Every step down the staircase felt real, but he knew he was dreaming. Valentine reached out to the banister, it felt solid. The wall, too, as he ran his fingers along the cold plaster, was as firm as he recalled. Wasn’t he asleep, then?
As he opened the living room door he found he wasn’t alone. There was someone there; it felt like walking into the kitchen in the morning and discovering the door to the extension closed, but sensing his father was just out of view. It was impossible not to detect familiar souls because he recognised their presence immediately. He recognised this presence too.
For a moment, the girl stood silently, gripping Valentine with her cold eyes. And then she moved. Forward at first, as if she might embrace him. It was a welcoming gesture, but it wasn’t directed at the detective. There was another girl too.
The tall, pale girl stood to one side. She seemed older than Abbie, but not old enough to be sufficiently wise. She was in some kind of trance, gazing into the distance behind her. Valentine turned away as Abbie spoke.
‘This is Paige, she’s lost too.’
‘Lost?’ He didn’t understand.
Abbie nodded, touching Paige’s arm. As the older girl turned Valentine saw she was carrying a child, her stomach swollen. She lifted Abbie’s hand onto the bump and they both turned back to Valentine, pleading.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said again.
The girls stayed silent, staring at him.
‘What do you want from me?’
As he spoke, more figures joined the girls. From behind them, moving slowly from the shadows, appeared a group of children. Their number was small at first but it grew and grew, forcing confusion and panic to crash over Valentine.
‘I don’t understand. What do you want of me?’
The girls continued to stare as the room filled up with more and more small children. The detective closed his eyes, tried to shut it all out, but the children kept coming.
‘Stop! Stop it now.’ His voice was a roar.
‘Bob . . . Bob . . .’ Clare shook him awake in the bed.
‘Christ almighty.’ He was trembling, his T-shirt soaked in sweat.
Clare rose and leaned over her husband. ‘Bob, what’s going on?’
He sat up, easing the duvet back and perching on the edge of the bed. ‘Nothing.’ He got to his feet and staggered for the bathroom. ‘I thought you weren’t talking to me, anyway.’
‘I don’t have any choice when you’re shouting in my ear.’
‘Let me fix that right away,’ he said as he reached for the door. ‘I’m going for a shower.’
‘Bob, are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Go back to sleep.’
‘Bob . . . Bob . . .’ She kept calling his name, but the sound of the shower drowned out her voice as Valentine laid his forehead on the cold, wet tiles.
The sound of cups clattering on a tin tray set Valentine’s nerves jangling. He looked up from his desk and saw a uniform PC removing the coffee mugs that were piling up beside the photocopier. He wanted to call out, to demand the cups stay where they were and the PC stop annoying him, but he reined himself in. It was pointless taking his tensions out on the squad. He’d been in groups like that himself, where people were too frightened to move for fear of a blast coming from on high. It didn’t work, unless your aim was to build resentment and a reputation as a dictator.
He got up and closed his door, to keep the noise to a minimum and his temper in check. As he stood there, resting his back on the flat of the door, he felt cold and alone. Not just alone in the room, but alone in the world. He tried to imagine how those girls had felt, facing the end. No one should ever have to feel like that; he knew those girls had been failed, not only by the police force, but by everyone.
All that life, all that living ahead of them, snuffed out. He’d heard people talk like this about those who had died young, but it wasn’t enough. Those girls were the future, our future, everyone’s future. The loss of such promise was a greater tragedy than he could begin to contemplate.
The image of Abbie McGarvie’s pale corpse lying on the bitumen came back again. It kept reappearing to him, kept flashing up behind his eyes. It was like a reminder of the great wrong that had been done to her and an ominous prediction of much worse to come. What kind of people did this to their own? How had we come to value young life so poorly?
Valentine thought of his own daughters. He imagined Chloe or Fiona fleeing, running for their very life. The image came clearly; he could see the fear on their faces, the anguish and the terror of their hell to come. But, worst of all, was to be a father and know this was just someone’s sport. Because he knew without doubt, somewhere off stage, someone was watching the scene unfolding and laughing in perverse enjoyment.
A rattling beyond the door broke his concentration. He snapped into a new state of consciousness and realised he was gripping the doorknob so hard the knuckles of his hand were white. When he stepped aside, wringing his fingers, the door’s hinges started to screech.
DI McCormack peered cautiously down at the handle, then stepped inside, closed the door behind her. ‘Hello, sir,’ she said.
‘What is it, Sylvia?’ He slumped into his seat and scrunched up his brows, massaging them with his fingertips.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes,’ he snapped.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes . . . No . . . Oh, I don’t know.’
‘That sounds more like it, going by the look on your face.’
McCormack approached the desk and pulled out the vacant chair. She was holding a blue folder but placed it on the desk, as if to indicate it could wait. To Valentine the room felt suddenly claustrophobic, like he was being cramped into the corner after previously ruling the entire territory.
‘Is it that obvious?’ he said.
‘A little. But then I did notice you haven’t been out of your office this morning, which some might interpret as you being antisocial, but I tend to assume you are in a contemplative mood.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes. And we know what that means, don’t we? So, come on, spill the beans.’
Valentine couldn’t return McCormack’s gaze; it felt like an accusation. He looked up to the ceiling where a dim bulb burned overhead. ‘I had another little visit, you might say.’
‘The girl again?’
‘Yes. But she wasn’t alone.’ The DCI detailed the encounter with the older girl and the growing swarm of young children. When he was finished, McCormack was covering her mouth with the back of her hand, looking like she was trying hard to suppress her response.
‘I’ve no idea what the message was this time,’ said Valentine, ‘but I have an idea.’
‘There were children?’ said McCormack.
