“Your guess is as good as mine.”
***
They parked the car in the Winter Wonderland car park and marched to the site office. Entering the tired trailer office, Helen was shocked by the sight that greeted her. The young woman huddling beneath a tatty blanket looked wild, unhinged and painfully thin.
“Hello, Amy. My name’s Detective Inspector Helen Grace—you can call me Helen. May I sit down?”
No response. Helen carefully eased herself into the chair opposite.
“I’d like to talk to you about Sam. Is that okay?”
The girl looked up, a horrified expression spread over her ravaged features. Helen studied her face intently, mentally comparing it to the photo she’d seen earlier. If it hadn’t been for her piercing blue eyes and the historic scar on her chin, they’d have struggled to ID her. Her once lustrous hair was lank, knotted and greasy. Her fingernails were long and dirty. Her face, arms and legs looked like a frenzy of self-harm. And then there was the smell—that’s what hit you first. Sweet. Pungent. Revolting.
“I need to find Sam. Can you tell me where he is?”
Amy closed her eyes. A single tear escaped its confines and ran down her cheek.
“Where is he, Amy?”
A long silence and then finally she whispered:
“The woods.”
Amy categorically refused to leave the sanctuary of the trailer office, so Helen had to use the dog. She left Charlie to babysit Amy, ordering Mark with her. Simpson, the retriever, buried his nose in the bloodstained rags that had once been Amy’s clothes, then shot off through the woods.
It wasn’t hard to see where she’d been. Her progress through the woods had been so blind, so crashing, that she’d rent great holes in the thick undergrowth. Bits of cloth, bits of skin decorated her path. Simpson hoovered these up, bounding through the brush. Helen kept pace behind him and Mark was determined not to be outrun by a woman. But he was laboring, sweating alcohol.
The lonely building came into view. A municipal swimming baths, long since earmarked for demolition, a sad relic of fun times gone by. Simpson clawed at the padlocked door, then broke away, racing around the building before eventually coming to rest by a broken window. Fresh blood decorated the cracked panes. They had found Amy’s cocoon.
Getting inside was tough. Despite the building’s derelict state, care had been taken to secure every possible entry and exit. Secure it against whom? Nobody lived round here. Eventually the lock was forced and the usual ballet began, shoes cased in sterile covers skating over the floor.
And there he was. Lying fifteen feet below them in the diving pool. A brief delay as a long ladder was sought, then Helen was in the pool, face-to-face with Amy’s “Sam.” He was a straitlaced kid, bound for a law firm, but you wouldn’t have known that to look at him. He looked like the corpse of any old dosser you might find on the streets. His clothes were stained with urine and excrement, his fingernails cracked and dirty. And his face. His gaunt face was contorted into a hideous expression—fear, agony and horror written in his twisted features. In life he had been handsome and winning. In death he was repulsive.
6
Would they ever stop torturing her?
Amy thought she would be safe at Southampton General. That she would be left alone to heal and grieve. But they were intent ontormentingher. They refused to let her eat or drink, even though she begged them to. Her tongue was swollen, they said, her stomach too contracted, and her bowels might tear if solids passed through them. So they’d hooked her up to a drip. Maybe it was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t what shewanted. When had they ever gone without food for over two weeks? What did they know?
She had a morphine drip too, which helped a bit, though they were scrupulously careful not to overfill it. She operated it with her left hand, punching the button when the pain became too much. Her right hand was cuffed to the bed. The nurses bloody loved that, speculating in loud stage whispers about what she’d done. Killed her baby? Killed her husband? They really were enjoying themselves.
And then—God help her—they’d let her mother in. She went berserk at that, shouting and screaming until her bewildered mum had to retreat on doctor’s orders. What thefuckwere they thinking? She couldn’t see her mother, not now. Not like this.
She just wanted to be left alone. She would concentrate fiercely on the things around her, staring at the intricate cotton weave of her pillowcase, gazing for hours on end at the hypnotic glowing filament in her bedside lamp. That way she could zone out, keep her thoughts at bay. And when a vision of Samdidspring up from nowhere, she would hit the morphine trigger and for a moment she’d drift away to a happier place.
But she knew in her heart that she would not be left in peace for long. Demons were circling her now, dragging her back to the living death she’d left behind. She could see the police hovering outside, waiting to come in and question her. Didn’t they get that sheneverwanted to answer those questions? Hadn’t she suffered enough?
“Tell them I can’t see them.”
The nurse who was busy studying her charts looked up.
“Tell them I’ve got a fever,” Amy continued. “That I’m asleep...”
“I can’t stop them, love,” the nurse replied evenly. “Best get it over with, eh?”
She could never suffer enough. Amy knew that really. She had killed the man she loved and there was no way back from that.
7
