When Anna saw why her dog Bonnie had half-dragged her on to the bright-green spongy ground beyond the trees, her heart started to beat so fast that she was afraid she’d choke. The peaceful sweep of Port Meadow, the nearby allotments with their fading bean flowers and the railway track blurred out of focus along with all their ambient sounds; for a moment she thought she was going to pass out. But Anna had never been much of a fainter so was denied that mercy.
Random, shocking details jumped out. A single running shoe soaked almost black with blood; more blood welling out through ripped and gory running clothes and streaking the honey-coloured hair that was still pulled back into a ponytail; the trickling little streamlet a metre or so from the bloody head; the contorted features, an agonized mask scarcely recognizable as human.
A name formed inside her head. Naomi. She instantly recoiled from the thought. How could that mutilated emptied-out thing be Naomi?
Anna continued to stare down as she tried and failed to make sense of what she was seeing, to understand how this lovely lucid autumn light, which she’d always associated with crisp school uniforms and fresh starts, could be illuminating Naomi’s corpse.
Then some internal wall dissolved and there were two Annas: the thirty-two-year-old woman, gripping on to Bonnie’s lead with bloodless fingers, and the stoned, terrified sixteen year old, stopped in her tracks by this same slaughterhouse reek.
A scream exploded in her head. It felt like all those times she had screamed for help in dreams, help that never came, because she could never make her stupid vocal cords work, though inside she was howling like an animal.
Bewilderingly, help did come. Two women came pushing through the trees, their two dogs straining against their leashes. Anna had seen both dog-owners before, walking separately over Port Meadow. The older woman’s hair was a startling mix of jet black and snowy white, loosely wrapped in one of her collection of gypsy scarves. The younger woman – just a girl, really, Anna thought – had once asked Anna jokingly if she was sure that Bonnie wasn’t a wolf.
‘God, oh my God, oh shit!’ the girl whispered now, then shrieked, ‘Buster! Leave!’ frantically reeling in her retracting lead as her tiny apricot poodle went to sniff at the blood pooling around the corpse. Just in time she turned aside, vomiting into the grass.
The older woman had pulled out her phone. ‘Get me the police! Yes, my name is Isadora Salzman.’ She had one of those actressy voices, the posh side of middle class. Anna saw little tremors running through her.
The girl straightened up, fumbling for a tissue. Her skin, normally delicate cinnamon brown, had turned ashy with shock. ‘Sorry, I never thought I’d have to see something like this.’ She pressed her hands to her mouth, fighting off another bout of retching. ‘This is exactly why I didn’t want to mind Nick and Leo’s dog,’ she said shakily. ‘I told them, “It’s always some poor bloody dog walker who finds the body, every fucking time.” And now I have.’ Her eyes skittered back to the dead woman, then away. ‘Are the police coming?’ she asked the woman who had phoned.
She nodded. ‘We’ve got to stay until they get here.’
No one had bothered to check Naomi’s body for a pulse. Everyone knew she was dead.
Bonnie had settled at Anna’s feet, calmer after their frantic dash. Keeping her eyes watchfully on Anna, she keened softly, a sound Anna had never previously heard from her rescue dog, and the only sign of her continuing distress.
‘I’m Isadora,’ the woman was saying. ‘And this is Hero.’ She reached down to soothe her dog, which was shivering and trying to hide behind her legs. Some type of highly-strung spaniel, Anna thought, its wayward fringe scraped back from its eyes with a bright-pink clip.
‘I’m Tansy,’ said the younger woman. ‘This is Buster. This is nuts,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Why are we introducing the dogs?’ Her eyes veered back to Naomi. ‘Oh God, her poor face,’ she moaned.
Isadora began untying the knot at the back of her scarf. Today’s headscarf was made of shimmering blue silk. Stooping down, she laid it tenderly over the once-lovely face, and Anna tried not to see the scarlet stains that immediately bloomed. ‘There, my darling,’ Isadora said in the tones of someone settling a child for the night. Anna couldn’t tell if she was trying to comfort the freaked Tansy or the no-longer living Naomi.
‘Should you have done that?’ Tansy said anxiously. ‘Isn’t that, like, disturbing the body?’
‘Her name was Naomi Evans.’
Anna only knew she’d said the words out loud when Tansy said, dismayed, ‘Oh my God, she was your friend! I’m so sorry!’
