Which way should she go? Claire stared at the upturned vehicle in confusion. Why could she not remember who she was or what had happened?
She set off, panicking after a few yards when she realised she was heading downhill. She retraced her steps, or thought she had, then couldn’t see the car. When the bulk of it eventually loomed out of the darkness Claire let out a whimper of relief.
This time she set off in the opposite direction. The sudden rise of an embankment brought her to her knees, but she knew she had found the road. She scrambled up and stood on the tarmac, the wind whipping her body.
No headlights punctured the swirling snow in either direction.
Claire suddenly remembered a radio presenter’s voice advising against travel. Where had she been and where was she going? A shocking image of an old woman flashed through her mind.
My mother is dying
.
A sudden gust of wind unbalanced her. She stumbled backwards and rolled down the bank to land shocked and shaken at the bottom, tears of frustration welling in her eyes. The sound of an approaching car sent her crawling desperately back up.
On her right a distant pair of headlights disappeared in a dip in the road, then reappeared. Claire waved her hands wildly, her shouts snatched by the wind.
What if the driver didn’t see her?
Claire stepped into his beams. For a split second she thought the white van would plough into her, then it swerved and screeched to a halt. The near-side window slid down.
‘Jesus, lady. You could’ve been killed.’
‘I think there was an accident – my car went off the road.’
The middle-aged man leaned over and opened the passenger door, offering her his hand to help her climb inside. Claire sank back in the seat.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I must have banged my head. I can’t remember anything after I skidded.’
‘Anyone in the car with you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ There had been no one in the passenger seat. But something felt wrong. She could feel it, like a name on the tip of her tongue.
Emma! The name meant nothing at first. A disconnected word emerging from her addled brain. Then Claire knew with sickening certainty. Her little girl. Emma was in the back of the car.
‘Emma, my daughter’s in the car!’ she screamed at him.
He jumped from the driver’s seat, fighting the wind with the open door.
‘There’s a mobile in the glove compartment. Call 999 and tell them what’s happened.’
Claire threw open the door and half scrambled, half fell out on to the road. The driver was already down the bank and fighting his way towards her car, which was clearly visible in his headlights, its boot crushed against a tree.
Claire stumbled after him across the boggy ground.
The back door hung open. He ducked his head inside.
She waited to hear him say the terrible words that meant her child was dead.
‘There’s no one here.’
‘What?’ she said stupidly.
‘There’s no one in the back.’
‘But she was there.’
The man regarded her worriedly. Claire knew what he was thinking. The woman’s had a bad knock on the head. She’s concussed, confused. Now suddenly she’s remembered a non-existent daughter.
‘My daughter was in the back of the car,’ she shouted at him, more certain with every second that passed.
He nodded as though he believed her.
‘I’ll call the police. If your wee girl managed to get out of the car, then she’s not badly hurt.’ He started back towards the van.
Claire began to shout Emma’s name. Each time the wind snatched it and tossed it away. ‘Please, God.’ She stuck her head inside the car, desperate for some indication that Emma had been there. A doll lay face up in the brown puddle that was the roof. Claire picked it up and looked at its impassive, mud-smeared face.
The man was coming back.
‘The police are on their way. An ambulance will take you to hospital.’
‘No!’ Claire yelled into the wind. ‘I’m not leaving here until I find my daughter.’ She shook his hand from her arm and started for the woods.
‘You can’t wander around in the dark. Wait for the police.’
His voice retreated as the trees enveloped her.
4
She wasn’t confused any more. Now everything was hideously real. She had crashed her car. She had lost her precious daughter. Mad with fear and grief, Claire staggered through the wood. She could think only of the way she had talked to Emma. How cruel she had been. She had made Emma cry. Tears streamed down her face.
Her voice was hoarse from shouting, her calls making less headway than before against the wind. Now she began to imagine the terrible things that could have happened to Emma. Who was the man in the road? Had he taken her?