‘Lots of children.’
‘And this new girl was pregnant, too. Just like Abbie.’
‘Yes, I made that connection too.’
‘Then I bet your thoughts followed mine.’
‘In that case, Sylvia, I hope we’re both wrong.’
Valentine watched the DI sitting solemnly and silently before him. The sound of cars beyond the window dominated the room for a few moments and then McCormack leaned forward and retrieved the blue folder. As she shuffled through the papers she explained the print-outs as being Malcolm Frizzle’s previous convictions.
‘I don’t need the whole list, only the current conviction for sex below the age of consent, and what was the other, grooming?’
‘Grooming, sex with a minor, and indecent assault, sir. In addition to the probation order there’s an existing harm order that relates to a historic case of grooming, too.’
‘The bloody scum.’ Valentine stood up. ‘Right, let’s put him through the grinder.’
The officers headed for the cells, ready to question Malcolm Frizzle about his involvement in Abbie McGarvie’s death. At the top of the stairs Valentine asked McCormack for an update on the SOCOs’ findings from the outbuilding on the Sutherland estate.
‘Nothing we can tie in to the McGarvie girl, no hair or tissue, and the blood is animal, I’m afraid.’
‘Animal?’
‘Yes, porcine. That’s pig’s blood to you and me,’ said the DI. ‘I spoke to Davis about this and he says it’s another one of those weird things that turns up at these occult rituals, like the salt, and the black wax that appears to be candle wax.’
‘I suppose sequins from girls’ dresses is just another trait, too?’
‘No idea, sir. There’s a ton of prints, and some match Frizzle’s files. There’s also a palm-print that’s been taken from the ladder, and guess what? It matches Frizzle’s file.’
They’d reached the interview rooms. Valentine nodded to the guard on the table and ordered him to bring in Frizzle. ‘Thing is, Sylvia, given he’s an employee there, those prints are understandable.’
‘And purely circumstantial.’
‘Yes, that too.’
The officers entered the room and retrieved chairs from under the one table that was positioned with its end butting the wall. McCormack was looking through the notes in the blue folder when Frizzle was brought in, leaving Valentine to do the greeting.
‘Well, well, well . . .’ he said, ‘how nice to see you again, Malky. Under such propitious circumstances, as well.’ He smiled and crossed his arms as the interviewee was directed to his seat in front of them.
Frizzle, sitting with his shoulders hunched, didn’t look comfortable before the officers. When McCormack slapped down the file Frizzle winced and sucked in his thin lips like he was stifling a scream.
‘You don’t look like you had a good night, Malky,’ said the DCI.
‘You’ve got no right. That was a liberty, keeping me in.’
‘I think you’ll find we’ve got every right,’ said Valentine, leaning over the desk and focusing on Frizzle’s eyes. ‘Don’t you know a young girl died, in perhaps the most unusual circumstances I’ve ever seen?’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, apart from what you’ve just told me.’
‘Is that all now, Malky? That’s not what I hear. Wouldn’t you like to tell me how you knew Abbie McGarvie.’
He dropped lower in the chair and seemed shrunken before the officers, nervously tapping dirty fingernails on the back of his knuckles. ‘Never heard that name before.’
Valentine got up from his seat and walked over to McCormack’s side of the desk, where he retrieved the folder. He read aloud Frizzle’s explanation for his where-abouts on the night Abbie McGarvie died. ‘You were on a six-mile run.’
‘That’s right, keeping fit’s my thing.’
‘I thought fiddling with teenage girls was your thing, Malky.’ Valentine slapped down the file, making the suspect tense in his seat. ‘At least, that’s what your previous states.’
‘Look, I haven’t done a thing. I’ve been as good as gold since that last offence, you can ask anyone.’
‘Oh, I have. And I got some interesting answers.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about. This is police harassment. You’ve lifted me because you can’t find anybody else.’
Valentine tipped back his head, smirking. ‘I don’t think that’s how it works in the real world, Malky.’ He passed the file over to DI McCormack. ‘Show him the statements we got from those young girls he’s been grooming.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The DI opened the file and retrieved two closely typed pages of statements taken from the teenage girls who had been caught trespassing on the Sutherland estate.
As Frizzle took the pages he leaned over them and started reading the words by following the tip of his dirty fingernail. When he was finished, he pushed away the pages and slouched in his chair with his hands forced beneath his thighs.
‘Nothing to say, then?’ said Valentine.
‘They’re lying. You put them up to it.’
‘You think so? Well, there’s an easy way to check that out. Come on, get your coat and we’ll drive out to the Sutherland estate and see if the bedrooms all interconnect. Just like you told the girls.’
Frizzle looked horrified. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Oh yes I can. I’m the police, Malky. And you’d do well not to forget that.’
‘I won’t.’ The words came so meekly that they prompted a reaction in Valentine that he wasn’t expecting.
‘Good!’ he roared. ‘Now tell me what the bloody hell’s been going on up there, and I want to know it all. The masks, the bed-hopping, the pig’s blood and the little girls running naked in front of heavy goods vehicles.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t give me that.’
‘I don’t. I just see things. I should have kept my mouth shut.’
‘Yes, you should have. But it’s too late for that now because a girl’s dead and you’re the one I’m looking at over a police interview room table, Malcolm Frizzle.’
He gazed up from the desktop. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Honestly, it isn’t. I just spoke out of turn, that’s all.’
‘Then why are you so nervy?’
‘Because you’ve got me in here, and you can put me away.’
‘Malky, I most definitely can put you away. What you need to decide here and now is whether I put you away for breaching your probation order or for the death of that young girl. Now make your bloody mind up because my patience is running right out with you.’