Anna had wondered if she and Naomi might become friends, but she just shook her head. ‘We spoke a couple of times, that’s all.’ Her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere weirdly distant.
‘I used to see her out running,’ Tansy said.
Isadora nodded. ‘She always seemed so vibrant. So—’ She quickly checked herself, but Anna knew what she’d been going to say. So alive. Instead, she said, ‘What a cruel waste.’
Tansy was pacing now. She was ridiculously pretty, Anna thought. In her boyfriend jeans and well-washed sweatshirt she could be an off-duty model. ‘I wish I still smoked,’ she said abruptly. ‘Damn it, I wish I had a spliff.’ She gave Anna an anxious glance. ‘Sorry if I’m babbling.’
‘I‘m half-Russian. I’m genetically wired to babble.’ Isadora was delving in her bag as she spoke. ‘Would this help?’ She handed Tansy a small silver flask.
Tansy looked anxious. ‘Are you sure? I’ve just been—’
‘Quite sure,’ Isadora reassured her.
Tansy unscrewed the top, releasing steam and fumes fierce enough to make her eyes water.
‘I put a shot of vodka in it,’ Isadora said unnecessarily. She saw their expressions. ‘Hero is an early morning girl. I need a little help to get going.’
Tansy hesitated. ‘I haven’t touched coffee for months.’ Using a small quantity as mouthwash, she spat it into a bush, then took a grateful gulp. ‘Thanks,’ she repeated more hoarsely before offering the flask to Anna, who took a deep swallow of the joltingly alcoholic contents.
‘I can’t look at her, but I’m scared not to look,’ Tansy almost wailed. ‘Could we move away? It feels disrespectful chatting over her body like this.’
Anna returned the flask to Isadora, who knocked back a serious slug before she said, ‘Also, if we get away from these trees it will be easier to see when the police get here.’
They couldn’t seem to move. They looked down at the dead woman, taking in her delicate wrist bones, the ruined flesh.
Tansy said, ‘She’s not wearing her bracelet.’
The persistent tink-tink-tink of Naomi’s charms as she ran had been like her signature soundtrack.
‘She always wore it,’ Tansy said.
Isadora started peering at the marshy ground around Naomi’s body. Unbound from her scarf, her hair made a tangled cloud around her sharply intelligent face. ‘She was wearing it.’ She pointed into the grass where silver charms lay scattered, winking in the sun like tiny fallen stars.
They fell silent, not wanting to imagine the final struggle that had caused the links of Naomi’s bracelet to snap. Still in silence they led their dogs a little distance beyond the trees. It was just possible to glimpse the awkward sprawl of Naomi’s legs, her bare and bloodied foot. They could have turned their backs, but no one did. It wasn’t morbid fascination or superstitious fear, Anna thought. It was like they owed it to her.
Tansy was partly hugging herself, looking young and vulnerable in a way that Anna couldn’t remember feeling. ‘Another person did that to her,’ she said almost to herself. ‘Someone I could have just walked past in the street.’
Isadora said sombrely, ‘That makes three now.’
‘Three?’ said Anna.
‘Fatal stabbings,’ Tansy said. ‘A girl was stabbed to death in Magdalen College Gardens a couple of months ago. Then a few weeks later they found that other girl – in South Park, wasn’t it?’
Isadora gave a bleak nod.
‘You seriously hadn’t heard?’ Tansy asked Anna.
Anna couldn’t tell her that it took all her energy to deal with the personal day-to-day. Other people’s tragedies dimly registered on her radar, but not enough that she would notice an emerging pattern: three young women, three open-air stabbings. ‘I only recently moved back—’ she started to say, but Tansy was already talking.
‘They need to catch him before the new term starts and the students come back.’
Isadora joined in, echoing Tansy’s worries, but Anna had stopped listening. A late butterfly fluttered past. The heat of summer looked to be carrying on into September, and Anna could hear bees buzzing. Cows grazed placidly nearby. How much better to be a cow or a bee, she thought, oblivious to the ugly human drama playing out in a corner of this beauty spot.
Bonnie sat up suddenly alert, one flawless white ear swivelling to identify a new sound. As the first squad cars streaked into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring, Anna had to force herself not to run, to keep breathing out and in, all the time feeling as if she was trapped in a recurring bad dream – a dream she was powerless to change and from which she was never allowed to wake.