The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) Read online

  Also by Tania Carver

  The Surrogate

  The Creeper

  Cage of Bones

  Choked

  The Doll’s House

  Truth or Dare

  Heartbreaker

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Sphere

  978-0-7515-5791-6

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Tania Carver 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  SPHERE

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  The Lost Girl

  Table of Contents

  Also by Tania Carver

  COPYRIGHT

  Dedication

  Snow Angels

  PART ONE: The Hanged Man

  1

  PART TWO: Nighthawks

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Castles Burning

  PART THREE: Rainsford House

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Rebuilding the Castle

  16

  17

  Biting Back

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  Fiona

  PART FOUR: Season of the Witch

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  A Thin Line

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Pulling the Cord Tight

  35

  36

  The First

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  PART FIVE: Let It Roll

  After The First

  43

  44

  An Easy Life

  45

  46

  Detective Work

  47

  Epiphanies

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  Obsession

  54

  55

  Ready For the Rest of Her Life

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  PART SIX: Clouds

  68

  69

  70

  To Beth. As I promised it would be.

  Snow Angels

  The house was supposed to be a safe one. That was why they were there.

  She didn’t know where ‘there’ was, exactly. Just followed what Mummy and Daddy said. Went where they went. Did what they did. But yes, she thought, it was safe. Or at least it felt safe.

  Wrong.

  It happened without warning. It had been a normal day. Or what had become a normal day for the family. Mummy, Daddy, her brother and her, all together as usual. It was snowing outside and she and her brother had wanted to go out, play in the snow. Mummy and Daddy had looked at each other, concerned. But the men who watched them, watched over them and kept them safe, Mummy said, told them it would be OK. They’d keep an eye on them. So she got ready.

  Before that she had been playing with the new dolls she had been given. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do with them, really. Their clothes, their hair and the little plastic things they came with were all different to what she was used to. She’d had dolls, of course she had. But they had been cloth and straw. They had smelled of natural things, of what they were made of. Like Belinda. Not like these. They smelled of things she didn’t know. Didn’t like. Plastic, her mum had said. And her mouth had twisted up the way it always did when she wasn’t happy about something. She put the doll down, didn’t want to play with it if it was going to upset Mummy. But Mummy saw what she was doing, smiled.

  It’s all right, she said. Play with your doll. It’s fine. And she looked down at her and kept smiling. But when she looked up and away the smile evaporated quickly.

  She didn’t know how long they had been there. She remembered her life before the house. She remembered something that she thought must have been happiness. Safety. Security. She remembered smiling a lot and not worrying about things. Then one night, Mummy and Daddy had told her to be quiet, very quiet. Like they were playing a game. She had been allowed to carry one toy but that was it. She had chosen her favourite rag doll, Belinda. And that was it, they were off. Mummy, Daddy, her brother and her. Off into the night.

  She was scared. Creeping along by a fence at what she thought must have been the bottom of the garden, still pretending it was a game for Mummy and Daddy’s sake. Still trying not to breathe.

  Eventually they came upon a hole in the fence. Daddy ran towards it, beckoning the others. She stopped, stared at it. Couldn’t move. Mummy had seen her, stopped. Looked at her.

  What? Come on.

  It’s a game, Mummy had said, her voice tight and hissing. A game. Come on. You’re with us. Everything’ll be fine. We’ll come back for… everything else. Come on.

  She still wasn’t convinced but this was her mummy talking so she followed them.

  They ran through some woods. Woods that until then she had only glimpsed the tops of from a distance. Now she was in amongst them, moving quickly.

  They heard a sound from behind. Turned.

  Come on, her daddy shouted and they all tried to run quicker.

  This isn’t a game, she thought. This is scary. I want it to end. I want to go back…

  And then she saw lights ahead of them. Two. Blinking. On, then off. On, then off. And, pulled along by Daddy, they ran towards them, even faster.

  It was a car. A big one with lots of seats in. Someone opened the back door and Daddy put her brother in then her. Finally he and Mummy joined them. They hardly had time to say hello to the driver and his friend before the door shut and they were off.

  And then they came here. To the safe house.

  Do this, said her brother.

  He lay down in the snow, put his arms and legs out, moved them backwards and forwards. Because he was her brother and because he was older and she had been taught to always follow your elders and betters, she did the same.