Claire stumbled and fell heavily as her right foot found a dip in the forest floor. Her head hit a stone, momentarily stunning her. She tried to draw breath. Tried to drag herself back to her feet. Her body was swaying, her limbs turned to water. The driver was right. She stood no chance. A strangled sob emerged from the rawness of her throat.
It was her fault Emma was lost and alone in the forest. It was all her fault. Claire slid to the ground, all strength gone from her body. Then she heard voices behind her. A strong beam of light caught her. A man’s voice shouted, urging her to reply. The beam was followed by another. Claire lifted her head, stood back up and called in return.
A yellow fluorescent jacket emerged from the darkness. Claire gathered the last of her strength and stumbled like a drunk towards the man.
‘My little girl . . .’
He caught her in his arms.
‘It’s OK. We’ll find her. You need to get out of the wind.’
The officer put his arm about her shivering body and led her back the way she had come. An ambulance stood on the road behind a police van. The policeman helped her up the bank.
‘Leave it to us. We’ll find her.’
Claire was too weak to argue.
DS Michael McNab stared into the darkness. This was hopeless. They would find nothing until it was light, but for a missing child they had to try. In the open, exposed to this weather, the girl might not last the night. He had extracted a doll from her bereft mother before the ambulance had taken her away. The dogs had been excited by it, sniffing the ground round the car, taking off into the woods. These dogs were their only hope before dawn.
McNab stood, rain streaming from his hood on to his face. He rubbed his bristled chin. His eyes felt as if they were full of broken glass. Three nights on the trot he’d been called out. He was beginning to forget what sleep was.
The wind had dropped a little, but the upper branches still swayed with its strength. The woman had told him a story about a man appearing in her headlights. She’d swerved to avoid him and gone off the road. A bump on the head had left her confused, then she’d remembered her daughter was in the car. The driver of the van had found the car empty apart from the doll. McNab looked down at its dirty plastic face.
A child was out there somewhere, frightened and alone in the woods. Maybe hurt. Maybe even concussed. McNab consoled himself with the thought that she couldn’t have gone far in the dark in this weather.
His radio crackled into life.
‘We’ve found her.’
‘Alive?’
‘Alive. You’d better come.’
As he approached the lights McNab heard a sound like a twanging wire. The closer he got to the torches the more insistent the sound became. The trees eventually parted to reveal a small clearing. The search party stood near a pile of trimmed branches. McNab heard the excited panting of the dogs and saw their breath condensing in the cold air.
The handler pointed ahead to where a girl sat under a tall pine tree. Flakes of snow drifted down through its branches to settle on her hair. She was humming. McNab wondered whether that had been the noise he’d heard.
‘She’s scared. She didn’t want us to go near.’
‘Great.’ Children were not his speciality, but he would give it a try. McNab put on his best child-friendly voice. ‘Hi, Emma. My name’s Michael. Your mum sent me to find you.’
The girl continued humming and didn’t look up. The sound was eerily penetrating. McNab fought a rising feeling of disquiet. What was he worrying about? The girl looked OK. She was just a bit spooked, that was all.
‘I brought your doll from the car.’
After a moment the girl lifted her head and looked in his direction.
‘You’ve got Rosie?’
‘Would you like me to bring Rosie over?’
McNab waited, judging when it would be OK to approach. He held the doll up to the light so that the girl could see it, then began to walk forward. That was when he noticed she was cradling something.
‘What have you got there, Emma?’
McNab directed the torch on to the girl’s hands.
The strong beam picked out a pair of hollow eyes, the curve of a cheekbone. Now McNab was spooked. Where the hell had the kid found a human skull? McNab heard the intake of breath behind him as someone else made out the shape in the torchlight. A metre away now, McNab crouched on a level with the child.
‘Where did you find that, Emma?’ he said softly.
She stared at him. ‘I was lost. I heard them calling me.’
Something cold and claw-like gripped McNab’s spine. Whatever was happening here, he didn’t like it.
