was all he could think to say. The SOCO van roared into life and eased along the sands. Onlookers drifted away. Already Chloe’s mutilated torso on the beach was being assigned to history.
“I feel like, you know … helpless, Andy. Just out-and-out helpless.”
Like father like son, he thought.
“Do you, uh, do you need me to do anything?”
Gilchrist knew what Jack was asking. But how could he have his son identify his girlfriend’s hacked up torso? “No,” he said, and thought he caught a sigh of relief.
“You haven’t heard from Maureen yet, have you?” Jack asked.
“I was hoping you had.”
“You really don’t think anything’s happened to her, do you?”
Jack’s question confirmed he was in denial. First his girlfriend, then his sister. It was too much for anyone to handle emotionally. But Jack did not need to hear that his sister was next to be hacked to pieces. “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,” he tried. “You know Mo. She’s probably gone away for a few days.
“Remember that time she ran off to Spain for a month without telling you or Mum? You went ballistic, man. Through the roof.” Jack chuckled. “Maybe she’s gone there again. Do you think?”
Gilchrist kept the deception alive. Having Jack do something was better than him doing nothing. “Maybe,” he said, and tried to sound upbeat. “Why don’t you look into that, Jack? Call a few friends. Find out if they know anything.”
“Yeah. I’ll do that.”
“And when you get hold of her,” Gilchrist said, “give her an earful and tell her to call her old Dad.”
Jack forced a chuckle down the line. “Will do, Andy.”
By nightfall Gilchrist had not heard from Maureen.
But he had not expected to.
MAUREEN STARTLED AT the scraping sound.
Someone was outside.
She heard it again.
She peered into the darkness, but saw only the shape of the door and the curtained window of the hut she was in. She struggled to move, but the knots bit into her skin, brought tears to her eyes again. She fought them back, bit down on the gag, and breathed through her nose. She had worried about the gag, worried that if her nose blocked she would be unable to breathe. It had happened once, two nights ago, and she had passed out from lack of air. But she wakened later, her nasal passageways clear again.
Another scrape. A key that time. No doubt about it.
The door opened and in the dim greyness she could make out the dark silhouette of his figure. She felt wetness spread between her legs, and tears well at her inability to contain her fear. The warm smell of urine lifted off the wooden floorboards.
She felt the floorboards shiver from the heels of his boots, smelled the stale tobacco that clung to his body like his personal scent. Despite hating that smell, it gave a welcome respite from the stench of defecation that had filled her senses for days.
An explosion of light hit her like a blow to the head.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“It’s fucking honking in here,” his voice growled.
Footsteps thudded across the floorboards. A tremor took hold of her then.
Don’t let him touch me. Don’t let him come near me.
The footsteps stopped. She knew he was standing in front of her. She heard a rustle of cloth, jacket rubbing jeans, perhaps, the sound of a bottle being opened. She eased her eyes open, squinted against the harsh light.
He squatted no more than three feet from her, his filthy moustache thick and dark over lips as tight and narrow as a scar. He smiled a slow smile that exposed cracked and yellow teeth, then held a plastic bottle out to her.
“Want some?”
She tried to say yes, but managed only a groan from behind the gag. She shifted herself on the floor, felt the damp squelch of her own defecation as it squeezed thick in the folds of her underwear.
“Want me to take that off?”
She closed her eyes in a long blink.
Please, take it off. Please. I won’t do anything. I promise.
She held her breath as he tilted the bottle to her upturned face and dribbled water onto her gag. She worked her tongue, sucked at the cool liquid.
Then the bottle tilted upright, and he waved it in front of her. “Some more?” He grinned at her, his eyes dark and feral, his hand lowering to his zip. “This first.”
She turned her head away, closed her eyes.
I can’t, I can’t. Don’t make me do this. I can’t.
She heard his zip being pulled down, some rustling, a grunt.
Fingers dug into her hair, twisted her head to face him, face it.
“Open your eyes.”
She started to cry then, her breath rushing in and out of her nasal passages, short sharp blasts that made her think she might pass out. She had read somewhere that hyperventilation could make you faint. She shortened her breaths, prayed she would pass out.
His grip tightened. She whimpered from the pain.
“Open your eyes, bitch.”
Quick breaths. Fast and hard.
“Open them, you fucking bitch.”
Please God. Don’t let him. Not again. I’ll spew and choke. I know I will.
He was close. She could tell by the way his breath rasped, the way his grip clutched and scratched her hair. She had looked once, had opened her eyes the first time, had seen how his face twisted in an ugly grimace as he climaxed.
Dear God. He’s coming. He’s coming.
She squeezed her eyes, heard him groan as sperm hit her forehead in a warm squirt. Another over her cheek. And one more. Then drips like syrup that oozed down her cheek and threatened to slide behind the gag and over her lips. She lowered her head, felt his sperm slither over her chin and drip free.
She had not done as he had asked. She had not opened her eyes. He would give her no water. Which was now what she wanted.
Without water, she would die.
Please God, let me die. Just let me die.