  What are we doing? she said after a few minutes.

  Making snow angels, he said. Look.

  He stood up, beckoning her to do likewise. He pointed at the ground where they had been.

  See? It’s like wings. He looked at her, smiled. He had hardly stopped smiling since they had arrived there. We’ve got wings!

  She could see what he meant. And because he laughed, she laughed too. And they did it again.

  The snow kept falling and lying all morning, so there was no shortage of it to play in. They played until she started to
get tired and a bit hungry.

  Going in, she said.

  Her brother looked up from the huge snowball he had been rolling, intending it to be the body of the biggest snowman ever made. Aw, stay…

  Coming back, she said, and went round the corner of the house.

  That was when she saw it. The sight that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  At first she thought their two guards were playing snow angels too. But as she approached she noticed that their wings were red. And they weren’t moving.

  She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t move. She looked round, wanting to call for her brother, but the words wouldn’t come. Eventually, she ran inside, heart pounding, needing Mummy and Daddy.

  She found them. They were on the floor too, like the police had been. Covered in blood.

  And then she was grabbed from behind.

  She struggled, tried to bite, kick, scream, everything. Stop whoever it was doing whatever they had done to Mummy and Daddy. But she couldn’t do anything. Whoever it was had her too tightly.

  Stop struggling, you little fucker, a voice growled in her ear.

  She smelled bad breath. Stale meat and cigarette smoke. She didn’t stop struggling.

  I said stop it, or you’ll get what they’ve had.

  The meaning of the words penetrated. She stopped struggling.

  Good, the voice said. We’re going to leave now. You’re going to lie on the floor and not move. Keep your eyes and your mouth shut. Count to a hundred. Can you do that?

  She didn’t know if she could. She nodded.

  Good. And when you’ve done that do it again. Or we’ll come back. And you don’t want that.

  He threw her down on the floor. She kept her eyes closed. She tried to count to a hundred.

  Eventually she opened her eyes. Stared. Her mummy was staring right back at her. She felt wet and picked her hand up. Mummy’s blood.

  She wondered what had happened to her brother, where he was. Didn’t dare move to get up and find out.

  So she lay there. For how long, she didn’t know. Staring at her mummy’s sightless eyes, letting her mummy’s blood soak into her clothes.

  Too scared, too numb, to even cry.

  PART ONE

  THE HANGED MAN

  1

  Claire held Damien’s hand. Tight. Heart pounding, legs shaking. Other parts of her body quivering too. So excited. Barely able to believe what she was about to do.

  Not her, they. They were going to do it. Finally.

  She glanced at Damien. Caught his profile in the dying light. God, he was handsome. Maybe not everyone’s idea of handsome, not classically good-looking, perhaps, but he did something to her. Moved something in her that no one else could move. Certainly not Gareth. He hadn’t moved her for years.

  She looked away from Damien, down at her feet once more. Moving slowly, the riverside sand still damp from the receding tide.

  Behind her, the lane led to the main road where they had parked. Or as main a road as Wrabness could claim. North of Colchester, south of Ipswich, it barely counted as a village. Dotted houses, farms, a slice of beach sporting a few stilted huts and some overturned, rotting boats along the sandy, stony shore. That was it.

  And a forest. A dark forest. The kind two people could get lost in. If they wanted to. And they wanted to. They knew what had happened out here. The murders. The madness. The babies. The stuff of nightmares, lurid true-crime books and prurient Channel Five documentaries. And there had been all three. They could have gone to a hotel like everyone else who had an affair, lain in a bed they would pay for but never sleep in, but where was the risk, the thrill, in that? They were transgressing. Where better to do it than in one of the most transgressive places around? The place had been the lair of a predatory sexual, cross-gendered serial killer. It just added an extra layer of excitement. A frisson of sex and death.

  Claire used her free hand to pull her blouse back together. Along with her skirt it had been pulled about during their session in the car, their passion so great they could barely keep their hands off each other as they drove. Pulling in her blouse was just for appearances’ sake, though, she thought. Just in case they bumped into anyone. Not that they would. Not down here. Not at this time of day. And if they did, she thought, breath shaking and mind giddy with what they were about to do, perhaps they might want to watch?