‘Did you find it under this tree?’ His eyes roamed the ground round the girl.
She pointed at the pile of brushwood. ‘In there.’
‘What if we exchange Rosie for . . . that?’ McNab couldn’t bring himself to say ‘skull’.
Emma thought about it.
‘Your mum’s waiting at the hospital for you,’ he tried.
‘He killed them. They were small like me.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
His apprehension was growing by the second. ‘What do you mean,
them
, Emma?’
The girl stood up and handed him the skull. Having rid herself of it, she seemed to crumple. ‘I want my mummy.’
McNab put one arm around her trembling body.
‘It’s going to be OK. You’ve been a very brave girl.’
He waited until the small figure retreated hand in hand with a female officer before he took a proper look. He was no anthropologist but he could tell the skull was human, probably that of a child.
McNab approached the pile of brushwood. It stood three feet high and double that in width. He’d passed numerous similar mounds in his trudge through the woods looking for Emma. He ran his beam over the heap. It looked undisturbed apart from an opening in the right-hand side.
McNab was conscious again of the strange humming sound he’d heard as he’d approached the clearing. So it hadn’t been the girl making that noise. He tried to pinpoint where it was coming from but couldn’t.
He took a GPS reading of the site, then called the station to report the recovery of the missing girl and the subsequent discovery of human remains.
5
Despite the mask, the sickly-sweet smell of roasted flesh invaded Rhona’s nose and mouth. Of all the scents of death, this was the one she found most difficult. She kept her breathing shallow and picked her way through the debris until she reached the back wall.
‘A member of the public reported seeing flames at nine o’clock,’ Bill said from the open end of the skip. ‘When the engine got here ten minutes later, it was pretty well over.’
‘When did they spot there was someone inside?’
‘When they turned off the hoses.’
Once ignited, the fire had had the benefit of a confined space and a strong updraught. The result was both bizarre and horrific. The lower part of the victim was virtually unmarked, yet the head had apparently exploded, coating the nearby walls with fragments of bone and brain.
Rhona crouched next to the body and began to check for anything that might help with identification. Her thorough search produced an undamaged pack of playing cards from a back trouser pocket, obviously shielded from the blaze by the bulk of the body, and a dog tag round the remains of the neck. Rhona lifted it free and took a closer look. The flat metal disc was blackened with soot but she could decipher enough of the inscription to believe it might be genuine.
Rhona bagged both items and passed them to Bill. ‘If it is a soldier, the tag will provide us with his identity.’
‘OK, where’s the fire?’
Rhona recognised the voice of Chrissy McInsh, her forensic assistant.
Chrissy stuck her head round the detective inspector’s taller figure. She was already kitted up, only her face visible, her eight-month pregnancy hardly noticeable in the shapeless white suit. She took one look in the skip then swiftly raised her mask. Even for someone with her experience it wasn’t an easy sight or smell.
‘Jesus, how did that happen?’
‘You tell me,’ said Bill.
He gave Chrissy a leg-up. As she landed, flakes of drier ash rose to float around them like black snow.
‘Who found him?’
‘A fireman spotted something when he finished hosing. The guy who mans the site, Steve Fallon, took a closer look,’ Bill said.
‘Bet this caused a bit of a shock?’
‘Fallon says he’s found everything in these skips, including a newborn baby, but nothing as bad as this.’
‘He should try doing our job,’ Chrissy said grimly. ‘Do we know who he is?’
‘Possibly a soldier.’
‘Gone AWOL?’
He wouldn’t be the first to decide going on the run was better than going back to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Chrissy regarded the headless corpse with sympathy. ‘So the poor bastard fried here instead of in a tank. Who’s scene of crime officer – McNab?’ Chrissy’s tone softened. DS Michael McNab, once her sworn enemy, had recently been partially forgiven.
‘A kid went missing from a road accident. McNab’s at the scene,’ said Bill.