  She looked round once more. No one about. Instead of keeping her blouse fastened she pulled it apart even more. Damien watched what she was doing. At her exposed black, lace-trimmed bra, the one she had worn specially for him, part of a set that he loved. That he had bought her. She saw the look on his face. Felt his pace increase.

  Something in her own body responded to his increased pace. Something dark, hungry and primal.

  She couldn’t get into the woods quick enough.

  ‘And this was where the body was actually found.’ Malcolm pointed to the spot. ‘Right there, ladies and gentlemen…’

  He tried to put as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could but he sensed he was wasting his time. Seven people had turned up. That was it. And two had complained at having to walk so far. Three were texting while he was talking like they were in school and he was a particularly uninspiring teacher. Despite what overly theatrical flourishes he could manage, the Colchester Murder Walk just wasn’t the sure-fire success he had imagined it would be.

  ‘Right there,’ he shouted, feeling another theatrical flourish coming on, giving the buggers what they’d paid for, ‘in front of the light on the lightship. The woman was naked. She had been attacked, mutilated. Almost split in two…’ Shouting the last two words as if he was a fairground barker in some Victorian penny dreadful. Giggles ensued. Not the response he had expected. He continued. ‘Sexually assaulted. Her body riven by the effects of knives, chains, whips…’ He bent forward, eyes wide. ‘And carved into her forehead, the word… WHORE…’

  He kept staring. They just giggled.

  Jesus, he thought. Pull it back, you’re sounding like you’re enjoying yourself too much. He sighed. Should have stayed at the library.

  When the library service was cut Malcolm had been one of the first to go. That was when he had settled on the idea of the Colchester murder tour. He had been on a Jack the Ripper tour in London’s East End and found it impressive. The guide knowledgeable but approachable, the crimes themselves explained in context to the times and the victims given a proper voice. Not sensational at all. A slice of living history, he had thought. On the train home he had got to thinking. Colchester had seen a rise in violent crime in recent years. More than its fair share of serial killers, too. Why not…

  And here he was, down on the quayside of the river Colne on a bleak, cold Tuesday night, dressed as flamboyantly as he could, trying to be a character, trying desperately to interest this tiny band of people. He felt like giving up and going to the pub.

  ‘Any questions?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said one bloke. Big, shaven-headed, tattooed. The woman with him all fake tan and spike heels. Her legs looked sparrow-thin and every time she tottered Malcolm thought she was going to snap.

  ‘Yes?’ said Malcolm.

  ‘What had happened to her?’

  ‘I’m coming to that.’

  ‘Only my mate used to have a burger van up that way.’ The bloke pointed down the road. ‘Said he helped the police, he did. Told me a few things.’ The man smiled, relishing what he was about to say. ‘He said that —’

  ‘Well, that’s great,’ said Malcolm, cutting him off. ‘For your mate. I’ll tell you everything else that happened, don’t worry. If you’ll just follow me…’

  He turned and walked along the dock towards an old, abandoned warehouse with a rusted crane beside it.

  ‘Here’s where the story really gets exciting,’ he said, wishing he felt it.

  Josh was glad of the darkness. It hid his fear.

  Coming down this path, walking towards the house they were
heading to, had been his idea. Kind of. It was a dare, something he felt expected to say. If he wanted to hang around with the cool kids, that was.

  He looked at the other two. Kyle was small with perfect hair and a face that could look angelic but more often appeared manic and deranged. Eyes constantly waiting to be lit by a dark mischief. Tom was Kyle’s best friend and acolyte. The archetypal follower, doing whatever Kyle said, walking behind him at school, coming to rest slightly behind his left shoulder, always sniggering as if he was constantly savouring a favourite punchline.

  Josh wanted to get in with them. Why, he didn’t really know. He hung about with the geekier kids. The scientists and readers. But Kyle and Tom seemed to have taken an interest in him, decided he was to be promoted to their ranks. Josh’s friends had noticed too; they hadn’t been happy about his new liaisons, had begun to withdraw from him. He was sad, of course, but someone else had taken their place. Hannah Cresswell. She liked the bad boys. And once Josh became friendly with Kyle and Tom, she had started paying attention to Josh. And Josh had boxed away his conscience, decided that the trade-off was worth it.